Demon_Shell

I think spacing this out over more than just a day would be a good idea.

Hello! @Demon Shell here with a brief summary of Mids' Hero Designer.

This is THE 3rd party program you want to have for CoH. It's importance ranks as high as Paragon Wiki itself, particularly with regards to balancing out any flaws in your characters as a level 50s.

The first thing you'll want to do is copy and paste the following link by highlighting the text and holding down the "Ctrl" key, then pressing the "C" key. Alternately, since we aren't in-game, you can just right click and hit copy.

http://www.cohplanner.com/

Once on that website, you'll want to click the red hyperlink that reads Mids' Hero Designer, followed by a "v", a version identification number, and the date of its last update in parenthesis.



You may also need to download .NET Framework 2.0 as well, though it's more than likely that you already have it or a more updated version. That can also be found on the website as the blue link under the Mids' Hero Designer hyperlink.

Once installed, the controls can be a little complicated. The first thing you'll want to do is find where it says Archetype in the top left corner and pick the Archetype you desire.



Afterward, pick the Primary and Secondary Power Sets, found beneath the Archetype menu.



From this point forward you will choose the powers and slotting that you want by clicking on the available power names either to the left or right. The info box to the lower left will show you relevant info about the last power your mouse has passed over.



On the left are the powers you have available to choose from, either based on your Primary/Secondary, or your power Pools. Yellow text means the power is available, green means chosen, gray means unavailable.



On the right are the powers you'll have available to you, either the ones you've chosen or by default. Left clicking these powers will increase their slot number. Holding the "Shift" key and left clicking will remove a slot.



Right clicking a slot will bring up a drop-down menu where you can choose what enhancement to place in the slot. The enhancements available cover the gambit of every enhancement found in the game.



Right clicking any power name, either on the left or right side, will lock the information box to the stats found on the power in question. To unlock the info box, mouse over the red [Unlock] button on the info box and left click it.



Holding shift and right clicking a power on the right side will flip the slots to an alternate setup. Repeating the action will flip them back. This can be used for quickly comparing slotting setups for an individual power.



Powers identified as toggles, or powers with lingering effects to the player will possess a button, either gray or green, to their right.

If green, the power is considered active, and its effects can be seen in the View Totals menu. If gray, the power is considered deactivated and not providing any effect.

The View Active Sets and View Totals buttons to the right of the Archetype menu can be used to view major information about your character's stats.

For the View Totals popup menu, there will be three tabs ("Survival", "Misc Buffs", and "Status") you can press to change the information presented. It will default to "Survival" when opened.



The View Active Sets popup menu will be divided between Applied Bonus Effects and Effect Breakdown. Applied Bonus Effects will tell you the total bonus to a particular area from set bonuses while Effect Breakdown will show where it's coming from.

Regarding set bonuses, remember the "Rule of 5": once you have 5 of an identical set bonus, you will no longer gain any benefit from any further set bonuses of that identical type and magnitude.

For example, you can slot 5 Luck of the Gambler: Recharge Speed procs for a 7.5% recharge speed bonus, and you can slot 5 Basilisk's Gaze sets to its 4 slot bonus of 7.5% recharge speed, because one is a proc, and one is a set bonus.

But, if you tried to slot an additional Basilisk's Gaze set to its 4 slot bonus, or a Kinetic Crash set to its 6 slot bonus of 7.5% recharge speed, you would exceed the limit because of the previous Basilisk's Gaze sets and gain no benefit.

If you do exceed the Rule of 5, the View Active Sets popup menu will indicate so when opened with a warning below the Effect Breakdown subheader and with red text, further labeled by the '>Cap' tag.



To activate and deactivate Accolades, Incarnates, and Temp Powers, click (right or left) the labeled button in the upper right corner. To edit the contents of those buttons, double click (right or left) the button in question to display a popup menu.



Many graphics, when moused over, will bring up information windows. This is most obvious with power selection and enhancement slotting, but can also be done with all information found in the View Totals popup menu.



There are many more functions to this program and it will take some experimentation to figure it all out. But this should be enough to get you started on the path of personalizing your own character's build.

I hope you found this helpful. That is all for now.

I like how these sets could actually work, mechanically.

Ice Armor for Stalkers but not Brutes? Even after the revamp to Rage?

You know what? After 5 years, I'll take it.

Everything else just sounds amazing. Particularly (to me) the concept of a buff to Energy Aura for Stalkers (and don't think it's anything but one).

Could try an 8-man Lambda. The nerf to Marauder was pretty substantial, just not sure if it was that substantial.

If we inspiration up on the gathering phase and get those doors closed fast, we might stand a chance.

Well, I was lucky enough to be picked.

The story was light and fluffy (without spoiling anything) and the ending had a hilarious in-joke to players. The dialog was very well put together and believable for the characters involved; the word-of-mouth exchanges you receive make it obvious why the characters were chosen.

On the first mission the enemy groups were scattered pretty wide, making debuffing difficult. On the second mission, at times they were so clustered into one another they bled together. Both of those have the potential to cause difficulty issues, but we had a lot of mez and debuffs, so we didn't have any problems.

It was a fast, simple, and enjoyable time. But even as an upbeat arc, the storyline wasn't as involved as I would have liked. There also didn't appear to be much of a motivation for the player (your character) to be taking part in the story other than Becky's involvement, at least from what I gathered. That's just my opinion.

I understand that it's partially the fault of the system for not letting teammates see return dialog, but after so many years I figured that people would know better than to use it for important information. There were no clues and no souvenir was awarded at the arc's completion. Had Z not pasted the final mission's return text, I would have had no idea how the thing really ended.

I five stared it, because it was an entertaining story and I had a good time. But the story's delivery, particularly to teammates, could use some work.

Thanks Z, for picking me to come along. And thanks @New Age Ronin for making the arc.

As an aside, I don't recommend soloing Faultline on a character with no mez protection.

It was fun hanging out with you and some folks and just wrecking that AE arc. Wish it hadn't ended so quickly, though.

And sorry about all the questions and suggestions. I figure you're probably used to it, but still.

Come back soon!

It'll be a busy day, I'll try to show up if I can on Tia J Locke; Peacebringer.

She's human form, but she's fully setted out (not with the final sets I would like, but they're pretty good) and has a T4 Alpha.

*Salute.*

The one thing I'm not sure on, is the Vanguard support pet's Twilights Grasp. The tool-tip says it heals for 238 twice, but that seems too good to be true compared to the other AoE heals, even if it does require a tohit check.

They're not really going to make downing Praetorian Hamidon as trivial as i21.5 or i22, are they? It's just some kind of "bud" of Hamidon, right?

I mean, yeah, Primal Hamidon is sort of a joke now, but Praetorian Hamidon is supposed to be the thing that an entire world cowers before. Cole didn't contain Hamidon, he just hid behind a barrier.

Before you pick which of the new Lore pets you want, make sure you look through the abilities the support pets get. Some of them are insane!

Arachnos gets Mind Link. (5% tohit/5% defense in all areas, 30sec duration, 1m20sec recharge)
Carnival get Forgue. (20% tohit/15% damage, 1m duration, 1m recharge)
Phantoms get Adrenalin Boost. (400% recovery/250% regeneration/50% rechcharge, 1m15sec duration, 4m20sec recharge) (enough to cast it a second time before they despawn)
Polar Lights get Assault. (7.5% damage)
Rikti get Radiation Emission (107 aoe heal, 16s recharge) and Accelerate Metabolism instead of a single target heal. (10% damage/15% recharge/recovery, 1m duration, 4m recharge) (2 uses)
Rularuu get an AOE ally targeting 50% damage buff that lasts 30 seconds. (4m recharge) (2 uses)
Storm Elementals get Hurricane. (30% tohit debuff)
Vanguard also gets Assault (7.5% damage), but they get Twilight's Grasp too instead of a single target heal. (238 aoe heal (x2?)/-50% regen/-5% tohit/-10% damage, 12s recharge)

Cimorians, Longbow and Nemesis, get an AoE heal along with their single target heal. (107 heal, 16s recharge)

Imagine Hurricane on an ally that can't be hit by enemy attacks.

That priority queuing thing will likely be a big deal for the first month or so.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06...orter-freedom/

Or go here, where people are speculating one of big things mentioned; Two-Handed Weapons.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=263836

Initially? ****...

Retrospect? Saw it coming.

Presently? I've already been paying for the game for years now, makes no real difference to me. Cept maybe when I go on hiatus I can still pop back in now and again.

Honestly, the one thing that caught my attention is that only eight archetypes will be playable for free/returning players. There's fourteen total, four Epic Archetypes, which leaves our ten regular ATs. That means one AT on each side (Hero/Villain) is going to be restricted to free players.

Who wants to bet Free Heroes don't get Controllers?

Edit: Nevermind, looks like that was already answered.

The short version is, I couldn't survive in melee on a character I built to fight in melee. So I stood back and rotated Toxic Grenade, Surveillance, Web Envelope, and Mace Blast. And occasionally I'd Placate, then jump in for a Shatter.

So, basically a gimpy debuffer when he should have been fighting like a Stalker/debuffer.

He'll get better when I can afford it.

I think I'll start bringing my Kinetic/Fire Brute. Try to get some levels under him.

Edit: Also, fighting at range with a Bane Spider is weird.

As far as I know it's working.

Anyway, it was just a lark when I was slotting in Mids' and opened up Poison Arrow.

Thanks for the input.

If I taunted an enemy and then placated them, would they just stand there, or would they attack another target?

Specifically, on a Mastermind if I used Provoke on a mob, then fired a Poison Arrow that proced placate (from the purple IO), would the enemy attack my pets?

Thanks.

I've ran with a plant/storm before. They are devastating without the danger of mob displacement, just like you'd imagine.

Yeah, it wasn't as good as the one on Protector. Too many people so it felt impersonal and boring.

Badass, all around.

It's just too bad for me that I already have a T4 Lore pet on my main. Now I'll have to make another.