Muon_Neutrino

I think I might go for a water/dark corruptor. Dark armor can be colored to look like some really nice water/sea mist type blue/green shades, so I'm hoping water/dark might work as a water blast / water manipulation sort of character. Plus dark miasma is, as always, amazingly good, so any excuse to use it is fine with me.

Honestly, the only thing I can think of is that its AoE damage isn't the greatest (though tremor isn't really as bad as its reputation would make it - it's at least got a nice big radius), which perhaps damages people's perceptions of the set in today's AoE-happy game. Aside from that it's a flat-out amazing set. Great ST damage, ST DPA that ranges from good to absurd, and great ST and AoE mitigation on top of that.

Aaaaaaand another thread goes off the rails. It's really the best idea to not respond to the troll.

According to city of data, power surge summons this pet when it expires. It's listed as doing 22.35s of mag 3 hold with a 50% chance for an extra mag 1, -55% endurance, -1000% regen for 15 seconds, and a minor energy damage component to robots. Note, though, that it doesn't have any -recovery, so even if it drains something they'll start gaining it back immediately. Also note that the power isn't autohit and has standard accuracy, so you'll probably want to slot some acc in it if you want to be able to rely on that effect.

I'll drink to that. An illusion port is *LONG LONG LONG* overdue. And the flimsy excuse to not give it to us last time was really lame.

And just to head it off, no, it won't be overpowered because of PA - if a mind permadom perma confusing an AV isn't overpowered, then neither is keeping one distracted with perma PA - and no, it won't be underpowered because of pseudopets that don't get domination - if electric and ice, which essentially only get dom on their two holds (dom is almost irrelevant for the immobs and flash freeze is useless) are fine, then illusion would be fine too.

Toss 100mil at a time to random newbies? Cause that's always fun.

Though that's more difficult now that we've got free players who can't receive trade requests. Does anyone know if there's an easy way to give free players inf?

Well, I voted for option 1, but really, they both kinda stink. Why are two d-list bit characters becoming the face of the game here? Put some combo of states, recluse, and/or tyrant back up there. I don't *CARE* if states is dead, he's a far better symbol than two nobodies.

So, here's what I'm looking at right now.

Cooler master CM690 II case (Suddenly out of stock, but I don't imagine that will last long. I wasn't going to order until next week anyway.)
CORSAIR Professional series 650W power supply
ASRock Z77 Extreme6 LGA 1155 motherboard
Intel Core i5-3570K processor
Cooler master Hyper 212 cpu cooler
G.SKILL Ares 8GB ram (went for some with no protruding heat sinks)
EVGA GTX 569 Ti video card
Seagate Barracuda 1TB hard drive

Is there anything wrong with this, as far as anyone can tell?

I still need to decide on a monitor, keyboard, and maybe headset (already have mouse, speakers, and copy of windows 7). Monitor I'm just looking for a decent, fairly big (20"+) lcd. Last time I had this monitor, which seemed to be pretty nice. I was thinking of just getting the same one again for simplicity, unless anyone has any better suggestions. I specifically *don't* cate about 3d or any of that.

Keyboard, when the rig was stolen I had *just* gotten a microsoft sidewinder x4 to replace the cheap generic I had destroyed with a glass of pop. I originally chose it for the anti-ghosting, since the generic had the annoying habit of not recognizing the 3rd keypress if I tried to hold down (for example) shift, s, and a (which got me killed on occasion in games like counter-strike since it's useful to be able to walk on the diagonal while sneaking). I was also hoping, though, that the macro keys would help alleviate some of the power overload I run into on high level characters here in CoH by mapping them to something like control+(1-5), but in the few days I had to play with it I found them a bit far from wasd to actually comfortably hit in combat. It's still a good anti-ghosting keyboard for about the right price, the extra features (while not quite as good as I had been hoping) are still useful, and I'd definitely buy it again if nothing better comes along. I'm curious, though, if anyone has any experience with any other gaming keyboards that they particularly like (especially ones with anti-ghosting or easy to hit macro keys).

Finally, headset/microphone. I'm not looking for anything fancy, just a decent, reasonably cheap headset with microphone that won't fall apart after a couple months. I had in the past a cheap radio shack headset which was nice and comfortable, but the mic died. Does anyone know what the *good* brands are in terms of reliability/comfort/etc?

Hey all,

Since this hell semester is finally winding down, I've decided it's time to replace the desktop that was stolen from me back in january. And, surprise surprise, there's a new set of processors just out to boot.

I was planning on doing something along the lines of Father Xmas' 1350$ build, which in the time since its last update has fallen to around 1200$. Toss out the 100$ for a copy of windows since I still have the copy from the last computer and it's around 1100$, which, once I add a monitor and keyboard, will be around what I want to pay.

The question comes with the new processors and associated parts. I'm knowledgeable enough to assemble a computer, install windows, etc, but I don't really feel confident on the picking out hardware side of things, and I *really* haven't had any time lately to pay attention to that sort of thing.

The processor on the old list is an i5-2500k, which goes for 220$ at the moment. Of the 7 ivy bridge processors available at newegg, the i5-3550 seems to be the closest equivalent, as far as I can tell. What I'm wondering, though, is what's the significance of the letters after the number? I *think* it has something to do with integrated graphics; correct me if I'm wrong, but that shouldn't be important for a build with a discrete graphics card, right (although then I'd wonder why it was in the last build)? Also, the main difference between i5 and i7 is the hyperthreading that gets two threads going per core, right? Am I correct in thinking that that doesn't make much difference if I'm not running a million programs at once, and therefore that I don't really need an i7? Basically, I don't really know the reasoning behind the choice of the original processor, so I'm not sure choosing the nearest equivalent ivy bridge version is correct.

I believe I'm supposed to be looking for Z77 chipset/socket LGA 1155 motherboards for ivy bridge. The old motherboard was an ASRock Z68 Extreme4 LGA 1155 board for about 180$. This seems to be the nearest equivalent Z77 motherboard - even somewhat cheaper. Again, though, I don't know what the reasoning for the original choice was, so I'm not sure if simply looking for the nearest equivalent is the right thing to do.

As for graphics, I was thinking of simply sticking with the EVGA GTX 560 that's in the old list. Is this still a good card? I notice it says it's a 'PCI express 2.0' card, while the motherboard lists 'PCI express 3.0' slots; will it actually work in that motherboard?

Will the cooler master 212 CPU cooler work with the new processor? I see that it says it works with the intel 1155 sockets; does that mean that it'll still fit the new processor? Also, a review for that particular motherboard mentioned that a similar cooler blocked the first memory slot and that they had to put their ram into slots 2 and 4 - they said it worked, but that seems like a really weird thing to me; I thought the first slot always had to be filled. Could this be a problem?

Finally, the case. I assume that the cooler master 690 case in the old list is a perfectly good case. Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, it doesn't seem to include any provision for locking the case shut (at least it doesn't look like it in the pictures). Given what happened to my last machine, I fully plan to lock this one shut and then bike lock the case itself to some holes drilled through the side of my heavy wooden desk (won't stop a persistent enough burglar, but ought to defeat the sort of smash and grab jerk who took the last one). I need an appropriate case, though, and it doesn't seem that case manufacturers think that locking provisions are important enough to note in their descriptions. I suppose I can drill holes in the thing for that purpose if I have to, but it seems simpler to just get one that already has a place to put a lock. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to go about finding such a case, or whether it'd just be simpler to just get this one and drill some holes (I can do that, especially since I'm guessing I'll have to drill holes for the bike cable anyway)?

Apart from all that, is there anything else on that list of parts that's out of date and should be updated? I'd rather not spend extra money, but if better stuff's now available for equivalent prices I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance!

Arms & backpack. They just look goofy to me. Plus, huntsmen are quite similar overall, and since I'd rather play a huntsman and don't want to play two characters which are so similar, crabs would lose even without the backpack.

Electric blast is bad because:

No 3rd blast.
2nd AoE is a very slow animating PBAoE.
Effectively no secondary effect unless you put a *lot* of effort into building around it and leveraging it.

There's nothing especially *wrong* with storm, and there's no particular anti-synergy between it and elec (apart from hurricane+PBAoE), it's just that elec sucks and there's no *positive* synergy either. Ice has the stacking rain synergy, dark has the self-heal + KD-allowing immob synergy, fire stacks rains too, etc, while nothing electric does really capitalizes on anything storm does (or vice versa).

As far as end use goes, frankenslot for end reduction in hurricane, freezing rain, tornado, and lightning storm, which are the biggest offenders (steamy mist too, somewhat). Getting +60% endredux in all of those will make your life so much easier. Aside from that, the usual perf shifter + recovery uniques, and try to grab recovery bonuses where possible.

Silencing sounds can be done with the procedures outlined in this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=113746

The specific beast mastery sounds are listed in this particular post in that thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...82#post4169382

Did they ever make another pass on the sounds? Because last I heard, they still sounded like a party in a trash can lid factory.

Procs in trip mine work the exact same way they do in any regular damaging AoE power - each of them will make a single roll against each enemy in the AoE when it goes off.

33% worth of damage enhancement in trip mine is worth ~64 points of damage. A regular proc (20% chance for ~72 damage) is worth a bit more than 14 points of damage on average. A purple proc (33% chance for ~107 damage) is worth ~36 damage on average. The blaster PPM proc, it depends on the proc rate, which I don't think anyone has figured out for sure yet (especially in AoEs). If it's (cycle time/(60/ppm))/target cap, that works out to ~7.5 average for the regular proc and ~14 average for the superior. If the dividing factor is aoe factor instead the blaster procs will be worth somewhat more, although I seem to have lost the aoe factor formula. Point is, with the possible exception of the blaster proc, it's not worth using procs until trip mine is already maxed out on damage enhancement.

If you want to try to max out damage and recharge in as few slots as possible to leave room for procs (i.e. the absolute most damage per boom, while still getting as much recharge as possible), I might slot the purple dam/rech, acc/dam/rech, proc, and superior blaster acc/dam, proc, along with a third proc of your choice (possibly store-bought, depending on whether the PPM actually leads to a higher proc rate than the normal proc or not). This sacrifices any ability to get the best set bonuses out of either of those sets, but if you toss a few boosters onto the purples you're sitting at 65+ acc, capped damage, and almost 90% recharge while still fitting in 2 purple and one regular proc (if you're willing to +5 both purples you could even swap the blaster acc/dam for the acc/dam/end and get a bit of endredux while still keeping capped damage, although your acc will dip to just under 60%, which might start to get problematic against +level foes - set bonuses won't transfer to the mines, although I wonder if tactics might).

Overall, though, unless you use mines *really* heavily I do have to wonder whether it'd be worth it. It's a lot of expensive enhancements and boosters to simply pack an extra two procs into the power (relative to using 6 oblits), and you're really sacrificing set bonuses.