MTeague

So, every escort mission in every game, ever?

There is enough existing content that is simple enough to do with only SO's, that I don't think it would be Beyond the Pale for the devs to experiment with a few story arcs that assumed you are kitted out with IO's and Incarnates, if they so choose. However, keep in mind, some people say "kitted out character" to mean "Blaster with softcapped defenses and massive +Recharge" Also, what does "designed for that character" mean? Does it mean,"the mobs have so much +To-Hit that you're not even close to capped defenses anymore and are dying left and right"? I suspect this would not be popular content. People avoid Rularuu for a reason, and it's not just because the shadow shard is big. Does it mean "the mobs have CC effects that entirely ignore Clarion and Mez you ANYWAY?", like a kind of "Reverse Purple Triangles", where for X seconds your mez control is worth something and for Y seconds it might as well not be there? Again, I suspect this would not be popular content. Does it mean the mobs are just big giant bullet sponges that take more hits? Um.... boring? Surely we can do better than just that for challenge? Does it mean so much incoming damage such that anyone trying to solo it, even your best kitted out Tank, is GOING TO DIE, unless they are accompanied by squads of support and controllers? What kind of enemies would you WANT to see in these situations? What would be fair and challenging? What would be just annoying / unfair / fliptables territory?

I still want the ability to grab them in a fireman's carry. Particularly for redside kidnappings! I mean, come on! Even if I'm forced to put them down before I can use any combat powers. However, I suspect the coding work for that would be .... "non-trivial". So yea, having them not get stuck on doorways, or running laps around the room to find you, would be nice.

My picks. Option #1: Willpower / Staff FIghting Tanker: You'll get a good AoE cone attack at level FOUR, far before most tanks have any AE. And that attack, Guarded Spin, is a Parry-like attack, giving you +Melee/Lethal defense. Quick Recovery for less End issues. Staff Mastery / Form of the Soul gives you Endurance Discounts, too. Plus, Spinny fighting is FUN. I'm somewhat hedging on Willpower though, because I don't know how well it's mix of mitgation methods gel how fast with only SO's. I've only ever used it tricked out with attuned IO's. Option #2: Fire Blast / Super Reflexes Sentinel: Skip your T1 blast, take your T2 blast. With only SO's, you're going to want every use of Opportunity to be a Defensive Opportunity for the endurance recovery. The heals don't suck either, but really the endurance recovery is what I'm going for here. You can hoverblast with mez protection. That alone can allow you to pull off some tricks melee can't always do. SR will take awhile to mature. It does need some slots devoted to it before your defenses will mature. But hey, it'll still beat the hell out of the days when you had to slot Training Enhancements and Dual-Origin Enhancements, and your defense simply wasn't good enough for the entire first half of the game. Most importantly, by covering Melee / Ranged / AoE positionals, you won't have to care much about Damage Types. Most tank sets have a big hole to at least Psi, and without IO's to patch that, that can become.... painful, in places like First Ward (Awakened, anyone?). There are a FEW damaging attacks that have no assigned position, but *very* few. The Sentinel version of SR gets an absorbtion shield to go with it, allowing for some soaking of hits you don't dodge. The Sentinel version of SR also gets some +Recovery in Enduring that melee version of SR does not yet. This plus Defensive Opportunities, I'm hoping would cure the End woes most other SO builds might face. That said, even for both above, I would avoid Defend the Midnight Mansion unless you have your heart set on soloing absolutely every mission. If you must do it solo with only SO's, at least go to Bloody Bay first. Earn yourself a Shivan Shard from the meteor collection. You'll need it.

See, I think both Heroes AND Villians should be able to accidentially kill people with AoE attacks. Including your own teammates. I'm also pretty sure that I should never be allowed to develop a game, because no one would ever play it and the game company would fold.

I"m with @Snarky. I rarely load up attack powers with procs. I'm more interested in set bonuses. For a few low-damage characters, (Earth / Poison controller), I will pick a few powers to proc-bomb with. But rarely more than 2 such powers. Melee characters I basically don't use damage proc's unless they happen to be the 5th or 6th piece of the set that I'm slotting. All of that said, Stamina is best place for Perf Shifter proc. You will, over time, get more endurance from that than you would from just another End Mod IO in the same slot. Make sure your attacks have a modest degree of Endurance Reduction in them. Most melee sets will have some Acc/Dmg/End, Dmg/End, etc pieces. Especially for attacks that you spam non-stop, you'd be surprised how much difference a few partial-end-reduction set pieces make. Another favorite of mine that I don't see used that much. There are a few sets that give % Endurance Discount to All Powers. Annihilation (Ranged AoE) 5-piece: 3% end discount to all powers Preventaitive Medicine (Healing) 5-piece: 3.75% end discount to all powers Reactive Defenses (Defense) 5-piece: 3.75% end discount to all powers Unbreakable Guard (Resist Damage) 2-piece: 2.5% end discount to all powers. Warp: (Teleportation): 3-piece: 3% end discount to all powers. Now, some of those are going to be easier to fit in than others. I don't often 3-slot a Teleportation power, let's say. But even using Unbreakable Guard in four of your resist damage powers will net you a 10% endurance discount to literally everything you do. And the 4-piece for Unbreakable Guard is some tasty Melee Defense, and you're going to want it's unique for the +Max HP's. Now, could be one reason people don't focus that as much is becuase they rarely exemplar down, and instead rely on Incarnate / Cardiac to solve their end problems. I try to make sure I can always perform well with the same build no matter if I'm doing a Posi run, or Night Ward, or doing lvl 50 story arcs.

Clearly, this would involve the Fargin principle, resulting in Fargin Iceholes. Or possibly the descendants of Elsa, causing a Royal Pain in the Ice.

** Hami Raid wipes ** "Paging Doctor Howling Twilight! Doctor Howling Twilight to surgery STAT!!"

I'd like any powerset for handheld firearms that does NOT have Gun-Fu animations. That said, i'm not holding my breath, and it's like priority #10,594, somewhere after "sort my socks", and "anything else I feel like today".

Well, if enough defense can buy a Blaster enough time, it can probably buy a /Regen enough time. Once cascade starts, yea, it goes quick, but if you rip down half your enemies by then, it still may be enough to win. You just might not be steamrolling the whole way.

Yea. My tanker soloing it at +2x4 had five Ravenwing Cabal on him. Honestly, I wasn't sure he was going to make it at a few points, until I realized I could simply move out of the area of thier big whammy attack. Then gradually the curve started to favor me, and I began to wear one down at a time. The whole crowd was on me the whole time. I never split them or pawned them off to the Midnighters. But, that was a tank, and I still had to ration my cooldowns, carefully watch my inspirations, etc. For a team.... I can definitly see it ripping up a crew of folks who aren't used to the Wards, or who tend to ignore incoming damage because all too often the game lets you get away with that. It doesn't take to much to mentally put a triangle onto the field, and each time they start charging up their big whammy, you move to the next tip of the triangle, fight them there, see them charging, move, fight them there, etc. Lord knows I dealt with vastly more annoying mechanics in WoW raids. I still don't feel the mission needs adjustments. I do think it's a big challenge, which it advertises itself to be, in the mission text that no one ever reads. I do think it's something that may take a small team a few tries until they begin to learn how to coordinate their defense powers, and avoid standing in bad.

I sort of want to say your Claws character should be rocking enough stacks of Follow-Up to hit anyway. But I also tend to dip into Leadership, and often run Tactics. Honestly enemies using Vengeance is usually more of a problem for me with them getting a big to-hit bonus. Even my /SR character may need to pop some purples when I cause piles of Nemesis to pop Veng all at once.

I don't think I've ever taken Hand Clap, ever. Pre-IO's or after. But I admit, I always did have a soft spot for Thunderclap, in Storm Summoning, even though there's almost always better powers to use, and even though anything close enough to me to be affected by Thunderclap was already going to have it's to-hit SAVAGED by Hurricane. That animation and sound effect... I get your point though. Bean Bag got a lot more use before my AR/Dev fully matured.

I can't buy into that, only because the T9's for the vast majority of powersets, pre-date the existence of IO's an Incarnates. Now, today in time? Yes, you can hit a point where the T9's are not always needed. But the design intent, I would argue, is that they were a form of "oh-crap" button, with very few exceptions (granite armor).

I'm with @Solarverse on this one. In part, because I've heard these effects at max targets and..... never found them even remotely a problem? Maybe it depends very greatly on one's hearing sensitivity. If anything is done I would want it to be an OPTIONAL thing. Ie, if a Preference is allowed for max effects, fine, as long as I can toggle it off, or as long as you have toggle it on. I do not require that other players hear exactly what I hear. But I would want to hear the sounds as they are now.

Sands of Mu and other prestige attacks can retain utility a lot longer for Debuff centric characters like a /Poison controller, however.

I love this mission as-is. I will concede that this mission is *very* difficult to solo unless you drop the difficulty. I have solo'd it on a Tanker at +2x4. It also took For-Fookin-Ever. (not an exemplared 50, a legit lvl 35 Inv/SS tank, although heavily IO'd for his lvl) My scrapper trying it at +1x3 still got her face ripped right off. (same, not exemplared 50, a legit lvl 34 scrappy, also twinked with attuned IO's) So if soloing is your thing, this is one of the rare missions where I say you know what, swallow some pride, drop it to +0/+0, and get it done. It is not impossible to team it, but you won't find standing teams for it. You'll need to put out a "Hey can anyone help me with this?" call. Re: the Ravenwing Cabal. They do a charge-up / big whammy PBAE. Do not just stand in one place. Joust them. Particularly if your difficulty means you get like 5 of the at once.

I admit, from the title, I assumed it was the Destroyed Galaxy City intro, with the dude screaming about Blue Spectrum.

I am occasionally a sadist. 😀

I definitely enjoy the Scirocco arc. I do wish there was an option to actually choose to try to help him, even if that choice had to end in a railroaded "failure". When I do patron arcs, I inevitably choose Scirocco or Ghost Widow, because they seem the most civilized of the four. Mako is just a brute, and Black Scorp, nope, have no desire to work with anyone who cybernetic'd that much of his body by choice. It'd be one thing if he was more like a Clockwork King scenario, but my understanding is he chose that.

I solo'd "Oldschool" Positron on my Controller. The combined 1+2 from before it was split up, via Ouroborus. No AV at the end, just an EB. It was nice being able to actually read the darn plot as I was going, though, to be fair, I can read the plot to any TF anytime I want on the HCWiki or other such sites.

What about: a) prevent all mission teleports / team teleports b) suppress all travel powers, including jetpacks, and kheldian novas, in order to force people to learn the geysers c) and -- *** is clubbed into submission by the forums ***

Space Squid doesn't do it for me. Never will. I hate the look of it. For this reason, my Khelds are always humanform only. What's "most effective" can go take a hike. Now, lots of people like, or at least don't *mind*, the squid, and that's cool. I may wonder why, but that's a "me issue". If something like this became available, I would use it. If it never becomes available, well, I have my own solution to it. I just don't pick the shapeshift powers. Ever. I really do like @Lazarillo's idea of a costume slot you designate as your "squid costume". I suspect that would take signficantly more programming effort, but I like the payoff in customization. It might also be a solution for people who hate the look of Granite armor, etc. Absolutely not holding my breath. But I think, if implemented, it could be the kind of code usable in more places than we might think at first glance.

This thread is going downhill fast. Zomg Look!! A Distraction!!

Do you not play in third person view, or something? I mean, yes, often your view is behind your character, but plenty of moves have them spin around, or get ragdolled, etc. It's not like you never see your own characters face in gameplay.