MTeague

I do not object to the suggestion "get rid of these caves" being made at all. People should be allowed to express displeasure with what they don't like. And just having the discussion can open up alternate means of resolving the issue. If the real issue is "I can't find the darn mobs", maybe there's other ways to address THAT, without ripping out the maps. I do enjoy the caves, and I do want to keep them, and I think the game would be diminished if they were removed. If there were no good ways to make locating the mobs easier for those who feel frustrated by it, I will say I have no strong preference if the caves were taken out of the rotation for radio or newspaper missions. I'd miss them some, but as long as the caves were kept in place for story arcs and task forces, and tip missions, then I will continue to see them plenty often enough, and it would mean existing arcs / stories keep their "feel". I think that's much less of an issue for the radio missions where I'm rescuing Joey Jones from the Circle of Thorns because of whatever 2-line intro the radio mission has. EDIT: example alternate fix: Maybe the Map should always show red arrows for mobs that are within X distance of you even if there's still 100 mobs left on the map, but continue to only show you red arrows for EVERYTHING when the count is below a certain number. Then you could still zip around the map, and you'd have a "radar" of sorts to find stragglers you missed far faster because of the "always on if within X distance" arrows.

Also clicky mez protection is superior because you can often have 2 or even THREE stacks of it running at once. That really spikes the magnitude of mez protection you have. A toggle would only ever have just the base values, meaning it would take far less Hold's or Knockbacks to affect my character.

QFT. This is exactly what I do on my Plant/Psi dom. Domination is auto'd. Hasten, I have to manually click. It's not that bad. now, of course, my Dominator is a Committed Villain, and has the Villain Alignment power (Frenzy), so I do have a "Fill my bar on demand, now-dammit-now" backup if I accidentally lose Domination. I tend to go 8 missions in a row with zero problems before that happens though. It's really not that hard to manually manage it once you get used to it.

I can sort of understand that, but do you find yourself hamstrung on that character if you flashback to a low level mission? (e.g. long pauses or holes in attack chain because you don't have enough lower level attacks?)

I've never had *quite* that happen, but I have had chefs come out and check with me when I want certain cuts of meat cooked more thoroughly than is considered "trendy". They never said "No, I will not do that, you are a horrible diner, get out!" But they did want to double check and said "Most people really don't like it that well done, and I can't uncook it, so... you're sure?"

If there's no Argo cap, then holes in the space time continuum mean you get liked 500 different copies of the Argo from Star Blazers showing up at once. The universe can't handle that many Wave Motion Guns.

While this IS true.... I do want to say, I have a Fire/Fire/Fire Sentinel that's an absolute joy to play. Fiery Aura, at least for Sentinels, can become quite respectable if you slot your character well. It may not be the best min/max choice, but he's plenty durable, without Tough, without Weave, and still a few levels short of having any Incarnates.

And noooooobody says no to Gamera. On the cave maps, honestly I don't mind them in the slightest. And I don't think heroes should expect that villains would organize their cave layouts and lairs specfically to make it easier for the heroes to find all of them. You learn the maps easy enough if you play them. Not once have I been unable to find where the last few mobs live. Though there were a small handful of times I spent 8 minutes looking for them. I feel what's far MORE deserving of attention is 4 and 5 story buildings with NO exterior windows, NO stairwells, and one-story elevators only in different corners of the building, NO fire escapes, NO fire extinguishers, NO kitchenettes, and NO bathrooms(!) Honestly EVERY office building and laboratory I've ever been to in Paragon City should be condemned.

I use Knockback in what I believe to be an intelligent and responsible manner. Will all players agree with me? No. Do I care? No, not really. If a team is uptight enough to kick me for it, I probably wasn't enjoying their company anyway. I do not enjoy teams that OBSESS over clearing missions in the absolute minimum possible time. Really, it's no great sin if we kill a mob in 8 seconds instead of 5. Life, will go on.

While Time may be infinite, Gaming Time, can be crushingly finite....

That's a fair answer. I admit, I'm seriously considering a possible respec on my Inv/SS tank, but a) also stuck at work, and b) mentally juggling the tanker ATO's and still needing X many qualifying powers to slot them into. And my tank is only lvl 33, so no footstomp or epic powers for me yet. Ah well. Not like I really need to decide in a rush.

Interesting. Would Boxing/Kick/Crosspunch get the Punch-Voke/Poke-Voke effect when used by a Tanker/Brute? Or would the extra AE / stronger punches come at some expense of aggro management? Or do you toss in the occasional Jab to get in misc taunting punches?

I read that more like... they'd have he possibilty to make Gale a Targetted Knock..... so you activate the power, you choose a location. If you click a point to the RIGHT of the mob, then gale would blow from that point towards the mob, sending them off to the LEFT. If you click behind the mob, gale would blow from that point toward them, shoving them directly at you. If you clicked BELOW the mob, Gale would be an updraft flinging them up into the air. But I don't see them saying you can pick a point and mobs will be pushed from all directions to this center point. I've love it if we can do that. But I wouldn't expect that on first pass. Because as I'm reading this, to get that to to work, they'd need to identify every affected mob, then calculate a vector from the affected mob to the selected location, then apply a vectored knock to that point. And also, no guarantee they wouldn't be pushed BEYOND your selected location. Maybe the mob 4 feet to the right of yoru selected location ends up 15 feet to the left of your selected location, because the knock threw him 15 feet in that direction... not stopping at any kind of invisible barrier at the "center point". Can they get there? Yes, I think eventually. But first pass, I think you're more likely to see knockbacks where a direciton is applied a thte mob sails however far in that direction, whether or not it goes further than you might want them to.

So, "War Mace" needs a skin that looks like a Brickphone?

Speed of Sound does in fact have the exact same Run Speed boost as Super Speed. Speed of Sound comes with exactly ZERO stealth out-of-the-box (although you can still slot Celerity into it) However, Speed of Sound does come with Jaunt, which is a super fast activating fast animating teleport with a moderate range. I believe it can be used up to 3 times in RAPID fire and hten you have ot wait for those "charges" to come back. Jaunt also has no "hover" affect. Jaunt makes Speed of Sound much more friendly in terms of vertical repositioning. It won't handle everything. You're not going to climb a massive sheer rock face with it, you're not going to cross the Shadow Shard with it. But if you zip across the zone and need to bamph up to a higher level of road, it'll do the job. Jaunt is also WONDERFUL as a "Combat Teleport" to reposition yourself in a batlefield. There's a definite tradeoff with the lack of Stealth, and with it being a different pool from Hasten. But I have 5 characters with Speed of Sound already. I really like it.

Well, the most classic teleporting hero I can think of, is Nightcrawler. I admit, I haven't read the comics NEARLY as thoroughly as some have. But I don't think he typically teleports parts of his enemies away. He more does the BAMPH to get behind you, strike, and BAMPH away. So I'm more in favor of [Burst of Speed] type mechanics (from Blaster / Martial Combat)

Some nice temp powers too. Croatoa gets the Iron Blade and the Rune-Blast power whose name escapes me. Both are particularly nice against Red Caps, and you will be dealing with quite a few red caps in the last arc.

Aid Self can work just fine on characters who have VERY high defense. (Super Reflexes, Ninjistu, Energy Aura, Ice Armor, etc). Admittedly, you may still have serious issues on a blaster or defender, because of Defense Debuffs/lack of Defense Debuff Resistance, whereas on /SR, you're much more likely to retain the ability to use the heal in combat becuse most thigns are still missing you, even if you have 10 council gunners shooting you. Invisibility, I do not use. I am a Map-Clearing-Fool. I have no interest is stealthing past entire sections of mobs. I'm a "Kill Most"-er. Stealth, I very much like, for the reasons @Heracleaitemized. My squishies with no status protection need to be able to choose when to engage, and be able to peek around a corner without combat immediately happening. The only 30+ squishes I have without Stealth, are generally something like Storm or Dark Miasma or Cold Domination, where I have Steamy Mist, or a similar PBAE stealth power in the that support tree. Kick/Boxing/Crosspunch ARE amazing, if you take all three. But that's a biiiig power selection investment. I do not like the idea of making Tough or Weave inherent. I may be in the minority here and the devs will do what the devs will do, but I feel there is MORE than enough power creep already.

I hear that. I do not like enterbasefrompasscode. but it's existed for most of a year, and I've basically ignored it. I've become very selective with teaming. I prefer to travel, oldschool, from mission to mission, across city maps. Once in awhile I'll use Ouro. Usually I don't unless i am specfically doing flashbacks. I never join ANYTHING that's a "speed run". "Kill Most" is my preferred mode, and if I can get it, "Kill Most" at +2 or +3. I will not join a lvl 45+ team with strangers until my characters are T4 incarnates. I will team 45+ content if I KNOW the people I'm teaming with are not yet incarnates. Otherwise, I will do Task Forces or exemplar to lower level mission groups, or just solo, to advance my characters from 45-50 and to get them their incarnates. Even when I am a T4 incarnate I'm still fairlly selective what teams I join. I don't really enjoy blaster heavy teams facerolling Council or Crey or CoT where every spawn is nuked or judged. I prefer teams where control and support matter. Exemplaring allows me to ensure that it does. It does feel sometimes that CoH is gradually becoming more of a single-player or limited Co-Op game for me than an MMO, because of how restrictive I am on what teams I join. I don't really have a good answer to that yet. I'm still working through that.

Teleportation change activation time of "Teleport" to match that of Jaunt. some means to break or suppress the "hover" effect after teleporting if I do not want it. I do not care if this is handled as a Stance, or via Null The Gull, or by selecting "Teleport" as a power choice giving me access to TWO teleport powers.... one with the hover, and one without. Take a good hard look at "Long Range Teleport". If, as I suspect, it is taken EVEN LESS OFTEN than "Confront", seriously consider removing it from the game. I cannot imagine anyone is seriously going to spend THREE power choices to take this when Base Portals, Ouro Portals, Aucton House Portals and the like are available without making a power selection AT ALL. Give Teleport an "Attack" power. I love the Bamph-Attack of [Burst of Speed] and think it's a great fit for the Teleportation pool. Fighting Kick: no functional changes to the power. Add Thunder Kick animation as a optional alternate animation. Boxing: no functional changes to the power. Add some kind of punch animation where your arm actually extends toward the target as an alternate animation. the "gut punch" default animation of boxing really doesn't do it for me, and looks like you'd have to be physically on top of the mob for it to have a chance to connect wtih them. Presence: needs some love. Functionally, the Fears and Placates have such a short duration compared to their recharge that it doesn't feel that the set deserves it's writeup description. "You have an impressive presence that manifests in a variety of ways. Whether through charm, persuasion or outright intimidation, you can manipulate your foes' desire to fight you. Though this is a challenging set to master, and can get you into trouble if used injudiciously, the potential benefits are great." I feel that that part is, frankly, false advertising for everything but Unrelenting.

I would support the concept of NEW archtypes that are Support/Control or that are Assault/Control. I would NOT support changing the EXISTING archtypes and flipping their primary/secondary trees. flipping the existing AT's is a hard no from me.

I do like the "Charge" mechanic like Burst of Speed. I'm not a fan of the "Buff given on DISABLING power" of Reaction Time. I'd prefer they got rid of that "on-disable" entirely, and had Reaction Time give you two mutually exclusive "Stance" toggles. One that gives the PBAE Slow and foe -Recharge and +Recovery, and +Absorb, and another that gives the +Movement and +Recharge. But I understand they didn't want to give so large a boost to personal recharge as a permanent power, and they'd likely nerf the amount of recharge given as a price of making it a "stance". I like the Blaster damage boost on using your powers, to make your next powers hit harder. I'd like to see an echo of that given to Corruptors, to boost Scourge on successive attacks. Maybe let each attack they perform allow them to Scourge at a higher health threshhold (so a mob could qualify for course at say 75% if you have several stacks), OR, if they decide that's too strong, then at least increase the chance of scourge happening on a target that's at 50% or below? I love being given a CHOICE for how certain missions proceed. Whether it's the In-Your-Face Praetorian MORAL CHOICE dialogue box, or something more subtle like choosing to help or betray the Midnighters in the Night Ward. I'd like to see conditional objectives and multiple alternate endings being possible in AE missions. I like fighting mobs who have some "Can Opener" abilities that I need to take seriously. No, I'm not asking for the equivalent of Mythic Progression Raiding in WoW. But I find I vastly prefer missions with First Ward / Night Ward / Rularuu / Carnies / Malta over missions with Council, Crey, or Circle of Thorns. So I'd like "Classic" mobs to have access to more powers in the sets that they draw from.

I do have a Staff / Willpower scrapper that I'm very happy with. But no small part of that, is the animations just work for me, and the "combos" are powers that I was going to use ANYWAY. I would be singing a very very different tune if I strongly disliked some of the animations. And that's really the main problem with a combo system. It doesn't *quite* actually REQUIRE you to take certain powers.... you *could* still skip some, even if that meant certain combos could never be performed.... but it really tries to lead you down a certain path like that. Compare and contrast to Claws, or Electric Blast, or Battle Axe where there are basically no performance repercussions on the powers you DO take, when you choose to skip other powers in the same pool.

honestly, if they're going to take away the slash command but put some other kind of "Anyone can do this" zone teleport in it's place.... that doesn't cost a power choice..... then from my point of view they might as well leave the slash command in place. But that's me.

I would be plenty happy with that. My Ninja MM would immediately switch to Knives of Artemis Ninjas.