PhroX

Fire/Fire/Fire Dominator deserves a mention: Fire Breath, Combustion, Hot Feet, Fireball and Rain of Fire, plus old-school 30 sec duration Firey Embrace

I can imagine some tanks would be rather unfun. Fire/Fire, BA/Inv, Elec/Elec etc. Anything that heavily resists it's main damage (particularly if it can heal too), combined with a tank's high defenses and lowish damage would be sooooo boring. You won't die, but they won't either

If it was just a tidying up of old stuff, rendering them in higher res and so on, then I'd go for Option 1.

If though, there were any real changes, then it's Option 2 for me. I'm talking about things like the alterations to thigh high boots, or the "shinyness" added to many metallic pieces with Ultra Mode. If the changes are like this, then I would still want access to the old stuff.

I would tend to agree that, on paper at least, both Dark sets are a little better for Scrappers - Armour for the reason you mentioned, and Melee due to Soul Drain being more effective with Scrappers higher Damage Mod.

That said, both are still very good on Brutes, and if you prefer the playstyle of them, you won't be gimping your character or anything.

Probably my coolest moment in CoX was my DB/SR scrapper gettting the killing blow on the Honoree and dinging 50 with the exp from him

While there's a lot I'd like, my single most wanted would be Ice Melee (and thus probably Ice armour though I have less interest in that) for Scrappers. While with things like Mace, SS or Energy, I can still play an "offensive" character by rolling a brute, there's no way to make a Ice meleer who's focus is on killing stuff.

While it's not relevant in this case, as there's nothing in PGT that has a conventional to hit roll that could be enhanced by the accuracy, if it did have, then it would be. Indeed, multi-aspect IOs/HOs are often used to get round slotting restrictions - for example, Widow's Mind Link cannot be slotted with recharge enhancements, but it can be slotted with, say, Def/Rech set IOs, and it does benefit from the recharge portion.

Assault. I rarely have problems hitting, even with SOs/generics, while not only is more damage always good, but Assault gets it's full effectiveness with just the default slot, while Tactics needs extras.

Yep, as Fulmens and Donna have said, don't bother with a farmer yet. Better to play a character that you enjoy and just, well, play the game. You get plenty of infulence from doing so, and if you really want more, spending 5-10 minutes a day playing the market is far far more time efficient than farming.

My biggest issue with this review, and indeed your comments in this thread, is that, for an informative review (as opposed to a humerous one), you are far too subjective, and worse than that, you're subjective in a rather egocentric manner. Particularly your comments here read like:

"I like MMOs to be made in a particular way and any that do it differently are badly designed"

Now, of course reviews are going to be subjective to some extent, but a good reviewer will understand that his opinions do not hold true for everyone, and that him disliking some part of the subject matter does not make it bad. Indeed, more than that, a lot of the features you appear to dislike are the very things that keeps fans of the game playing.

You complain about the lack of endgame, yet for many of us, this is a great thing. Instead of grinding our way to the level cap, and then griding up our gear and grinding through raids, we can just, well, play the game without the pressure of "needing" anything. There's a huge amount of content out there in CoX. Just because it's not concentrated in a single part of the game doesn't mean it's not there.

On a related note, you criticise content for not providing experience and/or loot, but, so what? Can't you just play a game for the pleasure of playing it? From my point of view, if the only reason for doing content is for the reward at the end, then that is just an admission that the content cannot entertain me on it's own merits.

You seem to be under the impression that every minute in the game should be spent "progressing", for lack of a better word. Why? Why not look around the world. Why not read the content? Why not interact with other players? Oh, I forgot, these things would count as "wasting my life" right? Well, if I'm having fun, how is it any different from spending a hour getting the "Unholy Shirt of Armpit Sweat +5"?

You complain about bosses being simple. But again, to many people, including myself, this is a good thing. I don't play CoX to solve puzzles. I certainly don't play it to organize and manage 25 people each with specific roles and responsibilites. I play it cos, after a long day at work, I can log on, find some friendly people and blow up bad guys. There are some AVs/Heroes that could do a rework (yes Reichsman, I am looking at you), but in general, they don't last long enough to get boring IMO.

You go on about "min/maxing". Well, a lot of people love the fact that you can do every single bit of content in the game, as the devs designed it, with out a hint of min/maxing, let alone the ridiculous gear requirements many MMOs have. Why should I be locked out of content purely because I don't want to grind away for weeks and calculate my effectiveness to 5 decimal places?

Just because it's different, just because you don't like it, doesn't make it bad. That's not to say a review should have be posistive - by all means highlight where the game is weak, but do so in a more balanced manner. Try to explain how it could appeal to other people. Reviewing with such a closed minded "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" attitude is utterly useless when it comes to helping people make an informed decision about a game. And without that, unless it's damn funny, which you're not, what's the point of a review?

I always take my heroside 50s to Ravenstorm (well, all three of them ). Kinda feel he must get lonely out there.

*/* with a competant player.

Yep, completely behind Bill here. The simple rule to teaming in CoX is: "anything can do anything". Yeah, sure, there are some combos which synergize well, but if you actually think you need them, then what you really need is to learn how to play.

I will add this though. IMO, if the team doesn't wipe at least once per mish, then the difficulty is set too low...