Schismatrix

[Brian Johnson]
"He's got big blue balls,
she's got big blue balls,
but I've got the
biggest, bluest balls of them all!"
[/Brian Johnson]

*heh* i remember when a Dev explained that the Longbow Nullifiers didn't actually have a detoggle power. It was just something like a mag 60 hold with a half second duration. Or their disruption grenades with stacking -res that couldn't be resisted. And back when mezzes killed all toggles. Longbow Nullifiers were awesome Brute killers when playing one with resist-based armor sets on large teams. One Longbow spawn could put your resistance in the negatives before the nullifier killed all your armor toggles. My DM/Elec was wiped by Longbow ambushes attacking the teams in less than three seconds sometimes just from massively stacked irresistable debuffs and AoE splash damage. Good times.

Nope. Being bothered by it is a matter of opinion, and some people are bothered by pink icing on cupcakes.

Dual boxing allows a player with two accounts to easily solo (solo player, not character) content that many solo players otherwise find difficult. It takes a fair amount of skill to dual box well, and even more to do it on a team. Still, i have teamed with a few players who can dual box effectively in a team setting, but i'm not surprised you haven't. Seriously, you're to ineffectual players what Psychoti is to twits in MMO's, you each seem to have magnetic fields that draw your respective irritant groups when playing an MMO. In Psychoti's case it's more hilarious for those of us who read his accounts of such encounters, and a case of opposites attracting.

While i think you're vastly overestimating how difficult dual boxing is i'm not surprised you've encountered a lot of bad dual boxers considering that it's easy to encounter players who have difficulty with controlling just one character at a time. That and the whole incompetence magnet thing. Look on the bright side: it makes for amusing anecdotes.

Oh i agree even though my Dark/Ice only has 2 holds. It's just that i went with a full set of Cloud Senses in Dark Servant for all the yummy set bonuses in addition to the tohit debuff boost and proc damage. (A tohit debuff set damage proc should be pretty useful in a critter who debuffs tohit with 4 out of 5 powers.)

i am sending some repo men to your home under what could admittedly be false pretenses, but they don't have to know that, and i really need* a new computer.







*want (Whatever.)

And you get full rewards for anything defeated by Self Destruction.

(Yeah, posted this earlier, but people keep asking again and again anyway, so i thought bolding might make it clearer.)

Well, yeah, they are. The drop rate was posted earlier in this thread. It's rather low by design. Honestly, unless RV is the only place you can fight 47+ enemies i'd try somewhere else for purple recipes. The diminishing returns effects in PvP zones reduce your effectiveness against NPC's compared to fighting them on PvE maps.
i'd say the best to get purples is to fight enemies in a 48 or higher mission with enemies set to -1, x6 to x8, bosses yes.
My DM/Elec Brute does that with RWZ missions on occasion. i've gotten several purples that way, but not that many since i usually just do a couple missions as a warm up before joining a team.

Proactive first when available, and reactive where the proactive measures don't catch everything, neh?

i use it in combat sometimes. If you can trigger it before falling it makes a tohit check right then, and even if you're defeated before the countdown finishes it deals its damage to every enemy that was in range and flagged as being hit when you activated the power as long as the enemy is still alive. Doesn't matter how far they run between it being triggered and it going off, if they're still up and the power 'hit' when you triggered it Self Destruction will deal full damage to them, although i think the damage gets canceled if you zone out before the countdown finishes.

Yes, it counts as an attack made by you even if you're defeated before it deals its damage.

Eat some pez right before you kick his keister. Works wonders. i usually don't have any problems with him, but then i normally solo the first two safeguard missions on my squishies to avoid team-induced failure syndrome.

Yeah, then it became Vanguard Sword that the game would default to, and then later Cimerorans. A bit before AE went live it was custom enemies in Longbow uniforms and no attacks or defenses that still gave full xp. i had one of these scanner leftovers on an alt the other week and i think it's back to Vanguard Sword as the default enemy group. Those bastards hit hard when they're +5 to a level 30 solo character.

When the fire fighting missions in Steel Canyon were in the works on test Storm Elementals would appear in place of where the fires spawn now. It was interesting.

While slotting up Fluffy's hold aspect like BrandX did for the Basilisk's set bonus is useful, i actually went Psy Mastery on my D3 and used several Basilisk's Gaze and a couple from another set in Dominate. With Fluffy being so heavily slotted for tohit debuff he actually survives a surprising number of alpha-bait summons. i sometimes resummon him in the middle of a spawn to absorb alpha strikes, especially against fear-resistant, AoE-heavy groups like Nemesis. He used to be more standoffish, but it seems that his AI has been changed to make him prone to charging into the middle of enemy groups, which is where i usually want him so his Chill of the Night aura can add to the joy. With substantial recharge slotting i don't mind using Fluffy as a disposable pet. Besides, he's got a four minute lifespan until you need to resummon him even if you don't toss him at enemies.

My D3 has been mostly retired for a few years, but when i have time i'll see if i can dig up a Mids' recreation of my Dark/Ice's build. Most of the secondary set slotting should work as well for Dark Blast as far as sets go.
Highest def number on my Dark/Ice is 30%+ vs. ranged, but combined with Miasma's controls and debuffs it's generally more than enough.

The Sealab 2021 zone. That's scienterrific, no?

i'm pretty sure i remember a mech battle game setting that involved a heavily Aztec-themed society. Even had a pyramid-mounted turret in one scenario called the Smoking Mirror that was somewhere between BFG and Wave Motion Gun if i recall correctly. Now that would be lost world zone. Jaguar-themed mechs the size of Kronos Titans, Quetzalcoatl-themed aircraft masking stafing runs. Good times, good times.

Yeah, don't think i can provide any useful help with your intended build after reading this. i suspect our playstyles and approaches to using Dark Miasma are far too radically different.

Healing is the last thing i consider when slotting Fluffy. After all, every single one of his powers except Pet Gaze debuffs tohit, and two of them are AoE.

My last Dark Miasmist to hit 50 six-slotted Fluffy with Clouded Senses.

i heard it was cow pies. It also involved a rotary air circulation device.

Not the same thing. Duck Dim Sum is probably referring to "Odinists" as many in the US tend to self-identify. Bear in mind that they do not necessarily have any ancestors from Scandinavia or Germany, but simply consider themselves the spiritual descendants of vikings. Very frequently also involved with or sympathetic to white supremacist and similar racist ideologies. Not all Odinists i've met are racist bigots, but in the US i will concede it seems to be a magnet for them, and that at least 75% of those i've met who identify themselves as such have been.

Sad but all too often true.

Ultraspacial Dreadnought Vanaheim, a spacegoing viking boat the size of Wales. It's the best of both worlds.

This.

My system isn't precisely old, and it isn't that current either, so i run at medium to high settings depending on the specific settings, but nowhere near maxing everything out. i really want to see the Ultra Graphics Mode shinies when they come out, and right now a new system is hard to budget. Upgrading my current system to run Ultra Mode would be equivalent to building a new one anyway since i would have to install a new mobo, processor, PSU, RAM and graphics card(s).

At that point i might as well spend the money for a new case, optical drive and HD since i usually give my old systems to friends or family who could use them.

Still, if you tweak the game settings you can usually get good performance and overall appearance out of CoH even if it won't be quite as pretty as it is on a higher end system. Mostly a matter of looking at what your system's strengths and weaknesses are and adjusting settings accordingly.

At this point there's relatively few acronyms regularly used in this game that catch me off guard. OTOH, i still don't know what DKP means. i like to think it stands for "Donkey Kong Points" as an homage to early video games.
Also, i tend to type "En route." more often than "OMW" even though the latter is quicker.

Okay, CS* is a new one to me even though i'm familiar with, and encourage the use of, the practice.


*i always think "Computer Science"...

i think at the least they'd have to change Dark Miasma up a bit, but do you really think that Traps would be that overpowered in Controller hands compared to Radiation Emission? (Or the 12 ton elephant in the room, Kinetics?) IIRC the more recent ports have involved tweaking the pets to be in line with AT mods, Traps' attacks won't get containment damage and Rad offers significant debuffs and potential for control stacking itself, although Traps' AoE controls are on a shorter timer than Rads'.

That was Mieux's position before TA received some buffs a while back; that is to say when it wasn't as good as it is today. He showed up in every thread where people were saying that TA underperformed compared to every other Defender Primary insisting it was actually more powerful if you knew how to play, testing and numbers be damned. TA was the awesome set for expert players and nubs should just avoid it since they weren't worthy or capable of basking in its glory.

i've tried TA with almost every AT that can use it. My Earth/TA Controller does quite well with it, but all the other alts have been deleted to make room for alts i find more rewarding. Like my FF/Archery Defender.