MTeague

There's nothing to feel guilty FOR, in my book. Choose to skip a certain power because you just can't tolerate it's animation but like the rest of the set? I got no beef with that. Don't want to deal with Inventions? I might think you're missing out, but I'm not going to diss a player who's just not ready to dip their feet into that pool yet. Or just chose a powerset combination that has no synergy, but you were re-creating a toon from LIVE, or just wanted to try out some combo for shiggles? Why not? This isn't mythic progression raiding in WoW. Optimization is nice. But if my group takes 30 minutes longer than some other group to finish a TF, I probably don't notice or even CARE, because I'm having fun.

I break it down this way Excellent choice of secondary. Drain Psyche is amazing, both to heal you and so that you are your own AE -Regen debuffer. And Psychic Shockwave is FUN once you slot it up. HOLDS: Both Mind and Plant have quick casting single target and AE holds, no edge to either primary there. Mind Control can take Teleknesis, which is a Toggle-Hold, and can be very nice for extra lockdown when levellling... but you already get Domination. TK's nicer for a controller who can leverage TK+single-target holds to keep a boss locked down. A Dom typically won't need this. Still, it's an extra kind of hold, and is a minor point for Mind, I think. CONFUSES: Plant gets Seeds of Confusion early, and omg, it's arguably one of the better powers in the game. Cone Confuse. Immediately, you turn a swarm that would overrun you into a swarm too busy beating each other up to notice as you ping them to make sure you get exp. and with Psychic Scream, you can tag the entire lot of them in one it. I think this gives Plant a very decisive edge. Seeds does require you to run into midrange, and you will likely take a few hits as you cast it. But once it lands, nothings going to hurt you. And then you can close to melee and Drain Psyche all of them. Mind gets a Non-Aggroing Single-Target Confuse that you can cast from signifcant range. This is very nice for a controller who would need multiple casts to confuse a boss. It's less important for you, since you could have Domination going and one cast is plenty enough on a boss. But if you want to be a manipulator who works from the shadows, consider this. Once you get Mass Confusion, then Mind is every bit as good with Confusing enemies as Plant.... except... the Recharge time on Mass Confusion is much higher than the recharge on Seeds of Confusion. Mass Confuse can probably hit more targets reliably, and you can cast from far enough away you don't eat incoming firepower. But Seeds is up EVERY fight. I can't say that for Mass Confuse. SLEEPS: Mind's AE sleep is much better. Lasts MUCH longer, castable from well outside aggro range, causes no aggro. Mind is just better here. I dont' think it outweighs the Confuse though. Mind also gets a ST Sleep, where Plant does not. Again, points for mind, just not sure it's enough points, for a Dom. PETS: Mind gets no regular pets. You could argue every valid confuse target IS your pet after you confuse it, but.... not entirely the same animal. Plant gets a full-time pet in Fly Trap Plant gets a very strong quasi-pet in Carrion Creepers. Which is also DAMN FUN to see an amazon jungle of vines going wild on a good-sized spawn. IMMOBS: Mind gets no Immobs. Plant gets a single target immob, and an AE immob. Admittedly, I'm not a giant fan of Immobs.... an immobilized mob can still shoot you, debuff you, etc. But they at least can't melee you IF you stay at range.... thing is though, ... with Psi Assault... you're going to be in melee range a lot. So honestly not sure how much immob's are more than just an AE dot for you. FEAR: Plant gets no Fear Mind has a nice Cone Fear, that's up pretty often, and can do decent damage to a group depending how you slot it. Fear is nice soft control if you don't hit them. But your confused foes can hit them and won't think twice about it. For a Dom, I give it to Plant.

Also, even if you dont' want to do the story arcs through Ouroborous itself, you can still use Ouroboros as a checklist. Clicking on the Pillar of Ice and Flame to get the list of arcs available in Ouro will show a star next to the arcs / missions you have already completed.... regardless of it you completed it via Ouro, or the oldschool way by finding the contacts in the wild. I would definitely leverage Ouro just to check what is there vs not before you level past the various lvl breakpoints. I have to admit, I would find it difficult to do what you're doing. I always do a random sampling of story missions on each character as they level. My tanker did the Hollows, my Storm defender did Faultline, my Scrapper will be doing Striga, etc. And my Controller did some of everything magic-related...and esp all of Croatoa.... while levelling. But do to ALL of them? Man.... it would be.... quite tempting.... to level up high enough to slot Attuned IO's and build up some set bonuses, and then go back for the marathon. My controller is a flashbacking machine now, but he's got lots of purple sets and bonuses too. I salute your persistence.

I will be here until (god forbid) a day ever comes when they turn off the lights. I enjoy teaming. But I solo probably over 50% of the time and I have no problem with it, since I really crave well written stories, and teams NEVER allow time enough to read anything. I still team, I just.... might then solo the same missions on a different character not long after so I can read everything.

Repel could make an awesome "Freight Train! Coming Thru!!!!" plowing through big groups of mobs. Back on Live....I and another player... I think a Defender? Were abandoned in the middle of Perez Park, the covered area, back when that was a thing and groups went there. There was a mostly-wipe, we had wakie'd. Half the team went to the hospital and quit team, one other survivor suicided, went to hospital, and quit team. We didn't wanna die. XP debt and all. (early game, we cared about such things lol). So I said, okay, let's do this. Told him to get sprint going, and fly for the sky as soon as we got to open terrain. I activated Repel, chewed my last Luck insp, and just barreled through like 5-6 different spawns of CoT at a dead run as we ran through the forest. "Bowling for Mages" style. I still have Repel on my main to this day because of that. It's also sometimes handy to bounce a confused mob closer to the mobs I want the confused mob to fight.

Ah! Good. That makes it.... far less intimidating.

My Sentinel is only lvl 29, so, probably not a fair trial yet. But so far, I don't feel the need for them to be fixed/buffed at all. I wouldn't turn it DOWN but... okay their DPS is lower. Big woot. It's not horrible, and it's not like you can't do anything with them.

I would skip it. There's a bazillion fantasy games and MMO's out there. And I don't think you could really DO same game, same powersets, and have it FEEL like a traditional fantasy setting. You'd still invariably be "Comic Book Superheroes in Fantasy Land". Now, yes, many good things taste great together.... Chocolate and Peanut Butter not least. But I prefer my comic book heroes separate from tolkien / wheel of time / other high fantasy settings.

Wait. So... concept wise.... the mechanical robot that runs around attacking things, it not really your character per se. Your character is the anime-panda riding on it's shoulder? That's awesome.

Mind/Kin for me. In addition to @EmperorSteele's excellent post above, the combo has several points additional strengths that make it perfect for me. a Non-Aggroing Confuse. I see so many players who still can't get past a slight loss of XP-per-kill when you can get much better and safer XP-per-time with Confuse. And the fact that the cast causes no aggro means you never have to start a fight wtih boss aggro if you don't want to. Two casts of Confuse and the boss is your unwilling ally and you can KEEP him confused for free hits for basically forever. You do need to be aware of certain mobs that have extremely high resistance / protection to confuse (looking at you, Nemesis and Arachnos Huntsman...), but they are definitely the exception. Repel, a power I once considered only good for funsies, can contribute quite a bit of emergency ragdoll defense if you slot it with a KB to KD enhancer. Despite the name "Repel", this power has no actual Repel effect. It's just a PBAE Knockback aura. Which you can shazam into a KnockDOWN aura with just it's default slot. And once you get Transference, the end cost is greatly mitigated. Telekneisis can be very useful levelling up, as an extra guaranteed source of Hold Magnitude. Later on that becomes less important, as you get the Lockdown Chance for +2 Mag Hold IO's, and once you can chain Mass Dominate with Dominate. I eventually respec'd out of it, but it did save my and my team's bacon levelling a few times. Allll the kin buffs. Siphon Power, i eventually respec out of because Fulcrum Shift, though if you're maintain an Exemplar / Flashback build, Siphon power totally deserves a spot. Siphon Speed, very easy to stack twice. Doable to get a third stack with Hasten. This lets you CRAP out the Hold Magnitudes or Confuse Magnitudes. You're not a Perma-Dom Dominator... but you can shut down the big bads all the same. Increase Density is *very* easily overlooked among Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift, but while it may not be flashy, granting every squishy on your team Hold, Stun, and Knockback protection for the entire duration of the team, is quite nice. Speed Boost, Fulcrum Shift, no writeup necessary.

I remember several very well done missions in AE in live that no longer exist. If I could host some of them, even very clearly labeled as "Not mine, I can take no credit, posted purely for homage", I would. Someday, I may get wild and crazy and see if I can reconstruct a couple of them as Tribute to the original author/mission. But heck, I in the Base Editor, I can barely manage to get below my SG base and start creating the beginning shell of an island, or above where I'd like to someday have an Airship or Starcruiser. I doubt my Mission-Builder-Fu will be strong enough to create good looking mission maps with all the tiny details that add up to so much.

Well, I tried to roll an Ice Controller, and go figure, the name Kelvin was long since taken. But whoever has the name, if you haven't already done so, please do me the favor of taking Jack Frost, and naming him Hobbes. 😀

I'm actually very glad to see this. I've been constantly wanting to TRY Stone Armor and constantly saying "But I has to see mah costume... at least SOME of it....". This could bridge that gap nicely.

He is serious. And stop calling him Shirly.

I love fighting Malta, in part because everyone hates them so much. But my 2 main characters are a Mind Controller and a Plant Dom, and both have Confuse. Confuse makes malta, super easy. My next 2 characters are a Stalker (stabbitize the sapper) and an SR scrapper (sapper can't touch this). all of which make Malta really a non-issue for me. I used to really dislike fighting Carnies, because they have Very high Psi defense, and that was an issue for my Mind/Kin. Esp the Master Illusionists. With Nerve alpha, it's not a problem anymore. So I'd probably say Freakshow annoy me the most because it feels like I always have to kill them twice.

Anytime iTunes chooses "(Wish I could Fly like) Superman" by the Kinks. I always hear this in my head playing my Invul/SS tanker.

I want my character to be able to enter City of Heroes Gyros, or El Super Mexicano, or Up N Away Burger, order food, and eat. 🙂 More seriously? Add three zones on the moon. One, a Blueside zone where humanity is trying to further the space program for science and runs into problems and needs supers to help out. Two, a Redside zone where Arachnos is building a Giant Moonbase Laser. Because C'MON. One Million Dollars!!! Three, a PvP zone. Because you couldn't believably have red and blue on the moon without some kind of hot-spot. I don't know how many people would USE it, but could throw the PvP'er s a bone.

"World Wide Red" is probably one of the best mission arcs I've seen in the entire game, in AE or not. Pratoria or vanilla. It's full of Malta sure, but it's awesome story-wise and people should really take the time to treat themselves to it and READ IT some day. It's FAR longer than 5 missions. It's longer than some task forces I've been on. I don't care. Maybe you prefer short paperbacks. Some of us enjoy long and complex stories.

Converter Roulette if I stay in game. Fire up the slow cooker if I don't.

Well, even if there's no official subscriptions as such, I know I personally would be willing to do a recurring $10 / month donation, if the day ever comes when that's allowable. I don't mind an up-front price, and I don't mind a subscription. And I recognize they have costs to cover, and the simple fact that hey, they're putting forth a lot of effort to restore a game I love, to maintain it, to carefully and gradually expand upon it. And that has value to me. I don't mind in the slightest if they profit from this, if and when they are eventually able to do so legally. What I don't want, is for the game to become microtransaction-based. Let the "P2W" vendor's name be only an ironic joke, and not the sad reality of too many other games.

For my Plant / Psi dom, my pools are: Speed: Hasten, nothing else. Leaping: Combat Jumping, nothing else (LotG mule, minor defense) Flight: Hover (LotG mule, minor defense), Fly (travel) Leadership: Manuvers (LotG mule, defense), Tactics, Assault Psi Mastery: Link Minds (LotG mule, defense), Mind Over Body. Psi mastery mostly just because my attacks are already all Psi, but also I really wanted to play around with Link Minds and see how close it comes vs not to the Widow version. (Not nearly as close as I'd hoped, but still, it ain't bad). I don't need indomitable will, because Permadom. Scorpion Shield may be better for personal defense, but I still have quite a lot from set bonuses, and I prefer to contribute a decent chunk of defense to the entire team. Psi Assault brings in Drain Psyche to allow me to heal up and for -Regen for the biggie-wiggies. Plant Control also brings in Spirit Tree, which is also nice maintenence healing, and lets me slot the entire preventative medicine set for the 8.75% recharge and the absorb proc.

basically correct. And yes, there are some Non-Positional-Attacks in the game. Very few, but they are there. They say Neener Neener to your positional defenses. Non-Positional attacks can only be defended against via Typed defense (smashing, lethal, etc). Otherwise they just hit you.

Honestly, even if the talks with NCSoft are slowing down new content.... taking that as a complete given for the sake of the argument.... I still want them to stay the course. I would rather they give as much of a try as can be given to be a legit operation, and thus buy protection from possible legal hammers, then have them flip birds at NCSoft and always live under the threat of a shutdown. This isn't a game I want to play for a few months and be chomping at the bit for the next shiny thing. I could spend YEARS in city of heroes, EASY. Hell, I did it on Live, and I'm looking to do it again here. Plus, I make bank as a software developer myself. I'm not in the gaming industry, but still. I'm a programmer. I'm able to make a living because of copyrights on software. I have some ethical quandries squaring that with playing a game that I know the HC team does not really have full rights to. The siren song of remaking my characters was too strong to resist, but I would really like the legal issues resolved and agreements reached.

So, I've tanked in other MMO's. Specifically, Warcraft. Expectations were kinda sky-high there. Tanks were expected to know every mechanic of every boss in every raid to know the maps of every instance, small group or raid to have full court vision at all times to pickup adds to properly manage every cooldown so as to not faceplant and not be the tank with the spiky healthbar. to know and mark killzones and priority mobs to kill. Clearly, quite a bit of this does not and cannot be expected to carry over into City of Heroes. It's a far more casual game, and very little even rises to the content of "Progression Grinding Endgame Encounters". I know of nothing in the CoH that can consistently wipe an experienced premade group for 3 hours a night for 2 weeks straight while they learn how to get their execution down perfectly. (And this is a GOOD THING, I am SO DONE with the WoW treadmill). But... I find myself massively gunshy at joining any group with my Tanker. I don't want to be complete Faily McFailtank by not even being AWARE of what groups are expecting from me in this game. So.... what are fair expectations of a CoX Tanker, in your view? ===== By G'Quan, I can't recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces! They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys! And they made a very satisfying thump! when they hit the floor. - Citizen G'Kar, Babylon 5, Season 3, *A Late Delivery From Avalon*

Well, on one hand, yes, using a Shivan does mean you're kind of not defeating them in a fair fight using just your own character's powers. But there's something to be said for realizing when the other side is already playing unfair, and being every bit as unfair, right back at them. Refa: Why? Why did you do this? Londo: To guarantee your cooperation! And because sooner or later, you would do it to me. Yes, we are returning to the old ways, Refa, and poison was always the instrument of choice in the old Republic. Being something of a sentimentalist, I got here first. - Babylon 5, Season 3, "Ceremonies of Light and Dark"