In this episode we discuss:

• Winner of Knives of Artemis costume code: Flick Guy
• Free character transfers until the end of January:
  • Starts:Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 8:59 a.m. PST (11:59 a.m. EST)
  • Ends: Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. PST (2:59 a.m. EST)
  • These are moves, not copies. You can move a character back with the same restrictions and caveats
  • You cannot transfer characters between different accounts — same account only
  • You can do up to 6 transfers a week. This could be anything from 1 character transferred 6 times back and forth between 2 servers, or could be 6 characters to different servers in any combination
  • Cannot swap between US & European servers
  • Lose Supergroup affiliation, prestige, and items
  • Lose server friends list, but keep global list
  • Leveling pacts will be broken
  • Keep auction house items
  • You may lose your character name if it is already taken on the new server. No warning is given, but you are given a free rename token. If you already have one character on the destination server you can do a name lookup check at the login screen.
  • If you have a one or two letter/number name, you will loose it forever. The servers currently only allow three letter/number names.
  • Character transfer tutorial
• City of Heroes® Super Booster IV: Martial Arts
  • This Super Booster channels your chi while combining the perfect balance of style and power.
  • Martial Arts themed costume set:
    • The Martial Arts themed male, female and huge costume parts include robes, shoulders, legs, gloves, footwear, mask, belt and head pieces, as well as new hair styles, chest emblems, and weapons. Male and huge characters also have the option to select the top knot hairstyle, while females will have the option for crazy braided buns!
  • Character Emotes:
    • /em bringit
    • /em pushup
  • Costume Change Emotes:
    • Smoke Bomb
    • Ninja Leap
  • Ninja Run power:
    • Dash through the city with the agility of a ninja! Use Ninja Run to strike fear in the hearts of your enemies as you increase your run speed and leaping abilities, and the best part? It doesn’t use one of your power selections!
  • This purchase enables these features for all characters on your game account from level 1. Ninja Run power is available at level 4. Costume change emotes* do require that you unlock at least one additional costume slot.

  Promo: The Empress Sword by Paulette Jaxton

This episode includes:

• The winner of the impromptu contest we created at the panel
• Information to enter a drawing for a Knives of Artemis costume code
• The City of Heroes Panel at Dragon*Con

Special thanks to:

• Grimthorn
• Colin Seraphina Brennan from Massively
• Central Nexus
• Douglas Allan of the Paragonian Knights

This time we discuss:

• PPD Contest Winners
• Congrats to Troy Hickman and Twilight Guardian!
• New Boosters Now Available: Jetpack and Cyborg!
• IGN.com Talks With Matt “Positron” Miller
• Issue 13: So big it can’t be contained in 1 update
• MMORPG.com Talk About Issue 13 & 14 Changes
• Massively.com Interviews: Issues, PvP, & Boosters
• The Rikti Return! Invasion from Sept. 26 to Oct 2
• Happy Birthday to RoseVortex – Organ Donors Wanted
• Promo: Geek Survival Guide

Enter our random drawing to win a PPD Hardsuit Costume Code from The COH Podcast! These were given out at the NCSoft booth at PAX ’08 and we have acquired extra codes for you to win!

Simply send an email to cohpodcast@gmail.com with ‘PPD Hardsuit Contest’ in the subject line. The deadline is Midnight, September 27, 2008. Drawing on September 28, 2008 and the winners will be notified via email after announcement on the episode is made. We are asking that entries come from those over 18 years of age.

Note: This costume token grants a costume toggle – not simply tailor options. The toggle is a permanent power that will be available to all of your characters! While the suit doesn’t grant any additional powers, it is way cool looking

In This Episode:

• Announcing Issue 13: Architect
• Oversight with the Shield Powerset and Stalkers!
• Hero 1 on Mission Architect on the Training Room!
• Win a Freakshow Costume Code on w00t Studios!
• Want to get some ideas for Base Building?
• Winter Event Testing Sept 4 on the Training Room!
• IO Set Feature thanks to Fantastic Foe!
• New contest – win free PPD Hardsuit costume tokens!
• Promo: JC Hutchins 7th Son Obsidian

Click through for the full IO Set Feature text

IO Set feature, by Fantastic Foe

[Awhile] ago, I suggested as a possible follow up to your IO
feature that you present what IO sets to look into if you were to try
and beef up a specific attribute of a character. You cleverly put the
job onto me (my boss calls that reflection, an art form perfected by
Wally in Dilbert) and suggested I submit something.

For my first research attempt, I decided to target Movement and
Recovery, two aspects that are probably better improved by picking
powers, but I like having options… and you can still pick Stamina
and Swift, and drop the bonuses from IO sets on top. Ignore ED! You
know you want to!

But I digress.

Okay, my basic goal was to look into cheap set pieces that provide a
bonus very quickly, only requiring 2 set pieces to provide the bonus.
Here’s what I found.

IO Set Pieces for Movement (in particular, running speed):

For comparison’s sake, unenhanced Sprint provides a 50% running speed
boost when toggled, unenhanced swift provides 35%. (If I’m wrong on
these percentages, please point it out… I’ll handle the mockery as
best as I can…)

The following IO sets provide bonuses to Running speed when 2 or more
set pieces are in a power:

Ranged Damage: Maelstrom’s Fury +3 % Run
Sniper: Exploit Weakness +2% Run
Healing: Regenerative Tissue +4% Run
Resist Damage: Aegis +5% Run
Hold: Ghost Widow’s Embrace +5% Run
Stun: Stagger +2% Run
Knockback: Kinetic Crash +3% Run
Melee: Focussed Smite +3% movement
Ranged Damage: Thunderstrike +4% movement
Pet: Brilliant Leadership +2% movement
Sleep: Induced Coma +3% movement
Knockback: Force Feedback +5% MOVE (Run, Flight, and Jump)
Endurance Modification: Performance Shifter +5% MOVE (see above)
To Hit: Gaussian’s Syncronized Fire Control +5% MOVE (see above)
Melee: Kinetic Combat +5% movement (see above)

Overall, there are enough large 4% and 5% bonuses that stacking can
can yield some nice results, particularly the ones to increase all
movement powers by 5%. Hover in particular is better when improved by
25% (that would be enhanced Hover, unenhanced hover would still be
painfully slow…)

The availability of the sets vary, the latest is
available at level 25, and none of the sets were prohibitively
expensive (in that at least 2 recipes where relatively cheap to
purchase. I admit to not delving too deeply into the economics.)

IO Set Pieces for Recovery

For comparison’s sake, unenhanced Stamina boosts endurance recovery 25%.

The following IO sets provide Recovery bonuses when 2 or more set
pieces are in a power:

Melee: Bruising Blow 1%
PBAOE: Cleaving Blow 1%
Ranged Damage: Thunderstrike 2%
Targeted AOE: Positron’s Blast 2.5%
Sniper: Calibrated Accuracy 1%
Sniper: Executioner’s Contract 2%
Sniper: Extreme Measures 1.5%
Pets: Commanding Presence 1.5%
Pets: Blood Mandate 1.5%
Heals: Harmonized Healing 1.5%
Heals: MIracle 2.5%
Resist Damage: Steadfast Protection 1.5%
Resist Damage: Impervium Armor 2.5 %
Defense: Kismet 1.5%
Defense: Gift of the Ancients 2%
Confuse: Befuddling Aura 1%
Confuse: Cacophony 1%
Confuse: Malaise’s Illusions 2.5%
Slow: Tempered Readiness 1.5%
Stuns: Razzle Dazzle 2%
Stuns: Stupefy 2.5%
Flight: Soaring 1%
Taunt: Triumphant Insult 1%
Endurance Modification: Adrenal Adjustment 1%
Endurance Modification: Energy Manipulation 1.5%

The remaining +recovery set IOs are all in endurance mod sets, and
require 3-4 set pieces, so Frankenslotting is possible, and can even
be combined with +recovery bonuses from the 2-piece End Mod sets.

Endurance Modification: Efficacy Adaptor (3 IOs required) + 1.5%
Endurance Modification: Performance Shifter (4 IOs required) + 2.5%

Overall, there are many sets that do provide an endurance recovery
boost. Sadly, the percentages are very small, and the stacking limit
of no more than 5 bonuses can hit fast and hard. That being said, it
should be relatively easy to hit +10% recovery, and some sets that can
frankenslot recovery boosting set IOs should easily hit 16-20%. Most
of the sets are relatively cheap to get at 2 pieces, except for the
Defense sets (which are usually small sets overall.)

These seem like small bonuses for the effort. I’d have to do an
in-depth analysis to support or refute that statement, and that is
beginning to seem like real work, In general, this might be of value
to people who despite triple-slotting Stamina still have endurance
issues, or people who choose not to take the Fitness path and instead
maximize endurance reductions and want even more endurance relief.

Beyond the sets above, there are very very expensive Purple IO sets,
available only as level 50 IOs that confer 4% recovery. These sets
are:

Melee: Hecatomb
PBAOE: Armageddon
Targeted AOE: Ragnarok
Confuse: Coercive Persuasion
Sleep: Fortunata’s Hypnosis
Immobilization: Gravitational Anchor
Stuns: Absolute Amazement
Hold: Unbreakable Constraint

These individual sets are Unique, so you couldn’t stack 5 Hecatombs,
but with time, patience, and influence, you could (okay, depending on
your build…) slot 5 from the above list and add +20% to your
recovery. Nice.

A quick clarification on what I mean by Frankenslotting:
You can’t Frankenslot a power if you are slotting more than 4 IOs from one set.

Obviously, you can 5-slot from one set, and then fill the final
available slot with a set IO from a different set, that is still
Frankenslotting. What I should have said: if you want to get IO set
bonuses from more than one set placed in a single power, 4 IOs is the
most you can slot and still be able to slot IOs from a different set
and get bonuses, since you always have to slots at least 2 IOs from a
set to get any bonus.

That might be obvious, but from the way I was saying it in my emails,
that 4 IOs was the max for frankenslotting, it was unclear.

That’s all for now. Hope this is somewhat useful, let me know if you
would like Combat Bonuses from IO Set features delivered in any other
way, or at all, or with more or less detail.

Thanks again for the great podcast.
Pat aka Fantastic Foe

He likes Pallas. He likes who he is when he experiences her life out of her eyes. And now he looks through her eyes at his own sleeping brown face as she peers at him through the crystal porthole in his stasis chamber.

After twenty years, Parasite will wake up.

Don’t forget to purchase the print edition of Playing For Keeps from Amazon.com on Monday, August 25, 2008 !! If you’d like to buy a copy its important to wait until that date to help push it up the Amazon charts enabling higher visibility of this awesome book!

And don’t forget to enter our contest to win a signed copy of the novel!! But you gotta hurry- we need to receive your e-mail w/ name, address, and age (over 18, please) by midnight tonight (5/23/2008)!!

This episode we discuss:

• T-shirt status
• Contest is almost over – get your submissions in by Jul 31, 2008!: Win a copy of the debut issue of comic book Twilight Guardian by Troy Hickman! The rules are as follows:
  • Send an Email, starting immediately to cohpodcast@gmail.com
  • We will do 2 random drawings, and Troy will mail them to the winners.
  • Make sure you include the subject: “Twilight Guardian Contest”; your full name; age (over 18); and complete mailing address.
  • If we draw you name and don’t have that info, we will go to the next name we draw.
  • Also, specify how you want it signed- either with just Troy’s signature, or with your name/character name/ or inscribed to your Aunt Fannie.
• Podcaste Global channel
• Podcaste SG
• Listener meet-up – Again, we’ll be hitting the troll caves in Hollows at the next meet-up, so you need a level 12 to join us. We’ll be split up into teams again, but will be all together this time.
• Double XP weekend
• Special Episode coming up w/Mur Lafferty – Submit questions for Mighty Mur!
• CoH News
• NPC Complaints
• Feedback
• Promo: Double Trouble

Linkage:

• Stay Connected with City of Heroes RSS News Feeds!
• It’s All Access for CoH and CoV
• Recent Activity in Violation of the Forum Rules
• Forum Rules Revision
• Visit NCsoft & City of Heroes at Comic Con!
• Game Update – Tuesday, July 22nd @ 6AM Pacific
• Comic Con News Articles

This time we talk about:

• Our nephew’s recovery (update: He’s home now and doing GREAT! You’re our hero RD!!)
• T-shirt status (tester shirts are in the mail and shirts will be available to buy soon! Prices are ranging from about $14 to $26 depending on one side vs. two side, colors, etc.
• Contest – Copies of Twilight Guardian are in the mail and on their way to Troy. We have decided on the following rules:
  • Send an Email, starting immediately to cohpodcast@gmail.com
  • We will do 2 random drawings, and Troy will mail them to the winners.
  • Make sure you include the subject: “Twilight Guardian Contest”; your full name; age (over 18); and complete mailing address.
  • If we draw you name and don’t have that info, we will go to the next name we draw.
  • Also, specify how you want it signed- either with just Troy’s signature, or with your name/character name/ or inscribed to your Aunt Fannie.
• Listener meet-up
• Paypal button
• Parsec awards
• North American Forum Maintenance on Monday!
• Time Stamps on the Dev and Community Digests
• Optional In-Game Advertisements
• City of Heroes is going to Comic Con!
• Live Server Update: Tuesday AM 17.200800612.1T
• Global Chat Down on Live as of June 27
• Win a New Car in the Matrix Machinima Contest!
• New Fanzine! Spotlighting Fan Art, Stories & More
• In-Game Store and Account Services Unavailable
• Promo: Double Share, A Traders Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper : Book 4

In this episode we discuss:

• Listener meet-up June 28th at 2pm, Guardian server. We are going to hit the new Hollows content, so you will need a level 5 toon to enter the zone. Meet at Wincott.
  • Viv will be playing either Vico Viv or her new character, Sive the Shining.
  • Chooch will be playing The Incredible Hulk Hogan (an homage to a friend that used to play)
• T-shirt status -still in progress, but coming soon.
• Contest – In the mail and on their way to Troy. We have decided on the following rules:
  • Send us an e-mail with the subject “Funny Book Contest”
  • We will do 2 random drawings, and will mail them to the winners. Make sure you include your full name, age (over 18), and complete mailing address. If we draw your name and don’t have that info, we will go to the next name we draw.
  • No current deadline set; we’ll announce it in the next episode.
• Still I say, go check out Twilight Guardian while you can still get your hands on it! We’ve read it, and I’m really hoping it gets picked up because I want to see what her motivations are and just generally more about the character!
• “This American Hero” Wins Machinima Contest
• Re: Skirt problem
• Wikia to Send Two Lucky Gamers to Pax!
• June 17th update to the live servers
• Sync Bug? Character Can’t Move? Read More Here
• Update on the “Sync Bug”
  • Confirmation about possible bug with Rularuu Bow
• Massively.com – CoX Issue 13: All your base are belong to us?
• Accolade spotlight: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Member Badge
• SG Spotlight: Viper
• Promo: Chasing The Bard, Murder at Avedon Hill, The Metamor City Podcast, Morevi: Remastered

Time is very limited, though – the deadline to enter is June 11th at 11:00 PM PDT! Sorry for the short notice.

This week we talk about:

• Announcements:
  • Listener meet-up June 28th at 2pm, Guardian server. We are going to hit the new Hollows content, so you will need a level 5 toon to enter the zone. Meet at Wincott.
  • T-shirt status
  • Contest coming soon!
• Rikti Invasion Returns
• CoH Desktop Calendar
• Hover change discussion & link 2
• News
• Main Feature – IO’s Part I
• Discussion of cool weapons
• Feedback
• Paragon University Archaology Department 4th Anniversary Flash (sorry, I totally forgot to add the link when I posted the episode.. thanks for the catch, WordSmythe!)
• Promo: Murder at Avedon Hill

Enjoy!