Soulwind

Takashen,

Like I said, look me up in game and I'll twink you out with some cash to get you started.

My global's @Soulwind and I'm on most evenings after 6:00 PM Central Time or so.

My high levels are on Guardian (red or blue side), Pinnacle (blue side), and Protector (red side). If you're using one of those I can hook you up right away.

If you're on one of the other servers, I'd have to look and see who's available...

If you're really worried about 50K in influence, look me up once you subscribe for real. I'll give you an extra 50K...heck I'll give you an extra 100K if you promise to play the game and not just powerlevel your way to the top and then complain about there being no end-game

(this is not a slight on you, I have no idea how you play, just a dig against some of the other "standard" rants some new players coming from other games seem to make).

It's not Sword, Sorcery, Orcs, and Elves Fantasy but I'd recommend you give Fallen Earth a try. It's a post-apocalypse setting (think Fallout but with mutation-virus-plague rather than atomic-holocaust).

The game is a nice mixture between "real" sandbox type play and "standard" theme-park mission controlled play. It's got a strong and reasonably complex crafting element, and a skill-based levelling progression.

I don't want to paint it up as a perfect game, because it's certainly not without problems.

One of the biggest that I've seen, in my opinion at least, is that the economy stinks and (for now at least) nothing ever really wears out so there's no turn over in equipment / demand for pure crafters.

The game also has quite a few bugs and some performance issues, but those are at least being addressed, if not quite at what I would consider an acceptable speed (but I'm picky so I cut them some slack there).

They just recently had a free trial period over the Halloween days, and hopefully will do some more free trials soon.

Personally, I will never again buy a new MMO without having had a trial period on it [after being burned too many times], so I won't say to just go out and get it. But, if you can get onto a free trial, I'd definately recommend you give it a shot.

It's got potential, it just remains to be seen if it lives up to that potential as time goes on.

Maybe the data chunk is messed up or maybe there's something wrong with the newest version of Mid's, but when I import that I see a VERY strange build.

You've 6 slotted Hasten. You're not perma-Hasten though, so all those extra 3 slots are gaining you is ~9 seconds of downtime difference.

You've taken Barb Swipe, but not Lunge or Spine Burst?

You've slotted the "Chance For Stun" proc into Physical Perfection? Trying to stun yourself?

Obviously some build choices are personal and you may have reasons for your power picks and such, but if it was me here's my build for a spines/electric scrapper:

(This is using level 35 IO's. I do all my planning with 35's...that way anything better is just bonus value - pretty much everything is ED capped and has +19.5% damage bonus, +52% accuracy bonus, +31.3% recharge bonus, etc)

Your choices may vary of course and I focus slightly differently, but there's room to move a few slots around or change a couple of power picks to suit your tastes.

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"After the release of i239, the servers are just total ghosttowns. The devs should merge the servers and force everyone to join my team and play the way I want them to !!!111!!!!11!"

For a toon that doesn't have one of the special speed-increase powers (quickness, lightning reflexes, etc).

Without considering any of the +Movement bonuses from IO Sets.

Swift (2 lvl 50 Run IOs) + Sprint (2 lvl 50 Run IOs) = 36.6 mph

With 3 lvl 50 Run IOs in each = 38.5 mph

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For Defense based toons who can put in 5 of the Gift of the Ancients Run Speed IO's
and 2 lvl 50 Run IOs in Swift/Sprint = 42 mph (43.9 mph with 3 IOs in each)

(shield scrappers can do 4 of GoTA without dipping into extra defense power pools
and end up with 40.9 mph (42.8 mph with 3 runs in each))

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For SR scrappers = 51.2 mph with 2 runs in quickness+swift+sprint and all 5 GoTA IOs
(53.9 with 3 runs in each)

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And you can squeeze a bit more out if you slot for the +Movement bonuses
that some Set Bonuses.

For Non-Defense based toons though, it's harder to get there since you can't use the GoTA bonuses

Be sure to note that it will only increase the magnitude for the proc's duration (8 seconds for PvE) and not the longer duration of the Char itself.

Personally, I make the effort to get the new badges from events on my main "badge collector" toon, so as to keep him current.

After that, I just play whichever alt I'm currently playing with as normal.

As the various events happen, if I'm in the zone and not otherwise occupied, then I'll join in with that toon. But I don't go out of my way to grind the event with every alt I've got.

That keeps things relatively fresh and fun for me during the events.

Putting one of the "special" IO's in PFF is a good use.

However, especially on a Mastermind, putting a recharge reducer in there is very helpful.

For MM: 0.33 end/sec, 120 second recharge, 67.5% Defense, 40% Resistance

For Controller: 0.26 end/sec, 15 second recharge, 67.5% Defense, 40% Resistance

For Defender: 0.26 end/sec, 15 second recharge, 75% Defense, 40% Resistance

The recharge time nerf that was applied to the MM version of PFF makes putting a recharge reducer in there the "best" choice, imo (I still wouldn't bother putting extra slots into it though).

Your pets will still attack while you are inside a PFF, but they only do it by thier own AI routines, you can't issue them new commands or change what stance they are in.

That's why the recharge time nerf was put into place for MM's in the first place (set your pets to agressive, turn on PFF, and just stand there all turtled up).

I've been getting really bad rubberbanding as well for the past couple of weeks.

So, I don't think it's any particular ISP issue, but it could be some kind of 'net-wide issue (seen those before), or it could be specific to CoX servers, but it's definately real.

Well, personally, I think the best tactic is to spread out your firepower around each banner, until the banners become vulnerable.

Then have everyone gather and take out each banner in turn, one at a time.

That way, everyone gets each badge on a single run through.

Unfortunately, what seems to be occuring (from last night's examples at least) is that once the banners are vulnerable everybody just wails on whatever banner they were at rather than taking them in turn.

This results in you basically only getting the badge for "your" banner (and the GM usually), meaning you have to participate in several event cycles to get all the badges.

(It took me 3 events to get all 5 badges on one toon last night...after I saw that nobody was really listening and taking the banners in turn, then I just started each later event at one of the banners that I didn't have the badge for yet)

When the event starts, there will be 4 big rune circles spawned (they show up on the game map), each with a ghostly flag/banner in the center.

After a few minutes, specific types of mobs will spawn around each circle (different for each of the circles).

As the mobs are defeated, a status bar progresses. Once enough go down, the flag/banner will become targettable and can then be destroyed.

Destroying the banner gives a badge.

If all 4 banners are destroyed, then a special giant monster spawns in the area. It's worth a badge too.

Get all 5 badges (4 banners + GM) and you get the Accolade badge for the event.

Purples drop from any mob that is capable of dropping a level 50.

They are very rare (according to paragonwiki it's a 1 in 5000 chance)

It's not surprising you've never gotten one to drop, especially if you aren't "farming" and are just playing the game normally.

I've only had 2-3 total since they introduced them.

Well, I'm assuming that the "your team has to do x% of total damage" rule that GMs follow applies to the special GM spawned by the event (it might not though, I don't really know for certain).

I was on 3 seperate events last night and I got the temp power choice each time, even though I didn't even make it across the zone to where the GM spawned before he was dropped the first time, so I'm not sure why you didn't get the choice.

That said, they aren't anything spectacular:

A 10-use Confuse power (I haven't activated it, but I'm assuming it's similar to the Valentine Event confuse power)

A 10-use Fear power (again haven't activated it yet)

A 1-hour-in-game-time auto power that gives a +15% damage bonus

A 1-hour-in-game-time auto power that gives a Resistance/Defense bonus (not sure..don't have this one yet)

For Defense calculations - No. It still uses the best defense from the primary attack's tags (ie fire/melee).

For Resistance calculations - Yes. Since each Resistance type applies seperately to each damage type component, then a Psi proc would only have it's damage reduced by Psi Resistance even if the fire portion of the attack was reduced by a different fire resistance level.

The Zombie Apocalypse exp is pretty poor. It's due to the way the zombies are coded to use the giant-monster "always fight at your level" code. The Rikti Invasions are the same way. Frankly, though, the exp is the least portion of a ZA. It's the fun of a mass event

(and since you get exp for any of the zombies that are injured by your team and there are literally hundreds of zombies being taken down, it does add up over the whole event)

As for the special Halloween salvage...just hang onto it. You can personally carry a bunch of each one, and you CAN store them in Base Salvage containers (our base has one salvage rack that's just for Halloween salvage so new toons can go in and get an extra costume slot if they want one).

I wouldn't try selling them now...right now they are going to be rather plentiful and thus cheap. Hold onto them until, say Jan or Feb, and they'll be much more valuable (if you care about trying to make cash off of them that is).

Personally, my SG will be trying to buy up a ton of them for later use.

Archon, it's an interesting idea. If balanced right, it could work. However, I think it's probably too radical a change (code-time-wise) to be seriously considered.

What I, personally, would like to see would be to either:
1) Simply add recharge, accuracy, (and maybe) damage to the existing endurance reduction that Vigilance gives. This way the defender gets better at everything a defender needs to do when the team is suffering, not just saves some endurance. Doesn't matter how much endurance I've got if I'm waiting on all my defender-y powers to recharge...

or (my preference)

2) Give defenders a small buff to everything (smaller than what #1 would give) on a permanent basis (rather than hit-point-linked) for each member on the team. This would be very similar, but not the same as, the team-link that Kheldians get. That way defenders are rewarded for being "team-oriented" toons actually on a team, while not rewarding them only if they "aren't doing thier jobs" as the current vigilance does.

I usually go for frankenslotting on these powers:

Radiant Aura - 3 lvl 35+ Heal/Recharge IO's and 1 common Heal IO (or a 35+ Heal from one of the other sets to get the 2 slot bonus +12% regen or +2.5% recovery)

Result: a 95% heal bonus and a 68% recharge bonus with only 4 slots

Radiation Infection - I use lvl 35+ Dampenend Spirits To Hit Debuff and To Hit Debuff/Endurance and lvl 35+ Undermined Defenses Defense Debuff and Defense Debuff/Endurance

Result: -42% to hit, -48% defense, +4% Damage Bonus (IO Bonuses), 0.36 End/Sec (45%)

Enervating Field: 2 common end reducer IO's

Lingering Radiation: I slot with 2 Accuracy/Slow IO's and then 2-3 common recharge IO's

I don't know, maybe this should go into City Life rather than here. But it is a question/discussion....hmm, if Mod 08 wants to move it, I won't argue

Anyway, as I'm rapidly approaching my 60 month vet badge, I got to thinking about the sheer number of characters I've made and deleted over the years and then that led into a thought stream of all the stuff in-game that I've still never done...

So, for all you long timers (or even you short timers if you feel like joining in), what in this game have you never accomplished?

For me:
I've never been on a Hami raid

(actually I've only ever SEEN Hami once on my main badge character, trying about a dozen times to get the Heart of Hamidon badge)

I've never even attempted any of the Statesman TF, Recluse TF, Lady Grey TF

I've never successfully finished the Hydra/Sewers Trial

I've never done a Hess TF, but I have done the other TF in Striga

I've never gotten the Task Force Commander accolade

(collectively, I've done all of original TF's, but never all of them on one toon)

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So how about it? Anything you've never done in the game, but keep meaning to?