MTeague

I'm torn. On one hand, truth of advertising, let people know what they're getting involved with up-front, etc. On the other hand, it's somewhat realistic to have the mission change out from under you in response to other events. Maybe you had no idea there would be hostages but once you got there, Okay, we gotta do something about them, get them out of danger, etc. On the other other hand, I sometimes sigh deeply when I'm in a goldside 1-20 mission spending time on the first couple spawns of enemies only to look up and, Oh, surprise, there's a mission timer, saying I need to find some computer and disable something in the next 2 minutes and 30 seconds or I'm going to be swarmed relentlessly. On the other other other hand, I actually do vastly prefer goldside content to most other game content... and yes, I've long since run out of hands.

I mean, I get what you're saying. I know a lot of people who could stand to toughen up and realize some things they get worked up over, are just not even remotely important. On the other hand.... I'm 51 now. The last time I was in an actual real life fight, I was probably... 11 or 12? I've done sparring in martial arts class. I've done the occasional bout vs another student the same way. But that's controlled, safe, you know who you're practicing against. They're friends or at worst fellow students/colleagues. You may get some adrenilin going from competitive spirit / pride. But it would not come even remotely close to an actual FOR REAL fight, where you don't know if the other guys is just looking to assert dominance or beat you down, or even kill you. Perhaps you're in the military and have seen combat duty? Perhaps you live in a much more rough-and-tumble area than I do, and ending up in an actual fistfight or worse is a fact of life for you. I don't know. But I don't think it's fair to expect most people to have sustained regular experience with real life fights.

You could be like 95% done with collecting a shivan. Get all the fragments, working your way through the turrets on a firebase, allllmost done and ganked dead, lose all progress and have to start over. I've never spent much time in Warburg, but I suspect something similar there where you allllllmost got the nuke and bam, dead. I think that's your realistic worst case here. Of the two times I died to PvP, one was in Bloody Bay as I started to collect meteor shards. (the other was Recluse's Victory) I left and came back at 3:00 am and got it done without interference.

I mean, I sort of get it. I was deathly allergic to all things PvP after some experience with Diablo 2 Hardcore back in the late 90's. In Diablo 2, a Hardcore character is a permadeath character. They die once, for any reason, including internet lag, pffft that's it, Dead is Dead, they stay dead. Also in Diablo 2, other players in the game could simply go hostile on you, for any reason, with very little warning. They had to be "in town" to do it, but they could have a town portal open, or catch you near a waypoint and be on you before you realized it. And then that lvl 67 paladin, who you'd been working very diligently on for most of year, was just ganked and dead, because random internet stranger wanted to get their jollies griefing you. And they'd typically dance about your corpse for a bit after, talking trash and mocking you. You learned very fast to password protect your games if you played permadeath characters, and only join games with trusted friends. And anytime anyone new was invited in you were extremely careful around them for a LONG time. This did not endear me to PvP, lets just say. I was basically allergic to it for well over a decade. But CoH PvP is pretty much as tame as it gets. You never die for real. You don't lose gold or loot. You don't lose XP. There's essentially zero consequences except a free teleport to the hospital. It's still frustrating to be pvp-targetted when you're not interested, of course. But well, it's happened to me a grand total of TWICE, ever, since June of 2019. And let's be fair, I knew I was going into a PvP zone. I was only interested in getting a Shivan, or some explore badges, but it's not like I wasn't warned or was unaware that I was willfully entering potentially hostile territory. I just don't see this as something that is such a common problem that code changes are warranted. I would bet the problem is over 98% fear of being ganked, vs actually BEING ganked.

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: