Dogma

If you wanna PvP, I believe corruptors are preferred. If you wanna learn the game, I recommend playing a brute or a scrapper as a hero. I find villian zones and stories to be not informative as a new player. Plus, hero side is often more populated than villian side. Stay away from Preatoria until later as it is more difficult than either hero or villian zones.

Couple of keys to keep in mind as a new player:

1. Mez sucks and a lot of mobs have it... Scrappers and brutes have mez protection. Tanks do too but they lack the dps and are over survivable when playing solo. Keep in mind that not all mez protection is created equal. For example, fiery aura has no knockback protection which is a huge drawback. You can fill these gaps in later if you want, but might as well get it from the start. Electric Aura uses Grounded power that requires you to be on the ground for it to be effective so you will get knocked around and mezzed if you're jumping or flying. I like Martial Arts and Willpower's mez protection powers.

2. Redraw sucks so keep that in mind selecting your power sets. Pairing Broadsword with Regen is probably not a good idea. Regen has a lot of click powers that will force you to redraw your broadsword for each attack and regen is only survivable when using the clicks.

3. IMO, having more defense is better than having more resistance. If you do a brute or a scrapper, try a set that has some of both or one that has more defense... Martial arts, Shield Defense and their ilk. I like Willpower too but that works a little different. This conversation can get complicated fast but generally speaking, more defense is better than more resistance.

4. Lastly, and probably the most important, take a travel power at level 4, you will regret it if you do not. There are 4 choices of which I think two are truly viable for most players. Fly, Super Jump, Super Speed, and Teleportation, that is the order of their usefulness imo for most players. Fly is nice cause you can move freely about all axis, chat while traveling if you want and it's pretty passive. I started using this on all my toons from the get go and don't regret it... the downside is it is relatively "slow" as compared to the others. Super Jump is what I use on all my toons now as it is quicker and I am more familiar with zones and instanced maps. Super speed is preferred by PvPers, in fact, I see a lot of PvPers take Super Speed and Super Jump since super speed has no vertical component. Super speed is the fastest in a straight line but is horrible when it comes to anything vertical (Villian zones have a LOT of vertical). Teleportation is my least liked travel powers... very active travel power in the sense that there is a lot of clicking and turning and clicking and aiming and ... ugh, waste of time. Don't take this unless you really want if for concept.

I realize you didn't ask these questions but I think these are more important answers than the questions you asked...

To address more directly your questions, if you wanna PvP, subscribe to the game. You will need lots of things the free account doesn't get without paying through the nose for. Hit Freedom or Virtue server as there populations are highest and will find plenty of folks to team with. Cookie cutter, not really, though there is lots of free advice out there. The builds for PvP will cost you a lot of in game currency that will require you to farm or play the market. Both of these activities will take time to actually develop your war chest so I would recommend not starting with PvP. Don't buy or subscribe from the start, play the game for a bit to figure out if you like it and so you make sure you're not wasting your money... buyer beware on digital content.

I've a DP/Pain corr that I enjoy... it's got a pbaoe heal, rez, a pbaoe buff and debuff.

While I appreciate your frustration and irritation, the f2p avenue is intended for those who have never experienced the game and thus would not be aware of how awesome they were. These roadblocks that you are experiencing while irritating, they are an incentive to get you to re-enlist. If you got all your previous glory for free then there would be no incentive for you to do so.

However, your comments about a free time of VIP for returning players could be a good idea though the logistics might be complicated. Maybe a nominal fee for full access for a week or something every 6 months might be easier to do for NCSoft. Though, the risk there is that you might get even more irritated by the loss of perks when the free time runs out...

It's all about perception... you are playing a game that presumes that someone can protect themselves by setting themselves on fire and that people can shoot mind bullets from their forehead... use your imagination.

Nix CJ at the end and take another travel power for non combat travelling (I took SS), must have imo for stoners... makes getting those glowies less painful... or some other power if you need the LOTG recharge... I'm not familiar with DM to suggest any of those.

Also, take kick instead of punch and put a force feedback +rchg in it. 100% rchg for 5 secs is a nice throw away slot.

Triple threat -- bring each AV to 5%, then 2%, then defeat. Make sure pendragon's shield is not up or about to be up and wait for Chimera to TP before making the final push.

Ready to Rumble -- Timer starts when you talk to the doctor to open the portal.. so the 20 seconds it takes to spawn count. Wait to judgment until the counter starts for the 250 count. Do NOT pull mobs to one spot, have your league move around the mobs to defeat the minions and lts. Don't wait to defeat whole mobs before moving to the next mob, they will follow you. Chimera first, then the other two.

Don't forget to complete the trial.

Buy reds at the consession stand.

Gather your team at one of the spawn points. I usually do the one to the left of where the baddies enter the arena. Eat half the reds you bought and defeat as many as you can.

Do the same for the monkeys.

You need to defeat a combined 75 ninjas and monkeys. I think there is a 1 minute timer on each phase.

It really depends on your AT and your total HP who you want to use. The only thing you need to worry about is that you've got enough regen to compensate for the damage you're taking. I was able to take on three even Rikti infantry on my brute. To echo what others said just make sure there isn't a mez that will break rest in the critters attack chain.

That puts MMs at a strong disadvantage... I realize most other inspirationss don't propagate from the MM, but it would seem there should be an exception made for the ultimate inspirations or even for all tier 4 inspirations that are purchased with astrals.

Not a perfect solution, but http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Hero_M...ashback_System lists all the merit rewards which includes all the Ouro flashback arcs. You will notice that the Arc Name field will denote if there is a badge awarded. The majority of the badge arcs are at the bottom of each category though this is not true all the time.

The villian page http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Villain_Merit_Rewards lists the badge missions in different section that are offered via flashback.

EDIT: I don't know how current these pages are either... may be missing some but it gives you a starting point.

Red Tomax's guide is out there too but again, not sure how current that is: http://tomax.cohtitan.com/story_arcs/

Just completed two runs on Virtue today. Here are a few tips that we patched together on our runs:

1. Last phase is 20 mins, just enough time to spawn lore pets twice. Once at the beginning and once again at the 15 min mark. Some pets are ready in 10, but hold onto those until all lore pets are ready at 15 mins and have a coordinated release if necessary at the 15ish min mark.

2. Bring 6 ultimates on each character. They don't stack and last for 3 mins. Use them to keep everyone on the league level shifted throughout the final battle. They are 2 astrals per insp in ouro. You can also get them on the market though they appear to be relatively expensive right now.

3. The succesful leagues that I've run on have had lots of corruptors. The advantage being that they have both buffs and damage. Defenders are good as well but controllers MMs and Doms, not so much. At this point, keep those ATs to a minimum. Tanks as well. Corrs, stalkers and blasters, and to a lesser degree, scrappers and brutes. I can't speak to heats and veats as I don't play them much. I'm guessing that if you've a solid team of single target damage, a solid team of corrs, the third team can be a mash up of anything else.

4. Support Hybrid is a plus, barrier destiny is a plus, and Longbow Cat+Null lore is a plus. Support hybrid gives bonus damage to all, barrier helps keep everyone alive, and longbow Cataphracts have a good -regen (I'm told, I cannot independently confirm).

So essentially, pop ultimate insps as often as you can, spawn lore pets immediately when the phase starts and be sure to put them on aggressive towards Tyrant, keep hybrids up as often as you can, and keep destinies and all other buffs fresh throughout. Wait until ALL lore pets have recharged, about 5 mins remaining in the phase, then do a mass spawn of lore pets and do a final push if you didn't defeat within the first five. Use barrier AFTER you spawn your pets to make sure they get the res and def buffs from the get go.

Just some pointers that worked for us. Let everyone know if you have something that could work better. Lets hammer it out so that we can get everyone the badge. Good luck everyone and send me a tell in game if you need help, got lots of toons I can bring.

Someone pro and con this for me... I'm not seeing any pros for this...

Dont like it one bit.... PPMs should be discarded altogether. my perf shifters, numinas, regen tissues, and miracles will be severely adversely effected and my planning for proc-ing in AoEs is tough already... this will just make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

Let me repeat: PPM is a horrible idea and should be discarded entirely.

Caveat: I'm willing to admit I don't understand the whole thing, please inform me if I'm missing details.

I'm voting for the shadow shard... very expansive, easy to port in villians and a group of baddies that could be the next main villian. The rularuu are under used IMO and could be a much more fearsome group for our up and coming incarnates.

I'm updating my badge popmenu with all the new badges and can't figure out the badge identifier for the new DA day job. I've tried several incarnations but none have worked. Anyone figured it out yet? All the lists I've looked at haven't been updated recently. Any help would be great.

1a. tier 3 alpha
1b. tier 3 destiny
2. tier 3 lore
3. tier 3 judgement
4. tier 3 interface

Then tier 4 from 1b-4 as the VRs become available. Tier 4 alpha comes when I do enough WSTs to slot it.

How do you bring old story up to date? It's game lore, you can't just change history. While some of the mission mechanics are irritating (hunt 65 carnies in PI... thanks Harvey), they are what they are. Removing or changing some of that stuff changes the lore and isn't really worth the effort as there are a lot of tie ins that may break once it is changed. It's there for posterity and if you wanna run it, you can, but folks who are done running low level content just look for the most efficient way to get to the stuff they want to run. If that means running DFB until you're 15, then running synapse, then DiB until you're 25, then citadel and hess, then Croatoa to Katie Hannon, then numina, midniters arc to ITF, then STF and Unai Kemen... you get it. You can do whatever suits your fancy and that is the strength of this game. The paths are high on the permutations, and even more so with leveling while examping... missed the posi cause you levelled to quick to 15, no worries, you can still run it AND get exp.

It's only old to someone who has played it umpteen times.