Lord Mayhem

Yeah Amber my Mind Link has similar numbers now at L42, frankenslotted with 4 L40-ish Def/Rech enhs in it, though at 50 I'll be slotting 3 Membranes and a LotG 7.5 in it.

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I would suggest that if you're aiming to get Mind Link perma without Hasten, — which is do-able alongside softcapping positionals — the kind of recharge speed you can get sucks your end down PDQ, so you'll be wanting probably the full monty of Numina's + Reg/ + Rec, Miracle +Rec and the Performance Shifter +End chance into Stamina, too.

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According to Mids my planned build has perma-Hasten with 5.1secs overlap (192.5% global rchg in total), so yeah Mind Link is perma (28.1secs overlap) and takes care of softcapping ranged/area def (melee is softcapped without it). That much +rchg should allow me to skip Swipe and (hopefully) still have a viable single target melee attack chain with just Follow Up, Slash, Lunge & Strike - I guess I'll see if my calculations are correct in 8 levels when I slot all the IOs I've bought this last few weeks into my widow.

It's a ludicrous build in both inf cost and power, but I haven't purpled any of my 13 L50s except for the very cheap Confuse/Sleep sets in my dom, so felt I owed myself at least one overpowered soloer for taking on some ridiculous challenges. And I knew by L35 that the Widow playstyle suited me (like my Claw/WP scrapper, but with more variety, survivability and damage), so I wanted to make the best of it. Depending how well it goes I may start saving up inf again to give the same treatment to my Bane, Warshade, Arch/En Blaster and/or Fire/Rad Corruptor (at least the two heroes would be much cheaper to do, with WW prices being so much lower than the BM).

And yeah I know about the end issues - my friend has a L50 Night Widow that I've duo'd my Bane/Crab with a lot, so I've seen it first hand, and experienced it with my L42 widow. According to Mids my planned widow build will actually have more endurance recovery than my L50 /WP scrapper & brute (which have Stamina + QR), with much lower toggle costs, so I'm hoping it will be enough.

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I've sunk a melon-farming fortune into my Widow, and regret nothing, not even the eye-watering cost of 5 x LOTG 7.5%s, purples, etc etc.

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I don't farm, so it took me a couple of months to raise the inf for this build, but spending 2.3 billion inf in a few weeks has bothered me less than I thought it would - it's not like it's real money The build would have cost a lot more at "buy it now" prices, but I like bargains and patience pays off, plus I already had some of the uniques from reward rolls and other uniques and HOs in base storage from past drops. Most of the expense was getting 20 purples, 5 from each of the 4 attack sets.

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Oh, and personally I found lvling a Widow to 24 murder. Soldier, not to bad, blaster like. Widow? Broken scrapper.

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I found Soldier worse than Widow to 24 (I hated that boring rifle), but I can't say either was that much fun at that stage - just felt like treading water until you could start playing your proper archetype.

I prefer my Bane build over my Crab build at 50, but I'm glad I levelled as a Crab (when I exemp down I don't feel the Bane plays as well as the Crab, even though I picked powers in the order I felt I would have if levelling as a Bane). My Night Widow is at 40 so far (no experience with Fortunata yet) and despite harsher endurance issues than Bane/Crab (and worse than Fortunata too according to my friend) it's so awesome in terms of dps and survivability (Bane still wins on burst damage, Crab on area damage, and both on debuffing though) that I'm already investing massively in IOs to make her godlike once I hit L47/50 - the first archetype I've felt tempted to do that with.

As said, Night Widow is like a Claw/SR scrapper/stalker but can have some blaster-ish elements, I'd say Bane is a stalker/corruptor hybrid (at least the way I've built mine), Crab is a tanker/corruptor with pets, and not sure if Fortunata will be more like my Mind/Psi dom or a Psy/MM blaster (but having seen my friend's L50 Fortunata in action I'd say a bit of both but leaning towards the latter).

HOs can be useful for Dark Servant - I plan to use them on my Dark/Sonic Defender and my Rad/Dark Corruptor at 50, and to re-slot my MM's Dark Servant with them (he currently uses Hold and ToHitDebuff IO sets in it to softcap -ToHit and Rchg, and get Hold Duration and Accuracy quite high). Mix Lysosomes (Acc, DefDebuff, ToHitDebuff), Golgis (Heal, End), Endoplasms (Acc, Mez) or maybe Peroxisomes (Dmg, Mez) to taste.

The Endoplasms/Peroxisomes can be particularly nice as they will affect both Fluffy's Petrifying Gaze and Tenebrous Tentacles. Though personally I lean towards Lysosomes as it buffs the ToHitDebuff on their Chill of the Night aura, their Darkest Night and even their Twilight Grasp - on top of your own debuffs that's a lot of -ToHit on an AV. If you solo more then you may prefer focusing on +mez or +heal as it will probably help you more often.

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Oh it's Ok. He only got away with the kudos. I still have this large ticking thing....

*hugs ticking thing*

You shall be know as Mr Tick-tock.

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*steps away from Carni*

I just remembered I have to be somewhere else...

*runs away, covering his ears*

I'm rather glad I booby-trapped the kudos with a rather large explosive device - can't have anyone getting kudos on an Internet forum - it wouldn't be right!

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Standoff pretty much summed it up

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Kind of you to say so, although it was actually Carni that gave all the details and binds.

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You're right! I must have had a temporary brain-finger disconnect. Sorry Carni - I have edited my post to give proper credit where credit's due.

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Desperately NEED CoX replacment huh!
Yes I feel like that sometimes too

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Don't unsubscribe - cutting off your CoX is probably unhealthy.

I feel that CoX just needs an expansion to make everyone happy.

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my Warshade would have been unplayable for me without all of the binds I wrote for it and, especially for those who can't be bothered to use binds, I can understand why so many dislike Kheldians - they're like Marmite - love 'em or hate 'em

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Ok, I'll bite. What kind of binds/macros have you written and why? Whats the inherent problem with warshades that needs fixing?

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Carni pretty much summed it up - I use keybind files written in notepad as well - whenever I change forms not only does my bottom hotbar change (to one with all of the attacks/controls specific to whichever form I'm switching to) but a whole new keybind file loads for that form. So basically I have 3 rotating bindfiles, one for "humanoid" form, one for "lobster" and one for "squiddy".

I have form-changes bound to the shoulder buttons of my mouse - nearest button changes to nova (or to human form if I'm already in nova), and the furthest button does same thing but for dwarf form - as both buttons toggle-off the current form it means you can also switch from dwarf to nova (or vice versa) with a single click, and as it's on the mouse and not the keyboard I can easily do that whilst moving.

The bindfiles also set teleporting in human and dwarf forms to Alt-leftclick - both teleports have different names (Shadow Step and Black Dwarf Step) so you simply couldn't do this on a single key normally without using bindfiles, because you can only have one "powexec_name" command in a single key's bind.

It all makes switching forms very natural, fluid, instinctive, and makes warshades a lot of fun to play. You can do fun stuff like teleporting mid-fight as a dwarf into mid-air and switching to nova as you do so, so when the teleport completes you're in nova and ready to rain death down on the spawn you were stood in a moment ago. It makes double-miring easy to do as well (if not as effective as it used to be).

Without keybinds, especially the hotbar switching, you'd simply have so many powers on your hotbar (for all 3 forms) that it would be horribly cluttered and you'd need to use either mouse-clicks (slow) or finger-stretching acrobatics to use all of the powers when you needed them. It just wouldn't work as well at all.

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Which doesn't quite happen in CoX PvE as there is nothing that requires the fattest loot to beat and old SOs haven't become worthless trash and should still see you able to make a good build.

The market is generally for things people want - not things that are needed to still play the game.

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True, but I bet there's still a lot of CoH/V players who convince themselves they need IOs when really they just want them. Personally I know I'd find it hard to go back to SOs/DOs/TOs, having got used to characters that can still have lots of rchg and endrdx slotted despite not gimping themselves on acc and dam.

The problem is that once the playerbase have voted with their feet and left it's too late to get most of them back whatever the dev team does, because most will go straight into another MMO and likely give their loyalty to that.

When I think of all the MMOs I've played for more than 6 months then left, with half of them I made myself a vague promise that I'd go back one day, see what had changed and try to recapture what I first loved about it.

The only time I have ever have returned to an MMO I quit was to this game, and that was because I missed it, as there were no other MMOs around quite like it (fluid combat system, fast travel, totally customisable character appearance, build a character how you want instead of being and looking the same as everyone else). Give it a couple of months and that may no longer be the case...

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*also at sky*
Yes maybe we could get shot of this Damocles sword thats hanging about and back to playing

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Don't look at it! You'll make it fall!

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Anyway, all that aside: The upshot of it was that because the act of earning Inf is also the same act that creates goods (salvage and recipes), the CoH market prices will tend to rise over time - it's just the rate at which it happens that is affected by farmers. Farming accelerates the rate at which influence is created in the game world (and there are very few ways in which influence is removed once it is gained), and accelerates the overall trend of increasing prices.

The only way around this (apparently, and I'm paraphrasing, of course) is for artificial injection of goods onto the market (causing a market glut and therefore driving prices down) or to stabilise the amount of influence in the market by creating more of the so-called "influence-sinks".

Anyway, I think this is a fascinating subject, and I might go nerdy with it and start to actually study it.

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Mudflation - it's pretty much unavoidable in MMOs with economy-based reward systems. I experienced rather extreme examples in EverQuest over the course of 3-4 expansions - the constant increases in gear power made previous loot almost worthless trash, but the constant influx of items and platinum/gold into the economy made the currency worth less and less. Then the gold farmers moved in and wrecked most of the economy so that you could barely afford anything except old trash (which wasn't good enough to let you do the newer content) without buying plat or farming it up.

The injection of goods can be done by increasing drop rates, but I can't see the Devs doing that tbh. They don't want everyone to have easy access to all IOs so we have things to strive for - just like HO'd-out builds were in the pre-I9 game, so purpled-out builds are now (and the PvP IOs I guess). ALthough purpled-out builds seem somewhat more attainable now than fully HO'd builds were before because of the market.

The worst thing about CoH's market economies is the fact the Devs have so much effect upon them - every issue recently has turned the prices upside down (I13's merits and I14's AE tickets especially) and you have to acclimatise yourself to the new prices all over again.

Maybe Paragon Studies need to hire an economist like EVE Online has

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Oh and since you have a 50 already how about a Warshade?

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Oh yes! Warshades are utterly fantastic too - I enjoyed levelling mine so much. At higher levels a tri-form warshade is like a floating blaster with the survivability of a tanker. Peacebringer... nah, I'd miss the double-miring, Eclipse, Dark Extraction and Stygian Circle too much.

But Kheldians aren't for everyone - my Warshade would have been unplayable for me without all of the binds I wrote for it and, especially for those who can't be bothered to use binds, I can understand why so many dislike Kheldians - they're like Marmite - love 'em or hate 'em

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It is a great little thread with some brilliant suggestions. The only downside is that I now have the thread title running around my head to the tune of "The perfect drug" by NIN...which is quite disturbing...and it wont go away.

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Hehe yeah I had the same thought - fortunately I'm a NIN fan so I just put The Perfect Drug on the hifi and it soon cured me of that thought

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That's the odd thing on a mish i did there was a number of defendable objects and when i attacked the surrounding spawn i got ambushed, there was also destroyable objects with guards that didn't spawn ambushes, one rescue and one ally.
Could i do something similar on a small map?

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Defendable objects always spawn a single ambush that will come running to attack the object itself (and only attack you if you're near it, but if the object to defend is a mission objective you fail the mission and get kicked out if it gets destroyed), but they are only triggered when the spawn around the object is defeated, iirc.

These don't count against the 3 actual ambushes that is the current ambush limit.

But you have to bear in mind that every ambush and patrol and battle actually take up spawn spots from things that would have normally spawned in the map anyway - put in enough of them and your map won't have any static spawns.

On a small map you could always just have a single clicky as an objective, then add a patrol or battle detail to spawn off the clicky and put in a really high number like 20 of them and also make them a mission objective. Then if the clicky is at the back you enter to an empty map, find the clicky (not hard if the map is small), click it and suddenly all of those battles/patrols spawn and you have to defeat all of them for mission complete.

I think this is kinda how the Devs do the Faultline dam mission where it's empty when you enter, but after you click the clicky (and go through the cut scene) suddenly the map is full of spawns.

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B H M A: Badge Hunter Mission Arc - from what I can see on the US fora, this was created for the badge hunters to identify each others' arcs and five-star them (for the star-related MA badges). It doesn't seem to have worked as intended, per the first post in this thread.

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It is worrying - I wish they hadn't put in badges connected to ratings, or even for producing content, at all. Ouroboros was the badge-heavy issue - I was looking forward to I14 helping to bring story-telling and creativity back to the fore, instead of badging and farming

As much as I love being able to make my own missions I'm starting to wish that I14 had just been a normal issue with Dev-created content.

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Cool. Thanks guys. I had a feeling that was the case. Empath/Kinetics FTW!

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Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think the buff/debuff and armour sets even show up in the critter creator until after you've picked a more offensive primary. I think it's to stop you making mobs that are helpless because they can't do any damage (and/or to stop you making buff/buff characters that can just function as personal buffbots).

Best option for a low damage ally who won't steal too much xp is probably to give them a control set as a primary on standard, then the debuff/buff set as secondary on extreme.

The Devs said they were increasing the ambush limit to 6, but it hasn't happened yet.

Something I encountered in an MA mission I did, which was quite clever, was that the final room was huge (it was the Coralax cave map that Calystix is always on in-game) but had no mobs spawned in it except the final boss spawn.

When the boss was defeated the creator had obviously set something like a dozen battles to spawn off that boss death at the "back" of the map, because suddenly about a hundred longbow and other mobs (iirc it was Freakshow) spawned all at once in the final room and started fighting each other and aggroing on my team - it was just chaos - total pandemonium - I loved it!

You might be able to do something like that. I certainly intend to try using that mechanic on my third arc (once I can muster enough enthusiasm to use the MA again without worrying my work will become invalidated by the Devs removing stuff from the MA that is being farmed by others).

As the other posters have said it's extremely unlikely the MA system would be pulled.

As for worrying about characters being deleted - if it happens then it happens, but I don't think the Devs will be too draconian - they'll just want to make examples of the most persistent offenders.

The main thing is that if you enjoy the gameplay then its worth sticking around - if you don't then it's not. If losing your character worries you that much then just make a new character and play that instead.

Just get another month perhaps and see how it goes - you can't really predict what will happen in MMOs these days. I've played MMOs where the entire gameplay style changed overnight with a single patch (EQ2) and my friend played one where overnight he effectively lost a character he'd played for years (SWG). The Devs here have made sweeping changes, but they haven't been quite as bad as that yet.

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I agree with all of the above-quoted, but I think the best way for the Devs to control the rate at which we level is to put a cap on it - make the cap high enough that only farmers and powerlevellers will ever hit it, but cap it nonetheless.

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I was thinking about that a couple of days ago, and it seemed like it could be quite a tricky thing to do.

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Very much. Not to repeat myself, but there's an easier solution, completely automated. Track rewards/time from MA missions. Adjust rewards for each mission based on that ratio.

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Yeah that could work very well too.

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Blasters have no need to ever get into melee, and they are very squishy but very shooty. Lots of fun, just watch that health bar. Oh and the Endurance. Apart from when you're watching the carnage.

Glass cannons all the way!

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Blasters are awesome - my Archery/Energy was tons of fun all the way to 50 (and had no end issues at all, as Archery is very end-light) and I'm enjoying my Energy/MM too.

Honestly Blasters are the one archetype I really miss not having when I play CoV (which admittedly is most of the time)

Yeah another vote for brutes - they're awesome - I've taken four to L50 so far, levelling another now (Mace/SR at L28) and just made another new one last week. You can't really go too far wrong whichever powersets you pick, tbh - sure, some are more powerful than others, but no brute is really weak.

If you like defenders then corruptors may be something to try as at least you'll be broadly familiar with the sets, though they do play very differently (admittedly I adore corruptors, but have struggled to find a defender I like, though I adore blasters too and a corruptor is like a defender-ish blaster). My Fire/Rad and Ice/Storm were fairly awesome all the way to 50 and my friend's Sonic/Kin was good too (if you wanted to solo a Kin then Sonic's cone sleep helps immensely), but if you want a safe and very awesome combo I hear that Fire/Dark is extremely good for PvE (and having played both of those sets to 50 I just know it would be) - I recently made a Rad/Dark though, as I've already played Fire/ to 50, but Rad/ still has some very good area damage.

Dominators can be very good too - I know they get a lot of bad press, but after struggling to 50 on my Mind/Psi, playing my Earth/Fire to L36 has been a night and day difference - Earth/ gives you excellent control and /Fire gives you great damage - quite a powerful combination. Plant/Fire, or Earth/ or Plant/ with /Elec, would probably work well too, as /Elec gets a damage buff power like /Fire does (and wouldn't you know it, I've made a Plant/Elec - just not played it yet).

Stalkers can be very fun and powerful as well, but again they get bad press. Arguably Ninjitsu is the best secondary as it has a heal, good defences, and doesn't take ages to get good like /SR. For primary Dark melee is said to be the best single-target, but I'm having immense fun with Elec/Nin - having so much area damage on a stalker is rare and certainly helps take down whole spawns quickly.

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Apparently they retain about 90% of their playerbase, in terms of pure account numbers, which is about 140k at the last count. Can't remember where I read that 90% figure, but I think it was from a Posi post/interview.

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I have heard retention is higher here than is usual in MMOs, and I can well believe it, though I don't recall a percentage being pinned on it, or how much faith we could put in it being more than PR /shrug

I used to use that MMOGchart website myself, but I'm not sure how accurate their numbers are, what with many of them being guesstimates or from industry insiders (who may have an axe to grind with their employer). Of course if you gain approximately the same number of new subscribers per month as you lose then that chart won't tell you much, even if the figures are accurate.

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Just a quick note.
I think people tend to forget that people posting on the boards aren't representative of the playerbase.
The fact you post on those boards doesn't promote you in any way, it just mean you have more free time for that.

The vast majority don't even read the boards, don't yell or cry "DOOM" on every patch, don't spend their time trying to find any weakness in the game...
the vast majority just play and enjoy the game how it is.

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Yep very true. I played the original EverQuest when it launched, with a group of real life friends and acquaintances that grew to about a dozen of us, and I was the only one who read the Dev tracker and looked at the news on the official website - then we all joined a guild which at its high point had around 50 members, and there were only a few of us that even bothered to read patch notes.

I doubt things are that different in other MMOs, including this one.

And if I hadn't been signed off work ill lately I'd just be an occasional lurker here myself, who read Dev tracker every day or two, but only perhaps browsed general discussion and the popular culture sections (and maybe bases and now MA forum) once or twice a week. That has been my usual state of being since I've been a player here.

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There are some excellent ideas here, but a lot of them will require an upgrade to the game engine.

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Yeah I appreciate that - and I am hoping that the Devs are working on a new engine for the game, or even a sequel - which would explain why their vastly increased Dev team is producing less content for us than 15 people on a lower budget did (but then a completely new MMO or other game could explain that too, either set in the CoH universe or not - hey that's an idea, maybe they're making an offline single-player game set in the CoH universe as an additional revenue stream and a way to bring more people to the MMO).

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Whilst I will be playing CO on release, it would be fantastic if the PS devs came back with a response that will be able to rival CO - and I mean soon ... not 'soon'.

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I had little interest in CO until recently as I didn't like the graphics or the lack of playable villains, but in light of recent events in CoH/V and Positron's announcement I think I will at least try CO on release.