MTeague

I'm not for changing anything. I listed these as reasons why I don't think any changes should be made at all, because I think even the proposed change (more merits for a Master Of run) opens the door to exactly this. EDIT: am I being paranoid? very possibly. That's still my stance.

He specifically said bolding mine for emphasis. That's why I offered other examples of greater or lesser challenge, all with an identical reward. If changing one reward based on "the challenge", why not the others.

That opens a big 55 gallon drum of worms. If you do a TF at -1 difficulty, should your merits be reduced by 10-20 because of it, or increased by 10-20 if you fight at +4? What about regular story arcs? What about the Ouroborous challenges, like "can't use inspirations", or "No temp powers"? What about a player with nothing but SO's vs one decked out in IO sets and with incarnates slotted? Should you lose 20 merits if you're twinked out the wazoo because the challenge is removed? In all situation you can argue whether that's easier or harder, and whether it really presents the same kind of challenge. Do you want merit rewards changed there as well? I'd say don't touch it, leave it all exactly as is.

I like that they made him a mission contact. And I do like that when certain characters have things happen to them, they vanish from the world. But when A forever after locks out arc B from happening, it should, bare minimum, be possible to do it via Ouroborous.

I want a badge for crossing the entire Shadow Shard with no travel powers, and no temporary powers, and no being transported by anyone else. Just you, and the Gravity Geysers.

If endurance is an issue, I am a big fan of the "discount to all powers" set bonuses. Unbreakable Guard gives 2.5% discount to all powers at 2 slots Reactive Defenses gives 3.75% discount to all powers at 5 slots, Preventative Medicine gives 3.75% discount to all powers at 5 slots Annihilation gives 3% discount to all powers at 5 slots. slotting a few of them can make a biiiig difference, since it's every toggle, every clicky.

It does make for a nice feeling of "back in time" especially if youv'e ever handled an old family photo albums with olllllld photos in it. I don't know if it'd want to have that up for the entire flashback arc. But as an option? Sure. Why not.

A Giant Monster version of Sally, requiring something like a full Hamidon raid to defeat. And a Mecha-Sally, in honor of Mecha-Godzilla.

Or the PB's said damn man, I wanna be a Greater Devoured! and merged with Hamidon. (this is not considered likely)

EverQuest Charm-Soloing! My Favorite! (not sarcastic at all, I mained a chanter for 4 years in EQ)

Mind Control tips: Learn to love Confuse. Learn to love that it's non-aggroing, and you can cast outside of aggro range. This can thin down a pack that's too much to take all at once, and / or just speed up the killing of some yard trash. Levitate/Dominate/Mezmerize is an acceptable rotation until you can work in something better. I would always END that rotation with the sleep, because Sleep works on bosses, pretty much one shot every time. So if you need two casts of Dominate to hold the boss? using Mezmerize last gives you time to get that next Dominate cast off. Of course, if you keep a Boss or Lieutentant confused, you have free hits on them all day long. Consider Kick/Boxing/Crosspunch (all three). The damage becomes quite good, particularly with containment, and can allow you to slot your controls for CONTROL, and punch things down once controlled. Although, my Controller is more willing / needs to be in Melee a lot. (Mind/Kin). I havne't done much with Sonic Resonance, your milage may vary. As Mind/Sonic you don't have any self-heals in your normal kit... so a) always fit in a Panacea in health, and consider a Preventative Medicine Absorb as well. b) if you can spare a slot in Stamina for Power Transfer proc, that could go nice as well. You wont' need to go completely wild, ideally you shoudl be shutting down a lot of incoming damage with controls. But some passive maintenence heals from procs can go a long way. Terrify is your AE, slot for nuking. And again, I strongly recommend Kick and Box and Crosspunch. You don't need to slot Kick or Box or evne have them on your bars. But they'll beef up Crosspunch nicely.

Ice/Ice is suppossed to be almost a Controller, so pretty good at keeping range. Though I've never personally tried it, and I'm not sure how much it still relies on being near enough / midrange to keep things slow and kited vs being airborne.

Pointless in single-player games. Still decently important for PvE co-op games, I think.

I'm a Map-Clearing-Fool, so I'm okay with the Defeat All's. But I admit I do have to disable XP a lot to finish the arcs I want to finish as I level.

Loyalist / Responsibilty, is basically a selfless good guy trying to work within the system, even if they are sometimes painfully aware of some realities they wish were not so. Resistance / Warden, is also basically a well-meaning idealist, wanting to topple Cole and bring about a better society, but with lines they're not willing to cross. I think you'd likely enjoy both. I give a slight edge to Loyalists / Responsibility in terms of practicality, because it always seems to me every Resistance story/arc entirely handwaves away the "Um, great, so we take down Cole.... How exactly would we handle Hamidon, if it gets angry again??". Maybe they all believe the Sonic fencing is a lot better than it is, or maybe they all believe it would never occur to Hamidon to tunnel under or evolve things to fly a few miles up and then drop down from above. But I always wished there was some kind of dialogue where you could at least ASK them, "Remind me again, how do we stop Hamidon without this guy?"

What's with this newfangled P2W vendor and prestige powers? In my day, you ran out of END and brawled! And then the Vahzilok puked on us and we died, and Doc Vahz made more minions out of our body parts. And we *liked* it that way! We liked right fine.... Though, nothing I come up with will ever touch the grandmasters ...

Issue 0 memory is very fuzzy, but that sounds right. I dont' think I really noticed that much of a pattern to who they sent me after at first. The differences certainly didn't last to too high a lvl though.

lol. Well, it's not like I think the idea has a snowball's chance in hell. I think GW has pretty good job security. But I guess my main objection is that Arachnos is so completely dominant over everything. If they were on more of an equal footing with Crey, or the Council, or Malta, or Nemesis, then I wouldn't care so much about the named NPC's. I get that my redside characters have to start out as a nobody. I get that nobody gets to be treated like Doctor Doom or Emma Frost at lvl 1. But I hate that even by the time I'm lvl 50, I still have various Arbiter's talking smack to me, and I'm only considered worthy to be a servant and join a faction, instead of really being treated like a power in my own right. The Mr. G arc and Pandora's Box help somewhat, but I still reallllly would like to see Arachnos having less of a "we control everything and if you really piss us off we'll go back in time and erase your genetic line" type of attitude. Because it just makes me want to do it to them FIRST.

Well, if we have to agree to disagree, that works too. But I'd say that ship sailed several years ago in the form of Kheldians, Crabs, and Fortunata's. And really a Sentinels range is fairly limited. They're still in melee or very short range for a cone quite often.

I'd say if considering blast powers ALONE, not buffs or debuffs Blasters > Sentinels = Corruptors > Defenders The Blast tree IS a Sentinel Primary tree (as it is for Corruptors), so it should be better than Defenders secondary. Now, with the effects of their Support tree thrown in, I'd say some certainly could/should outdamage a Sentinel. Particularly Poisen, Trick Arrow, Rad, Dark, things with very strong -RES debuffs. And a Sonic Blast Defender taking pains to stack the -RES, would probably outdamage a Fire or Ice Sentinel. But I would defintely expect any random Sentinel to outdamage a Empath Defender with the same blast set, or a Force Field Defender with the same blast set.

Devil is completely in the details. Matters how? What would you change? I'd be willing to talk turkey, but I'd be leery of anything that created mission arcs that were ONLY obtainable based on a certain Origin, or which provided different combat benefits to certain Origins (inevitably making one origin the "best" min/max origin....), etc.

Completely remove Arachnos, Lord Recluse, the Patrons, and Longbow from existence. Instead have different parts of the Rogue Isles controlled by multiple factions all competiting with one another (Crey, Cage Consortium, the Tsoo, the Family, The Council, Malta, Circle of Thorns, Nemesis, etc.). Make it more of a No-Man's Land / Wild West / Anything Goes, rather than "Under the Dominion of one unconditionally unchallengeable NPC boss". Yes, I'm completely aware that would savage a decade or more of in-game lore, and require rewrites of multple TF's and story arcs. I'd do it anyway. Let the player choose which factions (if any) to ally themselves with, and play a few factions against each other. Remove all War Walls. Remove all zone barriers. You should be able to run/walk/swim/jump from the Golden Giza to Atlas Park City Hall without "loading please wait" even once. These will never happen. But they've been on my personal wishlist for awhile.

I am dividing my time among CoH and a few other games, but CoH still gets probably 60% or more of my total gaming time in any given week.

Goose egg for me. 0%. I have T4 for alpha, lore, judgement, and T3 Destiny for my Mind/Kin controller. I do plan to get him fully done. Someday. If I'm not distrac- I have 3 other 50's, none even have an alpha yet. Been having fun levelling my other alts for the time being. I'll probably incarnate out a couple other characters at some point. But character concept wise, only the Mind/Kin needs it, since he's kind of the Gandalf of the bunch.