MTeague

My take on it? Some people are going to have inborn creativity bonuses. Same way some folks are just GOOD at certain sports, some people are just GOOD in social situations, and some people are just GOOD at math and hard analysis. These are all human and normal variations. But even if someone wasnt born with a gift for it? Then treat Creativity like a muscle. It's possible to get better at it, but it requires both maintenance exercise, and strength training. If someone hasn't focused any effort at it for decades, because it wasn't important to them, they had other things consuming their time and attention, etc, then yea, that person will start seriously behind the 8 ball. It doesn't mean they're chained there forever, it just means that's where they are, for now. Everyone's approach is going to be different. My steps below may not work for everyone. But they're what helped me start to get better at this. When cooking up a new character, I choose the AT I want, the powersets I want, then take a 2nd look and decide if the AT makes the most sense. Then i decide What's their name? Their secret identity. My blaster is Agent Bluejay. Her name is Margaret (Maggie) Rosaline O'Malley. This affects nothing, but just choosing a first, middle, and last name that fit together starts spiking the brain into different creative directions. How did they get their powers? Did they always have them? Were they perfectly normal as a kid and something happened as an adult to either grant or unlock those powers? Having some picture of "what was life like for them, BEFORE they arrived at paragon?", is seriously important to a backstory, and helps me tweak them a bit more is costume creator, making them a bit more mine. In the case of Bluejay, she was an entirely normal soldier agaist the Rikti until she was mangled horribly in a battle with them / blown up. She's now effectively a human-looking cyborg, and she has a massive hang-up with the fact that she's now much more machine than human. If your character started wiht their powers ALWAYS available to them, okay, fine.... what was life like at age 6? age 10? How did they handle being "different"? How did others handle them? What do they care about? Truth Justice and the American Express? The Good of the Many? Are they devoted to protecting the world now, because of someone they COULDN'T protect earlier, when it really mattered? If they're a hero, can they handle delibberately letting bad things happen to somone to set a trap for the bad guys? or are they unflichingly devoted to their ideals? If they're a villain, well, what kind of villain? What drove them to this? Power and let the world burn? Were they outcast as a freak and plan to rule over everyone else in revenge? Do they just want a life of idle wealth to enjoy in St. Martial and let other fools who enjoy the headaches rule the world? By the time I answer these, their costume usually makes itself for me. It gives me a baseline for the type of costume they'd probably wear, etc.

Nothing makes it come back faster. Not slotted recharge, not global recharge, not recharge buffs, NADA. I believe only Speed/Burnout has any chance, by just finishing all your cooldowns now-dammit-now. But that's not going to be perma-able either. can read up on their rationale / stated design intent here:

I could care less about the Shield Drone, etc. But if things like the German Shepherd Pet could get destroyed in combat, I'd be power-sad.

"They look friendly. I'm sure we can talk this over." (said standing in front of a giant pack of CoT with Behemoths, Spectral Demon Lords, etc)

Clearly we need a Wookie Bowcaster for a weapon model, that can operate as both a rifle and a bow wthout redraw. Name: Boomstic Flea?

Basically this. It can't be THAT hard to squeeze out one pool power somewhere in one of your three builds to fit a real travel power. And if it is? really that not doable across that many builds? Then that person made thier choice to sacrifice ariel combat on the altar of min-maxiness. If it's only needed for very specific very termporary things like steel canyon fire badges, there's raptor packs.

Having support definitely helps. Keeping Lady Jane alive was dicey on my Claws/SR scrapper. It was easy-peasy on the Mind/Kin contrller or even the Storm/Sonic Defender. And the Beast/Empath MM, heck, I just treated Lady Jane like she was another pet and tossed her a strip of bacon for every few enemies she killed.

they were safe and sound until you got your pay. I think it's good.

It depends if I like the NPC's or not. Heather Townsend arc. I hadn't read up on it, didn't realize what was coming. Got to the point of choice. Choose who to die, try to save both, and the game basically warning me if I try to save both I better be able to kill them all FAST. I was on a Mind/Kin controller. Not prepared for it, on a high difficulty setting, just my alpha unlocked, and I'm not sure it was even giving me a level shift yet. I knew I was going to lose both of them if I tried to save both. I was unwilling to lose either one. And I wasn't willing to drop the difficulty down to easymode. So I used Alt-F4 to terminate the game, waited a bit, and logged in with the mission reset. Did not fail yet. Bamphed to Ouroborous, and started a MARATHON of Flashback arcs. One after another after another, cleaning up all the Ouro badges along the way. But picking up lots of incarnate threads and some shards as I went. Staying in Ouroborus, so I could tell myself the quesiton of Kadabra Kill / Sigil was frozen in time. I went back as a fully T4'd out incarnate, with a Shivan Shard, a War Wolf, an HVAS, a summoned Amy, my Lore pets, and the temp power Clockwork pets from Penny. And a row of Team Inspirations. Speed Boosted them all. THEN started teh dialogue with them all prebuffed and ready to kill. Overkill. By TONS. But I saved them both 😄

I remember how many headaches she caused me in the Faultline 20's arc. But she surprised me by being pretty durable near endgame. Or maybe I just did a better job of establishing aggro / control in the RWZ arcs. No Mind is the most basketcase of them all in the current lineup, I think.

If you read a bio that you feel is offensive-because-of-ignorance, you can consider striking up a conversation with that person, to perhaps educate them. Or you can ignore tham and move on. If you read a bio that you feel is entirely 100% deliberately offensive, and knows darn well what they're doing and are TRYING to offend, you should /petition to report it. I will say that I read a lot of character info pages. I ninja-inspect most people I encounter on teams, or next to the Black Market, or standing near a trainer. Most people have no character biography at all. When they do, most are short and have a couple lines for concept, no more. Very rarely, I'll encounter a great one, and I always send them a congratulating tell. I think maybe 3-4 times, ever, grand total, in two years, have I see one that I actually considered truly offensive / abominable. General Chat does seem to contain a moderate contingent of folks who's political viewpoints clash with my own, and from time to time, some completely ignore the "please no politics" admonition. But it's been reasonably good these past few months, that I recall, anyway. But compare all of this to WoW? Or Blizzard Forums? Reddits? Homecoming has the least toxic crowd community for any MMO that I've ever played. I think I'd have to dig for forums and websites dedicated to single-player games (Civ Fanatics, etc) to find a less toxic gaming community. I accept that perhaps I've just been really lucky or the OP has been spectularly unlucky, but.... I'm not... I don't encounter this kind of problem.

Don't care where they came from. Don't care if their history with the game is as players or prior developers or yes. I do care that they're doing a fantastic job (from my admittedly biased point of view) here on Homecoming. I can certainly understand with some of the legal limbos of private servers, perhaps a little bit of cultivated un-curiousness on certain topics is perhaps best.

I don't believe he ever said they were rules. He said these were tricks... as in... techniques that can be used... and he said it in response to someone who said he felt like Defenders were typically the squishiest of all. If you're not feeling squishy? Go to town. Blast away. You do you. If you find yourself faceplanting a lot... might be worth taking a gander at that list. That's all I got from it anyway.

Pretty sure the Hive is level locked.

Half the time I see this, i always want to sputter "Cmon, Billions is a LOT, WTF is anyone going to do with more than 2 Billion anyway??" Then, I recall at at one point I had something like 238 million on my main before I went on a spending spree. And 238 million is ... over 1/10th of the 2 billion mark. And I'm... pretty casual. I don't farm (though I play TONS of story arcs), and hardly even do much converter roulette anymore. For someone who's more focused.... yea, I could see hitting Billions ... quite easily actually.

Not a good idea unless they also raise the maximium Influence cap, and the maximum amount of stored salvage, stored recipes, etc. accordingly.

Huh. I wonder if that changed somewhere along the way. I'd have sworn that Harvey Maylor gave a lot of "kill 50 carnies in peregrine island" missions, where carnies in other zones did not count, and carnies inside missions did not count, they had to be out in the wild in Peregrine street sweeping. It usually meant I'd have to kill about 45 Malta, 53 Rikti, and 32 Nemesis to evenutally get the 50 carnies i needed.

This is a big part of why I solo as much as I do. I enjoy reading the NPC text, and the mission text. Doesn't matter if it's a story arc I've already done 20 times. I still like reading them. Teams won't wait. So I usually don't team.

I would do Assault Rifle. Functionally, I don't doubt Dual Pistols will perform better in most situations. But I like having a snipe, and Dual Pistols ain't got one. Also the over-the-toppy-ness of the Dual Pistols animations.... aren't my favorite thing. For a secondary, is tougher. I have trouble pairing most with it thematically. I would probably do Devices, or Ninja, or Martial, or Mental.

They need a Snipe verison of this power that starts with 4 seconds of Jaws music.

IO sets for sure. I would first decide if you plan to mostly do lvl 50 content, or if you plan on doing a lot of flashbacks / exemplaring. if mostly lvl 50 content, then you want to buy Crafted IO Set pieces that you can Boost. If mostly flashbacks / taskforces / exemplaring, then my recommendation would be to get Attuned IO sets. Buy them as already attuned, right off the auction house. IO sets can be expensive. 40 million might get you between 1 and 6 full sets, depending on which sets you buy. Good news you absolutely DO NOT have to buy them all at once. Take your sweet time. Also, the influence should start to flow like a mighty river at lvl 50. Lvl 50 recipes will vendor for a fair chunk of change, as will the SO's that drop. To earn more infl: you could do Converter Roulette if you were so inclined (it's good to know HOW, even if you won't want to do it yourself) you can just buy Enhancement Converters with merits and sell the Converters if you want Influence on a more immediate basis. you could do AE farms, if you were so inclined. you can just join random lvl 50 groups and enjoy the ride and at the end of each session you'll have a decent chunk of change. Then buy more IO sets until you have the sets you want in the powers you want.

It will vary. My Mind/Kin did the solo'd it at +2x3. All KINDS of Mass Confusion going on to gradually clear the static spawns / kill portals. His attempt was also when I learned that it's possible, (though reallllllly tricky) to manage to split one of the EB's out from the pack and and take him down without aggroing the other. It involves a lot of aggro-and-run, and re-aggroing some of them as they start to walk back to their original spawn point. I also had fully loaded Shivan Shard and I wasn't afraid to use it. I had to full clear the entire map leading up to him to give myself room enough to do that without more adds adding in. But I was able to do it. My Claws/SR scrapper just embraced her inner scrapperlock. Static spawns I still pulled back and tore apart. When all the static spawns were dead, I went after the one with the gun first, and then the honoree after. I died a couple times. But tricked out SR plus a tray full of purples and reds, plus having Elude as an emergency button, will get you through a LOT. It was terribly satisfying. I have not yet done it on certain AT's. I'm sure some will be No Fun, and I'll need to lean very hard on temp powers

That would definitely explain our difference in experience to it. I level super slowly, turning off XP for long stretches along the way. It's very common for me to to activate "No XP" immedinately upon accepting a group invite, because I want to have fun grouping with friends, BUT, I don't want to skip past content that I'd wanted to do AT CONTENT levels. The flip side of that, is that I slot IO sets (attuned) at their minimum level, and build them up as I go. When I ding 50, I'm pretty much already fully kitted out. I'll often do a respec at 50 to juggle some slots around, steal one slot from this power to give to that power, etc. But the only time I use basic IO's or SO's is if the power is incapable of taking sets. So yea, when I'm doing the Ramiel arc, I'm already fully ready to go. (Not unusual for me to be carrying a pocket Shivan temp power from lvl 25 onward, just in case I need to drop an "I Win" button.... when I decide the game is just being sufficiently unfair, I throw down the Shivan and say "right back at you ,pal")

When I first came to City of Heroes from EverQuest, I chose my main specifically to be a hero analog of my EQ main. EQ Main - Enchanter CoH Main - Mind / Kinetics Controller. I did make him taller, (EQ character was a gnome), since I wanted him to blend into society more. But the toolkit is very close. EQ Mezmerize / Memory Blur - Mind Control Sleeps + Fear EQ Stuns - Mind Control Holds EQ Charm - Mind Control Confuse EQ Chanter Cripple / Debuff - Siphon Power, Siphon Speed EQ Chanter Buffs for Hasten - Speed Boost / Fulcrum Shift EQ Chanter Buffs for Mana - Transference, Speed Boost EQ Chanter Illusions - um.... Costume Changes. Have never regretted it. Your average murderball team may not have much care for Mind Contrl when doing PI radios, but there is content out there that will make you glad for a controller on your team. And I very much enjoy soling him as a Lamont Cranston / The Shadow type of figure, old man in a hat and mask who slips into a warehouse and a couple hours later the cops find the bad guys all trussed up and ready to be arrested, and the bad guys barely even understand what happened.

You have every right to make these suggestions and to try to sway the devs to your point of view. That said. I oppose every change you propose here, and am quite happy with AR as it exists right now. Not every powerset needs to be a roving speedclear murderball set. Ignite does right fine as a power when you combine it with some way to limit mobs ability to move. Immob's from your secondary or from Frozen Blast Proc, Slow effects, Knockdown to the keep them in the fire, or Knockback as long as you have the pinned into a corner before you spray fire. The powerset is Assault Rifle. Full Auto makes perfect sense as a nuke. If you want a big flashy weapon-based WHOMP there's always Munitions Mastery/LRM Rocket