UberGuy

No, it was supposed to be fixed. Nothing was supposed to get over 90% resists unless it was an explicit special ability.

If she still was, it was effectively a bug. However, "just" 90% resists would not be a bug.

Heh. You are an observant Siphonaptera.

Without this end date rushing upon us, I'm sure I would have been happy to leave the bull to others more prone to grappling. The decision to stick it out and achieve as much as I can before the lights go out pretty much has everything to do with that.

It's definitely bittersweet - it's cool to be the person forming the leagues that pull this stuff stuff off (recognizing fully how meaningless the leader is without good players helping), yet it's sad that I (and all of us) will lose direct contact with those achievements before long.* And yet, without that Sword of Damocles out there, I don't think I would be running this stuff at all, and so wouldn't have that memory to cherish. It's weird.

* Barring a miracle by the community or some other investment, which is still technically possible, even if we lose access to the game for a while while it unfolds.

You guys are welcome. After all, you're answering the call. Me forming this stuff wouldn't mean anything if people didn't help out.

I rather doubt it, but I can sort of see why they added it. Once upon a time, people definitely looked for street sweeping teams. There was a time in the game where that was unquestionably the best XP available outside of outright farms, which I think not nearly as many people knew about as do today.

I don't remember exactly when the "Looking for X" modes were added without going and looking for patch notes (I didn't think they were there at release), but if it was around those days of street sweeping's heyday, it would have made a lot of sense.

Street sweeping rapidly faded in popularity after the changes in mission rewards, halving of debt in instances, and the introduction of the original five "Notoriety" settings (Heroic, Tenacious, Rugged, Unyielding and Invincible).

Why?

Consider that players who played and kept playing other characters, but who abandoned Blasters, might have been compelled to keep playing blasters, giving them more interest in playing. And there are strong indications that there were more of these players out there than people who loved Blasters being "hard mode".

Also, imagine players who enjoyed blasters and not much else, but who abandoned blasters, would therefore have abandoned the game. Had Blasters not been "hard mode" compared to other ATs, such players might instead stick around. Retired players who had abandoned Blasters might have come back to play them. While this sounds like a very niche set of conditions, there being players who preferred Blasters being "hard mode", at least to the degree they have been so far, is definitely a niche group. Which would win out on net player change?

Even in the absolute worst case scenario of only losing players over such a change, I have absolute confidence that the number of people who would have left over such changes would have been exceedingly an small percentage of even CoH's relatively small player base. I'm not eager to see anyone leave, but I think causing a very small percentage of people to leave by making a change most of the remaining players will enjoy is worth the cost.

And in any case, I really don't see what our current circumstances have to do with this, because I do think any hypothetical loss of players here would have been invisible in the normal churn and loss already in play.

Of those where at least one prisoner escapes, I would estimate between 10% and 20% of BAFs on Justice let just one escape. After one gets away, the "skilled" players or those with more "plussed" characters move to reinforce the area where something escaped.

I could probably pull stats from my own logs. I already have a trial parser. I just need it to look for an Astral reward after the last prisoner defeat message and before the first message defeating anything else. I've been on well over 1000 BAFs, so it wouldn't be a terrible sample size.

It happens enough that I've commented to people about how it's frustrating to miss the Astral by just one prisoner - especially when it happens near the end. If five or ten get away, you're so not even close don't even worry about it. (Of course, much more than 10 and you start to worry about failing.)

They do. Same with bullet casings. They lay there, and if you run through them, use certain powers around them (such as Super Speed, Foot Stomp, Fire Ball), or plop a Singularity on them, and they'll scatter, follow you, whatever.

Easiest thing to use if you have it is the /e throwpetals emote from the wedding pack. If I stand there and use that, I end up with a scattering of petals on the ground, and I can whip them up as above.

Edit: I'll have to test to see if this changed, and maybe things are now falling through the ground instead of on it. I was doing the throwpetals thing just a few nights back, though, on the raised area immediately outside of the hospital in Dark Astoria. (We were forming a trial, and people were bored.)

Hah!

It may be better if the game really does end in two months, as I will now imagine "bow-chika-bow-bow" every time that comes up.

My CoH characters live in the CoH world. My favorites all weave some part of the game lore into their back stories - its a big part of what makes them feel relevant to me. Because of that, they don't make sense anywhere else. Yeah, I could create a variation of them somewhere else, but they wouldn't be the same, because their backstory would have to change.

It'd be a bit like transplanting Batman to Marvel Comics and having to leave Robin, Commissioner Gordon, Wayne Manor and his history with Superman behind. Sure, he'd be recognizable, but he wouldn't be intact.

Oh yeah, it's going to be so awesome when mainstream commercial software doesn't even run locally. See: Google Docs, MS Office 365 (depending on version) and Adobe Creative Cloud.

Oh, you didn't want that upgrade? Sorry.

Back when the Vanguard accolade boosted KB on the Nemesis Staff veteran power. (Which was back when it was a veteran power.)

Since I don't really know either of your posting styles well enough, I can't tell if this is serious or not. But even if it is serious, I still agree with him, even if it's not for reasons of shared experience.

I only have one Tanker. He's been stuck at 43 for years now because I got into other characters more, but back when I still actively played him, I saw a team that was running the original Maria Jenkins arc advertising one open spot. I wanted to join them for the AV progress so that I could unlock Portal Jockey on my Tanker.

However, the team was advertising specifically for a Tanker. (This was long before Going Rogue, so a Brute wasn't an option.) I didn't want to sign up for that knowing I lacked Taunt, so I didn't reply. However, they kept advertising, apparently not getting any hits, so I finally responded to the person saying I was on a Tanker and would like to join, but I also warned him I had no Taunt, and would not be offended if he'd rather find someone who had it. The leader said he didn't mind and invited me.

Knowing they were hoping for a meatshield, I made a point of being as "tanky" as I could, running around and smacking stuff in an effort to keep them PO'd thanks to Gauntlet. That seemed to go well in terms of my soaking aggro, though I sometimes missed being able to actually Taunt when we were fighting fliers or really anything I couldn't readily reach in melee.

When the team finally disbanded after completing the arc, several players on the team made a point of complimenting my tanking given my communicated lack of Taunt.

Like I said up-thread, I have no illusions about whether a Tanker with Taunt paying at least as much attention to aggro control as I was doing would have done a better job. And, trust me, I almost never play the tank - I am sure others can do it better than I did, even without Taunt. With Taunt, they probably could have done at least as good as I did with less manic play needed to hold aggro. But based on that experience, which involved what used to be fairly top-end content outside of raids (and later, trials), I think it shows that Taunt is very nice to have, but not necessary. (Again, outside of Hamidon raids and maybe iTrials.)

I don't think that's true. I think that, like Arcanaville said, it was always based on some fraction of your current level. I do believe that fraction changed, we also got 1/2 debt in missions. But I don't ever remember it being limited only to machine representation.

But I won't swear it wasn't so. I just can't remember it being like that.

PS: Here's the seemingly relevant info and history on debt that's listed on ParagonWiki, for what that's worth.

• A character can have a maximum of five full defeats' worth of debt.

Historical

• Level at which debt starts was raised to level 10 in Issue 5
• Debt from being defeated in a mission was halved in Issue 5
• Debt was lowered another 20% during Issue 11

Edit: Not from the wiki, but I poked another old timer and he said he thought it was originally capped at 10 deaths. This aligns perfectly with the remembrance of the cap being 1.1M at 50. The current cap at 50 is 440,000. That's only 80% of the pre-I11 cap, which would have been 550,000 at 5 deaths. 10 deaths would double that and be 1.1M.

Edit 2: He's right. It changed in I6.

I'm with the Hamster. While I think most people do look askance at a Tanker without Taunt, mine didn't have it until Inherent Fitness, and for the same reason - I mostly played him solo.

IMO, with the advent of the Gauntlet mechanic, an attentive Tanker could be a pretty good meat shield even without it in standard content. You could certainly be a better meatshield with it, but this game is easy enough for the most part that "better" really doesn't mean that much.

So I would forgive you this confession.

If you wanted to be able to manage aggro in some of the game's more challenging content, such as Hamidon raids or iTrials, then yes, you probably needed a decently slotted Taunt.

Other than one particular crusader who claimed otherwise here on the forums, I never met anyone who thought Confront was important. Most people I talked to or read opinions of on it considered it a wasted power pick at worst and a set bonus mule at best. Most of those I met who had Confront took it for concept reasons. I'm being completely literal when I say I believe I saw a Scrapper with Taunt less than 10 times in my 8+ years here. It might have even been less than 5 times, but I am less confident that's true.

So for this confession I grin and tell you no one cared.