MTeague

If the old 1972 "Kung Fu" TV Show taught me anything, it's never underestimate the Old Blind Guy (Master Po, not to be confused with a certain Panda)

The trick is to do a knockdown right before that attack, and to use the naginata staff when you do. Then it looks like you're repeatedly stabbing the bad guy somewhere he really does not want to be stabbed.

For Sorcery, I'm not a huge fan of Arcane Bolt. It can work and for controllers with Containment, it does not suck. But neither is it the Most Amazing Thing Ever. Conceptually, I like Spirit Ward, and that's usually my 2nd pick after Mystic Flight. It's been handy every so often to place on an NPC who's supposed to live, and it's easy to tag a squishy teammate with it. They may run zooming out of range, but hey, I tried. Visually, I love love love Enflame, esp with the flames custom-colored to match a theme. In practice of actually contributing damage, the power may or may not be worth beans. I haven't looked because I don't want to give up the power.

It can be rough if you're very very picky on names, like me. I don't even have 50 characters grand total, because I don't like settle-for names. I try to get single-word names when I can. I try to get something that a hero or villian would actually *want* to be called. (ie, not a joke name, not a horrible pun). And if I want "Firehawk", I don't want "the Incinerating Avian", or "Burning Parakeet". I did eventually accept "Flameshrike", though. I can't complain though. I still get to play CoH. I'd pretty much given up hope on that until my annual google search results came back with hits in 2019.

It's the fine line between not making them OP and not making them of questionable worth. I'm pretty happy with them as they stand. I would not mind if toxic dart got a little love, but it is a T1 pool attack, so it's never going to be something to write home about. I am hoping the remaining two Origin Pools become available "soon", but I can be patient.

I mean, while every AT can solo, and I do solo quite a bit, the game was designed as an MMO and there's a lot of assumptions of team play in some designs. Most notably in your bubbler sets, but even beyond that. It's not unreasonable that blasters were for massive damage after teammates had already applied debuffs. Sure they have their own secondary effects, but nothing to compare with corruptors, defenders, MM's, etc.

Um.... I have yet to roll one.... but I've always been told that Ice/Ice blasters are darn near Blastrollers. And looking at the powers, it feels hard to argue with. Ice Blast gives you lots of powers with slow and -Recharge, TWO holds, a damaging cone slow, and a Rain that mobs want to run away from. Ice Manip gives you a PBAE slow toggle, an ice patch for the power of flopping fish on dry land, a cone slow, and a third! Hold. That's a pretty good kit for blasters.

Bonus points if any animation does justice to the EverQuest Iksar Flop (lizard monk feign death)

I'm always slightly amazed. I don't think I even have 50 characters grand total. But I am *extremely* picky on names, and my own "not-really-OCD-but-I-call-it-that", requires me to mentally sketch out a character backstory / personality / worldview before I finish creating the character.

It's easier to pool my resources across my characters if they're all on the same server shard. Personal SG base, salvage, etc. Also, I tend to solo, so I don't have a large draw to other servers. I did once look at potentially mass transferring my characters from Excelsior to Everlasting. But a full third of my characters would have to have been renamed, and some of those were complete deal-breakers for me.

I'm virtually certain the story arc used to be longer too. I'm pretty sure I had to suck up Vahzilok Plague with flies buzzing around my character and a massive Recovery debuff for like 4-5 missions, some of them fairly long.

Let's not forget Tip Missions! I know I know, I'm probably like 1 of 5 people left who still changes alignments the Olde Fashioned Way, without using Null the Gull. But the Tip missions have some pretty decent writing for your one-off missions. I particularly like the writing in the Rogue-to-Hero and the Vigilante-to-Villian tips.

Disagree. Characters lvl 45-50 need to be able to do their missions without already being incarnates. That said, if they want to do it to areas well off the beaten path .... I'm thinking the huge Arachnos manufacturing facility north of Grandville proper. Hey sure. That'll never interfere with anyone levelling. Peregrine, I'm not sure has enough similar real estate. There is the Monster Island, but I think people would want that left as is.

My personal take is we've had enough power creep, and yes, freeing up an entire power selection or two is power creep. That said, I'm not a dev. Devs are gonna do, or not do, whatever they think is best, for reasons they think are best.

I was reasonably sure you can get any random badge via Ouroborus. It's why you don't see people offering the Spelunker badge mission the way you would in Live, etc. That said, I'm back from a 5 month hiatus, so I cannot swear to what may or may not have changed since last I was around.

Patrol XP accumulating, does not bother me. But I have zero problems flipping the "No XP" switch when I don't want to ding, in order to run certain missions at content, or if I feel I want more time to experience the character at a given power level, etc. That said, I certainly have no objections to an option being added to decline Patrol XP.

I really like the Story Arcs. There's definitely points where I want more choices offered. There's definitely points if i was actually my character I'd do things differently. But compared to all the story arcs from Blueside and Redside, I thought it was a strong improvement. The downside is you basically have to solo them, and even then not set your difficulty too high, unless you are willing to disable XP, or you can very easily outlevel several contacts and ding 20 while feeling like you barely scratched the surface. I tend to do 2 or 3 alignment storylines in each of the three 1-20 zones for my goldsiders. And yes, that absolutely means I disable XP immeditately upon dinging 9, 14, and 19. Sometims at 8 and 13, if I care about all the "introduction" missions. I think it's deeply unfortunate that NCSoft designed certain NPC's who are mission contacts to vanish from the game after a conflicting alignment arc. That's just bad design. Have them vanish from their normal location, sure, but have them available in a prison somewhere, or a safehouse, something! All in all, I very much prefer goldside to blue. Maybe some of it is the darker grittier feel of the world speaks to me. Maybe some of it is being sick to death of running classic TF's, or Radio missions. That's lumping things together too much, I think. There's Power, Responsibility, Warden, and Crusader. Responsibilty and Warden are the easiest to handle RP wise. At least for me. When you're just someone trying to get through the day and do what you think is the "right" thing. Maybe you don't like Cole, but decide he's better than the Devouring Earth. Maybe you want Cole gone, but realize humanity can't afford many more losses on this world. Power is next easiest. It's not hard to imagine sociopathic ladder climbers who will happily cut down anyone else they think might be a threat to them, or just because they like being a bully. Not my favorite characters to imagine, but not difficult, either. Crusader are the ones I have real problems trying mentally see their world through their eyes. Where they're so focused on tearing the world down, while a huge Devouring Earth presence is OUT THERE, and they have ZERO PLAN for how to deal with that after they knock down Cole. I cannot really consider them anything but partially mentally damaged. I also definitely wish there was a ground-breaking change for how certain NPCs reacted to the idea of another world accessable by portal. You'd think a lot of people would be ecstatic to know Humanity is not at the brink of extinction, there are more of us out there. I imagine many would want to get young kids out to Primal Earth, even if they wanted to stay behind and try to break Hamidon. But it's barely made noise of. I would not object to these as long as something similar were created for people would in theory should be Kill-On-Sight for most Praetors. Ie, you can't talk to Cole or his Praetors, but someone like Blind Makwa, or a post-corporeal spirt form of Vanessa De Vore, might be willing to teach you a few tricks.... provided you'd done the relevant content leading up to them. Still. Personally? I would never use them. My characters get thier powers from themselves, I have no use for hand-me-down tricks from Black Scorpion, or Captain Mako. It does not matter one bit how much min-max combat numbers benefit there may be to Scorpion Shield. I will never use it, on any character, and never have. I'll do the arcs for badges and fun. But I'll never use Patron Pools in any respec.

Hypothetically, what Knock magnitude would you need for something like a Skyrim Giant club attack? .... asking for a friend.

It's not all the time, but it's often enough. It would be refreshing to have a few arcs where someone is setting up to betray you, and you get to do a pre-emptive betrayal / neutralization of them. "Londo, you are a fool. You walk away from the greatest power I have even seen! And now you expect me to do the same!? They are the key to my eventual rise to the throne! Why would I abandon them?" "Because I have asked you. And because your loyalty to our people should be greater than your ambition. And because I have poisoned your drink." ..... "Why? Why did you do this?" "To guarantee your co-operation. And because, sooner or later, you would do it to me. Yes, we are returning to the old ways, Refa. Poison was always the instrument of choice in the old Republic. Being something of a sentimentalist, I got here, first." Babylon 5, S3E11, "Ceremonites of Light and Dark" That said, the Doctor Graves arc could be improved in excess of 90%, if they allowed you to murder some of the annoying NPC's at the end of the arc.

I solo probably 60-70% of the time, specifically because I enjoy reading mission text, and NPC's chatting, and cutscenes, and teams have all the patience of a 3 year old on a triple mocha latte. (Note: do not actually give coffee to the little ones). It doesn't matter if I've done the missions 30 times before. If it's new to the character I'm playing, I want to read it.

When I come up with a good backstory.

I have zero hope of purple triangles ever going away or being changed at this point. Still, I like where you're going with that. There has to be some other way to avoid "City of Statues" but still not be "Oh, you wanted to solo the EB/AV? Go get a Shivan, the powers you use to defend yourself in every other content are CRAP against EB/AV's, because reasons."

I would make Controls.... not pets.... actual controls.... Holds, Sleeps, Confuses, Stuns.... matter. At every stage of the game. Including Endgame. Otherwise, simply rip out Controllers entirely. It sucks to lvl up to 50 and realize no team even notices your primary, and only cares about your secondary, and maybe not even that. Oh, and that if you decide to solo, Elite Bosses still get Purple Triangle of Doom that nerf the bejeezus out of your primary skills, even though there's no Orange Triangles of Doom that reduce incoming damage dealt by anyone else. (yea, i'm slightly salty).

If this is done, please make it opt-in, or opt-out. Don't care which. Admittedly, I don't run repel THAT that often on my Mind/Kin controller. But I've taken Repel on him in every respec since launch of LIVE, and I always liked the Repel sound effects. Totally fine and understand sound quality issues other people are experiencing. I do not begrudge anyone the request for toned down audio. Just please let me keep the existing sounds for my own enjoyment, even if I have to flip a switch or do some power customization thing for "classic sound fx".

Faultline I believe was once called Overbrook.