Dead Calm

Are you sure it's not the other way round? I've got a range/damage HO in TT, and that seems to bump it up to near nightfall range, which as you say is very useful.

I'll try to put in an apperance for the begining, although I'll probably not be there for the end, as it will clash with my weekly dose of Jack Bauer's Hour of Power!

I agree with every point Tufty makes there.

Whether this is more worrying for him or me, I cannot say.

Here are my opinions on your questions.

1. Not sure about this one. I'll leave it for someone with psi experience.

2. Off the top of my head, PG is mag 3. Useful for taking out squishies If you can stack it with the any holds psi may have (have no idea if it does or not) it would be very useful.

3. See 1 above.

4. Fearsome stare: Excellent PvP power. Very few things have resistance to terror. Petrefying gaze: Useful PvP power, see 2 above.

5. It very much depends on who you are fighting. 1v1 with good use of fluffy they are very good - I've taken on blappers before and the -to hit is enough to keep you alive and fighting, particularly when the -dam as well. Pre-fluffy it is a lot more risky, as one detoggle can ruin your day. Against larger teams though Darkest Night suffers, as most of the time they will not attack as a group.

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Completely OT, but whenever I see this subject truncated in the forum list, my brain keeps trying to fill in a warshade equivalent of electric sheep. It's like a song stuck in my head.

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Not just you. Currently I'm going with electric squids, although electric voids also works.

I'd drop Swift - Hurdle and CJ together are tip top for bouncing round missions.

I'd be tempted to drop resist energies for Air Superiority. With AS in addition to all the other knockdown SS has, you can keep a lot of EB's in more or less perma-knockdown.

I've kept endurance reduction in my attacks post-stamina. Lack of endurance is the natural predator of fury, and thus should be fended off at any oppotunity.

A few musings in no particular order.

On people who only team with friends/SG...
Understanderble. If someone has lived/worked/socialised anywhere for a length of time they will have a network of friends who they socialise with which means they tend to interact less with strangers. This carries across to MMOs. This then also leads to issues like Lode's, that when a significant portion of that support network moves elsewhere, it can be a severe blow. I personally tend to PuG a lot, as I like meeting and helping out new people and also occasionally bumping into old friends who I've not seen for yonks due to switching to alts before Total Cat came in.

On it becoming hard to find a team in CoH...
I've not experienced it myself. I've been mostly playing in the 10-14 range, the 35-40 range and the 47-50 range recently, and if anything, I've found it easier to get a team than pre CoV, particularly in the 35-40 range. This is obviously not to say that other people aren't finding it difficult, just that I've not experienced it.

On cliques...
Cliques happen everywhere. Certain groups will always be seen as the "in" crowd. The entire forum is a clique, albeit one that I feel is generally very open and friendly to new members. Of course any clique that makes itself totally exclusive and unavailable to new members will die out anyway, so a natural form of control is present. There is precisely nothing that anyone can do about cliques forming and collapsing so it's one of those things I file in the 'no point worrying about this' draw.

On CoV causing the community to go to hell in a handcart...
I really think that there is an element of rose tinted glasses coming into play on this. There has always been spam in Atlas. Arguments on arena chat started roughly seventeen seconds after it went live. If there seems to be more of it, that's probably just because there are more people around, so naturally there are more stupid people around.

On what actually constitutes the CoX community...
Most of the CoX community are not boarders. Most of them probably have no idea that events such as the valentines party or the big photo thing even take place. Just because the board goes through periods of minor unpleasentness, such as regular bouts of Pre-Issue Tension, it does not mean that the community as a whole is falling apart. It just means that a particular bit is having a little tizzy.

The community as a whole is currently on a PuG doing Frostfire, not giving a monkeys about who said what about who, what epic AT they are going to use come I14, or whether fezzes will ever be included as a costume option (well possibly not that. Everyone wants fezzes), and they are having a blast not worrying about such stuff. I'd hartily recommend joining them occasionally, as it is jolly good fun.

I have completely forgotten where I was going with all this, so for now I shall stop.

I don't agree. They are very clever.

They really don't want to die if they don't have to.

Seriously though, used point blank they are devestating. Used pre-fight they are quite pretty.

I'm certainly up for it.

Toggle debuffs like Darkest Night, those green swirly things rads use and some of the cold/storm powers drop when you run off a bit - 200 yards or so I think.

Given how absolutly bloody useless they (by they I mean Darkest Night. Not sure about the others, although the storm recharge thing is a pain when it is on my brute) are in any PvP other than 1v1 or on occasion close melee with several characters, they really don't need further gutting.

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BBC News Link

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Lusca...is...an...OCTOPUS

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I am so glad it's not just me that gets bothered by this.

Tri-form for me. During a fight on a large team I'll probably switch multiple times.

Having taken a big CoV shaped break from my PB for a while, and then coming back to him in the last couple of weeks, I have to say that I had forgotten how truly fun he is.

I'm tri-form all the way, and the joy of being on a large team, launching a couple of AoEs from Nova, dropping into Dwarf to take the return fire, then popping into human to throw out some melee damage never gets old.

Whether I lead with big attacks in a no-fury situation is dependent on whether I am in a team or not. Solo, I aim to be able to get through a newspaper mission with little to no downtime, so I'll mostly use the standard attacks, with a KOB thrown in here and there, and almost no footstomps save for boss spawns because a) another high damage attack against them is a good thing, and b)They are normally at the end of the mission so end-management is not an issue.

However, in a team situation, I use both KOB and Footstomp far more often, regardless of the amount of fury I have built. Jumping into a large spawn without Footstomping? Unthinkable.

Longbow flamethrowers in the 30s are a right pain, and almost made me respec in resist elements (currently my build has resist energies but not elements and also is missing tough hide. I intend to swap resist energies with tough hide when I get round to doing the respec trial again). However, they can be dealt with with alternative tactics, namely jumping about a bit (easy for me, as I run CJ and have hurdle) to stay out of the burn patches, hitting them first, while more or less ignoring things like the blokes with rifles, and using AS/Haymaker to keep them down if KOB wasn't ready when I engaged them.

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you are missing out on a load of auto def powers which are always on but dont take any stamina while in use like resist elements and resist energies, also you have left out any slots on your lvl 35 power of tough hide, you want these and you want 3 slots in them (as with resist physical damage) otherwise you will only be able to fight opponents with smash/leathal damage and when you start to rise in lvl you will have difficulties.

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I disagree. A brute can happily survive without the passive resist powers. The trick is being sensible about what you kill first. A couple of slots in tough hide wouldn't go amiss, but their not essential.

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You ahve too many attacks and most will be useless as you will ahve too many to chain, by the time your main attack has recharged you wont have even gone through half of them.

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Again, I disgree. My attack chain is Jab on auto (brawl when in PvP), Punch, Haymaker and Air Superiority, with KO Blow and Footstomp used when rage is high (all of the above have a rechardge reduction in), plus hurl for getting runners/looking cool.

Personal, I'd still put an accuracy in your attacks, as well as a recharge (although I don't slot for th_buffs, so you may not need to) and try and fit an end_red in your toggles, but I don't have my build in front of me at the momment, so I can't tell you off the top of my head exactly where I'd get the slots from.

The absolutle best Dark/Dark guide (It's written about Defenders, but most of the stuff in it applies to Corruptors too) is Blackest Nights which can be found here.

The base is not off the field.

Is kicking the ball into touch in football unsporting or is it a valid tactic to regroup and gain an advantage?

As for two-men-enter, as I said, I do that for duels. Where I am challenging a person to go one-on-one with me. A totally different game to HvV PvP, which is about two groups, often of different strengths trying to get the best of each other.

A duel is the time for honour, sportsmanship and that sort of thing. A big ruck is a case of kicking someone in the nadgers and legging it when it gets a bit hairy.

I'm forever managing to get debt in PvP zones, including one a couple of days ago where I cunningly decided to have a bit of a break by resting in the middle of a big group of Arachnos, who would protect me. It would have worked better if I wasn't playing my PB at the time.

When I'm fighting a PC and a mob wanders past and decides to get involved/the flow of the fight takes us into a spawn, and I die, I usually bung out a broadcast accusing the mob of killstealing and depriving my opponent of their hard-earned bounty.

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You may wish to reconsider this particular approach to the zones as it is not a closed conflict like the arena and am moderately sure that is pretty easy to cross the terms of the EULA. Given that it has now been established that there is a function in the game that can ban you from ALL chat channels this is all the more important to bear in mind (the latest patch created a database bug and a number of people have incorrectly been banned from chat for up to 58 years)

Light hearted banter in pvp is fun and part of the game, trash talk can border on abuse depending on what is being said and pvp can do without it IMHO

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To be honest it was a deranged idea that came to me while writing the reply. Actual trash-talk I tend to stear clear of, as it can head south very quickly indeed and spoil the atmosphere for everyone.

Incidently I don't mean smilies or chatting. Proper in-game emotes, used in a proper sequence. The power of mime, if you will. I shall be working on ways of implementing it tonight.

Remember, just because an idea is both ridiculous and almost certainly totally ineffective, it doesn't mean you should stop working on it.

Next week Dead_Calm shall be looking at ways of using Kumer Rouge brainwashing techniques in Warburg.

Causing an opponent to get aggro is a totally valid way of getting them to turn off the toggle debuff they have put on you, and I say that as someone who plays a Dark Defender. I do not do it to get them debt, I do it to force them to withdraw from the fight for a bit to lose the aggro.

As for getting debt in a PvP zone, I will do everything I can in a fight with someone to avoid either of us getting debt. For example, if I had tp foe, I would never tp people into enemy mobs. Doing so would not be a victory for me, but for the computer. No fun in that for anyone.

I absoultly treat it as a game. I'll banter, I'll give props to the other side when someone does something really clever or takes me out in an imaginative way. The second I start to actually get wound up about something, I'll switch back to PvE.

It is a game.

A game I want to win.

A game in which my PvP rep shows that I have a long way to go before this is actually the case.

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None of the PvP zones qualify as a field of human conflict. They do however count as field of human gaming. Running to the base to escape a pursuer is running OFF the gaming field and announcing to everyone "I don't want to play until things are back in my favour again, or at least until that neast hero/villain goes away."

It's poor sportsmanship, that's the only way I can see it.

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PvP is a zero-sum game. For one person to win another must lose. Ergo it is human conflict.

Your argument essentially boils down to "A person should not run. They should stand there and let me boost my PvP rep, despite the fact they could stop me killing them if they wanted."

I say rubbish. In full-on PvP (not, as mentioned earlier, in a duel - I regard them as very much a two men enter, one man leaves kind of affair) I will use every single weapon (that is within the rules) at my disposal to win in PvP, be that attacks, defenses, using a travel powers to run to the base, jumping into a spawn so the toggle debuff you've stuck on me gets you a whole world of aggro, temporary powers, a string of emotes designed to rile you by suggesting sexual inadaquicy and getting you involved in a protracted discussion over broadcast about the best way to cook bacon in order to sneek up on you while you type your response.

If you cannot take someone down before they escape, and they come back and take you out, the one who has failed is you, not them. It's not exactly as if CoX is devoid of ways to stop someone escaping, and the option to retreat is there for you as well. If you do not chose to use it, tough.

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As for going to base, I often call teammates back to base to regroup for a big push

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That's different, that's a strategic choice rather than "oh mammy the bad hero/villain is after me so I'll go somewhere I know they can't get to me."

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I think you'll find that going somewhere safe to rest/wait for your clickies to recharge/get a temp power/have a bit of a breather is also a strategic choice.

Hit and run is not exactly a new tactic in the field of human conflict.

Do I always run to the base? No. Sometimes it is not neccessary, as there are sometimes other safe places I can go and hit rest, particularly when there is a big old scrap in one particular area, but if there is a wide non-localised confilct going on or if someone is chasing me, I'll happily go to my base.

Well done Rev.

Count me in for the TF. I'll probably run it with Nuke, as DF already has that badge.

To quote Sun Tzu's The Art of War, "He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight."

Retreating to base, resting, and returning at full strength is good tactics. Fighting to the last all very well, but gives the enemy advantages, particularly in somewhere like Sirens where that advantage is material rather than just bragging rights.

However, in a 1 on 1, I'll stick about to the death.

Give me a shout in game, and I'll give you a hand.