DarkCurrent

I've got a bunch of 15 and 20 IOs in all my powers. My grav/ice dom has her crafting badges, so it's no big deal to stockpile whatever the lowbies need.

The bins are full of generics and I just added a couple more bins to store up for the 20s and 30s.

No, Infernal and Batzul are down.

Down and out.

Cheers for the Brimstone Club. Took us just over 2 hours to complete. Yeah, yeah, i know it was no speed run, but that's pretty good for a bunch of actual 15-20 toons using generic IOS with minimal stealth and tp capability. Plus, a few folks hadn't run the thing before.

In another couple levels, we'll have to try out the Silver Mantis SF (20-25). I'd also like to run the Shaper Cult arc from Maros.

Who's interested in a Cap SF either tonight (Sun) or Tuesday night?

Minimum lvl is 15. Mobs will spawn at 20 though. There's 2 AVs at the end.

Recommended you grab a stealth power by running the BB patrol.

That'll make ghosting certain parts easier. Also, we'll be able to hold the AVs through PToD easily with 4 doms spamming their ST hold even at our level (15-18). Key is to put your hold in your attack chain.

Other things to look for: steel canyon mayhem, Men in Black badge by running Marshall Brass' arc, Ashley McKnight's arc, and hunting ice demons for Cold Hearted.

Sign up today!

An odd thing I noticed about my post I15 MArc was that the custom bosses all scaled downward while the NPC bosses didn't.

For instance, the team was lvl 15ish, 5 members strong and fighting on level 1. The ruin mage bosses showed as 15s or 16s, as did the Legacy Chain bosses.

However, the 2 custom EBs I made appeared at -1 boss level. And the 4 custom bosses I made for the grand finale mission were all lieutenants and one of them was -1 level at that.

Meanwhile, all the regular mobs with bosses were our level or one higher.

What gives? Is there some new code in I15 for custom bosses that has them scale down at a certain difficulty setting or team number? Do I have to up my difficulty just to get the level bosses/EBs I intended?

I gotta say that facing those weakened bosses who were intended to be milestone challenges in missions 3, 4 and 5 really disappointed me.

[ QUOTE ]
THIs might help you:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...=0#Post5101265

[/ QUOTE ]

That has to be the most intelligent post/guide regarding dominator tactics I've ever read.

And it's over 3 yrs old! Does that guy even play anymore?

[ QUOTE ]

Aaaand last but not least, I just read over the COT history again this morning and had the notion storywise that The Brimstone Club could be not necessarily Circle of Thorns but rather just one of the various hellfire clubs about at the time, though full of genuine mystics and psychics, so Zoria latched onto them in his bid for Oranbega, and when he founded the Circle he ganked a huge number of followers and members. Gives a good solid reason for The Brimstone Club to hate the Circle, as well as why they have a bit more varied abilities than the thorns. Not to mention it frees us up from having to say that our toons are posessed by the spirits of Oranbegan mages. I for one know that Lady just happens to be a wicked woman who sold her soul to Hellfrosts. Yes/No/Maybe So?

[/ QUOTE ]

I like this line of thinking. It meshes well with what I was thinking: the current CoT mages (agony, ruin, madness, etc) are rip-offs of Brimstone Club aspects, then super-powered with spirit thorns. Perhaps our powers are more 'legit' whereas theirs are owed specifically to the spirit thorns.

The backstory I have in mind for Baron von Ruwen works with that. He was an earth master that dabbled with spirit thorns. Whereas a ruin mage is an earth master because of spirit thorns.

We could make some more MAs to tie in to this storyline. The battle between old and new world CoT could rage from lvl 15 to 50. Any plans to make any MArcs yourself along those lines?

I was thinking to make a few more that would all have a mystic tie-in (fighting Banished Pantheon, Tsoo, CoT, Carnies, Mu, etc). Was planning to have Legacy, Midnighters, and other magical do-gooders in there as well. They're either trying to stop our usurpation or have something we need to become more powerful.

I've created a new arc post-I15 and I really liked the new features such as those in the testing window.

However, there were 2 things I was looking for and couldn't find. Not sure if they exist, or not, or ever will:

1) A way to scale a mission while in Test Mode for different size teams and difficulty settings.

Rationale: testing with a single player doesn't show all the potential problems that a team of 4 or 8 might have. What seems easy/challenging for 1 person may be overkill/suicide for a larger team.

This would only exist in Test mode so there's no way to exploit it for actual rewards.

2) Can NPC models be given customizable powers. For instance, I was making a CoT mission for the 15-20 range, but only Ruin Mages appear as bosses in that range. I wanted a larger variety of bosses, but I want them to look like the CoT in game. So while I could use the character creator and power customizer to create a boss with the powers I wanted, the character creator doesn't have all the costume parts for CoT mages. Meanwhile, I found that you could edit in-game NPCs, but only their costumes, not their powers.

Rationale: there are a lot of cool looking mobs in the game already. Being able to use their skins as a template in the character creator would be an awesome tool to allow you to fit custom mobs into pre-existing factions quickly.

Anyway, do either of these features exist in MA?

Hey, seeings it's a holiday weekend in the US, who all is still going to make the Sunday night team outing?

If a lot of folks will be OOT, then I'll probably just run my alt, the Viscountess de Lune.

Yeah, click the little 'i' with the red star around it in your mission tab. That'll pop up the contact and what he says.

It'd be nice if the info actually popped up for everyone automatically before/after missions, but who knows if/when that'll be added.

The long and short of the Unchained Legacy story is (SPOILER alert):





-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Montague Castanella offers us important information regarding the New World CoT's plan to harm us (we're the Old World CoT come to the Rogue Isles to spread our seed across the pond... we're called the Brimstone Club).

Intrigued, we agree to help Montague by finding the location of a hidden CoT temple (mission 1). When we bring back the map, he tells us that the New CoT have a powerful Mu artifact that allows them to dream walk, and that they're going to use it to destroy us. He confides that he really doesn't care about our health, but that he's certain the CoT will then use the artifact to destroy him and his Midnighter friends. So we agree to invade the CoT temple and steal the artifact (mission 2) before that can happen.

After we return with the artifact, Montague suggests we use it as a ploy to gather the CoT leader and his local sect in one place to destroy them. Montague sets up a bogus negotiation where we'll return the artifact in exchange for X, Y, Z on a cargo ship docked in the harbor. We're to go there with as many Brimstoners as possible and destroy the Circle completely (mission 3). Montague tells us before leaving that he'll send some of his associates to help us. It turns out his friends are actually Legacy Chain and that those do-gooder white wizards planned a trap to destroy both the CoT and the Brimstone Club in one fell swoop!

We manage to destroy the CoT and defeat the Legacy ambushers and return to Montague quite angry. He laughs and tsks that we survived. Before we can wring his scrawny neck, he vanishes in a puff of air issuing a challenge that if we want revenge, we'll have to fight him on his own turf (mission 4).

We battle and destroy Montague and his minions. When we return to the contact, we find Montague's ghost. It was summoned and sent there by his brethren, The Inner Circle of the Legacy Chain. They throw down the gauntlet... meet them in the secret tunnels beneath the University to settle the matter without spilling any innocent blood (mission 5).

Beneath the streets of Cap Au Diable we do battle one last time with the 4 Inner Circle members: The Legacy of Light, The Legacy of Earth, The Legacy of Fire and The Legacy of Steel. Winner take all.

And of course we are victorious because evil always wins! We are then free (having destroyed the local CoT sect and the Legacy Chain cell) to spread out influence across Cap Au Diable.

Mechanics:
The first couple missions are pretty tough because the CoT at that level are a bunch of ghosts (-acc) and the bosses are Ruin Mages (not to be confused with Baron von Ruwen!). They can be stealthed to a degree. You just need to find and click the glowie in the first. The 2nd requires defeating the boss to uncover the location of the artifact. There's a fun little ambush there too (at von Hirsh's request).

The 3rd mission is a kill all (just for Countess von Stachel), but the end battle is worth the struggle if you ask me. The custom CoT boss looks wicked evil and the battle spawns are a nice twist that unveils Montague's deception.

The 4th mission takes place in the Midnighter Club map, although I don't intend it to be that actual location, but rather Montague's Legacy of Light HQ. Monty has some fun powers, illustrating how illusion/nrg would work for dominators!

The last mission is a Cim tunnel map and sports 4 dominator bosses as the 4 Legacies. It's small, compact and meant for you to end up battling multiple bosses at once.

Problems:
The spawns for the CoT missions were huge and seemingly OP. The Legacy spawns were the opposite. I don't know why that was. I didn't change the settings or anything for the level range, so it must be something inherent to those mobs.

The 'big' bosses were all spawning one rank lower. The CoT leader in mission 3 and Montague are both supposed to be EBs, but they appeared as regular bosses. And the 4 Legacy bosses all appeared as Lieutenants. I'm not sure why that was. I was only set at setting one but that was because our team was fairly large (5). It also doesn't jive because the regular spawns were all creating bosses (ruin mages and such) at the regular level or +1. Not sure if that's some new addition to MA custom bosses where they follow AV -> EB downgrade rules or what.

SPOILER over
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Anyway, check out the arc if you get a chance and let me know what you think. Our team of 5 was able to get through it with some strong pulls and the -DEF of earth and thorn powers (we had 2 earths and 2 /thorns). We were all lvl 15-16 when we started. It'd definitely be easier as we got closer to the lvl cap of 20.

Hey I made our first Super Team custom mission using the MA. It follows our backstory, which is based loosely on the Hellfire Clubs of 18th Century Europe.

I changed our team name to the Brimstone Club so as not to be reported for potential copyright infringement based on Marvel's Hellfire Club.

Anyway, I made a 5 mission story arc that details the Legacy Chain's initial attempt to defeat us before we can get established in the Rogue Isles. The missions are scaled for lvl 14-20 and you'll get to fight Circle, Legacy and some custom mobs.

I tested it for most of the past couple days, so it should be good to go. Hopefully, some of you all will get a chance to run it this week with your team. The ID number is 246520 and the title is Unchained Legacy by @DarkCurrent.

If anyone else has or wants to make an MA arc for our team to help fill out our story or progress our move to take over the Rogue Isles, feel free to post info here or in-game.

See everyone in about 90 minutes.

If you have a new character on the server for the SG, we're giving you some starter infamy as well as providing crafted generic IOs.

If you're a few levels behind and don't have your temp travel powers yet, I recommend you use the base porter to go to GV and buy the jetpack near the trainer for 10K.

Of course you need an /sgi and starter funds first... the former of which has been buggy while in the zones. I've found that if either party zones to a different location, the /sgi then seems to work.

Speaking of rerolling, I know there were two players on my team last night that rerolled their ice/ices to ice/psis. They got to around lvl 9, quit, then came back about 30 min later and we got their new builds to lvl 7 before logging. They were both planning to come back today (Wed) to get up to 10-12.

I was earlier and helped Sentry of Ice get to 10 while I moved my level pact to 12 (my shoulders are tired from carrying Baron von Hirsh).

I was talking to a few of the others while doing some crafting and we decided to roll an alt. Dr. Wormwood rolled a new toon and got to 4 before I logged to roll my new build: mind/energy madness mage called Viscountess de Lune. She got to lvl 2 (woohoo) before the servers went down for their emergency maintenance.

Anyway, feel free to roll a 2nd character for the team. If there's enough interest, we can play on off days/off times and level those, too.

von Ruwen and von Hirsh have some starting infamy for new toons, so don't let that stop you.

Awesome turnout for the first night. Three full teams for the better part of 4 hours. Most folks went from 2 to 12.

We had lots of variety with grav, ice, plant, earth, and fire primaries. A lot of /psi, /thorns and /nrg secondaries. Lots of Barons and Ladies and one perverted Doctor.

My team made it through the AP and KR mayhems, as well as unlocking Veluta Lunata arc. We're going to pick up that arc on Thursday.

I'll see about crafting some more lvl 15 and 20 IOs for the team, so we'll all be supercharged for the next run through the terrific teens.

Catch you all on Thursday night!

Turnout looks like it'll be very good for semi-short notice. Sounds like there'll be 2 teams to start.

Regular play times are Tue/Thu/Sun from 8 PM til Midnight.

Gather around Burke the merc in Mercy Island to get the party started.

I'm thinking about heading to trap some ghosts in PO once we're high enough to unlock Lunata missions and battle some undead. That arc has a nice mystic flavor for us magicians. I can grab my lvl 50 grav and make short work of it by wormholing mobs into the traps for the team.

EvilRyu,

So you and your ilk spend years telling everyone how gimp and useless doms are, trashing their reputation over and over again, and now you want those of us who've enjoyed the AT that whole time, as well as who've led by example, to help noob doms how to play just because you asked?

Your audacity borders on lewdness.

I got an error and send report message window just as the updater finished applying the patch. Closed the program out, restarted and now it's working.

[ QUOTE ]
When is the I15 comming out?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's here now!

Tuesday night (8 eastern) 6/30 will be our official start. Meet outside the arachnos base next to Burke the Merc.

All CoT themed dominators are welcome. You can join HTTT's VG and make use of our base, bins, teleporters, crafting tables, etc.

We'll be stacking controls and the fancy new damage attacks to see what mayhem we can unleash. I advise that everyone skips their AoE immob (except grav) as it will mess up the kb we'll have with earthquake and ice slick. Grav's immob does not have -kb. If you are running grav, don't bother with dimension shift. Waste o' power. I recommend Hasten and Stamina for everyone, unless you are going with a /psi stamina free build.

We'll have plenty of slows, -rch, and knockdown early to keep us safe without hard controls. Once we get into our 20s, we'll have lots of hard aoe control as well.

If you still need an invite to the VG, give me a shout @DarkCurrent or join our HTTT global channel and send a message there.

See you tomorrow night!

I'd pick a control set with an AoE stun to stack with your friend's flashfire. That'll be your primary every-spawn control starting at lvl 12.

The leaves fire/ or earth/

As fire is light on control, I'd lean toward earth/ to complement. That'll make him the primary damager and you the primary controller/debuffer.

Imps do a lot of dmg, but they're pretty fragile. Stoney would help by tanking for you.

Also, your friend will be playing in melee with HF and Cinders, so with earth you'd be the ranged guy. I'd complement that with a ranged assault set. I think you mentioned /energy... that could work. Or /psi (until 38 and PSW).

FYI,

If any of you are planning to roll up a dom on Pinnacle or are looking for a server to start a dom, look me up @DarkCurrent.

We're going to start another all-dom team with a Circle of Thorns theme in our HTTT villain group. This'll be the 4th all-dom team and 6th themed overall, so we have experience with doms and super teams.

We'll start the team once I15 hits the Live servers.

Wait to play until then. I'm sitting on lvl 2 with Burke as my first contact with Baron von Ruwen.

Contact me @DarkCurrent or @Kazari to get into HTTT. You might want to join the HTTT global channel to see when/if we're online.

If anyone is interested, role a dominator that fits in the Circle of Thorns theme (magic origin and mystic/demonic dress). If you have a picture, name and backstory to go with that and want to share, feel free.

So what's the team lineup looking like now?

[ QUOTE ]
Dark Current: Earth/Thorn
RiverOcean: Grav/Psi
Organicide: Plant/Psi
Hack: Plant/Thorn
Hirsh: Grav/Psi (?)
JayBoh: ???
?
?


Fill the ?'s with your build people!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes.

[ QUOTE ]
No new Dom plans currently. These days anything I roll up has to have good AoE capability and the new single target focus of Doms has left me a bit cold.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes.

[ QUOTE ]
True.. however villian players are much less dependent on the "team" dichotamy thats the predominant standard on Heroside.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's also true. But I don't think redside is the target population for these changes, do you? To boost the population (stated goal) you need to draw from a new playerbase (bluesiders or newbs). Blueside prefers teaming, no? And I don't see many new players to the game until maybe Going Rogue comes out in a few months.

I also don't think these changes will do much for dom popularity. Sure, they're going to lead to an initial surge in players coming to try them out. And yeah, I fully expect some of them to stick around and then nauseate me by posting here about how awesome this AT 'is' and wondering aloud why they never thought that way before.

However, doms still have low HP, which is contrary to fighting in melee. They will still have incomplete attack chains until their 30s, which is made worse by the increase in recharge times. They will still have weak AoE control capability until their late 20s when they can 5 slot with SO-grade enhancements. And I think with the added endurance costs, you might just well be able to toss that on the list of pre-20 complaints.

And worst of the bunch is by increasing dom soloability with more ST dmg, the shock of teaming with the above-mentioned shortcomings (all of which are accentuated on teams) is going to create a complaintfest worse than any you've heard yet.

So I can pretty much guarantee there'll be a lot of hype followed by a large dropoff in dominators. In the end, we'll boost dom popularity perhaps to solid 4th place redside (ahead of stalkers), but when it comes right down to it corruptors, brutes and MMs will still be the Big 3 teaming ATs.