Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine City of Heroes: Your Chance to be a Legionnaire - Part 2

Okay it's 9:30 AM here now, Usually I've had 3 hours of CoH under my belt by this time of day. The servers are still down with no explanation, other then expect an extended period of off-line today. Soooo, is this the long anticipated launch of Issue #3 ??? If this the launch instead of the snow and ice monsters that they said would invade Paragon? Whatever is happening right now, for goodness sake, let us in!! Some of us, okay me, are going crazy without our CoH fix!!!

Official word says: The regular server maintenance window of 8am to 10am CST will be extended today, January 4th, 2005 for an indeterminate amount of time. We apologize for the inconvenience.

But they've also updated the Recent Updates page:

01.04.05
City of Heroes Expansion Issue #3: A Council of War



Epic Archetypes

Upon attaining level 50, you will unlock the first Epic Archetype available in City of Heroes . The Kheldians are a race of energy beings that have made Earth their new home. Kheldians and their dark cousins, the Nictus, attach to humans and form a symbiotic relationship with them.
You can play one of two new Archetypes, Peacebringers are the typical Kheldians, while Warshades are reformed Nictus who now fight for good.
Peacebringers are Natural Origin, while Warshades are Science based.
Peacebringers and Warshades have only one Primary and one Secondary Powerset to choose from, but these powersets have more powers to choose from than a normal powerset.
A Peacebringer's first contact is in Atlas Park .
A Warshade's first contact is in Galaxy City .
Kheldians and Nictus have unique storylines throughout their career in addition to being able to access the normal game content.
Kheldians and Nictus both have a severe vulnerability to a specific type of energy. Unfortunately sinister forces have made every villain group in Paragon City aware of this, and even supplied some with weapons that can severely hurt Kheldians. Be wary of villains wielding strange weapons, and the mysterious Void Hunters.

· Ancillary Power Pools

Upon reaching level 41, you gain the ability to choose from a new set of Ancillary Power Pools to help round out your character. You can only choose one of these Pools, so make your choice wisely.
Blasters
· Cold Mastery

· Force Mastery

· Flame Mastery

· Munitions Mastery

Controllers
· Stone Mastery

· Fire Mastery

· Ice Mastery

· Primal Forces Mastery

· Psionic Mastery

Defenders
· Dark Mastery

· Power Mastery

· Psychic Mastery

· Electricity Mastery

Scrappers
· Body Mastery

· Darkness Mastery

· Weapon Mastery

Tankers
· Energy Mastery

· Pyre Mastery

· Arctic Mastery

· Earth Mastery


Zone events

Dock workers in Independence Port have gone on strike until their security can be ensured.
The Clockwork King is hard at work on something big in Kings Row.
ndependence Port and Talos Island citizens are reporting sightings of ghosts haunting the waterways.

New Villain Group: The Council

An internal coup d'etat has shattered the 5 th Column, and from their remnants, a new villain group, the Council has emerged. Rumor has it that the Council is not as new as we would be led to believe. Heroes are urged to investigate every aspect of this new group across all Security Levels.

Badges

5th Column badges have been switched over to Council badges (Credit for 5th column defeats remain).
Modified badge tracking for defeats so that everyone on the team gets credit, not just the teammates within 200 feet of the villain.

New Zone: Striga Isle

Smugglers on Talos Island and Independence Port can secure passage for anyone Security Level 20 or over to Striga Isle, an island just off the coast of the United States in international waters. This criminal haven is rumored to be a stronghold and training center for Council troops.
Heroes interested in investigating the island are advised to contact Stephanie Peebles near the docks.

Mission Difficulty Contacts

Hero Corp has placed agents throughout Paragon City who are able to put a word to all your Contacts about how tough you think you are. Find one of these contacts and for a small fee of Influence they can make all missions you have and take from that point forward harder.
These Hero Corp personnel exist in all City Zones.

Powers

Bosses of higher levels (25 and up), all Archvillains and Monsters have been made tougher.
Bosses of higher levels (25 and up), all Archvillains and Monsters are now worth more Experience, based on how much tougher they got.
Villains who are notoriously hard (and thus avoided by Heroes whenever possible) have had their XP reward increased.
Giant Monsters, no matter what their level, will con Purple now. This is because the monsters are able to be fought by the entire level range of Heroes. That is, your character will hit and do damage to them as though they are your level. Additionally, they will hit and damage you as though you are their level. Heroes of ANY level should be cautious around ANY Giant Monster now. This does not apply to monsters spawned in missions or wandering in the Eden zone.
Fixed Short help for Super Strength/Rage (Long help was correct. Power was not changed).
Frostfire and Atta are now a new Rank: “Elite Boss”. Elite Bosses are tougher than normal bosses, but not as tough as ArchVillains. Elite Bosses are worth more XP than regular bosses.
Radiation Emission/EMP Pulse will now do extra damage to most machines and robots.
Changed the way many temporary powers expire. Many that were based on “real-time” will now expire based on number of charges instead. This is to prevent gaining a new Temp Power, logging out, and then coming back the next day and find it missing. This change only applied to Temp Powers that were Click Powers. Toggle and Auto Temp Powers do not expire when you are off line.
Group Flight: Removed added Endurance Penalty for each Teammate carried. Slightly Increased base END Cost.
Team Teleport: Removed added Endurance Penalty for each Teammate teleported. Slightly Increased base END Cost.
Powers that “Drain” or affect a target to buff of heal the caster have been modified. Previously, these powers would give you less of a Buff/Heal if used against a higher level foe, and more of a buff/heal if used against a lower level foe. Now, powers like these will give the same buff/heal as though you were targeting a foe of your level (e.g. life draining powers, powers that steal Endurance, or powers that debuff foes to buff the caster). This fix will also affect any power that does something to a target and then something to the caster. For instance, using a Nova Blast will no longer drain a different amount of Endurance from the caster depending upon the level of your villain targets.
Whirlwind, Repel, and Repulsion Field will KnockBack foes of all levels the same distance. That is, Repulsion Field will no longer lock higher level foes into permanent KnockDown. (This is a change to the level of a target and does not affect a targets resistance to or vulnerability to KnockBack).
Increased the effectiveness of the Defender version of Transfusion, Kinetics, Twilight Grasp, Siphon Power, and Kinetic Transfer by about 25% so they are consistently better than the Controller Version (both Controller and Defender version used to be the same).
Modified Totem, Rikti Monkey and Sky Skiff attacks.
The Family now has Tommy Guns.
Updated Force Field/Detention Field f/x.
Animate Stone can now fly with the assistance of Group Fly.
Change to FEAR: Villains that are afraid will no longer run away. Afraid villains will now tremble and cower in place and not attack. They will, however, retaliate once if attacked, but then go back to trembling. This change will affect most Fear powers including: Pool/Manipulation/Intimidate; Pool/Manipulation/Invoke Panic; Scrapper Melee/Dark Melee/Touch of Fear; Scrapper Defense/Dark Armor/Cloak of Fear; Defender Buff/Dark Miasma/Fearsome Stare; Controller/Mind Control/Terrify (villains will tremble in the presence of Spectral Terror, and will flee if the Spectral Terror casts Terrify on them.)
For all targeted toggle powers; if the target is over 300' away the toggle power will automatically turn off.
Boosted damage of Ignite patch.
Blizzard and Freezing Rain will now Knock Down flyers. Targets no longer need to be near the ground to fall if affected by these powers.
Reduced Max Damage resistance of all archetypes except Tankers.
Increased Tanker Damage.
Changed Tanker Taunt to an AoE Taunt. Increased Recharge Time, and increased duration of taunt effect. Tanker Taunt is an Auto Hit and does not require a ToHit roll.
Pool/Challenge no longer Auto hits. Gave it a 20% Accuracy Bonus.
Slightly Reduced Accuracy of Provoke.
Made all Tanker attack powers (secondary set) generate hate from all nearby foes. The more damage the power does, the greater the affected area. This effect does not kick in until after level 5, and slowly ramps up from there. The intent is to reduce a tanker's reliance on Taunt powers, and encourage the use of attack powers to keep villains attention on them.
Renamed Scrapper Taunt powers to “Confront” (This is a single targeted Taunt, so the name change is to differentiate it from Tanker Taunt). Scrapper “Confront” is an Auto Hit and does not require a ToHit roll.
Fixed problem with Lts moving slower than minions.
The powers Ice Armor/Frozen Armor, Wet Ice, and Glacial Armor are no longer mutually exclusive and can stack.
Wet Ice now Resists Sleep effects
Removed Shadow Maul from Skull Boss (Bone Daddy) and replaced it with a new power.
Short Circuit now does extra damage to most robots and mechanical foes.
Increased -Fly on Web Grenades.
Modified Hamidon powers.
Endurance gained from Rise of the Phoenix will now increase with END Enhancements.
Fixed typo in Shadow Maul description. Changed text to “High” damage (no power change).
Removed Disorient from Mutation, and increased duration of the buff.
Reduced Manipulation/Invoke Panic Accuracy.
Fixed Animate Stones immunity to Disorient, Hold and Immobilization. Also, Animate Stone can now Jump.
Malta Turrets will no longer be destroyed when you defeat the Engineer that created it.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Fiery Aura/Healing Flames.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Ice Armor/Hoarfrost.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Invulnerability/Unyielding Stance.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Invulnerability/Unstoppable.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Stone Armor/Earth\ss Embrace.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Regeneration/Moment of Glory.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Regeneration/Resilience.
Added resistance to Toxic Damage to Regeneration/Reconstruction.
All Build Ups, Aims, damage buffs and debuffs will now affect Toxic Damage types.
Added inherent Taunt to Tanker Ancillary Powers.
Added inherent Criticals to Scrapper Ancillary Powers.
Regeneration/Instant Healing's recharge time has been reduced from 60 seconds to 15 seconds.
Regeneration/Integration now offers some increased Regeneration, and can accept Healing Enhancements.
Moment of Glory now lasts longer (120 seconds). Also, fixed some gaps in MoG Mez protection.
Reduced Regeneration/Integration Endurance Cost.
Regeneration/Instant Healing Max Regeneration buff was slightly reduced. Additionally, it gains less of a boost from each added Enhancement.
Moment of Glory HP reduction is less (you will be left with 25% of your Max HP).
Boosted Defense Buff for Moment of Glory.
Improved Regeneration/Moment of Glory Mez resistance.
Added Toxic Damage resistance to Force Field/Deflection Shield.
Added a jump buff to Warshade/Nebulous Form.
Added Toxic Damage resistance to Penumbral Shield and Essence Boost.
Adjusted Cloak of Fear to match the way Fear works now. It will drain more End, but less often (equates to the exact same END cost).
Stone Armor/Granite Armor movement speed penalty was slightly reduced and its Endurance cost was reduced. Cannot be active at the same time as other Armors in this set, Super Speed, Sprint, Hover, Fly, or Group Fly. Slightly increased recharge time.
Improved Stone Armor/Granite Armor Mez resistance.
Added Toxic Damage resistance to Granite Armor.
Add resistance to Slow to Energy Absorption and Wet Ice.
Invulnerability/Unyielding Stance has been renamed to “Unyielding”. It no longer makes you Immobile and offers resistance to Immobilization. It is no longer Mutually Exclusive with Temp Invulnerability, however, it comes with a Defense debuff. Slightly increased its End Cost.
Increased the Duration and Recharge time of Unstoppable. Improved its Mez resistance.
Decreased the Accuracy and Defense buff of Invincibility. Defense bonus is now against melee attacks only.
Fiery Armor/Plasma Shield now grants protection to Sleep and Hold.
Fiery Armor/Burn no longer grants protection from Sleep and Hold.
Fiery Armor/Fire Shield now also gives you protection from Disorient effects.
Fiery Armor/Healing Flames no longer gives you protection from Disorient effects.
Fiery Armor/Rise of the Phoenix now also Disorients nearby foes. This Auto Hits foes but can be resisted by foes. Also, Rise of the Phoenix will leave you invulnerable for a brief while after your resurrect.
Dark Armors/Soul Transfer now also disorients drained targets. This Auto Hits foes but can be resisted by foes. Also, Soul Transfer will leave you invulnerable for a brief while after your resurrect.
Removed Flight Speed Enhancements from Quantum Flight (it is already at maximum speed).
Improved Dark Armors/Obsidian Shield resistance to Mez effects.
As a rule, top end resistance powers like Moment of Glory, Unstoppable and Granite Armor will offer nearly complete Mez Protection. Lower level mez protection powers like Unyielding, Obsidian Shield, etc (pretty much all other Scrapper and Tanker mez protection powers), will have lesser resistance at first, but will improve with level. These powers will reach similar resistances around level 35 for Tankers, and 45 for Scrappers.
Increased Damage of Hot Feet.
Increased Damage of Rise of the Phoenix . It also now accepts damage Enhancements.
Fixed a bug that caused all villains higher than level 50 to not get knocked back, down or up.
Increased Perception Radius for Giant Monsters.
Reduced Detention time and increased recharge time of Rularuu/Wisp/Detention Field.
Updated Requiem's, and Nosferatu's powers.
Miscellaneous

Fixed the long door wait bug, that left players with an hourglass cursor unable to act for an extended period
Minimap is now resizable and has an options pulldown.
Added /assist command which will change your target to a selected allies target.
Autorun will not turn off at ID Card, Enhancement Screen, Power Selection/Respec or Options screen.
Dialogs can be answered via 'dialogyes', dialogno' or 'dialoganswer ' slash commands.
Player description in the Info window will now respect enters and tabs
Quit will no longer be interrupted by mouse clicks. If you are quitting to the desktop you will be given the choice to exit immediately
Wrapped text in chat window will now be indented, to prevent player spoofing of other people (including GM's)
Added new commands powexec_toggleon and powexec_toggleoff to force mode of a toggle power
It is no longer allowed to give gifts to people in the middle of a respec.
Some columns in supergroup, search, email, and friend windows can now be resized
You can now hit an opponent with a melee attack while chasing after them.
The Supergroup window has been revamped. Unnecessary fields were removed and it now displays level and map. The window is also 2-stage collapsible, the header can be hidden, and then the bottom buttons can be hidden as well.
You can now control what music the boombox plays with a bunch of new emotes. These are also available from the Quickchat menu. They all begin with "bb" which stands for "boombox". The list: bb, bbAltitude, bbBeat , bbCatchMe , bbDance . bbElectroVibe , bbDiscoFreak , bbDogWalk , bbHeavyDude , bbInfoOverload , bbJumpy , bbKickIt , bbLooker , bbMeaty , bbNotorious , bbMoveOn , bbPeace , bbQuickie , bbRaver , bbShuffle , bbTechnoid , bbWindItUp , bbVenus , bbWahWah . bbYellow , bbSpaz.

That tells me issue 3 is going live and they are having problems with it.

Wow, my eyes kind of glazed over as I read this. Looks like Shadow Lad is getting a big heal boost. That's cool. And I like that the fear powers don't send them running. SL has one coming up. I suspect scrappers and tankers will prefer that, as well.

I guess we'll see how it all plays out tonight. I know my hubby wasn't pleased with the plans for the Ritki monkeys, since it'll make some of them more powerful (and you need to get 10,000 -- yes, 10,000 -- to earn the badge).

I didn't see anything about global chat. I thought that would come with 3. I want to log on with the right character to hold on to my chat name.

There is also a problem with the updater working, again, especially for those who downloaded it early. If you get stuck on connecting and are using a Windows NT or WinXP machine you can do the following:

First, close out the updater/CoH altogether.
Then,

Start
Run
type cmd then <enter>
type ipconfig /flushdns <enter>

Then restart CoH. If it doesn't work the first time you may have to repeat it one or two times.

Hmmmm...

I have a conference call scheduled at 5:30 PM EST. I think I feel an unplanned household emergency developing!

They're saying that Global Chat still has a few bugs and will be rolled out as soon as those bugs are fixed. Same for the respec... so if you're making any more new alts do so soon to get that respec.

(Any idea if you can transfer a respec? I've got a few extra characters hanging around. They're just saved costume designs so the respec won't do any good for them, but perhaps I could give them out....)

By the way anyone feel like doing a clone team?

A basic costume design would be picked out and the the whole team would all follow that design. The character name would be something with "L" and "I's in them -- they can be switched around for looking the same so MULTIPLICITY and MUITLPILCLTY look the same, tho to the CoH server they're different names.

Is the Legion going to meet tonight?

If so, on what sever?

I'm on now with Condo. Talk live is that the free respec will be available later this week, global chat by then also.

We need to do some research on selecting difficulty. You need to see a special NPC and pay 4250 to change your difficulty rating. Seems like you start out at medium (3rd of 5 difficulty ratings). Just did a door mish and it seems a bit easier than normal but not by much. Will be interesting to see what happens with a team (how difficulty is determined)

Huge war going on in Steel bvetween 5th and Council.

My understanding is that you can not transfer a respec.

Quote

By the way anyone feel like doing a clone team?

A basic costume design would be picked out and the the whole team would all follow that design. The character name would be something with "L" and "I's in them -- they can be switched around for looking the same so MULTIPLICITY and MUITLPILCLTY look the same, tho to the CoH server they're different names.

Sounds neat. I would do it.

Illusionaires of Infinity would be a good name.. Lots of "L"s and "I"s

You have got to be kidding ...


http://cohpling.com/?google

Well, I officially hate issue #3. I tested my new character (haven't even posted about him here yet) and he's screwed. An energy/energy blaster. I had NO, and I mean NO, problems with End and attacking same or +1 levels last night. My snipe didn't drain hardly any End at all. Tonight I can get maybe 1 round through all my attacks and I'm out of End. And same level (I'm still same level as I was last night) foes and knocking me down into the low red health in just 3 or 4 shots.

And no I did not do anything about changing the difficulty level. Don't even know how. So it is whatever the default is. I assume the default is the same difficulty level as pre-update and gains you the same xp.

Its no joke. There were a number of players the other night going around asking if anyone wanted to be powerleveled. Not players begging to be but players asking if anyone WANTED to be. And if you replied you were asked "How much you got?" meaning how much influence. 100K bought nothing. Zip, zero, zilch. Nothing more than a laugh from the other player. So just how is someone who is low level, looking to gain high levels, supposed to gain that kind of influence?

This guy wants MONEY, Scott. Cash!

And you're not making me feel good about the
prospects for Bluette ... 8-(

Can we get a group together tonight? I want
to test out both Andrew and Star ...

Grev and Mysa are on Virtue

Let me write some bills out and I'll hop on over.

I can bring my new character onto Infinity. I have debt to clear now anyway. Friggin' forgot all about the large mob of Council/5th around the Freedom store and bought it twice coming around the corner. But some lvl 35s came by, cleared up the street and gave me 3 lvl 35 SOs. Pretty cool of them I thought.

So do we want to go to Infinity or Virtue?

Up to you guys. I could log Garth in, its been awhile. Virtue and Infinity both are into the yellow right now.

Has anyone been to Steel on Infinity? Over by Pandora's Box the graphics are messed up and all around you the screen goes dark, like real bad fog. It follows you so you cannot see what's on the streets but you can see about 5 feet around you. If you leave the block to the south (head to the hospital) it clears up. Or if you go north it does the same. But it hangs around the shop. Don't know if it is that way on all servers or not. Sent a /bug in on it.

Yep, same dead zone on Virtue. I wonder if its intentional. And if it is, what the hell is causing it?

Looks like I'm not gonna be able to make it tonight. I'm getting a pattern here... with every patch the game freezes up my system at the login screen. The first time I uninstalled and reinstalled my video drivers and that made the problem go away. The second time it happened I uninstalled the game and reinstalled it and that made it go away.

I'm not sure if I'm going to try to get on tonight. I'm sure there'll be a lot more patches coming through in the next few weeks and I'm not into the idea of reinstalling the game every few days, especially since that means downloading all patches since day one again and again.

Sigh

Hmm...

I just looked on the Controllers thread and it
looks like States said he wanted to know what
their concerns are ... if it weren't for the
Devs past history, I might be hopeful that
Star could get a little love here ...

Star'll get a little love, as Grav is seen as the weakest control PS, if not second to Mind. (I am much less frustrated at lower levels with my Mind Controller than my Grav controller).

I'm a little concerned about illusion becaue it's being called the most uber control set. It's all about where the devs see the big picture, which is what I don't know.

We notice most when a power gets lowered. However, they've also helped a lot of powersets. Martial Arts were fixed after initial complaints that power animations took too much time. Dark Miasma also got a major fix, it used to be a very challenging set, it's now still a challenge but only due to the offbeat design of the set, which I love. Scrappers also got the critical hits in update 2, which has been pointed to a reason why some folks saw some of the scrapper secondaries as overpowered. Also, due to complaints from Mind Controllers confuse/decieve was revised so that you could get partial XP from confused kills.

It all comes down to how the devs see the balance. Not just balance between powersets but balance with the game overall. Turning other powersets up to match the uberpower messes with the overall game balance... that was the stated reason behind the HP increase that they killed after testing (that they turned up a bunch of powers to bring them in balance and had to increase foes' power to match).

Oh, boy, that thread's gonna keep me occupied...

Hmmm...good thing Beauty got a body suit for her second outfit. I fear Mysa is going to be very cold unless she comes up with a warming spell.