Rodion

I think Basilisk is saying that when you're in the ticket window in AE, it's hard to know what random salvage roll you should take -- arcane or tech -- if you need Masterwork Weapon, for example.

It's generally obvious from the name. "Hydraulic piston" doesn't sound very arcane.

What's missing, though, is the level and tech/arcane origin in the Info you get from clicking on [Hydraulic Piston]. Right now it just tells you that it's Invention Salvage, and not what level or origin it is.

A technical change -- the introduction of AE -- changed player behavior. A similar change -- coming up in I16 -- will probably change player behavior again.

The answer for salvage is simple. If you want some, you have to do the things that generate the salvage.

The easiest way to get common salvage now is to run AE missions and then use the tickets for the common salvage roll. You don't need to go to Atlas and get mobbed -- just go to any other zone (I use Talos and it's empty most of the time, even on Freedom) and and solo some AE missions that sound interesting. When you find one you like, do the other ones that author wrote. The competently written AE missions are just as good as most of the dev-generated content. You just have to look for them.

If that's just too onerous, run some Ouroboros missions. Or just run around and fight mobs on the street. There's no magic involved, but there are some tricks for getting salvage on the street: fight white, blue and green bosses and LTs. Their chance for drops is greater, but they're not that much harder to take down than even-con minions.

Sitting around on our hands wondering why everyone else isn't out there generating cheap salvage for us is rather presumptuous.

Even-con DOs provide 16.7% enhancement.

You can get level 15 common IOs at level 12, which provide 19.2% enhancement (same as a +3 DO). You can get level 20 IOs at level 17, which provide a 25.6% enhancement (better than a -3 SO).

You can also get IO sets of equivalent levels which provide even better slot utilization.

Now, since levels 1-20 go by so quickly it's probably silly to slot IO sets, but slotting common IOs is easy. If you place bids for crafted IOs in the market for more than the crafting cost (roughly equivalent to DO-level prices), they are usually filled within hours (depending on the type). If you think ahead you can buy up a load of IOs cheaply on the market with another character and store them in your base. Once you've got what you'll need, create the new character and never worry about DOs and all that nonsense.

If the market is dry or you didn't plan ahead, you can just run regular missions, get the salvage and craft the IOs yourself. Finally, if you have the crafting accolade for one of your 50s you can stock your base full of level 15, 20 and 25 IOs.

I'm not in favor of raising the level. However, a level cap of 60 wouldn't hurt purple IOs at all. They would continue to function as well as they do right now.

Hamidon enhancements are another story. If the current rules remain in place, they would become useless at level 54. But there's no reason that has to be true. They could make HOs work much the same as IOs -- a level 50 HO could provide the same enhancement numbers for a level 50 and a level 60 character.

Every time WoW raises the cap a certain number of players reach it in a few hours. So it's not really about the number itself -- it's about the fabulous new loot that you have access to at that new level.

CoH has been heading more and more toward a level-less design. It's basically just a gatekeeper for access to new powers. Other mechanisms can be introduced that could do the same thing.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned (which very well may have been somewhere) would be slottable accolade powers. Advancement at 50 could consist of earning an accolade power, and then earning additional slots for them (or your existing powers).

And isn't there some kind of "Incarnate" origin? That could mean just about anything...

You're right that weather would be client-side. But it could potentially have impact on the animations, causing slower display speeds. How much depends on the implementation. My guess is that rain or snow that simply falls down would be relatively benign, but that's just a guess.

People may not realize it, but the game already has something like this. There are birds wheeling about in the air in Nerva. Newspapers fly around in Paragon City. Also, if you stand under a tree leaves fall. They collect on the ground. If you hover you will make the leaves move around. Similarly, if you use certain powers near trash bins stuff will come out and fly around.

This started happening a couple of years ago, I think about the time they added persistent objects for Propel. Another guess: the same code was adapted to provide persistent falling leaves that provided the fun Propel objects.

The real question is whether adding weather is more important than adding a power set. It's a matter of feature priorities. Weather's probably on the list, but hasn't made it to the top yet.

Both of these could be implemented without removing AE to another zone.

Point 1 could be addressed by limiting zone broadcasts originating in AE to AE. If you want to shout at the zone, you'll have to go outside.

Point 2 could be addressed by optimization. As you approach an AE building you'll note that at a certain point (round about 100 yards) you suddenly get hit by a wave of lag. This is the data describing the characters that are inside the AE building.

The optimization would consist of not sending that data to you unless you actually enter the building. People inside the building would still need to get the data about the people outside.

Other indoor locations (such as stores) already work this way, sort of, because those locations are actually a hundred or more yards below the surface. AE is special because you can look out the window and see what's going on. But when you're on the outside you can't see anything that's inside. So that would make the optimization possible. I'm not implying this would be easy, just that it would be a reasonable compromise solution.

Point 2 could also be addressed by moving AE to the northeast corner of Atlas Park, somewhere more than 150 yards or so away from the trainer, Wentworth's, and other locations frequented by lots of players. Walking an extra 100 yards shouldn't be too much of a burden.

A single AE location would be bad because it would create a total mob scene for everyone who wants to use it. Most of the AE buildings in other zones are empty, and is where you'll find the people who use AE in the way the devs hoped it would be used.

I'm hoping that the changes in I16 will decrease the desire for everyone to PL and farm in AE, and this will become a moot point.

You really should say that it shouldn't be used as an attack in an open area when melee characters or AoEs are involved.

You're right in that you don't generally want KB powers to scatter mobs. Nothing is worse than someone running and using Hurricane or Explosive Blast to scatter all the mobs the tanker just herded.

But Gale is great in particular circumstances, as when a large group is in a dead-end corridor, or the inside corner of a room. Gale and Hurricane can be used to great effect to collect them in corners and keep them knocked down permanently and totally to-hit debuffed. Energy Torrent is useful in those same circumstances.

Knockback can be used to scatter, but it can also be used to collect mobs for Tankers and Scrappers. Got a runner or a ranged attacker that refuses to move to the tanker (say, a Nemesis sniper)? Knockback can put that sniper in the WP tanker's debuff aura.

The key point for Energy Blast: don't attack the melee characters' targets unless you're going to finish them in one shot or the KB will leave them in the melee character's range (i.e., KB into a wall). Better yet, let the melee fighter get the kill if they can do it in one shot. You get the same experience and it will make the Scrappers happy.

Although my EM/EA Brute isn't the most robust character I've ever played, I don't have anywhere near the bad experience you have. Personally, I don't like defense-based secondaries (like SR), because of the potential for single-point catastrophic failure, but Defense-based characters have their pluses.

My EM/EA brute is level 39, and as a test I just soloed a CoT mission at +1. This consisted of Behemoths, Air Thorns, Defenders, Guards and Nervas. I never used any inspirations and only got low on hits once, and didn't use Overload.

The character was an experiment on a server I never play on and has been abandoned for years, but I did put IO sets on it (Scirocco's Dervish, Serendipity, Rope-a-Dope, Red Fortune, Crushing Impact, Kinetic Combat). The only "fancy" thing I did was put Kinetic Combat on three attack powers for extra Smash/Lethal defense. Defenses are all in the low 30s.

It's not really true that EM has no mitigation: it's got two attacks, Total Focus and Energy Transfer, that do a ton of damage and have a mag 3 stun. If you take Stun (don't have it on my brute, but do on a WP/EM tanker), you can stun most bosses in two hits and keep them stunned permanently. Whirling Hands has a 30% mag 2 stun that helps in big groups. I also have Air Superiority, which is a great mitigation power.

When you fought CoT did you have Earth Thorns in the spawns? If so, that's where your problem was. They debuff Defense a lot, and that will kill you fast. Even still, if there's only four of them you should be able to stand against them. Heck, I could take down four CoT with my empath defender at level 37. At the very minimum inspirations alone should prevent you from getting wiped.

I have a hard time buying the "it doesn't suit my playing style" statement. I can see how playing a certain AT doesn't suit your style (I can't stand playing Masterminds for all sorts of reasons), but all melee types are basically the same, perhaps falling into one of two subtypes: AoE-focused (War Mace, for example) and single attack-focused (EM).

The only real difference between the two is that you need to pay more attention to the status of the mobs with EM -- you have to see whether they're stunned, whether they're LTs or minions, how many hit points they have left, which one you should take down with which attack, which Thorns have their armor on (and are harder to hit), which Thorn put Snow Storm on you (which moves him to the head of the line). These are all things you should do with any character, actually. If your "style" means you pay no attention to the tactical situation it's not so much as a "style" as not playing well.

This is why it's important to play a character for more than a day. Taking a character out of AE after 36 levels of doorsitting and expecting to understand how it works is silly. You have no feeling for how much damage each of your attacks will do to a minion, an LT or a boss. You have no intuitive feeling for how often the stun on Whirling Hands fires. You have no idea how much Fury you need to have built up in order for Total Focus to one-shot a mob. You don't really know in what situations you need to pop a purple before jumping in, and no real grasp of how big a group you can wade into safely, or what groups will give you trouble.

Your rant against EM/EA brutes says more about your impatience and competence than it does about EM/EA brutes.

Do you have any ambushes? Are they linked to the completion of an objective that is already completed when you enter? Like a captive that is marked as "Single"?

Another cause is a patrol that defeats the guards of a captive with an ambush or a defendable object (which has an automatic ambush).

I got a purple set when prices were just starting to spike a month or so ago. The only way to make enough influence to afford them is to sell things on the market. Probably the fastest way to do that are the random recipe reward rolls from AE tickets and TF tickets. If you do a lot of TFs at level 50 you also have a chance to get purples, so that might be the best bet for you.

I've had probably a dozen purple recipes drop since they were introduced, and I don't play my 50s all that often. The thing about purples is that they don't really offer a wide variety of bonuses. Typically, Recovery 4%, Fire/Cold Res 2.52%, Acc 15%, Rech 10% and Toxic Res 5%; or Regen 16%, Health 3%, Damage 4%, Recharge 10%, Psi Def 5%.

You should really examine your build and see whether purples will fill in the gaps better than other IO sets that are much cheaper. The main thing about purples is that you retain the set bonuses when exemped. If you don't spend a lot of time exemped, do purples really provide that much more than what you already have, or could get with your 187 million?

Remember what Spock said in Amok Time: "After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."

By "this thing" I assume you mean the edit box you enter text into.

There may be, but if you use Google's Chrome browser you can change the size of any multi-line text edit box on any web page. I use it all the time now because it's just SO convenient to change the edit box size.

A "vigilant" defender shouldn't be falling asleep on the job (or being held or stunned). Having end reduction when your team mates are dying is worthless if you're under some kind of status effect.

My latest suggestion is a "Vigilance" bar that builds up when you use your defender primaries. It's a lot like the Domination bar. It would come with a click power like Dominate.

Like Dominate, it would provide status protection and an endurance boost of some sort (power use end reduction would be better, to make it more unique and consistent with the current implementation). But unlike Dominate, you could click it even when held. It would also be nice if it provided some form or status and debuff resistance, or maybe a minor +recharge, or maybe a "Power Boost" effect to all primary powers.

The duration of the buffs and the recharge time would be up to the devs' judgment from data analysis.

This person may be"dual boxing" AE missions with two accounts, or even worse, is an "AE baby."

The lower level character, A, just sits by the mission entry while a level 50 character, B, runs through a mission by himself. They may be getting "padders" to fill out the team to 8 and then kicking the extra players, or they may be PLing seven lowbies at the same time.

The enemies in the mission (probably bosses) are specially constructed to be vulnerable to B's attacks, while B's defenses are impenetrable to the enemies' attacks. By appropriately selecting various options in the Mission Architect A is auto-SKed to level 45 or 46 and the mobs in the mission are level 52 or 54. This maximizes experience gained by A.

For example, B might be a Fire/SS tanker fighting demons, or a SS/Electric Armor brute fighting some mob that has only energy attacks, or a Fire/Kin with some snazzy IO sets.

They repeat this mission over and over for as many levels as they need to.

This sort of PLing has always been possible through the user of "bridging," but AE allows this to happen automatically without the need for an extra character to mentor the SKed character.

Changes in I16 will reduce this abuse somewhat by making all lower-level characters level 49 (if the mission holder is level 50).

Positron has stated that characters leveled by using exploits may be subject to punishments, and the account may be sanctioned (the slot used for the arc may be removed completely). It's not exactly clear that this method is an "exploit" in the same way that players who leveled by exploiting bugs that gave experience for killing creatures that had no attacks.

The other day I was playing and a level 29 blaster wanted to know how he could "hit harder." I had to show him how to go to Talos and buy SOs from the magic store, and how many to slot in each attack power. He had no travel power (not even a Raptor Pack from the bank mission). During that time he mentioned that he made a level 50 the day before.

As has been pointed out numerous times, this is rather silly. The game at 50 is really no different from the game at 20. Skipping levels 21-49 by getting PLed is pointless, unless the ONLY reason you're doing this is to create a PvP character.

The Shield Defense power Grant Cover already does this. It doesn't make sense to give this power free to all tankers. There's also a Leadership Pool power that does a similar thing.

This is also yet another automatic range-based power which would suck another bit of CPU power. We've already got enough of these, adding more is probably a bad idea.

I don't think tanks really need any more beefing up. They already get a second and third inherent -- they're called "tons of hit points" and "the best defenses."

Now, practically speaking, standing next to a tank is a bad idea when fighting certain enemies with AoE damage or stun attacks (Nemesis, Freak Smashers, Tsoo Ancestor Spirits). The few percentage points of defense that the tank would give a blaster or defender would be easily overcome by the multiple AoEs that are dropping on the tank constantly.

The only ATs that would really benefit from this would be scrappers and other tankers. There are serious balance issues involved with this and multiple tankers -- if you have five tankers they all wind up with 40% defense on top of their already fabulous defenses, all for free.

Finally, your intended explanation doesn't add up with the implementation. Granting defense to team mates doesn't increase the chance of the tanker getting hit, it just decreases the chance of the team mate getting hit.

A better description of your intended effect would be: any ranged attack targeting a character within 20 ft of the tank or a melee attack on a character within 8 feet of the tanker has an N% chance of hitting the tanker instead. AoEs would be unaffected.

Or maybe: any mob targeting a character within 20 ft. of a tanker has N% chance of being taunted by the tanker, and will instead attack the tanker. This would give the term "aggro magnet" a literal meaning.

I'm not advocating these implementations -- they have the same CPU problem as the above -- they're just a better match for your intended effect.

The existing mechanisms for aggro -- the taunt, the current Gauntlet and the taunt in auras like those on Fire/ and Ice/ tankers -- require some planning and skill on the part of tanker. This would remove some of that.

And, ultimately, as a tanker I don't want a crowd of squishie team mates cowering near me. They're much safer being at a remove.

You're right on the first point, but every web-based app I've seen for this is too klunky. Mids is just too good a starting point to throw out. It has a huge number of great features and is user-adaptable to boot.

As others have suggested, though, it should be open source. The nature of a computer game is that people come and go. Having one person responsible for it just doesn't make sense -- it's just too much work for one person to have to collect all that data, write the code to support it, and then maintain it when the game changes.

It's the perfect sort of app for open source. The person who took it over should seriously consider placing it under open source at the same place HeroStats is hosted -- as long as Mids is okay with that.

I do this sometimes, but it's really beside the point. For competent players doing regular missions the AT is all that matters, and even that doesn't make all that much difference.

The only times you need to know the power sets are when you're doing a TF that requires a lot of stealth and ghosting, or when you're going after AVs. And generally the only thing you care about for AVs is that you have enough -regen or -dmg res to take them down in a reasonable time, or maybe a tanker to tank the AV.

In those cases, I make sure I bring what we need myself -- either on my own character or with a friend who does.

On regular missions the appropriate use of inspirations and an understanding of how powers work will let you handle pretty much anything given your average collection of power sets.

Practically speaking, most servers don't have enough players to do what you want. There might only be 200-400 players on Triumph at any given time; the odds that you'll be able to find the one player on that server who has the power set you want and is not teamed will be vanishingly small. On big servers like Freedom it won't be any better -- there might be 10 WP/Mace tankers on, but they're most likely all going to be teamed already, or busy soloing their 8-man maps.

Finally, teaming with people who insist on having an exact team composition is boring. You waste all your time sitting around waiting for the team to form, when you could be out getting XP instead.

It doesn't matter if you get 20,000/xp minute on the 'perfect' team if it takes you half an hour to form it, and then it falls apart after two 15-minute missions. You could have been getting 15,000 xp/minute for that whole hour with whatever random team you put together, for a net increase of 5,000 xp/minute.

Family come in a couple of level ranges, the higher of which is 45 to 50. I don't think there's any way to get Tsoo at 50.

When I've wanted to use Family in my mission I use the 45-50 version of the group, and then set the mission level to 45-50. Lower-level characters will be auto-SKed to 45, while 50s will simply play as is.

As others mentioned, if you want Tsoo you'll have to create your own versions of them. You won't be able to make them look exactly the same (Ancestor Spirits will be rough), but you can emulate most of their powersets.

This is what you have to watch out for. If you're just running to 50 and forgetting about the character, it doesn't really matter when you get it. But if you're keeping the character, you should make sure when you respec that you get travel at a level that you're likely to be exemping to. Though I16 may bring some changes that may make this a moot point.

However, there are other considerations:

The temp travel powers are quite inferior to the real ones in terms of speed (raptor pack) and jump height (jump pack), even if you're just one-slotting your travel power.

Also realize that some travel powers and their prerequisites have additional benefits -- Super Speed has a stealth component that can be very useful. Hasten, Air Superiority and Hover are useful powers in and of themselves. Combat Jumping has immobilization protection.

There were already people who did this before AE: they invited "padders" or "fillers" to the team, then entered the mission and ran around to spawn the mobs. Then they kicked everyone off the team. The worst of these guys would spam everyone on the server multiple times. AE made this go away.

Because AE has no drops but tickets, AE's auto-SKing feature meant they don't lose anything by keeping the padders on the team, who often do nothing but stand by the door.

Seven doorsitters and a 50 soloing the spawns for 8 doesn't really constitute a team: I don't think the real teaming opportunities will be greatly reduced. The people who want to solo 8-man spawns will no longer have to bother the rest of us. Since they value their booty more than our company, it's no loss for them or us.

I've noticed that a lot of people think that you have to be on a big team to enjoy the game and reap good rewards. You don't. It's perfectly fine to have just two or three players. You can do 99.5% of the content that way -- including the AV missions (if you choose the challenge level properly AVs are scaled to EBs).

"But I'll get less XP that way!" you cry. Well, maybe not. I've seen all too many team leaders spend 20 minutes trying to fill that last spot on the team -- through a variety of mapserver disconnects, bio breaks, boredom, SG emergencies, etc. You're getting zero xp/minute while you stand around waiting for a full team. Since pickup teams have huge attrition rates, you typically wind up wasting a lot of time filling the team again after each mission. (A competent pickup team leader will not waste your time -- he'll keep things moving no matter what -- but that's an exhausting job and leaders of such caliber are hard to come by. I know I don't have the patience for it.)

Also, if you're playing with competent people that you know, you generally steamroll missions with no team wipes and other ugly surprises. Which means you can run at a higher challenge level and earn more XP. You can easily do twice as many missions an hour with a competent team of three or four regulars than you can with a pickup team you're trying to keep at eight.

Last I checked this still worked (a couple of weeks ago). I usually solo the Midnighter badge missions. When I get to the Latin student part I broadcast a message to Steel Canyon telling anyone who needs the badge to contact me. Whoever is teamed when I choose the password gets the badge.

Many people have been experiencing these kinds of symptoms in the recent past. It started happening to me after the last patch and during double xp weekend. It has pretty much returned to normal, but the netgraph plot is different than it used to be -- much lumpier now, with wider variations on ping than I used to get.

I didn't see what kind of internet connection you have. If you have dialup, you are out of luck. Too much data is being transmitted to participate in anything like a mothership raid or the Rikti invasion. The maximum effective rate is 5-6K per second with dialup, and even at that rate you'll start falling behind pretty soon. I've seen data rates up to 20K per second constant in Rikti invasions.

If you have satellite you're always going to have problems with ping -- that 48,000-mile round trip is never going to get any faster.

If you have DSL or a cable modem the first thing I would try is resetting my modem. Every once in a while my modem gets messed up and starts having lots of errors. Resetting it fixes my problems most of the time.

If that doesn't work, it's probably some node along the path between you and NCSoft's servers. This is really hard to fix because neither you nor NCsoft has any control over those locations. Ask your ISP for help trying to track down the problem.

If you slot IO sets that grant accuracy (like Thunderstrike, which is generally available pretty cheaply) your accuracy with the vet powers can be improved.

I've got an Empathy/Psi and a Storm/Electric. I tried really hard to make Short Circuit work with my defender, but it just didn't cut it. By itself it almost drains them dry. But most PvE mobs only have a couple of attacks that take little endurance, so SC doesn't do much to mitigate damage. To make it really have the desired effect I had to get SC and Power Sink from Electricity Mastery. But a defender can't kill the mobs fast enough for it to really matter.

It works a lot better with my electric/electric blaster: I drain them and then put them down before they can recharge. Still, the three holds I have on my blaster are much more useful than Short Circuit. PvE enemies just don't suffer like players do from lack of End.

My take on your experiment is this: yes, you can solo defenders. I've done it with every AT. With careful play and the right tactics, I've been able to solo all standard content on my Emp/Psy defender on Challenge Level 5 (except for AVs). Yes, that includes tough EBs. But all that really says is that I know how and when to use purples and break frees.

Soloing is really beside the point. This game is -- for me at least -- mostly about teaming. I solo a lot because I have odd hours, but usually I'd rather be teaming with friends.

What I think is wrong with defenders is the nature of the Inherent, Vigilance. Yeah, it does what it says. But it's too little too late. Unlike every other AT, whose inherents apply all the time, or improve with intended use, defenders only get the benefit from theirs when they fail to do their job. And for a well-designed character, Vigilance is totally worthless. By level 30 or 35 all my defenders have no Endurance issues at all.

And, of course, the inherent won't figure into your project at all. Another example of why it's worthless.

Trip mines seem like they would be neat, but they take a long time to put down. If you're solo and you don't mind wasting time, it's ok. But if you're on a team it's pretty annoying to have /dev blasters insist that everyone wait around while they lay mines. They're very situational.

I tried an ice/dev blaster, but gave up on it about level 12 or 16. It just wasn't doing it for me. I already had an Ice/Ice that I liked better. I also liked Fire/Energy, Energy/Energy, Sonic/Energy, Electrical/Electrical and Psy/MM better.

For me, Ice/Dev was in the same boat as Fire/Fire.