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The Witch's House, a virtual haunted house with Live monsters held its 5th annual Halloween Treat Giveaway. I think this year was better than ever! As usual, there were new things to see in the House. We had a ton of new scare actors helping us out, which was awesome and necessary, seeing as RL hit hard for many this year, and prevented them from being able to help out, much to their disappointment. The amazing RP community showed up once again, making this fun for all of us! (Haunted houses just are not much fun if people don't interact and race through, you know?) I got the privilege of handing out several billion worth of treats, thanks to amazing donors like @Amur, @ChiliBear, @Marine X, a large anonymous donor, and my helpful backstage support person (you know who you are! 🙂) My scare actors had a wonderful time and I appreciate them SO much, along with the very kind (but very busy!) GM Impervium and also GM Willow, who plugged along even while feeling quite ill (we all hope you're feeling better!) Visitors were overheard saying that the transformation chamber was one of their very favorite things in the House, and it's so appreciated! So, here are just a few of the people we had visit this year; there were many MANY more fabulous costumes and looks I could not capture because perhaps I was too busy, was hoping someone else captured it (you will note a difference in some of these pics, due to who took them). If you don't see your look here, it probably wasn't because I didn't love it, it was just a busy time!! Thank you ALL for coming, from the RPers who kept us laughing and sharing quotes all weekend, to the players who made the effort to transport over from another server (and there were a good number of those), to the xp focused players who decided they'd take a few minutes to see what the announcements were all about, we all really enjoyed having you there, and I hope you got great treats! ( I know the announcements get tiresome, but there is no other way to reach the majority of players; sorry for having to repeat the announcements so often). Thanks to those who helped out by announcing back on their home shards. I simply cannot be logging characters in to all the servers while I'm interacting with people, and certainly not if that also means I'm handing out treats.) Feel free to call out the characters you recognize! But no fair if their name is listed in the photo. 🙂 I noted the names of some, but felt it was unfair to list those when I could not list all. The House (Boo-17189 on Everlasting) remains open for the curious, with a few afk characters scattered about, but most of the time, no monsters, until Maintenance.

Been away for a bit but wanted to share some ideas for new powersets and changes to existing powers that I’ve been messing with on my personal server. These were really fun to work on and showed me just how much variety can be added for powers by recycling other effects that exist in the game. Hope you guys enjoy watching these and it sparks more discussion about power ideas! I don’t think there’s any end in sight to what’s possible in this game. My wife and I recently had our first baby so I won’t have time to make anything new or participate for awhile, but wanted to share these in the meantime. Disclaimer: I know some of this stuff doesn’t fit the balance vision for Homecoming, but I tried to make most of it follow similar formulas and patterns from other sets. Numbers can always be tweaked. Exo Blast Arcane Melee Tactical Armor Miscellaneous Power Changes (Includes Exo Blast)

(And as a bonus:)

No. You should probably go read more about fascism from a reputable source if you do not understand what fascism is. I could outline the various characteristics of fascism, but that's not really what this forum is for and would likely result in moderator activity.

That won't change anything. People will power level past all the content either in events or AE farms or saved mission farms. Edit: City of Heroes/Villains does something I am not aware of other MMORPGs doing. Giving players reason to actually experience the lower levels while leveling up. A lot of players I've met hail from the World of Warcraft school where the game doesn't start until you are at max level. And it is difficult to change that mindset.

The return of @Diantane. Many of their followers waited with baited breath for the wise words of their leader. Why play anything in this game without their blessing? Doing so would be foolish and a waste of time. Unless fun is defined by @Diantane, none can be had.

For as long as I have been here (the drop of Redside… “event?” This has been the case. Whether it was an abusive X-farm in aE on live, double exp weekend, new/updated powers, or seasonal event. This has been an endless cycle of chasing the new shiny. To now ask “ Did events kill the game?” Ignores twenty years of history of how players have played the game. Events did not kill the game. Events have been a solid enjoyable steady experience our players have enjoyed for years and years.

Have played RPG's since they were invented in 1977 (Apple II) and MMO's when they were invented in 1999. My favorite position is a tank. Unlike most tanks on this game where players use them the same way they would use a brute or scrapper, a tank is supposed to jump into a large group (Taking the ALPHA) and keep the baddies away from the team. If they can't do this, they aren't a real tank (just a melee character doing minimal dps (with their weaker secondary attacks). Taking the alpha is a tank's primary task. When the team moves forward, then stops right before a group, the tank runs ahead straight into them. When the tank has their full attention, the team can safely engage. Have played dozens of combinations for tanks in this game and most can take the alpha pretty well until their mid 20's. The sets that fail to take an alpha without dieing, can't be a real tank. COH is not like most MMO's where there is always a dedicated healer with the priority to protect the tank. So a COH tank set must be able to take the alpha and keep themselves alive to keep doing this. This why most sets will fail. From looking at the builds of other new players, I can see that most tankers train an even amount of attacks and defenses (a scrapper with more armor/health). An alpha tank puts everything into defense (including the fighting pool) well into their teens. The first attack I train is taunt. Then none again until tiers 7, 8 and 9. Later I wil train the rest as fillers. I have found that the most defensive pure alpha tank is one with a very high health absorbtion (1,000+ at 50 using SO's), a strong heal (based on the number of foes in melee range) and does not allow the melee baddies to touch them. This is raditation armor and ice melee (ice has the ice patch making the nearby foes to slip and fall). Many tanks have Super Strength for the Foot Stomp AoE. But Ice has Frozen Aura which does slightly more AoE damage as Foot Stomp (same 20 second base recharge), but also freezes the foes in place. There are more defensive sets like Invul, but they don't have both a large absorbtion and a heal.

Some people like the events, and some people only have a couple hours a week to play, so having the event run for a month allows those people to participate too.

I love that we've got some more color to the various spawns in Brickstown. The Crey encounters where they're threatening or even killing civilians are chilling and will fill even the kindest hearts with rage. And then there are these hosers: When you attack the Council soldiers, these asshats get to run away to the nearest door like civilian NPCs. I want to arrest this guy, even if I don't get experience or influence for it. On my less patient characters, I want to arrest this guy into a greasy smear on the asphalt. Can we adjust these guys so that they have the same level and abilities as like a level 1 Hellion? Barring that, can we make them go into the 'hands behind head' pose after we've taken out their supersoldier friends rather than just getting to run away? (I'd also like to rough up the council trainees that tend to appear in the East part of the zone, but I suspect that would likely be more development effort.) Thank you for helping me to stamp out fascism.

Made a Up N Away Burger "commercial" featuring my fire/fire blaster Kara Kabluey. There are a few things I need to tweak, but this was my first attempt and I think it turned out alright.

I main'd a Tank in Warcraft from launch until the end of Pandaria. It is true that CoH tanks, and really every archtype in CoH, play very, Very differently from their counterparts in a "traditional" MMO. This is a Good Thing. The brilliance of CoH, is that in the VAST bulk of content, no single archtype or powerset is ever necessary. Want to run with 8 blasters? You can do that. 8 scrappers? knock yourself out. 8 Defenders? Go to. No matter the config, if people are willing to adapt and play nice with others, you can get the job done, and generally have a good time. Now, I will say, when I personally am playing a tanker, I have a few rules of thumb. If the entire group is charging past me, I'll apologize and ask for a buff to fix whatever is holding me back (often END). If it cannot be remedied, i will gracefully bow out and wish them well. If the group is mostly staying together, but 1-2 players charge forward without the team, those that charge ahead are Not My Problem. Whatever they get into is on them. If any player faceplants a lot in the first few spawns, I'll make it a point to keep an eye on them for the duration, and keep punchvoke or manual taunting whatever needs it. (I always take Taunt, it's nice and handy for runners or annoying flyers) How much you need to watch out for teammates varies a lot. An exemplared 50 on a Synapse who has several paragraphs of set bonuses, is probably Just Fine without me. A true actual lvl 17 player on Synapse who is sidekicked up to 20, can benefit from a tank paying extra attention. As with most things in CoH, be friendly, be adaptable, and if something isn't working, be collaborative vs blaming people or trying to lock teammates into certain "jobs". You'll enjoy it a lot more.

I have encountered a surprising number of "veterans" who have no idea how to play either. This is not a phenomena of new players only.

Neat little featurette: 40 years ago, F4 rights holder Bernd Eichinger phoned the late, great Roger Corman. He needed an F4 movie to keep them, and he needed it now. It wasn't exactly going to change the world, but the actors, director, artists, makeup crew and FX team squeezed everything they could out of a meagre $1m budget (and a slightly dodgy script). And it never got released. That is not going to change on D+. (Probably. They might do something like drop it for April Fool's Day.) But Matt Shakman loved all of them so much, they were invited back to take bit roles in the new movie. If you love moviemaking - especially the "trenches" of no-budget stuff - this is a nice little watch, and I think I'd like to take all of them for a pint next LFCC.

And just to point out, Council & 5th Column are straight up fascist groups in game history. So, the OP using the label for them is accurate.

I ignore most events, and have for years. I'm not against events existing even for a month-long period, but I very much play CoH on my terms. An event being live, or not, won't convince me to change the goals I already had in my mind when I logged in. If by "Kill the game", you mean that people aren't joining you in the content you prefer, and that certain city zones "feel dead" to you because of it, well, the best way to get a group is usually to start one. There tends to be plenty of people waiting for someone else to start a group and provide a direction. So be the change you want to see. "Starting mission team! All levels welcome, but will be doing story content lvls 30-38!" isn't that hard to spam into LFG channel a few times. If by "Kill the game", you mean something else, I'm all ears, but I haven't noticed any real fluctuation in server population numbers. Just fluctuations in where people spend their time in game.

The events just go on too long I can see a week before and a week after said holiday but over a month is just too long even ingame fatigue settles in around week 3 or so when tot leagues dont get anywhere close to full

Struggling with your character in the valley between level 20 and level 40? Can’t find anything that won’t turn you to paste in AE when you select “My Level” because it’s left on the default 1-54? Want to be creative but lack the spark to make a new arc? The Mission Architect Sunday Special proudly presents the Medium Midlevel Matinee! To close out 2025, we present AE writers with a contest to build a medium sized arc for midlevel players. If successful, this will be an annual contest. This year’s theme will be: Hobbies! Whether it be heroic or villainous, write an arc centered around the antics a super might encounter in their downtime. With the prompt out of the way, what are the fine details? Rules and Judging Submissions must be marked as Final, have a level no lower than 20 and no higher than 40, and have a length of Medium. Any arc not set to Final or outside the level range will be disqualified. Authors may use a smaller level range for their arc (similar to how most official story arcs are only five or ten levels). Due to the quirks of the AE interface and how it calculates length, a Long arc will be allowed if it is only 3 or fewer missions. Though you can stretch for comedy or tragedy, the arc must take place in Paragon City, the Rogue Isles, or Praetoria and feel like it fits in City of Heroes. One entry per person. Judges may not enter. This year’s judges are @ZamuelNow, @Darmian, and @Lunar Ronin. Entries will be graded on a rubric to help with fairness but considering writing and opinions on writing are subjective, entries are not expected to make a “perfect” score. We celebrate the creativity of all the entrants. Entries must be submitted to the entry thread with Arc ID, in game global, arc name, and the arc’s description. Arcs must be published after Sunday November 2nd, 2025 6:00 PM EST, with an Arc ID greater than 69600. Entries will be accepted until Saturday, January 3rd, 2026, at 11:59 PM EST. Prizes First place: 300 million inf + the Lords of Winter, Heroes and Villains, and Rogues and Vigilantes Super Packs Second place: 150 million inf +the Heroes and Villains and Rogues and Vigilantes Super Packs Third place: 50 million inf + the Heroes and Villains and Rogues and Vigilantes Super Packs

stuff

I think everything pretty much has been said already above, but some additional considerations/reminders: For stopping, hit the back button near the end to stop the drift - this is how you had to Fly since 2004 when the game launched and before HC recently allowed Hover and Fly to stack. You can also STILL take Hover from the flight pool and have it stack, if you want - also, Combat Jumping helps. Yes, an extra power pick, but it's possible to do if the drift annoys you that much, Rune of Protection is largely not needed at all due to the unchangeable duration and recharge. I have only 1 character with it so that I can say I've tried it. It rarely uses it as inspires are typically always there when I need them - even in the worst of content: 4-Star TFs/SFs, iTrials, incarnate, etc. Power Pools are meant to have the "good" powers at the end and have prerequisites to take prior to getting them - always been that way. That's the trade off for the "good" powers. As also mentioned above, there are other servers out there who do allow you to pick any power in any order, and some also mix and matching many power sets across several ATs. I too am in the camp of finding the inherent TP very useful. I would be sad to have it go away from Mystic Flight. Too many times, I am trapped in a room or hallway by a horde of mobs and the TP helps me escape/relocate. Or it helps me to better position myself within a mob (in the case of my fairy Brute that wants to be surrounded by foes - sometimes, mobs stay in a cone and I can TP into the middle of the mass to force them to surround me. 🙂

This would completely screw over players. Edit: Pretty sure Controllers already have a chance to inflict a higher Hold status than listed. And with Holds specifically, there is a proc' that can increase your Hold's Mag by +2. Get the recharge down enough or have a teammate with you, and even the most stubborn EB can be held. (Edit again: And if you slot chance to Hold procs in your attacks, that is another layer of Hold magnitude you can be applying to the target.) (Edit again: And I'm at a loss over your "first attack waned so it does not contribute" part. If your Holds are wearing off faster than you can refresh them and you aren't a low level Controller, then you have issues with your enhancement slotting. For example, Ice Control's tier 2 (level 1) power Block of Ice is a Mag 3 hold that lasts for 22.35 seconds and has an 8 second recharge. You should already be able to get your Hold up to Mag 6 after 8 seconds without any slotting at all. Even its 20% chance to trigger Mag 1 Hold has a 16.763 second duration. With even marginal recharge slotting, you can be throwing Ice Block every 4 seconds. And with even 1 level 50 Hold enhancement, it now has a duration of 31.83 seconds. Yes, high mez resistance can reduce your mez duration, even drastically. However, mez resistance works as duration/(1+resistance value expressed as a decimal) for actual duration. So a target with 100% Hold resist cuts the duration in half (Duration/(1+1= 2) since 100% expressed as a decimal is 1.00). 500% resistance cuts the time to 1/6th the duration. So between recharge, hold duration, and using other powers, a Controller should be able to lock down just about anything.)

My favorite trick r treater this year… An SUV pulls up with tape on the side spelling out UPS. The suv stops, and out jumps a little girl dressed as a UPS driver, carrying a box with the top cut off for candy to be placed in. I laughed and told her it was genius.

I can't seem to decide on a single design I want to stick with, ATM, so here's "Psilver":

I suggest each contact list which mission/story arcs they have for us to choose from. Why in the world do we have to waste our time doing some one-off mission that gives no merits? There's just no reason to suffer through these one-offs other than to get to the story arc. If we can't get rid of them, make them part of the arc and increase the merit rewards by a merit or two. It makes no sense to me now that it's a non-profit game that we need people to sink time into a meaningless activity. In my mind, every contact should be like Lord Schweinzer. You go up, ask for the list of missions available, and choose what you want. Mind you, I don't want to do every arc with every character. I like how the contact gives me a choice - this or that. But when I know the contact has an arc, and my choices are some 90 minute timed mission or talking to a security chief, I know that neither one of those are what I want to do. I want the arc. Now, I'm left to outlevel the contact and go direct to the arc - which locks me in for the duration of the arc making doing other things, like help with a zone event or a gm problematic. Or, suffer through one of the options. Pitfalls: I'm sure it would be damned tedious for some dev to do this for each and every contact. I know I wouldn't want to do it! I don't even know how they'd manage to do this by level range. So many damned contacts! A good problem to have! But, Christmas is coming, and no harm in asking, as far I can tell.

1) True. That's why you can't "ban" farming. Players will just find what the most efficient path is and run on that path. If you close that path, they will find the next most efficient path. 2) True. 3) Incorrect assumption. Door sitters are not required to make bigger mobs. You just set your self for +4/*8 and go to town. Having door-sitters actually reduces the farmers income as drops are distributed to everyone on the map, not just the farmer. They are offering door-sitters to have company and to pay-it-back (or pay-it-forward).

I would say that the 'difference of opinion' issue is a red herring. Someone can -think- the 5th Column is a good idea and be shunned out of society until they change their opinion, sure. The recruiters aren't doing that. They're hanging out with a known international terrorist army in the streets of Paragon encouraging passerby to sign up for a fresh brainwashing by an army attempting to occupy Paragon City, which openly and flagrantly attacks superheroes, cops, criminals, and passerby. That goes from tacit support to material support, and opens them up to legal action and arrest... Via battle axe to the face.

Responding to @CoeruleumBlue No, the Halloween event did not kill the game. Neither did any other event. No, farming has never been against the rules, although the original devs kept tighter reins on it than the HC devs do. Yes, you can use Fiery Aura to great success in farms, but also in any other part of the game. No, you should not believe everything you read on Reddit. While I can't say there is never any toxic RP, I can say that there is plenty of friendly non-toxic RP. No, farming and RPing (toxic or not) would not stop if people "just played the game." Farming and RPing IS playing the game. Let people play the way they want to play and you play the way you want to. If you don't like farming, or ToTing, or RPing, or whatever, just don't do it. Let others enjoy what they like. No, you don't have to change Fiery Aura into a "normal armor set" because it already is. The reason it is the choice for farming is 1) it can easily be built to resist caps and defense caps on fire damage, 2) you can make enemies that only have fire damage, and 3) Burn, Blazing Aura, and Fiery Embrace can put out a lot of damage on top of whatever your attack set does. Ummm . . . . Comparing farming to crimes and thinking that it leads to predatory grooming is . . . I don't even know how you reach such conclusions. It's wrong and highly insulting to people who do like to farm.

This thread is a powder keg waiting to blow. Create an AE arc and you can do with them what you wish, there...

No. Okay. A bunch going on in that sentence. I don't do a lot of Trick or Treating. I do some. I mainly do it on a static team when someone else on the team has created a character that they want to get the Halloween badges on. Similarly, if I make a character that is supernatural in character conception, I'll trick-or-treat to get the badges. I'm not there to power-level. I usually only get a level or 2 before level-locking (turning off xp gain) or switching to another character. It is hard to get 8-player teams during the (when it comes down to it "power-leveling" and/or "quick merit gain") events. That does not mean that you can't recruit for other content. If people want to join, they will. Many are scared of the star. You don't have to be. People join or they don't. You get to pick the missions. You get to run your arcs in order to explore the game the way that you want with others to assist you. If a player is a jerk, you have the boot. If a player sends you tells that you don't want to interact with, then use the /ignore command. I'm not clear someone would consider you to be "obsessed with psionics". Was this from some RPer conflict? But I will go back to ... if someone is ruining your gaming experience through tells, use /ignore. That is definitely not the case. CoH was making profits until the Sunset. It just wasn't making a huge enough profit for NCsoft, and the fact the City of Heroes was never well received in South Korea. It is used for power-leveling. Other power-leveling tools are accepted at this point as well (and where on live), such as door-sitting on farms and joining level 50 police scanner missions in Peregrine Island. Some players power-level because they think that the "best way" (for them) to play the CoH is only to play the end-game as level 50. It does seem that this makes up at least 50% of the Homecoming population at this point. I, myself, I don't like the end-game content. I like creating characters and playing the game. I'm not the only one. I can say that the static team that I'm on - generally - does not try to recruit others to join when we are running together. I think the same goes for many SGs. They aren't looking for those outside of their SG's to game with. They might recruit for their SG, but they aren't generally using /lfg to recruit. I can't blame anyone for wanting to play with friend. When I'm not running with my static team (a 2-3 hours two nights a week), then I'm PuG'ing, looking for a PuG, or soloing (for one reason or another). I will agree with you that PuG'ing in general slows down during Events, but that doesn't mean that it stopped. I saw a good bit of people looking to run other content on the /lfg channel on the servers that I game on. Also - on the servers I game on - there was very little talk about the event on /lfg. People that talked about it in /lfg were generally looking for where it was going on and told to go to that zone and use /broadcast to get an invite. Originally, it was going to be a bannable offense to use the AE for farming. That didn't last very long and the DEVs ended up deleting the posts about banning players for using the AE for farming. Farming itself was never against the rules. Instead of banning it, the DEVs altered game mechanics to try to stop or to reduce farming. Popular game missions that were used for farms by not completing them and then repeating them were changed to timed missions so that could not be done more than once. The number of enemies that tanks could taunt was also part of this. I'm against farming. I believe it is an exploit, but I think power-leveling is an exploit as well. The DEVs are not against farming nor power-leveling. When it comes down to it, banning farming and power-leveling would ruin the experience of some players. This is not the case. I have Fire/? tanks and ?/Fire Sentinels and, as I noted, I'm against farming and power-leveling. Do those sets work differently than other sets, sure. The differences and appearance are important for me when creating characters based on character conception. I have no idea if there is "super toxic RP" here or not. My general experience in gaming is: 1) A group of RPr's has a leader that tries intentional to sow drama/discord in order to prompt RPG'ing. 2) There is going to tend to be a pecking order and newer players in an established group will feel the brunt of that pecking order. 3) Just because you don't fit in with one RPG group doesn't mean that there isn't a RPG group in the game that might fit you better. Honestly, I try to RP while playing the game - at the very basic level by making my characters based on a character conception and trying to use the character in-game based on that character conception. I'm not sure where you are going with this. With the Ouoboros, you can go back and play content that you out leveled. er, what? Farming in-gaming encourages predatory conduct according to who exactly? If you know of "grooming of minors" (I'm not sure "and the like" is supposed to imply) going on in Farms or RPg, then you should report it to the DEVs. If you have no proof of it going on, then you are spreading malicious rumors. I'm confused at how farming enables "the toxic RP community". There are players that RP with level 1s. You don't have to be a part of it if you don't want to. You don't have to take part in it if you don't want to. These still happen. These short "events" happen randomly and are sometimes set off by some missions or task forces being completed. If you stay on for several hours, it is likely that there is going to be an apartment fire in Steel Canyon.

I agree with this. I would be all for shortening the length of events to a week or two instead of a month or more.

Totally off point but I've taken to referring to the 2004-2012 period as Retail rather than Live, since with the licence we effectively ARE Live now. Your mileage may vary!

I stopped playing my Stalker because WP was so effective, I started tanking with it, which defeated the purpose of playing a stalker.

I see the peg stopped here on the Wheel of Diantane again!

Ah yes, a tank who doesn't attack is the best tank. It's a good thing tank attacks don't do anything important, like taunting in an AoE or doing various debuffs/soft controls that would make attacks useful for something other than damage. It is also known that the best active farming toon is not a tank, because they don't do any damage. Oh wait...

^---this And for the newer players (please read some of D's previous posts...more like "Diatribes by Diantane") I will say that unless you specifically want the original feel of Live, and only DOs/SOs, there's no reason you can't have both tanker ATO procs, by Posi1 (read any of the great money-making threads by @Sovera or @Yomo Kimyata). While I also take mostly armors on my tanks, early on, I'll make sure to get the first and second (or third) attacks, so I can slot the aforementioned procs. Quick recharging, fast animating, simple attacks...that proc a lot. The +res and absorb from MoT and GF, respectively, make big differences in survivability, especially pre-20. Fill that in with free prestige attacks, and you'll run out of end, before you run out of attacks.

A tank is an archetype. That's all. I never expect any tank below level 20 to have any real survivability because the game doesn't award them enough slots, nor influence to acquire the SOs to put in the slots they do have - unless they're vet players with a little gift from their alt. It always annoys me to no end to be on a tank at level 11, get an invite to a team running a level 14 mission at +4. Those npcs are level 18. And while I am sk'd to level 13, they're +5 to me. The math doesn't lie. It doesn't matter if you're on a stone tank, bio tank, no matter what you're on - if your team isn't killing them super fast, or buffing the crap out of my tank, I'm dead, and they're probably not far behind. Two things tend to lead to disappointment. Unrealistic expectations and unrealized expectations. In the example I provided, it's woefully unrealistic to expect any tank to handle that kind of scenario under typical pug team compositions. (where half of the folks aren't even slotted because they don't think it's necessary. Cheap, lazy bastards, lol) Every tank I have tends to survive in most conditions. And when it doesn't, I look in the combat attributes to see if I can determine why. More often than not, it's a -res debuff or a -recharge, or both. And if my teammates are otherwise distracted, or just lack the tools to help, then it's time to taste dirt. That's just the way this game is played. To minimize these events, you try to team up with smart people, or you analyze the team comp before you begin, and bail if there's weak team composition given the task at hand. Usually, there's nothing THAT hard that any pug can't handle after level 26. But before then, a tank has to be judicious if they want to avoid defeat.

Bosses have mag 3 protection to hold/stun/sleep/confuse. All controller hold/stun/confuse do mag 3 mez, meaning you only need to hit the boss twice with that type of mez for it to control them. ST sleeps for controllers are mag 3.5, so you will sleep them with 1 application. EBs are another story. If they're scaled down AVs, they'll have PToD which adds 50 mag mez protection to all but sleep/immobilize. And I highly doubt you're going to see a change to PToD, since that could trivialize AV content.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Loading_Screen_Tips Lots of them are listed here.

This ^ Know your foes weaknesses and powers. Purple Patch can get ugly too vs mez. Drives me nuts on a team of 8 when no one has an immobilize and then complains, for example, when Rommy turns into a track star.

My wife and I dressed as Fred and Wilma Flintstone to hand out candy. Most of the adults got our costumes though very few of the kids did. My personal favorite costume set that I saw was two kids, probably 5 and 7, dressed as Dr. Evil and Austin Powers and their mom dressed as Fat Bastard. The costumes were spot on and we got a good laugh out of them. Also saw a surprising number of inflatable costumes, mostly dinosaurs, though there was also a Cookie Monster and a Sonic the Hedgehog inflatable as well. Our neighbor's kid, who is 4 and autistic, had to practice coming up to us a few times before he was comfortable to actually go trick or treating. It was kind of heartwarming to watch him slowly go from "i don't want to go anywhere near those people" to having a big smile and saying "trick or treat" over the course of 20-30 minutes

I can do this even if no trick or treaters drop by.

My spouse and I have been living in our current home since 2008 and have always gotten an average of 50 kids annually, some years more some less (COVID was a low year last year was larger. My spouse is crafty oriented so created these hand made full scale static decorations outside, witches, pirates, this year added an Oracle. My deal is I sit out and greet the ToTers and guess their costume (and I am really good at it) which gets the kids super stoked and then they get candy, all kids get candy and plenty of it but really good costumes get more (if they are in a group I am less openly effusive) but they know. I don’t pick on bad costumes except when teens roll up. I don’t mind teens coming for candy, I respect that game but put in the effort. I mean yeah they still get candy cause its Halloween; I save the Grinching for other holidays. Princesses were way down this year while Dinosaurs were up. Superheroes were surprisingly low with just 3 Spiderman and 1 Iron Man. Got your standard witches and such but strange ones popped this year . . . Flintstones, several. What’s next? Woody Woodpecker? Felix the Cat? We had a Fred Jones from Scooby Doo, blonde hair and ascot with his wife dressed as Velma and their like 1 year old baby (who's birthday was that day) dressed as Scooby. Glorious. Then there were the crushingly adorable little brother and sister who came as Sheriff Woody and Jesse the Yodeling Cowgirl, you can’t help but give extra candy for that. There was a kid dressed as Wednesday Addams and mom as Morticia but the Wednesday was OG from the TV show and her mom was like her daughter wanted to kick the OG vice the reboot. Now the mom was Zeta Jones Morticia but who doesn’t like sword fighting Zeta Jones right? Then a father rolls up with two young boys and one is got me torn on my guess at first, is it Bruno Mars or is it Michael Jackson from Smooth Criminal, I took my shot with the King of Pop and I was right. His brother was dressed like Michael in the Billie Jean video. Respect and extra candy was thus received. Finally there was this couple with their son who looked to be like 16 or older who had come by not trick or treating just looking. But later they came back and after complimenting my spouse on the decorations and actually thanked us for doing the decorations and me doing the guessing and complimenting of costumes. Dude goes on to say that they have been bringing their son there since he was 4 and was now 18 and they tell us the kid is somewhat autistic but loved coming to the house to see the decorations and remembers me guessing his costume when he was super little. The dad said Adventure Time and I immediately remembered a Finn one year which surprised the dad I remembered (it was a rare costume to see) then mentioned the time when the kid was 11 that they came as a Ghostbuster and I nailed that he was Stantz not Venkman. That one I actually noted in my Facebook commentary 7 years ago. It was very humbling and a nice cap on a very fun and Happy Halloween.

Exo blast is missing a gimmicky mechanic nobody wants, please fix.