The_Spad_EU

Tanks are much more useful in uncoordinated PUGs than SG teams, for example, so it's not really fair to compared "planned" teams to normal ones in terms of AT requirements.

Sometimes you need an $AT on the team, sometimes you don't, sometimes having $AT on the team speeds things up, sometimes it slows them down. One of the great things about CoX is that you *don't* have to rely on the Tank/Heal/DPS combo in teams; if you can make it work well as a team then there's very little that you can't do with any combination.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

A PRNG on the scale that this game works with needs a large, randomly distributed sample taken over a moderate period of time before you could even start to draw any conclusions about drop rates. You also need to take account of all drops, not just Incarnate shards as being eligible for shard drops doesn't change (AFAIK) your chances of getting any other drops in addition.

Question for USians with Beta/Test access; does Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustenance benefit from other team members in leagues or is it capped at 7 teammates? I suspect I know the answer, but it just occurred to me and I'm curious.

Admittedly this is from a human form perspective, but my approach is usually to stealth in, toggle on Inky Aspect, Eclipse, Mire, Gravity Well on a minion, Unchain Essence, Stygian Circle, jump back, gravitic emanation, mop up, raise pet, Stygian Circle again.

Just make sure that if you're dealing with Master Illusionists that you time your alpha strike so that they've just come out of Phase Shift, otherwise they'll avoid your attack and batter you with impunity.

Crikey, someone else who uses Seamonkey; I thought I was alone in the world

How do you mean you're struggling to work out the syntax?

It looks like it's just: name,x,y,(width*scale),(height*scale),scale,colour ,z,docked,visible

It's very Chromey in its UI design (mind you, so is FF4) which I don't really like. If I want to turn off all the window chrome I'll press F11, otherwise I quite like all my toolbars 'n' stuff

Seems fast enough though.

I went through a total respec of my Ice/Fire a week or so ago; you might find the info useful: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=254594

It's cheapish; no purples, some of the sets do have enhancements in the 10-20mil range, the set for Tough was the most expensive to acquire IIRC.

What it comes down to is that if you don't have Regen/RES debuffs, massive damage output, MM pets, holds/stuns or long range damage you can't take him down.

If you can't down him before he spawns a 2nd clone then you have to start going after the clones or his regen is too high. By the time you've dealt with the clones, he's back to full health and you're back to square one. FYI he can spawn up to 26 clones

So far I've managed to solo him on my Ice/Fire tank, Warshade, Fire/Rad controller, Mind/Psi Dom and Merc/Dark MM - everything else has failed. It doesn't help that he cheats and his clone power doesn't need any Endurance to activate, so my Elec/Kin Defender's usual trick of keeping everything nearby at 0 End was worthless.

Will we at least get a free Global handle change if ours is changed?

The only problem with CIT is that it doesn't provide full character details (as it's primarily focused on badges) so if you want something with, say, full power/slotting info then you're out of luck. Not saying that CIT isn't good - I find it very useful - just that's it's not as complete as it could be.

Using Facebook as a model for doing anything is a bad idea from the start; I'm not saying things couldn't be improved (Where's our bloody online character DB thing that was being "worked on" before I left 8 issues ago?, for example) but trying to (inevitably badly) emulate existing services is never a good way to go about things as you just end up a) playing catch up and b) looking like you've ripped them off.

Well sure, if you stack the deck so that you've got a capped number of mobs around you that don't do any mez attacks and regen fast enough that they survive for the whole battle for you to mire/eclipse off, but that's not *really* representative or normal play is it

Oh, and that wasn't even level or even con (Unless they're Alpha slotted and hiding the buff icons, in which case they're just even-level; even-con would be White )

It's a tricky one. If I take Penumbral Shield then it helps when Eclipse isn't up (or there aren't enough mobs to cap), but I do lose the Recharge/Acc/Damage Buff from the Quasar set bonuses in exchange for some Mez resists and a small +HP.

TBH, even if I don't use Quasar much, I think it'll be more beneficial to the build simply because of the set bonuses.

OK, take 2; I've swapped out Penumbral Shield for Quasar and added a few slots from Hasten and Health to round things out. I did look at swapping out Super Speed, but that would only leave me with 2 slots to put into Quasar. It does mean that without Eclipse I'm basically defenceless against Cold/Fire/Toxic, but Eclipse will be perma so it's not the end of the world; I'll need 5 mobs to cap C/F/T, 3 for S/L and just 2 for E/N.

If I don't take Quasar then I'm left with a spare slot that I could put in a couple of places for some bonus Toxic RES.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Negative Energy: Level 50 Science Warshade
Primary Power Set: Umbral Blast
Secondary Power Set: Umbral Aura
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Shadow Bolt -- Dam%(A)
Level 1: Absorption -- ResKB(A), Status(7), Psi/Status(7)
Level 2: Gravity Shield -- ResDam/EndRdx(A), ResDam/Rchg(11), ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(13), ResDam(13)
Level 4: Gravimetric Snare -- Acc/Rchg(A), EndRdx/Immob(17), Immob/Rng(19), Acc/Immob/Rchg(19), Acc/Immob(23)
Level 6: Shadow Blast -- Acc/Dmg(A), Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Build%(11), Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), Dmg/EndRdx(25), Dmg/Rchg(25)
Level 8: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(9)
Level 10: Combat Jumping -- Rchg+(A)
Level 12: Sunless Mire -- Acc/Dmg(A), Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Dmg/Rchg(29), Acc/Rchg(29)
Level 14: Shadow Cloak -- Rchg+(A)
Level 16: Dark Detonation -- Acc/Dmg(A), Dmg/EndRdx(17), Dmg/Rng(27), Dmg/Rchg(31), Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42)
Level 18: Gravity Well -- Acc/Dmg(A), Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), Dmg/EndRdx(36), Dmg/Rchg(36), Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 20: Twilight Shield -- ResDam(A), ResDam/EndRdx(21), ResDam/Rchg(21), ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 22: Stygian Circle -- EndMod(A), EndMod/Rchg(40), EndMod/Acc/Rchg(42), Acc/Rchg(43), EndMod/Acc(43), EndMod/EndRdx(43)
Level 24: Orbiting Death -- Dmg(A), Acc/Rchg(45), Dmg/Rchg(45), Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48)
Level 26: Gravitic Emanation -- Acc/Rchg(A), EndRdx/Stun(33), Acc/EndRdx(34), Stun/Rng(34), Acc/Stun/Rchg(34)
Level 28: Inky Aspect -- Stun(A), Stun/Rchg(31), Acc/Stun/Rchg(31), Acc/Rchg(33), EndRdx/Stun(33)
Level 30: Unchain Essence -- Dmg(A), Dmg/Rchg(46), Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), Acc/Rchg(48), Dmg/EndRdx(48)
Level 32: Dark Extraction -- Acc/Rchg(A), Acc/Dmg(37), Dmg/EndRdx(37), Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40), EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(42)
Level 35: Super Speed -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 38: Eclipse -- Acc/Rchg(A), Acc/Rchg(39), ResDam-I(39), ResDam/Rchg(39), ResDam/Rchg(40)
Level 41: Stygian Return -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 44: Quasar -- Dmg(A), Acc/Rchg(45), Dmg/Rchg(50), Acc/Dmg/Rchg(50), Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 47: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 49: Acrobatics -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 50: Spiritual Radial Boost
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Acc-I(A)
Level 1: Dark Sustenance
Level 1: Shadow Step -- EndRdx(A), Rng(5), Stlth(5)
Level 1: Sprint -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 10: Shadow Recall -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(3)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(3)
------------

It means you can't combine them like you can with TO/DO/SOs to make + and ++ enhancements. i.e. You can't take 2 Lv50 Heal IOs and combine them into a Lv50+ Heal IO.

I'll look at dropping the extra slots out of Health and Hasten; Stygian Circle was mostly slotted that way to get the recharge bonuses, but I'll take a look at the endmod sets and see what I can do from that point of view.

The Defence is largely a side effect of other set bonuses and pre-req powers (Combat Jumping to get acrobatics) rather than a specific intent, hence the lack of the global +3%.

I will revisit Eclipse as you're right about slotting it more efficiently, but this build is a partial holdover from ~2.5 years ago when I last played (Been back just shy of a month), hence some of the odd slotting.

As for Quasar, I never used to like it, which is why I didn't take it, but that was back when I didn't enjoy playing my WS much at all, so it's something that I'm considering but I'm not sure where to fit it in as I like SS for the stealth component, Stygian Return is pretty handy and Acrobatics is nice for the extra mez protection.

Back to the drawing board!