Sterling

There is a lot of good advice in this thread. Just a few more things. When running missions to level try to pick story arcs when you can. You can go to Paragonwiki to see which contacts have story arcs for you. You can amass a decent amount of merits just leveling up if you do, which will come in handy later. Also, if for some reason a contact isn't open to you just run a few radio missions in the zone the contact you want is in. After you do the bank robbery mission you go to the detectives for they introduce you to new contacts. Make sure to pick the ones with story arcs. Also, whenever you have the time and inclination try to run TF's and Trials. You will be wanting as many Merits as you can muster. Later on you will be wanting IO's and some of them are very, very expensive. Find out which IO's that you want are the most expensive and buy them with Merits. It can save you 100's of millions in influence.

Also, this is generally a very helpful community. If you need help with something just ask and have a little patience. As long as you aren't obnoxious about it someone will get around to helping you with your problem. Especially if you can find your way into an active supergroup. As an example, back around Christmas I had my new controller standing around in City Hall and a lvl 50 ran by me then stopped. They said they liked my toon's look and then said it was my lucky day and handed me one million influence. and a tray full of high lvl SO's to vendor. I am not saying that will happen to you, I am just putting it out there to illustrate what a friendly community this game has.

Welcome to the game and best wishes.

Sounds like you are getting into groups with a bunch of noobs inviting you. Healing is always nice. But really, empathy is my least favorite defender set of the bunch. The buffs are nice but recharge way to slow and the only reason they need to be able to heal like they do is because they have no other way to keep a team alive. The other sets can,through either, faster buffs,debuffs or soft controls keep most of the damage from being dealt in the first place.

Find smart players that know that a defender's job isn't supposed to be a heal-bot and put them on your friend list. Also, finding an active SG with enough experienced players that know what a defender is really for would be a good idea.

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Thanks for a good guide. I am coming back from a long hiatus from the game (3 years or so) and I wanted to play with some of the new power sets. A Plant/Storm is one of the two new toons I have been running regularly and I have to say I love it. I have a lvl 50 Ice/Rad controller and I am having more fun running my lil lvl 30 Plant/Storm. So, after I ran my new toon a bit I decided to look for a guide to see what other people have had to say about it and ran across this post. It is very well done and informative.

I just made a plant/storm summoning controller a few weeks ago and I am seriously getting addicted to Seeds of Confusion...especially mixed with Freezing Rain. Watching a group of bad guys fight each other while slip-sliding and landing on their butts. Sometimes I don't even use my Roots just so I can watch the show.

Also, Carrion Creepers is a big mug full o' awesome. Watching a bunch of vines pop out of the ground that start smacking the bad guys around and off their feet is a real fun-fest.

My Controller is lvl 29 now...Can't wait until I hit lvl 38 and get Tornado and T-Storm as well. Plant/SS seems like it is going to have a real big bag of toys to keep me amused for some time.

I am also working on an Elec Melee/Shield Defense toon that is at 39. I have to agree with those that say Lightning Rod and Shield Charge are addictive. Very, very fun powers.

I've come back from over a three year hiatus. My first 50 was a fire/fire tank and is still a great toon to play. I am playing her at +0/+6 with bosses and I don't have a single IO set on her yet. The only weaknesses she has are to heavy Psi damage and endurance drainers like Sappers. Which can be dealt with by playing smart. (Char is great for dealing with Sappers in a group btw).

What Fire_Minded said is right on the money. You don't play a Fire/ tank like other tanks. It requires a lot of attention and button mashing to get the most out of one. I tend to play mine more like a scranker really and it works fine like that. You really have next to no defense without IO'ing the heck out of a Fire tank, but you don't neccesarily need it to survive. The jewels of the set are Healing Flames and Fiery Embrace. Keep an eye on your health and use HF wisely and you can live through a lot. Also, judicous use of Fiery Embrace and Build Up makes critters melt real fast so you don't have to keep up your mitigation for as long as other tanks in a similair situation.

There seems to be two ways to go with IO'ing out a Fire/ Tank. Either work in as much S/L defense as you can or work in as much recharge as possible. I was fiddling around with Mid's earlier tonight and got Healing Flames down to a 10.9 second recharge. Which would basically turn you into a one button regen tank and would increase a tank's dps considerably as well.

I may be looking at this from a slightly different angle then a lot of the core forum community here. Since I have been away from the game for a long time. But in any case here is my .02's worth.

I started playing CoH when it first came out. I played until a few months after CoV came out and switched to WoW to play an MMO with some real life friends. I enjoyed WoW and despite what many say about the WoW community met a lot of great people. I was lucky though, what many say about how bad WoW players can be is all to true. But despite the friends I made I burnt out on WoW and decided to give CoH another try.

What made me quit WoW and come back to CoH wasn't the people. It was the whole raiding end game that burnt me out. I was in one of the top raiding guilds on our server for awhile. My main was pretty tricked out in epics. I definitely felt a sense of accomplishment in raiding, but eventually it turned out to be a second job for me, not a game to play and have fun with. Not only was I obligated to a scheduled four hours a night, five days a week raiding schedule. I was also obligated to all the farming that was required for the high end enchants, gems, flasks and consumables you needed to raid. It got to be to much for me.

Well I came back to COH and saw all the new shiny IO's and thought "Oh great, here we go again...". Luckily I was wrong. The two 50's I currently have still do fine when I play them. (a FM/FA/Pyre and an Ice/Rad/Fire). I am also having fun leveling up a couple of new toons with power sets that are new to me (Plant/Storm and a Elec/SD). I can still join TF's with any of my toons and make a decent contribution and have never been turned down from a group because I lack in the way of set bonuses. I plan on getting IO's eventually but am pleasantly suprised I do not feel rushed to do so because I "have to" to be able to keep up with everyone else.

COH is a game I can play for a few hours at a time here and there and actually accomplish some things of worth. Which is something WoW can't say. Whatever new endgame path the devs take with this game I hope they remember that and stick to the same kind of philosophy that brought me back and is keeping me here.

I am working on one now...He is only lvl 22 and I already love him.

At lvl 22 I already can...

1.) Stealth with impunity (Steamy Mist + Super Speed)
2.) Deal with large groups of mobs relatively quickly and safely. (Seeds of Confusion, Roots and Freezing Rain) [Side note: Confusion does not slow down your leveling. It actually speeds it up considerably]
3.) Neuter bosses (Snow Storm + Gale [to keep them off of me], while stacking my hold)


There are a couple of drawbacks to leveling this flavor of controller though.

1.) Your single target damage is crappy at this level...Grab your Sands of Mu or Undead-Slaying Axe and cherish it deeply.

2.) Also, you will throw a party when you hit 21 and get stamina three-socketed.

3.) When things go south (like they do occasionaly) you are particularly vulnerable, since you do not have a self-heal available.

Well, good luck and I hope you give this a try...it is a real fun combo of sets to play.

Yeah, in most cases two accuracies for any power is plenty. Now if you are talking PVP that is a whole other kettle of fish. Most people slot three accuracies in their powers as a matter of course.

It's pretty simple, you name a toon something that could violate the EULA you can get generic'ed at any time. Whether it is through spite or truly offending someone it really doesn't matter. A name like "Roll another J" is an implicit drug reference (dang near explicit). Naming toons like that just gives other people ammo. It shouldn't suprise you if someone loads it up and takes a shot at you.

On a side note. I once named a claws/regen scrapper "Wolverizer" and made him a dead ringer for a certain copyrighted character (three guesses who, first two don't count). I KNEW that toon was going to get generic'ed. I just wanted to see how long it took. For the record it lasted til the toon was lvl 16. I just deleted it after it was generic'ed :-)

From what I have read, Plant/Storm's biggest drawback is endurance. How much do you think Consume out of Fire's pool would help? I have it on my Fire/Fire/Pyre tanker and it is a godsend...

Thanks for the advice. Haven't even checked out the Ouroboros stuff until today. It looks promising. I am currently running +0/+6 and am doing OK with the enhancements I have. I will try to crank it up some next time I run some.

A quick question about the Ouro missions...Is there a finite supply of them or do they keep generating like the police radio missions?

Hello everyone. I am returning to the game from a couple year hiatus. I have been looking on the boards and other places and see things have really changed. My richest toon is only sitting at around 17M influence and I see people talking about needing 200M+ to get the new sets that are out there.

What I need to know is...what is the best way for me to start building up my influence so I can start playing with some of the new goodies out there?

I have two level 50 toons at my disposal, a Fire/Fire/Pyre tank and an Ice/Rad/Fire controller. I am figuring my tank is still the best for farming influence. However, I am not sure what the best way to go about that is now. I have just been running some regular missions and while I am making a bit of influence I am thinking there must be a faster way to do this. Is it better to run certain types of missions or is just farming in a higher level danger zone the best way to go?

Any advice or links to guides would be appreciated.

No, what I am saying is that I believe you got the PM and that Statesman said that herding wasn't on his mind. But then in the patch notes specific concerns about herding were made and were the reason given for some of the nerfs. If you read through the I5 patch notes you will see this. I'm not going to sift through them and pull up a quote anyone can look up for themselves though.

So what this shows is that Jack is telling you one thing but the patch notes plainly and clearly contradict his PM to you. Something smells fishy and casts doubts towards any other claims Statesman or any of the other developers may make. It makes me feel that all the devs are doing is trying to spin doctor the poor "balance" choices they have made and could care less about what their player base thinks. To me it really makes them, especially Statesman, look bad.

Sir_Payens...If you like I5 so much, good for you. I mean that and I am not being sarcastic. Fun is a subjective thing and I am having less of it since issue five came out. I still find enjoyment, but part of this game, for me, was feeling super. The ability of my tank to wade into a huge group of Freaks or Nems and take everything they could dish out. My controllers ability to lock down entire rooms and have multiple pets following around...Those were FUN for me. I liked kicking butt and taking names. Not having to worry about every little move I made to prevent a face plant was fine with me. It felt Super Heroic. If I wanted to more of a challenge the game mechanics were already in play...I could have made a melee dependent blaster for example if I wanted more challenges...Oh wait I did do that and I do enjoy playing him when I feel up to more of a challenge...See the thing is...My toon's effectiveness should NOT effect your gameplay. Me having a toon more able to kill, tank, control, etc. then your toon shouldn't matter, ESPECIALLY in the PvE setting. The versatility in the AT's, power choices, slotting choices, the difficulty slider and mission choices could ALL effect the challenge of the game. Arbitrarily forcing people to play gimped AT's across the board was not the answer for fun play through a challenging atmosphere. The mechanics for that were already in place for those who chose to do so.

Proof States was at least misrepresenting when he sent you that PM...If you read the patch notes it states that changes were made to make "herding" to more realistic levels. It's right there for anyone to read. So, if Jack sent you a PM saying herding wasn't on his mind....Well the contradiction is pretty self explanatory to anyone with half a mind.

Jack,

Some of the things you have done in I5 have been good. I like Croatoa and the added badges. But honestly I'd be happy to chuck all that out to get I4 back...Most of your "balance" changes are poorly disguised attempts to derail powerleveling and to make things "fair" in PvP (a mainly useless aspect of this game.) You have especially molested the tanker set. My Fire/Fire tanker is now a burnless fire scrapper then anything now, for example. I feel especially sorry for those poor Fire/Ice tankers and Invuln/anything tankers. In many respects I think you let us down in I5.

However, I am still enjoying the game enough to keep playing, for now. But I am playing less and I am not having as much fun as before. Looking into the future and seeing myself not playing any longer is a much more plausible reality then it was when I first got this game, which I loved whole-heartedly. Especially since so many people I played with before are leaving the game due to all the changes. This includes Liberty Sentry on Justice. Leader of one of my SG's "The Defenders of The Constitution". He's been around since beta and has been a staunch supporter of your game and policies....until I5. He was a great guy and I am going to miss his prescence in CoH. I'm not going to forgive you for causing him to leave either. That is just one example however, I could also list a good seven or eight more of my on line friends that left due to your ham-handed modifications of powers in I5. So while I am still here I am not the happiest of campers and am ambiguous about my further involvement in CoH and to an extent all NCsoft games...

So in summation thanks for the new content...Other then that...Thanks for nothing.

I can live with the reduced damage...However, the increased recharge time is to long...We, as fire tankers need it for Immob protection as well...It needs to come up more often..Lastly, The Fear AI on Burn as it currently stands, is unacceptable...Roll back the AI to Issue four and decrease the recharge time some and the power can still be useful but not "unbalanced"...

I have one other question. Are you Devs actually reading these posts? How many unhappy people is it going to take to change your minds? You are losing players and Issue five is going to keep that up. Let me tell you something. I could have gotten into any MMO out there including WoW. You know why I didn't get into WoW? It is because of how much Blizzard nerfed Diablo:LoD rendering many of my characters in that game useless...I no longer play Diablo:LoD and I don't own WoW....Now think of that as a correlary for CoH and CoV...Get the picture? You guys are really dropping the ball here. Some tweaking and balancing may have been in order but your Nerf axe is being used way to much to be acceptable. Not just in burn but across the board. I've been on the test server and let me tell you something bub...ISSUE FIVE IS NOT FUN!!!!!!

If Issue five hits as is without any fixes I'm letting my account run out and I am not renewing it. If you can see from the posts I am not alone in this.

And you know all we get from you developers when we state we are thinking of quitting the game over these changes?!?!? Smug comments like "Oh, we'll see how many people will still be around and you will still be here and eating your words." Or comments to that effect. Which, really, show a total lack of respect to your player base. Shame on you...I haven't had this game that long...But I've enjoyed what was to be had in issue 3. Some things perturbed me in Issue 4. But enough was still good that I didn't complain, much...But now you are going from relatively minor nerfs to game breaking power set [censored]! Please rethink this. I have really loved this game and it will pain me to quit it because of all the hours I have invested into my toons. However, If I can't have fun playing this game any longer I will quit and so will a number of others. I'm also sure all of us who are disenchanted with your game will be more then happy to spread all the bad publicity about your products as we are able to...This isn't a threat. Just a plain statement on what is going to happen. Do us all a favor and show us that you actually give a load of dung about your player base. Right now it isn't happy and you guys don't seem to care one bit!!!!