GeminiProject

Some of the revamps to the game have gotten me baffled. OK, granted bioware games have always been more about the story rather than the gameplay (they all felt klunky and last decade tech to me) but this time around, they really dumbed things down to picking dialogue lines and running through a poor shoot em up between dialogue options.

I know a lot of people like this new game style, but it is SO not for me. You basiclaly get to move your mouse around a planet and click your mouse to collect resources... thanks for getting rid of the mako, but you didnt have to get rid of like 90% of the original game as well. =(

The scanning plantes thing really made me think of StarControl2. The original mass effect already had me thinking about the precursors and ur-quan with their story. Starcon2's resource collecting was so much better though. I wish they'd make games like THAT nowadays.

heheh, I guess it serves me right to ask something that doesn't have a copy-paste answer.

I just installed w7 x64 on my second laptop, which I've used to play CoH for three years now.

I was able to find and download updated drivers for xp x86 and play coh quite smoothly in the past. However now that I have upgraded to w7 x64, I seem to find myself in a tough spot.

The default drivers, that clevo offers for my video card (Quadro FX 2500M) give a black screen at logon.

Nvidia's website politely tells me that they wont touch the Quadro FX 2500M with a ten foot pole, it seems to be getting the mentally handicapped offspring treatment.

So I go over to laptopvideo2go and try to find drivers that will work fwith my card and w7.

For the life of me I cannot find one that works. Below is the coh helper output, I hope it will be of some help.

Anyone know how I can get the game to work with w7 and a quadro fx 2500m card?

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.8---

DxDiag gathered at January 27, 2010 00:24 (+03:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)
System Manufacturer: Clevo Co.
System Model: M570U
BIOS: BIOS Revision: 1.01.06
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7600 @ 2.33GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory: 3072MB
.Net Memory Report: 2082MB out of 3070MB available
Page File: 5165MB (972MB currently in use)
C Drive: (HTS721010G9SA00 ATA Device) 5324MB out of 19900MB (26%) free
D Drive: (HTS721010G9SA00 ATA Device) 69809MB out of 75383MB (92%) free
E Drive: (Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 ATA Device) 47704MB out of 74998MB (63%) free
F Drive: (Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 ATA Device) 51517MB out of 77626MB (66%) free
G Drive: (YXYLO 2ZSHURGX SCSI CdRom Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7600.16385 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA Quadro FX 2500M [Dox Optimised 185.20]
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / NVxx
Video Memory: 1774 MB
Driver Version: 7.15.11.8520
Driver Date: 12/26/2008 9:20:00 AM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7600.16385
Driver Date: 7/14/2009 3:07:00 AM

Sound Device Description: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7600.16385
Driver Date: 7/14/2009 3:07:00 AM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: Clevo Co.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: CAPELL VALLEY(NAPA) CRB
Motherboard Version: Not Applicable
BIOS Manufacturer: Phoenix Technologies LTD
BIOS Name: BIOS Revision: 1.01.06
BIOS Version: ACRSYS - 6040000
BIOS Release: 20061130000000.000000+000

Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1133x904
3D Resolution: 1133x904 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: No
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 87, 1
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes

Physics Quality: Medium
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No

Anti-aliasing: None
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High Quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: Unknown (3)

World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600

Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.600
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: Unknown bytes/second
Current Game Version: 1600.20091102.9T4
Installation Directory: E:\CoH

Mod files in the Data directory
. has 79 files
.\Oldbindnomenu has 74 files
.\texts\English\menus has 7 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\city has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Safeguard has 9 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\sewers has 44 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\static has 34 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Outdoor_Missions has 9 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Static has 16 files

Kind of underwhelmed by the rewards. I really don't understand why the rewards would be things that tend to irk people with balance issues (+5% XYZ) rather than nifty toys to play around.

I understand the vet rewards need to be "good enough to make us vet chums feel warm inside" and "pointless enough not to make any serious impact on gaming experience" but I thought easter egg like rewards to be a lot more fun (neat looking pets, different loking sprints, see-the-map like powers, etc).

I mean hey, things like make Baby New Year shut up vet power would be so much cooler than +5% awaken effectiveness. Or a shiny floating neon bilboard above your characters head power that says "I'm a 79 month vet and I got was this stupid billboard" vet power.

I know opening up the speardsheets and writing +5% into some cell is probably much easier to implement than any of these, so there is probably a 5 min implementation time incentive bonus at work here. =P

I never took grounded for it's KB aspect. It was more about the end drain resist, neg-en resistance, and a power with auto +res to slot some nice IOs. The KB aspect was 'nice' but nowadays when slotting for DEF to layer with your resistance, you end up with ridiculous amounts of -KB anyway.

For me the KB prot of grouded was icing on the cake, and the power was never left out of any ela build I made.

SR is easier to soft cap and slot for many more IO bonuses besides focusing on def.

SR is also kind of the toggle and forget secondary.

You toggle your stuff on, put PB on auto, then run in to beat stuff up. If you die, it was because the mobs had either very high ToHit buffs or there were mobs with non-positional attacks, a lot of em.

In EA, the dedication to softcapping is higher. Meaning you might have to forgo some of the nice bonuses wyou were reaching with SR in order to slot for typed defense (recharge comes to mind).

Also in EA, you have to mind -def pure psionics. These are a lot more common than than SR's non-positional kryptonite, and deadlier. Since EA has very low Def Debuff Res, a few mobs slamming you with -def psi attacks means you are pretty much dead meat.

You fo have a heal there to help out with these situations, however, in my experience, once you hit many strong -def psi opponents, no realistic amount of self healing can save you from faceplanting.

So in essecne SR is vulnerable to:
Enemies with To Hit Buffs + Non-positinally flagged attacks.

EA is vulnerable to:
Enemies with To Hit Buffs + -def psi attacks +-def debuff to some extent

I think the major difference is the journey to 50. Where tanks are generally mor survivable and do less damage.

As macskull said, as a min max situation though, once you put the necessary effort in your brute, you will never need aything else to take out maps spawned for 8 at +any level.

As others have said, the need for the calssical tanker/healer role in templay is vastly negligible in CoX. You never 'need' a tanker, just like you never 'need' a healer, granted the team know what its doing. I've tanked the LRSF on my SR brute, people have tanked it on blasters. So I would strongly suggest you pick whatever playstyle you enjoy the most, rather than being bent on tanking, odds are you will rarely get to tank anything while the others melt/blast/smash the enemies to peices before you can even dish out a full attack chain.

PS: because I like to stay with a toon until he is pushed to the max, I have to say I never could finish a tanker since my other builds were more fun to play to me (scrappers/brutes) I solo a lot though.

My SM/DA brute is in the top three toons I play. And I've rolled quite a few.

He's frankenslotted, and has the two healing recovery uniques+ the end proc. The build is cheaper than a purpled out build and has am-a-zing performance. I love throwing fault on top of Oppressive gloom and watch everything wander aimlesslly.

The worst part bout him was the ugly SM look, but now he's got a cool dark purple crystalline SM and dark purple DA that makes him very nictus-y.

Both Brutes and Scrappers are excellent solo toons. I started with scrappers, and went brute on 'most At type' after CoV came out.

On average, for most players (especially solo), numerically speaking, both ATs perform very similarly survivability and damage wise.

Notable exceptions are:

On Survivability:
Fire/ElA cap their top resist at 90% on brutes and 75% on scrappers, other than these two instances you will not see the res cap on your brute solo.

WP with high HP. Brutes have higher Hp and a higher Hp cap. If you build a WP toon with as much HP as you can tack on him, you can easily hit 100 hp/sec regeneration on him, making him a very tough cookie. Scrapper WP is awesome, but slightly less survivably (emphasis on slightly).

Defense based Toons: SR and SD (no EA for now) toons' survivability is mostly a factor of their proximity to the defense cap (SD gets more toys but thats too much detail). Essentially my DM/SR scrapper and my DM/SR brute are identical insurvivability, save for the puny teensy bit more HP the brute has, which is insignifiant, the only thing that kills me on those toons is being hit twice in a row and the first hit takes me to 10% hp on both toons anyway. Summary: Def based scrappers are basically the same survivability as Def based brutes with the same secondary.

Brute primaries (for now) are mostly the tanker seconbdaries. Basically the main reason why brutes feel more survivable is their primary powers' mitigation. SS, SM, ElM all have serious mitigation built into them in forms of KD, stun, etc. These take a big bite off incoming damage and make most brutes feel more survivable. This point might be moot with proliferation brining the same availability to scrappers though


On Damage:
In most everyday circumstances, both ATs do the same damage, period. Brutes ramp up fury and do slightly more than unbuffed scrappers while scrappers burst with crits and both toons on average are in the same ballpark. Some specific primaries and secondaries, and some specific situations break this mold.

Scrappers beneift a lot more from Dam Buffs. Not only is their Dam buff a bigger number usually, but the benefit of the dam buf on their higher base damage is more. What I am saying is, when a scrapper uses a self damage buff, he starts dealing more damage than a brute under the same self damage buff.

Most importantly sets that can perma their damage buff or have a perma damage buff perform significantly better for scrappers. A perma soul drain DM scrapper will be pushing more damage than the perma SD, DM Brute, almost all the time. I say almost since it depends on how many enemies available to fuel SD. If you only have one enemy in range the brute with fury cap will outdamage the scrapper with only one toon to fuel SD. But if you have ten enemies fuelling SD, the scrapper will outdamage the burte even at full fury. Same goes for Shield Defense's dam buff.

At this point I think the most significant factor for choosing Brute or Scrapper, is still the content available to blue/red and the primaries/secondaries available to the ATs. Those make a lot more of a difference than the little percentage here and there of better or worse performance under XYZ conditions.

Another bonus, brutes get a freakin awesome fist icon. I mean nothing says badass like a fist to the face for an icon man.

I've yet to find a more massive game breaking melee toon than my DM/SR scrapper and brute, PvE.

Comparatively speaking your kryptonites and weaknesses are negligible and if you do throw billions of inf at the build, the toon just becomes silly powerful.

SR is very strong PvE. But it exemplars badly

So why exactly do we keep the old 3 level range on set bonuses while exemplaring was changed to 5 levels? Kind of odd if you ask me.

Sorry I dont have a definitive answer for you but only my own experience. I had a level 10 on which I could not for the life of me get the 5-10 mayhem on. Bad luck strike maybe. But that basically made me roll a toon to level 6, to get that first annoying mayhem done.

In today's world where you can get a char to 14 ish very very fast if you have a 50 that can run 6-8man +2-+3 missions fast, I find it easier to keep toons in the 22,28,34,44 levels for mayhem parking. The lower ones were not worth parking a toon at, but also the ones you are least likely to find a team recruiting for.

EDIT: To clarify, I parked some support toons at those levels that still help my 50 if I decide to dual box, since those toons are never getting to 50, they might as well be useful somehow.

What Aett Said, Ice is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to sexy brute power. I'd sacrifice my neighbors kittens to the proliferation gods for katana/BS/Spines/Martial arts to be ported over before Ice melee.

Can you imagine the "WTF, this set sucks" posts after it was proliferated?

PI in freedom

Consta mapservering. If I am able ot get into game I will get disconnected in 10 seconds. And thats a big IF, I normally DC at loading screen.

My thoughts exactly MK. Unless there's something more to it that we don't know about yet (which is almost guaranteed) all of my toons will be parked at vigilante, since I play mostly brutes red side, I'd have to go hero first and then fall again. Hoping that you do become a vigilante and not a rogue again....

I knew posi was the one buying all those hyraulic pistons redside when you needed tem and selling them for 10x the price! =P

EDIT: until further info comes along, seems like having every single toon you have become a vigilante (not rogue) will be the gold standard for playing CoH or CoH with some tourism on rogue isles.

Going rogue as an expansion seems to have some major hurdles and I'm very afraid of the boundaries and no-nos they will set up in order to avoid these hurdles. The market thing is the first one we heard. I expect plenty of new annoyances to appear to keep the game from becoming City of Vigilantes.

I cant believe I'm missing the haloween event and most of this stuff... I've been on 'vacation' with like almost no internet connection until Nov 4th.

GR got me pretty excited. The only thing that didnt get me excited was the market bit. I'm still very surprised and confused at them not merging (if that is the case).

I'm going to make a deduction based on the info we have now and sat being a vigilante seems to be the sweet spot. You get to use the abundant blue side market, and do contents for both sides. I just hope you can take your villain throught he long journey of Villain>Rogue>Hero>vigilante as opposed to Villain>Rogue>Hero>Rogue.

Depending on further details, thats exactly where I would park all my characters.

This is highly debateable but imo the 'godmode' for FA is more and more and mroe and more recharge. If you can fit some def in there without scarificing recharge then great, otehrwise go for recharge as the thing that will keep you alive with FA is more damage, more burn, more helaing flames, more recharge and did I say more recharge? =)

After you reach 45% defense on SR, the only things that matter, or impact performance significantly, for soloing AVs are:

Recharge
Endurance Consumtion / Recovery
Regen / Healing /+HP

Recharge is probably the single most important metric. It affects Damage output, endurance consumption (end usage of your high recharge attack chain), end recovery (for DM with Dark Consumption), healing (Siphon life or aid self if you have it).

A High recharge will allow you to 'upgrade' your attack chain to cycle the heavy hitting and endurance intensive attacks more often and use the lesser DPA (damage per activation) attacks less often. A high recharge, high damage attack chain will burn through endurance very fast.

You need enough recovery, coupled with whatever recharge you could get into DC to keep up your attack chain without running out of endurance.

Depending on your recharge rate and regeneration, you may or may not need aid self to survive. A high enough recharge rate, coupled with the needed recovery to sustain the attack chain, and regen to passively heal you, should alllow you to survive an AV's damage by just using SL in your attack chain. The AV will hit you, you just need to be able to regen / heal the damage before the next attack makes it through the def.

SR is VERY capable of soloing AVs. Especially coupled with DM. The combo gives you end recovery powers and healing powers plus recharge plus long lasting perma-able damage and to hit (soul drain). Unless you are fighting an AV that has a bonus to hit, or some crazy insurmountable HP like recluse/states, you should be able to solo them no problem, with or without aid self.

I've gotten my Dm/Ela 99% slotted. I'm only missing the two gladiator 3% IOs which seem to sell for a beeeeeleeeeeon each now, so unless I'm on the test server with the IOs I swapped out of my other characters it will be a while before I re- amass two beeeleeeoooon inf that I will blow on just two IOs.

Besides being 3% short on def and 3% short on res, the set has 32 sec recharging energise and soul drain, and a wtf imbqbbq attack chain of MG>Smite>FB>Smite>MG for Dps or MG>Smite>SL>Smite>MG for Dps with healing. I also got the ranged and aoe def up to 20% and am missing the last 3%for 23%. I'm at 49 to 52% resists to S/L/F/C/E/Psi with neg energy at 32% and toxic at zeeeeero.

Perma energize is awesome. I just dont have to worry about endurance at all and I'm at 450% ish regen.

Whats not so good, as others pointed out is the 75% Energy resist. The same Problem exists with Fire armor and fire damage due to scrapper caps.

The set is very fun and looks really nice with power customization. I love ela's near total immunity to slows and drains.

Whats not so good, well for a build that costs about two billion inf, it is an epic demonstration on how heavy resistance sets lag behind pure defense sets at the edge of performance limits.

My very similar "in terms of recharge" DM/SR can eat a donut while soloing 8 man +3 spawns and winking at the ladies while flexing his glutes.

The DM/ELA needs to target heavy hitters first, LOS some of the spawn, jump away and back in to mess with the AI, in short, be tactical, to survive that. It is not as simple as stand in the middle and smack smash crack popple and wham.

The plus side is resist sets exemp much better, so he has a much wider range of play. Did I mention customized SDand elec armor look sweetsauce? I did? Oh well. =D

My two favorite DA brutes are my SM/DA and my DM/DA

The SM DA has a lot of recovery in it. Yes Fault+Opressive gloom is THAT good

I use the DM DA to fear everything everywhere all the time. Stacking CoF with with a high recharge Perma Intimidate and smacking the lucky ones with ToF makes me giddy.

DM/DA is pretty darn awesome for so many other things. The two bag o tricks mesh together well.

Claws and Fire are also nice with DA. Keep in mind you can stack up to 30% positional def with DA. making it very survivable in non DDR cases. And when feces hit the fan, Dark Regen is there to bali you out. =)

Well there are lots of things you could go for. What attack chain do you want to use? Recharge and regen work great for DM/SR's. If you up recharge a lot, you need to fit in some recovery there since as your attack chain uses the higher tier powers your end consumption goes through the roof.

Regen working nicely, physical perfection is a good fit, you can use it as a mule for any healing uniques you have and slot health with heal IOs for the added regen benefit.