Science_Teacher

I play with my 9 year old daugther and my 4 year old son. My daughter has had her own account for almost two years. My son, however, is a CoH animal.

My son and I duo with a WP/Axe tank (me) and a Fire/Fire blaster (Shaneferno). We're just now up to lvl 22. I used to hear, "video games stifle creativity" all the time when I was a kid. My son will take thirty minutes making a character, an hour playing him, an hour drawing pictures of the battles, and an hour running around the house and back yard role playing him. Not particularly creatively stifling.

The emergent literacy aspect of the game is great too. When he started I'd tell him letters of the selections he'd have to make for yellow line tram and contacts. "Go to Kings Row. It's the one that starts with a 'K'". He gets around fine now. I came home from work late the other day. My daughter had logged him on (presumably to get her little brother out of her hair). He was stuck because he'd done enough radio missions by himself to get the safeguard mission and couldn't figure out where to go. So my four year old soloed five radio missions set on tenacious with a fire/fire blaster.

We were doing the V day event missions and picked up a couple of villains to get the girdle. I couldn't get anybody on the team to believe Shaneferno was being run by a four year old. Sure, he sometimes hits rain of fire when the spawn is almost all arrested. Sure, he doesn't always clear out his inspiration tray to make room. Sure, he pops off fire sword circle when he's not in the middle of the bad guys sometimes. He's still better than many of the people you'll find on your average PUG.

It's good daddy/son bonding time.

I've played Thug MM up to a fair level where I think I understand the mechanics of the primary (at least with respect to the dynamics that /traps adds to the set).

I think the OP didn't elaborate on his disdain for the pistol attacks because, having played a thug MM, he probably couldn't understand why someone would want them other than because "they look cool."

Maybe at low levels you guys think you're dishing out damage with your dual weild, but if you're slotting your thugs right, any of your atttack's damage will be trivial to what your posse is doing.

Don't waste your end on your "bang... bang, bang.... pow-pow-pow-pow" attacks while your enforcers are hosing people down with a hail of uzi bullets.

You should be supporting them with holds, bubbles, tarpatches, poison traps, alkaloids, acid mortars or whatever the heck your secondary offers.

If you're role playing, fine. If you're more concerned with how your toon looks than how effective he is, fine. Otherwise, taking a pistol attack for anything but the occasional pull, you're wasting your power selections.

My thug/traps MM drops invincible spawns so quickly, I can't imagine how some lame, end hungry, low side of moderate damage attacks would make an impact.

I'm surprised so many people are defending the attack powers. Sure they look cool, but their damage is trivial compared to those of your pets. My 39 thugs/traps MM only has dual wield and that's mostly to pull mobs around a corner onto my traps.

Without having attack powers my thugs kill enemies so fast I often don't have time to plant any traps (and yes, I'm set to relentless). I think your power selections could be better used on something else.

I don't even need stamina if I'm just laying traps, directing my pets, and spamming web grenade.