UberGuy

Is the invasion not on auto-spawn at this point? I've been logged into Justice for some time and not seen one in either hero or villain event channels.

Edit: They started up again.

Very nice. Thanks for the investment in time this had to represent.

I voted on the one I prefer of the two (it's image #1), but to be honest, I find both overly large. The way the look on your screen, they'll end up badly cropped on my browser.

DamageReceived = DamageApplied * (1 - DamageResistance)

I'm going to shorten that as...

Dr = Da * (1 - R)

So if you have 60% DR and 100 points of damage are applied to you, you suffer 40 points of damage.

ResistanceFinal = ResistanceInitial - (debuff * (1 - ResistanceInitial ))

which I'll shorten to...

R' = R - debuff * (1 - R)

So if you have 60% DR and a 10% DR debuff is applied to you, you resist 60% of the debuff and lose 4%, leaving you with 54% resistance.

Combining...

Dr = Da * (1 - R')
Dr = Da * (1 - (R - (debuff * (1 - R))))

Let's call this Dr(debuff).

Dr(debuff) = Da * (1 - (R - (debuff * (1 - R))))

When "debuff" is zero, this simplifies back down to...

Dr(0) = Da * (1 - R)

So...

Dr(debuff)/Dr(0) = (Da * (1 - (R - (debuff * (1 - R))))) / (Da * (1 - R))

Expanding and simplifying that...

Dr(debuff)/Dr(0) = (Da - Da * (R - debuff * (1 - R))) / (Da * (1 - R))
Dr(debuff)/Dr(0) = (Da - (Da * R - debuff * Da * (1 - R))) / (Da * (1 - R))
Dr(debuff)/Dr(0) = (Da - Da * R + debuff * Da * (1 - R)) / (Da * (1 - R))
Dr(debuff)/Dr(0) = (Da * (1 - R) + debuff * Da * (1 - R)) / (Da * (1 - R))
Dr(debuff)/Dr(0) = 1 + debuff

I play level 50s on double XP weekends. So no, I didn't buy these. But I know people who probably will, and will enjoy them, and I don't begrudge them that. I'm not sure these are a smart idea for the devs to sell, but since they are selling them, more power to the folks who will enjoy them.

But that in itself doesn't make sense.

First, if we're waiting in the queue, it should tell us we're waiting in the queue. It shouldn't deceive us into thinking it's doing something that happens after we've made it through the queue.

But second, even if it is "lying" to us about the queue, sometimes it takes a long time to load the character list at times when is absolutely inconceivable that we are actually waiting in queue, such as late at night on servers that have primarily US populations and show green in the list.

That suggests several possibilities to me.

One is that the message about leaving the queue is actually a bug - backing out of any incomplete log-in might trigger that message, whether or not we are actually in queue.

Another is that we are being processed by the queuing mechanism, but it is actually slow to even get to the point where it checks to see if we even have to wait on a slot on the server. Imagine, for example, if all of our sign-in requests are handed to the queuing system, and it has to handle them one at a time. We might be waiting on other log-ins to process. In this case, exiting counts as "backing out of the queue" even though there isn't a queue of people waiting for slots. (If this is happening, the queuing system may need beefier hardware, or some tuning.)

Personally, I wonder if it isn't because the character list is now tied to our account status. It may be that it has to check the account server for each character, to see if we're allowed to play them based on our status. My understanding is that each shard has caches of this data, so I'm not sure this is a likely cause, but it is something we know changed with Freedom.

There's questions of whether something is useful, and then the question whether its useful enough to warrant buying it. For me, Super Packs aren't useful enough to warrant my spending extra on the random inclusion of things I don't really need. Are they useful? Sure. Useful enough? Not to me. (Note: I am referring only to myself, and making no claims whatever about how valuable Super Packs might be to other players.)

While I like the costume pieces, I'm not willing to spend points on them randomly, despite the high weighting towards getting them. If they make the costume sets in Super Packs available for direct purchase, I'll probably buy them, but don't want them badly enough to pay extra for the bundling with other goods and/or the chance of not getting a piece.

ATOs are available in-game, which I lobbied hard for, because the random factor involved in getting a set them was going to be a lot higher than that for costume pieces.

Store-bought Inspirations? Certainly nicer than standard ones, but I don't need them, as I literally have 50-100 of every T3 inspiration in the game socked away in a base. (Actually 100-200, since I have that on both Hero and Villain sides.)

Unslotters and Enhancement Boosters I do use, but again, I'd rather buy a quantity of them outright. I can also get a pretty good supply of them from Reward Tokens.

And Reward Merits... Well, I'm sure I could put them to some use, but here's a screenshot from a fairly representative example of my eleven level 50 characters.

Are you asking that question in seriousness? Because I think the answer is an unambiguously obvious "no, it is not a defensive set".

Titan Weapons doesn't kill at Plaid Speeds unless it's tricked out. With SOs it becomes pretty good in the mid-20s to low-30s, but is still not as outstanding as it is with IOs, though combining it with certain armor sets improves on when it starts to shine, and to what degree it can shine with or without IOs.

Edit: I see conversations like this as extensions of the same mindeset that says no "armor" set is worth playing unless it can be softcapped to L/S or Melee defense.

I don't put anything but Practiced Brawler on auto. Every character I have (that is high enough level to reach it in their build) has Hasten, and I don't put it on auto. Actively chaining / queuing other powers interferes with auto-click, and therefore I consider it extremely unreliable. (And this sometimes bites me on PB, too.) After 8 years of play, I've just become accustomed to paying attention to my click powers and refreshing them when it makes sense to do so. For example, if Hasten expires while I am between spawns, I don't click it until I get to the next spawn.

I used to carpool with a buddy who's an MMO butterfly. He and several other friends (all of whom were buddies from college who I also played P&P RPGs with) were in CoH's beta.

I played on-line FPS games, and was not at all into MMOs. A big part of why was that MMO versions of PvP which were prevalent at the time - mixing PvE and PvP - turned me off big time. PvP was fine with me - non-consensual PvP when trying to grind levels, not so much. The idea of being defeated and looted? I was never going to pay someone for that "opportunity".

Of course, CoH didn't have PvP at all at release, but that didn't attract me to it - it just meant that CoH wasn't actively distasteful to me in ways that other MMOs usually were. But my carpool buddy's descriptions of things like the core ATs, travel powers, and the FPS-like mobility characters enjoyed? That attracted me. I wasn't what I consider a serious comic book geek, but I did read lots of comics in the 80s and 90s, so the genre did attract me.

Because of those friends, I pre-ordered and got into the head-start. We pulled in some other friends from my FPS world plus one of my best real-life friends (who also still plays). While most of those other players have moved on (many being gaming butterflies, as mentioned), the experiences I had with them anchored me here for the long run.

In FPS games, my avatar was a digital representation of me. Eventually, in CoH, I learned to create characters who were not supposed to be me. They were comic-book (ish) characters of my creation who lived in the game world. The brilliant simplicity of a free-form "Description" field for our characters combined with the flexibility of the costume generator let me make characters who I could feel were wholly my own. And that let me develop an attachment to them that no "pure" FPS can offer. And that ability to grow attached to characters has kept me here for the better part of a decade.

Hats off to Cryptic for lighting the torch and Paragon for carrying it high.

It bugs the hell out of me.

It's not the queue. Most times it probably takes 5-10s. But sometimes it takes upwards of 45-60, and that is some bogusness.

The QoL impact that'll have on me is worth the price. Some part of me cringes at that price, but I'm buying it anyway.