MTeague

I was able to solo that mission on my Inv/SS tank at lvl 32. (I think at +2x3?) It.... took a long time. And it' wasn't fun at the very end when I have four EB's on me at once. I had to do some serious hit-and-fade, but it worked. (the EB's do a charge up PBAE attack I had to keep dancing out of ) EDIT: a couple things to note: before Ward turns he has you break four tablets in the maze. if you just race to those tablets and break them, you'll have a lot of aggro'd mobs who will come back to you at the courtyard ON TOP OF the new ambushes. This can easily overwhelm you, and DID overwhelm my tank the first time I tried to solo it. But I'd realized what went wrong. the following attempt, when I was told to break the four tablets in the maze, I took my sweet time and FULL CLEARED the maze. Kill all'd the spawns in there, one group at a time before moving onto the next. the results was on breaking the fourth tablet, I had no leftover mobs from the maze still hounding me. This made it a lot more doable to go get Clarity, handle the Talons around him, lead him over to the pool, while handing the adds that Ward threw at me. It was still a lot of adds, I did still need to use inspirations. But it wasn't a giant flood of mobs. Now to be fair, I havne't tried this with more squishy classes. A Thugs/Sonic Mastermind... that would be rough because you really don't have anything to help heal your pets beyond team inspirations, and they're going to get worn down. You could try Tankerminding and staying in Follow Me / Defend Me, but .... thats' also tough because then you can't ALSO tell them to concentrate fire on certain high value targets that need to die first. I can't really offer any advice there. MM's may have the hardest time of it vs any other AT though.

No offense taken. It's a good read. I still think the way massed amounts of global recharge pairs with procs is too strong. I would have your NET recharge for a power (recharge for that power PLUS your global recharge) factored into the PPM calculation. Because right now, some things are procing WAY MORE OFTEN than their PPM. I recognize this opinion is a minority view. I recognize this may never change, given how many people it would upset. But when an IO that's says right on the label it should proc 3 times per minute ends up procs in excess of 15 times per minute, I can't bring myself to see that as "good design".

the ones that I cringe over are for spending X much influence at the Tailors. Can't I just drop one HELL of tip and get the badges now? I have all the looks I want! I don't want to have to screw with costumes back and forth and back again until I've finally spent enough!

But I wanted a Powerpoint presentation. /pout

Whether I used it or not would probably vary by character... for my Stalkers, I want to SEE the moment that Hide kicks in, either from ATO proc or by having not been hit for long enough. But I hate looking cloaked on my EM/EA Brute. Seriously considering spec'ing out of Energy Cloak, despite it's Defense bonus, just because of the look. Most of my characters fall into the "rather not look stealthed" bucket, but probably a few others I need to *KNOW* at glance, without flicking my eyes up to a status indicator. Still. As proposed? Character-by-Character YN option? I'm seeing all upside, no downside. Make It So!

Your parents just aren't cool when you're 12 years old. It'll pass.

Empathy is a set with good heals, but I would NEVER look at Empathy as "healer set" The Buffs Empathy brings to the table are *very* nice. Corr or Def, you won't go wrong. They will a % stronger on the Defender though, so if you want to play the set for sake of the team buffs, I'd go with Defender.

I just dock my phone next to my computer.

I perhaps should use Damage Proc's more than I do. But I generally don't. a) I am a Set-Bonus-Chasing FIEND, and plopping in 3-4 proc's means giving up the good set bonuses. b) I keep expecting Damage Proc's to be seriously nerfed at some point. If I don't load up on them now, I won't be disappointed when/if that day comes. I have nothing more than a hunch on b), and it's possible I'm flat wrong and the devs are happy with how it works now. But it just feels to me like that cant' be what was intended.

I'll see what I can do lol. It may take a bit of time to assemble it. It'll give me a project for this week, though 🙂

This. If by "Endgame" you mean "Raiding Content", then you've got Hamidon, all Incarnate Trials, and.... that may be about it for things you need multiple groups to do. If by "Endgame" you mean "Content Intended for Max Level", then you also have all lvl 46-50 story arcs, including new Dark Astoria, Tip Missions, Dilemma Diabolique, etc. But there's a CRAP TON of content peppered throughout the game at a wide variety of level ranges. And the Ouroborous / Flashback system makes that a very viable and enjoyable thing for many of us do focus on for our 50's, evne if we exemplar down to lower levels to do it. And of course, there's Architect Entertainment. Every player can create their own story arcs for any levell and share them wtih the entire player base. But this is not WoW. Don't expect an endless treadmill of new content that's ONLY focused on Progression Raiding and meant to let you focus just on your "Main".

THIS. So much this. It's part of why I do not leave the tutorial on any character without a 1000 character backstory. It really helps me flesh out how that character thinks about things, what that characters goals are, what alliances / lines they might cross, and which ones they NEVER would. Which powers I take is governed entirely by what makes sense for them, not by what is meta-game-useful. Many will never take Hasten. Many will never take Tough or Weave. It's the character's journey that *really* matters to me, not which IO's they have (though I do trick them out well), not whether I play them once a week or five times a week. And it means that playing three different Psychic characters can feel completely different... one is the ancient mage who's lived among mankind from before recorded history, carefully guiding humanity along from behind the scenes one is a psychic vampire that drains the minds of others to feed herself and grow stronger. one is a completely amoral empath. No matter how nice he may seem to a casual observer, he manipulates others, put them into situations where they will be hurt without them even realizing that it was he who pushed them to it. Then heals them to make them feel even more indebted to him. Ultimately all other people are just tools to be used to him. None of them really matter to him. He's just telempathically aware enough to give the illusion of it.

My Mind/Kin uses Boxing + Crosspunch as staples in his attack chain on his 2nd build. (He also has selected Kick, but allocated no slots to it and never activates it). It's... quite nice. Esp with many stacks of Fulcrum Shift and Containment. I haven't used Brawl with it, but it does make for a very solo-friendly build.

I admit, I just don't take SS on defense base sets. Not exactly a "solution", more of a workaround. But if my Invulnerable tank is still 90% S/L resists and above 70% to most others, I don't feel the crash that hard. Also, I rarely solo on said tank. So I have backup in the form of Def/Corr/Controllers/MM's, anyway. If i've got bubbles or a Fortitude or an Ice Shield, I don't really notice the crash anyway.

Origin is extremely easy to rationalize for darn near anything you want it to be. My Claws/SR scrapper I have as Natural, even though conceptually she's been observered in super slow mo to begin dodging bullets even before they were fired when she should not have known the sniper was lining up, so there's a bit of psi in there, and some people would say that should be Mutant. I also have a Birdman Energy/Thermal corruptor who is not human / space traveller, but his powers are basically inherent to his species.

Amen. I mean, I get that you can't have Mender Silos tall spikey hair AND wear a baseball cap, .... and the large exposed brain "hair" wouldn't make any sense either... but SOME vetting woudl be nice. there are several hairstyles that would be entirely plausible with hats. And would very much like to have both colors to control the hair beneath the hat.

Totally should have "Big Money" from Rush as your soundtrack. Big Money goes around the world Big Money underground Big Money got a mighty voice Big Money make no sound Big Money pull a million strings Big Money hold the prize Big Money weave a mighty web Big Money draw the flies

QFT, though honestly I'm not sure how best to resolve this.

Ignite definiltey works best paired with an Immob, or some Knockback/Repel to shove things into a corner and light the corner on fire. For my AR/MC, I just rely on Kicks, Ki Push, and Reaction Time to trap bosses in the burning corner. Reaction Time doesn't really trap them but it takes them a LOT longer to leave the burning patch. Minions are less of an issue, the're just gonna die anyway.

But which sky? Atlas Park sky? Shadow Shard Sky? Zombie Apocolypse Sky? 🙂

I'm immediately leery of anything that might encourage people to only want to take an "optimal" config into a TF, or which might cause people to gripe about other people's power selections ("I want more merits, so YOU should have taken Tactics, so we could all stack good to-hit while not having any enhancements in effect!", etc) And I would flat oppose "No Travel Powers" providing any kind of merit bonus unless it also DISABLED your ability to use "enterbasefrompasscode" for the duration of the TF.

AT = "B*tch, I'm A Dev, I Do What I Want"

I've never done a single DFB. Ever. On either side. It just seems to "this is the royal road to powerlevelling" to me, and I WANT my characters to level slowly. My characters all tend to be normal human height (5'8 to 6'2 for the males, slightly shorter for females). This makes my characters relatively short in City of Giants. One exception who's super short, but his name is "Meddling Kid"... he's supposed to be a child, so he's at 4' or so. I always do the tutorial. I never leave the tutorial without a 1000+ character backstory. Character Concept is KING. I don't have to have perfectly paired set.... I have a Plant/Psi I have a Storm/Sonic, etc.... but I have to make those sets make sense and square with their origin / backstory. My characters are bracketed into "Dedicated Hero" / "Dedicated Villain" or "Rogue and Vig Combos" Even on the characters who can become Rogue / Vig, I never use a Patron Pool unless the character will STAY redside. Even on characters who STAY redside, I do not use a Patron Pool if there's a more fitting Epic Pool. (ex: Redside Sentinel is Fire/Fire/Fire), Redside Dominator is Plant/Psi/Psi, etc) I never use "enterbasefrompasscode" I never use P2W purchases for status protection.

You're not wrong at all. It just means you have to set these milestones for yourself as 'personal' unlocks as opposed to game-driven unlocks. I personally disable XP every 5 levels.... at 9, at 14, at 19, at 24, at 29, etc.... until I've done enough story arcs at that stage that I'm happy, AND done enough radio/paper missions for the Safeguard/Mayhem mission (and the Explore badge in each one). I also do not use the "enterbasefrompasscode" command and prefer to manually travel around the city, sometimes by rail, sometimes by street zone connections, sometimes by Pocket D, sometimes by Midnighter Club, etc. You just have to decide what kind of things you want to "gate" for yourself.

In the early issues, it was as you remember it. XP was much slower. It was not unheard of to run out of missions. XP debt could also pile up quite high, slowing your levelling even more, as people got used to the game. People died more. There was no Inherent Fitness. There were zero freebie extra attacks like Sands or Mu or Blackwand, etc. There were no IO bonuses. A lot of quality of life changes hadn't happened yet. What you have now is... remember that City of Heroes ran for about eight years... 2004 to 2012. So you have eight years of MMO expansions.... with all the extra content that brings.... but *very* few new zones got added. There are new tutorials, like the Twinshot story arcs. There are events literally DESIGNED to encourage extremely rapid levelling, like DFB. The Positron TF is no longer the heartbraeking nightmare it used to be, and debt barely registers anymore until midgame. And of course all the "Veteran Rewards" powers that used to be only avialable to people who'd played the game for years, are now available to any and all for a pittance of in-game currency at the P2W vendor, many of them outright free. On top of all that, XP gain is boosted. The result is quite a bit of power creep. I know you said Ouro and flashbacks don't really appeal to you from a character development point of view. But... really... I encourage you to find someway to work with it. You will either have to shut down XP very often.... or flashback a fair amount.... or take pains to create a LARGE number of alts and carefully navigate which alts do which missions.... or miss quite a bit of content. Because tehre is an ASTOUNDING amount of content, and not just at endgame. Every level range has a huge number of contacts and story arcs you can do. And then you have the Radio/Newspaper missions and the associated Bank missions. AND the tip missions and the alignment system. Without Ouroborus, I can't imagine anyway to avoid feeling like I'd missed out on a lot.