Soulwind

I don't mean to sound snarky ... (or maybe I do, it's been a looong week) ... but

If you want to "find" a new "group", then go out and FORM ONE.

Make your own PuG teams, find the one or two folks who work well with you, friend them.

Invite them to teams more often, get to know them (in game at least), and before long you'll have your new "group".

[sorry if this comes off wrong, but one of my biggest pet peeves of this game is folks who sit around and whine about "I can't find any teams", "the game's dead", "nobody teams anymore", etc. When what they really mean is "I'm too lazy to actually form my own teams and just want someone to come along and hold my hand"]

I just wish they were including the Human-Form powers of Khelds in the colorable powers, even if the Nova/Dwarf forms couldn't be recolored.

After all, that's what they did for Stone Armor (recolor everything except Granite).

I was really looking forward to making my new Peacebringer (Human Only) toon using a different color scheme, but I guess it's not going to happen now . . .

Oh well, the new SS and MA animations should keep me busy for now.

I've solo'd it (on Heroic mind you) with my MA/SR scrapper and my SS/WP tank.

So, yes it's soloable. It wasn't easy though. I think I MIGHT be able to do it with a couple of my controllers, but I haven't tried yet.

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It seems odd to me that my character can bulk up his front with armor, but leaves his back totally exposed.

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Just like Klingon battleships.

(Massive shields in front, almost nothing from behind.)

It keeps you from running away

For me, it's mostly going to depend on what we're actually going to be allowed to change.

For my WP/SS tank, I'd like to make the various auras as non-visible as possible. I specifically chose WP for him as it's graphics are relatively mild. Of course, Rage puts a giant stop-sign on the whole subtle business.

For my MA/SR scrapper, I'd like to get rid of his Hasten pom-poms. I mean, why do my hands glow? I never punch anyone...

Most of my other toons however, were designed (costume, origin, etc) with the current animations in mind and probably won't be getting much (if any) changes.

I expect this to end up causing me to create a whole slew of NEW toons though.

Cute.

Actually, I played Wicked, Wicked Wonderland last night.

I loved it. Very fun, very clever, and you managed some rather awkward rhymes in there too.

I gave it 5 stars .... but just barely. IMO, it would be better if you could of included one more mission ... something more with the kings specifically.

But, hey congrats on your "Dev's Choice" favorite

Fingers

oh and animated Tails

Please, please, if you are going to make entire AT's worthless in your arcs then please make note of that in the arc description.

So my wife and I are playing our Earth/Storm Controller duo. We're at 19 1/2 and don't want to open a new contact just for that half a level, so I suggest we try a few short MA arcs to finish the level out.

We hit the MA, find an interesting sounding one. It's got a nice description and sounds like it might be fun (and it's unrated -- I always try to take a look at the unrated ones or ones with only a few ratings -- assuming they sound interesting and not just obvious farm missions).

So we start it up, read the intro, go into the first mission and BLAMMO!. Every single minion is a full Dark Melee/Dark Armor scrapper with full mez protection running.

Well, needless to say, once we both drop our full complement of mez (2 st holds, 2 st immobs, 2 freezing rain, 2 aoe stuns) and the rather large (8+ minions) group just completely ignores it and beelines straight for us....it was a very short mission.

Immediate drop and I didn't bother to even give it a rating. I can't really justify giving it a bad rating since I didn't even make it past the first map corner, but I'm certainly not giving it a good one either.

Really, it sounded like an interesting arc and I may come back and try it with a scrapper or tank, but come on....

Lts or Bosses with mez prot .. fine, that's challenging and we can work with it. Minions with mez prot .. that's just a unpleasant grind with controllers.

If you want to put that into your missions, fine, no problem, some folks might even like it....BUT WARN PEOPLE BEFOREHAND, PLEASE. Pretty Please?

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Does anyone know where I can find the info to get base teleporation beacon locations?

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To get a beacon for any particular zone, you just have to touch all of the "exploration" badges in that zone WHILE IN SUPERGROUP MODE. It doesn't matter if you've already got the badges or not.

As to the badge locations in each zone, check the various websites for maps/locations.

Wow, just wow.

First off, there was no way I could actually manage to read that wall of text. Try formatting (punctuation, paragraphs, etc)

Second, all caps is considered yelling. Yelling at the devs isn't going to accomplish anything, except maybe getting your post mod'd out of existence.

That being said, I got the gist of your rant. You want weapon customization for the stone melee (and presumably others) attack set.

Sorry but, right now at least, it can't be done.

The "weapon customization" was only possible because the drawn weapons used by the actual weapon-set powers is a seperate object held in the hands and not actually a part of the powers themselves.

Stone mallets, Fire swords, Ice swords, etc (all of the power effects that look like a weapon but aren't used for every attack) are actually part of the animation for the power and not seperate objects.

As such, they are "baked" into the powers themselves and cannot be changed without actually doing 'real' power customization (ie new powers/animations) for every possible difference.

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The Hollows is a Hazard Zone, so the increased difficulty is deliberate. To those who perceive this as an annoyance rather than a challenge, staying in the city zones is better fit. The changes have certainly made the zone more survivable than it used to be, so "mission accomplished" in that regard.
EC

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Have you read War Witch's information about the revamp?

The Hollows is now supposed to be a mixed zone. The areas that are partially under control are city-zone level spawns and the wilder areas are hazard-zone level spawns.

The changes were never intended to "increase difficulty", indeed the opposite is more the point. Mixed city/hazard spawn levels, moving instance doors to stay in the appropriate neighborhoods, etc

Also, I never said it was a bad thing. I was just pointing out that with the positioning of the new spawn groups there is very, very little "free space" around many of the spawns and that it felt much more crowded than I (imo) believe was intended.

On a side note persuant to my earlier post. Cherry Hills is supposed to be limited to 5-7 level spawns now, but I was definately running into 9's and 10's in the spawn groups.

(I was very near the 'border' of cherry hills so they could have actually been spawns for the other side of the border that were just moved or offset somewhat into the cherry hills area).

Well after running my newly created level 6 toon through Wincott's missions, I have to give my opinions on the new Hollows.

I like the new mix of enemy groups.

I love the "stay in same neighborhood" doors.

I think, however, that you may have overdone the spawn quantities a little bit.

There are so many small spawn groups (ie skulls sitting on the walls/ledges/etc) around that it's no longer really possible to run a "weave in and out" pattern to cross zone areas without aggroing anyone.

Now, that could have just been due to the sheer quantity of folks in the zone causing a bump up of spawn groups (does that happen?), but it was definately a lot harder to avoid aggroing groups as I travelled around.

Admittedly, with the groups being mostly smaller, it wasn't fatal (like a bad aggro in the hollows used to be), but it was annoying.

Also, less than 100 feet from Wincott, I bumped into a group of lost that included 2 boss-level Rectors!! Not fun running into spammed sleeps and holds at level 5 Again, this may have been just due to sheer quantity though.

While I don't particularly care for voice chat. I have used it with friends and am not *against* it per se.

What I am against is if it becomes something that must be running (even if not used) in the background or eats up bandwidth (even if not used) causing it to impact game performance.

Case in point: Wentworths/Black Market - I love IO's and I mostly like the WW's idea. However, once it was implemented, it pretty much destroyed the performance of my old machine anytime I got with 500 yards of the building.

Yes, I know that's a symptom of the massive numbers of players all sitting in one spot and not WW's itself, but you get the idea.

WW's was a nice idea, but implemented badly (make the store itself a seperate zoned instance and not a general map area to get rid of the huge bandwidth requirements for player position/info updates as I go by), and I'm just worried about integrated voice chat (in the launcher or not, the data's got to be transmitted) causing similar performance problems.

Well it really depends on how it's implemented.

I've used Vent and TS with my "regular team-mates" and even set up a TS server with one of my spare machines for our SG use.

So I guess we'll see.

What kind of worries me is this line from the press release:

"voice mail and in-and-out of game communication via regular phones and text messages"

Just what we need, voice-mail versions of RMT spammers.

And what the heck do they mean "REGULAR PHONES", if using integrated voice chat means that suddenly I'm getting phone calls or text messages from {wherever}, that's going to cause an issue.

Of course the disappointing part is that I'd really like to have this option in the game.....(sometimes)

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<snip>This means that the speed that the buff bar info displays for Hover includes the real Hover buff + 2 * base Fly Speed, and that the info for Fly includes the real Fly buff + 4 * base Fly Speed.

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Thanks Gazer, that matches what I'm seeing too and it explains it in a much more readable manner than I ever could of done.

Maybe you should send pohsyb a quicky note about it? It looks like he's been monitoring this thread, but he might not be now that we've gone live with it . . .

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2) Speaking of Fly - the display icon shows me as travelling at 82.94 mph, while the combat attribute screen shows me at 41.36 mph. I'm certainly not going 82+ mph, that's for certain (and it's NOT an exact doubling, that would be too easy to explain )

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When viewing the info of a power from the buff bar, the display seems to show the sum of the buff given by the power and your base value for that attribute.

Take Combat Jumping for example. If your base Jumping Speed is 14.32 mph, and the Jumping Speed given by Combat Jumping is 0.14 mph, then the buff bar info for Combat Jumping will show 14.46 mph.

It's not really intuitive, and I hope that it's changed to show the same values as the Combat Attributes window.

Fly speed displays seem to have some additional oddities to them (base flying speed isn't as high as the flying speed given by Fly for instance), but the base+buff thing seems to be at least part of it (and affects tons of other powers).

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I see what you mean, but I think it's a little more than that.

In your example, I would expect to see 14.46 as that's the total value of my base+buffs and IS my actual speed.

When I look at the attribute window while flying it shows me my base fly speed, the bonus fly is adding, the bonus swift is adding, and the total of those. The total is the 41.36 mph I mentioned.

The icon display (where it's supposed to be showing me the effects of the powers) is showing 82.94 mph.

Now that I think about it..it might be showing me my base fly speed + fly's buff + the grand total again (while missing the buff from swift) rather than base+fly buff+swift buff (like maybe the index counter is off and it's picking up the wrong value). I think that might match up to the numbers I saw last night, but I'll have to double check.

(of course this might be exactly what you meant, and I just didn't comprehend you correctly)

A few things I found about the "real numbers" displays last night as well as a wish item: (I'm sure these have already been found, but just in case, I bugged them once).

1) The display icons at the top of the screen showing what powers/buffs/debuffs you have applied to you are not displaying correctly.

- If it's your own power, the info screen is showing as if it's an external effect being applied to you.

- Example: when I turn on my hurricane, the text reads along the lines of "Your accuracy and range have been reduced by the hurricane winds". when I turn on my Icicles power, it says that I'm the one taking damage.

- Because the power seems to think that I'm the target and not the originator, it's not showing the actual numbers the way that other powers are (Fly for instance shows my speed)

2) Speaking of Fly - the display icon shows me as travelling at 82.94 mph, while the combat attribute screen shows me at 41.36 mph. I'm certainly not going 82+ mph, that's for certain (and it's NOT an exact doubling, that would be too easy to explain )

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Wish items: While I don't expect to get these, they would be really, really nice to have.

1) A way to see the real numbers associated with particular powers. I'd like to see the accuracy, damage, recharge, etc of individual powers (especially combat powers) and not just the overall "stats" of the character. This applies especially to buff/debuff type powers, as they don't have even the minimal amount of info that's in the combat tab that attack powers have. (ie I turn on Snow Storm and all it says is "you slow your opponents", I'd like the numbers on how much).

2) A way to seperate out a particular power and put it in the monitoring windows so I could watch it's effects. It would be great if it could also tell me when a particular proc goes off attached to the power as well.

(and yes, I do have all [most at least] of that information from various outside sources [herostats, builders, etc], but I'd like it to be in-game, as long as we're trying to make the 'real numbers' visible).

Thanks. I figured it was that way, as stacking to-hit debuffs just sounded way overpowered.

If it stacked, I would of needed to change my slotting, but as is I can go with this:

Numina - Heal/End, Numina - Heal, Triage - Heal/End, Triage - Heal, Dampened Spirits - ToHitDebuff/End, Dampened Spirits - ToHitDebuff

Resulting in: 0.12 end/sec, 244.3% + 48.8% regen (683.5% max), -4.75% tohit with +16% regen and +2% damage set bonuses

I'm loving willpower

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Rise to the Challenge (Common abbreviation: RttC)

Toggle: .208 end per second
100% Regeneration buff per foe in range (effect does not stack from same caster)
25% Regeneration buff per foe in range (stackable)
-3.5% to-hit debuff

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So does that mean 125% for the first foe +25% for each additional foe (up to 10 total = 350% max) ?

and (with enhancements) ~242% 1st foe +~48% each other foe (~624% max)...assuming 94% ed capped enhancement?

Also does the to-hit debuff stack up? ie is it -3.5% to each foe or is it -3.5% per foe to each foe (max -35%)?

Cool. Now maybe we can convince the Angry Angels to post thier stuff here.

I've seen lots of very good "mini-movies" that folks have made, but in my opinion "birth of an angel" is still the best CoH player made video around . . .

Now I just need to read all the faqs and get around to making my own . . .

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Will the builds feel gimped when you exemp? I don't think there can be any question that they will - the set bonuses are too powerful not to notice their absence. But will they be gimped compared to the i8 build exemped to the same level? I don't think so.

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I have a pretty hard time understanding this, and if you posted a breakdown of your thoughts on it, I'd appreciate it.

Why do I have a hard time understanding it?

Well, you've adimittedly done several non-optimal slotting from a I8/ED perspective things. In particular, you've slotted less damage, recharge or accuracy than "normal", in the expectation that these will be corrected/supplemented by set bonuses. In addition, you potentially have slots that literally do nothing, such as the extra three slots in Health that contain the uniques. Maybe not all three are nulled, depending on your exemplar level, but in the I8 build those slots would actually enhance something somewhere else.

If you're one of the lucky folks who has access to a lot of HOs, this seems even worse, because the "slot compression" you get out of HOs goes a long way to helping counter the loss of enhancement strength that happens with Exemplaring. Since (in contrast to HOs) multifunction IOs have enhancement strengths lower than SOs, it's hard for me to see how it wouldn't be better to just blow off set bonuses nearly entirely if you plan to (for example) PvP in Siren's Call. I'd be happy to be shown this is wrong, though.

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Ahh, but if you are *planning* on doing a lot of PvP fighting in siren's (or where ever), then quite obviously, your build would need to be different than that given.

The build the OP put together (and thanks!, it helped me get a better handle on this whole invention thingy) is pretty obviously built primarily for large team tanking in PvE at high levels.

One thing I've noticed about "tricked out" IO builds is that they tend to become much more specialized in what they do than the more general SO (or even HO) builds. This isn't a bad thing, just potentially a complex thing to deal with.

But do the effects stack?

1) MM's have 3 summons (at least, often more), so can a MM get these aura bonuses x3 (once per power)?

2) Tier 1 pets, at least, have a recharge time well below 5 minutes. So can I self-stack the aura bonsues by using my tier one summons say every 2 1/2 minutes?

3) Can I do both 1 and 2 and get a full 5 sets of these bonuses (or more since there's at least 2 of these aura sets)?

Wow, I could easily see some ultra-powerful effects coming from this if so . . .

If, however, they don't stack at all, and you can only get 1 buff (or 1 per aura type at least), then I'd be for leaving them as is but making the duration 10-15 minutes just to cut down on the annoyance factor . . . if they won't stack then it's not that big a deal on the longer duration is it?

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What didnt they bugger up after releasing I7?

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The "Log Out Now" button.

It still works (sometimes even when you don't want it to).

Have to say I'm loving my new Electric brute. Only one small complaint so far: Havoc Punch has an "ewwwwwnnnn" sound effect tacked onto the end of it that sounds almost exactly like the sound effect that plays when you "pop" for running out of endurance. It is very distracting as I'm constantly double-checking the status of my toggles and end bar