f13.net

Allright, here goes -- I have City of Heroes. I tend to play for a month, get bored, and quit. I have like 8 characters between level 5 and 15. I have not played City of Villians, all on Infinity. (I think).

I am considering ordering the Light versus Dark pack off the City of Heroes website (I think that's what it's called -- CoH + CoV for 30 bucks, they give me the key and I can download the CoV client with it) mostly for the nifty bonuses, and so I don't have to track down CoV.

I'm pretty sure I can just attach it to my current (if inactive) account.

So here's the question -- how many of you guys play, on what servers, and what sides? What should I know as someone who hasn't touched the game in about two years? I'm happy to make new characters on another server.

My primary problem was having no friends to play with -- I'm not hugely social, but I like having a nice chat channel and a few people I know. CoH was always pretty good with PuGs, and I'm not looking for a giant Supergroup or anything.

Any advice? Suggestions? Servers to roll on?

I thought they opened both City of Villains and City of Heroes up not too long ago to anyone who bought either one.

Poisen/Thugs mastermind. Jack the difficulty up. Its stupid but kinda fun. I know how you feel.

Nevermore is right.  They opened the game up to all existing subscribers.  Check to make sure you can make a villain before buying anything.  (I don't think you had to log in then, but as I had both I can't really say if it worked or not.)

All my characters are on Pinnacle in a range of levels up to 33-ish.  (I have a 44, but she's part of a duo and I won't play her otherwise.)  I mostly solo, but I'm willing to try grouping if anyone shows up there.  Currently my villain is my main focus since those storylines are new.  if the global chat channel Signe mentioned in the other thread works I'll at least be in it.

I think that was a one time bonus thing.

I'll certainly check if I can make Villians -- I have to patch up to the latest version, which should be LOTS of fun. If not, I don't mind dropping 30 bucks for a key plus the goodies that come with it (some jet pack or something).

I'm still annoyed that every time I find a group of CoH players, they're NEVER on Infinity. I must have rolled the freakin' ghetto server when I started.

I'm happy enough to roll a toon on Virtue or something. As I said, I don't necessarily want to GROUP (PuGs are -- or at least were -- generally pretty good at the low levels I was playing) so much as it's nice just to have someone I know to ask stupid questions of...

Like "How can I send tells? What's up with this ridiculous bloody system? Why isn't it working? ARRGH" (something about commas? I don't remember -- just remember it taking me five minutes to work out).

/tell Latency, This is for people on your server.

/tell @Latency, This is for global chat!

I've joined the Batnet channel, so when I'm on you can chat to me there.  You can add channels through the "Tab" tab.

If you are unable to make villains and if you want to save yourself a few dollars, pop by your nearby Fry's or another game store.  I've seen CoH editions sold for $20 or so a lot of places.

Something else you can do now is rename your characters, and transfer them between servers (for a fee of course).

Although honestly, if none of your characters are higher than level 15, then rolling up a new one on a different server won't cost you that much time, if your intent is to play with people you know.

I'll probably reroll on Virtue and annoy Lantyssa in chat. Much like here, but I'll be in spandex.

Any new toons I make will be on Virtue.

I currently have a 32 on Guardian and a 32 on Victory.  I might transfer them to Virtue.

I'm trying some new things too.  Mostly things that kill s-l-o-w-l-y.  I don't know if I really have the patience for that rad/rad defender.  Or if it's worth making.

Anyway, add me to your global chat list. (Zero, not an o at the end).

@Xanthippe0

One of favorite toons was a rad/rad defender. Of course, he was fun because I grouped with 7 other rad/rad defenders in a supergroup (The Three Mile Island Boy's School for Boys) and exploited the fun stacking of debuffs. Only got him to about level 13, because while he's a blast in a group (especially when grouped with two or more other rad/rad defenders) he is insanely slow to level solo.

I think my favorite toon of all was a simple fire/ice blaster. I remember checking the game out right after they added things like defiance (is that what it's called for blasters? Where damage scales as your health goes down?) and turning into a mega-nuker when I was darn near dead. Was really fun.

I play a rad/rad defender, the debuffs are incredible. I don't think I get much out of the secondary though.

Well, no. Really you just tell everyone "Don't kill my anchor", drop every debuff on god's green earth on them, giggle as it effects all the other mobs, and hover serenly above the fray.

If you're board, you can use X-ray or something and irritate something.

They always kill the anchor, I don't even bother in PUGs anymore. I just pick a purple towards the back.

The comma is there cause names can have spaces in there.

If you want people to talk to but not necessarily group with them, search through the global channels and find the most popular ones for your server and join them. Except for Virtue -- on there you want to join VU2008. Freedom and Virtue are the two most active servers. Freedom has the nickname of "Freedumb" and Virtue is the unofficial RP server which means lots of furries, catgirls (as a subspecies of furries), schoolgirls, and "ERP" (Erotic Role Playing aka cybering). If you stay away from Pocket D except as an occassion travel mechanism you can avoid a lot of that, however.

I use Pocket D to travel and there's never anyone in there, unless there's an event and the entrance is there.  I knew it was the RP home, but I didn't know about the furries!   :ye_gods:

The sound effect for Proton Volley makes up for it though (it's the photon torpedo sound from Star Trek).

I prefer Dark/Dark, but I'm a wannabe goth.

I played my 32 controller today.  Good god, what a lot of fun.  Illusion/force fields - I have this army of mobs - phantasm, phantom army, and a thing that aoe fears. 

I feel like I'm cheating.

By the way, I vaguely recall something about a change so that there's a maximum number of the same slots?  Like 3 or something?

What are the restrictions on slotting?  I have Hasten slotted with 5 somethings.

I wish I could change my fire/fire blaster to a fire/ice blaster.

Some rl friends of mine picked this up, so I might resub myself. It's a rare opportunity that I get to play an mmo with people I know.

..

I'll probably quit pretty quickly though, I bet.  :oh_i_see:

Unless my grav controller is as fun as Xanth makes her Illusion out to be. What's the deal with that anyways? Did they patch in the fun again?

In the good old days you used to be able to have 3 phants and *12* phantom army decoys out at once.


ED aka Enhancement Diversification aka "3 minions = 1 hero" aka the largest global nerf in MMORPG history.

The rule of thumb is that you should not slot anything with more than 3 SO equivalents as there's a huge drop off once you get to that point (it actually starts slightly before that but it's not that noticable).

If you want the gory details you can read the Wiki:

http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification

No it's not, though I might be somewhat biased since my main is Illusion and I have two more Illusion alts.

Grav has Propel which might be the single most fun attack power in the game. Unfortunately it's incredibly gimped when grouped since much of the time the mob you are trying to hit with it will die while the power is animating. The Grav pet is very cool but of course you have to get to 32 to get it. Wormhole is unique and very powerful but requires coordination with your team if you are grouped which in PUGs is close to impossible.

What's your secondary?

Edit: have

Kinetics. I have two grav/kin actually, one is 31, one in his teens (but on a better server, with a cooler name...so I prefer to play that one).

In addition to propel, I recall that I started depending upon some kind of punching power in the flight tree instead. It was decent dmg (for a grav controller) and not as slow. Still was a bitch to take things down though.

Air Superiority -- the best pool power attack in the game and better than many power set attacks as well.

Grav/Kin is okay. Kin is a great team power set and people will invite you just for that if they know you have it. Unfortunately that means they also expect you to be constantly buffing them with Speed Boost which is a fricking pain in the ass (my main mentioned above is Ill/Kin).

Unfortunately there's not a whole bunch of synergy with Grav. Grav can do a lot of damage against single targets but since you don't have an AoE attack (your AoE immobilize doesn't really count as an attack) Fulcrum Shift isn't as effective a combo as it is with some other power sets (like Fire/Kin *cough*). Singy doesn't do much damage (it's a control-type pet) so Speed Boost/Siphon Power/Fulcrum Shift on it doesn't really help you kill much faster. You can't heal it with Transfusion either, not that you really need to.

Yeah, air superiority... That's it.

I'll be playing with two other people for the most part, so that might make it tolerable enough.

Seems like grav is just where it always was though. And fire is still superior, just like it was years ago. That blows.  I thought there was some unwritten rule that every mmo class gets it's day in the sun eventually?  :grin:

Oh well, I still like the idea behind the gravity powers, and couldn't reroll him to something else even if I wanted to, simply because the name wouldn't work for anything else.

Bug me @Ragnoros

I play on Virtue, anything I can do to help.

You can get the Good vs Evil edition of CoX for like 12 bucks SHIPPED on Amazon.

If your wanting to find something out try The Guide to Guides (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=9943910&an=0&page=0#Post9943910) on the CoX official forums. Or just ask me, if I could turn my knowledge of stupid MMORPG data into a job I would be set.

By the way, is anyone here on Freedom?

[edit] Fucking cocksuckers of the highest order. They deleted my name.   :mob: :angryfist:

Guess I'm not playing. Should have bought a gumjob instead.

I have a midlevel Ice/Healwhatitsname Controller from back in the day. Does solo levelling still hurt like stabbing yourself in the eye with a rusty fork repeatedly?

Well Empathy isn't going to help you soloing except for a minor heal but Controllers got an "inherent" called Containment which makes your attacks do double damage against targets that are held, immobilized, slept or disoriented. That helps a lot when soloing. Also exp gain is faster now.

Edit: you have some aura buffs too but those are on long timers.

This is what is making me reluctant to re-sub.  I managed to score a number of (what I think are) good names and it would be very disheartening to login to find that, not only do I no longer have my name, but some jackass actually has my name.

I had the perfect name for a grav controller. Grip.  :sad_panda:

RIP Grip.

And people who wanted to play the game couldn't find any good names because they were all taken by inactive accounts.

So what. I payed for a box and about 12 months subbing overall. At the very least, let me keep my fucking name.

..

Sigh. Oh well, it's done now.

It is interesting that a purely comedic change is stopping you from playing.  Like Angy Bob and his medal for not dying in LoTRO.

Perhaps if it was WoW, I wouldn't care. But this game encourages personalization more than other mmo's. You're encouraged to be creative, "roleplay", and get thematic right from the get go. The biggest strength of CoH is how it allows you to put your own stamp on the character. And now I've been screwed out of that too. So I'm not sure what's so comedic about it. I no longer have the same character that I made anymore. That sucks.

You can buy both renames and server changes now.  I've not done that, so I don't know how much it costs.

I think you can check to see if a name exists.

I have so far played my 32 fire/fire blaster (Bernadette BBQ), my 32 ill/FF controller (B-Girl), and my 17 grav/rad? controller (Cranky Spouse).  I have been asked to join teams numerous times on each.   None of these are on Virtue or Freedom, the highest pop servers.

I have not found soloing to be hard or a grind, because I'm enjoying the storylines and the actual play.  Xp gain seems to be moving along at a reasonable pace.  I've also been futzing with inventions and the market.  I am enjoying getting salvage drops - the random nature of them is fun.

I still have a 25 nature dominator and a 28 ice corrupter I haven't touched yet and many smaller than 15.

Why are some of my missions with gray mobs?  Is there a badge at the end of the chain?

Wait what level was he when you lost his name, if it was above 6, you got screwed.

The name Kathy (my name) was taken by someone in the LOTRO beta. They played it to, I think 6th, and then left it. It still sits there. I put it on my friends list. I even emailed them in game.

I'd like the name. They're not using it. They're not going to use it.

sorry, I am with ncsoft on that one.

I didn't even check (and now I uninstalled the client).. I thought he was in his teens, but now I think that I might have rerolled him as a dominator (or whatever the CoV controller is), then stopped playing soon afterwards.

They only did that whole name thing once or twice on CoX, right?  Then they dropped the idea because so many people complained.  It would annoy me though I wouldn't care passionately or anthying, but I can understand why it would bother a lot of people.  I thought it was a bad idea for CoX, especially since it's lack of "stuff" makes it hard to stay subbed for extended periods of time for a lot of people.  It seems to be one of those games that many go back to, though.  If the new superhero game has more content and is as fun to play long term as this one is short term, I expect CoX will become very empty, very fast.

The game has been around four years.  They announced their plans for allowing people to take names, and you only lost the name if you were inactive, below a certain level, and someone tried to make a character.  There have also been tons of place-holder characters and people who played a bit then never returned.

I don't think it should happen often, but I'm with Numtini and tazelbain on this.  Recyling names of low level, unused character names is a reasonable thing to do.

If you leveled him higher than 10, you'd still have the name.

If you didn't, why the fuck do you care so much if you couldn't be bothered to play him for that long?

Because.

That's absurd.

(http://files.blog-city.com/files/J05/90775/p/f/emo200.jpg)

Hmm, so what's the alternative to being pissed? Am I supposed to like my names getting deleted or something?  :headscratch:


Besides, I already said "Oh well, it's done now" in the first post I complained about this. Then followed up with an explanation with why it might have happened. It's not like I'm here saying that I'm going to sue Cryptic or some shit. So I'd appreciate it if you guys not go there, with the QQ pics. I'm just a little dismayed is all.

I have a goth defender (healing) based off the character Abby on NCIS. It was lame, but amused me at the time. Surprisingly fun to play at the time.

I wanted to do Pokemon's Nurse Joy, but it seems that's not the most unique idea in the world. (My son was a huge Pokemon fan at the time)

I have an emp defender named Dr. Goodhead.  "Holly Goodhead" was either taken or had too many characters.

Hero's on Freedom

Villans on Virtue

Good startup characters for Hero's:
Scrapper -- especially Spines/Regeneration, Broad Sword/Regeneration, hell anything/Regeneration, and pick leaping/fitness as your 1st two power pools and you will have a lot of fun solo or groups.
Tanker  -- Fire/Fire is great solo and pretty decent in groups, the new Willpower looks very promising (haven't played it enough), just remember that it takes longer to do stuff alone with this set
Blaster  --  they are fun, just becareful not to take on a lot of scoundrels at once, I have a soft spot for Assult Rifle/Devices, but have enjoyed a energy/energy blaster lately.

Villians side:
Mastermind  --  read up on how to control your pet's and you will do great in a group or solo
Brute  --  I like my electric/electric, I had a stone/dark and it was a lot of fun but had big time endurance problems...


I currently play a spines/regen hero and a plant/thorn domminator villian, they are a lot of fun.  I have a lot of fun in groups with my trick arrow/archery defender, willpower/battle axe tanker, plant/thorn domminator.

Now if you are building a villian or hero for PvP that is a whole 'nother ball game, depending on where you want to battle and what you want to do.

Defiance has actually changed now. It's called "defuriance" on the boards, because every attack you land gives you a short-term bonus to damage, more for single-target and close-range attacks. You can get up to about 50% pretty easily.

Also it lets you fire off your first two blast powers and your first support power under the influence of stuns etc.

Aww....I loved the feeling I got when I was hovering there, under 10% health, inspirations exhausted and surrounded by the smoking corpses of my foes and thinking "I AM A FUCKING BADASS!". I guess I can still do that, but it won't feel the same. :)

The "You think you can stop me? YOU CAN'T FUCKING STOP ME!" feeling of taking out an NPC mezzer with the tiny attack chain you get even under mezz is pretty good too.

All evidence seems to indicate that you really didn't care when you had the name and are now just using it as an excuse to be "dismayed".  That's what I'm calling you on.  It's totally reasonable of them to free up names that have been inactive for months and were never really played, especially in a game like this one.  All of the names I cared about are still waiting for me because I actually used them.  I know the grind is (was) a big complaint with this game, but it's not like level 10 was ever hard to get.

/sigh

I don't know why you defend such measures as normal (as far as I know they are not... it's the only game that I've had my name deleted in...hence, I'm "allowed" to be surprised and dismayed on that point alone).

Anyways... Correct, level 10 isn't hard to get. I think you didn't read my explanation though. I had been above that level before. I remember now that I had deleted him (he was well into his teens) because I tried rerolling as a dominator or whatever it was in CoV (and I finally purchased that around a year ago...and it was mainly because I did care enough about that character... the blaster secondary was attractive for Gravity). It turned out to not be what I wanted though, and I simply left it alone for awhile. Hell man, I barely played any PC games since then. I started using Macs again -- and I didn't even have a bootcamp installation until Leopard came out some months ago.

If you want my entire life story on why I can't keep City of Heroes on my mind at all times, then I'll gladly share that with you too. Needless to say, I cared "enough" -- I care as much as every other game out there expects me to care. Just because Cryptic decided to be different doesn't mean that I don't care at all. That's disingenuous fanboi bullshit.

Never mind.

You took my name, didn't you?!

I like humorous names and heroes that are half-serious and half-parody.

Go with a Battlestar Galactica Rip-Off.  Reinstall and make your new hero: Mr. Geta Grip.

You can have my Smiley Face Girl or Brick-Outhouse if you like.  Even Creepy Ivy.

She's a BRICK... Outhouse! *dance*

I'll give you Icy London if you want her.

Well, rolled a superhero on Virtue -- Fire/ice blaster.

toon name -- and global chat name -- is Blazing Ice.

(Yes, stupid name. But hell, all the good ones are taken....)

A great fire/ice blaster name would be Ginnungagap.

Storyline missions usually have a cap on how high the mobs inside them will go (no it doesn't make sense to me either). You can tell you are on a storyline misison by the little book icon that shows up when you view a mission from the Contacts screen. At the end of a chain of storyline missions there's often an extra reward (usually a DO or SO that you can choose from a list).

Actually, all contacts have a cap on how high the level of their mission will be. If you've got a yellow-backed book icon from a contact they'll keep giving you missions so you can finish up the story, even after you've outleveled them.

Also, some enemies just won't spawn over a certain level. I think this has only been used for effect once, a mission from Indigo or Crimson to take down some Malta before they ruin a fledgling hero's life. In one of the side-rooms are the Skulls the Malta have hired to take credit for defeating the much more experienced hero. They're capped at 14 and you can probably just roll over them. That's the point.

This MMO was the first since Asheron's Call that I really enjoyed. Sadly, I'm running an ATI card, and can't play. Would it be ridiculous to start building a new computer just to play CoH again?

A new video card would be cheaper.

Lantyssa: I missed your global chat handle. :)

As for ATI's -- I have a Radeon 9200 (I think -- it's ATI for sure), and CoH seems to run fine. What's the problem with ATI cards?

Also, apparently I can choose between a permanent Ghost Slaying Axe or Sands of Mu. Any reason to choose one over the other?

I like Sands of Mu.  It satisfies my "slapping someone silly" cravings.

I usually go with Sands of Mu for magic or mutant origin charactes, and ghost slaying axe for the others.  These two aren't affected though, later on you will have a choice in range powers and that origin will play into how much damage you do with it (Blackwand and Nemesis Staff).

My scrapper spines/regen is of mutant origin, so I gave him Sands of Mu and Blackwand.  My defender trick arrow/archery is of natural origin so I gave him ghost slaying axe and Nemesis Staff.  There is some debate in that negative energy is nicer to have than smashing damage, if you want to go that route, then Blackwand and Sands of Mu is better.  Sands of Mu is also a melee cone attack, so it can hit three bad guys or more sometimes.

I think I'll go with Sands of Mu.

So -- the ATI cards? I've got one and haven't seen a problem. Is it just some cards, or what?

Some of the ATI cards stutter, and it can be quite bad.

I like the Sands of Mu, but it fits most of my characters better than a giant axe.  And I justified it as the "Hands of Moo" on Jersey Girl.

I've been noticing stutter. I turned off shadows and that helped a lot. The Sands of Mu is fun. :)

I created a villian -- Technological Mastermind. I have a robot. :) I actually didn't plan to keep him (just wanted to toy with the villian costume editor and see the starting zone), but I managed such a cool costume and a great name, so I'm keeping him. (Lord Monochrome and his mighty robot Clank!).

Quick summary: The consensus is that Sands of Mu is generally better overall because you can hit multiple targets with it. Depending on your power damage types and the types of mobs you fight regularly the Axe may be a better a choice. Some people avoid Sands just because of the length of the animation and rooting effect and similarly some people avoid the Axe just because of the weapon draw.

Sands of Mu is the same style attack as Shadow Maul if you are familiar with that power. This is both good and bad. The good is that with some practice you can hit more than one enemy with SoM if you line them up correctly. The bad is you are rooted for the duration of the long animation including if you miss.

Sands does negative damage while the Axe does lethal. It can be useful to pick the Axe if you do mostly negative damage (to use against negative resistant mobs) and Sands if you do mostly lethal. On the other hand there are Dark Melee users who think that having two Shadow Maul-style attacks is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

You can go even deeper than that by looking at the resistances of individual mobs and picking the power that offsets resistances to your primary damage type. E.g. The "zombie"-type Banished Pantheon strongly resist both psionic and negative damage. Similarly Carnies resist psionic but take extra damage from lethal. On my Illusion controllers, which do primarily psionic damage, I take the Axe to take advantage of these match ups (and others). They are also rarely in position to be able to hit multiple targets with Sands so that advantage is negated.

The Axe also does double damage against "true" undead (Vahz don't count, unfortunately) which includes those annoying CoT spectrals with the extra damage being done as energy. The Axe can also be annoying if you are a weapon user (e.g. Katana Scrapper) cause you have to take out your weapon again after using the Axe. The Axe looks really cool, though.

I'm just rerolled onto Virtue. I've got a natural/martial arts scrapper by the name of Day Trader.

I'll be on tonight -- probably running radio missions in Kings Row. (Level 6 Fire/ice blaster -- @Blazing Ice). Took me two deaths to do one last night -- tried the boss with no inspirations left. :(

If I'm not in Kings Row, I'm probably toying with my Villian Lord Monochrome. He finds the riotous colors of superheros offensive, and wishes to purge them from the Earth. Villians next, of course.

I will be on as well, however I'm struggling with some stuttering and that doesn't go over well as a scrapper.

I'll be rerolling my secondary onto Virtue as well.

He is The Burgundy Bulwark, a defender styled after the golden age heroes.

You guys are tempting me to resub just to see what I still have on virtue. 

Day Trader: great name!

Resub? Do it.

Also, sorry I wasn't around last night - something came up. (read: I got tanked)

I'd probably miss any global tells anyways -- the chat's hard for me to really pay attention to. I think I have Xanthippe0 in my friend's list, and my brother apparently still plays in Infinity (his schedule is finally vaguely close to mine so we might one day be on at the same time).

I played my Villian yesterday anyways. Got to level 6, took Hover, cursed myself for ALWAYS TAKING HOVER and trying to decide which hero/villans should take something else anyways (hover just fits too well with my playstyle. Plus, fucking 3-D world).

I got my second robot -- Lord Monochrome and his henchman Clank and Clonk are doing battle. I like the Robots/Bubbles combo, although I can already see that reapplying bubbles is going to soak up a lot of time. I'm going to have to think carefully about how I want to slot those bubbles, and I think my next power is upgrade robot and I'm sure how that works...

Upgrade robot:  Select your henchaman and activate.  They gain additional abilities.  For the minions, it's a non-interruptable sniper-like attack.  Protector bots get a repair, and the Assault bot gets lots of goodies.  When you only have a few, it's worth putting in a recharge in the slot.  Later you might want endurance.

Take combat jumping and super leap on your next character.  It's a ton of fun.  Fly is good for a Mastermind though.

I have my chat window split in two.  Chat channels in one pane, combat and system info in the other.  Things are rarely busy enough that my chat scrolls off before I can read it.

-----
Speaking of robots, I would like some naming suggestions.  Currently I have:

Minions - traceroute, netstat, ping
Protect - Firewall, Black ICE
Assault - kill -9

'Black ICE' and 'netstat' are the ones I'm thinking of changing.  Telnet might work for the minion, but other ideas are good.

What's your Villian's particular....theme?

I mean, I admit that mine's pretty dumb. I was using White/black as linked colors while I worked on getting the costume to look right, and ended up LIKING white/black (mostly white -- the black is edging), and when the name "Lord Monochrome" wasn't taken (I was thrilled -- first time EVER that the first name I tried in CoX wasn't taken) I jumped at it.

So then I came up with, you know, a reason. A very fitting one. Lord Monochrome became a villian after spending his childhood suffering under the visual assault of Superhero's and their godawful costumes. The pain from the clashing colors was so awful that he vowed to destroy all Supers -- and then Villians, because most of them aren't much better. (Battlecry: "Those colors clash!")

Since I tend to wince at least three or four times an hour when some particular eyesore of a Super runs by, there's a bit of a grain of truth there. :)

I went with Clank and Clonk just because -- his robots are tools to an end. I admit -- with some shame -- that I found myself talking to the bloody things. "Clank, kill this imbicile for me. Clonk, destroy this fool" etc.

If you're going with net terms -- how about replacing Black Ice with Encrypt, VPN or if you want to get more obscure -- Blowfish or AES. :)

Robot/Dark.  Name of Latency, so obviously a network theme.  (What's more villainous to a gamer than latency?)  Her dark powers made people shun her, so now she shuns them and builds her own friends.

The minions I was going for networking protocols and tools.  The protector bots are protective devices or protocols.  I'm trying to avoid acronyms, but had nothing else for the second protector bot.

The assault bot speaks for itself, although I'm amused Latency considers people nothing more than processes at this point.  (One of the minions had been using this, but I finally got to upgrade it.)

Hmm. I thought with Protectors you were going with security tools -- so Encrypt would work. But for networking tools and protocols, have you considered Satan? I doubt many would get the reference....damn script kiddies. :)

Wee! First Mayhem mission! That was fun.

I can do that again, right? Just keep running paper missions?

Anyways, my contact (Mikey the Ear) is offering me one of three different contacts to choose -- there seems to be some significance to the choices I'm missing here. Anyone know why I'm getting three choices for a new contact in that zone?

Net Protocols/Tools:
Ethereal or Tethereal
NetBEUI
NetBIOS
puTTY
TermServ
SARA, SATAN, Nessus
POP3
Sendmail
SMTP
Port 23, Port 22, Port 21
Packet, Header, Payload
SYN, ACK, FIN, RST

Protective Devices/Protocols:
SPI or Stateful Inspection
ElGamAl
Public Key and Private Key
CRC, MD5 Sum, Checksum
Hamming Distance

I don't know how many bots you get in total but you could name each one after a layer in the OSI Model.

If that's not enough, just wiki those terms and they will lead you to hundreds of others.

This is how you develop contacts which lead to story arcs.  You do three paper missions, then a mayhem mission, then you get a new contact.  Each contact will lead to rewards from the different origins (though inventions make this less important).  You should be able to get multiple contacts by completing the story arcs and doing more paper missions.

Story arcs usually have wrinkles not found in the repeatable paper missions, unlike heroside where a lot of contact missions are just rubber stamps. Of the three contacts, Vendetti has you destroy an Elite Boss, Bocor sends you up against some of the more oddball arcane groups and foreshadows some later-game stuff, and Billie Heck has an interesting mission chain with some ambush waves and recurring minor enemies.

Thanks Murgos.  Those are some good ones.  Masterminds get six minions total, so if I had named the character after one of the layers, the OSI model would be a perfect fit.

When you get Oborous missions, you can go back and do story arcs and badge missions you missed, however I like do both the mayhem missions.  There are plenty of story missions to level you and some really cool ones out there.  There are also hidden contacts which become available when you meet certain conditions.

What power pools are you finding useful as a Mastermind?

I just dinged eight (hover, equip robot, my two minions, deflection shield) and am trying to decide what to take at 10. Slotting wise I've got my robots six slotted (three damage, three accuracy) and I'll probably three-slot my deflection shield (and insulation shield when I get it) with three defense buffs. I hate slotting my pulse rifle, simply because I don't use it much, but I think I have a +range, +damage, and +accuracy on it. The push power I've only got a +knockback on that I keep planning to replace with +accuracy so I don't miss as much.

I am acculumating invention salavage like crazy. I had to go find the vault, since I had 26 pieces (room for 30 total) at level 8. I need to do something about that soon.

My problem with CoX is that I just keep rerolling.

So now, if you're playing your Hero, look up Day Trader.

If you're playing your villain, look up XB-109.

Salvage comes by fairly easily, and at your level you can get as much benefit from selling it as making enhancements.  Some of the rarer or more expensive pieces I'll save, but otherwise it's just as easy to purchase most of them if you want to make something.

I've taken Hover, Fly, Assault, and relented to take Swift, Health, and Stamina once in my 20s.  I had Tactics before respecing, but its benefit is pretty low, and endurance drain was finally getting the better of me.  I didn't take a pulse rifle attack until 28.  With Stamina I could afford adding an attack, it gives me a bit to do, and I got the Rikti rifle costume piece, so this lets me pull it out.  (I admit the Rikti rifle was the major reason I took it.)  I'll take Tactics and/or Group Fly again later.  Group Fly is fun with robots, they get rocket boots, but I hardly ever used it.

Minions I five slot (2 Acc, 3 Dam).  Will six slot them once I start putting Pet IOs in their slots.  Protector Bots are six (2 Acc, 2 Dam, 2 Def) until Pet IOs.  Assault is going to be six, with all Pet IOs.  My rifle attack (Burst?  Second attack power.) is only one slotted with a dual Dam/Acc IO.  I'm mainly focusing on my secondary powers now that my pets are slotted.  Six in my Twilight Grasp, four in Tar Patch, and Darkest Night.  A few added to the rest as I can.

I'm thinking about selling the bulk of the common salvage parts, and keeping the uncommons (and one or two rares I have). I need to look up where the invention tutorial starts in City of Villians.

I took bubbles as my secondary power, so far I'm three-slotting bubbles with Defense buffs. (The recharge is fast enough). I slotted equip robot with double recharge speed ones, so I can rather quickly get everyone upgraded. I skipped photon grenade entirely, although do have the photon rifle attack (3rd power, not first). So now I can upgrade my minions then bubble them with deflection and insulation.

I plan to skip barrier cage, I don't see needing a root yet.

Power pool wise -- so far just hover. My endurance use is REALLY low right now, since all I ever use it for is push and photon rifle, and re-bubbling. I'm wanting flight and probably group flight. I was looking at Leadership, to buff my minions, but I was under the impression most of those powers were passive.

I just dinged 10, so it's off to run the invention tutorial. :)

Saving rares and some uncommons is the best idea.  Maybe arcane salvage, too.  The tutorial is in Cape Au Diablo, near the northwest Ferry.

Vengeance is a click, the others are all toggles.  Their drain isn't too bad (one slot Assault with Endurance), but it adds up.  Dark is also endurance intensive with its two big toggles, Darkest Night and Shadowfall, which was part of my problem.  I was fine if I didn't use them, but they're the best powers in the set.

Here's a question -- what's the difference between the Accurance and To Hit enhancements?

Accuracy makes a power hit more often. "enhancements" make a boost stronger -- so you could drop that on aim and you'd get more accuracy bonus out of aim.

(I think)

http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics

It has to do with how the basic combat formula works in CoX.  In a nutshell (iirc): a player has a basic 75% chance to hit an even level mob (50% chance to hit another player in PvP).  To Hit adjustments and Defense adjustments add and subtract from that base number directly.  The result can't go over 95% or under 5%.  That's then multiplied by Accuracy for your final chance to hit something, again capped at 95%.  There are other modifiers in there as well but that's the basic To Hit vs Accuracy part.  People generally find To Hit more valuable because if you're trying to hit a very high defense target, the +To Hit is going to give you better results.

Example:

If I'm in PvP and I'm trying to hit a target with 45% Defense, then 50% (base) - 45% (defense) = 5% * (1 + 100%)  (three Accuracy enhancements is roughly 100% bonus) = 10% or so chance to hit.

Let's say you had just a 15% To Hit bonus and only 33% Accuracy (one SO) against the same target: 50% (base) + 15% (To Hit) - 45% (Defense) = 20% * (1 + 33%) = around 26% chance to hit.

That's all just a very general overview comparing the two.  Ultimately it's really only going to matter a lot in PvP, against very high defense mobs or mobs way over your level.

Edit: and then Trippy posts something much more comprehensive.

Simple (lol) Version of the ToHit Equation:

CLAMP( [Player Accurcy] * [Power Accuracy] * CLAMP( [Base ToHit] + [ToHit Buffs] - [Target Defense]) )

The CLAMP keeps the number between 5% and 95%

An accuracy enhancement will increase the [Power Accuracy] term. 
A ToHit ehancement will increase the portion of [Tohit Buffs] that the power grants.

Example Case, I have a 3% accuracy set bonus and I use Build Up (+20% tohit buff) that has one SO ToHit Enhancement (20% bonus), I also have tactics running unenhanced (12.5% tohit buff) (  then execute a power with one SO Accuracy Enhancement (33% bonus) against a target with 60% defense:

CLAMP( 1.03 * 1.33 * CLAMP( .75 + (.20 * 1.20) + .125 - .60) ) = 1.37 * .515 = .705  (70.54% actual chance to hit)

With only the accuracy enhancement final chance would be 65%, with only the tohit enhancement the chance would be 53%.  However because tohit is additive and accuracy multiplies there are cases where tohit will be more helpful than accuracy.  Additionally, tohit buffs effect every power you use, while accuracy enhancements will only help the power they are slotted in.


Edit: Guess I spent too much time playing with colors.

Ha! I love the color coding, though the green is slightly confusing since that's used for healing related stuff.

One thing to remember about this stuff is that the game is almost entirely wrong when it comes to labelling Accuracy and ToHit buffs/debuffs. Except for enhancements and IO set bonuses everywhere you see "Acc", "+Acc", "-Acc" and so on those are actually ToHit not Accuracy. E.g. those yellow Skittles are buffing ToHit not Accuracy. Mid's has it wrong too which doesn't help matters.

Generally, don't bother holding on. If you've got some new slots and want to invent things to put in them, wait until you've made your enhancements before you dump them on the black market. But otherwise, just dump away. You can probably get better value out of just autoselling for the common "invention: attribute" recipes that you can buy from a worktable, and for some rarely purchased uncommon and rare salvage, and also for rarely used recipes. Every store buys recipes and salvage for the same price.

I generally don't even bother with pursuing rare sets, since they're seldom cheap, but if I really like the bonuses or the set's easy to acquire (confusion, immobilize, slow) then I'll take a couple. As far as I'm concerned the real draw to sets is getting 40% or 50% worth of enhancements in a single slot - mixing multiple sets sometimes in a process affectionately called 'frankenslotting". Selling a single piece of rare magic salvage for a high price can fund several powers' worth of cheap set enhancements.

The only commons I would save at low level are Luck Charms.  Those are used in Accuracy IOs and people very early on price manipulated those up to some pretty ridiculous prices (at least for a lowbie).  Great if you don't care about inventions and just want to sell them on the market, not so great if you actually want to make Accuracy IOs when you're low level.  This will likely change when I12 is released since magic salvage will be dropping more frequently.

I sold 2 of those for 100k last week - because there were less than 10 on the market.  Now there's hundreds but they're still selling for over 50k in the evenings.

I've just sold everything as I got it and I have a full set of IEs and two milliion inf. I don't think it pays to hold on really. You're better off leveraging patience. Put stuff up at a high price and buy at a low and let it percolate for a few days. Lots of people, me included, just keep going up up up until they get what they need NOW.

I'm also pretty surprised at how little the enhancements go up between levels. I looked at replacing IE 30s with 35s and the difference is tiny. I think I'm going to kit out to all IEs now and just sit on them until 50.

Might want to sell your luck charms now before I12 hits live, because it will destroy demand for low level accuracy enhancements.  Lower level characters will start out at 95% base tohit and gradually fall down to 75% by level 20.

Well, I started making inventions -- made a 10 accuracy one (I've got the mats for several 15 Damage and 15 Accuracy, and even some 15 To Hit ones). I just need to figure out which ones to make and where to slot them. I also need to ding level 12 to make them.

The black market is a bit confusing in terms of how to sell stuff there. I didn't have too much time last night to play around -- just ran the invention tutorial.

You should be able to make them, you just won't be able to use them yet.

True -- I also was low on infamy at that point. I figured I'd slot out using as many invention enhancements as possible, so I didn't have to worry about decay. Battle robots first, defense second, pulse rifle third.

Oh god, I got my butt handed to me on a Mayhem mission -- two deaths, one when I went to do the raid and one when I was trying to escape the vault. I got the key and then just beelined (jet-pack) there, apparently my little minions were running along dragging longbow.

I entered the warehouse and FIVE fucking longbow entered -- three yellow, two white. They all aggroed on me, and I had jack and shit in the way of inspirations to help with that.

Die to the hero on the way out -- took the hero down, but she had two longbow and an undercover detective (I think just bad timing) and I died with one longbow and the undercover guy still standing.

Completed the mission with no debt left, but still.

There's two ambushes inside the bank: one when you get close to the vault door and one when you grab the cash (there are other ambushes in Mayhem Missions but I'm just talking about inside the bank itself).  The vault door ambushes come in multiple waves and those are bank security/police.  The money ambush is the hero plus some longbow that come to stop you.  To finish the mission you only need to defeat the hero and longbow.  If you're a victim of bad timing and get a wave of police that coincides with the hero/longbow ambush, you still finish the mission just by killing the latter ambush.  It doesn't matter if there's police still standing.

I'm absolutely stunned at how much $$ I can make just by grabbing a recipe and stuff, popping over to build it, and put it on the market. It sells in a day and I double my money

The whole secret bid thing is confusing me, at the moment. I did get a few recipe drops (and bought two that I wanted) -- including bat wings, which seems a pretty easy to get one, but still -- and I'm so freaking FULL on salvage that I need to either sell it, or go run some missions for infamy and make a bunch of Inventions and sell those. :)

I'd prefer the latter, at least at first, so I can replace my enhancements with ones that won't decay as I level.