MTeague

Debbie Downer now lives on Everlasting. Dark/Dark/Dark Defender, naturally. Villainous, because being heroic takes too much zip and pep.

Honestly, I don't think a CoH2 will ever happen, even if there's a few new successful MMO's. I'm not saying there couldn't ever be another super-hero MMO. But I don't believe NCSoft will ever bless use of the CoH intellectual property beyond what they have already done with Homecoming. So if a next-generation game comes out? It won't have any NPC's or landmarks you associate with CoH. Archtype names will be different. Powersets will be different, if indeed they separate powesets from archtype at all. And whoever developed it, will want to quickly recover all of the costs of developing the game, so there will either be a substantial monthly fee, or it will be chock-full of "technically" optional microtransactions, like Diablo Immortal, or worse. Yea, I'm channelling Debbie Downer (.... which now I have to go check if that name is available on Everlasting...), but.... for major projects like creating a new MMO, "follow the money" is a great rule of thumb. What gamers want will only be occasionally be paid attention to. It's amazing to me that people don't understand how good we've got it here.

They're very low hanging fruit to slot the +3% defense all uniques. For my EM/EA Brute, I skip Boxing/Tough/Weave, slot the +3% uniques in those, and nab Manuevers rather than Energy Cloak (because I want to see my own darn costume!), After that, 5 piece Unbreakable Guard, depending how tight I am on slots. I want that +7.5% HP, and I'm a sucker for any +% discount to all endurance cost bonuses.

I've played on Excelsior and Everlasting. So far as I can tell, they both appear to be populated primarily by human beings. General Chat sometimes entertains, sometimes makes me roll my eyes, and sometimes I turn it off for a few days. LFG Chats are generally all business. Help chat is pretty help-focused, but some questions will spawn discussions. People seem able to fill groups no problem during prime time, but struggle overnight, and definitely struggle during the normal workday. (I have wierd hours, so sometimes I'm on then). I find Everlasting has a good base of Redside players, but still never gonna touch Blueside numbers.

Eh, ... even "bad" damage types... aren't that bad. Teaming there will be enough debuffs flying around that you'll still wreck face / meaningfully contribute. Soloing... I guess if you focus a lot on solo farms, and you really care about clear times, it can be an issue. I don't, and I don't, so it's not an issue for me. My Claws scrapper still kills things plenty fast enough, my Assault Rifle Blaster still drops targets fast enough, and my Savage brute still rips enemies a new one (literally) plenty fast enough, and my Ninja Blade stalker never felt slow killing anything. I don't think Lethal is as big a deal as people tend to think. Your milage may vary, feel free to decide I don't know WTF I'm talking about.

Now, it is very true, that For Purples, generally I'm doing a whole set, so I will leave them hexagonal, so that the set matches, and I can boost them. But if I'm putting just the Damage Proc and nothing else in a power? Or a Panacea proc but not most of the set into a power? Then I will buy them attuned. I cannot abide having a mix of circles AND hexagons in the very same power.

They're probably not going to let us summon Tyrant instead of Statesman. Although it would be fun.

Clearly what we need are Signature Summons for Fusionette, Flamebeaux, Dillo, Zephyr, and Arbiter Sands.

As it is, I already wish the forward facing heals of Marine and Nature would turn to my selected target. I'm not expecting that to change. I will suck it up and adapt, and grumble each time I waste a cast. But it's not my favoritest of all possible mechanics.

I do think the TF badges should be restricted to players who were there for the entire Task Force. Should not be awarded if you jumped in for the final mission. That said, a pro-rating of the reward merits based on the number of missions you were present for, doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Also, I don't know code-wise if this would be trivial or a massive PITA. No harm in asking, though. Worst case, they say no.

Oh, I think I remember that guy!

Mixing debuffs just for the ouro badges can still be done, but I still like Snarkys terminology on majors and minors. Don't combine majors unless you have this thing for pain. But you know, there is this song that says "Some of them want to be abused...." Keeping the same challenge settings for the rest of a character's life, or at least, for a really long time ... /salute, but I would not do that thing. I would totally join for the odd mission if someone needed/wanted a hand, but you crazy, mon. Of course, crazy, can be a good thing.

More Importantly, finishing Operative Kuzmin's arc puts Arachnos back in charge of Fort Darwin, as it should be.

re: popularity. If any kind of benchmark is to be used for that, I hope they consider hours spent logged in on the character, or the number of missions completed on the character, not the simple number or characters that exist of a given archtype. Characters powerlevelled to 50 and rarely touched again, are not something that should influence this. Also, if popularity is to be used, I think it is best used to refine things down to specific powerset combinations. If there's 6x as many Marine Affinity characters getting actual playtime as there are Empaths getting actual playtime, that may inform some decisions as well.

Have you tried paying them a decent salary, maybe offering a good 401(k) plan? You really don't want high employee turnover during a crucial project.

My hot take is that there are too many Archtypes to make true AT balance achieveable except by neutering them all. (which is undesireable). Slice it no matter how you want, a few AT's are going to be regarded as a bad choice by the min-maxers. Because players are really, really, really, good at finding any possible item to leverage/exploit/build upon, whatever phraseology you prefer, often far better than game content designers. Despite the devs best intentions, we WILL find a way to make some subgroup of AT's outperform others. Always.

I gotta disagree with that, at least a little. 10 seconds of no damage, sure, whoop-dee-do. Minorly annoying but not a big deal. The Defense Debuff (that is self-inflicted and unresistable), is more serious, and can mean a faceplant for certain armor sets. I deal with that by simply not making an Ice Armor/Super Strength tanker, and not making a Super Strength/Super Reflexes brute. When I use Super Strength, I pair it with stuff like Invulnerability and Electric Armor, or stuff like Regen, .... things that aren't so dependant upon Defense. [EDIT: And sure, Invulnerability likes Defense... but has enough underlying resists to handle the crash.]

Admittedly, my Ninjas/Electric Affinity MM is still in the early-mid-game level-wise, but it's viable to keep Snap Shot / Aimed Shot as one-slot-wonders with just one +Acc in each. As long as I fire each one off every ~ 10 seconds, the pets retain the +Crit just fine. Whether or not your personal arrows do any meaningful damage can definitely wait until the 30's.

A Ninja/Time MM should really get used to hanging out in melee range. Your inherent, Supremacy, does nothing if you're too far away from your pets. If you use the Pet Aura +Defense or +Resistance IO's, they emanate from YOU, so again, good to be semi-near your pets. Even if you don't choose to use IO's, Time's Juncture is a PBAE toggle from you, that inflict -SPD, -DMG, and -ToHit. Hanging out near your pets with that one helps keep them standing, because any enemy near you is more likely to whiff than connect. You benefit from your own Farsight +DEF PBAE buff, and it's a pretty solid buff, so things should mostly miss you anyway. If you and your pets are all in melee, you can drop Distortion Field on top of yourself, inflicting -RCHG, -SPD, and holding some % of enemy minion mobs. Temporal Mending, PBAE heal/heal-over-time. If you're hanging out far away from your pets as a /Time MM, you're not leveraging several tools you could use to keep your henchmen alive.

The enhancement text is incorrect. once slotted, it always provides a minimum of 3% resist all. I'm a little surprised the tooltip text has not been changed, but I also get that's a display-only issue, so it's probably pretty far down the To-Do list.

No Enhancements is the worst by far. But, as long as you do not combine No Enhancements with No Inspirations, you can make it work. You just have to really lean on inspirations when you're effectively unslotted in all powers. Things like Tactics, Targetting Drone, and Focused Accuracy go a long way on "No Enhancements" runs as well. You will feel the END cost, and you'll rest between most fights. But you were going to have to rest a lot anyway, and missing Sucks.

I agree with you on a lot of topics, but I can't get behind this. When Jab, Punch, Haymaker do less damage than Boxing, Kick, Crosspunch, AND, Jab Punch, Haymaker, plus Rage, do less damage than Boxing, Kick, Crosspunch plus Rage, there's a problem. You are objectively worse off investing more in your primary attacks vs a power pool.

Hm. Having a double with a number appended is often a sign that the name was pre-empted, but I guess as long as you do have the specified name on at least on of your characters, then all's well that ends well.

The tricky thing with a Zero Travel Power character, is on teams, and in particular on Task Forces, it's important to be able to get from mission to mission in a timely manner. Now, that doesn't necessarily require travel powers, but you might want to make sure you have access to Base Teleports and/or Long Range Teleport, and at least a few Exploration Badges in each zone. If your character concept is not completely averse to it, things like the Starter Jetpack, and the Raptor Pack you get from the Atlas Park Safeguard/Mayhem mission, can really go a long way here, too.

I mean, it's low hanging fruit I guess, and normally I'm in favor of more choices. I guess if you wanted to do a TMBG "Person Man" style of character. I tend to go more Triangle Man or Universe Man, myself.