MTeague

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

I have to echo @nihilii. Several of the missions people are listing as must-skip are ones I really enjoy and make sure to do on every character. I love the Stop 30 Fir Bolg one, and the Stop Takeover of Salamanca. I'm sure some of that is nostaglia from live days where those missions ruined my day. Crushing them now is just a "HA! I Win!". Honoree I look at as a rite of passage. If I can't defeat that misson, my character doesn't deserve incarnate slots. No matter if they unlocked or not, I do not fill them until the Mender Ramiel arc is done. Is Honoree / Trapdoor easier for certain characters, oh yea, no question. But there's *very* few problems in the game that can't be overcome by Inpsirations and Set Bonues, and temp powers that I've earned in missions along the way.

I admit, I do prefer being "organically" introducted to contacts by doing enough missions for a prior contact. "There's someone I'd like you to meet..." But the Contact Finder is there, and can be browsed, and there's actually a LOT of content out there at low levels. I have zero shame with utterly disregarding any "forced" contacts like Twinshot or Shauna Stockwell. I do enjoy the missions sometimes. But ultimately you the player are in charge of who you do missions for, not the game.

Note: I'm excluding HEATs and VEATs. But yea. Spare a moment's thought for the Kheldians. And the Widows/Soldiers are only a teeny bit better. Blaster - 13 primary, 14 secondary = 182 Brute - 22 primary, 13 secondary = 286 Controller - 10 primary, 16 secondary = 160 Corruptor - 13 primary, 16 secondary = 208 Defender - 16 primary, 13 secondary = 208 Dominator - 9 primary, 11 secondary = 99 Mastermind - 7 primary, 16 secondary = 112 Scrapper - 20 primary, 13 secondary = 260 Sentinel - 13 primary, 12 secondary = 156 Stalker - 17 primary, 13 secondary = 221 Tanker - 11 primary, 22 secondary = 242 Gold Medal: Dominators, still in only double digits for possible combinations. Silver Medal: Masterminds, with a footnote for having the LEAST number of Primary trees. Bronze Medal: Sentinels

I only use autocompletes if I'm absolutely certain an enemy has fallen through the world. Even then, I'll methodically explore the entire map, looking for mobs hidden in various corners. I've found Family mobs in warehouses waaaaaay up in the rafters at the absolute cieling. No idea how they got there, but I was able to finish the mission legitly, no autocomplete needed. I've zoomed in the map a lot and zipped around looking for hints and "ooooh yea, I can see the edge of a corrider there I missed in that far section of oranabega", and finished that way. I do not use autocompletes just because it's a big map with lots of enemies and I just want to speed through a mission. I get that lots of players do that. I commonly see it advised for Black Scorpion's defeat-all in particular. That's fine for them. Not how I handle it.

Hm. Maybe if I can get that center color to also go dark. I'll experiment with to tomorrow. Too sleepy to log back in and do character creation now.