Vanden

Okay, so recently I got the urge to make a Thugs/Pain MM. This MM naturally has Nullify Pain and Soothe. I've played this dude up to level 34 so far. Now, the other day I get the urge to play my 46 Merc/Poison MM. And the difference is night and day. With my Pain MM, I just constantly use NP to keep my Thugs in tip-top shape with the occasional Soothe to save one in big trouble. With my Poison MM, virtually every fight I start begins with one of my Mercs nearly dying. I've been in situations with both where aggro is out of control enemies are all over and I can't direct my henchmen because I can't leave Bodyguard mode. With the Pain, I'm spamming NP and Soothe, and 9 times out of 10 I win the fight with maybe a few dead pets. With the Poison I desperately try to heal my men but with the long time between activation and healing being delivered, the pathetic values on the heal, and the high end cost, I end up with no endurance, a bunch of dead pets, and the need to retreat.

Some might say that the debuffs from Poison make up for it. While that's more or less true against single tough foes, the fact is that you just can't debuff multiple enemies fast enough to make up for it. In addition, in order for the debuffs to really matter, you've gotta have Noxious Gas on them. I can't tell you how many times I've fought bosses pre-38 or when NG isn't up and stuck them with Weaken and watched them casually kill all my pets anyway. Sure I can heal or two of them with Alkaloid, but by then the boss's next AoE volley is up and all the other pets are dead.

In short, I've never once wanted for debuffs on my Pain MM, but nearly every time I've played my Poison I've desperately wished I had an AoE heal. I can't imagine how Storm, TA, Traps, and FF deal with it, but I'd imagine that the AoE debuffs or solid pet buffs are a great help. I wish Alkaloid were an AoE, with no other changes to the power.

I've already played and rated two of your arcs, so could I get reviews of these two humar arcs?

Title: The Extadine Lab
Arc ID: 2595
Creator’s Global Name: Vanden
Mission Count: 1
Notes – Current custom critter maker issues make this arc pretty hard.



Title: ParaCon
Arc ID: 1684
Mission Count: 1

Make something about how you sold my Blaster Justice-Guy into slavery.

Ah, we all know they've been working on it for months now, Positron keeps dropping hints about it.

Well if it's so time-consuming then WHY ARE YOU POSTING ON THE FORUMS INSTEAD OF WORKING YOUR ARMS TO THE BONE IMPLEMENTING IT?!

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However, I won't deny that I probably do the no pants thing best!

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Neither will I.

Frankly I would probably focus on +Defense. But that's just me.

I didn't read the whole thread, but I hope I'm not the only one to see the problems with your analysis of the secondaries.

You listed a downside in every set but Mental of "no health utility" even though the lack of proper heals is really a Blaster mainstay, with Mental being the exception rather than the norm. It's like knocking down every Brute Primary but Energy for not having an Energy Transfer equivalent, and it looks like you did it simply to make Mental look better.

You claim that Psi damage is highly unresisted, which is frankly untrue. It's been stated by at least one dev that Psi is one of the most resisted damage types in PvE, up there with Smashing and Lethal, and a recent post shows that Psi is actually the 3rd most resisted type among the common mobs.

You list the need for "Blapper" play to get the most out of Energy, Electric, and Fire and then neglect to mention that the same is required of Mental Manipulation (and conveniently forgot that Energy's stuns and knockback make Blapper play safer than the other sets do).

In short, it looks entirely like you came to the conclusion that Mental Manipulation is the best because you WANTED to come to the conclusion that Mental Manipulation is the best.

Put optional boss encounters in your mission. You'll want to do this anyway, since most players will solo your arcs and won't get to see your custom bosses otherwise.

Karl didn't appear until CoV came out if I remember right, and I was Hami-raidin' in I4.

Tell it to me straight, Triumph. Am I to blame for us being the no-pants server? It was years ago, back when Hamidon raids were big serverwide events and all the big players of the server came together to mingle and hobnob about while maybe earning an HO, when I decided that pants might cause lag. Of course lag was a big issue at those things and I thought, "Hey, wearing pants might cause lag, so I'd better tell everyone to remove them! No need to test this theory, I'll just Broadcast this revelation right now right after I thought of it, in the middle of this here mito phase." Naturally it caught on, and turned out much more successful than the later "Where is Vanden's hat?" thing.

Now I know back in the day Crockpot and his ilk were known for the speedo thing, but it always seemed to me that the presence of the speedo and not the absence of the pants were the important feature. So really...did it start with me?

Oh phew, I thought you were moving to Freedom.

This might just be me being ignorant of the world of copyright law, but Cryptic Studios doesn't make the game anymore, and when they sold the game to NCSoft nearly every member of the CoH team went with it. (As I recall there was like one guy who didn't make the move.) So why is the Cryptic logo still here on the forums, the official site and in the game itself (to the exclusion of the Paragon Studios logo in-game)?

That said, they're still easier than most custom MA minions.

Two Enforcers give a total of base 15% defense to all damage, which enhances nicely to a maximum of around 23%. Of course, getting that much defense enhanced can be difficult without sacrificing damage.

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Ok, I have been staring at concrete joist bluelines from 1921 too long today Castle.....

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What does this even mean?

Rikti Magi on mothership raids are TOUGH. They have all the resistances of Rikti, they're EBs, and they do tons of damage with their level 54-ness. Letting these guys run around unchecked can seriously put a damper on a mothership raid, but that's exactly what people tend to do because the darn things give exactly the same Vanguard merit rewards as the squishy Headmen lieutenants. Can we up the Vanguard merit rewards for these guys or something?

As I recall, Phase Shift and its ilk were given a 30-second timer for activation chiefly for PvP reasons. Issue 13 added tech that makes it possible for the game to distinguish between PvP and PvE play, and the biggest PvE exploit for Phase Shift, clicking glowies while phased, was fixed long ago. So does Phase Shift still need to have a 30-second use limit while in PvE? Obviously it would keep the limit in PvP.

How could you even say such a thing! Unless... Wait a minute! :O

Godwin's law? Who said anything about promotions? I was talking about Hitler.

FALSE! I may not have read your posts, but I can definitely respond to them just the same.

Hunt missions are not "super cool" as you claim. In fact, hunt missions are the second leading cause of depression. Hunt missions caused the 2008 WGA strike, and recent evidence suggests that they may, in fact, be Hitler.

Okay, here's my idea: Whenever you get a hunt mission, the game immediately completes it for you, giving you XP as if you'd killed a boss for every enemy it wanted you to hunt, an email is sent to your account's email address apologizing for wasting your time, and a free day of game time is added to your account. I think this would make those hunt missions just a little less painful.

Well, with regards to the flying above the clouds, I can see why they took it out; it looked BAD in that incarnation.

I got a question about play CoH with the Steam overlay active. Does it affect how well the game reacts to Alt-Tabbing? In CoH, when I alt tab it's always very quick to switch between Firefox and CoH with Alt-Tabbing, but when I do that with my Valve games on Steam, it takes forever for the game to come back up when I switch back. Is that just because of the Source engine or does the Steam overlay aggravate the condition? If I add CoH to Steam so I can use the Steam overlay, will it make Alt-Tabbing in CoH unfeasable?

I liked this idea when I posted it, and I like it now.