New with a couple questions...

Side note: if you haven't tried it, I suggest going into your Options-->General tab and setting "Show Player Health Bars = Always". This puts a mini health and endurance bar over every player in visual range, including your own character.

This allows you take your eyes off the Team window and still be able to see everyone status. And more importantly, you can see what they're doing (someone being stupid or just aggressive) and what the enemies are doing (sudden additional aggro). You can observe the battle field as a whole and you make informed decisions on fighting, setting buffs, debuffs, area denials, etc.

Also, again, you get a little mini health bar over your own head. Sometimes you're too busy to look up at the big health bar to notice that it's you who's getting seriously hurt.

Welcome to the game, Radubadu

If you need any in-game help, you can contact me on my global chat handle @Golden Girl - I'm around most evenings.

I'm on Virtue, with limited edition availability, most nights. @Thaneval here, but you can global chat across the servers, so I'm good for Q&A that way, too.

It may be important to realise, especially if you haven't played many alts, that the choice of powersets in this game can make two Defenders play completely differently. Kinetics, Trick Arrow and Empathy are all completely different, and in many other games would probably be different classes. Other ATs have shades of this as well (Corruptors in particular, what with being mirror Defenders) in that while most powersets in the same category do more or less the same thing, they have very different ways of going about it.

If you're playing a team support character, your priorities should probably be Blasters and other Defenders and Controllers first- they're the 'squishies', and Blasters in particular have a knack for attracting lots of flack what with their big flashy attacks and everything. A properly built Tanker will be very hard to kill and is as concerned with keeping the team alive as you are, while Scrappers tend to take care of themselves but their tendency to go into berserker rages (a player tendency, not a class feature) means they appreciate a few good buffs, and a heal if they don't have one themselves. (most melee defensive sets have at least one self-heal of their own, another reason healing is considered unimportant)

But above all, don't stress over it.The game's meant to be fun, and the death penalty is a joke. (heck, there's badges for working off debt) Combined buffs and good builds can make a team virtually invincible, and that's working as intended. It's not a game about grinding and raiding and arguing over loot, it's about kicking immense amounts of **** while dressed as a dork in the pursuit of completely pointless rewards, and making your own challenges and goals. If you're having fun, you're doing it right.

Personally, I'm holding out for a "Quest for Glowy" badge.

An open letter to NCsoft

Thanks again all for the responses. The fire blaster flow chart is now the wallpaper on my desktop

I do have another question that I'm rather embarassed to ask. Last night I logged in and tried to join a global chat channel. I couldn't figure out how to do it. I went to wiki which explains how to set one up and send but I saw nothing on how to join one. I'm sure it's not that complicated but what am I missing?

It's simple enough - just right-click on your chat window and select "Join Channel", then type in the channel's name. The channel itself will then be automatically added to the chat tab. To talk in it, just right-click on the chat window again and select the channel name from the dropdown.

An open letter to NCsoft

Unless it's a private channel, in which case someone will have to invite you. Aren't many of those, though.

Right click the center of a chat window (not on the Chat window's tab), on the pop menu, choose "Channel Search". Search for your server's name (or part of its name). Click the column header to sort. Look at the total membership amount and currently online amount.

Note: a global chat channel can have 2500 members. If you see a the channel with exceedingly high membership, but only a few actually online, the channel may be clogged with old, non-active members. Channel moderators can't kick a member until they're online, so there's no means to clear out non-active members. Occasionally, channel membership migrate to a new channel to get around this problem.

Consider the total online amount (during the times you play) as a more relevant number. You may want to join 2-3 globabl channels in your server until you get a better feel for where the action is.

Note: due to gold spammers, the moderators of many global chat channels have set new members to default to being in "silenced" mode. You'll have to wait until a channel moderator unsilences you. You can still monitor the channel and send tells directly to members. (Right click a channel member's global name and choose chat).

Note: if you're the one recruiting, you can Right click a channel member's global name and direclty invite from the pop up menu without needing to know their character's name.

Note: you can see a list of all online members to a global chat channel (after you've joined it) in your Friends window. "Silenced" members have a square next to their global name and channel moderators have a "star" next to their's. Note: some channels moderators play in hidden mode (to avoid excessive drama) so they may not show.

Note: you may want to organize your global chat channels in one of the spare chat windows, ie the "1 2 3 4".

Note: to switch between chat channels, you can Left-click the channel name on your chat input line to get the pop up with all the channels you're a member of.