Demon Summoning for Masterminds.
Ah, bummer. This character’s a blaster. I tried playing a Mastermind character, but it didn’t take me long to remember why I never liked playing a necromancer in Diablo II.
So now that I have two characters past level 20, and have designed alternate costumes for them …
Bruised Violet 1
Bruised Violet 2
(I didn’t realize until I started designing BV’s second costume that I’d picked the same face for both of these characters. Though you can hardly tell.)
… is there a way to automate, via scripting/macro, costume switching? I’m finding it annoying having to hit \k, select the animation I want, then drag the whole costume window off to the side to where it’s not covering up the character so that I can actually see the animation, and then finally click on the new costume.
Was there something weird going on yesterday (Saturday) in the game world? Between these two characters I played for several hours, and I don’t think I saw a minute of daylight in the “regular” world (outdoor mission maps were the exception). So either the “day” parts of the cycle were coinciding perfectly with my entering mission instances where I couldn’t see it, on both characters, or it was just plain dark all day. Some connection to those weird banners (which I discovered, the hard way, I shouldn’t mess with by myself)?
Bad timing of the day: BV got to 20 and got the mission from the Facemaker to go smack around 30 Family in Sharkhead Isle. I’m not a big fan of “hunting” missions, just because I find it kind of boring just flying around hoping to spot the mobs in question, but this one was made more frustrating because BV’s arrival on Sharkhead coincided with a Zombie attack. Somebody in Help chat confirmed for me that when the zombies show up, all the regular mobs disappear, and that explained why I flew around the the place for 30 minutes or so without spotting a single Family mob. Well, I’d managed to beat up 10 or so, but then they just dried up and there were zombies everywhere.
I discovered the Trick or Treating entirely by accident, too. And I discovered the best way (for me) to do it: find a building, like the Hospital, that is guarded by those Arachnos Drones. Then knock on nearby doors and when I get a “Trick”, make a beeline to that building so that the drones can take out those overpowered monsters that come chasing after me. The first time I got a “trick”, the monsters happened to be flying specters that were a bit too tough for me, and when I tried to escape they would not give up the chase. I swear I flew more than a mile away from where they spawned and they were still right on my tail. I only finally got rid of them by finding the AE building and ducking inside.
It’s all part of the Halloween event. I don’t actually know how those banners work either, they seem to be protected/attacked by some monsters but I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to protect the banner or destroy it or what. Don’t mind the banners so much but the zombies are a pain if you are trying to do something in the zone they are popping in at. They don’t even let you be in peace when you stand on a roof, you have to find a balcony or other wire-like structure like that if you want to go afk at all and can’t fly.
I think so, but I don’t know it.
As said the Halloween event is on, which means it’s permanent night.
As for the banners, they are a timed event requiring coordination.
[ol]
[li]Several people at each banner kill monsters.[/li]
[li]If they kill enough the Banners become vulnerable (there’s a progress bar).[/li]
[li]Everyone gathers at a banner to destroy it, then moves to the next until all 4 are destroyed.[/li]
[li]The event Giant Monster then spawns, with X/Y coordinates appearing to tell you how far you are from it.[/li]
[li]Track down and kill the GM before the timer runs out.[/li][/ol]
Actually the easiest place for that mission is Port Oakes in Marconeville. Lots of Family and they are all much lower level than you by then.
Oh cool, didn’t know I could do that. I’ve had a few other missions where I had to defeat X number of Mob Y in Zone Z, and whacking them in any other zone didn’t count. Of course, Mob Y is usually thick on the ground in the zone where I got the mission, and rare as hen’s teeth in Zone Z.
If the Mission tab says “X of Y”, it doesn’t matter where; even Tips and Newspaper/Scanner missions count. If it specifically says “X of Y in Z” then the target has to be in Z for it to count.
The Halloween Trial has a third badge: do the haunted house wearing a trick or treat costume.
Also, there’s a secret boss. Not an elite boss.
1: NOBODY GO IN THE HOUSE.
2: Talk to Devil Girl. Make a pact.
3: Find Bored Guy or Girl on the side of the house by the candy cauldron. Tell them to eat the candy.
4: Do the same on the opposite side of the house.
5: Go back to Devil Girl.
6: Fight.
Yep. I have several costume-change macros on my main. The command to create one is in this format:
/macro [macroname] cce [costume slot number] cc[costume change emote name]
For example, if I want a macro to switch to my demon costume while wreathed in flames and laughing evilly:
/macro DEM cce 3 ccevillaugh
That’ll make a macro button labeled “DEM” appear in the first open slot in your power trays. Clicking it will switch to your fourth costume slot (the slot numbers start with 0) while doing the Evil Laugh costume change emote.
Mine are actually a bit more elaborate, because I also have them set my title. My actual DEM macro was set with
/macro DEM settitle 638$$cce 3 ccevillaugh
which sets my title to “Hell Hath No Fury”. You have to know the badge IDs to do that, and you have to have the relevant badge. You can look up the IDs on ParagonWiki.
You can bind the same commands to a key, if you prefer that to a macro.
Thanks, Balance. I’ll fool with that and see what I can come up with 
Woot! Level 30!
And on that note…
Can you recommend a blueside zone where I can find “easier” Crey mobs? I’ve got the level 30 hero costume slot quest, “Protect Lauren from Crey”, and all Lauren tells me is, “You can find Crey in Crey’s Folly or Founders’ Falls”.
Aside from the fact that I’m beginning to despise these “hunting” missions, before receiving this one I hadn’t even laid eyes on a Crey mob outside of maybe one AE arc, and I also hadn’t even set foot in either of those zones. So I need to go to zones I’ve never visited and just randomly fly around hoping to spot the mobs in question. So I try Crey’s Folly first, and find the place swarming with mobs that are way out of my league (as in, one took a potshot at me as I flew past and 50% of my hit points were gone), and the Crey mobs I find that I might stand a chance against are all level 31 and standing around in crowds of ten or more. So I decided to try Founders’ Falls, where I flew around and around and around and found Circle of Thorns, and Rikti, and Council, and 5th Column, but not one single Crey.
If my objective is confined to a particular area(s) of a zone, it would sure help if the mission text would say so. It would save a lot of time. I don’t mind being defeated in a more or less “fair fight”; I do mind not being able to find the fight in the first place.
ETA: Also, I’m finding the COH Wiki (I checked there first) to be all but useless for finding this kind of information. Is there a better source out there? I guess I’m kind of spoiled by the various 3rd-party WoW resources.
You can find lots of Crey in Brickstown, in the big parking lot behind the train station and throughout the zone. You can also find many on the tops of buildings in Brickstown. However, the closer you get to the Crey’s Folly entrance, the higher level Crey you’ll encounter. Stay close to the train station / Independence Port entrance for lower-level Crey. There’s no reason to go to Crey’s Folly for Crey unless specifically required by the mission.
Go to the Technology Store in Founder’s Falls and take his mission, it’s full of Crey and counts for the hunt. If you need Rikti for the aura unlocking mission (offered by the City Representative in Atlas if you don’t know), take the mission offered by the Science Store in Brickstown. Also for the aura mission, there are low level Devouring Earth to the west of the Terra Volta gate in Independence Port.
Thanks again
I forgot I had another question I meant to ask:
Does accuracy of “low-level” attack powers degrade as you level, or am I just experiencing remarkably specific and consistent bad luck with the RNG? Specifically, I’m talking about the very first power my main character learned (“Flares”, from the “Fire Blast” blaster power set). As I got this character closer and closer to level 30, her Flares power started missing more and more often, compared to her other attacks powers, despite the fact that it’s got the same Accuracy enhancement slotted into it that is slotted into her other attack powers. I thought at first this was just perception, but I started paying close attention and it became clear that Flares really was/is missing far more often than her other attacks.
If it’s just RNG bad luck, I guess I can live with that - it’ll swing the other way eventually. If it’s an intentional mechanic, Accuracy would seem to be an odd choice for the degradation of the power. I could understand a “starter” power’s damage scaling in such a way that it becomes less effective at higher levels, but it doesn’t make much sense that a character would become less accurate with the power she’s been using longer than any other.
There’s “beginner’s luck” when you’re starting which is an innate accuracy bonus to all attacks. It degrades each level and is gone by level 20. Since you’ve been using Flares the whole time, that may be what you’re noticing since you started with a big +ACC bonus that was going away as you got your other powers.
Another thing is that Flares has a base accuracy of (1) whereas some of your other powers have a higher base accuracy (Fireball is 1.2, Blazing Bolt is 1.2, etc) so as Blaze’s crutch of Beginner’s Luck has gone away, you’ve picked up new powers that are more accurate to begin with. Furthermore, NPCs may have more defense or resistance now, depending on type.
So, in comparison, Blaze seems to be hitting worse than “it used to” on multiple levels. But Blaze itself has been unchanged.
Okay, yeah, somebody else told me about the Beginner’s Luck thing a while ago, and I did indeed notice a difference after level 20. But I saw the difference in all of this character’s powers at that time. What I’m seeing now seems to be limited to just Flares, and started becoming noticeable around level 26-27 and has just gotten “worse” since. Fire Blast, the second attack power she learned, also has a base accuracy of 1, and doesn’t seem to miss nearly as often. Both of these powers recharge quickly enough now that I could almost, but not quite, get into a rhythm of alternating between just those two attacks, so I use Fire Blast almost as often as Flares.
Of course, there’s the “video game logic” of these things, too, wherein these things are governed by mathematical formulas, not common sense. I’ve wondered, starting with my fire mage in WoW, how in the world is it even possible to “miss” with a frackin’ fireball at point-blank range? 
He happened to be directly behind another guy (or an object) from the point-source of the fireball, and was therefore in a blast shadow. Or he saw it coming and dove out of the radius. (Yeah, I know the mob didn’t actually dive for cover; the engine doesn’t support it. It’s still implicitly part of the Defense mechanic.) Stuff like that. Just like hit points, armor class, and such are abstractions of complex combat.
For Flares, specifically…I don’t know what it is about Flares. People have had the impression that the power is extremely inaccurate for years, but the data doesn’t support it. There’s nothing in the power stats to say it’s particularly inaccurate, and at various points, people have actually tested it enough to gather a statistically valid sample, and found that it really does have normal accuracy. The impression persists. My pet theory is that when you miss with Flares, it’s so stupid-looking that it sticks in your mind, and that makes it seem to happen more often.
I don’t know if that applies to your particular situation, but I felt you should know that you’re not alone in your annoyance with the power.
On the subject of finding mobs, among other things, you might consider loading the Vidiotmaps overlay. It’s an unofficial patch that puts an overlay on your map. In addition to various other useful bits of info, the margins of the map indicate the type and levels of mobs that spawn in various areas of the zone.
If you are really curious about misses and hits, switch one of your chat windows to show Combat stuff. It will show every to-hit roll you make and the chance to hit, roughly like this:
You HIT the Freak Gunner with your Flare!
You rolled 25.45, with 76.52% chance to hit.
Blahblah fire damage.
Hey, Onomatopoeia, I found the Crey guys in that parking lot and vicinity, right where you said they’d be - thanks 
Of course, my arrival in Brickstown coincided with a zombie attack again grumble grumble
Oh yeah, I understand that — I played D&D, and that’s all explained in the rulebooks, and I understood the same principle applied when I started playing these kinds of video games. It’s just the visual, when I stick my hand right in the guy’s face (because he ran up to me to punch me, so he’s close enough to touch) and cut loose with this huge ball of fire … and it misses. I guess it can be explained in “roleplaying” fashion, based on the animation when I miss at close range - my hands go up and I launch the attack over the enemy’s head. I’ll just say he didn’t dodge; rather, I twitched at the last moment.
OTOH, there’s really no good explanation for the lack of “friendly fire” (I lob an AoE attack at a group of thugs, and it leaves the hapless civilian they’ve surrounded untouched) other than “gameplay reasons”. Though D&D did introduce feats for spellcasters that allowed them to shape the blast radius of their AoE spells to avoid hitting friendlies. It was kind of silly.
I played my Archery character for a bit last night and had an amusing situation, caused by latency I assume, where I made an attack and the word “MISS” appeared next to the mob before my character had even finished drawing her bow 
Like I said in my original question, I admit it could just be perception, and it sounds like that’s the case, but yeah, I’m glad it’s not just me perceiving it that way
I’ll take a look at that - it sounds helpful.
Hey, will this “always night” thing end after today?