OK, so I just gotta wait till I can get the targeting drone (which I hear is good), trip mines, and cloaknig deivce. Got it.
Oh, quick question:
What happened to the fifth column? They used to be all over Steel Canyon, now all I see are council? Did they replace the 5th? Was there an in-game explaination (did a bunch of heroes take them down?)
Oh, and I have found out that a adrk/dark defender can seriously rock ass. Darkest night is my savior (did the Dr.Vahz mission with one of them, the ol’ Doc himself hit our scrapper maybe five times the entire battle, and me once (cause I had to get him first with my snipe, before darkest night was used.))
The Council overtook the 5th Column at the beginning of I3. I’m still a little unsure of the specifics, but it had something to do with the Kheldians.
There was a period of about two weeks that spontanious gunfights would break out on the streets between the Council and the 5th Column. It really sucked if you got caught in the middle, as they would forget about killing each other and start shooting at you.
Run up to AV. Fully cloaked, of course. Have friends ready to grab aggro when you zip away. Set Time Bomb. When you finish standing up, count 10 seconds. At the very count of 10, set Trip Mine. As soon as you can move again, zip away around a corner. 2 explosions will occur at once, preventing knockback from one making an enemy not get hit by the other.
Street hunting. See 2 tasty groups to hit, and want to hit them both so that nobody takes the 2nd spawn. Drop Time Bomb in the center of one, run off to other, drop Trip Mine. Watch the Tripped ones die, finish off survivors, run to Timed group, watch them drop, finish off survivors.
Run up to nasty boss such as Fake Nemesis, Dark Ring Mistress, Gunslinger. Do AV maneuver. Engage in normal fight after explosions. (If you are me, on Plagatus, you shall at this time turn on Whirlwind and autofollow the boss while fighting for great justice.)
My Plagatus is 50. He is an Ardevmun, so all of his attacks have 6 damage in them, except for the two bombs, who being drops are not affected by self-buffs, thus they have 1 accuracy and 5 damage, all being of course 50++, or 51++, or 52+ enhancements. Time Bomb has a bug where its base accuracy is lower than it should be – this is fixed in I4. Many people find it less useful due to the accuracy drop, although I personally hardly notice it at all with the 1 accuracy. It may be merely 65% base instead of 75%. I’m not sure. While it doesn’t do much nastiness to most AVs, it can still take off 5% of their health or so, plus the knockback of the two bombs can take the AVs off their feet for a few moments, which gives me time to run off and whatever is going to tank the AV time to run up and aggro it.
Bosses take around 40-50% damage from the combo…of course the only bosses I face are Fake Nemesis which I believe are a bit weak to Smashing. I don’t remember offhand. Still, it’s nice as a combo, almost kills off lieutenants, so that’s nice too.
I’m this close to finishing World of Warcraft, and I’ve been really missing my CoH scrapper, Carapace. One of the main reasons I quit CoH a while back, though, was because the missions got really damned repetitive- talk to contact, contact tells you to go to building in other zone, clear out building, return to contact, contact tells you to defeat x number of y baddies, wash, rinse, repeat.
Have they added new mission types? I was seriously bored out of my gourd after a while- the only reason I enjoyed the game was playing “dress-up” with my hero.
They’ve added some new tile sets but new mission types won’t be until I5. At least I think that’s where they’re going to put the non-combat missions that Statesman has been talking about.
The details are still a trifle vague (at least to me), but I’ll explain as much as I know. Evidently, there was a shadow organization within the Column all along. Requiem’s backstory and one of the Column/Council arcs involve beings of darkness called Nictus and something called a Shadow Seed; the Nictus and the Seed were involved in empowering some of the Column’s altered soldiers (Dark Vampyrii and War Wolves). With the release of I3, the world became aware that Kheldians–alien energy-beings who could merge with hosts of other species–were among us. The Nictus are evil Kheldians who possess hosts by force; warshades are Nictus-type Kheldians who have turned good, and peacebringers are Kheldians who merge with willing hosts. (I would guess that there’s more detail in the Kheldian-specific story arcs, but I haven’t done them.) When word got around, the Column realized it had been bossed around by aliens for decades and fighting broke out between the Nictus-controlled faction (the Council, led by someone/something called “the Center”) and the rest of the Column. There were huge ongoing battles in the streets between Council and Column troops, in which (once someone aggroed them), members of the two factions actually killed each other (not just the “fight” emote mobs do). The Council won, and took the Column’s place. Some of them–the Galaxy type–use Nictus powers openly.
D3s are great. I have one, and I frequently duo her with another D3 played by a friend from work. Now that’s safety.
I have a question about SGs, and administration of same.
My main character in Champion, Coldzone, started up a super-group called High Sociey, and he is of course the leader. Lute Skywatcher’s two alts in that server are captains, as is my SO. All of my alts in that server are rank-and-file members, and Coldzone has since recruited a couple more members.
Is there a limit to the number of Captains an SG can have? I wanted to designate all of my alts Captains so I could recruit no matter who I happened to be playing at a given time, but it wouldn’t let me. I then guessed that there can only be three Captains, so I tried to temporarily demote one so I could promote one of the alts I wanted to play. It wouldn’t let me promote or demote anyone – those “buttons” were just “faded out.” Yes, this was as Coldzone; I would think the leader would be able to do as he pleased, but I’m being stymied.
I finally got around to changing my lame-ass username to something a little more colorful and in keeping with SDMB tradition. Since you folks are the ones I interact with most regularly, I thought I’d let you know. Of course my CoH Global Chat name is still Nordic.
Has anybody gotten to see what the big server shutdown was about? I’m at work so I won’t be able to get on the game until tonight.
Guess I was wrong. They were still bug fixing a day ago, so this doesn’t bode well. The joys of software development; NCSoft must’ve been turning some pretty big screws, knowing the Cryptic would experience the storm.
