Eldorado

Sorry, but there's a VERY large amount of stuff in the game for everybody to sift through, too. There's a large amount of stuff over on Paragon Wiki, too. If all this stuff is going to be too hard to learn for some people -- in a seven year old game that's had A LOT of changes -- then sadly they might be better off playing another game. CoX is too complicated to dumbed down very much, and so are the forums. (There's a metric crapton of information in my dictionary, too, but if someone at the publishing house decided that they're going to rearrange the words in the next edition by the way they SOUND like they're spelled, that's not necessarily a good idea either.)

I think the solution for new forumites and new players is "stick around, accept that COX is complicated yet rewarding, read a lot, get used to the way things work and learn a lot."

Agreed -- I think that putting (for instance) tanks and brutes and scrappers in the same forum is going to lead to MORE confusion, not less -- and ESPECIALLY with powersets that are shared by all. I've got a 50th DB/WP or WP/DB tank, brute, and scrapper (and love them all) , but can you imagine someone trying to find information on one of those AT's and reading about another, especially if all three AT's are lumped together in the same forum?

I'm sure everybody at Paragon Studios wants everything to be all super-spiffy and mega-shiny for Freedom's release, but change just for the sake of change isn't a good idea.

That's the same thing I said -- now I'm in favor of "screenshots or it didn't happen." How does MARTy supposedly tell the difference between the perceived value on "OMG he got a purple!" and "oh, look, he got a Kinetic Weapon"? Are other people triggering MARTy when they get back-to-back recipes like Pacing of the Turtle and Temp Power: Useless?
Then LET THEM GO, especially if it stops the infernal whining.

This is a game. It's supposed to be FUN. When it's not fun, I think that MOST rational grownups find another game, rather than childishly DEMANDING that the devs bend to their will. I'm not quite sure where this sense of entitlement -- that the forums are full of these days -- comes from. Years ago, when more and more games started charging monthly fees, I'd apparently naively thought it would help weed out some of the little children and the griefers. Apparently, it's more fun to spend time complaining on the forums!

CoX has been going strong for seven years now based on the dev's decisions. None of those decisions have killed the game yet, despite the doomsayers and the ragequitters. Remember Enhancement Diversification and the i13 PvP debacle?

I'm not supporting MARTy here, either, but I AM saying that it IS the developer's game. They designed it, therefore they DO get to make the rules. If someone wants to pretend that this is a democracy, they can take their money and go vote elsewhere -- but it's NOT A DEMOCRACY. It's a video game.

It's a lot like being a teenager and not liking the rules your parents made up. Yes, we all hated it, and judging from the forums, a lot still do because they still apparently haven't moved out! But despite the gross unfairness of curfew and being grounded, nobody can argue about the parents being ALLOWED to make the rules. It's their house, and this is the dev's game.

"If you don't like it, wait 'till you're 18 and move out!"

If you don't like it here, take your money and go play something else. But don't argue that the devs don't get to make up the rules -- that's just stupid.

I suppose it's too much to ask for screenshots? I sincerely hope your buddy reported/bugged/petitioned THAT one -- the last I'd heard, MARTy was tracking xp numbers and inf and prestige, not drops. But if MARTy is in fact tracking random drops, that does sound messed up.

Sorry, but it's their sandbox, and we just get to play in it. No, actually, it's their sandbox, and they charge us to play in it. And since it's their sandbox, they get to make up the rules.

I think I'm with you on the "only two slots and IO's to cap it part. On the lower end and not using slots, I'll admit that there's a good chance that I'm missing some of the finer points of COH math, but if I'm doing it right(?):

IF base Fly + Swift unslotted caps out at 58.53 mph, then wouldn't +10% be 58.53 + 5.853 or 64.38 mph?
If that's right, then 64.38 + 5.853 = 70.26 would be +20%, which is awfully close to the 70.69 listed. In reality, who's going to leave the default slot empty? So we'll ignore the +20% part!
Then 70.26 + 5.853 = 76.09, which is pretty close to the listed one SO at 77.72 mph.

So that's +30% if I take Hover AND Afterburner and drop an SO in the default slot -- I'm guessing even more if I use an IO -- but I still have to take three powers instead of one to achieve that. (From there, one extra slot -- not two as I'd said -- to hit the 50% IS kind of inconsequential.)

Doh! And thanks -- I started to double check that by changing my password again, then decided I was about 95% sure I was right...and wasn't! So thanks for the correction!

Amusingly, this whole thing had me discussing password security with two friends, and how adding numbers to an all-alpha password makes things x times more secure, and then y times more secure if you can add symbols to the mix (which we can't here -- yet.) We also discussed random guesswork vs. keystroke loggers and malware, too, and how if someone's THAT serious about hacking an account then no password is truly "safe."

One of those friends also reminded me of a place we both worked where we were forced to change passwords every 60 or 90 days "and you'd think I'd have learned." "Yeah, I'm lazy too. It's human nature."

Sort of like double-checking my facts! Ooops.

That made ME laugh, but it's apparently where they're getting their inspiration!

Agreed, and agreed, and I want the KOA costume pieces too! But...agreed. I wouldn't pay that much for a KOA costume pack, much less a "toggle costume."
Prices that get laughed off the wall go back to "focus groups" or "test markets" or some other circle of Hades. Although they seem to be treating US as the test market guinea pigs, as they sort of did with "Live Server Beta Testing" recently.

I believe that last line should actually read "Set Password (you can use the same password you have now assuming it conforms to the new[ish] password criteria of 8-14 letters, must contain at least one number and letter")".

Some people [*waves hand, embarrassed*] with (formerly) inferior password security could not use their existing password -- I could still log into the game, but not the forum. Finally found this tip in another thread, went to use the same password and got hit with the above.

Thanks for pointing out that bit of information! I wish more people would put a disclaimer to that effect in some of their posted builds as well. I know a few people, including one rather "casual player" (and suspect there are plenty more) who read the forums and see these totally uber, tricked-out, purpled-out, 8 billion INF builds and assume that practically everybody else has at least one character like that! Then they complain that they're broke, have no virtual money and no time for farming or marketeering.

Most of us don't live in houses featured in Architectural Digest nor drive 2012 supercars from Road and Track, but we can still get ideas from those magazines or websites and/or dreams about them. If more hypothetical builds had a disclaimer saying that they're the CoX equivalent of a "concept car" maybe we'd have fewer people bemoaning the fact that they haven't got one?

Thank you VERY much for doing and posting the research here, since I've been wondering about the numbers. Reading the results, though -- I think I'll have to pass on taking the power. I'm sure I could have sacrificed ONE extra power from some of my character's builds for a 20-30% flight speed increase, but using up two power picks AND three slots for a 50% increase doesn't seem very cost-effective to me. Other's mileage may vary.

I was merely pointing out that a) SO's plus inspirations is a lot cheaper and easier for the "casual player" than IO's plus inspirations, b) it still does the job, and c) it's a pretty popular strategy on these forums for those that don't want to do it "the right way".

When CoH first came out, a lot of us WERE excited about a game that didn't revolve around "loot". TO's, DO's, SO's when you could afford them (yes, some of us struggled a bit to get SO's at 22) and eventually Hami-O's for those l33t people who wanted them -- nice and simple. You'd just upgrade every five levels and then go beat up bad guys, which was a lot more "pure" and "heroic" to me than the grindiness and gear collection of Everquest, in my case.

As the game progressed, more and more people started playing WoW and were exposed to "phat lewt" and then were surprised when they got to CoX and we had none. (Don't forget, CoH predated WoW by about seven months!) But since THAT game had/has a lot more subscribers than CoX, and since corporate beancounters rule the world, the WoWification of CoX began. [And admittedly, there were plans for the Invention System back when Enhancement Diversification came along, and players wanted more things to do, and the invention system became part of the "end game" here.]

Then IO's came out, along with the market, and some would say that every "currency" after that has been a reaction to someone else's --often casual players' - kvetching. "I can't afford to buy this stuff on the market!" and "I don't have big chunks of time to do TF's to get Merits" led to farming for INF. "I don't want to farm for hours" and "I don't want to become a marketeer and do THAT for hours!" eventually led to AE tickets (and more farming, despite the dev's claims that it was to be anything but) and then tip missions and Hero Merits and so on. As the Incarnate system took the stage as "the NEW end game content" it sometimes seems as though the Invention System has become more of a mid-game, end-game "must have" rather than "optional content."

The good news is, there are more ways to get cool new stuff now than ever before, and more and more ways for "casual players" to get those things. The bad news is, as you've pointed out, it's a lot more confusing and potentially overwhelming for the brand new player. As much as I love this game -- 12 years and 10 months of subscription time over two accounts (and no, I'm NOT a "casual player") -- I would absolutely HATE to be a brand new player these days. I hope that the game hasn't gotten too complicated for the "casual player" now, but I guess we'll see what happens when Freedom launches?

You say "toe-may-toe", I say "toe-mah-toe" and "Just use a bigger hammer. If it breaks, it needed to be replaced anyhow."

Defeating his clone army is the tactically preferred way to do it (and apparently what the devs had in mind when they gave him that army of clones); popping three or four medium red inspirations and then watching him drop before the clones even start to appear seems to be a popular alternative.

Based on what I first read here, and have personally proven a few times, it's completely soloable by characters with the kind of DPS generated by SO's and a handful of red inspirations for the Trapdoor fight.

I've soloed him on five or six SO'd scrappers and a couple of SO'd blasters so far.

I was in the same boat -- couldn't log in and couldn't find this thread to see that I had to change my password....

...AND my "old" password didn't conform to the new rules.

Instead of "you have entered an invalid password" it SHOULD have been telling me "hey, we've changed our password criteria and your existing password is too short, too long, doesn't contain a combination of letters and numbers" or whatever.

Thanks for providing the solution here -- the useless reply I got from my official support ticket confirms that the GM's are swamped right now and perhaps in a little over their heads.

Speaking of swamped GM's, you should have seen the one yesterday that blurted out "Hi, I'm GM_Namegoeshere blah blah blah do you still need assistance etc" in the "Local" channel -- in a crowded Icon store.

I bet half the players there had previously submitted petitions. Much hilarity and many "tells" probably ensued, including the ones to and from me.

There's definitely room for more offense in your attacks, and with IO's and Incarnate content, there's ways to get plenty of recharge without resorting to Hasten.

From a while back, here are three other DB/WP threads with quite a few builds -- of varying costs -- including some softcapped builds with better damage:

Dec 2010 -- http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=248492

Jan 2011 -- http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=250737

Feb 2011 -- http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=252159[/quote]

For that, you'd need to define "necessary." There are plenty of perfectly viable builds that can do some amazing things WITHOUT purple sets. Purple sets are nice for some things, but not for others. Purples are great if you want a lot of damage, a lot of recharge, a lot of recovery and/or are planning on exemping a lot. Purples are generally awful at providing defensive set bonuses, on the other hand.

A lot of that damage dealt might be from the purple sets; but they're really not all that great at reducing damage taken. A couple of purple sets give some psionic or ranged defense, but most purple set bonuses are about recharge, accuracy, recovery and regen.

You say you're a "casual gamer" using "regular IO's" -- are those generic IO's like "Invention: Damage" or regular set IO's like "Thunderstrike" and "Cleaving Blow?" If you're currently just using "Invention: Accuracy" type IO's, you might be pleasantly surprised at what you might be able to accomplish with regular non-purple set IO's for a fraction of the cost of purples.

Exactly -- unless you really NEED a large truckload of recharge that you can't get with 5 LotG's, purples are mostly just good for bragging rights, late game grinding, and/or costing billions of INF per set.

48 level 50's? Surely. 48 level 50's in a few months? That would be soooo much like work that it probably wouldn't be any fun for 99.8% of the player base, and even if someone did accomplish it they'd probably be so burned out that they'd quit playing soon afterwards.

Two accounts here, 71 characters/nameholders and 99% of my playing on Virtue as well. 20 level 50's, nine alpha slots, and only a few characters with t3/t4 judgement/interface/etc. -- so far. For some reason, I'll usually decide by 30th if I'm going to go all the way to 50th with a character; by the time I'm 47th I've usually decided if I'm going to continue playing the character and therefore going to spend the INF on IO's. I'm loathe to delete a level 50 that I don't like for the simple reason that there might be a nerf/change/something in the future that will change the way I feel about playing that character, and I'd hate to have to start all over again.

Left to my own devices, I'll usually only play two or three characters 95% of the time, until or unless "oh, we need a tank/blaster/controller? I can switch." I'm quasi-ashamed of how many thousands of hours I've racked up on my main scrapper, but I REALLY have fun playing that one. And "fun" is the whole reason I'm here in the first place!

Knockdown is a pretty handy form of mitigation, and if (at lower, non-hastened and super-recharged) levels you're just alternating between Attack Vitals and Sweep, that's AT LEAST three knockdowns for every six attacks! (Okay, that's assuming that you don't miss, and assuming that the villains don't have some sort of knockback protection, but against a lot of villains, my DB character can do a pretty nice job of keeping the boss in a particular group either knocked down or getting back up -- which keeps him from attacking me very much!)

Willpower really IS "turn on and forget": High Pain Tolerance, Fast Healing, Quick Recovery are "always on". Mind Over Body, Indomitable Will, Rise to the Challenge, Heightened Senses are toggles. Strength of Will is a Tier 9 toggle that a lot of people skip.

I guess you could call Resurgence a "click power" but if you're faceplanted anyhow...well. That's not "mid-combat."

I'll agree with Memphis Bill on Dual Blades being the "busiest" set out there -- I've got thousands of hours logged on my DB/WP scrapper and [virtually identical] WP/DB tank version. The set has fast attacks, flashy animations, and special effects from the different combinations -- and now every other set I play seems positively boring by comparison. Mash a button, wait...and wait...and wait. Repeat ad infinitum. DB is more like clickityclickclickclickityclick...OnnneThooouuuuus sssssaaaannnndCuuuuuuts...clickityclickclickclick.

I've been more or less playing my scrappers like this since I made my first katana/regen scrapper, taking things like Confront and building for survival over damage output. If I can get my defense numbers up to 99% after ED, I'm content with 95% in my attacks, as an (extremely overgeneralized) rule of thumb. Some scrappers try to build for 110% damage and 85% defense, on the theory that if they can "arrest" things fast enough it won't matter. On big teams, though, with the difficulty turned up, my scrappers are often still going while they're faceplanted and doing ZERO DPS until they get a rez.

So I build my scrappers to take a lot of abuse, and wind up pseudo-tanking and using things like Confront and the Nemesis Staff temp power to pull aggro off the squishies at range when I can't get there in time to stab their foe in the face. Juggling those things between (or in the middle of combos) and leaping all over the battlefield keep me on my toes, and I personally love it.

DB/regen will DEFINITELY be a clickfest, though I wonder in the back of my head about redraw issues. On the other hand, if managed properly, all those regen clickies can make for an absolute BEAST as far as survivability, and will definitely give you a sense of "living on the edge." Someone else said it [a lot better] in a forum sig, but my mangled paraphrase is that "regen scrappers are binary creatures: they're either indestructible or they're dead." (And apologies for the quote butchery!)

Great -- just shoot my hypothesis in the foot. Then again, you might be a statistical anomaly?

...or not!

Not at all, and it's definitely "working as intended."

I'll be the first to admit that I'm NOT an expert on stalkers, but I suspect that some other stalker primaries are going to play a lot more like their scrapper counterparts than Dual Blades does. I'm currently working on a Ninja Blade/WP stalker, which at level 35 already "feels" quite a bit like a couple of my katana/something scrappers. They seem a little squishier at times, but Assassin's Blade seems to make up for that! I'm not sure what the final result will be like until I hit 50th and (probably) start getting a little crazy with IO's as I did with the scrappers, but I'm definitely having fun so far.

Here are two other sides to the dual blade story, culminating in my humble opinion that one's enjoyment of a dual blade stalker is INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL to the number of other types of DB characters one has.

Story 1: there's quite a few people who love playing their DB stalkers -- just look around this sub-forum!

Story 2: there's another thread around here (with an admittedly small, unscientific sample size) where a few of us who've spent way too much time with our other dual blade toons complained that a DB stalker doesn't play like the others -- and admittedly, it's not supposed to!

I've got a level 50 DB tank, a level 50 brute, and my main is a level 50 DB scrapper. I've spent thousands of hours playing that scrapper, earning 10 million prestige (so far) -- and the scrapper plays a lot like the tank which plays a lot like the brute. I use various combos, but mostly use Blinding Feint and Attack Vitals, or BF -> AV -> Sweep. The damage varies depending which toon I'm playing, as does the survivability, but those three play very, VERY similarly. I can hit the right keys with my eyes closed; I can carry on conversations in "team" while some of the longer animations go off and not miss a beat.

Not too long ago, I decided to make a DB stalker. It's...different. Some of the animation times are different, which throws my timing completely off. It's a perfectly good character, but whenever I find myself in a melee situation rather than Assassin Striking something, my reflex is to start playing like a DB scrapper and the timing is all wrong...no, it's just "different." My brain wants to go from Build Up to Assassin's Blades, and then go directly to "scrapper mode" with the usual attacks and timing, but the stalker doesn't quite work that way --and again, it's not supposed to.

So my hypothesis is that the more DB characters a person has, the less likely it is that they'll be able to adapt to the "new and different" stalker style of play, and thus the less fun they'll have with their DB stalker. If it's someone's first dual blades character, they'll probably have a blast with it. If it's their fourth DB character, they might very well give up at level twenty-something as I did.

Here's three threads with multiple DB/WP builds, and there's a few softcapped ones mixed in there:

Dec 2010 (after inherent fitness) -- http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=248492

Jan 2011 -- http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=250737

Feb 2011 -- http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=252159

In my opinion, between Rise to the Challenge's regeneration levels, even more regen from set bonuses, willpower's inherent resists, and even the smallish -to hit buff from RttC, it's not AS critical to softcap a WP scrapper compared to some other secondaries.

Like with horseshoes and hand grenades, sometimes just being close to the softcap is quite good enough.

So yeah -- it's blazing fast when patching, and it was pretty easy to set up so it actually CLOSES after I launch, since I didn't want it running in the background. It's also pretty handy for launching a second instance for dual-boxing!

And -- best of all, it's NOT the "old" NCSoft launcher that everybody complained about!

A couple of my friends are change-resistant technophobes, and even they seem to like the new launcher.

QFT. I ran one BAF earlier, half the league was complaining about the lag. It was THE WORST I've seen in-game since building my new computer a year or so ago.

On the other hand, the lag seemed to make the participation metric easier to understand -- quite a few of us who were lagging badly got the "common" table at the end, possibly because we couldn't DO much!

In just a few days, I've gone from a disappointed "I don't want to do trials any more until they fix them" to an even more disappointed "I don't even want to play CoX tonight" for the second night in a row.