What's _really_ changed since i12(ish)?

Not much has been added since the price drop. People have developed many techniques for stacking base objects, creating fantastic looking bases, using objects for walls, free-floating objects. I made an analog to Batman's giant penny using two CoT eyeball windows, back to back. Check out the base threads. We're always hoping new tools or objects or textures will come, no action so far.

I don't think you Vigilante can join a Villain SG (my Rogue couldn't join my hero SG). I haven't tried taking a Villain in a Villain SG to Rogue, then hero, then Vigilante. I know there are patch notes about SG members becoming the opposite alignment, I don't think they are kicked out, but there is a loss of access to the base.

Take a level 50 and run Mender Ramiel's arc.

Same here. Maybe I can give some good advice.

I really like crafting, but I don't play the market. I just use whatever I find. Of course, across as many alts as I have that can be a LOT of IOs. I certainly don't plan it all out ahead, though, like most do. Same with Merits, as you said. They'll come, with time.

Demon Summoning it is quite worth it to take your attacks, as the -Res increases the damage for all of your pets. This has single handedly made it in vogue to take attacks now. Well, for DS anyway. Everyone else it's still regarded as stupid. Tankerminding is still around and as powerful as always.

You do not need to resummon when you zone, and upgrades are AoE now. It costs more End, so don't make the mistake of trying to buff all your henchmen like you used to. You should really only need to summon and buff once, as long as your henchmen don't die, but I personally find it annoying to lead henchmen through zones, and so I tend to dismiss them between missions.

Ah, Fury. Max Fury has been lowered from about 85%, 90% if you were lucky, to 75%. However, the minimum has been raised from about 40% for a bad build to 65%. In short, it is much, much easier to raise Fury now. It does not decay as quickly as long as you are still in combat, so you can still fight that one final foe with full Fury. It's just that's 75% Fury now.

For the guys who were able to steamroller through a whole mission with 85% Fury, that's a pretty big nerf. I suspect you are going to find that the going is easier, though, even though you may not be able to make the numbers as big as they used to be. On the good side, you can use attacks like Sands of Mu or go through a Rage crash and you won't be killing your Fury.

Mmm... uh... eh... heh. Well, see, I really like the MA. I even wrote a couple of missions I got some way into. But then other things came along and... well, you know...

The MA is extremely controversial for the potential for it to be exploited. If something can be found to speed up levelling, it usually gets around really fast and immediately appears in huge numbers. I suspect the "bad press" has actually discouraged people from trying the MA. There is some nice stuff in there. But finding it can be hard.

I suggest you put it on your list of things to try, but don't make it high priority. And you should probably ignore the offers of "Looking for one more for MA farm!" Probly not what you're looking for...

Dunno, never noticed any triangles myself. The nurses are definately cool. (Especially if you are a visiting "tourist" and can't get them from Contacts)

Oh, this is SUCH a good thing! As I said, I craft a lot, and send recipes between my characters. I used to do this with a personal SG, but this has made it MUCH easier. The 1 item per email limitation is a bother, but still way faster than trading via two accounts.

Absolutely not. In fact, one of my best tips for making lots of influence fast is to buy 40+ SOs off the Market at 5000 inf each, and then turn around and sell them to a vendor. You can easily raise the money to restock a character that just hit 22 with SOs that way. Or come up with the inf to craft a recipe. I don't consider this to be something sneaky, I figure if high level folks are putting their SOs up on the Market just to get rid of them, they're intending for lowbies to use them like this.

Some of the salvage on the market, though, wow. That stuff that sells for 1 mill or more inf. You have to either watch out for it in the recipes you find, and sell any that would cost too much to craft, or hoard your own drops. Selling a good valuable Rare drop can net you a lot, though. So basically it comes down to knowing which of the Rare salvage are going to be useful to the IOs you might use.

You can play the market, too, but that takes time.

Um, well, first of all it's not free to run the smallest base plot any more. However, the cost is now based on your amount of storage. So if you have lots of storage you'll pay more.

SGs and Rogue/Vigilantes gets complicated. Basically, where that's concerned a Rogue is a Villain and a Vigilante is a Hero. A Rogue cannot join a Hero SG, but he can join or stay in his Villain SG. When you go from Rogue to Hero, or Vigilante to Villain (a one way trip in both cases, you have to go all the way around the circle to get back to where you were) you are not "kicked out" of your SG, but you can't access the base, and lose leadership status if you had it. You will probably want to quit the SG and join one on the other side.

The bad news is, even if you are on a team with allies from the other side, you can't enter their base, even if they give permission for teammates to enter. I'm hoping this changes, but at least with the combined monorail lines and ferries it is a lot easier for "tourists" to get around.

That pretty much convinced me to never again believe the devs when they say, "We can't do this." It may be hard, it may take time, we may have to be patient, but no, nothing's impossible any more.

Inherent Stamina/Fitness. If any of your characters had Stamina before, go respec them. You can pick three more powers, although you won't have slots for them if you choose to keep the same slots in Fitness. If you DIDN'T have Fitness, you should not have it.

HEATs/VEATs are now unlocked at 20. If you've never tried them, try them out. Kheldians got an upgrade, they are now much stronger in Human form, and their "Balance" power now works in the Forms. So does Inherent Fitness. So yes, you can slot Hurdle for jump and your Dwarf will be a high jumper. VEATs are just awesome, especially Crab Spiders with the cool arms. And they can side switch, too, although you're forced to start on their respective side. (They can't be created in Praetoria)

Dominators got a revamp. They now do the same damage outside of Domination that they do in it. They still get the stronger controls, mez protection, and End recharge from Domination. Stalkers got a revamp too, somewhat earlier than that. (You might have been here for that) Defenders now get a damage bonus when they are solo or on a team of less than four, and Tankers do "Bruising" with their blows, which reduces the Res of their target.

Can't think of anything else right now.

Don't be so quick to vendor off Set IO recipes. Until you get a better feel for what's desirable, always check the crafted IO. Many times a recipe will sell for chump change because it requires a rare Salvage piece which will bump the crafting cost up by 1-4 million (depending on time of day and time of week), unless you happen to have one on you, of course. If you need rare salvage and don't want to buy it, there's advice to do a couple of AE missions and trading in the AE tickets for whatever rare salvage you need. So, if the crafted piece is selling for way more and you can still get a decent profit, you may want to consider crafting it to sell. NOTE: always consider the number of items for sale along with bidder and past history, if the piece isn't moving, then don't bother.

Along with what Jade Dragon mentioned about bases:

• You can now set permissions for your salvage bins/racks, but you have to do it for each one separately and you must be on a toon that has the "edit permissions" setting enabled.
• Base salvage was done away with in i13, salvage racks now hold a limit of 30 invention salvage.
• Temp powers from the empowerment stations now require invention salvage to craft. The recipes for the same buffs may vary between the arcane & tech versions of the stations.
• Raids and raid pathing have been disabled (i13 again). Many items can now be overlapped, intersected, and floating/stacking items is easier than ever. Check the base forums for more info.
• There is now one head leader, indicated with the red star. The red star leader has all permissions granted by default. The red star is subject to the demotion time set in the SG settings. It will fall to the most senior person (that has logged within the valid time frame) in the next rank down.
• There is a new version of the CoP trial. It generally requires 3 teams lead by members of the same SG. It is accessed through the Raid Teleporter. But since you are mostly solo, you may not be concerned with it. If you suddenly find interest, there are several threads on the subject.

Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson

Actually, it's 30 of any kind of salvage, except those flagged as untradeable. So that's Invention Salvage, Event Salvage, and the now defunct Base Salvage.

true... thanks for clarifying.

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Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson

You can have a LOT of fun in there with higher level toons (say 30+ to be on the safe side) as custom-made critters can be a tough fight. But it can be really hard to find something worth playing in there by yourself. Rather than trying random arcs (which will net you nothing, most likely), try some of those listed in this thread :

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=127939

Or this one:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=217207

These are arcs that a number of people have played, given feedback on, etc. so they can be considered to be 'vetted' as worth taking a gander at. Of course what one person likes you might not, but you can be sure none of these will be abandoned arcs that never got finsihed, broken farms (meaning the exploits it used were fixed but the author never took it down after that), downright insulting in some manner, etc.

Just wanted to touch on this part here.

The devs said power customization and alternate animations couldn't be done because they didn't have the manpower to do it, not because it wasn't possible. Their reason for not doing it before is because with the staff they had at the time, it would have taken up a LOT of time, and we'd probably be an issue or two behind where we are now.

Since then, they have hired more people, and the things that couldn't be done because they lacked the manpower were suddenly possible. We got power customization shortly afterward. I believe they actually hired a few animators specifically to work on it.

That said, there are a few things that won't happen because the devs won't do them. Like full AT and powerset respecs, for example.

Also, the Fitness pool is inherent now. There was much rejoicing (and a few inexplicable complaints). If you want to take advantage of it being an inherent power, you will have to respec (characters that already had it kept it as a pool choice, presumably to avoid breaking things)

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.