MTeague

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.

[Doc Buzzsaw] "Oh, what has science wrought? I sought only to turn a man into a metal-encased juggernaut of destruction powered by the unknown properties of a mysterious living crystal. How could this have all gone wrong?" Never change, Doc. Never change.

Well.... i mean yea. But not everyone is going to jump into a story creation tool and produce a Ray Bradbury quality short story right off the bat. Writing a story and having every character in it behave in a logical way that makes sense for that character and carrying the reader / player to a final goal is a lot harder than it sounds. I'll give people props for trying. I'd like it if they cleaned things up with a grammar checker / proofread things three or five times before posting. But they're at least getting their feet wet making missions. A lot of people don't.

I have very few spandex/tights costumes on my characters because it wouldn't exactly stop bullets or swords. The Invul/SS wears spandex because he's supposed to be immune to bullets. and most everything else. the Spines/Regen tends to wear biker vests and chaos leather because he's redside. But there's a good deal of exposed skin because he's REGEN. He's the unkillable man. shoot him, stab him, burn him, he just heals and gets back up again. The Energy Aura character has a tank top and spandex pants along with tech looking gloves/boots/faceplace, because he's got Force Field Armor. The /SR has some spandex, because bullets were never gonna hit her anyway. Most other Natural / Mutant characters, I at least want something with the look of a flak jacket. The tech characters tend to have full suits of armor. (except for the ones that are just human looking cyborgs) The Magics have Magic Trinkets, so I can justify anything as keeping them alive vs incoming damage. But I tend to do more suit jackets or robes.

If I were looking to solo an Empathy Corruptor.... I'd take a REAL hard look at Empathy Mastermind first. Same buffs, same levels to get them at, and a squad of minions to do damage for you while you focus on supporting htem or overseeing the battlefield. and that way your "Ally Only" buffs are still of good use on your pets.

Another name hit me as I was making dinner, and I immiedatley dropped eveyrthing to make the character. Phil Harmonic

This. Give me a some kind of search box with "Excluding the words..." where i can enter "Farm" and shazam, suddenly I'll be able to quickly see only the content I care about.

I'm not sure "Redeemed" is really that good a word here. I don't enjoy farming. I don't farm. But i can't call farming a misuse of the AE system with a straight face. The NCSoft Devs gave the tools to the players, the results were entirely predictable. Some players will make missions with nothing but custom foes that they are perfectly tuned against, in the name of the Almighty Buck / Influence. Farmers are using AE in a way I don't choose to use it. But... it's not in a state that needs to be redeemed as such. I DO wish there was a nice way for me to browse the AE list of missions that do NOT include the word "Farm". There's options to search, but it's more "including" critiera than "excluding" criteria. I DO like the idea of some missions being vetted and added into the full game as non-AE content. Though to make people happy that might require ticking some checkbox that says "I approve any use of my mission as standard content" or something, when they submit it. Esp since may require some tweaks / adjustments to who the contact is, where the mission was located, etc. in order to have it really work in standard zones. But a farmer farming is just as valid as me soloing storylines, and just as valid as me joining a TF.

Kinetic Melee + Sonic Assault = Niel Peart Drum Solo on the targets forehead? Instant defeat.

Ooooo, what if the folks at Torchbearer servers name one of their shards Homecoming?

I get a fair amount of winter packs every month, but I admit, I keep all of the Winter-O's I get for myself, and distribute them to my alts. I do converter roulette on a regular basis and at any given moment one of my characters is selling 20-50 regular rare IO pieces. I sometimes post ATO's for sale. I never post Winter-O's for sale. If I don't have an alt who can use the Winter-O I get, I convert it until it's one of the sets my alts need.

The To-Hit Debuff (and the Repel) both extend a few feet beyond the visible swirl of Hurricane. I don't think very far, but if the Repel moves them, they've been debuffed. As far as Herding, it may depends how you prefer to channel them. Usually on my defender, if I'm soloing, I either do not herd, or I corner pull and use Freezing Rain as soon as they're clumped up. When I'm teamed, it's almost never my defender doing any pulls / herding. Either the team is steamrolling eveyrthing and there is no pulling, just killing, OR, there's a Tanker who rounds things up, and I just play goalie with Hurricane, using the repel to push things back into melee range. I find I'm more surgically able to reposition things with the Repel effect, but i admit, I have not yet played a FF Defender or a Kin who made heavy use of the PBAE Knockback aura. It's possible I just haven't practiced the technique you outline enough. (/em add alts to backlog...) I also Gale KB-To-KD to just drop an entire squad of foes on their butts all at once, to interfere with an Alpha strike, and of course for the lulz. Maybe not the most practical power selection, but it's fun. And I have bought people needed time with it.

For every spawned zombie killed by a Judgement, 3 more zombies burst from the ground to takes it's place, and they ALL immediately cast Vengeance on the fallen zombies. Oh, and they all do the Super-Stunner auto-hit end-drain res if killed. And they all cast Snow Storm to savage your movement speed and recharge. Is that sufficiently offensive? 🙂 (This is of course A JOKE. I served my time in Hell during World of Warcraft Progression Raiding..... just trying to think of similar uberpunishing "okay guys, that's a wipe, just die" mechanics)

This I agree with completely. I've been in love with Hurricane since the first time I ever used it in 2006 or so. Hurricane is a monstrously large To-Hit Debuff. If you savage your enemies to hit by 30%, that's like giving yourself (and everyone else on your team) 30% defense. It's not exactly the same thing, but it's pretty darn close. This I have to disagree with though. My Storm Defender is at his absolute safest when things are in melee range, under the effect of Hurricane, consistently missing him again, and again, and again. If they're hurled back by KB, they might stand up and shoot from a distance and once the debuff wears off, they'd be able to hit me. If they're never thrown back, the to-hit debuff is consistently applied. Yes, there's still a slight Repel effect, but it's not toooo strong and mobs seem plenty able to foolishly run right back into the to-hit debuff. I seem to have far less END issues on my storm def than most people are saying, but, he's a defender, not a controller, and he's not constantly spamming any kind of AE immob. Those tend to be expensive. All I've got for my stormie is Perf Shifter +Chance For End, Perf Shifter EndMod, and a Miracle in Health. He does have 3 different set bonuses for "-% to endurance cost for all powers", though.

If you do not have very high defense, you won't be able to use Aid Self / Aid Other when things are attacking you. EDIT: that said, I use it on my Claws/SR scrapper and it's nice. But that is a tricked out /SR build.

MurderOfCrows can work as a nice dark magic, but I would absolutely love more options too!

LOL, nice thank you sir. Now I need to make sure no one ever upvotes me again 🙂

unlucky misses can happen of course, but i hear you.

My Ninja/Cold is doing well at lvl 28. Admittedly, I'm not trying to +4/x8 anything yet, just +1x3. But hey, he's lvl 28. Lots of slotting left to go, lots of powers still to get. I did sugar daddy him with the Pet Aura IO's and ATO's. And I mailed him several procs to toss into Infrigidate (hits pretty darn well....) But between inherent defense, two +5% defense Pet Aura IO's, Cold Shields, Arctic Air, and Manuvers, they're at 35% or so defense, and I have a lot more slotting to do. It works for me. I also run Snow Storm a fair bit to a) cut down on incoming attacks over the course of a fight, and b) keep runners more under control. I also have Sorcery / Spirit Ward and Frostwork to help prop some pets up longer. Do some die? Sure. I've rarely had them all die, even soloing +1x3 in late 20's. I think it's plenty viable, and enjoyable. It is "Best" / "Most Effective" / META? probably not. But it's fun.

Although if they were added, many people would be very happy.