MTeague

The type of enemies you fight, also makes a Large difference. By everything I've read on the Focused Feedback thread about Blackwing Industries, BWI was specifically designed to issue a wake up call teams that are only half paying attention.

It's wonky naming, but https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetics#Repel has absolutely no Repel component, despite the name. Just a fairly strong knockback. KD to KB KB-to-KD is an option, just like it can be for Whirlwind.

Honestly, I would not disregard Repel out of hand. For primarily ranged pets, like Mercs or Robots, allowing the MM to run around bowling their enemies over while the henchmen gun blast away, is not without merit. Yes, I get teams dislike Knockback, but just like Energy Blast, Repel can be used for damage mitigation as well. Enemies that are flat on their back or flying the friendly skies, are not attacking you.

Seriously delayed response, and not sure if it will fit the bill for you, but as of this writing Starvortex is available.

I concede there is considerably more for new players to learn. And yet, past lvl 20, I can't remember the last time I felt in any real danger when levelling. Team wipes feel far rarer than they used to be. The need to coordinate feels greatly reduced vs what it was in some early issues. Maybe some of that is having stronger enhancements right out of the gate, instead of having to make do with Training Enhancements and Dual Origin enhancements. Maybe some of that is people spending at the START vendor for status protection, or other temporary powers that weren't even in the game until the Veteran Rewards came along after the first several years of Live. I remember being delighted when a Force Fielder joined the team in the early days. Now, it's ho-hum, sure that'll help some. It is what it is, and I can't say I haven't leveraged the heck out of low level SO's, I can't say I haven't stacked the heck out of set bonuses after lvl 25. But teams being in no real danger makes it much easier for new folks to rapidly level up compared to the old days, too.

Sure. soloing.

I admit, I do tend to solo on my Thugs/Traps MM, because teams are all gogogo like rabid 5 year olds after a big bowl of Choco Frosted Sugar Bombs. They'd never benefit more than a tick or three from Triage Beacon, never bring new mobs back to my Acid Mortor, and have no interest in even trying to stay near my Shield Generator Drone. Never mind making effective use of Trip Mines or the like.

None of this is necessary. You are free to ignore the market and even ignore IO's altogether. But as stated above, either using the market, OR, getting a few characters up to lvl 50, either or both, can make Influence a LOT easier to come by. I am also a big fan of "Converter Roulette". That is, whatever IO set recipes drop for you during the course of play? Craft them. All of them. Without exception. If you wish, you may also choose to buy recipes or even some finished set IO's from the market. But starting out, just craft the recipes that happen to drop for you. If it needs rare salvage, spend the money and buy it. You'll make it back easy peasy. spend some Reward Merits to buy enhancement converters. I buy 30 at a time, 3 times. open up the convert window, and put your set IO's into the converter. almost never convert in-set. Use the radio button / dropdown over to the right. if it's already orange, convert by Rarity, to get a different orange IO set piece. if it's yellow, convert by Type, until you get an orange IO set piece, then if it's not a valueable set category, convert by Rarity until it is. Some set pieces are worth Way More than others. Anything that's a Damage Proc, keep for your own use, or sell for a bunch. else, other unique pieces like Reactive Armor Scaling Resists, or Preventative Healing Absorb Proc, or set pieces with Knockback Protection, sell pretty well. else, other pieces that are Melee, Ranged Damage, Defense, Resist Damage, and healing sets, tend to sell good. else, keep converting. That is the Quick and Dirty version, and is not intended to cover every nuance. Just the very basics to get you off the ground. But seriously, individual set pieces can easily sell for 1-4 million influence each. Sometimes they'll fly off the shelves. Sometimes you leave them up for sale overnight. Before you'll know it you'll be decking out a character with ridiculous amounts of set bonuses, not even caring if you just spend 200 million to do so.

while that would be nice, the "Bladed" staff option is ... pretty much a spear already.

sigh. A meme, once begun, cannot be stopped by the efforts of mortal man. Much like a forest fire, it must run its course.

To be fair, people have been doing enough Timey-Wimey shenanigans with Ouroboros, that there is no such thing as a coherent timeline. There's 100,000 or more varients of the timeline, growing daily. Loki should be exploding a few times about now. Also, not necessarily every character had to already be lvl 50 and have taken part in incarnate trials. Some in theory could happened before your hero's powers manifested. I know, I know, heresy, we are all the Main Characters of our own stories, and all the world's plot MUST revolve around us. But it's no different from any other MMO. Warcraft, you do the same raids and defeat the same bosses for several months on end, and no one bats an eye at "timelines". New characters get levelling up through multiple expansions, and no one bats an eye at what "has already happened". Its a game. We plays it. We rationlize timelines however we care to, and often we just don't overthink it.

Redside is bestside! Gotta rob them banks!

I mean, the tutorial is what it is. You may sometimes see other players in it, but it's not 2004, and there won't be 30-40 people in it at any given moment anymore. That's life. The cave missions... trying to decide if you mean one of the purple-blue caves from classic CoH, or one of the multi-instance caves from Mattthew Habashy's quest line with the Hellions and the fire, or a redside cave with Snakes. I'll grant you, they all look dated in their own way. But we are looking at an all volunteer not-for-profit, may-never-be-for-profit Dev Team. They do this in their downtime hours after their real life day jobs are over. While I wouldn't be against a facelift of some cave maps, I'm not personally expecting any change there.

Keep in mind, some of the animations will have you jabbing with the top of the staff, vs the business end of the scythe. But I'm certainly not opposed to this idea. I've also seen people ask for Hockey Sticks, etc.

I use a 17" laptop. LG, don't have the model number handy. Plenty big enough for me. I used to be "desktops or go home". But life took some interesting turns, and I find myself travelling 1,000 miles for a few weeks at a time now. I now use my personal (non-work) laptop for my general gaming, surfing YouTube, etc. Simply because it's easy to take it with me. Important documents get backed up to external drives at home. It does help that this laptop had a decent graphics card when I bought it (4-5 years ago now?), but many diehard gamers would consider this laptop to be a potato, just by age. Still. It runs the games I personally want to play, with fairly high graphics settings, and that's where the rubber meets the road for me.

Almost every game that has ever existed has a certain "shelf life". No matter HOW good it is. People can only accept doing the same thing, over and over again, just so many times in a row, before something inside them rebels. That's perfectly fine, and perfectly human. The games that I would say are an exception... Stardew Valley, Sid Meier's Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword, and yes, City of Heroes: Homecoming.... still have a "cooldown". I'll go back to those games again and again and again. But after X much time of play, I must set them aside for a year or so. Sometimes two. Eventually, the itch re-forms, and I enjoy them again. I first tripped over Homecoming in June 2019. Just my annual Google search "City of Heroes" AND <Calendar Year in YYYY>. And it actually came back with a hit. When I logged back in on my reborn Mind/Kin, I swore I would be here at Homecoming until they turned off the lights. My beloved game, was BACK. But that's not how life works. Already, I took all of 2023 and 2024 off from the game. I rejoined in April 2025, and I'm loving it again. For how long? I don't know. But I'd say it has at least another year or two before my personal cooldown for the game is expended. Now, does it automatically hold that the OP, or anyone else who's decided to hang up the gloves, will be back in two years? Absolutely not. Games that you come back to, are going to be different for each person. For some folks, it'll be Skyrim. For others, it'll be Darkest Dungeon. And other folks may have good life reasons to give up gaming entirely, be it personal finance challenges, be it family members requiring caregiving, be it the arrival of newborns, what-have-you. TL;DR: I guess what I'm trying to say, is this isn't something that should be argued about. Some who left will return, some who left, will not. No one is right for everyone. But people are probably right for themselves. I do not personally see a point to "Hasta La Pasta!" goodbye threads, but humans are humany, and we do weird things for weird reasons. Peace out.

It would be a huge power jump for certain mobs. Tsoo yellow ink men, in numbers, are annoying that they sleep you, but you an at least respond each time they hit you. If you were up against six of them, all Deep-Sleeping you, that would effectively perma-hold most players for any easy kill. Now, yes, Break Free's exist. So do powers like Clear Mind and the like. But it would be a Nasty surprise for players levelling up characters for certain missions. It may still happen in time. But I do understand being a touch cautious on the initial rollout.

<shrug> I think the upcoming changes are just fine. Tanks still hold threat like a champ. Playstyle for teams should not be impacted. On a team, the other players still melt enemies just as fast. Soloing medium sized groups is not greatly impacted, because you won't have overcapped numbers of targets anyway. For the most part, kill speed seems to be only meaningfully lowered when you are soloing +4x8. Even then you can still DO it, it just takes a bit longer to wear them down. Maybe I would care more if I cared about clear times, but I don't, and I never have. When I play a Tanker, what I care about is feeling unkillable, and the flow of the game. Whether a fight vs an individual spawn takes 30 seconds or 90 seconds, I do not care.

I've done it habitually for so long, I actually hit mental blue screen trying to remember what the mechanics of it were. I could not come up with the explanation.

eventually, Lore pets? But more properly, I should have said "well before the levels other controllers get pets"

That depends entirely on what you're fighting. A map full of Hydras or Toxic Tarantulas, you might want to lean in for the Toxic Resist.

My Mind/Kin controller took Repel, and kept it, just for situations like this. So I could activate a PBAE ragdoll and stand next to the corpse until it was finally flung aside. Also works in some cave maps where a mobs feet are showing but their body is stuck in a wall and they can't be targetted. Repel puts them flat on their back, and then I can unleash a couple of attacks before they stand back up.

Controllers bring both Control and Support, all in one package. That's their thing. Always has been. Dominators are impressive when they get Perma Hasten but that's late 30's at the earliest, and there's an awful lot of game before that point. Controllers bring their own debuffs, and if you choose to lean into damage procs, can still bring decent damage, esp with Containment. Heck, levelling a Mind/Kin, well before pets, only 1 damage proc in each power, he still gets a solid attack chain with Arcane Bolt in his rotation. Will he clear maps as fast as an even level Scrapper, no, but he clears them in total and complete safety.

I only use Hasten for Dominators and Controllers, because being able to rapidly stack excessive magnitudes can be crucial in some fights. I never bother with it for any other archtype. It's good, don't get me wrong. But I'm also a heretic who does not put Kick, Tough, and Weave into every build. I also sleep just fine, if my final build, maybe only has three LotG 7.5% recharges. It just don't concern me if I can't get a full five. I also flashback a LOT, so I don't respec down to only a handful of attack powers because I want one single build to be able to handle a Flashback to Positron or an ITF, without switching builds, and without respeccing.

I can't get past the idea that Blackwing, raven familiar of Vaarsuvius from Order of the Stick webcomic, is now charge of a large paramilitary group. Ok, ok, I know, it's nothing but a similarity in names. No such crossover actually exists. But Rule of Cool trumps all, right?