Tyrrano

So if I have a toon that's been idle for a year and happen to log in during a zone event, that whole year of credit goes poof?

That's ... stinky. :P

Pretty much same as mine - the 5000 has a slightly slower processor and GPU. AFAIK the case is the same. I found a guy in St. Louis that reflowed the GPU for me after it failed. It was a couple hundred dollars IIRC, but that included shipping it to him and back, and I was really happy with the work he did.

Coolers really have to match up with the vents to do any good. My inlet is in close to the center and it blows out the right side, so I need a cooler that blows up hard in the center. I've played a lot of CoX on this laptop over the 3 years I've had it. I just don't want to have to reflow it again. I'm actually thinking I'll cut some more vents into the service covers just to get some more air flowing thru it. I think these new drivers are helping some, too.

It just came back from being fixed, so it's really clean right now. Just upgraded to the latest Forceware build. Before that my frame rate was around 4 FPS in a hospital...

Yeah, this particular one has a 'heat pipe' that is supposed to draw heat from the GPU and northbridge. Not a great solution. :/ I've been looking for a really good cooler.

Trust me, after an hour or so this laptop is too hot to use on your lap. I use the dining table or other hard surface.

Yeah, this one has been known to get that hot after a couple of hours of CoX. Good to know that a good cooler can make that much difference. I think I'll stay off CoX until I can get a good cooler under it.

Thanks all! As always, this forum is most helpful.

Cool. Learn something new, etc.

They have separate drivers for each separate video card, separated further by operating system. THey had drivers for old Quadro cards and all sorts of stuff, so I'm sure they have one for your chipset as well.

And thanks for that link, Healix, I'll try it from there.

[edit] OK, this is a bit strange. Healix's link provides a single 'Forceware' nvidia driver. Nvidia's site had separate drivers for each card, and they were labelled 'Verde Notebook' drivers in my case. Driver build number is the same.

Nah, I'm not the type to do that. Was just being (not very) funny. Although I don't really play that character much TBH...

Look for +defense - far better mitigation than adding more healing anyway.

Whoever told you that is a moron. All enhancements are subject to ED.

Actually, perhaps they mean that the set bonuses are not subject to ED, which is correct. With Set bonuses, you just have the 'Rule of Five' to deal with. (Can only have 5 bonuses of the same value, i.e., if you have 6 sets that give +5% ACC, the sixth +5% doesn't count.)

Don't short-change Empathy. It's buffs are *awesome*. An Emp/* with well-slotted Fortitude, Recovery and Regeneration Auras, and Adrenaline Boost can make a big difference for any team. Just stay away from the 'I M heelorz' crowd...

I recently respec'ed my main (Ice/Emp 'troller) and skipped the rez power, and dropped the extra slots on the heals. I use them so rarely I probably would've skipped Healing Aura if I could...

No, but it is a debuff power. I think only the debuff is enhanceable. The heal is a 'side effect'.

The moral here is, some set IO bonuses are going to be somewhat wasted on specific characters. Sounds like this is a melee character - you'll get more benefit from chasing +regen bonuses than +heal bonuses.

A word here on 'hunt' missions. Veteran players often do skip these. I like to recommend that new players go ahead and do the hunts on their first character or two. It's a good way to see the zones. While each zone has parts that are boring (Skyway anyone?) there are some really interesting areas in all zones, and doing the hunts is a good way to enjoy the 'outdoors' and get a feel for the City.

When you've had your fill of seeing the sights, do what I do. There's a feature to 'auto-complete' missions. Each character can use it once in three days. The intent is to be able to skip missions that are too difficult or bugged - I use it to skip hunt missions.

Give us a hint, then? I've thought about fixing this but don't mess around with my trays enough to dig for it...

I met Mr. Doohan briefly in the mid 80's and occasionally wondered how that happened. I never noticed it in watching any of the movies/TV shows.

It says a lot that he shook hands with his right and obviously had no self-consciousness about it.

You really shouldn't use it less - That power is really a good debuff that just happens to have a decent PBAoE Heal as a side effect.

Oh, I'm not mad. Just your previous posts seem defensive, and I thought you might benefit from hearing as simply as possible how others would interpret your posts, so that you could understand why you're getting 'piled on'. It's easy to take these discussions personally, but I try hard not to. Not always successfully, mind.

Others might indeed prefer 'your' targeting, but I'd be willing to bet that a large majority are used to the 'standard' targeting and would be inconvenienced by any change.

Allowing the system to be flexible enough to work the way you remember it, while still defaulting to the 'standard' behavior would be perfectly fine, *if* it could be done without introducing more bugs and without impacting other fixes and deadlines imposed on the devs.

Personally, I'm still unconvinced that it was any kind of intentional 'fix'. I don't pretend to know how your version of the game could function differently from everyone else's version. But whatever was causing that discrepancy might not have been in the game software at all, or could have been a result of the way your machine was interpreting some function call that was revised to fix something completely different. Finding the real cause might not be a simple matter, or might not even be possible given the staff's manpower.

Anyway, it's unfortunate that something has changed in the way the game functions for you that you perceive as negative. It's also unfortunate that getting it changed back is probably a 'slim and none' proposition at best. I'd suggest rereading the thread to get the 'best ideas' that might allow you to get back as close as possible to your previous function, and make that work for you.

No worries, hon. They *used* to unlock at 50, but recently that was lowered to 20...

Meanwhile, other 'things' are simply not available redside, at *any* price. Just not enough volume. The merger will partially alleviate that little problem, and I for one am pleased as the proverbial punch(voke).

Sam, you don't happen to read Harry Dresden, do you?

Gah, you say that like 50 is one-foot-in-the-grave territory! I'm 43 and I'm pretty sure I'm not dead yet!

*slinks away, crestfallen, to delete his Emp/Elec...*