MTeague

Interpretive Dance is clearly supposed to be a Support set, so we can have a +DEF,+RES "Safety Dance" power.

jranger was the forum name of someone on live who was... a veritable font of ... creativity unconstrained by wisdom, I think is the nice way to say it.

For what it's worth, there are a number of player-created Story Arcs in AE that expand on Praetorian content. @Darmian in particular has some great ones. No, that's not quite the same as what you're asking, but they're very much worth a playthrough.

I have eleven goldsiders and I really enjoy those story arcs. But I plan to solo each character there, for at least the 1-20. I would not be opposed to joining a team for those, but the very first thing I would do is set it to "No Xp" for my character. I want to finish ALL of the story arcs that I think make sense for that character, giving the personality and backstory I created for each one. If that meant my teammate rapidly outlevelled me, then I would wish them well if they wanted to continue without me, but i am NOT outlevelling any story arcs there for anyone else.

I was very worried with how well my Ice Control/Cold Domination controller would fare in goldside 1-20. Now, I did sugar daddy him a Panacea proc, and 50 million from petty cash. But even without using the START vendor, he destroys things. Very nearly as fast as my brute. Largely that is on the power of Arctic Air confusing all the minions and lieutenants though, freeing him up to focus on the bosses. He definitely had an easier time in the early levels than my goldside Ice/Dark sentinel. For things I haven't done in forever... I've gone a full week without caffeine? It won't last mind you. But it's reassured me that I CAN in fact give it up, if I ever wish to.

I would not mind more animations. I would not hold my breath, either. But who knows? Maybe they have something in the works. Yellow titles... honestly, that sounds like a You problem. (and no, I have never bought one, ever, on any character). If how somoene else has fun in this game, just by adding a title to their character bothers you, that's probably something you should work on. [EDIT: I'm not even sure how/if/where yellow titles are bought, to be honest. ]

I mean, I would not be opposed to alternate defeat methods. Although, let's be real, the use of that will be niche, at best. Teams are still always going to be steamrolly wrecking balls of destruction. That. Will. Not. Change. Why are controllers like this? Hey, even if you don't like the answer, this game dates back to 2004. EverQuest was the MMO with the biggest recognition, even if a bare few months later WoW took over. The original designers assumed, right out of the bat, that people would team. That soloing could be done, but it would be rarer, and mostly a slog. It was with that mindset that the main five Archtypes were created. (Tank, Scrapper, Blaster, Defender, Controller). The Controller was pegged as a very team-oriented archtype, offering both lockdown and buffs/debuffs. At least for the early game, your controls ARE your attacks. Flash forward twenty years later, yes, player expections are very different, but the foundation of this game, is still 2004. Does this mean Controllers are helpless? Heck No. A well built controller can demolish things. My favorite is Mind/Kin, with side of Sorcery. Nothing attacks me unless I want it to, and I pick things off with Arcane Bolt, TK-plus-Levitate, Terrify built for Damage, and a few damage procs in certain key controls. On the secondary side, Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift keep me well buffed. Am I going to outdamage, or even keep pace with a Brute, Scrapper, or Blaster? Absolutely not. If that's your yardstick, get used to disappointment. But I can do respectable damage, safely clear maps, and enjoy my play, even without a pet (although some would argue Confuse makes ALL the enemies my pets...) Is it rough from 1-20? Hardly any slots, very few powers? Yes. But right or wrong, this is an MMO, and while teaming is never required, it is often the best solution to many problems.

When people have spent multiple pages arguing about what they're arguing about, there is no longer any productive use for this thread. Please lock.

Maybe your character needs corrective lenses.

I'd particularly be open to it if it gave us a way to acquire Going Rogue tips that we had already outlevelled.

I do think, when we disagree, it would be helpful if we took some time to phrase it, as if we were talking to a newer colleague at work. I'm not saying don't disagree. I'm not saying don't say why you think it's a bad idea. I am saying "Buckshot" or "Flamethrower", may not be the most forum-friendly approach. Do I expect anyone to change their ways, no, not really. But sometimes a mentoring approach is better than a "dude, ur idea sucks" approach.

I'm extremely happy with my Thugs/Traps character. As @Scarlet Shocker said, not every support set is all things to all people. Traps is not built for fast moving teams. Don't expect it to be. You are the team's "Oh Crap!" button, when there's a hard target, or when somoene accidentally aggros two extra spawns. That said, Thugs is plenty capable of just being a roaving band of destruction. The Defense your thugs will accumulate from your Enforcers, plus your Forcefield Generator, plus, if you took it, Manuevers, makes them extremely durable, even on the move. And of course, there's Gangnam War, when you want that extra oomph, or just extra targets to help distract foes. Your Thugs will work even better, holed up and making good use of your Traps. Teams generally won't wait for that outside of AV's or other kick-it-up-a-notch scenarios. Don't expect them to. Save your Traps for emergencies. Soloing though, you are a holy terror. Traps does definitely benefit from Global Recharge. Now, if I recall correctly from other threads, you (@Ultimo), typically do not use the AH, and do not use much in the way of IO's. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that point). This will be a character where you will feel that more than some others. Excessive +Recharge set bonuses are not required for /Traps to shine, but there's no denying it's particularly nice with a powerset with long recharge times. And this combo already has some powers just beggin' to be slotted with some Luck of the Gamblers. But you can just slot some recharge SO's, if that's the limit of where you want to go.

I would pick eight people who enjoy mild banter and chatting during missions.

I have to admit, I've never deliberately slotted a pet for end redux. Just gone with the Henchment IO sets or the Recharge Intensive Pets IO sets. And if End Reduction happened to be part of them, then they got exactly that much. I don't rememeber fly trap standing around doing nothing, my Plant is a Dom, so I has my entire secondary tree for direct damage. For me, the pet offtanking is what I'm really looking for.

I get that, and yet, 35 threads says there is very clearly pent-up demand. The devs are free to ignore that, of course. I find it difficult to accept that for mysterious code reasons only NPC's can grant the necessary tokens. At the end of the day, we're talking about a Boolean flag. "Affect" or "Do not Affect". It should not be beyond the possible for a YN flag under options to work in this fashion. It may not be worth it to the devs to come up with an alternate solution, but I will not accept that it is beyond their skill level to create an alternate solution that uses only a preference.

I have not used it yet, but I solo more than I team. When I do team, I'm not super choosy. If someone genuinely offends me to the point where I am actually disgusted with them, I drop team and /gignore them on the spot. But it is extremely rare that this has come up. Maybe 3 times in 4 years. People have to really be sailing far far over the line for that. For nearly all other cases, I'm easy-come-easy-go for teaming. I enjoy banter in team chat, esp for story arc or tip mission teams. Something to make it less grindy. If someone really seems like they don't know what they're doing, I'll send them a tell asking if they'd like some pointers. Usually people are glad, or at most a "nah, I'm good". If they're causing wipes and don't want advice, then I might suddenly "get a phone call I have to take" and drop team. But if they're not causing wipes, just not performing at a high level but want to figure it out themselves, OK, I got no bones with that either. I also can be a stubborn sonofbeech. If someone is quiet, but gets the job done and isn't unpleasant in any way, that's fine by me, too. I'm an introvert myself.

Plant Control says Hi. I mean, don't get me wrong. New Plant, is plenty viable. I'm re-levelling a Plant/Psi dom, and doing just fine. But it's definitely some Tennyson, "...Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,..."

I mean, egg, cheese, bacon, and bread-like substances have occasionally been known to be popular. So I can sorta see it.

My Claws/SR scrapper does not use Focus or Shockwave, because I don't like the idea of projected waves of force from the claws. I use only attacks that can concieveably be direct use of the blades. Strike, Slash, Follow Up, Spin, Eviscerate. I am aware some consider that as intentionally gimping myself. I give them permission to hold that opinion. For me, concept is of far greater import than performance. I do use Weapon Mastery epic pool for Caltrops, Web Grenade, and Shuriken to deal with runners.

Yes, but we have Fire! And pointy sticks!! And we can sweat across our entire bodies, giving us mastery of the hunt!

I've always read the pizza reaction (on most threads, as "have a slice!" / general idea of support. Whether that's the intent, could not say, and I'm sure on certain specific threads, it's used for other purposes. One must learn to read between the icons, sometimes.

Couple Additional Points: in the old days, there were also "Training Origin" (TO) enhancements. These are hot garbage. Vendor immediately if you ever encounter them. Dual Origin enhancements (DO's) were approximately twice as good as TO's. Single Origin enhancements (SO's) are approximately twice as good as DO's. so never use DO's unless you're dirt poor. both Dual Origin enhancements and Single Origin enhancements "wear out" and stop giving you benefits, if your character level is 5 or more higher than the enhancement level. example 1: at character level 25, you no longer receive any benefit from a lvl 20 or below SO or DO. example 2: at character level 30, you no longer receive any benefit from a lvl 25 or below SO or DO. however, you can use the "Upgrade" button to automatically replace SO's or DO's with a freshly-topped-off version of them. Costs influence, but is an option. Invention Origin enhancements (IO's) never wear out, ever. You can use a lvl 25 IO all the way to 50, and you always get the same benefit from it. Now you might want to replace those with more-current-level IO's in order to receive a larger benefit, but you never Have to. This can make basic IO's a cost-effective way to handle slotting as you level. You can always hover over every kind of enhancement to see what % benefits it would provide, to help you decide if it's worth buying / slotting. Hamidon Origin enhancements (HO's) exist. These are lvl 50 only (I think) and basically are two lvl 50 SO's mashed together into one. Per slot, they provide the most benefit, but only certain combinations exist, and they're not easy to come by. For now, just treat HO's as out of your price range and don't worry. Maybe look at them again when you have multiple level 50's. Invention Sets, are still basically invention IO's, but yes, they have the set bonuses if you slot multiple pieces from that set into the same power. Those set bonuses are individually fairly small. 1.8% max health. 2.5% melee defense. 6.25% global recharge. 7% accuracy to all powers. etc. But when you start having lots of these? You can become a god. You never benefit from more than 5 instances of the same set bonus, but even with that rule, these are Amazing when you have IO sets everywhere. The "Guides" section of the Forums has a few articles about enhancements, and just as importantly, some pointers on how to amass a lot of Influence. Not every method will be your cup of tea, but I do recommend browsing. In particular, this one really really helped me when I was new. Some of the exact numbers they quote are no longer quite true, but the big-picture idea still works just fine. You'll often see people refer to this method as "Converter Roulette".

I hear what you're saying, but if you ever frequented the CoH forums back on Live, remember how many one-word posts there were there, as well. Just /jranger, which had become forum shorthand for "This is a terrible idea, under no circumstances do we ever want to see anything like this, and the poster's intellect is highly suspect for that matter." Take away the reaction icons, I guaran-dam-tee you will start seeing a flood of /jranger replies, and probably a few others will be cooked up and instituted. Personally, I'd far rather keep the reaction icons, which at least eliminate that kind of chaff from the actual message streams. You can always just flat out ignore the icons if you wish. There are no settings to ignore one-word text replies, or forum replies that are just images/meme's, etc. Be careful what you wish for.

I get it may be percieved as "Very Low Priority; Workaround Already Exists". But I would hope exposing the toggle as another line item in the UI would be ... really tame. Granted, standard code rant applies, I have not personally reviewed the code, so perhaps it would be a beast. But usually adding a toggle or YN prompt to a screen isn't that that traumatic.

What if I don't want Dillo freed from his *hoorb* addiction? Is there another option to donate to @Snarkythat can help the one who is Dillo maintain his *hoorb* ness?