MTeague

Long term, you'll want the Staff Mastery Stance that increases damage. During levelling, when slots are at a premium, you may find the stance that reduces end cost or boosts recovery (forget which it is... Soul?) makes a big difference in how long you can keep that attack chain going. Also, if the "breakdancing" twirl-on-the-ground doesn't suit you, Eye of the Storm has an alternate animation when flying that you may prefer.

None of these are especially difficult, and you're talking about revamping every task force because they take entire minutes longer than you're happy with. Really guys? Admittedly, I am in Grumpy Old Man mode today, but hard no on the idea.

I understood that reference! (which... means I'm old.)

not a bad idea, though personally, I do not care for most of the seismic blast animations. Some of them, the animation looks like it should one-shot small neighborhoods, but it's still only going to do regular damage for that blast tier. I get what they were going for, but the disconnect doesn't work for me.

I would find it hard to come up with a proper themed character to use /Plant Manipulation, but I also haven't put a whole lot of thought into that prospect. Maybe Storm/Plant, for some kind of angry nature spirit?

You get a respec for free at lvl 10, and very possibly every 10 levels. (I don't need them that often) Should you need more, the oldschool "respec" task forces (Terra Volta, Nerva Archipelago) still exist. Should you need even more, there are respec recipes on the Auction House (Wentworth's / Black Market). The auction house is a good thing to familiarize yourself with, anyway. Even if you have no interest in invetions / IO Sets until you get a character to high level, you can typically sell rare (orange) invention salvage for 450,000 influence, each. That'll fund quite a few enhancements as you level.

I basically treat Unrelenting as a combat buff, with the option to save it and use it as a Wakie. Just like an awaken inspiration, there's no point to popping it if you're surrounded. If you realize you're going down, RUN. Get some distance from the mobs spawn point. They'll walk back and you can stand safely. Less useful than Rise of the Phoenix, yes. But it is a Pool Power self-rez, after all. Still. I wouldn't refuse it if they choose to buff the power more.

You're not alone. I mean, by the time you do all the mission arcs, you have a pretty solid grasp that Cole is Not a Nice Person, and that some very shady stuff is going down, and anyone who disagrees with him gets disappeared. But the single biggest question for the Resistance, that is the 95,000 lb behemoth in the room, is "OK, what's your plan for Hamidon / the Devouring Earth?". I've seen people say "Well, the average person thinks Hamidon is dead." I don't buy that. There's billboards all over the place reminding people about the monsters lurking behind the Sonic Fences. Provost Marchand outright talks to you about Hamidon during the tutorial if you choose Loyalist, and he's not acting like it's any state secret. He's honestly shocked if you ask "What's a Hamidon?". Maybe the Resistance assumes the state of half-truce with the Hamidon, with only occasional skirmishes will continue indefinitely, even if Cole were killed/removed. But that's literally gambling the entire species on that assumption. They should be smarter than that. Now maybe you have some true believers who say "It's better to die free than live a slave", and OK, some sympathy for that viewpoint, but it's one thing to gamble your own life, another to gamble all human life on the planet. Once we have contact with parallel worlds, OK, that's good, but the first step should be evacuating the remaining population, not trying to topple Cole.

If it matters to you, Everlasting has an outsized share of Redsiders. Redside was typically dead when I used to play on Excelsior. I could go entire evenings without seeing another player. There's still not a thriving metropolis in the Rogue Isles on Everlasting, but neither does it feel like you're stationed in Antarctica.

I want an alternate animation where Project Will hurls an NPC named Will at the opponents. Bonus points if it looks like Jonathan Frakes / Will Riker.

Ah. I appear to have skimmed over that. My apologies. No real objection there. It's already 40-45, so even flashbacked, you'd still have access to incarnate powers. (If it was 40-44, I'd be less keen on extending to 50)

I am generally a contrarian when it feels like there is already a perfectly good in game solution that people can't be bothered to use because "it will take so long". If certain players would rather not use the existing solution, but prefer to sit, wait, and hope the devs will take action to alter missions / content, because they don't want to spend a two-to-there hours (maybe less!) to do it, my sympathy levels plummet straight through the floorboards. It feels like someone calling a plumber to handle a backed up toilet when there's a perfectly good plunger right there, but they would feel icky using the plunger.

Ouroborous exists? Is that not the standard fix for any and all outlevelling of story arcs? Otherwise well, you don't HAVE to power level to 50 and build up your incarnate powers. You can always use "No Xp". But if you gotta gotta get to 50 fast, well, Flashbacks exist.

Because I never liked the faction as implemented, and I never liked the "maybe you can be worthy of joining us" angle. I'm not interested in joining the Villain Cool Kids Club. I want to usurp and start planning my eventual world domination from day 1, and Arachnos is presented as an unconditionally un-topple-able obstacle to that. Sure, there's the story where you can beat up a future version or Lord Recluse, take his helmet, and put it in your trophy case. And NOTHING changes. As I said, I'd prefer a system where you the player can join a faction and come to RULE it, or just meddle and play faction against faction, profiting all the way. And if the faction you want to join and guide to power just so happens to be Arachnos? Hey cool for you. But maybe I want it to be the Tsoo. Or Malta. Or Crey. I very much dislike the exsistence of Lord Recluse and his patrons as an "Evil Freedom Phalanx" that can never be displaced, can never lose power, can never be challenged in any meaningful degree. Even though the whole CoV setup is supposed to be about your Villain growing to the point of being a possible global threat. Now, my dislike means nothing. Recluse and Arachnos and the Patrons are never going away. I said as much in my post. This is just, if I had a magic wand and full freedom to reinvent the game in any way I saw fit, that's what I'd do.

I'll state up front, my wish list would require not just a green light to retcon, but a fully staffed gaming studio and a few hundred million dollars. So, I am completely aware, This Will Never Happen. Not Ever. I would downgrade Lord Recluse and Arachnos from "Big Bad" status, to just one of many criminal organizations in the Rogue Isles. No more or less threatening than the Carnival of Shadows, or Crey, or the Family. I would rearrange the Rogue Isles, so instead of spending your entire 1-50 journey bending the knee to Arachnos, you are presented with a list of criminal factions on the isles, and you the player get to make choices along the way to join/rule one of the factions, and through your actions, help that faction rise to power. Or, if your character can't be bothered with world domination and just wants money and the good life at the St Martial casinos, you can choose to play all sides against each other, profiting all the way. This would require heavy use of "instancing", similar to how Atlas Park changes as you to the Matthew Habashy and related contacts arcs. So yes, a few different hundred simultaneous outcomes. I would rearrange various City of Heroes maps, so each map had a "Bad" part of town with a few villain contacts and trainers, and have heroes and villains in the same zones on a regular basis. No PvP unless players choose to flag themselves for it. But while the heroes get recognition and cheers on the shiny part of town, the villains make inroads on the gritty parts of town. Again. Never gonna happen. That requires a truly new game. But that'd be the biggest thing I would change.

Not opposed, though I suspect it will be of much more use to Melee and Sentinels than any other AT. On my squishies, it's typically a rather short journey between 25% and dead defeated. Sometimes less than one second. Because typically that means the cascade failure of Defense Debuffs has already happened, and once again I get reminded that while Overconfidence can be a Slow and Insidious killer, it can also be a brutally savage and fast killer, too.

I mean, done right, pork chops are pretty good... But yea. right or wrong, efficient or woefully unefficient, on every server i've played, you're far better off adding the "Looking for Group" chat to a chat tab, and spamming invites there (ex: "starting up a Positron 1 TF! 7 more slots open!") Depending on the TF, you may also wish to specify if you want it to be a fast run vs a "kill most" (or KM), just to set expectations for anyone who joins.

Welcome Home! I get seriously nostalgic for WoW sometimes, and I have looked at Classic from time to time. And then I remember WHY I stepped back from raiding entirely at the end of Pandaria, and logged off for good at the end of Draenor. The endless loot treadmill of doom.. The inability to play tons of alts and play them well, unless that was your entire life. Guild drama (and ours was Really tame as far as these things go) how bad LFG raids were. the "elites" and "scrubs" mindsets of many players (and OK, i was guilty of this plenty in my time....) the general zero-sum attitude the game tended to instill in players. All of which is just every so much better / comes up so much less / not even a concern for me on City of Heroes. So, I'm still 9 years "sober" from WoW. Never again. Never.

I'm told it worked once, but it was the son of the lead developer, so.... yea.

The Devs and GM's in RL are really not that responsive. Create all the petitions you want, updates are pretty rare. (And when they do, it's like the patch that killed the dinosaurs...)

Don't worry you're in the clear. The ITF is back in time, long, long ago, before the Geneva Convention was in force. Unless you personally signed it as well, you should not be bound by it during the Cimorean time period. TV Tropes: Shoot the Medic First

I mean, if any AT is going to get Whips (and Chains), it should really be Dominators.

I'm not against the idea, but I'm definitely not holding my breath.

I would probably use a Mastermind for this. Thugs/Traps, or possibly Necro/Thermal or Necro/Dark. Something good and tanky, respectable damage output, with a nice mix of buffs and debuffs. Your mileage may vary.

Solution in search of a problem, I think. I've found veteran players to be reasonably generous when new players are having trouble affording enhancements. Now, yes, possibly there are some new players suffering in silence, without the gumption to speak up and ask for advice on how to get influence (Which then can easily get them an email donation...), but in all things, it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. [EDIT: that said, as long as we're talking a donation system and not some kind of tax, sure why not. I don't see any harm in it.]