PRAF68_EU

You can't get much more emotionless than the rubber headed monsters of the 1950s, and they don't do much to invoke fear.

Anyway, most lizards have long snouts with eyes on the side because they are prey. And therefore non-scary. Forward facing eyes are the mark of a predator.

Yeah, I was amazed that not once did they say "from the author of Tarzan". My wife wanted to see it as soon as I mentioned that.

The 3D was horrible though.

I think you have just invented a new game for when CoX fans get together...

Well, the silent e at the beginning is a quirk of the language, you wouldn't pronounce the word differently if it was spelled xploded.

It's pretty old, anyway, goes back at least 70 years.

If they make the snout to large, then many shots will only have one eye visible, impeding the level emotion that can be conveyed - especially if they are mo-capping the actor's performance.

I expect they feel that a more expressive face beats 100% comic book authenticity.

This is what I mean by needing to consider what powerset it's paired with to evaluate how useful the various forms are. FoS is most useful when paired with a high end cost set, such as Dark, FoM is most useful when paired with a cooldown heavy set like Regen or Fire, FoB is most useful when paired with a resistance set that doesn't cap, like Dark or Fire.

You're being picky. The TCW version was a Battleship-equivalent. And the Enterprise is cruiser-weight.

I'm a teacher of Physics and Maths, but I am wise enough to know that Arcana understands this game much better than I do, and wouldn't even consider a challenge.

But consider this: the effects of FoB and FoS can be reproduced with inspirations. But there is NO WAY to reproduce the effect of FoM. That recharge is over-and-above what can be achieved in any other way. It's value is in it's uniqueness, not it's magnitude. However, it doesn't particularly benefit it's own powerset. It's value depends ENTIRELY on what other powers you have. Thus, any metric which fails to consider primaries, secondaries, and pool powers is going to fail.

I'm a bit wary of introducing all-powerful beings into a movie for the general public, but if I was going to do so, it would be the Organians. I would combine Errand of Mercy with Arena.

Beginning: Full scale war between Federation and Klingon Empire. Excuse to open with a massive space battle. Enterprise is mysteriously ordered away from the front lines to protect a backwater planet called Organia. This time round Nu-Kirk manages to REALLY tick-off the natives, and is teleported off to fight it out with Kor man to man. Kirk wins, spares Kor's life, and convinces the Organians not to isolate humans and klingons to their home planets. Peace ensues. In the end it is revealed that Spock Prime was responsible for sending the Enterprise to Organia, in order to bring about an end to the war.


(My feeling is Spock Prime would be very cautious about sharing future knowledge, and when he does so it will be to try and make sure the new timeline is as close as possible to the old one.)

The did it for Hulk in this movie, and it turned out good.

Guess you aint herd the maxim "if it aint broke, don't fix it". Tinkering with things that people are happy with is always a bad move.

In this case, I think that, based on your personal playstyle, and unfamiliarity with the interaction with various defense sets, you are massively overrating FoS in comparison to FoM, or FoB's resistance buff.

Any you critique of Arcana's analysis will make a good companion piece to Homer Simpson's deconstruction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

You fail to define what you mean by "ridiculously". So far, all you have suggested is that Staff does marginally less damage that some other melee sets.

In my opinion, some variation in performance is both inevitable and desirable. It is the price we pay for creative freedom.

I have played MMOs where they tried ever so hard to make things balanced. They are boring and restrictive (and still fail).

I never have. I would rather a game be fun than be balanced. Isn't that why most people play CoH? To have fun?

Unless it's an e-sport things don't have to be finely balanced, and even than, balance is an unobtainable illusion.

And, so far, you have failed to provide any evidence that Staff cannot in any way "get the job done". I KNOW IT CAN, because I have played it. I've also played Titan Weapons, and that can get the job done too. It may or may not produce more DPS, but I don't look closely at the numbers and it's not enough to notice otherwise. What I do notice is that Staff is MORE FUN than Titan Weapons, since it gives more choices, and isn't such a pain to micro-manage endurance.

You might not be "trying" to kill play-styles, but killing play-styles is the inevitable consequence of your agenda. Equality is the enemy of diversity. Look what happened to PvP in the name of "balance and equality".

You still need a strong villain to sell a movie. Star Wars needed Darth Vader as well as the Death Star.

Put the Enterprise on a mission to intercept the Doomsday Machine, but picks up Kahn on the way. Then, as you would expect, KAAAAAAAAAHN!!!! gains control of the Doomsday Machine, and you have a plot.

I know EXACTLY what you are arguing. The issue is, I don't AGREE with it.

True. You can never completely balance one effect against a different kind of effect, which means that powersets in CoH are NEVER perfectly balanced. That's the charm of the game. *****-retentive attempts to make things perfectly "balanced" is what kills choice and variety, and what did for me in a certain recently released high profile MMO.

Exactly. "Your opinion". The fact is that people are still happy to play those sets, so your opinion doesn't matter in the slightest.

You have a very narrow view of things. Fire armour offers less survivability than the other defense sets. This is because it offers more damage. It has always been designed that way.

"It's a damage set, therefore the only thing that that counts is damage", has never been the way CoH sets are designed, there has always been some which are intended to overlap with other roles with many powersets.

I doubt "running the numbers" would tell you anything useful, since it is a matter of when you have the buff, and what other powers you have.

For example, consider staff pared with Fire Aura (any AT). Use FoB to get the maximum damage buff, then activate Fiery Embrace. just before FE expires consume FoB and switch to FoM for the recharge bonus, to get FE back up as soon as possible.

Other tactics could be developed for other pairings (with some worse than others, I wouldn't pair staff with WP myself). That's the thing with Staff, it a tactical set, not a brute force and ignorance set like Titan Weapons.

Actually, quite a few defense sets have clicks with long cooldowns, but the thing about Staff is you can SWITCH. If your end is running low, use FoS, if you need your cooldowns up, switch to FoM. End use can vary significantly depending if you are fighting single or multiple foes.

This is how I play my Staff, who is a /regen brute. I switch frequently between forms, depending on what the situation demands.


It's +10% resistance for tankers, and it's not just Invun who needs some extra: Fire and Dark are also short of the cap, Stone when not in granite (e.g. fighting psi mobs), and even Ice has a horrible psi hole. SR is so for over the def cap on a tanker that ony +res makes any difference at all.

It also make resistance sets on stalkers significantly less gimped. The bottom line is if your have a res based set and can't hit the cap, then you get far more from +res than +def.

This idea I like.

Although the Jason Todd flashback would pretty much require a Joker story, and well, which actor would accept that gig now?!

Depends on your playstyle, but if more damage was always better than def or res then Firey Aura would be the only defense set anyone ever played.


Here is a tip for getting the most from Staff: just because a button has an orange ring around it doesn't mean you have to push it immediately. Another: Hardest hitting attack is not always the best attack to use.

Just how useful +recharge is depends on which secondary you are paring it with.

And then becomes completely useless as it's easy to softcap defense without it, especially for tank.

On the other hand, Psi resistance is very very useful for pretty much any tank.

Apart from psi. A lot of psi damage in the endgame.

How much befit you get depends on how near of far you are from the cap. For example, consider a tanker with 80% res and no def. For them, +10% res would halve incoming damage, wheras +20% def would only reduce net damage by a further 8%.