shingi

so whats next?

paying someone for slotting suggestions? or maybe paying to have someone complete TF's and getting merits so they can try and get that super rare recipe you want?

its a slippery slope into chaos and stupidity the moment people ok "mercenary" work like this in a game community...

I'm also waiting for the PPD code to appear.. and my name was kinda high on the list.. bring possibly one of the first group of CoH players to arrive and bug them on the saturday...

*waves* hi yes, that was me and Irric helping the NCSoft guys locate and troubleshoot problems by asking them to do stuff and then it all breaking!

Would like to say it was nice to meet people though, chatted with some other players and that, I'd mention who but I'm terrible with names and such. massive thanks to the NCSoft people for dealing with the problems they had at the start so well, and esp to Kat who sketched, provided witty commentary and was overall a bundle of energy the whole time we were there!

Never one to speak my mind much on these forums, I saw this and had to speak.

In other MMO's death, IE loss of all hit points, can result in some harsh penalties, WoW its a cost of armour/weapon damage and either a potentially LONG hike back to collect your body, or almost half an hour of being weak as a kitten. In FFXI you lose exp and face a potentially LONG hike back to your group.

either way its a pain in the rear not only for YOU but for EVERYONE YOUR TEAMED WITH. this often results in name calling and accusation as to who's fault it is and so on.

one of the main reasons I personally like CoH/CoV is that people are generally ok if you die in a large team. Especially now as you can make an awaken from other insps, and in some cases its helpful to the team if you do! I'm not a big player of ranged sets but if I remember correctly there's at least one set who's "nuke" is based on casting on a dead team-mate (rad defender set I think), and what about vengance? it'd become a next to pointless power if people were scared of taking on a little debt..

So debt isnt a discouragement for some people, big whoop. Would you rather have your team shouting at you for stopping their exp/inf flow for half an hour while you trudge back? would you rather risk loosing 2-3 levels, representing hours of work because someone wasnt paying attention for a moment?

keep debt as it is, maybe increase it a little at later levels so the "badgers" can get their badges and feel like they earned it.

just my two inf

I live with miss october, and you have no idea how much she 'squeed' when seeing your name on here.. flakey?

well speaking as a level 50 claws/invun and having had said 50 for a good few months, i'll add in my 2p's worth.

i played a lot solo on this scrapper, so i took EVERYTHING from the invun set and slotted it heavily. as it stands now i've been known to solo brutes in siren's, and co-tank AV's with another similarly slotted /invun scrapper with us taking it in turns to use unstoppable. as for the claws, i use strike, spin, focus, follow up and eviscerate from the set, with AS from flight and the taunt as well in case i need it.

unyielding is something i've taken for granted on this toon, i miss it badly when playing other alts now, the knockback and hold resists it offers are really quite good, if nothing else make sure you take this!

i guess it depends on your playstyle and how often you team and who with, as i said this was a solo build for me, designed to take a lot of punishment from invincible missions with no healer, and while not amazingly fast at killing things due to my end reductions over damage SO's he does the job and thats what counts right?

you can catch me on my global @shingi if you want a demonstration, he's on defiant and i'm about most evenings.

sadly i wont be able to make this untill about half 8, so if your going for the standard tactic i doubt there will be much left to do for a simple scrapper such as myself.

i will however come along to see how things are going and give a hand if needed once i've got home from work.

well as no-one else has done this yet i feel i have to do it myself.

a few weeks back Shingi, that crazy claws/invun scrapper some of you may have teamed with a while back, hit 50.

i've never been a huge influence on server wide events, nor one to instantly stand out in people's minds, but along the way i met a few good people, most of them are in Honourable United and some are not. so thank you one and all to those who teamed with me often (shamana and missphit spring instantly to mind but there are others and its roughly 6am now!) and i hope to see you guys at the hami raids.

Shingi/Awai/Ada

Shingi will be there if i'm not working.

HU will know of my availablity and i will be coming with them if i am

another HU player hits 50

Shingi

Tech origin

claws/invun scrapper with body mastery epic.

congratulations to Sally Storm, Honourable United's very own Jimmy-kicker on reaching security level 50 late last night.

I've teamed with sal a lot since i joined HU and i've always been impressed with the sheer level of jimmy's kicked and villains taken down. couldnt happen to a nicer person or player.

good luck with the PB sal, and we've still got that rear-kicking in the arena to sort out

as a clawed scrapper i'm in two minds about this.

changes would be nice, its frustrating to have long animation times, i can hit evicerate at the same time as the level 30 MA kick (who's name i forget) and they will hit first, do more damage and be smug. i dropped slash and strike in a respec and have never looked back, swipe is nice and quick and does reasonable damage.

on the other hand, i can just run and run and run in missions, triple slotted stamina, a heavy slotted invun secondary and one or even two (yes two) end reductions in my attacks mean while my damage is useless in PvP in most PvE situations, even against +2/+3 targets i can just keep going and going without ever coming close to losing so much end my toggles drop. if claws got changed to higher damage, higher end i'd be kinda upset, it'd take away the uniqueness of the set and force people such as myself into a different playstyle altogether.

congratulations MissPhit and Shamana, i wondered why i'd not seen you two about for a while.

just two levels for me left, i'm getting there. so is my MM tho

thought i'd add my point of view to this.

Hi, i'm HU's perma-PvP loser, being a pure PvE build, and have taken part in 3 of HU's last 4 arena events.

i'm a scrapper and i use flight as a travel power. i have ranged attacks however, and while it would be stupidly slow to do so, i could hover outside of reach of others without ranged attacks and pick them off, something my semi crazy leeroy style wouldnt like anyway but its possible. limiting travel powers means you have to face down your opponant, rather than move away. as its been said you cannot win by running but you can make it damn hard for you to lose. while we all hate losing, in the arena and in a tournement its going to have to happen to someone. we cant all win the tourny after all :P the restrictions have been worked out over many many months and many arena events to try to allow for the fairest possible fight for everyone. SS wont save you if your opponant can land a knockdown attack on you, SJ wont do much for you in an enclosed map such as the boat map and so on. overall its been decided that it makes for a better fight all round for them to be removed.

as for stealth, a couple of yellow insps can help you see thru some of it, or focused accuracy from the body mastery epic pool, so it wont help that much, and as i've found out from some fights i've been in traps can still be set, ambushes can still happen and you just cant out-think another player every single time, unless your up against me, in which case its easy

for the most part these events have gone smoothly in the past, with little to no complaints from those involved. most people agree the limits placed are fair and the system cap uses is as well.

something else i have also learnt, PvE tactics just dont seem to work here.. i dont PvP much, in fact this is the only PvP i take part in so i dont have tactics for it myself, but if you rely on something in PvE it may not be as effective in PvP.. as my countless defeats will show


also, bridger should come, it'd be fun to see how well we could do against someone who actually works for the company!

to my understanding, and from experience, they way it used to work was the larger the team, the larger the spawns. it has changed recently to changing when "seen" depending on team size.

i think this feature came in around the same time as the anti-powerleveling codes as i've heard them called. on a whole designed to prevent people doing this kind of thing.

that said

there ARE still people out there in game who just dont realise this. in the past they've leveled that way so they see no reason to change it.

its a shame, and i agree, if my first few teams had been like that i doubt i would have carried on with the game. as it was my early teams seemed to consist of leeroy clones, hence my long and continuing solo career!

when you build a community, like we have and will do on defiant, you always get the bad eggs. its a shame but cant be helped. i also understand why we cant "name and shame" them here, it'd quickly become a flame war and no admin wants that. still, Game Masters and other players should be warned about these players and these tactics somehow.

c'mon, all we're asking for is a idiot nerf, surely we can get that right?

i agree that if implimented via code and allowed within the game then yeah, things like what i mentioned wouldnt happen.

thing is MMO's are meant to be about social interaction, thats what the dev's of all of them want, thousands of gamers from all over coming together and building a strong community based on friendship etc etc (gah, warm fuzzy feeling making me ill) but in games where items or currency can be traded easily you end up with griefers and people selling currency and items for real life cash (real money transfer or RMT)

CoH is one game where this is hard. inf needs to be traded in person and from what i can tell this isnt a massive problem on CoH, there are no items as such so thats also a non-issue. bring in this merc system however and i can see sites starting to offer services such as "$100 for 10k prestige earnt" and then we'll get people who have the money to do that buying the services from these sites and getting amazing bases.

RMT is against the user agreement, the more things they code that could be exploited for such things the more it will be. RMT normally isnt allowed because its basically unfair, just because you have money in RL shouldnt allow you to have all the best things in-game without earning them the way everyone else has to.

i just see this being a source of trouble, in a perfect world where we all are as honourable as the heroes we play this would be a good idea, sadly not all of us are.

here's a thought about merc's for everyone.

lets say people start to merc this way, you basically have a verbal contract with someone else on the internet, someone you dont know, cant really trace (legally) and which really isnt all too legally binding.

say the merc is asked to earn 100k prestige and is offered 5mil inf for it. the merc agree's and works hard for a week or two and finally his lifetime total rolls over the 100k mark. he contacts the SG leader with whom the contract is with.

instead of his reward he gets kicked from the group.

whats a merc to do but put it about in broadcast that "player X of SG Y is a cheat"

and we have ourselves a flame war

it can also happen the other way round, merc demands money up front (for say helping on a base raid) and doesnt bother to show up, doesnt honour their side of the deal. flame war follows soon.

coming from a game where merc's rule and basically anything you want in terms of items to missions even to levels can be bought with enough in-game money this kind of griefing is common. in fact one area of the game on the server i played on i avoided purely because it was the place where people did just that, [censored] and moaned and complained and flamed each other 24 hours a day.

i'm talking about FFXI, check almost any forum on the game to see threads about merc's ripping people off or people ripping off merc's "just trying to earn some honest cash"

merc's have ruined that game. i really hope as much as this is a nice idea in principal it never happens. there is just too much chance for trouble

in my humble opinion as a level 25 claws/inv scrapper i say under-rated.

follow up is an interesting power, [censored] damage on its own but boosts att and acc on other powers for about 15 seconds, a recharge enhancement in there (DO or SO) means its almost ready again once the effect wears off, please do not overlook this ability.

also dont forget focus's ranged aspect, that can be extremely useful at times too.

claws are fast, furious and fun, my end drain is very low and with dull pain acting as a top up on my health my longivity is good too.

please dont write off a whole powerset on rumours and hearsay. if you feel its underpowered as a whole then by all means move on, but dont say its [censored] and no-one should play it because it didnt work for you, as others may be more happy with it than you.

and yeah, i'd agree that claws/inv makes sense for a wolverine clone in terms of concept, after all his healing factor and adamantium bones make him pretty invunerable i'd say.

hmmm

ok thanks so far everyone, i'm starting to see why i feel trick arrow works when others dont. its due to my solo nature.

i tend to let my pets go their own way, i work with the three pre-set macro's provided for control over them and work with them taking aggro for the most part. i consider them my team and as such offer protection in terms of pulling aggro off them. (i solo as a scrapper in CoH mostly too)

as such i tend not to "micro-manage" my henchmen, i rarely use inspirations on them and i let them take care of themselves too, the protector bots do a semi decent job of healing and putting up bubbles for them. in all honesty i've only had to bolt from trouble a few times and am rarely in debt using this method.

i can see the benefits for teaming of things like the FF and the traps sets, and why trick arrow wouldnt be as good as them in those kind of situations.

thanks again, please, keep the thoughts coming, i'd like to hear if anyone has worked with a trick arrow MM in a team situation and what, if anything, it brought to the team

hello all

i've a few questions regarding the combination in the subject. mainly the reasons why trick arrow is considered a "poor choice" for MM's, over traps or FF.

now i played a robotics/trick arrow MM in beta, did ok for myself, i've got a very similar build now, and she's currently sitting at about level 22 waiting for me to finish my shift and get some play time in.

i've not played around with FF or traps in a MM build, but i am more of a solo player. i've not had any kind of problem with trick arrow, in fact i find the holds and de-buffs available very helpful, esp when dealing with mobs who prefer melee over range, while my bots prefer range over melee.

i'd like to hear from other robotics MM's with their views on the pro's and con's of trick arrow and the other available secondaries. its obviously a little late for me to change build so i'll be taking trick arrow up a little more, i'd just like to have the thoughts of the MM community on the matter.

again, points to note

mostly a solo player

not worked with other secondaries with robotics

intrested in thoughts from robotics MM's as other henchmen behave differently/have different strengths and weaknesses

thanks in advance

i have one i like to call

Hugging henchmen
when issued with a command to attack (all pets) my henchmen will sometimes run into each other and become "stuck". both pushing against each other and not actually moving from the spot they are on.
suggested fix: possibly give the pets some version of collision avoidance AI, or at least allow them to see each other in those terms.

Full Metal Pirates

currently just one member (Ada) but willing to take in others, preferably those who like to solo but want a SG for larger things such as TF's and potential base raids.

simply put, i solo 99% of the time in CoH and CoV, in fact my CoV toon has been 100% solo. however i often feel it'd be nice to do the larger team missions like TF's and such. with the potential for base raids now open, making a group of like minded players seemed like a good idea.

simpe rules, be nice. prestige is appreciated but not demanded, SG colours may change daily (be warned!)

PvP players welcome, all ages welcome, all AT's and styles welcome.
please send a PM on these forums if your interested.

ran into this guy a few days ago.

thought i'd tag him and bolt, just for the hell of it..

activated superspeed, superjump, targeted the GM, let of one blast and went to run.. i got maybe 2 steps.

anyone know if he spawns on his own and gathers minions or if he spawns with the 20 or so mobs i saw him with? i think on his own he'd be less of a problem as most of the damage i took was from the following crowd.

also, being a big fan of storylines, can anyone let me in on what missions/contacts may give this story in full? i heard the mob talking about him being killed by mako and i'm intrigued.

here's one i see a lot

ftw/4tw - for the win - something which will make victory certain. normally used for bragging reasons "yeah <insert players AT here> ftw!! i pwn!" etc

not sure if its invaded CoH yet, but i'm sure it will in time

i think it might have been, it had minions called gremlins at least, tho i think its associated group was cap au diable demons.

not made it as far as sharkshead isle yet, but i'll keep an eye out for that guy

just took part in taking down a GM in cap au diable.

its name was deathsurge, took a while to kill, but eventually went down.

no badge was awarded tho.

anyone else found any others yet in CoV?