Madadh

First, you're certainly not the only person that is bothered by outleveling things. It frequently bothers me, too.

As has been said, you can always turn off XP for stretches, as needed.

You can also adjust the difficulty down. While this might make it too easy to be fun/interesting/challenging, it also makes it award less XP. If you can find the low diff sweet spot just barely challenging enough to be interesting, but minimal XP gains, that also helps slow the rate at which you advance, without having to turn XP off altogether. I prefer turnig it off totally, myself, because then I can turn the Diff up and get more enemies, for more drops, and more challenge, without making the outleveling problem worse. And, as some of those levels, the extra drops are really nicely in demand, since people do tend to fly past some of those points.

Either way, sadly, once you pass something you're pretty much out of luck, except via ouroboros.

Looks-sounds-etc wise, the ATs won't really be much different, except Stalkers will all be sorta hidden-ish.

If you like elemental effects, Lightning and fire armour both look very cool, IMHO, and don't completely obscure your basic costume/look. Fire does obscure more than Elec, but not as bad as others (stone/ice, I'm looking at you mostly). Most of the non-elemental powers don't have much look at all, except for shield, then you just carry a shield around. So, if you like shields, will then, obviously, take shield. If not.. If elemental and shields are out, the most interesting of what's left, in my opinion, is Energy Aura. It has a cool, subtle little distortion effect going on that doesn't obscure you much at all when it's active. It does have a stealth power, that makes ya ghostly in appearance like all stealths do, though. But, of remaining options, I find Energy aura the most aesthetically interesting.

But, Bio Armour is coming soon...



For offensive sets... Jeez, too many choices..


Dual Blades: Is flashy and fun.

Staff Melee: Ditto

Martial Arts: Is flashy, or not, depending on your desires, as it has multiple animation choices for almost every single power, more than any other offensive set I can think of. I recommend it highly since you can fine tune it more than any other melee set for aesthetics that appeal to you.

Street Justice: Looks like a poorer cousin to Martial Arts, visually, but isn't bad looking, just not customizable, and less flashy. Not knocking the set mechanically, just aesthetically. And not really knocking it on aesthetics, just giving it lower marks for aesthetics than MA. And if MA were less customizable, or SJ at all customizable, I'd prolly rank SJ above MA. Still, it's a solid option, better than most, IMHO.

Kinetic Melee: Awesome, flashy, fancy. And I love the sound effects, but I've heard many people say that the sound effects grate on them. To each their own, but I'd make this a top candidate.

All the elemental attacks have distinctive looks that appeal to some, and not so much to others. Dark melee seems the least interesting, to me of this category.

Most all the remaining weapon sets are pretty lame, and boring, sadly, with the exceptions of Katana/Ninja Blade/Titan Weapons.
Katana/Ninja Blade are different than the BS/WM/Ax trio, and thus a bit more interesting, but no great shakes, but not bad.
Titan Weapons is a lot different than most every other weapon set visually/auditorially. I personally think it looks goofy/bad, but it is unique, and lots of folks love it, so it's definitely worth your consideration.

I'm sure I've left some out, but that should give ya plenty of options to look into for now.

Since I can't find todays patch note yet, and assume that they just aren't up yet....

Does anyone know what was on todays publish?

Is it the attuning bug on these UEs? Is it the teleporting bug inside of the Summer Event mish? Is it the auction house being updated to allow folks to sell/trade the new UEs? Or is it something else entirely?



And, on a different topic (and overused refrain)..

Why is it not possible to through up the patch notes somewhere (anywhere) as the publish is is happening, while the servers are still down?

I just clicked on it every time I ran as the thief role. And it worked fine every time. And usually I clicked on it pretty much immediately, so I'm pretty sure I didn't have a triggering event that preceded and made it clickable, but I guess that's a possibility. If so, however, whomever unlocked it for me was a bloody fast.

Hmm. Well, Strato, you've sorta convinced me. All your arguments make sense to me. Since I mostly play defenders, and probably won't ever be a blaster type, or rarely ever, it's not as big an issue to me, so I'm not going to get irked either way, but yeah, if I were a blaster player, a 'solution' that revolved around pretty much having to get a snipe and then build for plus tohit to leverage it certainly wouldn't feel like an elegant solutition. I would totally agree that snipes should be fixed to not be the obvious skippable power in every set, but going well past that to make it the central power in a set does seem sorta overboard.

Then again, it is still a single target attack, and CoH seems to be more built around AOE (or evolved into at least), so maybe it's not as big a deal as it seems on the surface.

Well, I've played scads of Defs, but not many FFs. That said, my one FF I've put time into is into the mid 40s, and I have respeced and tried a number of different builds. Point is I'm no great authority, but not an armchair commentator, on this set, but I can offer my opinion.

I find Force Bubble pretty much better in every way, with perhaps 2 exceptions.

Force bubble is a lot cheaper on the endurance bar. It has a higher mag effect. It recharges faster. Costs a lot less end. Has a bigger area/repel distance. Casts faster, even.

Some folks think it might just be too big though. And Force bubble can't really be slotted anything, except Generic IO.

I definitely wouldn't pack both.

I'd give Thunderstikes a good look. Really solid set with nice damage, nice recharge, nice end reduction, and the set bonuses are pretty great, too. +Recovery, and + Def to ranged and E/N. Also, they aren't super expensive.

Fun event, all in all.

I haven't had any issues with getting the whole team in, or getting stuck at any specific parts.

We all got all the Perfect Badges regardless of our own role. I think it seems to be team based. Not sure if it's WAI, but it seems fine to me.

And as for not being able to sell the UEs on Wents... I think that's because there isn't a category for it to be assigned to yet in Wents.. There are categories for the ATEs, but that's not exactly right. I guess it could be under 'special' enhancements, too, but that's not exactly intuitive, either. My guess is it'll stay non-sell-able until they decide how to categorize and and get a wents' patch added in.

Dang. Very nice. You're right, not exactly a solo-er, but boy, everyone should love teaming with ya. Makes me wish I have more than just one or 2 lowbies on Infinity.

The point is that they aren't changing the power. It's a proc. If you like Force Bolt as is, slot it as you normally would. If you'd prefer to keep knocking something down without flinging it all over the place, now you'll have that option, too.


I'm sure it's been stated, but my big question is.... Is that proc a unique? Or can it be slotted in multiple powers?

Has any tool changed defs as much as clarion has recently?

In your spot, I'd be saying goodbye to Time Crawl. Only reservation I might have, is that I seem to recall it also has some -regen component. Not sure, but if it does, and if it's amount isn't tiny, I might be tempted to keep it. Otherwise, "Adios, TC."