Et_tu_Brute

I've got to say Lord Infamy that I laughed hysterically while I read your guide. ROTFLOL - great commentary.

I always play on a team and people get [censored] pissed when I pick up all the aggro from the stalkers/brutes. Not that they really mind, because they aren't getting hit. They are actually frustrated because I did moderate damage to the entire mob. If you go with this build, you should realize by now that it's like a squishy scrapper on the COH side. But that's what I like and I love running in to combat like a man on fire carrying a can of gasoline.

I must say that I charge in a lot... and I take a lot of dirt naps. D.E.D - dead sir! The damage potential on this toon is insane when done right. Fling Thorns - love it to pieces. The resulting death of half the mob and myself simply makes me laugh all the harder.

I don't like giving people "builds". They follow it too closely, so laying out the powers like you do is far preferable from my point of view. Of course, my opinion and 60 cents might by you a can of pop.

I still have a hard choice to make between this build and a Mastermind with Thugs/Dark. Not sure which will help my party more, but I think I'll try to stick with Plant/Thorns after reading your guide - which is truly after my own kind of playing!

Hi everyone,

This is my PLEASE SAVE CITY OF HEROES reply!

Seems to me that this thread gets down to the point of why there was a mass exodus from City of Heroes in the first place. Personally, I love superheroes/villians. The graphics and the game design for COH/COV is still (in mid 2007) vastly superior to everything - including World of Warcraft. All my friends and associates agree. So why did they all quit playing COH?

Being in the computer programming and games business, I can tell you why if you want to know. This is not a COH bashing post... I wouldn't waste my time with that. I would prefer to be designing or playing a game right now. However, I really love the idea of COH and I feel VERY strongly that it should be a success ("COH 2 - A New Beginning"). I'll openly admit that I jumped to World of Warcraft and left COH behind. What's funny is we still talk about City of Heroes/Villians while we play WOW. After playing both games for several years and playing with literally hundreds of people, I've collected an awful lot of feedback on what works and what doesn't. Hey - it's my job to learn what works in computer gaming. Any ways, if any one is interested, here's the results we've compiled over several years.

1) WOW is by far the gold standard, as everyone should know

2) WOW allows you to have 25 quests active, all of which can be cancelled at any time. Some of the negative feedback was the 3 quest limit in COH and not being able to cancel it. (returning to contact to cancel 1 quest is not useful based on discussions).

3) WOW encourages you to push the limit as a player. We are supposed to be heroes who strive to do impossible things. So why does COH punish failure with XP debt and WOW does not? Good question. WOW simply charges you an extremely affordable amount of money to repair your items. COH, not having equipment, can't do this... or can they? Actually, you can. Simply charge a small amount of fame when the player gets killed. That makes perfect sense. Your fame should go down if you are defeated - not your XP. This makes a whole lot more sense to me.

4) Nerfing. What can I say about it. Nothing destroys client-consumer relationships faster than Nerfing. Nothing. This is the biggest no-no in the industry. City of Heroes is often called City of Nerfs - said with both parts affection and hatred. Your long term customers for online gaming consist primarily of power users who work on their characters for years. Want to drive someone away? Nerf their class. This is by far the biggest destructive factor. Around 90% of the people I asked in WOW said that this was the primary reason they left COH. Coming in a close 2nd was XP debt.

5) City of Heroes, simply put, was too hard at higher levels. This came up because people could never get out of XP debt
and, quite honestly, the game DOES get too hard. From a design point of view, I am not sure it makes sense to force people to team when they get higher level. There's something to be said about that lone hero - that urban legend.

I honestly hope some of this helps. I need to get back to work. Also, I could easily write a whole book on theories, but I'm not doing that unless I can find people who actually listen! (this is where you say, 'sorry, what'd you say'?

I am ALWAYS interested in hearing thoughts, feedback, suggestions, or just plain funny things at my personal email. I hope to see people online in City of Heroes / City of Villains.
_____________________________________

COH/COV toons on Infinity server:
Nuclear Nurse (COH global@Nuclear Nurse)
Dark Reckoning (COH)
Cthulhu's Madness (COH)
Call of Cthulhu (COV)
Fist of Cthulhu (COV)
... and a whole lot more.

WOW on Uther server
(Hardly ever log on, play COH instead)
Sif (70 Warlock)
Jacynth (70 Hunter)

mdkrieter@hotmail.com

_________________________
"I hear you've been missing work a lot lately."

"Well, I wouldn't say I've been missing it Bob."