Kong_Fuu

So, the best solution still seems to be to have someone kite LR and keep him away from the team while you deal with the towers. That's what our group did (well, a Stone tank in Granite just kept taunting him in the corner). The towers have 30k HP and take a little while to knock down, but they don't have any direct attacks.

You'll also need someone to distract the flyer and the big spawns it drops.

I'd wager that if you don't take the towers down then LR is nigh-unbeatable. I mean he makes a big deal about them in his cutscene and everything.

Also the flyer respawns, almost instantly in fact. I don't even think the pieces from the old flyer were gone before the new one spawned, and we took it down twice for good measure (one of our players DCed right before it went down the first time and didn't get the badge).

I will admit that we had a high level of competence on my team, which helps a lot in running a smooth TF.

Ran it today with a decent team:

1. Emp/Something Defender
2. Rad/Something Defender
3. Fire/Rad Controller
4. MA/SR scrapper
5. MA/Regen Scrapper
6. DM/DA Scrapper
7. Stone/Stone Tank
8. Something/Something Scrapper

There were a handful of deaths but overall it wasn't too bad. I didn't even pull out my Shivan, although I considered it with when we were fighting the four Lackeys at once. Mako was annoying because he kept running around like crazy, and Black Scorpion was pretty good at two shotting the melee guys, but we ground through them. The Flyer wasn't bad at all, and that hero is my first character to earn the badge. :/

For Recluse himself, we had the tank pull him in a corner and taunt while the rest of the team beat up the towers. One thing I didn't understand is why the repair guys were only minions and were level 45. I was one shotting them with Dragon's Tail (and humerously making them fly in every direction) every time they teleported in, no threat at all.

Recluse himself wasn't a huge problem, although by the end of the fight it was hard to get close enough to actually hit him with all of the Bane Spiders forming a human shield around him.

We actually had a little bit of trouble with the two named bosses in the Respec mission. One of them had a rather nasty endo drain power that did a number on my scrapper. In the future I don't think it will be quite as bad as we will know what to expect.

The Flyer respawns a little too quick I think when you kill it. The pieces from the old flyer aren't even dissolved yet and a new one is flying around.

That's actually a pretty major buff to Smoke Grenade. I mean there is actually a reason to take the power now. Back when you had to make a to-hit with the debuff, it was basically useless as a perception debuff because as soon as a single mob "sees" you all perception calculations go out the window and every mob just knows where you are until you get well out of range.

Now it could be used to help set up a toe-bomb perhaps (although it's easier to just take Superspeed IMHO). At least it has some purpose in life again.

I was running a Safeguard mission last night with my Dark Defender who had Superspeed + Shadowfall. It didn't seem to help against the Malta, they were tossing grenades and sapping me from long range. In fact I survived a lot of them because the grenades spent so long in the air that I was well outside of their (admittedly huge) aggro range by the time it got to me. I think it's just an issue with Safeguard missions.

Interestingly enough the Carnies didn't seem to be spotting me thorough my stealth, so maybe it only affects regular street mobs, not "causing mayhem!" mobs?

It sounds to me like Statesman "gets it" W.R.T. the problems with bases, at least if his last post is any indication. How to fix it is another problem entirely, but I'm sure looking through this thread has given him some ideas.

Before all of you /Devices (sigh: /Gadgets) blasters get all worked up, he did say "very minor". My guess is that you'll all go: "That's it?!? What about fixing the problems with the set?" Once the change is announced.

My guess it that it will be: Caltrops fixed to tick 20% faster or something else that nobody asked for.

I'm reasonably certain it won't be one of:

1. Giving targeting drone an inherent damage boost to make up for the fact that ED destroyed its purpose in life.
2. Fixing Trip Mines so that they actually explode when stepped on.
3. Making Smoke Grenade not unhide you, defeating its entire purpose
4. Making Time Bomb remote detonatable (say by damage?)
5. Tweaking Autoturret in some way to make it useful or at least worth the time and endo it takes to set up

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I have no idea how they'd implement a permissions box.

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The irony is that there already is one. It's on the SG window. You can choose who to allow into your base. There is currently no 'Everyone' option.

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder why.

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I'll tell you why: Because the list you would get when you click on the base portal would be huge. There would have to be a seperate button where you could search for string/total prestige value/value of the base or something and pare down the results to something manageable.

That said, I'd love to be able to wander around random bases on the server to see what everyone is up to. I'm sure there are tons of beautiful bases that would be fun to wander around. The explorer in me says: Do It! The realist in me says: that's a very low priority for the devs.

Also, fix the "teammates can enter your base" option already. It hasn't worked for months and when it did it was quite useful.

Actually, the PvP aspect of bases won't be around until at least I8, probably later. Apparently problems with the IoP trial have pushed it off for yet another issue.

I think a reasonable workaround for Transfusion would be to move the heal to the very beginning of the animation, basically closing down the window between the start of the attack and the time when the mob still has to be alive for the heal to work. It does make the power slightly more powerful than it would otherwise be, but I think that's a reasonable compromise to make for a defect in your game engine that would otherwise be very difficult to fix.

What if Transfusion was turned into a very small AoE that also worked on corpses even if you can't target them? There might be an issue with stacking the heals if you do that though.

Bonus points if you make it look like it was made from the parts of several clockwork.

Assumption? That was pretty explicit, the bonuses are larger than they were in Beta.

Granted, they could still be small (what was a 1% damage boost in beta might be a 2% boost now, a whopping 100% improvement!), but they are apparently better than they were.

The point is that you have to run the trial again if you want the bonus. Think of it as something else about bases you have to upkeep.

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I thought all that stuff was grey to you

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Of course, but he is playing a Dom after all.

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Faultline - Do you know, I don't even recall where this beacon is, I haven't used this teleporter in so long? About the only use I see for this zone is accursed Vazhilok hunts and a quick shortcut to Bloody Bay if I'm somewhere like Founder's Falls or PI.

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The beacon drops you right off near the (never completed) TF door. For those of you that don't know, that's the very bottom of the map at the far end from the door. As a shortcut to BB it's not very good. In fact it's not very good for anything. Right now it's the one beacon that our SG has not bothered installing--we only have one teleport room and with the Raid porter + 3 basic porters the room is already full.

That's also because you're the one trying to sell it to the playerbase (not that we have much choice on the matter to begin with...). A good salesman never calls a turd a turd.

What happened to Burn was a nerf IMHO. Burn was reduced to a power that is barely even worth taking anymore (and believe me, I've tried, it's not like I can rely on Ice Melee for damage if Burn doesn't work out...)

Burn was overpowered for sure, but it was reduced to the mostly useless (It feels like I'm using nerf fire now!) category, mostly through the hit to the recharge and ED.

Other powers have been reduced in effectiveness wtihout going all the way to a Nerf IMHO. The toned down Fearsome Stare on Dark Defenders is still a usable power, but not overpowered like it used to be.

Effectively this means that the buffs are just considerably more epensive than what you'd expect because you need to stack several of them to make them worthwhile. Since it already takes quite a long time to get enough salvage for even a single buff, this has put empowerment stations back in the useless category.

Worse, they can _still_ be overpowering. It just takes longer to build up the salvage to do it. All it means is that they're useless for normal play.

One thing I noticed: The guide lists Practiced Brawler as having resistance to Repel effects. I don't know about the villian version, but the Scrapper version has 0 Repel resistance (I couldn't even touch a Hurricane or Force Bubble user).

Nice screenshot, but you really need to shrink it down. I think I could almost make out a character in there.

To reinforce another poster's point, Soul Transfer is a ton of fun in PvP, especially when you get ganked by a big team of stalkers all coordinating their ASes. Nothing like dying and then suddenly coming back AND dropping all of their toggles and disorienting them long enough to get Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom up. Sometimes I even saved my buildup for that after-death killing spree.

<-- Apparently "villian enough" requires you not to have a job, life, friends, etc...

Ah well, since I have a job I don't need a free year of CoH anyway.

Not being able to respec seems like a minor point to me. It's not like the Hero pools where there's occasionally some variety between them. These were pretty much the same set of pools copied over to each patron and given different graphics/slight tweaks.

Usually the problem isn't with a whole spawn disappearing, it's when that Night widow boss ran away during battle and nobody noticed. Then she comes back around the corner behind your team and tosses a smoke grenade. Nobody notices and suddenly there are 4 groups aggroed on you.

Worse, sometimes on pick up groups you'll have people freaking out "OMG! Invisible mobs are attacking me! My client is bugged! (Character logging out in 30...29...(dead)...28)

A smoke cloud around your character's head would be great too. In fact I'd like to see that for the player version of SG, since it's kinda hard to tell who it hit as it is now.

Yeah, but who carefully scans their iconbar after every fight?

The text component would help. I still like the idea of putting some smoke effects in front of the camera though.

My only complaint is that it can be hard to tell when you're affected by the smoke grenade. You can still see your teammates, so half of the time it looks like you just cleared the spawn and it's time to move on.

Of course then you run through three different spawn looking for the next spawn and wonder why your health is suddenly dropping.

I wish the world would get "smokey" or something when you're under the influcene of SG just so you know to be careful.

What's up with that "Self Destruct" power on all of the pets? Is that just how the devs make the pet go away after a set period of time, or is it actually an explosion like the icon seems to indicate?

Your numbers are suspicious. Why is the toxic damage so much higher on the second minion attack?

Anyway, assuming the lethal component is supposed to be the same, the base armor provides 10.7% resistance, which slotted up would be 17.1% resistance, which doesn't exactly wow me. If I had other resistance powers to stack with it I might take it, but alone it's not buying you much for the endo cost.