Heelllloooooo Scrappers!!!

Heelllloooooo Scrappers.

According to my login screen I have been offline for 975 days, but I had a few friends telling me about the current state of City of Heroes so I thought I would come back and give it another run. And seeing as I am a Scrapper at heart I thought my first stop should be the Scrapper forums.

So anyone here remember the old Screwy-One?? I have had one in game tell from one old friend so far and it sounds like there is some real action in the Australia channel so maybe I will get to team with a few people this time.

Where is the good stuff? What new content should I be having a look at? Who has the best guides?

What is OP these days? Any power set combos that are worth a look at?

What is up with the Market these days, people still trying to manipulate it or is that old hat now?

That s probably enough to start with, glad to be back and all that.

Warmest regards, Screwloose

And as always “I am not young enough to know everything.”

At 975 days, you likely haven't played a /Shield Scrapper. That would be interesting, I suspect. Hope all is well. Also, for your signature, City of Data is now moved to cohtitan.com.

The first thing you need to do is whip out your nearest plastic source of finances and purchase enough paragon points to then purchase Street Justice. You will instinctively know what to do next.

Welcome back, Screwloose! Enjoy, the game is fantastic!

Hey Screw, I remember your posts from back in the day. Welcome back and we're glad to have you back.

Hi

There don't seem to be many recent guides. These days you throw together your best guess in Mids' Hero Designer, say what you're after, and everyone fixes it for you, or something like that.

Nothing is particularly OP these days, except maybe a Super Strength/Fire Brute, but it pays for it a bit by not being hugely survivable. Shield Defense is arguably the best secondary, as it provides enough survivability combined with a big damage boost and a great AoE attack.

I haven't paid much attention to the Market forum recently. I think attempts to manipulate prices are old hat, and only happen in response to someone complaining on the market forum claiming that someone is doing so. There are plenty of ways to make buckets of influence that don't require market manipulation. Buy low, sell high, the usual.

I can't remember when they started showing real numbers in the game, but I think it was more recently than 975 days ago. You can now see details on all the powers, and you can monitor numbers in real time as well, such as watching your base defense, and when it goes red (negative), you know you've been debuffed.

They now have incarnate levels and incarnate trials. You can sort of go to level 53 now while picking up a handful of new powers.

Welcome back.

I remember you well! Always enjoyed your posts. Nice to see you back.

Welcome back! Also give Energy Aura a try on Scrappers, new port, mixes well with the Street Justice you need to try.

Lottsa changes gamewise & scrapperwise, and our the Scrapper forums are still the place to be.

Thanks for the warm responses.

Took my 50 Spines Dark Dark Scrapper out for a roll last night and had a great time mowing through some Radio and Tip missions.

Given that he actually spent power choices for the Fitness Pool and only has 2 Invention Set Enh and less than 10 standard IOs he looks like he needs a Respec and a lot of Upgrading of his Enh.

Most of my characters are on Justice so give me a yell if you se me.

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

Thanks for the tip Valorin. Fortunately I am happy to keep going mostly as is at the moment so I can afford to build up some capital before I start spending, which is lucky cause some of this stuff is expensive (% . I did more of the IO set stuff with my Villains cause I was playing them more when the whole IO system came in so I grok the Frankensloting concept.

I really need to spend some time with a planner to get some idea what I can do now. Looks like slots are going to be the issue rather than powers, especially where I want to sneak an extra slot into something for an odd set IO.

I had a bit of luck already with a Respec recipe drop that sold immediately for 100mil. Nearly tripled my current savings in one sale (% .

Got a couple of other nice recipe drops and I am crafting and selling the ones that turn me a good profit. One of the things I like about the way CoH is set up now is that when I get a good recipe I can hold them fairly easily, either to use them myself or to sell them to finance other options.

Made myself a Recovery Serum temp power for giggles. Looking at the temp powers I am thinking that maybe some Stun Grenades would be good to go with OpGloom for particularly tough fights.

I started on the Incarnate plotline, the map for the Trapdoor mission was a bit nasty. Kind of put that arc on hold as my friends decided they want to do it as a group. But glad I didn’t have a big group for the Trapdoor map, dropping 6 people down those ventilation shafts into a large spawn would have been a nightmare.

I have also been hitting the Tip missions up whenever I get them, working towards Hero alignment. They seem to have some nice writing which I enjoy and lots of Carnies who are good fodder for a Spines Dark Scrapper. I presume the Tips just keep dropping, but I am still working out what the other effects of doing these are.

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

Hi all

This is turning into a bit of a blog but I thought I might keep it going see if it remains interesting.

I have been impressed with lots of little Quality of Life things as I have been playing. Been doing mostly Detective and Tip missions still, seems like the quality of writing has improved noticeably.

I have been impressed with the flexibility of the difficulty setting mechanisms. I am running my Spines Dark at 3 characters worth of equal level critters and it has been fun. Most times I don’t have to engage too much competence to take out a spawn, sometimes I have to make sure my good tricks land correctly and occasionally I have to go to the bottom of the bag of trick and I can be sent to the hospital.

I was concerned about getting my IO sets together but I seem to be getting a good rate of drops and making decent Inf. In about the last week I have had 3 of the Superior purple recipes drop so another week of that should set me up to trade them on the market to make a single whole set.

I tried a few things to generate some inf. Old trick of buying set recipes no one wanted for about 10% of their vendor value and selling them to a vendor got me 1 mil in short order but was pretty boring. I crafted and sold a bunch of the recipes I got as drops and lots of them sold, one for 100 mil. And I went back through all my old characters and cleared out their salvage and made about 350 mil, 200 mil of that on one piece. So I am about 3 Superior and 4 useful Orange recipes and 600 mil over the week. Another week of that should see me fairly well set for a big upgrade.

I have a couple of characters with a recipe for a Lost Healing Wand, which says it makes a device that heals Lost? What the heck is this, the only vague memory I have is that it could have been from the Crafting tutorial, or am I wrong, anyone know?

I have to make some apology to people I might have contended with last time I was here about KB resistance for Dark Armour scrappers. I bought and slotted a Karma KB resist Enh and the difference is nearly indescribable. So much so that I am thinking of doing the same for my Kheldian who is the other character I am mostly playing.

One thing on my list to get into is the SSA, any tips or advice? Do I need a group for any of it, should I turn my difficulty down a bit before I run it?

Hope everyone is having fun.

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

Thanks for the info Exxar, I am not much of a farmer although it sounds like a good way to improve my rate of IO Set-ifying and if the missions are reasonably fun I don’t mind doing them regularly.

Took my Crab Spider out for a run last night and wow that AT kicks butt. Think I am going to bring him across to the Hero side as he will make a great team corner stone for playing with some of my friends. And he picked up another Purple IO recipe so a good start to the week.

I have had a hack at a Set IO build for my Spines Dark in Mids and I seem to have a pile of slots, did they change the number of slots we get? Only slight issue so far (besides affording it all) is I seem to be slotting a lot of sets that give a 9% Accuracy set bonus: Siroccos for PBAE, Positrons for Targets AE. Is it worth trying to use a different set or should I just slot them anyway?

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”

Hi all

Another week another few purple recipe drops. Got my friends through the SSA and everyone was very happy and did it again solo with my Crab Spider who I have brought across to the Heroside.

When I was working on my Spines Dark Scrapper Respec on Mids I noticed that first there are now 5 powers in the Ancillary and Patron Power Pools and that some of the powers in the PPPs seem extra cheesy.

Cheesiest for a Dark Armour Scrapper would seem to be the Leviathian AE Stun attack. But I really like the look of the Soul Pool and it’s Click +Def power.

Does anyone know if I work my way over to the Villainside can I Respec to a Patron Pool or will I have to do the Patron Arc first?

I gave a few of my other Scrappers a run (MArts/SR, Claws/Dark, Dark/Regen) and they all went pretty well.

I have been crafting and selling recipe drops that I was going to make a profit on and am making more Inf than I have been spending on IO Sets, although I could have gone harder at getting IO sets on my characters.

Since I worked out that I have about seven level 50 characters that could benefit from some IO Set upgrades I have been doing the one Hero Merit for 5 Random Rares swap and distributing the ones I think I can use to each characters and crafting the rest for sale. Seems to be working fairly well so far.

The Team Sidekick/Mentor mechanic is becoming one of my favourite things. Makes getting a team together easy and means I can see how my old level 50s would play at various levels without having to level one up again.

Regards, Screwloose

Well, as far as I can recall there hasn't been a change to the number of slots we get. With IOs, it often happens that you are able to get the enhancement values you want in a much smaller number of slots.

It's not huge deal that you have a lot of sets that give +9% accuracy. There is a limit in that you can only get five bonuses of the same value to the same thing. So only 5 of the +9% accuracy bonuses will actually be applied to your character. I usually don't worry too much about that though if slotting the sets helps to reach my build goals. Something that would help you have a more powerful build on a /Dark would be to slot sets that give you defense to S/L or Melee. Achieving the soft cap is a big deal these days.

I have access to the patron pools on my main. I have been respeccing in and out them though. He's a /Invuln so I went for Hibernate. But the Patron pools can be useful. Shadow Meld is popular for /Regens. It'd probably be pretty good for a /Dark too. IIRC it makes your character invisible (graphically, not mechanically) so that makes some people avoid taking it.

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

Was a slow week for Purple recipes, but I passed the 2 Billion Inf mark so time to start some serious IO Set-ifying.

When I went back and looked at all my characters Screwloose was actually my least upgraded, several of the other characters already had 3 or 4 powers well Set slotted, although generally with the easier to get Sets.

Highlight of the week was a 7 man team when a whole bunch of my friends were on all at once.

I have the SSA down pat now with a few characters. Even made myself a schedule sheet so I can write down when each character does it. Is the 7 Day cool down separate for each reward or are all rewards you have taken locked out until 7 days from the last time you did the SSA?

Screwloose is just about to get Villain status then I think I will be doing the Black Scorpion Arc to qualify for the PPP. I have to say I have found the Villain missions interestingly written and a bit disturbing. The nature of villainy seems a bit mundane. Some of the missions seem to rely on the character having been a hero previously, which works for Screwloose, but wouldn’t work for some of my characters that started as Villains. Are there different Alignment missions if you are a Vigilante moving to Villain status rather than a Villain confirming Villain Status?

Got to get working on my Incarnate status as well.

Hope you are all having fun.

Regards, Screwloose
“I am not young enough to know everything.”