1761

Yes, it is a slotted passive. It also looks rather nice (most important thing obviously) with the crackling electricity surrounding your body.

1762

Do the ice and elec passive defenses/auras display all the time, or just when in combat? When I got the fire one, I was a little disappointed that it didn’t trigger until in combat, but now I think it’s kinda awesome that my character “flames on” for battle mode, and it makes him look much more dramatic entering a fight.

1763

ice/elec/force/fire isn’t a defensive form, they add very little defensive power.

same as ego.

1764

Okay then, do the elemental/ego forms (not-necessarily defensive) display all the time or only in combat?

1765

Are there any good wikis for this thing? The Wikia one sucks.

1766

only in combat.

1767

He actually could have gotten credit for it, if you’d known to share the quest. Frequently escort quests are only given to one person before starting, so you’ve got to get it, and then quickly share it, before embarking on it. Frustrating, but I expect it will be fixed.

1768

you can’t manually share the escort quest, it’s automatically shared in group whenever someone grabs it.

1769

If that’s true now, it’s a recent change, as I’ve had to manually share many escort quests.

1770

Yeah and sometimes not everyone in the group gets the pop up. That’s happened to me personally a couple of times. Without the ability to share it, you have to redo it.

1771

Yah, as noted, it’s an offense buff that also looks kind of cool, but only shows up in combat or sometimes when you activate some other buff. I use it to enhance my dps-fast-kill play style.

If you want to tank, it’s a bad idea, of course, but it’s hard to use the uber gigabolt power effectively without it (you need some kind of energy form activated for gigabolt’s charge mode; otherwise you might need 3 shots to kill a mere henchman!)

1772

Speaking of which, was there a decent manual included with the retail version of the game? (I got it off Direct2Drive.)

It must be bugged because three of us did an escort mission last night but Mordrak didn’t get it (we were all bunched together, so it wasn’t an out-of-range thing). He had to go back and grab it again separately.

EDIT: As Mordrak noted above!

1773

Even after the sonic arrow nerf, it’s still one of the highest damage skill in the game, 35 energy = 2k aoe crit at lvl 30, which is vastly better than most of the last tier skills, compare to sonic arrow which you can grab at start of the game.

1774

A manual emerges… how many days late? If it’s anything like the in game manual… handy for the stat listings but it’s mostly a pitiful little thing.

Edit:

Don’t forget the stun! Still, sonic arrow has a much longer animation time before damage hits than any ability I’ve used so far. In situations where time is of the essence it can be a close call to rely on it.

1775

I dunno I downlaoded it from Cryptic. I recall COH having a nice looknig but 100000% worthless manual, since they, well, changed shit constantly.

1776

No – the retail shipped with a terrible ~8 page manual, which primarily included installation instructions and the EULA in handy printed form.

There is a more complete .PDF available on the website now, but a lot of the game is still trail-and-error (for me at least…)

1777

doesn’t really matter for PVE, most the group is already dead after the first shot.

1778

If you’re playing solo, sure possibly (my ego isn’t high enough for that, they are just mostly dead). In a group, when reinforcements come (or perhaps in instances where it’d be more important), it does matter.

1779

Ice burst, and you win, if not, icewall and block, you win, 1 icewall is enough to kill Super villain.

1780

Bear in mind that they’re nerfing the footsteps ability of icewall.