The Demacian

I've already gone blueside on my mind/fire dom. Making as few changes as possible from the official build, would this Ice Mastery version: datalink be acceptable? Or any other blueside APP?

Is level 31 good enough for our meeting next Friday? Does malefactoring work the same way in PVP as it does in PVE?

That was two or three kinds of awesome. Mayhap even FIVE?

Thanks for the great contest, and for increasing my net worth by 128%!

Is it crunch (mechanics) or fluff (lore/history) that's being judged? CoH only or superhero fandom in general?

Here's what I'm currently running on my mind/fire.

Stalker Spots
1) @Doctor Roboto - EM/WP please
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)

Dominator Spots: (Please choose- Mind/Fire, Earth/Eng, Earth/Fire, Mind/Eng)
1) Eagle Eyez
2) GL
3) Zwillinger
4) Lis mind/fire
5) DEMACIAAAAAAA! (@The Demacian)
6)
7)
8)

Blaster Spots: (sonic/em)
1) @arkyaeon
2)
3)
4)@Zatch

Yeah, it went pretty well. As a (relative) lowbie, I was missing the purple doodz a fair bit, but then I remembered to combine other insps to yellow and it was all good.

This may be the longest amount of time I've ever spent dirtnapping. Thanks for the xp, the death, and the server, des! :P

I didn't even see the warning - I was uisng my freespec. There are lots of things in the game that take over 5 minutes - hard fights, respecs, custume creation, costume editing - and give you little or no chance to see such warnings.

And on top of it all I'm getting repeatedly logged out of the forums.

What is the first place contestant dressed (or not dressed) as?

I gotta say Project Tesla looks really good.

I just plain forgot. I was locked out of my apt, too, but if I'd got in I'd have headed to Bookman's to pick up some stuff. Having only managed to join up with you guys once , I've failed to pick up the habit.

Really hoping I remember next week! Am already on target for the target level due to getting in on a TV trial.

What happens if too many of the 56 are "ringers" - aside from the approved Emp ones? The bane of my existence in League of Legends were "smurfs" - reasonably skilled players who could and should be playing at level 30 against other decent players, but who got their kicks by creating lowbies and stomping peeps.

Now I'm largely playing CoH with LoL-inspired toons instead of playing LoL because it's a million times less frustrating. While I probably needn't worry, I'm just hoping that this PvP thing doesn't wind up like that.

If the origins mattered and had meaningful powers, then people would have to choose between the origin that makes sense for their backstory/look, or the origin that works best with their other powers. You already see this enough with Oil Slick Arrow.

Some of us build the character first and THEN write it a backstory, but we can't ignore the other players.

As for the batman/logan cherry-picking thing, well, people in alpha say CoH was originally going to be that way, but people were doing it more often for maximum synergy / OPness more than they were doing it for making a cool character. So that can cause a similar problem: the bigger the gap becomes between min-maxers and story/character aficionados, the more the min-maxers will avoid others and treat them like second class citizens.

Min-maxing and character creation don't have to be mutually exclusive; I've seen very powerful characters with great backstories and flavor/design/costumes. However, people for whom min-maxing is a secondary concern can find their cool characters picked last for all the TFs and games of dodgeball if there aren't some caps on the min maxers' power and some excellent powers designed to appeal to non min maxers.

So origins are largely a flavor concern where Oil Slick and a chance to set up Containment aren't concerned, and ATs force you to choose from a set of powers that is both thematically appropriate and reasonably effective. This limits your creativity but also helps keep 75% of the players from making identical "tankmages" who chose the "right" origin.

For a successful game, gameplay always has to be a priority over "fluff", even really delicious and awesome fluff. If you crave good (and less-restricted) fluff, read (or even write) a novel / comic / in-character blog.

Is there anything wrong with taking 10 hero tips and then choosing to stay rogue, or do you get something better for staying rogue at the end of 10 rogue tips?

I don't really care what the rewards are. Even for no reward, I would do these kinds of things just to better embody Gallio's personality. An eventual badge, merit of some kind, or alignment-based reward wouldn't hurt, either.

Anything beyond "click the glowie, kill the badguy, rescue the hostage" is a plus. I LOVED terra volta and I look forward to going back in on a higher difficulty setting to defend the reactor!

Vigilante - various reformed villains who are now productive members of society walk the streets. To anyone else they're just a random white-name-civ, but Vigilantes see a villainous subtitle and can dispense justice. Killing the now-defenseless ex-villain is the easy part - now you have to evade the cops, sneak/break out of jail, perpetrate a cover-up, or something.

Villain - dear lord, the possibilities are endless, much like Hero. Be cruel. Similarly, Rogue - just be a jerk. Vigilante's the only difficult one, to me, to think of non-fight scenarios, but I think/hope I came up with a cool one.

@Ruff
English might simply not be MedEvac's first language - even if it is, the rules for ordinal numbers (as well as the corresponding abbreviations) are awkward and hardly count as "rules".
@MedEvac
Ruff was attempting to riff off of the fact that you abbreviate "first" as "1rst" instead of "1st".

When I started with the trial, I made a Praetorian in homage to Annie Darkchild, and then lost access to my praetorians when I upgraded. Now that I've upgraded again and have Going Rogue access, I'm wondering if Mind/Fire was the right choice - at level 6, it so far seems like a lot of single-target stuff, and not very much fire.

A proper Annie should be great AoE damage, some occasional stuns (or holds, they're practically the same), and if I'm very lucky some of her other traits like a PBAoE fire toggle, a pet that's on fire, and good "mana" management would be nice. Annie D's nuking power is constant and powerful, but the clutch stun and/or AoE stun is really why a team would take her. Other mages nuke just as hard from longer range. The gigantic, angry teddy bear who is on fire, well, sometimes concept gives way to reality in these sorts of conversions.

I'm thinking that Fire/Mind or even Fire/Fire might be more appropriate. Levitate is tons of fun but I get enough of that on my Grav controller. Will I end up getting decent AoE damage out of this or should I reroll before it's too late?

Do you have URLs for any previous contests you have run or judged (or their recaps)? Newbs could use that to get an idea of what previous winners have looked like, judging style, etc.

Gotcha! Sweet action. Thanks a bunch.