City of Heroes/Villains - Talk Me Into or Out Of It

The Game Room
21

Raza, I saw that you had asked something in the CECIL channel yesterday while I was AFK, but you were gone before I got back. You were asking about enhancement caps, I think. I didn’t see where anyone had answered you, so I’ll put it here.

The enhancement “caps” were added with a change called “Enhancement Diversification” (when people complain about “ED” in City, it has nothing to do with sex) quite a few issues ago. It put soft limits on the total amount of enhancement of a given type you could have in one power. Basically, it made it hard to get more than about 3 Single-Origin (SO) enhancements’ worth of boost in a particular attribute.

For example:

Each even-level damage SO gives you 33.3% enhancement. With the first two, you get the full effect, giving you 66.6% total. The third one will put you over 70%, which triggers the first break point; past 70%, the enhancement is reduced in effectiveness by 10%, so the third SO gives you a total of 95%, rather than 100%. Anything over 100% will be reduced to a flat 5% enhancement, so slotting 3 more SOs will only bring you to 110% total.

Short version: There’s not much point in slotting more than 3 SOs of a single type in a power. This won’t really affect you until you’re over level 22, and can start slotting SOs (and IOs that have equal or greater enhancement values).

My first and main character is an Empathy/Dark Blast defender, and I played him solo a lot. I built him as a balanced defender (big shock there, no?), and he spends as much time blasting as healing/buffing. With enough practice, you can do both seamlessly if you want. It’s worthwhile to build up your offense even if you team exclusively, because the utility of pure healing drops off in the high-level game–buffs are more useful there, for the most part, and you can contribute by blasting between buffs.

He leveled a bit slowly solo, but I never found anything but AVs and monsters that he couldn’t take out with enough preparation and patience.

22

Soloing a defender means choosing a defender set that has some self heals and buffs and a secondary that can actually take things out. Its easy to gimp them. If you pick a set that is all about buffing your team, its a lot harder. And pick a secondary that is actually going to do some damage output.

23

Thanks, Balance, for the explanation. Once I figured out the correct search terms, I was able to find some info that was very timely, as I was just starting to slot 15 IOs, and that info saved me overslotting (and I had to change my level 22 Blaster’s slotting for max effect, as he had 5 damage IOs).

By sheer coincidence, my Defender is also Empathy/Dark Blast. But I’ve built him as a pure-healer: I currently (at level 14) have just the one offensive power I got in the beginning; everything else has been heals/buffs/flight. I know it doesn’t have to be this way, but I did it to really focus on the healing/team aspect, as all my other toons live solo lives (especially my 22 Ice Blaster). He’s very specialized, but so far he’s lived up to my expectations; no deaths yet! (thanks to Absorb Pain, the “Oh Shit” button).

24

And now I’m on to yet another character on Virtue: Arrow Jack.

I originally had taken the advice to create a scrapper, but I kept getting my ass kicked from time to time. So I created a blaster, archery version. I seem to be doing pretty well, as the strategy seems to be to keep ones distance and run away a lot. I’m good at running away.

I played for a little while this evening and leveled him up to a 5 pretty quickly. I think I’m going to stick with him this week.

25

Another Ex-CoH/CoV player checking in.

This game has many of the same concepts common to many mmo games…tanking, healing, crowd control, aggro-management, but is very solo friendly. Even more so than WoW. It doesn’t have the gear/loot mechanics common to other games, other than high end enhancements/salvage/costume parts. IIRC, it also has a no roll looting system…you get what you get, so no arguing with other players over loot.

The character generation/customization options are hands down the best I’ve ever seen in an online game. In some games, many or most same-level characters of a particular class look pretty much the same, because they all wearing the same gear. That does not happen in CoH/V, because except for certain rare parts, and a few level restricted accessories, you can control most aspects of your character’s look. You can have several different looks, and toggle between them at will…all without affecting your combat effectiveness.

Don’t like your powers? You can always re-pick them, either by using a free “re-spec” awarded by the game fairly generously, or earning a re-spec by completing a trial.

From my experience, the Villian side was better designed than the Hero side…things appear a little smoother, and you can tell they learned from some of the mistakes/player-annoying things on the Hero side.

Unless things have changed drastically since I left (about a year ago—right about the time of the Rikti Invasion thing), there’s really not much of an “endgame” like you see in other games. No huge raids to slay “dragons”.

I wished I’d tried the PVP stuff in the game. If I burn out on WoW, I’ll probably go back and check it out.

Also, check out the official forums for that game. You’ll find lots of advice on the various classes, strategies, builds, and other stuff that will help you learn the game.

26

I’m curious. I haven’t yet done much on the Villain side; what do you consider better on the Monty Burns side of the game?

27

The Rogue Isles seem more “real” You can tell they applied the lesson learned from CoH.

A lot of the older neighborhoods in Paragon City have a sameness to them. One section of Steel Canyon, say, looks a lot like the others. Not so on the villain side.

I just couldn’t play over there, though. Collecting “patients” for the Vahz left a bad taste in my mouth.

28

Just out of curiosity – I don’t have any gaming periperals; I play this game (and every game I have) solely by mouse and keyboard.

Is this game compatible with, or enhanced in any way by, a game controller? How about a headset/mic deal?

I might convince myself to invest in those things (not only for this game) if that were the case.

29

I consider the structure of arcs and contacts to be much better villainside, on the whole. It’s more streamlined in a lot of ways, particularly in the fact that it doesn’t send you between zones nearly as much.

Say you’re in King’s Row, heroside, running missions for Juan Jimenez. The first mission might be in KR, the next in Atlas, the third in the Hollows, and the fourth in Perez. He’s also likely to send you on three or four hunt missions. He offers no arcs, no badge missions, no temp powers. He’s fairly typical of a heroside contact at his level. They do get better later, in that most later contacts have story arcs, but they still tend to send you all over the place. The exceptions are newer zones with self-contained arcs, like the Hollows, Faultline, and Striga. The new zones tend to follow the villain contact/arc model.

Mr. Bocor in Port Oakes, on the other hand, will send you to do things in Port Oakes, so you have less useless running around. He has a pretty neat arc, a badge mission, and a mission that gives you a temp power that allows you to summon a zombie. He’s pretty typical of a villain contact at his level. Later villain contacts are less free with temp powers and badges, but many have more than one story arc. (I like story arcs. Also, with I13, story arc completion will evidently award Merits, which will make them even better.)

The broker system is better integrated than the detective system, too; it was created for villains, then grafted onto the labyrinthine contact system heroside. If you want to chase specific storylines or enemy groups, it’s easier to pick and choose villainside.

There’s also the fact that Mayhem missions are vastly more entertaining than Safeguards (though I actually like Safeguards). All that stuff that vandals and random mobs blow up in Safeguards, costing you time? In Mayhem missions, you get to blow everything up, and you get time bonuses and badges for doing so. Hitting a parking lot with an Area of Effect attack at high level is a reward unto itself.

I don’t see any way you could play the game with a controller, honestly. I use practically the whole keyboard (and my masterminds use the ten-key pad as well). It doesn’t seem practical, unless you’re talking about something like an Alpha-Grip (a funky controller-shaped keyboard thing).

Some of us use Skype to talk while teaming. I use a desk microphone for that, though I’m thinking about shopping for a better one, as the traffic noise it picks up sometimes bothers the others.

30

It’s a good thing they do kick ass. If I had to complete Safeguards to get contacts each time I went to a new hero zone, I’d be irritated.

I’m actually not a big fan of villainside. Aesthetically speaking, I have to admit I prefer the cleanliness of Paragon City. Even Aeon City, a small area in Cap Au Diable which is supposed to be clean and high-tech, looks grungy to me. Gameplay-wise, I find I prefer the hero archetypes a lot more than the villain ATs. The villain ATs are interesting, to be sure; I love the Mastermind concept. But it took me a lot of false starts with villains before I actually settled on one I enjoy playing, my Super Strength/Electric Armor Brute. I’ve never gotten higher than level 20 villainside because of all the false starts, so I’m interested in seeing the higher end zones. It is growing on me, I’ll admit. But before finding my Brute, I far preferred to spend time with my Scrappers and Blasters than my Corruptor and Mastermind.

I’m positively salivating at unlocking the villain epics. I didn’t pay them much attention until I saw what they were capable of when teaming in Cimerora.

31

Timed out on the Edit page:

Also, oh my god Brutes are fun. If you like causing damage, Brutes leave Scrappers and Blasters in the dust. The sheer violence I’m capable of is breathtaking.

“I’m on the Brute Squad.” “You are the Brute Squad!”

32

Sorry for the delayed reply. Balance pretty much covered it. Hero side will have you spending a lot of time running around…and at pre-travel power levels that is particularly annoying. Villian side seems to let you get right into your mission doors with out “zone hopping” so much.

I really loved the mayhem missions. Running through goody-goody land, flipping cars and raising hell is fun.

33

I don’t think it’s been mentioned; but you should do Police Band missions in Kings Row ( or Newspaper missions villainside ) to get at least one Safeguard/Mayhem every few levels, starting with level 5. They give you useful temporary powers, including a jet pack from 5-9, and a jump pack at 10-14. The Hollows is a lot less irritating if you can just fly over groups you can’t handle.

34

I’ve heard they changed the Hollows, but I haven’t actually taken a character there literally for two years. Stop me if I’m wrong, but I heard they’ve added a hospital so if you die in the Hollows you don’t have to run back from Atlas Park. I don’t know if they’ve changed the levels and numbers of mobs. But **Der Trihs **is right. Getting the jet pack will make your life easier overall in game especially in the hollows. For a low level character it can be a super duper pain to try and nvavigate on the ground and avoid mobs of trolls that are +2 or +3 of your level.

The good thing is you don’t have to go to the Hollows at all. When you get the first hollows mission to talk to Wincott you can either drop it (I usually do) or you can go there talk to him and NOT accept his mission. You can level just as well in King’s Row or radio missions. I would suggest that a new player at least tries the Hollows missions once, though. They can be fun and its never been hard to find a team in the Hollows in my experience.

35

Yes, there’s a hospital ( and a store, and a trainer for levelling ); and sort of; the levels are the same, but they changed the numbers of enemies in much of the place. They’ve also added new mobs, and some new behaviors and NPC chatter.

36

They also fiddled with door placement so that you’re not getting missions halfway across the zone, with +5 level mobs between you and it. I admittedly haven’t spent much time in the Hollows since they revamped it – I tend to take sewer teams to Kings Row and go from there – but from what I understand it’s a much more livable zone.

37

I wonder if they’ve fixed the door missions that lead to somewhere they shouldn’t. Like when you get a mission to go to a bank but the mission door is a cave entrance or sewer. That was pretty silly and it ruined the immersion for me. ope they got to that one.

38

That throws me too, but the idea in those cases is that you enter the bank (or lab or whatever) through the sewers or cave system. Why you start at the main entrance is beyond me, but I have seen missions with the intro description saying as much.

39

After being gone for awhile from the game one thing i am happy that they have fixed are pets. Masterminds can now walk through their pets instead of being blocked into a room by a pet that won’t move. I’ve actually died because of being trapped in a cul-de-sac by my pets before.

40

Same here. I used to have Teleport as my travel power on several Masterminds just so I could teleport past the idiots.