LordSparky

I am so confused by this. Please set me right.....

I need to go back to the beginning to finally get to the 2nd Tier 3 unlock before I can get to the 4th Tier.....wow but how do I do that? Do I need to (assuming I have the components):

1. Unslot the current stuff?
2. Remove it from the tray?
3. Or just start re-crafting stuff?

Am a little afraid to do that as a casual player so if someone could be so kind as to spell it out for me that would be awesome.

Thanks for the summary - just got the 54 moth reward so this was very handy.

Will try to keep this insightful.

This is a story about a custom build mish for a custom built toon as a solo test. Its not meant to be a farm (or a guide to farming) because I think farming is boring BUT if thats what rocks your boat then thats your business.
Also I have since writing this experiment up I have changed the map to a longer outdoor map. I could change it back to the ship map for this experiment if requested.

What I did was:

1, Created a toon that can be optimised to one mission/critter - this will be a fire/ice tanker called Vandar (magic ...with the new Magic Booster of course).
2, Created a critter that was simple enough to take on and had the worst attack possible for a fire tanker - this would be a (standard/standard) fire/regen scrapper lt.
3. Set a mission with an easy map (the ship map - short) and only the above critters - lets call them Fire Drones and call the mission Fire Drone Walkover.

What I wanted to know was:

a) How easy would it be to solo missions given the optimised setup?
b) How quickly could you level?
c) How fast could you complete the mission?
d) What kind of tickets could you earn on a solo basis?
e) Can you earn enough influence?
f) Facts, figures and observations.

For me this really was an experiment. It should go without saying the with an MMOG with tens of thousands of story arc's to spend you time soloing in only one mission is kind of stupid & not recommended. So that is actually my executive summary - its kinda dull but I really wanted to make the observations for myself having read a lot about the game over the years.
So on with the observations:

a) How easy would it be to solo missions given the optimised setup?

An obvious answer: it starts of a bit hard but gets much easier quite quickly.
Levels 1-7 were a bit tough because the critters were all Lt's and you effectively only have 1 defense (fire shield) and limited offence (blazing aura, frozen fists & ice sword) and lastly a small self heal (Healing flames). Of course I do have the 2 vet reward attacks which are the only things that made this doable. Without Sands of Mu & Blackwand (is that what its called?) this would just be too tedious to do.
Levels 8-11 were better because of Temperature Protection which effectively doubled my fire resistance without added endurance issues (I think that Fire Shield & Temperature Protection each give a base of 30% resistance). Another attack in Frost (cone) was a very welcome addition at lvl 10 but to be honest my endurance was an issue at this point. BA was keeping my blue bar low and TO enhancements were not really helping.
Levels 12-21 a significant improvement with DO's now kicking in to give real protection & some offence. A few things to note here, the first of which was I chose to skip a travel power. No need if you are just hanging around in AE eh? I based myself in KR at this point & had the odd jog to Blue Steel & WCH but that was pretty manageable. I did pick up Swift Health over this period to help (& set me up for Stamina) and then Burn at lvl 18 and then Ice Patch at lvl 20. Yes endurance is an issue - you had enough resistance now to start to herd but not always enough endurance to finish the fight - but Burn & Ice Patch is such a good combo I could not wait.
Levels 22-32 were very much easier. SO's obviously make a big difference & are very affordable thx to all the tickets. With a solid resistance to Fire & some to smashing/lethal damage as well as a consistent supply of purple's Vandar could complete the mish in 6-7 herds (sorry I know thats a bad word but this is an experiment). I did take the fighting pool to get Tough for added S/L resistance which helped but not incredibly. I also took build up which was very useful on the Ice Patch - Build Up - Burn combo. Taunt was also handy for keeping the mobs in tow.
So I hope that gives you an idea of the solo game - its a grind but very do-able.

b) How quickly could you level?

Again an obvious answer: Not as quickly as being PL'd on a farm but for a solo act I thought it was pretty good. In real terms thats 1-32 in 27 hours. For me, soloing a tank in the lower levels is a really horrible barrier to getting tanks up and running. They dont even start to get good until the mid-20's so I was pleased to see how quickly this went. Obviously the progression is weighted to the early lvls - I hit lvl 24 at around 20 hours. In the early levels you would lvl twice per run and then it slowly got less frequent. By lvl 15-20 you would need to do 2 runs per lvl and from about lvl 28 you needed 3 runs per lvl. So about 50 mins per level on average. Not bad.

c) How fast could you complete the mission?

In the early levels it takes a solid 40mins to get through it and expect to die a lot. Interestingly you do not earn inspirations at all until lvl 12 which did not help. However once you get SO's you can expect to get throught the mish in around 15-20mins depending on difficulty & spawn sizes. Also after lvl 22 you now sometimes get medium inspirations drop which help a lot in getting through this. It might be interesting to set this as a time trial for later levels.
I have tried this mish with a lvl 50 fire rad controller and a lvl 50 invunl fire tanker. The controller had no problems with the mish set on invincable and did it in much the same time or maybe even a touch faster. The Invuln tanker was much slower given his lack of resistance. No surprises in that but I was surprised at just how squishy Invuln. is in this mish. Ouchies!
lastly on the time issue was about mission difficulty settings. When Vandar was over lvl 22 & well slotted with SO's it was definately the best mix of time spent vs reward to have it set on Unyeilding (threat lvl 4). Better mob sizes & more consistent. For the solo player in general this seems to be the best setting. Wont comment for teams as this is not the purpose here.

d) What kind of tickets could you earn on a solo basis?

Anywhere from 450 to 900 per run but an average of around 600. For the best return on time spent vs rewards as mentioned above the best setting was Unyeilding (threat lvl 4). Turning it up to Invince (threat lvl 5) was not only slower but resulted in less tickets on average.
The other thing to mention here is the spawn sizes. In the 1st & last room where they spawn as orange Lt's they would always spawn the same number of enemy groups but they varies in size from mish to mish. Sometimes it was 3 drones per mob, sometimes it was 4 or 5 drones per mob. I think on average that makes it 4 but it was random & that had a big imapct on tickets awarded.

e) Can you earn enough influence?

Short answer here is no but the long answer is hell yes. Yes you can earn some Inf. but as per normal in CoX its not enough to cover your cost of enhancements in the sub 32 levels. The key thing is that you earn tickets that can in turn buy you enhancements at your level +3 which is really handy because you always seem to have enough tickets. Alternatively you can trade the tickets for other items which can in turn be sold at wentworths/black market. This is even more lucrative depending on the item and its often more efficient to do this and use inf to buy enhancements.
So no reall issues about inf. for enhancements. You earn enough tickets to cover this one way or another. Its not enough to buy IO sets so you will need to get that inf. elsewhere!

f) Facts, figures and observations.

Levels: 1-32
Time: 27 hours
Mission completed: 50 times (I got the 50 mission badge on the same run I hit lvl 32)
Average tickets: 600 (ish)
Optimum herd per mish: 6 herds (there are 4 sections to the ship map so 2 herds in sections 1 & 4 respectively and 1 herd in sections 2 & 3 respectively)

I noted that there were no insperation drops until lvl 12. You only got medium sized insperation drops after lvl 22. Interesting it was tied to your level and not the mob difficulty.
Lt. mobs spawn orange in the 1st & 4th sections and red in the 2nd & 3rd sections of the ship.
Orange mobs spwan at 3-5 critters (random) while red mobs spawn at 1-3 critters.

So.............


Thats this experiment done. I still like playing the mish with a lot of my toons as a bit of a trial to see how they stack up but this one really belongs to toon Vandar. He owns it big time. Now Vandar is free of this mish I have put a more balanced alternative build on him & he is a free magic tank in the big wide world. Of course in the wide world he is a very average Fire/Ice tank but at least in this mission he was king.

Cheers & please forgive the typo's and grammar.

LordSparky

Thanks for that - I think I know what is happening.

If you do the Elvis is Everywhere arc (lots of Elvis bosses) you find mobs saying Elvis song words or references. I think that they are all inserted as Fight a Boss or Release A Captive objectives. But I find very few mobs that are not one of these. I guess the questions would then be:

1. Can you run a mish with only your objective related spawns?

2. If you put in the max # of objective related spawns then does this subtract from the total # of mobs that would spawn in the mish? (if that makes sense)

Thanks as always for any help.

Whoa I really need some help - just cant figure some stuff out.....any chance you could point me in the right direction? I am sure its something I am missing.

1. How do I have custom critters saying stuff when I go through a mish? I was in a mish and saw the spawns do this. I am looking to do a fairly simple defeat all mish & I cant tell where to put in the dialogue or captions or whatever they are.

2. Also is it possible to add emotes to the spawns in a defeat all mish?

This stuff is a little tricky for me so any help is appreciated.

OK Just checking in.....and telling a happy story.

Firstly a big thanks for Tease for getting this thread up and running as its been a real help.

So I am using Vista 32 with a 9800GTX+ card and was having the usual issues. Only things were getting worse. Every time they got worse I uninstalled drivers, used a driver sweeper & tried the latest drivers. Things might be ok for a bit then the crashes would get regular & become a pain in the buttttt.

Finally I decided to unistall, clean sweep, run the correct hotfix (not as simple as it sounds but I read all of the relevant posts & got the right one in the end) and then install the 181.22 drivers. And no I am not running the vista SP2. I think I also had to uninstall separately the Aegea (?) PhysX thingy.

So far no crash after at least 25 hrs of gameplay. Woot!

Thanks again.

Just checking back in - I have been running the 181.0 drivers for about 12hrs of gameplay on the 9800GTX+ and only had it crash twice to a white screen. Sometimes it feels like it will crash & it gets a bit choppy in the game but it seems to come right. Twice in 12hrs is a big improvement.

OK here is my update.....in this thread as opposed to the other ones..

I was using an 8800GTX and had the crashing issue using anything after 169.25. Tried lots of things with the other drivers but it just did not work. The 8800GTX recently died & I now have a 9800GTX+ with the same issue only I dont think it works with the 169.25 drivers.

I was using the 180.43's and had a few crashes, always at kind of key moments so I dumped them and had a long hard read of this thread. What I did find on Guru3D was 181.0 drivers - for developers so I could not find them on the Nvidia site.

Sadly, its still crashed using these drivers BUT it was at least a bit idfferent. This time it went to a white screen where I could then pull up task manager to stop the game without having to reboot the PC. Previously I always had to reboot.

So 1 crash in 5 hours of gameplay without the need to reboot is maybe a step in the right direction. Will continue to monitor and if keeps crashing I may switch to the earlier drivers.

Oh man I have bought the cyborg pack it & taken it for a quick run.

The costume? Looks great. Tons of detail & great textures i guess. Might need gfx details cranked high to really get it to shine? But I think it is a nice addition to costume options.

I REALLY LOVE the ability to blow myself up. Love it. I always wanted to be able to self destruct for one reason - because I CAN. The animation is very detailed & well thought through. Its going to be fun every now & then to just blow up. Not sure if it will be really useful as a combat power given the 60 min recharge but thats not why I love it. This was worth the price by itself.

The emotes are cool but only for theme reasons. Not fussed.

The Auras are OK but as someone pointed out it should be made clearer that they are only available at lvl 30. They do look nice though.

Summary? I am one happy customer. I gave it 8 out of 10.

MORE PLEASE!

Great guide - EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Cant wait for part 2 & yep please do include relevant links. I will have a go at this over the weekend & no doubt post some questions.

PLEASE keep this info coming. The changes on base rent means this kind of guide is invaluable to people who will be playing with bases for the 1st time.

I love n00b stories so long as they are done in the right spirit - maybe constructive jest? Anyway.....real n00b from the other night:

Lvl 41 tank in our team was being a bit .....odd.
Me: Wait here til the grp is ready
Tank: OK (then runs to stand in range of the mobs & draw fire)

Me: OK tank go herd some out please
Tank: OK (then runs into Room Of Death, aggro's 3 grps & stands toe to toe until we run in to save his rear end with 3 deaths in the process)

Me: Hey tank please be so kind as to pull that grp so we dont all go in that room.
Tank: OK (then stands in the hallway in LoS & uses Taunt and get shot at...a lot).

It was not all bad but kinda hard work when the guy was lvl 41 & struggling to read his chat window as well.

Couple more stories:

I brought my older brother into the CoH to which he is now addicted. One of the funniest moments was when I asked him about his slotting on his first toon:

Me: so what is your most slotted power?
bro: Oh I have Brawl 6 slotted!
Me: Huh?? Why????
bro: because it recharges the fastest!!!!!!

I also got my best friend into CoH. His highest toon is now lvl 33 blaster. Lots of funny stories about his learning curve but our favorite was this one...

He was about lvl 22, always ignored tells & never followed instructions from the chat window. So one night while we were playing & talking on Skype (he FINALLY downloaded it...)

Me: How come you dont respond to tells?
Him: Err...what are they?
Me: The yellow text in your chat window.
Him: Chat window? I dont have yellow text in it.
Me: You do have a window right?
Him: Oh yes but I dont see any chat in it.
Me: So you dont see this message??(i send a message)
Him: Oh yes I see it - above your head in the game
Me: not in the window?
Him: Only above your head which is how its always been.
Me: You said you had a chat window??
Him: Thats where I type so the message appears above my head in the game.
Me: Do you have a little blue arrow/triangle on the right end of where you type & if so, click on it....
Him: Oh yes i do (clicks it to expand chat window)....AHHHHH!!!!!!

He had somehow managed to minimise the chat window & never knew it. I had seen him annoy many team leaders by ignoring instructions

We did laugh a lot & my brother & I spend the next 3 months calling him Chat Boy. He has many stories like this but this was his 1st and best.

Erm....some nice thoughts here so thanks for the guide.

A couple of things:

1. Its worth pointing out that your slotting does not take into account Enhancement Diversification (ED) so many of your recommendations are off. Hasten for example only wants 3 slots. You may want to re-jig this post.

2. IMHO you could easily factor in a respec for an Ill/Kin. Like respecing out your travel power or decieve. It is a pain in the rear end in the early levels when you dont have SO +Accuracy to ensure you hit your target. And it does take a while to recharge.

3. Lastly it would be really insightful if you could include some of the strategies or gameplay techniques for your build. My impressions of ill/kin so far is that there is no cookie cutter build as it depends on your playstyle.

<QR>

To the OP: Wow - awesome guide. Just started a Fire Rad yesterday & am really excited at the potential for both team & solo play. Am playing a fire Kin atm which is fun but Rad just looks...interesting. Big thumbs up on the guide though.

Just 3 questions -
1. How would you slot choking cloud? Sounds like a cool power that I want to use.
2. Any ideas where I can get some stats outside of a hero planner?
3. Any ideas on strategy or specific tactics that can be used for pulling, herding, street sweeping etc?

To Antiangst - Great tips for the soloist. Was not thinking about a potential respec build but maybe I should! I always seem to want to avoid Ring Of Fire.....

Hmmmm.....

Firstly & foremost this is a nice intro for Newbie tankers. Its general & short & about right for a newbie attention span (which is short). It frames some key issues that a tank needs to be aware of when first starting the game. So yes its a STARTING point. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thanks to the OP - your stated objective is achieved. In the current shambles that is newbie tanking in the i7 CoH world we should be seeing more of this both in game & in the forums. Dunno how else to get it across but there are loads of other posts on the topic....

And then a comment on the many posts that followed: Are we all too experienced to really discuss newbie perspectives?

Before I start lets remember that a newbie tank is not always a lowbie tank & vice versa.

Imaging you are a lowbie/newbie reading the comments after the OP:

"what does AoE/CoT/AT etc. mean?"
"Kinetics? Transfusion? I dunno what that stuff is I am just trying to stay alive"
"Tactics? Like you mean kinda hitting stuff & staying alive? I am still getting my head around aggro!"
"How exactly do I change targets quickly? Tab?? Oh the Tab!!!!"

My 1st lvl 50 was a tanker & I remember how many levels it took me to sort out some of the answers As stoopid as I may look it was well past my 20's (maybe even early 30's). I got taught how to herd at about lvl 36 at the far end of creys - I bet you ALL know that 1 container.....

My point - lets dig deep & remember what it was like when we first started on CoH & tanking. Thats who this post is for.

Justed wanted to add my 2 inf worth.

For $10 this is good value. I am a happy camper. A few reasons:

1. I REALLY like the Justice pads & costume in general. I like the idea of some extra costume bling too. More costume options are great for those of us that have loads of alts & always seem to do the same thing.

2. That VIP card is just plain handy. I have used it mainly to get to FF or KR fast from those far away places - like Creys Folly or The Hollows. I only need it once every hour but its groovy to have. Nice quality of life improvement if nothing else. Now if they did anything special in the VIP room.....

3. The jump jets make SS a much more viable travel power. So with the changes made to fly & now this for SS things have been getting much better for getting around. No it does not help lowbies but it may help in the other 300+ hours in the game.

Really nice guide. Particularly the strategies section as with this ice/ice combo its kind of important to get some tricks organised if you want to get the most out of the powers. In fact I may have a think about what I could add to this.....but for now...

One of my favourites is the "ice patch huddle". Basically you aggro a few mobs, hide behind a corner, drop the patch, shiver, build up, ice storm and then single target attack whatever is left as they run.

Also, for my lvl 34 Ice/Ice i have SS & Stealth that I leave permanently turned on. If I see2-3 mobs standing close (like with a hostage) I zoom on in, cast ice patch, cast Ice Storm & then zoom out for shiver & single target attacks. If they are still nicely bunched the Frost Breath works well here too.

A couple of other things...

Its interesting that I have seen some people post that Blizzard is not as good as other Blaster nukes because its DoT. In my experience though, when paired with Ice Storm & Shiver it is REALLY effective & can change the course of a tight battle. I would even go so far as to say it FEELS better that other Nukes but I would love to see how that stats compare. It just seems like you control & survive it better.

The next point I wanted to make was to actually draw attention to the controller aspects of this build. TopDoc wrote a great Post on the 5 most damaging controllers in the game & the Ice/Ice Blaster was in there. Quite right too! When you get to the late 20's and have Freeze Ray, Shiver, Ice Storm, Ice Patch etc. all slotted you can add control value to the team over & above awesome single target damage. This has turned out much better than expected on my toon. I had an Ice/Emp controller (lvl 50) & this was one of the main reasons I chose an Ice/Ice. I straight out enjoy damage + control which I just did not get before.

I would be interested to get your thoughts on the Epic pools as I am still not sure about what to take. I was seriously thinking about taking Arctic for the "snow storm herd" ability - cast snow storm on a far away anchor & use them to aggro the other mobs & bring everybody to your ice patch of death. Also another hold opens up but I am not sure if it is any good (I chose not to take BFR as the activation time is IMO prohibitive).

Ahh true herding - how I miss it!!!

With the i6 changes it was changed from a really efficient way to empty out entire maps for almost every mission to a more tactical role. Sometimes it just does not make sense & is much slower than just jumping in - like in an outdoor map or when there are just too many mobs.

When it does make sense is when the team is a little too squishy or when you find one of those "rooms of death" where you are at a tactical disadvantage if the whole team enters.

I am glad for this post as I have seen soooooo many tankers that are obviously new (although one was lvl 37...) doing the "stand in the middle of the squishies in the corridor & taunt & just stand there" thing.

RULE OF THUMB 1 - Never bring the mobs past the squishies.
RULE OF THUMB 2 - If herding never keep line of site......therefore....
RULE OF THUMB 3 - Never stand in line of site in the middle of the squishies and taunt WITHOUT swiftly moving out of line of site somewhere in FRONT of the squishies.

And yes Taunt is a great tool. Its not 100% needed but it is SO useful I dont know why you would not. 1 power & 1 slot. Particularly when you are herding the situation could be that 14 of the mobs are attacking you but 3 Lts have decided to go for your blaster. 2 options - take the whole mob of 14 to the blaster & punchvoke 3 Lts (very dangerous) OR........
use Taunt!

Had a chance to test some builds a bit more last night & came to a key question: How do you survuve the return volley after you launch Fire Breath when solo'ing?

I tested (not comprehensively) by street hunting mobs of 8-10 white/yellows in Creys Folly where I died a lot trying to get through my opening 4 hits: Fire Breath, Fire Ball, Combustion and then maybe Fire Sword Circle. I could get Aim, Buildup & fire breath away but would get knocked back, stunned or mezzed immediately after. Basicly I struggled to get the 2nd or 3 attack off without being sent to the hospital. To be fair I am lvl 31 and all of my enhancements are now -1 (yellow) so I am losing some effectiveness there but this still seems a little too "high risk".

I tried a variation on the build which was to take the leaping pool with CJ, SJ & Acrobatics. Also it helps popping aid self before the battle so you get a disorient resistence. So with Aid Self, CJ & Acrobatics running I had another go at it. I found I could jump into mobs after I used Build Up, launch Fbreath, Ball & FSC & the mob was either dead or running. I slotted Fire Blast & skipped Fire Sword because I could then take down the runners with a fast ranged attack. I died less (still died a bit) but on the whole it was more successful. Of course that is an outdoor area & I don't know how it works in a full team scenario.

I did try a Freakshow mish set on Rugged & that was a bit easier too - but only mobs of 3-4 white/yellows/orange. The build means that it now cant use SS & Stealth which blows but if you need disorient, knockback & immob resistence then something has to give.

Snakebit - this is an excellent guide! I was just about to post on the blaster forums a "I know it sounds weird but is there a guide to a heavy duty fire/fire blapper AoE death machine out there?" post but there you were. Love your post.

I have a level 31 fire/fire blaster (Napalm Joe) & have just moved from thinking "my secondaries are gimped! They are all melee!" to a "My secondaries are…interesting - there are LOADS of high damage AoE" so I am planning the respec & spending lots of time on Test. That said, its hard to get real team play on test so I had some of questions.

1. In your build you stated you had respec'd 5 times. Is the build you posted a respec build or is it how you would build a toon from scratch taking all the powers as they become available? Is there an early build vs a midlife build (if that makes sense….?).

2. With that in mind I note you have Aid Self at lvl 35 meaning its lvl 37 before you can get it fully slotted. Would Aid Self not help a lot in your overall survivability? Is it not worth getting & slotting earlier?

3. Did you experiment with slotting for defense? I know its not great but is adding Tough or slotting Combat Jumping etc. worthwhile? While I think I know the answer, I was wondering about your thoughts here.

4. How do you fimd the endurance usage without consume? It has such a long recharge do you only use it after inferno? Can you put it off until lvl 35 ish?

5. Fire breath - is it really that good? Cant remember the stats but does it not blow your cover etc? I was even thinking about skipping it until I read your post.

6. You chose the Fire epic - how come? I was thinking about the Munitions epic particularly because of LRM's. Any thoughts?

Hehe - thanks Mr Knight.

This is a philosophical point I was trying to convince a team of recently. It really adds value to the game if you can stop being precious about debt (within reason) & live a little. Its more fun AND lucrative. How good is that!?!?!

Want to see more game content?? Get debt!!!!
Want to get an awesone XP to Inf. ratio? Get debt!!!
Want to do outrageous tactical experiments with your powers? Get debt!!!!
Out leveling your enhancements?? Get debt!!!!

Sometimes you dont die & only get awesome XP - darn it!!!

Debt is good. But like all good things, moderation is advised.

Hey,

First up I just wanted to say thanks for the guide. Regardless of agree/disagree I really appreciate it when people go to so much effort to help out a fellow hero/villain.

Anyway, I have the lvl 50 Fire/Mace tank on CoH & a lvl 30 Fire/Fire Brute in CoV so your post is really interesting.

I had a couple of questions/observations:

1. Hasten - is it really needed? Just dont know whay I would need it given you have almost always got something to attack with & I hope to not need HF & consume that often. If you always have an attack, then quicker recharges does NOT mean more fury?

2. I know you said this is a respec build so I guess that explains Stamina at lvl 26. Word of warning to people using this guide to build from scratch: you WILL need/want stamina at lvl 20 & slotted at lvl 21. Its no fun to watch the fury bar drop while you suck wind for end.

3. Is it worth waiting a bit for consume? Again with the view that I am building from scratch I am thinking that if you can manage End issues early on you can fit in a bit more offense/defense a bit earlier. I was going to take consume at lvl 30 but decided to pick up the fighting pool instead after reading your guide.

4. Just that point on CJ - so just 3 slots needed all with DefBuff? No need to slot EndReds? Is it worth slotting if I am not going to get Weave?

5. Tough - am thinking that the slot I saved from CJ can be placed as a Endred slot here to much greater effect yeh?

6. Acrobatics - Any ideas what the end stats are for this?

Otherwise I got some really useful stuff out of this guide - nice job.