New efforts!

[chuckv3]

Ah, knockback...

My main is (at this stage I refuse to say 'was') an Eng/Eng blaster, and while I won't pretend I was awesome at managing KB, what I was good at was annihilating enemies. Energy Torrent > Explosive Blast, that's all the minions flattened or on their backs, single target attacks to mop up any Lieuts, another EB if things are closing to melee, and Power Blast, run in, Total Focus on the boss. Vary tactics against certain enemy groups (Malta, I'm lookin' at yer sappers for a Sniper Blast), but the basic tactic was sound.

If a tanker couldn't keep boss aggro off me for long enough to clean up the trash before working on the boss, no biggie, Superspeed has its advantages.

Work around the outsides to keep mobs flying toward the scrapers, not away, and very few people will complain. The only time I ever went for hover/fly to knock downwards was during invasion events with tight bubbling protection or if everyone else on the team was melee.

Knockback is mitigation, and I will mitigate the hell out of anything we're fighting.

I'm sure it'll take me a while to get back in the groove on relaunch, but not too long.

Yep. My first 50 was an nrg/nrg blaster, and I mostly soloed the last 5 levels, running around the shadow shard cave hunting those GD giant eyeball things and the Brutes and Sprites they always bunched up with. I ended up mostly solo slogging through to 50 because:
1. Too many bad tankers standing in the middle of an open space, even after it's obvious that some damage dealer(s) on the team have KB, then complaining for KB messing up their neat little aggro bunch. Is it really that complicated to find a CORNER or WALL? Almost always: NO. Not all tankers are bad, but the 1/4 that were just wore down my will to team, since I almost religiously PUG'd (just to meet people, learn new things, get a good lauch, etc.)
2. Blapping. With KB and any nearby wall, I could solo at least 4 bad guys by just "juggling" them until they were all dead. EXHILARATINGLY RISKY. And by that I mean FUN. Snipe the biggest threat, SS in and start juggling. I used to do that in the parking lot in PI to those mages, too. Loved the sheer audacity of a high-damage squishy just running right in and taking care of business.

And I didn't even have IOs on that character (since this was before IOs). If I had to re-make her, she'd have capped S/L defense and be WAY less squishy, and probably way more bold.

[Thunder Glove]

Man, three pages of discussion since I last looked at this topic. I have quite a few things to reply to. :D

I don't really mind starting over, and the name issue won't be a problem for me.  That's because I keep my characters fairly well-grounded, and not "4-color superheroes" styled.  To wit, I'll name a Rad/Rad Defender "Jane Smith" instead of "The Amazing Atomic Woman."  Everyone else drives themselves nuts trying to think of the perfect uber-cool "super name," but I never even bother to try, as it's not my preference.

My characters rarely look like superheroes, either.  When in the field, they wear sensible head-to-toe body armor.  When dealing with normal business around town, they're wearing normal casual or formal clothing, as dictated by the situation.  Apparently, I was one of the very, very few people who played this way.

Half and half for me.  Some of my characters wore spandex or power armor, others were just normal people in more-or-less normal clothes.  My Masterminds tended towards the latter (usually dressed in a suit and tie, no less).

Yeah....you do know energy melee was far outdamaging other sets right?  Not to mention how many stalkers abused that.....energy transfer needed the nerf :/.

Energy Melee was incredibly good at what it did.  I don't understand why people would take a set that was beautifully focused on single-target damage (Total Focus did damage equal to KO Blow, and Energy Transfer did damage comparable to Blaster nukes and Judgement blasts) and stunning (every attack had a Stun chance, many Mag 3, and some 100% chance) and then complain about its lack of AoE.

I never had a chance to play EM before the nerf, but I never had any issues with my Energy Melee Brute (at least, no issues related to Energy Melee; Energy Aura, even after its improvements, still felt flimsy, but that's another issue).

Finally, on the issue of getting our characters back - frankly, what I'd miss are the Vet rewards (particularly the one-shoulder capes, which I loved) and the Inf I could send to myself as a booster.  (I literally can't remember how I afforded to keep myself in SO Enhancements before I got and sold my first purple drop)  I could recreate the characters themselves easily enough, some with different powersets.

[chuckv3]

Rock/Paper/Scissors and all that. Ultimately, as long as the mission gets accomplished, it doesn't really matter that much to me.

Speaking of builds being good here and bad there.... I feel obligated to bring up a very under-utilized feature of the game: secondary builds. I never really used that, and now I plan to put in secondary build for solo versus teaming on my defenders (level 10-30-ish), and possibly PSI-defense secondary builds on some toons around level 40 when it can be effectively capped.

And couldn't you also get a 3rd build slot from one of the incarnate contacts?

[Surelle]

This is correct.  Included in the file is a checksum using a Super Sekrit™ proprietary complicated calculation method to ensure that any file edits can be detected.

Having said that, there are still ways to exploit the inventory system.  Specifically, you could have, for example, loaded one character up with all of your influence, purple IOs, and sweet loot, exported them, then loaded another character up with all of your influence, purple IOs, and sweet loot, exported them, lather rinse and repeat.

So if a game ever does make use of the export files, we suggest that it only be used for character definitions (costume, colors, power customizations, level, powersets, etc.) and badges, not tradeable inventory.

That is a terrific idea, Tony!  When SOE's Everquest 2 was still subscription-only and they first put up a Free-to-Play server, they let players "copy" their characters onto the F2P server to encourage their player base to try it.  But nothing would copy over except bags and boxes (the way you carry inventory on characters there and in the bank storage), and bound items, which were automatically given a 0 money value.  So if you even tried to bring other things they would stay behind, and your bound stuff couldn't be traded or sold on the broker (auction house), and you couldn't even vendor things for quick cash.  They were just doing this to avoid exploits and artificial market inflations.

I do have all my old CoH toons backed up with the Sentinel software, and I do hope we get to use them again, but who knows, this could all fall apart like the other attempts too so I guess we're getting ahead of ourselves. 

And there's always SCoRE- how's that going?  But obviously no one has to answer that, especially since I kind of wonder if it's the CoT/SCoRE team that has banded together to buy CoH now anyway.....  *ducks* 

That's just my personal take on it:  It's not Paragon Studios involved, we know that, and MWM is using Unreal 4 for CoT, and Unreal 4 has been mentioned as being possibly used for CoH2, plus SCoRE is working on reverse engineering anyway, and NCSoft is rumored not to have the code, but just one final backup of CoH with Issue 24 still on test....  I mean, who else would care enough or would already be doing something similar enough to be able to pull this off at this point anyway?   ;D   And the CoT Kickstarter funding of $678,000 would give them a good chunk of leverage, and what donator would complain?  The whole reason we all backed CoT is because it would be the only CoH we'd get, it was the spiritual successor, and MWM would do their darndest to make sure it was never shut down.  I doubt any who donated to the CoT Kickstarter would complain if MWM got CoH2 into production and got CoH up and running again instead!

I really hope it is MWM and SCoRE to be truthful:  CoT only came about because CoH fans want a game that will never go down again.  I would trust in them to keep CoH running, and I would trust CoH's fan base at the time of shutdown to return enough to keep it funded enough to stay alive.  Hey!  Leandro could even do the P.R. trailers!   8)

Okay, I'll be quiet now.

[Last Known Hero]

plus SCoRE is working on reverse engineering anyway, and NCSoft is rumored not have the code, but just one final backup of CoH with Issue 24 still on test.... 

We hope at least! To me it feels like SCoRE is just a fairytale :P .. on that though, I find it weird that they wouldn't have the code. Even if they didn't plan on reviving it that is still a massive thing to just get rid of when it was right there. Why not store it, leave it, forget it until an option comes up for it. But to simply 'not bother' I'd find that weird.. But I keep 3 copies of my important files so maybe I'm the weird one.

[Winter Fable]

I'm so glad to hear many of you used KB powers and did not kick others for doing so.My husband and I ran no rules radios missions on freedom and sometimes on guardian.We wanted  people to have teams where they could have fun and not worry about anyone yelling about how they played.I would play my illus/emp he would tank and keep pulling mobs to us so it was a constant battle.He would tell the team that the next time they would be dead for sure(even though he helped me with my build making sure my emp had so much recharge I could keep all buffs going).It was really fun and without binds I would have never been able to keep the team going,but they loved it.

[Surelle]

We hope at least! To me it feels like SCoRE is just a fairytale :P .. on that though, I find it weird that they wouldn't have the code. Even if they didn't plan on reviving it that is still a massive thing to just get rid of when it was right there. Why not store it, leave it, forget it until an option comes up for it. But to simply 'not bother' I'd find that weird.. But I keep 3 copies of my important files so maybe I'm the weird one.

Would Cryptic still own the code too, or just the engine?  Or did NCSoft own the code since they created Paragon Studios?  If so, why the heck would they get rid of the code but keep a backup?

But come to think of it, no matter who is behind the wheel of the attempted purchase, I'd think Cryptic would have to know what was going on too, as they had licensed the engine to NCSoft to use in perpetuity, right?  So that engine license might need transferring, depending upon how much NCSoft was planning on keeping a hand in things or not post-deal.... 

I agree with you, though; I'm a backup fanatic.  Google Drive, User folders, and a memory stick even just for day-to-day college work and kid pictures.   :D

[Dal]

I'm so glad to hear many of you used KB powers and did not kick others for doing so.My husband and I ran no rules radios missions on freedom and sometimes on guardian.We wanted  people to have teams where they could have fun and not worry about anyone yelling about how they played.I would play my illus/emp he would tank and keep pulling mobs to us so it was a constant battle.He would tell the team that the next time they would be dead for sure(even though he helped me with my build making sure my emp had so much recharge I could keep all buffs going).It was really fun and without binds I would have never been able to keep the team going,but they loved it.

Yeah, I think this is the whole point of CoH - to create a character however you want it to be and be able to have fun with it. I have nothing against min-maxers, but expecting everyone to follow an obsessive view of the game in PuGs is pretty stupid.

[Minotaur]

Well way I saw it, I figured anyone who couldn't deal with someone who had knockback at all, was actually very bad at AoE damage anyways(and almost ALWAYS proved to be bad at it).  When I lead a team I didn't kick on knockback.  I kicked because the person did nothing but heal, never buffed, nore attacked.  Thing was all of the best teams I had didn't pay so much excessive attention to knockback in that way, they didn't care as much.  They still mopped the floor with everything very fast.  If your among those who only cares about maximum exp per second you were a stop having fun guy or a scrub.  In the former, you were so obsessed with that .5% exp increase that was often negated by the bits of debt you'd pick up for not using the tools to mitigate damage.  In the later case, you were very bad at AoE.  I saw both kinds of players.

I saw bad blasters who cried about knockback affecting their aoe when they:

Launched fireballs on lone bosses when blaze or fireblast was available.

Skipped flairs so they had inferior single target damage so they tried to substitute with fireball, often needed someone to speed boost them because they were wasteful with endurance.

Wasted firebreath on single target enemies.

....Actually often skipped both firebreath and rain of fire so fireball was their sole AoE, making them completely inadequete for AoE damage to begin with.

I also saw lots of mistakes from other knockback phobics to who often misused powers wasting endurance so much as to always be empty.  I on the other hand always outdamaged them even when someone was knocking things around.  I'd often have things dead so fast even if there was a good chance of scatter cause i'd have my heavy hits in before the mobs got scattered.

Thing is.....

IF YOU CANNOT ADJUST FOR THE CHANGING SITUATION AND ADJUST WHERE YOUR PLACING YOUR AOE'S DON'T BLAME THE KNOCKBACK USER

The only person who's doing crap damage is you if your only hitting one or two guys and you only have yourself to blame.  If there is knockback in the air, hit earlier, don't be so hesitant.  You can smash/blast/hit entire groups as the tanker hits them, if your waiting 2-3 seconds your waiting 2-3 seconds to long and giving your enemy mobs plenty of time to inflict 2-3 seconds worth of damage anyways.

Edit: Corrected some lines.

This is garbage, I will have teed up my rain of arrows before you launched your knockback, and if you know there's an arrow blaster in the group you should know that you should be waiting for that to go in first for maximum group efficiency, flexibility is needed from both sides.

I just hated AoE KB because if I was playing a melee toon, I would often hit TAB-F to target and the constant KBing of my targets causing jerky motion would give me motion sickness.

[Ankhammon]

My PB had a bind: "Out of my way, $target is mine!"
Originally created to make it clear that Mi-chan was more than happy to personally engage the bonus enemies that came with Kheldians and wasn't one of those shrinking violet Khelds that would cower at the back of the team any time a Quantum or Void showed up (and i encountered many of those over the years), it later became used primarily to indicate a willingness to take care of any enemy that was personally aggroed despite where KB might send them. Of course the general goal was to keep them contained with the rest of the mobs, but in large open maps overshooting with a KBed enemy sometimes happens. Still, the goal was to stay positioned so that AoEs could be used on all enemies in addition to ST attacks for whatever boss was being used as a futbol.

That reminded me of a Manticore TF my SG went on just after Khelds were introduced.
A Cyst spawned right near the AV (Hopkins?). We didn't see it was there and so no one attacked it right off. Well it spawned over a hundred of the little shadow buggers in a tight pack and we couldn't get close to it. This was back before they got their power nerfed so they could do things like dbl shot our PB who was tanking the TF. The team wiped several times.

I was on my Ill/kin and ended up saving the day. I used my confuse on the AV and had him clear out the cyst. Probably took something like a half hour, but they were tired of running back from Hosp anyway. :)

I'd completely forgotten that one and just had to share.

[umber]

Speaking of builds being good here and bad there.... I feel obligated to bring up a very under-utilized feature of the game: secondary builds. I never really used that, and now I plan to put in secondary build for solo versus teaming on my defenders (level 10-30-ish), and possibly PSI-defense secondary builds on some toons around level 40 when it can be effectively capped.

I tinkered with the secondary builds but found I didn't have the time to dedicate to them.  There were so many alts in the stable that I was having trouble enough remembering how to play any one given character, let alone keeping up with multiple builds per character.  If I wanted to play something with a radically different style, I'd switch alts not builds.  Also, had plenty of support-type characters who had never seen solo content outside of the tutorial, making a solo-friendly build just wasn't of interest.

Its an interesting idea and if I would've had a smaller stable to keep up with, probably would have went down this path more.

[Sinistar]

Yeah, I think this is the whole point of CoH - to create a character however you want it to be and be able to have fun with it. I have nothing against min-maxers, but expecting everyone to follow an obsessive view of the game in PuGs is pretty stupid.

This. There was one flake (I have other 4 letter terms for this person but shall withhold them) who thought they were the be all and end all, that their trash didn't stink, that they were above the rules of conduct and stated to me that if I didn't build my characters to THEIR standards that he would get me boycotted from the server.  This person was also well known for farming any exploit possible in our out of the AE and built AE missions to run any AE exploit there was.

Needless to say, they lost.

[Sinistar]

Speaking of builds being good here and bad there.... I feel obligated to bring up a very under-utilized feature of the game: secondary builds. I never really used that, and now I plan to put in secondary build for solo versus teaming on my defenders (level 10-30-ish), and possibly PSI-defense secondary builds on some toons around level 40 when it can be effectively capped.

And couldn't you also get a 3rd build slot from one of the incarnate contacts?

Characters could have up to 3 build slots yes,  however I didn't generally bother with them except for certain characters that would regularly run lower level TF or SF, those had a secondary build I would switch to that was still S/L def capped at lower levels.

All other characters ran their one and only build and seldom ever exemped down.

[chuckv3]

I tinkered with the secondary builds but found I didn't have the time to dedicate to them.  There were so many alts in the stable that I was having trouble enough remembering how to play any one given character, let alone keeping up with multiple builds per character.  If I wanted to play something with a radically different style, I'd switch alts not builds.  Also, had plenty of support-type characters who had never seen solo content outside of the tutorial, making a solo-friendly build just wasn't of interest.

Its an interesting idea and if I would've had a smaller stable to keep up with, probably would have went down this path more.

As with anything else, it depends how you roll... I tended to play one character 95% of the time until they hit 50, then start something else from zero, and only go back to the 50 for Hami raids and stuff. I guess now I'd run incarnate content when I wasn't in a "lowbie" mood. So I'm not an alt-a-holic like some others. That being the case, it probably makes more sense for me to use secondary builds, so I can progress with one character in situations where they normally wouldn't do well.

[Power Gamer]

On the subject of secondary builds, I wanted to be able to choose a diff AT on the second build. It would be so cool to change from a tanker to a blaster depending on what the team needed and not have to change toons.  ;D

[LaughingAlex]

This is garbage, I will have teed up my rain of arrows before you launched your knockback, and if you know there's an arrow blaster in the group you should know that you should be waiting for that to go in first for maximum group efficiency, flexibility is needed from both sides.

I just hated AoE KB because if I was playing a melee toon, I would often hit TAB-F to target and the constant KBing of my targets causing jerky motion would give me motion sickness.

Don't expect me to bother inviting you in any of my teams then if your going full blown knockback phobia on me.

Edit: Thing is that motion sickness I bet isn't even real motion sickness, just intollerance at the mere presence of knockback(in other words, you get mad just seeing it no matter what).  I'd seen it before many, many times, even when i'm not knocking aggressively at all(energy blast the ST attacks were often more damaging overall, and if I did knock something it was into walls, or the team had enough damage the knockback didn't matter because I was fulcrum shifting everything in sight).  Just one guy getting knocked and boom, they start complaining.

Another Edit: I get just as bothered by the blaster who thinks the world centers around him.

[Power Gamer]

KB was annoying, when improperly used. But hey get over it.

All power sets have strengths and weaknesses. Just learn to adapt.

If you don't want to play with peeps that use their powers in a way you don't like, then avoid PUGs at all costs. Only team with peeps you know. It's that simple.

That being said, there was a tendency to kill the controllers 'anchor', negate the tankers aggro, use KB at the least opportune moment and so on.

Hopefully when we get the game back peeps will take the time to master their powersets and minimize errors. The game is much more than mashing buttons as quickly as possible, or grabbing the glory for yourself.  :)

[Samuraiko]

In other City Of Heroes news...

Ko does the #ALS #IceBucketChallenge! And calls out Matt 'Positron' Miller! Whereas my roommate Alisa (who also did it) called out Melissa 'War Witch' Bianco! :D

http://youtu.be/pri62EZlziQ

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

[Last Known Hero]

I don't think I'll ever miss KB haha. Coming from a stone tank, early on it sucked because there were no ways to combat it being a slow mover. I mainly teamed with a guy who was nrg/nrg blaster and loved/slotted for KB. With set bonuses the run speed and recharge was not an issue so I was more ok with it.

But that being said, if you KB you can't get mad at the tank for your death, period. I've had people actually cursing at me because they KBd and got aggro

[Power Gamer]

I don't think I'll ever miss KB haha. Coming from a stone tank, early on it sucked because there were no ways to combat it being a slow mover. I mainly teamed with a guy who was nrg/nrg blaster and loved/slotted for KB. With set bonuses the run speed and recharge was not an issue so I was more ok with it.

But that being said, if you KB you can't get mad at the tank for your death, period. I've had people actually cursing at me because they KBd and got aggro

I feel your pain.

PUGs could be very rewarding or very frustrating.  :roll:

I hope to play stone tank more when we get CoX back.