MTeague

I do love my Spines/Regen stalker. He's scrappy as all hell and I have no hesitation in being "acting tank" (or at least, "alpha soaker") for a 2-6 man group. And he's a STALKER, not a brute, not a tank. But at lvl 35, he's still tricked out well enough to have 50% smashing/lethal resist, 24% melee and ranged defense, and he's ridiculously durable for someone who isn't even a tank. For an actual tank though... the problem is balancing things. If you regen too weakly, you can't sustain enough damage, the set becomes labeled "fail" and people shun it like a skunk sprayed it. Except for we few contrary folks who enjoy doing "Garbage of the Month" builds just to see if we can make it work when everyone else says no. If you regen too strongly, then your character is literally an immortal god and nothing of this world (or the next) can harm them. And then every other set becomes "fail" by comparison. I don't know how you square that circle and still keep things even enough that nothing eclipses everything else. I certainly understand why they havne't been eager to try. On the other hand, with IO's and Incarnates, I'm not sure "balance" even is a thing anymore lol.

I mean there is Kick, Boxing, and Crosspunch, and if you do get all three, they can be surprisingly effective. And there's Project Will and Arcane Bolt. But...... NOT an AT that I would likely roll. I wouldn't object in principle to it existing, but I think they'd get way more bang-for-buck via Melee/Support or Support/Melee.

I pack in as much defense as I can *after* hitting permadom. Permadom is just too damn good not to shoot for. Constant Status Protection alone is totally worth the price of the IO's. I don't care as much if my Dom gets softcapped defenses though. Most things are gonna be locked down or beating each other up from Seeds of Confusion or holds, or stunned by Psychic Shock Wave. After I have permadom, I favor ranged defense > melee defense = AOE defense. I don't totally redo power choices for it though. If I don't have Weave, ok, I don't have Weave. I don't need it on every character, and I prefer some flexibility rather than *always* taking the same pools on every character every time.

Actually that's not how i read it. I read it as a desire to channel people into other people's SG instead of people having personal SG's, so that then there can be a more populated "guild chat" and someone can set out organized and structured goals that other people should want to work for, instead of people doing what they darn well please with their own evening. Becuase you bring back Prestige, you bring back upkeep. Then someone's personal huge decorated superbase? SHUTS DOWN and can no longer be entered or used until the upkeep is paid. Admittedly, it could be done without upkeep... but the way I read it the original poster would be fine and dandy with 80% or more of the personal supergroups ceasing to exist and people needing to look for a new group to join. Maybe I'm just being very uncharitable in my interpretation however. These things happen after a long day at work.

There's always Kick / Boxing / Crosspunch too. If you take all three, they DO boost up quite nicely. And if you were already planning to get Weave, you're already dipping into that pool some. And, Kick becomes a VERY reliable Knockdown vehicle (40% chance), which is mitigation along with damage. If I was gonna do it I'd say Kin/Sonic, but it depends how much you plan to do this as a solo feat vs if you'll be teaming a lot. Dark/, Rad/, and Time/, are all very solid choices too.

You may wish to look at how virtually every other game in existence is run.

My position remains 100% unchanged. a) I do not have a high opinion of the perceptiveness and rational thinking of a crowd of gamers, and their ability to step back and consider alternate points of view and whether or not there's other angle they should consider. Case in point. I see /Regeneration roundly panned by the vast majority of players. I've never had a problem with it and quite frankly I suspect many people have never touched it, and are going purely by groupthink and crowd opinion instead of actually TRYING IT. And anytime I see power changes in any game... EverQuest, Diablo2, WoW, CoX, Fallout, etc... that I consider measured and well reasoned, there is always a massive wailing and gnashing of teeth on the forums for that particular game. Without fail. b) ultimately this is not and at root can never be some kind of democracy . Fundamentally, the devs are hosting us. We play at their sufference and they can show people the door at any time. That they are a much more levelheaded and reserve that for only gross misbehavior doesn't mean that the fundamental ownership has in any way changed.

Hm... the vote is missing a choice. I vote "I think the devs should act when they see fit, as they see fit, whether or not the playerbase agrees with them."

Some stalker sets are more single target focused, some are more AE-friendly. But if you solo a lot, you're unlikely to be in a situation where you NEED to burn down a host of mobs all at once. Caltrops is a hidden gem in /Ninjistu. Stops incoming damage from melee foes cold as they slowly try to escape the pain-field, and you get total free hits in the meantime. Also, the Stalker ATO's are *extremely* nice, to the point of being game-changing. Unless you're doing a deliberate live-off-the-land build, I heartily recommend slotting both ATO procs at lvl 10 or as close as you can after. Even if you move them around later with unslotters.

Defender. To be clear, I'm not talking about "first impression on Homecoming." I'm talking "first impression" which for me means Live, back in issue 0 or maybe 1. I don't always solo. But when I do, I drink DosEquis But I do solo at least some on every character, and I have a certain minimum "Okay. You're supposed to be Super Hero or a Super Villian. So you should darn well FEEL super." On live this meant setting difficulty to at least "Rugged", I think the Homecoming analog would be +2x1 With Solo Bosses ON. Back in Live, I simply couldn't get a defender past that. Not even a major story arc mission. Just a door mission with Skulls or 5th Column ("Council" didn't exist at that time... it was 5th Column). All they did was rack up impressive levels of debt. My scrappers, tankers, controllers could manage just fine. Blasters were squishy but if I hoarded my inspirations I could generally burn the boss down before it burned me down. But a Defender? Solo? Back then. Uh-uh. I pretty much HAD TO team to progress in any way, and then the character stopped feeling Super. Sure, they could heal Bob the Scrapper, or they could toss out some bubbles, or put out some Rad Debuff anchors. And they could help out a team. But if they were 100% guaranteed to die and rack up debt solo, then they weren't a hero... they were a sidekick at best. I did not roll another Defender for a long, long time. Not until after IO's were a thing. Now of course, I have four Defenders, which tops the spread among my alts. (Most AT's I have 3 of, some only 2). IO's and ATO's and general changes along the way changed things Considerably.

Another good reason to NOT have a Road Map is sometimes, hopefully not often, but sometimes, you will find that what sounded like a good idea is simply not feasible in any realistic timeframe, and the idea, however good it might be from the end user point of view, has to be put into the trash can. Not simply shelved or "maybe we can look at it later" but, "Sorry you have no CONCEPT of the amount of code rewriting that would have to occur, we are not spending 3-4 years on just this one idea, we just ain't gonna do it." Now imagine if they had to say something like that AFTER it had appeared on a road map? No matter how many disclaimers were on that road map? The rage (however irrational) would be legendary.

Don't know what to tell you. I did that mission just last week on a Blaster, and both bosses stayed relatively put. It was just your basic "pop inspirations and burn 'em down" encounter for both fights. Of course, I did use Glue Arrow on them, which may prevent them from jumping.

We could have a new Inherent called "Chew Bubblegum". Kinda like Fury? Except it starts full, and the more you attack, the more it wears down. Until you are all out. of bubblegum. 😁

I have a real hard time choosing any Dominator secondary OTHER than Psi Assult. Drain Psyche. leaving out every other power. giant -Regen debuff, huge personal +Recovery +Regen boost, for an AT with few normal self-healing options (though there's always Entropic Chaos procs...). Being your own debuffer to rip down the EB's, AV's, GM's regen? is vey vey nice. Psychic ShockWave is also huge though. Admittedly, it's your T9, lvl 38 to get it. But if you already have enough +Recharge for Perma Dom, this thing comes back FAST, and it's a strong PBAE that just wrecks most mobs, and also applies the -Recharge to them and also Stuns them, AND, the stun effect benefits from Domination. It's a perfect followup to a cast of Seeds of Confusion. (admittedly, yes, there are other dominator primaries, but did I mention I really really looooves me some confusion?)

I definitely think it's best if the person forming the TF sets the expectations in the message that they spam to LFG channel. And I think that even if, to you, there is a blindingly obvious and clear "default" for the TF, still specify that when sending messages to LFG channel. Because I guaran-dam-tee there's gonna be people out there who disagree with what you think the "default" should be for a given TF. And really you only have to type it once. How much harder is it to say "Forming Citadel TF, +0 speed run for quick merits, pst", or "Forming Citadel TF, +2, kill lots for exp and merits! pst" vs "Forming Citadel TF, pst". Might cost you entire seconds to type it out, and you avoid SO MUCH headaches once the group forms. Sure, there's no guarantee everyone actually READS your full text, (because, you know, reading is HARD...), and sure, there's no guarantee people will honor it. You may still have a pair of stalkers dead set on speed running it and finishing the mission no matter what you do. You may still have a Tank or Brute who's less sure of themselves and wants a slower more methodical clear. These things happen. But you at least would have set the tone, and it's entirely on THEM at that point if they don't like it, and you'd be entirely justified to kick them if they're causing grief.

I ran an Archery / Tactical Arrow blaster through 1-21, turning of XP for a long time at 9, and 14, and 19, so as not to outlevel any content. A blaster DID, admittedly, get dicey at times. Esp at lvl 9-12 range. But I made it through the vast majority of Praetorian missions without dying. Although I popped a lot of inspirations, including a bunch of Double Inspirations from Superpacks. And I did trick her out with Attuned everything. 4 ATO's from each blaster ATO set, Regenerative Tissue +25% regen, a couple of Entomb's for Ice Arrow, etc. This was most decidely NOT a live off the land character.

Levitate can be nice because it's Smashing damage for those pesky robots and Banished Pantheon zombies that take verrrry little damage from Psi. Also the flip up and knockdown is a few seconds where you can put a loose mob under control without it beating upon you. Totally agree on going wild with Confuse. having an AE to go with it to tag mobs is also nice, but evne if a few here and there are 100% killed by other confused mobs, even if it costs a few xp per kill, you get a lot more xp per time. and it's just plain FUN 🙂

I also main'd an Enchanter back in the EQ days, and my main character was specifically chosen to emulate that. Mind/Kin Controller Mezzes (sleeps), Charms (Confuse), Stuns (Holds) Slows + Hastens (Siphon Speed, Speed Boost) Enemy Debuffs (Siphon Power, Fulcrum Shift) Team Buffs (Siphon Power, Fulcrum Shift, Increase Density) Mana Replenishment (Transference) Never regretted it once. It is true, Mind does not get permanent pets like Fire, Dark, and most other (all other?) control sets. But c'mon if you Charm Solo'd at all in EQ, you can totally do this in CoH. And you'll probably have quite a bit of fun, though it might be a little iffy getting off the ground at first. Full disclosure, Confuses are among my most favorite powers in the game. I am entirely biased on this matter.

Hephaesto, my Fire/Thermal Corruptor back on Live, became a Fire/Fire Sentinel here. He's FAR more what I wanted the original character to be. A well nigh indestructable being of living steel and fire, but who throws fire and sets things on fire, but doesn't magically summon fire swords. If Sentinels existed back when City of Villians was first released, it's exactly what he would have been. Instead, back in live, I had to choose between making him tough like a brute, or being able to throw fire but being squishy. He worked as a Corruptor, but I was never really happy with it.

I would love this. I'm sure it would be.... Unfun... to code. I think some animations / powers are regrettably intertwined. But the biggest reason I have never made a Tri-Form character is I *hate* the look of the squid. I know, lots of people love it, and all power do you. It doesn't do it for me.

This is true. I have switched costume colors sometimes when making a new character because of this, or gone to helmets / hoods.

Given that every other badge is Ouro-able, or has some other equivalent thing like Villian Disruptor to go and get Safeguards you missed, I can't think of any reason this one arc should be held sacred and special. If it would really offend the sensibilities of the devs (and I doubt it would, they enjoy this game too....), but if for some reason there was concern over "watering it down", "making it worthless"....maybe something like scale everything to 44 force exemp to 44 so you *have* to do it without Incarnate powers? Because that seems like it would ramp up the challenge a fair bit, while still allowing people to take another spin on the wheel later if they lost power or real life exploded in their lap in the middle of a mission.

For all that I see Lethal damage panned, my Claws scrapper has never felt weak. I mean, I won't turn down a buff... but I can't say i've felt like it was needed.

That's further than I'm willing to go. I can sort of see it for ONE SINGLE character. But "name-squatting" for a character I've created and just havent' played yet, is one thing. Reseving a character name, or several names!, on a server I don't even play on... that would feel wrong to me. I guess it does depend how much you bounce around various servers though. I tend to be only on Excelsior.

I wouldn't leave.... but I might simply retire characters rather than accept having to rename them. Depends on the character. About 12 of my character names I am VERY firmly attached to, because I had those names on Guardian back in Live. Even having to change spelling or add an extra word in front of them would distress me. I'd see if I could move them to another server and rename them, and if I could not.... they would simply be parked forever, and I would focus on other characters. I'd also probably take a 2-3 week break playing Civ IV BTS while I /pouted and railed against FirstWorldProblems, until I got back on and played the characters whose names I could keep.