seebs

Okay, never mind; that's a property of the short cut. Now fixed to not run as admin or with special privs.

As to the security question: Disabling UAC in general strikes me as pretty dangerous and unwise. Too many things can operate without user knowledge -- IF they aren't stopped by UAC. It's a good feature. It makes a lot of sense to give the unprivileged account access to/ownership of the game directory, since the updater does have to be able to update that, and also a lot of sense not to let the program run with any elevated privs that can be avoided.

Thanks, this looks really useful.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to actually work, in that after I have created, as described, the compatibility thing telling CoH to run as invoker, it still pops up the same message every time.

Why hasn't this launcher just been fixed to actually work correctly under modern Windows? This seems like a pretty basic question of following the published standards, no?

EDIT: Nevermind, it works once I figure out that it had become set to "run as administrator", and I unset that. That said, the "why do I need to do all this" stands, the game launcher should not need special compatibility settings, I don't think.

EDIT AGAIN: WTF. It defaults to "Run as administrator". If I right-click and pick "open", it works fine, but I can't figure out how to make the default-operation be "open" rather than "run as administrator".

Huh. My pets don't get in MY way, but they seem to get in anyone else's way occasionally, or shove people around.

Is the XP from it nerfed? I hadn't noticed -- I've actually done AE stuff to level because, once I factor in travel time and rewards (assuming dev choice missions), it seems to give a decent payout in terms of XP per story.

That said, I'm mostly doing it for the stories, because the stories are awesome. There's some awesomely creative writing going on here, and I really don't care whether people think they're cheating the system.

Woah, I'd totally forgotten about fluffy. Of course, that's a loooong way out.

Been pretty happy with it. It provides more healing than I originally thought, the key is that it's SLOW healing. If it's down at the start of the pull and you can keep your pets near it, it's pretty good. If you try to drop it when half your pets are under half health, it's pretty useless.

I guess that's another primary for the Anime Girl AT.

Yeah. Which may be a downside, as the knockback is one of the primary mitigations the thugs have -- enemies who are in the middle of flying back are not attacking.

I think it'll work out, but it'll take some getting used to.

Okay, cool. Well, if all else fails, if I guess wrong, I can try again. That I'm playing with a thugs mastermind may also be significant, because I'm expecting to play with a variety of other people attacking (and knocking back) melee mobs. So there's a LOT of knockback going around, which tends to be a disadvantage for melee.

I'm expecting to mostly hover -- I tend to like hover a great deal for mitigation and also for seeing what I'm doing in crowded melees. Although... I've been assuming I should stay out of melee, because dominator looks sorta fragile (similar, I think, to controller?). If dominators really ought to be meleeing, I'm willing to rethink that a bit.

I was sure this thread was going to be about some extreme activities in Pocket D.

So, thinking about this power set. For RP reasons, I need flight. What other pool powers should I be looking at? What should I be planning to skip in either plants or thorns? It looks like the first entangle is pretty much disliked because it's redundant and I have better options elsewhere, anything else really skippable?

Was toying with the idea of acquiring a "cheap" gaming PC. Currently I'm using a Linux box a bit over a year old, or a Mac laptop, to play CoH. They're both livable, but neither is especially zippy at CoH, and both are perhaps a little crash-prone.

I have very little Windows experience, and thus, not much clue of how to keep a Windows machine adequately secure. I also have no clue what's "good enough". I have no other Widows-related applications or work, so if I did get a machine, I'd care about it running Mids and CoH. The monitor it'd be used with is 1920x1200, and ideally I'd want nice smooth framerates on that.

I have no clue what I'd be looking for. While I do have the technical ability to build machines, I also realize that doing so is not usually a good investment of my time. If I could just get a box, and it would run CoH decently without much hassle, that'd be fine by me and save me some sysadmin time. (I don't actually *enjoy* sysadmin work.) And if GR or something is about to bump requirements, I should take that into account.

Basically, if I wander into a store, pick up some cheapish quad-core machine, and throw in a new video card, will I have something that runs CoH well? Should I be thinking a lot harder about my goals or requirements? Should I be looking at laptops?

ETA: Specifically, looking at an Asus G73JH, the BestBuy-only one without the blu-ray drive (I have no interest in blu-ray, so that's free money to me). Anyone got one? Like/dislike? Advice on that?

Well, "support" as in "let's see how much stuff we can duo with this pair", or "how much can I fill in the weaknesses of that build".

I'm sorta tempted by spirit tree, just because when I was grouping with the thugs before on a /traps MM, I was loving triage beacon's effect on the minions during larger pulls; it helped a ton with keeping them upright. Except the arsonist, who is also suicidal. But I'm not overly attached to it, and it does seem like it might not really be all that useful in context. I've been mostly ignoring the melee powers; the thugs are meleeing more than enough as is, and also have a ton of knockback, so I'm thinking to focus entirely on control and maybe a little light ranged damage to fill in the gaps, and leave the damage output to the swarm of thugs.

Agreed that thorntrops may well be totally redundant by the time I get there. I just love that power so much. (I don't think I yet have a single blaster who isn't /devices. I may be experiencing some slight bias issues.)

I suppose trip mines could be used purely as a strategic defense -- drop it before doing a large pull, and if you get unlucky and things come at you, well, problem solved.

FFG's been annoying to me because:
1. It tends to follow sort of erratically, and gets stuck easily on other party members (or minions).
2. The bots run out of it anyway.

So I have to close up a bit with enemies once the bots have done their first couple of ranged attacks. But I'm getting the hang of it.

Hadn't thought about the grant invisibility thing, but obviously, I'd need that too... In which case, grant invisibility+invisibility is probably better than stealth+grant invisibility. Hmm. 6 seconds each for my entire robot army plus FFG is 42 seconds, so I'd have somewhere around a minute with the ENTIRE TEAM invisible. This has serious abuse potential. Of course, that'd chew up most of the slots I'd been planning to use for patron pool stuff. I could still get charged armor and electrifying fences, though. Hmm.

Wait, does "only powers that affect yourself" mean I can't drop traps? If it does, then that strategy is not viable after all.

Drat, I was totally thinking that avoiding the pulse rifle powers would get me enough power choices that I wouldn't run out of slots for once.

Thinking ahead a bit.

Trip Mines is often pitched as a power that is used for toe-bombing; same for Poison Trap.

That's a pretty stealth/invis-oriented build. Presumably I'll want a stealth IO. However, given that, I'm not seeing an obvious sane way to get invisibility. The actual "stealth" power seems like it would be a poor choice in many ways, but it would make toe-bombing easier. I don't get Cloaking Device (that's /dev blasters), and I don't think any of my other powers create stealth.

So do I just do without nigh-invisibility, or what? Is Trip Mines less practical for me than it would be for a /devices blaster or /traps defender?

Well, first question:
Does Thorntrops have the same fear effect that the traps/devices caltrops does? I always thought caltrops looked like a crappy power until I actually used it -- that fear is amazing and has turned it into one of my go-to powers for crippling large clusters of enemies.

Apart from that, the primary intended role of this character is support for a thugs/dark mastermind. I'm not yet sure which sorts of things this will change about a likely build.

Looks like I may be getting a brute because "that looks fun to play". Beloved Spouse has a thugs/dark mastermind, I'm still messing with my options. Dark/dark corruptor is tempting to me just because I have so much fun on dark/dark defender. Also looking at things I haven't played, like rad/rad corruptor, or a dominator. Mmmm, dominator. (I like controller a fair bit... There's some similarities.)

Edited to add: Wanted a dominator, after messing around, went plant/thorny assault. Won't know for quite a few levels how helpful or unhelpful it is, but it certainly does seem helpful. Beloved Spouse is running a dual blades/super reflexes brute to ally with my mastermind; while the synergy won't be amazing, I really do like the idea of someone other than the bots soaking alpha strikes, and FFG plus various other traps stuff will help patch up any temporary limitations of pre-level-20-or-so SR.

Beloved Spouse and I spent a relaxing afternoon playing our masterminds together.

It was fun. It was also quite frustrating, because TOO MANY MINIONS. So we're thinking of playing something else with each of the two masterminds. ... So what goes particularly well with masterminds? We're both pretty flexible about what we'll play. I was thinking probably a corruptor or mastermind would make a good fit, but really, I just don't know the archetypes well enough to say what'd be particularly good.

FFG is love. With FFG, protector bot, and maneuvers, my defense against just about everything is already 23%. That's starting to be pretty effective. I do note, though, that later on I may well find myself well past soft-cap, in which case maybe I should at that point think about swapping maneuvers for assault.

Still, FFG has moved this character from "I do decent damage but I have to be totally on top of my powers or my bots fall over" to "how do I position my mortar so I can get both of these mobs at once".

Okay, given some useful feedbacks, the revised thoughts are:

18: Tactics
20: Poison Trap
22: Aid Other
24: Fly
26: Assault Bot
28: Seeker Drones
30: Group Fly
32: Upgrade Robot
35: Trip Mine
38: Repair

I have no picks for 41/44/47/49. I could fill stuff in from another regular power pool or from a patron pool. Group Fly really does appeal just for the fun value of the Flying Robot Squadron.

I sorta like that idea -- wouldn't hurt to have both, since I have more free slots than I'm used to due to not taking the pulse rifle stuff. Three skippable power is win.