Ex_Libris

Also I'd like to point out that while i do have an end game elec blaster, I only play blasters and have many of them actually. I always find the need to justify the negativism present when Electricity is brought up.

Stating that endurance drain is useless, in fact is actually a useless comment. A blaster's entire offense comes from their endurance pool, the ability to deprive someone of their offensive capability outright is impressive. Again, understand that Short circut can completly rob any even con of its endurance if its 5 slotted with endurance drain, or leave the higher ranking opponents below 15%. Meaning 3 spells maximum might ensue.

Simply stating that its impossible getting near a target to cast a PBAOE is again absurd. You assume you have a supreme knowledge of all who are around you, negate all use of stealth (stealth, invis, phase shift, player buffs)skills, and assume you yourself are not held defenseless by means of a spell..... assumptions

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Fifth_Element,

Electricity doesn't stun. The animations appear to stun them, but they can still interupt those animations and attack back. I had a level 12 electricity blaster so I experienced this first hand.

With regards to PvP, we don't know if it will be more individual based (AC, UO) or team based (DAoC). If most battles are large scale seiges, AE will still be king. If it's small wandering groups, single target blasters will have the advantage.

As for crowd control, I seriously doubt it will work like it does on minions. More like it does on bosses - which is not very well.

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No the animations are a stun, and in fact whatever mob you see breaking that stun is usualy ONLY a boss Red_Bane. They also disrupt any current action the monster was taking. So when you see that riflemen shoot you and the glowing blob flies at you but neither reports a miss Nor a hit you know whats going on EVEN if he appears to be moving, which i might add is Rare to occur on non boss mobs.

They will hold a swordsmen swing in place, a damned hands in place etc etc... The stun has no possible chance of missing, and can only be shaken off by boss mobs....

If you have rolled an Elec blaster your most likely aware of this from levels 1-40.

RSRobinson, an Ice vs Elec match would be dependant on who gets the first shot off... Ice's ONLY option for succuess would be a freeze ray. If Ice attempts to blindly nuke an elec blaster, as the elec nukes back, he would interrupt and stun the ice blaster on the first shot meaning his demise (assuming battles would be based off a few spells concerning dmg output in pvp). Furthermore, Ball lightning has a range of 80, which is the max of any ice nuke accept the respective sniper attack, but ball lightning is a dot and its stun is the duration of its dmg or the Dot... meaning the elec blaster has that option from that range

More importantly, Simply naming a Primary and justifying it as dominating is ignorant. Secondaries must be taken into account ....

Kudos for those who are thinking about Boost Range right about now...

8 out of 10

So after reading multitudes of origin stories, I was inspiried to write my own *cough*Sly*cough*. I personally love writing, have written several stories, which I shove into some back file in my computer so no one will ever ever see it. I think I'm afraid of scrutiny. And yet I'm posting something here. Hmmmm...

Well anyways, before you get to the story itself, I have a couple of things to say. This is the first time I've written anything in the first person, so I hope it's not really bad. Also, sorry if theres any spelling or gramatical mistakes. I was not here during beta as well, so any liberties I take with the occurances that happened in Paragon, I would like to apologize for, but I did do a plethera of reading of the events that made Paragon City what it is today, and tried to incorporate that into my story. Some liberties just needed to be taken. And lastly, while my character is a woman, I'm not, which made writing it in the first person a bit more challenging, but I've rambled on long enough. So, I present to you:

The 1st installment

“Do you know what it’s like to wake up, and have half of your room melted?” I yelled at my shrink. “Do you know what it’s like to see the entire world in a shade of yellow? Do you? No, I didn’t think so!”
Since I had started coming to see this guy, every third day, for the last month and a half, he had told me nothing else but to calm down.
“Now, now Jaradesse,” He said, in a total unwavering voice. “Calm down.”
If I could have rolled my eyes at him, I would have. I was convinced he was really a quack.
“Here, sit, sit.” He pointed at the couch.
I glanced at it, decided to just give up, and plopped down. I started at him. Clyde Bennett, my shrink if you haven’t figured it out yet, was one of those short stocky guys, who looked like he could be hit in the head with a stick and not feel a thing. He just sat there, twiddling with a little pen all the time, exact same posture, totally upright in the antique chair. He always just sat there, nodding every now and then, and listening. Oooooh yes. Always with the listening.
“The way I see it, Jaradesse, is that you…” He started on another one of his patented, long winded speeches, which summed up could have been easily translated to “You need to calm down.” But no. He just kept on going on and on. I had listened to it too many times already. Well, while he rambles, let me tell you how I got here.

My name, if you haven’t guessed it so far, is Jaradesse, or, to those who know me in the least bit, Jara. No last name. Why? Because I don’t like it, and I don’t want my family to get dragged into any of this. As far as they know, I’m dead. Anyways, I was originally born in Berkeley, California. My parents were both teachers, both nice, but, in retrospect, naïve people. The lived in their own little world, and they were content with that. Before my, ummm… changes, I would have liked that, I think. Now, things are a bit more… complicated. But I digress, so let me get back on track. When it came time for me to go to college, I had a few choices. I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do in life, but I was always interested in sciences. At the time the best choice I had for that line of work was Paragon City University.

Ah yes, good ol’ PCU. Now, I had heard that Paragon City housed a large amount of heroes, and frankly I found that rather… attractive in the city, but I didn’t realize ‘till I got here just how prominent they were in the history, and how active they were in the city. I remember the first time I saw the statue of Atlas while touring the city, the first time I saw a hero in action (even though it was on TV), the first time I saw The Statesman giving a speech… it was... exhilarating. Exciting and brand new. I knew that this was the place for me. Sometimes, I wish I hadn't been so sure.


*Stay tuned for more installments of The Life of Jaradesse*

Oh yes Azhurdan, your bind can be broken by pressing 2 opposite direction keys at the same time and letting go together. This causes the hero to have sprint on even when standing still. However, the binds reset themselves nicely if you move so its not a big problem at all. Just to keep you updated though, and thanks for the nice work.

I made a possed being that has a demon binded with his soul.

Name Bilsabob
Class Scrapper
Powers: Katana/night
Added depth : Teleport

In my Bio and my depth of rping. I use many mythos to demons wrote about in really old scrips. Like yeatha and baelh. Do you think this is to far to go on RP side. I dont think any 12 year old know what im talking about infact unless someone studdied Demology in colloege odds are they wont.

I agree a OOC in your ID saying your male would be cool.
Ill be adding that in my one female RP toon tonight

Fifth_Element,

Electricity doesn't stun. The animations appear to stun them, but they can still interupt those animations and attack back. I had a level 12 electricity blaster so I experienced this first hand.

With regards to PvP, we don't know if it will be more individual based (AC, UO) or team based (DAoC). If most battles are large scale seiges, AE will still be king. If it's small wandering groups, single target blasters will have the advantage.

As for crowd control, I seriously doubt it will work like it does on minions. More like it does on bosses - which is not very well.

very well said robinson! oh and this is an awesome guide!

Put "((I'm a male roleplayer))" in your ID?

Errmm....Gnarly I tried out the new 2.2 version and seems that once I set the same button to toggle between fly and run, that function does not seem to work. For example, I set "x" to fly/run toggle but if I press x multiple times, its the same function as "+up+ when flying and does not set me down at all.

Oh yes just something I found out recently, if the last line of the bind is "<key> "$$"", you will not get spam all over your screen while loading different bind files. So you can put the last line of each bind file as

tilde "$$"

or some other key that you dont use, you eliminate long lines of bind spam.

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Gnarly,

Thanks so much for ur bind i hardly used fly when i would fight because of the tedium of switching between hover/fly. You're a Godsend. I just tested out your latest and greatest version with one problem however, sprint does not toggle off. I don't know if it has something to do with the new version for SS. In the Q&A setup i went with the defaults of primary (none) and secondary (sprint) maybe that has something to do with it. Would appreciate any help in this as this would become the perfect bind if sprint would toggle off as well. Thanks for all the hard work from all the binders who helped make this happen

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Yep, I found this out as soon as I got home... I thought I'd looked at the binds, but I missed it :/ It was actually a problem I introduced when making the logic a bit more complex so that sprint (or SS) is not turned on when jumping in place.

So, it's fixed in 2.2, along with the Back -> backward problem, and is on the site now.

As for as the game crashes, somebody else had that problem with binds... not just mine, but with all the bind_loading. Despite it seeming silly to me, apparently the game sends all changed binds to the server. Only one other person has experienced this who posted, so you're the second. Don't know what to say, or if I can help.

2.2 is now up, and I'm going to be busy this weekend a lot. I'll try to check back and hear if you're all having better luck with 2.2, but can't promise anything. Also, sorry for the biggish downloads.. I'm trying to switch to a new type of scripting which would cut the file size WAY down. But things change so fast, and real life is intruding, that that is not likely soon.

So, I hope 2.2 helps the bind-killer problem with sprint remaining on when on the ground. It did for me.

Gnarly

Ok, I found the two that give the damage and usage statistics and added them to the list.

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One of the other ones THat I had seen was something like"you have died only 16 times"

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I've not found this one yet, but i will keep looking and then add it to the list when I find it.

I favor AR for PvP. With other blaster primaries, you reveal your location every time you attack regardless of which attack you use. The long range AR attacks have little to no particle effects associated with them.

Electricity and Ice would tie for second for me, with energy at 3rd if PvP is largely occuring 1v1 or small group v small group. If it's large scale PvP then I'd go AR first, Fire second, Ice and electricity third.

Devices would still be the top secondary powerset wether it's small scale PvP or large scale PvP. Simply far to much versatility to pass up.

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PvP - Fire Blasters will definatly be the way to go. It all comes down to faster animations and cast times, IMO that is. Of course all that could change by then.

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This is far from accurate. Most fire blasters if not all ARE ae blasters, to be useful in PVP you need single target dominance....

If you concern animations to be of ANY value in PVP situations then ICE would be your choice for having the 2 fastest single target DD's a blaster can get.

The argument, is the person with the faster animations can get more attacks in... True ... but that negates the fact that the enemy(s) are still attacking you, and this logic ASSUMES that the faster animated character is going to win... which is completely false. You have to take into account the spells being cast, the damage being done etc etc..

In PVP the most advantageous opponent would value any sort of stun/knockback or ability which prevents your enemy from attacking back... even if for a short period....

For this reason alone Electricity would be the best, because every electricity attack has a stun component. Unlike knockdown which has a chance of occuring.... the stuns found on electricity always occur, and only sometimes do they miss on a boss.... Furthermore electricity Drains endurance, and has voltaic sentinel... a 'stationary pet' if you will which cannot be the target of spells or attacked. The endurance draining component will be the defining characteristic of any blaster in PVP

As far as the attack animation argument goes... Ice has 3 one second attack animations... something to note

Every other blaster has 2-3 second attack animations varying with the type of spell it is.

Ball Ae's are 1 second animations... But using AE's for pvp will be an efficient method of attack, not neccesarily the best option.

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What I do, however, is have my rbutton for +mouse_look (standard) but my SHIFT+rbutton set to ++mouse_look. That way, when I'm flying or autorunning/flying, I can turn it on and not have to hold down the button.

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Ingenious. I'll give this a try. Thanks!

RSRobinson I know it would be hard to speculate on a build for pvp since it's not even implemented yet and we dont know much about it but based on the powers available to us now what power sets and powers woul you pick?

A few times I have seen a citizen that tells you how often you have used a certain power since you've logged in. "You have used Sniper Blast 32 times today."

Excellent post. Very well thought out. Thank you.

I have a preliminary build, but I'm not going to distribute anything until I have fully tested everything and made sure that it generates working binds. Hopefully I'll be able to post the working installer either tomorrow or shortly thereafter. Working on this almost makes me want to write my own extremely robust keybinding program, but we'll see how this goes over with you all first...

I wish I were committed...
*Wipes a tear*


(...To a woman, not to an institution)

My wife and I play, but our hero characters are un-involved.
We've only once played characters who were married to each other and that was not really deliberate. They were pre-gen characters in a freeform.

I have husband-and-wife characters over on Infinity. The accident that created them forced them to time share the same physical form (Guardians of the Galaxy - Starhawk and Alia). It's a "Ladyhawk" scenario. They know the other is around but can never find each other.

Starfarer
-------------------------
Darkwight 8 Defender
Utloki 8 Controller

I came to the conclusion that the other messages one can get are either purely random, or based upon some certain recent activity.

The ones I listed above were the only ones that I found to be consistent throughout all the city zones. I went to each city zone and clicked on 5 names of each letter I could find, and those listed above were the only constants.

One thing I did note about the "random" ones though..if you click on two in the same zone with the same first letter, they tend to tell you the exact same thing.

Some of the "random" messages will give you tidbits about some of the villian groups (ie. Sky Raiders or Skulls), some will talk about your hero's previous exploits, sometimes you will get information about the name of a shop where your origin can get DO or SO enhancements (and these ones will usually mention city zone and the street "zone" to find it in), others will talk about the lore of the game such as some of the original 6 (I think it's 6), etc. But the ones i listed were the only consistent ones I found.

Fyre follows the group through King's Row, observing the area.
"Nice neighborhood. Great place to raise the kids..."
Danny's sarcastic comments are largely unnoticed as they approach the house. Danny feels as if he is entering a crime scene as they open the door and step inside.
"Should I even ask what that smell i--"
Fyre stops short when he sees the man standing by the front window.
"Oh...uh...hi."

I rp's probly for the first time since starting this game, happened totally randomly, but there was some guy doing it who I teamed with, and had a lot of fun, even though he kept on running into any mobs he saw (including purples) because he couldn't stand to see civilians being hassled. I finally managed to convince him to take on only those we could handle (through some nifty rping on my part), but I can say that I had a lot of fun. It was a nice break from the norm.