MTeague

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"

Mind/Kin is a nice combo but it can be will be slow to start. It works best if you're fully willing to use Confuses to protect yourself and your team. Levitate is some team-friendly knockup damage mitigation (boss ain't attacking while flung into the air or getting back up) Terrify (the Cone-Fear) is really more of a personal damage vehicle than much else. But it is nice to apply damage to a crowd after Mass Confuse to ensure exp will be had by all. Transfusion Siphon Speed is easy to stack and the +20% recharge you get from it stacks. Very nice for unleashing lots of mags of hold for EB's / AV's. Increase Density will give hold/stun/knockback protection to everyone else and smashing/energy resist. But it's not nearly as "noticeable" as the rest of the /Kin powers. Speed Boost / Fulcrum Shift <mic drop>

I really think Caltrops is wildly underrated by a lot of people. It doesn't do a ton of damage, but it slows the heck out of mobs and they take time trying to get off the caltrops and that's FREE HITS on them. At the very least it's a period of no incoming damage from them. No, you don't want to use Caltrops on the pack that a tank just pulled for AE nuking, but if a group of melee has gotten past to your squishies, toss those bad boys on the ground! I would like to see Triage Beacon become Triage Drone however.... something mobile that could follow you.

Just finding this thread, sounds like a blast. I'm just picturing an entire Amazon Jungle of Carrion Creepers causing chaos galore. But for your Plant/Sonic's -Res toggle - drop it on a Dominator. They tend to have a fair number of melee attacks and will probably be least shy about getting up close and personal. Esp if you tell them, you're going to put the toggle on them, and if they've got Sonic bubbles up to make them much less squishy. My Plant/Psi dominator usually lives in melee (Drain Psyche, and all...)

I cry a little bit when I see "Does not do the Confuse route". Confuse, is frickin' AWESOME. Confuse = completely free hits on the confused mob, and it's not hard to keep a mob perma-confused. Plus, the confused mob will help your team fight. "But you lose xp", not really. If the confused mob does 100% of the damage to an enemy and kills it solo, then and ONLY then, do you not get exp. If people deal at least ONE SINGLE hp of damage to the target before the confused mob kills it, you get like 50% of the exp you would have gotten if your team killed it outright. And the Exp you get scales up the more damage your team does to it. And you kill FASTER (and safer). It's not about XP per kill, it's XP per TIME. Levelling, Confuse is great. At 50? Confuse a Sapper. Watch and giggle as it saps the Malta Zues Titan instead of your friends. Same with Carnie Ring mistresses. They'll toss their Mark of Vitae on an enemy, not you or a teammate. Rikti Guardians? They'll bubble you and give you Accelerated Metabolism. Knives of Artemis? Their caltrops instantly stop hurting you and start hurting and slowing them, and they run away all slowly and it's free hits baby. Mass Confuse is every bit as good. a) stacked with regular confuse, it's a one-two-whammy to confuse any boss. b) one cast and your squishes are safe to alpha strike whatever. c) just got jumped from behind? Mass Confuse / Terror, they're all beating each other up, you've damaged all of them, group will get plenty of exp for the kills without turning to focus on them. And with good +Recharge, yes it possible to Confuse EB's and even AV's. It's rare that you would need to, true, but i've saved groups where we didn't have a tank and the big bad would whomp down the squishes too fast. Popped Hasten, got good confuse rotation going while the rest held back and sure enough, confused, then everyone UNLOADED on it during free hit and we wins. Most of the time though, for EB's / AV's, you're better of with Hasten, Dominate (with Lockdown proc), Mass Domination (with Lockdown proc), and Telekneisis to rapidly dump mags of Hold. My main is a Mind/Kin/Psi. For Mind, I took every power. Every last one of them. And use them all. Not in every fight, the right tool for the right job. For Kin I skipped Siphon Power and Inertial Reduction. Took everything else. He's a blast to play.

There's MANY villian groups it makes no lore-wise sense for. But I admit, I would cheer if I saw two Rikti Mentalists merge together and form a glowing ball of ghostly rage and said "Power Overwhelming!!" Blizzard would probably object to that specific one though. And lorewise, Rikti != Protoss.

Something like this might be easier to rationalize too, if there were more "styles" of crab-pack. Maybe a translucent energy crab pack. Maybe a boney / spikey organic crab pack (I'm thinking Kerrigan Queen of Blades here). It could also make it easier to justify Crabs with different origins, or even make a crab-pack appealing to a NON crab as a costume choice, if it didn't come with an Arachnos logo and have two choices that are both high-tech instead of something that might be psionic/natural/magic/mutant. It would be controllable to have it appears vs not, same way there are Auras that are always on or Combat only. That said. I am a programmer. (NOT with homecoming, or any game company, i do medical software). I know full well this could be a VERY large undertaking, in terms of artwork, in terms of code invasiveness, etc. I do not beleive this can qualify as "Best use of limited man-hours" anytime soon. But I think it's entirely reasonable to put the idea on an "It would be nice if..." list, as long as we don't form expectations.

Because Zer0 has a sniping tree and melee trees. "Striking from nowhere / Killing with accuracy / This is who I am."

if the target was walking back and forth they might have moved outside of range during the interrupt period.

If you solo at all, don't underestimate Spore Burst. A well timed sleep can save you big levelling up. That said, if you plan to group most of the time, it's probably not worth it to you.

I have zero problems with AE existing, though I have not and will not ever use a designated Farm mission on any character, ever. I will use AE to surf for missions with actual story content. Some of those are disappointing, some are truly amazing. But my characters, mostly I level doing normal story arc content. Not AE at all. Not even TF's. Just talking to contacts and doing a variety of street sweeping or door missions. Please do NOT take this option away from me or trivialize it into a speed-levelling experience. If you touch story arcs at all, please make them more like Praetoria, where the arcs are exceptionally well written and it has a greater feel of your choices impacting the world.

Just because they can't see you doesn't mean it's completely impossible that they decided just as that moment to start walking to the coffee maker. Or maybe they DO know you're there and are just trolling you by pretending to not notice you and just by chance move out of your way at the last second.

Keep in mind the amount of coding, and artwork, needed for any new powersets, much less characters based around entirely new mechanics. Keep in mind resources vs man-hours. I mean, OK,, on one hand, sure, Dream Big. Nothing wrong with having an "in an ideal world" list out there. But I would temper expectations around reality, at LEAST until they can manage to get formal "you're legit" papers from NCSoft.

I like the idea. Especially if could toggle for the kind of enhancement you're protecting. Maybe I don't give a rat's behind about Training Enhancements, Dual Origins, Single Origins, or even Basic IO's. But I do want to protect my Hami-O's, my set IO's, my ATO's, etc. I do suspect it would be "non-trivial" to make the change though.

Agreed. It's certainly not the only text description that's flat wrong. The "Recharge Intensive Pet" set IO's still say they cannot be slotted in MM henchmen powers, which I believe was true on Live, but is not true on Homecoming. I'm guessing it's a matter of "bigger fish to fry" or "keep forgetting to slam that into the code before next patch".

I'd like to see this happen. /EA could be rough on a brute back when CoV first launched, but with IO's in play to patch up all the gaps? I think a tank could rock it plenty fine, without even having to change the nature of any of the powers at all. My EM/EA is still staying a Brute, though.

I don't think Trick Arrow needs or should get a heal. You're using a frickin' bow and arrow. That doesn't heal, unless you're shooting suppository medical arrows. But several sets don't get a heal, and are fine. Sonic Resonance, Force Fields, Cold Domination, etc. At MOST perhaps you could have a Triage Arrow that sets up a Triage Beacon (from Traps) at the target location. But keep in mind, that's useless for any fast-moving group, becuase no one stays near it for long. If you want to be a healing archer, the Medicine tree is available, and is honestly a better solution for heals you can use even on teams that move, and top off people as needed. I think efforts are far better placed in strengthening some of the early weak arrows. Entangling Arrow - give it a small fire/toxic dot ("caustic"?) and would allow it to set off Oil Slick. Flash Arrow - I agree the To-Hit debuff is not strong enough as is. I would be fine with a base 10% (or more!). Yes, it's an AE power, but Poison and Radiation get better -To Hit powers at comparable levels in their respective trees. If boosting the to-hit much above 10% would be considered too OP, perhaps add a strong -Range effect, so things have to try to get into melee range with you before they can attack. It wouldn't change much for a "Standard" team with tanks and scrappers and MM minions, but it would make a huge quality of life for anyone soloing if they could use Flash arrow and kite for some free hits. Glue Arrow - I'd look at the -Recharge effect. I don't know what it is right now, but it should be right up there with Snow Storm for -Recharge. I don't know that it needs more than that, except perhaps a faster recharge. Mobs try hard to get OUT of the glue, meaning they move slowly and don't attack. This already mitigates a ton of damage / gives your team lots of free hits. Poison Gas arrow - I think entirely reasonable to give it a -Regen comparable to Poison Gas Trap in Traps.

I won't say I don't ever play any other games. there's days I just want to go for world domination and fire up Civilization. There's days the sandbox itch hits me and I fire up one of the older Bethesda titles. But you can count on seeing me on Excelsior 3-4 nights a week, and most every weekend. I don't care who comes and goes. I don't care who obsesses that the population is above or below a certain threshold. for SEVEN YEARS, I would have been perfectly fine and dandy with a SINGLE PLAYER version of CoH, just to have my fix back. So long as Homecoming exists, *cough* <Ahnold voice on> "I'll be back".

I wouldn't refuse it if Instant Healing became a toggle again. But do I think it *needs* it? Not really. Then again, I'm making no effort to tank LARGE spawns with Regen. And I have no interest in doing so. So my expectations may be very different. My regen is a Spines/Regen stalker. Teaming, I let the Tank tank, and I'm in a half-step behind him critting out the wazoo and tossing in instacast Assassin's Strikes everytime that glorious orange circle appears around it. If I catch aggro on a few stray mobs it simply doesn't matter. I can easily out-regen them. When I solo, I run +2 with bosses, and everything falls before me. Ya, a couple of bosses I've gotta pop a few inspirations before the boss, and use my clickies during the fight. But I win, they don't, unless I'm just sloppy. If you want Regen to be tanking soloing +4/x8 well.... can't advise you there. The set was originally designed only for Scrappers, and later Stalkers. Brutes were a much later afterthought. I don't believe it's design intent ever included solo tanking +4/x8

I can't say my most fun team ever included a tank.... but that's because it was an All Defender Task Force (1 Storm, 1 Rad, 1 Dark, 2 Empaths, 1 Trick Arrow, 1 Sonic, 1 FF) flexing our Defendy muscles and showing the awesome power of Defender pewpewpew. OUTSIDE of such highly specialized cases though, yes, I love having an actual Tank on the team.

<blink> okay, after I checked all of the floor styles it never occured to me there would be a separate category for surfaces. that should take care of me. Thank you!

Okay, I have stumbled and fumbled a bit, and managed to upgrade my plot, add three rooms, learn how to adjust floor and ceiling height, and set the cieling to open sky and choose the kind of sky I want. So far, so good, for a complete newbie as base building. I would like to have one room that looks like a public park, etc. As if you'd just walked from a cave out onto a grassy hill. Under "Place Objects" and the category of "Nature", I found Grass Valley, but it looks like it's 24x24 or something and won't place. I also find Grass Transition #1 and #2, but those only make small patches of grass that don't actually even fill their whole cell... they just sink into the cobblestone floor. You get some grassy look, but I'd like a Wall-To-Wall grass/dirt/hill base for this room's floor. How would you go about doing that?