VKhaun

If you buy trading cards that come with bubble gum, you spent $1 and got ten cards, and one piece of bubble gum. Together* they are, collectively, worth $1. You can't ask the guy to tear the packs open and give you the gum for a dime because you think it's 'a reasonable amount'. You can't call the gum or the cards worth zero because you're buying it to get the other part.

A pack of cards, with gum, is $1.

Needless side debate though, I think we agree on the what and why, of adding T9 costumes to super packs.

I would expect to see them added to Super Packs. I have no justification, other than that thinking of it from their point of view it makes the most sense.

Going straight from T9 exclusive to 'another set in the store' doesn't really do the T9 justice. Mid tier sets like Samurai armor would be rarer than celestial if every freemium with two tokens could grab a celestial part a la cart.

Having to buy super packs to MAYBE get a costume piece is not a good condition for a set to exist in because it is very exclusive. Elemental order is only for those who have purchased quite a few super packs with points.

At the same time, they are separately exclusive. T9 is available to those who have purchased zero superpacks, and super packs are still available to the aformentioned T2 freemium. Further, a T9 could still buy super packs without redundancy because -as seen with Elemental Order- it rules the pieces out that they already have.

Thus, super packs. Still exclusive to a degree, but available to all if they really love the set and want to gamble for it, and the super packs need more content anyway.

My 2¢.
IMHO.

I would like some outer layer chainmail.

A chain coif (maybe even a few styles?) under hoods. Lots of detail options are available for the upper head on the hoods head type, that you can't actually see under most hoods that would stand out nicely on a thin head covering like a coif. It would also add another option to eliminate the stark contrast you get at the neck line on a lot of costumes.

A chainmail upper body robe. Templar style, with chainmail as one color, and the big square of cloth as the second color, hanging down a bit past the belt, and the front ready to take any given chest emblem.



And I want guns!
I want to do a dual pistols of some kind whenever they inevitably give us more reasonable animations for that set, my main just rerolled FF/beam rifle from FF/AR but I liked AR (just not with FF) and I want an AR blaster now.

If mecha could give me at least one slick new option for all each that doesn't clip horribly or randomly share colors with parts that don't match I would be very, very happy.

I'm having a lot of fun with the set (Ninja/Thermal). I just did the Tsoo attacking the Museum arc for Deadly Combatant the other night as -1x2 with bosses on for big even-level ninja vs ninja brawls. More enemies seemed to give more inspirations too, so Genin tend not to go down if I'm vigilant with heals and greens, unless they get knocked down by an ancestor spirit while both heals are unavailable.

I honestly did not know about the recharge intensive pet category and that makes me sadface. Not only are Ninjas weak, but they can't actually go get the defense buffs others can? Yikes... Hopefully the devs will take that into account if they buff the set, and give them decent extra defenses or resistances.



I'm going to push on though. The concept remains as not a solo MM like most seem to think of them, but as a dedicated healer. Obviously with MM HP I will be the weakest healer possible with /thermal, so as long as my MM pets chop of enough damage to beat a defender/corruptor and balance that out I'll be okay with it. Again, not saying I've accomplished that yet, but so far at low levels I definitely feel way more offensive than any defender or corruptor I've played.

I also notice my pets have fantastic alpha. If I do GoTo Passive then Attack Passive on a yellow con Tsoo Sorcerer, that guy is dead like disco on Teusday morning. Not only is it great damage, but they animate faster than the enemy NPC's. The enemies all sort of turn and look at my ninja, think about it for a second, and then get around to attacking. Response time is even better if I do Goto Aggressive.

After playing a MM again for the first time since I came back, I have decided I would like most to duo with kinetics, simply because of the knockback resist buff. The rest is gravy. I just hate seeing my dps go to zero when something knocks them all down, and I hate that they won't take inspirations while knocked down.

I am your chum, dog.

Upon returning I noticed MM's were listed under 'support' and for the first time thought of them in the context of grouping. When I played one it was mostly solo and I thought of it a lot like a controller, where I was trying to maintain a situation in my favor more so than a defender doing damage and supporting.

I'm curious now where MM's stand as far as DPS.

Assuming you have a target that doesn't fight back and you don't care about the various MM paperwork like controlling range or anything like that, you're just going to go 'GO GET THAT GUY' and let all your pets have at it...

1) Which primary will do the most damage?
Usually when people put Ninjas and Necro lower on a list they're thinking about survivability or utility as well, and this question doesn't involve those. YES I know dead pets do no dps, please read the above. Assuming you are letting your pets go to town on a held/offenseless target or at least are keeping them alive and able to attack at full strength, what primary will do the highest DPS?

2) Where does MM DPS fall compared to corruptors and defenders?

Defender.

Strongest buffs, and if you're only a duo you're still pulling a damage bonus from their passive. Since you'll want to be shooting things and contributing DPS I would take a less-busy set.

Sonic is probably a better fit for duo with melee pets and heals, but I would not rule out FF because Personal Force Field will let you run in and take an alpha strike which is a huge net gain in healing and micromanagement vs the MM dealing with it every time you approach a group of enemies.

Magic all day.

Ice.

I like ice thematically, but every ice set feels very low end to me. They lose powers to bad control like sleep, and always have miscellaneous other drawbacks like the area hold in ice control being PBAoE instead of ranged AoE, or Frostwork being a +hp on a long timer. I don't like the ice sword, and even the defense/armor buffs are very obtrusive and blocky so you can't see your character.

I'm sure someone is perfectly happy with their ice character, just like I'm sure plenty are perfectly happy with their axe or gravity characters, but that's just my 2¢. I feel like ice is generally the underdog of CoH/V power sets.

Blasters: AR/Devices
Most highly offensive characters are not also squishy. To me, as a player from the early game, AR/Devices was a common combo and made a lot of sense. A squishy normal guy walking into a super powered fight? Is he crazy? NO. He's got GUNS.

Scrappers: Dark/Dark
I can't even begin to argue why I think this, but it's the honest answer. Dark always seemed like scrapper territory to me and when someone says scrapper I expect to see DM/X or X/DA if not DM/DA.

Tankers: Super Strength/Invulnerability
Because, yeah...

Defenders: Empathy and defenders don't get a secondary.
Yeah yeah... 'go back to WoW kid!' but really that's what a defender is to me. Either Kinetics or Empathy making sure everything goes right, with no free time to blast. Again I played mostly in the original game and have since just come back many times for short periods. Back when enemies would jump inside eachother and defense stacking was broken, if the tank didn't need healing and buffing, your mission was too easy!

Controllers: Mind Control/Anything
Mind Control is just the absolute quintessence of the concept. The basic and common, but still awesome way control is achieved in media and a set with a very basic layout. Mez, KB, Hold, Confuse... AE of each, with a cone terrorize thrown in for an even nine. Every other set is giving something up to get something else, deviating from this standard.

Brutes: Titan Weapons/Willpower
Ever since I first read the word 'Brute' in the context of a CoH Archetype I have thought of them as using big giant two handed weapons. Nothing says brute, not super strength, not throwing things, not getting mad - NOTHING says brute like a weapon that looks too big for the user to carry at all, being swung like it weighed nothing.

Stalkers: Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu

Dominators: Mind Control/Mental Assault
See Controller

Masterminds: Bots/Force Field
Bots gives that feeling that you're really controlling many things at once, both the concept of remote operating several machines at once and the animations that all go together very well where as with the other pet sets if you say 'attack that guy' they all sort of scramble and do different moves without synchronization... but the bots all lean back and fire a few rounds of lasers together.

Corruptors: Thermal Radiation / Fire
I saw these come out with City of Villains, and so I still find it odd seeing HERO corruptors. Nothing says 'evil support' like fire IMHO and I think of Thermal / Fire when someone says corruptor.

That blew you away?
You'll be picking up pieces of your brain around the room for weeks after this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

With the way the animations are done and the decade long trend of 'evil' styled super heros a classic Scythe seems blatantly obvious. I assume unflinchingly that they are just holding it back until Halloween and will be very disappoint if I'm wrong.

Beyond that, the only hole I see there would be the medieval demographic. All the current weapons look too techy or improvised. It needs a giant spiked mace and/or a war hammer.

They have kind of backed themselves into a corner with weapon graphics though... it's a paid-only set IIRC and not free to VIP's, so their work hits a smaller demographic, and they have opened the set to a large variety of weapons so people who want to play a 'two hand sword' or 'two hand axe' character are always going to be low on options because they're more discriminating than the set itself is.

Overall I still think that's good though. Gives you more variation possible between costumes.

These topics always go on to absurdity. Most of the plans people come up with are more effort than a full time job.

I would probably not even tell anyone I won it, and continue working until I was fired or had a reason to quit. Just go through life normally with infinite money codes on. If a good person is having hard times, maybe buy them a car or a bunch of supplies and leave it for them without saying who's it's from or anything.

The only thing I'd really want to do overtly would be to find 'that girl' I still care about (every guy over 25 has one of those I think...) and sign over a ton of it to her out of the blue, see how she's doing, make sure her life is easy.



As for CoH/V... after buying out the market and grabbing a thousand super packs, I might take a 'vacation' as an excuse to go to wherever their headquarters is located where I would take Dink out to a nice lobster, dinner and talk about a few weapons I want in the character builder and what it's going to cost me to get them...

Fantastic.
Thank you.
BRB scrapper...

So after being back for two months and making this post I have mostly made a ton of lv20-35 alts and -as usual if you know me- come full circle to wanting to do a weapon/shield melee character again. I know a little more than I did when I made the other thread and I definitely want to do War Mace / Shield Defense. No doubts there.

However, my highest so far is a lv47 SoA who started out crab but slowly talked himself out of all the crab powers and into a bane build. I'm looking at mids and the damage values are HIGHER for the VEAT than for the scrapper (even taking out the Toxic DoT, which is fantastic and shouldn't be taken out) and I really don't get that. I start every fight with a big crit from hide, and then he's running double assault and adding toxic DoTs while fighting AoE resist debuffed enemies (Venom Grenade)... how is that fair? SOMETIMES my team will have those things, he will always have them.

Please tell me there's something in here I'm missing that will get me more Damage on a scrapper, because I would love to out-do my SoA but I don't want to level a pure melee to 50, call it my main, and just end up being weaker and less versatile than my SoA.

Granted, a scrapper is probably tougher than a SoA but I'm not trying to turn this into an AT vs AT thread to decide one is totally 'better' I'm looking to pull more melee damage. I don't want to roll MDPS to be tougher, or to shoot a gun, or be sneaky, or buff people... I have the SoA for when I feel like doing all the fancy stuff.

I want to make this character for that satisfying crunch and to see red bars drop fast. Melee single and PBAoE, can I do more damage than my SoA if I make a WM/SD scrapper?

Thanks, all.