Schismatrix

Gosh, i wish i'd thought of that.

Fusion 7's "born date" tagging is a bit odd to me, but then i guess i have a hard time thinking of something whose every action i control as my child. "Registered" or "created" makes a lot more sense. Hell, a huge number of the characters people make should have decades of existence prior to the creation in game, so "born" only really makes sense for clones, certain types of androids, some alien species, and byproducts of one of Zeus' headaches.

The purpose is whatever you make it. Slotting the blasts for debuffs instead of damage will help the team somewhat less than slotting for damage, but still more than Defenders who never slot or use the blasts at all. Defenders are a support archetype that focuses primarily on buff/debuff and ranged damage, with some hard and soft control. You are the one who decides which aspects to emphasize. My advice is to build and play the Defender in a way that is fun for you. Since you're planning to team i would suggest playing to each set's strengths, but beyond that do whatever you like.

My Defenders all aim for a balance of support and offense, but that doesn't mean yours have to as well.

From the Defender character creation screen: " The Defender tends to help his allies, and attack his foes, from a distance. The Defender excels at powers that assist friends, but can also hinder his enemies. The Defender is able to attack at quite a range, however, the Defender is not built for hand to hand. He might be able to dodge a few attacks, but the Defender won't last for long."

If you're having fun and your teammates appreciate what you're doing for them then you're doing it right. (Assuming knowledgeable teammates. Idiot teammates will only notice the most superficial aspects of what you're doing and should be regarded as slightly less intelligent Controller pets.)

What Agge said.

i have oodles of "toons", and for a couple i know within a few months when they were created. Most of them i have no specific idea other than the approximate year. Some have been deleted and remade several times even though i'm generally reluctant to delete any alt over thirty.

Honestly, i don't really care for the most part when an alt was made, but i'm all for making the info available for those who do. The creepy baby icon seems unnecessary to me. i'd just add a [Registered] field to the character ID screen that shows when they were first registered by Paragon or Arachnos authorities. (AKA their creation date.)

Don't recall exactly. It was over a year ago. Basically the chain part of the power was rebuilt almost completely IIRC.

Makes perfect (non)sense to me.

They were, but apparently there were issues with implementing the contact.

This has been my experience.
Although i've found Dual Pistols to be pretty effective, the fact that my main DP users are a Rad/DP and a DP/Dark probably factors significantly into that. The sets i've paired Dual Pistols with are both very effective on their own, even solo. Even Ping Pong Ball Blast would probably do well with those two. My Dual Pistols/Energy Manipulation is still only level 13, which i would expect is the alt that will notice DP's relative strength the most.

i've always used Fluffy as an alpha strike absorber when it's useful to do so. If he survives it's all the better.

Procs check whenever the the power they're slotted in is used, or every ten seconds for toggles. Ammo type just alters which secondary effect is active, but all are technically present at all times, so current ammo setting has no effect on proc chances.

That's what i thought. "Avoid" is the less useful "fear". The cowering fear most associated with fear powers is the one i was thinking of and i was pretty sure no blast or assault sets had it in any powers.

i still haven't taken the DP nuke on any of my live alts, so i'll have to wait and see. Although my two candidates for getting it in the near future use Dark Miasma and Radiation Emission, so it won't be a very useful test. Both sets generally make jumping into melee range much safer than otherwise.

Subscriptions into the millions has nothing to do with how cutting-edge and awesome the various game systems happen to be. The 900 lb. Gorilla in the room with millions of subscribers, WoW, came out shortly after CoH and actually has a lower demand and performance design as far as things like graphics go.

Unless you code a new game every few years you're always going to be limited by old programming. i don't think there's any way a company could afford to rebuild their MMO every couple of years and not go under.

All that aside, i do agree with your sentiments. While a CoH2 would be cool, i'm still happy to continue playing CoH1, and i think Ultra Mode will make it as shiny as CO for the most part, and the animations of this game are still far better in my opinion. Hell, unless it's finally been fixed CO still doesn't even have ragdoll physics. The only thing that CO has that i'd like to see and doesn't seem to be currently possible in CoH is picking up and using environmental objects.

Well anyone can "tank" solo.
It's not like anyone else is going to steal your aggro. Surviving aggro is essential to tanking, but equally essential is holding the aggro when others are doing things that could steal it. Unless you can keep aggro from your teammates what you're doing is surviving, not tanking.

Every single one of my alts can survive solo aggro, but most of my non-Tankers cannot hold aggro when others try to steal it. Though some of my Dark Miasmists do fairly well by combining damage, soft controls and massive debuffing.

Actually drawing a blank here on any fear powers in any of the blast sets. Is there one?

Yes it does. Just like when it blew BAB's mind when Oil Slick Arrow+Howling Twilight was used to stage a mass rez while players were testing the (then newly) modified Hami raid some time back. Still works the same.

Damn you! You had to do it between the last time i read the thread and its later evaporation. i have to admit i was impressed by his perseverance. Admittedly i think it was partly that he didn't understand the actual meaning of many sentences. (If interpreting posts that rejected his suggestions as supporting them was anything to go by.) Still, his tenacity and single (simple?) mindedness was sort of impressive, as unpleasant as the implications based on his statements about his dating habits were.

So what did you post that was so hurtful? (No need to post it here, but i am somewhat curious, so feel free to PM it if you want.)

i think it's been pretty conclusively demonstrated that you can make some hideously powerful builds, but what i really want to see is a few more hideously bad builds through cherry picking from any set. Preferably in some combination of three approaches:
1) Powers chosen from all sets.
2) Powers chosen from specific archetypes.
3) Powers that seem like they should be good from the name or in game short description, but actually tend to under-perform.

Edit: "Warning: As of Thursday March 4th I gave up cigarettes. I am irritable and grouchy, meaning my posts will contain much more snark than usual for the next several weeks." i wish i could use that excuse. i gave up smoking a few years ago, but i never smoked much more than a pack a month, so it was fairly easy. My occasional irritability and frequent snarkiness has more to do with cycling between hypomanic and dysthymic states with occasional excursions into (usually) relatively brief manic or depressive states. That and being a bit of a b*****d at times. (To use Warren Ellis' favored epithet.) So, yeahhhh...

So, did you?

Wait, are you saying it wasn't an exploding sun that put the moon in CoH into a polar orbit?

i applaud your insight and tactical thinking.
i use Howling Twilight as a preemptive mez & debuff far more often than as a rez. It's not unknown that i'll ask teammates to leave a minion alive so i can use it to rez a fallen teammate because HT is still recharging from having used it earlier in the fight to soften up the enemies or save another teammate from needing a rez.

Good game design/gamemastering.
[/discussion]

When i read the OP i just thought of answering each with "Are we there yet?!"
Maybe tossing in an "I have to go potty!" for flavor.

Yours is more honest.
Damn it, now i do have to go potty.

i know someone posted screenshots of their purpled out Dual Pistols Blaster the day after it went live, and i know a bunch of others had them in the forties at that point, but none of mine hit 50 because i was doing other stuff most of the time.

Kudos on the fifty. What's your primary?
i'm going to guess your 50 is a Defender or there's little reason to announce it here.

??

But a solo Defender's damage output is low enough that the end drain has time to become useful. Especially if using a debuff and/or endurance draining Primary to keep the Defender alive long enough to make it significant. Which i guess isn't really high praise for the usefulness of endurance drain as much as it is a comment on low Defender damage/endurance efficiency.

Edit: Back on topic. Minor quibbles about things like Electrical Blast aside, i agree with the OP wholeheartedly and i never even left the game.

The point is that some of the people posting here do know more than you. The fact that they are willing to acknowledge that there are things that they don't know should not be taken as an admission they know less. Often it's the converse.

That's not really correct. The programming has changed since then, but it's gotten more complicated, as it would have to in order to fit the new features into the current engine. This doesn't mean it can't be done, and for all i know such things are coming in Going Rogue, but it does mean that in the game as it currently stands what you initially asked for will not work.

Cool.

Awesome.

Crossbows as a skin for Assault Rifle? That's... um... yeah.
So it would look like a crossbow that shoots jets of fire and bursts of bullets or (hypothetically, but not even sure it's currently doable) bolts?
Unsigned for that.

On a related note: bemoaning that Swap Ammo can't be slotted for use as a set mule seems odd since i usually skip one or two powers in every set, or take powers that can't take sets, so not only do i have no idea what sets Swap Ammo would take, i have no idea why every power in Dual Pistols should be slottable as a set mule any more than powers like Conserve Power, which are already in other powersets. Or Hasten, what sets are usually put into Hasten?

Of course there are many other powers like that. By the OP's reasoning the Devs should make it so they all can take sets, so which sets would those be?