MTeague

But how many characters have a backstory > 500 characters?

I'd never heard that particular use of "Steamroll". I assumed it to be a generic term to mean "being overpowered" I agree that "kill through" is probably a better term to use in LFG.

Infridgidate can be a decent DPS power if you slot it heavily with Damage Procs and add lots of global recharge. You certainly don't have to if that's not your thing. But it can help /Cold have more of a DPS option for when you are soloing. I do think it would unbalance things too much if FF or Cold or Sonic or Thermal or Empathy or the like could use their Ally-Only powers on themselves. I feel there is already QUITE enough power-creep with IO's and incarnates and we should not be adding even more power creep into the equation. But I have seen this requested enough (ally-only-powers-on-self), that I will not be shocked if it actually happens.

I would love to see the Family explored more. Not just misc thugs in suits shaking people down on the streets of Independance Port, but stories where they play SERIOUS HARDBALL, maybe even putting a mission contact in the ground as you get too close, and then you have to continue to find other leads to chase them down rather than being pointed to a new contact as normal. Also have them start using high-tech weapons, not just tommyguns. There's been enough Rikti tech, Portal Corp tech, praetorian tech, arachnos tech, crey tech, you can't tell me a serious crime sydicate couldn't have gotten ahold of some goods, and found ways to ensure a steady supply. There's Gangster World Family mobs in Portal Tech missions, lets see some shadows of that in Primal Earth with lvl 45+ high powered wiseguys. I would also love to see two other factions opposing the Family in the zone The Outcasts. We know from tip missions and time travel that Frostfire becomes a Big Deal. Lets see some hints of that. Have him try to organize "his people" to create a few areas that are Off Limits to the Family, where even the Family fears to tread. And maybe some of Frostfire's people have to get a bit on the Vigilante side in order keep those protected sections actually protected. The Syndicate. Yep, I'm talking Praetorian Wu Yin here. Lots of people had to evacuate Preatoria, and I think he's enough of a survivor to have made the trip, and probably got at least some of his people out as well. This could be an opposition to the Family where it could get very very grey, who's really a more long term problem than the other? Also, I would love to see at least one interaction between Praetorian Wu Yin and Primal Earth Penelope Yin. She's NOT his daughter, but it might help him get some closure or sense of what his daughter might have been like had Praetor Tillman not claimed her. And maybe it would allow for a Darth Vader / Luke Skywalker moment where Praetorian Wu Yin simply can't let something bad happen to even an alternate universe Penelope Yin during a TF confrontation.

None of my stalkers even take Placate anymore. With the Chance to Hide ATO, Placate is entirely unnecessary. Still. Maybe if it were AOE, more people would take it, and it might be of more use to those players who do not sugar-daddy their alts with ATO's.

Absolutely agree. While you may be able to appeal it, I... probably wouldn't bother... because what's gonna happen? Either it'll keep being brought back to thier attention by people who don't know it' predates this whole mess, OR, they'd say something like, "look...we'll restore the name... but please just dont' play this cahracter for half a year or until a vaccine is found." It's not worth even trying to appeal, I think.

Definitely glad the game is back for gamers of all stripes. Very glad to know it may help you beyond just being a nice fun arcady stompy pasttime 🙂

I would also add some folks may enjoy VISITING said cabin, or roughing it for a week. But not for 50 weeks of the year. If I saw someone putting together some challenge run teams, I'd at least consider it. Would I make a regular ongoing commitment to it? No. Would I join for a week or two? ya, probably.

ooo Doc Quaterfield with No Travel Powers, No Enhancements, No Temporary Powers!

I do not think Force Fields are worthless. I do think there is a persistent PERCEPTION that they are by a vocal group of players who are focused exclusively on "endgame" to mean incarnate content. Frankly, I think that's carp. Incarnate content is fun every so often. I much prefer flashbacks, exemplars, AE storylines (not farms), and I am always glad to see a Bubbler on my team. And when you DO run incarnate content? It's not just the bubbler. probably half the players could be removed from any given iTrial and you'd still succeed because incarnate powers are THAT game-breaking. So I wouldn't overstress about the bubbler alone. For that matter, the real endgame isn't running incarnate content on the same character again and again until you're bored stiff with the same encounters. the real endgame is alts, the real endgame is writing AE storyline content.

You will however, *hemmorage* endurance at first with Dark Armor. Definitely need to be strategic on what toggles to run vs not until you slot up some.

Consider also Hover. While it's not KB protection as such, it seriously reduces the actual effect of an incoming KB. Beyond that, there's always the IO approach. A Blessing of the Zephry, a Karma, and a Fury of the Glad (if you have a PBAE to slot it into....) adds up pretty well. I mean, maybe things with Force Bolt will still send you flying, but shotguns and grenade launchers will stop being an issue.

I do not often see Fire Tanks / Brutes outside of AE. But I'd certainly be willing to roll with 'em, and I'd bet most groups would have zero problems cruising along.

No no no. Portal Corp is on the job. The planes taxi into giant inter-dimensional portals and take off in alternate realities, re-entering our world about 3 miles south of Striga. and there's a Giant Honkin' Portal that incoming planes fly directly into to get to the right runway to land on while bypassing the city, the exact same way. THAT wouldn't end tooooo badly, you think? 😄

Even if they wanted to add a slight reduction in accuracy so that your T1 pets would miss about the same before vs after, just having them not be lower level would help their survability vs incoming damage.

I would gladly have a Hurricane power that had NO repel component whatsoever, just the exact same -ToHit it already has. As it is, I can still apply the -ToHit debuff even when teaming by glancing the mobs at the edge of the effect, barely pushing them at all. But I still get grief and groups asking me not to use it anyway, no matter how responsible I am with it, because the repel effect drives people batty and they're nervous that I won't use it right.

I won't turn down a buff, but I'm quite content with how my Ninja/Cold MM and my Beasts/Empath MM perform. I certainly don't feel like they require a bunch of changes. That said I do tend to ignore the MM personal attacks in my primary tree. The damage / endurance cost simply isn't worth it most of the time. There's better things I can do that that endurance instead. When soloing, both commonly stay in defensive stance, Tankerminding. My Beast/Empath uses Kick and Boxing and Crosspunch, all three, because the endurance cost is vastly less than the MM personal attacks and getting in melee range makes darn sure my pets are all in range of Supremacy and Pet Aura IO's. My Ninja/Cold uses a six slotted Infrigidate with 3 damage procs and 1 -Res proc, and other than that, grabs aggro by using Snow Storm.

Auto-scaling may have issues when the enemies in question only exist in certain level ranges though. There is no such thing as lvl 45 Skulls. Now, we can take a low-level Skull, and we can boost up his HP, make him count as lvl +1 if he's a lieutenant, etc. But that Skull would have no new attack powers beyond what he had at lvl 14. You would have all your powers if you're not auto-exemplared down. So it's a super lopsided fight unless they take time and trouble to add high level powers to all low level enemies and make sure those enemies only have access to those powers if they scale up to a certain level. You would have all of your set bonuses etc if you were not auto-exemplared down, etc. Also it would have a strong effect on who chooses to use what IO sets. Sometimes I use Eradication or Sircocco's Dervish for PBAE sets instead of Obliteration because I can keep the set bonuses all the way down when I'm exemplareed. So suddenly IO sets that only scale down to lvl 30 and no further would become desireable for any flashback level, because you wouldn't exemplar, everthing else would scale up. And sets that only scale up to lvl 30, or get a long hard look and probably converted or tossed. Now, if they can get keep the Auto-Exemplar and STILL allow you to invite people? Then I'm all for it. But I do think the Exemplaring aspect of Ouro has to stay.

I used Staff Fighting / Willpower for my first Praetorian. No regrets. Did well. Was a long time until I got Rise To the Challenge becuase it was my secondary and I turned off XP for long stretches to ensure I didn't outlevel any story arcs I wanted to finish. Invulnerability should also do quite well, but, keep in mind, you'll see a lot more Energy damage coming at you at low levels than you would on Primal earth.

Now I feel an evil desire to make an AE map full of Dark Melee/SR and Dark Blast/SR mobs. "How fast can this mission be voted off the island?" 😄

My take on it is, "slot well, choose your powers well, and SR becomes just as layered". You should be able to build up a fair amount of resistance via set bonuses, certainly to at least the common damage types. and you don't even need to get hardcap resistance via set bonuses if you have 3 passives plus reactive defensive unique all giving you scaling damage resist between Preventative Medicine Absorb Proc, Panacea Proc, Power Transfer Proc, you can get quite a bit of passive healing that just happens for maintence to help maintain you between hits that do sneak in. Physical Perfection and/or Medicine tree are quite doable to add to a build

Sooooo many times this. If some sets need *mild* *small* tweaks, perhaps. A couple % points here or there to an existing power maybe. But I would not want powersets to be completely redone, or to gain whole entire types of functionality that they never had before. Some sets are always going to be "better" than other sets by opinion / word-of-mouth / favored playstyle of more vocal players. Sometimes, that opinion will reflect objective truth. Sometimes, it won't. I enjoy playing "disfavored" sets and finding hidden gems that perform quite well if people would just try them out.

What if that box is actually a ninja hiding inside a cardboard box? It might be harder to hit than you think.

also "This would take a lot of dev time", is very frequently, a Scientific WIld A** Guess (SWAG). Now, when someone goes completely off the rails like um.... *cough* i did *cough* in a thread about Player Created Signature Powers, okay, even a cursory glance of including entirely new interfaces and powers, yea, that's firmly in the "it would be cool if we had infinite time" category. When it takes most of a page to describe it, yea, it ain't small. but "autoreject option for white salvage"? there's already other autoreject options out there. None for salvage, sure. But for small inspirations, etc. So this MIGHT be as simple as copy/paste and tweak a few lines of code documentation. It also MIGHT be something that would take 3 weeks or more of concerted effort on this and nothing but this and make the programmer in question wish they'd never picked up the idea in the first place. And unless any of us have actually looked at the source code and know the language it's written in, we're speculating.

They probably already have to worry about a Pasta and Antipasta reaction 🙂