New efforts!

[Prism Almidu]

KEEP BUILDING!!!!

This. I barely knew how to use the program, but I threw together something for my main. After experimenting further, making builds based off the first set of trolls from Homestuck, I had enough experience to go back and squeeze more power out of the main build. As a side effect, the troll builds look interesting enough to play, even though when the game was up, I never really played anything other than the main, so that will be fun.

[kierthos]

One thing I could never mentally get past was that certain power-sets sort of fit certain origins.

I mean, my favorite character was a Rad/Rad Defender, (which I rebuilt a couple of times before settling on the final version), but he was always Science or Technology origin. Not that I really needed to, but I never saw a way for that combo to be a Magic origin.

Not that origin meant all that much, but it was more of a mental exercise... how would that fit?

[Shibboleth]

One thing I could never mentally get past was that certain power-sets sort of fit certain origins.

I mean, my favorite character was a Rad/Rad Defender, (which I rebuilt a couple of times before settling on the final version), but he was always Science or Technology origin. Not that I really needed to, but I never saw a way for that combo to be a Magic origin.

Not that origin meant all that much, but it was more of a mental exercise... how would that fit?

I am not seeing why Mutation wouldn't have worked for Rad/Rad. Natural either, if you suppose the character is an alien. Supernatural...well, by definition magic can do anything.

[umber]

One thing I could never mentally get past was that certain power-sets sort of fit certain origins.

I mean, my favorite character was a Rad/Rad Defender, (which I rebuilt a couple of times before settling on the final version), but he was always Science or Technology origin. Not that I really needed to, but I never saw a way for that combo to be a Magic origin.

Not that origin meant all that much, but it was more of a mental exercise... how would that fit?

Never got around to rolling the alt but I remember working up an revamp of a titan/fire scrapper I had whose concept was of a group of beings that our angels were loosely based upon, extra-dimensional beings from a magical plane of air and fire.  Was going to make the revision rad/rad serving as Holy Flame.  The visuals I found to be particularly fitting was the X-Ray Beam as a "burning gaze", the charge verison of Aim had a noble aspect to it, and Mutation was a cool Resurrection effect.

(Color customization really was a game-changer, for this player at least.)

The only holdup I can see having is being too attached to the names of the powerset and the powersets themselves.  Just ignore that its called "Radiation Emission", its just a label, when your character uses the powers its Holy Fire or Unholy Curses.  The anchors are swirling portals into Cthulhu-esque vistas of infectious insanity.  Neutron Bomb is an alchemical mixture.  Choking cloud is your own lifeforce boiling away via Blood Magick.  However you wanna describe it.

[pinballdave]

Origin meant something early in the game when you wanted to replenish those DOs and SOs at a convenient shop. For my science guy, getting his level 15 DOs in Steel meant I could go to the science store on the north side of Steel in the proximity of some high level mobs. Or, he would opt for DOs from the Mutant or Tech shops in more friendly areas. Later on the science guy in Bricks was a tough commute, too.

[blacksly]

One thing I could never mentally get past was that certain power-sets sort of fit certain origins.

I mean, my favorite character was a Rad/Rad Defender, (which I rebuilt a couple of times before settling on the final version), but he was always Science or Technology origin. Not that I really needed to, but I never saw a way for that combo to be a Magic origin.

Not that origin meant all that much, but it was more of a mental exercise... how would that fit?

I used Magic for my Illusion/Rad. Rad was just magic curses upon the enemy, and magic blessings upon the allies. Illusion obviously fits with magic.

Rad Blast is a little less obviously magical than Illusion, but it's not as if a mage couldn't be throwing green bolts of energy at his targets rather than fire or lightning. It could be magical energy, it wouldn't have to be radiation.

Magic fit with basically anything that wasn't clearly technological in origin (pretty much just Dual Pistols, Assault Rifle, Traps, Devices, Mercenaries, Robots). Even Thugs might fit a bit, given many modern-fantasy stories where the mage protagonist may also shoot a gun.

[pinballdave]

I used Magic for my Illusion/Rad. Rad was just magic curses upon the enemy, and magic blessings upon the allies. Illusion obviously fits with magic.

Rad Blast is a little less obviously magical than Illusion, but it's not as if a mage couldn't be throwing green bolts of energy at his targets rather than fire or lightning. It could be magical energy, it wouldn't have to be radiation.

Magic fit with basically anything that wasn't clearly technological in origin (pretty much just Dual Pistols, Assault Rifle, Traps, Devices, Mercenaries, Robots). Even Thugs might fit a bit, given many modern-fantasy stories where the mage protagonist may also shoot a gun.

What if the robots were golems or those funny chakra vessels from the Serpent and the Rainbow?

[Fireheart]

I played a Rad/Rad as a Druid, servant and defender of the 'Green Power'.

Be Well!
Fireheart

[blacksly]

What if the robots were golems or those funny chakra vessels from the Serpent and the Rainbow?

I would see some kinds of Robots as doable by magic or magic-steampunk. Just not those particular ones, they looked too tech-y to me.

[Twisted Toon]

I would see some kinds of Robots as doable by magic or magic-steampunk. Just not those particular ones, they looked too tech-y to me.

Powered by a crystal that channels the ambient magic in the world....maybe?

I had a "Magic" Eng/Grav Dominator. She used magic to manipulate gravity fields, which she used to generate the power that was used by gloves that shot forth blasts of energy. If I had to pick just one Origin for her, which I did, I would have gone with Magic, obviously. However, if I could have picked two Origins, she would have been a Magic/Tech Origin.

I think I could come up with a somewhat plausible reason to combine any two origins together in one character to explain their powers. Magic and Tech being two of the easiest ones to combine with others. Granted, Mutant and Natural might be a little hard to explain for a Robots Master...wait. Mutant ability to control metal or maybe "Mannequins", or Golems, if you will, and of course, the gun you use for the natural part. Or, if you're using Dark for the secondary, Natural could explain the robots, and Mutant would explain the ability to manipulate the Darkness and befuddle your opponents.

[Legion of One]

Can I suggest that news be posted in its own thread, which is only open to moderators?  I check in periodically, but I'm not going to read through 20+ pages of posts every time.  The last post from Iron Wolf left me scratching my head, and I have no idea how to find the way to reply #18684.  Keep the fun CoH chat going, but at least copy the news to its own easy to find place.

Thanks.

[Aggelakis]

Can I suggest that news be posted in its own thread, which is only open to moderators?  I check in periodically, but I'm not going to read through 20+ pages of posts every time.  The last post from Iron Wolf left me scratching my head, and I have no idea how to find the way to reply #18684.  Keep the fun CoH chat going, but at least copy the news to its own easy to find place.

Thanks.

Maybe there already is one. Maybe it's stickied and locked. Maybe it's been there for many moons now. ;)

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10649.0.html

There is no news which is why that thread's last post is from February (modified in May).

[ivanhedgehog]

Maybe there already is one. Maybe it's stickied and locked. Maybe it's been there for many moons now. ;)

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10649.0.html

There is no news which is why that thread's last post is from February (modified in May).

I pity the fool........ sorry, had to watch the mr t wow commercial

[Relic7]

I really miss you guys and the community :( hope we see another update sometime soon!

[Surelle]

Dear new posters with one post:

Please don't forget to check out Paragon Chat!  It's in its own sub-section of these forums with Icon, and it may help to tide you over some.   :)

[Ironwolf]

so thats the good news after almost 2 years?  Whispers?  This deal will take longer then Duke Nukem forever if it ever gets done.

NDA Non-Disclosure Agreements are written so that you cannot talk about the deal.

I can't stress that enough. Multiple people have said that the deal is still in the works and is progressing. You may not be aware that very recently Nexon has started a hostile takeover of NCSoft. This complicates the deal and has slowed it down.

The deal is not a simple give us the game back and its over. There are a lot of things happening. Read Nate Downs first post on the Mask comes off.

[Doc Artz]

This may be a new and weird idea. As everyone who listens to the news is aware, drones are rapidly becoming everyday hobbies. What if the Ranged or Contoling classes had a drone. Under fire one could use  "Rain of Fire". Just a thought 8)

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

This may be a new and weird idea. As everyone who listens to the news is aware, drones are rapidly becoming everyday hobbies. What if the Ranged or Contoling classes had a drone. Under fire one could use  "Rain of Fire". Just a thought 8)

My Traps users had multiple drones already. FFG, Seeker Drones, and Acid Mortar. My Bots/Traps MM had nine offensively oriented drones alone even if one of them was immobile.

[Arcana]

Regen scrapper edition could get 45 seconds or so of capped defense with a recharge build if you took the Soul Mastery epic pool. Shadowmeld, Moment of Glory, and Shadowmeld again. It required that you had 14-15% base defense, and then shadowmeld could get you about 30%. If you were rocking enough recharge to perma-hasten, then you also had enough to get Shadowmeld's cooldown down to the 30 seconds needed to bookend it around Moment of Glory. You would also be rolling out Reconstruction every 15-18 seconds and be able to maintain around 50% uptime on Instant Healing. At that point, it becomes rather difficult to die unless you are really trying to do so. You also had the benefit of being able to use some rather silly good dps chains, if you were into that sort of thing.

You could have all that protection, or you could have very fast dps chains, but not both at the same time.  Try performing an activation cost analysis of that build.  If I remember correctly, you'll find you can be spending almost a quarter of your time activating powers including Arcanatime tailgates.  One thing I was doing in the last year or so of the game but had not done a systematic analysis of was the activation cost of different powerset combinations - in other words, the offensive *cost* of different sets of defensive powers. 

For example, suppose you have a reasonably full attack chain, or can make one with your build.  Then every second you spend activating anything other than those powers potentially costs some offense - because its time you cannot spend activating powers.  Because attack chains aren't perfectly smooth and even in DPS, the cost isn't proportional in actual fact but if we estimate the cost as such, you get results like Reconstruction when running at +200% recharge taking about 0.875s to cast (corrected for Arcanatime) out of every cycle of 20.73 seconds, or about 4.22% of the time you're unable to activate attacks.  Shadow Meld at perma-hasten-like recharge levels of 3.75 has a net recharge of about 27 seconds and a whopping arcanatime cast of 3.125 seconds, for a net idle time of 11.6%.  In other words, using Shadow Meld as often as possible with perma-hasten-like recharge means you'll be idle for 11.6% of the time just using that one power.  The number for MoG under those conditions is about 4.13%, for reconstruction 5.23%, and 0.7% for Hasten.  That's about 21.7% of your time idle just running those four powers as fast as possible.  You don't have to run them all as fast as possible, particularly reconstruction, but if you do that defense comes at a very significant offensive cost simply because you're clicking defensive powers so often you can't attack as often.

Of course, if you build it and run it, you'll notice that right away but computational analyses of such builds typically ignored those effects.  It was also something I thought the devs should consider when balancing powers - that the cost of a strong defense wasn't just in its endurance costs, but also its effective offensive penalty by virtue of locking the player out of attacking when it was activated.  There were lost opportunities to balance powers for high recharge builds by simply increasing their activation costs, and thus indirectly increasing their net offensive cost for higher recharge builds.  Basically, the most defense you buy with the power, the less offense you get to generate.  You then put the job of figuring out how to balance the value of that trade with the min/maxers themselves, while more casual players get more reasonable benefits from such powers without the need for harsher power nerfs.

[Dareon Kale]

The idea was mostly that you could survive pretty much whatever mess you got into while thinning the heard a bit. Once the situation becomes manageable, then you go back to knocking out attack powers to your heart's content. Regen being click heavy always meant trading offense for defence to one degree or another. However, your point is well taken in terms of what activation times would do to any efforts other than survival.