Spectreblade

This will likely make me sound like a complete idiot, but as the download approaches 88% completion, I realized I've been reading the display wrong this whole time.

At first it looked like it measured the time remaining as hours:minutes. But it's actually minutes:seconds. So the 780 hours I mentioned in the original post was actually 780 minutes.

Oh, well, at least I'll be able to get in-game a lot sooner than I originally feared.

The Shadow Shard is a set of four zones can be accessed through Peregrine Island. There will be a portal to the first one, Firebase Zulu, inside one of the Portal Corp. buildings. It should be marked on your map.

There aren't and Black Arachnos Helicopters in Paragon City, but the heroside equivalent to the Pilot badge is the Commuter badge, which you can get by logging out at train stations.

The download of I21 seems to be progressing a lot faster than the "time remaining" is indicating. When I first created this thread, it was at 20% downloaded. I turned my computer back on at about 9:00 AM Eastern this morning, and after running continuously since then, the download is now 60% complete.

I'm beginning to think that the "time remaining" display is simply bugged, since the actual pace of the download seems a lot more reasonable than the "184:22 remaining" that it's claiming.

I'm creating this thread because I am having problems with the NCSoft Launcher. Right now, I am downloading the patch for I21. The reason I haven't done so already is because about a week before I21 was to launch, the power supply on my computer blew, and between many different Real Life committments, I've only just now gotten it replaced.

The problem is, the download is progressing very slowly. As of this post, it is 20% complete, downloading at 43 KB/s, with 780 hours remaining. But the time it displays varies from the low hundreds to the mid thousands depending on what I'm doing.

I'm hoping that the problem is simply that my computer's processing power is being divided between updating City of Heroes and my other programs (including Windows and my Firewall/Antivirus, now at 55% and 41%, respectively) also having a month's worth of patches to get caught up on. If that's the case, then do you think I should just stop the download of I21, then resume it when my computer's other updates are finished?

So, do you all think that is what's going on, or do you think it could be something different?

The short version of my story is this. I was a high school senior in Philadelphia when the attacks happened. I was in my second-period political science class when the planes hit. And I was in third-period trigonometry when the second tower fell. By the time fourth period rolled around, they'd sent us home early, and were closed the next day.

For the long version, I wrote about that in an entry on my LiveJournal a few days after the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Here's a link to it.

Although I didn't personally know anyone who died in the attacks, it affected me and the rest of the country just the same.

As for my opinion on the matter of reporting violations, whether in-game rules or in real life, my opinion is generally that anyone who can be reported deserves to be, and that if they broke the rules, they broke the rules.

Though in practice, while I won't have any sympathy for those who knowingly broke the rules and are upset that someone called them on it, I'm usually too busy playing the game to report every trademark violation I see myself. I tend to be a bit quicker with reporting more actively malicious stuff like trolling a public channel like Help or griefing.

While I don't have any actual characters that would be vulnerable to generic-ing, I have played around with the costume editor to see how close I can come to replicating some of my favorites from other IP's. And for a while, one of Spectreblade's alternate costumes was InuYasha. I created it to attend an anime-themed costume contest/Halloween party held in Pocket D on Virtue. I even got to fight an arena duel with The Cape Radio (I think it was the Cape, but I don't recall exactly) playing the first season opening song! My opponent came to the party dressed as Mega Man (okay, so it wasn't just anime). After losing the match, I quipped, "You got Wind Scar!"

As for my least favorite archetypes, I've never really been able to get into Corruptors. I've never gotten one out of the teen levels. I can't really explain why, though. But with Time Manipulation coming out soon, I have a concept for combining it with Sonic Blast. I'm still not sure if I'll make that toon into a Corruptor or a Defender.

I'm not too fond of the Epic AT's, either, but I have a more coherent reason for those, that's been mentioned a few times before. It's mainly the lack of freedom in concepts for them. One of the main appeals of this game for me is the ability to create my own concepts, and in a game like this, a character whose story has basically been written for you just doesn't appeal to me. When I want to play a character with a pre-written story, I have any number of other games to choose from.

Philadelphia, here.

I was at work, just about to go on break when the quake struck, and my co-workers and I felt it. At first people thought as individuals "Who's rocking my desk?", until they realized everyone arond them was shaking, too. Then tweets from outside the building came on their phones about people feeling it. Nothing fell over where I was, but we certainly felt it. There wasn't any official order to evacuate the building, but many people decided not to take any chances, my department's boss among them, so we went home about an hour early.

But at any rate, I'm still alive and well.

I have 5 Lv 50 characters, and only my two mains have Incarnate powers of any kind.

Spectreblade: Broadsword/Dark Armor/Darkness Mastery Scrapper: Alpha T4, Judgement T3, Interface T3, Lore T4, Destiny T3

Orochi Dragon: Ninjas/Poison/Soul Mastery Mastermind: Alpha T2, Judgement T2, Interface T3, Lore T2, Destiny T2

If I were to recommend a new Judgement power, the concept that comes to mind first would be a Lethal-damage power. I'd call it "Metallic Judgement", similar to how there's a "Cryonic" and a "Pyronic" judgement. And while we have a targeted AoE (Pyronic), a cone AoE (Cryonic), a chain AoE (Ion), and a PBAoE (Void), there's still no location AoE. That's what Metallic would be; something like a rain of metal blades at a targeted location. As for a debuff effect for the Radial branch, I'm thinking defense debuff, like with Broadsword and Katana. Now the Total Radial needs a control effect. Thematically, I'd go with Immobilize, explained as the affected foe having their feet nailed to the ground by the shards.

So, there's my take on it. I'm not a dev, so I know it probably won't be exactly as I envision it, if it even comes about at all, but it's fun to speculate.

The first time I saw someone dancing in the Lambda Trial cutscene, my thoughts were "Why were you out there dancing instead of in here helping gather temp powers?" That's still pretty much my attitude toward it. I don't know if I'd kick someone for it, but it does warrant at least an annoyed glare at their character.

Personally, I find farming boring. I usually just play through story arcs and missions, and let the other rewards come at their own pace.

Back before there was AE, I actively hated farms, because I saw it as immersion-breaking. To me, the act of resetting a canon mission over and over again without completing it was like Superman raiding a villain's base after being sent to retrieve a McGuffin, beating up the henchmen, then ignoring his objective and leaving without the McGuffin just so the villain could call more henchmen for him to beat up. It just didn't seem like a heroic thing to do.

But now that there is AE, my stance on it has lightened. I tend to see AE farms as more of a "Danger Room" type of thing. I still don't partake of them myself, but they feel more plausible to me now.

I do feel it's a shame that legitimate arc writers like myself are having trouble getting our arcs noticed in the sea of farms, but as long as they don't take advantage of exploits, I'm willing to tolerate them.

I just thought of something. All of the thread so far, including my previous comment, has been based on the assumption that it's the same couple each time. What if there's more than one Desparate Guy/Turndown Girl pair?

I don't visit Pocket D too often, since on Virtue the Rikti War Zone seems to be the main Trial rally point, so I don't know if they have the same character models every time. But the times when I have passed through, I've always imagined it to be a different couple each time. Like one day it could be Desparate Guy Alex and Turndown Girl Barbara, and the next it might be Desparate Guy Chuck and Turndown Girl Danielle.

Thinking about it like that does take a lot of the unfortunate implications out of it.

I have found myself in the roles of both Turndown Guy and Desparate Guy at different points of my life, and my personal experiences put me on the side of those who think Desparate Guy should look for a more willing partner.

Way back when I was really little, I once playfully proposed to a girl who lived down the street from me, and she was extremely enthusiastic in accepting. I was also young enough to have not quite outgrown the "girls have cooties" stage of my sexual development, so this was more than I bargained for. Thankfully, she got the idea that I was uncomfortable with it and backed off before it reached the point where any therapists needed to get involved.

A little later in life, there was a girl in high school who I had a huge crush on. I would buy her gifts on Valentine's Day, hang out around her, the whole deal. But then one day I overheard one of my classmates tell another "He's going to force himself on her." But he didn't actually say "force himself". That was the single most hurtful thing I'd ever heard anyone say about me, and the shock of realizing that people thought I was capable of something so terrible brought me back to my senses. So at that point I backed off a little, and while she and I never actually were in a relationship, we still remain friends to this day.

But thanks to that incident, and a drive to not give that high school classmate the satisfaction of saying "I told you so!", I tend to err on the side of "no means no" in my dealings with the opposite sex, and don't really have much sympathy for Desparate Guy in this scenario.

I take the "Trays have specific roles" approach to my layout, too. My three main trays are powers that are part of my build proper, as well as inherent abilities. First tray is mostly for attack powers, with the zero slot being a self-heal power. Second tray is toggles, with a "panic button" power in the zero slot. Third tray is usually taken up by epic pool powers, travel toggles, Rest, etc, with the zero slot left empty for temporary powers to appear in so I don't have to go into the powers menu to find them.

I have all 9 trays open in my UI layout (I love having a widescreen monitor), and they have their purposes as well.

* Tray 4 is for Incarnate abilities on my two mains, which I have bound to my numpad keys for easy use. This is also the tray where I drag mission-critical temporary powers (like the acids or grenades during a Lambda trial).

* Trays 5 and 6 are Veteran Rewards and other account-wide bonus powers like the ones from the boosters.

* Tray 7 is for Accolade powers and others earned through gameplay, like the Oroborous Portal.

* Tray 8 holds my day job powers.

* And finally, Tray 9 is where I keep my temporary powers.

I got a few questions about the option players will have to decline the movement speed increase from buffs cast on them by other players.

If someome who has themself set to decline movement buffs has a movement buff applied to them, then gets hit with a slow power, will the speed buff still cancel out the slow, or will the slow affect the player as though they didn't have a movement buff?

Yes, like everyone else said, any power that's not part of the actual weapon set will cause your character to put the weapon away and have to redraw it. Although I've also heard that on a redraw the actual attack animation will be faster than normal to compensate for the time spent drawing the weapon. Whether or not this is true was the subject of many a debate in the earlier days of the game, and I don't remember if it was ever definitively confirmed or busted.

Either way, my first and main character is a Broadsword/Dark Armor/Darkness Mastery Scrapper, so I'm used to dealing with redraw, to the point where I'm actually crazy enough to have Jump Kick to deal with Lethal-resistant foes like robots (which are often weak against Smashing). But my usual method for minimizing the effects of redraw is to queue up my first Broadsword attack before I engage the enemy. For example, I'll queue up Head Splitter as I'm running into melee after my initial ranged volley of Tenebrous Tentacles/Night Fall/Dark Blast. This way, I draw my weapon as I'm approaching the enemy instead of when I'm right in front of them and within their melee range.

And one other interesting tidbit about redraw. I also have a Spines/Regen Scrapper, a shapeshifter named Amorphous Man. A while after Power Customization came out, I thought it would be cool to have his different spine attacks use different sets of spines (Bone spines for one attack, Metal for another, Plates for a third, etc.) But when I actually tried it out, I found out that doing that resulted in a redraw after every single attack. Needless to say, I switched back to a single set of spines after that failed experiment.

Right now, Spectreblade is single, and, while knowing that the profession of hero is a dangerous one to both himself and his loved ones, would still like to have a significant other one day, so he'd probably end up marrying another hero who would be able to take care of herself.

But even assuming the loved ones are civillians, I think Spectreblade would go with Option 3: Call for backup. I tend to think of Spectreblade as my main hero, and my hero alts as fellow heroes who he frequently works with. Among his closest associates there just so happens to be a sidekick who specializes in teleportation spells. One quick call to his most promising student, Motoko Michi, would solve the whole problem.

Spectreblade: "Could you Recall Friend my family to safety?"
Motoko: "Sure thing, sensei!"

And at that point, the beatdown of the nemesis would begin in earnest.

Back when Going Rogue first came out, I was doing one of the Resistance Warden arcs on a Claws/Invulnerability Brute, and came across a proximity bomb. And somehow, my first instinct was run up to it and poke it with my claws. Then I see in the NPC chat something like "That's nitro, you idiot!"

Next think I knew, I was faceplanted, thinking to myself "Yep, I'm an idiot."

But the biggest "oops" moment that comes to mind for me was when my main BS/DA Scrapper was in his 30's, and I'd just completed the mission that awards the Nemesis Staff temporary power, and I was reveling in the fact that I now had a ranged attack to play with. Soon after, I joined a small PuG. I was still feeling proud and wanted to show off my new toy to my teammates. So I hit the button to draw it between spawns in a mission to show it to them. Then my character turned around and fired it right into a pack of enemies. A teamwipe quickly followed. My lesson for that day; ranged attacks are ranged.

As for me, I spent update day looking at the various new slots, researching and planning out how I'd go about getting them. The day after launch, I did an Admiral Sutter TF. It was only the day after that that I even considered running the trials.

I've been making about 3 to 5 trials a day total to unlock the slots. So far I have Judgement unlocked with a tier 3 slotted, and Interface with a tier 2. I'm at 90% toward unlocking Destiny, and around 14% for Lore.

What I want to get done at minimum is to have all the new slots unlocked and with at least a Tier 1 in them. After that, I'll be doing the trials when the mood strikes me, just like I do with any other content in the game. When I was working on my Alpha slot, it was pretty much the same thing; getting the slot unlocked quickly, then letting the shards drop at their own pace, with the occasional TF to get a specific component. I only today got the last shard I needed to craft my tier 4 Alpha boost.

And as for the "converting shards is slow" arguement, who ever said it had to be all shards or all trials? Now that I have my tier 4 Alpha, I no longer have any use for Shards except to convert them into Threads, but the trials will still be my main way of making progress on the slots, with shard conversion supplementing it.

It did take me a while to get my tier 4 Alpha, and will probably take time to get my other slots maxed out, but that's not a problem to me. The game will still be here tomorrow, despite what doom-criers would have us believe.

I was wondering why I wasn't getting Empyrean merits after completing the BAF so many times the other day to unlock my Judgement slot. Now I know. While I'm disappointed that I've been cheating myself out of Empyrean Merits, I think getting the slot unlocked was worth it, though.

So, with all of these fancy new Incarnate powers, how do you tie them into your character's concepts?

As for me, my main, Spectreblade, is a Broadsword/Dark Armor/Darkness Mastery Scrapper who draws his power from the possessed suit of medieval armor he wears in battle, and I mostly been thinking of the Incarnate slots as the power of the Well amplifying the armor's existing abilities.

Alpha: Cardiac
I went with Cardiac for my Alpha slot for mechanical reasons, since neither Broadsword nor Dark Armor are very friendly to my blue bar. Concept-wise, there really isn't much more to it than allowing the soul of the armor to manifest itself more efficiently.

Judgement: Void
This one is the only one of the four new slots I've unlocked so far. And my choice for this one is more conceptual. Spectreblade already has several powers from Dark Armor and especially Darkness Mastery that channel the armor's spectral energy into offense, and the Void tree adds yet another to his arsenal.

Interface: Gravitic
This slot is one I have yet to actually unlock, but Gravitic is looking like the frontrunner to fill this slot. As a Scrapper the slows from the Core branch of the tree will help me to keep foes in melee range (not to mention within Death Shroud/Cloak of Fear/Oppressive Gloom range). For concept, I'll imagine the slows as pretty much what it says on the tin; as the armor's energy sapping my foes' speed.

Destiny: Barrier
Spectreblade's Dark Armor resistance toggles are the soul of the armor using its power to form a barrier against damage, and the Barrier tree will be that spirit extending its protection to my allies as well as myself. Even the ally Rez at the higher Radial tiers can be explained as basically an ally-version of Soul Transfer.

Lore: Seer
Now this one will be the hardest to justify as an extension of the armor's power. So instead of tying it into my existing concept, I'll just say that I saved some Seers from Mother Mayhem's influence, who have become allies. It is in a knight's nature to save damsels in distress, after all.

So, how will the rest of you tie your incarnate abilites to your character's concept?

My name is Spectreblade, and I am an inspiration hoarder.

(Hi, Spectreblade!)

Now that that's out of the way, I also have a standard inspiration arrangement. I first got the idea of having a standard supply from my days participating in Virtue's long-since defunct "Fight Night at the Golden Giza" arena PvP matches. (The house rule regarding inspirations was that small ones were allowed, but no medium, large, or special ones). Being for PvP, it had a little of everything.

Column 1; 4 Respites
Column 2; 2 Lucks and 2 Sturdies
Column 3; 4 Break Frees
Column 4; 2 Insights and 2 Enrages
Column 5; 4 Catch a Breaths

I've still kept that standard arrangement to this day, but the problem is, it leaves no room for drops until I can overcome my obsessive tendencies and actually use one (usually a green to save my life or a blue to prevent my toggles from dropping). After I do manage to break the careful arrangement through using one, I tend to be more liberal after that.

But the team I was on last night, along with reading this thread, have given me reason to reconsider my inspiration usage. Last night I was on a melee-heavy team on my main BS/DA Scrapper running Praetorian AV missions, and we came to Diabolique. Between our relative lack of debuffing and Diabolique's constant phasing, it was tough getting damage through. So one of my teammates switches characters to a Rad/Rad Defender. After that we started making faster progress.

But then when Diabolique's health got low, she started throwing Personal Force Field into the mix, reducing our DPS even further, negating the advantage from the Rad debuffs. At this point her health was barely budging. So, thinking quickly, I fire off my Geas of the Kind Ones accolade (my accolades and temporary powers tend to sit there collecting dust too, but that's a topic for another thread). It helps a little, but it's still not enough. So I'm there thinking "Okay, what do I do now?" Then I notice it. A large Red inspiration and a few small ones. So I went to town and popped them. Diabolique's bubble soon followed, and after a long and grueling battle we emerged victorious.

I can't really say that popping those reds single-handedly won us the fight, but I can say that it was the final nail in her coffin. So once I can pry myself away from the forums to get some actual playing time in tonight, I think I'm going to try using inspirations more often.

The travel powers I choose are mostly dictated by what the concept of that particular character, so I have experience with all four of them.

My main, and my namesake character Spectreblade is a Broadsword/Dark Armor Scrapper, and I have Leaping as my power pool on him, and have all four powers in that pool. Jump Kick, while probably not the best attack power out there, is useful as a low-level attack-chain filler and another damage type in my arsenal, and Combat Jumping and Acrobatics shore up the holes in Dark Armor's mez protection. While Cloak of Darkness provides Immobilize protection, I have to turn it off when escorting hostages, which would strip me of that protection if I didn't have Combat Jumping, while Acrobatics provides Knockback protection that Dark Armor lacks entirely.

As for the other pools, One thing I've noticed while playing Motoko Michi, my Willpower/War Mace Tanker with the Teleport pool, is that it's the only travel power with no suppression, and the only one unaffected by slows. On many occasions, I've found myself in a slow patch like Quicksand or Caltrops, and responded by teleporting behind the offending foe and sending him twinkling off into the distance with a well-placed Jawbreaker. Stone Armor Tankers and Brutes often take this as their travel pool for similar reasons, as it's also the only travel power they can use at the same time as Rooted (mez protection) and Granite Armor (T9).