MTeague

I can't get past the idea that Blackwing, raven familiar of Vaarsuvius from Order of the Stick webcomic, is now charge of a large paramilitary group. Ok, ok, I know, it's nothing but a similarity in names. No such crossover actually exists. But Rule of Cool trumps all, right?

Well, why make it a "might" cry. Queue it up for the nostalgia:

I could do without additional sources of floaty text. There's a point where I just understand the 2nd damage number if my containment damage, I don't need to see any text accompanying it. That said, overall, these changes are all great. My Mind/Kin Controller has no pets to control, but he still feels like he's in a very good spot now with the Deep Sleep changes and the reduced cooldowns if Total Dom / Mass Confuse are used on smaller spawns. And my Ice Controller Mr. Kelvin will be glad he can finally order Hobbes around. (yes, Kelvin & Hobbes...)

Do these changes only apply to Player use of the powers, or NPC's as well? I'm wondering if Lost bosses like Emerites, or even minions like Yellow Ink Men, can Deep Sleep players.

I completely read the message title in Twisted Sister voice for "I wanna Rock!" I have an AR/Martial blaster. Super fun character to play. Uses Speed of Sound as well, so has Burst of Speed for rapid teleport attacks, a foot sweep or kick or Ki Push, then Jaunt back out to proper Cone distance for Flamethrower or whatever else. And lulz at any melee mobs trying to catch up to her. I'm not as familiar with Storm Blast, but Martial Kombat is a great secondary.

lol. I may post a "Rise from your Grave!" thing if the thread has been dead for most of a year. That said, I'm also kidding when I do so. Picking up where an old discussion left off can be just as valid as starting a new thread with a link to the old. Reviving an old thread does run the risk of someone else reponding to something in the first 2-3 posts from long ago, because they didn't notice the date-stamp. But sometimes, it can be desireable to keep things condensed in ONE thread. I'd like to think we're all (mostly) functional adults here, so if occasionally we reply to something ancient, really, no harm no foul.

This. I'd make it a Control set "Transmutation" or something, that could apply to any origin. (I mean, it needs serious stretching for "Natural", but is it really any harder for Natural to rationalize Ice Conttrol?) Holds would temporarily bamph you into a (large) frog or something that can reasonably be targetted, but not atttack much. Immobs might turn your lower body into a tree trunk? Literally "rooting" you in place. (Although this might be difficult if we still need to animate the immobilized target doing martial arts kicks....) Intangibilities are not always the most popular, but turning the target into a cloud of mist? a partial transmute could be the basis for confusion / disorientation a pet is easy, you point at something and turn it into a large black cat, panther-sized. The downside is... that's a lot of graphical / animation work to toss in there. And my understanding is that's one of the more troublesome aspects for the dev team. Do keep ideas coming though. Worst case, people say "No." Although, this may be best transplanted to the "Suggestions & Feedback" forum.

Moose: A Møøse once bit my sister...

Hey that gold shithole looks way cleaner than Port Oakes or Cap Au Diable. Except, um, for First Ward. They kinda got rekt.

Obligatory: I've always been quite happy with my Spines/Regen stalker, which people keep telling me is the worst possible regen combination, but.... um... OK? I find him plenty durable enough. I will say, I make no attempt to soak the alpha strike for a team. Stalker. Not tanker, not brute. Soaking alpha strikes is not my job. I'll still dive into each spawn in scrapperlock mode when on a team, but between decent resists from set bonuses and popping the occasional Inspiration, he does right fine. I would like additional -Regen Debuff Resistence. 19% is low. Why not 91%? Super Reflexes gets sky-high DDR, on the idea that if you're a one trick pony, you need to OWN that trick. Well... let a set named "Regeneration" own comparably high -Regen debuff resistence (RDR?). Click heavy never bothered me, but I do main a Mind/Kin controller, so I've been clicking like a madman for years. Constantly triaging / pre-planning my next 3-5 clicks.

if you're looking for easy mode, you're probably not seeking out AE arcs that say they include Archvillans and Elite Bosses.

Right now, they are in the universities, (3 blueside, 1 redside, 1 goldside). And they can be added to bases. While having one in every non-hazard-zone wouldn't really hurt anything, given your self-imposed restrictions of "refuse to use a base", I think the solution then boils down to "get the summonable one". The hassle of going to a university is not that large. It's very doable between missions. If even that much delay is intolerable to you, then I really have to ask would having one next to each trainer really solve it, or would that feel like it was still "too far" and "interrupting the flow of the game".... particularly in big zones like Independance Port, or Salamanca, etc. I really think long term, you'll be happiest with the summonable one.

My non-super Thugs/Traps MM uses a "school backpack", mild headcanon for lugging around all the devices they setup everywhere. Honestly, it's not big enough for most of them... I mean, just look at the size of the FF generator and the Triage Beacon... so you kinda have to assume some degree of miniturization tech going on. Same way my non-supers typically wear some kind of flak jacket looking thing that.... wouldn't be enough for most of what they fight lol. Lost Swordsmen using a sword 8 feet tall? No that hits you you're just dead. But gameplay concessions and flavor, and as long as it's fun, I shouldn't overthink things the way I always do....

While I also tend to (gradually) get all the crafting badges, I'm content with the existing scheme. I'll post common IO's for sale only if they are accuracy, defense, resist, healing, recharge, or end reduction. Everything else I just delete without even an attempt to sell them. It's not worth leaving the others up for sale for the amount of time it would take. Breaking them down into components would be, to me, just one more hassle. Buying common salvage is dirt cheap, and until you get up into the 40's, the cost of recipes isn't anything I notice. I'm not really opposed to the idea? I just feel the benefit is near-trivial.... just a feeling that you can get small parts back from what was a relatively small one-time-expense in the first place. And to get that benefit, the devs would need to cook up a scheme, decide what's balanced and what's not, implement it, test it, and release it. I'd way rather they focused on mission content and/or powerset tweaking than helping people feel a little bit better about spending small money for common IO's. My $0.02 USD, your milage may vary.

lol. I love the idea that the villains all ran out for ice creams! I mean, OK, ice cream is pretty serious business, and all, but ... they might need to work on that discipline.

I only have multiple builds on one character, and I don't plan to repeat that. It's a giant PITA when you respec. Now, I know the idea is once you have settled plans and don't intend to respec much ever again, setting up a 2nd or 3rd build can give you more static options. But I always end up respecc'ing more often than I think I will. It's enough of a hassle each time I do it with only one build. I don't want to have to do two or three back-to-back-to-back. If I could tell it "I only want to respec build A, keep builds B and C completely untouched. Don't make me re-select everything for them", then I'd be more willing to use multiple builds.

I would love an option where I could flag X many of my redsiders to show up as Elite Bosses that my bluesiders have to fight at the end of a mission, and vice/versa. Even better if the flagged alt would show up including ALL of their set bonuses, and (if lvl 45+) ALL of their incarnate abilities, so I had to deal with facing a foe with softcapped defenses and ridiculous DDR when facing off against one of my Super Reflexes characters. An actual fair face-off. But I would definitely want it to be my characters vs my characters only, and I would want it double opt-in. Flag each character to be an eligible opponent for another one off my characters of opposite alignment. Flag each character to actually have such encounters / boss fights in their missions. Because at certain level ranges this would just be extremely obnoxious. It might work better for a tip-mission environment vs normal missions, too.

I mean, there are times I am decidedly anti-social and not looking to team and not really wanting drive-by buffs. But mostly for those times, I'm either offline and it doesn't matter, or I'm doing story arcs, soloing in an instance, and it doesn't matter. It would only really come up if I was (a) feeling anti-social, AND (b) doing a story arc / mission that requires me to spend considerable time street sweeping in a populated area. ex, if a mission tells me to kill a bunch of clockwork or council in Boomtown, I'm really not concerned with drive-by buffs, because the place is deserted. If the mission requires me to kill 50 carnies in Peregrine Island, OK, drive by buffs happen, but I grow thicker skin and don't worry about it. People mean well. I'll just deactivate the buffs a few seconds after they fly off. It's not like the player who randomly buffed you is going to hang around and babysit you for an hour to refresh their buffs the whole time. Deactivate, and it's a non-issue. Most of the time I don't mind the buffs at all, though.

First up, thank you for Not trotting out the dungeons and dragons alignment grid. Generally speaking, most of my Heroes at least think they belong to Savior / Idealist. I have one hero who firmly believes she is above the law and not answerable to anyone or anything, but is very strict for her own personal code. I have one hero who is primarily concerned with how mutants are treated by normals, and may cross over from villain from time to time. My villains, well, at least some of them are entirely outside of this grid, because it has no vertical option for "causes great harm, and that is the point of the exercise", and no option for "causes great harm in the name of eventual planetary domination." Other of my redsiders really have no interest in ruling the world, but they have powers, and want to be filthy stinking rich, and think laws are cute, at best. But once sufficiently rich, they'd really stop being a thorn to anyone else, because they'd be too busy enjoying the good life to cause any more mayhem. And I have a couple redsiders who are on target to eventually become heroes, but they had it rough and they'll spend a very long time at Rogue before letting go of the "But I'm gonna get paid, right?"

This is why you Fireball civilians anytime you're on a Mayhem mission. One of your rare options to retaliate!

I never have. But in theory.... dedicate a costume slot, select the character aura that has flies buzzing around you. never slot Stamina (may or may not want to do a build for this, so could turn on/off by switchhing builds) do not use Panacea proc or anything with free periodic +endurance. Not my personal cup of tea, but if I was minded, that's how I'd approach it.

I've occasionally been annoyed at missions that tell me that I've been poisoned, when on my Fire/Fire/Fire sentinel who, headcanon, literally no longer has flesh or blood. He's a creature off living steel and fire. So how exactly did you poison me? But I get mission writers cannot foresee these things, and even if they could, they'd have no way to tell when a character is organic vs robotic vs extra-planar vs non-corporeal vs other. Maybe such a system of quirks, both positive and negative, could allow for such. But really, no one is going to go back and scour every existing mission and look for ways to refine them, the mission text, NPC speech etc, to tailor it to your character. So, from an RP perpsective, I don't see it accomplishing much. Headcanon items will remain headcanon items that the game does not account for, and that's that.

I've beaten that mission on my Mind/Kintroller. Not sure if everything is as applicable on Dark Control, but at least for Mind, Confuse causes no aggro, and I don't have any damage procs slotted in it. It's slotted with a confuse set, so good accuracy and duration considerably longer than it's recharge time. So I basically stacked 4-5 applications of Confuse on just ONE of the Wardens. Only one. Don't even try the other. Eventually it was enough to overcome the Confuse protection/resists. I had to completely sacrifice all XP for the other Warden, just keep maintaining Confuse on the first one, until he killed the second. When it was just the one Warden left, then I kept maintaining Confuse, and alternating Holds until I had him helpless, then normal damage rotation. Its an annoying mission, to be sure. I don't take it nearly as personally as I take Purple Triangles, but it's the nature of the game. Also, once I get to lvl 15, I always grab a Shivan Shard, So when the mission in patently unfair, I can be every bit as unfair right back at them. Admittedly, getting the Shivan Shard at lvl 15 on a controller is.... not the most fun thing either. But it's not that that hard to simulanteously weaken-but-not-kill the firebase turrets, and then pop them all in rapid-enough-fire to use the firebase and grab the temp power.

Keep in mind, CoH is extremely friendly to "bring the player, not the class". I've seen All Scrapper Task Forces, All Blaster Task Forces, All Defender Task Forces (loads of fun when that many support classes turn each other into steamrollers of DOOM). CoH is also extremely friendly to alting. Back when I played WoW (Burning Crusade through Pandaria), the time demands to fully level and gear alts was... considerable. I knew several players in WoW who didn't even have a single Alt, becuase they didn't want to take focus away from their main. I knew others who had four raid-geared characters, but at that point WoW had completely consumed their entire life. That's not a concern for CoH. Getting multiple charactrers to max level and fully kitted out will feel like no time at all if you're coming from WoW. So, don't overthink your first character that much. How do you like to play? Sneaky and Stabby? You'll have loads of fun as a Stalker. If you'd rather be the one who has full court vision and plugs any holes on the battlefield, Controller or Dominator will do you right fine. Ranged damage with big numbers? Blasteriffic. King of buffs or debuffs? Defender or Corruptor. I will say Debuffs tend to matter more late game than Buffs, but I have never hated having a ForceFielder or Empath on my team. And if you just enjoy being the Unkillable Man, Tanker is hard to beat, and a well built Brute does not suck, either. MM's can be fun but I would not start with them. Pet Management is just one extra hurdle as you get into it.

Honestly, Flambeaux being entirely self-centered fits her to a T. It's also part of what makes it satisfying to beat her down in some of the Going Rogue Tip Missions, later on. When she's trying to be full Villain, and completely utterly failing at that too, because she's not a Villain, she's an over-arrogant Diva / Attention Hoor(b). Redside mission tip, Filmed Announcement in particular, but there are definitely others.