MTeague

Conceptually interesting. I like that it has no pet (though others may despair at that). it may be a bit limited with darn near everything being melee range. Somethign would be needed to make up for that hassle. On the other hand, you have almost every power as a damaging power, which is quite unusual for a controller. So maybe that's what makes up for it. I'd certainly want to pick up fly or super jump pretty early to handle things that stay airborn.

Epic Pools are a wierd mixed bag on Sentinels. So far I very much like them. But they have a different assortment of options than most other epic pools. I am a slave to character concept, so for my Fire/Fire sentinel, I could only take Fire epic pool. But it fits him. I'd really WANTED a sentinel on live but they didnt' exist. So on live, he was a corruptor. Using the Fire epic pool gives him a decent melee attack, and Fire Cages and Warmth, which he'd had in his prior incaration as a corruptor. (pretty sure on the cages anyway....) Psi epic for Sentinels: Mass Hyp is situational; better for soloing / bypassing trash than for groups. Mind Probe is a solid strong melee attack. Dominate is an excellent hold, and Quite popular for Proc-Slotting. Psychic Shock Waive, I'm guessing is probably a weaker version of the Psi Assault T9 power, but it's very nice. Fast recharging, Fast animating, very strong -Recharge, decent Stun effect. Link Minds is not quite the Fortunata Mind Link, but, it's STILL a very nice gift of +Defense to yourself and to your entire team.

This is good advice regardless of AT or powerset. You will burn more endurance attacking many times during a fight than will EVER be consumed by your toggles over the duration of that fight. My rule of thumb is: Get your bread-and-butter powers up to (around) 4 slots each. Depending on AT that might be only 3 powers, or that might be 5 powers. Really depends what is your bread-and-butter. For my Fire/Fire/Fire sentinel, it was Flares (Which I later respec'd out of, Fire Blast, Fire Ball, and Blaze) For my MM's it's the Pet Powers, and a FEW supporting powers in secondary For my Mind Controller, it's Mezmerize, Dominate, Confuse, Levitate. etc Once the bread-and-butters are decently slotted, then start alternating 1 slot to a secondary, and 1 slot to a primary, OR, 1 slot to a pool power, and 1 slot to a primary, to gradually build up a little bit of depth. When you hit the 30's and start getting 3 slots per level, and more levels that are slots vs powers, that's when you really start to backfill.

Now, I do think Teleport pool is overdue for a rework. Unless they plan to totally remove the Base Teleporter slash command / macro, and NOT put anything in it's place, then Long Range Teleport is entirely obsolete. No one is going to spend THREE power choices to get what a macro can do for free. Teleport, I have no issue with the End cost. My controller can zip north/south across Independance Port without running out of end (although, admittedly, it's pretty close). But I do have an issue with the animation time, and the enforced hover effect. I think that's a holdover from the days of Dial-Up Internet and really bad connection speeds. I'd love to see regular teleport just BAMPH you more along the lines of Jaunt from the Experimentation pool. (only, able to just keep casting no cooldown) Teleport Other is very niche. Can be useful when soloing to thin minions away from a boss before aggroing the boss. But no team will ever wait for this. Recall friend is similarly niche. It would become more useful if the Base Teleport macro were removed, but I have given up hope that that will ever happen. Still useful to yoink people across the Shadow Shard, or to grab the team leader if he was busy recruiting other people while the rest of the team moved to the next mission door, etc. I would like to see a "Teleport Attack" power, similar to "Burst of Speed" from Martial Combat, added to the set. Long Range Teleport seems a prime candidate to sacrifice for this, given its redundancy to the teleport macro.

I think you mean "I've made choices to mule LotG 5/5 and I've made choices to add hasten and weave and I can't even concieve of my character relying on team buffs for recharge and defense, so I only ever pick these choices". Only 40% of my characters take Hasten. No more than half of my characters touch the Fighting pool at all. Not all of my characters take Combat Jumping. Really there is quite a bit more choice involved than you seem to think there is. It's easy to work in Medicine for /SR. I have a Dark/Dark corruptor with the PRESCENCE pool for the self-rez option. I have a Mind/Kin with the Concealment pool. My Plant / Psi dominator does not use the Fighitng Pool at all. My Fire/Fire/Fire sentinel does not use Leaping OR Speed pools My Invuln/SS tanker so far has only Leadership from your list... No Speed, No Leaping, No Fighting. He has Leadership and Experimentation.

I... do not see it blink. I just see the word "Email" in red. Honestly, that kind of irks me because the word is ALWAYS red, even there's no new character items, just the same ones from last week that I have not yet claimed. The indicator should really mean "something is new to you", not "the list isn't empty". But I would not put this anywhere near the top 1,000 list of things to change. I would put it on that list if it were a blinking indicator, though. I do not like blinkies or screen flashes of any kind.

Plus if these were sonic bubbles, thats +Resistance, and more resistance to layer on top of defense is always a good thing.

I would find this puzzling. I mean, I'd be disappointed, but I could kinda understand it, if they just didn't take the "ally only" buffs. But if you actually TAKE the buffs, I'd be surprised if they didn't use them. Maybe they only took them as IO mules? Or maybe they've read 835 threads about how everyone is softcapped (fallacy) and how bubbles are useless (fallacy), believed them, and therefore gave up?

Also, unless you're a die-hard soloist (And there are some....), it's really not that big a deal if your character only has 30% defense. You'll almost certainly get the remaining amount from misc team buffs, or if you don't, it's quite likely your team will include a tank, or a few controllers/doms, who will do lockdown and set the table for you.

This much I can understand. None of my current heroes use Patron powers at all. I have a few lower level characters who conceptually are much more in the gray area between hero and villain and it's *possible* that some of them might use patron powers.... maybe. If there isn't a better-fit ancillary pool that speaks more to that character concept. Even my villains, only 40% of them take a Patron Pool. Most, I'm still happier in terms of character concept with an Ancillary pool. That said. These are choices I make. Those choices have consequences. I means some of my characters have a much harder time pinging a softcap for defense. I can still build up quite a bit from set bonuses, but some of my characters may end iwth only 30% range defense, not 45%. I'm okay with that. And I don't see a need for Afterburner to be changed to accomodate my choices. Heck, if it were up to me, as long as Afterburner was on you would be FORCED into forward motion at top speed. The ONLY way you could stop would be fly into a wall or toggle it off.

Scrappers can semi tank for small teams, but it's generally not by means of a Taunt power. I will accept, in principle, that somewhere, some Scrapper, has actually taken Confront. I've NEVER seen it, but I'll accept that it's possible. Scrappers don't really...."tank"... in the traditional sense. They dive first into the pile and soak an alpha, and they carve things up. But they're not controlling aggro, they're just presenting themselves as first available target for mobs to shoot at, and then it's a complete free-for-all. Alpha goes to the scrapper, but Beta Strike and Gamma Strike? Round and round she goes, where it stops, nobody knows! Anything not aggro'd more by someone else still attack you, but it's unrealistic to expect to hold ALL the aggro. My Spines/Regen Stalker does this all the time when he teams. You can do exactly that with a Sentinel, as is. Shields up. Do not hang back. Hop directly into melee ahead of the rest of your team. Unleash your attacks as fast as you can. You'll soak the alpha. Probably a few will die before Beta and Gamma strikes so there will be less firepower to go around. But those strikes will be mixed. Some to you, some to the blaster, some to a debuffer, etc. That's already enough for a Sentinel, "tanking", I think. I did exactly that last night in a lowbie Praetoria group (Imperial City 14-16 range).

Stooges Mastermind?

Traps and Trick Arrow are *wonderful* sets, don't get me wrong. But I'm not sure they really evoke a mythological trickster deity. I definitely like Mind Control for this (I am seriously biased in favor of Mind out of the gate though.... so.... grains of salt) Illusion control conceptually is GREAT, but as implemented, I've never liked it. Sure it's effective, but should be much more about Deception, and less emphasis on Phantasm Pets, at least, if I were going to design a set by that name. Time as a warping / altering / yank your reality out from under you is good, workable there. MOST importantly, you should have a wide variety of costumes with different heights, some male, some female, some huge, all with good costume change emotes 🙂

The downside of a front-loaded burn is if you pop it too early, you lose a big chunk of damage on any late arrivals that miss that first big tick. And yet they're standing the same fire, for almost as long. So I would not be against it returning to a simple HIGH ticking DoT. But I have pretty fully adapted to it's current iteration on my Fire/Fire/Fire Sent, and I do get quite a bit of Oomph from it. And it's certainly easier to pair up with an Aim/Gaussian's Proc to make sure that first hard tick gets extra use when I hop into a crowd and pop Burn. So I'm fine with it staying as-is, too.

For what I would do for Sents.... I'd like to see the activation of Defensive / Offensive Opportuntiy divorced from your T1-T2 blasts. Give them two click powers instead, not unlike how a Dominator triggers Domination. Your opportunity bar still fills same as it does now, and when full you can click EITHER Defensive Opportunity OR Offensive Opportunity. But it doesnt' matter which power you used to trigger it. Yes, it would make it an extra mouse click, but it would also allow some alternate power selection choices along the way. I'd like to see a mild increase to Sentinel damage. They should still hurt things less than a Blaster (because Sents have personal armor and status protection), and less than a Scrapper (because Sents have Range). But maybe look at the current gap, and try to bump it half that distance. That's really about it. I'm not sure they need any more.

Would you give this same Taunting slotting option / taunting power to a Scrapper? If not, why give it to a Sentinel? In many many ways, a Sentinel is a Scrapper with lower damage on each strike, but better range, and typically more AE attacks.

As long as we're talking like Rularru type threat, I'm okay with it. It really shouldn't be Dr. Strange's preferred method of handling a purse snatcher, though.

I'm familiar with the thread and the proposed set. I just think it creates the same problem in the opposite direction. How does that work for anything but Tech or Natural? OTOH, well.... if the existing sets already heavily favor Magic/Mutant/Science, particularly with some of the pets like Jack Frost and Fire Imps.... perhaps it's time for some sets that feel more like Natural and Tech, and are much harder to justify for Magic/Mutant/Science.

Mind Control could be a candidate for Natural, depending how you think of psionics. Plant Control could be Natural, if your character is not entirely human to begin with, etc. Still, I hear you. Most Control powersets are not really plausible for a truly Ordinary Average Guy. I can only make a Controller or Dominator work as Natural if theyr'e inhuman to begin with. OTOH, I dont know. If they actually made a Gadget Control with Flashbang Grenades for Stun, Curare Darts for Hold, Sleep Gas grenades for a Sleep, etc, then that would start to be next to impossible to justify that as working with Mutant ....

a) i like the existing animation. I'm fine iwth additional choices, but I wouldn't want the existing animation ripped away entirely. b) I'd be okay with a slightly curtailed animation where you spend slightly less time flipping in the air before you strike with the claws, plus a corresponding rebalance. c) alternately, some dead time could be tacked onto the shorter animation until they both take the same time.

I have no problem mentally treating an AE mission as "Canon" if I think it's a particularly well done story in AE. But also, there's some very strict limits on how many AE missions you can post per account. I don't plan to make a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th account to post even more AE missions.

I'd like a new Visual appearance for Granite. As it is right now, I'll never even select Granite if it turns my character in a stone slab and I can't see the costumes I worked on for so long. I'm indifferent on power changes. I do think Granite should *probably* remain a toggle, just because it was an Issue 0 power, and I think it would be massively disruptive to existing characters who have Granite and who simply respec out of the lower toggles for one build and keep the lower toggles only for a second Exemplar build. At the very least, I think you'd need to give Freespecs out if you started changing something so basic at this time. At the same time, I think "Team with a Kin" isn't a stance I'm 100% comfortable with if it's meant as "There's your solution". I mean, my main is a Mind/Kin. Kin rocks. Teaming with Kin is good. But CoH has striven to be a "Bring the player, not the character / not specific powerset combos". So I think there's grounds to stay maybe it's time to ease up on at least the MOVEMENT penalties for Granite. Even if you keep the -Recharge, even if you keep the -Damage, at least let them move at a reasonable pace and allow them to jump up as high as a lvl 1 character (no hurdle, just basic unslotted jump height). I think that would still be a big QoL change to help Granite without making it an automatic clear best choice. And if you DO happen to team with a Kin, well, you still will very much enjoy the buffs they can provide. (+Recovery, +Recharge, +Damage, etc)

You're not wrong but.... well. The human race is rife with examples of megomaniacal people who hungered for power. Both historical and current. It's not hard to find a litany of dictators who willfully chose that life of paranoia and over complicated mess to have POWER NOW. It's VERY doable to create an all-too-believable character who would make that same choice. You may or may not want to play them, but it's quite easy to visualize it and even empathize with such a character and imagine how this hunger came upon them. Me personally, I channel my meglomania and arrogance into safe things, like programming, playing redside, and playing Civilization type games. Where I can raze cities of millions to the ground, but it's just pixels on a civ map, so no one really gets hurt. Power-trip-fantasies have their appeal. We just have to be well enough adjusted to enjoy it while remaining grounded enough to separate the game from the real world.

Honestly, I'd just be happy if Arachnos 100% ceased to exist. I know, they wanted a Dark Mirror counterpart for States, etc, some big organization that could explain why it wasn't total anarchy or just steamrolled by NATO or the USA or Any Nation Really Peeved At What the Villains Have Done Lately. But I'd have prefered if the Rogue isles were essentially a Failed State, with multiple oligarchs and shady organzations and black markets, but not an NPC Evil Overlord. However, I'm realistic enough to know, this, will never change. Much too much baked into the cake now. I do like the current CoV asthetic, but I do think it makes sense for areas that are controlled by certain factions to be better looking. Slums should be slums. Aeon City should and does look nice. St Martial is a prime example. The glittering facade of money and power and dark underbellys all around. Nerva is.... Not my favorite zone. Longbow has taken over half of it, and it's allowed to stand? What? They should have all been eviscerated long ago. And the islands in Nerva are MUCH too far spread apart. It's really not a feasible zone to travel without flight or teleport unless you really really enjoy swimming. A smaller tighter archipelago would have been better.

Seriously. I don't know how hard it would have been to make them just howl once and fade away instead.