MTeague

The same way you can customize a broadsword to have many different looks, the ideal solution is for "Beast Mastery" to have a variety of different looking + sounding beasts. Necromancy: choice of vanilla, Vahzilok, or Circle of Thorns spectrals. Thugs: choice of vanilla, Mooks/Family, or Syndicate Ninjas: choice of vanilla, Tsoo, or Knives of Artemis Robots: choice of vanilla, ??Council Bots??, or Praetorian Clockwork. Mercs: choice of vanilla, Malta, ??? Beasts: choice of vanilla, ??CertainVanityPets??, or Snakes. Demons: choice of vanilla, CoT Hordling/Behemoth/Overlord, or Talons of Vengeance In all cases, this would be cosmetic only. No changes to pet powers, pet cooldowns, etc, regardless of selected appearance. Probably never going to happen?? But that's the direction I'd try to go.

As a source of Damage, Air Sup has never been noteworthy. But it's an extremely reliable single-target Knockdown, and can be useful to delay a foe from acting while another power of yours recharges.

I mean there's gotta be a few steps of mostly middle ground in between there. But there would probably never be any consensus on what's the right place to stop. I will say I rarely taken the Presence Pool for specifically this reason though. The Self-Rez in the T5 is nice, and it has some decent boosts in it as well.... but man the first few powers are Stinky Poo, at least, for all my character concepts. I have sucked it up and dealt with the wasted power picks for exactly one character so far. Dunno. There are some specific powers I do think are probably so bad they deserve a rework... but it's not exactly a critical issue. There's a LONG list of things I'd rather were taken care of first.

This. Cross Punch does quite well soloing on my Mind/Kin controller (especially with lots of Fulcrum Shift stacks), and my Beast/Empath MM will run right into melee with her kittehs and doggos. It is always the best choice, probably not, do I sometimes get into trouble soloing either one, sure. But it's FUN, and it works a lot of the time. I wish Kick could look like the Martial Kombat version Storm Kick, though.

well.... yes. In fact, I am. 😀

Only if I can have Dual Shields for power-bashing shield throwing while still blocking insanity

I would want an underwater aquatic zone. Maybe going deeper into Coralax lore. However, this will probably never happen, because In CoH, it doesnt' matter if it's deep ocean or a public fountain, you can never swim down and max depth is like 2 feet. In most games, underwater zones are near-universally hated. implementing a breathing requirement couldn't really happen becasue various characters are super enough they don't NEED to breathe, or can hold their breath for 3 hours, or they're just plain robotic and breathing is for carbon-based critters. but if i could magic-wand something into the game, this would probably be it.

I would not be opposed to this. Originally, Full Auto could hit fewer targets, but was a crashless nuke. All the way back to the beginning, crashless. Now everyone's T9 is crashless, and Full Auto.... is just sorta, there. I don't consider it a critical-must-have item. I know lots of people hate on AR becasue it's not top-tier, but it still gets the job done plenty well, unless it truly deep-down matters to you if you finish a fight in 30 seconds vs 38 seconds. I know i've never cared, but for some people it's all about performance vs towers, and any other metric that they can spreadsheet.

It would probably require new animations, as opposed to just shoving a wand/staff/thing into the existing animation. At least if it were to look up-to-snuff with the rest of what Homecoming has produced for new sets.

There is a perfectly good Test server where you can insta 50 anyone to experiment with any power combos / animations, etc to your hearts content. That said, I would not be opposed to a swap-in-swap-out mini-respec. I'd even be fine with any such mini-swaps still costing me a full respec each and every time, but just making it simpler to do without having to rearrange all my power trays, and I'd consider it a BARGAIN at the price. I do not consider it a pressing need. But it would be very positively received, if the devs decide it's worth the projected coding effort.

I'm feeling cynical and jaded today, but I would see this rapidly devolving into a powergame min/max "can I squeeze more +DEF out of this?" where very few players would actually care what fits in with their characters backstory, just another vehicle to try to defense cap sooner, because most characters I inspect don't even HAVE a backstory. That said, maybe I'll feel better after a Snickers.

Yea. I don't use Fire Melee or Ice Melee because I hate the elemental sword looks. Fine and dandy for everyone who likes them, just not my cup of tea and I have lots of other choices. But I would circle back around to these powersets if other visual options were provided.

I feel your pain. During Live, my Mind/Kintroller never felt like a seventh wheel, or wanted *only* for his secondary. Admittedly, I never went deep on Incarnates / Trials in Live, and having totally tricked out builds felt like a very rare thing then. I can't say it's all bad for every one of my characters, but.... I do miss the bygone days of yore, sometimes.

And do you do so also to Freezing Rain? Sleet Storm? It's very easy to construct an argument for most any power. "How accurate are you going to be after you just took a battle axe to the face?" But at some point, game mechanics, and the dying shreds of game balance should take over. At least in my probably unpopular view.

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.