Laughsalot

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Sorry heroside

Try Broadsword/Katana Regen Scrapper with a Cold or Forcefield Defender or Controller. The buffs on the scrapper will make him super survivable. Regen gets its self-heal and endurance powers early. Combined with the buffs of the shields and controls or attacks from the second character and the scrapper can flip out and go super crazy right from the start. Katana and Broadsword both get an attack at level 8 that adds lots of melee/lethal defense as well for even more survivability. Plus its a big sword. So it hurts people.

Two Dark/Ice Defenders. These guys will be relatively complicated but super powerful and controller-ish.

Dark has Tar Patch, Darkest Night and Twilight Grasp early. From two of you these three will make you incredibly survivable. Enemies will be slowed, weak, and have trouble hitting you. Ice attacks do great single target damage, have a slow component and at level 16 you both get Freeze ray.

Eventually you can have debuffs of many kinds, fears, holds and other powers along with machine-gun like Ice blasts.

Dark might be too complicated for your son but pairing a Dark with a melee character can be great too

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm liking the dark/ice defender idea. If I understand correctly, we would be able to hold bosses with both of us using freeze ray? Could you(or anyone for that matter) recommend a good build for single target boss/av hunting?

Thanks much.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's one way you could do it. or you could use Petrifying Gaze, which is a ST hold in the Dark set. Using Dark/Ice you have the potential of having 3 ST holds each with Petrifying Gaze, Freeze Ray, and Bitter Freeze Ray. You also get Fearsome Stare which is a great way to blunt the alpha strikes of spawns.

The thing you have to decide though is how important AV killing is for your duo. Two Dark/Ice Defenders could probably take an AV down eventually, but it could take a long time to do it. They would be able to have no trouble with Bosses, and normal group spawns.

If killing AVs is important, then it's hard to go past Radiation, Kinetics, or Cold.

So what does it have an effect on then?

Yes seriously.

If I was taking about effectiveness I would have said that RttC is 1/4 less effective than Invincibility because that has a Mag of 4, and RttC has a Mag of 3.

I never said it was 90% less effective? I said it was over 90% less, meaning the taunt duration lasts 1.25 seconds for RttC, and 13 seconds for Invincible.

Of course that's taking base numbers. If you were to slot both with taunt enhancements the numbers would change even more.

[ QUOTE ]
All "at the cost of" having slightly less of a taunt duration in it's aura

[/ QUOTE ]

Invincibility has a taunt duration of what? I think it's 13 seconds, while RttC has a duration of 1.25 seconds.

In what universe is over 90% less, slightly less?

[ QUOTE ]
I've seen several threads re door-camping and all of the problems that it seems to bring. IMHO the devs meant for players to actually travel about for this even yes? Make it like real life ToT where you're hitting each door once and then moving on? Otherwise it seems like almost free exps and goodies to me.

All this being the case, why not make the timer on each door 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds? Eliminates door-camping and makes it feel more like RL ToT.

Just my 2 Inf...still a good event and the costumes ARE a big tease (the PPD Hardsuit looks SOOOOOOOOO good on my powered-armor characters!).

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, now that would be a real fun event. Running from door to door only to see 'You cannot enter' every time you click on a door.

No thanks, thirty seconds is bad enough.

I like the event as always, it's fun.

The only complaint I have is the number of costumes that is needed to get the 3 badges. 50 seems quite excessive to me, and I'm averaging 4+ hours to get them. That's too long for a short duration event.

I also seem to notice that I get more costume drops solo, than when teamed, so I've been refusing ToT teams, and just doing it solo.

If the amount of costumes needed remains at 50, then perhaps it can be coded so that if anyone on a team gets a costume, then everyone gets credit for it on their costume badge counters. That would speed the process up some, and would actually make it desireable to team, rather than solo.

[ QUOTE ]
Unyielding is the autotaunt in Invuln set.

[/ QUOTE ]

No it isn't, unyielding gives a DEF debuff, small amounts of RES, and protection to status effects. It's not an aura, and it won't help you aggro anything... well other than to help keep you alive long enough to hit things.

Invincibility is the Invuln Auto-Taunt aura, gotten at level 18 for Tanks, level 28 for Brutes and Scrappers.

Sure, no problem. As you're not likely to change your mind, and neither am I, then we can just agree to disagree. I don't like the PPPs at all really, both in implementatiom and concept, so I won't be taking them more than likely. Like the OP, I find the track taken by the Devs to be disappointing, and that is why I posted my agreement with him in this thread. Others will like the more structured environment, so for them they'll be happy. I just don't fit into that catagory, and I accept that.

[ QUOTE ]
That would make a great tragedy.

Some of the best stories have the protagonist lose, y'know.

And we are villains...

Trapped by one's own lust for power is a perfectly plausible and workable turn of events if what one is really interested in is story.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, I understand all this... I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make.

Some people are posting right now that they can fit PPPs into their character concept by saying that they aren't really joining Arachnos, but are instead saying they're sticking it to the man, and betraying their patrons, or giving them lip service, to receive their power so they can take them down later with it. That's all well and good, but then lets say that I7 does hit Test, and we discover that avenue isn't viable because of the way the story arc plays out (not saying it will, or it won't, it's just an example). Suddenly those people who were going to justify it like this can't, and start complaining. Meanwhile someone else says, "Neato, I like that idea, trapped by my own greed, here I come."

It works for some, and doesn't work for others. APPs however, don't really come with this pitfall attached. You take them, or you don't, and if you do take them you are free to come up with any story you like to have them. This might not necessarily be the case with PPPs though, because by their very nature they have a story constructed around them, and the player might not have any real control over it. We'll just have to wait and see.

[ QUOTE ]
Look at comic books. A classic theme is the ol' villain doublecross. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. So your brute "buddied" up and swore "allegiance" to Mako. Little did Mako know you only did so to get into his good graces to steal a little of his coralax power and eventually overthrow him and Lord Recluse. Or perhaps you did so only temporarily to try to learn the secrets of Sharkhead Isle once and for all. Or maybe you were mauled by a shark (or perhaps you prevented shark mauling by kissing it on the snout like Abigail from Duck Tales) as a child and want to use your fear to unlock your sense of vengence on the heroes, ala Batman using his fear of bats to his advantage.

[/ QUOTE ]

And again we won't know if that's possible until we know what's involved in the story arc.

While what you say is entirely possible, it might not be. Sure some Brute might go into the whole thing with the idea of taking Mako's power, and then using it against him, only to discover that as he gets further and further along in the story that option doesn't exist. What if at the end of the story arc, when you swear allegiance to your patron, the story pretty much spells it out that given the pact you make you can't attack your patron? Or what if you are told that if you try to use your spirit sharks on Mako, they'll turn around and have a feeding frenzy on you, rather than the other way around?

Of course this is all speculation, and until the content of the story arcs are known we don't really know if we will have the option of using our imaginations or not. That's the only point that I'm trying to make. I can come up with plenty of RP reasons to fit PPPs into my characters stories if I wanted to, the question is, will the game world allow me to, given the story driven nature of the PPPs on offer?

[ QUOTE ]
This isn't about imagination. This is about perceived control of a character. A good roleplayer can roleplay anything. I'm not even a roleplayer and I can think of a million reasons why my corruptor suddenly has Ghost Widow's powers. Maybe he did align with her, to get closer to taking down Lord Recluse. Maybe he two-timed her and stole a rare artifact from her lair during a conversation that gave him some of her powers. Maybe as he grew in power, repeated exposure to the Night Widows have given him a kind of supernatural radiation poisioning.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure you can think of a million reasons as to why, but will they fit? Unlike the APPs, which are more extensions of a hero and are left to the imagination of the player, PPPs come from a Patron. The only information we have to go by are what bits and pieces are given in interviews, and even those are vague, but we do know that the story arcs tie directly into the backstory of the patron giving them, and that you supposedly swear allegiance to a patron to get them. Until we know how the story arcs play out, and what is involved in earning these PPPs an RPer can't make any real judgements. We'll just have to wait and see what actually happens in the story before we know if we get any leeway, or if what happens is already laid out, and the same for everyone.

[ QUOTE ]
There's a wide margin between swearing allegiance and becoming a toady. Allegiance does not equate to servility. Don't any of you work in any sort of hierarchy?

When I signed up for the Air Force, I took an oath to obey the President and all officers appointed over me. That doesn't mean that I spent all my time spreading rose petals in front of second lieutenants. It sure as hell doesn't mean that for guys like Marine Recon.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I've worked in many hierarchies, and those who impress the powers that be, and do what's required usually succeed, while those who buck the system don't.

Even with your example of the Airforce, while I'm sure you didn't drop rose petals at the officer's feet, I'm also pretty sure you didn't openly disrespect them, or be insolent in public unless they gave you permission to do so first. I'm also pretty sure they told you when you could work, and when you couldn't, when you could go on leave, and when you couldn't, what you could wear etc, etc, etc.

[ QUOTE ]
As for enforcement, if you're allowed to read behind the lines to make up magical methods of enforcing pacts, you're allowed to read behind the lines to do whatever you want; you just can't change the surface of it, but you can see the underlying motivations your way.

[/ QUOTE ]

As I said, such reading between the lines is all speculation at this point, and if, after finishing the story arc, the patron in question says, "Well done Evil Captain Nice, in reward for helping me with <blah> I bestow upon you the dark energies of the netherworld to do with as you see fit" then I will openly acknowledge I was wrong, and just think that this whole PPP system is even dumber than I do now. If on the other hand there is a big speil about swearing allegiance to said patron, and how once bestowed with their power there is no turning back, etc, well then, that's a different story altogether. In the end it will all be how it's handled within the text, and cutscenes, of the different story arcs...

And now to try and bring this back on topic, I pretty much agree with the OP. For all of my characters, their first, and foremost allegiance is to the villain group they are in, and not Arachnos. This is what is so deal breaking for me. If I was the leader of a VG there is no way I would have anyone in my organisation who had sworn allegiance to an Arachnos patron, it would just be too risky, I could never trust them, and even if they were just playing said patron along, I don't need the hassle of a traitor in my midst. If they can betray their patron, they can betray me, and so I just don't need them.

Of course, such a policy would be impossible to police in an existing VG, as I'm sure there will be players who want them, and I'm not such an RP/Character concept Nazi where I would limit such a choice to those who have chosen to join my VG, and served it well... which just goes back to wrecking the immersion factor for me, and is why these unrespecable, story driven PPP's don't work for me.

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe I just have a different view on Arachnos than you do, but it doesn't seem to me that Arachnos is commanding my every move. To me it seems more like a loose confederation of warlords than a really tight pyramidal structure, y'know? Arachnos seems like a completely fractured structure where branch #1 not only doesn't know what branch #2 is doing but also mounts actual assaults on branch #3. A person can move about inside that framework doing more or less whatever they want. Not to mention that a large number of the contacts aren't Arachnos at all.

It also seems to me that there's a pretty significant difference between taking a Patron and licking boots. People seem to be taking it as some kind of insult that a major figure in the organization would recognize them and grant them extra powers and they also seem to be taking it that means they'll be waxing the Patron's car every Saturday afternoon and picking up his coffee at Starbucks every weekday morning. You could just as easily take it that the Patron is afraid of what your character is becoming and is sucking up to you with gifts...

[/ QUOTE ]

Except in the interview with Matt Miller he said, and I'm paraphrasing here because I can't find the bloody link to the article...

We always liked the idea of characters gaining access to powers by swearing allegiance to a patron.

This doesn't sound like the story arcs are going to give you any wiggle room when it comes to saying you are pretending to join with them, but don't really mean it.

Most of the pools given are magical in origin, and if you don't think that these patrons won't have ways of enforcing those who they have embued with their power, then they are dumber lackeys of Recluse than I thought. Ever heard of demonic pacts? These patron powers certainly sound like they could be something similar, and given that one of the Dev's themselves said in an interview that you get these powers by swearing allegiance to one of the patrons, it sure does sound a lot like boot licking to me. What a patron give, no doubt a patron can also take away, and if someone did take the power and run, then I'm sure the patron would just strip the offending villain of the powers they bestowed.

Of course there is nothing in game to reflect any of this, except for whatever is written into the story arc, so for now this is all speculation. However, if the story arcs play out the way I suspect they will, it will end up with your character bound to a patron in some way, and no matter what your character says, mine will just laugh and tell you to go take your psych meds because you're obviously delusional.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand what it is that tanks want for PvP. Are you guys actually wanting to hold agro solo for another team of 8?

[/ QUOTE ]

What I want in PvP is for Primary powers to actually do something. I've done a lot of PvPing with my Tank lately, just to see how viable they are, and I find most of my time is spent turning toggles back on inbetween throwing out attacks. In fact, I end up most times just gobbling a few purple pills if I have them, and then turn my toggles back on once the villains my team is fighting either run away, or get defeated.

I don't mind needing a team to help me defeat other people because my damage sucks, but I do mind needing a team to keep me alive because three quarters of the time my toggles are knocked off.

No other AT has it's entire primary powerset negated so easily, and I'm quite sure if Tanker attacks suppressed offensive ATs ability to do damage for a certain period of time the screaming against it would be heard from now until doooooooomsday.

[ QUOTE ]
Thats solo. I don't see where the controller buffs you or debuffs them. I dont see where the blaster goes in and nukes etc.

I'm not picking on you... it's just that your example above is solo.

Right now if the tank goes in, taunt will probably miss... and everyone will just kill the controller, blaster, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

If a Tanker requires a PvP team that has buffers to keep him up because his toggles are suppressed/knocked off because his punchvoke has gained him too much attention, then what's the point of having a primary in the first place?

LordArkaine the more posts of yours I read, the more it’s made apparent to me that your views have little to no bearing on what the majority of MMO players believe, and for that I am rather grateful.

Your idea of what constitutes powerlevelling makes little to no sense at all. According to you, if a character is not within some sort of relative proximity to a fight, then they are gaining XP by doing nothing, and therefore shouldn’t be entitled to any XP. Sorry, but I find this rather ludicrous. If a group splits up to hunt, for whatever reason, be it to complete a ‘Defeat XXX’ mission, or just to optimise their XP, then they should be able to, and every member of the team should be rewarded for it. If all members of the team are hunting, and actively participating to attain the team’s goal, then they deserve to be rewarded for it, they’re all taking risks to some degree. There have been plenty of scenarios that have been given where it’s been shown team mates who are actively participating in fights, can be doing no damage, and get outside the XP range whilst DOING their JOB. For example (yet again):

An Emp or FF Defender/Controller who is using superspeed to travel between two subgroups of the same team 1200’ apart. It takes twelve seconds to travel that distance with SS (possibly longer if the terrain is not flat), and for six of those seconds the Def/Con is in the XP no-man’s-land. These support characters are doing their job, and doing it extremely well, but they are being penalised for being efficient. They are not lagging behind, they are not training or shopping, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. From what I can gather from your posts though, they aren’t contributing directly to either fight during this six-second gap, so they aren’t deserving of any reward.

And then there is this example:

There is a group of three, two of them are in the red zone of a map, and the other is in the orange zone. These two groups are far enough away to be out of each other’s XP range. The guy by himself is fighting, and earning XP for his kills only. On the other subgroup one guy is fighting, but the other player is doing nothing, he’s just following along far enough away to be out of harms way, but not contributing in any other way. After a while, all three join up, and the two who were fighting continue to defeat mobs, while the other guy does nothing except stay within range to get XP. He’s not contributing a thing, but still getting full credit for it. How is this XP range idea stopping him from leeching? It’s not, so it’s a flawed design. Now granted, again from reading your posts, I would suspect you would consider the guy doing nothing a mooch and ‘powerlevelling,’ but he is getting rewarded for doing nothing and still playing within the confines of the system.

And then there is this example from a Sky Raider Respec trial that I did with some friends:

There were three of us: an AR/Dev Blaster (me), a Fire/Fire Blaster, and an Emp/Dark Defender. The Fire Blaster, and Emp Defender would hang back in a designated safe spot, and I would go ahead cloaked. I would then snipe, and slug an engineer defeating it, and we would time it so that as the slug fired the Defender would TP me back to the group. Teleporters would then TP to us, allowing us to finish them off before the skiffs, and others arrived. This broke up the groups enough, that even with two squishies, the Defender could keep us alive. It was a great tactic to use, and it worked. The thing is, had the XP range been in effect the other two would never have gotten XP for the engineers I defeated, even though we were using extremely effective tactics. Not much of a net loss granted, but over the course of a Hero’s career these small losses here and there are going to add up to a very significant amount. One I find unacceptable considering what the XP range is being put in place to supposedly prevent.

[ QUOTE ]
As for my definition, I never gave one so stop assuming so much. I drew a direct comparison between standing a train and split killing. They are in essence the SAME.

[/ QUOTE ]

Whether you’re meaning to do it or not, you are implying definitions of things. Standing at a train station being powerlevelled, and splitting a team up to maximise your XP may in essence be the SAME thing in your opinion, but they definitely are not in mine, or a good deal of others. I see a definite distinction between the two, and this XP range solution is not a good one. Which is why I just say no to it. It’s crap, it should never go Live.

[ QUOTE ]
Conceptually nothing. These changes have no effect on your personal xp gain. A lagger left behind would drain your experience exactly as much as it does currently on live. Sure, the total team xp is lower, but who cares if the guy who decided shopping was more important doesn't get any xp? You're still getting the same xp as you do on Live. A person sitting in a team not doing anything is ALWAYS a drain on team xp, regardless of whether or not they themselves get any xp by it.

So this has no effect on your experience gain, only on the people who fall behind.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually I care, so there you go. We all have to buy and sell enhancements, and at some point we all have to AFK due to RL concerns, so it evens itself out. I don’t consider these people a drain on team XP because they’re getting it. The only time I care is if someone is truly leeching by not doing anything, and who conveniently unidles just long enough not to get auto-logged. Those players are easy to deal with though, you just boot them.

I don’t need some arbitrary piece of code to tell me when a team-mate is mooching thanks, I’m quite capable of working that out for myself. I’m also glad that of all the teams I’ve been on in CoH, I’ve never once ran into this selfish attitude.

This is still a bad work around, so it needs to be scrapped completely.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually as a tank it will affect your gameplay when you start getting lowbies asking you constantly to come herd wolves or to help them powerlevel. It will happen when you hit the 40's and start hanging about in Peregrine Island. Blasters, Tanks, Scrappers are all cursed with lowbies they don't know sending them random tells asking to be pl'd.

[/ QUOTE ]

As a Tank running around PI it doesn’t affect my gameplay one bit, because if I get a random /tell asking to be PLed I just ignore it. It doesn’t even slow me down. I don’t know how a piece of text appearing in a chatbox can cause a player the inability to move, use powers, or remember basic tactics to play the game, but apparently it can? I guess I must be naturally immune to the side effect of yellow text sent by strangers asking for PLs causing this gameplay affecting syndrome.

I’ll give props to you Statesman for recanting some of this inane proposal, but I’m not going to support any tweaks, or compromises to this concept. It needs to be thrown out completely. I’ve sat silently by, and lived with every other change that’s been made to try and curtail powerlevelling, but not this one. I’m getting tired of the changes that basically do nothing except impact my game play, while the ability to PL remains quite viable, and still easy to do.

Enough is enough, and I just hope a majority of the player-base is as tired as I am of these band-aid fixes that are worse than the cut they’re supposed to cover up. We’ve already had one instance of risk = no reward, when portal spawns were made to be worth no XP, but still earned you debt if you were defeated by them. We don’t need a similar approach here.

I’ve read other posts claiming that the Devs are going to do it anyway, so we might as well just get used to the fact, or take whatever compromise they’ll give us. I don’t believe this to be the case though. I know how this whole dance works, the Devs make a change that is really bad, and then when any compromise is made that lessens it, people are so relieved they are getting something back they’ll take whatever scraps are thrown their way and be thankful for it. We shouldn’t put up with it this time. This whole concept needs to be scrapped, thrown out, and forgotten about. Those out there that feel the same way about this should just say NO. Don't accept any compromises this time.