Cybercel

Can I just ask why being able to recycle set IOs more cheaply/easily is a bad thing? I'm not understanding the reasoning.

When levelling my Empath to 50 (with no attacks) I went with Teleport, Speed, Leadership, and Flight. Not necessarily the most sensible of picks, this was just after I started. However, I learnt a number of things:

1) You can run the entirety of Leadership on a pure Empath with no Stamina.
2) Hasten is really, really useful on any buffing toons. More recharge = buffs are up more.
3) Recall friend is kinda useful at low levels to extract dead teammates, but not so much at higher levels and as you get to be a better player. People still appreciate a TP though, and can be useful for speed-running TFs.
4) If you're being knocked back, you can't heal people.

I stuck with the same set-up for a while before switching her to a SJ/SS build for zonal PvP. I miss having Hover and Fly, though - I liked being able to hover up a little out of the way of things while still keeping people in range for the AoE heal and Leadership buffs. I'll probably respec back, but also keep a knockback IO or two in somewhere.

Some form of stealth is nice, but I don't think any kind of necessity. If you're keeping SS, then yeah, a Celerity stealth IO in there could work, and saves you taking a pool and using more end. Even more worthwhile if you do grab Recall Friend for speed-running.

Medicine is one of the pools I'd say is useless on an Empath - it's there to add some abilities to sets that don't get heals. Empaths don't need this, as they have far, far better versions of these powers available innately.

You say this is based on some US threads that have spawned great discussions, yet seem intent on just disagreeing with anyone who doesn't think that Sonic sucks.

I'll add another voice to the side saying Sonic doesn't suck. I love the secondary effect, and it works nicely with Defiance the way it is now - both encourage you to play in the same way for more damage. It's a great primary for a blapper build, as has been mentioned; fire off the Sonic blasts, get Defiance up and some stacked -res, and then fire off some melee attacks. I always played my Sonic/Elec this way, and never felt like deadweight who couldn't do enough damage. On the contrary, I tended to play as a boss killer and go straight after the toughest targets to help the team out.

As for Sonic Blast's purpose in general... I think it depends how you play it. I've had a couple of very different builds on mine. One was a single-target damage dealer, for teaming. The other was a soloing build - and it did very well at this. The sleep and stun are great for this kind of thing - run into a room, send most of them to sleep, stun a remaining one and then start picking them off in safety (starting with the stunned one of course, as the stun does a heft piece of -res). Other nice plus-side of the sleep is that there's a relatively cheap purple set just waiting to be slotted.

The only real downside I find is that Shout could really do with a shorter animation, but that's an issue for all ATs with the Sonic Blast set. Also, much more of an issue in PvP than PvE - my Sonic/Elec was frustrating in PvP because of Shout, especially as it was clear she'd be quite good except for that.

I've heard some bad things about Howl, also, but never take it because I can't stand the sound effect. Also, it'd wake up your sleeping mobs, which seems counter-productive on a more control-based build - might be OK on a team build for the cone -res though? The cone knockback is just annoying, but a lot of otherwise good sets have one or two poor powers - I wouldn't say Ice sucks for having Bitter Freeze Ray, or that Fire sucked when it had the old-style Flares. Obviously if the devs chose to turn it into something less irritating I'd be very happy, but mostly because there'd be no risk of teaming with Sonics who think it's just great to send everything scattering across the room.

This happened to me recently after I installed test server. Turned out the normal, non-test shortcut on my desktop had somehow turned into a shortcut for the US version (no idea why, never played it). I fixed the short cut to point to the correct EU .exe, and now all is well.

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i'm not too fussed about the Respec suggestion but Princey is spot on about the 10 enhancement cap. I've been asking for this to change for ages.

The current system was okay till inventions.

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I'm far more concerned about this point than the number of respecs, too. I recently rebuilt an old character who'd had a nearly full set of synthetic hami-os in, switching her to an IO build. Painful. Had a similar experience switching a toon between two IO builds - and I wasn't even moving where any slots were. It uses up way too many respecs just trying to move enhancements out because of the limit of carrying ten, and a lot of hamis and IOs are just too expensive to throw away.

With inventions, we need some way to be able to remove enhancements from a build. Aside from the immense cost of respec recipes, it's also time consuming and irritating to have to rebuild a character several times in a row just to get the enhancements out.

I can understand maybe not wanting people to just re-cycle the same SOs and standard IOs over and over, so even if it were something along the lines of only set IOs and HOs being removable, that'd do. And I'd be fine with it being something I needed to earn, like a respec, as long as it could be repeatedly earnt. Or even a small number of merits giving a token that lets you remove X enhancements.

I guess the other, perhaps simpler thing would be letting us carry a lot of enhancements, but the devs seem to veer away from letting us have a lot of storage. It'd be interesting if we had something where we could actually carry 126 (total slots at 50 + standard 10, I think) enhancements, but past the usual limit of 10, this could only be added to by a respec. So if you respecced a toon and took out 30 enhancements, you'd not be able to gain any mob drop enhancements, buy any, take any from storage, or make any. But you would be able to go and drop those 30 enhancements off in your SG storage.

I think the whole thing seems worse than it might otherwise because of the history between the two companies and the two games. Especially when you take into account that on various news sites, any number of experienced gamers are saying their beta applications for CO are still pending - it does make it seem more like petty trouble-making than honestly trying to pick up some good beta testers.

That said, I doubt a lot of people are going to pick what game to play based on how the makers act towards other game makers. The only relevant point might be that if they're generally going to act like [insert unpleasant plural word here], will they also end up acting like that to their players?

Personally, I already know where I'm staying (this place improved after Emmert left, so why would I go to another game of his?), so it's fairly irrelevant to me, but I do think the whole thing was a bit unnecessary.

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Cap is my fav too. St Martial is OK too.

I hate the others. Nerva is annoyingly huge. Mercy is annoyingly hard to navigate with all those blind alleys and the dumb high up sections, Sharkshead gets old very, very quickly and Lagville is just a big mess and hell for a TPer or Superspeeder to get around.

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That's funny, one of the things I was thinking after posting that (as I run around Atlas on a new hero alt) is how much more annoying I find Atlas to get around than Mercy. May say something about how what you're used to or what you like for other reasons has a huge impact on perception of this kind of thing.

My main issue with Grandville isn't getting around it, not with all the temp travel powers now... it's the mission doors with Bane Spiders outside. And it can be difficult to get around when SKed up unless you're invisible. Other than that I don't really have an issue with it - the main villain I'm levelling right now is a Super Speeder, and I just run through, then use a flight pack when I'm stuck. It was horrible before that, just glad my first villain had Fly and stacked Stealth.

Nerva used to bother me, but auto-run is your friend. Sharkhead's not very interesting and everyone ignores the GM, but then I don't find any of the old hero zones interesting, so I can't count it as a huge downside. At least ferry and market are nice and close to one another, and there's a base portal in a sensible place.

Mercy is probably my least favourite of the CoV zones, and I can see how it might make it difficult to get into. It gets better - all I can recommend is just do Kalinda's arc max, then go to Port Oakes, and then onto Cap ASAP.

Cap is probably the most populated villain zone, it's the closest thing the Rogue Isles has to a hub. You've got a nice area around the Black Market with the University and a salvage vault, and it tends to be relatively populated, people on broadcast, etc. Plus it's an interesting zone in looks. And there's a GM you can generally get a team for.

No, it's still not like Atlas Plaza, which I know some people really miss, but I have to say I prefer the villain zones.

From level 6 you can choose to take powers from Power Pools instead of your Primary and Secondary. One of these Power Pools is Flight - taking one of the initial powers (Hover or Air Superiority) will unlock the ability to take Fly at level 14+.

Even though you now won't have it as early as you could have done, it's no big worry! You can pick up Hover or Air Superiority at 14 and Fly at 16, if you want it as soon as possible.

I can't say I'm worried about either of these things. Especially given we've been reassured that there's no plan at all to cut the number of devs, my feeling is actually that MA just means we'll have lots of new missions/arcs all the time, freeing up dev time for the million other things we all want in the game. For instance, if players are making more missions to help keep people amused, maybe some dev time will get used for more villain TFs, or improved hero TFs, or more new-gen zones like Faultline. The stuff players can't do.

Now, while I hope a lot of players do make missions, so there are lots of interesting new missions to play, I really doubt there will be a game-killing mass exodus to the MA. A quick flick around these and the US forums seems to show there's a good mix of people who are and aren't interested in mission creation. And will it really be any different than to when a new powerset comes out, and a lot of people run off to make a new toon with it, meaning less people are playing at higher levels? Or when a new TF comes out and a lot of people just want to run that? I remember the markets being crowded when they first came out, too... but the game survived, because those that aren't bothered still team up, and the shininess wears off after a bit.

I'm enjoying them - it's nice having something in the game that benefits those of us with far too many toons! Agree that the 2-hour limit on a lot of them just isn't enough time when they're based on mission ends, though. Could do with a tweak, but fun!

Surely it just depends what your aim is? For instance, I'll quite happily ghost in order to speed run things if I'm trying to get merits or a badge for a dull TF, but I recently dragged a low-level PuG Stalker through an entire Longbow mission - every last mob - after it decided to leave the team and run off to get the mission objectives with no warning. I don't see the point in ghosting if you're trying to level and the mobs are offering good XP, and I think it's bad manners/poor teamwork to run off without a word rather than staying and fighting with the rest of the team.

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you know people have been soloing GMs on Ill/Rad long before there were IOs in the game right? Perma PA is not required, I bet it would take down the time it takes mine to do it sure, but its not required

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Yes, but I was making a general point about specialising characters for specific (and perhaps non "standard") jobs, not specially talking about Ill/Rads. And specialising was always possible to some extent, of course - you can bet there were Ill/Rad builds in I4 specifically meant as AV killers, or soloers, or teamers. IOs just take that specialisation to a new level. It's probably largely the same sort of people who enjoyed playing around with specialised builds pre IOs who still enjoy it now... we just have a lot more options post Inventions.

Much as some people apparently can't understand the enjoyment in this, I can't understand not wanting to do it - Inventions really revitalised the game for me, and I think there's a good chance I'd have wandered off by now without their addition.

So to get this back closer to on-topic, I can completely understand people farming inf in order to try to complete their builds - but I hate unsolicited, repeat "wanna farm?" tells as much as the next person. Perhaps the best message to send to the OP is that it's fine to play however you like, but everyone will appreciate it if you do so in a way that doesn't irritate other people. I do think the best bet would be finding an SG that does a lot of farming and PLing - much more steady, they'll be like-minded and therefore not irritated by your playstyle, and the quality of teaming will probably be better than just asking around.

As an added bonus, you don't get a forum full of people discussing the merit (or lack thereof) of various ways to play the game.

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Pooling merits simply encorages the creation of a "farmer alt" to supply the others.

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The current situation encourages this, actually. I think I qualify as a proper altaholic, given two accounts full on Union and mostly so on Defiant. I have quite a few toons I'd like proper builds on - end result is I end up doing TFs and so on repeatedly on one alt so that my merits are in one place so I can afford the things I want. Then since that toon has all my inf and rare salvage from being played so much, it's also the best toon to craft things on, so I craft from there and dump in the base for other toons to collect (which takes seconds and is no discouragement at all).

I'd be really pleased if I could vary which toons I played a bit and then pool the merits - I'd probably end up playing more of my lower levelled toons, rather than just repeat running things on a 50. Hadn't even thought of it before this thread, but I think it's a good idea.

Trading between accounts on the other hand... can't say I have a real opinion either way. If Smurphy is right and it'd lead to more lower-level recipe availability, then yeah, that'd be a good thing, but all I see in that thread is a load of theorising back and forth - I don't think there's any saying what the actual effect would be on the market.

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Given the difficulty in finding a reasonable challenge as it stands... does ubering out with Purples actually increase your enjoyment of the game? Do you want it even easier???

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It doesn't necessarily make it easier. As I said above, not everyone goes for the same goals with their builds - I'm sure there are people who go for the sterotypical uber build, carry on just marching through missions the same old way, and then get very bored. But there are plenty of people making builds that just amuse them, or make a character play in an unusual way, or perhaps make it able to do things that specific character "shouldn't" be able to do.

Fahie's example of turning a toon into an AV soloer is a good one. Some people like trying to take on large-team spawns themselves or in a small team, some people get a real kick out of speed-running TFs and optimise for that. Some people kit out squishies with a lot of res or def so they can solo things they couldn't otherwise, or even tank. Or sometimes it might simply come down to wanting to round out a character - like giving a very end-heavy toon a load of recovery, because it's bloody frustrating to run out of the stuff.

There are a lot of self-invented challenges to be found - I'm sure they're not all to everyone's tastes (like the infamous petless MM), but a lot of people do find building for these things really fun, and IO sets really do take it a lot further.

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Does it actually improve the game having a more powerful character?. Cant see it myself. All cotent can be done on an average one. Character development? I cant see anything behind that.

Is a more powerful character more fun? Funnily enough, I find it marginally more dull.

Im not knocking farming here, im just trying to understand something I cannot empathise with.

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In part, it's certainly that it's something to do with a level 50 after it hits 50.

It's not just that, though - I do actually have more fun on my characters where I've played around with IO sets than my characters who have SOs or standard IOs. Why? I guess they feel that much more personalised and individual, I've tweaked them to fit my style of play, and suddenly my Fire/Rad Corr isn't just one of thousands of Fire/Rad Corrs.

It all depends how you use them, too. Some people are obsessed with fitting in purples and LoTG recharges because uber sets are their goal. Me? I like playing around with procs and trying to make my characters more self-sufficient, or perhaps I aim to make them work well with a toons I tend to team with. However it's done, there's a real difference between an SO'd toon and one with a good IO build - and by good, I mean one that achieves its aims, whatever those are.

I guess it also helps that I'm a difficulty junkie, and I love huge groups of mobs - having builds I can do silly things on that it feels like I shouldn't be able to do really does improve my enjoyment of the game.

Like any given part of any game though, I'm sure it doesn't appeal to everyone. And we're a little off-topic, because it's entirely possible to make a good IO build or two without any real farming. I can perfectly understand people who want to farm so they can equip more characters with good builds, though. I'd love to have more of my toons fitted up.

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Nice though Web Envelope is, I'd go with a resistance based shield, and just buy web grenades from SC - villains almost always seem to control the zone on Union, and I don't normally find I need more than 6 in one play session.

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Guess it's all down to playstyle - I use mine far more than that, and I'd miss the acc and range enhancements too much. But then, I really hate letting people get away.

Obviously it's not so useful if you have a regular teammate with similar abilities, but I've found having one person on the team who can make escaping more difficult, or knock the pesky Empath out of the sky, or stop someone from using jump to get away when they've been slowed, is just too useful.

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Gonna add my 2 inf, don't get a def based shield on a thermal, it's just lol. Considering you'll be one of the prime targets. Definatley advise you to take Mu mastery, and pick up charged armour, offers some great resistance.

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I like the shield from Mu Mastery better, but the -fly and -jump is far, far better when it comes to the zones. I've tried both, I always miss Web Envelope more than resistances. Plus the shield from Black Scorpion comes into its own if you team with a /Cold, as an added bonus.

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Yup I got Web envelope on my other corrupter and love it.

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I suppose the other good thing about Black Scorpion if you really don't like the def shield, but want Web Envelope... well, that's one free power pick on a packed Thermal build. I've still taken it, but I run a hybrid PvE/PvP build anyway, and team quite a bit with /Colds on that toon. I've honestly not found it to be a huge blow to survivability in zonal PvP, so it works for me.

To the OP... obviously this is all a way off anyway, but if you do go for Web Envelope, it's hilarious slotted up with range.

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Gonna add my 2 inf, don't get a def based shield on a thermal, it's just lol. Considering you'll be one of the prime targets. Definatley advise you to take Mu mastery, and pick up charged armour, offers some great resistance.

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I like the shield from Mu Mastery better, but the -fly and -jump is far, far better when it comes to the zones. I've tried both, I always miss Web Envelope more than resistances. Plus the shield from Black Scorpion comes into its own if you team with a /Cold, as an added bonus.

I was actually a little upset I'd made a Rad/Thermal for a long time, as it did seem weak while I was levelling. I only kept it because I loved the concept of the toon so much! But then I got to high levels, respecced, and she's now one of my favourite toons for zonal PvP. (And her arena build on test is good fun, too - primary doesn't matter in arena anyway, for the most part.) In some ways, I actually really prefer Rad/Thermal to other /Thermals for that purpose. It's never going to be a dueler like some /Thermals are, but the stun and debuffs work really nicely on a support toon. I think the only other one I'd really look at, for support, is Sonic/Thermal.

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Focus on your secondary, definitely pick up Cosmic Burst, and consider picking up Irradiate for the scary debuff it has - whilst less than useful in most Arena situations, being able to mass-debuff groups of heroes before laying in with Melt Armor is an effective Zonal tactic (especially if there's someone around to save your [censored] during and after).

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Further to this... Irradiate is hilarious in Recluse's Victory when a Blaster is running Personal Force Field (from the ancillary power pool) and thinks they're all nice and safe. Unlike def-based powersets, PFF offers no resist to def debuffs - hit Aim (slotted up with tohit buffs as well as recharges for PvP), and fire off Irradiate next to them. It has naturally high accuracy anyway, and combined with good slotting and Aim, it will start to hit them regularly. Follow it up with Cosmic Burst while Aim is still up, and providing they're not running Dispersion Bubble, they'll be stunned.

This works to some extent on Controller and Defender bubblers, too, but Dispersion Bubble prevents them from being stunned. You can still start to get some hits on them though. My personal favourite is to follow it up with Web Envelope from Black Scorpion's Patron Pool - if you hit, then the hero is now def debuffed and -jumped/-flied. It's easier to keep hitting someone with Irradiate once they're stuck on the ground, too. I would strongly, strongly advise taking Black Scorpion, in fact. It just makes you that much more useful to a team when you can stop people from getting away, as well as stopping them from killing your own teammates.

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I seriously have no idea what you're on about. I just tried it and it sounds normal to me.

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Look at the date of the thread, and some of the responses. This is from almost a year ago when there was a sound effect bug.

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Dark is very fun to play but is it real good in pvp (against radiation emission) ?

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I have an Ice/Dark specced for zonal PvP. I've even taken her into an arena tournament. She's a lot of fun, and amazing in PvE, but completely outclassed by my Rad/Thermal for PvP Corruptor duoing. She's quite fun solo or in disorganised teams where I can't bet on having any backup, but I never play her when I'm with my SG on a PvP Corruptor team.

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No, PvE'rs can't tell PvP'ers to not fight them, but c'mon, PvP'ers, you have as little right to tell anyone they can't PvE or farm.

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You're right. They're perfectly within their rights to do whatever they like. Doesn't mean we won't kill 'em though.

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Exactly. The last thing I'd do is tell anyone they can't do something in a PvP zone, because my thoughts on the matter are that as long as you're not breaking the EULA, it's allowed. So the farming is allowed, but so is killing the farmers.

That given, I do think it's fairly pointless to whine at either the farmers or the people killing the farmers. I'm more irritated by the latter, though, because it's just ridiculous to complain when you're killed in a PvP zone.

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Umm... that was for like five minutes? Not a whole half an hour or more like farmers! And my friend was just attacking some Arachnos as I wanted to see what Illusions was like. All I asked was that you leave us alone for a few minutes and then you can attack us. So I don't really see your point.

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It's a double-standard to say that in one case, people should expect to be attacked because it's a PvP zone and you're warned upon entering, but then asking people not to attack yourself or others for any other reason.

My personal take is that I don't care about farmers, or badgehunters, or duelists, or anything... as long as they're fine with the idea that people are allowed to attack them at any time, and quite possibly whilst teamed, with a heavy, or while using insps. Telling people not to kill you in a PvP zone is always ridiculous, regardless of the reason.

People have every right to be irritated when they do get killed when they don't want to PvP, or when the odds are unfair, but I'm firmly of the opinion they should keep their irritation to themselves, or get some friends to help, rather than starting with the "Don't kill me, I'm farming/dueling/fighting AVs/huntin koolas" lines or insulting whoever's doing the killing.


Quick edit: Just to point out, I apply these rules to myself in the reverse situation, too. If I am in a PvP zone doing something that isn't PvP, then I pretty much expect that other people will come after me. Sure, it can be irritating when you really need those Shivans or whatever you're after and someone won't leave you alone, but I try to keep my frustration to myself, and get someone to come in and help if I can, because I know whoever's doing it has every right to.

Rad/Thermal can be a good team character. It should be soloable at a push, especially at lower levels - depending on how you build it, of course - but it'll shine much more as a support character.

The nice thing is that Rad has a couple of really nice attacks that aren't so quick, which means they're perfect for firing off every-so-often when you have a quiet moment where you don't need to buff, debuff, or heal. (Also handy because there are so many good powers to take from Thermal, but you don't really need a ton of your primary.) Cosmic Burst and Irradiate are the really stand-out powers in the set - careful with Irradiate though, it WILL get you killed at lower levels and on poor teams, it pulls in an amazing amount of aggro.

Being able to stack -def from your attacks and Melt Armour is very nice, especially when you can Forge people. Very nice on enemies with high defense, including AVs/Heroes with a some kind of power that gives them very high defense. It's good in the PvP zones for that reason, too.

Seconding what Alvan said, just remember you're not a healer. At low levels, you might feel like one, but later on you're much more of a buffer and debuffer. I found it actually started out a bit slow, a bit dull, but really came into its own with the debuffs in the late 30s. Stick with it!