Call Me Awesome

I already have enough trouble getting to all my other alts; at last count I had 14 at 50, 4 in the 40's, 7 in the 30's, 12 in the 20's and an unknown number of lowbies. Every AT in the game is represented... except Stalkers.

Lately I've been dividing my time between my Shield/Fire tanker (30) and my Fire/EM blaster (43) while sadly neglecting all those others

I imagine I'll get interested in another character at some point; probably before either the Shield tank or the Fire blaster hit 50... that seems to be the way things have gone for me the last year or two; and probably accounts for all the various alts in the 20-40 range

Oh, those 14 who are already 50 also tend to call on my playtime quite frequently once again making it tough to level the younger characters. Let's see... three tanks, 3 scrappers, 3 controllers, 2 defenders, 1 blaster, 1 peacebringer, 1 brute all at level 50; 2 controllers, 1 warshade, 1 blaster in the 40's, 3 defenders, 1 controller, 2 tankers, 1 widow in the 30's... too many alts, not enough time

Yep, Rad's good; but there's a lot of other debuff sets out there that are also good. IMO what makes Rad nice is it's "Swiss army knife" approach; it offers great flexibility with tohit debuffs, defense debuffs, resistance debuffs, -regen debuffs and slows along with a great team buff in AM.

None of these debuffs are unique to Rad, and some sets are better at specific debuffs as well... nothing I know of can debuff tohit like a Dark/Dark defender for example while Sonic/Sonic is better at -resistance than any other debuffer.

Stack a team with a few debuffers of any type and, assuming even moderate player ability, you'll destroy nearly anything in the game. Debuffs outperform buffs in nearly any situation in the game... of course the ideal is to have both. Healing comes in a very distant last.

Indeed, and I've done it many times unassisted on my Stone/Fire back when he was slotted up with SO's... with very little insp use. That's the big advantage that Granite + Rooted has over other sets; it can do those things at base level performance.

You are given a rename token Hyper; I've used it once to intentionally change a character's name by creating a level 1 with the former name on the destination server.

Right click on the shortcut, select properties, compatibility tab, check "Run this program as an administrator"

Damnit, I did not need to roll up a new tanker!

Inv/Stone, Stone/EM, Stone/Fire at 50, Fire/Fire at 35, current project Shield/Fire at 28 and all my other alts... and you guys are making me think about rolling up yet another

Truer words are seldom spoken there. Players like that can be counted on almost without fail to be poor players. Teams with that attitude are invariably bad teams. In all my time in game I've never seen a team that "needed a healer" be anything other than horrendous.

If I'm forming a team I usually don't care a lot about what the team composition is outside of a very few cases (MoSTF, MoITF). In all cases though, even on an STF, I'll take absolutely anything in preference to a self-described "healer"; 9 times out of 10 anyone who describes themselves that way is a complete waste of time.

Give me a Rad or Dark or Sonic or Kinetic or Trick Arrow or Ice or FF... any of them are likely to contribute more to a team (past level 15 or so anyway) than an Emp. They're also MUCH more likely to be played by a good player. It's not that the Emp set's bad, it's just that so many Emp players are bad. It's unfortunate, but it's gotten to the point where the bad Emp players so outnumber the good ones that those few good ones have to prove they're worthwhile. Unless it's a player I know I'm always leery of an Emp... I know it's unfair but I still look at them as useless until proven competent.

Your best bet is to make sure he doesn't summon the Banes and the easiest way to do that is by casting a toggle debuff on him. Radiation Infection, Snow Storm, Darkest Night and the like all do a great job of this... LR's summon is interruptable and he can't fire it (except for the 20% HP pet nuke) if he has one of these on him. I can assure you that if you're getting hit too much on the ITF that LR's Banes will rip you apart in short order; you'll have a bunch of +4 bosses pounding you in addition to LR. It's best to restrict your problems to only the one big 8 legged one

Of course this does require you to taunt him otherwise he may decide to say hello to the debuffer. If you're depending on a kinetic to keep you healed then lead LR over to the green tower; the kin will be able to Transfusion off of it and it's the last one the team will take down. I'd still prefer added resistance and defense over pure healing, particularly while the red tower's up... he can very easily two shot you. His heaviest attack can take my Granite tanker down to 25% in one shot with the Red tower buff so beware.

I don't think the game's different on Win7; I did a complete fresh install on mine though since my COH directory had gotten rather cluttered... I'd used the same directory and drive for two upgrades and reinstalled each time, then copied. I found I had 3 different COH installs (one was Test, but I've no idea where the other came from) and had to make sure which was which.

When I went to Win7 I just copied cohupdater.exe to a new directory on the new SSD and let it cook overnight. Everything was all ready to run the next morning... it only took me 5 minutes to reset resolution and various graphics options, and to re-install the Vidiotmaps overlay. Doing it that way I made sure I wasn't bringing any potential problems to my new install.

Oh, one "gotcha" that I've seen with Win7; make sure you install the newest drivers for your videocard from Nvidia or ATI... the driver Windows installs isn't fully functional. I'd also suggest installing the 64bit version of Win7; since you're going to all the work you may as well get rid of the 4GB RAM limit.

I think most of your questions have been answered, but for practical usage the built in sound is just fine for most situations. It's been two system upgrades since I used an add-on sound card.

Now, if you're doing professional audio editing and processing then it's a different story altogether, but for general use and gaming with multi-channel surround sound the built-in audio's fine. My gaming machine uses the built-in Realtek sound with no problems. My WORK machine on the other hand has an 8 input $2,000 card. I can't tell the difference on the output to speakers of that over the built-in... there's a huge difference on input quality though.

Oh, ouch. Yeah, that WOULD tend to make the set underperform just a wee bit

I lucked out since very early in my career I found a guide for Invuln so I had a decent build from the early levels... it did take me until the late 20's to really understand how to tank though and MUCH longer to really get all the fine points down.

Everyone has the "well Duh, that was stupid" moments in game; even those of us with years of experience still occasionally have them. "Gee, that was dumb running into that group without turning on my toggles" "Remember idiot, you're playing your BLASTER now, not your TANKER" I've done all of those and many more besides

All of the various editions come with different goodies; the Good vs Evil has a very useful jump jet power and access to the Pocket D "Tiki Room" with a tailor and inspiration vendor. Architect and the Mac both include other extras, not having them in front of me right now I can't remember the exact specifics.

The "Super Booster" packs all include various goodies as well; of these the Martial Arts booster is probably the most useful with the Ninja Run power it grants you at level 4 which is basically a half strength super speed and super jump power... add Sprint and you'll have nearly base super speed at level 4.

You'll need to buy one of the 19.99 versions of the game to have the full, unrestricted version, then you can add the booster packs as you like. I'm not sure if the Going Rogue expansion qualifies as a full version of the game or not... from what I've read I'd doubt it. Given my choice of which edition I'd probably get the GvE edition goodies personally.

I'll go out on a limb and say there's no chance at all of Ultra Mode working on that integrated graphics adapter... I seriously question if CoX will run at all; the graphics are extremely weak.

If it does run, you're probably looking at the lowest settings on everything and low resolution, probably with graphics errors. The good news though is that you've enough computer horsepower otherwise and if the machine has a PCI Express slot you ought to be able to drop an inexpensive video card in; check out the "ultra mode shopping guide" thread for ideas there.

I realize this isn't what you were hoping to hear, but unfortunately your machine is severely underpowered as-is. It's fine for business apps and web browsing but not much more.

The problem is the accuracy... actually hitting him with antagonize is like hitting a MOG'd PP... you'll be at the tohit floor until that orange tower's gone. This is where a tank has a huge advantage with Taunt being autohit. For the most part you'll be depending on "sight" aggro; you'll need to make sure he doesn't see something else he'd rather hit.

I guess I'm going to have to ask just what your intentions for the character are beyond being elemental.

If you want to tank then unquestionably the Stone/Fire is the best choice... once it matures it's practically unkillable and has really good AOE damage output (for a tank), I have a Stone/Fire at 50 myself and it's extremely competent at tanking. Remember the mobility penalties attached to Stone Armor though, and the damage and recharge penalty in Granite... it's not for everyone. Some love the set and some just get frustrated with the lack of mobility and being forced into TP for a travel.

Fire Armor really is one of the weakest tanker primaries... that said there are ways to compensate for it and create a capable character. Fire Armor's a set I haven't played in years and only into the mid-30's then so I'll let others tell you about it. Stone Melee is a very good, very hard hitting set with a lot of control built in... it's very single target focused though since the only AOE's are either low damage (with AOE knockdown) or no damage (with AOE knockdown and stun). I HIGHLY recommend taking both of the AOE attacks though, and as soon as you can; they help immensely in survivability and aggro management. You can build a capable tanker with this combination; you'll just be less durable than the Stone/Fire. On the other hand you won't have the mobility issues either.

If you're looking for mass carnage then the Fire/Storm 'troller is a good choice with a lot of damage output. I haven't played that combination but I do have a 50 Fire/Rad 'troller and a 43 Plant/Storm so I'm reasonably familiar with the sets. It will kill much faster than the tankers but it's FAR less durable; truthfully there's not a real meaningful way to compare them they're so totally different.

It's doable, but not easily. Your biggest problem is all the defense LR has from the Orange tower makes your taunt, Dwarf Antagonize, very iffy to hold aggro... if LR sees something shiny on the rest of the team he'll ignore you and go pummel them into the ground.

That said I HAVE tanked it with my PB; it took considerable team support and I HAD to get him well out of LOS of the towers before the team went in... if he saw them beating his towers he had a strong tendency to ignore me and run over to pound them. Survivability wise I was roughly at base fire tanker level requiring pretty consistent healing from the team's emp. This was back when the STF was relatively new... given my preference I'd rather have had a sonic bubbler truthfully.

I haven't really thought about how it would work in today's game; this was before the Keld buffs. It'd be an interesting challenge.

A Granite tank can handle LR with zero support and usually with no inspiration use... I've done it many times with my Stone/Fire. Heck, Granite + Rooted can handle it on SO's... that's how I did it the first few times I tanked the STF with Granite Flame. Invuln, if well built, does need some inspirations until the red tower drops but CAN survive without anything once the Red tower's gone even if the Blue tower's still up... you just need a small amount of luck and maybe a green or two. I still tend to keep purples active until the blue dies as a precaution. Once both Red & Blue are down an Invuln's just fine unassisted and probably won't even need inspirations; I typically allow mine to expire once that point's reached.

Stacked mez buffs is one way to handle Ghostie; another is to simply keep your defense at the 45% soft cap. All of her attacks and her heal have standard accuracy after all; negative energy defense makes you relatively safe from the hold. Anymore I don't worry much about the hold; if I have an emp or kin on the team then I'll ask for the 8 CM/ID buffs beating the hold takes, if not I simply fall back on defense. If I'm tanking her in melee then I need no purples... I'm at 45% to S/L/E/N with one foe in Invincibility. If I'm range tanking then I'm around 34% defense and need one small purple per minute.

My SG has taken to calling Lady Jane "Fusionette's Mother"... she's almost as smart but lacks Fusionette's common sense.

Very well put; I agree completely.

I do recall seeing Posi mention in the "shopping list" thread that the 5770 was giving surprisingly good results in their internal testing; I'd grab the ATI over the 250.