Gorgar

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I think the problem with the APP's and the scrapper is that the scrapper is pretty powerful with what it has.

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Agreed. APPs for the other four archetypes seem to let the AT transcend its limitations. Scrappers are already pretty well-rounded, so there doesn't seem to be that much to add. Doesn't really bother me though, as what takes other ATs epic powers to achieve, scrappers get at the outset (well-roundedness), so for me that's three or four powers I can just spend on whatever looks entertaining.

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My favorite WS Alt i play is my Human only. They are late bloomers no doubt, but that's for when they crank up their effectivness to be truly powerful. I personally notice for a WS they feel comfortable rght after they get Stygian Circle, and a PB right after Stamina but more like right after Solar Flare.

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Thanks! That's kind of what I was looking for. Several helpful replies here, thanks everyone. I'll probably push a pair of human-only to somewhere around those two levels before I make further judgements.

And yeah, I know, it's way more flexible if I take other forms even if I don't plan to use them at 50, but I'm more concerned with the journey than the destination. I just couldn't tell from early experiments what this was going to look like later on, unlike say an energy blaster, which (for me at least) felt like level 50 was a logical extension of what she could do at level 1.

I really like this guide. Nice job. Especially like the history and in-depth analysis of accuracy and to-hit, and the reasons for considering taking or skipping powers. Thanks for keeping it up to date with later issues.

Might be outdated. They balanced the damage per activation a while back, but before that, Flares was a dog. Took forever to animate. I think for that one they mostly just cut the activation time down a fair bit. But, it's in line with the other powers now, and with the fact that you can fire it off while mezzed, I tend to want both. Also, if you're the sort that likes to slot single target attacks with procs, Flares is a good candidate because it recharges quickly.

I think in general, tier 1 blast vs tier 2 blast vs both tends to be a question now of tuning your attack chain more than avoiding weak powers.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm still contemplating this. I remember being pretty discouraged with it in early levels because voids or quantums (don't remember which I'd run into) were killing me with ease.

Favorite to beat on: CoT. They take themselves *so* seriously. Beating up wizards is still one of my favorite things to do.

Sorcerers, though. I'd like to see more enemies like that. One makes a Tsoo group harder to take out. Two is a pain. More than two and it's pretty hard to take out a group unless you can hold them. They're a more interesting sort of challenge, to me, than AVs and GMs.

I've been running a 17" MBP for a while now. Runs CoH just great if I reboot, and mostly pretty well if I use the Mac client.

Since you're doing recording with it: if you use a firewire interface, you may have issues. I have an Alesis io26 that doesn't work with CoH at all. Whatever I do, the sound comes out distorted. My solution is to use the built-in sound (headphone jack) for the system sound, and Logic uses the Alesis, and I run both outputs into different channels on a mixer. Don't know if you'll have any problems, but if you do, try the built in sound.

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I guess I'd still go with The Mouse Police. I *did* reserve it on virtually ever server after all. ^_^

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I just saw a Mouse Police in WWs on Virtue. Thought it was a cool name.

It's hard to pick for me. Of the serious ones, probably Chord of Souls. Taken from music, as I prefer to do, and fits the character's powers (dark/sonic defender).

Currently I am most amused by a warshade I made. I had no ideas whatsoever, so he turned out to be a big lizard with the arctic pattern, which happens to look pretty neat in white on a black lizard. Name: Inexplicably Arctic. Probably headed for deletion, but I am entertained in the meantime.

I'm considering starting a peacebringer and a warshade. However, I don't have any interest in the non-human forms. I know not taking them gives up a lot of power and flexibility, but for me it's human-only or not at all. So, how do human-only Kheldians compare to the other ATs? Are there any advantages other than getting the travel power early? Are there interesting things you can do with the human-only variety that you can't do better with the other ATs?

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Vigilence nee Negligence is an extremely weak inherent. It provides wildly differing levels of benefit.

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I agree that solo, Vigilance doesn't do anything for us. I'd like to see it do *something* myself. I'm not convinced that it's a horrible inherent, though. I think it does what it was designed to do, which is give us a hand keeping toggles up, etc, when things start to go wrong.

That said, I'm sure it's not equal across all primaries. I'd bet Empathy gets more use out of it than, say, Force Field. But I think the same is true of other inherents: Scourge really goes well with AoEs, etc. Vigilance isn't particularly sexy, but I think it fits the defender theme pretty well.

I also don't have a problem with the idea that defenders have the weakest damage and/or are hardest to solo. I'd rather the ATs be different and interesting than all have to perform at the same level solo. Part of the charm of defenders, for me, is that they aren't solo machines. If scrappers solo AVs for a challenge, defenders, depending on type, solo at Invincible for a challenge or, for less soloable powersets, at something lower. There's still challenge to be had. In return for that, defenders have potential to be a huge addition to a team in a way that's harder for a scrapper to do.

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Any time a defender activates a power from their primary or secondary they get a vigilence buff that lasts 10 (perhaps 15 since many defender buffs take 2-3 seconds to cast) seconds that has the effect of reducing the defender's end costs by 5% AND reduces the recharge of their powers by 5%.

The defender can stack a maximum of 5 of these buffs at any one time capping the benefit from vigilence at a 25% reduction to end costs and recharge.

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I think giving defenders access to another 25% recharge reduction might well lead to some sort of recharge nerf to keep things in balance. Also, this would encourage using a lot of fast-activating powers to keep the buff going, which isn't something that would benefit the game, in my opinion. I don't want my defenders to feel like brutes.

In the end, I don't think defenders are underpowered or unbalanced. It would be nice if vigilance did something for the solo defender, but the AT isn't broken, in my opinion. It's just different.

Hero, definitely War Witch. Once they killed her off, I lost interest in the comics.

No real favorite villain. I do remember liking Arbiter Sands' dialogue, and Nemesis is entertaining.

So maybe they should add some knockback protection to Cloak of Fear. Then there's a reason to run it, and if you want to invest in the accuracy, it will provide more reliable fear effects as well.

I think it's not so much the holds you want as the immobilizes, which most controller primaries other than Mind seem to have in abundance. Also, if you go defender or corruptor, Dark has that cone of immob. The thing is, the duration and recharge on mass holds is pretty harsh, so you need the immob to fill in between holds if you're going to use a lot of knockback powers.

I went the other way entirely with my four stormies, either pairing it with a powerset that had more knockback yet, or with mastermind pets, who don't complain. I love knockback and loathe immobilization powers, though.

However, I can still team. Storm's got pretty good control powers, so when I'm trying to minimize chaos, I use Freezing Rain and Thunder Clap. In fact, if you slot Thunder Clap up, you can learn to use it as the rain is wearing off, and it will keep any remaining minions stunned until it's time to rain on them again. This is on top of whatever your other powerset is doing. In the case of the storm/energy defender, I do that, then keep things off the squishies. If the tank loses control, then I'll drop tornado, freely toss stuff around with Hurricane and Lightning Storm, etc, until the team can recover. Stormie = safety net, if you play it that way.

Sundrop, Mountain Dew Throwback, espresso, scotch.

I would love this. So would the Circle of Thorns, because unless and until something like this were to be implemented, they will continue to be the target of my recreational positional displacement.

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LOL. This trying to state the fact that boost range has much of ANY impact in the PVE game outside of some cones for the most part is ridiculous.

Most blaster powers are already 80ft range, which is more than enough. Once i get pos blasts put in my cone attacks there isn't a fathom of a reason i really need boost range for anything in the PVE game.

For those shorter range ST blasts, i take it in stride, and have never had a problem using them with their current range.

Boost range is a gimmick. Its entertaining, but FAR from the reason to take /energy on a blaster outside of PVP.

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80 feet is more than enough if you want to take return fire. Some people might be into that, I guess.

I'd say it stacks well with the energy primary for keeping stuff outside its own range but inside yours.

Anyway, the best use I found for Power Boost was doubling the heal on Aid Self, which, six-slotted (three heal, three interrupt reduction) and power boosted will bring about half your hit points back if you can hold still for a very brief time while you hit the power. Also works on Personal Force Field, which is what I keep it around for, as well as an occasional turbo button when I'm hovering through a mission.

You could get some benefit out of Sonic in that it should boost the sleep and stun powers, but that might not be worth it.

Energy/energy, permanent Boost Range approach. Range-doubling is huge, and knockback only helps you keep them in the sweet spot of being outside their range but inside yours.

Fun to do: hover somewhere near a place where mobs who want to close to melee can jump up to, then jump over to you to try to attack. They'll be busy running their little obstacle course while you rain indignity and death down from above. For extra bonus, the repel aura power from the force epic, so they go flying even if they manage to make it to you.

I'm mostly a Combatant/Fighter, but also a Mechanics Explorer. With a side of costumer. My hobbies include stunning wizards and pushing them off cliffs. If you set it up right, they'll come right back to you for another go.

I solo a lot, and I'm also the opposite of Steamroller, even on a team. My builds and playstyle are aimed at patient, inexorable victory. Might make me a Control Freak, though I don't use holds all that often.

Storm defender: everything stunned and/or airborne all of the time. Eventually, they'll take enough damage to lose.
Dark defender: everything cowering and asleep. Bad dreams. Defeat at my leisure.
Tanking: everything focused on me, periodically falling down due to being smacked with an axe. (I know, nothing new here, but I enjoy it a *lot*.)
Blaster: everything out of its own range (but not mine) and on its back until defeated. (Mezzes are a problem here.)
Mind/storm controller: So many options. Stunned, falling down, asleep, cowering, confused, held.
Dark scrapper: I skipped the cone attack. Single-target focus, my attacks, fear and healing vs their dps. (I almost never team with this, because I don't really add much unless a team needs a low-damage free agent that doesn't need looking after.)

This keeps me entertained for hours. Playing a fire blaster on a steamrolling team keeps me entertained for about a mission and a half.

Same thing here. I can play the game just fine if I reboot to Windows, but playing via Mac client means at some point it will start freezing. /reloadgfx helps, but some nights it doesn't help enough. It's a MacBook Pro with 4G of ram, so I'm guessing RAM isn't the issue.

I think now's a good time to add to the travel powers. I'd love to have another option or two.

As far as flight goes, instead of another toggle power with greater speed, I'd prefer to see something like a Speed Burst that adds to flight speed, reduces control, doesn't last all that long, and fades out rather than stopping abruptly. Probably also locking you into Fly for the duration, though that might be hard to do in the game, or open up some exploit. The rough intent would be that it would make crossing IP fun if you had the power, as you could activate it once or twice, but it'd probably not help you much in Talos because the distances are too short. It should be hard to control and somewhat unforgiving; if you activate it in Dark Astoria, you're going to get stuck on a building.

Probably could do something similar with Super Speed and maybe even Super Jump.

One of them turns out to be War Witch, I hope.

I'll have to buy it later. The web store is currently crying for mercy. Must be popular.

Would it be possible to treat robes the same way weapon customization was done, then? Weapon powersets and shields have a custom costume part. If every powerset except the troublesome ones had Robe as a custom costume option (including none), and there was a bit of logic such that if any of the player's powersets (and pools...would not want to be the guy trying to do this for Jump Kick) didn't have that option, it didn't show up at all, then MA's animation issues could be freely ignored.

In fact, you could even do just a few at a time and add more as time permits.

That was funny. I like the actual game characters too. Rather see stuff based on our graphics than something unrelated.

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Can saved costumes be moved from PC to Mac and vice versa?

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Untested, but I don't see why not.

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I tried it, but it didn't work. Seemed to put a spare / in the path, oddly...could see it when it told me what file it was trying to load. Not sure what happened there, and didn't troubleshoot further.

Also, thanks for posting this. I was upgrading from the closed beta, which they sent me a link to but I never seemed to be able to log in, so my setup was probably weird. My path was slightly different and I had to let it fix files a bit longer, and try it twice, but in the end, upgrading via your instructions and skipping the massive download worked. Very cool.