The Grim Heaper

Name
Costume
Description
Powers

I try to only report those that infringe upon at least 3 of the criteria, although name and costume are usually the most damning of the four, as they are the most visible.

And there is some room for play on a few of these where I'd still report:

-Powers; this can be tricky, as many copyrighted characters have powers that just don't exist in CoH, or have so many powers that choosing two powersets doesn't do the character justice. Be your Batman look-a-like a sj/sr scrapper, a ma/dark stalker, or a something/devices blaster, he's likely getting reported.

-Costume; let's face it, as robust as our costume creator is, sometimes it lacks that one little detail, won't let two specific (and otherwise perfect) pieces be used at the same time, or the patterns fall just short of what you'd like. An Energy/energy blaster by the name of Iron Guy with a red/yellow colour scheme and the jewel chest detail is more likely to get me to report him than an Energy/energy blaster by the name of Iron Guy who looks like a medieval knight in grey plate armour.

-Name; For starters, obvious spelling mistakes to get around filters are obvious. If two other criteria match, no amount of "supah mahn", "Super Man 2.0", or "xXSupermanXx" are going to save you. Using a nickname of the character like "The Man of Steel" might earn you a bit more respect, but won't save you from the report button.


This three strikes system helps allow for things like tribute/cosplay costumes, and names of things that existed long before DC/Marvel/(insert company here) used it for one of their characters (Kyriani had mentioned an example using Pheonix).

Despite all of the above, if the character you are copying is not familiar to me, I can't report it. Heck, if it's sufficiently obscure (Like a character from a Magic: the Gathering card)- I, personally, would probably just let it go.

And just because these are what I go by doesn't mean that someone can't report you for less. And the GMs who look into the reports usually tend to err on the side of caution. In some cases you might even be able to escalate and have your name restored (I seem to recall stories on the forums of Jim Butcher running around as one of his characters from The Dresden Files, getting generic'd and then then having the name restored on the basis that he owns the character. And one about someone who got generic'd for having the same name as an NPC, but had the name restored because the character existed before the NPC in question was even added to the game).

Storm summoning would mostly work... Although if you want the 'sand' to be a yellow/orange, you're out of luck for snowstorm/freezing rain. This is also the case for the entire Ice Manipulation set, as all the yellows have removed from the pallet, so you're stuck with a more red/purple-ish brown.

I'm not too sold on the colouring Ice powers to make them sand... Many powers would work, but the shields and pet have a rather distinctive crystaline motif that I'm not sure goes well with a sand theme.

Other than Storm, Radiation works... And Time manipulation is an interestiong option - the visuals could work for sand, and you have the whole "sands of time" angle to exploit (although may require a seperate unlock later on if you go premium)

Good news! Maneuvers provides defense to all vectors (type and positional), so yes, you have 6.75% smashing/lethal (3% to everything else).

But type/position do not stack; the game goes by whichever is higher. in this case, any attack that lists smashing or lethal will go up against the 6.75, but without smashing/lethal, the attack rolls against the 3% from maneuvers.

If you had 20 ranged defence, 10 melee, 5 AoE, and 3% against all types (except Smashing/lethal which is 6.75%) - you'd have;

20 def against a lethal/range
10 def against a smashing/melee
6.75 def against a Smashing/AoE
5 def against a energy/AoE
and against an oddball positionless Psi attack, you'd have 3 def.

EDIT: figured it would be sufficiently answered by the time I hit submit, but I had to confirm Maneuvers wasn't just positional defense. Was 95% sure, but the 5% usually bites me in the ***.

I find Soldiers of Arachnos to be fun, although the first 20 levels before you get to pick between crab/wolf takes a bit of patience. Personally, I like the crab side of things, although the mandatory spiderleg backpack can be a bit.... limiting... costume-wise.

Once you get it up and running in the higher levels there's so much possibility! I've got an ALL AoE attack chain (two cones, three targeted), 30-40 resist to everything, another 30-ish defence, and a full complement of 6 nearly-perma spider-bot pets. But if you want something more single-target or melee, those are also options!

And best of all, get a couple soldiers/widows on the same team and the stacked leadership buffs can give everyone on the team nearly capped defenses, a decent damage buff, and increased tohit!

I have a problem with the lightning beams in that they don't always all show up. I tend to inevitably get killed by an invisible one. I figure it might have to do with my particle count settings and just how many powers are going off on my screen just before they hit. :/

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Costume_Sets
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Unlockable_Costume_Pieces
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invention_Made_Costumes
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Veteran_Reward_Costumes
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Category:Costumes

Can't necessarily find pictures for everything in the wiki, but there's a fair amount.

And you can always try searching the News Archive... for example, the January 10 announcement about the 'now available' VIP Fire and Ice set. They tend to provide pictures for stuff like that.

I'll just throw this out there, but /devices for blasters does fairly well with a basic SO build. Devices isn't a powerhouse set that you can integrate into your attack chain, but if you're not in any hurry you can kill just about anything shy of arch-villains and giant monsters with zero effort.

While I have less experience with it, I'm guessing Traps is in a relatively similar boat.

I have an alt-account that's premium, without IO access. And honestly, switching back to SO's? Plays more or less the same.

The initial cost of fully SO-ing a character was a bit of a shock (it had an IO build, so switched to build 2 and remade with SO's in mind), it's been a while, and I forgot how much the darned things cost (Note to self - next time collect SO's from Trial runs on main account). The slotting is a little different; Some powers that only had 5 slots now required 6 to work at the level I wanted them to with SOs, and those slots had to come from somewhere...

Ultimately, any powerset combos will do just fine with single origins, you may have to adjust your play-style a bit, and some power-picks may be a bit different.


As for any comments about gimping yourself made earlier in the thread - What? with that kind of logic we should all be playing the FOTM build, all with the exact same slotting, and maxed out on enhancement boosters. anything less is just pointless. *eyeroll* This isn't that kind of game. Can you min/max to get your Rattata in the top percentage of Rattata? Yes. do you need to in order to beat the elite 4, or nearly anything the game throws at you? no.

Today's lesson is, don't be Youngster Joey. He's an annoying little prat.

Another strategy not yet mentioned in this thread (EDIT; I need to read better, SerialBeggar mentioned it) it to just simply not rescue them. A little counter-intuitive, I know, but you just run past the hostage situation and come back once all the other objectives have been fulfilled. They'll still be there ready to be rescued, and you don't have to baby-sit their stupid ***** for nearly as long.

That said, I really wish you could hand these allied combat NPCs inspirations. If they're low on health and you don't have any healing abilities, they're screwed. Or give them Rest and only allow the AI to use it when the player they're following uses it. Sometimes going solo I need to rest up a bit, but the ally following me just stands there and watches. This would be the perfect opportunity for some accelerated health regen on NPCs.

I guessing it's a few things that contribute;

-A holdover from when grenades could be wasted.
-If a badge run is being performed, having one person hold all the grenades helps ensure that one person can't ruin it for everyone else. Insisting on this behavior on non-badge runs helps establish this as a normal activity, so there is less resistance on actual badge runs.
-Helps with certain activities, like keeping one or two gates open to get the extra astral from defeating enough adds.
-some people may just have control issues.

A couple reasons for this of the top of my head;

-Occasionally they reorganize all the costume pieces, changing up their index values and such (or in a more extreme example, I believe they somewhat recently combined the 'masks with hair' options in with the general, as there was little difference between the two in the first place. Or moving tails to the bottom section rather than lumping them in with belts). Whenever this happens, it does not affect your costume out in the world, but open up the editor interface and suddenly things that are in conflict revert to a more default state. It does keep the colour selections, so all you have to do is re-find the correct costume pieces.

-Less likely but still possible is that some legacy costume parts have been removed, or certain combinations of parts is no longer allowed (STILL kicking myself for blindly customizing my fire blasts on one costume where I had the Magic Bolero+Wings ) In these cases, you have to choose between editing the costume, or losing some parts that are no longer possible.

Keep in mind that in both cases, backing out of the editor instead of accepting changes will not alter your costume.

As for restoring the costume, your best bet is to take a screenshot or two of your costume, and then either set CoH to windowed mode and re-size so you have the screenshot and the editor in view, or just have both open and alt-tab between the two. (I often find this is also the best way to put enhancements back after a respec)

I'll throw my hat in with the "do what ever you want, but if your 'concept' build omits certain key things that the general strategy would require of you" (most often tanks who are unable to do so), Then I'll let you do your thing.

However I do tend to comment on builds when people start to kvetch about one thing or another... Like on this one AE farm I was on way-back (Freak LTs in massive spawns due to defend objectives)... Tank was doing his thing, then a lvl 50 Claws/SR scrapper starts moaning that it's impossible for him to stay upright, so he'll just lay on the floor... Well, My Claws/SR is holding her own, so I look at his build... sure enough, many key reflexes powers are missing, and in their place is as many powers as is humanly possible to get from all the travel power pools. in some ways I kinda miss some of the hilarity the AE babies brought with them.