Kawless

I'm curious!

Ahhh that explains it, the scrapper I was grouped with had all kinds of HP bonuses.
I grouped with a resist-based tanker today and was getting full rewards.

So there is a secret to it!

I'm experimenting, and watching the badge update itself.
A scrapper I'm grouped with takes 229 damage, so I toss a heal large enough to bring him to max health.
When the badge updates itself, it only adds 5 points.
I repeat this a minute later, the badge adds 229 points to the total.
I do this for a while, and whenever the badge updates itself, it is anywhere from 0 to the full 229 points.

Is there some secret parameter I must meet for my heals to be considered "fully valid" heals?

Does healing oneself count?

The Apocalypse: Damage seems wasted unless you're really gunning for that 5% psi.
Same for the Absolute Amazement: Stun.
I'd dump the Scirocco for the final Obliteration, for a little more defense.
Don't think I'd bother with a large set of Numina's beyond 2 slots for the regen.
I'd keep the three Tempered Readiness, slowing foes movement to nearly nothing comes in handy sometimes.
I like slotting the Stealth unique into Sprint, so I can slot Super Speed with Run or Endurance.

As for the Leadership pool, Maneuvers is fine for slotting a LOTG.
If you are =only= going to solo farm the standard farm maps, you may not need Tactics.
I chose Tactics for when:
- Having a L45 sidekick that I'd like them or their pets to be able to hit stuff
- Fighting enemies with smoke grenade or stealth (I don't always just farm)
- 5 slotting Adjusted Recharge if I have slots for it

What's with all these builds with only one recharge in Fulcrum Shift?

Do you even need +Recovery uniques if you are taking Transference?

If I have a sonic controller, will Sonic Siphon and Disruption Field stack?
If a sonic blaster then attacks this debuffed mob, will his debuffs also stack?

Do sonic blaster attacks alone stack on each other?

Anyone know what the -res cap is?

There's this group of 8 players I see fairly often at the AE.
all anon
all 50
no guild
no invention sets
no accolades
no vet badges, just AE, WW and inf badges
their names and how they are put together remind me of the names we see in RMT spam

If it's simply one guy who is stoked about farming, I figure Ok, what the heck.
I heard of one WoW guy who played even more accounts at once.

But something about this group just doesn't seem to add up.

Most characters I usually see have some kind of coherence between their name, appearance and powerset.
These appear to have none, as if everything was chosen at random.

The Fire/Kin works primarily because of Fulcrum Shift.
Thus all of your attacks, no matter how weak, become a force to reckon with at 300% or so higher than normal.
Add in AoE stun, AoE damage and multiple pets and you can steamroll weak groups.

Any archetype with Kinetics, AoE stun and damage can be similarly successful, but Fire Control is most effective because of multiple pets, and Hot Feet.

Fire/MM has AoE damage and PB stun, but you will need to find some way to consistently get +300% normal damage.

If you pvp, Lightning Field is great for popping stalker invis.
I wouldn't bother with it for regular PvE though, not worth the drain, and not worth sacrificing a more valuable power for.

For a blaster, I think Acrobatics is overrated, as you can always get off lower level attacks while held/stunned/etc.
An enemy can dramatically activate Domination and stack all the holds they want, they won't ever be safe while near you.

Decided to take one to 50 and starting to look at full set slotting.
Anyone have one they'd like to post?
Prefer non-purple sets if possible.
Haven't decided on epic pool, but not going with fire.

Any advice welcome!

Yeah dump FA at first opportunity for Tactics.
+Perception is good vs pesky smoke grenade.

Do things that generate Merits.
With about 250 Merits, get a Miracle +Recovery.
100 million is too much to buy one for if you've only got 20 million.
Then get a Performance shifter +End, with merits or cash.
Then you can start looking at sets.

This is what it currently takes to make Sword and Shield work endurance wise.

You should also get the PB attack.
Hitting 10 enemies with 1 attack is more efficient than hitting 10 enemies with 10 separate attacks.
Get several people with PB/AE attacks and you can start to mow through things.

The minions should not be high purples unless the group has lots of +Acc buffs to go around.
What is faster, killing 4 orange minions for 10 points of reward, or one purple minion for 5 points of reward, in the same amount of time?

Even poor people shouldn't bother with SOs, making a single L25 base IO is far cheaper than buying 6 sets of SOs from 25-50.

PvP enh sets are pretty expensive, are you willing to spend a billion or more inf on this guy?
If you got 3 LotG enh in a power, may as well get the full 4 for Acc.
Obliteration is a nice set.
Combat Jumping doesn't really need a recharge, you could slot the Steadfast Protection Unique there.
Some none-PvP sets are also on the expensive side, might want to check out the markets.
Maxing out Def is fine, but not to the point of short changing yourself in other areas.

Stamina - I always get by 20, any character.
Charged Brawl may not be as exciting as Lightning Rod, but it isn't useless like plain Brawl.

4 slots to primary defense powers works out pretty good.

Should be interesting when finished!

Can you give us the hash text so we can copy and paste into Mids?

Just curious!

Operating System (Vista, XP, OS X version): XP and Unix
User Client (Mac, PC, Linux): PC
Server:Virtue
Zone: Mercy Isle
Character name: Happens to all characters
Time: problem existed since I14 beta
Location: planet earth
Archetype: All, Any
Level: All, Any
Power: Alternating Current
Mission: Any MA mission
Mission Contact: Statesman
Map: maps/Missions/Tech/Tech_60/Tech_60_Layout_01_01.txt
Mission ID #:all applicable
Bug Description:

Edit Published Mission -> change enemy group in Ambush/Ally/Patrol/whatever -> Republish
Test Published Mission -> enemy group is unchanged

Operating System (Vista, XP, OS X version): XP and Unix
User Client (Mac, PC, Linux): PC
Server:Virtue
Zone: Mercy Isle
Character name: Happens to all characters
Time: problem existed since I14 beta
Location: planet earth
Archetype: All, Any
Level: All, Any
Power: Alternating Current
Mission: Any MA mission
Mission Contact: Statesman
Map: maps/Missions/Tech/Tech_60/Tech_60_Layout_01_01.txt
Mission ID #:all applicable
Bug Description:

I have this large, completely linear map.
Front/Middle/Back means absolutely nothing.
All maps I have tried have this problem.

This makes it utterly impossible to tell a linear story.

Attempted solutions:
Have tried using triggered ambushes to tell a linear story, but it is far too limited.
Expanding the number of missions completely breaks the story.

It is impossible to tell my story in a way that makes any sense.

It has become apparent the AI has some serious flaws.

-an AV (standard OR custom) stands there, picking its nose for 5 minutes waiting for a long-recharge power to recharge. Encounter becomes trivial.
-a custom mob uses NO debuffs whatsoever
-a custom mob spams a certain power whenever it becomes available
-an ally on defensive will aggro the entire map if one person has tactics on

Even if the AI were simplified to:
-every second, pick a random power out of BOTH powersets to use
Then it wouldn't fight so idiotically.

Please let us pick individual powers for custom mobs.
Balance it any way you feel like, but please give us choice.

<Does a bunch of TFs with the most capable character>
<Transfers finished IOs through base storage>

So what's all this I hear about "Untradeable Merits"?

Most experience is with Broadsword / Shield scrapper.

Subjective:
The total defense seems to operate below a certain "Effectiveness Threshold", at least against Unyielding-level mobs.
I grouped with a FF defender this one time, and felt near Unstoppable.
I grouped with a sonic defender, and while survived, there were several anxious moments per mission.
The rest of time felt unhappily similar to a blaster, all that debuff def adds up.

Objective:
I don't mind click mez protection, but its Animation is huge PITA.
Long-[censored] activation time, and it always puts your weapon away.
All these delays add up during a dangerous fight.
Wish they'd swap the animation with one of the shield toggles.

Endurance issues...
During many fights, hit 0 end with only half the mobs defeated, then all toggles drop. With maxed out stamina!
Would gladly trade long-recharge OWTS for WP Quick Recovery.

"Just roll a WP scrapper" isn't the solution I'm looking for, this set should be just as viable even if it is defense based.

Pulse Rifle Blasters!!
Radiation Blast Blasters!!
Sonic Masterminds!!
Ice Sword Circle for Ice Tankers!!

Well, a man can dream at least.

Anyone know if we can make Co-op zone missions?

Like most posters, am hoping for allowing higher level chars to pact, but anyway..
Just like to give a huge THANKS for allowing xp awarded far more frequently! This was a massive improvement!

tanks without heals = shield tanks.

If you deleted the heal component from say, Hoarfrost, so that it only granted +HP, it would be a pretty crippled power.

Yet OneWithTheShield and Frostwork do this very thing, making them also... Let's just say, not nearly effective as they could be.
There is no +regen in the set to fall back on.

These buffs all have long recharge times on them, it's not like people are going to be spamming them like they were empaths.

So, people get Aid Self, which I'm told the designers also do not like us doing.

I don't know what the designers are trying to say with all this.
Ice armor is great vs cold attacks, Fiery aura is great vs fire attacks, Willpower is great against psionic, but there doesn't seem to be any particular attack or enemy that shields are good against.

It seems rational to desire to survive most fights as an armored melee, I cannot see why Shields are so undesired to make survivable.

Event: Disaster: Low Health.
Ice Armor: Hibernate: Good chance of surviving disaster
Shield Defense: Use inspirations

Maybe they really should make shields a costume option or pool power, an ice shield would look pretty nice on an ice/ice tanker.

Game tells me to report this on Beta Forums.

(System is running XP, 2 gigs ram, running windowed mode on a PCI-Express ATI card.)
Had been doing extensive base editing for several hours, when graphics started to corrupt.
Graphical chaos seemed to originate from the shoulder cape and had the same color as shoulder cape.
Throught I'd try zoning to fix it, but got the "Debug" & "Debug Remotely" message box instead.
Ctrl-Alt-Del reported CoH as using 1.434 gigs of memory.
Clipboard:
------------

Assertion failed

Program: E:\City of Heroes\CityOfHeroes.exe
Time: Sat Dec 27 11:44:16 AM
Process ID: 3728
File: c:\src\utilitieslib\utils\superassert.c
Line: 1857
Expression: 0

Error Message: CRT abort() called

ERROR: swDumpStackToBuffer - timeout (258) waiting for dumpHeap is NOT corrupted
Last windows SYSTEM error: Not enough storage is available to process this command.

Please make it possible to choose a recipe lower than our level.
Ex. invention sets for when we exemp down for all these TFs.

30 slots seems unusually small compared to personal character storage and the amount of stuff we can store on Wentworths.
Please give us more slots per rack, and lower the max number of racks per base if you have to.