I’m waaaay for changing the names of ranks in CECIL. I’ll give Ryle the benefit of the doubt and say he was in a rush when coming up with titles 
And N9IWP, I can invite to SG too. Just don’t send an email because I always forget to check that.
Ah quit yer whining! You got Shaun of the Dead and there’s no hint of it even coming to the U.S.
I like the new titles. And I agree with the guidelines for who should be which rank.
I also like the three-character limit to avoid hitting our limit too soon. Only character I have in so far is Super-Collider. I think my main alts will be Brainiac4 and Sgt. Soldier. I’ll apply for membership with them next time I play 'em.
And tonight I should be playing from about 9pm Central. Super-Collider if there’s a level 12ish group, otherwise leveling Brainiac4 or Sgt. Soldier from 2/3 on up.
heh.
Maybe we should set up the Dopers International Swapshop!
Hello everyone! Couple of things to say.
I’ve stopped with the alts, I know what I want now. I only have three characters and I’ll switch between them in order to help everybody out, they are;
RyleDup 14 Mutant Scrapper Spines/Regen
Leader Ryle 8 Natural(?) Defender Empathy/Psychic
Agent Ryle 10 Natural Blaster Assault Rifle/Devices
This are my only characters now, and I’ll be hoping to lead you all into battle!
I guess I will be taking partial leadership of CECIL since I formed it and not many others really want the job, I believe we should have 3-5 different top ranked people, which will help manage CECIL with me.
About the rank titles, the problem is they are apparently limited by text, and Illuminati Captain gets shortened to Illuminati Capt-, so if you want to submit names I suggest you make em a bit shorter, I’ll be happy to change the names (we came up with them real quickly).
About the captain rank, I think we’ll be promoting those who have been in CECIL for quite a while as captains, so they can help with the inviting. I’m usually on at least every day, so I can invite most, but the captains can do the rest.
By the way, about the groups I lead, see, I love to have everything go nice and smoothly, but sometimes people lag behind and stay not doing anything even though everyone is fully healed, I get a bit impatient and end up pullin something and gettin myself killed, so basically I just hope whoever the tank is he can see the team situation and move along as neccesary :).
The reason I have three characters is because we tend to have a mixed bunch of classes, and sometimes we really need a healer, or a scrapper, and when we got those, I love blastin’ away heh.
Caio everyone, hope to see you ingame!
Oh, I forgot, a quick note about groups, there are two types of groups that are the most efficient, either a group with 50% or more of the members being three levels or higher than the other half of the group, or a group where everyone is within 3 lvls, examples.
Group of 5, levels 8, 9, 10, 8, and 5.
This group will work fantastic, the 8’s arent too far from 10, and the 5 can be sidekicked by the level 10 up to level 9, so you end up with a group of 2 8’s, 2 9’s and a 10, very good working.
However, if you have a group of levels 8, 9, 14, 9, and 8, you run into problems, the 14 can only sidekick one of them leaving the rest at a lower level, since you need to fight lvl 14 or higher mobs just for the XP to be any good, you end up with 2 people fighting well and splitting the XP 4 ways, its half the normal XP.
I’m just saying this so we can optimize groups, it can be annoying to hunt for a while and barely get anywhere.
Some additional info on my characters:
The Daring (just earned the title last night) Harold Levin
The Stone Sentinel (that’s an e, not an a)
Purple Pixie, Mutant, Controller, Illusion Control, Radiation Emission
Harold’s my main, the others are alts. I’m on most days, give me a holler.
Also, I’m available to work on the webpage, as I’m unemployed at the moment.
verbenabeast, we’ve got to get USAvenger and
First Daughter (my Captain America ripoff, er, tribute; her in-game bio says she went to “Steve Rogers University”!) together for at least a snapshot.
Character Updates:
First Daughter, lvl 8 Tech Blaster, Energy Blast/Devices
Steppin’ Razor (not Steppen’), lvl 10
I guess Steppin’ Razor is my main character - he’s currently the only one in CECIL, though he doesn’t seem quite as fun to play as some other ones I’ve played around with. He may fade away eventually.
hehe this game is addictive…
my char is a scrapper (err lvl 4 right now i think) name EricDraven
and no I am not a fanboy of The Crow, I just thought it would be a little different… at least until I meet the other 274 The Crow wannabes!
Stilleto has reached level 14. I HIGHLY recommend Super Jump — it’s damn near flying.
Wow! Last night was lethal! Now, I’ve gone on that very mission solo, and it’s one of those reverse-difficulty ones, where the start are above your level, and it ends with a three level lower LT boss.
If you find one of those, it’s great XP as a team, but fighting your way back out is lethal, as you wind up with multiple LTs a level higher than anyone in the team.
Sorry I couldn’t go trollhunting after that, but had reality stuff to do.
If ever I get outta debt (500 to go I think) I’ll be a 13. Then I guess I’ll take on a few solo missions so I can hoard XP till I get to 14. I’ve been jonesin’ for super jump ever since level 6.
Heh, last night was certainly an experience. A fun experience, but an experience nonetheless. I’m still trying to get the hang of the tanking thing. I understand the idea of not just wading into the thick of cluster of bad guys you come across, but eventually it all seems to degenerate into chaos and I’m trying to figure out which guy is the biggest threat to be taunting and then I get on a guy just to have someone blast/punch him halfway across the room and my Pulverize button is saying “You’re too far away, you frickin’ newbie!”
Any tips or stuff would be appreciated. I understand the basic concept from my years in EQ (tanker holds the mob, blasters turn it to cinders, controllers try to hold things back, etc) though I know there’s more flexibility in the classes; i.e. you can make a controller with basically no crowd control abilities.
So much more difficult than soloing where I just walk up to some guy trying to steal Dana’s purse and swipe a war mace upside his face 
Here’s how I’ve been playing Deus X as a Tanker in a team. Stand by while your ranged attack teammates select their targets and wait for them to fire. A lot of the time this will pull the target mob out of the crowd and it will charge your team.
Immediately target the charging mob then hit “F” followed by your primary attack. “F” (in the default keyboard map anyway) causes you to follow whatever you have targeted so you start charging the mob. You will probably get the “out of range” error message when you activate your attack but don’t worry; it’s queued up and ready to go.
As soon as you get in range of the mob, your attack goes off. The majority of the time the mob will stop and turn to attack you, ignoring the Blaster it was charging earlier. By this point the rest of the mobs have probably started charging your team as well. When they get to where you are fighting, several of them will probably stop to attack you as well. The ones that continue past are hopefully not enough to overwhelm your blasters.
You have now successfully kept a number of the mobs away from your more defenseless team members. Of course, they are now hitting away at you but that’s why your primary power is Defense. You just need to keep them occupied for a while.
Yeah, when things degenerate into a general melee it can be hard to determine your next target. I generally scan for anything that cons orange or red and charge it on the assumption that it poses the biggest threat. Otherwise I attack whatever is attacking me at the moment or any of the mobs that seem to be hanging on the fringes of the battle using ranged weapons themselves.
I was trying to follow this last night while teamed and it seemed to work pretty well. (And I made it to level 11 too!)
Thanks, that was helpful. I didn’t know Follow worked on mobs, being used to Everquest where follow is for group members only. At least now I’ll have less issues with my target getting slammed thirty feet down the hall and me standing there like a yahoo 
I’ve been determining threat about the same as you. First, anything charging the blasters/defenders (higher health mobs take precedence since I assume the nearly dead ones will eat it from AE blaster attacks anyway), then any other large mobs and then guys with ranged attacks sniping at the team (especially those stupid Reaver guys with the crossbows that slow you).
Any other tips would be appreciated, but I already feel better about what I’m doing.
Well, since I tend to play healer/support/ranged classes across games, I don’t know how useful this’ll be.
(All these "you"s are generic, not directed at anyone in particular)
If I have a limited area heal, please don’t run around like a crazed chicken when you get low on health. I’m trying to get fairly close to you so I can cast Heal and when you keep running away, it makes my life a lot more difficult, especially cause, in Wizard in Green’s case, it takes a while to recharge. If nothing else, try and break off the fighting and come stand by me. It’ll only take a second.
Tanking is all about aggro. Basically, you want them to be more pissed at YOU, than at me (me being the people standing in the back healing, raining down fire and bullets, etc. that will crumple up like cheap paper if touched). If something starts rushing the healer-type(s), use your Taunt on it. Unlike most other games, us ranged folk in CoH can actually handle ourselves pretty well, so when something starts heading for the support players, we can do some damage.
If nothing else, rush the guy that’s the highest level and start pounding away. The Blasters can pick off the lower-level guys fairly easily or use their Knockdown/Hold/Whatever powers to delay them. However, if you know the bad guys well enough, go after the most dangerous one, like the Madness Mages or Life Mages if you’re fighting CoT.
If it’ll help you, here’s my rough targeting order when I’m playing Lysander:
- Anything attacking me or the healer types
- If there’s a good-sized, closely packed group still standing when my rifle Grenade recharges, it’s going into the group.
- Are the tanks/fighters getting low on health? Are they fighting something big and nasty that’s wearing em down? If they are, I add my fire to their attacks so we can bring it down.
- Crowd Control. Is there anything wounded/low-level enough that I can bring it down with one shot (of whatever happens to be recharged)? The more enemies we clear, the less they can attack us. And I also remember dying a few times when we’d managed to get everything in the group down to quarter health, but never actually killed any of them.
Of course, I have the luxury of standing in the back and watching the whole group and this assumes you have a good-sized, fairly coordinated group like we tend to run. Since you’re a tank, you can just charge in and we follow your lead. 
I’m glad for tank/fighter types, I just don’t have the patience to play em for very long.
As a “veteran” Tanker (what, we’ve been live for 2-3 weeks now?), if I’m going to wade into a mass of brutes to protect my team, I’ll select the toughest one (unless a controler has some spell on him like rad poisoning), click F, then jump into the midst. I keep my Brawl set to auto (ctrl+click the power) so that while my other punches are charging, he’s still getting off a few here and there. Once that one is down, I hit Tab to switch targets which is faster than trying to find one with your cursor, hit F, and repeat.
One thing to watch for with Tab. You have to be somewhat facing the group in order to target one close. If you Tab while turned away, you might accidentally target a group down the hall and go charging after them before you mean to.
We Tankers really depend on Defenders to watch our health in situations like that. It’s real easy to get stuck in the middle of a bunch of enemy punches and be unable to rn/leap out of their midsts until you are lying face down on the floor.
Heres my strategy as a blaster;
I run up near a group of mobs, hide behind an object, throw caltrops in a place that they’ll have to run to to get me, but it has to be a narrow place, so they can’t avoid the caltrops.
Then, the tricky part comes in, I strafe out, and then start strafing back in but right before I’m behind the object/wall I hit the attack and that way while I’m shooting I’m covered behind the wall, this gives me the maximum defense, you may see me spazzing around walls running back and forth firing, trust me, it’s effective.
Now, the caltrops are fantastic, when I’m fighting a mob 1-on-1 I can kill it without ever getting hurt because of caltrops. They make mobs go into ‘fear’ mode where they try to run away, but because the caltrops are between me and them, that means that they’ll try to come get me, think “Oh shit I gotta run!” and then head back, as soon as they get out, they think “Hey, he’s back there!”, and the process repeats itself a couple times, til they get fed up and run away for about 20 seconds, then they come back and continue.
While they’re in the “run-away” stage, I can strafe out, and shoot while strafing back in, the time that I’m exposed isn’t enough for them to turn around AND shoot me, so it makes them do a turn, then I hit them, then they can’t hit me, so they run away again. I never get hit, I do dmg to them, all works out.
Now, this isn’t always the case in groups of enemies, because some of them will always be looking at me when I strafe out to shoot, unless I’m real lucky, so I get shot a couple times by the ranged guys, but I get to toss off my grenades.
When I’m with everybody, I wish I could get you people to follow my strategy, it would save tremendously on deaths / health / endurance, basically it goes like this
Everyone hides behind a corner that has mobs around it.
I drop caltrops in the narrow place beyond the corner.
I strafe-fire at a mob.
Everyone waits behind corner.
Mobs all get stuck in caltrops.
Melee rushes out and attacks the bosses / lieutenants
Ranged strafe-shoot with me.
Healers sit on the corner and AE heal the tanks or strafe-heal the tanks.
Caltrops will make the mobs fire a LOT less often, and we pretty much just mop the floor with them.
What do you guys think of this strat?
I was trying to go with that last night, dancing out beyond the caltrops and picking on the bosses and LTs, to keep their attention away from you, then dashing back in to drag 'em off. Unfortunately, too many higher level bosses and LTs and they all aggroed on me at once and then it all fell apart.
Works pretty well, but when everything falls apart, everything falls apart.
Yeah I know man, last night was crazy, but hopefully we can get down the strategy another time. If we get a controller in to this, we could have them immobilized in the caltrops, that would be fantastic.