Organica

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I'm still irritated that EVE was partly the reason Earth and beyond went under. EVE isn't even similar to the gameplay syle of EB. Frankly I don't understand the pull that EVE has for the sci-fi niche. I didn't like it at all.

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RIP Earth and Beyond

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I thought Earth and Beyond went under because Electronic Arts are idiots?

I did the LGTF two days ago. I'm a katana scrapper, and we had a broadsword, and a dual blades, and the tank was mace I think. It was a long fight, but we managed to eventually beat him down. I used my blackwand as often as possible. ^_^

I joined a team the other day, and another player asked how things were going. I started to explain how I was crafting and selling and putting in bids with a goal of redesigning my character to add more positional defense via set bonuses... and he said, "I have no idea what you're talking about. This is my second day."

Anyway it was an AE team, and he was low level, but luckily it wasn't a PL team... we were running an actual story arc. He had no idea how to even get into the AE building. We got to explain what PLing was, and why he should avoid it at first, and what afk meant, and a thousand other things... hopefully we gave good answers to all of his questions, and he had a good time.

I don't know you, but in all of this time I may well have teamed with you at some point. Take care!

Now we just need to explain how, once you're there, to find the secret lounge room, how to get to the other side of the dam, and how to find the entrance to the tunnels where some of the missions are.

So I brought my laptop to my parent's house, where I'm visiting for the 4th of July weekend.

It's not that powerful, but I can at least log in and do some marketing. But that's all, right?

Oh, a hami raid? Oh, I've got 2 hours and that'll be fun! Just so long as my laptop can handle it (which it does....)

After that I'm off to fireworks for the evening, but I do log in late at night and talk to a friend for several hours.

Next day... log in... Oh, a rikti ship raid? Those don't take too long! Off I go....

Oh, Kronos Titan is up? I gotta go help!

An invite to kill Eochai and Jack in Irons? Sure!

An invite to help kill Nemesis? I'm always up for an AV fight!

You want to run my Infernal mission? Sure! I've had it for two years, about time I finish it!

Want to do Chimera too? Let's go!

Next is Dominatrix!

Then Shadowhunter!

Ok, now it's Malaise!

Here comes Seige!

Maurader, you're next!

Suffice it to say... my laptop still handles CoH well enough to let me play. I had a fun weekend!

---

Except... when I went to show off my character to my nephew (who plays Wow):

See? This zone is called the Storm Palace. Cool, huh? Before I show you the palace, let's see how I do against these brutes... /faceplant.

Hmmm. I guess a dozen of them were too many.... Well, this is the storm palace itself. Oh, there's some wisps. They look weird don't they? Let's see if I can pull just one.... /faceplant.

Anyway, I'm going back to Peregrine Island where it's safer. Oh look! It's an invasion. See, that's a rikti ship! Aren't they cool? /faceplant.

Needless to say, I don't think I impressed him with the survivability of my character, although I did get to demonstrate the lack of any meaningful death penalty at level 50.

Was talking to my friend this morning... I'm working on my scrapper's build to add defense. And he wanted to show off his build... 45% smashing/lethal defense, on a fire/kin.

Granted that was an extreme build -- he said he'd spent 6-7 billion on it (which... when one person says "I have a 4 billion build" and another says "I have a 7 billion build" does it mean the 2nd person has a better build, or just more money and less patience? But I digress...)

Anyway... clearly SOME fire/kins would be fine farming one of those boss missions. ^_^ (And I know he does.)

But you have a point. For a 54 boss mission, a good tank and a well-built team are not afterthoughts. Some people get that, some don't. I was on a team yesterday where the leader very carefully picked out veteran players/good players with good builds (he commented on mine so I know he was paying attention to these things). Took extra time to assemble the team, but it ran really smoothly. On a different team, similar mission, lots of people dying and the leader was frustrated because things weren't working the way they were supposed to..."something's wrong... we shouldn't be having this much trouble!" he kept saying... but of course he'd just assemble a random group of 8 people together, several of which were mid to lower level. No real clue what made a good team for that kind of mission.

I think farms like this are still not very exciting, but they're miles ahead of older-style farms. At least everyone on the team is involved.

If Praetorian Nemesis is good, then is everything in Praetoria part of a Nemesis five-step plan to bring about world peace?

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Incriminating Evidence

This shot was taken during an ITF today with a Troller bubbler a Kin/ Defender and an Empathy Defender.

Take a VERY close look at the defense numbers.

Did I kill stuff FAST? HELL NO! But did I kill it? HELL YEAH!

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I like that defense numbers window. Is there a guide somewhere that explains how I can set it up to look like that?

Wanted to say thanks for the guide. I've yet to implement it on my invulnerability tanker (lvl 43) but I plan to. In the meantime, I decided to apply some of the advice here to my katana/regen scrapper.

I picked up 2 full sets of Obliteration (expensive), 2 full sets of Kinetic Combat (expensive) 5 pieces of Mocking Beratement in Calling the Wolf, 4 pieces of Reactive Armor in Tough, Resilience, and Moment of Glory, the steadfast unique, I have 4 pieces of Luck of the Gambler in Weave (expensive, but I already had 3 of them) and 2 5-piece sets of Doctored Wounds (in Dull Pain and Reconstruction). 2 pieces of Blessings of the Zephyr in fly.

I kept a 5 piece set of Scirroco's Dervish that I had earlier, and a 6 piece set of Crushing Impact.

Net results: with Integration, Tough, Weave, Stealth and Hover active (how I've always played anyway), I have:

Ranged Defense: 19.55%
Melee Defense: 28.92% (Divine Avalanche will add anywhere from 15% to 60% in battle, and is usually at 30% -- I have it on auto fire)
AOE Defense: 19.24%
Smashing/Lethal: 32.05%
Fire/Cold: 19.24%
Energy/Negative: 19.86%
Psionic: 14.55%

I have 25.76% smashing/lethal resistance from tough and resilience to go along with that.

I'm really not a numbers cruncher, but those seem like pretty good numbers for a regen scrapper. ^_^ For my build I have MoG which is great for taking an alpha or for when things get crazy, and 2 heals (reconstruction and dull pain -- I don't have instant healing). So far between those and my defense/resistance I seem to do really well. Much better than what I had before, that's for sure. ^_^

I'm still planning on 1 last respec to change a few things around... I want to replace one of the Doctored Wounds with Miracle, which is more expensive but I have 4 pieces for it now. That would add 1.88% AoE defense and .94% cold/fire for 5 pieces of the set, and 1.88% Psionic defense if I splurge and 6 slot it with the +Recovery unique (very expensive though).

The other thing I'm debating is... right now I have hover 2 slotted with level 50 flys and stealth 2-slotted with level 50 endurance reductions. Either power can take defense IOs/Sets, but I'm not sure how useful that would be. I could conceivably squeeze in a 3rd or 4th slot in either power. Reconstruction can take Resistance sets, and right now I have one of the sets of doctored wounds there... I might switch that out, still haven't decided.

The one other question I'm not sure about is whether my sixth slot in DA should be used for recharge or defense. Right now I have 5 pieces of Kinetic Combat and a level 50 recharge. That grants me 82.6% recharge time, and it basically can fire every other attack, for 15% melee defense. I'm not sure if slotting for defense (or a defense/recharge IO) would add much per hit... I need to experiment with that I guess. ^_^

Overall I think I've improved my character significantly though, and I got my inspiration to do it directly from this thread. And when it comes time to outfit my invul tanker I'm going to follow the advice here as well. ^_^

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On a weird note, I heard a team broadcasting for a 'high level dragon' in Atlas. What the hey?

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Oh, now I want to know if they found it.

I'm an altaholic, but I suppose I'd consider Mouse Police on Virtue as my main. Scrapper hero, then. ^_^

Yeah

It's a fun one. ^_^

When you do it, take a picture of your hero next to Sister Flame, then post it in this thread or in the thread for the arc in the Missions forum. I did that, and apparently Sister Flame really got a kick out of it! Everyone should do that when they run her arc. ^_^

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4. Sequential Boss: Dr. Godpants reveals his true form! Beating down the main enemy causes it to change into a more powerful version after "defeat." Bonus points if the big-bad's style of combat changes radically between forms. (Snaptooth does this already, but his attacks don't change much.)

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Mary MacComber does this too... the only change is that she goes up in level a couple of times, I think. Still, same general idea.

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Smurphy wrote:

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I want to open the door to the mission and shoot the guys I see between the end and me. I don't do "tactics" or "strategy". The extent of my playskill is "close eyes" "throw fireball". I'm going to turn the difficulty to 5 and run at the bad guys. I do this for each and every Task Force and Strike force regardless of who's on my team and what the common perception of "this is how this TF is done" may be. Statesman and Recluse Task/Strike Forces included.

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I think you should start your own global channel. I'd join it in a second.

--NT

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Call it the "Close Eyes Throw Fireball" channel.

I'd join.

I was in a Hami raid last night. That was my third time ever and my first time since... oh, sometime in 2004 I think?

I did a few RWZ ship raids this week too. The ship still looks very cool. And I was on an Eden Trial run -- not even a full-on speed one, amazingly enough! That was my third time for that one too, and I love the Eden maps, quite awe-inspiring.

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See title.

The reason I ask this is because I see AE mission teams mowing down groups of lvl 54 bosses with very little trouble. With the exception of EB's and AV's, these are the hardest mobs in the game and random PuG's can kill them in groups now.

With I9 and the invention system, the game has gotten easier than ever. What can be done to make it more challenging? Is the current linear mission system holding it back? Do missions need to be more dynamic in some way? Do mobs need to be harder to kill? More damaging? More CC?

What do you think needs to be done? Or do you think nothing should be done?

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You are watching teams mow down the easiest level 54 bosses they can possibly find (or build). Trust me, that's no yardstick to measure everything by.

And as many people have said, you can easily design AE missions with enemies that are nearly impossible to beat. Making the game more challenging isn't the trick, it's finding players that want to be challenged. At least, finding a full team of them at any given time. ^_^

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I was robbed of my hilarious n00b train wreck story!

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Now that's a tragic story!

The last two nights I've ended the evening by joining an AE mission/farm for a half hour to an hour. Just to pick up some tickets for a few bronze recipe rolls.

Tonight I joined a team advertising "35+" mission team. I happened to check the leader before we entered. He was 22. I quickly checked the rest of the team --- MOST of them (well, half or more) were on the lower half of the level scale, a couple in their teens. This, I thought, is a level 35+ mission team? Nice how you invited a few higher levels to more or less PL you that way....

Anyway we had a level 46 stone tank, and I'm on my 50 scrapper. I knew the tank wasn't in any danger and I knew I could stay alive and whittle stuff down. There was another scrapper I think in his 30's. What everyone else on the team did wasn't really my concern.

And... it wasn't a bad team, but the blaster and trollers kept pulling aggro every other spawn or so and dying. Leader told the tank to pull just a few if there were more than the aggro cap... I wanted to say, "Or you could wait for him to gain aggro before tossing out your AoE's" but I figure some of these lessons you just have to learn the hard way.

Halfway through the tanker dinged and right after that had to leave. I had what I came for, so I left too. End of the ride, I guess!

I make a lot of alts. I've never had problems finding a workable name. Names of characters I've created in just the last 2-3 months:

On Virtue: Rouge Spy (deliberately spelled Rouge), Dog Is My Copilot, Valkyrie of Atlantis, Rocker Girl, Maid of Steam

On Liberty: Wilhelm Scream, Rocker Girl (later remade on Virtue), Machine Spirit

On Justice: Dark Candy

On Victory: Darkcandy (remake of above, but Dark Candy was taken ) Rocket Wolf, Tillie the Troll, Candy Ice

On Pinnacle: Aquamarine Assassin

Some of my favorite names are taken from songs that I like: Mouse Police, Terra Nova Cain, Serpentine Fire, etc. None More Black was also inspired from a line in the Spinal Tap movie, and by one of the main characters of the movie in general.

ALSO: The Virtue forum has a very very long thread with name suggestions, all available on Virtue at the time they were posted. Even if you don't play on Virtue, it's worth browsing through if you're looking for ideas or inspiration for a name.

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Enjoy the influence now, before I17: IRS cometh issue comes.

I think your in the 90% annual tax bracket now :P

Me, I'm going to a tax shelter in the rogue isles (yeah, thats the ticket)

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That's part of Going Rogue, right? You can be heroic and pay 90% taxes, or you can keep your money and take your first step to the dark side....

Yeah, I know level 50's are expensive, but A) My last enhancements lasted me more than 2 years, and these might last me forever, B) I have field crafter but I've never gotten the 45-50 badges, so I'm a bit closer to some of them now, and C) I'm greedy! That extra % I must have!

I did change some 3-slotting to 2-slotting as well. Before this, I had Dull Pain, Reconstruction, Moment of Glory and Build Up all slotted with 3 recharges. Now I have 1-2 recharges in them at most (depending on what other recharge from IO sets I have in that power), except for Build Up... which is 3 slotted for now but I might well respec again and use the 3rd slot somewhere else.

The other thing I did was get rid of Focused Accuracy. Way back when it seemed like a great power. It was an endurance hog, but I slotted it with 3 hit buffs and 3 end reducs and removed accuracy enhancements from my attacks, and thought I was stylin'. But that one power used up 6 slots and only gave me a 20% accuracy bonus... waste of slots when I can easily get more global accuracy from IO bonuses, if you ask me.

Normally I *do* take my time on these things and buy and build as needed while I level up. This is the first time I've taken one of my level 50s and tried to do everything at once. I don't recommend doing it that way, but I think I've managed to pull it off anyway.

I think one reason I felt like posting about it is... I spent nearly an entire evening, staying up past my normal bed time, just doing market stuff (except for 1 AE mission run). And I had fun! Every time a sale went through or a purchase came in, I was excited -- one step closer to my goal! Normally I'm one for placing orders and stuff for sale and then just ignoring everything for a day or two.

I'm a very low-key or low-level marketeer. I generally craft generic IOs for sale with 6 or 8 different characters, and when any one of them has 100 million influence or infamy I'm pretty happy. I might have a billion scattered across multiple characters on several servers, I don't know, but I haven't done any serious money-making.

I've been playing my level 50 scrapper Mouse Police lately. This character was 50 before IOs came out, and while I had a couple of IO sets slotted, the vast majority of my enhancements were SOs. I'd been tinkering with some set ideas the last day or two, but last night I made the decision to respec (a few days late on that decision I guess, but I have lots of vet specs anyway), remove a power here, change some slots around, and then slot for global accuracy, global recharge, and as much defense as possible, particularly smashing/lethal. I've paid attention to how much defense I get from Divine Avalanche and how much that affects my surviveability, and I wanted to up my base defense above 20% if possible.

Anyway... started with a bit less than 100 million. The most expensive part of the plan was 2 full sets of Obliteration, but I was also buying 4-5 pieces of multiple other sets... and then crafting level 50 IOs for the rest.

Mind you, after respec I had a lot of powers unslotted... so while I was not bidding for the "buy it now" price, I was trying to bid for the "buy it within the next 24 hours" price. So I knew I was spending money.

Halfway through the process, I ran out of money. And I realized that, of all of my other marketing characters, none were heroes on Virtue, so I didn't have a lot that I could borrow quickly.

I got creative. I borrowed a bit from two other characters. I pulled crafted IOs out of my base to sell. I sold a set of Mako's that I'd just respec'd out of. I started crafting to sell in earnest, using other characters so I could put more up for sale. 2 accounts FTW! I even joined an AE boss mission then bought a lot of bronze rolls to see what I could craft and sell (or even what would come up that I was already bidding on).

The good news is, as of this morning most of my bids had filled, so my character is nearly there already and certainly back to playable at this point.

Moral of the story: I need to get more serious about my marketing. 100 million just isn't that much money, when it comes down to it. I don't think crafting generic IOs turns enough of a profit quickly enough for me anymore....


/em throws the marketing switch to "ebil"

I never saw it.