SteelRat

Awesome info guys, thank you. I was completely unaware of the damage bonuses granted for Vigilance and whilst I figured as buff / debuff is the primary role for a defender, it would make sense that the debuff in sonic would be sufficiently more effective, I honestly didn't realise it'd be as much as that!

Think I'm going to enjoy this toon!

Opinion / suggestion. Not a demand. Know the difference

Yeah i had a brief google for the mu equivalents and aside the elec fences couldnt see anything that reall grabbed me. I did have static discharge on an earlier build and dropped it for the hold because i thought its damage was a bit sub par. I find sb is more useful because it allows me to lock down additional mobs or stack holds on tougher ones. Ive avoided vs for concept reasons and so would avoid the adept for the same reason. I think if having both pets would up the damage output sufficiently i could work in a conceptual explanation for both but i think itd be an all or nothing situation. Additionally looking at the recharge on the adept i wonder if id be better of just using storm elemental lore pets further down the line?

Additionally i havent put any slots in electric fence because i just dont use the power. Im wondering uf it be useful as a set mule with an io build. Will have to drag mids out and have a play this evening i think!

Thanks for the tips guys. DrH that playstyle is exactly how i find he is the most effective; lock em down from range, sap them to within an inch of their lives then just when they think theyve had enough pummel them in the mush with an electric clad fist. I like the idea of the mu mastery epic instead of the blueside one too. any other key picks from that set other than the group immob? I just have shocking bolt amd the armour at the moment

My second ever level 50 is an Elec / Elec / Elec blaster which has been sitting around not really doing an awful lot over the past 4 or 5 years. This particular combo doesn't play like any other blaster I've ever played - I call it a "SlapTroller".. Blapper, Sapper and Controller, and oddly of all those things he does, blasting seems to be the weakest! The weird thing is though, I get the distinct feeling there's potential in there; there's just something missing.

I'm not a hardcore player and I've amassed about 400 million inf on my main. If I blow this on a cheapish IO build for him (he's so old, he's all SO's at the moment) is he still going to be a bit "jack of all trades, master of none" or could I use that 400 mill to get him started and use that as a sufficient level of awesome for a stepping stone to something better?

Rolled it and teamed a bit for half an hour last night. Got to just shy of level 5. One thing did cross my mind though, other than the obvious "the focus is on support rather than blasts" aspects of defender game play, is there anything that would make this particular combo more effective on a defender than the reverse combo for a corruptor? I tend to play in small teams (2-4) and solo.

I would imagine this question will raise a collective raising of eyebrows from the defender community, but perhaps part of the reason why I've never really managed to get in to one is that I probably just don't "get" them properly.

You need to slot your "Getting the point" attack with a bit more ACC tbh.

Solo theyre easy enough, they do tend to overwhelm teams ive been on though. I probably shouldnt have said "for no other reason" either. Theres a fair few other reasons i usually try to avoid that zone if possible too but fighting gnomes is the primary one. I think i like cohs "contemporary" setting and croatoa is just too much like halloween fairy land for my taste.

Just stumbled on this thread as I've been tinkering with the idea of a Dark / Sonic as well. Just seems to make sense that the -res of Sonic would mesh nicely with the -res of Tar Patch and all the other monstrous debuffing goodness that Dark offers.

Like the OP I've got a bit of a blind spot with Defenders. I have a single Storm / Elec at lvl 39 (who's been there for years but I just can't bring myself to delete her because I love the concept so much), but other than that I've never found a combo that works (for me).

Reading this through I think my Dark / Sonic idea will definitely see the light tho

Just a point of reference, I have a Samsung NC110 Netbook. I upgraded the RAM from 1Gb to 2GB and removed the installed copy of Win 7 starter and replaced it with a copy of Win 7 Pro. I can play CoH on this at low settings and I take it with me to my gf's house so she and I can play together on weekend evenings. It can get a bit "chuggy" at times, but it's certainly playable.

Essentially what I'm saying is, there isn't much these days that CoH WON'T run on perfectly fine.

Croatoa can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned, for no other reason than Red Caps.

There is nothing more humiliating than being a super powered pillar of awesome only to have your backside repeatedly handed to you on a silver platter by a bunch of garden ornaments.

Like all the content in CoH, DFB is optional. If you don't like it, don't do it.

Personally, I do like it, not only because it allows me to get a feel for a character and whether or not I'm going to like it fairly quickly, but in a game that's better enjoyed in teams (on the whole) it's the one where people are always announcing teams that run it, even on servers with a relatively low population.

News: Welcome

Mood: Elated.

Win Levels: Maximised.

Well, thanks for the feedback and I do take on board what you've said. To be fair, if it seems a bit randomly thrown together, that's more or less because it was! Beyond the sound track, and some loose tie in with the RWZ (from the opening lyrics) I didn't really have a concept in mind other than Volk just steaming in and doing his thing with a variety of different enemies. As much as anything that was down to me being a complete video newbie. I didn't know anything about encoding, video compression and only had a basic idea of the editing software I was using. Really was learning on the fly as it were. .

Whilst I do agree with you that some of the guitar emotes were a little out of place with the flow of the music (especially with the first one), I do feel that the timing of the transitions between scenes went in line with changes in verse / chorus. I also wanted to capture that feeling of "bashing out a guitar solo when all hell was breaking loose around me", which again, fits in with the concept of the character. Additionally, I think I did quite well getting some of the key moments of the song to fit in with specific points of the action.

However, with all that said, I'm grateful for your comments and will certainly bear some of those things in mind when I do the next one. Now I know a bit more about everything, I can introduce a bit more planning and a central theme so the whole thing is a little more cohesive.

Well here it is. I've had the idea of this whirring in my head for a while simply because the song so perfectly fits my character, Volkaniks concept. Never tried doing anything like this before, but I'm delighted how well this has turned out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMHxa...ature=youtu.be

Hope you like it!

Have since found a still better way of doing things. After a bit of trial and error with various compression codecs, and after a bit of googlage, I managed to find the XVid codec. Has all kinds of benefits. VDub will process the compression and cropping faster, the resulting files are much, much smaller than the originals with this compression (e.g.. a file that was 1.6GB in Fraps compressed down to just 80MB with XVid) and most importantly, Power Director 10 recognises it quite happily.

I now have a butt load of video captures to process. Happy days!

So its not the FACT that people have to pay to play again, its the fact that they're told they don't and realise that to "eat their old burger" they're faced with "well, actually you do" once they're standing at the till.

I can understand why that would be a bit of a sticking point and would sour the gravy somewhat. I do admit that when I saw the email from Paragon explaining how the Freedom system worked and the various options I thought "hmm.. not REALLY free is it?", but I figured that if I paid the way I always did and forgot the Psuedo Free options I'd still be able to play the way I did without losing anything.

As I've already said though, I think it's a matter of viewpoint. If you're a returning player, EXPECT to pay a subs exactly as you did, which isn't unreasonable in the scheme of things really is it? That's no different. What IS different is that now you have a "CoH Lite" version that doesn't require you to pay, but will obviously come with certain restrictions.

I do agree that the marketing of Freedom is misleading, but Paragon aren't the first and certainly won't be the last company to entice it's customers by having FREE in big letters plastered everywhere, only for the small print to say that actually you have to pay £8.95. Sure it sucks, but that's unfortunately the way of the world.

Had a moment of clarity in the shower. As you do.

Think I'm just going to crop the files in VDub without compressing them, import the cropped files in to PD and then export the whole video as something else; WMV, MPEG4 or whatever.

Wood. Trees. *facepalm*

Cheers for the advice all. I ended up sticking with FRAPS, and VDub for the raw footage processing and upgrading my old copy of Power Director 8 to version 10 to glue it all together.

One problem / question I have though, when you're processing the original AVI file through VDub, do you use any compression codecs, or just leave it raw? Problem I have is that I've been using the Intel 5.1 codec to compress the AVI file to a more manageable size, and the old copy of PD8 I was using was able to open that fine. PD10 reports that it's an invalid file format despite me downloading and installing ffdshow codecs.

Thoughts? Apologies if any of these questions are a bit dumb, but I'm a complete rookie to all of this!

*EDIT*.. Helps if I read replies properly. I'll give the Sony Vegas Platinum software a look and see if I can export as WMV from the cropped AVI file without using any AVI compression codecs.

In essence, Samuel, I do agree with everything you say here. There are a couple of things though that I have a problem with.

Firstly, I'm sure you're well aware that there are players that will "leave the game angry" no matter what you do for them. They are usually very vocal, and usually also expect more than they can ever realistically hope to have. I'm sure you don't expect us, the community, to bend over backwards to back them up.

Secondly, I think the biggest problem with the whole F2P model that Paragon have adopted is really the Premium one. If you think about it the other two cater for their intended audiences fairly well; if you're a paid up subscriber, happy days. If you're a brand new player and you play with a free account you have pretty much everything you need to get you started for absolutely nothing. IOs, certain AT's and the like aren't necessary for someone that's never played the game before, and so it's right that those restrictions are applied. You can still "have fun", "try the game" and all the things the supporters of the OP are advocating without alienating the player. Most reasonable people will understand that you don't actually get much for free and if they enjoy the experience the free model offers, they'll be happy to subscribe.

The trouble comes if you're previously a subscriber and you want to play under the "Premium" system. Those restrictions mean that you won't be able to play all of your old characters, their IO's won't work and a whole load of other stuff that you used to have, you now won't have. The point is, are those restrictions REALLY all that bad when it comes down to it? Why should someone who doesn't pay a monthly fee have anything like the same access to the ones that do, just because they USED to subscribe? It's worth remembering that before F2P, if you didn't subscribe you couldn't play at all, so I'm less than sympathetic when people who did subscribe who now don't (or won't) complain when certain stuff isn't available.

It's worth mentioning too that if you give too much stuff to Premium players that would normally be available to regular subscribers, your regular subscribers could say "hang on a mo, if I get all this stuff when I'm not subscribing, why do I need to bother subscribing at all?"

Adding a +1 to Dev Love. I think the changes that have been made over the past couple of years really have been fantastic. In any entertainment medium, the ones who last and stay the test of time are the ones who are continually reinventing themselves whilst still keeping a basic formula. That way you keep your old fans and are able to bring in new ones. City of Heroes is the only MMO that I've seen be able to do that and do it successfully.

Sure, you don't get it right all the time, but for the other 999 times out of 1000, Bravo Paragon Studios, Bravo.