Call Me Awesome

Issue 4 I believe; we've had one every issue from i5 on... a couple of times we've had two. The last time I recall having two freespecs for an issue was somewhere in the issue 10-12 area. The reason for that is that we get a "use it or loose it" warning a few days prior to a new freespec being given out so we can use the old one if we haven't already and that time they forgot to give warning so we got another about a week later.

Most of my characters have enough respecs saved up anyway to make it mostly a moot point for me; I only have two characters who don't have at least 3 vetspecs saved and most still have 2-3 Terra Volta respecs they can do. This is the first time in over a year that I'll be respecing all my characters; generally I tend to plan things out in advance and build for my final goal from the beginning. Issue 19 is going to be a lot of work for me, 15 level 50's to respec and a whole bunch in the 20-47 range. I'm not complaining about getting a substantial buff to every character though.

Yep, it can almost be done on pure SO's... I got to ~42% def to all positions without slotting a single IO on a test build. Of course that did require an... unusual build with slotting and power selection.

I think my SD/FM tanker (47 as of tonight) only had to find about 7% defense with IO bonuses to softcap... I did it with cheap IO's too. Multi Strike, Mako's Bite and the Steadfast unique with a single set of Touch of Death.

The more I play that tank the more impressed I am by both it's durability and damage output. It's by far the most damaging tanker I've ever played and it approaches my Inv/Stone tanker for durability.

Given the choice between Tough/Weave or Res Elements/Res Energies I'd get Tough/Weave in a heartbeat; REl and REn just don't give enough resistance to make a huge difference while Tough/Weave DO. Back in issue 7-12 before the Invuln buff of i13 I completely dropped REl and REn on my Invuln.

Going from ~15% to ~30% resist for exotic damage is helpful sure, but it's much more effective to go from ~70% (without Tough) to hard capped 90% resist (with Tough) to S/L damage. Defense is the same way, the more you have (up to the 45% soft cap anyway) the more each additional % is worth.

Mind Control is one of the original powersets for Controllers at COH Launch. Containment appeared in issue 5 as a partial compensation for the Global Defense Nerf and the neutering of controller AOE controls. In the early levels it's one of the most powerful controller sets out there with a strong single target attack chain by level 6-8; it gets steadily stronger into the 20's and then plateaus while other control sets start to take off in the mid 30's.

The area where Mind excels is in aggro-free control; confuse, mass hyp, mass confuse can all be used at will without drawing aggro. Mesmerize does draw aggro, but by the time it's sleep wears off so has the aggro, it could be considered a fourth aggro free control. Mind isn't really weak; it's just different. It has very good ST damage with the Dominate/Levitate/Mesmerize chain and a decent AOE damage/control power in Terrorize. It isn't Illusion or Fire but it isn't a wimp either.

My first 50 controller was Mind/Kinetic and while it isn't a killing machine like Fire/Rad or an AV soloer like Ill/Rad (my other two 50 controllers) it isn't bad. Mine has the Master of Statesman's Task Force badge (received twice on that character) and is a great team character.

Indeed, they get VOLTRON!

*If you've never seen a Malta group with 2 Hercules Titan LT's in it do their thing then attack one and get it to about 50% and all things will be made clear. It's one of the cooler things to see in the game.

(I'd kind of like to be able to voltron two Zeus Titans into an EB version of the Kronos... that'd be cool)

Still, getting back to the OP I'm surprised that a mature scrapper is having issues at all with a single Herc; they've never seemed that dangerous to me on any of my characters. Sappers heck yes, and Gunslingers, particularly boss versions are nasty but while Hercs can hit hard they shouldn't pose a serious threat. A Zeus can be tough but Hercs have always seemed fairly normal. Harder to kill than a typical LT due to the resist but not overly dangerous. Step out of the burn patch and keep pounding.

Heck, I've a bunch on my PB also... they're dirt cheap and great for ranged attacks. Unfortunately they're also the most common HO out there so they're the least valuable. I haven't looked in the last month, but they were in the 100k range

I'd agree with this with one minor caveat; I'd look for +endurance or +recovery bonuses before looking for +regen. Also as Airhammer mentioned the shakeup coming with the fitness pool going inherent in issue 19 will cause a major redesign on nearly every character in the game... greatly for the better I might add.

The times my soft capped Inv/Stone tanker could have used Aid Self are so incredibly few and far between it's much better to get other powers and simply carry a couple of greens. Unless I'm solo tanking Lord Recluse in the STF I almost never need inspirations so it's no burden to keep a couple greens in the tray.

Now to the OP, at the time I wrote my soft cap guide in issue 13 all the IO's I listed could be bought for around 20 million... in today's market you're probably looking at roughly 80-100 million. If that sounds like a lot to you just remember that the earning power of a level 50 makes this fairly trivial and it's really easy to make big money on the market without trying. If you've some Hami-O's on your tanker you can unslot them in a respec and finance your build by selling them at the market; many HO's sell for over 100 million. Keep 3 Cytoskeleton HO's for Invincibility and sell any others... Ribos really bring huge money. On the other hand Centrioles (dam/range) are still worthless

The key to anything is always playing intelligently and using your abilities to their best advantage. Still there are mobs that one tanker can face and yawn that will send another tanker to the dirt... prudence would dictate being aware of your strengths and weaknesses and knowing when you're facing mobs that play to your weaknesses.

Caution is certainly in order facing DE with a Shield tanker while an Invuln can run and gun them without problem. Likewise a Sapper isn't really a huge threat to a Shield but they're a major concern for a resistance based tanker. Know the mobs you're weak to, find them first and deal with them.

There's ways to deal with problematic mobs with any tanker I've played, the methods and which mobs fall into that category vary from powerset to powerset.

True, I've a 50 BS/SD scrapper who's anything but flabby. Not quite up with my Invuln, Stone or Shield tankers for durability but it's no slouch. I've main tanked the ITF with that scrapper.

I do have a 45 SD/Fire tanker I've been playing recently (well, last month... I've been working 18 hour days for the last 20 days and haven't logged in) and it's a beast. Durability wise it's a bit below my soft capped Invuln but still more than adequate and damage wise it leaves my other tankers in the dust. It doesn't quite equal my BS/SD scrapper but it comes rather close to my Spine/Regen scrapper in damage output. I've been very impressed with how well that tanker works.

Actually a Core2Duo is just fine for COH, I have an older workstation class laptop with a Core2Duo, 7950GTX mobility and 1600x1050 resolution screen that manages 40-60fps with limited Ultra Mode turned on. Shadows up to one notch below full and full reflections is playable at roughly 30fps; the big hits are turning up AA or activating occlusion (which I don't like the look of anyway personally so no loss there).

I do, as you probably expect with that machine, cherry pick my settings for "bang for buck" on the eye candy vs the performance hit. Obviously it can't keep up with my main machine with a core2quad 9550 and 275GTX vid card but it's perfectly adequate for the task.

On the cleaning vents issue I'll add a big HELL YES to that... if the unit's overheating and the intake/exhaust vents aren't blocked (like setting the laptop on a carpet or other soft surface... the intake fans are generally on the bottom) then either they're clogged with crud or the laptop's poorly designed and lacks adequate cooling.

Cleaning out the vents isn't rocket science but you can damage the fans if you do it wrong. One quick and easy check would be to blow into them and if you get a cloud of dust then yeah you need to clean the suckers. Don't use a can of air for this without stopping the fan from spinning... freely spinning the fan with the air can can damage bearings and potentially damage components. Your fan effectively becomes a DC generator when it spins which could cause Bad Things to happen. Unlikely, but why take chances.

Here's an anecdote from my own experience... a friend of mine brought me his daughter's laptop because it kept overheating. Once I opened the case and saw the main cooling fan it was no wonder; I pulled a wad of dust bunnies/cat hair nearly the size of a golf ball out of the fan and duct. Apparently the daughter liked to play with the machine sitting on the carpet... in a year's time it accumulated enough crap to stop the fan completely. Luckily removing the crud solved the problem and we didn't need to replace the fan and he had a talk with the kid about carpets, cat hair and computers and why they don't go together well.

If you build it right any of these will work quite well for you; the Invuln will be tougher than the SD but the SD will deal considerably better damage. Both will easily be tough enough for most anything you'll want to do; I haven't found much that causes my SD/Fire much trouble. I haven't tried taking him on an STF yet; I prefer to take a 50 tanker instead of a 47 so that challenge will wait until the ding.

Heck, try both and see which one suits you. The Invuln will be tougher early; like all defense sets SD takes awhile to come into it's own.

I take it you don't face Nemesis or Crey much? Snipers are a somewhat common LT spawn in those two groups... I typically see at least a couple of them spawn in a given mission.

Snipers can't be herded, they have a self immobilize so they do not move from their spawn point. The only way to move them is to knockback them.

If you're facing mobs with AOE Phanty will rush into melee and literally get killed in seconds. I was facing Requiem last week on my perma-PA Ill/Rad and it got so I hardly bothered with Phanty. I'd summon him, he'd immediately run into melee with the AV and die within 15 seconds. PA always had the aggro but he'd still get pasted in seconds from splash damage.

Phanty has no business in melee and with mobs I'm not running in to heal his worthless butt and catching the same damage that's dropping him. PA is supposed to melee for aggro, Phanty is supposed to stay at range by you. Illusion is a set best played from range, there's no reason to run into melee. Because of Phanty's broken AI he's far less useful than he used to be.

Good question; frankly I'd doubt it but I really don't know.

It can happen, but so far I haven't seen it. Most of the time the Bonfire kills them as it KB's them, either immediately or when they run back in. Just keep an eye out for them and make sure they're all dead before moving on to the next tower. I've found as long as "their" tower is alive they'll ignore a destroyed tower near them to come back and heal their tower. It's once you've killed their tower that they look for any nearby to resurrect.

This may not be 100% accurate but I haven't seen any exceptions so far.

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Should've known I'd get scooped by others trying to answer first
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Let me be the first (hopefully, some folks here are pretty quick on the reply button) to welcome you to the game; don't be afraid to ask questions about anything you're unsure about... most of us don't bite. Since you're currently on the trial you'll be limited in what you can do, unfortunately that's a legacy of the Gold sellers using free trial accounts for nefarious purposes.

Obviously there's something right about this game since so many of us have been here for 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 6 years now and we're still going strong. A large part of that is the community, we tend to be a more mature, tolerant and friendly group than many other games.

Now in answer to your questions, probably the majority of us are what you'd describe as casual players; we have jobs and lives outside the game. As a general rule we don't get hung up on details. I've been playing over 5 years now, mostly casually and I'm still having fun.

This is NOT a game based around rushing to 50 before the real game starts... outside of a couple of high end Task Forces and Raids there's not much to do at 50 that you can't also do at lower levels. For the most part the game is what happens from level 1-50, not what happens once you're already 50. Most of us have multiple characters of many different AT's (what you'd think of as Classes) that we play, and the game plays very differently for a Scrapper than it does for a Controller.

This is, first and most assuredly foremost a PvE game. While PvP does exist it's confined to the Arena and a few dedicated zones. Very little of the playerbase has any interest in PvP at all. Since I'm one of those players who doesn't care about PvP I really can't go into the finer points but from listening to the few who do play it they aren't happy with the current implementation. Back before the last series of PvP mechanic changes I'd heard that PvP'ers accounted for less than 5% of the playerbase and many of them left when the rules were changed a couple years ago. Now you'll find a few dedicated PvP players on Freedom and not much anywhere else.

My advice to you is to go ahead and try several different types of characters to see what you enjoy. For a good "learning" character to start out I'd suggest a Scrapper of some variety with a Resistance secondary; they'll offer good damage output and enough survivability to be forgiving of beginner mistakes. Once you've gotten the basics down try anything that looks interesting until you find a character who really clicks with you.

One thing to be aware of, this isn't a game where the "holy trinity" of tank, DPS and healer applies; in fact the word "healer" in reference to a Defender is something of a curse word here. Our buffs and debuffs are extremely powerful and much more valuable than simple healing, at least once you level past the mid-teens. Team composition is very open and no particular AT is ever "required". Even the Statesman's Task Force, one of the toughest 45-50 Task Forces in the game doesn't need a particular composition or AT to succeed. The fastest times have actually been turned in by a team of 8 Controllers.

All AT's can contribute to any task in the game and none are irreplaceable. A team of 8 Scrappers? By all means, it'll destroy anything it comes across. 8 Blasters? Things tend to die too fast to kill the team. 8 Defenders? Katie bar the door things will go fast with stacking buffs to make the team godly and debuffs to turn the mobs into kittens. Our "support" characters are powerful in their own right; put a group of them together and they become downright broken... in a VERY good way

Good question, I've /bugged it twice so far. Of course the (non) feedback you get from that is the form letter "Thanks for reporting ............." is pretty meaningless.

Anyone PM'd Castle about it yet?