Hart

Wow, that description matches my VG.

Drop me a line if you ever decide to go red! We're tiny but active and unlike the big groups I can personally vouch for each member.

Also, I'd look for groups that aren't actively recruiting, as they tend to be tight-knit.

So back before i16, finding a team was as simple as walking to Cap au Diable and spamming broadcast. Sure, you ended up in a farm team, but you -did- end up in a team -fast-. I find the solo gameplay CoX offers to pale in comparison to a real single player game like Fallout, Bioshock, or Ratchet and Clank, so the ability to get a team fast was a huge plus for me.

Last night, I spent 6 hours LFT on a 50 crab. Turned on the /search window, asked in coalition, asked in VU2009 a couple times, no response.

Normally I'd just start my own team, but there were zero corrupters LFT when I checked. I checked every half hour, -for 6 hours-. So I worked on my build instead. I ended up spending that time blowing 80m and replacing all but two powers worth of generic IOs with set IOs.

Where are people at, and what are they doing? Last I checked, Crabs were in demand redside for the defense aura, awesome AoE and pets. Have people gone back to blueside now that AE was gutted? Is everyone in some other zone? Was the hami raid really -that- big of an impact?

I saw ITFs filling up almost instantly in VU2009 so I know there were people out there playing, but I didn't get so much as a tell all night. Is it me? Have I somehow committed some unspeakable gaming sin I'm unaware of? What's the best way to fish for invites in this game post-nerf?

For comparison, I went Earth/Earth over Plant/Earth because of my experience with Plant/Energy.

For the first 26 levels I relied on /Energy's knockback for mitigation. After getting Carrion Creepers and Fly Trap knockback was even more unreliable than normal because both of those are pets that follow you around spamming roots.

Granted, this may not matter much since Seeds of Confusion can be made perma with very little cost or effort, so your need for knockback as mitigation is a lot less.

The other reason I went Earth/Earth is entirely powergamey - I want to slot Achilles Heel Chance for Resist Debuff in Quicksand and either Earthquake or Stone Cages so I can watch things melt on big teams.

I'd at least 'end task' on PnkBstrA. That's Punk Buster, a piece of anti-cheating software used in a lot of first person shooters.

I've had it cause problems with other games before - running BioShock after Team Fortress 2 caused BioShock to lock up, etc.

Yikes.

You'll want Stalagmites, Volcanic Gasses, and Earthquake a lot earlier than you've got them in this build. I'd take them ASAP unless it's a serious build compromise.

Also, you'll probably want to skip either the single target immobilize or the AOE immobilize.

I hear Hurl isn't that great, but I haven't used it yet and it's a brand new skill, so YMMV.

If it helps any, I think there's a command that'll move you back to your main bar - something like ALT+1 or CTRL+1? I'm sure someone can clarify.

Either way, when you accidentally click the wrong spot, instead of panicking and trying to click backward, you can just mash that command. That way you only have to learn to use the keyboard for a single command instead of retraining yourself to play the whole game with it.

Also, not that I'm a logitech fanboy, but their G15 gaming pad works wonders for me when I'm playing this game. Too many buttons to easily bind is a common complaint, and the extra buttons help a lot. A Belkin Nostromo n52 is another great left-hand kinda-keyboard thing, I used one until I wore it out.

IIRC, the one that's easiest to actually cap is ranged regardless of powerset. Since defense gets exponentially more powerful as it approaches the soft cap, and everything has a ranged attack it'll use on you, I'd go with ranged until softcapped and then focus on smashing/lethal/energy.

AoEs in general tend to trade high damage for the ability to hit multiple targets. They also tend to have reasonably long recharge timers. Unless you're dealing with Statesman they're unlikely to be the main cause of your death - they're much more likely to take out an unwary squishy.

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die

How bizarre.

I've only got two characters I'm actively interested in RPing with. One of them is a Mind/Psi, and it's never occurred to me to 'probe' someone, nor have I had anyone attempt to 'probe' my character. Then again, I don't hang out in Pocket D.

The other character does have something similar to a disclaimer, but it's not intended as some sort of RP god mode. The origin of her powers is a chunk of the Tower of Babel, and to outsiders she appears to both think and speak in dozens of languages at once. She's actually thinking and speaking in the original language of man prior to the fall of the tower, which ironically makes her nearly impossible for most characters to understand. It's not that you can't read her mind, it's that you probably don't have the Rosetta stone you need to understand all of it.

That character -has- had numerous attempts to read her mind, which typically require me to make a trip to babelfish. The inevitable sentence in 8 languages tends to be met without any return comment. I think she's flypaper for mindreaders because I call out that particular weirdness in her bio, and players are curious as to what'll happen if they try.

Maybe this is a case of the chicken and the egg? One guy put ((send me a tell if you try to read my mind)) in his bio and it escalated from there, or perhaps there was one particularly munchkinish mind reader and everyone else started adding disclaimers to get them to sod off?

I have noticed a lot of this in bios, but I always assumed it was a MRP/ERP thing and just ignored it because that's the opposite of the type of RP I'm interested in. I casually godmode out of victimization because I'm only interested in playing comic relief, but I wouldn't go so far as to put some sort of 'I win before you even start' message in my bio.

If you're talking about Melee defense, Smoke is a to-hit debuff that'll basically work out of the box and probably trump whatever else you could do with one power selection to increase your melee def.

Frostwork is skippable for /cold. I'm not getting into the argument, but it basically comes down to more HP on a few team members rarely being worth the power selection.

If you're planning on solo farming you could also skip the shields and benumb, but if you're planning on solo farming I'd roll fire/kin instead because Transfusion, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift will do a lot more for you than Sleet and Heat Loss.

Incidentally, why are you focusing on defense for a controller? Flashfire, Cinders, and enough recharge can make defense unnecessary because nothing ever gets to swing at you. In particular, melee defense on a troller is counterintuitive because you'll still die in 2 hits if you go into melee without holding/stunning the opponents first.

Therm. The rad toggles don't really work in PVP - all someone has to do is get 80 feet away from you and then come back. AM is nice, but that's about all /rad has going for it in PvP.

I've been messing around with this some more. I can't get the standard min / standard lt / custom boss thing to spawn a bunch of bosses, so that's a disappointment. I'd be curious to take a look at your mission and see how it works.

So failing that, I figured I'd try and put together a ticket farm. We can't farm purples in AE, so there's little point in setting everything to 50.

I put together a clockwork farm, which caps the players level at 20. They're vulnerable to smashing damage, and my Stone/WP shrugs off the damage they do. The end drain is a bit annoying, but a /kin would fix that handily. I heard that clocks give better xp than most groups - I think I've seen a chart actually, but I can't find the link anywhere.

So far I've been able to farm it on -1/4x with no problem - he's only 35, so I'm going slowly. I'm a bit frustrated with Stone/ for lack of an AOE, but the only option in that level range with an unresisted AOE is War Mace. A WM/Elec brute would probably be ideal for farming this mission - but I have no idea what I'd do with one afterward.

I'm going to see if I can get more players to join me, and just crank the spawns up to ludicrous numbers. Change everything on the first 1/2 of the map to 'defeat a boss' and everything on the last half of the map to ambuses on boss defeat, and hopefully the fact that I have to kill 10-12 minions per pack won't matter because I'll be constantly swarmed by clocks. With Stone/WM I'm thinking I'll try and kill the bosses and lts, and just ignore the minions and let them agro cap off of me. After all, they're just fueling RttC.

I was considering putting together a Bat'zul farm for my SS/Fire, but IIRC a few of those guys have holds and could be dangerous in large numbers.

Alright, so I reclaimed leadership of my VG last night after a long hiatus. During the 45 day wait, I ground out about 8m prestige, which left me sitting on 10m total. I've heard people talk about creating their own VG for use in storing salvage, enhancements, etc, and I figured I'd really go all out.

So come to find out yesterday that I can only have 18 storage units PER BASE. I can afford to purchase the largest non-secure plot and fill it with rooms, but thanks to the absolute maximum on storage units I can only stash 540 units of salvage, and less if I want enhancement storage as well.

Items of Power aren't in the game. Storage is limited to 18 bits per base, which you could cram in with two storage rooms. Teleporters take up a bit of space, and adding a medbay takes a bit as well, and then you've got power and control rooms. But after that.. what's it all supposed to DO?

I put a lot of time and effort into grinding out the prestige to build this thing, but it really doesn't seem that sizes beyond about the 3rd or 4th provide any additional functionality. Sure, I could build a massive RP coffeehouse or bar - but there's already Pocket D.

Is there something I'm missing that I could do with a large base but not a small one? I'm not interested in aesthetics, just functionality.

Not to be a jerk, but the missiles were intended for base raids, which were removed from the game. You don't -need- them for anything else, and they're generally more trouble to get than they're worth, so the best bet is probably just to give up and come back when noone's around.

If you're a blaster that's not heavily invested in PVP gear, you're pretty much bait for a good stalker. As soon as you stand still for a couple seconds, you're going to get killed; AS goes through your tiny HP pool like a hot knife through butter and your personal defenses are probably fairly poor if you play PVE mostly.

If you actually want to win you'll have to get the first hit, which is extremely hard against a stalker. You're both very high damage characters with minimal defenses, so whoever shoots first has a huge advantage. You're ranged though, which is a point in your favor; if he doesn't take you down in the first few seconds you should win easily by kiting him. If he's a PVP player he'll phase shift / hibernate when he starts loosing, hide, and come back after maybe 30s-1m, fully healed, so be ready for that.

Rolled up an Earth/Earth, Hart of Rock n Roll (see what I did there?) but only managed to get 'er to 8 last night.

So far so good - loving Tremor for the knockdown, though the damage is pretty disappointing.

I guess the better question is, what would you take instead of the pets?

I've got all the AOEs including Heavy Burst and Dark Obliteration, and still managed to fit the pets into my build. The only thing I skipped that I could see an occasional use for is Serum, and I'm thinking about replacing Heavy Burst with it now that I've got enough recharge not to need it on most fights.

The pets represent 2 power selections and at most a dozen slots. Are you grabbing Frenzy? Arm Lash? Slice? I could probably provide better advice if I knew what you were considering skipping them to add to your build, or what powers you would consider dropping from your petless build in order to fit them in.