Knuck

I had a similar problem, and it seemed like it was related to the elevators. I encountered it in the bank and the police station in the Peregrine Island Safeguard mission.

In the bank, I aggroed the looters in the lobby, ran past them, and took the elevator to the vault. The lobby guys followed me to the elevator, but apparently got stuck there.

After I defeated the boss and minion in the vault and returned downstairs, there were multiple Arachnos maces hovering in the air around the elevator. No targetable foes were visible, but I was able to Footstomp them to death. (The maces never went away. They just kept hovering.) So they were still tangible and on the map, but not visible, mobile, or targetable.

In the police station, I rescued the 3 Awakened PBs. They followed me to the elevator to the cells, but I arrived on the 2nd floor alone. When I returned to the first floor, I could see PB aura fx around the elevator entrance, but no visible or targetable allies.

You picked a great secondary with Storm. Tornado and Hurricane can drive people nuts! Plus, Gravity Control's immobilizes don't prevent knockback. Advantage: you!

Other recommendations:

Group Fly. People HATE Group Fly. Turn it on when it's not even sightly helpful. Fun!

Grant Invisibility. Ask who *doesn't* want invis (Tanks almost never do) then make sure to always invis them. Hilarious!

Jump Kick and/or Flurry. These won't actually harass other players, but you can imagine them shaking their heads every time you use these silly, inefficient attacks. Cool!

Whirlwind. You'll already have Hurricane's PBAoE repel effect (making Whirlwind annoying *and* inefficient), but this also lets you spin around like an idiot! Awesome!

Go get 'em!

I think the benefits for the City Traveler badge are great, but ultimately, the elimination of travel pool tier 1 prereqs is an idea so good that it should be made universal. Give it to everyone. Not because some of us deserve it or don't or because some of us earned it or didn't, but because it's just a nice change to the game.

It seems like CoH was originally designed (IMHO) to slow down your leveling progress as much as possible, presumably so you'd have to pay for an extra month or 2 before you reached the level cap. That's why you had to walk everywhere for 14 levels, why the original contacts were so reluctant to give you their cell phone numbers, why so few zones had stations for both the green *and* yellow lines (haven't the folks in the Paragon City Transportation Dept ever heard of a transfer point?), why Founders Falls didn't even have a train station. That's why there were no map icons for the stores. Jeez, remember the old Paragon Dance Party? The original entrance in Steel Canyon (also not shown on the map) was very close to the yellow line, which allowed players to use the PDP as a shortcut to Talos. When the devs realized we were using it as a shortcut, THEY MOVED THE ENTRANCE! God forbid, we'd shave off a few minutes of our commuting time.

That's no longer the CoH design philosophy. The devs now know that many of us are here not because we're still struggling to hit the level cap, but because we love the game and want to keep playing it over and over, and that making it less of a drag is the best way to keep us playing. Now they give us temp travel powers, base teleporters, Ourobouros, new train stations in Founders and Skyway, and contacts who hand out their phone numbers like candy. They give us patrol xp, double xp weekends, and a smoother leveling curve. And it's great! We aren't all hitting 50 that much faster and leaving the game in droves. We're hitting 50 faster but staying anyway because it's more fun.

Anyway, it's a great reward, and I'm looking forward to getting it; but I think it'd be great if we just made it a change to travel pools instead of a vet reward. It seems consistent with the current "less hassle" philosophy and doesn't break the game.

Of course, this means they'd need to come up with another cool 5-year vet reward, but I can live with that...

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Abusing Dark Astoria

Speaking of Peacebringers and nova form - Dark Astoria. Unfortunately, I haven't been hunting here since ED. However, pre-ED, it was possible to two-shot +1 minions with 5 damage SOs in Dark Astoria, without buildup. Since buildup is WORTH more than 2 SOs, it stands to reason you can still do it WITH build up. Large packs of Banished Pantheon husks is what you want - they are VULNERABLE to Energy damage. So you build up, nova scatter, nova detonate, and then fly off to the next group. You'll also pick up a ton of inspirations, and you can use 3 reds in lieu of buildup. (And of course, they last longer)


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That's a good tip. Perez Park is another great place to find targets with a vulnerability to energy early in the game. Those herds of Skulls (lvl 7-10 or 11, I think) on the streets are very tasty to a young Bright Nova. Everyone levels pretty quickly from 6-10 anyway, but wiping out packs of Skulls makes those levels fly by.

[Don't try it with your Warshade though: Skulls resist negative energy.]

I'm not sure I understand why Rage needs to be changed.

Before I3, I tended to use Rage only in tight spots: in a big battle with mezzing/holding foes, I'd plant myself with US, provoke up a big swarm of bad guys, hit Rage, and go to town on them. If the fight went on too long, stacked stuns/mezzes sometimes got through when Rage dropped, and I was vulnerable for a few seconds.

I almost never died because of this. Maybe once or twice. Sure I often came close, but I almost always snapped out of stun in time to hit DP and get my defs back up. My secret? I've slotted RPD 6, REl 5, REn 5, and Tough Hide (aka P90210 or whatever) 2 times. As a result, I'm really hard to kill, even without toggles. This protection came at a cost: I spent slots that could have gone to other powers. I chose to sacrifice offense for defense.

That's a choice every tank makes to some extent. Do you skip Resist Elements so you can get another attack and slot that up? There's no wrong answer. With (say) Footstomp, you'll ultimately kill fatser than me (I only have 4 attacks, and only 3 are slotted), but I might live through some fights that would kill you. Seems it all evens out in the end: you get xp faster, I get less debt.

Anyway, with the new version of Unyielding on Live, I still haven't been stunned by Rage when I had UY up, but now I can use Rage more often. I run around with UY and when Rage wears off, I know there's a window of time where I'm more likely to get mezzed. It's riskier, but it's no big deal. If there are too many mezzing foes, I just use Rage less often. I still get to use it more than pre-I3, and there's still a drawback to it. What's not to love?

Granted, it must be more of a pain to use Rage before UY is up to its full status protection, but that just puts you in the same boat with all those inv tanks that never took US before I3. Heck, I had US and still used Rage without it. Sometimes you needed to be mobile, and you just had to hope the fight would end before you went dizzy. It's a game: there should be some risk to it. Otherwise, what's the fun part?

I don't like the proposed End drop for Rage, because I can't protect myself from it. Yeah, I can have a CaB ready, but my toggles WILL drop for sure. Granted, I'll probably get them back up without dying (thanks passive defenses!), but it's guaranteed to happen. With the stun effect and UY, there's a decent chance I can get through it without any side effects, but there's always some risk. I like it that way: Rage has some risk, but Unstop has a definite drawback. Why give us 2 powers that have major penalities? Isn't one major and 1 minor penalty enough?