Covnam

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Even if Hequat was operating outside of normal mission parameters when using selective breeding & eugenics on an entire empire of people which Hequat founded solely to destroy Oranbega, by all accounts Tielekku still did not want humanity to learn magic but rather wanted humanity to stay depended on / worshipers of the various pantheons of gods.


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Just wondering, which mission(s) was it mentioned that the Mu were being selectively breed?

To me, it seems that over the course of time, the sides have simply changed. Oranbega might have been founded to bring magic to humanity, but in trying to save themselves, made a pact with evil and won, destroying the Mu, but failed to control what they unleashed. Due to the evil forces now in control of the CoT, they are very different from the founders of their civilization.

The current Mu are the same. They are the descendants of the Mu civilization that tried to keep magic from humanity, but are now fighting for humanity. The descendents for the most part likely do not have any loyalties or motivations to keep magic from humanity, they have their own agendas and loyalties. This change is probably because of two reasons. The first simply being time and the current Mu descendents simply forgetting their lineage. The second would be due to what the Oranbegans turned into, the CoT, and their actions against humanity today. The Oranbegans/CoT destroyed the Mu, so the original reason for the start of their conflict has been lost on their descendents, but they still fight against them, whether it be because of the CoTs actions against the Mu descendents today, or the legacy that some of the Mu descendents know of that they should be against the CoT, even if the reason behind it has been lost.

The Banished Pantheon seem the most consistant. They sought to feed of the suffering of humanity, were banished, and now simply seek to return in order to continue.

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To be honest, this is the second time someone has mentioned that I seemed like in a bad mood. Sorry about that - I really wasn't. In fact, it was my birthday that week and Philly is my hometown. My only stress was family related!

The worse thing about the show (if there was anything to call "worse") was that people were more interested in the NCSoft bag than City of Heroes!

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Probably because everyone there already played CoH

Happy Birthday

Take care Vyv!

Feel free to post without the Red name in the future, then you'll be just like one of us. One of us, one of us, one of us

Thanks for all your hard work

Anyone happen to figure out or know why positron is still "leaking" anti-matter when every other hero (at least those that were shown) lost all of their powers? Shouldn't that be included?

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Poor Synapse. Figure scrappers to go charging ahead

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I think Synapse is a Blaster, not a scrapper. So of course he got taken out

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Check it out. Very, very cool.

But now we have another signature hero we know nothing about.

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Maybe he was a pickup?

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Saw it, thought it was awesome.

One question:

When is the motion picture!!!!!!!!???????

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Ditto! Or at least a short film as that's some nice CG work and you don't see many superhero style pieces. Especially those focused purely on showing off powers and combat like the past CG trailers and intros that have been released have displayed.

They're all great stuff and I'd personally love to see more and lengthier pieces.

This trailer is one of the longer ones at almost 3 minutes and is simply a great piece of work. It even has some plot. Now they just need to finish the story

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On Praetorian Earth, Mother Mayhem was forced by Tyrant to push her powers in order to help defeat the Rikti. When she realized she was burning out she imposed her will on a fledgling super called Northern Light. The will of Mother Mayhem keeps Northern Light prisoner within her own body. Mother Mayhem has shown no signs of wanting her old body back.

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Is this information (along with similar bits of backstory) somewhere in the game or on the CoH website? If not, it'd definately be nice to see it

Great FAQ/Guide Including the binds/macros is quite helpful too.

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Did you even read the thread fork you replied to?

On test, Damage/Range HOs have been modified to be Damage/Range/Cone Range (in order to fix the bug where slotting such an HO in a cone-range power would cause the power to be able to "go off" at the extended range, but not cause any damage). This affects all "cone" powers currently - including melee-only cones such as Shadow Maul, Headsplitter, and Golden Dragonfly.


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This is on test already?!? *grumble* patch notes.

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As an aside... cone range enhancements do not currently add to the area of an AoE - on live or on test. I don't know whether that applies to PBAoE, which is why I didn't post (I will test this tonight - stuck at work now) - it depends on whether PBAoE is coded as "AoE centered at <user>" or as "360º cone from <user>". I could see it going either way, but I'm guessing it's the former.

Kam

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When were Cone enhancements supposed to enhance AoE effects? It increases the range of the cone, and thus the length of area it can affect, but I've never read anything relating it to AoE powers, targeted or PBAoEs.

How "Ranged Damage" oriented are blasters in general anyway?

Out of 90 powers available to blasters 44 are ranged powers that deal damage. 37 of which are 80 ft. or less.
For Melee and PBAoE damaging powers Blasters have 25 attacks.
Which leaves Blasters with 21 other utility powers (self buffs, "control" etc).

I would have expected blasters to have a far greater number of ranged attacks if that is intended to be their primary focus.

Defenders support in a variety of aspects, controllers control and support, tanks can certainly tank and scrappers can deal damage and take it. In general, they all seem to have power sets more focused on their roles in comparison to blasters which are simply supposed to deal damage at range.

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As was said before, they're the 8 surviving members of Freedom Phalanx.

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As was said before, of the 1,000 members of Freedom Phalanx, only 800 died. That leaves 200, not 8.

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That wasn't the Freedom Phalanx, that was a group of heroes designated as Alpha Team.

Just thought I'd take a look at how well a Blasters current Primary and Secondaries are filling their role. Here are some numbers (since every good CoH discussion needs them it seems). Just to clarify, for blasters I am defining a power as an "Attack" if it deals any amount of damage.

Ar|Ele|Eng|Fire|Ice - Primaries

9 7 7 7 8 = 38/45 Ranged Attack Powers

Melee/PBAoE (0-5ft)
0 1 1 1 0 = 3

Close (6-40ft)
2 0 2 2 1 = 7
Mid Range (41-80ft)
4 6 4 4 7 = 25
Long Range (81-120)
3 0 0 0 0 = 3
Very Long Range (121-160)
0 1 1 1 0 = 3


Dev|Ele|Eng|Fire|Ice - Secondaries

2 1 0 1 2 = 6/45 Ranged Attack Powers

Melee/PBAoE (0-5ft)
3 5 5 7 2 = 22

Close (6-40ft)
0 0 0 0 0 = 0
Mid Range (41-80ft)
1 1 0 1 2 = 5
Long Range (81-120)
0 0 0 0 0 = 0
Very Long Range (121-160)
0 0 0 0 0 = 0


I wasn't sure where to place turret under devices as it's placed at the blaster's feet, but still attacks at a range (which I don't know the base of).

So, anyone/everyone, feel free to interpret the numbers as you wish about how focused Blasters can be on Range and feel free to further stratify the ranges if you think it will help.

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(3) The suggestion to implement the 30%-dmg-not-resistant in PvE is ridiculous - we'll be back to the days of "City of Blasters" when everyone complained how fast blasters kill everything and how they don't need anyone else for support and we'll just get nerfed again.


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Sorry, but I find that statement ridiculous. How many mobs in general have a strong resistance to every type of damage in the game? I know Sappers have Eng resistance, some CoT have Fire I believe, I'd guess Crey have varied etc. But almost nothing is to the degree of a Tanker. And since PvP is the obvious source of this, I haven't seen Tankers being mowed down by blasters even with the bonus.

So I really can't see this bonus being applied to PvE making that much of a difference for the avg. fight. Sure, in specific match-ups it might help, but overall it won't make a large difference imo. It will certainly not bring about a "city of blasters" with hordes of heroes mowing down mobs by the truck-load.

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As a hard-core Scrapper I say give Blasters 500% damage cap, heck give them 600% damage cap!

Blasters have low HP, no DEF, no RES, and no Status Protection.

IMO, Blaster secondaries should be Control based powers. Everyone elses primary is copied by another AT's secondary. Giver control to Blasters.

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Hehe, Eng/Illu

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Are people not getting yet that Blasters are supposed to be the black mage class?

They're very useful and skilled players and allies, but they're not the kings of 1v1..contrary to popular belief. Just because their archetype is at the top of the list does not make them the 'knight' 'all around' character, for those of you who havent noticed.. it's just going in alphabetical order..

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I don't know if anything will be changing in FF XII, but for all the other games I've played, even FF XI, the black mage far out damaged any other class in return for being so weak in most every other aspect. Using this comparison, blasters got the weak part right, but aren't quite up to par on the damage scale.

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Hmm...what if Sparky became a targetable pet for electric blasters? That would create 50% damage mitigation and might help them....what about pets for the other sets? Wouldn't be infringing on trollers, because we could only have one out at a time, but would be nice to help survive a lil better.

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A variation on this theme come up a LOT and I make a point of emphasizing it every time i notice it. There was a thread "tosses a rock over there" that had a LOT of great ideas on some type of aggro mitigating pet to put into our secondaries, and I think it would be a great thing.
My personal favorite (thinking of /fire here) would be a a flaming effect put down using the same means as Rain of Fire. Once in place, you attack the mob, and they react as if the effect generated the attack. They unleash hell on it instead of you, and you proceed to wipe them out. A couple of seconds in to the fight, they realize that it's you hurting them and refocus on you. Hell, I don't even need it to have any attacks of it's own. Just grab that inital aggro and I'll handle the rest.

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I like the way this sounds. I might render it this way: Make a power called Focal Point. A targetable ranged summon that is static. All of the ranged attacks that the blaster fires instead of firing from the blaster (they still do the animation, just without the power affect) fire from the summon. This draws fire off of the blaster and onto the pet. They would still have to be summoned at a range because they could be killed just as easily as the blaster who summoned them and they can't be buffed, so the blaster is litterally simply sending his powers from another target in order to keep themselves safer. While it can't be buffed, I would allow it to be healed. Outside of attacking instead of the blaster, the Focal Point has no attacks or abilities of it's own.

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How about losing Power Thrust, Stun, and Boost Range from the /Energy powerset and adding things that help more than a few power sets....maybe put some form defenses there. I like Energy Punch/Bonesmasher/Total Focus, but the three I mentioned are situational at best.(yeay yeah, some people use them, but most that I have seen have no use for them besides punching people 200 feet for fun at lvl 50)

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Many of the /energy blasters I team with are very happy with boost range.

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If they make changes to the power sets, primaries or secondaries, there will be at least one person who is unhappy. There's no reason to argue over that. The devs will simply need to data mine and questions players and find out which powers are the least desired (if they intend drastic changes) and hopefully those who don't want the change to their power will learn to appreciate it.

Another alternative, though I don't know if this could be implemented, is to offer current players (or maybe always) a choice between the current power set and the new power set. So for instance, you'd have Electric Manipulation (Original) and Electric Manipulation (Revised) available as power choices. This would let people either stay with what they have or choose the new set. Assuming there are drastic enough changes to require something like this. At least then though people wouldn't complain if all their melee attacks were taken away as they would still have the option to keep them.

(thought I'd add this to the conversation)
To quote the manual "Scrappers...often find themselves a bit overshadowed by the more specialized Blaster and Tankers" (Page 8). I assume this is the concept for the AT (and I'd guess, is desired to still be relevant) but I fail to remember the last time a Scrapper was overshadowed by either AT let alone Blasters.

I also take this to mean that Blasters should be able to consistantly deal more damage (for instance, equal or higher damage cap) just as a Tanker has a higher cap than a Scrapper and should be able to tank better as well.

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Thought I'd post a further explanation about the Blaster damage explanation in "Ask Statesman."

That was - and is - the reason why Blaster damage is capped lower than Scrappers. I did forget to add that the ranged attacks of mobs deal less damage (typically) than melee attacks - and the Blaster is generally the target of raned attacks.

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At least initially. I'm sure you know just like the rest of us that mobs will quickly close in to melee range and that on in-door maps this happens extremely quickly. If my blaster has to round a corner to target a mob and they are 10 ft away (being stealthed w/ Super speed of course) I have no delusions that my range "advantage" will last any longer than the power's activation time.

I never got why they were called the Surviving 7/8 either. Plenty of heroes survived besides them. The only reason I can guess why they are called that is that they are the only ones to survive from their SG or Paragon City. So in Paragon they have that title, but it doesn't mean they are the only survivers of the entire war.

To quote the backstory from the main page:
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Alpha Team was much larger, consisting of over 1000 heroes from across the globe. They launched a full frontal assault on the Rikti main troop concentrations, drawing as many alien troops into the fray as possible. This was a dangerous ploy, and it proved costly. In the ensuing titanic battle, 800 of 1000 heroes died, along with some 50,000 Rikti soldiers.


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and this guy:

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one hero, the utterly invulnerable Ajax, managed to survive the blast. He had been taken captive by a Rikti stasis ray and rendered unable to follow his teammates into the portal. Now he was the sole surviving witness to their apparent victory.


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The only clue is this:

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The Vanguard and the other great hero organizations of the world scarcely existed anymore. With the exception of Statesman and a few others, all the world's greatest heroes had died in the war.

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So maybe it is in reference to the "greatest" heroes, but that seems like a bit of a stretch (in story terms) that the only 7/8 greatest heroes were all from Paragon and would be given this title. Kind-of demeans the other survivers imo.

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Statesman most certainly was confirmed to be Natural, although I think the thread this was stated in (by States himself no less) is long since deleted.

My assumption is that any human has the potential to unlock the 'incarnate' within them so to speak, but only Statesman and Lord Recluse have figured out how/managed to do so.

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Fair enough, but that still makes him a completly different type of natural then say a MA scrapper or an AR blaster might be. Statesman still "unlocked" some kind of power, natural though it may be, is still different than the general Natural hero out there.

Makes me wonder about Kheldians, PBs in particular. They're "natural" but certainly have powers as well. Though perhaps it could be said that taking on other forms and such from previous hosts goes beyond what they are naturally, and that could a power which could be cut off.

And what about naturally born mutants?

Though, of course the writers could simply say, "it's a magic power that prevents all heroes from acting beyond what any normal citizen can do" and then the debate would be closed
Then all that would be left would be to grab pitch-forks and torches to fight back

While I agree that Natural heroes should still be able to fight just as well, I think Tech heroes would also be able to fight. If guns can still work, then (assuming) that's the level of technology that the spell turns off advanced technology (assuming it does) there'd still be tech heroes able to fight.

Perhaps that's how the heroes will fight back, Naturals and Techs will be the way that this arc will be solved.

I wonder about mutants though, the born with it kind of mutant. What makes their abilities any less natural then a non-mutant?

Anyway, I'll just throw out this prediction; I think that the key to winning will be to shut down the War Walls since that appears to be the source of what the magic was placed on to affect all the heroes.

Which brings up a nit-pick about the drawing of the War Walls on the first page... they look pretty short...
And the outcast still using some kind of power...

Also, that second two-page panel looks like it'd be awesome to have in the game (if it could be lag free...). A bunch of giant robots with a small army of drones and outcasts on the ground fighting dozens of heroes Just as long as we still have our powers

The comic looks great btw, can't wait

Oh, and I was also left wondering about how the whole Ressurection Power/Spell would work in this situation. They clearly say that one of the heroes is dead (or at least looks to them that way) so how long do they have that their power would be effective? I mean, they were going to leave Statesman behind (not very heroic...) so I would imagine it could be some time, but then it might not. I suppose this could give the arc a time factor though, "We have to bring down the war walls in 24 hours or the fallen heroes are beyond our power to help them" etc.

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I didn't see anything that indicate thet Natural Origin heroes were suddenly powerless.

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Uh, Stateman is Natural, and he lost his powers. My interpretation of the spell is that it shuts down anything that wouldn't work in the "real world". So Manticore's archery skills are unaffected, but Statesman's "inner will" is, even though they're both Natural in origin. This would also shut down all magic, and any technology more advanced than an automobile (which means the city should be experiencing a total blackout as the Terra Volta reactor, which uses Rikti technology, shuts down).

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While I don't know how the origin fits into the Incarnate AT, I doubt you could say that Statesman is a "natural" along the lines of how a natural is defined by the game: "Your origin involves no mysterious forces or secret discoveries, you have simply used your remarkable talents to train yourself to the very pinnacle of human potential," and according to the background story of CoH about Statesman, "Cole claimed to have unlocked the power of his own Inner Will, an obscure explanation at best. Whatever their true origin, it was undeniable that Cole possessed something that hadn't been seen since the age of the Greek Heroes: superpowers." Definately not the same as other natural heroes.


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There's one small personal problem though; I have a character (Black Victor) that would die permanently if magic ever stopped working. So in the interests of a true roleplayer, either I'm going to have to concoct a good enough reason for him to stay alive on the listed date, or I'm going to have to delete him.

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You could simply say he's out of town fighting in another city...

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Given the date, I thought I should post something.
<ul type="square">
Killer mimes.[/list]
I love being evil!

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New AT! Woot!