Knowmad

Happy Birthday Old Man!

Can you believe we've played this game more than 8 years?

So many Task Forces (literally thousands)!

From that very first 7 hour Positron in 2004 when only 2 of us remained at the end, wondering how in the world we managed to pull it off, to the very first LRSF with no Brutes or Corruptors, to the Master runs that succeeded as if by magic when they should have failed many times, to the Krazy Katies fighting a +7 Mary Macomber. Heck, we even fought GM class Shadow Cysts in the sewers at level 6. WTF were we thinking.

My global list is full of insane people who refuse to quit when the going gets impossible. The journey was uphill both ways and I loved it.

Happy Birthday Cass!

I'm going to make a new FF/NRG Defender, skip the tutorial for the first time ever, and upon arriving in Atlas Park:

Lvl 1 Defender LFT!

1/04/05: COH IT WELL BE GONE TO THE AMERICANS!!!!!!!

Forget trying to save the game, save the Prophet.

What's next, a big red ball in place of the Atlas statue? The Arcanaville of my dreams showing up in tights at my door in the fateful December of 2012 with the words: "Do you know exactly how bored I am right now?". Of course my response would be: "No, let's run the numbers".

Why not ad a group rez component to chronoshift, with the side effect of causing people rezzed this way to randomly phase shift or teleport around the current map for several minutes after being resurrected as they reintegrate into the time stream. There's also a very small chance that one or more dopplegangers will ambush the rezzed and their teammates.

The game needs more powers with overpowered capabilities and fun but devastating side effects. In fact, an entire buff/debuff set composed of nothing but these sorts of powers would be awesome. Imagine an ally heal that almost always tops off hp, but has a small chance to reduce your hp and stop all healing and regen for a short time. And what about a power that summons a giant monster to fight for you that every 10 seconds has a chance to turn hostile? Or a pbaoe fortitude that stacks, but also aggros and enrages (buffs) everything within a large radius?

The list of fun possibilities is endless

I want all 24 of my powers to be freezing rain. If they stacked and had defender numbers, I could solo AVs.

On second thought make them all toggles. With cardiac and a miracle that's doable.

I have level 50 FF/NRG, FF/ARCH and FF/Beam. Beam is the best because of its -regen (225%). It allows you to contribute a significant debuff on hard targets. With cutting beam and disintegrate spread, you have more AOE than you'd expect. Add the Defender AT set and now you have healing to go along with your defense.

Energy Blast is so underrated, what a fun set.

I have the 2010 13" Air with the NVidia 230m I think and it runs COH really well on standard settings at 1440x900 native resolution. Z will have to let us know how the 2011 Air performs with integrated graphics. I'm hoping I can stick with future generations of the Air as it's by far the best computer I've ever owned. So fast, quiet, light, and fun. No wonder it has sold so well.

Beast/Poison sounds good.

I like how a few key powers in TA are auto hit and flash arrow even has an unresitable debuff. My only real wishes for the set are to add some small -regen to acid arrow and to make more of the TA debuffs unresistable, maybe poison gas and acid.

Force Fields with Mace Mastery for Powerboost. Your crazy Ninjas will be invincible.

1:16 to boot? That's sloooow My 2010 MacBook Air 2.13 C2D with 256GB SSD cold boots to the desktop in 15 seconds or less. It's frickin insane. It also plays COH well at recommended settings (25-35 fps) and more than 50fps on performance settings. I've had it over a year now and it is by far the best computer I've ever owned. Light, fast, quiet, and reliable.

Beam rifle fills a major weakness of FF in that it provides 2 crucial debuffs helpful in downing hard targets (-regen and -res). You can apply a 225% regen debuff with disintegrate and single shot, and a 20% resistance debuff with piercing beam. Force Fields is astoundingly good now that the small bubbles are AOE. Powerboosted bubbles can provide AN ENTIRE LEAGUE with 38% defense, toxic resistance, and protection from endurance drain in just 3 clicks lasting 4 minutes.

My now level 50 FF/Beamer also has massive personal defense (50%+ range and aoe, 38% melee) with Dispersion, Maneuvers, Weave, Hover, the 3% steadfast unique, and set bonuses to Range and AOE defense from Red Fortune, Serendipity, Blessing of the Zephyr, Gaussian's, Detonation, and Ruin.

A true tank mage without purple or pvp sets, and pre-incarnate. As someone with 7 level 50 force fielders of various sorts, FF/Beam is tops in terms of fun, power, and thematic synergy. If you are a shield connoisseur like me, it's a can't miss combo.

The bigger the team size, the simpler the objectives need to be. This is a basic tenant of mob mechanics.

Incarnate content should consist of large leagues of mostly brainless button mashing and/or solo/small team, story driven intricate puzzlers. The best incarnate content would be large, easily understandable league events that are very difficult if some league members haven't run the solo/small team content as an independent prelude.

Anything else will not be fun for most people, even if the rewards are great.

Zombies should die fairly easily. But they should have a chance to get back up again and again. And the "rezzers" shouldn't prevent you from re-summoning the regular 1st gen zombies. Each rezzed zombie should have a chance to change sides and attack you or spread the vazhilok plague to friends and foes alike.

Make zombies fearsome.

Don't even get me started on all the cool things that could be done with the other primaries. Robots assembling themselves into Malta Titans, Mercs gaining buffs with each kill until they go all 5th column Super Soldier. Dying ninjas should grant other nearby Ninja group invis, speed boost, and foresight buffs, so that the last Ninja is the toughest to kill. The bruiser should be able to summon his own gang war, and Demons should be able to possess enemies with their attacks (confuse with a different graphic - red glowing eyes). Possessed enemies should be able to spread the effect potentially turning entire hordes into demon slaves.

MMs have so much potential and none of what I described requires mucking about with their AI. Pets need to become far more dangerous to both their enemies and masters alike.

An underrated use for Force Bubble is to draw aggro to the bubbler and away from the team , especially when you lack a (live) tanker. This used to be real tricky since drawing aggro to yourself meant you needed to PFF quickly or die valiantly trying to save the team, who usually watched in fascination as you used a power they'd never seen before and couldn't quite comprehend before dying themselves soon after the bubbler bit it.

But with the advent of inherent fitness, it becomes much easier to fit Weave into a FF build and put yourself at or above the defense cap to all positions. This is of course SITUATIONAL, but I have used it to great effect against ambushes and other bad situations. Toggle on FB and fly around the room launching repulsion bombs. Then toggle it off and nuke the incoming horde. Then pop a blue, PFF, conserve power and you're back in the game.

The ability to protect yourself almost as much as your teammates also means that FINALLY the bubbler can survive melee and actually grant meleers the defense from Dispersion without relying on a constant stream of purples to survive.

But Force Fields is boring, underrated, and full of weird powers in search of situations. Right?

I DON'T CARE. I LOVE IT. And with i21, pair it with the potent combo of regen debuffs (225%), res debuffs (20%), and an all important toggle saving, crashless nuke from Beam Rifle and you get an unlikely Tank Mage from 1-50+. FF/Beam - the new FOTM.

Everyone picks Earth/*, so I'll pick Electric/Time - 2 great pbaoe toggles, several location drops, several holds.

It should be a control beast.