Enforcer_EU

Two points to cover here. Firstly, It took nearly 18 months to get my first toon to 50 because I'm such an altoholic. I have tried so many different types of character, some I've loved and others I've got bored with and deleted. For me, the game is there to be played for fun not just to ding as quickly as possible. I'm now learning how to play a kheld and loving the fact that I'm going to "screw up" my build at some point. I know the general thrust of how to build a good solid build for the other ATs and now I have the fun of learning all over again what works and what doesn't (for me). In all honesty, I need the low level play to get a good handle on the epics, the same way I needed them when I was a newbie with the others.

The second point is that ultimately, SK is allowed as part of the game concept. As a function, it is perfectly acceptable. That said, the way people use it can be abused. If it is between people who know each other, either in game or real life, nothing is off limits. You want to help your mate power level past the boring bits of the early levels? Thats entirely your choice. Your girlfriend is online with a level 30 and you have a level 10 and you want to play together? Feel free. What people do consensually that doesn't affect other people is perfectly acceptable in my opinion.

The opposite side of the coin is where someone is being annoying and is begging the high levels to PL their low level. If they don't know the other players in the group. or haven't been specifically invited then it is wrong. When we were doing an AV mission the other day we were having problems without a tank. There weren't any of comparable level online so we invited a tanker of late 20s to play. He got an SK up to 49 and all the buffs we could throw at him. Technically it was power levelling but it certainly wasn't leeching. He saved us all numerous times with his aggro control and didn't die once as we kept an eye on him. I'm not saying he wasn't able to hold his own as he could, but we felt responsible for his safety. We had fun, the player of the tank had fun, and it was a group decision to invite him. At the same time we had a couple of /tells from people under level 14 wanting to join our team and get an SK. As a group we decided that they were too low and refused. Our choice, and a different set of players in the team might have made a different choice.

As a person who has just got a kheldian for the first time, (lord Blue hit 50 on wednesday!! YAY!!), I can't say that I'm even vaguely interested in PLing as such. I'm interested in teams, and if it means SKing to a level 5 or 6 higher than my own then I'll do it but by no means am I interested in SKing to level 20s or 30s just to level quicker.

I'm not sure if thats just me, but I'm really enjoying the whole thing of the epic archetype and the game feels brand new again. I have however accumulated a good global friends list as well as a lot of SG friends so there is always the possibility of helping out with someone elses missions which is a different argument altogether.

The thing that killed any hope of pvp for me wasn't the fighting other players, it was the farming by groups of players.

I went in early on looking for a group to pvp with as I thought it would be quite fun to team up and take on some villains. All my requests for a team got me was a constant attack by groups taking me out without warning, then spammed abuse and some quite unpleasant comments when I pointed out how unfair it is for 8 players attacking one without even warning me they were there. It was made even worse by the fact that they camped outside the hospital and got me every time i poked my head out. I know there is a 30 second window of safety, but as soon as it wore off I was faceplanted again with masses of insults about how [censored] I was.

Before I get the flames about how I was in a pvp zone and should expect to be attacked, yes I know. That was the point of me being there. If it was a lone player I wouldn't have minded but being farmed by a full team was really annoying. The only result of my requests for a team was to advertise that there was an easy chicken ready for plucking.

To be honest, I don't think I would have minded if they had only done it the once and sent laughing messages to me along the lines of "welcome to sirens call, hope you enjoy your stay". I have a sense of humour and can take the bad with the good. It's the abuse I was getting that killed it for me. That, and the fact that I had to log and play a different character until I could be sure they had gone and I could get to the exit without fear.

mine is level 22 now but at lower levels all alts have a problem with accuracy. my blaster couldn't hit a barn door at twenty paces before i got to level 12. the combination of low acc and high end is a pain at times at lower levels but bear with them as they are great slightly later once you can get so's in acc. would totally reccomend going the health and stamina route as well as it lets you last longer in a fight which combined with fury turns you into a mincing machine. the acc goes up each level anyway so don't worry about it or get disheartened. just remember to slot the highest acc and end reduction you can. it does get better, honest

I play mercs and apart from longbow flamers who can incinerate my pets extremely quickly I don't tend to lose troops any faster than other types. In fact, I find that they survive a lot better than my mates ninja who all seem to have a death wish.

Visually I think that robots have the edge, those giant robots are awesome. I've not played with zombies at high enough levels to see all the pets but mercs are really drab and boring to look at.

All I can say is that with mastermind I can play on high difficulty levels much easier than with other alts. My blaster and empath rarely play on anything other than heroic as faceplanting while running away is a major problem.

General Deathbringer lvl 33 mastermind
Enforcer lvl 38 blaster
Lord Blue lvl 28 healer
Lady Thistle lvl 10 plant flinger

apart from making me laugh out loud, which is a rare thing on these forums, I rather like the idea of monkey minions

poop flinging is no more disgusting than zombie puke which made me feel slightly nauseous the first time i saw it. The YUK factor was quite high.

Considering the rude and disgusting things monkeys get up to in public there is a danger of seriously grossing people out with the powers.... I'm for it!!

went into a pvp zone when it first started and had the most horrendous time. there was a gang of 8 villains running round attacking lone players without warning. I was just standing there sending a bug report and suddenly my health rocketed down and i face planted. i complained on broadcast and just got the old " its a pvp zone, you got what you deserved for standing there" reply. went to hospital and came back to finish the mission and the little sods actually followed me round the map attacking me every time i popped my head out of a mission or round a corner. There was no warning or conversation, they just thought it was really funny that I was so angry at the total inequality and unfairness of the situation and abused me every time I said anything.

I realize now that there is no need to actually go into the zone to clear your mission screen but at the time it was all new and all I wanted to do was get rid of the contact mish and go back to the pve area. At the time I was frustrated because I didn't want a mission hanging round cluttering up my mission screen.

This spoiled the whole concept of pvp zones and is likely to spoil it for new players who don't really understand how the game works and might make then give up on the whole thing. When I was a newby we only had pve and I faceplanted regularly because I was still learning the system and powers that I had. Pvp adds another layer of learning to the curve which we can't do if the groups of pillocks go round attacking lone players.
For information, my character was a mastermind with no pets summoned. Talk about shooting a fish in a barrel. MM's are almost the ultimate squishy. All our attack and defence is tied up in our pets. Going for a lone MM doesn't strike me as a particularly challenging fight somehow. I suppose it boosts the figures on the screen though. Heaven forbid some people should actually go for the challenging opponent............

General Deathbringer, level 32 merc/dark miasma Mastermind

I actually find having a couple of attack powers is really useful as a back up. Last night i entered a mission and the goons were right by the door as i entered. They started firing straight away and my health plummeted as i tried to summon my lvl 3 pet.

After making a hasty retreat i tried again, same result. Third time i ran in, all buffs up and running and just shot the 2 culprits near the door. THEN i summoned my pets and completed the mission as normal. I'm not saying that everyone should take some sort of attack power, but to balance your character there are times when you do need to be able to do damage on your own and if you don't have the option then faceplant is a distinct possibility.

General Deathbringer, level 31 merc/ dark miasma Mastermind

oh i see. not noticed it before and not played it so can't comment.....
forget my previous post, i'm an idiot

not sure which power or pool you are looking at. if its dark miasma, then you have one healing power twilight grasp which is probably the best heal in the game with its super amount of healing plus its accuracy reduction, downside being it needs an enemy and to hit before it goes off, or there is howling twilight which does extremely minimal damage( don't even think of bothering to slot a damage enhancement in it, thats a waste of a good slot) but causes a variety of extremely useful debuffs on your opponent and also rezzes any team mates within reach. Again, it is more powerful than the standard healer rez as it requires a to hit roll and an opponent but it is the only rez which will give full health and endurance back to multiple dead team mates in one go. try using recall friend to stack your dead mates in a corner and cast it whilst standing over their corpses. It is a little end heavy, but hey, you're a mastermind not a brute. What the heck are you doing in combat draining end? Thats what the minions are for

Is it just me, or does the merc medic commit suicide quite frequently? Out of all my minions he is the one that seems to have an overwhelming desire to go one on one and toe to toe with the opposition. I was wondering if the other medics did the same, or indeed any of the other support personnel as I haven't really played any other mm type much, just enough to get a feel for them.

General Deathbringer level 30 (yay) merc/ dark miasma mastermind

i think the trick is to put the highest end reduction enhancement you can afford as the first step. my end goes to about half from the first summon to the final buff so far but i don't really need maximum end anyway.

masterminds are designed to be played with your own personal safety in mind, not as a melee character. you let the pets go into battle and you stand on the sidelines looking pretty. or you play like me and stand in the middle of them casting heal as required. dark miasma is fantastic for masterminds as you can usually keep your pets alive for most if not all of the combat.

if your pets start dying then run like the soft squishy that you really are. pets will keep the mobs occupied until you are well out of the way. as soon as your last pet falls, then re-summon them.

the only reason masterminds have attacks is as a final solution if the pets are all dead and we might possibly die. if you look at the damage, it is a lot lower than the pets can do. masterminds are even more squishy than blasters so if you feel the need to get up close and personal then you are playing the wrong character. personally I cannot play scrappers and tanks to save my life, i don't have the disposition. i prefer to be able to stand back and suss out a situation first. at the first sign of it going horribly wrong i'm out of there like a gazelle.

Having played CoH since March, I've never really noticed super groups except for the annoying people who abandon you half way through a mission with the excuse their SG needs them. (to my mind, thats bad manners. They commited to at least complete the mission before bogging off and leaving the rest of us in the lurch). However, since the advent of bases the constant spamming of broadcast for new members seems to be the way forward for some people. I have no intention of stopping my style of play with my SG (a group of friends who have known each other for many years). I play this game for fun, not politics. If the small groups get penalised and fail to build bases, then so be it. Until the devs decide to make it impossible to solo and force us to work all the time in groups I shall continue to play in whatever style I am in the mood for. Sometimes solo, sometimes small SG and sometimes full on 8 man team causing mayhem. We will never be able to afford a functional base with the numbers of players in our group so we don't bother trying for prestige. Now if there was only some way of selling off all this useless salvage cluttering up my inventory....................

enforcer, level 38 blaster
Lord Blue , level 28 defender
General Deathbringer, level 18 mastermind

Not everybody wants to play a game with hundreds of members in a super group. My group has 3 members and about 6 to 8 alts we play regularly. I accept that bases haven't been up for long and we all need to earn the prestige to buy stuff but it is still way too expensive to buy anything functional. All we want in our base is the smallest of everything. We will never have enough money to buy a power room and everything else needed to go in it before we can start using the most basic facilities. If we were given x prestige per level of alt to put into the pot it would help. All the level 50's would have much more than the level 10's (as it should be) as payment for their dedication and appreciation of the fact that their alt is an elite hero and possesed of godlike power to us mere mortals..... A super group with 60 members deserves to have the top range facilities in their base but us small groups shouldn't be forced to live in a single room with 2 chairs and a candle like 12 year olds in a tree house. If the fantastic four were penalised like that Galactus would have laughed himself into a hernia. The Joker would have firebombed Batmans bedsit and the brotherhood of evil mutants would have ended up in county court for non payment of rent on their duplex flat.

we only have three players in our group, with 2 or 3 alts each. we play as friends who know each other outside of the game and all agree that we only want people we actually know in the group. This doesn't make us elite or snobbish, its just that we can solo or group play depending on time and inclination. It also means we can go for a beer or six and talk about bases, gameplay, moans and praises etc. To us the game is fun as we are friends in real life. If we opened it up to anyone who wanted to join it wouldn't be fair to that person as we socialise together and as is the way of all things that person would feel left out.
This makes us seriously disadvantaged when it comes to building bases. All of us play regularly and have a large amount of influence. If the prices were lower or the influence/prestige exchange rate were better then we wouldn't feel so hard done by. We don't want an all singing all dancing base with 60 members all quartered in luxurious apartments, but by the same token, one room with 4 armchairs is a bit pathetic and feeble.