Dwimble

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Excellent addition to the game! My only complaint about it so far is that it doesn't give me any data on how my toggles affect the recovery rate.

It is of next to no value for me to know how much endurance I recover per second without also deducting my current usage from toggles. Right now it in effect just gives me a recovery rate Gross, without any figures to find my recovery rate Net. The gross figure is of very little value.

For example, my PB in Nova form gets a boost to Recovery, but it also burns endurance. By adding the former to my recovery stat without also deducting the latter, it makes it look like Nova gives me a net boost, when in fact the one essentially just offsets the other.

I'd like to see every activated toggle listed under Recovery Rate, subtracting from the totals.

"Arctic Sun ...Needs Art ... Badly!"

"Arctic Sun is about to die..."

Ha ha ha...grats on the Gauntlet reference! Except I can't see something like that without immediately cringing inside as I remember the sound of Death touching you. Most. Hideous. Sound. Ever!

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Paragon wiki. They mysteriously got all kinds of sets and what they do up there. It states all teh snipe sets are snipe/AS sets

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I just went there and removed that "Assassin Strike" reference, based on the good Doctor's comment.

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...If it weren't for the breaking of the links when editing, I'd do it. I've already edited many of the posts several times. And each post has a lot of links.

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I was just suggesting that you change the outline, not all the sub-sections. Not having relative links in the outline is what's most intrusive, in my opinion.

You only have about 15 links in the outline, and if you simply copy/paste it into Notepad first (before editing it) and then use your text file as the source file for any future edits, then you'd never have to worry about breaking anything. However, if other people are going to be editing it too, then that might not be a realistic solution. I wouldn't think the outline would be changing very often though.

Too bad there isn't a more reliable solution. If the "Edit" option didn't break those links then it would work beautifully, with no problems at all.

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...I think relative urls of cityofheroes v. cityofvillains are only generated by the board for the listing of threads in the forum menus. Once any of us put a link in a thread, we have to choose heroes or villains and that link is hard coded...

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It can be done quite easily. Just delete "http//boards.cityofvillains.com" from all the links and it should work correctly. So, all the new links would look like this: "url=/showflat.php?Number=7529603#Post7529603"

The only problem I've found is that if you ever try to edit the post after you format the links like that then it will change some things. It will change all the "url=" codes to "a href=", add "target="_blank"", and then close it with "/a"...which breaks all the links. So, it works great, but once it is changed then you would have to fix the broken links if you ever edited that outline again in the future.

Example portion of first post, but with relative links:

----

This post contains an outline of the organization of the guides which are grouped by category in the following fifteen posts. Click on a section heading to go to the corresponding post.


I. [u]AN INTRODUCTION AND GUIDE TO “GUIDE TO GUIDES” [u]



II. [u]BEFORE YOU START – PREPARING TO PLAY [u]

MANUALS, NEW PLAYERS’ GUIDES, &amp; OVERVIEWS[/b]<ul type="square">
[*]Official Online Manuals
[*]Beginner Guides
[*]Tips
[*]Guideposts to look for / Long range planning[/list]CHARACTER CREATION[/b]<ul type="square">
[*]Names &amp; Titles
[*]Rolling Roleplayers
[*]Origins
[*]Alt(ernative) Characters
[*]Costume
[*]Hero/Villain Planners[/list]

III. [u]ARCHETYPES, POWERSETS, POWERS, AND BUILDS [u]

GUIDES TO ARCHETYPE AND POWERSET GUIDES[/b]<ul type="square">
[*]Heroes
[*]Villains[/list]POOL POWERS[/b]<ul type="square">
[*]Travel Powers
[*]Other Power Pool Powers[/list]SPECIFIC POWERS &amp; CHARACTER CONCEPTS[/b]<ul type="square">
[*]What Archetypes Can Do (See also Team strategy sections.)
[*]Powers Used by Several ATs
[*]Character Concepts[/list]

IV. [u]OPERATING YOUR GAME – HOW TO MAKE THINGS GO [u]

COMMANDS [/b]

BINDS &amp; MACROS[/b]<ul type="square">
[*]How To Bind &amp; Macro
[*]Binds for Specific Purposes
[*]Travel Binds
[*]Remapping[/list]


V. [u]COMBAT MECHANICS [u]

INTRODUCTION TO COMBAT[/b]

DEFENSE &amp; ACCURACY &amp; TO-HIT[/b]

DAMAGE &amp; EXPERIENCE &amp; REWARDS &amp; LEVELING[/b]

HEALTH &amp; ENDURANCE[/b]

OTHER MECHANICS OF COMBAT[/b]

CONTROL AND AGGRO AND STRATEGY[/b]<ul type="square">
[*]Pulling
[*]Managing Aggro[/list]

The only way I've found so far is to use:

/bind KEY "targetcustomnext notmypet"

However, that will toggle through everything...friends, enemies, pets, glowies, hostages...everything, except your pets. There may be a better way to target just glowies and hostges, but I haven't found one yet. Maybe someone has found something better and will post it.

But as with anything, there has to be line of sight to target them. Nothing would allow you to target them from say another room or the other side of a wall.

I really will try to update it. Life just gets in the way. I wrote the original guide on an impulse in response to someone's question on pulling in the Player Questions forum. I posted it and then decided it was thorough enough to put it in the Guides section, so I copy/pasted it here virtually unchanged (that's why there are some typos and such). It was hastily done without any planning, in an hour or less. I didn't do any research, using only what I had learned from simple trial and error while playing.

As to the comments about "better guides," my aim was to write a simple, non-technical, plain language "small guide to pulling" for people. I didn't wish to write a technical guide exploring the game mechanics of agro, agro radius, pulling and so on (which a few other guides do quite well). If or when I update it, I'm sure that will stay the same. I have no interest in writing a "Technical Guide to Pulling." I'm a technical writer and help author for a software company. I do that all day at work and have no interest in doing it for a game I play for fun.

Excellent job, Zombie_Man! I've run tests on the difficulty system many times, PM'd with Statesman about it, written little guides, and edited the Paragon Wiki article about it. Your guide is excellent and compiles all that information and more into a comprehensive and readable format...in a manner far better than I could have ever found the time and inclination to do.

Great work!
__

Here's a small bit of info you might wish to incorporate into a future version of your guide after a little more research or testing...

In a post made long ago, Statesman talked about the way spawns work, specifically with regards to bosses spawning in solo missions (note: this was just before the notoriety system was added, and I think the post is still available). According to him, bosses don't spawn normally in solo missions because they are technically worth more than 3 minions. So, when you see a boss in a mission it is because the mission creator specifically chose to override that limitation and place one or more bosses in it. I've never tested it, so I'm not sure if levels #2 and #4 would cause them to appear in solo missions (due to the "virtual teammate") where they wouldn't appear if set to levels 1, 3, and 5. From my experience, bosses still rarely appear in duo missions, but it might be worth some testing to find out if the virtual teammate causes them to spawn randomly when solo and set to 2 or 4, since there aren't any "random" boss spawns at the other levels.

I wrote that guide almost two years ago, and much has changed since then. For one thing, something radically changed with AI and agro about a year or so ago (I think it was sometime around CoV's launch). Things just don't agro anywhere near as easily as they used to. Especially when mobs aren't facing each other. It is very routine now to start shooting or fighting something, without using any sort of pulling techniques, and defeat it before the things standing nearby in the same group even notice.

Frankly I think it is a bit silly. It happens to me constantly...I'll be blasting or swinging away and have one or two things defeated before the other guys seem to wake up and realize, "Hey, there is someone standing right behind me killing Frank and Bob...I guess I better help." And even then they may turn and stare at you for several second before they attack. It is a lot easier now to avoid mass agro than it used to be.

Also, I never meant the guide to be taken is some sort of absolute or exhaustive exploration of pulling and agro generation facts. It is a small, general guide made to teach the simple basics of pulling.

Swift's addition to flight speed: ((.1 x (1+enhancements)) x ((level x .01) + .865)) x 21 fps = Total FPS added to flight speed.

Swift adds a percentage of your base flight speed, it doesn't actually modify your base speed. So, that means it gives the same speed boost regardless of which power you are using (i.e. Hover, Fly, etc.). Unenhanced it adds 8.75% of your base flight speed at level 1 and 13.65% of your base flight speed at level 50.

So, unenhanced Swift adds 1.82 fps at level 1 and 2.87 fps at level 50. That's just 1.24 MPH at level 1 and 1.95 MPH at level 50. It help a little bit with Hover, but it is virtually imperceptible with Fly. Even at level 50, 3-slotted with Flight Speed enhancements, Swift only adds about 3.8 MPH to your fight speed.

Now, Hover is getting a 10% base speed boost in Issue 8. I haven't checked to see how they implemented it yet. If Hover's base value is actually being increased by 10% then that would also mean Swift's boost would be a little more when used with Hover. If, however, Hover's modifier has simply been changed to make it end up being 10% faster, then that wouldn't cause any change to Swift's speed addition, since base flight speed would still be 21 fps before Hover's modifier.

I hope all of that made sense and wasn't too complicated.

...and just in case people don't realize it, the chest option is available in Tights, Baggy, and Armor.

Use an MP3 player?

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I think the 5th will definitely return, but I kind of doubt that is the "common foe" to which Positron was referring.

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They said FAMILIAR enemy. Not common. Also how many other groups do you know have need of a new 'power base' than the currently leaderless 5th Column?

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*sigh* Actually he did say it, but technically it was common "threat" rather then common "foe." But in any case, "common foe" doesn't mean commonplace foe...it means "foe in common," as in two groups having something in common, which in this case would be having an "enemy in common."

The exact quote was, "Heroes and Villains will find themselves banding together against a common threat." And I was also going by one of his recent interviews where he actually did say "common foe," which is basically the same thing as his "common threat" quote in the letter.

Frankly, I couldn't care less which villain group it is going to be. I was just speculating and giving the logic behind my guesses...just like everyone else.

Not to mention that it is in the far distant computer-gaming future of two or three years away...a veritable eternity. So, anything can happen between now and then, and everything is blind guesswork at this point.

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But...

Villains don't have 13 TFs/Trials (Not counting Respecs).

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You are correct, they don't have a bunch of TFs that are just a bunch of the same old regular mission strung together with an AV at the end, some of which can take eight hours or more to complete. Some (e.g. in the Shadow Shard) are so long and tedious that few people ever bother to attempt them. Some are so repetitive, why bother? Citadel, for example, has about nine missions that are virtually identical...same basic map, frequently at the same door, and ALL Council....with an AV at the end of the last one. The other two mission in that TF are a "Defeat 40 Council" and a "Take the doodads to So and So."

In fact, that's the way most of the hero-side TFs are. CoV is no poorer for not having those sorts of TFs.

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Villains don't have 27 zones.

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Correct. Instead, they have seven zone that are 2-4 times the size of most CoH zones. And those zones are much more "alive" and vibrant.

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Villains don't have any Hazard zones.

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Correct, and neither do they need them. The CoV zones have sections that are just as dangerous as any Hazard Zone...bigger spawns, more bosses, and so on. Plus, most of the Hazard zones in CoH are virtual ghost towns, with the exception of the more dynamic, newer ones like Hollows and Striga Isle. Crey's Folly and Perez Park get a modest amount of traffic because quite a few contacts send you there for door and "defeat X" missions, and Eden has the trial...but hardly anyone ever CHOOSES to go to those places for any other reason (unlike Striga).

We can all agree that CoV certainly needs more content, but counting up zones and TFs isn't quite the same thing.

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It's kinda obvious that we're looking at the return of the 5th Column here...

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I think the 5th will definitely return, but I kind of doubt that is the "common foe" to which Positron was referring. It wouldn't make much sense game-wise for it to be the 5th anyway. There really isn't any reason why heroes and most/all villains would unite against an human/earthly enemy. Many or most villains would just hook up with the 5th like they've hooked up with Arachnos.

My guess is that it will be the Rikti. It is likely that the Rikti home world won the zone poll they took awhile back, and that could easily be a common foe that everyone would unite against. It's easy to understand everyone uniting against alien invaders who wish to take over or destroy the world and/or turn everyone into Rikti. That kind of common foe makes perfect sense.

Another possibility could be the Rularuu/Shadow Shard. They are also alien invaders, the Shadow Shard is under-used, Pocket D's is in the Shadow Shard, there have been MANY posts from players suggesting that they allow Hero/Villain team-ups in the Shard, the IoP trial is in the Shard, and so on. And with the addition of so many temporary powers and such that allow flight, navigating around the Shadow Shard wouldn't be quite so difficult as before. So, it being the Rularuu would also make sense.

The only problem I see with the Rikti or Rularuu is their level limitation. There aren't any Rikti under 30 or Rularuu under 40. But as the original Rularuu invasion showed, they can be lower level. Therefore, a few changes could allow lower levels characters to participate. The Rikti home world could also encompass multiple zones which would accommodate a variety of levels. After all, it could be only high-level Rikti that have come to Earth, but their home world could have all levels.

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I agree. Whenever I hear or see "toon", I think of this.

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I've played and beta tested a bunch of MMORPGs and other games, played some MUDs before the MMO days, played text-based games, PnP RPGs for years, and so on. But CoH is the first time I had EVER heard an RPG character called a toon...and whenever I see or hear it, I always think of THIS.

I just can't help but hear Bob Hoskins in my head saying, "Toons!" with disgust.

Here's a breakdown of Hover speeds for you (with white SO Flight Speed enhancements)...

0-slotted Hover: 4.20 fps ( 2.86 MPH)
1-slotted Hover: 11.19 fps ( 7.63 MPH)
3-slotted Hover: 24.15 fps (16.47 MPH)
6-slotted Hover: 27.30 fps (18.61 MPH)

0-slotted Swift at 50: +2.87 fps (1.95 MPH)
1-slotted Swift at 50: +3.82 fps (2.61 MPH)
3-slotted Swift at 50: +5.59 fps (3.81 MPH)
6-slotted Swift at 50: +6.02 fps (4.10 MPH)

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1-Hover/0-Swift: 14.06 fps ( 9.59 MPH)
1-Hover/1-Swift: 15.01 fps (10.23 MPH)
1-Hover/3 Swift: 16.78 fps (11.44 MPH)
1-Hover/6 Swift: 17.21 fps (11.73 MPH)

3-Hover/0-Swift: 27.02 fps (18.42 MPH)
3-Hover/1-Swift: 27.97 fps (19.07 MPH)
3-Hover/3 Swift: 29.74 fps (20.28 MPH)
3-Hover/6 Swift: 30.17 fps (20.57 MPH)

6-Hover/0-Swift: 30.17 fps (20.57 MPH)
6-Hover/1-Swift: 31.12 fps (21.22 MPH)
6-Hover/3 Swift: 32.89 fps (22.42 MPH)
6-Hover/6 Swift: 33.32 fps (22.72 MPH)

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actually 3 SOs net 97.x can't remeber exactly

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No, three white Type A SOs is actually 94.9967%. However, there are a few charts where some people claim it is 95.5%.

Rhygadon,

All of your numbers are off because you calculated all of your 3-slot figures as if 3 SOs add 100%. ED changed that a long time ago. Now 3 SOs add 95%. So, in order for your numbers to be accurate you need to redo everything using "x 1.95" instead of "x 2.0".

TopDoc, your statement that Swift only adds a flat 2.87 f/s to flight speed (5.58 f/s with 3 even SOs) seems to contradict the statement you quoted from _Castle_ where he says it has a level scale. It looks like he said Swift works exactly the same for flight speed as it does for run speed, but with a reduced multiplier.

Were those values you listed referring to a base before the multiplier, a flat-rate, or just the final total boost at whatever level you happened to do the test? I'm just curious because that seems to contradict both what _Castle_ said and what your guide says about how Swift scales.

As Saturn_Knight said, sleep/hold/stun will drop your toggles. As for individual powers that have a chance of dropping one or more of them, here's a post by _Castle_ listing them:

Toggle Drop Post 1
Toggle Drop Post 2

Pilcrow's got it right, as usual. Here's the team multiplier:

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For every person in a team up, there is an XP boost. The experience points of each mob are multiplied by a value before being divided among the team members. Currently, the XP boost values are this:
.
Team Size XP multiplier
2 - 1.25
3 - 1.5
4 - 1.8
5 - 2
6 - 2.1
7 - 2.2
8 - 2.5

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So, I find that the "sweet spot" is either at 4 to 5 members or 8 members. It all depends on the team, how fast you can move, and how high a difficulty setting you can handle.

1. The cape brooch options: Skull 1, Skull 1 Metal, Skull 2, and Skull 2 Metal are not available in the Female cape options:
Skull Brooch Screenshot

2. All Skull Brooches clip so badly on all Jackets that they are unusable.
Skull Brooch Clipping Screenshot

Thanks, Jay!

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It had placeholders for the I7 stuff before it went live. It only got the actual stats updated recently, and as I said, it's still missing some stuff.

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It has always been missing some stuff and had some inaccurate numbers, which is to be expected from a free player-made tool.

But to the OP, if you want numbers for Elec/Elec brutes and such then download the Issue 7 Prima Guide update. It has details and numbers for all the villain powers, patron powers, and power pools. And they are mostly complete and accurate, since they were written by the Cryptic team. There are a few errors though.