Dr_MechanoEU

Ed smirked as most of the Freakshow had fled.

Turning to see the Freakshow tank he grinned, "hey you...once I'm done with you, you'll need to see a Meat Doctor just to patch you back together...." he grinned his eyes burning an intense orange flame which flickered in the wind.

He needed to distract the Tank away from the girl and there wasn't much more of a distraction than an insult, "besides, I hear Drek fights like a little girl...just like all his Freakshow buddies..."

Yes I know, double posting is bad...

Just thought I'd show a Pic of the Nictus sword with the Roman armour to show it, plus it's more upclose than the other screenshots

Nictus Sword

(Edward, being security level 50, also outclasses the Freakshow by a wide margin...but hey doesn't hurt to let the guys have some luck).

Edward grinned, the Telsa Cage sparking around him for a moment, barely stopping in his tracks, he grunted and flexed his fists outwards, shaking off the effect.

"Wow....you know...that was incredibly lucky...been a while since I've had that happen to me."

He continued walking, "Listen pal, you and you're friends have got two options, either walk away now and the good Lord will forgive your trespasses or you can stay and fight...the choice is yours, I'm a forgiving man, unlike my feline friend here...she gets real angry, real quick..."

Ed saw the bullets flying towards Ellie, he knew they would have little impact on her but he should probably atleast get some fun in.

His legs became a blur as he moved infront of the path of the bullets, there were dull thuds and a grunt, blood leaked from the bullet wounds as he doubled over for a moment before standing up straight.

"now that just ain't gentlemanly...shooting on a girl who wouldn't see it coming..."

The wounds slowly sealed up, the bullets plinking on the ground one by one..."now...you still so confident?" he begun walking towards Smeg-face, backfisting one of the other Freakshow that got in his way, "well this sure does make a change from fighting Rikti and Carnies..." he smirked.

Ed was on his daily shopping trip, in the guise of his older self, most of the time the punks left you alone if you were just an old mad. Shopping in Paragon wasn't quite the same without Big Als supermart like he had in the Rogue Isles...he did miss the staff there.

He was thinking to himself, wandering through equations, technical data, specifications on upgrades, completely oblivious to what was going on around him, wandering into the middle of the fight, "hmmm...I suppose if I reverse the..." he paused to look around him, "oh..OH...damn it...can't an old man do some shopping!"

He place the groceries ontop of a wall as he did he spotted one of the Freaks trying to make a run for it, "oh no you don't," closing this distance and throwing up his hand, shadowy tendrils burst from the ground holding the Freak in place.

He bought his fists down to his side, curling up the nether energy as he violently threw them back towards himself, leeching energy from the surrounding freaks as he transformed into his red skinned demon form in a burst of black smoke.

"Show time..."

Will be running a 2nd ITF today hopefully, will then post pics of both the normal and the Nictus sword.

Apparently the Nictus version the actual blade is colourable but the Nictus 'fog' cannot be coloured.

It is also the last sword I need to have the complete set of unlockable Broadsword options.

There simply isn't enough costume slots with all these new funky weapons...damn you BaBs and Jay

Can definitely say for certain the normal Romulous sword unlocks, got it tonight on my BS/Regen scrapper, will be trying for a second ITF tomorrow to see if the Nictus version unlocks.

It seems there's a hidden unlockable broadsword which didn't make mention of in the patch notes.

Actually it's two.

First time complete of the ITF grants you This Sword

Second time complete of the ITF grants you This Sword

Now I definitely need to run the ITF on my 41 BS/Regen scrapper

oooh...using the American Streets of Rage 3 colours for Skate (Sammy), there's something I didn't think would happen, not complaining just use to seeing the Streets of Rage 2 colours but nice way of getting around the whole homage/rip-off issue.

So characters taken are Axel, Max and Skate.

Edit: Decided to go with Adam Hunter, renamed Alex Hunter (a MA/WP scrapper).

Alex Hunter

My Rad/Rad is built with an Offender build to mind.

Rad/* debuffs stuff so hard it will often have trouble hitting you while AM also boosts your damage by 35%, combine this with Assault from the Leadership power pools and you've got some nifty +damage.

*/Rad also debuffs defense as well AND it lets you AoE quite well, Irradiate and Neutron bomb are good for taking out large debuffed groups in one go while Proton Volley, Cosmic burst and Neutrino bolt can help you with your single target attacks, combined with Aim I've two shot +2 lts when it comes to the Proton Volley - Cosmic burst combo since Cosmic bursts damages is on the high end.

Plus if things get really hairy you can always fire off EM Pulse and Atomic blast to wittle down the numbers and make a run for it.

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I'd probably admit to being a bit embarassed about playing a MMORPG at the age of 35, when most of my friends have families

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I wouldn't be...infact in WoW almost my entire guild is composed of people over the age of 30, I'm the youngster of the guild at 24 with the youngest being 20, it's why we're a casual guild doing the whole three nights a week for only a couple of hours at a time. People have lives, infact one guy missed a raid tonight because he fell asleep after looking after his kids all day (they had a family outing), there was no complaints just "awww ain't that cute" kind of remarks.

Lots of people at thirty and beyond play MMOs so it's nothing to be ashamed of.

would be on the Union server, hoping to get a few people interested, obviously be levelling together and such. Nice to see people not only remember the series but also want to participate

Edit: As promised here are some very basic goes at various enemies from Streets of Rage, sadly I don't have the 39 month reward which meant the boxer doesn't look as good as he could do.

SoR meets CoH

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Another example - it'd be quite tricky to create a boxing kangaroo, but you could always try a wolf, lizard or insect, and if you have the vet reward, create a boxer...

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Yes Roo (or Victy if you go by Bare Knuckle 3) would be a tough one to create, though if you need the boxing fetish sorted there is always R.Bear and R.Bear Junior to contend with that. I'm going to faff around in the character creator and provide some examples of SoR inspired toons.

Yes, the character names would have to be different, Galsia becomes Garry, D. Signal becomes D. Sign, Barbon becomes Barbel, Ash becomes Soot and so on.

Well ages ago I posted an example of one particular SoR (well Bare Knuckle actually) inspired character.

City of Heroes version of Ash with game sprite

Edit: Oh and this would be hero side, yes I know it doesn't make much sense but that way we can include the heroes and the villains in one SG, besides it's a homage, not direct lift

Also if anyone is interested, feel free to speak up.

First off, many of the older gamers amongst you will remember a scrolling beat'em up known as Streets of Rage, many hours were spent in your youth on the Sega Megadrive (Sega Genesis to our American friends)

I am (possibly) thinking of starting a Homage SG back to those days known as the Bare Knuckle Brawlers (Bare Knuckle is Streets of Rages Japanese title) where every character in it tries to emulate a Hero or Thug from the game series.

Obviously these homages cannot be too close as eitherwise we'd get generic'd faster than you can say 'spoon' but would the whole thing just be a tad too close to the line for existence and be smacked down?

The thing is Streets of Rage is nolonger a supported product line by Sega, the last in the game series was released back in 1994, this is 14 years ago now. While it holds a place in the heart of many a retrogamer, the last news of any kind of official sequel being developed was early 2000 which apparently was scrapped completely.

Currently in existence is the Streets of Rage remake, a very fine fan-made followup but that's about it.

So is it feasible to actually create the SG without getting layeth the smacketh downed by the Moderators or is there a chance for this too exist?

There are many problems with PvP.

I am a casual PvPer, I tend to use the zones to 'stress test' now powers, what better way to test a new power than against a thinking opponent.

As with the topic in the US of a similar nature (entitled 'why does CoX pvp suck?') there were a lot of problems raised in the topic, I shall voice several raised.

Stalkers and blasters are simply unfun to fight against, I for one don't care about losing, heck I expect with a toon built for PvE primarily than PvP but being 1 or 2-slotted by someone is simply not fun, I love a stand up fight, hell even if I get mezzed (and forgot to bring breakfrees >.&gt and I last longer than 10 seconds, it's still a tad more fun than just being defeated with no possible chance of getting any shots in on the enemy whatsoever because I know it was my own stupidity that cost me the fight and not a game mechanic.

Base raids, while they may be fun, the cost of creating stuff only for it to be trashed while fighting simply means a lot of SGs wont open up to base raiding because it simply risks months (sometimes years) of work on their base to be trashed in under 20 minutes.

Melee classes (besides Stalkers) in PvP are under-represented, what we could do to really boost their PvP Viability is a tough one. Having melee attacks supress travel suppresion, while good, does bring up the problem of that, to quote:

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A flying Broadsword Scrapper doing a Brian Blessed and diving into attack an unsuspecting defender who, while trying to run like Stone Cold Steve Austin through Molasses, has no chance as the Scrapper wheels around for another attack before the supression wears off

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It's a hard problem to solve and I honestly can't think of a decent, no overpowered way, of solving it, better minds than I should be at work at solving the problem though.

FoTM builds are always going to be a problem, there really is no way of dealing with it, some set combos simply will outpreform others, however, perhaps making it so that the other sets aren't outpreformed by such a wide margin (buffing certain sets for PvP situations only) as to make them atleast a viable, if not alternative, choice where someone new could atleast succeed decently in PvP instead of being dropped every time like a dead weight simply because they made the wrong powerset choices.

No tangible rewards, for one, up the rep for kills gained, for gods sake get rid of the current decay rate, allow people to earn that 400 rep badge over time and increase the rep from a measly 1.00 upto a 10, that's still 40 PvPers you have to kill to gain that badge and you DON'T have to actually resort to rep farming to do it for a change.

The problem is that you end up going the WoW Arena route. Make PvP rewards completely outshadow 90% of the PvE rewards and it kills a large percentage simply because the PvP rewards are better (large raiding guilds suffered massively thanks to Arena simply because people could get perfectly viable PvE gear, not only with less effort but far easier than attending tier 4-5 PvE dungeon raids).

Did you spines/Regen not have MoG? Was he still stuck in the way of thinking that it was terribad and thus should not be specced into?

MoG pretty much null and voids virtually any alpha except the mighty Rularuu eyeballs (I swear the Rularuu are the toughest enemies in the game...EVER! I actually hate the Watchers/Observers/Overseers more than Malta Sappers) and of course Hamidon himself (but for such enemies we have IH instead).

Both my Regens have become emergency AV/GM tanks (all except Lusca...being hit by four tentacles at once is going to kill anybody except an eluded up SR scrapper or a Granite tank) by firing off MoG and then IH afterwards, though once IH switches off...well he's going to be going down no matter what but he hopefully bought the teams enough time to regroup.

Playing my BS/Regen I must admit I did enter a scrapperlock state, 8 man team spawns but designed for -2 to my level on invincible (team leader was 37, I was 39) about eight -1 Nemesis footsoldiers, a smattering of even con lts and 2 +1 Warhulk bosses in each spawn in a 'prevent the jailbreak' side mission.

Most of this was solo as well though, the rest of the team were elsewhere, so until the granite tanker turned up just as I got to 'Shock Treatment' (oooh I hate mobs with their own tier 9s, she lasts ages just because of it and nothing else).

Even then the granite tanker kept getting detoggled thanks to Shock Treatments end drain effects. This is where running both Stamina and Quick Recovery become a godsend.

Sure it's not the eight man invincible spawn but then, smashing your way through these hordes of minions, constantly smashing things, swiftly moving from fight to fight was just joyous.

Scrappers are:
Level 50 DM/Regen.
Level 40 BS/Regen.

This is at the level 16 range...

yeah playing my level 16 fire/fire blaster like my level 50 scrapper is a no-no. I'm use to there being MoG or IH available to fire off, or even Recon and DP, with my Blaster its very much kill it before it kills you, I'm not entirely use to being that squishy, even on my Rad/Rad offender (don't worry, I did take all the 'required' powers from my primary).

Though I am loving the 8 man team (with tank using taunt) BU + Fireball + Fire Breath, I imagine later on it does become a monster for damage on a wide scale.

I always imagined Defenders as a mixed bunch, Rad/* solos quite well thanks to the debuffs but then having only played a Rad/Rad I can't speak for the rest of the powersets though obviously a pure Empath would be hell to solo I imagine.

Always assumed Controllers would preform worse solo than a Defender but sadly I'm nay as experience as you guys, so feel free to correct me where wrong.

Aye his normal self and BS/Regen self is something easy to simply ignore, mostly because I never really RPed as the BS/Regen version.

Aye basically it was kind of obvious it was causing Jam a lot of stress, it got through even Eds thick skull that perhaps it was best to simply not do that anymore of fear of losing Jam and the last thing he wants to do is lose her.

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Playing a scrapper really doesn't require science, you run in the mob and click buttenz.

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And thus the joy of the Scrapper was realised. It does make a whole different ballgame to playing a Defender (I do have a level 40 Rad/Rad fender).

There is also one inherent problem I have encountered.

If your first character or the one character you've played the longest is a scrapper (or Brute...they suffer from these problems too but it's simply called SMASH!), you have to fight mighty hard to supress said scrapper tendencies when playing on toons that aren't a scrapper.

Such as remembering your actually playing your fire/fire blaster and as such, not able to survive the attention your getting from Fireball...even though your Scrapper would survive and kill most of the spawn anyway...

As of late I decided that Ed just had one too many versions of himself running around. He had his main lvl50 form, his Broadsword/Regen form and his female form.

So after blowing nearly twenty whole English Pounds on rename tokens I decided that as of now, each of these would be seperated from Ed, a complete outfit/look makeover and given their own backstories.

I imagine this is also a good way of spicing up those characters and alts of mains if you have any hanging around that you don't use anymore.

Anyway, here we go...

Darkness Redeemed: This is Ed, I liked the name Sword of Redemption but since he didn't actually wield a blade, I always felt it didn't quite fit him so renamed him to this (plus it's a way to spice up playing him for a change, thankfully I can't think of anyone RPwise who didn't just refer to him as Ed, since that's how he's always introduced himself).

Timeless Blade: Eds Broadsword/Regen form has been turned into this. Basically a time wandering swordsman, with outfits ranging from the Medieval (literally the medieval set with the Savage Roman sword option) to the future (Enforcer and Talsorian Broadsword) with Modern day (Trenchcoat, black T-shirt and slacks, scrounged Rikti warblade) and Eastern influence (Martial arts gi, chinese style trousers, Tsoo blade).

He seeks to undo whatever goes wrong in the timeline, so he's pretty busy thanks to whoever it is thats mucking about with the timeline (the ones who force the Menders to make our characters go back in time to sort out their meddlings) as well as any day-to-day heroics that crop up, when in Paragon, do as the natives do.

Seductive Flame: This was Eds female form. Now she is a Salamandra (based on the Salamander of legend, a fire living lizard) who rebelled against her peoples ways (being told not to visit the humans, since their own volcanic island is hidden somewhere in the world) after completing her training as a Priestess of the Eternal flame. She's using magic to maintain a more human form than her people normally have. She's new in Paragon and a bit disorientated.

So there you go, a quick rundown of who has been renamed to what.

hmm do I hear the Burly Brawl music from Matrix Reloaded in there?

Either way great vids Pious, loving it

Oh yes.

As noted in the topic it's a derivative of the unofficial '6 second rule' whereby the team as a full six seconds before the scrapper runs off and dives into a spawn.

Also have you head the phrase 'scrapperlock' it's a common occurance on Scrappers whereby the stopped focusing on anything but enemies, including their health bar.

Even on a Regen when I've gone full blown scrapper lock, it's merely involved clicking reconstruction when it's up and then carrying on the fight. Paragonwiki describes it as a 'state akin to beserking' which is very true.

There is an old scrapper mantra "Scrapper kills, we're killed or their killed, it does not matter which, merely a kill matters".

Can't wait to see my fight video up and running.

Be warned peeps, it's a pure-sluggathon.