The Grim Heaper

I, personally, haven't had any luck with the snipping tool, when CoH is in fullscreen, the result is the same as the printscreen button - solid black.

What map type was this? I know I've had troubles with npcs on the stairs in the Praetorian underground maps. They can navigate them but you have to babysit the morons. It's like the stairs are JUST below the maximum height to walk up (a pixel more and you'd have to jump), and it confuses the hell out of the AI pathing (Stair one; I might have to jump *move forward* oh, guess not. Stair two; I might have to jump...)

Sadly this is just another practical demonstration of "John Gabriel's Greater Internet ____wad Theory" (look it up). Unfortunately you will encounter these type of people everywhere on the internet. I'm sorry you and your son's experience was soured by this encounter, but know that it is not the norm among CoH's playerbase. Fortunately, the game does provide you some tools to deal with this sort of thing (with the stipulation that you must first encounter the idiots in order to deal with them).

Player notes: (you might have to set options to "Player notes: show always") One star the offender and leave a note with what they did, and their full global name. I say add their global name in the notes because there is/was a bug that would apply the note onto other players if there was spaces in the global name. This will aid in never teaming with the individual again.

Global ignore: somewhat self explanatory.

Petitioning: Kicking your son from the ITF probably wasn't really petitionable, but the harassment after was. For a case like this - I'd guess that either a warning or a time out would be issued depending on past history. But know that it is policy not to inform the petitioner what actions were taken against the reported player.

Salvage:
Rare salvage I almost always store in the vault/base. Sometimes I sell it if I'm a couple million short for a resipe/other rare that i need.

Uncommon is up in the air... if it's plentiful on the market, I add mine to the pile, if it's in short supply, I hold onto it for when I need it, rather than paying out the nose later.

Commons - I keep some, like Alch. Silver which is almost ALWAYS in high demand (unless base/vault is full)... actually, the mid-level salvage has been in high demand lately - all the people playing their 50s - I'd keep a decent stash of those for when I need them, but they're a good way to make some quick inf. Otherwise I list commons for 11 inf. Less profit then vendoring? Yes. But it ensures they move somewhat quickly, and my market inventory goes up as I get more badges for selling lots of stuff, which means i can sell more at a time later.

Beyond the search tool in the team window (/search), scroll down the forums to your server's board and look up the global channels they use.

Might be worth level pacting with him for the next round of re-rolls. At the very least it will stop you from overtaking him, and might even help him get past the blahs of the early levels if you do a little extra leveling on the side. Just don't let your friend delete that character - he might want to shelve it for a while, but deleting it would make the pact pointless.

Pretty sure you didn't need to go blueside to get the APPs, they are available to everyone. If you wanted to go blueside anyway, no worries, but it isn't a requirement for the Ancillaries as far as I'm aware.

The mender and the flame are not working because Ouroboros is two zones; hero and villain versions. You mission and the contact for it point to the villain version of the zone which you cannot acess unless you're a villain/rogue.

You probably will not be able to complete it without going villain again. And even if you got a GM that would drop/auto complete the current mission, you might be chained to the villain incarnate arc, and would have to go back for the other missions anyway.

-Team composition does not require the holy trinity (tank/healer/dps). Teams can work just as well with all tank, all dps, all mez, all buff/debuff. Some combinations are certainly more effective than others - but all combinations are viable for 99.9% of the content (and the remaining .1% is up for debate)

-Your character does not have to be shoehorned into one or two min/max builds to be effective, but at the same time you can min/max your build to squeeze out some extra performance, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

I have 2 characters that I really wanted Hasten on. My crab (between the pets and the all AOE build, I like the recharge), and my elec/dev blaster (his attack chain is fine without - but when solo (or when waiting for the rest of the team) I love it to pump out more and more mines.)

Most other characters that took it? often used as a 'might as well' pick while respeccing into inherrant fitness. Usually when there's a level (otherwise occupied by fitness) where there's no other powers from my primary/secondary/existing pools that I want.

Herding entire maps into a crate? My you have been gone a while. Welcome back.
Aggro caps, AoE target caps, and enemy collision took care of that little strategy.

Before I begin, if you have any intentions of sticking around for any length of time - Paragonwiki. Bookmark it. Love it. It's a player run collection of information on the game. many of my answers will link you to relevant pages.

1) Ancillary and Patron power pools. Available at level 41, they provide powers that help fill holes your build has by providing ranged damage, holds, immobilises, and other tricks that you don't necessarily get from your primary/secondary. Note that you must first become a villain/rogue and run a patron arc in order to unlock the patron power pools.

2) There is no wrong choice. You can pick your alignment based on flavour ("Axetion would never break the law, he is and always will be a hero"), or based on perks ("Axetion likes badges; switching sides lets Axetion collect more shineys.", or "Axetion wants in on the patron power pools, I guess he could switch briefly to acquire them"). Paragon wiki article.

heroes/villains are each restricted to their respective zones, But as a reward for loyaly sticking it out for lengths of time, they can perform certain tasks in order to accumulate special merrits that can be used to purchace rare Invention recipes for relatively cheap.

Vigilantes/Roges enjoy many of the benefits of being Heroes/villains, but they also get to freely travel between Paragon City and the rogue isles, and team with anyone in those locations. It's rather ideal if you want to to participate in the content of either side without commiting yourself to being stuck on one or the other.

3) The level 50 content you're hearing about is likely the incarnate system. You can unlock the alpha slot by talking to mender Ramiel in Ouroboros.

4) Wentworths is the hero side auction house, for villains it's the Black Market. You may need to select the option to view certain icons in the lower right hand corner of the map. Some auction houses are more frequently populated than others, often due to ameneties that are close by - Steel Canyon and Cap Au Diable, for instance, both have a Untiversity and a Vault near the markets.

5) There's no need to delete/rerole any character because you've been gone a while. However, if you've got Going Rogue, starting a new character and going through Praetoria is a good way to relearn the basics, as much has been changed since either the hero or villain tutorials were created (they've been updated where necessary, but still). Be warned that Praetoria and the content therein can be a bit more difficult than the old content in that level range.

That said it may be a good idea to respec or at least reslot your tanker. Since you've been gone, things like enhancement diversification have changed the generally accepted way to slot powers (General rule of thumb; no more than 3 of the same Single origin enhancement in a given power - it's an oversimplification but a good starting point). For example, where optimal slotting of generic attack 1 used to be Dam*5/Acc*1, it's now Dam*3/Acc*1 and then pick two from Acc/End/Rech/(special thing the attack lets you slot)


Also - depending on when you left, the players' focus went from street sweeping to running or farming missions and TFs. This means that most of the people on any given server are likely inside instanced missions where they can't hear your broadcasts. Scroll down the forums a bit, and visit you're server's board, look up or ask what global channels are active and join them. This is the best way (other than a well populated list of active friends/sg mates) to find teams.

Honestly, I've never run a LGTF where we did not take out the pylons first. Closest to taking out the mitos first I've witnessed is the "lead the rikti through the goo and hope they take a couple mitos out while we deal with the pylons" method.

Wonder if this is derived from that in an effort to take everything out faster - lead the Rikti through the goo, and they provide extra damage to take out the mitos faster... (and with more targets to spread the aggro around)