DrMike2000

I cashed in 40 merits hero-side for a couple of random rolls yesterday, and the recipes never appeared in my tray.

I saw the text in my chat window "You have been given a Aegis:Rech/End" and the orange "Recipe Gift" text, but the recipe wasn't there when I opened my inventory.

I've petitioned this in-game immediately. I wasn't too put out since the two recipes would have gone for less than a million anyway (Aegis and a Perfect Zinger I think?).

Has anyone else had any similar experiences?

Edit:

A tip for new players:
Try not to leave "Hide Recipes that are missing ingredients" clicked on and forget about it!

*slinks off in embarassment..*

Possibly the Gaussian +Rech/End IO looks worthless, it gets deleted more than say a LotG +Rech or a anti-KB IO?

Imagining I'm a casual player (ie someone who doesn't read this forum and Red Tomax or Paragon Wiki several times a day) if I got a Gaussian's +Rech/End I'd probably think "Oh, its one of those set-fillers like a Resistance set's Rech/End, ie it doesnt contribute to the primary attribute of the power type. I'll delete or vendor it". Kind of like when you do a random roll and get a snipe or something.

If I get a LotG +Recharge or -KB IO its immediately obvious that its something a bit out of the ordinary and I'd at least check the price.

Although, the idea of people rolling a recipe with merits and then not even checking seems a bit odd...

Oh yeah, they're recipes. I couldn't be bothered crafting them.
Some new goodies, alos level 33 recipes:

Positron's Blast: Dam/Acc/End
Time & Space Manipulation: Stealth
Scirocco's Dervish: Chance for Lethal
Decimation: Acc/Dam/Rech

Its Pool C, ie drops from Merit rolls rather than defeats or missions.
Its got good set bonuses (especially +2.5% to all positions for 6 slots).
Absolutely anyone can use it, since it fits into Tactics, even if you are one of the few archetypes without a Build Up style power.

These three things are what makes recipes cost the most and disappear the fastest from the market when they do drop.

I've decided to cash in a bunch of merits on one of my characters. The following are now available for reasonable prices at level 33, just right for Siren's Call!

Aegis: Psionic/Mez Resist
Analyze Weakness: Chance for +To Hit
Decimation:Acc/End/rech
FreeBird: +Stealth (x2)
Ghost Wiodow: Chance for Psi Damage
Luck of the Gambler:End/Rech
Numina: +Regen/Recovery (x2)
Positron: +Chance for Energy Damage
Devastation: Dam/Rech
Obliteration: Chance for Smashing Damage

Get 'em while they're hot! They're lovely!

I'll be posting some more tomorrow if these shift. This is villainside, as the title implies.

Virtue's where I go when I want to relax and be someone else.

On a typical PuG I can stay in character from start to finish and usually get a response from two or three other players at least, sensing that silent nod that they get what I'm doing and play along.

Other servers I used to play on were cool, and people were polite and friendly about not wanting to talk in-character, but Virtue seems to get it more often.

This reminds me of Windows Vista, or the changes to recent versions of Word.

The old interface worked fine for me, the new one's clunkier and uglier. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but so far Im very unsure as to what I've gained, if anything.

Probably my favourite new feature is the persistent bid amount. That makes listing batches of 10 crafted generic IOs much quicker

The only attack that does any meaningful End Drain is Short Circuit, and it drains equally well for Blasters, Defenders and Corrupters. (Oh, and the nuke.)

Even on a Defender slotting for End Drain instead of damage in Lightning Bolt and Charged Bolt, I'm pretty sure you'll kill most targets before draining them.

For a Kin/Elec, End Drain as a really useful tactic kicks in at level 27, slotted Transference.

It would make sense, especially now that anyone can buy a 16% S/L Def shield for mere inf.

(Or just hang out in a PVP zone for 21 days, followed by an Arena...)

I am out of date. I forgot to mention Traps.

Force Field generator provides more Defence than Diseprsion Bubble, the only downside is that it can expire or be defeated as a sepaarte entity. Or get stuck on a corner...

FFG: 13.3% -> 21% slotted
Steadfast in Tough: 3%
Weave: 8% slotted
Manouvers: 5.5% slotted
Hover or CJ: 2.5%

that's 40% Defence right there! getting the other 5% from set bonuses should be a doddle.
(Psi defence included, as all of these are to all types and positions.)

I really liked Kin/Elec.

Kinetics requires you to stay in melee range to get your own heals, end boosts and buffs. Electrical Blast has both AoEs fireable from point blank range. Dark, for example, will have you hopping in and out to cone and then buff/heal, all of which can get quite hairy if you've Siphoned Speed recently.

Elec suffers from low damage output, especially if you slot Short Circuit for end drain over damage. Fulcrum Shift makes this matter a lot less than it would for other primaries.

Elec/Kin is easily the best sapper I've played, and Ive played Elec/Elec and Elec/Energy Blasters too. Sapping the masses takes two Short Circuits, but sapping a boss can be done from range with Transference. This and Tesla cage makes up for the lack of dirct safety Kinetics sometimes provides.

I've also been surprised by how commonly these have dropped.

I got a Kinetic Dampener on the first day after placing a bid for one. Ive since got around 5 temps on every character Ive played over the weekend.

I'd Kinetic Dampener to the generally useful list. +16%(?) Def vs Smash and Lethal and +30% Res to Energy has got to be nice for a number of characters and situations.
Any Brute or Tank with existing S/L def like Energy Aura, Stone or Ice can now vastly power up for boss fights. The Energy Res would also be handy for say a Invulnerability or Dark Tank on a ship raid.

Currently you can re-roll, without any extra dev time being spent on this.

People already do this. I've re-rolled my Scrapper as a Stalker, and love it.

I can see the desire to keep badges when you do this. But what about cross faction shifts like I've done? (actually, how will this work in GR?...)

What about accolades that grant ingame powers?
Any modification of powers on your second time around will just introduce balance issues for very little gain. I'd say you have to live with the loss of your badges and move on.

This suggestion would really mess with the inter-archetype balance.

Melee characters in any game are at a severe disadvantage due to the fact they don't have any ranged attacks, and have to chase down enemies, deal with fliers, and so on.

To compensate, in CoH, they get status protection, ranged characters don't in general. Ranged characters typically get other tools for dealing with mezzers, such as mezzes of their own, but generally dont get the passive protection that melee-ers do.

This used to bug me, until I played Champions Online, where this distinction was not present. The upshot of their archetype-free system was that melee characters were very unattractive. This helped me to understand the reasoning behind what seemed like quite an arbitrary decision in CoH.

So, making a power available to every "squishy" at level 6 that gives them mez-protection would seriously break a balance deal that exists between melee and non-melee in this game.


Final note - some ranged characters can get mez protection. Force Fields and Sonic do so, and all Controllers can get it in the PSi epic pool, just not round the clock. But, it always comes at a fairly steep price - no offensive buffs, no self-heal, sleep and KB holes, or very hard to perma, and unlockable at level 41.

You can make a Defender to be pretty tough, I guess thats what a Tankender is.

The guide in my sig covers some slightly out of date advice for Force Fields and Sonic Resonance. My guide's a bit old (before BotZ ever existed, and before split bonuses for defence were introduced, and befroe toggles just suppressed while you got mezzzed...)

These two primaries provide mez protection. Dark, Storm and Rad all give you good surviviability, but leave you vulnerable to mez.

Of the two, FF is the best for personal survivability. Its pretty easy to stack Fighting, Manouvers and Hover/CJ and build up soft-capped defence to many positions during the 30s.

Your role on a team is not the same as a real Tanker. You don't need taunt, but provide everyone (including you) with soft-capped defence. So unless you're facing certain enemies (Devouring Earth, Earth Thorn Casters) you can let the whole team run full tilt without fear for their own safety.

I highly recommend FF/Sonic as a Tankfender project, as it allows you to provide some decent ofensive buffs too via Sonic's -Res.

If you're looking for a more effective Psychic concept character, you could try Sonic/Mental.

Colour the Sonic powers pink and skip Shout (its got the worse sound effect ) and you'll soon forget that you have "Sonic" in your power description as you fire pink rings from your head that cause enemies to sleep, get stunned and generally fall over.

You'll do smashing and energy damage as well as Psi this way, and have a lovely selection of cones to fire off almost non-stop once you get a bit of recharge.

I do still find this one of the more frustrating aspects of character creation in this game.
Certain secondary power sets force you to take a bit of a turkey (like Gale, as Penny says ) or something that you'd really rather defer till later (like RPD in Scrapper/Brute Invulnerability).

It's like this because someone made a decision way back that it this is the way it would be, and it isn't really bad enough to warrant developer time to change.

I'd much prefer it if it worked the way the OP suggested, and you could choose between the tier 1 and tier 2 powers.

(While we're at it, I still get ganked occasionally by having to take 4 of the 6 powers available before level 6 grumble grumble...)

It's not a big deal, but I think it is off-putting to new players. I may PL characters to 20 in 5 hours these days, but when I first played the game, a whole power selection was equivalent to hours of play.

Based on the original conversation with Castle quoted here, there could be a toggle that provides a damage buff based on incoming damage.

Not an inherent, as Castle says, but similar.

If the set does have a Fury toggle (or any other +Damage generating mechanism), it benefits Brutes the least, since Brutes are blanaced to operate under a +Damage bonus most of the time, and thus gain proportionally less from +Damage from their powersets.

Maybe this will replace Build Up for Kinetic Melee?

Then again, the same argument applies to Against all Odds, Rage and Build Up, so... oh well

I am really looking forwards to this.

I think its an excellent idea.

It would have to be pretty extensive and thorough.

Vendor prices would need adjusting.
Crafting costs for every recipe too.
Inf rewards for mission arcs and enemy defeats would need adjusting.
That 25 inf you get from the Mystery Gift would REALLY need adjusting to 3 inf!

Character's personal inf amounts would need adjusting.
Market bids and sales would have to be rounded off.
Pending emails with inf attachments would need modifying.

But yeah, its a good way round the 2 billion 32-bit barrier.

I love the Werewolf idea

Adding wings for flight is an obvious one.

I've also considered making characters with different material skins, e.g. activating a costume change to steel or flesh when they trigger Temp Invulnerability. But, the practical upshot is that you spend the entire mission in steel form, and then revert to flesh afterwards.

You could switch to some of the giant glove options for Total Focus or a similar heavy hitter, but the 60 second costume change limit kind of puts a damper on that idea.

My non-Kheldian PeaceBringer ended up using his costume slots to store copies of my other characters from my SG, the idea being that he'd sometimes mimic his teammates.

I think the ultimate "freak-your-teammates-out" trick would be to somehow save their costume files and drop by the tailors between missions, though. Turning into a copy of a pick up group teammate would be pretty unexpected.