Samuel_Tow

[QUOTE=Kyasubaru;2442075]Dark Armor also lets you turn into mist with Cloak of Darkness.[quote]

Good point! Let's see... Cloak of Darkness on its own is kind of a mist transformation. Cloak of Fear (or possibly Oppressive Gloom if I can't find an actual real reason to take Cloak of Fear) would work as hypnosis, or at least mental suggestion. Soul Transfer works well as a self resurrection ability (which is what it is) and doubles as a soul steal (which, again, it is). Dark Regeneration IS the set's soul steal. And I even have Death Shroud for a bit of a more obscure use of Darkness. Groovy!

Say, here's one last question. I get the Lich and I get the others, but what do I slot my Soul Extraction for? Right now I have it slotted for accuracy, triple damage and a single recharge. Given that it's on such a huge timer and temporary anyway, shouldn't I just slap another recharge enhancement when I get that chance?

I actually think I'll break character and NOT run a character against his grain this time around. I already have a bunch of good-guy demons and a bunch of bad-guy good-guys, so I think it's only fitting to make a vampire a villain. I don't have enough concepts I can actually make villainous anyway, so I don't want to recycle the only obvious villain I have as a hero. I might make him a Rogue, though... But for the moment, that limits me to villain ATs.

Also, before I move on:

I finally broke down and I might be looking at getting a new sound card altogether. I'm not looking at something ultra-expensive, but just more decent than that damn Xtreme Audio. For the moment, I seem to be looking at the Xtreme Gamer. Would that be a good choice?

Here's somewhat of an abstract question for you. After playing through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and basically swooning over what is probably Alucard's coolest incarnation in visual media (I really don't like Hellsing), this was just the natural next step - how can I make my own ripoff of him in City of Heroes? Of course, I don't want to remake Alucard, partly because I dislike cheesy ripoffs and partly because I don't actually want to make a new character at this time, but let's consider this a thought experiment on the broader question of how to make a vampire.

This comes down to what a vampire should be able to do, first and foremost, and with all the fiction we've had concerning vampires, from Bram Stoker's Dracula to the horrible Blade movies, what a vampire is and isn't has varied a lot over the years. For the sake of utility, I want to keep off replicating a vampire's weaknesses, partly because City of Heroes can't replicate weaknesses anyway, and partly because a lot of their weaknesses are just absurd, like not being able to cross flowing water or not being able to enter a home unless they are invited. Let's stick to what they CAN do and just ignore what they can't.

*Turning into a bat or into a swarm of bats. This is probably the most classic move short of sucking blood, and it's going to need to be available to any vampire wannabe character. Of course, we can't have that in City of Heroes, but let's think laterally here - a vampire typically turns into bats in order to disappear, or in order to reach unreachable locations, like inside locked rooms or on top of high ledges. With a bit of a fudge, that could actually fit into Teleportation reasonably well.

*Turning into mist. I've no idea when that first showed up, but both Castlevania's Alucard and Legacy of Kain's Kain can turn into mist to pass through grates. Alucard, furthermore, can stay in mist form to avoid attacks and move around enemies. Essentially, if you're quick on your fingers, you can "mistify" just long enough to avoid most attacks. In City of Heroes, we can't turn into mist, and I'd avoid going for things like Arctic Air or Steamy Mist just for the fact that this transformation is almost always used either for purposes of damage avoidance or obstacle avoidance, and covering yourself with mist is rather different from BECOMING mist. However, there is a power in the game which has both - Phase Shift. This power allows you to pass through doors, at least, as well as through other people, which combined with the other powers from the pool would achieve sort of a similar effect.

*Hypnosis. A vampire is almost always shown to have some degree of hypnotic power, unless he's going for full-on badass effect, in which case the power is simply never used. But older, more suave vampires will almost always be able to enchant the ladies and lead them around like a puppet on a string, and he's able to confuse and misdirect vampire hunters, at least. That I'm not really sure what to do with this, since that's pretty much Mind Control, and I don't fancy a controller for the job. Council/Column Vampyri do sort of a fudge of this by combining Dark Melee and Mind Control, but that's obviously not an option for me. I'm drawing a blank here.

*Kickass fighting. Less so in older stories, but newer vampire stories definitely have this. D from the anime of the same name is very much this, as is the vampire he's hunting in Bloodlust, who seems to have the ability to transform his cape's edge into a metal blade and cut people with it. Alucard is another good example in very much his every incarnation, specifically being a mean fighter in Castlevania. Along with his bag of tricks, he's just one tough bugger. Here, this sort of requires a fighter archetype, which is why I didn't want to pick a Controller or Dominator or some such. I want to say "just sword," but I'm hesitant.

*"Soul Steal." I'm calling this after the spell of the same name in Castlevania, which essentially hurts people while healing you off of them. This is sort of a common theme of vampires in video games, though, as biting on a person's neck works less well with wonky controls and suspect clipping. Raziel sucks souls from a distance, Kain draws people's blood out and shoots it into his mouth, Alucard has the Soul Steal and even our very own Vampyri use Life Drain (at range, no less). In-game, this is obvious - Dark Regeneration. You draw power from everyone around you and heal yourself while hurting them. Point for point exactly.

*General purpose regeneration. Basically, Vampires can't be hurt by ordinary means. Cut them, stab them, shoot them, they'll just heal it all back without any lasting problems. This seems to suggest Regeneration, and our very own Vampyri actually have Dull Pain for this express reason. But that doesn't actually seem to make it into any of the actual vampire games I'm aware of. Most vampires heal by drinking blood directly or from potions and cheeseburgers (seriously?), rather than just from standing around and, in fact... Most I'm aware of don't heal on their own AT ALL. In this case, I'm willing to go with the latter and just lump this into Dark Regeneration and call it a day.

*Sucking blood. Then there's... Well, this. That is what very much defines a vampire, but it's also the one thing that an action-packed vampire almost never actually does. And even when they do it, it's more biting people's necks off their spines than the stylish act of lowering a lady as though in a dance, biting her neck and covering it all with your over-large cape. What's more, since we lack grappling of any kind, we're essentially restricted to non-contact life-syphoning, which is basically Syphon Life. Or Dark Regeneration, which is the same mechanic only at range and on a larger scale, so I'm willing to lump this in there.

*A cap AND wings. It's interesting to note that all non-Blade vampires are obligated to wear a large cape that's black on the outside and red on the inside. It's true. It's right there in the handbook, just above the Romanian accent which never existed and isn't actually Romanian. They also often have the ability to transform that cape into a pair of bat wings and fly or jump with it. Kind of like Batman does, come to think of it. Even Castlevania's Alucard has that in his double jump, as his cape flaps like bird wings to give him an extra jump. That's not doable in this game, however, since we can only ever have wings OR a cape, and even costume changing doesn't quite cut it.

*Flight. Before I forget, this one is largely hit-and-miss. Vampires can generally dissolve into bats or mist in order to fly, but a few ones are just so awesome they can fly in human form. It's never really explained how they do that, and it's generally assumed they're just so cool that flying is the natural result of this awesomness. But it's fairly rare, and mostly restricted to game final boss vampires. Most live action movies lack this for reasons of budget (and lack of imagination), and it does tend to work against the "badass fighter" theme, so it's rarely ever allowed even in games or cartoons. One way or the other, though, that's easy enough to replicate via Hover and, push come to shove, Fly.

*Shooting fire? This may be more a game cliché, more a Japanese trope, as the Japanese tend to have a very loose interpretation of Western myths and religions, but it seems like a lot of really powerful vampires in animé and manga seem to have abilities that cross over into the "totally absurd." Kind of like how very powerful ninja shoot fire from their moths, teleport and turn into giant foxes. Hellsing's Alucard is the perfect example of this, having "locked" powers less typical for a vampire and more typical for some deranged psychopath's interpretation of what the devil would look like. As such, the door is open to giving such a character "exotic" abilities, such as laser beam eyes, fire blasts and so forth.

That's basically all I can think of at the time being. I'm not sure what AT/Powerset combo I can actually create this as, and I'm not even sure my view of what a vampire is or does is actually on the money. Which is why I put this as a question: How would YOU make a vampire in this game?

*edit*
If I'm making a lot of these threads lately, it's because I have a lot of free time at work. I have work to do, just at home, so I'm passing the time. Please, try to find it in your heart to forgive me.

For those of us who don't have characters who could earn a cape but haven't, what changed about it? And does that affect the CoV-side cape mission?

Repulsion Field, from what experience I've had with it, is a piece of garbage that seems to have been specifically designed to make people who take it weaker. It costs, on its own, more than any combination of other toggles I can think of, and can drain your endurance to NOTHING if you have a large spawn that persistently tried to get into melee range, and it does almost nothing since people will just shoot you to death. It's even worse on a Mastermind, since it's a form of self-protection that doesn't help you protect your henchmen. And since henchmen are your REAL self-protection, not protecting them is silly, especially when it costs you so damn much to not protect them.

Also, the range on Force Bubble is 50 feet. The ranges on Pulse Rifle Blast, Pulse Rifle Burst, Photon Grenade and Force Bolt are 80 feet and the range on Repulsion Bomb is 70 feet, easily longer than the reach of the bubble. How are you managing to not be able to fire your rifle blasts past the range of Force Bubble when they have a longer range? Secondly, the primary use of Force Bubble is to sweep enemies into a corner and jam them into a clump so that your Assault Bot can burn-patch them to death without them scattering, and if you jam them in a corner, you can approach past your bubble's outer wall since there's nowhere for the enemies to be nudged back to.

I've been over this before. People extorted the virtues of Repulsion Field and how it helped with enemies resistant to repel (I don't remember WHICH enemies), but even then, the thing ticks once every two seconds, which is plenty of time for people to run in and punch you or your bots in the face. Also, with so many enemies firing AoEs from range, a 9-feet-wide kinda-sphere isn't going to do anything to save you. Specifically since YOU shouldn't need saving in the first place, with your bots around you, Protector Bots bubbling you and your own Dispersion Bubble protecting your from attacks and adverse effects.

As far as I'm aware, you can't edit default henchmen dialogue. You can, however, disable it entirely and use /petsay commands to add your own dialogue to your binds/macros. The downside to this is that it'll spam your pet channel, and the pet channel of anyone on your team, and this could be annoying. That, and you can't actually have it random, and alternating it is a complicated process.

The plague of random hunts is that spawns are almost completely random, and if you have the poor luck to hunt something with no spawns points all its own, or something which doesn't spawn in the right level, you're SOL. Far as I'm concerned, we need to root hunt missions out of arcs as much as possible.

That said, yes. A place that spawns ONLY Carnies in Peregrine Island would be very, very appreciated.

After getting a spare moment to install Silverlight, I have to say that's pretty neat. Good work