Little things I wish I'd known

[MikesMind]

Hi. Just thought it would be nice to have a post where people can put little things that they wish they'd known/realised from the start.

1) The Tab Key is Your Friend: Tab allows you to cycles through all enemies within your view screen. Invaluable for flicking between multi-targets so you can keep control of the group you are fighting.

2) Read the Archetype Boards. Before creating a character, I repeat again READ THE BOARDS! Other people have spend hours playing almost any combination of powers you are interested in and have shared their experiences here. The boards can give you GREAT advice so you can plan you character better and know which powers work well with your concept, which don't. and which plain suck (Choaking Cloud I'm looking at you!).

3) The 5th Column Ambush. Apparently ambushes are quite common in later game, however the 5th Column will come after you right from the start! Nothing worse than doing a mission and exiting low on health and end (yeah you get a heal when you leave the mission but not up to full if really down) and casually making it back to the trainer/contact just to get flamed and shot as they jump out at you unexpected.

4) Hover Rocks: There is a lot (oh my is there a lot) of fierce debate over which travel power is best. However, I would like to claim of all the travel prerequisits you can take at 6th lvl, hover is the the best (expect when Hasten fits you character!). Ok its slow, slow, slow... but when you are hunting Circle of Thorns in Kings and you dont have to keep going up and up the fire escapes to find someone else has beaten you to the green glow on the roof you will love it. Even better it gets you out of melee range if you are blaster/controller/defender and gives you a small defense bonus even if you are in office block corridor and can't fly up.

5) Freedom Corps Buys Training Enhancements For More: Need to sell all those enhancements you get for top dollor - head for Freedom Corps (one in Steel Canyon right on the Bronze Row map icon north of the tube station). However, its not worth it until you are at least level 4 or so 'cause unless you are very very careful you are likely to be killed by a random street mob on the way there.

I am sure folks have loads more they will love to add :) Go for it guys!

Mikes

Prismatic Star (18th Rad/Rad Defender - Triumph)
The Extremist (6th Rifle/Dev Blaster - Triumph)
The Redactor (5th Ill/Emp Controller - Triumph)

[MikesMind]

Groan... and 1 more I forgot:

Sprint Uses Endurance: It's obvious I know, but I wasn't aware of how much a difference it made until I got Fly. Whilst the Sprint button is active it used End.. not a lot, but it adds up. Turn it off before going to a fight, particularly if you have an ongoing power... believe me it makes a difference!

Mikes

[Super_Volt]

target_enemy_near

I wish I'd learned about this command sooner than I did. Unlike TAB's spastic target acquiring, this command actually acquires the nearest target. Don't get me wrong; I use the TAB key key as well, but there are many times where acquiring the nearest target is preferable to acquiring a target that's randomly chosen by the computer. Having both styles of targeting set to different keys gives me a lot of flexibility in acquiring the target I want, which is great for me because I usually don't mouse-click to acquire enemy targets.

You too can have this amazing ability to target by typing /bind G "target_enemy_near" into you command line. I put in on the G key, but the beauty of keybinding is you can choose whatever works for you.

[Innovator]

With Hurdle or Combat Jump, you can window hop really fast up the buildings in Kings Row, faster than getting up there with hover. The trick to jumping from one window to the window above it is to press jump first then hit forward. Once you get the hang of it, you can forget about looking for fire escapes. :D

[BlackDecember]

A bad name can ruin a good character.

Not happy with your costume? You can change that. It'll cost you a fortune at low levels, but at least its fixable. But a bad name will haunt you.

You can create the perfect character with the perfect look and get them all leveled up just the way you want...but if you're not satisfied with the name it'll eat away at you until you eventually have to re-roll.

Take the extra 20-30 minute upfront and create something original that you love. Don't give up out of frustration. If it's already taken, that just means it's not original enough.

[Steve_From_HR]

If you take hurdle, you get get around faster by constantly jumping forward than you can by sprinting along the ground. (Useful to know pre level 14). Just watch how fast the distance to target goes sprinting vs. hurdling.

When you begin to get DO or SO to sell - sell them at the correct archetype-related store for signifigantly more money. IE a level 25 science/natural DO sold to a science or natural store = $4100 vs. $2000 or so from another store. Sell your training ones to the general (freedom corps) store as noted above.

I didn't know this - single origin enhancements cost 30000 influence. So, save your money between level 18-22! ;)

You can right-click a person in your 'team' window and choose "set as waypoint" to make it extremely easy to find them in a tangled up part of town.

If you are in a task force and have to log out - or get kicked offline - you will still be in it when you log back in, providing someone hasn't kicked you out of it or finished it. Also - once you get into a task force you cannot buy inspirations until the end.. which, depending on your group, can take hours and hours. ;)

The 'freakshow' enemies can come back to life after you kill them.. watch your back.

I am sure I know tons more. Heh.

[Skorj]

There is an NPC Store next to the trainer in Skyway. That store pays full price for trainings (unlike the NPCs in GC and AP) and can be reach safely by low-level PCs. Just don't fall off the walkways. :)

[ronproc]

Some notes about your entries:

1: hitting attack will target the nearest enemy You will have to press it again to attack but the first time will target the closest enemy
2. Hover - Just remember hover is a Defesne power NOT a travel power. Use defense slots on it not just speed buffs
3.Ambushes - get used ot them - At low level the 5th column and clockwork can be annoying but ambushes occur either soon after you accept a new mission or as soon as you are done with a door mission. Some will kill you, get used to being in debt and learn to kill whole mobs of greens to pay it off
4. Sprint uses end yes but not as much as others turn it off in combat if you must but as you get more end and ways to replenishg it you may leave it on for quick step to catch a retreating enemy

thats it for now


Ron Procopio
Main- Tria Ul Scar 18 scrapper pinnacle
Alts - too numerous to list ( at least 33)

[TheLastSentinel]

See, now its threads like this that restore my faith in humanity...then I read the eleventythousand posts by PuffyShirt and I want to crawl unto a bunker and wage war...

[Doggabone]

IIRC, CTRL+TAB is the default keybind for target_enemy_near.

[Indiramourning]

[ QUOTE ]
2. Hover - Just remember hover is a Defesne power NOT a travel power. Use defense slots on it not just speed buffs

[/ QUOTE ]

Sadly, the amount you can raise the inherent defense of Hover is trivial by adding Enhance Defense enhancements. By default Hover offers a 5% defensive bonus, even if you 6 slot it with Enhance Defense enhancements, the most you can raise that 5% value is still below 10% (I don't recall the exact value). So it is a waste of slots to add Enhance Defense enhancements to Hover. Also, the 5% defense inherent in Hover isn't actually the most important defensive quality of the power. Hover's ability to keep you out of Melee range is! Melee attacks do 3 times the damage on average compared to Ranged attacks. So Hover is a great defensive skill, even at it's modest 5% defensive bonus. The best enhancements to add to Hover are Reduce Endurance Cost :)

[MothTwiceborn_NA]

Assist works by targeting your main assist and hitting an attack power - it automatically goes for their target

[Zathrus]

[ QUOTE ]
get used to being in debt and learn to kill whole mobs of greens to pay it off

[/ QUOTE ]

Kiilling greens is a waste of time. If you're simply XPing, kill whites in the largest groups you can handle with the least downtime. This has been proven time and time again. Killing 2x the number of green mobs will not get you more XP, it will get you less.

[ QUOTE ]
4. Sprint uses end yes but not as much as others turn it off in combat if you must but as you get more end and ways to replenishg it you may leave it on for quick step to catch a retreating enemy

[/ QUOTE ]

Sprint uses 0.5 end/tick. Flight uses 2.5, Superspeed and Superjump use 1.5, and Teleport uses 15 (per port). Hover and Combat Jumping cost 1/tick, as do many other common toggles (Manuevers, Assault, Tactics).

And you do not gain more endurance as you level. You start with 100 end and will have 100 end at L50. You do, however, gain more ways of replenishing it, either through your own powers or through those of teammates. But without any special way to replenish it you will regain 5 end every 3 seconds, so keep that in mind when figuring out toggles and how much end you use.

[ QUOTE ]
By default Hover offers a 5% defensive bonus, even if you 6 slot it with Enhance Defense enhancements, the most you can raise that 5% value is still below 10%

[/ QUOTE ]

No, 5% * (1 + 6 * 0.20) = 11%. Not that that's a particularly worthwhile use of slots to most people, but it's still worth sticking a single defense enh in the free slot.

[ QUOTE ]
Melee attacks do 3 times the damage on average compared to Ranged attacks.

[/ QUOTE ]

That depends entirely on the enemies you fight. At low levels melee is more dangerous than ranged combat, but that changes in the low to mid 20s for some villian groups.

[ QUOTE ]
The best enhancements to add to Hover are Reduce Endurance Cost

[/ QUOTE ]

Reducing Hover's endurance usage from 1/tick to 0.75/tick is questionable at best. A single defense SO will raise Hover's defense boost to 6%. Not much either, but it edges out 0.25 end/tick to me.


Oh, and my direct contribution to the thread?

On the map screen you will see areas of a zone bordered in different colors. These borders not only indicate the boundaries of an area (the name shown on the map), but also the general level of the villians there. Areas bordered in red should have the highest level villians for the zone. Yellow is middle, and green is lowest.

[AnotherDeadHero]

You can zoom in on all maps, even mission maps by clicking on the slider.

Boy I wish I would have known this on my early cave missions.

[Beck_]

If you are getting some connection issues and every now and again you get the 'lost connection with map server', if you know its gunna kick you back the logon screen rather than come back to the game after a few seconds then heres a little way to speed up that BS...

Once you get the message just goto options and click the quit to logon.. this will happen instantly. Then just log back into the game and carry on. Not a very usefull tip but saves you 30 seconds of waiting for the disconnect. ;)

[False_Prophit]

/Bind is your friend. Your best friend. Use it a lot. Though it may not be true for everyone, I've found that binding attacks to the numpad (and shift+numpad) makes it immensely easier to cue the right attack exactly when you need it. No half-a-second wasted moving the mouse to the right point. Similarly, binding inspirations by name (instead of the default F1 for column 1, F2 column 2, etc). This saves you some more time when you quickly need a specific enhancement, and limits the chances of your hitting the wrong one by accident. Again, shift+FX is good for the higher level inspirations, and I use the numbers above the keyboard for the highest ones. Of course, different binds are necessary for different builds, but customizing your binds is of paramount importance for the most efficient gameplay. Hope this helps, and great thread guys!

[Beerjitsu]

Great thread. My .02 influence...

-That the space bar sends you straight up while in flight.
-The store map patch (I wanna marry that thing :))
-That tesla cage is NOT just a glorified version of electric fence (hold > Immobilize :o)
-That you don't have to take BOTH of the first two powers in a pool to get the third (anyone wanna buy my air superiority? Low mileage...)
-Don't turn your back on that freakshow corpse...
-"Cool...one more shot and that Fifth LT is going down...OMG WHAT IS THAT!!! <thwack>"

[Sihada]

Been playing since beta and I only discovered this one last night, and quite by accident...

You can combine two enhancements that are already locked in a power. this occasionally useful if you have two enhancements that just went from yellow to red. Combine them and you can squeeze the last bit of bonus out of them for another level.

[Satanic_Hamster]

If you punch a Tsoo twice, the sorceror will come back to heal him.

If you taunt/provoke/have invincibility on near a sky raider engineer, he won't setup a force field generator.

No matter how high of a building you jump off of, you can't die from it.

If you use a knockback power on an enemy on top of a tall building, they won't die from it. However, they'll get really hurt and they'll attempt to come back to you, no matter how long it takes to climb up 50 stories of fire escapes.

Putting heal buff enhancements on heal is useless. RECHARGE TIME ENHANCEMENTS.

The stanima power in the fitness power pool is one of the most powerfull powers of them all.

Sister Psyche can't be trusted to give you a useable award.

Positron rules.

[meowjen]

AWESOME! Thanks so much, I had no idea.

This thread is the best, only been playing a couple weeks now so much of this is brand new for me. :)

[Peril]

the invisibilty power from the concealment power pool will NOT protect you from an enemy once you have agroed it!! You can however walk around unmolested in missions where you have to find x and not have to arrest everything...simply get to the object and click on it.
And if you havent had this happen to you..DONT USE THE ABILITY REST NEAR ENEMIES!! if you are hit by anything you will DIE!! (and using Phase Shift will not save you from this!!)

[Grassy]

If you right click on an enemy, you can pull up a short info box about the mob. It's not much, but it will give you an idea of what kind of attacks and defenses the mob posseses. I also enjoy that type of background information.

Grassy Emp/Dark Defender
Infinity

[Liolel]

[ QUOTE ]

2. Hover - Just remember hover is a Defesne power NOT a travel power. Use defense slots on it not just speed buffs


[/ QUOTE ]

It may not be a travel power but I've had to use it a such a few times between level 8-14 (When I got fly). The thing is when you get a mission with the door in the gruff (in skywalk) at level 8, or in the land of the lost (in skywalk again) somewhere around level 12, or deep into boomtown (at around level 12) walking there isn't really a option. Luckily I'm patient, so I would turn on hover and just take 6 minutes getting there and back, and since your endurance recovers faster then hover drains it your safe unless you get too close to the ground.

[MikesMind]

Hi :)

Glad to find people are finding the thread useful. Just wanted to add 2 things: I really agree with Grassy's comments about the info boxes available on the mobs. I only found this out after almost a month of playing the game and both the background information and the hints about the mobs abilities is invaluable!.

Second, as a few people has stated... Bind rules. As well as activating powers I have found it really useful when grouping to have ones that say something along the line of:

1) That $target looks nasty.. can we take it out first.
2) Help, a $target has appeared unexpectedly and is killing me!
3) I am targetting the $target (followed by a quick, right/left/centre msg
4) I like that plan, lets go with it :)
5) My endurance is low can we wait up for a second otherwise I wont be able to heal you (I tend to play a defender or empath controller)

Mikes

[Super_Volt]

[ QUOTE ]
Putting heal buff enhancements on heal is useless. RECHARGE TIME ENHANCEMENTS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you mean putting heal Enhancers on the inherent ability, Rest, is uselss? If that's what you meant, then I totally agree.

If you meant that heal enhancers are wasted on powers that heal others, then I disagree. Both types of enhancement are useful. SO Heal Enhancers will dramatically increase the amount of HP you restore per use. Recharge is great too, I just couldn't stand by while you bad-mouthed my healing SOs. :)

[Tacitus]

1. Maintain tactical awareness at all times and know what you're up against. It really matters if there is a Bone Daddy stuck in the middle of that group of Skulls.
2. Don't chase runners. They'll come back. It's way too easy to aggro a second group or do as I did yesterday and run into a trio of lvl 35 Nemesis just hanging out in Steel Canyon while chasing a runner.
3. Ignore the jerks. They can't ruin your fun unless you let them.
4. If you get in a bad group, quit! It's not likely to get any better.

[Satanic_Hamster]

Clicking the "Mission Completed" message on the top display will transport you out of the mission.

[Scarpa]

[ QUOTE ]
Clicking the "Mission Completed" message on the top display will transport you out of the mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

The first time I saw this in action at the end of a team mission I sent a message to the team saying "were did everyone go, you guys just disapeared". :eek: It makes geting out of those crazy maze caves so much easier.

[Ex_Libris]

Got a questions about enhancments...

Is it better to slot a dual enhancement that has a 15 or a generic 20??

I wish there was some indication of which is more beneficial! And whats better - a 15++ or a 16 (both generic)?

Is there a formula so i can figure these out?

[GuapoMendez]

[ QUOTE ]
Got a questions about enhancments...

Is it better to slot a dual enhancement that has a 15 or a generic 20??

I wish there was some indication of which is more beneficial! And whats better - a 15++ or a 16 (both generic)?

Is there a formula so i can figure these out?

[/ QUOTE ]

Generics give you an 8% bonus. Duals a 16 and Singles a 30% some, a 20% others. Always choose a Double over a Generic and a Single over a double.

[Satanic_Hamster]

As stated everywhere, including the manual ;), any usable DO of ANY level is better then any usable trainer of any level.

A 15++ acts as a level 17, hence it's more effective then a level 16.

[PyraSalus]

[ QUOTE ]
Putting heal buff enhancements on heal is useless. RECHARGE TIME ENHANCEMENTS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? I don't get it, why would this be the case?

[HellPyre]

Some enhancement tips and selling tips.

My method of madness for selling and slotting is as follows:
Enhancements can be bought at level increments of 5.
An enhacement is optimal when its 3 levels above your current level. Its useable till its red or 3 levels below your level.
Training enhancements make very little different in your overall damage: (example)
At low levels 1-6, sell every enhancement you get to a freedom force trainer.
At level 7 go to the trainer and buy lvl 10 of everything you think you need.
8-11 sell everything, at 12 go buy 15s or 13 you can go buy 15s and + the 10s.

Follow this all the way up and you always have enhancements in your slots that are effective. At 22 you will want to have enough saved to buy all Single Origin enhancements.

Remember especially when you start getting DO and SO drops to sell them to the proper store, its a very nice price jump.

There used to be a nice site that explained % of each enhancement type and the forumula's but its not up anymore... from memory it was something like this:
Training is 8%, DO is 16%, SO is 33%
One + on a Training is 1%, DO 2%, SO 3%.
Ideally you would want your enhancements to be green to you.

The forumulas showed that enhancers that increase something are more effective vs ones that reduce something. Like... a damage increase of 8%, you actually got 8%. Where a recharge time 33% you may actually only get 15%.

In general I only + my powers that I use every fight and then only when I find the exact level that will work.

Some other things I wish I'd known:
Missions are terrible exp.
Debt is not a big deal, unless you only do missions.
Sidekicking penalizes the mentor and the sidekick in exp.
You can't change your super group colors or symbol.
A tanker is a better controller than a controller.
teleport is the worst travel power... ever.
Superspeed + Hurdle is very cool.
Staminia, if you don't think you'll need it your probably wrong.
There really are powers that are not worth taking...ever.
No matter what anyone tells you, you can make a gimp character, choose wisely.
The tutorial is still boring, even the 20th time through it.

[muuto]

[ QUOTE ]
There really are powers that are not worth taking...ever.

[/ QUOTE ]

As a n00b, I'd love to see this discussed - what are total gimp powers?

[EvilLittleChild]

That was the greatest thing I HAVE EVER LEARNED THANK YOU from the bottom of my tanker.

[beowulfe]

[ QUOTE ]
There is an NPC Store next to the trainer in Skyway. That store pays full price for trainings (unlike the NPCs in GC and AP) and can be reach safely by low-level PCs. Just don't fall off the walkways. :)

[/ QUOTE ]

Any more specific directions to this store? I haven't been able to find it ...

[Beck_]

[ QUOTE ]
Sidekicking penalizes the mentor and the sidekick in exp.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dont think this is correct.

As far as I know, sidekicking a lower lvl player does NOT affect your exp at all, the sidekick will be one level lower than you and they wont be penalised at all.

So if after sidekicking both of us were still solo.. then if I kill a same lvl minion I will get the exact same exp now as I would when Im not a mentor.

If the sidekick kills a same (new) lvl minion solo (i.e. one lvl below me) then he will get the exact same exp as he would if he was not sidekicked and killed a same lvl minion.

Now if you are grouped with people of different lvls then there will be exp benefits and penalties. But this has nothing to do with sidekicking.

If anyone knows any different then please say so.

[Fire_Iron]

Beck_,

I think he assumed that the mentor and sidekick were grouped.

[Alyssa_NA]

[ QUOTE ]

A tanker is a better controller than a controller.

[/ QUOTE ]

You DEFINATELY have not played post-level 30. I agree with all other points, but the controllers I have seen from 33-35 can beat minions down better than tankers by far. I went on two missions SK'd and noted the blaster just picking of fthe runners, and I (a scrapper) was just there for fluff. The controller could have easily solo'd purple bosses and minions.

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
If the sidekick kills a same (new) lvl minion solo (i.e. one lvl below me) then he will get the exact same exp as he would if he was not sidekicked and killed a same lvl minion.

[/ QUOTE ]

...which is less than what he would have gotten for killing that same minion while not sidekicked. A level 25 hero taking down a level 25 minion gets more XP than a level 20 hero taking down a level 20 minion - and a level 20 hero defeating a level 25 minion gets substantially more than either of them.

I don't know what it did to the rest of the team's XP (if anything), but I do know that the second time I ran Sister Psyche's TF, I was sidekicked in the first mission, because I was 23 and didn't like the look of the 26s that greeted us. The second mission started with 25s, so I dropped the sk. Before long, we were back to 26s and I was getting more XP for them not sked than I had gotten in the first mission while sked (and nobody had dropped out of the team), so that looks pretty clear to me that being a sidekick reduces the XP you get for any given foe.

[Kalen_NA]

Don't forget to count the time to get this xp...

How long to take down the same mob while SK and while not SK ? :) (if ever you could take it down before him do to you while you're not SK)

[SweetThang]

As an answer to muuto's question.
[ QUOTE ]
As a n00b, I'd love to see this discussed - what are total gimp powers?

[/ QUOTE ]

Gimped powers (If you have them, don't flame me...it's just my opinion)

Beanbag - Why? When you can take other offensive powers...why?
Taser - Don't recall anyone ever taking it...anyone ever see it?
Combustion - I guess if you six slot this bad boy...but honestly I've never seen it deal massive dmg...am I wrong?)
Air Superiority - nothing to add here....
Assault and Tactics - If you are not a defender or controller stay clear of these..the 7% buff is not worth it. Why does this power pool penalize you for your AT choice??? No other power pool does this !!
Flurry - Weak...just plain weak.
Resuscitate - Weak for a level 20 choice.....just keep Revive inspirations handy..save a power pool choice. If you wanted to be a healer...why did you not play an Empathy Defender or Controller?!?!
Hand Clap - Knockback, no damage dealt...slight chance of disorientation. R - E - S - P - E - C, find out what it means to me.

That's all, and really just an opinionated rant. If you have found these powers really work for you, kudos.

[Blue_Volt_NA]

[ QUOTE ]
Combustion - I guess if you six slot this bad boy...but honestly I've never seen it deal massive dmg...am I wrong?)


[/ QUOTE ]

Oh where were you when I started my Fire/fire blaster. I HATE that power...

Oh, and I guess that this is sort of a 'flame', but only in a good way ;)

[Beck_]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If the sidekick kills a same (new) lvl minion solo (i.e. one lvl below me) then he will get the exact same exp as he would if he was not sidekicked and killed a same lvl minion.

[/ QUOTE ]

...which is less than what he would have gotten for killing that same minion while not sidekicked. A level 25 hero taking down a level 25 minion gets more XP than a level 20 hero taking down a level 20 minion - and a level 20 hero defeating a level 25 minion gets substantially more than either of them.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is just the way the sidekick system works. If you are lvl10 and kill a lvl10 minion, you get, lets say 100 exp (not accurate), if you are then sidekicked to be at combat lvl35 and kill a lvl35 minion, you get exactly the same, 100 exp.

Thats the way it is, otherwise if you were getting 1000 exp as a sidekick it would be a huge exploit for quick lvling. The exp scales down to your actual combat lvl.

If that same hero killed a villain 3 lvls above him (sked or not) he would get say 300exp either way.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what it did to the rest of the team's XP (if anything), but I do know that the second time I ran Sister Psyche's TF, I was sidekicked in the first mission, because I was 23 and didn't like the look of the 26s that greeted us. The second mission started with 25s, so I dropped the sk. Before long, we were back to 26s and I was getting more XP for them not sked than I had gotten in the first mission while sked (and nobody had dropped out of the team), so that looks pretty clear to me that being a sidekick reduces the XP you get for any given foe.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are confusing the sidekick system with the general XP system. All the sidekick system does is artificially increase your combat lvl and all your powers etc to that lvl. It then scales th exp down to your actual combat lvl. In your example you are lvl23 killing lvl26s which is a +3. If you were sidekicked to be lvl25 then the enemys would only be +1 so you would be getting exp as if you are killing lvl24s (which is +1 to your actual combat lvl).

So yes in your example, you would get more exp to be a lvl23 killing +3 enemys, rather than a sidekicked lvl25 killing +1 enemys. But if you cant hit the bad guys then maybe you should take the XP hit for the team and be sidekicked. ;)

So to try and summarise what happened in your missions...

In your first mission you were sidekicked to be lvl25 (I presume) and so was getting XP for enemy+1.

In your second mission you were not sidekicked and so was lvl23 and getting XP for enemy+2 (more than the first mission).

In your third mission you were not sidekicked and so was lvl23 and getting XP for enemy+3 (more than the second mission).


Anyway Im rambling. My point is that the XP you gain is relative to your actual combat lvl and the enemys lvl. Sidekicking is just a way to artificially increase your powers etc so that you can be usefull to higher lvl peeps.

And a final summary of the summary..

Sidekicking does not penalise your xp. But if you are killing enemy+3 unsidekicked, then start killing enemy+1 sidekicked, you will obviously get less XP. That is the way of the XP system. :)

[Chazzmatazz]

Here's one that I just discovered (I may be slow). By clicking on the "I" in the yellow star in the mission window, you get an expanded text description of the mission status (might just be a rehash of what the contact told you when getting the mission initially). I was wondering what the big deal with Task Forces was, because as the non-party leader, I couldn't SEE any of the story arcs occuring. I finally got clued in to clicking on the Yellow "I" while doing the Synapse TF at lvl 20. It adds a fair amount of story "texture" to the game, if you care about that.

Oh yeah, another voice for not taking leadership pool unless defender or controller.

I'd like to dissent on Air Superiority's "uselessness". I think AS is a great melee attack for controllers (esp) not to mention having a huge knockdown chance (which is good damage mitigation).

[Justice Blues]

[ QUOTE ]
As an answer to muuto's question.
Gimped powers (If you have them, don't flame me...it's just my opinion)

Beanbag - Why? When you can take other offensive powers...why?
Taser - Don't recall anyone ever taking it...anyone ever see it?
Combustion - I guess if you six slot this bad boy...but honestly I've never seen it deal massive dmg...am I wrong?)
Air Superiority - nothing to add here....
Assault and Tactics - If you are not a defender or controller stay clear of these..the 7% buff is not worth it. Why does this power pool penalize you for your AT choice??? No other power pool does this !!
Flurry - Weak...just plain weak.
Resuscitate - Weak for a level 20 choice.....just keep Revive inspirations handy..save a power pool choice. If you wanted to be a healer...why did you not play an Empathy Defender or Controller?!?!
Hand Clap - Knockback, no damage dealt...slight chance of disorientation. R - E - S - P - E - C, find out what it means to me.

That's all, and really just an opinionated rant. If you have found these powers really work for you, kudos.

[/ QUOTE ]
Can't speak for all of them, but I do have characters with some.

Taser - As a low level blaster, being able to stun the mob that has reached melee so I can get my attacks recharged is a very good thing.
Air Superiority - great attack, good damage for reasonable end cost, and knockup is really useful. Plus it can get a flier to come down and join the party for a while.
Leadership Pool - it does not penalize some ATs, it gives a bonus to Defenders and Controllers. According to Poz (I think, maybe Gecko) all of the pools except travel work better for some ATs than others.
Hand Clap - Fun as all get out. :) And useful to stun porters or other mobs you are trying to catch.

See, nothing gimped here.

[Ex_Libris]

That saving peds is boring.

[beowulf2010]

[ QUOTE ]
2. Don't chase runners. They'll come back. It's way too easy to aggro a second group or do as I did yesterday and run into a trio of lvl 35 Nemesis just hanging out in Steel Canyon while chasing a runner.


[/ QUOTE ]

An extension. If you have Radiation Infection or Enervating field or something similar on a runner, shut it off as the debuffs will aggro other groups too.

[Brainiac4]

I like your enhancing strategy. My addition to it: when you hit 27, do not wait for 28 to buy your level 30 SOs so you can combine them. Start buying 30 SOs right away, and keep going until you fill up. If you hit 28 before you fill them all out, great.

Once you hit 32, again do not wait to get those 35 SOs -- start buying immediately.

On another note...
[ QUOTE ]
Some other things I wish I'd known:
Missions are terrible exp.

[/ QUOTE ]
They can be... but they can also be nice consistent xp. A large well-formed group (6-8) can mow through the large crowds in a mission, producing good xp per unit of time. It's not as efficient as street hunting yellow/orange/red groups, but it's not terrible -- and it's fun.
[ QUOTE ]
A tanker is a better controller than a controller.

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree. I play with both, and like each of them for different reasons. But when it comes to crowd control, the controller is more reliable at higher levels.

[Mr_Xoff]

[ QUOTE ]
You can combine two enhancements that are already locked in a power. this occasionally useful if you have two enhancements that just went from yellow to red. Combine them and you can squeeze the last bit of bonus out of them for another level.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just realized this as well.

Example:

That means a 15++ (effective lv17) can, at 18, be combined into a 20+ (effective lv21) with a 20 purchase.

Meaning that the time to slot lv20 enchancements for current 15++ ones isn't level 17, but level 18, as you'll get some benefit out of the current 15++.

If you have open slots, hit them with the new higher levels first. Once you hit 18, you can slot the 20s with 15++, making 21s.

Basically, don't replace "maxed" slots unless you don't have any free ones.

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
And a final summary of the summary..

Sidekicking does not penalise your xp. But if you are killing enemy+3 unsidekicked, then start killing enemy+1 sidekicked, you will obviously get less XP. That is the way of the XP system. :)

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, I get how it works. We're really just debating semantics here...

I look at it and see that I got X xp for killing a level 26 while sked and Y xp for killing an identical mob while not sked, where X < Y. Since doing the exact same thing netted fewer xp while sked than while not sked, I call that an xp penalty.

You look at it and see that the mob was +1 to my combat level when sked and +3 when not sked, then reason that it's appropriate for a level 26 (+1 to clev) when sked to give the same xp as a level 24 (also +1 to clev) when not sked, so, therefore, there is no penalty.

It's all just a matter of perspective.

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
Meaning that the time to slot lv20 enchancements for current 15++ ones isn't level 17, but level 18, as you'll get some benefit out of the current 15++.

If you have open slots, hit them with the new higher levels first. Once you hit 18, you can slot the 20s with 15++, making 21s.

Basically, don't replace "maxed" slots unless you don't have any free ones.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll agree with your final statement here, but not the first. There's no good reason to go through, e.g., level 17 with yellow enhancements when you could be buying shiny new green ones. Not buying any until they're combinable doesn't buy you any additional effective time, it just delays the first purchase.

When you do buy them, though, it is definitely wiser to combine existing enhancements with each other where possible than it is to unnecessarily trash enhs by replacing them with level+3 enhs.

[Red_Spectre]

not really...there is no exp penalty for SKing. you get the exp for the level you are fighting at currently. your logic would also say you get an exp penalty for leveling.

[Archipelago]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
2. Don't chase runners. They'll come back. It's way too easy to aggro a second group or do as I did yesterday and run into a trio of lvl 35 Nemesis just hanging out in Steel Canyon while chasing a runner.


[/ QUOTE ]
An extension. If you have Radiation Infection or Enervating field or something similar on a runner, shut it off as the debuffs will aggro other groups too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Extension extension. If you WANT to draw a huge huge huge crowd of baddies for watever reason, Radiation infection is a good 'net' as it pisses off enemies bad enough to chase you, but doesn't harm them enough to trigger the urge to flee from inescapable damage.

[Ganner]

You can combine DO enhancements of different origins... sorta.
The way this works if you are, say, Science origin and you have a power slotted with a sci/mut damage enh for instance. You can combine any other /sci DO damage. A tech/sci DO and a sci/mut DO would combine just as if they were the same type. The slotted enh would take on the "appearance" of the highest enhancement or the one already slotted if they were the same level. This goes for all DO's as long as one of the /origins is your origin and they do the same thing. damage/damage, acc/acc. You get the idea. Forgive me if this doesnt make much sense. Im tired and have a headache.

[Arctic_Spear]

That some fifth turn into werewolves. I encountered this on the sister psyche tf..My group had a good laugh at my reaction for about 10 minutes.

[Rogue1]

[ QUOTE ]
I like your enhancing strategy. My addition to it: when you hit 27, do not wait for 28 to buy your level 30 SOs so you can combine them. Start buying 30 SOs right away, and keep going until you fill up. If you hit 28 before you fill them all out, great.

[/ QUOTE ]

One other addendum...

If you have multiple enhancements of the same type (like more than one damage) on a power, and you're not replacing all of them with new SOs, you can combine them This frees up a slot for the new SO, and increases the effectiveness of the old one. It's not much, but it can save you a little.

For example, at 27 you have the following on an attack power

Dam25 Dam25 Dam25

Click on it for the combining screen and combine two of the damage enhancements. Then add the SO in the empty slot. You then have

Dam25+ Dam25 Dam30

I know, it's not much, but it's better than just trashing them.

[Gothryd]

Clicking on pedestrians whose names begin with certain letters will tell you certain things. Such as what the current time is, how many total hours you have on your character (my personal favorite), paragon city time, etc. A nice little touch.

[Euclidian]

SweetThang
[ QUOTE ]
Air Superiority - nothing to add here....
Assault and Tactics - If you are not a defender or controller stay clear of these..the 7% buff is not worth it. Why does this power pool penalize you for your AT choice??? No other power pool does this !!

[/ QUOTE ]

Air Superiority has uses for a flying defender or controller, or any AT for that matter. It’s ok because it can knock down flyers. It can also knock down mobs on the ground with a high probability.

As for Assault and Tactics and the unfair bonus, Scrappers and Tankers do more damage and have more of a benefit from the fighting pool than the other ATs.

[Helterskelter13]

[ QUOTE ]

Any more specific directions to this store? I haven't been able to find it ...

[/ QUOTE ]
The Freedom Corp "store" is in the park with Mynx the trainer and ... Positron? One of the Task Force heroes. Basically, go down the tram ramp and follow a walkway immediately to your right out to the street. Just ahead and a little to the right is a stone-walled-in park. Head in there, Mynx is off ahead and to the right (I think), and the FC person is around behind the TF hero. Just stay inside the walls and you'll find them eventually (they're dressed in the flashy red/white outfits, so they should stand out). There may be an actual FC store building somewhere, but the guy in the park should give the same prices and is very convenient. :eek:

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
not really...there is no exp penalty for SKing. you get the exp for the level you are fighting at currently. your logic would also say you get an exp penalty for leveling.

[/ QUOTE ]

First off, no, when sked you don't simply get xp based on your clev. A 23 sked to 25 gets xp as if they were 23 and fighting enemies two levels lower than they actually are (because they're fighting two levels higher than their actual level), just like the levels of any drops they receive are reduced by two. A 23 killing a 25 while sked to 25 gets the same xp as a non-sked 23 killing a 23, not the same as a non-sked 25 killing a 25. (XP inflation at higher levels would make this an incredible exploit if you just got xp as if you were your clev - a lvl 2 could sk to a 50 and gain multiple levels from one kill.)

Secondly, yes, if you really want to push it, I would say that there is an XP penalty for being more experienced. I accept that it should take more to gain levels as you become more powerful and there are two obvious ways to do this: Increase the XP required per level or reduce the XP gained from a given task (e.g., killing a lvl 5 minion). You definitely have to do one or the other (or come up with something completely different, but I'm not aware of any commonly-used third option), but I don't like systems that do both. That sort of double-whammy really bothers me... But at this point, we're moving into a more general game design discussion instead of good things to know about CoH, so I'll just leave it at that.

[Shubox]

Talos Island is the best place for selling enhancements all the stores are reasonably close 25+ mobs though

[Striker_HTF]

I love this thread and I really wish it had been up when I was starting out. Here are some of the best comments I've seen (some are flat out cut and pasted, some use my own wording). As well as a couple I completely disagree with.

Things I learned completely by accident:

- You can combine two enhancements that are already locked in a power.

- The space bar sends you straight up while in flight.

- When fighting Sky Raiders look for and attack the Raider Engineers first. If they are attacked (taunted, provoked, whatever) they won't setup a force field generator, which make you miss 9 ways to Sunday.

- No matter how high of a building you jump off of, you can't die from it. (Which makes for a fun game. How close to the ground can you get before hitting hover?)

- Putting heal buff enhancements on Rest is useless. I wasted extra slots on this as well. Use recharge enhancements.

- Clicking the "Mission Completed" message on the top display will transport you out of the mission. I think I was level 8 before I learned this lesson.

-----

Things I completely disagree with

- Missions are terrible exp.
Missions are almost always full of white baddies and some yellows. An occasional same level boss is thrown in. Don't stay away from missions because you can hunt +1 or +2 levels above you. They are great fun. I take great pride in the fact I have 13-15 souvenirs at level 31.

- Debt is not a big deal, unless you only do missions.
Debt isn't a big deal period... unless you die over and over and are in a constant state of debt. In this case, rethink the way you play... or whine and moan about it in these forums. The latter must work... I see so much of it.

- You can't change your super group colors or symbol.
Actually you can, but it ain't for the weak of heart. First, get everyone out of the supergroup. If there are no members to the supergroup then it can be recreated as if it were new. Granted, this is more viable during the supergroup creation than when there are 75 members, but that's all we've got for now.

-----

Other random thoughts

- There really are powers that are not worth taking...ever.
Someone wanted to know which ones. As a blaster who has made this mistake don't take the Leadership power pool. As someone else has already said - if you are not a defender or controller stay clear of these..the 7% buff is not worth it. I'm very upset over my choice here. Luckily I'll go through the Terra Volta Trials as soon as the next issue comes out. Hopefully the rumors are true and I'll get to dump the entire pool and pickup something useful like Medicine or Conceal.

-----

The most important tips I've seen

- Ignore the jerks. They can't ruin your fun unless you let them. (I couldn't have said it better myself.)

- The stanima power in the fitness power pool is one of the most powerfull powers of them all.

If you take nothing way from this entire thread know that the Fitness Pool is your best friend. Build your hero so that you can take Stamina at lvl 20 (the earliest you can get it). Six slot Stamina as soon as you can. Just get Heath and either of the other powers to get to Stamina. Don't bother with all 3, but at least get Health. Its not as great as Stamina, but it ain't bad.


That's all my thoughts for now.

Striker -HTF

[Tyger42]

[ QUOTE ]
4. Sprint uses end yes but not as much as others turn it off in combat if you must but as you get more end and ways to replenishg it you may leave it on for quick step to catch a retreating enemy

[/ QUOTE ]

Flaw in this statement: You NEVER get more than 100 end. Most people get stamina in their character build, so get swift as the pre-req. Put a couple run speeds into swift, and sprint becomes largely unneeded since swift costs no end and cannot be shut off by stuns.

[Tyger42]

[ QUOTE ]
Melee attacks do 3 times the damage on average compared to Ranged attacks.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



That depends entirely on the enemies you fight. At low levels melee is more dangerous than ranged combat, but that changes in the low to mid 20s for some villian groups.


[/ QUOTE ]

One word: Snipers. x.x

[Tyger42]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Clicking the "Mission Completed" message on the top display will transport you out of the mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

The first time I saw this in action at the end of a team mission I sent a message to the team saying "were did everyone go, you guys just disapeared". :eek: It makes geting out of those crazy maze caves so much easier.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do people not know this? It tells you specifically that's how you get out of a mission in the tutorial. *sigh* It'd do a lot of people a lot of good if they actually read these things.

[Karbanog]

[ QUOTE ]
How do people not know this? It tells you specifically that's how you get out of a mission in the tutorial. *sigh* It'd do a lot of people a lot of good if they actually read these things.

[/ QUOTE ]

And that, my friend, is why the phrase/acronym RTFM is so commonly used you see it on T-Shirts! :)

[Tyger42]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How do people not know this? It tells you specifically that's how you get out of a mission in the tutorial. *sigh* It'd do a lot of people a lot of good if they actually read these things.

[/ QUOTE ]

And that, my friend, is why the phrase/acronym RTFM is so commonly used you see it on T-Shirts! :)

[/ QUOTE ]

I used to work tech support for DirecTV. YOu wouldn't believe the number of calls I got about things that were explained in actual simple english specifically in their manual (Programming the remote, etc). 9 out of 10 times, the customer had never even opened the manual and had, in fact, THROWN IT IN THE TRASH with the box and packing material. *sigh*

But, yeah, back in my EQ days, the patch messages are displayed in the launcher window every time there's a patch. Without fail, there'd be /ooc's (/broadcast's EQ equivalent) asking about a new feature that was explained plain as day in the patch message. *eyeroll* I swear, there should be quizzes you have to pass about these things before they allow you to play every time. Even if one doesn't RTFM, they should at least go looking for the answers before asking... Learn to try to help yourself before asking others to do it for you, says I.

Anyway, derail done. We now return you to the actually useful info...

[Cow_Boy]

some good info in here. I'll add a few tips for getting up buildings, since that's a particularly interesting topic for me (for some reason).

Ascending Fire-escapes : hold down your right-mouse button to steer (assuming you haven't rebound it). You can rip up a fire-escape in no time (or a stair-case, whatever) by steering with your mouse and not the keyboard. Actually, steer with your mouse most of the time and you'll find you have much, much more control than with the keyboard.

By-passing fire-escapes. With absolutely no jump enhancements or powers, one can leap up the side of a good number of the buildings, especially the ol' brick "apartment" buildings with relative ease. This may be a bit tricky to explain but with a little practice, it's easy as pie.
First you have to be at a building that actually has a bottom edge you can jump to, that should be a given.
Run at the side of the building from an angle, leap up while still moving and you should land on an edge. Keep the space-bar depressed and continue to "run" at the building at an angle. You should find yourself jumping up and to the side, catching an edge on the next level up.
As you approach the side of the building, switch your angle of incident (that means angle yourself towards the other side of the wall you're going up) and you should switch directions while still maintaining upward movement (or you'll go sailing off of the side of the building since you didn't change directions early enough). Continue to do this, zig-zagging your way up the side of the building until you reach the top.
Note to Superspeeders, you can do this REALLY fast, BUT if you don't let-off as you crest the top of the wall, you'll totally over-jump the roof and go right over the far-side of the building.

Other handy-tips:
Click the arrow on the team-window. It will roll-out additional info about your teammates. It will tell you where a teammate is when they are in a different zone and what buffs they have when they are in the same zone.

Simply click a teammates name in the team window to select them (and set them as a waypoint. ;))

/bind , "nop" to clear that damn default "/tell $target" key. I always seem to hit this at the most in-opportune times. The syntax /bind <key> "nop" will clear a bind for whatever key you specify.

Right-click a teammate (or their name in the team window) and select "Info" to see exactly what powers that person has. Don't waste time by asking teammates to stop and tell you what they can do.

A good pull is when the monster comes far enough from his group that the rest of his buddies can't see or hear him counter-attack. Too often I see a really good pull get nixed because the team doesn't back off far enough to get the target out of range of his friends. Once the rest of the group sees their minion buddy open fire on something, they all wake up and attack too.

[Relampagos]

Not sure this has been posted.. but I discovered this using the map patch (love it love it love it). The use of thumbtacks.

While in the map, right click on a location and voila! a thumbtack will appear on the map as well as the compass in your nav screen. You will even be given a range-to-target on the view screen, just like any other waypoint.

To remove, simply right click over it again. Very useful when going to the stores on the map patch.

[Fasque]

Some very basic things I was stupid enough not to realize when I began the game (in no particular order).

You don't need to run through Independence Port to get to King's Row. You can take the tram. Duh.

You can run up the ramps below the bridges in Kings Row (and get on top of the bridges). The width of the ramp looks too narrow, but you can do it.

You will at first be unable to find Circle of Thorns in Kings Row. Don't worry about it, it's not your fault. It's the devs' fault. The devs should have to find Circle of Thorns in Kings Row each Friday before receiving their paychecks. Then things would get better.

You can walk on the telephone lines, though sometimes its hard to get on them.

Don't use an awaken if you are within sight of an enemy mob. You will be disoriented when you awaken, unable to take any action, and you will be killed again.

If you are dying too much, or not leveling fast enough, or simply not having fun, it may well be because you have chosen poor powers. As said elsewhere in the thread, there are some powers that are comparatively worthless. The manual will not tell you this, the devs will not tell you this, but it is true. But don't give up on the game, there are powers that actually do work and are fun. EVERYONE rerolls at some point.

Most players know less about the game than you do, regardless of how little you believe you know. This is hard to believe, I know. But it is true.

You will die more often in groups than solo. Always.

If you are in Perez Park, you will always die more often in large groups than in small groups. Always.

You will be trapped and die at least once inside the woods of Perez Park, regardless of whether you are grouping or not. This is not your fault. It is the devs' fault. The keys to the devs' cars should be placed inside the woods at Perez Park every morning at 7 am. Then things would get better.

At some point, you can CALL your contact instead of physically travelling to their location. Duh.

Some missions are "front-loaded" with the tougher monsters first and the weaker monsters later.

Glowies emit a throbbing sound when you are close by.

You can click on the "Mission Accomplished" green letters to exit the mission. You don't have to run back to the door. Duh.

The "follow" command will not effectively jump your character over fences, go up stairwells, etc. Don't expect it to function unattended.

And one more: Galaxy City is a better starting point than Atlas because a) you don't have to run around the fences encircling that darn industrial park, and b) Gemini Park is the best early char farming ground.

[NerdKicker]

You DEFINITELY can not read English. He didn't say controllers couldn't beat minions down. He said tankers were better at the act of controlling than controllers, which is debatable, but at least pay attention.

[losing2entropy]

>Combustion - I guess if you six slot this bad boy...but honestly I've never seen it deal massive dmg...am I wrong?)

Combustion is not GIMP.
It's AOE damage. Massive? No. But moderate, yes.

#1 for Tankers using fire, this provides an AOE damage ability. This is HUGE!

#2 for Blasters this provides another AOE attack. It's unpleasant to have to get in close, but I have seen MANY blasters that rely on it as part of their AOE sequence that flattens every enemy in a group. You can NEVER have too much AOE.

It's not AMAZING, but it's hardly a "gimp" power.

[Soulshine]

wish i had known that binding and macros was so easy!

simple phrases like "gather" are now only 1 button away and people dont complain bout missing the buffs. plus there are kickin flying binds that will improve gameplay.

so go out and look for binding ideas. make your keyboard helpful and manageable.

[Sigellius]

If you have fly or hover, you can travel faster by angling down by 45 degrees and holding space ("up") and forward. The vectors combine.

Whether this is true or not, I'm not sure. But it certainly FEELS like I'm travelling faster when I do that - perhaps it's an optical illusion.

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
Ascending Fire-escapes : hold down your right-mouse button to steer (assuming you haven't rebound it). You can rip up a fire-escape in no time (or a stair-case, whatever) by steering with your mouse and not the keyboard.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can rip up a fire escape in no time if you don't steer at all... Run forward up the stairs, strafe right (D by default), run backwards, strafe left (A), repeat until you're at the top. Don't turn at all.

[ QUOTE ]
Simply click a teammates name in the team window to select them (and set them as a waypoint. ;))

[/ QUOTE ]

Well... Click on the name to select them, then right-click and select "Set as Waypoint" from the pop-up menu to set them as a waypoint...

[Kong_Fuu]

Just be careful you don't back into the Skull Daddy that's half way up the fire escape after chasing the last hero and giving up. It's such an unfortunate way to die.

Hunting the CoT in Kings Row was almost enough to convince me to take Hover, just to avoid climbing the stupid stairs only to find no CoT (or some annoying level 20 flying blaster wiping out the last of them just as I arrived...again.

[Seryphim]

[ QUOTE ]
... Ascending Fire-escapes : hold down your right-mouse button to steer (assuming you haven't rebound it). You can rip up a fire-escape in no time (or a stair-case, whatever) by steering with your mouse and not the keyboard. Actually, steer with your mouse most of the time and you'll find you have much, much more control than with the keyboard. ...

[/ QUOTE ]

I usually just maintain my facing up the fire escape and go backwards on the flat run without turning at all. I just have to ensure that I run toward the center since I have learned that running off of a fire escape (no building in COH would pass my countries building codes since they do not have a hand rail.) is bad and many times painful. I just keep zig zagging up always facing the same dircetion, the only movement of my mouse is to keep me centered. All movment is forward, right, back and left. Repeat till roof or end of fire escape. :D

Edit: I guess Fated_Frontier and I use the same technique. :eek:

[Ex_Libris]

Circle of Thorns are not really that hard to find in Kings Row. But there's a trick to it.

They only spawn at night. And you often need to kill the daytime spawn at their favorite hang-outs.

I really wish I had known this earlier in my career.

[Ex_Libris]

I find combustion useful to help hold agro as well as drawing in foes along with provoke. After drawing them in my Blaster buddy drops his Trip Mine and we can knock out a whole mob of orange our lvl in one punch.


Dooome lvl 27 Invul/Fire Tanker Triumph

[Justice Blues]

The real trick to finding CoT in KR is by using /camdist 400 and looking down. It places your POV well above the top of the building, making it very easy to see the green glowing clouds of the CoT.

[Beerjitsu]

A couple more I thought of...

-If you six slot hasten with recharge reduction and auto-fire it, it never goes down
-Voltaic Sentinel is a big pile of doggie poo
-Mortificators rez cadavers...ditto for some Crey scientists
-Travel powers get faster as you level on their own...so slotting hover is a waste of time.
-If you set up your inspiration tray correctly, you can just use the function key to pop an insp, and the next one will slide down ready to use...like a pez dispenser
-certain Mobs, like embalmed cadavers and Death mages blow up and do SICK damage
-Said exploding mobs can be interrupted when they go into their countdowns

sorry if any of these have been posted previously...this is a great thread, wish it had been here a few months ago...

[Ebon_Angel]

And also, those kamikaze exploding mobs damage other mobs if they're deceived. A good hit from them can take out other minions, and do severe damage to lt's and bosses. Yeah, you don't get the XP for 'em, but it can help to thin out an otherwise too-big-to-handle group in a mission.

[GenericHero_549]

[ QUOTE ]
- Clicking the "Mission Completed" message on the top display will transport you out of the mission. I think I was level 8 before I learned this lesson.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just an FYI...the tutorial door mission tells you this when you complete it.

[GenericHero_549]

[ QUOTE ]
You will die more often in groups than solo. Always.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not always true. I die more solo (though rarely) than in a group. Mostly because I'm a scrapper, and like to test my limits. In a group, it is rare to take on anything that is dangerous to me, or someone else is handling enough aggro to manage. This is especially true when there are overzealous defenders healing everything is sight, whether they need it or not.

However, this is probably more true for other ATs. Defenders and controllers probably. Solo, you know when to run and what you can handle. In a group, you don't want to run before the group, and you can't always count on the rest to pull aggro off you.

[Red_Hot_One]

[ QUOTE ]
-That you don't have to take BOTH of the first two powers in a pool to get the third (anyone wanna buy my air superiority? Low mileage...)

[/ QUOTE ]
- To get to the 4th power you can select ANY 2 of the previous three. You do NOT need 1 of the first two and the third.
Example: You can take Swift, Hurdle then Stamina, you do not need to take Swift, Health, then Stamina.

- Combat Jumping (and Hurdle I belive) will allow you to jump up buildings with inward slants almost indefinatly, until you run into a ledge or out cropping. This also works on internal corners. I belive the corners need to be slanted, but not definate.

- Assist is your friend. Just target the "puller" and see what he is targeting, that way every one can attack the same mob, and not cause un needed agro.

- Even SK'ed you cannot get into Perez until your toon is level 7, and Boomtown until your toon is 11. Don't think just because you are SK'ed and fight at a higher level, you will be able to enter these areas.

- Cave door missions. Sometimes when you cannot find that last mob, check to see if there is a upper or lower level to some of the rooms.

- Recall friend can teleport people even when dead. This is a very usefull power for a empath defender/controller to grab. This way you can pull the corpses to a safe area and revive them safely when endurance permits.

- CoT demons and Tsoo guardians (i forget names) that "phase" out to invisible cannot be harmed when they are not visible. Only attack them when they are "solid" form.

- The "energy" from the guns that the Lost shoot, shut down your toggle powers.

- You can change the default chat group you are talking to by clicking on the letter above the text entry field on the chat box.

- You can send yourself email if you have somethign you want to remember, with out writing it down.

[Happenstance]

[ QUOTE ]
That some @@@@ turn into ****. I encountered this on the $$$$ tf..My group had a good laugh at my reaction for about 10 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, ouch. Can we keep spoilers off this? I did not know that, and now I won't be properly freaked out when it does happen to me.

In trying to learn some tricks and tips in playing the game, I've already run into quite a bit of information about the missions I'm doing. *sniff*

Kevin

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm a scrapper, and like to test my limits.

[/ QUOTE ]

But that's redundant... (Well, OK, we scrappers call it "testing our limits". Everyone else seems to call it "being crazy" or "having a death wish", even when we don't die.)

[Brawlizard]

When charmed Mortificators will kill and then rez their freinds over and over. :D

[Sentinel_X]

When hunting cot in kings row, there is a heavy concentration of spawn points directly north of the trainer, in the southern part of the "Gris" or whatever it's called.

Wish I'd known this with my first character. That mission took hours to complete.

I also use the method of running up stairs by strafing and ascending the next flight backwards.

It is a good idea to plan your characters ahead of time and to post your build in the forums so experienced players can help critique your build. I've never posted my build, I usually just search the forums and form my build on that, but posting your build is a faster way to do that.

[Relampagos]

[ QUOTE ]
When charmed Mortificators will kill and then rez their freinds over and over. :D

[/ QUOTE ]

Charmed/deceived sorcerors do this as well. Funny, they don't come over and heal me when I deceive them. Bastiges.

[LadySteelBlade]

One thing to take into account for sidekicking xp penalties. If you are sidekicking someone to 1 (or several) lvls below you, he will have a lower percentage of experience, but...

Take into account that someone 1 lvl below you is fighting a yellow, 2 an orange, 3 a red. So someone 3 levels below you may get 40% of the xp or less but it is 40% of the xp of a RED while you are getting 60% of the xp of a white. Which makes up for the xp penalty in the end. I know, whe have tried it me and my roommate and it does work, we got about the same xp (approximatly).

[comorbid]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Any more specific directions to this store? I haven't been able to find it ...

[/ QUOTE ]
The Freedom Corp "store" is in the park with Mynx the trainer and ... Positron? One of the Task Force heroes. Basically, go down the tram ramp and follow a walkway immediately to your right out to the street. Just ahead and a little to the right is a stone-walled-in park. Head in there, Mynx is off ahead and to the right (I think), and the FC person is around behind the TF hero. Just stay inside the walls and you'll find them eventually (they're dressed in the flashy red/white outfits, so they should stand out). There may be an actual FC store building somewhere, but the guy in the park should give the same prices and is very convenient. :eek:

[/ QUOTE ]

Better still, open up your map and find her there. She's a trainer rather than a contact, so she's on it, even if you've never heard of her. Then you can just click on her and follow the waypoint.

[ QUOTE ]
Travel powers get faster as you level on their own...so slotting hover is a waste of time.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dunno, I noticed a bit of a difference after slotting some speed into hover and fly, not a huge difference, but I could move faster. Granted, as new as I am, I don't really know if slotting early affects things later. Although it probably doesn't.

[ QUOTE ]
I also use the method of running up stairs by strafing and ascending the next flight backwards.

[/ QUOTE ]

I prefer strafing up the stairs themselves, moving forward or backward when I get to the top of the flight, to position myself fore the next one. Dunno if it's faster or slower, but it works better for me.

As for things I wish I'd known when I first started:
<ul type="square"> The camera is both your best friend and your worst enemy. Learn how to position it if all you can do is run. I almost got sick the first time I strafed with my back facing the tram track supports, with the camera zoomed all the way out so I could spot enemies more easily.

However, you can use it to look around corners and con enemies without haveing to actually go around said corner.
Go AFK inside a safe place rather than next to a safe place. I thought my (at the time) lvl 11 scrapper was ok on the sidewalk, until I heard a loud "THWAKK!!" when I reached for my cigarettes. Our little 3-person, low-level team got spanked by 2 lvl 30 Devouring Earth. The 6 was dead, my 11 and the 10 were stunned. And while I stood there frantically typing "&lt;bleep&gt;!!! RUN!!! RUN NOW!!!" the 10 got hit again. Apparently when I said I was going AFK, they decided to do the same. So let that be a lesson kiddies...smoking kills. *koffhack*
That thing about phase shifting enemies.
Everybody loves to hate the healer. (/e thumbsup)
Having more than the minimum but less than the recommended system requirements, doesn't necessarily mean the game will run all that great. *koffkoff15FPSkoffkoff*
[/list]

And the most important thing I've learned:

MAKE USE OF THE FORUMS.

[Beerjitsu]

[ QUOTE ]
Having more than the minimum but less than the recommended system requirements, doesn't necessarily mean the game will run all that great. *koffkoff15FPSkoffkoff*
[/LIST]

And the most important thing I've learned:

MAKE USE OF THE FORUMS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Amen to BOTH of those last two!

[Tacitus]

If you get a door mission inside Perez Park as a lvl 8 or 9, put it off. The first time I tried to do one at low level, I died 3 times trying to get to the door and again after the mission when I tried to leave the park.
On a similar note, you can run across the tops of the trees in Perez Park. Finding myself alone deep in the park and faced with hovering as fast as a crippled snail to get safely out, I found I could hover up to the tree tops, drop, and sprint all the way across on the trees.

[Kolondo]

1. Any of the radiation emissions powers will automatically remove a ancestor spirit or COT daemon from being shifted (I love this aspect of the debuffs)

2. This is a game where if used correctly all first powers are viable (you just have to settle for four or five slotting in the beginning)

3. Little Pips Hero planner in legacy mode is the only way to plan a hero.

4. It is not worth it to EVER slot a training, it is only worth selling them until you start getting DO's then just chuck them.

5. Even some DO's are not worth it, as they will sell for LESS than 1k even at the proper vendor, blech.

6. No matter HOW much you try to justify it a power that is SITUATIONIAL is not worth the slot (man I wish I had not taken and six slotted Phase Shift :o )

7. Teleport BLOWS if you do not have either Recovery aura on or a six slotted with SO's Stamina

8. Best possible travel combo hasten then super speed than teleport, what you can not run around you Teleport over ;)

[comorbid]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Having more than the minimum but less than the recommended system requirements, doesn't necessarily mean the game will run all that great. *koffkoff15FPSkoffkoff*
[/LIST]

And the most important thing I've learned:

MAKE USE OF THE FORUMS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Amen to BOTH of those last two!

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh yeah, dude...Perez Park...kills it every time. lol

[Portal_NA]

[ QUOTE ]
Circle of Thorns are not really that hard to find in Kings Row. But there's a trick to it.

They only spawn at night. And you often need to kill the daytime spawn at their favorite hang-outs.

I really wish I had known this earlier in my career.

[/ QUOTE ]

Untrue - they also spawn during daylight. Some of them spawn less frequently during the day - others continue to spawn quickly.

Finding CoT is also easy if you know where to look. When you exit the tram turn 90 degrees to your left - pass through the vacant lots until you come to a cluster of buildings. On top of them you will find a few groups of dedicated CoT spawns that are present at any time of day. Leave the area and they will respawn very quickly.


Area Buffs!
The best way I have found to get my group to form around me for an area buff is to use a bind that states a time limit and makes a sound:
/bind numpad1 "group Casting a Recovery Aura in 5 seconds.$$em whistle"
/bind numpad2 "powexec_name Recovery Aura"

Hit one on your numpad, then ten seconds later (yea 10, not 5) hit two on your numpad. Pretty soon even the most stubborn people realize the whistle means free endurance. The whistle emote will not always work if you are in a combat stance so it's good to develop the habbit of hitting the escape key first.

Another point - stealth type effects stack. Stealth alone will not make you invisible to enemies. They won't notice you until you get into melee range - but they will notice you. But if you put up stealth and super speed (which also has a stealth component) at the same time - you will become completely invisible.

[Happenstance]

I see these questions pop up sometimes.

You can have up to three missions, once you get enough contacts to give you those missions.

You cannot ditch a mission. If it is too hard, then you will need to recruit some teammates.

Some contacts give you a choice of missions. Look carefully for a mission that says, "You have 75 minutes to..." It is a timed mission and should not be taken if you have to be at work in 10 minutes. Again, you might have to recruit teammates, but let them know that you have a timed mission so they can cooperate more effectively. Some people like to dilly-dally.

You are not penalized for failing a timed mission.
Caveat: I don't think so. I've not done so, but I've been on a group that did. The person with the mission did not report any adverse effects. I'd have thought you lose Influence but maybe not.

The team leader can choose the current mission so that everyone knows which waypoint is active. On the Mission tab, choose Team. You'll see the current missions of all your members. Ideally, you want to pick a mission that's in the zone you're currently in. At the bottom, click on Select Task. The waypoint shows up for everyone, and you can coordinate your attack. If you're in a dangerous zone, try to travel together for safety. If you're all scattered (i.e., the group just formed), see if someone has Recall Friend and can pull everyone there in order to avoid the danger. This way, only one person is at risk instead of the entire group.

Speaking of Recall Friend, if you are trying to gather the group together, send a message warning people. Don't just willy-nilly grab someone out of the blue. You may want to bind the following to some keys:
/bind o team I'm going to summon everyone to my location unless you speak up now (even a letter if you're in combat).
/bind p team I am now recalling $target. Prepare for teleport!
Edited due to correction made by Tarambagil. Thanks for the update.

Natrually, you want to select the teammate (manually or shift+number) before using that announcement. Since Recall Friend can be interrupted, you have a little time where someone might speak up and protest being airlifted. In Perez Park, this may be a required mode of transportation.

After completing a mission, check your contacts from the menu. It's possible you could call in rather than travel to the contact (especially if he's in another zone). Be aware of ambushes, though. So, after calling in, make sure you're prepped for battle (I only had one ambush in the history of my 16th-level character, but it frightened me, so I'm a bit paranoid).

If your group is low on missions, it may be necessary for the group to split up so people can farm their contacts. Treat this as downtime but try to minimize it. While people are farming, those who don't need to tap their contacts might engage in some light hunting.

That's all I can think of about missions for now.

Kevin

[Tarambagil]

Good collection of relevant info there. Just a couple of short comments:

[ QUOTE ]

You are not penalized for failing a timed mission.


[/ QUOTE ]

Except in the sense that you don't get the reward that would otherwise have come your way. And beware if it's part of a story arc. I once failed the last (timed) mission in the Wheel of Destruction arc, and I got no souvenir from it... :(

[ QUOTE ]

/bind p team I am now recalling $$target. Prepare for teleport!


[/ QUOTE ]

There's just one $ in the $target tag. Doubles are used to seperate commands, so the above would have the result of you saying "I am now recalling "... and then nothing more.

[Tuft__NA]

That you can keep the camera from spinning around into inopportune objects (trees, potted plants etc) simply by holding down the right mouse button while attacking...

Assisted targeting. Click on a team member and you target the opponent which that member targets.

[acidhead]

Ok, I'm a newbie. I've been playing for less than a week now, so these might look really really basic to all of you.

But, I wish I had known:

1. I can use duplicate enhancements on the same power. I'm not talking about combining, but actually filling two or more slots with Damage for example.

2. The abilities to fly/teleport/etc were available at level 6. I was at level 10 before I selected hover. I know this is in the manual, but I didn't read it well enough before I started playing.

3. You have to go see Ms. Liberty (or any other trainer) to actually level up. I was at level 3 or 4 before I realized this. So when I first got to her, I had a whole bunch of stuff queued up. I was just doing missions before that, and I kept wondering why I wasn't levelling, duh! :)

Again, I know these seem stupid, but this is my first MMO game and I wasn't familiar with it at all.

Thanks for the post, this is great!!

[SweetThang]

The correct bind would be...

/bind p team I am now recalling $target. Prepare for teleport!$$powexec_name Recall Friend

if I'm not mistaken

[Happenstance]

[ QUOTE ]
The correct bind would be...

/bind p team I am now recalling $target. Prepare for teleport!$$powexec_name Recall Friend

if I'm not mistaken

[/ QUOTE ]

That's if you want to combine the announcement with the power. I myself prefer to keep them separate, as I have other announcements I make as well. I often mean to tell someone he's going to be teleported when instead I announce to the entire team that I'm going to snipe the snot out of my teammate. Oops.

Granted, snipe and recall friend are powers that won't work when you target the wrong thing, but there are others.

It's a matter of taste, I know. Some people like to put the commands in there. I like to have the command separate from the text. I'm nutty that way. That's why I didn't put that line in there (and that opens up a new question about macros, which can be found in another thread).

Kevin

[Beerjitsu]

A few more...so I'm bored at work, sue me :p

-if you need a safe place to rest or go afk, and there's no stores or trams handy, the ledges around the city-zone force fields are great...assuming you can get to them.
-Just because people tell you a task force only took them three hours, NEVER assume this will be true for you. I always allot 5-6 hours for a TF.
-Never assume that you're safe, even in a zone far below your level. One level 35 Rikti left over from an ambush in steel can ruin your whole day.
-On story arcs with certain villain groups (Fifth especially), always be careful exiting missions and calling your contacts, because it can trigger an ambush. And if you're in a low level zone and trigger one, try to clean it up. If you can't then call for help...unless you want a bunch of dead lowbies on your conscience.

[DanWolf]

Beware of the "R" key while waiting to rush in a group or just talking... if you press "R" this will make your character run ahead. I went into the options menu and changed this running key away from "R" to another since it is so near the keys we use the most playing, it's so easy to hit it and then watch your charcter run away into trouble. By the way hitting it again will stop it.... but by this time it may be too late . . . :( as I have found out the hard way. . . ;)

[Happenstance]

No matter how many of the Contaminated you may defeat, you will never be above 2nd level when you exit the Tutorial.

"Kevin, what are you doing?"
"I figure I'll take down more of these Contaminated."
"But you completed the mission."
"I wanna see if I can get up to Level 2 right now."
"You can't. You receive set XP."
"Aw, crap."

Kevin

[Thrudd_Amok]

How do scrappers and tankers /assist eachother? With ranged attacks it's easy, you just click on the person you are assisting and start blasting. With melee attacks, you have to find the next target and go to it. Is there a way to easily go to the target that your assist person is targetting?

[Infernal_Girl]

[ QUOTE ]
How do scrappers and tankers /assist eachother? With ranged attacks it's easy, you just click on the person you are assisting and start blasting. With melee attacks, you have to find the next target and go to it. Is there a way to easily go to the target that your assist person is targetting?

[/ QUOTE ]

Best way is to use the F key to follow your teammate, and then any assist melee attacks will go off if you are close enough to the tank/scrapper's target.

:eek:

[Kryptosfrisbee]

[ QUOTE ]
A bad name can ruin a good character.

Not happy with your costume? You can change that. It'll cost you a fortune at low levels, but at least its fixable. But a bad name will haunt you.

You can create the perfect character with the perfect look and get them all leveled up just the way you want...but if you're not satisfied with the name it'll eat away at you until you eventually have to re-roll.

Take the extra 20-30 minute upfront and create something original that you love. Don't give up out of frustration. If it's already taken, that just means it's not original enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't agree more, and by all means make sure you spell it correctly. There is nothing worse than being 20+ levels in and realizing you are stuck with Electic instead of Electric, Molton when it should be Molten, Tornadoe instead of Tornado, Granut instead of Granite (ok that last one was a stretch, but from what I've seen it could definitely happen).

[xylenz]

Heres a big one for scrappers and Tankers. You can auto follow mobs! "So what" you say. If you set up a key bind to "target nearest" then "auto follow" it you will never have to worry about being out of range. Your toon will automatically run to the nearest mob. In a group as soon as you defeat the mob youre on hit your /bind and keep attacking.

Another thing, the jump attack. To kill a runner jump over it and attack. When you land you will spin around and attack it even if it if far away. It looks cool too!

[Stratocaster]

that you can put more than one of the same enhancement on a skill......i have a lvl 27 blaster and i just figured that out and ive played since beta..... :confused:

[TheCottonMouth]

[ QUOTE ]
Some notes about your entries:

4. Sprint uses end yes but not as much as others turn it off in combat if you must but as you get more end and ways to replenishg it you may leave it on for quick step to catch a retreating enemy

thats it for now


Ron Procopio
Main- Tria Ul Scar 18 scrapper pinnacle
Alts - too numerous to list ( at least 33)

[/ QUOTE ]

Not sure what cheat you're using here... but I started at level 1 with 100 endurance... am now level 21... and still have 100 endurance.... you never get more that im aware of.... only powers that use more of it...

[Soltares]

[ QUOTE ]
Hunting the CoT in Kings Row was almost enough to convince me to take Hover

[/ QUOTE ]

When hunting those 10 CoT in Kings Row, I /broadcast that I am killing 10 CoT, and ask if anyone else doing the same would like to group with me. Invariably I get a few nibbles, and the time goes much faster, since we never bother to meet up, just hopping up random buildings. Best of all, any CoT anyone in the group kills, counts towards *all of our* missions.

Being an alt-o-holic, I have done that mission way too many times...

[darksable]

I was flying around the rooftops of kings row searching for cot with only hover, so It had been like 45 minutes, and someone broadcast from the ground "there are cot everywhere! I can't move without hitting one". I practically fell out of the sky, but explained that I was looking for them, where was he. He teamed me, killed one (i only needed one more) then quit the team. It was nice, so I knowwhat you're saying there!

[Iron_Tyger]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How do scrappers and tankers /assist eachother? With ranged attacks it's easy, you just click on the person you are assisting and start blasting. With melee attacks, you have to find the next target and go to it. Is there a way to easily go to the target that your assist person is targetting?

[/ QUOTE ]

Best way is to use the F key to follow your teammate, and then any assist melee attacks will go off if you are close enough to the tank/scrapper's target.

:eek:

[/ QUOTE ]

I usually have a melee attack in my first powerslot, so I press "1" at the top of the keyboard which queues the attack and targets a villian, then hit "F" to run to him. Both are default binds programmed into the game.

Also, taunt and provoke can bring the enemie to you. Taunt is excellent for pulling stragglers away from groups.

Great thread!!!

[SoulPatch]

Still new here (level 13), not sure what the map patch is I have heard a few people mention...anyone care to explain?

[Relampagos]

Being in REST can keep you from being teleported.

Irritating when you WANT to be teleported.

Handy when you know you might be griefed teleported.

[MACH_ZERO]

never ever be really tall, anything much over standard height and on cave mission especially your head will be in the rock and you will find yourself getting stuck on things often. Also to see some of the mobs .. the short ones..you need to go to a higher angle than is other wise nessescary that down ward angle makes it hard to see second and 3rd level critters hidding... I do so wish that i could be normal size.

COT in kings row also live under several bridges.

the B key for 1st person toggle can be your friend, not great for combat but helpful for negotiating obstacles.

[Prolix]

... that you must do the mission for Serge (the Icon tailor) before your second costume slot is opened? If you just waltz in at 20 when you're notified that you earned a new costume, you'll be making alterations on your MAIN, original costume!

[Manifest_Force]

[ QUOTE ]
That some fifth turn into werewolves. I encountered this on the sister psyche tf..My group had a good laugh at my reaction for about 10 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree on this. You should NOT know! It is more fun that way, it keeps the edge to the game. The first time it happened to me was in IP. We beat down the LT, my health was about gone and POOF there he was Roaring and all. I had a momentary "Scream like a little, girl run like hell, what the hell is that? Reaction before recovering and going after him with the rest of the team. Because we sometime use Ventrilo voice server I had to listen to all the laughing but it made that one of my most memorable and fun fights.

[Manifest_Force]

[ QUOTE ]
Beware of the "R" key while waiting to rush in a group or just talking... if you press "R" this will make your character run ahead. I went into the options menu and changed this running key away from "R" to another since it is so near the keys we use the most playing, it's so easy to hit it and then watch your charcter run away into trouble. By the way hitting it again will stop it.... but by this time it may be too late . . . :( as I have found out the hard way. . . ;)

[/ QUOTE ]

I fixed the hit r and run into combat problem by rebinding the key to P, since I never hit P to bring up the power menu. This has kept me alive and out of trouble.

[Baledin]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A bad name can ruin a good character.

Not happy with your costume? You can change that. It'll cost you a fortune at low levels, but at least its fixable. But a bad name will haunt you.

You can create the perfect character with the perfect look and get them all leveled up just the way you want...but if you're not satisfied with the name it'll eat away at you until you eventually have to re-roll.

Take the extra 20-30 minute upfront and create something original that you love. Don't give up out of frustration. If it's already taken, that just means it's not original enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

Couldn't agree more, and by all means make sure you spell it correctly. There is nothing worse than being 20+ levels in and realizing you are stuck with Electic instead of Electric, Molton when it should be Molten, Tornadoe instead of Tornado, Granut instead of Granite (ok that last one was a stretch, but from what I've seen it could definitely happen).

[/ QUOTE ]

Bleh, I just realized the other day that I switched two letters in my name, Phoenix Down is spelled O before E, but I switched them. Thankfully, it's an error that few will catch :-)

[Ex_Libris]

-The Train drops you off and lets you on in different spots of the station. For the longest time I thought I actually had to go and touch the ground on the zone and go back in, you've just got to go to a different room in the station.
-It is worth it to go through the default keybindings (controls) and verify you like the way they are. R was one of them and the 'reply target' (, I think) were bad ones for me.
-The boards are important you can save much time on ideas for builds but don't be afraid to experiment either, especially now that respec is near.
-Other fansites/forums can be helpful too, coh.warcry.com and coh.stratics.com are two.
-There are good and bad players out there. I found a nice group of patient people to do the Synapse TF, they were willing to wait the 30 minutes it took to make sure we got our AT numbers right to do the mission in a decent amount of time.
- Pinnacle only - The tougher zones of Boomtown are overlooked as nice solo leveling zones in your mid to late teens. Faultline is good into your low 20's and even then you may want to bring a friend just because the mobs congregate in larger numbers.
-Since you're reading the boards you most likely know this but STORES FOR ENHANCEMENTS EXIST. For the first 6 levels of my first char I deleted any enhancements I didn't use.
-Jumping is faster than running with superjump but it's quicker still if you don't reach the apex of the jump. !=Short leaps are quicker than bounding ones.
-Being sidekicked will not get you into 'unprotected' zones that require you to be a certain level. You have to actually be the level that the zone requires.

[comorbid]

If you save a citizen from a gang (unless it's for a mission), wait for them to come back and thank you, they give you the same per-enemy number of influence points, and even that little extra bit can help out in the long run.

[roberto1]

[ QUOTE ]
Still new here (level 13), not sure what the map patch is I have heard a few people mention...anyone care to explain?

[/ QUOTE ]

The Map Patch is a set of files you can grab from someone posting on the forum. It replaces the normal zone maps with zone maps labelled with store locations . VERY useful to someone who's never been to a particular zone or who wants to maximize their influence colleciton by selling enhancements to the right stores.

That's what I wish I'd known: that you can sell SO and DO enhancements for more at stores that sell similar enhancements. Thus, the mutation store (subgenetics or biotechnix) will pay more for SO or DO enhs that are part mutation.

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
Still new here (level 13), not sure what the map patch is I have heard a few people mention...anyone care to explain?

[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.heroeshideaway.com/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=Downloads&amp;file=index&amp;r eq=viewdownload&amp;cid=2

It replaces the in-game maps with maps that have the store locations marked on them. It also adds an approximate map of the trails to Perez Park.

[Peril]

you can invite people into your team from a distance by typing /i &lt;charactername&gt;....

[Skinart]

An important one- especially for your blaster alts (You know have at least one!).

Under options, you can make it so that player health is always shown. No more accidental assists conning a hero to make sure they are ok.

Oh, personal fave, you can make teammembers into waypoints. Excellent in keeping tabs or meeting up sans TP.

[Jkspaz]

Just because an enemy boss cons green or blue to you does not mean that it's as easy to take out as a minion who cons green or blue.

[Starspawn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If the sidekick kills a same (new) lvl minion solo (i.e. one lvl below me) then he will get the exact same exp as he would if he was not sidekicked and killed a same lvl minion.

[/ QUOTE ]

...which is less than what he would have gotten for killing that same minion while not sidekicked. A level 25 hero taking down a level 25 minion gets more XP than a level 20 hero taking down a level 20 minion - and a level 20 hero defeating a level 25 minion gets substantially more than either of them.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is just the way the sidekick system works. If you are lvl10 and kill a lvl10 minion, you get, lets say 100 exp (not accurate), if you are then sidekicked to be at combat lvl35 and kill a lvl35 minion, you get exactly the same, 100 exp.

Thats the way it is, otherwise if you were getting 1000 exp as a sidekick it would be a huge exploit for quick lvling. The exp scales down to your actual combat lvl.

If that same hero killed a villain 3 lvls above him (sked or not) he would get say 300exp either way.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what it did to the rest of the team's XP (if anything), but I do know that the second time I ran Sister Psyche's TF, I was sidekicked in the first mission, because I was 23 and didn't like the look of the 26s that greeted us. The second mission started with 25s, so I dropped the sk. Before long, we were back to 26s and I was getting more XP for them not sked than I had gotten in the first mission while sked (and nobody had dropped out of the team), so that looks pretty clear to me that being a sidekick reduces the XP you get for any given foe.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are confusing the sidekick system with the general XP system. All the sidekick system does is artificially increase your combat lvl and all your powers etc to that lvl. It then scales th exp down to your actual combat lvl. In your example you are lvl23 killing lvl26s which is a +3. If you were sidekicked to be lvl25 then the enemys would only be +1 so you would be getting exp as if you are killing lvl24s (which is +1 to your actual combat lvl).

So yes in your example, you would get more exp to be a lvl23 killing +3 enemys, rather than a sidekicked lvl25 killing +1 enemys. But if you cant hit the bad guys then maybe you should take the XP hit for the team and be sidekicked. ;)

So to try and summarise what happened in your missions...

In your first mission you were sidekicked to be lvl25 (I presume) and so was getting XP for enemy+1.

In your second mission you were not sidekicked and so was lvl23 and getting XP for enemy+2 (more than the first mission).

In your third mission you were not sidekicked and so was lvl23 and getting XP for enemy+3 (more than the second mission).


Anyway Im rambling. My point is that the XP you gain is relative to your actual combat lvl and the enemys lvl. Sidekicking is just a way to artificially increase your powers etc so that you can be usefull to higher lvl peeps.

And a final summary of the summary..

Sidekicking does not penalise your xp. But if you are killing enemy+3 unsidekicked, then start killing enemy+1 sidekicked, you will obviously get less XP. That is the way of the XP system. :)

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, I haven't actually compared it for individual fights but you do get less experience for completing story arcs while you are sidekicking someone. In my 20's when I would complete a story arc solo I would get 2000 xp and 4000 influence. When I sidekicked my brother with me, I would get 1600 xp. I could have sworn that I read the devs confirm that you got 80% of the regular experience when sidekicking.

On another note, if you click on your mission description (the "i" in front of the mission when selected) for hunt missions, it will often tell you where in the city or zone to hunt for those particular factions.

Selecting Alt and a power will make that power into an autoattack.

You can see how many hit points the enemies have by mousing over their red bar when targeted. If you hold it a minute, it will pop up in number form.

[Penny_Cillin]

[ QUOTE ]
Bleh, I just realized the other day that I switched two letters in my name, Phoenix Down is spelled O before E, but I switched them. Thankfully, it's an error that few will catch :-)

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't count on it. I noticed someone on Infinity the other day with "Phoenix" misspelled.

[Uncognitive]

At least one level 20ish contact in Independence Port will give out a "Defeat 30 Sky Raiders in Terra Volta" mission to you even if you're three levels below the minimum security level (23) to enter Terra Volta. I had to spend three long, long levels staring at that mission on my list.

Even enemies that don't have specific stun powers can stun you if they hit you hard enough. Trolls, Family, Tsoo Ancestor Spirits, Freakshow, Warriors, etc.

I've noticed that stores tend to be near the permanent waypoint dots on zone maps.

If you're a Dark Armor Scrapper or Stone Tanker, you don't need to spend that much time designing your costume. ;)

[Rei_Rei]

- if you are an illusion controller and you are soloing DO NOT take out the last minion/lieutenant near the boss. I have yet to find a boss on a mission that could be mind controlled, so the only way to solo them is to dominate the minion and have them beat the boss down very slowly.

You won't get a lot of experience off the boss, even if you time it so you get the last hit in and it dies before it has a chance to fry you, but in some cases it is the only way to complete a mission solo. And as a controller you are used to this anyway, right?

[SagittaryGold]

Well I knew this one already, but if you target a mob and use a team-based power (a heal, a single-target buff, etc), you will use it on whatever the mob has current targeted.

[keegan]

you can superjump faster than the speed of barf (from the vhazilok).

[Thrudd_Amok]

If you are doing some extreme soloing, don't fight on the spawn points if you want to use an Awaken.

[Tealeaf]

[ QUOTE ]
Still new here (level 13), not sure what the map patch is I have heard a few people mention...anyone care to explain?

[/ QUOTE ]

Go to here, (http://ddz.net/files/pafiledb.php?action=category&amp;id=10) and download the one that says ingame maps with stores. This also has the paths in Perez park. I use it, and it works great.

[Tar_Heel]

The little blue buttons on the interface windows let you undock the windows. Particularly useful to get the map off to the side so you can run it AND see where you are going. Before when I did this I didn't know you could undock it from the mission box and so I had to keep bringing the mission box back to center to read it.

[Tealeaf]

You know when I learned that thing about the blue buttons undocking stuff so it can moved about? Right about the time I read your post. Thank you!

[Mouser]

[ QUOTE ]
With Hurdle or Combat Jump, you can window hop really fast up the buildings in Kings Row, faster than getting up there with hover. The trick to jumping from one window to the window above it is to press jump first then hit forward. Once you get the hang of it, you can forget about looking for fire escapes. :D

[/ QUOTE ]
I Never use combat jump to window hop, and i get up faster then ANY low level player , even if they have hover/combat jumping.
I jump onto a window and jump and push forward, but while I do thaty I am hold a strafe key, when I get close to the edge, I switch keys, and I can get up any building faster then combat jumpers

[Freedom_Force]

Good thread, I think I’ll bump it…
Just a couple things (sorry if I duplicate earlier advice):

1. When grouping and things are going bad, pressing “F6” (on it’s default setting) will say “RUN!” without you having to type it out.

2. When soloing (or grouping for that matter) and things are going bad, hitting “F8” (default) will cause your character to say “HELP!” in the local channel and make police whistle sound. Especially useful for lower level heroes who don’t have speed/jump/fly power to escape mobs easily. Most nearby heroes will be happy to help.

3. I have “If you need help, press F8” bound to a key. So if I come across a hero, low on health and fighting several baddies, I can ask before jumping in and there is no issue about “kill stealing.”

4. If you come across a high level mob in a low level zone, get on the “broadcast” channel and let people know where and what level. Usually a high level hero or four will swoop in and take care of it.

5. Something I just learned – holding down the “ctrl” key and clicking on a power in your tray will set it to auto fire/active as soon as it recycles. (provided you have a target chosen and in range and available endurance).

6. Bind, bind, bind! Binds are your friends. Use them wisely.

I know a lot of this is right in the manual, but you’d be surprised what people don’t know.

[Jade_Dragon]

[ QUOTE ]
3. I have “If you need help, press F8” bound to a key. So if I come across a hero, low on health and fighting several baddies, I can ask before jumping in and there is no issue about “kill stealing.”

[/ QUOTE ]

I do this! It's a really good idea...

I also have "Thanks!" bound to a key.

[Dex1138]

Not really something I wish I'd known, but some friendly advice for newbies:
If you're not going to read the manual, at least read everything in the tutorial. It will give you lots of info you may wish you knew later!

[Nacoya]

You DON'T have to live with this :)

I had the exact same issue pop up with my level 20. Dr Cheng gave me a Banished Pantheon mission in Dark Astoria. I logged a bug with support and while in game, a GM took some infomation and then set the mission to complete, giving me 230 experience etc.

I missed out of course on the XP from killing the 20 Banished Pantheon, but then I also got a slot free to get another mission. The GM said to please log support calls while *in game* for this - because it is NOT supposed to happen :)

[ QUOTE ]
At least one level 20ish contact in Independence Port will give out a "Defeat 30 Sky Raiders in Terra Volta" mission to you even if you're three levels below the minimum security level (23) to enter Terra Volta. I had to spend three long, long levels staring at that mission on my list.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Mindhunter]

[ QUOTE ]
the invisibilty power from the concealment power pool will NOT protect you from an enemy once you have agroed it!! You can however walk around unmolested in missions where you have to find x and not have to arrest everything...simply get to the object and click on it.
And if you havent had this happen to you..DONT USE THE ABILITY REST NEAR ENEMIES!! if you are hit by anything you will DIE!! (and using Phase Shift will not save you from this!!)

[/ QUOTE ]

However with superior invis from the Ill controller pool will allow you evade an aggroed enemy if they lose sight of you. One of my favorite tricks for when a battle goes poorly and my group needs a rezzer alive. ;)

Also, sometimes it's best to take the time and read the info on some enemies before you fight them. Simply left click on them with your mouse. It may give you an insight on which ones to attack first and how to fight them.

[EvGen_88]

I can't beleive I wrote a long post and then didn't confirm it . . . :(

Can't remember all I wrote now, I wanted to add that I read hover with 6 speed enhancements is as fast as base fly, with half the end use and a defense bonus and no acc penalty!

Other major stuff I know was covered, so some minor stuff!

You can change your costume before lvl20! Not sure if there is any minimum, I found out around 10. Just go to Icon and edit your original costume. Base cost about 500i. About 300i per change I think. I only changed my lense colour.

You can see who anyone is targeting by hovering over them. Hero or mob.

Tp Foe will bring the whole mob in your direction.

When XP hunting, go for groups of mobs that are as high as possible, but that you can defeat without using to much endurance. Running low on end causes down time, high groups more risk, and too low fills up your enhancement slots with too many low ones = more shop trips/throw aways and less resell value. Low lvls are good for refilling inspirations though!

You can cancel powers with the escape key. "OK snipe! Wait our tanker if AFK! Doh!

Bind a key to "say Yes!" you're stunned, almost dead and someone offers you a tp, and "say No!" you and your purple target are almost dead, you have couple green inspirations, and your target is stunned and just about to give you the rewards of the kill and someone offers you a tp. If you can tp bind a key to "t $target Need a tp?"

Those guys in Steel Canyon with the riot gear on aren't with the police . . .

Enhancements that reduce effects are less effective the more you add. 1st SO enhancement will reduce 33%, 2nd 23% 3rd 15% and so on. ALTHOUGH, enhancing reducing debufs is actually adding to your powers effect.

Don't create a new hero because of a bad power or 2 if you have got him/her over 10th, respec later!

You can still lvl with debt

You can do tons of cool stuff with bind! (as previously mentioned, even without making a lot of files)

Your background will determin your main enemy! (if you hate Vahz, don't make a science origin!)

Mobs of similar origin are more likely to drop DOs, SOs that you can use.

Mortificators hate zombies (why else would they raise them to see them get beat up again?;D )

If you bow with a katana in your hand you'll stab yourself through the chest. (though taking no damage!)

Purple means your lvl +3 OR MORE! You may find drstically higher lvl mobs wandering around sometimes. Just to give people (the devs?) laughs I think.

If you hold down the middle mouse button you can rotate the camera around your hero, grat for screen shots with the print screen key! Found in your coh folder's screens folder. Viewable (and convertible) with Irfanview (Google it) among others.

That's all for now! :p

[Faolon]

I didn't read all of the posts, its late(or early depending on how you want to see it...) so sorry if this has been said already:

Holding down the shift button and pressing the #'s 1 - 8 will target the teammates in those designated slots. Want to highlight the 4th guy in the group list? hit shift+4 and you'll automatically target them.

[ QUOTE ]
Tp Foe will bring the whole mob in your direction

[/ QUOTE ]
I did catch this.
This isn't always true. With practice you can get it down to about 75% chance of a single pull. NEVER port a boss because A.) you can't port them... and B.) pulling a boss in anyway usually always brings the whole group down upon you.
In places like TV and DA and Faultline, port can be a melee type's friend when you don't want to fight full groups. Just perch yourself on a ledge of a skyscraper or roof of a building, where they can't get to you, and you'll be able to pick them off one by one. Just be sure you're far enough from the edge to do so. Careful to check the group for flyers. You don't want to port a mad freak chopper and find out he had stunner/juicer friends with him.

oh a couple last things:
Many of the powers people will call "gimped" are only considered that because they don't use them to their advantage. TP foe is one example, but make sure you research the power on the boards before you do get it. Most people are good at explaining what the power does and what they don't like about it. Like someone else said, they have spent tons of time designing different heroes and testing out powers.
If you can't find any posts, make one, theres nothing wrong with inquiring about a power.

STAMINA IS YOUR FRIEND. You can live without it, but you'll be much happier with it.

Edit: Enhancements:
Trainings are 8.3% or 5%(for range, cone range, res dmg, and def)
Dual origins: 16.7% and 10%
Single Origins 33.3% and 20%

[Balancing_Point]

Missions with lifts in them

Although they look like zoning, they aren't. If you get pushed back to the lifts and lose team members have the porter go down the lifts and THEN recall friend.
The dead guy can be ported between floors for safe resurrection.

Don't kow if TP foe can do this, probably not.

[Dynamic]

[ QUOTE ]
some good info in here. I'll add a few tips for getting up buildings, since that's a particularly interesting topic for me (for some reason).

Ascending Fire-escapes : hold down your right-mouse button to steer (assuming you haven't rebound it). You can rip up a fire-escape in no time (or a stair-case, whatever) by steering with your mouse and not the keyboard. Actually, steer with your mouse most of the time and you'll find you have much, much more control than with the keyboard.

By-passing fire-escapes. With absolutely no jump enhancements or powers, one can leap up the side of a good number of the buildings, especially the ol' brick "apartment" buildings with relative ease. This may be a bit tricky to explain but with a little practice, it's easy as pie.
First you have to be at a building that actually has a bottom edge you can jump to, that should be a given.
Run at the side of the building from an angle, leap up while still moving and you should land on an edge. Keep the space-bar depressed and continue to "run" at the building at an angle. You should find yourself jumping up and to the side, catching an edge on the next level up.
As you approach the side of the building, switch your angle of incident (that means angle yourself towards the other side of the wall you're going up) and you should switch directions while still maintaining upward movement (or you'll go sailing off of the side of the building since you didn't change directions early enough). Continue to do this, zig-zagging your way up the side of the building until you reach the top.
Note to Superspeeders, you can do this REALLY fast, BUT if you don't let-off as you crest the top of the wall, you'll totally over-jump the roof and go right over the far-side of the building.

Other handy-tips:
Click the arrow on the team-window. It will roll-out additional info about your teammates. It will tell you where a teammate is when they are in a different zone and what buffs they have when they are in the same zone.

Simply click a teammates name in the team window to select them (and set them as a waypoint. ;))

/bind , "nop" to clear that damn default "/tell $target" key. I always seem to hit this at the most in-opportune times. The syntax /bind &lt;key&gt; "nop" will clear a bind for whatever key you specify.

Right-click a teammate (or their name in the team window) and select "Info" to see exactly what powers that person has. Don't waste time by asking teammates to stop and tell you what they can do.

A good pull is when the monster comes far enough from his group that the rest of his buddies can't see or hear him counter-attack. Too often I see a really good pull get nixed because the team doesn't back off far enough to get the target out of range of his friends. Once the rest of the group sees their minion buddy open fire on something, they all wake up and attack too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Running up fire-escapes just takes a change in thinking:

Instead of doing any turning, run up forward, do a sidestep, hit reverse (running backwards), do a sidestep, run forward....repeat. Makes you get up them very quickly.

Edit: Just saw someone else in thread posted this also. PS. When I was young and without a travel power, I thought i was pretty clever by traversing zones by running along tram lines...it you fall off the main part, you will be running along the sides, just turn into the rail and with autorun it can be safer than running the streets.

[ArmagedN]

A Silly little thing that I didn't see listed but comes in handy for me occasionally...

If you haven't invested in super leaps, super speed or flying and want to get across town quick without being bothered or having to run around building or jump over things, try running on the train tracks...I've found in a couple of cities at least the tracks cut straight across the town...Just start at the train terminal to get on the tracks, then run on the tracks over all obsticles...Nobody (except an occastional train) seems to bother or even notice you up on the tracks...

Like I said, it's a silly little thing, but seems to work well if you are putting off the faster travel modes in luew of more combat/defense skills.

[8_Ball]

Didn't have time to read through the whole thread so I hope these haven't been mentioned:

- The guys in the red &amp; white tights standing near Ms. Liberty are Hero corps trainers. They will buy your unneeded enhancments early on (felt like a dork when it took me till lev 11 to realize this :))

- From lev 20 on the best place to sell your enhancments is Talos Island due to the proximity of all the stores..this remains the case all the way to lev 50

- Early on when your still short on INf. Always sell DO's &amp; SO's at they're orgin specific store, they will always give more Inf. for them (this is also the case for training enhancments.)

- The only Zone with both Tram lines running is Steel Canyon.

- There is nowhere to sell enhancments in Kings Row or Brickstown (unless your orgin-specific contact is there)

[SilverAgeFogey]

It may be self-evident, but you cannot move while you are mid-conversation. So if you see someone speaking to you and you see, "Hey, it's high level Clockwork WWWWWEEEEEQQWWWSSSSS", it's not because they can't spell... :o

To get out of that quickly, hit ESC - but be aware that you may need to hit ESC twice (if, for example, you are replying to someone.)

Speaking of replying... if someone uses a Tell to you, you do not have to Tell back. Hitting the backspace key will automatically set up a reply Tell.

Something that I found terribly useful... in solo work or on solo missions, you can hit C to turn off the Chat window, making it a little easier to see the bottom left hand side of your screen.

[fsckfsck]

[ QUOTE ]
Something that I found terribly useful... in solo work or on solo missions, you can hit C to turn off the Chat window, making it a little easier to see the bottom left hand side of your screen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now here's a thing. I used to use this all the time, but now that Update #2 is out with the new chat windows, something rather entertaining happens when I do this.

It's not when hitting C initially to make the chat Window go away - it's when I hit it again to bring it back. As you know, there's two windows, top and bottom - well, when it comes back, the top one is sized down over the bottom one, and can't be resized. So you can't see anything in the bottom window.

I can't work out a way of making it stop doing this, except to change zones (which seems to reset it nicely). Have you found this, and if so, worked out a way to make it go away?

[Kid_Conundrum]

Way too many for me to read, so nobody will likey read this either...

If you don't have your travel power yet and you need to climb a lot of stairs, the easiest way is to not turn at all.

Assume you're starting from the bottom of the stairs and the stairs ascend in a clockwise fashion (looking up the stairs from the ground).

Forward 'til you hit something (first step require a jump, for fire escapes)
Strafe Right 'til you hit something.
Backwards 'til you hit something.
Strafe Left 'til you hit something.
Repeat from the beginning.

It takes some trust and practice initially, but once you get it down, you can climb stairs *super* fast.

Oh, and one other trick... for stairs that start on the ground (missions, level changes in zones) the first set of stairs can be skipped with a simple jump!

[Tacitus]

I wish I'd known to choose powers out of my secondary. I am brand new to online gaming and to COH. My first toon, may he rest in peace, was a katana/regen scrapper. I picked all my powers for their "cool" factor. None of my secondary powers sounded cool. Fast healing? What kind of power is that? How am I supposed to use that to arrest people? "You better come along peacefully, hellion, because I'm a fast healer." Not only that, some of them didn't even give me a button on my power bar!
So I took my attacks and picked up cool things like recall friend, flurry, hover and fly. I took nothing from my secondary except my level 1 power.
I actually managed to get him to lvl 15 without his utter gimpness becoming too apparent. At lvl 15 I went into the sewers on a Vazh door mission with a full group of 8. I think I died 10 times that mission. It was ugly. You really have to build for offense and defense.

[toomanyalts_NA]

I've taken way more from this thread than I can contribute right now. But thanks to all who have added to this. Very informative.

Something that I have found when running around especially in the sewers where the tunnel passages alternate between the left and right sides of the path. Instead of turning left then going forward and turning right to go in the door just use strafe left or right. Its much quicker than turning.

And when you run into a dead end, running backward is quicker than turning around.

:p

[Prolix]

When you're far enough along &amp; involved in the game to start binding keys to commands and self0designed macros on your own, you may also start to wonder how to remove a key binding...

For some reason, binding a key to the 'nop' command is how you unbind the key. So to clear whatever you have assigned to Shift+Tab for instance, you type:

/bind shift+tab nop

...and that keystroke will no longer do anything.

Thanks to whoever I read that info from on the forums in the first place, but I don't know how common the knowledge is so I thought I'd try to spread it.

[meowjen]

[ QUOTE ]


Speaking of replying... if someone uses a Tell to you, you do not have to Tell back. Hitting the backspace key will automatically set up a reply Tell.


[/ QUOTE ]

I wish I had known this before I got to lvl 15... I always HATED tells until then because it was such a pain to type out the /t Insert Name Here, Insert Text Here. When someone told me about the backspace trick I was ecstatic.

[Dhalric]

You don't have to do the Hollows missions right away. Simply go meet David Wincott when asked, but do not accept a mission from him. Now go back to the contact who sent to you to the Hollows and you will be able to do his or her next mission and continue along the more traditional path.

[ThePipe]

[ QUOTE ]
Air Superiority - nothing to add here....

[/ QUOTE ]

I like to solo a lot with my blaster and I always toggle between fly and hover when I'm fighting (I swear my feet haven't touched the ground since level 14). My strategy is usually to use build up, nail the boss as hard and fast as I can to take him down, then fly up to deal with fliers that come after me. If there's more than one, I use Air Superiority to knock their butts back to the ground, which is usually well out of aggro range at this point. Then I go down and do it again.

Edit: Some more stuff:

1. If you're a meleer and you're chasing that poor unfortunate mob that just doesn't want to be caught and pumelled, and of course running at it's back won't let you get a shot at him, try jumping over him. You'll often get that last shot off in the air.

2. If heading a long distance across a zone, first check with broadcast to see if there's anyone at your destination who can TP you.

[ QUOTE ]
The Train drops you off and lets you on in different spots of the station. For the longest time I thought I actually had to go and touch the ground on the zone and go back in, you've just got to go to a different room in the station.

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL I thought I was going crazy when I first started used the train station.

[ QUOTE ]
5. Something I just learned – holding down the “ctrl” key and clicking on a power in your tray will set it to auto fire/active as soon as it recycles. (provided you have a target chosen and in range and available endurance).

[/ QUOTE ]

Is there anyway to auto-set more than 1 power at once?

[ QUOTE ]
Something that I have found when running around especially in the sewers where the tunnel passages alternate between the left and right sides of the path. Instead of turning left then going forward and turning right to go in the door just use strafe left or right. Its much quicker than turning.

[/ QUOTE ]

3. Good grief, this may be the most important piece of advice in this thread: Learn to use your mouse! If you use the right button, you get free look. All you keyboarders need to evolve into the current century.

4. It's been mentioned before but I'll say it again. Don't Recall Friend someone without asking! Just the other day I was heading to pick up Awakens for a mission we were about to do but I got teleported across the zone before I could.

[Gwenevie]

[ QUOTE ]
- if you are an illusion controller and you are soloing DO NOT take out the last minion/lieutenant near the boss. I have yet to find a boss on a mission that could be mind controlled, so the only way to solo them is to dominate the minion and have them beat the boss down very slowly.

You won't get a lot of experience off the boss, even if you time it so you get the last hit in and it dies before it has a chance to fry you, but in some cases it is the only way to complete a mission solo. And as a controller you are used to this anyway, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Decieve is a very useful way to lock down a boss for a solo illusionist. I almost always open by casting Deceive twice on the boss and letting him wail on some of his minions. Deceive lasts much longer than Blind and it can be cast twice (needed to get past the boss' resistance) without causing aggro.

Before level 18, taking white or yellow bosses is easy this way, and orange bosses if you have a good set of inspires to help you (you'll run out of endurance before you can finish one off).

After level 18 (phantom army), orange bosses are routine and red bosses well within range of a soloist.

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
For some reason, binding a key to the 'nop' command is how you unbind the key.

[/ QUOTE ]

"NOP" is old-school shorthand for "No Operation".

Before reading about that bind here, I discovered through a little experimentation that you can also clear a key by binding it to "" (a set of empty quotes).

/bind , ""

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
Is there anyway to auto-set more than 1 power at once?

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope. The devs don't want you to be able to walk away from your keyboard and let the game fight for you, so they only allow one autofire power.

[ QUOTE ]
3. Good grief, this may be the most important piece of advice in this thread: Learn to use your mouse! If you use the right button, you get free look. All you keyboarders need to evolve into the current century.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm tempted to say something impolite and insulting in reply, but let it suffice to say that I can do most things in just about any program more quickly by using the keyboard. Many of them more accurately, as well. The main advantage of a mouse is in ease of use, not efficiency of use. (Again, in most cases. In CoH, the mouse is, for example, much better for fine navigation, as it offers a degree of precision that the keyboard cannot easily match.)

BTW, you don't need to use the right button constantly. Just bind a key to ++mouselook and you can hit it, use the mouse to steer for as long as you like (without having to hold anything down), and then hit it again to get your pointer back when needed. The one side-effect is that your character won't turn around while mouselook is active - e.g., if you run by someone and attack them, you'll immediately turn back to your original facing after the attack. Depending on the situation, this can be either a big advantage (when travelling to avoid being sent off in a random direction after conning a mob) or a bit of a nuisance (never automatically turning around while in a big fight so you only see what's on one side of you).

The real most important point in the thread: Learn to use /bind!

[ QUOTE ]
4. It's been mentioned before but I'll say it again. Don't Recall Friend someone without asking!

[/ QUOTE ]

Not such a big deal any more since Update 2 added teleport confirmation dialogs.

[ThePipe]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm tempted to say something impolite and insulting in reply, but let it suffice to say that I can do most things in just about any program more quickly by using the keyboard. Many of them more accurately, as well. The main advantage of a mouse is in ease of use, not efficiency of use. (Again, in most cases. In CoH, the mouse is, for example, much better for fine navigation, as it offers a degree of precision that the keyboard cannot easily match.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Well duh, this is a City of Heroes forum, and I'm talking about City of Heroes. I have no doubt that you can navigate more quickly in Microsoft Word with hotkeys than you can with a mouse. But pick a first or third person game and I'll show you why a mouse is far better for accuracy/control/efficiency than keyboard.

[Rumil]

A few things I like to keep in mind:

- Keep an Awaken on you at all times. Even if you're careful enough to never need if, a friend or teammate might!

- Multiple healers in a large group are very good!

- Before deleting enhancements or inspirations you don't want, ask if anyone else wants it.

- Pick ONE PERSON to lead the group (ie - pick the mobs to kill) in a large group. Aggroing 2 groups at once is BAD news.

- Be sure to have an enhancement inventory slot open when you complete a TF. Otherwise, you don't get your SO!

- We love the scrappers and blasters, but holding them back and making sure everyone has endurance, has used their buffs/inpirations, and are fully healed can make or break an attack.

- In addition to that, sometimes it's wise to snipe/taunt the smaller minions. Even if the whole group comes, they come in a line, and it's much easier to deal with them.

- High (really high) level heroes can have fun helping out low level ones! In the PP swamp, we had 2 VERY high level healers with Healing Aura on autocast in the middle of the swamp. A third ran around the ENTIRE swamp aggroing all the monsters. Pretty soon, we had 8 newbies in the middle of a giant Pool Of Infinite Healing taking potshots at 40 monsters that were busy attacking the high level heroes (and failing). Such fun. Such experience! =)

- Write a background story!! Or if you're terrible at that sort of thing, hire your younger brother/sister/whatever to do it! I've seen some absolutely brilliant ideas and humorous "info" on heroes. Ok, some rather lame ones too, but it's the effort that matters!

- And for that matter, come up with a good name. =P

- Read this thread. It's useful and funny. Ah, glad to see you are already doing it. =)

- Get your friends to play! Random folks are nice (and the people on CoH are quite nice on average), but it can't beat knowing the face behind the mask! (no pun inten... actually, that was intended...)

- Resolution settings can allow you to see much more of your screen, yet have that nav/chat/target/inspiration window up at the same time.

- Don't be a jerk, help out those in need, and apologize when you make mistakes.


Rumil

----

Phrydia - fire/emp controller
Broquen - force/dev blaster
Doc Rejuven - emp/dark defender

[Maxxxthrust]

Super Speed + SuperJump = THE most fun super fast way of getting around. And the speed u get from superspeed stays with u in superjump.^^

[_Zironn_]

[ QUOTE ]

- We love the scrappers and blasters, but holding them back and making sure everyone has endurance, has used their buffs/inpirations, and are fully healed can make or break an attack.


[/ QUOTE ]

Guilty...very much so.....lol
Then again I've been SK'd to a group of mid-40s and they were getting rather scared when my end bar wasnt mpving group after group....oops :P

[Interface]

Here's a few of my nuggets of wisdom :)

Don't throw enhancement slots around. Either 6-slot a power or leave it at 1.

Don't use Brawl. Just... don't. As soon as you exit the tutorial, delete Brawl from your tray and forget about it.

You NEED a travel power.

Solo street hunting is the best exp, but it gets boring fast. Street hunting with a good group is decent exp and a LOT of fun. Group missions are fun too, but it's often hard to find a mission that's good for everyone. Solo mission are mediocre exp, but they're (imho) the safest, since you can take it at you own pace. Doing _anything_ with a bad group is the worst.

Your group doesn't NEED a healer... but it sure helps. Two is even better.

A Tank is NOT a Scrapper with more hitpoints.

Do not, under any circumstances, enter Steel Canyon before level 10. In one of the devs few serious blunders, the SC hospital is a long distance away from the tram or any lower level zone, with many mobs in between. A low level char who gets killed in Steel is in _very_ deep doo-doo.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again; GET STAMINA.

Hasten is another power that almost anyone can benefit from. It's not a no-brainer like Stamina, but darn close.

Resist the urge to get a new wardrobe at level 20. You should be saving you inf for SOs at level 22.

[Juriel]

I don't agree with some of these.

Brawl is good for the early levels as an additional attack and to finish off enemies that are in a very weak state, not needing to 'waste' a bigger power on them.

Powers can well be slotted in any fashion desired - each slot gives the same amount of benefit, so go with the ratio that you feel comfortable with.

A total makeover of one's costume at lv20 costs around 40k. That's as much as ONE SO. I'd gladly exchange one SO for a cool, new, additional outfit.

[Murry]

^^ Agrees with the brawl comment.

You'd be surprised how much I still use brawl. Countless bosses and their goons have gotten to see the handle of my katana up close an personal just before they go down. Great way to finish off a mob and not waste a more powerful attack.

[Wildstar_]

[ QUOTE ]
You don't have to do the Hollows missions right away. Simply go meet David Wincott when asked, but do not accept a mission from him. Now go back to the contact who sent to you to the Hollows and you will be able to do his or her next mission and continue along the more traditional path.



[/ QUOTE ]

Actually once you talk to The LT. You can go back to You King's Row Contact and he/she will give you another contact. I suggest getting at least to the 1st base part of the mission. That way if you get in a greta group thats clicking you all can go through the Hollows. Also at the end of the Hollow's arc you get access to DO's which is huge that early on.

[Dark_Mave]

[ QUOTE ]
Well duh, this is a City of Heroes forum, and I'm talking about City of Heroes. I have no doubt that you can navigate more quickly in Microsoft Word with hotkeys than you can with a mouse. But pick a first or third person game and I'll show you why a mouse is far better for accuracy/control/efficiency than keyboard.

[/ QUOTE ]

*sigh* My mention of fine navigation (not necessarily all navigation!) was a specific example, not a blanket statement that mouse is superior to keyboard in CoH. There are a lot of things in CoH that I would never use the mouse for, such as activating powers, bringing up the map, or using inspirations. I can do all of these more quickly and accurately using the keyboard (and some custom /binds for the insps to free me from being tied to how they're arranged in the tray). I wouldn't use the mouse for much of anything other than fine navigation and clicking on objects if I didn't have to, but there's a lot of stuff that, AFAICT, cannot currently be bound to keys.

[Rumil]

[ QUOTE ]
Here's a few of my nuggets of wisdom :)

Don't throw enhancement slots around. Either 6-slot a power or leave it at 1.

Don't use Brawl. Just... don't. As soon as you exit the tutorial, delete Brawl from your tray and forget about it.

You NEED a travel power.

Solo street hunting is the best exp, but it gets boring fast. Street hunting with a good group is decent exp and a LOT of fun. Group missions are fun too, but it's often hard to find a mission that's good for everyone. Solo mission are mediocre exp, but they're (imho) the safest, since you can take it at you own pace. Doing _anything_ with a bad group is the worst.

Your group doesn't NEED a healer... but it sure helps. Two is even better.

A Tank is NOT a Scrapper with more hitpoints.

Do not, under any circumstances, enter Steel Canyon before level 10. In one of the devs few serious blunders, the SC hospital is a long distance away from the tram or any lower level zone, with many mobs in between. A low level char who gets killed in Steel is in _very_ deep doo-doo.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again; GET STAMINA.

Hasten is another power that almost anyone can benefit from. It's not a no-brainer like Stamina, but darn close.

Resist the urge to get a new wardrobe at level 20. You should be saving you inf for SOs at level 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

Careful what you claim as wisdom... These statements directly contradict what others say, and also what experience says.

I'd disagree with most of these. The fellow after this original post also made some points, I'll reiterate and add:

- enhancements are as you need them. Some powers might not need to be 6-slotted, but could use a boost from 2 or 3.

- Brawl is VERY useful. Often, I find my enemies with just a sliver of health, and I'd rather save my blasts for the NEXT guy since a simple punch can end it.

- Soloing can be profitable, but that really depends on your AT. I assume the poster is a blaster or scrapper? Even as an offensive character, teaming with healers or controllers can GREATLY speed up kill rate and lower downtime.

- Large groups need a healer. Healers lower downtime, and the group doesn't want to waste time waiting for HP to go back up for one person. And in every group, there are always mistakes made, and healers are your insurance, or people end up dead.

- Steel Canyon can be safely entered if you are with a group or being SKed. Even if you get stranded, I've made my way through many times without initiating fights. You just have to be very cautious.

- A single SO is useful, but a new wardrobe can add much to a character's appeal. Since many of us play for fun, I think the new clothes greatly add to that.

[Uncle_July]

A lot of things I learned from others (or the hard way) have been mentioned already. I do have a few items to add. My primary right now is a scrapper (Broadsword/Enhanced Senses), so bear in mind any bias that may cause.

The more people there are on a team, the more monsters in a door mission. Sounds obvious, but if you solo a lot it's a really big change to be part of a large team. More monsters means potentially a LOT more damage flying around. Consequently, if you want to do task force missions, go on some missions in teams first for the practice. I hadn't teamed recently as my scrapper before Positron TF (like in about 7-8 levels) and consequently died - a lot. I wasn't prepared for the radical shift in damage going from 3-5 to 20-30 bad guys at a time.

Get some abilities that can be used on/for other players. I was the sole melee person in my Positron TF, and we had four blasters. I felt about as useful as sneakers on a cat. I've been picking up Medical abilities since then, and plan to get Leadership abilities later down the road so I can have some more flexibility.

Get familiar with the locations of stores and the best route to them - that way you can visit them quickly without delaying your teammates on multi-mission groupings. Also, you’ll save yourself time when soloing.

When binding to keys on the number keypad, type Numpad and the number without any spaces between.

If you can touch type, make sure you’re in chat mode before typing chat messages. There’s nothing quite like dropping most of your windows accidentally and taking off running towards a mob also. (‘R’ to Run, ‘C’ to open/drop Chat, ‘N’ for the Navigation Window, ‘T’ for Target information – these are the ones I have had the most trouble with.)

You can give (as opposed to trade) something to a player by clicking and dragging it onto the person.

A variation on the stair-climbing methods mentioned: On the stairs from one level of a zone to another, you have retaining walls which keep you from falling off the staircase. Standing on the steps at a 45-degree angle means you can just run backwards and forwards without the strafe that you have to use on fire escapes. (You hit the wall at an angle and slide along it until you reach the landing, then the same in reverse.)

With Issue #2, there is a vastly improved option for finding team members. If you start receiving invitations from complete strangers out of the blue, it’s because they have deselected the blue button labeled ‘LFG’. (They are then no longer looking at a list of just the people looking for a team.)

That's it, hope it proves useful.

[Blazing_Quasar]

[ QUOTE ]
-"Cool...one more shot and that Fifth LT is going down...OMG WHAT IS THAT!!! &lt;thwack&gt;"

[/ QUOTE ]


The first time that happened to me I almost levitated out of my chair. No one warned me about those things!!! :D

[NapierNavlys]

Here's a handy bind that I didn't see posted in here, (if it was and I missed it, I apologize), one of the most important binds for a defender:

/bind F1 "team_select 1"
/bind F2 "team_select 2"
/bind F3 "team_select 3"
etc

It's so handy to have a button to hit to select a teammate for heals/buffs, instead of trying to click on them, or click on their name in the team list.

Also, I have a key bound to:

/bind h "em point$$say $target is over there"

So that I can point out a big bad boss before someone rushes the minions and aggro's him, so that I can point out glowies to whoever is in charge of clicking them, or hostages, etc.

And, just to reiterate something that's been said a couple times before:

When you run into new baddies you've never fought before, right click on them and read the info. It's usually entertaining, and it gives you a little insight into how they're gonna try to beat you down.

[Blazing_Quasar]

Travel Powers:
Huge debate on this. To me, Super jump and Super Speed are much better than fly, it's faster and funner, again it's my opinion, not fact.
Kills:
If your low on health ( a ml. of red left) don't think you only have one last shot to kill the boss at the end of the mission. Hello hospital and debt!
Needed Powers:
Hasten - Always good in a fight
Health/Stamina - must haves

Always map out stores. They are good place to run to if you have no chance to win a fight and need a place to get away to. but warn those inside the store that something may be waiting outside the door. I was in SC walked out of the store and got whacked by two lvl 32 "The Lost". I was a lvl 12. Basically, door opened...[Censored]....WHACK...hospital.

Also, more game etiquette...If your being chased don't run through another hero's melee. Again in SC this happened to me and I was taking on two yellow outcasts when a tanker ran though unfortunately bringing in 3 purple Tsoo which I mistakenly targeted....boom...arrow...fist...death...hospital .

One last thing...Curiousity is good...curiousity+proximity=quick death. Examples...The latest invasion Standing with mouth agape at the portal site...WOW COOL!...pointy things....flashing lights...hospital.
The same thing on Talos Island. Saw the Devouring Earth for the first time...clicked on one to see what the heck they were...forgot, then continued my melee with the devouring earth still targeted...big mistake. Shot one by mistake...lots of things stabbing me...death...hospital.

[Uncle_July]

[ QUOTE ]

One last thing...Curiousity is good...curiousity+proximity=quick death. Examples...The latest invasion Standing with mouth agape at the portal site...WOW COOL!...pointy things....flashing lights...hospital.
The same thing on Talos Island. Saw the Devouring Earth for the first time...clicked on one to see what the heck they were...forgot, then continued my melee with the devouring earth still targeted...big mistake. Shot one by mistake...lots of things stabbing me...death...hospital.

[/ QUOTE ]

So that would make "Be careful what you're targeting" another good suggestion. :)

[Rumil]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

One last thing...Curiousity is good...curiousity+proximity=quick death. Examples...The latest invasion Standing with mouth agape at the portal site...WOW COOL!...pointy things....flashing lights...hospital.
The same thing on Talos Island. Saw the Devouring Earth for the first time...clicked on one to see what the heck they were...forgot, then continued my melee with the devouring earth still targeted...big mistake. Shot one by mistake...lots of things stabbing me...death...hospital.

[/ QUOTE ]

So that would make "Be careful what you're targeting" another good suggestion. :)

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, yeah, this has happened to me too. =(

Curiousity can be dangerous - let someone else be the cat. =)

[LittleFuzzy3]

"Combustion - I guess if you six slot this bad boy...but honestly I've never seen it deal massive dmg...am I wrong?)"

There is actually one use I get out of combustion *it's not enough, and I'll be ditching it on respec, but it can be useful* Every now and then, some clipping bug pops up, adhering a mob to the wall, or a door, or even *on three irritating occaisons* inside a staircase. Combustion is the only AoE I've encountered that works for all of those situations. You could send a petition, but often if you're doing that, you might as well just restart the mission, you'll get it done sooner.

[herofan9414]

wow. great thread. and at this time of the morning, good to keep an all-nighter going.

Im not going to try and remember everything that was already posted, but some good things to note..

Using Powerlines and Trees can be helpful when dealing with certain foes. Wolved, DE, many enemies have no effective ranged attacks, and if you're perched on a branch high enough, the will never touch you. Helpful if you have ranged attacks.

I wish Id known there is actually an exit in the train stations. I cant count how many times I would run into the exit thinking I had screwed myself. Pay attention to signs!

just my two cents

[WatsonBrothers]

TP Foe is very useful for getting bad guys un-stuck from inside walls, floors, etc.

[Debonair]

Great posts, a couple of my own, sorry if there are repeats:

Height matters differently for different heroes. I am now making controllers and defenders tall and scrappers and tankers short, because when in first person view (which I prefer in many situations) I can easily see over the other PCs, or they can easily see over me.

The missions where they tell you to kill "x" villains and then suggest where you night go to find that villain don't always REQUIRE that you go to that zone. If the mission says "Keep the peace in Perez Park" then you have to kill them in Perez Park, but if it says something like "Discover the secret formula: Kill "X" Vahzilok" and the contact says that you might look in King's Row or Perez Park for these baddies, you don't necessarily have to kill the villains in the suggested zone. Instead, turn around and whack the nearest Vahz near the contact. If it decriments the count, you're golden. The fastest mission I ever finished was one of these where there were 10 Vahz standing right next to the contact.

Click on a teammate and you will automatically target their target. (Think this was said already, but I keep running into people in teams that seem to always be getting in trouble because they are off soloing mobs in the group when we could all be combining efforts, maybe in 2-3 subteams, but at least not all individually.)

When you pick up hovering or flying and you are sniping at a Lt or Boss, look down before you take your first shot. Some can knock you from the sky (some minions too I think). I find it good to hover above power lines or train tracks when I snipe so that if they knock me down, I'm still not in easy melee range. I'd rather not fall all the way down to the ground where a couple of them are waiting to pummel me.

I've remapped my num keypad for most movement, and put "next target" and "closest target" on numpad + and numpad "enter." As I approach clusters of villains or areas of poor visibility, I cycle through by tapping + with my pinkie. You can do this from a safe distance, size up the group, and where visibility is poor you can actually detect enemies before you can see them. When you are ready to pick a target, click the numpad enter to go back to the closest, then cycle through to the one you want. You can drive and position yourself with the numpad steering keys while targeting without reaching over to the mouse or taking your fingers off the power keys bound to the numbers on the QWERTY keyboard.

I've also bound "look up" to numpad 9 and "look down" to numpad 3. Again, saves you from shifting your hands from mouse to keyboard for most steering, but admittedly this is a matter of style, and not an improvement for everyone.

[abplands]

I have yet to see the fact that you can "tree-jump" over the wall in Perez Park, so I'll mention it. Anyone without a travel power (or if they choose superspeed) can clear the wall if they turn on sprint, run directly at the wall (and a tree) and jump so that you would land on a treetop. If you keep holding down jump (and get the distance right) you will launch off the top of the tree and continue over the wall.

It takes a little practice, but it can save loads of time. That said, you can jump off many things that you can't actually land upon, but using the trees to get into PP are the most useful that I've encountered.

[Zigmund]

Ok.. a few.

1. If you're going for the Fitness pool (and mostly everyone does), take Hurdle or Swift at lvl 6. It makes getting around much faster. I'd reccomend Hurdle as you can jump over obstacles and save time.

2. Remap autorun from R to something out of the way ASAP. This is the first thing I do when making a new character.. I use the ~ key personally. You can change it under the options menu - controls

3. The best time to form a new character is an off-time. You won't have to fight will all the other lowbies for the limited spawns. I like Saturday mornings personally, I can level up to 6 very very quickly if I'm not competing against others.

4. Enter a hazard zone 2 levels higher than the minimum. It will make things go more quickly.

5. At lower levels hunting purples is mostly a waste of time. You miss too often and people tend to die easily.

6. Unless someone shows me some mathematical proof, I'll state that at lower levels fighting blues and yellows is mostly the way to go.. go through them quickly.

7. Occasionally you can superspeed through the trees in Perez. STand next to a wall of trees leading into the park, face parallel to the trees, and superspeed strafe, you should pop through the trees. It takes a little practice but it's a nifty trick.

8. You really DON'T NEED a "healer". Defense &gt; resistance &gt; mitigation. Healers compensate for incoming damage as best they can (miitagion). Other types of defenders and controllers stop you from taking the damage in the first place.

9. Don't neglect your defensive powers, even if they are only pools.

[Iron_Tyger]

If you're hunting in AP, GC, KR, SC, or Skyway, and you need to go away from the keyboard or take a knee for a minute, head towards the water in city zones. Mobs do not spawn in water, and few heroes travel through the lakes, so you can rest relatively un-noticed while swimming in the middle of any of the city's lakes.

PLEASE NOTE: This will not work in hazard zones. Enter the water at your own risk in those areas.

[Traepoint1]

Beanbag has saved my butt several times. being able to stun one mob and concentrate on another is very useful when soloing.

[DocMidnight]

[ QUOTE ]
Got a questions about enhancments...

Is it better to slot a dual enhancement that has a 15 or a generic 20??

I wish there was some indication of which is more beneficial! And whats better - a 15++ or a 16 (both generic)?

[/ QUOTE ]

Any DO that you can slot is better than any training you can slot. Enhancements more than three levels below you stop helping. More than 3 levels above you you cant slot it. Same with SO. Vs DO. 15++ is equal to a 17 (15 plus one plus one)

[BlueBella]

This one is scrapper specific

the "f" key "auto-follow" is your friend... just has much as the tab key.

especially for those non-gamers who may be intimidated all the movement involved in melee combat. I am one of those with dumby fingers and my beloved auto-follow has made me a kick [censored] scrapper.

[MothTwiceborn_NA]

accuracy in brawl, run speed in sprint, recharge reduction in rest. And don't bother slotting any of them.

[GlaziusF]

[ QUOTE ]
7. Occasionally you can superspeed through the trees in Perez. STand next to a wall of trees leading into the park, face parallel to the trees, and superspeed strafe, you should pop through the trees. It takes a little practice but it's a nifty trick.

[/ QUOTE ]
"Inside the trees" is less confining than "outside the trees but inside the maze". You can head for your target in a straight line, but there'll be some juking to get out of the other side. The "stand of trees" image filler is like one-way glass. Not sure whether it actually blocks targeting.

Just be careful. Sometimes when outside you have different slopes and gradations, inside you have two stretches of differently-leveled ground and a gap.

If you enter the gap, you will fall, and fall, and fall, and fall, and then wake up by the boathouse in Everett Lake in a cold sweat - it was all just a dream!

--GF

[Iron_Eagle]

[ QUOTE ]
It may be self-evident, but you cannot move while you are mid-conversation. So if you see someone speaking to you and you see, "Hey, it's high level Clockwork WWWWWEEEEEQQWWWSSSSS", it's not because they can't spell... :

[/ QUOTE ]

BWAHAHAHAHA!!! wooooo! :D :D :cool:

[Skorj]

There is a /stuck command for when you're stuck on the geometry.

At higher level, consider slotting an interrupt reduction SO in Rest instead of a recharge reduction if you find you don't use rest that often. Reducing the time it takes to start healing can help in some situations.

[lsdeimos]

I haven't finished reading this really long thread yet...so I'm not sure if what I put up here is...plus half of them are odd and for fun.

One tip to use with assisting a teammate is be careful with ranged attacks. Half the time the one you're assisting takes out the enemy before you. If you're at the end of a single mob, hold off as you both get closed to killing the last bad guy. A few times I had a power slotted up as they defeated the villian. Sometimes you shoot off at the already defeated...sometimes you don't. Problem is they may start cycling through a new mob to see how many lts and bosses there are etc, while your attack is still selected from the last fight. Of course if they're within range your attack goes off...they come straight for you when no one is ready for it.

Assisting is a great way to get rid of mobs faster ;)

I know this works with the assault rifle...if you have it out and you do the "bow" emote, you act like you're shooting an arrow.

If you're like me and you have fun dancing on coh, do the bind- /bind (key) "$$ em dance"
Press it really fast and you cycle through the dances and it looks really odd. Add some more binds by replacing dance up there with other emotes. cycle through a bunch of them and it looks really cool. If you want to do leg movements bind kneel and yoga (each one you start going to position with either your right or your left leg).

Some people don't know this but you can tp yourself in really weird places for fun. In the city hall, the reflection on the ground is just an upside down city hall which you can tp yourself into. you can also tp under overpasses (though they might have changed this)

For awhile I didn't realize you can throw caltrops underwater...(stupid murky sewer waters...)

I may think of more eventually...heheheh

[BetaGreen]

Awesome thread.

my tip for now: Remember the name of this thread to give to new players in game.

Thoughts in general...I think most have been said but are worth repeating...

Please out of respect for Defenders, not all are empaths!!! Don't invite them to your team and complain when they don't heal so much.

As a blaster or controller, BE CAREFUL when you throw down an AoE power right off the bat. You draw all the aggro.

If you are not sure on a power to choose, consult the forums. It will save you a lot of heartache.

[Tar_Heel]

You can only have two story arcs going at once. Check the clues window. If you have some old ones you are stuck on an old arc. I just figured this out and took out Dr. Vahz with my 41 Tank just to clear it off.

[Mister_Orion_NA]

OMG, I actually read all the posts! :eek: A great thread. I had already found out most of the things via mentors or by experimenting, so I felt rather pleased with myself :)

One thing I've just learned in game (the hard way), and now got confirmed in the thread:

Low health! But the boss also has low health! I can take him!

almost always leads to:

*whack whack whack* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! ... hospital.

The one thing I saw only mentioned was that in missions the mobs get harder the more people you are. According to my understanding it has to do with the following number of people in the team (I have this only from a mentor and haven't checked official numbers, so I dont guarantee the validity of it):

5 = more mobs
6 = they go up a level
7 = bosses are more frequent
8 = all of the above

So if you're going on a mission, and want it to be a quick one, dont go in a big group (unless, of course, you have a kick [censored] team :D )

- You can see the amount of hp a mob has by targeting it and hovering with your pointer over his hp bar, in the target window. The same you can do with other heroes.

- If you hover over the heroes bars in the team window you get the % of their hp/end.

- If you, like I, slot your powers with much dmg and wait for lvl 27 or 32, to buy the next set of SOs, you wont finish off same conned mobs as fast as you did before, after you level (duh!). As a blaster I learned this the hard way. Oh! Orange 5ths! I take out a group of those easily with Build Up, Aim, Fireball and Firebreath, and they'll all just nicely say 'Hueagh, hueaaah' and fall down! *wooup* *wooup* *hurl* *breath* What the heck!? They still stand!? And many of them! *blam blam blam blam blam blam blam* AAAAAAAAAAAH! ... hospital.

- You can use the tabs to keep record of specific messages you receive. Just klick on the numbers (1-4) on the upper right hand corner of your chat window and you have 4 different tab areas to configure (just press Add tab). You can change the tabs by mright clicking in the tab and selecting 'Edit tab'). I've configured them so that I save NPC chat in one (can be fun to read), private tells in another (they get so easily lost in all the other messages), one for the supergroup (very handy to have when you communicate often with the others) and one for team (useful in combat, if you still have a lot of text messages in the default tab scrolling away team tells). And if you got much screen space you can detach each one of the four tabs.

That's all, for now!

[Ryker_XXX]

I have too and thought I'd add a few.

You can also change keys under the options menu, but binds are great. :)

If you are not comfortable with doing binds, you can reassign keys like tab to target nearest by doing the above.

You can also assign a key to get your position, great when trying to find badges.

Also you can assign a key to quit game with one button or just type /quit.

[Zippo_NA]

great thread. seeing a lotta things that amazed me when i discovered them and some new things as well :)

my 0.02 influence:

- as mentioned before target_enemy_near is your friend, esp if you're a tanker or scrapper. hit whatever key or bind you may use, then select follow (hit "F"). yes, runners will come back, but knocked back foes are great to hit when they're down or waiting to find your next target wastes time when your hasten is already beginning to fade. throw in a quick burst of superspeed and you'll be all over your foes like white on rice.
- your SKed character is fighting at lvl 30, but they are not lvl 30. you may get some stat boosts and can take on those purples you once feared, but in some cases -- especially involving lower levels -- you cannot compare with a true lvl 30. less useful enhancements, but more importantly less useful powers. still using brawl because you don't have a better attack to cycle? were you holding off on hasten or have you not hit stamina yet? chances are your teammates will have this and you'll feel like the odd man out hiding in the corner resting. just be aware of this and be aware of how much you're really contributing (or taking away from the group if you require too many heals due to your naivete) before you get too cocky.

[Valence]

For all those console players out there....

There is a neat program called Joy-To-Key that is invaluable. You can map keys to all the buttons on any controller you have.....and you can also use binds with it. I hardly ever touch my keyboard or mouse.

I love these posts!! ......keep em coming.

[Gemini_II]

[ QUOTE ]

I'll agree with your final statement here, but not the first. There's no good reason to go through, e.g., level 17 with yellow enhancements when you could be buying shiny new green ones. Not buying any until they're combinable doesn't buy you any additional effective time, it just delays the first purchase.

When you do buy them, though, it is definitely wiser to combine existing enhancements with each other where possible than it is to unnecessarily trash enhs by replacing them with level+3 enhs.

[/ QUOTE ]

"There's no good reason..." --&gt; So, all I have to do is come up with one? Easy.

Effectiveness: Level 37, you have level 35 SOs with 2 pluses (effectively 37s). Until you level, these are White, not yellow. Which means, they are still effective. When you hit level 38, if you are still in a mission, finish it, of course, but as soon as you leave the mission, excuse yourself, go level, and buy your new enhancements. Minimal yellow-time.

Cost: Lets suppose that you are going from level 35s to level 40s upped to 41s

Poster's Way:
Starting from level 33, you buy 18 Level 35 damage SOs at 42000 each = 756K to get 18 level 35+ SOs (assume all combines are successful)
During the next 5 levels you purchase 18 more level 35 damage SOs to up your damage to 35++ (assume all combines are successful) = 756K
At 38th level you purchase 18 level 40 damage SOs at 52K = 936K
==========
18 level 41 damage SOs = 756K + 756K + 936K = 2.448M

Now your way;
At level 32, you buy 18 Level 35s damage SOs (replacing your old 30++s) = 756K
Over the next 5 levels you purchase 36 level 35s to up the enhances to 35++ (assume all combines are successful) = 1.62M
At level 37, you purchase 18 new level 40 damage SOs = 936K
At level 38, you purchase 18 new level 35 damage SOs (because you are daring that way, and its cheaper than the 40s) to up your 35s to 35+s = 756K
=====================
18 Level 41 damage SOs = 4.068M

1.62M more your way? I don't know about you, but I need a hell of a lot more than 18 SOs, and wasting 1.62 million influence is not a smart solution. The difference between a white and a green + = 0.1x damage --&gt; is that pittance worth 1.62 million influence?

My contribution:

SS+Cloaking Device+Smoke Grenade makes you completely invisible to all enemies, including Snipers, Rikti Drones and Rularuu, regardless of level. Nothing is better than being able to scout without fear. Glowie missions become much less of a hassle. Also, aggro seems to drop faster when you have invisibility, so mobs don't chase you as long, and quickly forget that you attacked them.

If you get lost/confused on where you are, click on one of your teamate's names and then right-click to Follow them (F is default for Follow). You may run into a wall, but you will also get their green HUD box and you can get a better idea which way to go.

When using FlameBreath, set up with the thinest profile of the group possible, then target the enemy furthest away from you to get the largest group possible.

AoE attacks: AoE attacks are weaker than single-target attacks; if a boss or tough Lt. is in the middle of a group, use your single-target powers on the minions until you can be sure to set off your AoE without aggroing the boss.

Force Fields #1: The Dispersion Bubble draws aggro. For the best results, put Deflection and Insulation Shields on your teamates and then put on your PFF. Once someone has gotten aggro on the mobs, get near to the lead melee'er and turn off the PFF and turn on the DB. Beware of AoE attacks from the enemies.

Force Fields #2: Force Bolt is an excellent tool; if a teamate (read blaster) is getting hammered by a melee mob, FB them off of your teamate, which gives the person time to throw some damage at the mob, and rarely gives you aggro. FB is also useful for protecting you from melee attacks or protecting an area (read Reactor Core). FB is good from driving retreating mobs back towards your damage dealers (read Scrappers), nothing gets a Scrapper more excited than to have a FF'er pop a FB onto a runner and knock them right back into melee range.....neat trick, and its amuses all.

Force Fields #3: Two FF'ers' bubbles WILL stack. Even slightly slotted, this will reach the Def cap, plus the other FF'er gets a rarity, to actually enjoy the protection of some bubbles.

Trip Mines: Trip Mines are sensitive to your location/nearness. If you aren't near, they won't go off. This offers the */Devices blaster a nice side-effect, you don't need the 9th/ultimate power to do a "blow-up".....set down 4+ mines in a small area, get far away but within line of sight, then have some nervy soul bring a whole slew of baddies into your mine field. Run into the mine field and, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM... plus you can still do your ultimate if you need to ;)

Hydras: Hydras are suseptable to Lethal damage, which makes AR/* blasters especially effective in Hydra hunting.

[Garrik]

[ QUOTE ]
1.62M more your way?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you're sweating 1.62M in the level 37-38 range, you must have something else you're spending your cash on. I've given away 3-4 million, bought new enhancements as early and as often as possible, and I still have 3-4 million just sitting there at level 39. My SG mates in their 40s have between 15-20 million.

Assuming you can find someone to help transfer inf, all you need is one character above 35 and money problems are pretty much over.

-Garrik

[Ninja_Raid]

A Scrapper in Steel Canyon will level faster solo than in a team, as long as you're not a crazy suicidal scrapper.

Any kind of defender is an asset to any team.

DON'T TEAM WITH STUPID PEOPLE! Nothing ruins a game experience more than a Blaster who thinks he's a tank, a Defender who thinks they're a blaster, a Scrapper who thinks he's invincible. or ANYBODY who doesn't listen to the plan. Learn to read the names and descriptions of the characters inviting you to a team, or those on a search list before inviting them yourself, and recognizing the warning signs. Air Superiority is one of them, along with Teleport Foe and Flurry, when owned by Controllers and Defenders (note, these are just common warning signs. 'There are exceptions to the rule, as there always will be).

A forcefield Defender cannot constantly refresh both Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield, and run Dispersion Bubble constantly in a six-man team or larger, and still expect to help with damage. Slot your defenses, not your attacks, if that's what your goal is with the character.

Combat Jumping is awesome. Unless you have no room for it whatsoever in your build for a scrap or tank, it's worth grabbing.

Fly is expensive. Plan accordingly.

Superspeed is FUN. Get Hurdle to make it better.

Teleport is not for everyone. It takes creativity to use well, and end reductions to make it efficient for travel.

Mezzing kills. This applies to heroes and villains equally, so love your fellow Controllers.

Controllers CAN solo, Illusion and Mind Controllers in particular. Grab Concealment if you plan to do so at any length.

You don't NEED any archetype for a team. Not even defenders. All you need is intelligence and strategy.

High-end gaming is fun, even if you're only sidekicked into it artificially.

There's more, but I'm tired. COH FOREVAH!!!

[Warhead_NA]

[ QUOTE ]
A forcefield Defender cannot constantly refresh both Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield, and run Dispersion Bubble constantly in a six-man team or larger, and still expect to help with damage. Slot your defenses, not your attacks, if that's what your goal is with the character.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually they can, eventually. At 37 with 6-slotted Stamina and an Endurance Reducer in all bubbles not only can my FFer keep everyone double-bubbled, run Dispersion and blast but can also run Maneuvers and Accuracy from the Leadership pool at the same time.

Oh and that's with Energy Blast, with Psi (very low End cost) it's even easier.

[Gemini_II]

[ QUOTE ]

If you're sweating 1.62M in the level 37-38 range, you must have something else you're spending your cash on. I've given away 3-4 million, bought new enhancements as early and as often as possible, and I still have 3-4 million just sitting there at level 39. My SG mates in their 40s have between 15-20 million.


[/ QUOTE ]

You go ahead and waste 2M, that's your business. The poster said there is no good reason, and to me, 2M influence is a good reason. Tell me you wouldn't participate in a mission or costume contest if it offered 2M influence.

And, I do sweat 1.62M influence at 38th level. I don't know of any other way to spend influence than to buy Enhancements and Inspirations (trivial at this point), but I do tend to only go to one shop and sell instead of running around to all the specialty shops just to sell the 1-2 enhances that I have for that origin.

[MrGenerichero]

here's one for all the SJ'ers out there, I know I wished I had known about it earlier...

/bind key ++up (auto jump button!)

now you can auto run and auto jump and its almost like flying! Set it and forget it!

[Garrik]

[ QUOTE ]
The poster said there is no good reason, and to me, 2M influence is a good reason. Tell me you wouldn't participate in a mission or costume contest if it offered 2M influence.

And, I do sweat 1.62M influence at 38th level. I don't know of any other way to spend influence than to buy Enhancements and Inspirations (trivial at this point), but I do tend to only go to one shop and sell instead of running around to all the specialty shops just to sell the 1-2 enhances that I have for that origin.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wouldn't participate in a mission or costume contest for 2M. I might do it for fun, but not for the money. In fact, I gave away 1M at the last costume contest my SG sponsored.

Having said that, some food for thought:

1. You get roughly 2/3 the value for enhancements not sold at the proper store. If you're worried about influence, you might want to consider selling in Talos where the round trip to several stores only takes a minute.

2. At level 37, you're running around with all white enhancements. If you buy lvl 40s that will be +3 to you, you get a bonus of 1.15x the enhancement for each one. For a power that does 100 base points of damage with 5 SO damages in it, you do 266.5 points to my 291.5 points.

3. I'm not trying to knock how you play the game - your money, your time. I'm just trying to allow people who may not understand the math to see the difference in approaches.

4. The real difference between the 2 methods you laid out for purchasing enhancements is in when you buy the 'next level' upgrade. I buy them as soon as available (i.e., 40s at level 37). When I do, I cannot combine, but must replace. You wait one additional level, so when you buy the level 40s, you can combine with your existing enhancements. This saves you one round of purchases. The original statement was that there was no good reason to wait. There is a reason to wait, but how you define good is key. To me, a savings of 2M is not a good reason, at least not in my current financial situation. However, this may be a great reason for you!

-Garrik

[Gemini_II]

Garrik,

I agree, it is a money management issue, and you are free to spend your money as you wish. But, I would like to mention that during the life of your toon, assuming you go to level 50 and start buying SOs at level 22, you actually buy five extra sets of enhancements when you replace as soon as you are able.

I just got my Fire/Dev alt to level 38 today, and I ended up buying 59 level 40 enhancements (not counting the 6 or so unsuccessful combines I had). On average, they cost me 45K each (I bought 34 damage enhances at 48K each) which equals 2.655M influence (not a trivial sum to me, although I guess it is to many).

For the sake of ease, since 37/38 is in the middle between 22-50 and taking 59 enhancement slots as an average (yes, I know there are more awarded on the topside of the levels, but I want to make this easier), 5 extra sets actually comes to ~11M extra.

As far as damage, I calculated that I would be doing a good bit more of damage (4.6x vs. 6.11x) after I upgraded to 40+ enhances, but I guess that the villians' HP went up faster than my damages did, because it was still taking me a Blaze+Fireblast to take out yellow and white minions.....here I thought I would be knocking them down faster...oh well.


I suppose over the life of your character, 11M is a small amount, but I'd still prefer to save my money, especially when it seems to have no major effect (for me) to have the latest level enhancements. Level 37 was really pretty painless...so, no complaints from me in the damage department.

BTW, anyone know an actual number on the bonus blasters get for damage?

[Garrik]

[ QUOTE ]
I suppose over the life of your character, 11M is a small amount, but I'd still prefer to save my money, especially when it seems to have no major effect (for me) to have the latest level enhancements. Level 37 was really pretty painless...so, no complaints from me in the damage department.

[/ QUOTE ]

Someday maybe we'll have something to do with all that money. Then it will matter!

Sorry to hijack the original thread a bit - hope someone finds it useful!

-Garrik

[Hanover_Fiste]

Here's something that happened yesterday to me. I offered to take a beginning tank (lvl 3) with me on a miss. No, it was not powerlevel and I asked them. I do it because I love watching new people play and I want to promote my fellow tanks. Anyway, I sidekicke the toon and tell him to fight as well - which he did. What I don't tell them is at the end of the miss I give away all the enhancements I pick up - usually several DOs and a few SOs. This person fought and then left as soon as it said miss accomplished stating he was off to play with his SG. I told him 'no prob, have fun'. So lets see, he missed out on something like 30K worth of influence just to speed it along. Who wouldn't have loved that at 3rd?!?!? Shame shame.

My advice to new players...go slow, enjoy the view, and when a high lvl toon offers to take you for a ride, go for the whole ride!!

[Night_Fyre]

Here's one I like:

When doing a "Stop 15 &lt;baddies name&gt; mission", &amp; the contact says "You can usually find plenty of Tsoo in Talos Island", &amp; you dont' think you can go there yet or just don't want to, you can go kill them whereever they hang out in the lower level areas. Example: I had a Defeat 15 CoT mission &amp; the contact told me to go somewhere where I knew there would be CoT that I prob couldn't handle in large groups Solo. So I went to King's Row, &amp; blasted 15 CoT offa the rooftops in about 2 minutes. Be aware though that you obviously won't get any XP from the arrests for this since they're such lower level, but you get the mission XP MUCH FASTER, then you can move on. Some missions won't let you do this... the ones that specifically say "Defeat 15 Clockwork in BoomTown" means that you haveto go to BoomTown to do it.

The other thing is that if you use your Powers Tray, once you get enough powers &amp; you want to open the 2nd teir of the tray, go into Option &amp; resize your Windows from 100% to 80-85% if you havent' already done so. Otherwise the tray takes up too much of the lower-right of you're screen.

[Jagdwolfe]

Air Superiority might become an issue depending on how City of Villians will be implemented. Can't wait to see what they will look like LOL.

[xMSGx]

Im a New Newbie, so what are us new newbs doing?

Well first off I ordered this game online so it took a couple days to get here, so I was reading up these forums, I read this entire thread, saying ok I wont do that, ok I wont do that. Well I did them anyways.

Been playings since feb 4th
just two days ago, I was doing the Pos TF and was waiting at the train station after I got off for my team leader to tell me which city to deliver the book too, i was lvl 16 and you'd think I would know better by now, specially since reading this thread, well.....

I TRIED TO GO IN THE EXIT OF THE TRAIN! That whole time until then i was like yeah baby im not the 95% who's done it or the 5% who has lied about it! lol wrong I did it.

I havent tried exiting the mission thru the door, Im glad i read this thread for that one.

I had some high lvl blaster who was like my tutor, i was asking on broadcast some questions about enhancements, had no idea about DO's and he took me to the store that sold them, and gave me 500k, just for the hell of it!!! He said he was glad to help someone who was new and he had so much he didnt care, WOW I was like awesome, I have had a UBER Blaster ever since. LVL 18 and broke, ok i have about 30k but this is money ive earned from going down to about 1k

that wasnt really a newb mistake but still a awesome experiance when you've only have your first lvl 10 guy on your 3rd day of playing.

Dont SJ onto a group of mobs that are even or above you! bad! lol

Dont stand in the middle of the street in Skyway, or you will get dealt with by a rouge ambush! lol Try 400+ damage points by a lvl 40 advanced drone. me...lvl 16, and it happened TWICE in 15 minutes lol

Get on at 845am, not knowing the servers usually go down at 9am for scheduled maintaince. Excited about playing and was just able to run around a bit. &lt;sigh&gt;

thats all i can think of at the moment

[InfiniteMonkies]

[ QUOTE ]

Powers can well be slotted in any fashion desired - each slot gives the same amount of benefit, so go with the ratio that you feel comfortable with.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, thats not true, and I think it's one of the as-yet unadressed probelms of the game.
For damage powers anyway, it's far more efficient to slot for damage than anything else

If anyone wants a break-down of the numbers, feel free to pm me and I'll gladly provide them, or if I get enough requests I'll post them, but the way it works out, assuming you dont have problems with endurance, it's always better to slot attacks for damage than for end redux or recharge time.

[Jagdwolfe]

LOL some more things learned. AKA Things I will not do as a noob.

1&gt; I will not run up to the first group of gang members I see without checking who is there. Mr Fallon Shotgun is not my friend and impact lead poisoning makes for messy tights.

2&gt; After realizing that Mr Fallon Shotgun is not my friend I will not run down the pavement attracting the attention of more of his friends.

3&gt; I will also not randomly hop fences because the Clockworks seem to get horribly annoyed when you land on top of them.

4&gt; I will not mess with the Nasty man with the cadavers. If I do I have to arrest him not the Cadavers since he had the annoying tendency to wake them back up.

5&gt; Sewers = Bad Idea.

[Part_Troll]

Nobody will read this far!

Don't turn off TOOLTIPS in the Options menu!

With ToolTips, you can hover the mouse over your XP bar, and it will tell you how much XP you've made since your last 'level up', and how much more you need to make.

You can select a player or a mob, and hover the mouse over their Health bar, and see how many hit points they have! This is most useful when you're fighting Archvillains who you are connecting with but they don't appear to be losing health -- hover the mouse over their health and you will see that the Hatched Kraken has approximately 28,000 hitpoints!

Some others:

* Decieve the Sky Raiders ForceField emanators! Cool trick.

* Ice slick is way too good to avoid for an Ice Controller!

* Hasten is cool, but because you attack more, your endurance goes out the window. Be sure to get Stamina. My tank re-specced OUT of Hasten/superspeed into CombatJumping/Superjump and hasn't had endurence problems since. Not everyone *needs* Hasten, but ...

* most everyone *NEEDS* Stamina! Those blasters who are level 30 and don't have the Fitness pool -- they are slowing your team down enormously.

* As a Tank jump over and behind mobs before using Taunt. That way they turn to face you, and are far less likely to attack your team-mates, plus because you'll now be FACING your team-mates, you'll be able to see if they are being attacked before their health bar starts to (rapidly) shrink, and hopefully do something about it.

* As a blaster/defender/controller do NOT alpha strike (be the first one to fire) at any new group, since this will aggro the entire group and they will remember for the entire battle. Let the Tank or Scrapper get their attention BEFORE you strike.

* Paragon Protectors -- these guys use Moment of Glory when they get below 25% hitpoints, this effectively makes them unhittable (or hit for very few points of damage). The trick to killing them is to whittle them down to 50% and THEN use Build up/Aim on your Blasters, pop a red inspiration, and snipe or use your most powerful attacks. Then the Paragon Protector is -dead-. Usually people use their most powerful/boosted attack at the BEGINNING of a PP fight, and thats just not the wisest choice.

* Team invisibility + Invunerable Tank with Invincible = not very invisible, since Invincibility auto-aggros groups as you come into range.

* I wish I had read this entire thread six months ago.


Archvillain Q (Level 39 fire/fire blaster, Justice)
Titan-Ice (Level 37 Ice/FF controller, Justice)
Arsenic Man (Level 33 Ice/Ice blaster, Virtue)
Puzzle (Level 32 rad/rad defender, Justice)
Acutely Velcro (Level 28 Inv/Stone Tanker, Justice)
Ftoomsh (Level 9 Kin/Psi Defender, Justice)

[Roughneck_Doc]

Hi all, I really like this thread. So much so it inspired me to put a player guide togehter, a link to which is in my signature. Please take a look and provide feedback. It's a beta version and I'd like to get a final one posted. Thanks.

[FrostyBot]

If you choose Hover, going vertical in an open area is a nice way to be safe when recovering. Just hold down space and rise, rise, rise. Mind yourself near buildings, though. Nothing like rise, rise, rise *BOOOOOOM* fall, SPLAT hospital visit thanks to the Outcast pack on the rooftop. Look both ways before levitating.

Inspirations are good. Try and keep 1-2 slots open by using them against anything decent (whites/yellows+). Odds are, they'll fill in one of the slots when you arrest a few.

Blue (even green) con mobs are usually good ways to pick up Inspirations without getting chewed up in the process.

You can activate Fly/Hover in mid-fall. Learn the timing and getting down from high places can be a very easy experience.

Bosses usually take multiple applications of a status inducing power to have it take effect. Don't expect Mr. Mire Eidolon to stop moving because you used Electric Fence. If a boss is charging you, this usually means he intends to take your head and jam it into the nearest hole- making that hole with your head, of course. If you are squishy, give yourself plenty of room to move. Some opponents are just going to be annoyed by certain powers-you can Fence that Cadaver all you like, all it's doing is damage. So be careful with newly names on your target. Laughing at all the Prototype Oscillators on the ground is good. Shooting one, having four fly up and chop you to bits on their helicopter rotors is bad.

Embalmed in Paragon City is another word for "blows you up".

If you want a bit more goodies out of fights, find citizens in trouble. Once you mash the bad guys threatening them, they may end up bringing you a little bonus Inspiration/Influence.

[MrNoj]

[ QUOTE ]

* As a blaster/defender/controller do NOT alpha strike (be the first one to fire) at any new group, since this will aggro the entire group and they will remember for the entire battle. Let the Tank or Scrapper get their attention BEFORE you strike.


[/ QUOTE ]

/Disagree

Depending on build, a controller can start a fight with a group and never get hit... sometimes even keep your whole group from getting hit. By using an AoE Immobilize, one can potentially freeze up a group for an entire fight, far more likely if there are two immobilize AoE's in the group. Sometimes it's the best idea for a controller to hit em first... the rest of the time it might not be the BEST idea, but it usually works decently with the right controller and the right person behind the controls of said controller.

[RustMan]

[ QUOTE ]
Clicking the "Mission Completed" message on the top display will transport you out of the mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is one: Pay attention during the tutorial - very valuable information can be picked up in Outbreak.

[Jagdwolfe]

I learned this morning that if I actually use enhancements my Fire/Fire Tanker does better in combat and I get even more enhancements. LOL was wondering why I was getting spanked.

[Saturn_Knight]

[ QUOTE ]

Depending on build, a controller can start a fight with a group and never get hit... sometimes even keep your whole group from getting hit. By using an AoE Immobilize, one can potentially freeze up a group for an entire fight, far more likely if there are two immobilize AoE's in the group. Sometimes it's the best idea for a controller to hit em first... the rest of the time it might not be the BEST idea, but it usually works decently with the right controller and the right person behind the controls of said controller.

[/ QUOTE ]
As a gravity controller, I would like to make a clarification on this point. An AoE Immobilization and an AoE Hold are two different animals. Immobilized mobs can still attack you at range, and will. Even then, tanks (invulnerable in particular) like the opportunity to herd before controllers lock anyone into place. So I generally will allow a tank or scrapper to make the first move. AoE holds have an accuracy penalty compared to single target holds, so be sure to slot it with an extra accuracy enhancement if you're going to make the initial strike.

Another point I did not see mentioned relates to following a runner. If you hit the F key you will run at the speed of the runner, even though you may be faster. I kept wondering why the runner would slow down AND SO WOULD I! I thought it was lag or a bug, but it's just literally following in their footsteps. So use follow to get going the right direction, but then press the forward key to close the gap.

[MrNoj]

You're right saturn... I get them mixed up (you'd think I'd know better by now, I guess I need to play my controller more). With the group holds it's a good idea to have at least 2 slots worth of acc, since they can be inaccurate... like I said though, 'Depending on build'.

[EternalTwilight]

First, in response to an old post about the minimum level to change your outfit.. There is none. I've changed mine at level 1 (I skipped the tutorial.)

Second, one simple bit of wisdom. Kill stealing is bad. No, i take that back, its badong.

[Kull_WarThorn]

If you are an illusion controller, using your own private tank army (aka PA) before costing Flash will typically prevent that free hit they seem to get while you are casting Flash (which has too be done right smack from the middle of the mob).

[DerStuttgarter]

Big ditch bad, go around.

That even though I feel comfortable running around the streets of the Hollows, stay out of the gulley. Bad things down there, very bad.

Stutty

[Ebon_Angel]

Apart from Founders Falls and Peregrine Island, you can go pretty much anywhere you like in Paragon City if you're careful.

I've got from Atlas to the docks in Talos Island at level 6 before (where I met the guy who was sidekicking me up for a mission in Peregrine). You just have to be very careful about where you're going.

[StrikeSlip]

[ QUOTE ]
Big ditch bad, go around.

That even though I feel comfortable running around the streets of the Hollows, stay out of the gulley. Bad things down there, very bad.

[/ QUOTE ]

OMG is that an understatement. I still have bad memories of my L8 tank getting one-shotted by a +7 troll LT when someone had the bright idea of taking Grendel's gulch as a short cut.

[srmalloy]

[ QUOTE ]
1. You get roughly 2/3 the value for enhancements not sold at the proper store. If you're worried about influence, you might want to consider selling in Talos where the round trip to several stores only takes a minute.

[/ QUOTE ]
When selling SOs, the level 40+ contact stores offer you the 'wrong store' prices; with the reduction in drop rate that came in I3, and the change in TO/SO/DO ratio that went along with it, it might be worth the extra time to head from Peregrine Island back to Talos to make a loop around the stores to sell out, rather than just selling everything to Ghost Falcon. It's probably not worth making the trip back from the Shard, what with the extra travel time, though.

[EternalTwilight]

You can get a travel power pre-level 6. It's called dull pain. it makes running through dangerous areas (read: the gulch) much less painful.

[Richter_8_6]

3 words: Belkin Nostromo n52. It's absolute control in the plam of your hand.

Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n52 (http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&amp;Section_Id=2 071&amp;pcount=&amp;Product_Id=157024)

The only thing you need the keyboard for is random chatting. 14 programmable "keyboard" style keys (2 rows 5, 1 row 4), a scroll wheel w/ a center "click" button, an 8-directional control pad, a thumb "trigger"...

...and the shining prize: a "profile" shift key that lets you flip through 4 different colored profiles, each of which can have a completely different set of keys bound to all 26 programmable keys, giving you a total of 104 programmable slots.

The keybind editor is easy to use, and includes a full macro editor - so you can actually bind macros to the keys. I use it for extended battle-cries, chat "taunts" to use on enemies, and common requests ("LFT" or "HEAL PLEASE!!"). It's all easily editable, and with the mouse, means that the keyboard goes bye-bye completely (again, except for random chatting).

If anyone is interested or gets one, email me for my Nostromo profile - jdfurryphx@yahoo.com .

[Knightsedge]

[ QUOTE ]

Flaw in this statement: You NEVER get more than 100 end.

[/ QUOTE ]

Haven't read the entire thread yet so forgive me if this has been said, when you get the atlas medalion you do get a bonus to endurance (only 5 points).

[SleepingDragon]

k

[Doomguide]

And while I haven't gotten this far with a character yet I believe you can get another 5 end (for a total of 110) with the Portal Jockey accolade. It also increases you max hp by 5.

Doomguide

[BenArba]

[ QUOTE ]
And while I haven't gotten this far with a character yet I believe you can get another 5 end (for a total of 110) with the Portal Jockey accolade. It also increases you max hp by 5.

Doomguide

[/ QUOTE ]

All of the HP and End increasing accolades not only increase your max, but your regen and recovery rates are based off of your max. So getting the Atlas medalion increases your endurance to 105, and increases your endurance regen rate by 5%, which is even greater improved if you have Stamina and Quick recovery.
Same is true for HP and HP regen powers such as Health from the stamina pool and FH, IH, and Integration from the regen scrapper pool.

[Vanguard00]

Just wanted to thank everybody for their tips. I'm a Lvl 5 Blaster on Justice and I've read some excellent tips.

Again, very useful thread and thanks to all. I'm off to do some binding now...

(...and if only someone would tell me how to use "thought" emotes...)

[Raven_Akurei]

[ QUOTE ]
Just wanted to thank everybody for their tips. I'm a Lvl 5 Blaster on Justice and I've read some excellent tips.

Again, very useful thread and thanks to all. I'm off to do some binding now...

(...and if only someone would tell me how to use "thought" emotes...)

[/ QUOTE ]

if you type a semicolon before whatever your message is in the chat window, it pops up as a thought bubble. Many-a-time I have tried to respond with a text smile only to think a parentheses :P

this can be overcome by hitting the space bar before you type ; )

[RobDude16]

This thread is huge - so I realise someone might have already said this, and that most people won't read this far...but....

Depending on your build - there is a good chance you won't have as much Endurance as you'd like (at least until you hit 20 and can get Stamina or whatever it is). One thing that can really help is to only turn on sprint when you want to sprint - turn it off when you are fighting.

It's pretty easy to setup your controls so that whenever you walk forward, or backward Sprint comes on, and whenever you stop walking sprint goes off (although on occassion the binds become reversed)

(I can post my bind if anyone wants it - but I think it's already on the boards about a million times)

EDIT: I meant, the bind I wrote is nearly identical to the ones on the boards - not that the bind I personally wrote is all over the boards. If that makes sense :)

[Richter_8_6]

[ QUOTE ]
3 words: Belkin Nostromo n52. It's absolute control in the plam of your hand.

Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n52

The only thing you need the keyboard for is random chatting. 14 programmable "keyboard" style keys (2 rows 5, 1 row 4), a scroll wheel w/ a center "click" button, an 8-directional control pad, a thumb "trigger"...

...and the shining prize: a "profile" shift key that lets you flip through 4 different colored profiles, each of which can have a completely different set of keys bound to all 26 programmable keys, giving you a total of 104 programmable slots.

The keybind editor is easy to use, and includes a full macro editor - so you can actually bind macros to the keys. I use it for extended battle-cries, chat "taunts" to use on enemies, and common requests ("LFT" or "HEAL PLEASE!!"). It's all easily editable, and with the mouse, means that the keyboard goes bye-bye completely (again, except for random chatting).

[/ QUOTE ]
Regarding my Nostromo n52 post:

I've got an email specifically for CoH! Send any of your questions or profile requests to ricther_8_6@yahoo.com.

[B_Samson]

As previously mentioned, Illusion controllers can take deceive Sky Raider FF Generators to put bubbles around their teammates.

When an illusion controller deceives Avalanche Shamans, the earthquakes they cause will hit not only your enemies around them, but the Shamans themselves. Ditto for Storm Shamans and their storm clouds. It's fun to watch. :)

Mission critical objects (TV reactor core, time capsule, war wall generators) can usually be bubbled.

Want to drag a whole bunch of your enemies to you? If you have a power like Darkest Night, target the enemy farthest from you, hit them with it, and hide. They'll run toward where you're hiding and aggro everyone else as the run by. (It's a good idea to have something like a tank on your team standing between that group and your hiding place.)

You can exemp into a TF, but not SK into one.

And for anyone who's really just starting out, you can open your chat prompt just by hitting return. You don't have to click on it every time. (Related: The backspace shortcut for tells was mentioned earlier in this thread.)

If you are a tank and something calls you away from the game in the middle of combat (i.e. phone, pet barfing on the carpet), you can still hold aggro by targeting a team mate, setting taunt on autofire, and hitting 'F' (default for follow). Anything that teammate targets will be taunted by you. (The defenders I run with also find enormous humor potential in this technique.) Just be careful to target a team mate smart enough not to point you toward a set of +5s. . .

As stated in their info, when a Banished Spirit of Death sees a hero, it can not be distracted from that hero. The only way to pull it off is to defeat it. (Don't actually know, but maybe deceive would work, too.)

You can run on top of the trees in the middle of Perez.

[Aurex]

There was way too many pages of this to sift through, so if this was said previously, sorry.

When you can buy level 35 SOs. Buy them!
Do not get your costume first like I did.
I sucked for 2 levels until I could afford to properly enhance my powers. Taking a costume at 30 is extremely expensive, get the ability to create it, but WAIT!

Unless you've got influence to burn, it's gonna cost tons. That influence is put to better use making your powers better when you really need it.

[Centinull]

If your a blaster, 6 slot your snipe for damage.
It already has a high accuracy and with SO's you'll be able to one shot Even Cons, some +1s, and +2 that are vulnerable to your attack type.

With my Elec/Elec, I lead with Snipe, follow with Charged bolt, Lightning bolt, and Telsa Cage, and due to hasten, Zap is ready for use again, buy the end of the other 3 attacks.

Heck if your a blaster, slot you main 3 atttacks heavily for damage I usually slot 1 accuracy and 5 damage, but if you have trageting drone, you won't need the accuracy enhancement. Once you get SO's the difference slotting makes is incredible. You will be so much more effective when you can drop foes with 1-2 shots and move on to the next.

HASTEN AND STAMINA ARE NOT ESSENTIAL
They are just freaking incredible. Sure you could go hunting with a Black Powder rifle, but having an AK47 would make it so much easier. The same argument goes for Hasten and Stamina. You can make it to 50 without them, it's just alot easier with them than without them.

[Emnity]

My only contribution and I can't tell if it's been said:

Every AT benefits from knowledge of the battlefield, especially controllers and defenders. Get to know your Home and End button - I play the majority of the game zoomed way out on distance with my viewpoint looking down from overhead. This way anchors are easily visible, enemies easily selectable, and damaged teammatesa easily healable.

Emnity

[SuperTeddy]

Mobs that explode, such as Abominations and Life Mages, cannot blow themselves up if they are debuffed with a toggle like Radiation Infection or Darkest Night. As long as it is anchored on them or they are in the area of effect, they can try but will not succeed.

[vidicate0]

Interesting, searched this thread and found no mention of the difficulty slider, or the Hero Corps Field Analyst. These guys will change your "status" for a price. The options are Heroic, Tenacious, Rugged, Unyielding, and Invincible. As you go down the list, your mission difficulty (and rewards) increases. I mention this because I made the newbie mistake of thinking I was only gaining a new title, not actually turning white's into red's :p

[Govtmorgue]

Get out of debt by getting exemplared. You might not get xp but you will work of debt twice as fast...making it quicker for you to get un-exemplared and therefore able to regain that xp :)

[Roughneck_Doc]

[ QUOTE ]
Get out of debt by getting exemplared. You might not get xp but you will work of debt twice as fast...making it quicker for you to get un-exemplared and therefore able to regain that xp :)

[/ QUOTE ]

Just remember that if you are defeated while exemplared, you accrue debt at your actual level. This can get very debt expensive. :(

[Lord_D]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There really are powers that are not worth taking...ever.

[/ QUOTE ]

As a n00b, I'd love to see this discussed - what are total gimp powers?

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats kinda subjective, no power is completely non-useful. It's a matter of taste and wether or not your going for the cookie cut numbers build or going for unique combo's, or just wanting a power that is different.

Most people claim a power is useless when they are attempting to build a numbers based character, based solely on combat numbers (most effecient defense, most efficient damage output, or a mix of both).

Every power has its usage, at least for the time being. Some powers may be very useful in early levels and then become unused in later levels, in which case they can be respec'd out, but they did serve a purpose at one point.

Earlier I read someone saying that certain move powers were very bad, and I think that is an incorrect assumption. Yes, the power may not have worked for you, but they all have their usage. SS and SJ have comparable speeds, their uniqueness comes in that SS lowers the chances of being seen by baddies, SJ allows you to go over obstacles rather then around. Teleport is the fastest form of movement, but in order to use it for longer periods of time, it requires slots. Flight, while being the slowest of the move powers, allows for more strategic play, while your up in the air you can play recon and plan out where to go and keep away from danger more easily, most people kinda frown on Flight's real value, and even though your accuracy is lessened, you can still attack while in flight without hindering your placement (and your still not near the enemy). Unlike with SJ (you lose some movement control while attacking), or TP (you fall which can be bad if an incoming attack hits you right after hitting the ground and you end up ded), or SS (you stop moving all together while your attack animation plays out). They all have their advantages and disadvantages, its just a matter of taste and play style. To say any particular move power is a bad power, is opinion, not fact.

I guess what I'm really trying to say, is that all powers have their place, maybe not allways, but they have their use at some point or another. And it allows for more unique combo's rather then ALWAYS having the same chars in every shape pouncing about.

[Lord_D]

[ QUOTE ]
As an answer to muuto's question.
[ QUOTE ]
As a n00b, I'd love to see this discussed - what are total gimp powers?

[/ QUOTE ]

Gimped powers (If you have them, don't flame me...it's just my opinion)

Beanbag - Why? When you can take other offensive powers...why?
Taser - Don't recall anyone ever taking it...anyone ever see it?
Combustion - I guess if you six slot this bad boy...but honestly I've never seen it deal massive dmg...am I wrong?)
Air Superiority - nothing to add here....
Assault and Tactics - If you are not a defender or controller stay clear of these..the 7% buff is not worth it. Why does this power pool penalize you for your AT choice??? No other power pool does this !!
Flurry - Weak...just plain weak.
Resuscitate - Weak for a level 20 choice.....just keep Revive inspirations handy..save a power pool choice. If you wanted to be a healer...why did you not play an Empathy Defender or Controller?!?!
Hand Clap - Knockback, no damage dealt...slight chance of disorientation. R - E - S - P - E - C, find out what it means to me.

That's all, and really just an opinionated rant. If you have found these powers really work for you, kudos.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bean Bag - If disorientation is your bag, then this bag is for you.
Taser - I've seen many a devices blaster take this power and lower levels then respec it out later, its always helpful to render temporarily useless, a baddie that has gotten too close, especially since devices isn't a melee based secondary like many of the other blaster secondaries are. Plus disorientation in PvP is very useful.
Combust - For a tank is great, more AoE is good due to PunchVoke, for a blaster, not sure on its real usage, unless your playing a Blapper in which case more AoE is a good thing.
Air Superiority - Much better then most moderate single target hand to hand attacks (especially for tanks), because it has a VERY HIGH chance of knocking the target down and does descent moderate damage to boot. And as you know, a knockeddown target isn't attacking back which gives you at least one more swipe at him/her before getting back up.
Assault and Tactics - These powers are ok, a bit endurance heavy, but when stacked can be very nice. Best used when on teams.
Resuscitate - If you feel the need to be able to rez and your not a Radiation or Empath Defender/Controller, then this power is useful. Or in those situations where your rez power is still renewing and you need to rez someone else, its nice to have a suplimental rez power.
Hand Clap - Good for crowd control, if your in trouble, too many baddies on you, too many baddies attacking a particular member, poof, the mass's are disoriented, allowing you a momentary break or less baddies attacking for a few moments. Unlike sleep, you can attack disoriented baddies and they can't do anything about it till the effects are over. And knockback means less attacks coming in for a few seconds as well. Its more of a situational power, but not without its uses.