Thunder Knight

I was thinking of a MA/ Brute yesterday. I was watching a video of an old Commodore 64 martial arts game, where the player is constantly chased by two characters, one of which is a large green sumo wrestler who has all the characters' moves, and was sad I couldn't make a MA/ Brute like that. (I don't know whether the forums' "no talking about other games!" rule has exceptions for games that old, so I leave the game nameless)

Anyway, I wouldn't mind if they were to just add alternate kick animations to Super Strength, rather than port the entire moveset.

I love the "Blam! Pow! Crash!" packaging, too. Because nothing says "strong, modern woman" like superhero cliches that had become jokes fifty years ago.

Just wanted to pop into say.. thanks for pointing me towards Recluse's Victory. I kept meaning to get the Oroboros Portal power, but I'm always on my way to do something else when I ran into people, and just plain forgot to ask.

I hopped into Recluse's Victory, got the Globetrotter Badge, and got out again with a shiny new power, 1-2-3.

I... don't like this idea. And I don't think the comparison to Adam West's Batman or Brave and the Bold is entirely accurate. They're more skewed towards comedy, but they're still superhero shows. Heroes, villains, and the fate of the city (or the world) at stake. (And B&tB, for all its goofiness, usually sets the stakes really high, and it also has its own episodes that are really serious - "Chill of the Night", anyone?)

This, on the other hand, looks like a complete genre-shift, from superheroics to high school comedy, only with Batman villains randomly shoehorned into the stereotypical high school roles, so it'd have to do a lot to get me to watch it. (I'm not saying it's impossible, but it'd take some clever writing to overcome the premise for me)

And all that said, I really like these character designs.

I'd just like to have the pieces available on more than one costume slot on my SoA, so I can have one costume with the regular Wolf armor, one with the Crab/Bane armor, and the rest with non-Arachnos costumes.

For magic types, a variation of the old Indian Rope Trick immediately comes to mind. You literally anchor the line to nothing, and then swing (instead of climb).

And since highly-advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic, just technobabble up an explanation as to why you can do the same without magic. ("Well you see, Timmy, I've anchored the end of the rope to a specific point in the space-time continuum, which is even better than anchoring it to a solid surface!" "Gee whiz, Mr. Lizard!")

I think the whole point of Longbow (from a gameplay perspective, not storyline) is that they're supposed to be generic troops, above local police but not cut out to be full-blown superheroes.

As I said recently in a very similar topic (might have been the same TC, actually), most Longbow minions, lieutenants, and Officer bosses are essentially just AR/Dev or DP/Dev Blasters with various Pool Powers to supplement them (Stealth for SpecOps, Flight for Eagles, Tough for Officers, etc), and the various Wardens specifically use heroic AT power combinations. Except for maybe one or two unique attacks, there's nothing that can't be done already with the current AT combinations, and it's easy enough to throw together a Longbow-like costume in the costume creator.

I should play with my AR/Traps Corrupter (a Longbow defector, still wearing a dirty Longbow costume) some more. He's only level 4.

Only tangentially related, but I'm also sorry for the change in i18 that took away music on the loading screen. (In i17, which was the first issue I played, whatever sound effects and music were playing when you started to zone continued playing through the loading screen; since i18 it just does a rapid fade-out to silence, and I don't like silence).

It's the "I don't like silence" part that fits here, leading into...

I know some other games have an option to keep the background music continually looping instead of just playing once (and a lot of the CoH music is clearly designed to loop - many of the music files have names with "loop" in them). That would be the easiest solution to the "too much silence" problem.

Also, I've been playing video games for a long long time. So when I think "background music in a video game", rather than anything ambient, I think of things like this or this or even this. Oh, and boss music. Definitely boss music.

Anyway, my point was... I hate silence.

Warshades are specifically atoners who are trying to make up for past misdeeds by willingly merging with a human and using their combined powers to right wrongs. Making them evil would defeat the entire point.

Also, "VEAT" stands for "Villain Epic Archetype", so there's no such thing as a Hero VEAT

Looking over the various Longbow powersets, there's really little Longbow does that's in any way unique. The minions, lieutenants, and Officer bosses are essentially AR/Dev or DP/Dev Blasters, while Wardens just emulate other already-existing Hero ATs and powerset combinations (En/En Blaster, Storm/Elec Defender, Inv/SS Tanker, Mind/Emp Controller, etc) with regular Power Pools (Flight, Leadership, and Fighting) for the rest.

(Also, um... http://boards.cityofheroes.com/forumdisplay.php?f=603 ?)

There's actually four new powersets (Kinetic Melee and Electric Control being the other two), and all of them can be taken by any applicable AT (Hero, Villain, or Pretorian), as long as you have Going Rogue on the account.

My two highest characters are an Elec/Invuln Brute and a Stone/Stone Tanker. Even aside from the powerset differences, they feel very different in terms of pacing and priorities.

In fact, I was struggling a lot with my Tanker when I was trying to play him solo like my Brute. I was treating him as another Brute with slightly less damage and slightly more defense, rushing from spawn to spawn trying to take them down as quickly as possible, and the playstyle wasn't working. Even with Stamina and End reductions up the wazoo, I kept running out of Endurance way too quickly, and even with Bruising, he didn't feel like he was doing much damage.

Finally, I had an epiphany - even without Granite, I'm soft-capped to S/L/En/N/Psi (with the appropriate toggles on), Rooted is keeping my HP up, and Mud Pots is damaging everyone around me even if I do nothing. I can just stand there and let attacks bounce off of me while I catch my second wind, and finish off enemies at leisure. Heck, I don't even need to worry about the Minions at all most of the time, I can just deal with the Lts. and Bosses and mission objectives and kill Minions only if I really want to (for drops, for example). It's almost like using Stealth, except instead of the enemies ignoring me, I ignore them.

Meanwhile, my Brute can just rush from spawn to spawn, tearing through them like paper while taking a little damage here and there, but usually not enough to worry him in the long run. He's a pure attacker, taking down everyone in his path to get through the mission. And when he does get in trouble, Unstoppable and/or Dull Pain come into play, giving him more reason to rush before they wear off (and, in the case of Unstoppable, before the crash hits).

Of course, their team strategies are a little different, especially the Tanker's, where I don't so much ignore enemies as just hold them in place for others to whittle down, but the same idea still applies - I am defensive, not offensive. I am a rock, I am an island.

I don't know if the differences would feel that severe if I had a Stone/Stone Brute. (After all, I know that Stone is much better at ST while the Elec is better at AoE) I'm planning to try it someday, to see how it plays. I suspect, though, I'd still be playing him more like my other Brute than my Tanker. There's a reason that they're called "Primary" and "Secondary" power sets, after all.

I actually made a WM/EA Brute long before I first saw this topic. She's a tiny bespectacled lion-girl who hits people with a shovel. (I was sad to note that there wasn't a metallic "clang" when I did so, but ah well)

... she was not, as you might guess, intended to be serious in any way. She never even got to the Trial account level cap before abandoning her (I think I ran out of time), but she's still there on Justice, waiting.

Though, at level 41, both the Scrapper and Stalker get access to Weapon Mastery APP, which completes the Batman concept nicely.

If you have Going Rogue, then a MA/Nin Stalker is a little closer to the concept, because /Ninjitsu gives access to some gadgets (Caltrops, Smoke Grenades, Blinding Powder) much sooner, and Assassin's Strike to strike from the darkness and KO one opponent immediately is so Batman-like.

I'll also put in my two cents. I played many a trial account that started in Praetoria, and it really is more difficult than the regular Hero and Villain starting areas.

I routinely got thrashed by Ghouls if I tried to stand and fight, regardless of AT and powersets, and I somehow managed to get killed by the first group of enemies in Praetor White's first mission while I was playing an Earth/Earth Dominator (and that was hardly my first character, or even my first Dominator). A similar Earth/Earth Dominator in Mercy Isles was much easier to raise.

Keep in mind that, as a Stalker, you don't have to fight everything that moves, especially in the tutorial. Just Hide and run past anything you don't need to fight.

Maybe try a less fragile and more straightforward AT for your first character, like a Brute or Tanker? (Then again, my first two characters were a Blaster and a Mastermind, so I might not have room to talk)

I wonder if this is related to a couple of Mayhem Missions I had where the hero never showed up (one of which also included a jailbreak side mission where Echidna didn't follow me into the elevator).

Depends on which era of the comics. They've changed the explanation for his powers numerous times - the Golden Age Superman was just really durable, but not completely invulnerable (Willpower); the Silver Age Superman was often said to have skin "hardened like steel" (Invulnerability); while the 1990s Superman has the TK field explanation (Energy Aura, though I'd leave out Energy Cloak). Current-day is back to the "super-hard skin" explanation, I believe.

Gobbledygook, if it's Superboy you intend to homage (as opposed to Superman), then his powers were originally a TK field approximating Superman's physical powers, but with many "standard" powers missing - no Heat Vision, no Super Breath, etc - and a vulnerability to fire (I'd actually go with Energy Melee or even Kinetic Melee with Energy Aura for this version). Later he developed full Kryptonian powers (Super Strength/Invulnerability). I don't know what the new YJ cartoon is using as an explanation, since I haven't seen it yet.

So I guess it all depends on which Kryptonian, from which era of comics, and how closely you want to adhere to the original's powerset for the homage.

That exploit was definitely fixed, so no worries on that front.

I'm really liking Inherent Fitness - it let me squeeze in a few more attacks for my tank.

I do wonder why the alternate Electric Blast animations weren't used for Electric Assault (except for Zapp).

My mains aren't level 50 yet, so I can't try out the Incarnate system for a little while.

More exciting details as I think of them.

Invuln, definitely. The "hole" in Psi is a classic Kryptonian weakness (along with magic, but there's no way to represent that here). Add in the Flight PP and Energy Mastery APP (Physical Perfection and pseudo-Heat Vision), and there you go. Season to taste.

I'd probably go with an Inv/SS/EnM Tanker for a heroic Kryptonian, though.

All my characters are built around concepts rather than worrying too much about what the numbers are going to look like 50 levels down the line, so I've actually thought about just this topic for a lot of fictional heroes and villains (super or otherwise).

Congrats to the winners, and thanks for the chance to participate!

All those years of playing KoL will serve me well here.... ahem....

Good guys or bad guys,
It doesn't really matter...
Hitting stuff is fun!

This has happened to me a few times over the past few months, not just post-i18. Going into a mission door will also fix them. (But sometimes, going into an outdoor mission would be what messes them up - in which case I'd just leave the mission and re-enter).

Nice to know about /release_pets, though.

Thanks for the info. I actually managed to mess up BOTH builds of one of my characters, which is why I asked about the respec.

Off to get rid of the Jump pool on my poor Stone/Stone Tanker and get Stamina on him....

Thanks again!

First, a brief introduction: I'm a new player. I played on trial accounts for a couple of months until I got the hang of things, then subscribed my original trial account (which had all the characters I liked on it). Now my mains (Elec/Inv Brute, Robotics/SS MM, St/St Tanker, and a CoA Crab, all on Protector) are all in the 20s, and I'm having a blast.

However, since it was my original account and my original characters, some of their builds are less-than-brilliant. I subscribed shortly before i18, though, so I do have a freespec available.

Anyway, the actual question: do I have one freespec for the whole account, or one per character? I've gotten the impression that it's the latter, but I can't find confirmation anywhere.

Thanks.