MTeague

It should be noted however, that there's really no need to earn BAZILLIONS of merits. It's cool if that's your thing and all. I'm definitely in teh "Casual Merit Earner" grouping, doing mostly story arcs, tip missions, and the occasional TF when the mood strikes me. I do not farm and have no interest in it. I do like doing a bunch of Ouro for a few characters redside and a few characters blueside. But I only really need (where need = kinda want, would feel put-upon without them) enough merits to buy about 90-100 converters that I shazam into 30-40 rares that sell for 1-4 mil each. As long as each cahracter does that every so often, I have NO trouble buying attuned set pieces of whatever set I want for my next couple of levels. When the inf piles up to 100 mil or so, I'll either buy some superpacks or winterpacks and mail around or convert the ATO/WinterO's to whichever alt can use them, and then do more story arcs for more merits to start the cycle over. Sure I COULD focus and earn lots more inf per hour and lots more merits per hour.... but as long as my alts are tricked out with attuned set pieces in every slot.... I don't feel any loss.

I'm fine with a new power being created. I don't want my existing teleport changing out from under me. Bamphing away from a 17 piles of caltrops on a Knives of Artemis map, or straight up and away from a mass of melee mobs, or around the inside of a warehouse in combat has saved me several times. I suspect I would be far better able to "nimbly move around a battlefield" with the existing power than what is being proposed here.

Kintrollers are fun. My main (used in my avatar) is a Mind/Kin controller. Very fun. But I've been wondering how an Kinfender or Kinrruptor plays. Has to be very different without controls and without MM pets just blasts and kin powers to shape the battle. Definitely on the to-do list. I also strongly endorse a permadom. My Plant/Psi is just amazing.

Water Blast I'm working with for a Water/Sonic corruptor. Not fish-themed as such, but name is Deepfathom, and concept is a mutant heavily adapted to water, sonic worked in on a Sonar angle.

The other toggles may have issues, but i can probably patch around things with IO set bonuses. Groups will probalby kick me if they realize I don't have Granite, but eh, it's a Brute and my 28th alt, he'll be able to solo just fine lol.

The only way I will ever be able to make a Stone Armor character is by NOT taking Granite Armor, Ever, not even on an alternate build, and just running the lower level toggles. Also, @siolfir, I thank you for the posted screenshots. That's confirmation that Ablative Carapace still hurks up a shell around you even with minimal effects on, and FOR ME, that means the set is dead to me until there's something less ugly or a true no fx option for that specific power. I'd suspected, but had not KNOWN that it still does that animation. Apologies to anyone who really likes that power but I just.... can't.... get past that animation.

I haven't tried Dark Control yet, but I have a Plant/Psi permadom and she is canned destruction, only, no can. Just destruction. Admittedly, it helps that Plant Control also favors a Captain Hit-and-Fade partial melee, as you run into midrange to get good coverage with Seeds of Confusion and go from there. But I do love /Psi Assault. Drain Psyche alone is worth the price of admission, given that Dom's have very few self-healing / maintenance options, and the fact that it comes with a GIANT -Regen debuff and you can have it up almost all the time as you get to Permadom is huge. Psychic Shockwave is awesome. Sure single target it's not so great but it melts a spawn nicely, AND comes with a good chance for Stun... AND that stun is boosted by Domination. And by the time you get it, you're probably rockin' so much haste you can fire it off like every 10 seconds. Psychic Scream is a a nice cone. Animation is longer than I'd like it to be, but really, probably no longer than Fire Breath / Frost Breath. Solid damage though. TK Thrust is a you love it or you skip it. I recommend it though. You'll be in melee a lot anyway, and it can hit hard... and it's Smashing Damage, very nice against Robots when so much of your other damage is Psi. At low levels you may want to keep the Knockback for a soft control / ragdoll control. Once you're at midgame, I'd think about tossing a Sudden Accel KB to KD in it.

I rocked Praetoria 1-20 soloing an Arch/TacArrow Blaster, +1 with Bosses. Died far fewer times than any other Preatorian run I've done yet, and was surprisingly resilieant when I learned to leverage Glue Arrow as a kiting tool, Web Arrow to keep Ghouls from being next ot each other to stop them from healing, and Ice Arrow to lockdown one long enough to kill a few others. Reduced incoming damage by QUITE a bit, and outgoing damage was still plenty good.

I'm kinda the opposite to the original poster. I keep wanting to TRY Bio Armor, but I .... just.... can't.... get past the animation on Ablative Carapace. I know, the set has a "minimal fx" option. As a whole. But that specific power, Ablative Carapace, does not, not when I browse the customize options for each power in the tree during character creation.. So I'm guessing it still animates the same. I know it's not a long lasting animation. Lasts a few seconds then gone. But those few seconds on a power you'd use probably ever few pulls (or more?) is enough for me to keep finding a reason to try some OTHER resist/defense set instead. To the main question though. Try /Regen. You said you like healing. There you go. It works best if you sugar daddy the character along the way with a variety of attuned IO's as you level. (What doesn't?) But start stacking defense through Kinetic Combats and the 3% uniques, start stacking resistances via Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall uniques and Resiliance and Tough and Preventative Medicine sets in your /Regen powers, and suddenly you just truck through everything and end every fight at max health or at least you're up to max health before you even get to the next spawn.

If we were dealing with a for-profit AAA gaming studio on an actively supported game that was generating revenue enough to be their bread and butter, I'd be "Dude WTF" that Illusion Control got something cool and no one else did. We're not dealing with a AAA gaming studio, and the very limited dev staff is doing this as a hobby / devotion in there free time after they do whatever day job they have to pay bills, keep the family happy, hang out with their own RL friends, etc. My expectations are vastly lower for a smaller "labor of love" programming team. Mirror option for Illusion Control, I see as a proof-of-concept babystep. Hopefully more options will come in time. But I'm plenty cool with the existing game as it is, and I have a legion of characters (well, slightly over 30) and that'll keep me busy for literally years. I can be as patient as needed. I'll still WANT new shiny toys of course. But I'm keeping expectations right at zero. Anything I get is a gift. Hell, having the game AT ALL to even HAVE this discussion, is a massive gift.

Dual Pistols / Devices. Mostly because my costume is a pretty darn close hybrid to a Malta Operative and Malta Gunslinger.

I'd like a better variety of crab-pack options. Like one that looks organic like an Arachnoid's arms. Or Boney-Spikey-Spine-y. Maybe an "energy claw pack", similar to the celestial wings. Who says Arachnos hasn't experimented with other things on their minions? It's not like Recluse was really worried about their retirement plans or worried about possible harm to individual mnions.

I'd love to have full customization. I hope we get it. but I wouldn't turn down the ability to recolor the existing minions, or be able to do power customization on them. Maybe I want a BLUE Oni who's powers LOOK like Ice, even if under-the-hook they all still function 100% identially to the existing fire powers.

Snake lower body for sure. But ONLY if I can use it on a Martial Arts character. If EverQuest can teach Snakes to Kick, then I expect CoH to match it.

Just make sure you get the spelling right on the names. Hate to be in this situation: https://xkcd.com/1012/

Just gonna say, whoever out there has the name "Kelvin" for an ice character... please please please have Ice Control as a powerset and name your pet "Hobbes".

I'd still really really like "Kick" from the Fighting pool to be able to use a Storm Kick or Thunder Kick animation. Even it does no additional damage and the animation times are set to match. I just really want a more martial-artsy Kick for an MM or a Defender, or for my Claws scrapper, etc. Similarly, if Jump Kick could do the Eagle's Claw animation, not any extra damage, JUST the animation, I bet it would become a lot more popular.

Two different types of weapon attacks, gonna need a "No Redraw" option. No objections. Though, I think most power pools kinda need 5 powers now.

The number of times in City of Heroes, whereI have needed to shazam myelf into a different character without logging out, can be counted on zero fingers. Soooo... yea. I'm saying I can't see it being terribly useful. Maybe I've just been really lucky. Maybe my experiences differ wildly from yours. Maybe I've just forgotten a few nights where it did happen and it's just gone from the memory banks because I didn't care that much. All things are possible. This kind of thing is certainly one reason why I liked having a couple of Druids in the raid group back in the WoW days, Back in WoW, having raid members with mutliple sets of loot and dual-specced and COMPETANT enough to play varied roles could reallllly help on certain progression raid fights. In City of Heroes... sure it could have stylepoints... and like I said I dont' really oppose the idea.... but my reaction, is indeed, "Meh".

Well, there's always the expression "Like Kicking Dead Whales Down the Beach" to describe something horribly unpleasant, almost guaranteed to leave you in dire need of a bath, and ultimately futile, But I would guess Greenpeace (and probably PETA) would object to that phrase too.

I'm not vehemently opposed to the idea. But I would probably never roll one of these. I would just roll a Fire/Fire blaster, and roll an Illusion/Kintroller, and roll a Necro/Dark MM, and just load up whichever one I felt like playing at that moment. I get that, for whatever reason, you want one single character that act like multiple different characters. I'm just not feeling it. I prefer making more alts to this idea.

I deliberately level slow. I prefer to experience my characters at varying stages of power as they develop. I have never run a single DFB, nor do I have any desire to do so. I do team about 50% of the time, but most commonly for radio missions, and usually not for more than 2 hours at a stretch. Also, usually not until level 15 at the minimum. I think endurance is perfectly fine right where it's at. Sure, sometimes low level characters have to rest after every fight. Sure, for a low level brute, that means I never gets to build up sizeable amounts of Fury. Sure, for some characters, I may even have to RUN, because I'm low on END and I simply cannot yet defeat the entire pack in one go. But it's taught me to think tactics, to use geography to my advantage where needed, to learn to ration my inspirations, and to look at every single tool I have in the toolkit, including Knockback / Knockdown as a damage mitigation tool, including immob's and kiting behind cover to split foes long enough to defeat a few, including use of Stealth powers to lower aggro radius, strategic sleeps and confuses, etc. I would be sad if they trivialized end managment at low level. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I do think you learn a lot if you work with the character at low levels of power, that helps you in rougher patches at high levels of power.

I wouldn't want to have to code it 😉 But I love the idea. Esp the idea as "Shapeshifter" being the AT and the KIND of shapeshifter being basically your primary/secondary powersets. So one kind could be beastmaster, shifts into eagle for flight, panther for combat, etc. But another shapeshifter might be like, Mr. Fantastic, and stay mostly human-ish, but could punch across the room with extendo-arms or do a knockdown attack by turning into a bouncy-rubber-ball and hurling himself into enemies. And ya a third shapeshifter could shift themselves into elements... an iron form, slow and tanky, or into mercury to zip along the ground, or a gas form to fly, etc. Very expandable to allow other ideas as they were cooked up. I could see it consuming a loooooot of coding time. But it would be really fun.

I could certainly understand keeping Signature Hero looks and Villian Group specific looks for NPC's only, esp if spreading them to players might be a bone of contention to NCSoft. Silly? Yes. But you'd be AMAZED at how many people can get piqued over the silliest things. I would like to see something like the PPD Hard Suit and PPD Shell pieces available to players, but .... that's so far down in the "it would be nice if" pile, and not even remotely approaching any kind of need.

I level up almost exlusively through story arcs, pickup groups, and taskforces. I generally don't group for extended periods of time on any character because even though I know it's NOT necessary, and I DON'T need to do it as I level anymore, I still consdier it something of a rite of passage to do all the Safeguards (if a Blue character) or Mayhems (for Red characters) as I level them. I have never done a DFB and I have zero interest it. I actually dont' WANT to rapidly gain tons of levels. I prefer to level up slowly and experience that character at several different stages of power.