Live_Wyre

First off, sorry if I broke some kind of forum rule for posting all the pictures instead of links...I was just trying to put it all in one place so you could compare.

Widow defense numbers

Widow no mind link

Widow slotting

Fortunata defense numbers

Fortunata slotting

Bane defense

Bane Build

I included both builds for my widow, because the fortunata's mind link is not slotted for recharge also, so that changes things a little but still stacks nicely. Had I done that to my widow, with double maneuvers, that would be his numbers with 30ish secs. of downtime for mindlink. Just hasten on a simple build llike this gives me 3 full minutes of that defense in a pinch. I dropped hasten once I got Elude though. If you are stacking with a bane's maneuvers then you should be good to go on both fronts.

I would say hasten won't matter, once you get alot of attacks. My build is up to 42. You will also see that I don't have any accuracies in my widow build, but I do have both his offensive accuracy tools and he only solo's +1's and +2's. The Fort version is a team character, so I want to make sure that version hits...period. I will say that hasten on a -->widow<-- with minimal IO frankenslots give you Elude-level defense for 3 minutes(back to back mindlink) when you want it. If you have the money, you can slot sets for recharge bonuses and become even more rediculous. My widow also has elude, just for giggles.

I say stack as much of the other stuff as you can and you can fight harder and harder enemies and still have a relatively easy time with them. 60% damage+buildup+crit=someone having a bad day! I will fix my bane build when I get a chance, because I want maneuvers for that build too, so that it will be somewhat more sturdy like the Crab version of him.

Also, I will note that I bought the ninja pack just for ninja run and don't use travel. Before then, I used the Grandville jetpack.

I am not a powergamer, but I do like to be good at what I do, so take this build with a grain of salt. But, I think it shows what a regular build can possibly look like without a lot of IO's, so you can imagine the rest, full sets, +recharge, purples, etc. Sorry if the thoughts are all over the place, hopped up on Redbull and still trying to get the thoughts together with the photos.

I would change Dimension Shift in Gravity to make it shift teammates instead of enemies, but only slightly. It could half-phase them for 5-10 seconds, decreasing all damage from enemies, while allowing them to still attack, kinda like the Carnies phaseshift and still mess you up. The recharge would be 1-2 minutes, unaffected by recharge boosts, so not overpowering.

I wouldn't care which powers you picked, as long as you had a somewhat team build. No one truly knows your slotting, they just see a bubble, or fire, or ice, or green numbers. They're not gonna say, "Oh, he/she isn't purpled out. Kick!" But if you got a bubbler and you don't see 2 bubbles, or 1 bubble and a reasonable replacement power that takes it's place(i.e. not team tp), then something is up. I never kick because my in-game life isn't that dramatic, but I would ask you why. Then you would say, "Oh, this is my solo build." And then I would say, "Oh, just wondering." and proceed to punching people in the face again. I get more bodies to beat up and you get to have fun--win, win!

My new pet peeve is my friend that plays with me. We made shield characters to play together and I IO'ed them both to maximize the duo. Basically, as long as we are together, granting cover, we are at the "soft cap" to all positional.

Problem is, he still plays like his Gung ho blaster and goes where he wants, and then when he is in the red, he wonders why. I keep telling him, just stay fairly close and between the defense and decimating anything that is around, we are unkillable. I just wish he would stay semi-close...but he won't, sadly.

Here are my picks and reasons.

Atlas - Yellow Line fairly close - Hop to steel for University access - Hollows and Perez access
Talos - Green Line close - access to "green line zones" - also access to Skyway
Crey's - easy access for that series
Boomtown - No one ever goes there, but when they do it sucks
Peregrine - to avoid the Talos to Peregrine trek
Faultline - I do those arcs most of the time with new guys

And then I use my base's other two slots to be interchangeable to what I need at the moment. It's just me and a friend so he never cares if I change them. I have all beacons so whatever I need I switch out to. One is usually the Hollows, for low level toons. And also Striga stays up alot for the Wedding Band and War Wolf arcs. I use the Wentworth's dayjob, Pocket D teleport, Mission teleporter, and Ouroboros Portal to fill in any other transportation gaps.

There was a way to not make them spawn as normal groups by right clicking them in the edit character screen. I don't know the exact problem and the way the map looks other than what you have said, but you may want to try that. Are they spawning together in every group, on a team, solo, what? Is it only once during the map, counting towards the "defeat *Big Boss*" count? Mine were spawning as if they were just the boss from the group and someone told me about the right click thing. You may wanna try that and report back here if it continues, to provide a better scenario.

I use all those tools as someone would use thier cliche "healer". If a team is doing badly, someone always says, "Want me to get my healer?" When a team is doing good and a tank is tanking well, I say "Want me to get my fire blaster, to speed this up?" It is just that way with me, because I like not dying every group. If I unleash and don't kill them, they kill me, on a bad team. That's just me though.

I'm gonna say that an Xpress 200 isn't good enough. Someone will probably correct me and say how it will work under circumstances, but it seems like a poor choice to me. It also depends on how much RAM you have more than how much physical memory (188Gig). Are you using an older Laptop? You need to give the RAM, Video memory(dedicated or not), and stuff like that. People like using COH helper from http://home.roadrunner.com/~dasloth/CoH/CoHHelper.html to show others on the boards. That's a start. Someone with more technical knowledge may be able to help you more.

Here's how you fix it. Give them domination...the old one, as Rodion said. Increase damage, give them mez protection and longer mezzes. So, in a pinch, a defender can actually defend better, by killing faster, fearing or holding key enemies or maintain high endurance toggles. My two cents. Not worth much, but you need it for sales tax .

If you have two accounts it would not show up either. It happened to me. I thought they were just messing AE up with all the trying to nerf farms, so I just let it be. It was actually because I did not unlock the extras on my second account, so if I logged in with it, something new was invalid. And likewise(stupid me), when I logged and something was invalid, I would replace it with something cool...that had not been unlocked on the other account and get invalid again. Finally I caught on and unlocked everything for both.

Umm, yeah, "Father knows best"! That front side bus would edge it out in most stuff, because the only real draw I saw in the extremes was indeed the overclocking ability. They were just easier, for "extreme gamers", supposedly. Like I said before, with the graphics, it does come down to the money gap, and 370 Euros(?) does seem a bit more for the overkill of overkill. It's like if someone gave you a big bowl of icecream, and then dumped pure sugar on it. Sure, it's sweeter, but does ANYTHING need to be that sweet?!

The quad core depends on if the game in question uses all 4. That's my understanding. I have a Q6600 in my desktop and it screams. It does EVERYTHING on my computer fast...but... In gaming(CoH), it is just above average, because City of Heroes doesn't use all 4. My *computer is using all 4, so background applications don't slow the game down, but it is not actually applying all 4 to the game, as far as I know. The extreme line of processors is supposedly the cream of the crop. If the game can use all 4 cores or if you're just preparing for games that do(like me), then go quad. If not, get the extreme.


Graphics-wise, SLI 9800GT should be better...but(<---note the but again!)...if the SLI is not supported or doesn't really get applied correctly, then it's worse than the one 260. I am rolling with two GTX 260's in my desktop, so I don't care if the SLI works, I'm good. If it's not enough, I upgrade, but only Crysis really kills anything past a 9800GTX. In a Laptop you don't really get the choice to upgrade if the SLI doesn't suit your games. Plus as far as I know, SLI means more power, desktop or laptop. Depending on plugged in or not, it will kill your battery fast. Personally, I would just go 260 and be good, or if you can find a 280, 285, or 295 mobile, then one of those.

Hope I was at least a little help in shedding some light on what you may/may not already know. Someone with more technical knowledge will definitely come. I only speak from experience. I had 1 9800gt, then went to 2, then to 1 gtx 260, then to 2. Generally my 260 was better, because SLI was having issues. They may have been fixed by now with better drivers.

First let me say, I am a farmer of convenience...meaning if there is something on tv and I can mindlessly push buttons, I will. This double xp let me down. I logged in on my second account to finish off a level and hit it in like 5 minutes. That's when I knew it had happened...double xp was applied to AE. I didn't touch the game the whole weekend.

It's pretty sad because due to my hectic schedule, I will usually log on to do crap stuff like change a costume, but thanks to that, I didn't touch it at all. Architect is getting to the point of outrageous. I still like the stories that I do find there, but when I found out double xp was applied to it, it became no fun. And that's really aweful cuz it doesn't take much for me to have fun. I am not knocking AE because the idea is good, it's just the implementation is flawed. I'm not gonna rant on, but that's my two cents.

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Web Grenade needs..something. Unlike most immobs, it does no damage. Increased range, duration, or a % chance for +1 magnitude would be nice to offset the lack of damage.

[/ QUOTE ] It needs to slow recharge(don't know if it does), since you can't attack very well if you are snared in a web.

Don't know invulnerable brutes, but I have a tank with invulnerable and it is pretty durable. Just gotta remember that your strength comes from being surrounded to pick up the defense from invincibility. Some tanks/brutes are VERY mobile and that is a killer for invulnerable against the exotic damage.

As for energy, I have stopped playing pretty much everything I had with enerrgy melee. It is just too single target with not enough of anything else going on. It doesn't have to be an AoE monster for me, but I gotta be able to make some noise(footstomp), throw something(hurl/hurl boulder), or something. Even dark has like siphoning going on. I just need something to break the monotony of punch, punch, punch. You may enjoy it for the same reasons I hate it, but I have stopped a tank, brute, stalker and even my Ice/energy blaster. It just wasn't my thing, but hopefully this sheds even a glimpse into the set.

I just got a microsoft wireless keyboard 6000 v3.0 and wireless laser mouse 6000 v2.0 combo. I believe it was like 70 bucks on the base, but here is one on newegg. It comes with a thumb-drive sized transmitter, pairs together right out of the box and both items have battery indicators on them. The software is ok also but nothing really fancy. There are 5 "favorite" buttons at the top in addition to standard media controls, "open browser" favorite, my documents favorite, sidebar favorite(Vista), calculator button, my pictures button, and zoom buttons right on the keyboard. Through the software, you can assign the mouse buttons as pretty much anything also, to include macros and more "open this program" buttons.

It's pretty good so far. The only gripe I have is the function buttons are a little small for my tastes but I am getting used to them. Also, the transmitter goes into a slot on the bottom of the mouse for transport. All-in-all, a good deal to me. Of course there is better, but this is one that I just picked up spur of the moment and is actually pretty good.

I want a tier 9 like Zero uses in X-Men Origins:Wolverine. If you don't know it by the name that I am totally gonna make up for it(Shoot Out)...It's the tier nine where you take down a whole army without a scratch on you.

--+15% defense
--inferno level damage
--Endurance crash with HUGE red letters flashing on the screen..."Reload..Reload" like those old arcade shooters.
--Kick [censored] gun play like the movie...but it's really just a 60 ft 90 degree cone

Wishful thinking, but if we are gonna just speculate and make up stuff, it should be good stuff.

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Also, I was wondering about a power called "Speed Loader". Where after you click it, it boosts the speed of your attacks for a while.


[/ QUOTE ] That's included in Aim for this set, to make it different from other sets. It's gonna be called Headshot. It's gonna have standard aim bonuses, but 20% recharge for the 10 seconds and 10% chance to crit for the shot. Again, wishful thinking.

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Eliminate AE xp? That sounds like a damn good idea actually after the numerous fixes and changes the Dev's have implemented that are really having no deterring effect on the problem. Remove xp and rewards and turn the MA into a purely content-driven aspect? Harsh yes...but at this point sugar-coating and coddling are getting people no where fast.

[/ QUOTE ]They may as well make Architect a stand-alone builder just for the user then. I don't farm or anything specifically for xp, and I don't really care about xp rates... I do care if I get xp at all though, and I am sure I am not the only player like that. If I get 500 instead of 5000 per enemy, so what, as long as I get my 500. The system is broken, but taking out all rewards is not going to help it.

When I am looking for a serious team, I look for people of appropriate levels in appropriate zones first. A level 20+ really shouldn't be in atlas that long, unless they are doing AE... After that I look for my level in ANY zone other than Atlas. Lastly I look to the tried and true Peregrine. At least you know they are probably hunting AVs or something, because it is no longer more economical to farm in Peregrine, unless going for purples.

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whats the global rech needed for ML to be perma on a night widow, how bout a fortunata?

[/ QUOTE ]My widow *doesn't* have perma mindlink and I just use elude for a travel power...

I made an Arc and just recently ran it on a team of 4. Instead of my target boss being at the back only, he was all over the place in normal spawns. I had anticipated this happening, I thought, and created another boss for my custom group. Oddly enough, the other boss was only in 3 groups if I recall correctly. Any tips on how to make my custom boss be only at the back of a mission as he is supposed to?

Also, what is the best map to make 4 allies spawn as close to the beginning of a mission as possible?

If you have not clicked under the veteran tab and hit "claim respec" it is not showing anywhere. If you click it and have a trial respec, they should co-exist(don't quote me). but for the vet ones, you definitely have to click them to claim them.

Umm, so yeah...thanks. I can finally publish my Arc, the way I envisioned. Characters have mostly only the powers I want them to have. I am able to have my main as an AV without ticking 120+ damage because of his lightning field. You guys have done a top-notch job. I am sure there are improvements that can be made, but what you have done is a huge step in the right direction. For the first time using Architect, I was able to say "yeah, that's it", instead of "ARGGGH!!" Thank you Devs.

If anyone wants to check it out(self-plug ), check out Arc 242185 "Project Miner: Origins".

Fire will definitely hold its own, and devices is icing on the cake when it gets higher. I say give it a go, unless you just can't stand it. There are some things you grow to love and some playstyles you never will. First and foremost, fire is one of the ultimate blasters. Devices(to me) is one of the ultimate fun sets as far as being cool. It's not necessarily the best, but it's fun. I have never played one, but I have a traps MM and they are similar. I like having the ability to set people up while other stuff is going on around me. I can only imagine as a fire blaster, that "other stuff" will be people dying. try to follow through to about 28 or so and if you don't like it, delete. I don't delete much but when a character is deserving to me...it really is deserving.

It's a good debuff ad can repel the things that hurt you most. Like anything though, if you don't plan on using it, get rid of it. I have a storm controller, so it's not really the same, but that's my 2 cents on the actual use of the power.