Comicsluvr

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well, we are already in a level pact. That and my girlfriend would always get mad when i played. I have 5 active toons also.

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Get her to play as well. Problem solved...

I'm hoping for a mix, like Fire Bolt, Fireball and Fire Sword for the MM and something similar for the pets. A whole horde of demons plus the MM rampaging around weilding Flaming Swords would look so cool IMHO.

I'd also like to see a Succubus-like Boss Pet with Dark and/or Mind Powers. The Minions could have strong Melee and weak Ranged and the Lts could reverse that.

Of course if no Succubus then I wants me a BIG Demon for the Boss. I'm spoiled with my Assbot when I see only slightly larger humans for Mercs. If I'm going to have a Boss then I want a BOSS that looks the part.

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Position yourself outside spawns and gently nudge guys. Don't scatter things everywhere.

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This is good advice and I've seen it used this way to good effect blueside. Once the Tank hits the aggrocap some of the fringe spawns start running around. Use Hurricane to nudge them back into a corner, into an AoE (Ice Slick works really well), away from other squishies and back through doorways if you don't want to deal with them yet.

Porting into the middle of a spawn with Hurricane on is just about the fastest way to get kicked that I can think of...

I was on a TA/A Defender in the mid teens on a team that had been screaming for a Healer for 10 minutes before starting. After they recruited me and found out I had no heals they almost kicked me but I convinced them to go along with it by saying that I got the Single Target Healing Arrow at 16, the AoE Healing Arrow at 20 and the Rez Arrow at 24. There were snickers but the team leader BELIEVED ME!

We ran mission after mission, some players dropped and others joined, we had 7-8 for hours. I'd just hit 24 and on the next mission the team leader died (our first death all day). He asked about that Rez arrow and I LOL'd so hard that I almost fell out of my chair.

Our success was not all or even mostly due to my play I'm sure but that was my best Defender Moment yet.

Also remember that there are a LOT of new things to do. Faultline was reworked a year or so ago and now has some great storyline. Redside also has fewer zones but (some say) better story arcs like the afore-mentioned Wretch arc. Redside also has some GREAT stories when you hit lvl 40 and can approach one of the four Patrons.

Just remember that as long as you're having fun there is no real 'right' way to play.

The crux of my problem might simply be the slow server Riverdusk. I'm not so enamored of the toon that I don't want to remake him on a busier server for better playability. Since I've only ever run the one Empath maybe rolling up another one on Virtue or Freedom will give me needed experience.

Thanks for all of the tips gang.

First, IIRC the cash generated by the Wedding Pack was used to get another Issue done early. That being the case I see no reason not to believe that Going Rogue (likely the best paid goody since CoV) will generate enough interest for the Devs to get it done in a hurry.

I expect I15 sometime between now and the end of July and Rogue to be out in plenty of time for Christmas shopping season in November.

Had an odd occurance this past weekend: Friend and I were going to blow through one of his old missions (we were 16, mish lvl 13) and when we entered we found lvl 20 slime guys from Perez Park! We figured it must have been a glitch and intend to try again or drop the mish but we thought it was very weird.

It was in the redside VEAT arc if that makes a difference.

Many other have given very good advice.

Be involved. You HAVE to have an active presense in your SG to make it work. The more people see the top leaders on the more they think that there will be players to help them and things to do.

The theme nights/events is a great idea. Before RL intervened my SG's MasterMind Mondays was a big hit even on a slow server. TF/SF nights, Lowbie Nights, Hero/Villain nights are all good ideas.

Now that Base Permissions can be set by Rack instead of at a general level you can set aside a rack or two for new members to use without fear of theft. I set all of my storage to accept and several of them to allow everyone to remove as well. Remind the new guys that the racks are open to everyone so they need to be responcible for their own stuff but not having to wait 90 days for Base Permissions seems like a big draw right now.

Assign officers to do things. Nobody can do it ALL, even players with no job and tons of free time. So pick some friends and/or close players and assign offices for them like Recruiting, Events, Base Maintanance and so on. Make sure they WANT the job and are capable of doing it of course but never be afraid to ask for help. Then when things come up and you can't make it for some reason you let your Officers know and they can carry on for you in your absense.

One thing I liked is allowing SG members above a certain rank to have some say in the decorating of the common Base areas. My Medical Bay was done very nicely by one player, the Control Room by another and the Meeting Room by a third. Some rooms (like Teleport Bays) can be a bit tight and should probably be done by the Base Officer but letting the SG members have input on other areas lets them feel like they have a say in the SG. If one member wants something really special tell them that if they earn X portion of the Prestige for it (alone or by organizing teams of SG members) then they can have it.

Keeping a SG active takes a lot of work but you don't have to do it all alone. Trying to do so will likely drive you nuts. Get some help from those you trust and things will go a lot smoother.

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Also, as far as thugs becoming PPD if you switch sides - my immersion would be a lot more strained by this than most anything else. "Hey there, former criminal! Despite any crimes you may have commited, (including but not limited to: breaking and entering, assault, theft, grand theft, bank robbery, kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking, and murder) we'd like to extend you the honor of joining the Paragon City Police department! Just promise not to take things from the evidence or armory lockers without permission, OK?"

Again, it all comes down to theme and backstory. And Thugs lend themselves pretty well to a group of "normal" people who get fed up with their friends and neighbors being kidnapped by pretty much every group on the planet to be be used as guinea pigs/possession hosts/sacrifices/fertilizer. The Mastermind is the one with the resources and planning skills, and the others are the ones that get things done. "Hank the Hammer may be the one that can lay the hurt down, but I'm the Man with the Plan!"

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Personally I don't see any more problem with Demons being good guys than I see a problem with Heroes with Axes arresting criminals. It's a game...we HAVE to have some suspension of disbelief or it simply doesn't work.

As long as the Devs can point to some sort of movie or comic canon and say 'Here...we were thinking sorta like this' then I'm good with it.

As long as the movie wasn't Superman III and the comic wasn't something with the word 'Power' in it...

*Dashes off to see of his fave server has 'Man With The Plan' reserved for a MM*

Gonna leave that challenge for BadStorm but thanks for the laugh JT!

Something else too is the Big Picture. Defenders and Controllers are the living proof of stacking Powers. Sure, 8 Fire Blasters can hit a spawn with Fireball and watch pretty much everything go away. But one Sleep Power plus no BFs and they're all hurting.

Add one Empath to the mix and now (with CM) the Sleep/Stun/Held problem goes away. Then drop in a Tar Patch or Ice Slick and watch the enemy TRY to run from Rain of Fire.

To me the scariest combination of characters is anything that involves 4 Defenders running full Leadership. With Bubbles their Defense and Resistance can get over 20%, they can have CM up all the time, all of them will hit everything with Tactics and have a 72% Damage buff from Assault. Throw in one Tank to herd and the five of them will go through mobs like anything.

Now imagine all of this candy with a boost to basic damage. Sick sick sick. It's a shame that of all the ATs Defenders are the least likely to be able to solo. However they trade this off with bringing the most to the table when they team.

My suggestion is to find a dedicated partner to Duo with. If they also run a Defender then it's double the fun. If they run anything else then the duo will be greater than the sum of its parts.

CoH was built around the team concept hence the ATs. A 'perfect' team of one of each AT would really move well if they were at all coordinated.

I can see your point Fulmens...I just don't want to be 'that guy' who is always sending tels asking for a team spot. If our Team Finder would just post who has the star I could just ask the team leader but that gripe is on another thread.

And I wasn't thinking of MYSELF as the star but I also don't want to be running a toon that afterwards the players are thinking 'he's good at what he does but what we REALLY need is (fill in the blank).'

Defenders have so many options that I sometimes get the roles confused. Blasters do damage...got that. Tankers hold aggro and TAKE damage...got that too. But a typical Defender has so much in the toolbox that at times I wonder what to use.

Also, Empathy is one of the sets I have the least experience with so I wanted to avoid the most newbish mistakes. The advice about Elec is good though...if the team needs less healing after Level X then I can concentrate more on buffing and hitting the bad guys.

Thanks for the tips.

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Base love? What's that? I'm not surprised at all if nothing is done in them for i15. Sorry to be negative, but I've kinda given up.

What would NOT surprise me is when their supposed Base Raid "fix" goes live, there'll be HUGE changes and the majority of people won't be happy about 'em. Just my prediction.

I still don't see what harm there is is in throwing in a few decorative items into the base editor. Sheesh. C'mon, pleeease?

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This is what really gripes me. Yes, I love some of the big stuff we've gotten this past year (the ITF rocks) but it seems to me that a few little things sprinkled here and there would be really nice and not take up a ton of time.

More decorations

More wall/floor/ceiling patterns

More mission maps

Other numerous little cool things that have been suggested over and over.

As far as I'm concerned we already have the cadillac of hero games. Now all I want in a better cd player and some bucket seats.

Something else to consider with a TA/A Defender...fun. The toon will be so much fun to play you may feel giddy at times. Four of these can go through enemies like a hot mower through grass...all while having fun.

The TA portion of the toon alone is worth playing. Lots of great stuff there.

For one thing, Defenders can buff their teammates which Blasters, Tanks and Scrappers cannot do. Apparently the Devs consider this a tradeoff vs lower offense and defense. Our Inherent also sux solo. All of this means that some Defenders may never be able to solo well. However on the flip side I have seldom seen a team doing well that did not do BETTER with a Defender along.

As to your build, I'd start by moving Assault up a lot...before Stamina even if you team because the End hit will be lessened. I mean if you want to do more damage the 18% buff right there is a nice jump.

IMHO the best AT for an Iron Man homage is a Crab Spider...except for the look. Sorry, but they have it all, melee attacks, blasts AND defenses.

I have an Empath/Electric Defender who's a lot of fun to RP, great costume, the works. Right now he's stuck at lvl 31 because I can't solo with him at any reasonable speed and I'm having trouble finding teams.

With my other, higher-level characters (4 50s and growing) I find that post-30 a dedicated Healer becomes less and less desirable as a teammate. Maybe I haven't seen the full force of the set being run by a solid Empath player yet but it appears that after somewhere around 30 or so everyone seems to want more damage, a Tank and more Controllers.

So my question is, what's the endgame for Empath Defenders? With all of the other sets going on out there that mitigate damage (too many to list) where should an EMpath focus their attention so they bring something to the team's table?

I really want to salvage the character, to the point that I'm willing to move to a busier server (he's on Pinni right now) or remake him. But I don't want to fly through levels (he was VERY popular early on) and then coast to a halt in the 30s again.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

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I meant, even if it is done poorly, if what they are doing is allowing characters to switch sides, then it won't divide the playerbase.

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If the Markets remain seperate then the player base is already devided. If I can either take my MM on redside (bad market) or blueside (good market) then which one do you think I'll choose if I enjoy playing the Market? That's what I mean by deviding the player base...redside will lose players because now villains can have the blueside market but I don't see too many heroes going redside.

It's long past time for the Markets to be merged...

Like many others, I'm going to express guarded optimism. I mean the concept is cool but the path between there and how the idea is applied is a long and rocky one.

I forsee LOTS of people who like the villain ATs but dislike low pop servers moving villains to blueside. I mean there are no heroic equivalents to MMs so I look for those to proliferate fastest.

Tanks more popular than Brutes? On what planet?

I have an AR/Devices Corr who is just a blast to play. When they give me an AR/Dev Defender then I'll worry about the powersets being too close. Before Pain Dom I could see Empaths being da bomb redside but now not so much.

But now a rampaging Brute all buffed up and crazy blueside? I shudder to think what will happen to the Scrapper population. Oh, another advantage...a lot of Scrapper players can run Stalkers blueside which is secretly what they wanted anyhow.

If it's implemented well it could be a way cool addition to an already cool game.

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I don't think the person that starts the SG should EVER been auto demoted. This is just crazy!

This is the aspect I have always hated about this game. If the founder AFK's for any period of time he could leave someone in charge but not lose control of what he built up. If members do not like this fact they should leave and start their own.

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Nope...tried that...didn't work. Lemme tell you a story:

When I started playing 30 months ago I joined a SG created by friends of mine. Quite a few members, several alts each, lots of action. Over the course of a year we built up the SG to the topp 100 on the server. The the leader and his wife have RL things to do and tell us they're going to step aside for a while. They leave a couple of us in charge to keep the lights on and they leave for 6 months.

When my friend returns he asks to be reinvited and we do so. Then he asks for his title back which we gladly grant. Then he proceeds to kick everyone from the SG and sell it off to someone else in-game. 18 months of hard work for some of us shot out the window. No explanation was forthcoming and I don't speak t them now for some odd reason.

Creating a SG and not taking care of it is like making a baby and then handing it off to someone else. You may not have known the current leader but to be honest if they've been gone 41 days they're not doing a very good job either.

I sympathize with your employment plight. However you must have known that lapsing your account was coming. If you did and you didn't take steps to secure the SG in your absense then the fault is yours, not CS'.

If you leave the house with strangers in it while on vacation don't cry when you return and found they've painted it a different color...

Personally I think they should have done a stealth-merge (unannounced to anyone) about two weeks ago when the Markets were at their most volatile. Things were so messed up then that nobody would have noticed and by the time the Devs announced it the post-MA dust would have settled and all would be right with the world.

The Rogue expansion, paid or not, will have to be done well or it may subdivide the game population. Redside suffers from relatively low pop now. Blueside can survive if some of their population goes to a new zone for a while but I do not believe that redside can afford to lose anyone.

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It's not very heroic to spawn a bunch of minions to die for you.

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Real-life soldiers do it all the time.

Nick Fury did it in the comics...with the Howling Commandoes first then with SHIELD.

While I agree that porting MMs to blueside would pretty much kill what's left of redside I also feel that the basic premise is sound. However the set would have to be changed IMHO. The 'Squad Leader' should play a more active role and be more of the guy in front rather than the MM who sends the minions out to fight FOR him.

One way to do this might be to switch the Primaries and Secondaries around. The Squad Leader would have the Summoning Powers and support as his Secondary and then have his/her own Powers as their Primary. More like a Controller or a Dom who CAN summon pets but they don't HAVE to.

Just my 2 Inf

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I'm curious, on an abstract level, what the Demon set specialty would be.

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Maybe a portal that starts pouring out little Imps? Kind of a stationary version of Gang War...

Nah, too much like an existing power. Maybe you could Banish a foe back to wherever you summon your henchmen from. So it would be a form of Black Hole or Detention Shield. (Although both of those are available in MM Secondaries. Eh, I'm out of ideas)

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Here's what I suggested in the sticky thread:

18: Demonic Resurgance. This power is cast on a fallen pet. It will Ressurect the pet with full health and endurance, and supply all other pets and the player with a moderate +damage and +recovery buff for 60 seconds.

Nice little power that has the drawback of needing one of your pets to die, sorta like the Necro lvl 18 power...

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One of each? That would cause weird weather in the area wouldn't it?

I think that the Farmers should be restricted insofar as their methods are having a serious impact on the rest of the game. I don't care if they can get a 50 in 8 hours...let them. If they leave out of boredom they would not likely have played long anyway. If they stay and they play well I'll team with them and not care how long they took to get there. If they play poorly I'll move on and drop a note not to team with them again.

However the game can no longer be segregated into 'casual' and 'hard-core' because of the Market. It connects everyone, high and low, and is my one gripe in all of this. I can stay in my own teams with friends and avoid Farmers and be all happy right up until I hit the Market. Now their playstyle is affecting my play and I feel that I have a right to gripe. However, I hate to gripe without presenting a possible solution so here goes:

1) Put Common Salvage Drops into the MA missions but at a reduced rate. Make them ALL of a General catagory, instead of Arcane or Tech, so that nobody can set up a Salvage Farm (and you know they would...just to say so...). The reduced rate is so that high-speed farming doesn't suddenly glut the Market. Just enough to bring it back to sanity.

2) Restrict the MA to the typical level-spread for SKs and so on to prevent the massive surge of lvl 1s entering lvl 40+ missions and getting 20 levels in an hour. By this I mean that a character either has to be within 5 levels of the highest character or they need to be SKd which will reduce the number of characters getting the free ride.

3) Extend the Studio B power suppression to cover the entire top floor of the MA. This has nothing to do with Farming but with lag. Standing midway between the MA and the Market in AP on Virtue can potentially tear the fabric of space and time and cause all kinds of other problems. Just extend the suppression field to cut out all of the auras and power effects and the lag goes away.

Soapbox time: I have long been an advocate of merging the Markets from red and blue side. The MA and the Farmers abusing it have so damaged the Markets on both sides that I strongly feel that now would be a good time to merge them since the result could not possibly be any worse. Many players that I have spoken to say that they love playing villain side but the Market there is not worth the effort. So I say merge the two now while things are at their ebb and then when the dust settles there will be equilibrium.

Firstly, I love the MA. I'm a writer by trade so being able to make my own arcs is great.

I am as saddened as other posters by the farming spam but more because of the diminishing skill of players than anything. Yesterday I had a WS player ask me where to get Enhancements. He'd obviously been speed-leveled to 50 and then started a WS just to see.

I also think that the Market is going to need help...perhaps in the form of reinstating Common Slavage drops in MA arcs or something. This past weekend the price of several Common Salvage pieces was topping 100k since fewer players are selling it and more want common IOs that won't wear out as they speed up through the levels.

However one of the main attractions for me remains: I get to see ALL the cool maps that I have never seen before or have only seen once! I don't farm TFs and most of my toons have never even done a Posi or Infernal TF. So now I can see some of the really nice unique maps without having to run a TF or truck through a lengthy story arc.

To be honest I've wished for the Devs to use some of these maps more often even before the MA. I mean they spend all that time and energy on a map that a relatively small percentage get to see? Why so? Why not reuse them once in a while?

Well now they can. I'm not sure about the Market woes or what to do about the massive farming but I do know that I love the idea of the MA.