Did you ever meet those people that say you are playing wrong?

[doc7924]

I used to get them on teams now and then. Know it all's who tell people their build is bad, or they don't know how to play their toon the right way, or your AT is the wrong choice and you should play THIS one.

Then I look at their vet status and I have like 7 years and they have 8 months and act like experts.

Or of course sometimes a build really is bad. I once teamed with an Empath / Elec defender that had only TWO powers from the empathy side, and he was a lvl 48! Useless as a healer and a 2nd rate blaster at best.

[SerialBeggar]

There was the time I was street sweeping alone in Bricks with my Energy/Dev Blaster (1st main).  Just as I engaged a group by tossing Smoke Grenade to start, some player who was Super Speeding down the street stops near me.  I thought he was going to observe my technique, such as it was, but instead, he makes a snide comment to the effect of "oh, another Blaster exploiting Smoke Grenade".  I was like  , but I was busy fighting, so I couldn't ask him what he was talking about.  I guess he got tired of waiting for a comeback from me and eventually took off. 

I'd only been playing for a month or so and I don't think I was even reading the Forums yet.  It was a while before I came across a post about Smoke Grenade being "broken".  Even then, I wasn't at the point where I was thinking about game mechanics, so I didn't really understand what was wrong with it until the fix for it came a year later (I think) and I read the Patch Notes. 

FYI in case some of you youngsters weren't around then:
Smoke Grenade's main utility was its -perception to allow you to sneak by enemies.  The problem was on its secondary effect of a small -tohit debuff on the enemies.  This small -tohit debuff was supposed to be 5%, but there was a decimal error and it was doing 50% -tohit instead.

[Castegyre]

I usually have builds that people think are odd. I did things like purposefully avoid using purples and trade DPS for survivability in CoH all the time. I make my characters to cater to my play style, not what some guy on a forum says it should be built like. So I've had people tell me I was doing it wrong plenty of times. I'm seldom the one asking for a rez though or begging for help to get things done.

While I am open to advice, I don't tolerate much from people who are just running their mouth. At the same time, I try to not second guess other people's builds either. So long as everyone is getting the job done and not being dead weight on a team I don't have a problem. If I do say something to someone else I try to be polite and helpful about it instead of making an ass of myself.

[Aggelakis]

I had someone tell me I should have rolled something else when I showed up with emp/arch. This was early on, pre-IOs - my emp was a main Hami healer, so she was chock-full of stacked HOs & lv53 SOs. I proceeded to Rain of Arrows/Fistful of Arrows/Explosive Arrow my way through a four-man mission and for some reason, they didn't comment on it again. Yeah, thanks, I know how to pilot my toon just fine thanks.

[hurple]

I usually have builds that people think are odd. I did things like purposefully avoid using purples and trade DPS for survivability in CoH all the time. I make my characters to cater to my play style, not what some guy on a forum says it should be built like. So I've had people tell me I was doing it wrong plenty of times. I'm seldom the one asking for a rez though or begging for help to get things done.

This is what I did too.  I always built around my soloing playstyle under the belief that if I was effective solo, I'd be effective on a team. 

While I am open to advice, I don't tolerate much from people who are just running their mouth. At the same time, I try to not second guess other people's builds either. So long as everyone is getting the job done and not being dead weight on a team I don't have a problem. If I do say something to someone else I try to be polite and helpful about it instead of making an ass of myself.

I never even bothered to look at other people's builds.  Just never concerned myself with it.  ah well.

[hurple]

I had someone tell me I should have rolled something else when I showed up with emp/arch. This was early on, pre-IOs - my emp was a main Hami healer, so she was chock-full of stacked HOs & lv53 SOs. I proceeded to Rain of Arrows/Fistful of Arrows/Explosive Arrow my way through a four-man mission and for some reason, they didn't comment on it again. Yeah, thanks, I know how to pilot my toon just fine thanks.

I don't remember anyone ever bad-mouthing any of my toons, but I had a MA/Regen scrapper that at the end of a TF one of the other players PM'ed me that I had the best MA/Regen build he'd ever seen. 

And, after the introduction of IO's I did get pretty good at building non-squishy Blasters.   

[syntaxerror37]

I was doing a TV respec trial once, I think pre-IO days with a player who was apparently really into PvP.  He was going on about each of the team member's power sets and what powers out of each were "all you needed" based solely on playing PvP.  To his credit, he didn't bash any single set or combination, he just didn't seem to understand that not everyone saw PvP as the end goal of the game.

[Floride]

I don't remember anyone ever bad-mouthing any of my toons

Same here. But thinking back, I do remember one of Ukase's Trial runs were some guy went nuts telling everyone he was giving them all a 1 star rating. It was funny because he thought it would have some effect on our toons globally.

[Brightfires]

That *was* pretty silly...

Liberty folk were usually pretty polite, but did I get the occasional "Why are you playing THAT?", particularly with my Peacebringers and my Ninja and Zombie Masterminds. It wasn't a mean thing, exactly... more like the people in question just couldn't understand how anyone could possibly enjoy playing something "sooooo terrible" and/or "under-powered" when I could have had a MFing Warshade or a Demon summoner instead.

I also had the occasional power-player try to "helpfully" correct my "sub-standard" builds, even after I explained that I wasn't really playing the game with Ultimate Power in mind. I was a Dirty Casual. I wasn't interested in uber-builds... I think some people  found that very hard to understand, too. As long as my toons could do what I wanted them to, I was happy.

[JaguarX]

at times.
especially with regen that many of them said was "gimped now" due to "nerfs." And the usual, "why play a defender if it's not empath?"

or the usual, "why not play a enegery/x  or x/energy? everyone plays that." usually replied because I dont want to and or tried it and didnt like it.

[Power Gamer]

Since CoX was my first MMO, I'm sure quite a number of peeps rage quit teams I was on due to the fact I didn't understand AT's.

But there was only one time I recall someone saying I was playing wrong.

I politely explained that I would play my toon that way I wanted, and I would refrain from telling him what powers he should use. He might do the same. He politely agreed and we had fun anyway.

[hurple]

That *was* pretty silly...

Liberty folk were usually pretty polite, but did I get the occasional "Why are you playing THAT?", particularly with my Peacebringers and my Ninja and Zombie Masterminds. It wasn't a mean thing, exactly... more like the people in question just couldn't understand how anyone could possibly enjoy playing something "sooooo terrible" and/or "under-powered" when I could have had a MFing Warshade or a Demon summoner instead.

I also had the occasional power-player try to "helpfully" correct my "sub-standard" builds, even after I explained that I wasn't really playing the game with Ultimate Power in mind. I was a Dirty Casual. I wasn't interested in uber-builds... I think some people  found that very hard to understand, too. As long as my toons could do what I wanted them to, I was happy.

I always built to a concept.  I never attempted to create an *uberbuild* (tm).  I would start with a base, some comic book superhero archetype and build based around that.  Even if a  power was available, if it didn't fit the build, I wouldn't take it.

For example, I wanted to build a super-speedster.  (I know that seems silly in a game where *anyone* could have super speed, but...) Note, this was prior to Street Justice, or Kinetic Melee.  So, I picked Super Reflexes as a secondary, but was stuck for a matching primary.  I tried Martial Arts, but it just didn't fit.  Finally, I chose Dark Melee, because it looked the most like just normal punching.

Then, I maximized speed on everything.  And, did NOT take the Dark Melee Noodles of Doom power. 

I had a hard time justifying  Dark Consumption and Soul Drain, but took them because of a dearth of other options.  But, it never felt "right" to me.  I also did not like the dark "clouds" that appeared around the use of the Dark Melee powers.

Then, two things happened around the same time that finally made the toon "click" for me...

They added powerset customization and I read the origin of Zoom in the Flash comics.  And, it inspired me.

First, I re-colored the power effects.  Then, I added a jewel to the toon's belt, colored the same as an Ouroborus crystal and re-wrote the guy's origin to say that he was a scientist working on time travel when there was an accident so that now when he is in contact with even a piece of one of the crystals he falls out-of-phase with this dimension so that he appears to have super speed, and that when in that state, if he touches another person he would actually steal "time" from them to boost his own life-force. 

Still no noodles of doom, but, I finally had a concept-worthy explanation for most of the powers, and that toon went from languishing around level 15 to getting played through all the way to 50+.  He went from one of my least favorites to one of my favorites, just because I thought up a worthy backstory. 

[Groundbreaker]

I had people telling me Regen was crap a lot which I found odd seeing as how it was always getting nerfed for being broken (I still think I can make a case that the whole shut down was a regen nerf and there was no other way to reign it in)

I also got a lot of people telling me the only defenders that were good were FF and Emp. I would get that a lot on my Dark/Dark.

[Vee]

I also got a lot of people telling me the only defenders that were good were FF and Emp. I would get that a lot on my Dark/Dark.

From this guy?

[Groundbreaker]

People were generally stuck in the mind set that healing was necessary, but a few people also "knew" that Force Field was really good.

I say I got it a lot, but it was only really from PUGs. For the majority of the game I never got any negative comment everyone was really helpful and respectful of each other in my experience.

[hurple]

People were generally stuck in the mind set that healing was necessary, but a few people also "knew" that Force Field was really good.

I say I got it a lot, but it was only really from PUGs. For the majority of the game I never got any negative comment everyone was really helpful and respectful of each other in my experience.

A truly good build would have some damage mitigation making a team healer a bonus, not a necessity.  IMO.  So, anyone saying (typing) that is a goober.

[chuckv3]

I got equal amounts of "wow, nice" and "stop doing that" on my energy/energy blapper. The complaints were usually from someone who obvisouly never tried the blapper angle, and some variation of "I'm not going to heal/buff/rez/pull aggro unless you stand in the back and blast from a distance."  I never understood this attitude (it was not a "reaction" since I wasn't dying or complaining if I did). I would usually counter with "Do you realize all blasters have melee powers as secondaries?"

The only other weirdness I can remember is some tanker with AoEs (something / BA iirc), level 16-ish, joining my team half-way through some troll cave mission, telling me he should take over as lead tank (after one large bad guy group that went quickly with no player deaths). He tells everyone that obviously I didn't know how to tank because I should be concentrating on AoE damage more than holding aggro. Then he makes the whole team stop attacking while he demonstrates the multiple hits from his axe swings, how important it all was, then dying within about a minute with only about ten bad guys on him. He hosp's without asking for a rez, then sends a team tell that he has no travel power so this might take a while.  For the 5 minutes it takes him to sprint across the Hollows back to the map, My SS/Invuln tanks through the rest of the mission without anybody dying, and everybody else on the team sends me PMs like "good job", "you tank way better than him" and "what was that guy talking about?". Then we all go our separate ways to ditch the guy.

[Groundbreaker]

I regularly saw people heavily deviating from type. The most common was Blasters trying to Tank. For a long time I was convinced that these people didn't know what the hell they were doing. They would run in and get all of the agro and then go down instantly and complain that the healer wasn't doing his job.

I saw that so often that I developed a knee jerk reaction to someone telling me their Blaster could tank. I was quite vocal at telling people they needed to rethink their build. Eventually of course I encountered some Blasters that actually did have a build that could Tank. That shut me up. I am still weary when someone says that, but I am willing to give them some benefit of the doubt.

[saipaman]

I never used 'melee blaster' as a compliment! 

[Paragon Avenger]

There was one time, I got on a team running radio missions.  When we got to the bank, I was such a noob, I didn't know what I was doing and didn't ask for advice.  So I get on the map, I don't see anyone, so I go looking for them.  I trip the bank robbery.  I get everybody killed.  The robbers got away.  The mission failed.  I was told that I played wrong, but not in a polite way.