Dr_MechanoEU

Been thinking of creating a Fire/Fire/Ice blaster and was just wondering if anyone had any build suggestions or examples just so I have a frame to work with?

Edward knew that Omega couldn't last in this state.

Edward kept up the pace, throwing everything he had at Omega, he wouldn't stop until either himself or Omega had fallen. Edward was forced to break off from the fight again, giving himself a chance to heal with Omega stood there, locked for a moment. He let out a hard breath, getting some wind back before charging back into the fray.

"Fall damn you, fall!"

Edward grinned as he felt a sensation he only knew as 'the armour of faith' the moments were fleeting but with enough faith you could change the world, his skin seemed to absorb any impact launched at him, he could feel the fighting spirit that the machine seemed to leech out of him quickly rebuild, faith was food for the hungry and energy for the tired.

He knew the moment wouldn't last so he kicked his own healing factor into overdrive, it still hurt but the scorch marks barely had time to burn before they healed over, he could only burn so much of his energy before he had to redirect it elsewhere...his healing factor could not be constantly maintained.

He felt the blows hammer down on him now, forcing him to break off from the fight, a bloodied grin on his face.

"Believe Edward, come on...believe.." he muttered to himself, feeling healed enough to get back into the fight he smirked and launched himself again at Omega.

"Even you can't sustain that form Omega...fear will grip you and faith shall cause your loss."

He brought back his fist and launched a punch...

Edward smiled to himself, unlike the other fighters, he was going all out to make this a show-stopping spectacle, this wasn't just some brawl, this was a televised match so he'd paid extra for some special 'enhancements' to his entrance.

As he entered the arena and waiting for the countdown his entrance music of One of a Kind blasted out across the arena.

Edward muttered to himself, "3...2...1..." as the countdown hit 0 fireworks exploded out from the entrance, firing off in red, white and blue in a X pattern. He charged out of his entrance and vanished from view for a moment.

Spotting Omega he reached into a holster at his side and took a moment to fire off his looted Crey pistol before charging. He would finish this fight quickly, it wouldn't make great TV but it would make this fight a lot easier, fire spreading down his arms as he launched himself at Omega.

Seeing the Metal Behemoth of destruction turn into a form he could only think of as a mini-Deathsurge, he knew that it was all about outlasting Omega for now, his fists burning every time he threw a punch, the static deadening the force of his punches to nearly nothing it seemed. He could feel the static building up, the hair on the back of his neck standing up through sheer static force. He reached out with his hand, to force the fear upon the unfearable...

Diving in on the debate, though I'm not really as qualified as say TG to discuss this.

1) I'm always stupid enough to NOT walk into zonal PvP without a shedload of breakfrees...that would be my main fault, it's stupid and I should probably prep more...but that's my main thing.

2) The reasons scrappers are so far down the 'list' is that Brutes/Scrappers/Tankers all suffer from glaring problems in PvP (suggestions to counter this in the suggestions part):

- We can be kited and unlike other MMOs we rely on toggles for our protection, those go down, we're stuffed. Most other MMOs the melee classes rely on heavy armour to simply reduce their foes blows to a point where they simply don't matter but then most other MMOs the plate wearing melee classes don't come with self heals (bar Paladins...and they're tough nuts to crack).

However they do have one major bonus, most have either a) Ranged stun, b) A charge which gets them into melee and c) abilities to stop ranged ATs from getting away.

These are something that Scrappers/Brutes/Tanks all lack, we have no way of closing the distance really quickly (well there is Super Speed I suppose) and then keeping our targets within distance before they bugger off elsewhere.

So far during my forary into PvP Today to check out how well the Dark Mastery pool faired (compared to the Body pool) I found it exceedingly lacking yet the abilities make it SEEM like it's perfect for PvP, a hold (which doesn't hold anybody in PvP...EVER, not even for say 5 seconds) a Ranged attack (always handy) and a ranged Immobilize (which doesn't immobilize anybody unless already pre-stacked with Midnight Grasp).

Though it's mainly my own fault for playing a melee set which isn't great in PvP, Dark Melee, though it does come with it's major ability (touch of fear), Soul Drain is no decent replacement for Build up (it requires mobs to be near you to work, the more there are, the better it is, useless against a single opponent unless said opponent is a Mastermind, in which case it is very godly). DM is great Sustained DPS but very poor burst DPS, even so, before I respecced into the Dark Mastery pool, my win/loss rate was just breaking even.

The fact was, without Focused Accuracy, my hit/miss rate went down the tubes completely, my DM/Regen scrapper isn't heavily IO'd out (and will be losing two IO sets when I respec BACK into the Body Pool, thank god they were both cheap).

I will say one thing though, Fortunis Fortunata is deadly currently, the complete lack of Confuse suppression really was the bane of my existence during that fight as was the Psi damage (and if there is, it really didn't seem like there was any confuse suppresion).

I ended up fighting a fire/something Corruptor, defeated once, the second time, it ended in a stalemate, my endurance kept reaching zero but I'd always have enough endurance to fire off MoG or IH and the fight just was getting nowhere, though I honestly have no doubt that he would have defeated me in the end.

The short end of the stick is that lolmelee for PvP really needs to be sorted out.

(my attempts to PvP with my Rad/Rad were just dire...but then she is lvl 40, has 1 IO set, no accolade, and the +acc from the targets IO sets, not to mention the Soldier of Arachnos leadership powers, made a mockery of any kind of debuff)

Taking part in one of the Cage battles (against Battle Unit Omega) has got me thinking.

Since this is the Superhero version of Wrestling/MMA but with the Charity tournament twist, perhaps people would like to add their choice for character entrance music.

Entrance music has always been a main pull for me when I watch wrestling, the fact it instantly identifies the wrestler without them even appearing.

So:
1) What entrance music would you choose for your character?

2) Why that particular song.

Links to videos is always a good.

So I'll kick it off with Ed aka Sword of Redemptions' entrance music choice.

1) One of a Kind by Breaking point

2) Well there's two reasons really, one RVD was one of my all time favourite wrestlers and for the chorus:

The fear I see when I look in your eyes
Makes you believe I'm one of a kind (one of a kind)
The fear I leave in the back of your mind
Makes you believe I'm One of a kind

Relates directly to his 'signature ability' Touch of Fear which during his one on one arena matches seems to be quite effective (just ask Battle Unit Omega ).

sure tonight is good. I'm still working but I finish at 5pm today so great

The thing is though that now we have the VEATs the likelihood of them introducing the Arachnos helms is slim-to-none.

Though according to a few in beta of CoV the Devs distinctly told them that the Arachnos helms WOULD become available to others at a later date...

...and they have as the VEATs. In order for people to recognised the VEATs for what they are and what makes them unique (Kheldians by contrast have the glowie eye effect and shapeshifting to make them unique) the costumes will be restricted so that only those lucky enough to pre-order it will have the Wolf Spider helm (here in the EU).

Personally I'd prefer a 'villains pack' of costumes. Carnie Mask and Bustiere, 5th column face mask/helmet/body armour, Freakshow chest detail/mohawk/robotic arm etc.

Of course the likelihood of that happening is also very very slim.

I can dream though.

unfortunately I can't do sunday night, perhaps next weekend?

9pm tonight HB, see you there

Hmm Riled, fancy Headbreaker and Edward going against each other?

Though can I ask for a pre-match interview, I do have a suprise planned (not a bad one, just something tongue in cheek about the whole thing).

Is there going to be another sequence of fights?

If so Ed would very much like to volunteer for the next round, fighting so he can win the prize money and donate it to the Moth Cathedral for repair works and the like?

hmm going through the thread I've noticed the whole 'omega level clearance' stuff mentioned.

The arcs that it gets mentioned in is 30-45, so yeah, you don't learn the whole big secret behind the Rikti until you're late in the game as it were.

Issue 12 introduces one big problem...

The new hero contact, designed for level 10-50, blows that out of the water for you REALLY early in your career...Omega clearance isn't worth that much anymore...

hmm another question I'd like to raise.

What about Hero registrations from other countries, do they cover you while operating in Paragon?

Lets say Rome was the center of Italian Hero Registration, London for the United Kingdom (or Conversely, London/Edinburgh/Cardiff for Heroes of English/Scottish/Welsh nationalities).

There's nothing to state that the ONLY place a hero can get registered is Paragon City so are you covered by say, your British Heroes Liscence while operating on Paragon Soil?

Personally I would love to see 'the cage' used for more things.

Ideas include:

A high profile Charity Tournament where the winner chooses which charity to donate his prize money too (for heroes or not so villainous villains).

A tournament where a potential employee of villains is looking for the toughest, meanest SOB's the rogue Isles can offer, winner gains a lucrative contract (possibly NPC or perhaps working for someone like Ms Pistol) and a lot of resources to throw around.

My personal favourite though is Loup's suggestion of the outlandish early 90's style WWF (not WWE) wrestling but with super heroes playing the baby faces and villains playing the heels (perhaps some less than heroic heroes or less than villainous villains could be tweeners), break out the old spandex, think up a wrestling name for your particular character (or they can use their own) and a name for a signature move and away you go!

Possible wrestling names for people include:
Big Lunk = Big Ben.
Crimson Archer = The Crimson Jay.
Doc Mechano = Mad Mech.
Tiger White = The Pale Tigeress.
Red Commissar = Commissar Crush (with signature move, The Iron Curtain!).

and so on. Reckon it would be a lot of fun.

Great work as always Catz looks fantastic!

For those not in the know GIMP is a Free to use program, you can downloaded it and not have to pay a cent, it has all the tools of Photoshop (well not ALL but it is pretty advanced).

I use GIMP for sprite editing since it's far more versatile than paint.

Just look it up on google (though you might want to type in GIMP painting program and not just GIMP on it's own...)

41 and 7 bars...

I request the same as FFM.

PL PLZ!

Ah yes, I recently begun to reread my book on Japanese Swordsmiths and it's noted that several current Japanese companies actually OWN Muramasa and Masamune swords (though they are extremely rare and virtually priceless).

The best would be to have Juuci Fuyu and Yawaraka-te as lone entries since they ARE mythical swords and as such nobody can confirm their very existence (though historically Muramasa and Masamune could never have met) and nobody claims to own them.

These two blades could be imbuded with the mythical qualities.

I merely introduced Yawaraka-te as an answer to the Muramasa Demon blades.

Of course it is safer to create a Masamune sword with similar legendary qualities (or none at all, merely an incredibly fine sword with a very, very sharp edge) while granting it a unique but probably name, Masamune swords tended to (though not all) have softer names (like Tender hands) than the harsher sounding names of the Muramasa blades (like 10,000 Winters).

This way, as you mentioned, you don't run into the problem of having a the same sword.

((I would say real world legendary blades would be fine, such as those created by many Japanese Swordsmiths or even the legendary carved Oar Boken used by Miyamoto Musashi, attribute something fancy to it (say it's made of wood but can cut as well as any sword or some such) and away ya go!))

((it's probably best to include those two as a seperate entry but perhaps put on the note that all Masamune blades are rivals to all Muramasa blades, able to undo wounds caused by Muramasa blades. Owners of one style of blade meeting an owner of another will automatically have an inherent dislike for one another, one cannot posses one of each sword, the very nature of the swords will not allow it...something like that? Keeping Juuci Fuyu and Yawaraka-te as seperate entries since they are historic rivals to one another))

Yawaraka-Te
Description: Rival sword to a Muramasa blade (that is called Juuchi Fuyu in the legend, translated as 10,000 Winters and which may have been your inspiration for the Demon Muramasa blades). Created by Masamune Okazaki, Yawaraka-Te translated means Tender Hands.
Powers: The blade will not cut those Innocent or Undeserving, a blade of a true hero, it is the pinnacle of Masamune Okazaki work, able to cut through the thickest armour and even Council bulkheads.
Owner: Originally Masamune Okazaki but the blade is reportedly lost to the Annuls of history, no hero has yet come forward claiming to own this blade but such blades often find their way into the hands of a hero.

April 7th: 4am

Edward sat crouched on a ledge of a building, deep in thought, the hour of the wolf had come around again, this time he was merely looking for guidance from his own self, sometimes the Lord delivered, sometimes he did not, still questions needed to be asked.

"What do I do?" he muttered to himself.

"Do I ignore the law of man and instead administer the law of God, do I administer holy vengeance upon a man willing to beat his own child or do I respect the laws of man and let the police deal with this?"

He had been told how a young heroine had been beaten by her father...this upset him deeply, such things always upset him, unwarranted violence against women was something he shunned even as a villain. There were times when fighting those of the female persuasion was needed but even then he tended to pull his blows just that little bit more than he would if he was a male foe.

Sure the others had told him he wasn't useless but times like this made him feel it, he should have been there for the poor girl, stopped the striking hand but he didn't know...

Right now he had a choice, did he follow the words that Michael had spoken, the reminder that even heroes were bound by the law and any attempt on the life of this...scumbag...would result in prosecution, most likely of Murder one or did he ignore the words and administer a wrathful and violent vengeance upon him, the likes of which this man had never seen.

The choice was hard, how could he risk his existence by going after this man, yes he had sinned but killing him might be a greater sin in the eyes of the law, the first commandment, thou shalt not kill.

Edward smiled to himself, "no...there are better ways to punish than to kill or maim but do I even utilize such a non-lethal punishment?"

The question still remained, to punish by his own hand or to let the law of man punish him, the laws often were flaunted or avoided entirely by those with power, this man did not have that kind of power, he was no Countess Crey.

"Do I even punish him at all, do I instead seek to show him the wrongs of what he did and give himself up to the police, the mercy of the Lord is as infinite as his rage, which does he wish me to use?"

The poor girl, he still didn't know if she needed her father to put right what he had caused in her mind. He would have to stay his hand for now until he knew that the girl wouldn't be needing her father to forcibily help her...well...perhaps there was some way of using some 'friendly' persuasion in getting the father to correct his mistakes...

Edward was quitely sitting in his favourite, if very tatty and well worn, armchair. Salvaged from a skip near the abandoned house he had begun to call home.

This place reminded him of his first true home, an abandoned house on the crud-heap that was Darwins Landing on Mercy Island. Sure he had to deal with the occasional Snake intrusion outside his house, mostly dealt with by throwing a potted plant at the head of said snake and yelling at them to scram but he had liked it.

Part of him missed the quiet hissing of the snakes during the night as they talked about an uprising that never came or Stheno, their goddess-come-leader leading them to a victory which never materialized.

The very thought got him questioning himself, was he really any better off now that he was here in Paragon, sure he was fighting the good fight and had made a name for himself as a true hero but was he really doing the city any good.

It seemed like every time he took down a cell of Knives or sweeped the thugs off the streets around his city block, more just turned up. Could anybody ever really hold back the crime tidal wave that constantly washed the streets of Paragon?

He had fought the one known as Lady Sadako in order to protect his friend Jess from any harm but in truth he simply couldn't force the seemingly inevitable duel between the two from happening, sure Sadako owed him but he didn't want to be owed anything, he didn't want to have power over someone, that kind of power can truly corrupt.

He sighed softly, feeling the familar sensation of a warm, tingling glow on his skin he looked up to see Steve, his Shivan, holding out a cup of coffee.

"Thanks Steve, tell me...do you enjoy being here?"

The Shivan nodded it's protoplasmic skull of a head and settled down in the other chair.

"It's just, well, you know, if you wanted to go back to your people in Bloody Bay and go about completing whatever it is Shivans are meant to be doing, you're free to leave..."

The Shivan gurgled, a sound Edward knew was a kind of laugh and reached for a pen and paper, writing on it for a moment before passing it over. Edward slowly glanced over the note.

"I can't go back, not knowing what I know now, my people are doing something, something they don't comprehend, there is a storm coming and I'd rather be by your side, to be mindless is not to be free, to learn and experience is to be free and that freedom you have given me, even if I cannot remember the life these remains once had, I can still make a new one out of it."

Edward Smiled and nodded, "Who would have thought a Shivan would have such insight...I do still need to work on that modification to allow you to speak."

Steve shrugged, perhaps a sign of saying that there was no real rush for it for now.

"I feel so useless though, I'm barely around enough to help the Unity Vigil, it seems like I'm so loose and unneeded cog in a well oiled machine, especially now they have Ben and Freddy, those two have always outclassed me in everything so why am I still there, they don't need me at all. The only people that truly need me are you and my family..."

He looked at the clock, the hour just before dawn would break, "ah the all to familiar hour of the wolf..."

Steve looked as questioningly as a Shivan could.

Edward smiled, "The hour of the wolf is the hour between night and dawn, it is the hour when most people die, it is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, it's the hour when my kind become more powerful...it's the hour when, if a person is awake, they question the self all the more...don't ask me why this is but it's just the way of the world..."

He sipped his coffee slowly, "right now there is a hero sitting on a window ledge no doubt, wondering the same things I am, wondering wether he really should just give up, retire and do something normal with their life, this will last until dawn breaks, the warm rays of the sun somehow erroding and slowly erasing those doubts until the hero returns home to sleep, forgetting about his self doubts..."

Edward sighed, "but me...I never forget them, even when I was human I never forgot them, a life filled with doubt is a harsh one indeed but you simply put those doubts to the back of your mind when the situation requires it...it's only during this hour of the wolf that I let them resurface...I allow them time to breath, if I kept them bottled down, I think I would have gone completely insane so very long ago"

Edward took another sip of his coffee, "oh how those that sleep have such a blissful state to never be awake during this time, even if they suffer the nightmares inherent within it, they can simply wake up, shrug them off and go about their day, those of us awake...it's much worse.."

Edward slowly stood up, finishing the rest of his coffee, "still...we do what we must because we can...I think it's time to go work this off a little, cold night air and a good workout will do it..."

Steve simply nodded his head while Edward unlocked the front door and slowly stepped out into the night, the sound of ever present sirens filling the air, crime didn't rest but thankfully neither did he...

((basically the idea for this thread is about posting what your character is doing/feeling in topic titled time (the hour of the wolf) are they having their own self doubts, going over things in their mind or simply suffering from a bout of nightmares...the rest is up to you..))

Edit: ((the hour of the wolf is currently 4am-5am due to the clocks going forward an hour and the day is wednesday)).

[ QUOTE ]
brutes were getting ice armours

[/ QUOTE ]

Very unlikely to happen I'm afraid, you see Brutes DID have Ice armour in beta of CoV but because Ice deals -recharge it meant the enemy were attacking less (doesn't matter if they hit or miss when they do attack, just that they initiate an attack on the Brute, so SR for brutes is fine here) and thus for fury building it was terrible when compared to all other sets and removed. Of course since building fury isn't an important thing in PvP due to a bug (so I'm told) then this affect is nil but a set has to be viable for PvE before it will get the go ahead.

Now while I say 'very unlikey' no doubt some clever spark at NorCal will work out the kinks with this powerset and change the -recharge to something else to make it viable for Brutes.

They were porting the easiest sets first, /Kin or /Rad for MMs is going to need a lot of tweaking before it's not so very very overpowered in PvE or PvP, this is /Kin moreso than /Rad.

Empathy and Poison are (probably) not going to be switching sides, BaB said that they thematically make no sense because Empathy is a heroic idealology set (you don't hear of many villains have an empathic relationship with people) and Poison is pretty villainous (for obvious reasons).

Brutes with Regen...can't see a problem with it personally and not entirely sure why they didn't port it over but I imagine that is coming in the next batch. I imagine Domi with Illusion requires some tweaking as well but again, not entirely sure what.

Anyway, I say give it....4 or so months and you'll have your sets that you wish villainside, this is of course a guess but I reckon the next batch may come as part of Issue 12.5 (just as real numbers etc. was 11.5).

What effects will these things have on PvP...not much. The sets your after aren't considered great for PvP bar one (Regen) so *shrugs*.

The one thing that REALLY binds me to this world is characters that are my own.

In WoW I feel like 'just another Dwarf hunter' the fact that the game is one mahoosive gear-grindingfest really doesn't help either, everyone looks exactly the same as everyone else in varying degrees in what amounts to different armour and weapons. The character isn't really mine, it's just another dwarf in a variation of armour and weapons (this is one of the main reasons why the Chinese and Koreans really love WoW but detested CoH when it was released over there, simply because they desire everyone to look roughly the same whereas CoH was all about being unique).

I did switch to playing WoW for a while and CoX a lot less but then the inevitable 'raiding blues' as their called, set in pretty quickly over the space of two weeks, the realisation that I spent 12 hours of my life a week fighting bosses that may or may not drop something I needed...so for all the effort I may just get sod all reward...where as CoH, the reward I get = effort I put in.

It's the fact that while yes, the WoW world is that much more immersive than the CoH world (for the love of god remove the warwalls) by the very fact that once your loaded in you almost never encounter a loading screen unless your either a) entering a new continent or b) doing a dungeon instance. The constant loading screens always break immersion while ingame for me in CoH.

BUT

Having an immersive world is nothing without decent gameplay to go with it, once you come to realise the whole game is basically designed around grinding, it doesn't matter how epic the setting is, you heart sinks because you realise you'll be stuck on this never ending treadmill of grinding for 'the next best loot' UNLESS your one of those guilds who is at the bleeding edge of content constantly...you're always playing catch-up. Whereas CoX, you really DON'T need the best of the best loot (IO sets etc) to be able to do the endgame content and then you don't need to do that endgame content until your sick of it to get Purple IO sets so you can do the uber-uber endgame content (and so the cycle continues forever and ever and ever and...).

While lore is very importaint in a game, the WoW lore has become shoved to the side in favour of the grinding (or lollore as it's refered to on the WoW forums) and all the wonderful things I so loved about the Warcraft games have pretty much been demolished single-handedly to make way so 5% of the population playing the game can get the 'phat epixs' and reduce the lore to nothingness but another excuse for a meaningless grind.

CoX has a very different lore, it's one that's uncovered slowly, bit by bit, it may require reading something off Paragonwiki or it may come at you in a completely random order (such as learning Blue Steel is the one responsible for the Clockwork Kings' current state AFTER doing the Synapse TF...) but you piece it together yourself. It's not quite like WoW which relies on the last 3 RTS games + expansions to provide it's lore (lets face it, WoW has added very little in the way of lore when compared to those games) it requires you to read the clues and missions briefings carefully so you can go "ohhhh...that makes more sense now".

The reason I stick with this game because they're really isn't any other game where I can RP a character of MY choosing and not be forced into the way of how a specific race should act as bought about by the games lore (Dwarfs HAVE to be a certain way, Nelfs HAVE to be a certain way) and any going contrary to the way they're suppose to behave really is an outcasts amongst their people...

phew...sorry got a bit ranty there...