MayorOfAngrytown

That is an ... understatement.

Just for kicks I tried a "no insps" run on my quite-far-from-high-end-but-still-pretty-awesome sp/da/blaze scrapper and got pretty much destroyed by the first couple of spawns when it came down to me and just the bosses. I was doing okay, but they were taking a very long time to wear down, and without DR fodder I wasn't healing fast enough.

I think though that this map is a very good test of AoE/ST dmg balance, I run farm maps at +2/x8 occasionally and the bosses in those tend to melt only slightly slower than the lt's. These bosses I was have a lot more trouble with, as to be expected on a combo with less than impressive ST dmg.

Once I got Soul Txfr'd by one of the /dark bosses I bailed. That was enough of a preview of what I would have been in for. Maybe if I let myself pop candies like crazy it would be doable at 0/8, but it would still be an epic war where I'd be hanging by a thread and a tray that can't combine into anything would spell my doom.

If I ever "finish" his build or my brute's build, I might give this another run for kicks.

I'm a Hew Fan, personally

Do it! Seriously. Right Nao! Why are you still sitting there?

I really wanted to do this combo back in the old days, but the default spines were too ugly and the endurance cost was impossible for someone with my meager skills.

Now with all the options available for endo management and the new looks for spines (which lend themselves to some sweet costumes, see thread about a page or two down) it's easily one of my most fun to play.

It's very heavily tied to iPower picks, and no consideration was given for exemplaring. But i'm one very pricey IO away from s/l soft-capped, 1 purple insp away from e/ne soft-cap and lay out AoE damage like crazy, which is what it was about after all.

Any suggestions welcome, especially on slotting for TS and DS.

I know the endurance looks rediculous with iPowers off. Ageless really is that good.

I imagine that's mostly a side effect of people using AM's to get LOTG's for themselves (usually several in a given build) and picking other things to market when they want to turn AMs into other FakeMoneyUnits.

At least that's my approach, I don't grind any one set of given content enough to really turn it into a niche or anything - I mostly use AMs to get what I want for builds.

I dunno. A decent trial run can garner, what, like 5-ish merits? We have 3 trials now, so hypothetically in 1 run each you could be just under halfway there. For those of us who are bothered by repetition and somewhat patient, iTrials might be, if not more effective, at least more interesting. I guess it's a matter of taste, but I just seem to roll through the various options for getting shiny and fake money units - the idea of the "fastest" way is rarely my primary motivator.

NTTIAWWT.

Any pricing on the Unobtainium grade stuff? Purples/PvPs? Again, I'd probably reserve those for my own use, but I'm curious all the same.

This was my route on wm/sd as well, though it might change if I ever get around to tweaking him into a more expensive build.

Uh, I like the soundtrack. :P It's definitely a love/hate thing though. The first few times I rolled it I didn't like it much either. For some reason I tried it again and find it .. different in some intangable, imaginary way.

Sorry, this part gave me a chuckle.

Can I just echo that. I've sold some drops that I might have otherwise ignored based soley on that rule (mostly 20s-30s stuff found while lvling) and made some decent fake coin in doing so.

Well, it wasn't terribly profitable, save that it was far faster than sorting through random rolls, crafting the good stuff, and marketing it, but ...

I did go though a phase of noticing when certain Uncommons were at stupid prices (along with many times more bidders than available stock), grabbing many large stacks of them and essentially flooding someone's corner with inventory at half or 2/3 the last 5, depending on my mood. There are definitely faster ways to make FakeMoneyUnits, but for some reason I got some kind of perverse satisfaction out of it, even if it was imaginary.

I have one of those, didn't get far with it. I was trying for a Snow/Fog look. It almost worked.

Agreed on the slotting comments, btw. CoF needs 'em in one way or another.

I browsed those threads a while back, and from a game mechanics standpoint there is probably little to nothing I could add suggestion wise that would improve PvP in the Cities.

I just wanted to touch on a couple things, you know, in the vain hope that someone out there is listening.

First and foremost:

Lose travel suppression. Period. It was the single most unique element to the PvP side of this game. Also the single most fun - and yes, I am primarily a melee player. I'm sorry but Suppression alone basically destroyed the PvP game for me. FFS. Bring back my flying stalkers and my SJ/SS jousting!!

At the very least give us our full non travel power speed when suppressed from travel speed.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's get more general.

I resubbed to the game when CoV came out specifically for the promise of PvP. I stayed to fiddle with the stuff that was new at the time, but I *really* wanted there to be viable PvP element to this game. More importantly, I *really* wanted the zone PvP thing to play out. For a while it did. Were there whiners? Naturally, but that's inevitable.

Now that GR has dropped and we are a couple issues into Incarnate content, I see a tremendous opportunity for a PvP revival in the Cities. Imagine the awesomeness that could have been zone PvP - goldside 50s invading Primal zones and vice verse. Of course that notion is predicated on the assumption that there will ever be an option to play out goldside past 20, but that's another discussion entirely. None of this, naturally, does anything to resolve the mechanics; I only mention it as a tangential thought. A possible inspiration for the PvP community to reunite in force and renew the call for changes rather than just giving up.

Either way, here's yet another "on again off again since CoH launch" player that really would love some attention given to the PvP game.

To (not really) answer your other two questions, I think the key to answer #3 lies in answering #2. MMO PvP suffers from one inherent flaw, and that is that any player with a gajillion of FakeMoneyUnits (tm) invested in PowerfulGameShiney (tm) is automatically going to be at an advantage to any player who wants to get started in PvP. Conversely, any attempt to equalize things (see Issue 13) is doomed to meet with failure. I don't have an answer for this, it's just an observation. A limited and probably flawed one at that.

Simply put - if there were some way to make PvP more accessible to the general player base (ie players who don't have stockpiles of the best IOs and billions of inf) it would be, by extension, more appealing overall.

That said, if anyone knows where I can find some "Not Overly Serious, Just for the Fun Of It, FOTM's With 100 Billion Invested Not Necessary PvP," shoot me a gleemail to @Angrytown. I'm happy to server hop to find it.

tbh: I've never looked at the in game info on it that I can recall, but I'm sure checking later tonight.

I know that I was somewhat surprised when I tossed that first fire blast at an even conned minion and did much less dmg than shown in mids.

Hmm. There is also the possibility that I'm a bit daft, but I recall having read about this before.

This.

Pretty sure that even between beta and launch there were changes to fury that would have mitigated (but not eliminated) the problem. In my memory fury was always from attacking and being attacked.

Modern fury - no brainer - not even a problem. Been proven, shown, displayed, folded neatly, and placed in a box.

That said, meh, ice. While it would be fun, I'd rather see Spines, Broadsword, or Regen.

Oh wait, we were talking about things that might actually happen? Ice/Ice it is then.


(QQ's in a corner thinking about broadsword brutes...)

/fa benefits from Consume, which gives end for each mob it hits as well as a recovery boost for a bit. Still probably end hungry (the only time I've played it to any length I also had DC from dark melee, so ya end wasn't an issue. )

/sr is probably quite different in the way it would play though, and the classic pairing as others mentioned. I imagine easier to stay alive in general; I just mentioned /fa as an alternative, and kinda as a reminder that I had thought about making one, lol.

Fair enough.

The biggest thing that I noticed about your build is that it mixes building for positional and typed defense. I took a quick stab km/will, somewhat inspired by my current km/regen plan.

It's probably sloppy and garbage, smashing/lethal is still just shy of softcapped among other problems.

Anyway, it should give you an idea of another take on the combo.

I did swap out the torrent for hasten, and the sev rez for manuevers - just what I would probably do, feel free to disregard. Either way I would still slot for smashing/lethal defense as that builds on your heightend senses base.