MTeague

Hit another one today, from Mr. G on redside: "Splice is technological mastermind and has the moral compass of a brick, just like a brick."

I'm not sure the planet can contain the amount of Rage that would be generated if Blizzard took down WoW for half a Saturday. Much less the "Screw that noise, I'm not working Saturday either...." angle.

Agreed completely. Before IO's existed, I only had ONE character with Hami-O's, and even he didnt' have many. Everything else was SO's on every character. So for the most part, I would drag up the handful of Hami-O's (if I had any) to the "don't kill me tray", and then let ALL my other SO's remain in the bottom bucket, where they would be automatically vendored, and then I'd just go visit Ghost Falcon and buy new SO's. With IO's, they don't vendor anyway, and if they did, it still wouldn't be anywhere near what the AH would pay for them for, and the hassle of losing any of them and replacing them is very real. So it's very careful management and triple checking that yes, I do have everything saved off into one of my trays.

@Gulbasaur I feel like there should be a "What the Cluck" power in the MM set. Maybe rename "Hurricane Cluck"?

Queen's "One Vision" all makes sense to me now! I had no idea Freddy Mercury was so foresighted.

My experiences are similar to@Six Six's. I sort of fell into "build resists now, defense later"... and looked at my slotting at lvl 47 and realized there isn't going to BE a "later". I've got Smashing/Lethal Resist at 59% with a few slots more to place. Fire Resist at 75% and so overcapped it's not funny. Due to respec and see about rebalancing this. Cold Resist at 37%, Energy/Neg Resists at 58%. Psi Resist at 26% and I'm looking at a respec to build more /Psi, I'd like to toss in 3 Impervium Armor uniques (already have full Aegis) to patch that hole. 2 for sure, but Ideally 3. Toxic is only 20% or so, but if I know I'm facing lots of Toxic I can just set Healing Flames to autocast and suddenly it's at 50%. Worth it for Hydra maps, or facing Toxic Taran's. Cauterizing Flames is extremely good maintenece heals, well worth six slotting. Healing Flames is a GIANT heal and comes back pretty fast. If you're also rockin' a Panacea proc and a Power Transfer proc, maybe an Entropic Chaos proc, and you tend to use Defensive Opportunity rather than Offensive? There's green numbers all around you all the time. Having Defenses of only 11-17%... and yes that is WITH both 3% uniques.... or so is a serious mindbleep. But it hasnt' been a problem. I don't even notice it when Council mobs swarm me with machine guns or chainguns and rip my defense to shreds. Eventually it dawned on me that what I have, isn't unlike a /Regen character who had stacked Resists instead of Defense. I have zero problem soloing +2x4 maps just diving straight into piles of mobs and melting them all down around me. I use Burn a lot, and Fireball is often cast at point blank range, and couple steps backpedal for Fire Breath, then tank out the rest. I use Cremate and Fire Cages from Fire Mastery. I almost never die. Now, true, I said +2x4, not +4x8, but I'm also not 50 or incarnated yet. It still means I'm swarmed by a ton of mobs when soloing and I just burn them down and press on. I never run out of End anymore, and honestly, I end most fights at full health and full end. My villain still FEELS like he's earned his stripes. Now. Are there specific mobs that give me a Bad Day? Oh yea. Some standard can-openers. Sappers: we do not like the Sappers, Sam I Am. Consume will let me replenish SOME, but I'm careful to identify the sappers BEFORE I dive into a pile of Malta, and they get Blazing Bolt as an opener for the Hold effect and Ragdoll. Then I murdalize them before they can stand back up. Carnies, Ring Mistresses. That Touch of Vitae is an evil horrible nasty wasty debuff. Tarantula Mistresses / Fortunada Mistresses, the Psi hurts us, nassssssty hobbits! First Ward / Awakened: They will beat me up and do unspeakable things to me and take my lunch money. They're even more Bursty Psi Damage than the Arachnos. Still. with a respec, if I can work in another 18% or so Psi Resist, those last two groups will be much less offensive. But I also don't really care about Devouring Earth with the +To-Hit generators. My defense wasnt' that good in the first place, and my resists are not impacted. I still burn them down out of habit, but mobs with high +to-hit aren't that big a deal, comparitively. Rularuu eyeballs are also not that big of a deal to him.

I would like to see Sonic Blast and/or Sonic Resonance have some OPTIONAL animation changes, borrowing from the Talons Of Vengeance / Sirens, where the animation and sound effect are more musical.

This. So much this. This is also why I completely disagree with "Force Fields are useless at endgame". No they are not. I'm quite sure the support crew with Force Fields, Cold Domination, and Empathy, and of course your VEATS, probably prevent cascade failure deaths on a regular basis, each night, every night, by paadding the defense of their team to the point where the baddies start needing an Improbability Drive to start cascade failure on characters who DON'T have /SR levels of Defense Debuff Resistance. People still may perceive them as useless because of the all-too-human tendancy to "Of course they didn't hit me! I'm just that awesome", instead of "Of course they didn't hit me! Props to my buffers!". But I am always glad to see any such defense contributing characters on a team.

My knees are no longer medically capable of doing a jig, I am sort of looking forward to levelling my Elec/Elec Dominator though. He's been on the backlog for awhile.

I'll say this much. When I'm writing a character bio? I'll use any words I want, and if those words supposedly mean somthing different in "in game lore"? Then in game lore can BITE me. CoH-Verse mirrored enough of our world that's it's entire plausible Requiem has both meanings, and people just distinguish which is meant by context clues. Can I prove that? No. Can you prove otherwise? No. And either way, I'd say as writer of a bio, my headcanon supersedes anything I damn well please it to supersede. How anyone else wants to react to it, is something I would view as their problem.

My default assumption is if someone takes the time and trouble to write up a decently long bio, they WANT people to read it. I doubt they'd mind in the slightest if you posted the character shot with them, but, I can also respect the "what if?" and leaving it off, just in case.

My Assault Rifle/Martial Kombat blaster is not a "Flash" style speedster conceptually. But she is a human-looking-cyborg that, for short bursts of time, can move faster most things can see. Experimentation / "Speed of Sound", I leave toggled on her always, in part so I have "Jaunt" on tap for a repositioning teleport in combat. Martial Combat / "Burst of Speed" as a Teleport Attack gives her the ability to unload on enemies a few times in rapid succession as if she'd moved too fast to follow. Between this and Jaunt she can pretty much be anywhere on the battlefield at will. Martial Combat / "Reaction Time" slows movement and attack speed of all nearby enemies, simulating her being THAT much faster than they. Martial Combat / "Ki Push", with it's slow-fade repel-hold on target gives her 4 seconds of free hits on target, again, as if she was attacking so fast she was attacking them while they were still flying back in the air from her punch. Experimentation / "Adrenal Boost", can be thought of as activating all her cybernetic resources and reactions to give her the 20+% defense, as well as increased Hit and Damage. Sure it's a 10 minute cooldown for 1 minute of power, but it's up a couple times on a map-clear, and if I add even one small "Luck" at the same time, it's SUPER high defenses for a blaster of her level. (still only mid-level) Ki Push / Storm Kick / Dragon Tail / Reaction Time can apply so much chained repel / knockdown / slow that even if Adrenal Booster is down / low on Lucks, she can often kill certain nasty bosses before they can even fire off a single attack on her. Though that is a bit of a gamble. Panacea / Power Transfer / Entropic Chaos procs mimic her cybernetic self-repairs and make her more quite a bit more durable than she'd otherwise be. She is however, still a glass cannon. Later, that may change, but at lvl 25, she just don't have the slotting yet to really stack good defenses / resists.

I dunno. I suppose we do need more incarnate content. There's big demand for it anyway. I just.... would like some story-arc love for non-incarnates too. Maybe even a couple zones were incarnate powers just flat out Do Not Function (achieved by forcibly exemplaring you to 44 if need be). I mean, okay. Yes. We have incarnate powers, there's not that much content to use them, and lots of people want some Bigger Better Faster challenges. I'd just also like some additional content that doesn't get into a competition with itself for "My Cthulhu is bigger than your Cthulhu!", and we don't necessarily have to face the next reality eating monstrosity all the time.

note that these will also show up for the zone even if you mission is complete, but not yet turned in. It doesn't check for "place you still have to go and beat up baddies". It checks only for "do you have a mission nominally in that zone?" Even if only remaining objective is "return to contact", you'll still get the marker in the zone where the door mission is. (not necessarily the zone where your contact is)

My god, it wants me to choose between Italian Sub and Monte Cristo. That's like.... choosing between Da Bears and Da Bulls.

I mean, it doesn't have to be a hockey puck... but if I'm tasting blood, it's not cooked nearly enough. In my book, burgers and steak should have a pink center, but not RED. Yes yes, I understand the "foodie" thing is to sear only the outside. And if they're going to pay for it, and if they're going to eat it, they have theirs that way. If I'm paying for it, and I'm eating it? Pink center but zero red.

I just treat everything like a Kill Most / Kill All 😉 I've never enjoyed or signed up for speed run extravaganzas though. Just not my cup of tea.

I'd like this extended far beyond just Spines/Quills to all sets where plausible. If I'm using Energy Melee and do a Bone Smasher, and Boxing or Crosspunch, let me keep the Energy Pom-Poms on. Or if I'm using Claws and CrossPunch, it would be nice to keep the Claws out. Or for Assault Rifle / Martial Assault, if I do a a few of the kicks, is it really necessary that I put the rifle away just to kick somebody in the head? Ki Push, I can kinda understand, you use your hands, both of them, for that. But Storm Kick? C'mon let me boot to the head while still holding the Rifle. I'm fine with it being a checkbox / option and/or a Tailor Customization option, whatever makes it easy enough to code. And if the devs want to start with JUST Quills as a Proof-of-Concept Babystep along the way, well... okay I get that too. I just wouldn't want them to lose track of eventually circling back to the rest, even if changes were released on a gradual incremental basis over many many patches.

To be fair, there will be a MANY such drive thrus with order boards in the surrounding suburbs. But not in the actual metropolis itself. Same with supermarkets, too.

Please please please make the contact look as close to Ed Wasser as possible.

Even just doing a recolor on the Darkness powers might give it a different feel. Make Darkest Night a splash of Bright Purple, Tar Patch something like Brilliant Red, Twilight Grasp bright Blue... it can go from feeling like "I've done Dark on five characters already" to something that feels different just because of the looks. Bonus points if you also have local chat for each power that uses Bob Ross paint colors. "Just a touch of the Titanium White... a little Alizarin Crimson.... some Phthalo Blue..."

Now I'm getting nostalgic for all those lvl 1 wood elf corpses splatted all around the ground around Kelethin back in EverQuest. Or the occaionsal low-level Erudite Shadowknight / Necromancer corpse who fell into the Hole.

My only quibble there is it's not a story tied to YOU. The Technology Origin arc will never be tied to MY BLASTER, Agent Bluejay. Will never account for anything I add to her backstory. Will never be tailored in any way to anything reflecting any personal nemesis of hers. It'll be common to ALL Technology-origin'd characters. So I really don't see it any more "tied to *you*" any more than Looking Through the Glass is tied to "you". Or any more than tip mission is. It's really not. At most it can give an impression of it. I'm in favor of "you can pick any one" similar to Patron arcs.

I love the graph showing which characters interact with which others in what way. 🙂 Also love the stumbling-into-crime on Ileana 🙂