Smurphy

I understand there's slightly more Inf coming into the system because I round up the 1s column. That's it though. What other devaluation is there?

Well, on the positive side, we finally have some names to scream as we hurl ourselves into battle.

I think I'll be letting Issue 17 settle down a bit before hopping on my Eagle. I was having some lag issues all day. I'll be rolling a new Eagle to go along with my 18 or whatever to join up with all the lowbies we will probably have I hope you guys are undeterred and ready to make new, better, stronger Eagles!

I've played three (heck, I've played 6 at the same time) Thug/Storms and I generally recommend NOT playing them as many players frequently suggest. Freezing Rain is simply a game winner. There's no need to use powers like Hurricane frequently and blow the enemies out of Freezing Rain. Thugs can virtually always take out the enemies before the Freezing Rain(s) go away.

I recommend mixing and matching. For more than 1 person variety can be fun. I recommend one /Storm, one /Dark and one /Traps. You have all the Thugs stacking their +Defense plus Steamy Mist, Shadowfall and Force Field Generator. Take three Maneuvers on top of that and your squad, including the MMs will be extremely beefy. Tar Patch + Freezing Rain + Acid Mortar will give massive minus resistance. You have various ways of controlling packs as well.

At Patron levels (40+) MMs can pick up AoE Immobs. Then a Storm can truly go wild and not worry about the enemies being thrown everywhere. I used Hurricane only as an emergency escape and time to re-summon all the pets. Hurricane, to me, was more "you can't kill me and I can't kill you." With multiple experienced storm players you can frequently turn on Hurricane and make sandwiches. Have the MMs split up and pile all the enemies into a central location where you drop multiple Freezing Rains.

I cannot speak to how difficult this would be to implement or how technically feasible it would or would not be. Nor can I comment on what could occur if this was implemented improperly.

This idea is a little out of the box and is an idea to increase the Influence/Infamy cap of 2 Billion to 20 billion.

1) Take every inf amount, every reward, every price, everything, and round up to the nearest 10.

Examples
Single Origin costs 10,525 Influence before, now 10,530.
Influence Reward for a defeat of 3, now 10.
Influence bid of 5,000,100 before, now 5,000,100.
You are holding 10,205,295 Infamy before, now 10,205,300

2) Remove the zero at the far right. Essentially, divide all prices and every Inf value, Inf cost, and Inf reward by 10. Now the Inf cap is essentially "20 billion" instead of 2 billion.

Examples
Single Origin costs 10,525 before, now 1,053
Influence Reward for a defeat of 3, now 1.
Influence bid of 5,000,100 before, now 500,010.
You are holding 10,205,295 Infamy before, now 1,020,530

3) Add a superficial zero to the far right of every Inf value, Inf Cost and Inf reward. This change essentially makes most amounts appear to be almost exactly the same except for the rounding up to 10 part.

Examples:
Single Origin costs 10,525 Influence before, now 10,530.
Influence Reward for a defeat of 3, now 10.
Influence bid of 5,000,100 before, now 5,000,100.
You are holding 10,205,295 Infamy before, now 10,205,300

Is this crazy enough to work if the Inf Cap was desired to be increased?
Some very small amounts of Inf are slightly increased. I don't think that's a big deal.

What happens if I take... I think I can login 4... Thug/Storm MMs at the same time and do it?

I'm excited to see how everyone does I expect the DPM to be easily beaten with some of the various strategies people have mentioned.

Mostly, my friends and I play our normal way. Our runs our normally in the 60 to 80 minutes range on those settings. Our previous best at +2 Buffed/Debuffed was 67 minutes and 133 deaths. That's a 2.26? or a 2.28 or so. Yesterday we ran one at 91 deaths and 61 minutes or so. That's a measly 1.5. They were both fantastically fun and that's what matters.

The interesting thing about Deaths per minute is you can calculate the number on any content and at any difficulty. It can apply to every Task or Strike Force.

Surprisingly, it is actually difficult to have players defeated that many times and actually succeed on a Task Force in a respectable amount of time.

Give it a try. Run a Task Force or any mission with a few friends. Count how many defeats you get and how long you played. Task Forces allow you to set Defeat and Time limits which record the time and deaths for you automatically.

Use your doubled space to add 100k worth of ambushers.

The most important thing about [Fallout] is having teammates who know how to use it. When your teammates start getting themselves killed only in the middle huge packs of enemies and when Fallout recharges you know you've got some skilled and experienced players on your team.

Most people think "no no" dying is bad, we'll fail if we die." Experienced players know "dying can be good, we need to die at the right time and places".

It's kind of odd how the usefulness of Fallout sorta goes like this...

Really bad players --- normal players --- really good players
Useful ------------------- not as useful --------- useful

Bah, is there a chat channel output for sent e-mails? I couldn't find a way to confirm who I sent an e-mail to and how much.

Feel free to send me a test e-mail or a small amount first to make sure we get it right

282 Deaths
119 Minutes

2.36 Deaths per minute! new Record!

The lag was pretty bad on I17 day on Virtue. I'm not sure if that helped or hurt our DPM. It certainly hurt our time to completion. Was a great time!

*EDIT* A big "OH YEAH" and thank you to the Devs for giving me my crack back. I forgot to mention the important things when I first posted. A little excited at the moment -- been waiting for this moment for 6? 7? 8? months.

*DOUBLE EDIT* Would it have been more appropriate to say "proof that the BOTZ nerf went too far" ? Some people might not have gotten the sarcasm

Empathy and Traps play much differently on teams. Empathy powers want to be cast on different teammates every 30, 60, 90 or however many seconds. Traps doesn't have such frequent change of targets. Empathy has a high "maintenance" or "diligence" to run at full power. You want to cast Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost every time it recharges. When you are playing two Emps who have Hasten and AB each other, Fortitude recharges quite quickly. Even making it simple and double-forting the same person there is a lot of work involved in changing targets, executing the power, and then returning to original targeting setup.

With two computers you can use some outside programs to assist you in sending keystrokes to the 2nd instance of City of Heroes. I believe (you should double/triple check) that copying keystrokes is allowed. Something that automatically executes or creates the keystrokes on its own would not be allowed. You may find it useful to have a program send some of your keystrokes to the 2nd computer. Executing attack powers (so 1 press shoots from two guys) may be very helpful.

I was able to play 2 Emps on one computer while manually pressing every keystroke, individually, for each Emp character. However, it was a helluva lot of work.

Rating various setups and their effort...
Low Effort...
Playing a Force Field Mastermind alone...
Playing a Tank/Scrapper/Brutes alone...
Playing 2 Masterminds
Playing 3 Masterminds
Playing 2 Crab Soldiers
Playing 3 Crab Soldiers
Playing 1 Fire/Kinetics character on an 8 man team
Playing 2 Emp/Sonics.
...High effort

I'd put the two Traps toons somewhere around/above the Crabs. Emp/Sonics will probably be a lot more intense if you try to use their full buff/attack potential on a big team. Do-able, but requiring focus.

Are you using a two or one computer setup?

I've played two Emps on the same computer. I used no 3rd party programs and truly played 2 CoH games at the same time. The duo is quite powerful though it was a little more demanding than I'd prefer. I wasn't able to sit back and simply enjoy the carnage like I am able to on some other combos.

From a pure power perspective it is hard to argue with Sonic Blast. Minus resistance really shows its might when fighting Elite Bosses and Archvillains. Empathy and most of the blast sets lack any enemy debuff potential. Sonic really shines. However, whatever blast set you pick will be awesome and effective. Assault Rifle could be on the list because AoE Knockback and high damage/long animation powers will be less demanding, user friendly and easier to play.

Teaming with other players wasn't too hard for me. I'd recommend letting them know you are two-boxing and saying, hopefully, that you will buff AND blast and your teammates probably won't notice you are a multiboxer. Just let them know that the occasional elevator will be your biggest hurdle.

Nice work! I can't quite see in the picture. Are these all even level Heros at level 50?

Another great night of Iron Eagle action. We got up to an 8man team at one point. Before that we had a bunch of lowbies and two level 10-12s or so fighting level 12s. We had a few semi-close calls but no times of outrageous damage. Then two or three controllers joined the team and we got Fortitude, Ice Shields and Force Fields stacking. That made things easy. We kicked butt and lots of people got lots of levels. A death free night.


Next meetup -- Thursday April 29th. 9PM Eastern Time.
You can setup your own meetup times and play whenever you like, of course