Primal

Three pages on this. Hmm.

You know, if we could somehow combine farming, crazy moon-language posts, cleavage, Fire/Kins, CO, accuracy nerfs, and the Balance Vision all into one thread, it'd make the likes of AASQ and Threads to Watch seem like Marty Stu one-offs in the Roleplaying section.

Throw in SWG and the forums would simply go black hole.

Add ED and infinity would be reached, causing the end of all times.

...I say we've got work to do.

I'm afraid of commitment.

Heck, I've seen people admit outright that they thought they deserved their own thread. "Well, that thread's 30 pages long and I knew my post would just get drowned out."

When your mom told you you were special, she meant TO HER.

The issue, City_Life, is that somehow we've managed to go all this time without farming being an issue. People just...DID it, they might brag about it, but the devs didn't much care. Before IOs even, it was inf, xp, Hami-Os, whatever. Then comes AE, specifically slated as "not for farming" (admittedly a tricky thing to define at best), and suddenly it's a topic in need of its own forum? Or a new thread for every user?

...So it's a berf? Or a nuff.

B_I, others are saying that now the REST of /Psi is decent too, so the set is a little more even throughout, instead of 37 levels of suck and then a good attack.

Not that Tier 9s are uniformly good on every set. /Ice's for example is (or was) just a slightly-higher damaging attack, not sucky but hardly worth raving over.

It's obviously been posted before, but it's been awhile, and we have new blood, which means new perspectives.

Simply put, do you have an attack that you prefer to use as a Finisher? And do you hear the announcer from Mortal Kombat in your head just before you use it? "I just hit buttons 'til stuff falls down" need not apply here, this is for the players for whom it is not the mechanics, but the style. ...Well, okay, if that's what does it for you, you post too.

- Crane Kick is my favorite power in the game, and my favorite Finisher too. It just looks so freakin' cool, so powerful-looking, and so FINAL. If we had breakable glass in the game, I'd go absurdly out of my way to aim enemies toward it. As it is, I make do with cliffs, ledges, heck even a wall two feet away can give a nice effect. Even before the uber ragdoll physics we had available, enemies sent flying with a kick looked great. Anyone remember when there was this ridiculously-long dramatic pause before the kick went off? Loved it even then.

- Second, and it's a close one, is Siphon Life. "Soul STEAL!" My DM/Shield goes to great lengths to finish off CoT (and other) mage enemies with this power, due to her backstory...she is part of an order of monks who hunts down mages who twist magic for evil, and the only way to truly put them down is to pull out their corrupted souls for later purification. The animation is just great for this too, again it's such a final-looking power.

- Once Axe gets ported to Scrappers (hopefully!), I'll be using Beheader to put down even more of my enemies. My Axe/Fire Brute uses it now. Just the name alone says "Weaken your opponent, then choose this". Anybody seen the movie Queen of the Damned? Yeah, I know, not great, but there's this one scene where the guy does this quick slice on a vampire, decapitating him, and then kicks the body backward and the head drops straight down. It's tough to think about merely defeating my enemies when this image comes to mind every time I use Beheader, but I do try...okay, big lie there, I cackle madly and yell "Off with his head!"

There are tons more, I have one for pretty much every character, but I should stop there. I tell ya, other games that just make you attack something 'til it falls kinda pale in comparison.

When my DM/Shield finishes off someone with Siphon Life, I say "Soul STEAL!" in a deep melodramatic voice.

I also have been known to say "Dark Metamorphosis!" (in the same voice) when toggling on Cloak of Darkness on various characters, and saying "This is very suspicious-looking!" (in a high voice) when at a glowy.

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There's actually a lot of characters in the comics that are purely support characters. The problem is those characters aren't very fun to read about, and they aren't all that fun in a fight (kind of like a pure-healer build )

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What interests me about "support" characters in this game is how really lacking they are in actual offense, and I'd wonder about comic characters that also lacked offense. In the "real" world, if I have access to, say, Mind Control, and decided to go out and beat up people of whatever alignment, I also have access to a baseball bat and my shotgun. Or just take up Kickboxing. Heck, Heroes are all licensed, they can carry all manner of swords and guns and no one would say anything.

Obviously the reason I can't have a Mind/Katana/Dual Pistols/Storm character in the game is due to balance issues. But it all falls apart hard when trying to bring that stuff out even into comics. Sure, puny human weapons are worthless against quite a few threats, but against basically regular humans? Please. I don't care how "well-trained" someone is, unless they're evading everything, a bullet will [censored] them up, and exceptions just prove the rule. You have to get into the realm of "protective materials that at this time do not exist" to get around it.

Go with "[name of group]" then, it's not a bad workaround. "There's a lot of Council up there, be careful!" "Carnie patrol coming!"

Or heck, just "group". Hard to fault that one.

For singles, "that guy/girl", or "enemy".

I considering offering that one, but then thought the same thing as you: it just means "no", and really it's only slightly on the obnoxious side of neutral.

QQ also came to mind, but that's a visual, not an acronym.

Considering the entire point of "tl;dr" is to be obnoxious, one wonders what other acronyms fulfill this role. For educational purposes only, of course.

I only object to the word "healer" if someone is using it as a synonym for "Defender". It's unclear at best, smacks of laziness. That's pretty rare these days, over level 10 or so very rare indeed.

Otherwise I assume they want an actual aura-rockin' Empath, and their reasons are their own. If I see someone in the 20s or more Broadcasting for a Healer, certainly none of my Defenders (all non-Empaths) will volunteer, no matter how good their heals are. That's a team that will be either a boredom-fest or consist of wipe after wipe.

True story: I once started a Broadcast war on Virtue about this. I didn't precisely intend to, I was just being sarcastic. Somebody sent out the message "26 group looking for healer". I saw it several times, had time to complete a (solo) mission, saw it some more. As I was logging to change characters (neither a Defender), I said "Would you consider taking any OTHER Defenders?" When I came back, Broadcast was alive with people yelling at each other about, yeah, "healer". There was quite a bit of wondering aloud how that team would've gone, and how much quicker it could have filled, if the leader had just said "26 group in need of defense". (I saw a FF offering their services during that time, for instance.)

I started off with MUDs in the mid-90s. Therefore, I use "mob" to describe a single enemy, and "group" to describe a bunch of mobs.

...On the forums, anyway. In-game, if I'm mentioning a single enemy, I call 'em rather specifically, because the only reason I'm likely to be talking about a single enemy is because I want the group to notice it and right now. "Second Sorcerer around corner" for example, or "Void Boss in there". "Mob" just doesn't come up, it's a generic term used for speaking broadly. For multiples, "spawn" or "group" or "bunch" or, say, "Council" is I think pretty obvious.

In the forums, I tend to obscurely sub-reference and use OTHER jargon enough so that the "'mob' means 'mobile object', not 'group with torches and pitchforks' or 'Mafia'" thing should really be the least of anyone's worries. I daresay 99% of the time context makes it clear.

And "critter" makes me picture one of those cute fuzzy little caterpillar things you see after a rain.

Some people actually bought lifetime subscriptions to Hellgate: London. $180? $150? Something like that. Can you imagine? (I'm one of the game's few defenders, and even I only paid for it for 2 months, $20 total. Wow was I getting ripped.)

CoH offers a yearly subscription, which is a really good deal. I'm on the 6-month plan myself, also a good one. A "lifetime" subscription would go for no less than $1000, even this late in the game, and I still don't see it happening. This game could go on for at least a decade more.

And just who is this THEY?

They talk a lot.

As many of us pointed out in the official topic about this, setting any enemy on fire (or other DoT) or hitting them with a debuff stands a very good chance of sending them running. Especially Longbow, they all bolt like rabbits at a moment's notice. (Like someone said in that thread, "Longbow, commence Operation GTFO!", which made me lol for real.) My Mercs/Poison uses her hold to keep an enemy from heading for the hills far more than she uses it as something actually tactically-useful. On ANY character, if I want an enemy to run, I hit 'em with Shadow Maul (the vet power), and they run every time.

This is not new, it's been happening for years, and the fact that it happens to some players far more than others is I suspect part of the problem. I've long since decided the devs are as stumped about it as we are.

Those are two forums with CoH as a main topic. They both, surprisingly to me, seem active. If you honestly want a place where NCSoft holds no sway, there you go.

Zombie offered four more, btw. What exactly are you looking for?

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I for one wouldn't mind having access to another forum where people can say they were banned and why.

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The GameFAQs mods might give a [censored] enough to delete such a thread, I couldn't tell you for sure; IMDB though, rather unlikely. Granted, you are unlikely to garner actual sympathy in either place, but you can have your say. For a while at least. There are tons of other forums of all stripes too, the process for joining often merely filling out a form.

Was your post serious? It's hard to tell.

Ha, I used to be big on Fruitopia too. That Kiwi-something green flavor was my favorite, but Strawberry Passion Awareness was a lot more common.

I too have not seen it in years. I'm tellin' ya, it's freakin' curse. All that stuff I listed in my OP, vanished. If you even see a bottle of MDX anymore, I envy you, cuz it's gone too.

Huh, SPA is still served in McD's, Wiki says. No wonder, I think the last time I was actually in one of those (as opposed to the drive-thru because it was 2am) was round about 2001.

Vaguely inspired by the PUI thread, but this is the virgin version. ...No, not that, we're talking "non-alcoholic" here. What beverage can most often be found on your desk when playing? My prediction is that Mt Dew will have the edge, but I've seen plenty of people claim to spray Diet Coke on their keyboards when they see a funny too, so who knows. If it's Red Bull, that's cool, if it's water, go you, if it's "Nothing, man, I keep liquids away from my keyboard", I hear ya.

My drink of choice lately is Mt Dew Voltage, a raspberry-and-ginseng concoction that seems to have me hooked. Sadly, because I like it, it won't last, and in fact already I couldn't find any cases of it in the store yesterday (though to be fair I only went to one). Like Surge, RC Edge, Mello Yello Afterglow, Pepsi Twist, and Stacker 2 Cola, it's not long for this world, thanks to me. Otherwise my primary answer is Dr Pepper, and I can always go for a good ol' Coca-Cola if there's nothing else. (And also a heck of a lot of iced sweet tea in restaurants, but I suck at making it myself.)

And while I have your attention, I'll admit the real inspiration for this thread: Mt Dew Game Fuel. Despite the blatant WoW imagery on this product, I picked up a 20-ouncer this morning. (I'm a dirty philanderer, I have no shame.) And I gotta say, it's okay. Nothing incredible, but it's good. Dew had the same basic product a summer or two ago, but it was orange then and had Halo 2 on the label, now it's this funky blue color and has a Night Elf (I think). Tastes the same though, so my memory says.

At any rate, my secondary question is, what flavor does CHV inspire? Can we come up with one?

The Respec Trial, Hero-side you mean? I've done the mid-20s and mid-30s, little need to do them again, actually no need to do them the first time except for the badge and the experience (non-numbers). I have so many vet-specs at this point, and I'm not one to respec much anyway. I spent my last one for the sole purpose of rearranging my enhancements.

Red-side, I haven't done them at all. Don't have the need there either, but I rarely see any teams forming up for one. The one red-side has a bad rep, so I hear, something about a psychic tree that can one-shot you for miles, and a race to kill off a bunch of thorns? I know CoT are involved. It sounds obnoxious to tell the truth, but like I said I've rarely seen announcements about one starting up, certainly never been asked (unlike blue-side, where I get asked once a week or so.)

Sorry to derail the thread.

Edited my post to sound less whiny, I did not intend that.

Never been a fan of TFs myself, they're always either grueling endurance tests or moving at such speeds that I have no idea what the hell we're doing. There's never an in-between, and I certainly don't care about them enough to start my own team. I'll do them occasionally when invited, but I have to be in a certain mood and in need of the badge too, a very rare occurrence.

Players that run the same TF multiple times just make me boggle. Obviously they can do whatever they want, but clearly they and I have nothing in common.

Back when it seems everyone was in AE all the time, and threads popped up lamenting a lack of teams, there were always posters saying something like "Untrue, I did two TFs just today!" To which I always thought, Great, that's wonderful, so I'll just be over here soloing I suppose. Obviously this is all my own issue, so I can't complain...too loud. (Edited to add: I did get on my fair share of non-TF non-AE teams, it just struck me as funny that the choices, if you just went by the forums, seemed to be either AE or TF.)

Back in 2004 it was Fire/Rad that was all the rage. Those were all over the place. Firekins were around for sure, but it was another year before they got away from being a secret (in the Fight Club sense), and after Containment came around the population exploded. Frankly, even if I had a neato concept for one I wouldn't roll it, they're so pathetically common. (I have a Fire/Storm, started in late '04, whose secondary was chosen just to be different. And Storm is surprisingly...but here I must invoke Fight Club again.)

Controllers are a wonderful AT. Fragile yet stupid-powerful. It doesn't surprise me that they're getting their due respect.

Moderator08, you know we like you and all, but danged if you don't make threads tricky to grok sometimes. What the heck did Player and MunkiLawd say? Somebody who knows PM me, so that I may make sense of this thread/get some lulz (maybe)?

Ha, you two with the same reg date. Never noticed before, but now I'm loling. It would explain a lot....

I've wound up on a couple of Mercy bank farms in my time. Wasn't looking for them, but at some point during that mission somebody said "Want to farm this?" or "We're farming this, okay?", and I've stayed. Oddly enough, by "farm" every single one of those teams have really meant "We'll do this mission all of two times total, then everybody's suddenly gonna have something else to do, or we'll all just get bored with our (lol)farming and go do different missions anyway". Funny, that.

All of my characters have "I don't do AE/MArc" in their search field, and it's only failed me once. Nothing to do with disliking farming, I don't do AE at all for other reasons. I don't know if that policy has kept me off farming teams or not, could go either way.

No one has ever sent me a tell asking specifically if I wanted to farm. Been asked to bridge ("Nah"), PL ("Don't know how, don't want to know"), and fill ("Sure, I don't mind"). But never to farm.

I take the firm (i.e. apathetic) middle ground on farming, can you tell?