Point Blank Area of Effect. It refers to attacks that don’t require a target and are instead centered around the player character.
The other flavors of AoE are Targeted AoE, which requires a target and deals what is effectively splash damage to those around it, and Location AoE, where it doesn’t require an enemy target, but instead you pick a spot on the ground and that area temporarily becomes a damage zone. (Location AoEs use Targeted AoE IO sets.)
I always thought it was “Player Based” but I don’t know where I got that. It meant the same thing as “Point Blank” though.
Thanks, that’s been bugging me.
New question, spoilerboxed for those who haven’t gotten this far (level 40+) yet:
When did Flambeaux “go bad”? She’s been turning up in my Tip missions as a villain since I hit 40.
Back in my Everquest days, it was called “player based” frequently enough that that’s how I thought of it.
When is the new Anniversary Badge supposed to be anyhow? Isn’t it about this time?
No, it’s every April 28th.
I have the client downloading on the new box right now. How’s Paragon city looking nowadays?
The upgraded version of Atlas is pretty nice.
I gather that she actually turns in a vigilante tip mission (in the 30-40 range, I think), though she’s clearly unstable right from the start. I’ve never actually seen that mission, though, since I’ve never actually switched sides with any of my characters.
I recently did a mission like that. You show up to kill off some Nemesis bosses, and she goes berserk about you stealing her chance to make everyone love her again or some such. She’s definitely a twitchy one.
Another odd thing about Flambeaux (no need to spoilerbox her name, I guess), is her entry on ParagonWiki:
“Flambeaux is a fiery-haired hero who developed a process to turn her body energies into biochemical fire she can project at her enemies.” (bolding mine)
This intrigued me because, from what we see of her in the game, she clearly doesn’t seem bright enough to have “developed” this process on her own. (Said to Proton: “Are you still doing science? But it’s so boooring!”)
I see a few possibilities:
• The wording on ParagonWiki is vague/misleading. Her “developing” the process might simply mean she’s a mutant (though I don’t think her origin has been mentioned) and she “developed” the process naturally when her mutation manifested.
• She actually stole the technology (or whatever) that gives her her powers, and claimed to invent it herself, though this again leads to my point that she doesn’t seem bright enough for her claim to be convincing.
• She has multiple personality disorder. Her “dominant” personality is the narcissistic airhead we see in-game, while another personality is a brilliant scientist/inventor.
• She’s actually quite intelligent, and clever enough to develop the process that gives her those powers. She’s also a talented actress and her “narcissistic airhead” persona is a clever ruse.
• Her powers are the result of Crey experimentation, and her belief that she developed the powers herself are the result of Crey mind-wiping/memory replacement.
• She’s a Nemesis automaton that developed it’s own personality and “went rogue”. Perhaps some glitch in her programming makes her think she’s really human.
• She’s a Nemesis automaton performing exactly as programmed.
I should post this on the official forums, I suppose…
Or went through puberty and “developed” that way. 
Or she was a brilliant scientist before using her invention to give herself powers, and the process screwed up her biochemistry enough to turn her into a hyper-hormonal narcissistic nitwit.
Or she was a janitor at a mad-science lab, screwed with some of the widgets and accidentally gave herself powers. “I meant to do that!”
For some reason, these remind me of this comic 
Geez, talk about aggravating - a bug has rendered my main completely unplayable. I was on my main and I clicked the button to go to the Paragon Market; the window opened, but before the content could load the game froze and then crashed with an “Assertion Failure” error. Now when I try to log in my main, she’s stuck with the Paragon Market window open, which of course promptly freezes and crashes the client again. And of course this had to happen at 9:30 on a Friday night, so it means it will probably be Monday before anybody qualified can respond to my report on the forums.
sigh At least this seems to be confined to my main, and I have 40-odd other characters I can play in the meantime.
I did confirm the Paragon Market is the problem, though - I tried to open it on the Character Select screen and it immediately crashed the client. (Fortunately, it’s not stuck open on the Character Select screen like it is on my main.) I’m guessing this is a bug introduced in Thursday’s patch (there was a patch, right?), because I made some purchases from the Market on Tuesday or Wednesday with no trouble.
I had me a bunch of fun the last couple days, just playing with character creation. I got this idea to create an all-female “supergroup” (in name only, since I can only play one of them at a time) based on our solar system. Then I took screenshots and stitched them all together into a “team photo”. I present “The Solars”:
http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/coh/The_Solars.jpg
(1.5MB file)
From left to right:
From the USA, Team Leader/Founder “Mother Sun” (Radiation Emission/Fire Blast Defender)
From the UK, “Girl Mercury” (Kinetic Melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper)
From the USA, “Venus Lass” (Gravity Control/Earth Assault Dominator)
From Germany, “Erdmädchen” (Plant Control/Storm Summoning Controller)
From the USA, “Ms. Mars” (Broadsword/Shield Brute)
From France, “Fille de Jupiter” (Ice Armor/Fiery Melee Tanker)
From the USA, “Saturn Signal” (Psychic Blast/Mental Manipulation Blaster)
From Mexico, “Princesa Urana” (Electrical Blast/Time Manipulation Corruptor)
From Canada, “Neptune’s Niece” (Ice Blast/Ice Manipulation Blaster) She insists she really is Neptune’s niece, but she’s not fooling us. We have her papers. She was born in Saskatoon.
And finally, from … well we’re not sure. She doesn’t talk much. We think she’s still pissed off about the whole “Pluto isn’t a planet anymore” thing, which hit the news about a week after she finished Mother Sun’s program that gave her her powers. She’s kind of surly and keeps to herself. Originally planning to call herself “Plutonium”, now she sarcastically goes by “Notta Planet” (Dark Melee/Dark Armor Scrapper).
So anyway, it was fun creating all these ladies. However, I was rather miffed when I discovered that the Mars chest emblem is not available to female character (and likewise, male characters can’t use the Venus symbol). This is an outrage!
That is pretty cool! Nice job!
Thanks!
Forgot to mention that those characters are all on Virtue.
Nice work, Mister Rik. You’ve clearly embraced the true spirit of City of Heroes - the greatest joy is in creating characters. 