Lord Mayhem

Yeah I've no complaints over Jay's work lately (except that he needs to produce MORE costumes - MORE MORE MORE!!!!) - far better than most of the costume sets we got before, especially the Valkyrie, Roman, Vanguard, plus Cyborg and Magic booster stuff. Techbot Alpha was being rather harsh there, I feel - especially because I just Googled "goit"

Criticism is fine - we pay our sub, so we're entitled to it - but it needs to be rational and measured. When it crosses into personal slurs, and attitude that is likely to just rile up the community with no other reason for posting it (because the requested outcome is patently ridiculous - i.e. calling for Jay to be fired for such petty reasons), I really do feel that people are going too far...

...which makes me a sad panda ... and makes Baby Jesus cry ... and runs the risk of persuading any lurking Battlenet kiddies that their particular brand of ranting idiocy would find fertile soil here - and you don't want that, do you?!

Much <3 to all the posters trying to fight irrational subjective hyperbole with logic - your optimism is inspiring!

<3 Firefly - now prove you can tune into something BBC-ish, preferably with a blue Police box and a 900+ year old time traveller.

Oh and pssssst, Television, I heard that Dr Aeon fellow saying that Architect Entertainment is the entertainment of the future, today. I'm not sure he sees a place in the future for television...

/stir

I wanted to respond to this as well:

I have 17 L50s and I'll be grateful for any new Dev-created content that gives me an excuse to play my favourite L50s again. I only play my L50s occasionally now - on new/holiday content, self-imposed challenges, weekend TFs/SFs, and the occasional raid if I'm in the mood - maybe 10% of my total playing time - for the most part I'd rather be levelling a new character, exploring a powerset combination I haven't played before.

The deal-breaker for me is whether the new endgame content will be more fun for me than levelling a new character - what I don't want is mass zerg drudgery-by-rote, punctuated by boring hang-time and the petty tantrums of armchair dictators, like the raiding endgames in most other MMOs.

As long as the endgame system doesn't take the fun and replayability out of the existing game then I have no reason to dread it. My main fear is that Paragon Studios may become so focused on endgame content that they end up spending most of their future Dev time on it - just like Blizzard have done in the past, even though only a small minority take part in WoW's endgame - the last thing you want is a Dev team spending over 90% of their time/resources on content for under 10% of the playerbase.

Ironically since EverQuest 1 (where I was a serious raider and eventually burned out on it) I've quit almost every endgame-focused MMO I've played within a few months of hitting the level cap. CoH is the first MMO I've played for longer than the 3 years I spent subscribed to EQ1, and until now it really hasn't had an endgame to speak of - which (on the whole) I've been fine with.

Tyrant's bio is intriguing - shades of grey, but slanted more towards good (propaganda probably).

POTENTIAL SPOILERS:- I really like that Primal Earth's "supers" are being made out to be the villains in all of this (admittedly I'm biased as I prefer playing villains) - similar to how the Rikti must have viewed Primal Earth's heroes after the initial attack on their home dimension too - it makes me wonder if a certain Prussian Prince is involved this time too, but then if Emperor Cole has been having trouble with the Resistance movement in Praetoria then having an external threat would prove very useful as an aid for keeping the population in line in an Orwellian 1984-style way ("obey me and I'll save you again - this time from the global threat these inter-dimensional invaders pose!"). END SPOILER

Re: the screenshot, the costume is great - especially if we can get costume pieces with colour-definable neon too - but I'm more interested in whether the background is from an actual zone or a new tileset/map - as we desperately need new/more tilesets/maps (i.e. ones that we don't all know better than the layouts of our own houses in RL).

Threads like this remind me why I like this Dev team so much.

I've played all CoV archetypes to L50, some of them twice (and brute 5 times ), many of them solo - I think Brutes and Masterminds are still the best soloers, probably tied for it (most MMs should be able to finish bigger spawns faster, but Brutes can have an easier time on tough targets depending on the Brute/MM secondaries), though I personally enjoy Brutes more than MMs.

Dominators are very capable soloers now too (my Earth/Fire was awesome), and certain Stalkers solo very fast as well (my Elec/Nin was incredible - could finish solo spawns faster than my brutes). Some Corruptors can solo very well (my Ice/Storm is very good solo - better than my Fire/Rad, though the latter is better in teams), though with Dominators, Stalkers and especially Corruptors the powersets you pick affect how good you are solo more than they do for Brutes/Masterminds.

All 4 VEAT branches are very good solo - Crabs excel on big spawns, while Widows/Banes/Forts are pretty good all round. It's hard for me to gauge their solo performance against the other ATs as I spent stupid amounts of inf on mine to make them godlike, so they're my best soloers on redside, bar none.

I have a L50 Bot/Dark MM so I have a fair idea what works well with it, but I'll try to stick to your criteria.

As a Dominator you may find it futile trying to control things or melee them when his pets are knocking them around (robots do knockback) and doing lots of area damage. Plant/ would probably work reasonably ok as Seeds will bunch spawns up nicely in the MM's debuffs and Creepers are fairly wide area, but you won't be taking much else from your primary except the ST hold and the pet (I have a mid-level Plant/Elec and I'm not). The sleep is pointless with all those BoT AEs (plus it notifies, unlike Mind/'s sleep, so you can't even use it to prep a spawn) and the AE Hold is too short to recommend it when Creepers/Seeds are so much better. The Tree may look like a good idea re your partner's pets, but the regen is very low and he has a really good area heal anyway that's easily spammable (not like he'll have much else to do mid-combat). But your partner presumably has Fearsome Stare and Howling Twilight in his build, so you won't be lacking for control anyway.

Earth/ is nice on Doms too for debuffing and area control, but lots of it is location-based placeables so the pet knockbacks will work against it sometimes. Fire/ and Ice/ really need you in melee range (I'm going to use one of those two with /Earth secondary on a heroic Dom in Going Rogue for that very reason) so not them. Mind/ is great but won't add a lot to this duo (no pet, AE confuse comes late, etc.), and Gravity/ is always hard to recommend on a Dom I find.

For Dom secondary you'd want to avoid melee (knockback can be annoying) so avoid /Earth for sure. /Fire is probably your best bet (full single-target ranged chain, decent cone, +dmg buff) - I've played an Earth/Fire to 50 and I'd have to say that in your duo you're probably going to want to skip Combustion (low damage, DoT, melee PBAE) and Incinerate (DoT, melee) as you'd rarely use/need them, Blazing Bolt has limited use (except as a set mule for the Manticore IOs), Consume can be handy sometimes, but everything else you'll be using constantly.

For Corruptors I think you should consider Ice/Storm, which I've played to L50 (and it was a blast!), as it has quite a bit of synergy with Bot/Dark:

- Firstly you can stack Freezing Rain + Ice Storm, and/or Blizzard, with the Tar Patch and Bot AEs your partner is laying down, and large spawns will just melt away - also all that -spd from the Rains and Tar means enemies won't be going anywhere fast.

- Secondly Ice/ has really good single target damage to handle bosses/EBs - about the only things that won't evaporate under the area damage your partner's bots and your rains will put out.

- Thirdly your Steamy Mist, stacked with /Dark's Shadow Fall, will give full invisibility to both of you and the pets, plus tons of stacked elemental/energy resists (especially if you slot for it - advisable) and status protection - if your partner wants to take the taunt from the Presence pool and tank in bodyguard mode backed by his heals (and yours if you take O2 Boost, though it probably wouldn't be necessary, but also gives status protection) then he'll be even more solid.

- Fourth, he can't complain about your knockback as his pets will be doing lots, so you can use Hurricane and the (mandatory pick) Gale to keep enemies out of melee range of both of you and the bots and even knock them back towards the Tar Patch / Freezing Rain (handy for stuff that isn't affected by the -spd, like Warwolves) - plus you can use Lightning Storm at will (I only really used it on EB/AV fights though).

Thunder Clap is probably skippable (being a melee PBAE low-mag stun), though you could stack it for higher stun magnitude with his Howling Twilight and Photon Grenade (if he takes it - though some of his Bots fire them too). Tornado is potentially skippable too though you may want to keep it for situational use (it does quite a lot of damage to EBs/AVs that can't be KB'd, plus it would be adding up more stun mag and some -def).

Of course you could do a lot of that with a /Storm Mastermind too /shrug.

A /Rad Corruptor would stack quite well with /Dark too and fits your debuff criteria (I've got a L50 Fire/Rad Corruptor that is lots of fun), and any primary works fairly well with it. /Traps and /Trick Arrow would give debuffs as well, though they have a lot of placeable location effects that may not go so well with the Bot knockbacks - though /TA's Oil Slick on top of Tar Patch, lit by the Bots energy attacks, might be fun - and /Traps' Force Field Gen would add a lot of status protection and defence to your partner and his bots if he wants to bodyguard tank. I haven't played either past mid-level though, so I shouldn't give too much advice on them.

Sonic/ is a pretty good primary (I haven't played it past mid-level, but my regular duo partner loves the set), and all that -res and single target damage will help with tough EBs/AVs - Archery/ is very good too for single target and area damage (my favourite blast set - played to L50 once on a blaster, and playing it again on a /TA corr) - plus both of those have a single target stun which could stack with other stuns mentioned above (e.g. to stun a nasty boss, like Malta Gunslingers, which can be pretty nasty against Bots). And it sounds like you don't need me to tell you how good Fire/ is.

Of course if you ever wanted to try Energy Blast then this might be a good duo to do it in, as your partner can't really complain about the knockback, but it won't do as much damage or synergise as effectively as Fire/Ice/Sonic/Archery. Rad/ primary has some decent stuff too (Cosmic Burst is great damage and a stun, so more stun-stacking possibilities), though Irradiate would need you in melee range. Assault Rifle's cones would let you stay back and add more area damage, but you're not really covering the shortage of single target damage in the duo. I haven't played those last two past low level though, so I'll shut-up about them.

If you already have a L50 villain then an Arachnos Soldier going down the Crab path would work well too - lots of area damage to stack with your partner's will wreck large spawns, your Tactical Training buffs will make his pets more solid, and you can also get 6 pets of your own (3 spiderlings, 2 disruptors, 1 patron pet - go Black Scorpion and the arachnobot blaster nicely matches your other pets and does decent damage). It was the first VEAT I got to L50 and it's a lot of fun (though I tend to play it more in its Bane build now).

Some do, some don't, often it goes unsaid in their bios:

e.g. Punchy the Loon (my L50 Mace/SR Brute) was once an orphan called Jimmy who earned the ire of Westin Phipps at Grandville's Haven House by burning down the Punch & Judy puppet show that Phipps had put on to distract the children while some of their little friends were being dragged off by Arachnos for psychic testing. Mistress Distress (my L50 Widow) was one of the orphan girls taken that day, while Phipps got even with the mischievous boy by blackmailing Darrin Wade into magically cursing Jimmy with the grotesque appearance of a Mister Punch puppet (the character's costume was inspired by my forum avatar, and just like Mister Punch he spends most of his time hitting things with a big stick).

I'm also putting together a concept for a cyborg character (who I've already designed a costume and settled on a name for) that was built by my existing cyborg villain Baron Steelfist (L50 Bot/DM Mastermind), using the brain of some poor civilian he kidnapped. Baron did this in a bid to understand his own condition and so that he could run experiments on his creation and test upgrades (intended for himself) on it without risk to his own life. Baron himself was kidnapped and turned into a cyborg against his will and was cruelly experimented on by a mad professor that he murdered when he escaped - my twisted update on the Frankenstein story - he is rather angry and confused about it all and he lost most of his humanity during the process and cannot remember his former identity, so this is basically repeating his own pattern of abuse. As a twist I think the new cyborg is going to retain its conscience through the "procedure" and, to make the best of a tragic situation, become a hero (probably as a heroic brute post-GR) with Baron as his arch-nemesis.

Also some of my characters are alternate universe versions of each other - usually one on Defiant as a hero, the other on Union as a villain - whose lives were identical up to a defining point in their life (usually the moment when they got/discovered their powers). e.g. Nightbow (my L50 Arch/En Blaster) and Ghost Spider (my L50 En/En Stalker) are the same person, mugged and tortured by a Hellion - the Defiant version was rescued by Manticore, who paid for his treatment (replacement cybernetic eyes, making him a great marksman) and mentored him, while the Union version gave in to savagery, killed the Hellion and was found and kidnapped by Captain Mako who saw potential in him, so had him rebuilt as a partly-cybernetic Arachnos assassin.

Arctic Prince (my L50 Ice/Storm Corruptor) and Polar Storm (my L20 Ice/Ice Blaster) are also the same person, a Bavarian mutant who was persecuted for his icy appearance - in the Defiant-verse he ran away to Paragon City to escape persecution and find more people like him, but in the Union-verse he killed his persecutors and ultimately fled to the Rogue Isles to escape prosecution.

In my head, before character creation, as my imagination has to give life to them or I'll feel no attachment and be unable to play them. My characters come alive long before I ever enter the Rogue isles or Paragon City with them. And I don't even roleplay!

There needs to be an available name I like, that fits the concept I've come up with to justify putting together two powersets I want to play, plus a costume that works for that concept, and the bio that unifies everything into a believable character. Sometimes I'll create them without the bio (because I'm still refining it), but they never get past the tutorial until the bio is finished and in place.

Admittedly my characters are not safe from deletion until they get past L20 - if something doesn't work i.e. I come to dislike the name, or don't enjoy playing them, or they just don't feel right (even if I can't put my finger on why), then they'll get deleted. But even if that happens, if I liked the costume/concept/bio enough then chances are I'll remake that character if I can, changing what I didn't like - or I'll re-use the parts I did like to inspire a new character.

So it can take ages for me to make characters I like - sometimes months - getting a suitable name I like that isn't taken is often the major delay - so I'm always running through character creation options and concept ideas in my head, making new characters sometimes months in advance of when I'll actually start playing them.

I find it much easier to make NPCs for my AE arcs - because I'm not personally controlling them, and they're not representing me in the game, I don't need to feel that same attachment, so I can be more objective and less subjective, which speeds up creation to minutes instead of months.