MTeague

That's the thing. I'm pretty sure zero enemy mobs ever get a Build Up or an Aim. I'd want to see it added to them, as the price of this. But I'm also feeling somewhat vindictive and petty after a crappy day at work, which probably means I should log off the forums. Just gonna get myself in trouble.

I can go along with this, only if minions, lieuts, bosses, all get powers that can ignore defenses and hit the player regardless of being softcapped. Otherwise, no. Misses happen. If they can miss you, you have to have at least a snowballs chance in hell to miss them.

I get it though. Can't tell you how many times at work they told me "I don't need a giant writeup, just the executive summary". Then when I actually give them the short version, they carve it into a stone tablet and hold it agianst me saying "But you never TOLD us about this part!" After that I wanted to start all my JIRA's with "In the beginning..."

Just please dear god dont' let them spew overdone "pirate talk". At least not more than one day a year.

is there a groundhog's day effect to Sentinel suggestions that I missed?

Experimentation: Speed of Sound / Jaunt is quite nice. But caveat, I do not treat Hasten as a must-have. Only about 1/3 of my characters pick it up. So for a character who was never going to get Hasten, Speed of Sound is a perfectly viable alternative for travel powers. And Adrenal Booster is *quite* nice. Toxic Dart / Corrosive Vial are "meh" however. They don't impress me. Force of Will: Mighty Leap / Unleash Potential is another good set of powers. Unleash makes for a nice 20% defense boost if slotted, and the Regen it provides is quite nice. Necessary? No. Could do the same with misc inspirations. But it's nice to have them "on tap" as it were, via the cooldown power. Sorcery does seem most versatile, if it can fit your character's concept. Flight and Teleport for one point is nice. Arcane Bolt is nice if you need a blast, Arcane Ward is nice fi you don't. Rune of Protection is Resist, not defense, but if you will reach softcaps or close to it, having some resist on tap may be of more value to you. I like Enflame. It's probably never going to be a giant damaging power, but visually it's awesome, and on a character with a taunt aura it's nice extra damage for not too much of an up-front cost. Probably Enflame is better for Solo vs being on a murderball team that's just going to melt everything in 3 seconds or less, though.

Very happy with my Beasts / Empath. When solo, I'm in Bodyguard mode 100%. I use Crosspunch a lot, both because it's better than many MM direct attacks, and it keeps me right in melee range with my pets for Supremacy, Pet Aura IO's, Healing Aura, Leadership buffs, etc. The T1 wolves survive okay enough, the T2 lions and T3 dire wolf are my Fortitude targets when soloing. That said, this character is still levelling. I'm not doing x4+8, and probably wouldn't even try. +2x6 is a plenty good enough goal for me to shoot for once I get the character fully kitted out. Just shy of lvl 30 now, and +2x3 is challenging enough. EDIT: I think it's the usual CoH-ism's. I hear lots of people say "Assault Rifle sucks". Maybe so, but my blaster still dishes out tons of pain with it. Is it the most optimized blast set out there vs "endgame" content? No. But "it's not god-tier" does not equal "sucks", unless you embrace a completely black-and-white view of the game that I reject.

"It is rumored that there are no more than 100 Knives of Artemis. If this is true, they've been cloned more times than a Cylon."

Sounds buggy to me. Rogues are still redsiders, and should be able to start a Strike Force and enter missions, even on their own. Vigilante are still bluesiders, and should be ble to start a Task Force and enter missions, even on their own. a Vig for a SF, or a Rogue for a TF, that I could see being a problem. But rogue for a SF? I can't think of any legit reason for that to fail.

Personally, I would never consider using any power that summons arachnobots or widows to my aid, if I was a SoA/Widow gone blue. (EDIT or any other archtype for that matter) I wouldn't feel right enforcing that limitation on other players... maybe they have a way to make it work in their own headcanon, or maybe they literally give zero F's about making it make sense and just want the powers they picked to work. But for myself, I would never use any clearly-arachnos-related summon power unless I was red-aligned. Coralax from Mako's pool would still be fine though, because coralax's don't give a flying yeet about Recluse.

It's not so hard to just ignore the extra tips that show up, and use "Dismiss this contact" when it's over. Really no skin off my back however long it lasts.

I like it. Admittedly, on whatever week it picks To Save a Thousand Worlds, I'd have to really think about it. I always do that story arc once for any bluesider. But it goes on and on and on so long.... once might be enough, lol. (probably does not help that I am a map-clearing fool) Still, plenty of weeks, I don't bother do a weekly task force, so, why not?

Intruiging. I did not know that, and I stand corrected. Thanks!

My personal rules of thumb (your milage may vary, see dealer for details, etc) If the character can already do good damage with the power straight out of the box, I avoid procs. scrapper crit, brute fury, corruptor scourge, blaster's damage boost using blasts, etc does not affect proc damage. by contrast, controllers, defenders, mastermind's are relatively "meh" damage with their attacks, and therefore more likely to benefit from proc dmg. recharge of the power. look at the Proc-Per-Minute of the proc. Say it procs 3.5 times per minute. That means, on average, once every 17 seconds. if the power is extremely fast cycling, like say Neutrino bolt (4 seconds base I think?), your chance to proc is very low. if the power's recharge rate is pretty close (say, 16 seconds recharge), then you have an excellent chance for those procs to fire every time you use it. if the power's recharge is very high (say, 90 seconds or 2 minutes), it becomes alllllllmost a guarantee the procs will fire every time you use it. keep in mind, if you slot recharge directly into the power, that reduces the power's recharge and alters your proc chance but GLOBAL recharge (set bonuses, luck of gambler pieces, hasten) make the power come back faster without lowering your proc chance. This is why you'll see some people going absolutely nuts stacking recharge bonuses. mechanically, it's very very useful) Now, I'm still a set-bonus field. When I slot lots of procs into a power, I hear voices of set bonuses that might have been cry out in terror, and suddenly silence. So I tend to limit myself to three or less proc-heavy powers per character. That may or may not be an issue for you. Depends what your other slotting goals are and what other powers you have. Holds in particular are excellent candidates for slotting because of the sheer number of options. However, on Holds, I do like to maintain at least a couple slots for acc/hold. Having procs do damage is nice, but I also rely on the Hold power to, well, HOLD the enemy. I'm quaint like that. Especailly on my controllers. But you can probably squeeze in 3-5 procs on a hold, depending on your tolerance / desire to maintain hold duration. Defense Debuffs that deal damage are another strong contender for proccing. PBAE melee powers also tend to have decent recharge times and good number of damage procs available. While levelling, I wouldn't try to build up more than 2 proc heavy workhorses at once. Slots are at a premium low level. Also, consider running Tactics, or using a Kismet +Acc. the more procs you use, the less slotted accuracy you probably have, and potentially fewer set bonuses for +acc to all powers. Having a five proc'd hold, or a six proc'd Infrigidate is great for damage..... but does nothing if you whiff because your accuracy sucks.

this should be optional. Opt-In or Opt-Out, I don't care which. But I suspect it would get old, fast. Especailly if it were to affect every piece of music for every outdoor section of every part of the game, too.

We clearly take very different approaches to the game and value different things. I honestly don't care if my AoE's hit 4 mobs or 16 mobs. I shoot at what's avaialble. It's not like it's going to genuinely matter to me if a mission takes 4 or 5 minutes to clear, or whether a TF takes 20 minutes or 45 minutes, at long as I was on a team where people were using their powers and enjoying themselves. I'm not going to say your way is wrong. But I am going to say some of your suggestions are probably best handled by who you choose to team with vs altering basic powers/effects that have been in the game since launch.

Depending on the power. Tornado benefits wonderfully from KB-to-KD, because mobs stay in the tornado longer and take damage longer. Gale can be situational. Making a squad of mobs flop down but not move, can be useful, but there's also times I prefer to ragdoll them some distance into a corner. Power Thrust or Force Bolt I would never want a KB-to-KD in, sending the enemy FAR is the point of the power, it's a "Get outta my FACE!" tool. Buckshot / M-30 grenade, I can definitely see KD being better, particullarly if you've already sprayed an Ignite patch.

Okay, I'll bite. What is even remotely bad about Ice slowing the movement speed of NPC's?

No, but I'll tell you. Slotting a Panacea proc in Health, and a Power Transfer proc in Stamina, goes a long, LONG way on a Super Reflexes character. Depending on the SR character's other powerset / epic power choices, you might be able to have four different IO's pulsing periodic heals, and of course a Prevenative Medicine absorb, too. It can make them quite resiliant against the occasional whammy that streakbreakers it's way through. For a Regen character, I'm pretty solidly in the camp that Recharge and Recharge Resistance are the two most important things you can slot for, with Resistance right on their heels for a photo-finish third place. My spines/regen STALKER sometimes feels more Brute-y in combat than than my energy/energy BRUTE! (Though to be fair, I've spent a lot more effort optimzing that stalker....)

I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of Movement Suppression. But I would very much want it removed for enemy NPC's as well, and I'd like to see enemy NPC's exploit it more. Sky Raiders. Goldbrickers, Longbow Eagles, etc. Let's see them do their damndest to maintain distance and blast away at melee from range, zipping away at max velocity as they exhilerate in no more movement suppression. Let's see some Council using strategy to spread out and focus fire while actively trying to avoid being clumped up!

If you want knockDOWN to cause smashing damage "as theme" you shoudl also strongly support actual KnockBACK which sends you flying, to cause *even more* smashing damage. unless of course, your motivation 100% begins and ends with your first reason:

Being creative and being terrible are not mutually exclusive. And sure, qualify of names is highly subjective. Some will like names I choose, others will shake there head and say "Whatever dude." And that fine with me. Far more important to me is not having "xHell Beastx" Or "SpineyFireGuy". But, just as I would shake my head at those, I'm sure someone else thinks they're great.

There are definitely some low hanging fruit names that get scoffed up. But it usually doesn't take *that* much effort / imagination to find an available name if you put a bit of a twist on it. I wanted a brute. Villain. To punch things. A lot. Goes on mayhem missions. generally cause havoc. Ooo, let's try Havoc for a name! Taken. Havok? Taken. Plus, X-Men. So I filled his backstory with lots of Cold War stereotypes, put hin in a tanktop with a Hammer-and-Sickle emblem, and thus was "Red Havok" born. I wanted a sonic character. Most things i tried related to speakers or decibles were either taken or just didn't do it for me. So I made his backstory that he was an opera singer, and named him "Phil Harmonic". I wanted an Electric Affinity character. looked up some general electrical terms. A number of things I wanted were taken. So i took a break, started up some dinner, plugged in my phone.... and inspiration it. While quite rare "Cable" can be a first name. And thus was born "Charge Cable". Backstory has his full name as Cable William Guy, and oh yea, he's heard allll the jokes about "Cable Guy" "Cable Bill", and he's kind of got a bad attitude about them. Quirks like that just flesh out a character and make them so much more fun to play.

Honestly, I don't think the idea that someone might have once thought Arachnos was the good guys can pass the laugh test. I do think it's very plausible to have people join not because they like Arachnos even one small bit, but were conscripted in a press gang. Or just a random citizen who was sick of being extorted / preyed upon in the rogue isles, and decided it's better to be the hammer than the nail. Either such one might jump ship at the first opportunity. Sent on a mission, and stowed away on a freighter to Paragon instead, never looking back.

well, one thing with epic archtypes, is "epic" doesn't just mean "powerful", like an epic-rated WoW drop or something. In this context "epic" archtype meant there is an entire plotline and story specific to the archtype. Or at least, that was how the oldschool live devs saw it. Strictly speaking, HC devs are under zero obligation to care about that. But if it did matter to them, they'd probably want to create mirror missions of same appromiate difficult and number for your redside kheldians, and for your blueside SoA. I do think it would add a lot more flavor to it than just "okay you can start cross faction now".... but it would mean quite a bit of writing.