Bystander

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how do you get this badge? it sounds familiar

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It's an exploration badge that's halfway up Recluse's tower in Grandville. Can't remember the coordinates off the top of my head, but if you go straight up from the base portal, you'll hit it no problem.

So yes, it seems to require some sort of flight, but I haven't searched too hard for another way up there, since my Superspeeder still has half an hour on her Sky Raider jetpack so I personally didn't have to worry about that.

Yeah, I agree, I really like how this change seems like it's being implemented conceptually. And I tend to fight on the ground as well, so it definitely should work out nicely to me. Has anyone had a chance to try it to see how the magnitudes of protection are?

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From the latest patch notes...

• Fixed error with Brute Lightning Rod. It now does all Energy damage instead of Smashing damage.
• Brute Energy Melee Lightning Rod has had its recharge rate reduced to 90 seconds.

Special Note: A bug is making Lightning Rod recharge at 60 seconds on test server right now. Enjoy it for the now.

Now that those issues are worked out continue with your rantage.

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90 seconds isn't bad. 90 seconds is really good in fact. My own Power Boost is up every fight with just one recharge and its base recharge is 90 seconds. Enjoy the 60 seconds for now though >.>

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Woohoo! This rules without question. Gone from once in a while to once a pack (or two if you're real quick). Thanks!

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Doesn't matter any more. The Television was changed to unlock with Master of the Airwaves.

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Works for me. I definitely approve of this change. I know some won't because it's so much easier to obtain but this makes it more capable for the commoners so to speak. Devs, thanks for listening to all the arguments and making decisions accordingly.

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Slightly off topic, but BINGO, I can now confirm 100% that the Freak of Nature exploration badge is required for High Pain Threshold.
Linky

This is not to be confused with the Technofreak History badge, which is another requirement that sounds very similar. If Freak of Nature sounds familiar, that's why.

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Great find, thanks! And thanks for posting the pic too Out of curiosity, what level were you when you got that badge? I'm curious because of the amount of exp you earned for it.

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If they can not find a way to fix it then I would suggest cutting the end cost or raising the base damage since all it will be is a fancy single target attack in terms of Fury and exp gain.

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Heck, one way I'd be happy with for them to fix it would be to make it essentially a version of itself that only chains back to the target it hit. So in other words, make it a fully single target attack as a fast DoT with a higher magnitude sleep or whatever it is that causes the mobs to do that caught-in-electricity animation. That way, while it's not doing the conceptually neat chaining between enemies, it stays effective, it doesn't have the XP loss issue, and the set gets a decent higher damage single target attack for those that want burst damage. What would people think of something like that?

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Except if it was DOT then the extra damage would wake them up and cancel out the sleep effect. Same thing that happens with the science origin power, it does damage twice and because of this the sleep is negated most times.

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That's true, I forgot about that aspect. How about making it a Hold using the same animation then? Or making the sleep take effect only after the DoT is complete or on the last tick of it? Or instead of the sleep/hold animation style, go for a greatly increased End drain style?

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If they can not find a way to fix it then I would suggest cutting the end cost or raising the base damage since all it will be is a fancy single target attack in terms of Fury and exp gain.

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Heck, one way I'd be happy with for them to fix it would be to make it essentially a version of itself that only chains back to the target it hit. So in other words, make it a fully single target attack as a fast DoT with a higher magnitude sleep or whatever it is that causes the mobs to do that caught-in-electricity animation. That way, while it's not doing the conceptually neat chaining between enemies, it stays effective, it doesn't have the XP loss issue, and the set gets a decent higher damage single target attack for those that want burst damage. What would people think of something like that?

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You're a self admitted badge wh0re.

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Thank you.

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A LOT of the badges require very extensive grinds. Therefore it is not unreasonable to make the assumption that either you like grinding or you dislike it a lot less than most people. It may not be necessarily accurate, but it's not unreasonable for people to make that assumption.

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You are correct. I do not mind grind badges as much as most people. To assume to that I like them, however, is still to assume (you know how that saying goes).

Again the only reason some people can tolerate 'grind' badges more than others is that the tolerant ones are either 1) Way OCD, or 2) realize that badges were not meant to be hunted for. They were meant to be earned through normal play. It's our decision to hunt for them and that makes them a 'grind'

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Yeah, I know. And that's why I had the "or dislike them less" clause in there. Personally, I gather badges, but I don't go for the ones that require grinding. What is important to me, though, is content. Having content based on badges that require OR encourage grinding is in my opinion bad.

For example, Doc Buzzsaw/the TV, with their Inf badges. I missed out on Doc Buzzsaw because I didn't find out about the requirement until I was already in the thirties. I got the Bling badge at 32. I technically can't miss out on the TV contact but only doing that contact at 50 kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion.

Another example would be the Slot Machine with the Marcone badge. I grinded for that badge with two others in Port Oakes. It took us around four hours and I really hated it. I liked the contact, but not enough to do that grind again so I basically said that once was enough. Then it turns out that Gangbuster is required for an Accolade. So if any other of my characters want that accolade that gives gameplay effects, I have to do that grind again.

I consider Accolades to essentially be content in a lot of ways because they give actual gameplay effects. Whether it's a passive boost to HP or End or a power on a slow recharge, it still affects my gameplay.

I'm rambling now and I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this post (mostly because I got heavily distracted by work for half an hour or so), so I'm gonna stop here with one final comment. Because you are a badge-wh0re, and because you are willing to tolerate grind doesn't mean that grind is good or even Ok. You're looking at it from one end of the spectrum, other people are looking at it from the other end. One of the best things about CoX in my opinion is there is less grind than other MMO's, or less that feels like grind in it.

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Please do not put words into my mouth. I don’t like grinds anymore than you or others (and never said I did)

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You're a self admitted badge wh0re. A LOT of the badges require very extensive grinds. Therefore it is not unreasonable to make the assumption that either you like grinding or you dislike it a lot less than most people. It may not be necessarily accurate, but it's not unreasonable for people to make that assumption.

There's an elevator that goes right up to it around back. I was confused as well for a bit but I just went up there and followed the platform around. It's near those two contacts (Abyss and Mage-Killer).

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Man, I really hope Castle takes a good look at electric/. All it takes is a couple changes to make the set great. Namely

1) Make Thunder Strike equal to the blaster version... but for brutes. Thunder Strike for blasters is comparable to Total Focus for Blasters. Thunder Strike for brutes is not comparable to Total Focus for Brutes. And it would not unbalance the set if it were.

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Not happening.

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What about slightly reducing the recharge on it (maybe down to 15 seconds from the current 20)? I personally see no problem with the damage for it, but it takes a long time to recharge given it's power. I'm basing this on comparing it with Jacob's Ladder, which has an 8 second recharge. Jacob's Ladder will do more damage than Thunderstrike against the same number of enemies if you line them up right, and has a much smaller recharge. Though on the other hand, Thunderstrike has the capability of hitting a much larger number of opponents (which I like), it just recharges so slowly that you don't get to do it very much. A 5 second reduction in recharge would help but not make it overbearing I don't think.

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2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.

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We have a bug report in engineerings queue to do something about this, but there is no ETA on a change, and it is possible they tell us nothing can be done. In that case, we either redesign the power, or leave it as is and add the "Warning: May cause XP loss" into the help text. Obviously, a code fix is the best case solution.

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Thanks for the update on Chain Induction. In the case where you might need to redesign the power, is there any idea for the redesign that you're leaning toward? And given that over half of the set is area effect attacks, will that affect your decision?

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If a signature character has a badge associated with his defeat, it should be awarded whenever he's defeated, not just when it's the "right" zone. Recluse's Victory has plenty of badges on its own, more than any other PvP zone by far, and this artificial restriction is unnecessary and unfounded (nothing in the badge descriptions say anything about needing to beat the heroes/villains there).

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I agree. It shouldn't matter where you defeat them as long as you defeat them.

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Please remove or sharply reduce the requiements or difficulties (50% or more) of the grind badges. 1000 Pill Boxes (particularly since this has to be done by each person 1000 times, with no team reward for a very team activity), 1000 heavies, 200 toxic tarantulas (which are rare until Grandville), 200 Marcone bosses (only show up in two zones, one very low level, the other at high enough level that they might lead to outleveling the contact), Midas Touch (as regards the TV contact only - and I'd strongly recommend kicking the TV over to Nerva or St. Martial, and lowering the requirements to appropriate levels, since 30-40 is infamous for not having enough contact missions), Isolator (in a PvP zone and with sharply limited spawn rates, it's a griefable grind, not a challenge) - all of these are excessively high grinds. Grinds don't make the game fun, and the devs have repeatedly said they don't wish to reward grinding - but they are, and how.

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I defintely agree with the Inf badges for the unlockable contacts. As others have stated, there are plenty of other badges that would work for the TV contact. Why not use any of those? For the Isolator badge though, Positron specifically said that IF they ever allowed it to be obtained after Outbreak, it would be extremely hard, annoyingly hard. This qualifies. I consider that to be what he intended. And the people who were campaigning for the badge seem to be ok with it being so difficult.

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Let us know what the badge requirements are. Despite the best efforts of many experienced badge players, we only know of three power-yielding accolades villain-side, when we've got reason to believe at least three more (the equivalents of TF Commander, Atlas Medallion, and Portal Jockey) should be around somewhere. Unfortunately, without knowing what's involved in them, we cannot tell whether we're still missing badges, or if the required badges or the accolades themselves are bugged. This is also true of the Arachnos Transport GM in Grandville - it's apparently a forced spawn, but nobody's seen it in Grandville, only as an unattackable target in Mercy.

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From everything I've seen, we know of four accolades for villains - High Pain Threshold, Demonic, Megalomania, and Headline Stealer. The requirements shouldn't be known for these in my opinion since that's the whole point of trying to figure them out. People had to work to figure them out for heroes, it should be the same for villains. Mind you, it would be nice to know even whether the others that haven't been found yet exist currently. Not necessarily what they are or what they require, just whether the other equivalent accolades exist on test currently.

I also feel that some of the requirements for these are a bit out of whack. For instance, High Pain Threshold seems to require the Deathless badge, which is an Epic level debt badge. That's a ton of debt you have to earn for this badge, and NONE of the hero accolades require ANY Epic level badges. Also, Headline Stealer requires the Media Junkie badge from the TV contact. So you have to have gotten that 20 million Infamy to be able to get that.

On a related note, I'm curious about the effective level requirements. On the hero side, many of the accolades have a hard level requirement due to hazard/trial zones. Villains don't have that hard block outside of Strike Forces. So Megalomaniac, which is the equivalent of Vanguard, has a hard block of 35 due to the Crystal Keeper badge, and Vanguard has a hard block of 40 due to Rikti Crash Site. On the other hand, High Pain Threshold has no (known) hard level req but it's equivalent has (if I remember right) a hard requirement of 23 (for badges in Terra Volta). High Pain Threshold requires Deathless though, which even staying at max debt cap starting from level 10 on, I doubt you could get even remotely close to 23. Anybody have any additional info or data on this?

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Since knockback is so common, the lack of protection against it really makes this powerset undesirable. You have to either get CJ/Superleap/Acrobatics or three-slotted Hover for status protection that's a "gimme" in many other sets. Those costs are excessive.

I have a fire tank with Acrobatics and it's usable (barely) because tanks don't have to attack all the time -- they just have to stand there and take aggro. Brutes have to attack all the time to keep Fury up. With an endurance hog like Acrobatics, it makes for a lousy combination.

Grounded might be a good candidate for KB protection. since Static Shield already has End Drain protection.

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Guess you missed Castle's post:
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FYI: Electric Shields' Grounding Power will have Immobilize and Knockback Protection added. The set will still not have a Heal power or HP Buff power.

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On approximately half of the maps, there's a side mission to break into a villain hideout and steal their stuff. The "glowie" in that mission 100% reliably gives another randomly-selected temporary power, no matter how many missions you've done on this map. I haven't even been farming them hard and I think I've got something like 8 of them (not counting another 10 or so from story arcs and the ones you were talking about and the PvP zone patrol missions) just from the process of getting my level 5 to 30 contacts. If I'd been farming them hard, I could probably have scored another 6 or so.

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The funny thing for me regarding this is that I've done I think 4-5 mayhem missions, and my roommate's done around 6ish. I've never gotten the break into villain hideout side mission once. My roommate has gotten it virtually every time. Guess I'm just unlucky

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FYI, Lightning Rod's Recharge Time will be being reduced.

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(tries to push luck)
can we get a dmg boost?

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No. I should say, "Not Likely" since anything is possible. Lightning Rod, with it's Area of Effect, does about twice the damage of any other Brute tier 9 power. Against a single target, its damage is comparable to Greater Fire Sword.

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Good to know. I'm assuming that the damage will be changed to Energy though? Unless the description is in error? And thanks for the info!

I wonder if it tried to award him the 35-39 temp power and he already had it? I would assume that it's based on the character's level, not the level of the Mayhem mission. If he didn't have it then he should have gotten something at least.

Though this does bring up a point. How does this work with Malefactoring? Say you're a level 40 and you want to get the temp powers you missed, can you Malefactor down with someone of the appropriate level and get the temp power for that level range?

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Uk notes

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Gotcha, thanks. Those weren't there when I was checking earlier (since I specifically checked the UK boards).

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In the 5/16 notes:

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• Mayhem Missions: Signature Heroes now only spawn for groups of 4 or more on appropriate maps.

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Yay, no more getting jumped on by the Freedom Phalanx while I'm solo.

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5/16 notes? Not seeing those anywhere. I've tried refreshing, clearing cache, trying a different browser, and seeing if it was on the UK side (since they're a number of timezones ahead), but I still only see the notes for 5/10. Where'd you find those?

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I find the absence of Red Name comments on either the Elec Armor or the Elec melee to be quite sad at this point. We know they are reading the boards, but their lack of comment to me at this point is that both versions of Elec are " working as intended ".

Given the potential for this set - not really looking for uber, but was hoping for par - in its current form it will be most likely relegated to theme/concept builds only.

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Keep in mind, E3 was last week, so a lot of the devs were probably down there and didn't have time to check the forums as much as we have been. There were what, around 3-5ish dev posts the entire last week? I'm sure we'll get a lot more this week now that they're back.

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Sorry, I was at E3, and Cuppa was the only CoX Dev or Mod I saw at the NCSoft booth during my many visits there (one of the blue-shirted people at the main desk looked at me like I was from Mars when I first said "Cryptic", but it's possible she just couldn't hear me over the band NCSoft had on stage ).

Cryptic didn't have any demos there at all. Just a poster and a looping gameplay video, really. I don't see what they could've been doing at E3 that would justify a week of silence.

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Just because they didn't have a demo or anything doesn't mean that they weren't there. It also doesn't mean that they weren't here either. I was merely giving a possibility for why we hadn't had many posts from the devs last week.

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Specifically:

Melee AT's have a considerable lower Ranged Damage modifier than Melee Damage modifier. For Stalkers and Brutes, the Range modifier is 2/3 the melee modifier.

So, if a Melee attack rated at 'High' does 100 damage, a 'High damage Ranged attack could be expected to do 66 damage before slotting.

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Out of curiosity, how do the Stalker and Brute range modifiers compare to the Scrapper and Tank ones?

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I find the absence of Red Name comments on either the Elec Armor or the Elec melee to be quite sad at this point. We know they are reading the boards, but their lack of comment to me at this point is that both versions of Elec are " working as intended ".

Given the potential for this set - not really looking for uber, but was hoping for par - in its current form it will be most likely relegated to theme/concept builds only.

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Keep in mind, E3 was last week, so a lot of the devs were probably down there and didn't have time to check the forums as much as we have been. There were what, around 3-5ish dev posts the entire last week? I'm sure we'll get a lot more this week now that they're back.

The problem with that argument is what if those lower level people want to earn the Bling badge for Doc Buzzsaw or want to earn the Midas Touch badge for the Television? Basically you have people going from 1-25 in SG mode and then dropping out immediately after and staying out.

So as a result, you're getting maybe 100k Prestige from them during those 25 levels AND you end up with multiple sugardaddies in the SG. If they want to do the content for these two contacts, this is pretty much how they have to do it. Or grind for multiple days on end.

If you have people in your SG that absolutely don't care about content, then that's one thing and they can stay in SG mode longer, but otherwise, it's one or the other.

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Summarizing this whole issue: Midas Touch is a poor requirement to unlock content because...
- it's not fun to acquire.
- it's not something you can specifically work at. It's a by-product of gaining XP, not an achievement in itself.
- it's not something your teammates can specifically assist you in acquiring.
- chasing after it hurts your Supergoup.
- it's very superfluous - selling loot will give you almost enough Infamy to cover every SO you need, you will only need a few million more to finish the job, not 20 million more.
- people already complain about the Bling badge being a requirment.

I fail to see how any amount of content is worth those problems when there are 200 other badges they could choose from that do not have those issues!

I would be very interested in hearing a Developer give their reasoning for choosing Midas Touch for this instead of some other badges.

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I agree wholeheartedly.

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I have to disagreee with that, without a movement power and only 15 min to do it... and with the bank and the jail being on opposite sides on the map. Every moment counts, I have gotten booted in the middle of the final fight more than half of the times i have tried sence they lowered the time from 20 min to 15.

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The time was always 15 minutes. It was just the broker mission text that said 20 minutes, which was a bug.

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If they were to add new patrons, I'm sure they will give everyone a chance to change. They never said the PPPs will always be permanent. Most likely new PPPs would mean new patrons, who probably aren't loyal to Arachnos. They probably wouldn't care if you betrayed Arachnos to join them.

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Actually, yes, they did say that Patrons would be permanent, you cannot respec out of them. And they also said that they would laver be adding another patron that's non-arachnos in origin.

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I don't remember seeing them say that they'd be adding a non-Arachnos patron, and I can't seem to find it via search. Do you have a link for that?