New efforts!

[Luna Eclypse]

I managed to run CoH with somewhat minimal Ultra settings with the card I had at the time, a Radeon HD 5770. Had to switch it back to vanilla rendering for Incarnate Trials though to get my frame rate back up. It was a very reliable and well-made graphics card and it's still getting use in my friend's new computer that I helped her assemble. Last year, I built a whole new compy framed around a GTX Titan card and I'm kinda bummed I never got the chance to see how high I could run the Ultra settings with it during actual online play of the game. I hope I will get that chance in the future if all goes well. *fingers crossed*

[Aggelakis]

What's this referring to? i don't recall anything titled Shades of Gray or Dominator rage.

I'm guessing Shades of Gray should be Going Rogue. I have noooo idea what Dominator rage means.

The alignment power Frenzy? (20s of +recharge + a dom bar fill on a stupid-long cooldown)

[Ohioknight]

I'm guessing Shades of Gray should be Going Rogue.

Well if there are 50 of them, I'd say it's definitely Going Rogue

[Neutrio]

My emp defender was emp/rad, I had 4 attacks from rad which was plenty.

I agree with Mistress Urd.  Speaking also as an Emp/Rad, I had 4 attack powers from the Rad pool & that seemed more than enough for me on teams or solo.


Honestly, back in the day, I never understood where the negativity came from against Emps who were built to be healers. Concept/RP aside, why was that so bad?  Back in the early days, that was most of what you did on teams (solo play was more challenging but not impossible or even extremely difficult).  I have had people who would get upset at me for using my Defender as a healer.  They would tell me that I wasn't supposed to be one.  They said I was supposed to be a buffer & debuffer (in the case of Rad powers) toon.  I don't think I still really get it.


Since my primary power set was Empathy, I took all the powers except Absorb Pain & I still had more Rad powers than I used on a team (this was before Epic Power Pools & granting of Fitness, etc.).  After all, 6 of the 10 powers are HP-generating powers! :)


In teams, I would follow the tank/scrap (whoever was leading the melee) and watch the team roster bars & heal anyone who needed it & cycled through CM, Fort & AB.  I generally always had a Leadership power (not all of them - until I made a support-only set for stuff like RMS raids, etc.) & it/they was/were always toggled on.


Now, in the last quarter or so of the game before shutdown, I agree with one of the posters above who mentioned that "Heal Only" power set Defenders were likely to find themselves without much to do.  That certainly described my Defender (until I made a "Damage" power set for him).   If I'm not mistaken, that was because of a fundamental shift/change in the AT powers & changes to the game where most ATs received some combination of more regen, defense and/or resistance and/or received attack/ish powers that did more -regen, -defense and/or -resistance.


I was never one of those Empaths mentioned above that felt they HAD to be on a team or it would fail.  In the early days, the probability was likely much higher.  In the later days, we could flex our secondary powers significantly more & that was vera nice. :)  I didn't mind the changes that generally left my heal powers less necessary - it took me a while to realize that though.  Okay, in the early days, it was a nice ego stroke to see someone say in channel things like "Oh! Awesome! An Empath! Grab him!". :)


Now though, I see my "cast" as having several job possibilities which makes me love them even more:


1) Healer/Buff - if you really want to roll that way
2) Ranged damage w/some heals & buffs
3) Melee damage w/some buffs/debuffs - ala Dark/Dark
... probably many more


Regardless, I couldn't heal or debuff stupid.  If there was too much of it on the team, all of my efforts wouldn't help.


I really liked Fort'ing the melee toons (especially scrappies) and CM'ing everybody (always wanted a self-CM), zinging off a Heal Other, popping the RAs for the big fights & debuffing the bad guys with my rad powers.

[Neutrio]

It absolutely is.

Side note: I just saw the movie "Lucy"... Pretty cool movie! The biggest thing I got out of it: If we are that good with special effects these days, I demand to see a really cool superhero movie based around someone like Phoenix! We have too many guy superhero headliners--Luc Besson just pulled off a good one with a woman headlining it... :D

Agreed.  I've been waiting on a Wonder Woman movie for about as long as I waited for an Iron Man movie (I think by the time IM1 came out, it was going on 10 years?).  Now if I could also get a Green Arrow movie (maybe the Arrow TV show will evolve into one) ...

[Kheprera]

I played several defenders, my first an emp/psi. While I had the heals and buffs, I utilized the attacks as well. Nothing angered me more than getting on a pug and being told "Don't attack, just spam your heals." The team played like crap because they relied on heals to help rather than letting buffs help them through. After the second wipe (I still attacked while powers recharged, and we were running in the Hollows) I got screamed at for not spamming heals.

So in the team goes a third time. As soon as they hit a mob of CoT... I quit and left.

My SG ran an all defender ITF... we just steamrolled everything.

Ahhh to do that again!

Soon!(tm)

[Cailyn Alaynn]

You are incorrect sir. The real question would be "DO YOU EXPECT US ALL TO HAVE A 3 WAY BRIDGED SLI TITAN CARDS?!?!" :D

YES. BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

-clears throat-

If I can clear up a little bit of the graphics issue, concerning price and what-not...

I'm developing Revival (Which is basically City of Heroes in Unreal Engine 4) on a EVGA manufactured NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti FTW.
Picked it up...a year and a half back? Paid around $250, and that was for an extra-fancy "FTW" version of the card.
It runs the editor, and everything at maxed out graphics...smooth as silk.

So there you go.

[kierthos]

Agreed.  I've been waiting on a Wonder Woman movie for about as long as I waited for an Iron Man movie (I think by the time IM1 came out, it was going on 10 years?).  Now if I could also get a Green Arrow movie (maybe the Arrow TV show will evolve into one) ...

At a guess, you're going to have to keep waiting. The Superman/Batman/whoever else they're going to throw into it continues to look like it's going to be a giant train wreck of a movie (at least in my opinion).

Honestly, if Guardians of the Galaxy does well in theatres, it's going to set the bar that much higher for DC. I mean, if the MCU has a hit movie with a talking raccoon, and DC isn't going to have a Wonder Woman movie out until at least 2016? Yeah, that says something.

[Serpine]

I'm guessing Shades of Gray should be Going Rogue.

Essentially correct: Issue 18's official title was "Shades of Gray", with the patch including both the free material related to the issue and the expansion gated material tied to Going Rogue.

[MM3squints]

What's this referring to? i don't recall anything titled Shades of Gray or Dominator rage.

From Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes

18    "Shades of Gray"    Introduced the tips system, an alternate method of getting missions via drops from enemies, opened trading between alignments, and united the Wentworth's auction house and the Black Market. Anyone with the Going Rogue expansion received access to new power sets Kinetic Melee and Electricity Control. This issue also re-introduced the Cathedral of Pain trial.[19] A retail box release was made of Issue 18 called "City of Heroes Going Rogue: The Complete Collection."    August 16, 2010

Also for Rage (Actually it's called Frenzy)

From Paragon Wiki
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Alignment_Powers#Frenzy

You drive yourself into a blind rage to strike down your foes! Upon activating this power you will increase your recharge rate. All Hero Archetypes, Masterminds, Corruptors and Soldiers of Arachnos will receive a high damage increase, Dominators will have their Domination bar filled, Brutes will have their Rage bar filled and Stalkers will be put into a hidden state and receive a minor damage buff.
Recharge    6 minutes
Effects    Self +Recharge, +Special
   +30% Recharge for 20s
   Brute: +100% Fury
   Dominator: +100% Domination
   Stalker: Hide, +40% Damage(All) for 20s
   All Others: +60% Damage(All) for 20s

[The Fifth Horseman]

This goes back to what AlienOne was saying about UE. Given the current requirements for the engine, even if they ported it today, mid ranged cards(2 to 3 gig) will still be able to run it at very capable frame rates two years from now. I still hold out that higher resolutions may change memory demands.

Higher texture resolutions would have more of an effect, really.

Just to re-chime-in, for gaming it's 90% about the video card. Any computer 5 years old will work fine IF (BIG IF) it has a PCI Express 1.0 or 2.0 slot and at least 4GB RAM, a 64-bit O/S. Plug a $50 to $100 video card in there and you're golden. I would shoot for GeForce GT 610 for low $, 640 for medium $$. And really, there's no need to spend high $$$ until CoH2 comes out :)

From what I'm seeing, the sub-$100 segment has terrible cost-to-performance ratios. At the moment, going below HD7770 is just wasting the money - saving 15% in return for 50% lower performance doesn't strike me as particularly reasonable. If someone is on a budget, getting second-hand parts is a better way of cutting the costs than getting slightly cheaper but significantly worse performing ones.

[AlienOne]

YES. BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

-clears throat-

If I can clear up a little bit of the graphics issue, concerning price and what-not...

I'm developing Revival (Which is basically City of Heroes in Unreal Engine 4) on a EVGA manufactured NVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti FTW.
Picked it up...a year and a half back? Paid around $250, and that was for an extra-fancy "FTW" version of the card.
It runs the editor, and everything at maxed out graphics...smooth as silk.

So there you go.

Thank you.

[ukaserex]

I don't know what y'all are talking about, I **LOVED** my Dominators! Once I got rolling with perma-dom I could lock down a couple of bosses and many liets and make each battle a cakewalk for my team!

Perma-Domination ROCKS!!

In some ways, for me, CoH was kind of like a game of rock, paper, scissors. Well, maybe not.
All I know is @Daemein could play a dom very, very well and I simply...didn't. There were a lot of mitigation techniques, and I really enjoyed all the different aspects of teaming with my dom - but going solo - which generally I prefer - was really challenging. I was still a little behind the learning curve with my dom, I think. If I hadn't had so many other characters that could solo well, I might have played her more and learned more tactics and slotting strategies. I think some players are more suited for different AT's than others. The only reason I tried to play a Dom was so I could learn to be a better teammate for when I teamed with a dom on my characters that I liked playing more.

That being said...on this cakewalk you speak of...where is this cake? And how far must I walk to get it?

[Shadowe]

The cake is a lie.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Thank you.

You're welcome. :D

[blacksly]

The cake is a lie.

So it's great for the diet?

[Shadowe]

So it's great for the diet?

It's a diet to die for.

[Waffles]

Real talk: Plant/fire/fire permadom was just unholy.

It's a diet to die for.

https://hellofatties.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/homer_diet.jpg

[ukaserex]

Regardless, I couldn't heal or debuff stupid. 

This made me laugh, and for the most part, I agree. But you forgot - you have access to one power that can sort of negate stupid, at least for a little while. It's called Resurrect.  ;D

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

This made me laugh, and for the most part, I agree. But you forgot - you have access to one power that can sort of negate stupid, at least for a little while. It's called Resurrect.  ;D

Actually i considered that my stupid facilitating power. Now Fallout and Vengeance, those were very good at negating stupid or even turning it into an asset.  8)