Cybercel

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I would like to see more people take the medicine pool and share the load, after all isnt that what its there for?

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I've never found there's any real need for people to take Aid Other... most teams I've been on, there are usually a couple of Corruptors with a heal, and then often an MM with a heal, and that's enough to cover everyone.

Anyone taking the medicine pool and trying to use Aid Other is going to be slowing themselves down and not doing their real job, since it's not exactly the fastest thing to use with that interrupt on it. If a Brute stops to try and heal someone, they're letting their Fury drop, and I'd much rather see them taking out the threats anyway, for example.

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When u usually update the website? :S

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When I have time.

I don't have any kind of set schedule for it, since I really live on a weird schedule myself.

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It helps if you have someone else in-game to vent at while it's happening, though. I go for my boyfriend, or my SG's global channel, usually.

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And for extra comedy value you can forget to change channels before venting - informing the rest of your team just how awful you think they are

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Actually, there's a bug in CoH at then moment that means your team can see what you write over Tell and Friends - it doesn't come up in the chat window, but it does appear as chat bubbles

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Are you sure you're not just seeing people talking in Arena?

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It helps if you have someone else in-game to vent at while it's happening, though. I go for my boyfriend, or my SG's global channel, usually.

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And for extra comedy value you can forget to change channels before venting - informing the rest of your team just how awful you think they are

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That actually happened to someone in our SG... I think he managed to do it two or three times in the same team, too. I have to say, it was very funny for the rest of us on the global channel.

I've come to love awful PuGs. I think that's the best way to deal with it. Find the amusement in it, learn to leave when you know it's just too bad to even be funny, and try not to worry too much about all the debt, since it always goes away.

I've had some really funny experiences on bad PuGs - I keep logging on with my characters, just to save particularly bizarre conversations I've seen, and regularly take screenshots of the worst builds and bios I come across to share with SG-mates. I honestly think it keeps the game fresher for me than if I just teamed with people who are actually good at it all the time. It keeps me thinking, it ensures I'm paying attention to what I'm doing - when it seems like the entire team is out to get you killed, you really need to know what's happening at all times so you can try to get away. It's especially fun to play support-oriented characters on these sorts of teams, I find... the whole experience really keeps you on your toes, trying to keep everyone alive as they do increasingly stupid things.

It helps if you have someone else in-game to vent at while it's happening, though. I go for my boyfriend, or my SG's global channel, usually.

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and you can still hold through res to holds anyway iirc..

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You can, but I don't think there's any way a Blaster could hold a Brute (alone) without detoggling the Tank's mez protection. Either you were toggle dropped and the BFs worse off, or multiple people were throwing holds at you, and they stacked over your mez protection. If I'm remembering correctly, an Ice/Elec/Elec Blaster at high levels who'd taken all their holds would be the only Blaster who'd be capable of single-handedly holding a Brute, and even then, it would take a while do to, all the holds would have to hit, and it wouldn't last very long. No point when (especially pre-I7) they could just detoggle you instead.

Listed, now that I've found out Jubai's powersets.

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best nuke has to be blizzard for corrupters, the scrouge DoT at the end of it is just nuts. Especially how its buffable in issue seven.

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Yeah, it's fantastic. It's works well with the self-buffs, and Tar Patch. Duoing my Ice/Dark with a Robots/Dark usually means two Tar Patches, an AoE immob (from the MM's patron pool) if the mobs are likely to run out of it, Aim, and then Blizzard. Sometimes with a red insp or two if we're fighting high levels or just want to see how silly it can get.

I think the best thing I've seen yet was when four or five ambushes of Freakshow ended up stuck in one area as a big group. We ran down a hallway into them, dropped all of that, and I killed almost all of them in one go - a few were just outside of the Blizzard, but the robots finished them off.

You can get fantastic teams going in PvP, and honestly, they're the only times Empaths are any good. I've respecced my Empath into a build that still works perfectly well in PvE, but with a few specific nods fo PvP (mostly the zones - I've never liked the Arena much, but that's another possible team PvP avenue you might want to explore). She's a lot of fun when there's a decent team going, and I'm kept very busy. When you're in a PvP zone, everyone wants Clear Mind to keep their perception up, and in a big fight, you need to do a lot of moving around and healing, and it's important to keep all the buffs going, too. Other than that, I spend most of the time trying to avoid any fighting and keep as far away from enemies as possible. Lots of Break Frees and Teleport mean I can escape, because a dead Empath is no use to the team. I have picked up Air Superiority, though, so I can knock people who get to close to me out of the sky at later levels. I've honestly come to prefer PvP Empathing to PvE - there's just more to do.

My Ice/Dark has hers, and makes regular use of it. Rather tasty over Tar Patch.

I think there are a few parts to the problem. Fire does have AoEs, and it pulls in more aggro, and poor players do two things: fire off AoEs at bad times, and don't know how to deal with the aggro/finish mobs off after the fact. Other than that, though.... the fire sets are nice and flashy, lots of damage. I'm pretty sure they have some sort of call to new players. Even I started a Fire/Fire Blaster early on, after seeing someone in the Hollows using Fireball. It just looks good! So, at low levels, we all see tons of these newbies playing Fire Blasters, and frankly, most newbies aren't that great. Also, it's really obvious when the team wipe was caused by the Fire Blaster using Fireball and Rain of Fire when no one was ready. I've caused teamwipes with a Defender and a Controller without anyone even noticing, but everyone sees when the Fire Blaster AoEs the huge spawn of Trolls. As a result, they've picked up a reputation for being aggro magnets who are likely to live in perma-debt and get everyone around them killed. When it comes down to it, a decent player on a Fire Blaster probably won't die all that much more than they would on any other character.

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A good point cybercel - the two accuracy is due to habit on most of my toons I think.

I may try with a 1acc, 3 heal, 2 recharge slotting on test before I take the plunge on live. Thanks for the advice

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Yeah, I tend to always put two in now, just in case I want to PvP - it seems like even when I start a PvE toon, I end up in a PvP zone after a while. That and I've become used to being able to hit high level mobs almost all the time. With a rad, though, it has to be worth trying just one, for PvE. If you keep two accs in Irradiate, you could fire it of first, debuff a good part of a spawn of mobs, and then get to firing off your single-target attacks and heal.

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TG has always been slotted that way for me - the stacked -def from a very fast neutrino bolt/xray beam combo means it damn near always hits without any acc slots, and the 3 recharges mean it is up in 4 seconds if it does miss.

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With that in mind, is it really necessary to have two accs in all your attacks, then? I know my Rad/Thermal managed fine with one for a long time, and I only boosted her up to two when I started taking her into PvP.

Speaking of PvP, if you will be in there even a bit, I'd suggest at least the one acc in TG. The higher base def in there will likely cause you problems. Since you're not really planning on using this as a dedicated PvP toon, from the sound of it, it might not be worth going with the two it would really need, but one would at least mean you can more often hit than miss when you do go in, and it certainly won't hurt in PvE, either. The third recharge speeds you up by less than half a second, I think, so consider whether having a miss at a vital time might overall be worse than it being half a second slower. It could go either way, but I know I'd rather have the accuracy so I can try to get a heal off something that's hard to hit if I need to. It may also depend on what level enemies you tend to fight.

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Heh, feel free to disagree with me - I'm by no means a fount of always correct information

Let me clarify then; ON ITS OWN Petrifying gaze just doesn't cut the mustard - but if you have a nother hold to stack with it, it can be useful - I'd generally advise not picking it up till you get to patron level, then respeccing it in in that case, but thats just me - my dark/elec was spoiled by having a second hold in his secondary

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Mm, it does work better with a second hold, certainly - I'm one of those lucky Ice/Darks who didn't need to wait for Patron Powers. I found even when I only had one hold, though, that I quite liked being able to lock down Lts., especially when I was solo. Also handy if you tend to coordinate quite a bit with your teammates - Syn plays as Robots/Dark, and we've always worked together to hold troublesome bosses, EBs, AVS when they can be held...

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By the way Cel, you and Syn 50 yet?

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Yep! I'm feeling a bit lost now, but no doubt the fog will clear in a bit and I'll get back to playing with alts, or maybe start on the Ice/Dark guide I've been thinking about...

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A quick /sea last night showed that we're very close to double figures on the level 50's. So I guess the next question is when are all the 50's going to get together and try to crack the Recluse SF?

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Maybe when my brain calms down. I'm feeling mildly disoriented after sitting here playing such stupid amounts for the past week. I do look forward to having a crack at it, though, so if anyone wants a Robots/Dark and an Ice/Dark and will be forming a team for it, give us a shout. It'll be a lot easier, I assume, after we get the next AV change, anyway.

It's not that Sonic doesn't do "straight up" damage. What you're probably seeing is the two different damage types - Sonic is Energy and Smashing. Both happen at the same time, but if you look in your combat tab, they'll be displayed separately.

Assault Rifle is actually one of the lower-powered sets in the game right now (in part because it does mainly Lethal damage, which is highly resisted), but it has an interesting bag of tricks. It also has higher innate accuracy, which is to make up for the time you spend drawing your weapon. Since you've not hit single origin enhancements yet, this is quite possibly why you feel like you're missing on your Sonic. Once you get those in, I really doubt you'll notice any difference at all, especially with Targetting Drone slotted for to hit buffs - and anyway, it's not really that Sonic has low accuracy (although there was a rumour that it did for some time - the cone/AoE attacks do, like in most sets, but the single target ones apparently don't), it's just that Assault Rifle has a bonus.

If you want sheer power out of a Blaster, /Energy and /Elec are the ways to go (And most primaries will work alright, but Assault Rifle and Archery will slow you down since you have to draw a weapon). Devices works better if you want to stay at range, and play around with the mines and other tools in the set.

I'd vote for Shadow Fall as well. It's fantastic to have the energy, negative energy, and psionic res from it. Also, the stealth will stack with Super Speed (if you have it, or respec into it sometime) to provide invis against most NPC enemies.

I would disagree with the previous poster about Petrifying Gaze, just for the record. If you pick up a hold from your Patron Power Pool later on, you can stack the two, and hold bosses. Or you can help your team's more dedicated holders lock down difficult opponents, whether than means an arch villain/hero or someone in PvP.

Thanks LP! And thanks for hanging around when you had to be up for work, and getting debt while trying to help us with our wholy unecessary double-ding. Hopefully, you'll ding at stupid o'clock sometime soon, and we can do the same.

Sadly, Syn's PC locked up so much that the screenies didn't work, but we have a demo file that should have captured the moment - we'll look as soon as his PC recovers from changing the graphics settings.

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Just to check, im not going to look at that site and find cherry drops listed as a level 50 villan now am I ?


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Just for that, I'm going to do it.

By the way, ran past you on the way to a mission yesterday... you're at 40 now? Well done. Maybe I'll list that character over on the hero side.

You know, I'm getting the feeling it's rather handy that my Rad Defender ws just about to hit 22 when the servers went down for I7. Can't wait until my first villain is at 50 so I can return to her... should be fun.

If you don't attack much, I don't think there's too much point in picking up Acrobatics. You won't pull in enough aggro to make it worthwhile as far as the knockback protection - it's only the few things with loads of AoEs that will cause you trouble, and Hover will do the job alright. I'm quite fond of 3-slotted Hover for PvE battles. I can stay above or otherwise near the fight, I can move fast enough to keep up with the fighters, and it cuts down on how irritating knockback can be.

Some people swear by Acrobatics, and a lot of my characters have it, but I'e never felt the need for it on my Empath. She was TP early on, and now she has Recall Friend/TP and Hover/Fly. Fantastic combination of travel powers and handy in both PvE and PvP. I also have Fly slotted with some end reductions so that I can throw a few heals while Flying if I need to rush around a lot, despite not having Stamina.

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AB doesn't really need heals in it, since the +regen it provides is about as good as slotted health. Either go 3 recharge 3 endmod or put the 3 slots with endmods in them somewhere else.

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I really have to disagree here. I know of very few people who can eat through the endurance of AB, so the endmods are pretty much pointless. The health slots, on the other hand, are useful. Powerboosted Regen Aura and then AB on one team member right after gives you someone who's basically been turned into a /Regen. I've used it to help Scrappers tank AVs, and to make people really difficult to take down in PvP. Very handy.

No idea how you've kept that rate up, but well done! I've not heard of another 50 yet. Union doesn't even have a 45, as far as I know... but then, we had some really crippling lag for hours yesterday. I know Synaesthetix and I stopped for a while because of it, and it slowed us down even when we did keep going. I know other people who signed off thanks to it, too.

As some of you probably already know from the Union Heroes forum, I run a site listing the level 50 heroes of Union. With Villains now able to reach the same cap, I'll also be listing them.

If you have a level 50 Villain you'd like listed, reply here (or send me a PM, or contact me globally - @Cybercel) with the following info:

Character's name, AT, Primary Power Pool/Secondary Power Pool/Patron Power Pool

If you've chosen not to take any Patron, then let me know.

Feel free to give me info if you know someone who should be listed who isn't - it'd be nice to have this as complete as possible, and I can't possibly do it all myself. If you only know someone's primary and secondary power pools, that's fine, I can list them without their Patron Pool. Let your SGs and friends know about the site if they might be interested.

I realise I'm posting this a little early, but I'd like to make sure people know about this ahead of time so they think to post here when they hit 50. That, and there's a good chance that when the first person gets their final ding, I'll probably be mid-mission trying to get there myself.

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i dinged 42 about 11 am and will most likely be 43 before i midnight

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You're actually faster than you think. Synaesthetix and I went to sleep around 8AM, and ran a quick search before we went - you were already 42 then.

I'm pretty sure, as said earlier in the thread, Debt Collector was the first to 42 - I was teamed with him, and we kept searching just to see where people were during quiet moments. There didn't seem to be another 42 for a while after him. Seemed like most of the highest-levelled players were Brutes - I felt pretty lonely as a Corruptor at 41 and 42 for a while, but saw some others start to catch up with me after a while. Anyone seen any Doms, yet?