So, think way back to I9 beta, when they were working on the drop pools. Pool B only dropped from a story arc completion. People went nuts over 50s not being able to get pool B drops. Pool B was changed to mission complete.

Now, with I11, we will have infinitely repeatable story arcs, thanks to Oroborous.

The devs run things several months ahead of what the players see. (The story has it that they had ED going when they instituted the Global Defense Reduction, and took that into account.) They likely had infinite story arcs going when they organized the pools.

Thoughts?

Isn't it funny how the old "conventional wisdom" goes by the wayside?

Back before I9, people used to say "don't buy trainings, don't even slot your drops, sell everything and maybe by the time you hit 12 you'll be able to afford some DOs," or even "don't even buy DOs so you'll have enough cash for SOs when you hit 22."

Suddenly salvage, recipes, and Wentworth's are upon us, and all of a sudden all the badge-hungry level 50 zillionaires out there are pouring their cash down to the lowbies who get the salvage drops they can no longer easily obtain directly. The "lean years" of having to prostrate oneself before Level 50s, or hope to win costume contests, are more or less over and even the newest newbie can afford to buy all the Enhancements he needs practically from the get-go—and can be confused by older guides that advise extreme thrift.

Well, you certainly can't say the devs are averse to change.

Since not everyone is a member of cityofvillains

I was able to finally get the bug wings costume piece for my Dom, Biomekanic.
Thought I'd share the link to the pic.
Comments off here as this is an x-post.

From the July 6 Beta version still on the training room and NOT LIVE patch notes:

"You must defeat Mary MacComber all ten times in order to progress the Katie Hannon Task Force."

I'm SO not surprised. I figured they'd do this exact thing to curb the clockwork like re-running of Katie's TF for rare recipes. It's still a pretty short TF, and is a plum level range for recipe selection. It just isn't going to be a 15 minute stealth/teleport quickie anymore.

Honestly, Mary Mac is the real core of the TF and I enjoy the challenge of fighting her. She's a tough opponent, but she IS defeatable. However, I do know many people have commented they have not succeded in a fight against her. So, if you need the TF badge for the Geas accolade, get the lead out. The so-called "Quick Katie" TF is about to end.

Based on the play experiences I've had lately with @crunchbird, as well as on the several task forces ran recently with other LJers, I think that the overall salvage and SO drop rates for 40+ characters are flat out broke. It's kind of subtle, because we do know that 40+ drop rates were lowered some, but my personal experience suggests that a level 35 character gets about 6x as many SOs and possibly 8-10x as much salvage as a 50. That just can NOT be right.

I decided to go right to the official forums, so if anyone else can compare the drops between a 40+ and a, say, 30-39 character, it would be great to hear. Even if I'm told that I'm just a statistical anomaly.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Again, this is information I haven't seen posted anywhere so I just figured I'd share my personal experience. IMO, it's some of the most useful practical information I've found in applying anything IO. These IOs are now my absolute favorite new addition to the game.

The two IOs in question are -
Karma: Knockback Protection
Steadfast Protection: Knockback Protection

These two IOs are exactly the same with the exception of Karma being a defense IO and Steadfast being a damage resistance IO. Both offer -4 mag knockback protection that works like a set bonus - your protection will always be on regardless of whether it's slotted into a click, toggle, or inherent. These are not unique, either, and you can slot multiples if you have multiple mitigation powers or a power that takes defense AND resistance such as Shadowfall. They do only work on you, even if you slot them into a friend buff... when I slot this kind of enhancement I refer to it as "attaching" it to a power rather than slotting the power with it since the power is just a vehicle and doesn't interact with the IO at all.

What's all this mean to you? Well, a lot, if you don't have knockback/down protection provided in your set. I haven't fully tested the ins and outs, but here is what I can tell you about practical uses -

- 1 KB enhancement (mag 4) slotted into Increased Density had my Kinetic Defender standing toe to toe with Banished Pantheon and Nemesis. Not once did she get knocked around... not even by purple conning BP bosses or the Shaman's Earthquake. This is HUGE for my Kin and has been enough of a change to get her back onto my 'actively leveling' list.
- 2 KB (mag 8) enhancements slotted - on Stealth and Fortitude - changed Hami/Mito knockback to knockdown on my Empath Defender. I used an Essence of Earth (after nerf to resistance cap), 2 KB enh, the 20% mez and 30% mez uniques when testing against passive aggro and the result was that by the time I'd jumped up from the knockdown I was unstunned. My toggles didn't have to be on for any of those IOs to work, so it wasn't a problem. I used Heal Aura and one or two respites to live the entire duration of the EoE with no other outside help.
- Since Super Reflexes' Practiced Brawler and Invulnerability's Unyeilding have mag 10 protection, according to Red Tomax, and neither suffer Hami/Mito knockback/down I'm assuming 3 KB enhancements (mag 12) will negate the effects. I haven't been to the Hive with an active Hami to test on since my Empath got his third to be sure, though. Nothing more than 3 should be necessary for anything shy of PvP (I've heard Force Blast has mag 18, for instance).

I need to test my KB enhancements against Elite Bosses and ArchVillains still, to see where they fall in the range, though my best guess would be 2 or 3 enhancements. In the end, one KB enhancement can be an AT's best friend and anything more than that should probably be considered only necessary for specialized toons' use.

That all said, if anyone gets dropped either of these recipes and is crazy enough to not want them, I would love to have them ^_~ Happy hunting.

I've updated my general FAQ for I9 and inventing, located here based on the questions I've seen repeatedly asked on the LJ global chat channel, as well as on here.

If you have questions, feel free to ask, but remember that this is intended as a general primer. If you're ready for exact numbers or you have a specific question about a unique IO you got, I'm just going to point you at the more advanced guide that Quasadu did or the Paragon Wiki. I also want to point out my new favorite page, the list of Invention Enhancement Sets.


This should, however, get you oriented to the basics of inventing. Welcome back to all people returning to check out the game, and Hi! to the new folks. : )

1.) STF on Pinnacle? Anyone up for the States TF this upcoming Sunday? I'd be available anytime after 10:00 am CST. I've run it on test with Kuso, and would love to do this now that I9 is live.


2.) I'm probably just putting a HUGE target on my chest, but I'd like to revive the idea of a very casual CoH/CoV player gathering in Chicago during the weekend of Wizard World. Nothing formal like the ideas being tossed around last time. Just hey, I'll be at WWC and would like to meet for dinner, nothing more, nothing less.

Anyone interested in either, please let me know.

Current Mood: Full of Frango mints

I've been looking at IO sets, and their bonuses in particular, pretty hard for the last few days... really trying to figure out how most of them are worth anything outside of PvP. ( Is it just me? )

I took last week off because I figured everyone would be too busy fiddling around with I9 (as was I :) but Wednesday night I'm again doing an episode of my City of Heroes TalkShoe live podcast talk show, "Exploring the Heroes' City" at 10 p.m. Eastern, 9 p.m. Central.

This episode will be about I9; in particular I want to mention some things I've noticed about the auction house and Inventions. But everyone is welcome to join in with their own take on things!

See http://terrania.us/heroes/ to listen or join in, and http://terrania.us/talkshoe for information on how to call.

I compiled a list of Enhancement percent comparisons for myself, and figured I'd share.

(Fake Cut: Enhancement % info)

Disclaimers: Obviously, '4 effect' IOs and Schedule C & D Enhancements are also offered, but I didn't bother taking the time to write them down. Neither did I finish the lvl 30 IO information. But I think it's a good start, anyway, and more than I've seen elsewhere.

First the important bit. Today while fighting some Nemesis Automatons, Raye got the one costume piece I really wanted for her, ROCKET BOOTS! =D Obligatory picture:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v720/jillbamfette/CoH/rocketboots.jpg

And I finally finished sifting through all the pictures for the Statesman TF yesterday. This TF will be old news soon (probably already is for some) but it was my first time running it, we had an amazing team, and I had a great time! so I took a whole lotta screenshots, (though I forgot to for the first bit of the TF) which can be found here:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v720/jillbamfette/CoH/StatesmanTF/

The images from the final mission came from a demo, not while actually playing since I wanted to pay full attention. the demo did some weird things to my graphics, namely it removed all trace of my power animations, even buffs on me like bubbles don't show up, so I dunno what's up with that, and some of the other powers are a lot brighter than they are in the actual game... but still got some nice shots out of it, and it had the benefit of eliminating my rad debuffs from the images so you could see the AV's better.

Here's some of my favorites and notable encounters, though.

( Read more... )

Two HUGE things to announce:

1) Account Reactivation
From here:

Have you played City of Heroes or City of Villains previously? Do you follow the game but are not subscribed? Are you interested to check out the new free expansion, Issue 9? Well now you can!

Are IOs like HOs in that: you can slot one that boosts multiple attributes, even if the power you're putting it into doesn't have all of those attributes. For instance, if I have a DMG/HOLD/ACC IO, (just an example, I don't know that there's one like that) ... could I put it into a non-hold power, and it will still boost the DMG and ACC? I know HOs work that way, but I'm wondering if IOs do...

I was wondering whether a set of IOs is more valuable than a bunch of level 53 SOs. So I bought a set and tested it out. Listed below are the enhancements before and after (and their level)

Dispersion Bubble
Original: DEF(50++), DEF(52+), DEF(53), COST(53), COST(53)
Totals: DEF(57.2%), COST(76%)

Red Fortune: 1 Full Set, level 50 (note, yes I added another slot so I could use the whole set)
Totals: DEF(57.5%), COST(97.5%), RECHG(73.8%)

So even though I had to devote one more slot to it, I wouldn't be able to put a level 53 anything in there and bring my totals up to what the set gives me, let alone the bonuses for having the whole set slotted.

So yes, buying sets of IOs is worth it.

In the spirit of KW's newbie guide, I thought maybe we should cook up an FAQ for I9. I was on all day yesterday and there were quite a few repeat questions. I decided to use a Q & A format to keep the topics and replies short and sweet. If anyone has additional questions, or needs clarification, post 'em and I and the other helpful folks here will take a stab at answering. This isn't an exhaustive explanation of I9, these are just the questions I was answering yesterday, mostly multiple times. As always, the Patch Notes are something you should try to read completely.

This FAQ was revised May 21, 2007.

Hello all!

My team on Justice successfully completed Statesman's Task Force earlier. It took us about 4 hours, but we did it! I have some screen shots, but I'll link them because they're huge:

Taking on Viridian in the second mission.
Taking on Silver Mantis in the fourth mission. There are a lot of effects going on in this shot, but it's still neat. :-)
Taking on Ghost Widow in the last mission.
Taking down one of the machines in the last mission I love this shot!
And finally, a group shot. The guy on the far left wasn't with us.

I want to thank the members of Task Force Infinity for a great time, great conversation, and a successful run:
Megumi Yamato
GAARNG
Profion
RedTyrannasaur
Mighty Lornac
Diamant13
Phantom Enigma

And me - Arwen Darkblade :-)

I can't wait to run this again! It's so much fun!

Caveat Emptor means "Buyer Beware." It's an ancient adage, and true today.

I just want to offer up this thought, especially for the benefit of people who haven't been around for a long time. Even though the invention system is going live, it's not final or perfect. There are bugs in it still, there will be adjustments to it. In fact, there are changes planned to apply after it goes live already. Once the whole playerbase gets their hands on inventions, you can bet that new wrinkles will crop up and the devs will fix them. It would be nice if there are only minor tweaks, but realistically, there will probably be at least a few relatively major adjustements. The devs have demonstrated that they have absolutely no compunctions about adjusting anything they think needs fixing, and they will do so without any apology or compensation other than a freespec for a major round of power adjustments.

Don't overextend yourself trying to get on the inventions bandwagon. Try it out, sure, but do so cautiously. Don't spend all your money on a rare recipe; you'll probably find you can't get the salvage. Don't bankrupt yourself for new shinies that might get nerfed next week. The economy will be crazy at first as people with too much money drop ludicrous cash out of bored indifference. Never spend more resources on something than you are truly willing to part with. The new City of Trading community (city_of_trading) will probably be a much fairer place to get items, especially if you want to do some kind of rare for a rare trade.

I'm not trying to cry "Doom!" here. Enjoy the new content, just don't get carried away and go nuts over it. : )

Current Mood: pensive

Well, something's taking 20+ minutes to patch this morning. What could it be?

And why do they make me have to choose between waiting for this and running out to get the new Tori Amos album?

Update: Apparently, the servers are "offline for extended maintenance" until 1pm EST today, so looks like my little ass is off to Breast Bi.

Current Mood: one impatient litte bastard