Hellguard

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This just opens the floodgates to a lot of griefing in my eyes - especially for AT's that are used to taking a lot of hits in PvE but are fully capable of managing that incoming damage and still coming out on top. Now you are just going to get spiteful people laying in wait around enemy mobs and picking people off once NPCs have done a fair amount of damage to them for the sole purpose of giving them shedloads of debt.

It's just going to end up putting a lot of people off entering PvP zones if they keep it like this.


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QFT, and because you say the same thing I want to say only better.

Congratulations!

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These things are absolutely awful the way they're implemented. Were I king of bases, this would be how they'd work:
1: Duration is 1/2 or 1/3 of what it is now.
2: The buffs are produced as unique inspirations.
3: You can only have 1 of each inspiration.
4: When Bob converts his salvage into a buff, it permanently enables the machine to give Bob buff inspirations. That is, each individual player buys access to the station's inspiration shop with salvage, where inspirations can be bought for a reasonable price.

Really though, we need to either cut the costs drastically, or make these into temporary powers that the player can trigger. Balance wise, compare these things (I refuse to call them "Buffs") to the Bloody Bay temporary power. I'll take a mission long elite boss over 15 minutes of two fifths of hasten any day, and the Shivan is easier to get too.

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QFT. Someone mentioned earlier that if rezzing at your base made you reappear at your mission door (like it did in CoV Beta at one point) it *might* be worth it a little bit if you died fighting a tough boss. You could rez at your base, buff up, then go back to face that boss.

But now you have to factor in travel time to your mission, and really the buffs for the most part aren't as good as inspirations. (The inspiration bins are going to be great for this kind of "strategy" ... die in a mission, rez at base, grab whatever inspirations you need and then run back to your mish... don't have to worry about a duration on inspirations!)

A lot of people don't like strategies that rely on being defeated in the first place, though.

It's sad that empowerment stations were one of the things that were touted as being base improvements for small sg's, but I don't see them being useful to even the largest sg's.

Ok, so I kinda feel like an idiot, but I can't find the empowerment stations in the Edit Base tabs on the Test Server. So, um, where are they?

EDIT: Nm, found em. For some reason I didn't think to select/enter the workshop so the empowerment tabs would appear. Duh.

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*/Regen Stalkers and */Thermal Corrupters.

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/Regen Stalkers don't get QR, and /Thermal Corrupters aren't exactly Empaths...

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No PvE missions in this zone means this event is solely for tinkering with builds from my POV.

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You can leave RV. I know they said you wouldn't be able to, but I ran a couple newspaper missions in St. Martial last night with a Thugs MM...

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... there was a time when goin to the hollows was terrifying. You had debt at level 5 and you had to bust your rump to get rid ot it...

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Up hill, in the snow, both ways?

No offense, the tone just brought back memories of my grandfather's "Back in my day..." speeches.

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Well, back in MY day we didn't have no fancy Hollers or yer gol-danged pee vee pee!!! We hunted Skulls and Hellions and Hydra in Perez and we LIKED it.

Name: HERO DEPOT

Founder/Contact: @Hellguard (send global tell to @Hellguard in game, or PM me here on forums)

Player Type: Mostly casual

RolePlay?: If you want, but not required at all.

Membership levels: All

SuperGroup Colours: Red and Black, but wearing of colors or sg uniforms not required.

Normal time of Gameplay: Varies, but mostly during the evenings and weekends.

Info/History:
**HERO DEPOT has been around since June of 2004 and has historically been a small supergroup of friends.
**We'd like to expand in numbers but retain the sense of "family" that we've always had.
**We ask that you stay in sg mode until level 25 after which point it's entirely up to you (but we won't get upset if you decide not to run in sg mode for some reason even before that).
**We don't have log in or participation requirements. If you're looking for an easy-going group of people to hang out, chat, and bust heads with, then we're the supergroup for you!
**We are primarily focused on PvE, but several of our members do enjoy PvP as well.
**Our number one goal is to allow you to have fun in this game and to recognize that people have real life commitments and needs. This game (and supergroups) should be about fun, not work.

Base: Full-featured PvE base, with telepads, med room, and workshop. Mostly tech-based, with some arcane thrown in as well. Issue 7 will bring Empowerment Stations and storage bins, and we are set up to accomodate those.

Website: http://herodepot.guildportal.com

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Yeah, but think PvP. Stalkers are already crying over FA; making +Per buffs in your base too cheap would make em throw even bigger fits...

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Precisely. As soon as this goes live, anyone with enough Salvage will be able to see Stalkers in Siren's Call without even needing IR goggles to do it.

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Yeah, I can't wait. I got me plenty of salvage...

Seriously, the only downside to the empowerment stations and PvP is that you have to leave the zone to get to your base. Obviously, this would matter more in Siren's than anywhere else. It just doesn't take long at all to go back and forth from any PvP zone to your base. Heck, base portals are very near the Warburg and RV entrances hero-side...

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Perception Increase needs its cost reduced. This is currently more expensive than Fear and Confuse resistance, and I can only think of one mob in the game that does -Perception. It's just not enough of a threat to justify the cost.

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Yeah, but think PvP. Stalkers are already crying over FA; making +Per buffs in your base too cheap would make em throw even bigger fits...

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Why isn't there any PvP missions in RV? This completely boggles me because I figured RV would be me digging my Scrapper out of his still temp-grave to do some missions that WEREN'T in the Shadow Shard. I like to solo with him but the shard is annoying.

Why was there no implementation of PvP missions in RV?

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Not sure why we don't have missions in RV, but the Warburg contact now gives missions to everyone up to level 50. (The WB patrol mish is labeled "Patrol Siren's Call" but is truly a WB patrol, just a minor bug...)

I would rather have had a contact in RV for people 40+, but at least there are now repeatable, soloable, non-Shard missions for those folks (even though I personally LIKE the Shard...).

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I've noticed that very little actual testing could get done in the test server. I've tried every day at all different times and every time I'm in Recluse's Victory there is some annoying person that thinks they have to kill me like its the regular game. Then on top of it I return to the same area to continue and they kill me again and again, talk about annoying. Come on isn't it obvious when I'm trying to look around and not even fighting back that I could actually be testing something? The test server should really have some restrictions put on it.

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You have a good point, but they can't really put restrictions on the Test Server. Conditions there need to replicate as close as possible conditions on Live.

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Just pointing out that any Regen type character doesn't sweat the 1hp thing like the rest of the playerbase does.

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*starts twitching*

Psst... hey, Beo... I know you're tryin' to be helpful and all, but... Regen's not even MENTIONED in the patch notes for the first time ever. Let's keep our mouths shut and keep it that way, 'kay?

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I remember previous patches where everything was set in stone once it was up on the test server. Time on test was just, apparently, for fixing bugs. Player feedback did not result in any tweaks or changes to any of the major or even minor features or nerfs.

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As much as I don't like a lot of the nerfs (I DO have a Regen...) this statement really isn't true. They rolled back the boss changes due to player feedback, as well as the mutually exclusive IH & Integration thing. There are undoubtedly others (in fact there was a thread similar to this idea not long ago, probably still in General somewhere), but it's early and I'm tired and I've got a long road trip ahead of me this morning.

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Once again...these empowerment stations do NOTHING to help the small SG, and that's what they were supposed to do.

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QFT. In fact, I can't imagine even the largest SGs getting a lot of use out of these things, given the salvage costs.

My SG is about as small and casual as you get, but we've managed to build a decent PvP base including workshop and a couple of telepads. We'll make good use out of the storage units, but I doubt we'll even put in an empowerment station if costs stay what they are.

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Also, for those unaware, capes were not part of the game in beta or at release. They first came around in issue 2. Auras too -- but they were in issue 3.


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Not sure if someone's already corrected this, since I'm only about halfway through reading the thread... but auras came out in issue 2 with the capes, did they not?

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...that Smartfilter (at least at my job) will block you access to the City of Villains site, but not the City of Heroes site?

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At my job, it's the opposite. I can get to the villains site, but the only thing I can access on the hero end is the forums...

Pretty good guide, and it reaffirms what I've felt since creating Hellguard in June of 2004. At that time, I didn't know that /fire was supposedly gimp; I was going for full fiery concept. A lot of the /fire powers are lackluster, including (for some odd reason) the high end ones, but there are some gems in the set as you pointed out.

I know you're focusing on AOE PvE damage, but the set can be good in PvP as well, although there I'd argue that the single target stuff like Blazing Bolt and Blaze are pretty important. (Suppression is over with by the time BB's animation is finished, so you can get a lot of ATs to half health and then zoom in with SS to try to finish them off before they even know their health bar's in trouble...) And the toggle dropping goodness of both FS and FSC can't be forgotten either.

Only thing I noticed that I might correct in your guide is slotting on Fire Breath. It already has 95% acc vs. even cons (as opposed to the 75% for most other powers), so the acc slot might be skipped or given to another recharge or end. redux unless you're regularly fighting much higher cons. Of course, if you're comfortable on the recharge and end. use then extra accuracy never hurt anyone.

Nice to see another fire/fire blaster enjoying the set and succeeding with it. Keep it up!

Thanks for this entire post, States. The AV thing in particular makes me glad, since I solo (or duo) so much, and I'm really glad to see that you've listened to those of us who didn't like the stealth nerf.

Now.... can I have my IH toggle back?

No?

Hmmm... How 'bout that Phase Shift timer? Any room to work there?

No?

Ok, then.

(In all seriousness, thank you for this stuff. It's definitely a step in the right direction to make lots of people feel better about the game and the developers.)

My wife and I play CoH/CoV together, have for quite some time. The origins of Hellguard (me) and Lirit LeFey (her) are tied together, and when we're both on we're always teamed.

Coolest thing in the world!

You had a really good point, though. Why would they need the store receipt? The CE serial code has to be recognizable as such, since you get a couple extra in-game items that you don't get with the standard edition. You'd think they could just look at the account of anyone who sent in a request for a replacement figure and see what they needed to see...

Unless only certain stores were affected and they're only going to honor requests for people who bought their CEs at those stores?

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I wonder what I should do, because my friend has (had?) my receipt..

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If you have a valid code to activate your account, do you really need the receipt?

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/em Coughs nervously while suggesting Ms Forum Cartel herself check out CuppaJo's post in the Announcements section...

Uh, I mean, WHAT Forum Cartel?!

I'll just add my details here, just in case it matters. Preordered from Gamestop, picked up copy of collector's edition at physical store, only had six figures (Ghost Widow missing). Just like most others, it seems.

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I've tried it out, still don't see any percentages. Had a empty spot in Death Shroud (deleted a damage in it) and dragged over a endurance reduction. No numbers, no math, just the same ol same ol. So much for clearly being able to tell what a power's effectiveness is now due to the enhancements in it.

What was that statesman said? Let's keep it simple? Ha!

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I very clearly see percentages in my powers, whether I'm mousing over the power or slotting something in it. (This is NOT during a respec, however, not sure about that.) Only tried one character so far, will try others in a little bit.

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I have this to say about Defiance....

Above level 40, the rate at which one's hitpoints can drop from 40% to 0%(even with the I5 HP boost) is so fast, that Defiance really has little discernable effect.

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Quoted, because it's what I was going to say almost word for word. At the lower levels, Defiance seems to be a decent little boost, but nothing to write home about. For my lvl 50 blaster, I could never get it to do me any good whatsoever.

Thank you.