Muon_Neutrino

That's always been one of my favorites too. Sure, it's quite unpolished compared to the demoedited masterpieces we're used to today, but that just makes what they pulled off an even bigger accomplishment. And the synchronization of the shots with the song is quite good.

On the subject of videos, a video that I found the same day as I found that one is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42y2v...eature=related

It's not really anything special compared to the last one - it's just one of the very old (note the old design for BaBs) launch trailers for CoH with the audio replaced with a song. What's notable about it is how incredibly perfectly the song syncs up with the trailer without any editing of either one. It was so close that at first I thought that this was the original trailer, until I ran across a version with the original audio (and I still like this version better, as the original audio includes a really bad voiceover).

It's also pretty good, I think. The official trailers for this game were always pretty looking, and the song certainly fits well. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a HD version of that original trailer, though there's probably one out there somewhere.

Oh man, those four arcs and SSA:2 were yours? Well, at least you can be sure now that any game company ought to be ecstatic to have you on staff writing stories. Those were some of the best stuff I've played in CoH yet, right up there with the clone arcs and Turg's ghost in the machine arcs.

Not quite - the 20% chance for knockdown is separate from the knockback suppression part, it only takes effect if the power didn't already have knockback. If the power already does knockback, the 20% chance for knockdown is ignored and instead the power's regular knockback is replaced by knockdown. So, it works like this:

Normal power, no knock effects: gains a 20% chance to inflict knockdown.

Normal power, has x% chance to knockback: The knockback is converted to knockdown, so where before it had a x% chance to knockback and a (100-x)% chance to do nothing, now it has an x% chance to knock*down* and a (100-x)% chance to do nothing. It will never do knockback.

Power is tornado or bonfire (100% chance for knockback every pulse): these two powers were deemed too strong with 100% chance to knockdown every second or so, so they got a special exception coded in for them. These two powers have a 40% chance to knockdown and a 60% to do nothing each pulse when slotted with the KB-to-KD enhancement.

Just need to point out that this, while a common misconception, isn't true. Knockback, regardless of the shape of the delivering AoE, always knocks its targets directly away from the source of the effect - and in the case of a power like explosive blast, that source is the player. The only way you'd get EB knocking enemies away from the center of the blast is if you use it on an enemy in melee range so that the center is right next to you.

The only way you get radial KB is with PBAoEs or powers that use a pseudopet (like bonfire) to deliver the knockback (which is therefore treated as the source).

Personally, especially if you've got a KB suppression IO so that you can use them back to back without worrying about the first knocking them out of range of the second, I'd be really loath to drop either of them. If you forced me to choose I'd probably ask if you spend much time in melee using the melee attacks. If so, I'd keep explosive blast since I could use it without jumping out of melee, if not I'd keep energy torrent since it's got similar damage for less recharge and end. Really, though, I'd take a extremely close look at my build to see if there was *anything* else I could drop instead. I'm always very reluctant to sacrifice AoE potential on my blasters, as I feel that on teams that's the niche they can lay the best claim to.

It's a reference to the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop war game, which prominently features 'chainswords' as a common melee weapon, some of which are very similar in appearance to the new weapon here. The setting of the game as a whole can be summed up as 'grimdark', but one of the races, the Orks, has a lot of amusing qualities and are more or less the comic relief of the game. That post is an example of how orks speak ('the red ones go faster' is a particular tagline of theirs and a reference to the orks' interesting 'psychic gestalt' collective unconscious psychic abilities - they believe that vehicles go faster if painted red, and since they believe it, it's actually true - at least for them).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ork_%28Warhammer_40,000%29

I personally play Tau, but if I were to pick up a second army it'd definitely be orks. They're just hilarious.

Two points. First, from the issue 24 patch notes on beta:

So, that bug will be fixed in a month or so, not issue 46.

Second, the wolves will only have to spend time chasing things everywhere if you're bad at storm. Contrary to the popular reputation of the set, a good storm user will be *reducing* scatter, not increasing it. Yes, storm is capable of some very effective chaos control if you choose to unleash it. Yes, storm is capable of causing all sorts of headaches in the wrong hands. But fundamentally, storm is the *positioning* set, not the 'scatter' set. While I think that there are definitely legit plusses and minuses to storm in general and a beast/storm mastermind in particular, scatter is *not* one of them.

Yeah, that'd be my opinion too. Not spectacularly enthused about the set itself, but just seeing the AT receive any attention is nice.

I would literally start jumping around my apartment like a maniac if they announced this. I'm going to make a water/ice blaster when i24 rolls around, but the only real reason I'm doing that is because there's no such thing as a water blast dominator. I would be all over a /water set for doms.

Best part is it'd be a pretty easy port. Leave the three regular blasts, tidal forces, steam spray, and tidal power system as they are. Turn water burst into a standard PBAoE and mutate dehydrate into a melee range siphon life analogue instead of a life drain analogue. All of that can be done purely with database changes, no animation or art time required. All that you really need to do is figure out what to replace whirlpool and geyser with.

Most assault sets have two powers that aren't regular attacks, so you'd probably be adding in one extra utility/flavor power and one more attack. I could see whirlpool's art and such being repurposed as something slightly analogous to mud pots (aura, minor DoT + slow) - sure, it'd be pretty boring and not super useful, but not every power needs to be a must have. As for geyser, I'd personally mutate it into something new - the melee equivalent of a mininuke. Basically something along the lines of 60s-ish recharge, perhaps a total focus and a half's worth of ST damage, and a hefty thunderstrike-esque region of splash damage + secondary effects around the target (though with considerably more range and damage than thunderstrike's puny effect). I'd personally prefer something more interesting for whirlpool, but the advantage of this sort of setup is it allows for the reuse of as much of whirlpool and geyser's art assets as possible.

My final numbers including the above:

Acc/Dmg 7
Acc/Dmg/End 7
Acc/Dmg/End/Rch 6
Dmg/Proc 11
Dmg/End/Rch 5
End/Rch 9

I think I made out pretty well - 11 procs in 45 runs is a 24.4% drop rate!

I agree, ouch! I still say that I ended up with all your luck.

OGODOGODOGODOGODOGODOGOD YES * a million. One of my biggest pet peeves about the costume system in this game is that there are *so many* costume bits that you can't have at the same time as anything but a plain vanilla unpatterned base. For example, if I have a character whose skin is anything other than basic human skin, they can't wear any of the 'clothing' style patterns and instead have to use things from the shirts/jackets/robes/pants/etc type categories. Any gloves or boots that show skin have the exact same problem. This would also open the door to implementation of a more in-depth variation on the same thing that I've also wanted forever - allowing things like (for example) the justice glove's armplate or the warrior boot's shinguard to go on top of some other base texture (like bare skin).