Oldeb

The ability to create that combo never made it out of beta for Issue 16.

I don't remember the reason given for the change. It may have been because of Granite's inability to display Claws correctly, so you could be safe. But if it was because of how Eviscerate looked you're going to be very sad .

Considering what happened to Claws/Stone for Brutes...

Mine's from a semi-obscure short story by Poe, A Tale of the Ragged Mountains. At least it's as obscure as someone like Poe can get. It's not considered one of his better stories and it doesn't seem to have a plot so much as it just sort of rambles on for a while.

The story involves Bedloe experiencing the death of Oldeb and then dying in a similar manner. Since I use Bedloe as my global I reversed it when I made a forum account.

Shows how much I know about Traps.
So would it be a change for the worse or would the extra damage from scourge just make it a wash then?

Because Rhode Island hates contests, that's why. I'm not kidding. Before you can hold a promotional contest you have to file with the State Secretary's Office. And you have to pay a filing fee which I think is currently $150. Failure is a criminal misdemeanor. There's a cut off; if your prize is below a certain value (I can't remember the exact $$ amount) then you do not need to file. But I'm guessing there's some other hassle then. Like probably filing that you don't have to file or something like that. It's just not worth the red tape for most contests, especially spur of the moment type ones that were pushed out relatively quickly.

I'd agree with Puppy for the most part, although I think we differ quite a bit on how much of a pro or con a particular hole may be. For example I think Puppy underemphasizes the cons of -rech and -spd in Stone's Granite Form, but it is largely an opinion as to what benefits outweigh what negatives. Not really a suprise for me since I'm a fan of Fire Armor and will happily trade +damage for surviabilty. Small wonder then that I think a set that does the exact opposite is a big negative. No two people have the same playstyle obviously.

I'll take a shot at Super Reflexes, someone else will have to fill in Shield Defense.


Pros: Quickness provides a nice +rech. Easy to soft cap defense with IOs. Excellent Defense Debuff Resistance greatly reduces the risk of cascading defense failure. When the random number generator is in your favor you are untouchable. Excellent god mode. Only three toggles makes it pretty light on your endurance bar.

Cons: Starts slow. You'll be weak early on and just have to ride it out. Needs nearly every power in the set to really reach it's full potential, which can limit power picks you'd rather use for power pools or even your primary. Some psionic damage powers have no positional tag, meaning you have no defense against them. When the random number generator is not in your favor you are dead, there is no inbetween with this set. Lack of self heal can be a problem if you are hit. God mode is not all that useful once you reach the soft cap.

Click Mez Protection: Mostly a con now, it used to be a big pro before the change to holds meant they didn't detoggle you anymore. Can be frustrating to those who like to keep another power (such as Hasten) on autofire.

Hello to the both of you!

One thread you may be interested in is Wyll's now famous "What my Six Year Old Has Learned From Cox" http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=122918

It's getting pretty long by now but it's full of stories of parents and teammates of players much younger than your granddaughter. You'll find plenty of family friendly hints and tips from others. I'm sure you'll both have a great time no matter what server(s) you decide to call home.


And as for keeping up, I don't think you're even old enough to raise our median age. At least not according to this informal poll back in September. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=193064

Dark Melee gets some of it's "weak" criticism from people who like the SMASH feeling of sets like Super Strength or Stone Melee. It doesn't have the massive smack of Headsplitter or flashy effects like Lightning Rod. Heck, of the 9 powers in the set only 3 of them have you actually touch your target, something that's sort of odd for a melee set.

That doesn't mean it isn't doing damage or working just as well as other sets. Unslotted on a Scrapper Midnight Grasp does slightly more damage than Headsplitter as well as being a less commonly resisted damage type. It just isn't flashy about it. It's very much a toolbox set, with it's powers filling gaps elsewhere in your build.

My first 50 was a DM/FA Brute, and yes, you'll feel a bit left out when everyone else is getting a tier 9 SMASH and you get Midnight Grasp. Don't give it a second thought. My Brute is like the energizer bunny. He just keeps going and going. With two heals and two end recovery powers, there isn't much that slows you down. You're the terminator of Brute builds. Pair DM with a defense set and the -to hit makes you even better. Pair it with a set lacking a heal and Siphon Life has you covered. End problems? Not with Dark Consumption around.

If you want SMASH look somewhere else, but for all around effectiveness Dark Melee is a great set.

He's actually dead and just really well preserved.

You know that whole "die young and leave a beautiful corpse" thing? Willard Motely stole that from Zer0.

CoH Splasher already can do this for you.

http://www.splasher.com.ar/

I don't really have any good stories about being a healzor, but I have gotten several sincere "nice heals" comments from PuG teams with my Force Field defender. I have no idea what they thought was going on.

My understanding was that when they talked about "jewel tones" for ice powers it wasn't like this

http://images.forbes.com/media/2008/05/15/jewels_01.jpg

or this

http://allaboutrubies.org/selling-rubies.gif


But ended up looking more like this

http://3d-jewels.smartcode.com/image...els_16556.jpeg


If that's the case I'm with the Devs and agree with the choice to not add it to the game.

Number of people in one place is probably a big one, since the server needs to keep track of who can see who and has to keep sending that information. Dividing people into teams and sending them into instanced missions reduces the load of a crowd.

Power use affects load. Masterminds with their pets will generate more load than anyone else. In theory you could force a server to lock from the load long before you hit the population cap if you grouped enough MMs in one zone and have them let their henchman run wild. Spamming AoE powers will generate more than if you were spamming single target powers.

Combine the two in a Rikti Mothership raid or a Hamidon raid and you generate more load than a server with the same population spread out.

While population is the probably biggest single factor on generating load, what they are doing and where has an impact as well.

Edit: It should be noted that things like spawning a second instance of a zone and caps on the number of people in a zone are there to keep these things from really affecting anyone's gameplay. But they do show up as extra work for the server even if you don't notice it.

I think Freedom took something of a population hit with the AE fix, (I refuse to call it a nerf) but I don't think they would have dropped so far that the population is now below Virtue's. They were anecdotally pretty far ahead of us, nearly as far ahead as we are from Justice or Infinity. Even a large scale drop would probably just move us to a more even population.

Also remember that while load and population correspond, the two aren't equal. Freedom received some hardware upgrades that the other servers haven't yet and that would mean they can handle larger numbers better than Virtue can right now. When Virtue gets its upgrade we'll probably drop back down to our usual number two spot.

In my opinion Virtue is also more likely to have people who do things that create greater load for the server. Gathering a large number of people in one place is rougher on the server than that same number divided into teams and scattered into instanced missions. Pocket D here is never really empty and Atlas Park wasn't filled up with people just because of the AE building. Pocket D crowds in particular are unique to Virtue in my experience.

Every server raids the mothership and we're no exception. That's a large load and we hit the Rikti pretty frequently. I think we're the only server with regular Hamidon raids and while those aren't a continuous thing they impact load whenever they take place.

So while I think that Freedom's load is more or less based entirely on population, Virtue seems to go out of it's way to hold large, load generating gatherings. Clearly we need to be less friendly and talkative if we want to regain the number two spot.

Here's a pic of my character and the pet juggling together.

My clockwork pet does the juggle_electricity emote occasionally. The faint hope that it will happen is the only reason I ever bring him out anymore. I've never seen him dance, and I've never really spent much time with any other type of vet pet out to see if they did anything interesting.

It's not new with i16, since I first saw it before the issue came out. I have no idea when it was added though. Like most people, I'm don't have it out very often or pay it much attention when I do.

Totally unofficial, but here's a bit of chat log from yesterday you may be interested in:

[VU2009]V: Oh geeze. Blue shields... *clears throat* So....when do we get that button to cut off friendly buffs?

[VU2009]Back Alley Brawler: system for unwanted buffs is being looked into

[VU2009]E: omg good...

[VU2009]V: Spectacular!

[VU2009]E: someoen hit me with a god-ugly speed boost earlier

[VU2009]S: Oh that is good news. Some people will love that.

[VU2009]K: Wait, I just logged on. o_o

[VU2009]B: Nice! Thanks BAB

[VU2009]E: i looked like i was farting while i ran XD

[VU2009]Back Alley Brawler: wasn't something we felt necessary to hold up I16

Shadow Fall prevents Heavies from spawning during Rikti invasions.

Even a post from Dark Watcher hasn't been enough to put it to rest. *sigh*