MTeague

I took Warmth on my Fire/Fire/Fire sentinel, in homage to his first incarnation, back on Guardian server when City of Villains first when live, because back then he was a Fire/Thermal corruptor. Plus, Warmth is handy on Mothership raids and suchnot for Healing Badges. For preqs, I grabbed Cremate (love it) and Fire Cages (meh). Fire Sword Circle might have been more optimal, but really Inferno is up so often, I don't feel the need for an additonal PBAE. and I've always hated the look of Fire Swords on anyone who isn't magic-origin (which my sentinel is not, he's science).

Leaving aside any coulda/shoulda/woulda/oughta's.... I do think this is a good idea. The ladies get to have a plain "Headband", and a variety of "tiara" options, even when they have hair showing. Just not the gents, it seems.

Although I'd really love an Elementalist set that deals with more than the classic four elements. I'm totally riffing from an Order of the Stick webcomic, but why not a Chlorine Elemental, or a Titanium Elemental, or a Copper Elemental? We know ever so much more about chemistry than the ancient greeks did, isn't it time?

Gadgetry and/or Utility Belt pool powers. MM Primaries. MM's have the fewest primary sets of any AT by leaps and bounds. Imagine if Blasters had only 7 primaries, or if Scrappers had only 7 primaries,, or Tankers. A little love feels overdue. But if new MM primaries are deemed "not workable", and if there is no appetite to provide full pet customization... maybe some reskins? Thugs: vanilla option, or Family style suited gangsters. Mercs: vanilla option, or Knives of Artimis style special ops Ninjas: vanilla option, or Tsoo style ninjas Robots: vanilla option, or something Cylon inspired. Always loved the look of the Centurions in the 2004 reboot with guns/claw hands. Beasts: vanilla option, or perhaps Shadow Hounds / Spirit Panthers, a la Night Ward? something in that style. Demons: Drawing a blank on this one, to be honest. Maybe something Talons of Vengeance inspired? Necromancy: vanilla option, or perhaps fresher corpses / resident evil twist?

Rather than devouring earth models, I'd more think of the Pumice / Magma guys from the Hollows.

I'm assuming OP is defining "in need" of a respec, as "your most recent respec predates changes to your primary, secondary, or pool powers". Which does not necessarily mean you'd want to make changes. Just that the last time you made your selections, was using information that is now somewhat stale. That said, I doubt the game actually tracks a calendar date for your most recent respec. Just how many respecs you have available, and what your build looks like now. Provided it were opt in (personally I do not want the clutter), I'm not opposed, but I suspect this could not be a backwards compatible change. They'd proably have to introduce some kind of data element for "most recently respecced on YYYYMMDD", and they would not be able to seed that new field. is it that hard to just skim patch notes and choose for yourself which to respec? (full disclosure, my entire roster is a whopping 30 characters... i guess if you had hundreds, that would be a lot)

Ice/Ice brute. Somehow I actually got Cold Fury.

Question on the self-rez aspect. Does anyone know how long you can wait before clicking yes/no for the rez effect? Sometimes it's good to wait a couple minutes for mobs to reset before popping back up.

I do not want to discourage anyone from posting suggestions (even if I might be about to do just that.) That said, Storm Summoning is... already a Very solid Support Set, capable of disrupting foes and providing good damage in it's current form. Regardless of what might be thematic, I think the requested changes could only be implemented alongside some serious nerfs, which I would not want to see. Storm Summoning does not get a self-heal. It's hardly unique in this regard. Neither do Trick Arrow, Force Field, Cold Domination, Poison, or Sonic Resonance. If you do not feel complete/safe without some form of self-healing beyond green inspirations, Medicine -> Aid Self is available. Or, if you are feeling rich, there are many set IO pieces that can provide a self-heal. Hurricane definitely does not need to deal damage. It's one the very strongest to-hit debuffs in the entire game. Hurricane is among the reasons why Storm doesn't need a self-heal. Hurricane prevents debt. Use it. Love it. The To-Hit debuff lingers for awhile after enemies leave the cyclone, so you only need to just skim enemies with it every so often. Lightning Storm... Like @Uun, I like being able to summon two storms at once. And there's a whole lot of Location based powers that don't follow you around. See Glue Arrow, Oil Slick arrow, Caltrops, almost the entire Traps set, Ice Slick, Bonfire, Spirit Tree, Quicksand, Volcanic Gases, Smoke, Tar Patch, Distortion Field, and more. I don't see why an exception should be made for Lightning Storm. Not every power is intended to be bread-and-butter for a fast-moving steamrolling team. Some are better fits for slower moving teams or for bigger targets / longer lasting fights, and that's OK. O2 Boost, in addition to healing, frees the target from sleep, stun, provides endurance drain resist, and +Perception. The heal is often the least important aspect of the power, and I don't think anyone invites a Storm Summoner expecting them to be main healer for a team. I think if you take a good look at what Storm already brings to the table, it will not be found lacking. And I definitely don't want it to undergo nerfs just to provide additional utility it has never needed to bring. Do still feel free to post, and/or offer counterpoints, and/or just say "MTeague, you're just flat wrong". That's entirely your perogative.

A human shaped boss would be nice for some situations. Jump Bots are perfectly fine for a boss level fight / obstacle. But the Jump Bot as a boss in the corner rubbing it's hands together as it contemplates it's nefarious plan, always strikes me as odd. Much less why the human sky raiders feel obliged to protect it. Then again, some of that is Newspapers / Radio missions and perhaps I should just keep my expectations low for them. I do like (read: hate / love to hate) Captain Castillo of the Sky Raiders from the Doc Delilah arc.

Praetorian DeVore is a telepath powerful enough to shield the minds of the Resistance, to the point where the Seers aren't even aware that shielding is going on. DeVore must be creating essentially a "false mental image" that the Seers can scan and be content to see, not even knowing it's not the real deal. I find that idea interesting, along with the fact that she can do that for so many people. I would guess it's something similar to some Wheel of Time "tied-off weaves" , where Vanessa creates the false mental images, and can somehow leave it in place without having to consciously maintain it. I get that Praetorian DeVore is nominally dead, but as with all things comic book, if the character is not SEEN to die, right in front of you, then hedge that bet. Now in the Underground Trial a body is found, along with her mask. That does not require that the body they found, was hers. DeVore always wore the mask. How many people actually knew her face, vs just knew the hair and the get-up? Her death could have been faked while she fled. Even if it was in point of fact DeVore's actual flesh, for such a powerful telepath, it's not out of the question that she was able to cast her consciousness elsewhere and transplant it elsewhere before she died, much as Praetor TIlman did. I'd love to see more done with her, and the Syndicate, in follow-up storylines dealing with the aftermath of the Praetorian Refugees. I'd hoped maybe the Syndicate would become a power in the Khalisti Wharf area, but, perhaps not, given the patch that just went live. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen somewhere else.

Praetorian Vanessa DeVore.

Really? I like the +Def from Energy Cloak on my EM/EA Brute, but I hate the stealth effect / not being able to see my costume cleanly.

If you've done the Striga Arcs, Ring of Peebles might help you stack enough Resistance to soak a hit, too. It can be a "too cool to use" temp power, but for Envoy, I have no problem activating the Precious.

well, you can do attack-attack-attack, then finish with sleep, and get distance while your attack chain recharges. Of course, if you're using a Shivan, or a Snow Beast, or any other kind of summon, your sleep will be insta-broken. But it could give you time to summon a replacement tank. Teaming probably IS the best answer to bosses like Envoy. I just occasionally get bitter because well, debuffers still get to debuff during triangles, the boss doesn't ignore anyone's defenses or resistance during triangles, blasters don't deal any reduced damage during triangles, it's only my meat and potatoes controls that get told to sit and spin. I do hear what @Scarlet Shocker is saying, and they're probably right. My frustration with triangles may not be an entirely rational reaction, but, I am not always rational.

Actually Mind does have two sleeps. single target and AE. Historically some people have skipped them, but they can be very useful. I suspect with the upcoming Deep Sleep changes, they'll be more popular, though I don't expect Deep Sleep to have any greater effect when triangles are in play.

I try to keep each session no more than 2 hours. Doesn't always work.

Purple Triangles feel intensely personal on a Controller/Dominator. I get they didn't want City of Statues, but I dislike having my characters main strength crumpled up in front of me, slam dunked into a trash can, and lit on fire. When everyone else gets to have their toolkit remain essentially unchanged vs the exact same foe. Envoy of Shadows is one of those bosses I only do once per character and then Never Again, and I go prepared with 80% dodge inspiriations and a full Shivan Shard, planning on using every charge in it before the fight is over. At that point, I am not the hero. My shivan is. At some point the binary "boss is completely helpless" OR "your control failed completely", should give way to some kind of sliding scale, where a hold sticks, but for a greatly reduced duration, or a failed hold increases the recharge on the bosses attacks, or something. #RantOff

This is partly why I find lvl 1-44 far, far more enjoyable than levels 45-50. But people will gravitate to what gives them their dopamine hit, and it doesn't have to be the same thing I gravitate towards.

After 20 odd years, of people constantly re-writing it's history via Ourobous? Paragon City would have imploded upon itself from the network of ever expanding paradoxes, and would no longer exist. At best, it would be some kind of Niflheim place like Night Ward.

Fold Space, when used as an opener, is logically, not that different from aggroing a group of mobs, and running around a corner to group them up. If used in mid-battle, perhaps a case could be made for more, but I have only seen it used as basically an opener / pull. It just has some convienence baked in. I don't think it needs a nerf, but I'm willing to change my mind if you can paint use-cases that are more than just herding mobs around a corner without spending the time to DO it.

Honestly, a lot of temp powers aren't worth using. Flashbang grenades? Confiscated beanbag? Yawn. Penelope Yin's gift to summon some clockwork minions? Ho-hum. The temp powers that are worth using, I do try to make decent use of, especially if they're time limited. "Iron Blade" or "Rune of Warding" from Croatoa come to mind. You need some good +accuracy to all powers from set bonues to make best use of them, but they're great on a Defender or Controller. Blaster, less important, you can burn things down anyway. Temp powers that you can re-aquire, I'll use plenty. Jetpacks. Shivan Shards. I try to save Shivan Shards for Arch Villains or stupid-hard missions, but for those fights, smoke'em if you got 'em because you can always get more. Really handy for Portal Jockey. Temp powers that are good, non-re-acquirable, and limited by use... yea... I conserve too much. I've never burned up a "Ring of Peebles". I do use it, but just barely 2 minutes of use at any given time, then quickly back off again. The Ice Armor temp power, too.

City of Heroes has always been an incredibly alt-friendly game. The two other MMO's I played were EverQuest 1999-2005, and World of Warcraft 2008-2015. For both games, I needed to spend... truly ridiculous amounts of time levelling my "main" characters. Getting them geared up, and making constant trade off with other members of my respective Guilds to struggle towards shared goals. I always itched to see how other classes played, but between work, family, and efforts on my main characters, it was difficult to get any Alt to any respectable level, much less have a raid-worthy alt. When I finally did manage to get a few raidworthy alts, I was burning myself out badly, costing myself far too much sleep for far too long. I'd begun to develop health issues from lack of sleep. In 2016, I swore all Guilds, forever. But between those two treadmills, from 2005 to early 2008, I had played City of Heroes, City of Villains. CoH was FUN. Extremely casual friendly. I could play alts to my hearts content. There was no endless treadmill of raidset after raidset to "gear" your characters. Guilds / Supergroups were entirely unnecessary. I could spend as much or as little time in game in a week as I wished, without having to feel like I was letting anyone down. I could alt around and still get a good night's sleep, every night, without straining real life obligations. A part of me always regretted leaving CoH for Warcraft, especially given how burnt out I was by the end of 2015. I was always idly interested in going back to CoH, but it had been shut down in between. I was delighted when my annual "city of heroes 20xx" google search finally came back with a hit in June 2019. I still refuse to join anything expect a personal supergroup, that is just "Never Again" territory. But I enjoy pickup teams and TF's, and I enjoy being able to dabble into a little bit of everything, while still keeping balance in Real Life and getting a good night's sleep. CoH does so much that is "right" from my admittedly biased point of view. There is no "loot drama", no "OMG I should have won that piece of gear!" that can plague other MMO's. You don't have to make it a full time job all by itself. This is what online games should be like.

Honestly, I still hold out "never gonna happen but maybe" hope for an Opt In system where you can flag certain of your redside alts to be a "nemesis" of a blueside character, and vice versa, and then in some kind of specialized tip mission, have an end fight against that alt of yours. But, that alt would have full access to all of their set bonues, have full access to all of the incarnate powers (if both lvl 50+), etc. Every single power that your character has, that NPC copy could use against you in mission, without exception. (or if you only had bluesiders, then some kind of "rival" flag for your alts vs your other character)

On Live, I used to fear going into Bloody Bay to get a Shivan Shard. I would go at 2:45 am, to try to minimize the chances of being ganked. On Homecoming, I'll enter any day, regardless of time. I don't give it a second thought, and I'm genuinely surprised on the rare occasions I see another soul in the zone at all. So far, each time, they've been another person looking for the Shivan Shard quest. Now I do play on Everlasting these days, and maybe on Indomitable or something the story is quite different. But I often forget anyone pvp's in this game at all.