Oblivion21

I was on a BAF run once when a kinetic got confused and speedboosted a group of prisoners. They were so fast! I laughed and laughed.

I don't know how imposing a cap on inf or the market would help anything. The OPs suggestion of increasing drops and decreasing inf generation would bring prices down, but it might not leave you in a better position as now the market is flooded with new drops and the price decreases, so your new drops are now worth less inf.

The people currently farming for inf are getting drops along the way and putting them on the market. So they are not only earning inf, they are increasing supply of recipes and salvage at the same time. All in all, as we reach equilibrium, what we are seeing are the true costs for some rare items. A kinetic combat might only drop once per 120M influence earned through play. Capping the price at the market won't work (as we've seen through the ultra rare PvP IOs that are bought and sold outside the market) and capping inf won't work because people will just hoard them.

What I would really complain about is simply the absolute rarity of some of these recipes. The +def PvP IO is dropping so rarely that it is simply worth 2.5B. If you cause deflation, it will cost less but you'll be earning less inf along the way.

As for myself, I'm trying to take the hard path and earn the 60 emp merits to buy a single PvP IO. Running a BAF and a LAM every night for a month would earn me that one IO out of a entire set (which would take half a year playing the same two trials every night). I started this journey after I had already played enough trials to T3 this character and tonight I stand at 28 emp merits. Tonight, when I logged in, I realized that I simply can't take it anymore. I've grown sick of the trials and sick of CoH. I do think that some of the costs for these items is simply extreme, but the devs feel that running the same content content 30 days is a fair price for a single item. I think it's a bit extreme and has left me ignoring the other content. I'm not totally blameless here, there are other ways to earn the merits, but playing the market and farming emp merits or not my cup of tea or not as efficient. There's not a whole lot of difference between farming trials or farming the same tip missions for 60 days. Think about it, running the same type of missions every night for an entire year is required for one set of some IOs.

Given the prices set forth by the devs in this context makes it quite clear that complaining about your inf purchasing power isn't going to do much. The only way to increase your relative purchasing power is to increase the drop rates, especially for rare and extremely rare items. I think the prices put on these items in terms of emp or alignment merits make it quite clear that they want these items to be exceedingly rare or expensive. This has sent some players, like myself, into behaviors that make me form a disdain for the game. I don't want to do another freaking trial in my entire life.

This thread reminded me of this comic..

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000...2318.strip.gif

The first character I ever created was an nrg/fire blaster (terrible combination) on Liberty. I picked up the game many years ago after seeing some advertisement or review (can't remember which now). Being a newb, I selected Liberty not because of any informed decision but because I liked the name. I only got the blaster to level 17 before I quit.

You see, I had some limited experience in MMOs before CoH and I had some expectations about what massively multiplayer meant. And although I have better knowledge now about how to find teams and other players, at the time my expertise was limited to broadcasting messages attempting to get invites. It didn't take long for me to become frustrated. However, before quitting the game entirely I noticed that when logging in, Freedom had the magical yellow bubble next to its name. That one little detail saved my sub and has kept me around over the years. I appreciate the large number of people online, even the occasionally annoying spammer. It adds color and entertainment to the atmosphere. In my opinion, that's what massively multiplayer means.

I also understand that this isn't what everyone is looking for in CoH. There are people out there that like their low population servers because they've made a home and community there. It's just not very friendly for people who, just like when I started, don't know how to become a part of the community and enjoy playing this game in the presence of others. There's a reason that many people are curious as to the number of people playing this game and how active the servers are. We do the whole community a disservice when these people become frustrated and leave. I would therefore make two recommendations:

1) Some notification on the sign in screen regarding server population. Honestly, I wasn't even aware until this thread that the servers are listed according to population. There is basically no guidance for a beginner as to which server has a large population.

2) An auto-teaming system to make it easier to get on a team even if you aren't aware of global channels or your server's super groups.

Looking at Bill Z's numbers is kind of disheartening. Depending on the time of day, I have trouble getting large teams on red side on Freedom. I can't imagine trying to do this when, at its peak, the server only has ~70 people on red side. If we ignore the people who are hiding (as they are probably not going to be actively teaming) and we assume that a good chunk of that 70 are 50s who are farming, socializing, playing the market, etc (maybe 30%, unless someone here has some concrete data), that leaves 49 people stretching from level 1-49. I could see how someone just starting at level 1 with no friends and no group would definitely feel like the place was barren, especially if they logged in during non-peak hours. Now, I'm not trying to be unfair to people who are hiding or who want to solo, but I have to imagine that most people who purchase this game do so to play with other superheroes. I can't see how having so few teaming opportunities for new players on some servers is sustainable or desirable. Maybe more needs to be done to funnel a player's first character to a high population server so they can get a bigger bite of the MMO experience before they go to a smaller server with a tighter community.

I would probably pursue every possible option before merging servers, but I don't think consolidation is something that can be entirely ruled out as the game ages and populations shrink.

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Here's my take on "pure" meatshield tanking: it requires your teammates to work with you.

If your team isn't going to stand back and let you set up the mobs -- and few teams need to, so you'll seldom find people inclined to do this and seldom find players mentally agile enough to adjust to it -- you'll need to be mobile and damage-dealing to keep as much aggro as you can in a fluid team environment.

There's no question Granite is the ultimate anvil, but I find my Granite Tanker wanting teams to slow down and let me take some time to get aggro set. It's very hard to be as flexible and fast-moving with Granite (or Stone as a whole, if you consider Rooted) as it is with other sets.

I generally agree with what Call Me Awesome wrote above. Willpower is a fabulous Tanker set, but it's less attractive for meatshield/aggro duty. I personally would extend the recommended secondaries beyond his choice of Stone Melee to include Super Strength, Battle Axe, or War Mace, because of controls in those secondaries. It's too easy to get fixated on setting up combos (and lose track of teammates or aggro in the process) for me to recommend Dual Blades for a meatshield build; Fire has no controls per se, and I have little experience with Ice or Energy Melee, both of which are often cited for low damage (at least pre-35 for EM) to boot.

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I have a WP/Fire that's nearly IO'd out and he's a complete beast. I have one taunt in RttC and I have taunt from fire. I jump into a spawn and hit combustion, which has a large radius, then hit fire circle sword after they've gathered on me. Doing that plus taunting anyone on the outskirts keeps the team chugging.

And this sucker is crazy tough against most mob types. Without a huge investment, he's softcapped to s/l and over 40% to the rest, except psi. If the enemy is in melee, he's softcapped to all except psi, which is still > 30%. He's got 70% resist to s/l, but weaker resists to the rest. Add this to 3100 hit points and 600% regen (much higher surrounded by enemies) and this tank is a force. My only issue are spawns with large number of -def attacks, but many builds have this issue.

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G_tanker you said you saw a lot of WP tankers face plant on the 54 boss farm. Why do you think they face planted and how can you build a tanker to avoid that? Does WP suck at Tanking?

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Let me answer for G_tanker.
I'm going to guess the WP Tanks he saw faceplant either did not have Tough and Weave or just were not good at Tanking.

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I can speak for myself, thanks, I have lots to say about terrible tanks.

First off, willpower is a middle of the road set. It does not really excel at anything - jack of all trades syndrome. It can be built for pretty much anything, however. Innately, as a set, it does not have a great starting point against 54 smash/lethal bosses.

Many of the terrible tanks I've seen this week did have tough and weave. Some were too stupid to run them, I kid you not (too much endurance? lol). Incidentally, one non-WP highlight of this week was the stone tanker that didn't enhance granite and was going down where my invuln scrapper had no problems. That cracked me up.

Typically they weren't played/built. 54 smash/lethal bosses are not WP's forte innately the way it is for invuln or stone - they do more damage per hit than lower bosses, meaning more needs to be regenerated, and the -tohit effect is much weaker vs them. Higher resistance is important if you want to stand up to that much damage consistently, and you definitely want to softcap S/L or melee for that environment if you can manage it. (Of course, one FF defender or Fort and you're pretty good!)

By comparison, my invuln scrapper was tanked 53's from 28-39 and 54's since then in the last few days. I simply IO'd out for defense to S/L and built teams or brought purple insps to finish the softcap when needed, always with at least 60% S/L resistance.


Another thing is keep in mind your taunt aura is weak. Annoyingly weak. I have played with a number of bad willpower tanks in the last few days (my ABSOLUTE favorite one was the 48 WP/Fire/Pyre yesterday that thought she was 'helping' whenever I brought a new pack of 54's into the group by fireball/taunting them off me and losing the ones she had next to her - we had like a dozen squishy deaths in a run due to her not knowing when NOT to taunt) so I'm a bit jaded.

Willpower's big strength is not innately S/L, but it can be designed for it with a little effort and can do quite well. As always, there's an insp vendor right outside the AE - it always pays to have an emergency skittle to cover your holes. Bad players will think they can tank simply because their AT says "Tanker" (*laugh*), and most of them get too caught up in the glory of standing in a pile of mobs to realize the nuances of capping and agro, then wonder why their teammates are dying. Please, please don't be one of these players. I can't do double and triple spawn herds of 54's with partners that try to steal my agro and lose theirs in the process - it kills teammates.

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Nearly finished with my WP/fire tank. I'm missing a few sets to give me +HP and the Task Force Commander Accolade. I have ~2900 HP, but will have ~3100 when done.

Through sets and power choices, I've softcapped S/L defense (over 40% on the other types as well) and have 70% resistance to S/L. In a huge group, I'll get >150 HP/s regen. WP with the right slotting can be an unstoppable machine. Not only because of survivability but because of longevity. My recovery is 4.21 end/sec. There's basically zero downtime. If I hit SoW, I cap my S/L resist easily and up my recovery even further.

My only regret is selecting fire. The AoEs are nice, but being a tank they are simply for holding aggro. They also provide no mitigation. I've just started a WP/SS and am building him in a very similar manner, and plan to perma-Rage. The end crash is not an issue so I plan to get a great deal more mitigation and damage on top of the incredible survivability I have now.

I was also fortunte to buy many of my IOs when the AE was in full swing. I got the KC recipes pretty cheaply and even rolled a LoTG:Recharge and NC: Regen/Recovery. It was (is) relatively cheap to make an extremely effective WP tank even though the price of KCs has increased substantially.

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Personal thought on question.

Slower levels = Greater Value of the Goal

Faster Levels = Firecracker goal. Ooo, ahh at first then nothing.

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I don't believe that's true. I slaved out to make the first 50, but I didn't feel any particular sense of accomplishment when it was done. It also didn't unlock some huge chest of new content.

Like I said, the only new content for me in this game are basically the characters I create. If you don't want me going 1-50 quickly, ok, but at least give me an opportunity to quickly go to a point where I really start feeling powerful. This is a subjective request, but for me it would be late 20s to the early 30s. Definitely something past stamina.

It also helps me pick out duds. The game changes quite a bit when you get into the 30s and 40s. I discovered this with my second alt ever, a fire/nrg blaster. I was extremely powerful when I got into the late 20s, but as I hit the late 30s I realized I strongly disliked this alt. I spent much of my late 30s mezzed. He's still sitting in his late 30s. It's not really time wasted, as I enjoyed him up to that point, but it was certainly disappointing to realize that he wasn't going to get into the content in the 40s. It wasn't until I stuck with my scrapper that I hit 50, years after I started.

I've already unsubscribed once due to boredom. You might say longer leveling provides more value, but I say the longer leveling isn't worth the prize at the end. I'd rather play around with many different powersets than spending time getting one to 50.