Spectreblade

My favorite veteran rewards are;

Being able to take a travel power at Lv. 6 without a prerequisite. Though for me it's the "without a prerequisite" part that's more useful. In the early levels, I'm usually more concerned about getting my character's basic powers in place to use one of the earlier power choices for it, like Assassin Strike for my Stalker. What's more important to me is that it frees up a power choice, which can be a great asset on some tighter builds so that I can take something more useful instead. I can always take the prerequisite later at a level where I don't have a newly unlocked one from my primary or secondary that screams "Take me now!", if I so desire.

The Buff Pets. Having my first character be a Broadsword/Dark Armor Scrapper has taught me the value of endurance, and I seek out recovery and max endurance buffs when choosing what IO sets to use on that character. Having the Blue Wisp Pet helps that out even more.

Assemble the Team. This one's a great timesaver, since it get's everybody where they need to be at once, which gets my scrappery self into the fray that much faster. It can be a pain having to wait until everybody's done their between-mission errands like training after a level-up or going AFK for a bio-break, and it's just as easy to Recall Friend the teammates one by one, but I don't take Recall Friend on all my characters, just the ones whose concept allows for it. For the ones that don't, I have Assemble the Team.

/afk nosebleed. I wasn't on a team when this happened to me, though.

My father is a WWII veteran, who fought in the Air Force on Iwo Jima. He's still alive at 85 years old, though I'm not sure he will be for much longer.

About two months ago, he had to go to the hospital for what turned out to be cancer (a tumor in his gallbladder blocking his bile duct), and had another more recent stay in the hospital after what was supposed to be a minor operation to have a temporary stent implanted to bypass the tumor replaced with a permanent one ended up with him having a heart attack.

He's home now, and scheduled to start chemotherapy soon, though, and we were even able to go to our neighborhood's Memorial Day Parade. Although he was just a spectator this time instead of being in it, it was still good to have him there.

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Just an opinion:

It's a little bit easier to make a magic origin character because there's no solid rule on magic and it's easier to suspend disbelief when makign a bio.

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This is the reason most of my characters are Magic origin.

With Science and Technology, their powers, while fantastic, are often still somewhat grounded in reality.

This is even more restrictive for Naturals, whose "powers" are limited things that any normal human can do with sufficient training, barring those that were never human to begin with.

And as for Mutation, while their powers can be as diverse as the other origins, their origin stories don't allow for anything other than "I'm a human who was born with wierd genes," except in the implications of having them.

Magic, however, is the least restrictive it terms of what can be done, both in powers and stories, which is probably why it's my favorite.

Arc Name: From the Abyss
Arc ID: 70466
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Spectreblade
Synopsis: A Crey Industries lab housing fossil specimens collected from the Abyss in the Rogue Isles has cut off all communication with the outside world. Go in there and find out why. (1 Mission, with 1 Elite Boss and 1 Boss-rank Ally).

Stone Armor toggles are not showing any graphics. I'm not even sure they're active.

I'm gonna have to be there for the next one, too.

I'll agree on Group Energy Flight. While it could be useful for carrying teammates around, I once was on a pick-up group with a Peacebringer who actually used it in combat. Now keep in mind Group Energy Flight debuffs accuracy in exchange for a third dimension of movement, which, being less experienced than I am now, only added to my confusion.

Also, as for Tornado, how would you describe a well-used one? I have a Mercs/Storm Mastermind who'll probably be getting it, and an Energy/Energy/Leviathan Stalker who'll probably be getting Water Spout.

I'm for the suggestion to give the present spawns GM coding, too. I opened one present in Galaxy City on my newly created Tanker (Lv. 3 at the time) and got Lv. 9 Snowmen from it. And of course, there's the issue of high-level characters ignoring snowmen they could easily defeat, but the people who actually belong in the zone can't. You'd think common courtesy would be enough of an incentive for things like that, but I've been proven wrong in that many times, both in real life and in-game.

I'd also like to see some more variety in the holiday missions, too. Like, what ever happened to the "Steal/Recover the Presents" missions from just after CoV launch?

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Why do Kins SB people just as they start running? People overshoot their mark. If they have hurdle instead of sprint and no combat jump it just gets silly. I'd SB people inside a fight duration, not moving towards mobs or holes in a cave floor.

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When I'm playing my Kin defender, I usually pass out Speed Boosts between fights like that. That's because during the fight, I'm usually too busy using my other powers like Transfusion, Fulcrum Shift, my blasts, etc.

As for people turning down Speed Boost, I usually assume people want it unless they tell me otherwise. But if they don't, I'll respect their wishes and stop using it on them.

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Hmmmmm... Dual-build may indeed be interesting (Time for that terribly frivolous build that has Group Flight+Team Teleport).

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That's similar to what I'm planning to use dual-builds for. This gives players an opportunity to experiment and try things that fly in the face of conventional build wisdom.

For example, I think I might try a petless build for my Ninjas/Poison MM Orochi Dragon, and a Stamina-less build for Spectreblade, my main Broadsword/Dark Armor scrapper, to see if Stamina's really as necessary as some people think it is. If it turns out a BS/DA can survive without Stamina, it would send a message that a lot of other set combinations could do so as well. Normally, I wouldn't try that and risk gimping myself, but with multi-builds, I can just switch back if the gamble doesn't pay off.

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Hey! Where's the somehow get control of someone's SG when they go afk for 15 days, kicking everyone out and keeping the base to yourself go on the list?

Or if you can't kick everyone just stealing everything, cranking up the plot size an burning through the prestige until the group just leaves and restarts elsewhere.

I'm just thankful this happened a year before inventions lol.

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They actually touched on that toward the end of the article.

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There are, of course, many more examples of player-on-player annoyance. We haven't touched on bases, for example: the golden rule is to be careful who you trust with base permissions, as a nastily-inclined player can empty out your salvage bins, or sell all of your base furniture and replace it with several hundred identical water coolers.


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I just added myself as a fan. I also have a Myspace account, but I've been much more active on Facebook. I've found it a lot easier to find people I know in real life with Facebook than through Myspace. In fact I happened to reunite with my old high school sweetheart through it, and while she turned out to have moved in with someone else since I last saw her, we're still friends and still stay in touch through it.

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How about definitions for:
endred
endmod
endredux
frankinslot

Found those in some guides for enhancements.

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Endred and endredux are both short for "Endurance Reduction" enhancements. Those are the ones that lower the endurance cost of powers.

Endmod is "endurance modification". They can be used in powers that drain or restore endurance, like Transference and Power Sink, or in powers that buff or debuff endurance recovery like Stamina or Accelerate Metabolism.

Frankenslotting is the practice of putting Invention enhancements from different sets in the same power. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of what the benefits are, but I imagine one of the reasons is if you had a power that does damage and inflicts a stun, you could put a few pieces from a damage set, and a few pieces from a stun set, and get bonuses from both sets out of the same power. Or if one set has pieces that enhance aspects of a power you're not interested in or aspects the power doesn't have, you could use parts from a different set that enhance the aspects you need. Is that right?

I also created my account on May 6, 2004. Then as I was installing the game, I found out I would need a new graphics card to play it. So, a little while later, I finally got the card and gave life to Spectreblade, the hero that had been adventuring in my head for the past month. That time between when I had the game installed but couldn't play it was agonizing, but it did give me plenty of time to read the manual and refine Spectreblade's concept. Since then I've made several other upgrades to my computer for the sake of this game. And I've made several other characters in that time.

Some of my most memorable moments were:

Entering Paragon City proper from the tutorial for the first time. Nothing says "Welcome to your new life as a hero!" like the Atlas/Freedom Plaza music. Then talking to Back-Alley Brawler for my first training session, and reporting to Gregor Richardson for my first mission.

Entering Steel Canyon for the first time. That was the kind of landscape you typically think about when you think of superheroes, and reaching the level where I could get missions there was like finally starting to come into my own as a hero.

Getting my travel power. I took the Leaping pool on Spectreblade, and it felt so awesome that I could literally leap tall buildings in a single bound, I had to show my family.

Defeating Dr. Vahzilok. After he infected me with that damn wasting disease, he was going down! He would be the first AV I ever fought, and I let out a cheer when he went down, making my family wonder what was going on.

When badges were first introduced. I logged in and a torrent of "badge earned" messages washed over me as I stood in the Talos Island magic SO store where I logged out from the last time. It was like it was raining candy.

Now, I'm going to be getting my 4 year vet reward any day now, and I'm still going strong.

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DOOOOOOMM!!! This new system is going to suck so bad... Especially since it is never going to be implemented...

So funny joke there guys. Almost had me there in the first paragraph, you kind of gave it away at 'Issue 12 is being rechristened: issue 12, zap boom bang' or what ever. But none the less, thank you for helping me start off April fools day with a bang.

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That's where they had me until, too. Nice one, Devs!

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I was wondering if team teleport was good for defenders trying to get everyone close enough for an AoE buff?

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Team Teleport doesn't bring your teammates to you. What it does is teleport you and any teammates that are already near you to another location. It's like self-Teleport, only you take nearby teammates with you. There is a temporary power you can get from a Bank mission and a Veteran Reward power that teleport all teammates on the same map to you, but they have extremely long recharge times, and I think they're interruptible (but I could be wrong on that), making them impractical for combat.

I just got back from celebrating my birthday and saw the official announcement. These look like a lot of fun. I will be getting mine in May.

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No no no it's not the 10 seconds to click the delete button but if you think about it, some people will be buying inf from these people. Maybe most people cant afford it (one of my mails had an advertisement for pl for $268, i though that was somewhat insane) but some can. I cant help but wonder if the ppl I sometimes pvp against who are io'd out only have their money from buying inf. As a student there is no possible way i could ever afford to do this (not to mention that doing this is against the eula in the first place) and it creates serious imbalances in the game. There is a reason the eula exists and if we still get these mails it only means that people must be buying inf, making these people a profit and encouraging them to keep this going. At least if we stop the advertisements we can stop them from getting new business and strangle their profits. With any luck, it might end up having them stop their activities.

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An excellent point. It's not so much the spam itself that people get up in arms about, although it is annoying, and that alone is reason to stop it. It's the greater problem that it is a symptom of. Namely, a money-hungry third party taking advantage of the game and the company and creating a potentially game-breaking imbalance by giving players a means to buy success.

After all, we come here to set aside our real-world cares for a moment or two, and having the real world's economic disparities affect us even in our game defeats the whole purpose of a game.

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The problem w/ spammers is that money motivates them, and apparently there are people lazy enough to pay someone real money to give them in-game currency which is very easily attained on one's own just by PLAYING THE GAME.

My hope would be that the CoX population at large would know better, and educate those who might be considering using the "services" of an RMT spammer, because nothing drives away spammers like a dry well, but I know that the spammers wouldn't be pushing so hard if there players weren't biting the worms on the spam hooks, as it were.

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QFT. As this thread demonstrates, the game population in general does know better, but as mind-boggling as it is, there are people out there who are indeed that lazy. If we want to find a permanent solution, it will have to deal with the demand. But unfortunately, that is easier said than done, because of simple human nature. Wherever there are groups of people, there will be bad people among the good.

As for reporting spammers, I use the /ignore_spammer command if I get a tell, but I don't usually send a follow-up petition. Wasn't the whole point of /ignore_spammer to be a more efficient way of reporting them without having to stop whatever you're doing and open the petition window?

But /ignore_spammer seems to be working well to stop the tells. It's been a long time since I've gotten a RMT tell. Problem is, they're using the in-game e-mail system now. For that, I think a simple "report spam" button on the e-mail window could do for e-mails what /ignore_spammer does for tells. But that still has its problems, too. By the time someone sees the spam e-mail to report it, the account it came from could already be long gone.

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I agree that, as long as they're set as disabled by default, meaning that no info is available on the net without a player's consent, there's no problem.

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That's pretty much my attitude toward this. I'm looking forward to having my characters up on the web for all to see, as long as I have some control over how much of them they see.

Personally, I'm fine with my characters' descriptions, powersets, and badge collection being displayed. I'd draw the line at influence on hand or build specifics like slotting. But overall, I like the idea.

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REST

That's right, it's not just for healing; it fills the blue bar, too. I've seen many a player go from spawn to spawn with little END left and then crash during a fight without ever stopping to use Rest. There's no shame in Resting. Create a bind or macro:

/bind ctrl+r "l I'm gonna rest for just about 10 seconds, you can go on without me if you want, I'll catch up.$$powexecname Rest"

Then it's your team's decision whether to wait for you or not. While Resting, you can turn on any self-buff toggles you want, especially if you had to turn them off to save END. A recharge in Rest should bring it up to make it available every second or third fight.

For protracted battles, I've even backed up around a corner to Rest just to refill END and then jump back into the fight.

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That's some good advice. I've done all of those things every so often.

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Excellent guide! One question though, and I am sorry if I seem like a noob, what is a PUG?

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It stands for "pick-up group". Esentially, it's teaming up with strangers, as opposed to teaming with members of your supergroup or friends.

A "Proc" is an invention enhancement that gives a power a chance to inflict an additional secondary effect, such as the Sting of the Manticore set's Chance for Toxic damage enhancement.

I made one of my two planned transfers today without incident, but when I attempted the second, the credit card company refused the charge. I'll try my second transfer later after sorting things out with them.