Organica

OMG, that is soooo annoying. I can't count the number of times I've headed to a zone for a mission, and halfway across the zone I realize I'm not heading to my mission, I'm heading to some stupid detective who has infiltrated my navigation system and rerouted me because he thinks being introduced to me is more important than whatever mission I'm on.

If they sold a temporary power in the market place that would allow you to kill the detective with your mind when he does this, and you could hear his scream across the zone, I would buy it. I don't care what price they put on it.

I don't think that's it. Sometimes only the level 50 is available, and in those cases naturally it's your only option for the Buy it NAO crowd. But a lot of people don't want to see a level 47 IO when they could have a level 50 IO.

I've made a nice career on one marketeer buying a certain recipe in the 30-33 range, crafting, and selling for a massive markup, and they always sell because there's so few available at any one time. (There are never any recipes available for longer than it takes to post them -- there are always outstanding bids ready to claim them. Not just the levels I buy, but all levels pretty much.) That's buy it NAO at less than top level. ^_^ Even so, I can't sell for as much as the top level goes for. Perceived superiority comes at a premium, you know that.

Why are we so vehemently defending a really pathetic store interface by demanding everyone subscribe and go test things on beta?

How about this: I don't want to play on beta. It's a nice perk. It should not be a requirement. The store interface ought to be able to give us some idea of what we're buying. Why is that such a threatening idea?

What you are asking is how much of a tank-mage you can make, and the answer for CoH is you can build some pretty impressive tank-mages, but you simply can't "have everything".

Probably my best tank-mage is my electric melee/shield defense scrapper. I have softcapped defenses to all three positions, so defense is covered very well. I have tons of AoE damage, and can attack from range if needed. I have a lot of global recharge so my powers come back quickly. With incarnate powers you can add extra AoE damage, pets, a heal, etc.... some people might prefer something like a Super Strength/Fire Armor brute, or a corruptor or crab or warshade -- there are quite a few ATs that can be built to impressive performance levels.

But as for my scrapper... if my defense gets debuffed significantly, I can be in trouble quickly. Takes a lot to do it, but it's a potential problem with some enemies. I don't have a heal (outside of my incarnate powers) so that's a potential weakness. (I do have the Panacea proc at least.) In situations where defense is ignored, my scrapper can have major problems. And the big lament for Electric Melee -- I don't actually do very much single-target damage, so a single powerful enemy is more of a problem than a group of twenty slightly less powerful enemies.

The point being, no character is unstoppable in all situations. ^_^ Would be boring if that were possible, really.

And a recipe only, not even crafted.

And level 29, not even 30.

Also, why's there a Talos police station next to the Pocket D entrance if none of the cops hang out there?

I know on Virtue you still see mid level teams all the time. Usually tip teams or radio mission teams... rare to find a team running actual contact missions.

Low and mid level TFs are run a lot too.

Woo.

That's good to hear. ^_^

Wow... Just... wow.

Don't know if I want to buy that, because I won't use those shoes ever.

Oh, I've used "Free Costume Change" as a badge on certain characters for ages. Makes me laugh.

Right now I'd have to say Master of Lambda Sector, which I got last night and is my first Master of badge ever. I've always kind of avoided Master runs because I know you have to be very careful and do things exactly so, and I guess I'm always afraid of being the one to screw things up. Which is odd I suppose because I think of myself as a smart vetaran player who can follow instructions, and I have characters that are very well IO'd. I can tank an ITF in my sleep, on some characters I could probably solo it, but I've never actually attempted a Master run for whatever reason.

The Lambda run was fun and a challenge. On the first run we took goatee-Babs down with just a minute of time left. On the third run, because I hadn't rebooted my computer after several hours of play and two straight Lambdas, things got a little wonky and I was stuck in perpetual "down" mode, which prevented me from jumping or flying up, and when I flew forward it was at half speed (and ground level) and when I stopped I'd drift backwards constantly if I didn't turn fly off. Made the run past enemies in the labs quite an adventure, and then during the fight I had to hospital at one point and only got back over the walls because they are sloped, so I could fly into them and "climb" them. Then with 3 minutes left Babs jumped up on that one platform in the corner, and I couldn't get up there until I figured out that by flying backwards I actually gained a little altitude... so everyone's wailing on Babs, trying to bring him down before time runs out, and I'm flying around backwards and then dropping down onto the platform and missing it twice. I'm sure I looked quite impressive. ^_^

But nobody has to know that when I wear my badge. And we did drop him, again with just about 1 minute to go.

Yeah, I just took one of my heroes to villain and then back to hero over the last week, and I was kind of sad that there are all of these unfamiliar hero missions that I don't see at any other time. Also kind of cool, I suppose. I guess the only way to do them on a regular basis would be to play a rogue and always refuse to turn hero when you get the chance after every 10 missions...

Scrappers, brutes, MMs, SoA... all can solo exceedingly well.

You can solo on just about anything of course. But certain classes really excell at it.

What I'll say is that you just have to dive in and make mistakes and learn from them.

I think I really started with IOs when I read a thread about how easy it was to softcap typed defense (smashing/lethal specifically) on an Invulnerable tank, and how tough it made them. That sounded really cool, so I took what I could from the thread and immediately applied it to my katana/regen scrapper. This, unfortunately, was a less than ideal approach, not the least because Divine Avalanache (the katana parry) really grants melee defense (actually melee & lethal per paragonwiki). All I know is that every application is about 15% melee defense, and I can manage to stack it 3 times as long as I keep firing it... but these are things I didn't understand back then.

So my friend tried to help me with a positional defense build instead. I used that for a while, tried to improve on it, but it's nearly impossible to softcap all defenses on a regen and it's playing against the set's strengths -- regen has essentially 4 heals, and really benefits from lots of recharge. Some defense doesn't hurt, of course. ^_^ But I haven't really gone back recently and tried to work defense into my katana/regen scrapper's build... instead I just went all-out for massive recharge, which was, at least, the popular way to build regen scrappers at the time.

Along the way I had to figure out how to make more money than I had. I'd been making money on the market up to that point by crafting generic IOs and selling them, and this gave me over 100 million on a few characters, which seemed pretty good at the time. But when I got into IOs, I had to ramp up my knowledge of how to market and make money at it. These days, there are a lot of other options, and I buy a lot of things with alignment merits for example. But mostly I market for my cash, although I have farm-capable toons, and I do run a lot of tip missions and SSAs and Ouro arcs just for merit rewards.

Even after I'd been at it for a couple of years, I discovered new tricks and things I hadn't previously been aware of, and when I look at my older builds I still wonder why I did things that way. There's a lot to know, you don't absorb it all overnight.

Without MIDS I would be totally lost. Learning how to use that was a big part of learning how to properly IO my characters.

Also, I think it's entirely possible to just run story arcs that you like and eventually be able to afford a build that way, but only if you play the same character a lot. Being an altoholic kind of goes against being able to pile up merits through regular game play.

This explains why, over the last several months, I've occasionally had problems with stealth. It just so happens that over the last half year I've played brutes much more frequently. ^_^

There are too many servers and free transfers for me to ever feel I need to delete a 50. Though some of them I just don't ever play.