Lady_Cobra

This sounds like an interesting idea - I would certainly be interested in making a character for this if you get it up and running.

I must warn though that I am a not an experienced RP'er, so I may have a steep learning curve ahead!

Just one question for clarity. It has been indicated that the politics part will be toned down a bit, but I just want to be sure that it would not be a problem compared to your basic idea to create a character who was perhaps a bit disgruntled or desillusioned (spelling?) with the old regime - perhaps having even been "forced" into doing some "heroic" acts against the character's own beliefs.

Would something along those lines be okay?

Hi Mace,

Mystery Girl X would be very interested in some RP on Defiant. She is already VG'ed, but hopefully that would not prevent her from meeting up with your group to RP.

I also managed to miss out on the first 8 pages of this thread until now, but would just like to voice my personal opinion in favour of COV's "(role)playability" for a basically "not so evil" or perhaps even "heroic" character.

For some reason, all my COV characters have backstories that seem to show that they are not truly evil. IMO there are a lot of concepts that could make COV an interesting setting for such characters, such as e.g. a character being framed for a crime he/she did not commit and working behind enemy lines to clear their name or perhaps an undercover hero.

In response to the "Godmode" objection, I agree with DavidG's point that such "undercover" heroes would certainly not be wise to run about flaunting their actual heroic affiliation, and thus antagonise other (truly villainous) characters.

Needless to say, in playing such characters you will as mentioned by others end up having to "bend" a few mission texts here and there and look at the defeating of foes as "arresting" more than killing, and some missions will have to be "refused" IC for ethical reasons and then done OOC, but this certainly hasn't ruined my fun or my immersion in any of these characters.

Actually, to me it has almost been as if these characters have had an extra dimension because of the way their environment conflicts with their true motivations and because of the many moral and ethical dilemma they have to face more or less constantly.

Finally, the idea of a more "greyish" as opposed to black or white character could seem to fit in well with the upcoming ability to switch sides (something I more or less expect all my COV characters to end up doing!)

I can certainly understand that others may have a different view, but I have just had so much fun playing closet-heroic villains that I wanted to comment.

My comments may not be all that relevant to you as my main is a MA/Regen and not built for PVP, but to comment on the two that I have any experience with:

I have taken stamina. Actually, my stalker works quite well as a "squishy" scrapper. She has solo'ed with relative ease most of the way to 39 and can comfortably deal with most types of foes even up to 3-5 white or yellow ones at the same time as long as you keep an eye on your health-bar and keep in mind that once it starts to drop for real, you have much less time to react (run, pop an inspiration, or activate dull pain, hasten or whatever) than a scrapper would have. I haven't tried PVP, so this is just PVE (villainous) based experience. But if you want to have the fall-back scrapper option of your stalker, stamina could be a good thing.

As for slotting of attack powers, I have done the same as you with your brute, i.e. 2 ACC, 3 Damage and 1 Recharge - that works pretty well for the most. The AS does fail sometimes and can make things interesting quite quickly, but mostly it works fine. For PVP you might want to sacrifice the recharge for another accuracy but that's just speculation on my part.

Thanks for this tip - I will try it out

My main COV character is a level 39 MA/Regen stalker.

Of all foes, the Longbow Ballista Elite Bosses give her the most trouble. On a good day, she can defeat a -1 level one, but she has also managed to be embarassingly defeated one-on-one by a -2 level one.

Currently, she has a mission where she has to defeat an even level (39) Elite boss Ballista. The EB cannot one-shot her but he can certainly kill her in two blows, and has done so several times now.

I have tried to use a "safe" tactic of "Focus Chi - AS - Placate - wait for recharge of all three - repeat" and I think that this in theory could just beat his regen rate and bring him down, albeit after a long time. However, each time I manage to get him down to around 70-80 % health, he comes up with some kind of powerful and very quick double strike after the AS, which two-shots and kills my toon before she can activate placate. This has happened 6 or 7 times now and I am slowly beginning to suspect that this may not be an optimal strategy

Does anyone have any experience with good tactics for solving this problem (apart from levelling or recruiting help; this is just to learn whether it can actually be done solo)?

I should say that I haven't taken "Moment of Glory" yet. Would that be an effective power against a Ballista EB?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or comments.