City of Heroes Super Team FINAL JOINING INFO

Cafe Society
381

Tactics depend a lot on the powers of those you’re teaming with. C.E.C.I.L. teams seem to be fairly laidback (compared to some pickup teams I’ve been on). Just stick with the team and go with the flow.

In general, a team should not aggro more enemies than it handle. Usually this means someone should snipe or taunt a badguy (the pull). Often more than one will come. If it’s too many, then everyone runs. Otherwise, don’t attack the pull until it’s outside aggro range of its non-aggro’d friends.

Let the tanks and scrappers have the most aggro. That means others should mostly attack the badguys who are currently being attacked by the tanks and scrappers. It’s better to focus attacks on a single badguy to kill it faster. Kill the bosses and lieutenants first. They do the most damage per second and are most likely to kill a hero. They also have powers (holds, stuns, raise zombie, etc.).

Area of effect attacks are tricky. They are very helpful, but can be really dangerous for picking up aggro. Be ready to escape. Which brings up another hint: if you have to escape, don’t use hover! It’s too slow. Drop to the ground and sprint.

Don’t attack badguys who have been immobilized by a controller (unless it’s a boss). Concentrate on taking out the enemies who are actively hurting your teammates. If you notice a teammate is hurt bad (keep an eye on the team list), attack whoever is attacking him. This will distract the badguy and give your friend a chance to escape.

If you’re hurt bad (your health bar turns yellow or red) disengage! Do whatever the team’s healer needs you to do to be healed easily. You’re no use to the team when you’re dead. You can somtimes run to the mission exit, leave and come back for a nice heal.

Don’t stray far from the team. Many defenders can buff their teammates, but only when they’re close together. Plus there’s safety in numbers.

Finally, know your own powers. If you think you could use them more effectively if the team tried a different tactic, let us know. Communication is the key to a fun and effective team.

382

Congrats, Skillet38. I can’t wait for Culex to hit 20, but for that to happen I’ve got to stop running around Paragon taking pictures of level 37 monsters.

CandidGamera, I haven’t worked with you, maybe I will with one of my low characters one day. A lot of the getting-by-as-a-Scrapper stuff in this game just involves monster knowledge, and what your party is - so you know what monsters to attack, what not to attack, when to boost your defenses, when you gotta put on Sprint and run your little legs off. Big thing, is to pull out your sword by pressing one of your sword attack keys BEFORE you run up and whap somebody, as that saves a good deal of time. Seriously. If you ever want to pair up wither sidekicked to Culex to explore some of the higher level places, or work with one of my lowbies, I’d be happy to give you a “monster tour” or something. You know, point out what monsters to avoid, which to rush, what attacks they have and how to avoid them, etc., if nobody else has done that sort of thing for you yet. (I get kinda bored on Culex sometimes and want to help out everybody else.) Defender’s easier, IMO, particularly the bubbler you’ve got - bubble your buds, PFF when low on health, bubble your buds, snipe something, bubble your buds, stand around getting bored. Heh.

383

Thanks. I think the Ninja is currently sidekicked to Jim Beam … which is unusual, as I believe he’s too close to Jim’s level, unless Jim gained one since our last jaunt. I keep getting the red thought bubble everywhere I go…

Always looking for advice because this is my first MMORPG… and I rarely play the FPS that have controls that would’ve prepared me for this. I mean, I played Duke Nukem 3D, and a little Quake … and that’s about it.

384

/unsidekick will take care of that. Learned that last night.

I can’t emphasize enough that you should run when your tank says, “Run.”

“Oh @#%$&!,” is another good clue for your ranged guy to stay back… way back."

I had fun with you all last night, even though I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn after Lysander got dropped.

In related news, Earthfall has met his demise, and has gone to that magic armor scrap heap in the sky.

I’m test driving Defenders right now.

385

Hey, we kept you guys mostly alive in an area 10 levels above you. But yeah, it felt weird to be the cautious one in the group. It’s how I normally play solo. Tag a baddie, run back, drawing him away, wait for him to give up, run in while he’s walking back, pick him off from behind.

I have to say, La Pucelle has nothing like the damage output of my old Fire/Gadgets blaster from beta.

386

If you want a fun Scrapper to play, try Claws. The damage per hit is lower than some other power sets, but you don’t use a lot of Endurance and you attack fast. My character Jade O’Neil can alternate Brawl and Swipe with virtually no pause in between, and that’s without any recharge enhancers or anything. Plus the claws look cool; they’re about 3 feet long, and you see lots of whirly flashes of death.

387

Some possibly helpful information on controls… selecting one of your teammates, either with the mouse (by clicking on their character or their listing in the team window) or with the keyboard (using a keybind to select teammate 1, for example), will show you who they are targeting, and if you launch an attack, it will be directed at that target.

So, when the blaster is pulling, if you select the blaster, you’ll see who they will be shooting at – and can simply type “f” to “follow” (or charge, more likely) that target.

As noted previously by Justice Blues, you can set an attack to autofire by CTRL-clicking it in your powers tray. I found this very helpful as a tanker, not so much as a blaster, defender or controller.

388

Hey, Toaster. You need to feed the hamsters over at the C.E.C.I.L. board. It’s making the SDMB look zippy.

In other news, Thermocline is ever-so-slowly closing in on level 14 and Flight. I cannot wait!

389

Sorry, it’s server maintenance day or something, it should be better by tonight I presume. Happens once a month I think, or something. No big whoop.

390

And now it’s back up, hehe. So you can go post there now.

391

This game is warping my fragile little mind. Everytime I see a chain-link fence around a mostly empty lot in a commerical or TV show, I keep expecting to see Clockworks.

392

So, you guys missed the Memorial Day Parade. Ascendant was there, made a nice speech and everything.

393

The Memorial Day Parade Threads.

First, Who is this Ascendant guy anyhow?

Second, the speech he gave, can be seen in the Front Page.

394

So, I’m in Talos Island with a big team (levels 22 - 25), and we’re just street cleaning. We had just finished off a big gang and were standing there admiring ourselves and recovering end. I have a bit of distance from the rest of the group and suddenly I notice this group of little monkeys moving really fast towards the rest of my team. I chuckled to myself, “look at the cute little monkeys, never seen those before”. I highlighted one and it said Level 34 Rikti Space Monkey. I suddenly found the reverse gear on my lev 22 scrapper Stilleto. As I was backing away nervously, and franky, in a bit of shock, I noticed that 3 of my team were dead, and 2 more were in the process of dying, including a very tough lev 24 tanker who I had hardly ever seen wounded.

The more alert of my team started to get some distance, and I thought I was in the clear when I noticed I had taken a hit for… oh 300 points or so. It’s amazing how fast you can activate Super Jump when you’re frightened. I got away, and our team got on the broadcast channel saying words to the effect of, “Watch your ass. There are lev 34 Rikti space monkeys in Talos!!”.

A bit dazed and confused, out ream regrouped and set out again, cursing the stinking alien scum who came out of nowhere. We passed an alley, and sure enough, there were the damn space monkeys again, not aggroing, just huddled up… with the lev 34 Rikti Headmen. Quite a site I must say. We sent out another warning on Broadcast.

In mere moments some very high level heroes showed up. A level 30 scrapper and a couple of defenders, bout the same rank. The scrapper got all buffed from the defenders, and waded into the monkey swarm. He lasted maybe 3 seconds.

From my (I thought) safe distance, I watched this Very short melee, took a monkey hit for, oh 250 hits, and SJd my ass far away Very fast. Well, the monkeys and headmen were aggroed by then and came out of the alley into a main block of the city. It was on!

By now a lot of high level heroes had shown up and (from a rooftop) I watched the biggest battle I’ve ever seen. Lev 40 blasters were dropping like flies, but so were the monkeys…finally the headmen started to succumb to the (guessing) 50 or so heroes that were wailing at them… I saw my chance, and jumped onto a controller held headman, and along with about 10 other brave melee types, wailed on his ass with my katana. I got 2 hits in before he cracked.

It was quite amazing. The sky was simply thick with hovering/flying heroes, and to see that much firepower unleashed at once was breathtaking. Take the number of heroes you see gathered around Lady Liberty on a busy day, and quadruple it. Everybody wanted a piece of the Rikti.

Stilleto, signing off

395

Does anyone else have severe connection problems? I have a great computer and a fast cable modem. I have to trouble with my other online game but this one… My downloads take forever. Otherwise I’m fine as long as there aren’t too many players on, but the closer it is to 8 pm central, the more my display looks like a slide show. I’ll have several laggy bouts of losing connection to the mapserver and eventually will just crash to login screen. If I have to go to the hospital, I’ll crash so hard I have to re-boot. If it’s anywhere near 8 pm, it won’t let me log back in. Anyone else have this?

396

I don’t have the slowing down… much. Occasionally I’ll get what seems to be a burst of lag… which half the time is followed by a game crash and one of those ‘Report Error’ windows.

Of course, at other times, I’m getting complete involuntary system reboots, as most of the people who’ve teamed with me can tell you.

397

I’ve had some odd connection issues, but nothing as bad as you’re seeing. I’ll lose the mapserver about once or twice a day, and once (only once thankfully), I couldn’t log back in with that character for quite some time.

Other than losing the mapserver, the only time I saw any type of network issue was entering Atlas Park, with a new character, at about 9:30pm EDT.

Bride of Ash - Level 12 Mutation Tanker (fire/fire)

398

DeVena, I’ve noticed that sometimes the CoH executable fails to close properly. I quit and get back to the desktop, but looking in the task manager I can see CoH still running.

I mention this because several times before I figured out what was going on, I would play the game while at least one instance of CoH from a previous session was still going. The two (or more) CoH executables compete for memory and network resources. This can causes severe lag and long load times.

The solution is after quitting the game, check the task manager and delete any CoH processes you see still running. After doing this regularly the game runs much smoother.

On a related note: does anyway else get problems from alt-tabbing into or out of the game? Half the time I alt-tab from the game, it gets a mapserver disconnect error. Very annoying for trying to check email while playing.

Plug: I’ve started an Official Character Sheet Thread over at Culex’s C.E.C.I.L. message board. You get to it indirectly through my sig.

399

I’ve lost the mapserver once (unfortunately, just after I attacked a group of Lost :frowning: ) but that’s the only time I’ve actually been dropped. (I’ve been dropped a few times when I’ve gone afk for too long but that is probably deliberate.) Once or twice I’ve had things get pretty sluggish during a large free-for-all but never any real problems.

A couple of times last night my display did this odd jumping back-and-forth when I entered combat but usually moving forward or backwards a step or two corrected it. First time I had encountered that particular problem.

400

Just got my first issue of City Of Heroes, the comic book, in the mail today. It’s an average book. Not something I’d buy off the rack but can’t complain as a freebie. Looks like “featured heroes” from the game are more or less screenshots and names tucked in the back pages, not part of the story. Still it’s a cool way to show off people’s creativity.

Now I know I saw another comic starring a new hero coming to Paragon City. I think there is a preview of it on the CoH site. This is a different story altogether about super hero roomates meeting up with a veteran of the Rikti Wars. Like I say, fair, but nothing outstanding so far.

Now when they feature Max Carnage, Mutha Nature, Pestilenz, or Clevlnd Steamer (doubtful), i may change my tune :slight_smile: