ClawsandEffect

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Blueside go Scrapper or Tanker. Scrapper if you want to solo well, Tanker if you want to solo slowly.

Redside (which is, in my opinion, more fun) go Brute, Corruptor, or Mastermind. Probably Brute or Corruptor. Dominator is kind of strange, and Stalker is just plain weak for most purposes. (They do excel at what they do, which makes them the only redside AT with a clear and unique role, unlike blueside, where specialization abounds.)

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Stalkers have always soloed very well, they just didn't have a clearly defined role on a team. With the Stalker buffs allowing hidden status to come back faster, a higher damage modifier, and increased critical chances they can compete with and in some cases outdo Brutes on damage - it's just that more damage isn't often needed on a redside team.

I wouldn't say "weak for most purposes" though - if I were building a team I'd give them the same place as a 2nd or 3rd Brute. They essentially have the same "team role" as Scrappers.

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I have the same problem with my stalker I have with my scrappers. I can outlive anything but a softcapped SR or a Granite brute, but I really suck at keeping other people alive. So I end up in "last man standing" situations a lot, simply because the situation went South and I couldn't prevent it, but could keep myself going just fine.

They solo beautifully once you figure out their playstyle though.

Overheard in Atlas Park.

"How do I get to Kings Row?" - said by a level 50 tank, who also advertised himself as "best tank ever". Was Invuln, with nothing but passives and no taunt.

"Where do I get level 30 enhancements?" - said by a level 31 WARSHADE.

"How come my tank keeps dying?"
"Did you turn your toggles on?"
"What's a toggle?"
*facepalm*

I've also seen some HILARIOUS builds.

DM/SR scrapper: All of the primary. Had the speed, Teleport, and Leaping pools (unlocked with Flurry, TP Foe, and Jump Kick respectively), no fitness pool, his secondary consisted of: Focused Fighting, Agile, and Practiced Brawler, and NOTHING ELSE.

We invited him on an STF, I wondered why he kept dying and opened his info window in the 3rd mission. I *facepalm*ed and resolved to just let the idiot die, since he was doing some of the stupidest things I've ever seen, and blaming the rest of us for his deaths. He kept yelling at the kin for not healing him from 3 rooms away. He charged Dr. Aeon solo, before the rest of the team was done with Wretch. Yes, he got kicked for that.

From what I've seen, the idiots tend to flock to scrappers and tanks. My theory is they kept dying all the time on the squishier ATs and decided they sucked because they couldn't play them.

Yep, I agree with the bullheaded one.

Scrappers need Pyre, Tankers need Dark. Since they have the primary and secondary sets to match now.

I won't lie, I want Pyre for scrappers so my Spines/Fire can have Fireball, he doesn't have enough AoE

Scrappers deserve a 5th set too. I'm at a loss as to what it could be though.

I specced out of it on my Fire/Fire. If you regularly team with a controller who has their AoE immobilize you can get some mileage out of it, but for my playstyle (completely psychotic, if you must know) it really didn't fit.

Solid damage in an AV fight, because AV's generally won't run from it.

Sonic/Devices.

Seriously.

Siren's Song neuters most mobs before they even shoot. Screech or Taser (or both for a boss) will get you one target that won't shoot back while the rest continue to snooze away. The resistance debuff will increase your damage significantly (It is possible to deal damage ABOVE the damage cap with a Sonic)

Cloaking Device + Stealth IO = invisibility without dipping into any other pools. Webnade keeps things at range, which is where you want them.

I have gone fairly long periods of time without even taking damage on this character, let alone dying. Softcap your ranged defense and hover a lot and you will be nearly unkillable by the majority of things in the game.

Personally, I like running them in about 45 minutes to an hour. The Speed ITFs are fine, but I don't like feeling rushed when I'm playing. If I'm running it with my main scrapper I prefer to be able to take time to flip out and kill things just because.

I'm just not in that big of a hurry most of the time.

However, I was on a full team that did Posi and Synapse back to back in just over 4 hours. That was fun.

Make the badge title "Ain't Afraid O' No Ghost"

Good ideas and bad ideas both in there.

TF Changes:

- I can only see granting a travel and attack power for Positron and maybe Synapse. If you don't have a travel power by level 20 for Sister Psyche that is your own fault. And you should have all the attacks you need by then as well.

- A slight bump to merits would be nice, but they're really okay as they are.

- The drop rates and mission counts of most of them are fine, the outliers are the Shadow Shard TFs. Fewer missions in Dr. Q would be nice.

MA Changes:

- Yes to custom groups requiring at least one minion, one LT, and one boss critter.

- No to recipe and salvage drops in MA missions. That is the point of tickets. If you put drops in missions you might as well remove tickets completely, which I doubt will ever happen.

Safeguard Changes:

- I see no real problem with this one, provided it exemps you for the duration of the Safeguard.

Costume Piece Changes:

- I'd rather not see any more costume pieces attached to badges, especially the harder to acquire badges.

Currency Changes:

- You already can purchase any of the things you mentioned with Reward Merits. The exception is the Unique purple recipes, which are not purchasable in order to ensure that they remain rare. Purchasing with tickets is redundant. Also, the ticket drops are intended to replace the normal chance of a recipe drop that doesn't occur in MA missions.

World Events:

- For starters, we don't really have any true world events that something like this could be obtained from. Second, we don't need yet another kind of currency, we have 3 as it is.

SG Changes:

- Yes to the first, although I don't know of too many SGs that are pushing the current limit of 150.

- No to the second. My SG has a network of coalitioned SGs that we use to form teams and TFs. Cutting that in half would do nothing but hurt us. I'm sure there are a LOT of SGs that could say the same thing, this would do more harm than good, and I have to admit I don't see the point of this one.

Like I said, some good ideas and some bad ones. I shared my opinion on which are which.

I'll break it down for ya pal.

Lower subscription fee = less new stuff in the game.

They just hired a LOT of new programmers and other people who all contribute to the game on a daily basis. Like the MA? Like the idea of Going Rogue? Like the fact that they actually fix things that are broken?

None of those things would happen if they didn't have the money to pay all the people they hired.

Where do you think that money comes from?

Continuing onward:

Less new stuff in the game = fewer players over time.

If new stuff was not constantly being introduced a lot of people would move on and take their business elsewhere.

Fewer players over time = even less profit for the parent company (NCSoft)

When the game starts costing more money to run than it is earning per month they will shut it down. They are, after all, running a business.

Your suggestion of lowering the game's subscription fee will cause the inevitable death of the game FAR sooner than it otherwise would be. And I'm sorry, but I would like to continue playing a game that I enjoy as long as I am able to. I would rather not have my pastime prematurely shortened because one jackhole can't budget enough money for his subscription.

So, in summary:

I would much rather pay $15 a month and have them spend the money they make on improvements and additions to the game than pay $5 less and have them do less to make the game better.

I can go along with disabling all email on trial accounts. I mean, how many people on a trial account that aren't RMT spammers know anyone in the game well enough to want to send them an email for a legitimate reason? How many people on trial accounts even realize they CAN send emails for that matter?

Out of the thousands of emails sent out per day, maybe 1% of them actually gain the RMT people any business. The other 99% are doing nothing but annoying people and overflowing ignore lists with global names that have likely been banned.

Speaking of which, banned accounts should be automatically removed from global ignore lists.

Bill, you've got some good ideas there. I like the client-side filtering myself.

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enjoy the game people farm doesn't hurt anyone

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This actually is not entirely true.

Before they implemented the XP Curve Smoothing they datamined to see how long people stayed at each level and averaged it out. PL farmers running with bridges lowered the average time people were staying at levels in the mid 30's. Therefore, when they finally did the XP curve smoothing we got less than we would have if the PL farmers did not exist.

Arcanaville went into that a while ago with all the numbers and such, but I couldn't find it when I searched.

Just because you can't see the harm in something doesn't mean it isn't there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a rabid Anti-Farmer or anything, I personally don't really care. Just pointing out that there are things farming hurts, whether you choose to recognize it or not.

Because not using an attack usually doesn't cause the team to complain?

I try to keep people Speed Boosted with my kin, but sometimes I am busy doing something else when it wears off. If I'm teaming with complete strangers it is inevitable that the instant SB wears off one or all members of the team will say SB PLZ or even just SB

What makes it unfun is a lot of people's attitude that Speed Boost is all you're good for and that you should spend your time doing nothing but buffing them.

So in short, it's not the power itself that becomes not fun, it's people's attitude toward it.

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What about punching stuff? I'd bet that some players log in mostly to do the combat because combat is fun.

Not necessarily mindless racking up of kill numbers, but the actual animations and tactics of battle. People who line up to kick a foe off a ledge might be in this category. People who kick a gray foe off the ledge, for no reward, probably are in this category.

Whether it is carefully planned to produce optimal reward or not is relatively unimportant to the pastime; it doesn't necessarily involve exploring; story and RP may be ignored. Teaming is fine -- both to see more "action" in a given fight, and to have people around to ooh and ahhhh after a really good punch.

I don't know what you'd call this...uh...sphere of interest in the game -- combat artist?

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I'd call that Combatant.

And I fit in that category. I often log into a melee character just to punch/stab/kick/slash/electrocute/pummel things for no real reason other than the fight itself.

There used to be back when Hamidon spawned as an AV with a level. Since they changed that a while back they only drop at level 50. The ones you see with buy histories are ones that people had acquired before the change. They are usually very expensive because there will never be any more of them than are currently circulating.

Oh, misunderstood what you meant by "Hide this arc"

I was going to say HELL NO. Then I read the post and saw that you didn't mean what I thought you meant. I thought you were going to suggest the ability to hide your own arc from people searching, which would make farms harder to find and eliminate.

Since that's not what you meant I have no qualms with your idea. Let it be done. (heh, as though I have any say in the matter )

I could see something like this.

I don't however agree with the "known to the public" idea. That could lead to completely unnecessary bad blood between people.

Make it ONE forum account, called TheCommittee (or something) and have players rotate in so it stays as impartial as possible.

5-9 people in the committee would be good. Since it wouldn't be known who is on the committee at any given time, it would eliminate the possibility of someone's friends trying to use their buddy's place on it as leverage. Also make it so if you divulge that you are on the committee in a forum post you permanently lose committee placement.

Keep it as faceless and impartial as possible and it might be workable. Also make it very clear that the committee would have ZERO actual power. It would be more of an attorney team than a judicial system. You can plead your case yourself, or you can take it to the committee and have them plead it for you.

There are of course HUGE holes in this idea that would have to be addressed, but in theory it is a good one.

1) Not sure, I think there is something else you have to do as well, but I don't think it costs anything extra.

2) Yes

3) You're not putting an extra $5 towards the game, you're putting an extra $5 towards Target. The retail outfits bump the price up in order to make a profit off them.

EDIT: thought the OP meant a time card, my #3 answer may be incorrect in that case. I wasn't aware there was a retail version that had teh game but no disc.

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What ever the reason, The downtime has always hurt CoX. Lots of people leave to other games because they are up more. Not to mention most game companies perform normal service routines at the time the largest player base isn't online. I have a had time believing Europe has more players then U.S. 8am CST is just the wrong time to bring this stuff down. suck it up like every other IT based company and do your service at 2am

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At 8 AM your time (I'm guessing you're Central like I am here) it is 6 AM in Northern Califrornia where the dev team is based. Which is before most daytime players log on and after most dead of the night players have logged off. I don't know about you, but in my experience 2 AM is NOT when the least people are online, they actually got it about right as far as their timing.

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

When I first started playing 3 years ago it was pretty much every morning. I'm actually glad they've dropped it down to 2 or 3 days a week. It was more of an issue for me 2-3 years ago though, I was working 3rd shift at the time and server maintenance was cutting into my playtime.

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this game should lower its monthly fee to $9.99 instead of 14.99 imo. its getting old. its 5yrs old now. any game this old should not be going for 14.99/month still. if the rate wasn't so high i would keep my subscription going for a longer time. since its so high i will only subscribe for one more month before quiting.

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Bye.

Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.

Find a game that doesn't suck that's subscription fee is cheaper. Pretty much ALL MMO's have a fee that is right around $15 a month. I have never heard of one that is lower.

This is a pretty lame "I'm quitting!" post. You knew what the subscription fee was before you opened your account. I can understand quitting because you're dissatisfied with the game, or quitting because you're bored with it. But quitting because the game costs $5 a month more than you want to pay? Okay, sure, it's your call, but posting on the forums to tell us all about it screams "pay attention to me!"

I'm going to wager a guess here, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. You started playing while the broken AE PL farms were in full swing and got to 50 ridiculously fast. Now that you have 1 or more 50's you're under the impression that there isn't anything to do because you skipped over the majority of the game. Since you don't think there's anything to do you feel the subscription fee is too high.

Am I close?

Sure, why not. It'd be a feature that almost no one would actually use, but I can't see any way it could possibly hurt anything.

Just put a timer on it like costume changes so you can't spam it.

What goes best with Claws?

The answer to that one is obvious.

Effect goes best with Claws.


Had to

Edited for better wording.

If you've been running MA missions with PuGs there is another explanation for it.

Thanks to the broken PL farms that were getting characters from 1-50 in 2 days (or less) there are a lot of people with high level characters that don't know what they're doing in the slightest.

It could be a case of these people having had bad experiences with tanks that think they're scrappers and don't understand what their job is. And if the people you're teaming with are new as well that may have led to the (mistaken) belief that all tanks suck and are useless on teams.

I only have one tank currently, a Shield/DM, and I am the first to admit that I am not that good at agro management, but at least I know what I'm supposed to be doing, which is more than some can say. I have seen so many Invuln tanks in the 40's over the past couple weeks that only have the passives and all the attacks, and no taunt or taunt aura.

I have also run across people who told me that my claws/regen and BS/DA scrappers are gimped because they can't farm as good as a spines/fire (which I also have)

Short version: Some people are idiots. If you are a competent tank you will find teams of non-idiots that will appreciate your contribution.

I despise Masterminds, but I might give a potential Assault/Modified Pet combo a whirl. It's not the AT I have an issue with, a well played one is an asset to any team,I just dislike the playstyle as I don't like my pets doing all the work.

A set combo where the pet(s) is there to support YOU rather than the other way around would appeal to me.

A low HP squishy pet that buffs you and maybe a couple minor defensive powers, and later in the set another pet or two that add damage of their own. It would be tricky to balance, but it could be very fun.