SolarSentai

If you're VIP at the moment, I don't think you can purchase anything that's already included in VIP. So basically, you'd have to go Premium before you could buy it.

I think the Paragon Market is becoming "Too much of a good thing" in the sense that there's way too many options now - options that we didn't have before.

As a subscriber, prior to Freedom, everything was pretty much included in my monthly sub. Yea, you guys released the occasional booster pack and expansion, but they were pretty spread out. So shelling out $10 here and $10 there wasn't as big a deal to get the new shiny.

With the Paragon Market, there's just way too many options out there - especially when for 6+ years I didn't have to buy anything extra. Granted, I still don't have to, but after 6 years of playing, if there's nothing new to play with, the game gets boring.

With Freedom, -new- VIPs/subscribers get a lot more bang for their buck. And that's fine. I'm not bitter that I paid for things to have them when they first came out. I understand that, and I get it. But what do existing subscribers get that they didn't already have? 400pts a month? If you're releasing new shinys every week, 400pts doesn't go far. If I want the goodies, I have to shell out more now than the occasional $10 with the booster packs.

tl;dr

New subscribers get lots of goodies out of the box.

Old subscribers feel like they're getting milked.

Also, I like the idea of an alternate option to the free server transfer. While it was a nice gesture at the launch of Freedom, I think a lot of players opted to stay on their home servers and not relocate to Exalted. A choice of "account services" or even a rotating award, one month transfer, next month rename, next month alignment, etc, would be more palatable. Or even the option to trade in the transfer for pure points. Heck, even at half value I think it would be more useful to a lot of folks.

All in all, I still love CoH despite the gripes I have with it. You guys rock for interacting with the players on a regular basis. Yea, it's a business for you. But it's entertainment for us. There has to be a balance where you make money and we get goodies.

At first I was against the idea... but after reading that...

CoH being ported to Vita needs to happen.

Please, Devs, make it happen...

P.S. - Just kidding

Yea, this one I don't agree with mostly because of connection issues.

Putting all your eggs in one basket is a problem waiting to happen.

If there's a few people who aren't sure what to do or don't want the responsibility of using the temps, then by all means, pass them over to someone else.

But putting all of the temps on a single person is a bad idea. Disconnects can be random and unexpected (or maybe that person knows they always crashed on iTrials and doesn't say anything because they won't get invited). Who knows?

Either way, nice list

But YMMV on #6

Most commonly people build for:

+Defense and/or +Recharge

In your specific example, a SR Scrapper would benefit from either of those two bonuses. I think the more straight forward benefit would be defense. Since you inherently have high positional defense numbers to begin with, you would want to focus on IO sets that would bring your AoE, Range and Melee defense values as close to 45% as possible.

This is where Mids comes in handy because as you set and slot your build, it calculates your defense values.

I'll be using my Martial Arts / SR / Body Scrapper as reference for my examples.

Focused Fighting- Toggle- Gives Melee Defense.

Un-enhanced, this power (according to Mids) gives 13.88% Defense to Melee attacks.

Slotting with 3 common defense IOs (not sets, just regular ole IOs) bumps that number up to 21.99%

That's less than half way to 45%.

Even if you figure in Dodge, the auto power that gives you melee defense, that's only an additional 5.63% unslotted and (roughly) 9% slotted.

So you're still a bit away from the magic 45%.

Now we look for things that give you more melee defense, and set slotting for Focused Fighting in general.

In my build, I have FF (and all my SR defense toggles) 6 slotted with Red Fortunes. Why?

With level 50 Red Fortunes, FF gives a Melee Defense value of 22.86%. A fraction less than using 3 Defense IOs. But, it also gives a "global" defense increase of 2.5% to Ranged Defense.

This percentage is cumulative to your overall Ranged Defense given by your powers. It doesn't increase the powers 2.5%, it flat out gives you 2.5%.

So, with Red Fortune, not only am I get the most out of my FF toggle for Melee Defense, I'm also getting a bit of ranged defense out it.

Red Fortune also has some other nice bonuses, like 5% global recharge.

Now, we're still looking for more Melee Defense.

Touch of Death is a Melee set that gives 3.75% Defense to Melee when you slot all 6 pieces. That's great! MA has a bunch of attacks that are single target. (StJ does as well). Storm Kick, Crane Kick, Crippling Axe Kick and Eagle's Claw are all 6 slotted with ToDs. That's 4 x 3.75% = 15%, which is applied to your overall global Melee Defense.

To recap - we have Focused Fighting giving us 21.86%, Dodge giving 6.52% (in my build) and 15% global Melee defense from Touch of Death(s). That's 43.38%. Close to where we want to be!

Now, I just so happen to have taken Super Jump as my travel power. So, hello Combat Jumping! Yes you don't give a large amount of Defense, but we're not looking for all that much. With just a regular ole defense IO, CJ gives is 2.35% to All. And that brings us to 45.73% Defense to Melee attacks.

Now, you basically rinse and repeat the same concept for your other two defense types: AoE and Range.

There are some powers that give you Defense to everything - CJ, Weave and Maneuvers. If you have room in your build, they help greatly.

If you have a power that gives you a To-Hit buff - Tactics, Focus Accu, or Build Up, you may wish to consider 6 slotting Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control. That gives you 2.5% Defense to Melee, AoE and Range.

Also, I realize this is a lot to take in so don't kill me


Pure influence isn't the only way to acquire the things you need. As I had mentioned with Merits, Tickets, etc you can pick up the stuff you need as you go by emailing stuff to yourself, or storing crafted versions in SG bins.

I won't lie to you though - the more useful sets are more expensive. It's just the nature of the beast.

On the plus side, as you've seen, you can always sell what you don't need and use that inf to buy what you do.

The prices you see on the market aren't set in stone, and do fluctuate. Red Fortunes for example. On average, they sell for 1.5m - 4m a piece, roughly. That doesn't mean you can't get them cheaper if you're patient, or buy the recipes and craft them yourself.

Since you seem to play a multitude of characters, you can always place low-ball bids on the things you need (within reason) and they will fill eventually.

Using the Red Fortune example, you can usually pick up most of the pieces for around 1m, sometimes less, if you're patient enough.

When I was "learning" to use Elec and Fire I had to train myself to use the self heal.

I was used to playing mostly Shield and Willpower toons.

Not that there was a huge learning curve per se, but getting in the mentality to actually heal to fill in the defense gaps took some getting used to.

Especially with Brute Blinders on >_>

We'll see. I know Kinetic Combats are some of the most sought after IOs out there, and have always been somewhat expensive, but they're the highest right now that I remember them being.

I could be remembering wrong, but I had generally seen them in the 25m - 50m realm for the longest time.

Recently I've seen them 75m - 250m.

It's one of those things where, okay, you can always get them at a set price with one currency vs farming in game for them and either buying them with merits of influence.

This is generally true. But if "suppliers" stop working those particular recipes because they're being purchased elsewhere and move on to a different IO, the availability will drop and prices will continue to go up.

So if people can buy them with Paragon Points, either the supply in game will be higher because the "suppliers" are still putting them up on the market but people aren't buying them, or the "suppliers" stop farming/grinding/rolling etc and the existing supply is dwindled down so the prices go up.

Insert Standard Code Rant Here.

If you don't work for Paragon Studios and have not actually seen and/or understand the game code, you cannot for certainty say that something is easy to change/add/remove/etc.

And really, look at the past 22 issues at all the QoL changes that have been implemented. Yea things might not get done as soon as we would like, but the Devs do listen and make adjustments as their schedule permits and the tech permits.

I'm not a fan of glowing hands with Hasten but that's what we have at the moment so it's either use it or don't. I find the benefit of the power far out weighs the negative graphics effect.

And don't get me wrong - I have my issues with CoH and CoH:Freedom but I don't think I'll ever say that the Devs don't listen. They do listen - sometimes they act on it, sometimes they don't. That's life.

I'm of two minds when it comes to buying IOs on the market.

On the one hand, I definitely agree with the above statement about convenience.

On the other, I wonder if having them available in the store makes the in-game prices higher which leads to people buying them in the store because they can't afford them in game.

With that said, I have purchased IOs in the Paragon Market when they've been on sale. Not so much because I can't afford them in game. I mean, I can easily afford them but paying 250m inf for a level 35 IO just "feels" wrong.

At least this type of IO anyways.

For something like a Luck of the Gambler 7.5% Recharge or a Numina Recov/Regen, things like that are always on, global boosts, etc and I can justify the cost to myself.

Bottom line for me - let people play/pay as they want. Personally, I think I'm more on the side of IOs being in the Paragon Market are bad but hey, it's your dime. You spend it how you want it.

/2 inf

Unfortunately it's not.

Heroes/Vigilantes can only enter Hero Bases.

Villains/Rogues can only enter Villain Bases.

However, if you start as a Hero and are part of a SG, and transition to Villain, your SG status enters "limbo." Basically you are still a member of the SG, but you cannot earn prestige for it or enter its base. If/When you convert back to Hero, you will still have your "earned prestige" and be able to go about using the SG as normal.

I'll also note that once or twice I have had a villain successfully enter a hero base (via being on the same team). Obviously it was a bug/glitch, but it also means that it probably is possible.

Bolded emphasis mine. Running BAF and Lam at +0 is considerably easier than running MoM or TPN at +0.

I think I've been on half a dozen or so MoMs where there were 6 or 7 +0s, or +1s for that matter, and none of them were successful. Could it have just been bad luck or a poor mix of ATs? Possibly.

Having skilled players with you is great but if you lack the tools to overcome the "gimmicks" of the trials, you will fail no matter how many skilled players are there.

Personally, I think if the devs are going to be introducing more difficult trials they should "level restrict" them based on 50+0/1, 50+1/2, 50+2/3 etc.

I would guess most people wouldn't particularly like that, but I think it would solve a lot of recruiting headaches. But to sweeten the pot on that suggestion, I would also give league leaders the option to disable the level restriction should they choose to.

And don't get me wrong - I don't think excluding people is right, or fun, or overall a good thing. But not having the tools to contribute makes for a poor overall game experience as well.

Anyway, as always, YMMV, just my 2 cents, etc.

Yup. I'm still waiting for mine from the end of December.

And I received the same PM about no longer being with Paragon Studios.

I'm kinda surprised there was no Farewell Thread.

S/he said that Zwil or Frietag would be taking care of the costume codes.

/still waiting :\

Having failed my fair share of MoM's because of the lack of level-shifted characters, I can appreciate the "need" for them.

Asking for specific ATs is kinda silly, I agree.

I know the person who uses that particular advertisement and he's a nice guy

The LotG 7.5% does have a defense value in it.

I've made the mistake of using a level 50 in Mids, and then a level 25 (or whatever odd level I've had laying around) in game and scratched my head wondering why I was missing a tiny amount of defense.

Also, if you're looking to squeeze some more defense you could always use the Nerve or Agility Alphas

This describes my appreciate for the show. I initially checked it out to see what the hype was - the show was already in season 2 before I started watching it.

I'm one episode behind at the moment (s2e15 - Will probably watch it later after work) and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Maybe I'm just easily amused and like pretty colors, but overall I quite enjoy the show - the jokes, the animations, the dialogue, the songs - pretty much everything about it.

Mostly what I like about it the show is that there's pretty much a clear-cut message tied to every show - like a moral of the story. I grew up watching Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, He-Man, etc in the late 80s/early 90s and those cartoons were the same way.

I guess there's somewhat of a nostalgic feeling there too.

Do I need to quote Rules 1 and 2?

Also, FWIW, I've seen plenty of "meme" characters in game, most notably the "green anonymous" guy who was appropriately named Anonymous.

It made me smile when I saw him.

If that's the case, why are the shields offered in the pack?

Only shield characters can use them.

For the sake of consistency, I would've rather seen no weapons at all in the pack.

Either way, 23-someodd pieces for 400 pts is okay in my eyes.

But the bow should've been in the Valentine's Pack *shrug*

Unless you're talking about solo'ing AVs and GMs, you're fine with basically any of the debuff sets for team play.

For the most part, all debuffs to stack. So let's say you're a Rad defender on a team that also has someone with Sonic, Thermal, Cold or even TA - and a mix of other ATs and whatnot - you will still be melting stuff.

If you're looking to take down AVs or GMs, then you will probably need a more specialized build.

Oh, and as far as Rad toggles using endurance - yea... they do... but there are ways to mitigate that - either with other teammates (kinetics, empathy, cold dom, etc), blue inspirations and/or you can get a Recovery Serum temp power that boosts your end recovery. There's also a SG Base empowerment buff that does so as well.

Bottom line, you can't go wrong

They should stack, at least up until the point of reaching the debuff cap of the NPC targeted.

IIRC, NPCs have a hardcap on their regen, resistance and defense just as players do.

Either way, the more rads the merrier

^ this.

Overall, it's such a small percentage of time in a given month that they use the Admin channel I don't see it as such a big deal either.

*shrug*