MTeague

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.

Full Auto is a T9 Blaster Nuke. I think that's a bit much club compared to say, https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Blaze_Mastery, or https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Darkness_Mastery. Minimally, it would have to be scaled down to an appropriate power level. I'm thinking simpler to swap it out for M30 Grenade. Also when Scrappers/Stalkers/Brutes/Tanks get a summon in patron powers, it's not a boss-level summon. Commando (T3 mercs pet) seems a bit over the top to me. The devs will do as they see fit, but I think you're asking for ... probably too much power here.

Once you've seen a team with 6+ stacks of leadership toggles, it gets real hard not to take them on every character. Although mass-stacking of Manuevers, Assault, and Tactics *does* require people to stay more or less close to each other vs running every which way.

It really is a damn shame that First Ward is so often deserted. The arcs are very well done and the enemies much more interesting than Even More Freakshow and Even More Sky Raiders for the level range.

Fiery Aura for Sentinels has the same thing on Cauterizing Blaze, just FYI.

to be fair, the undertaking is still probably a large undertaking to write a number of branching arcs that have allow you to flesh out where your characters lines are (if in fact, your character has any). Technically, I agree I don't think it's a massive lift. the game already has the ability to present you with choices and alter the mission based on the outcome. And, they have have missions that give a more subtle choices with no giant midscreen popup.... such as the Imperial City Power mission where you can choose to capture Ricochet even though it means leaving Zane, Arie, and Warrant to die, or the option to leave the mission, letting Ricochet, and then get the next mission to save your powers division buddies. I'd love more of that. It's just in terms of writing up good arcs, narrating it all, deciding where the character can choose to branch left vs right and why.... that's time consuming. So I could defintely understand how producing those arcs would have to come in drips and drops rather than a sudden shazam, here's 40 new arcs! Or they might decide time is better spent giving AE the tools to make such branching arcs and farming out the storyline generation to us.