FupDup

Counterfeits of relics and weapons exist in real life, so I see no reason why they couldn't exist in the costume creator either. Unless that means we're going to remove Tech Wired costume pieces just because Positron has them (in a unique color). I think there might even be at least one radio/newspaper mission about something like that? I don't remember, but the point still stands.

Cobalt, from a coding standpoint is it possible for the shield to be attached to the side of the character's left glove as if it was just a giant costume piece rather than a separate weapon in your hand? That might be able to bypass some of the animation jank because the shield would just move with the left glove. Admittedly that could cause a lot of clipping with the big shields but I'm willing to live with that. Or maybe restrict Sents to just the smaller shields with less clipping if it's really bad.

A really weird one was when I had the Ghostslayer Rifle (or w/e it's called) temp power redside. The normal animation for characters is a regular 2-handed rifle shot, nothing out of the ordinary. But for shield users, the animation has you hold the weapon in your right hand, arm extended straight but with the gun pointing downwards diagonally, taking a long time to pull the trigger, then when you fire the arm recoils back. It just looks so incredibly haphazard that I wouldn't be surprised if the live devs didn't even know about it. I think this power could just use the one-handed Single Shot animation that Wolf Spiders use.

I try to keep at least one slot open at all times if only because the red message INSPIRATIONS FULL! triggers my OCD. But if I'm on a team and we're cleaning house, they can flood in pretty fast.

Satellite Blast confirmed.

This isn't an issue on any of the other 4 armored ATs, so I don't think it would really present a problem for Sents either. Judging by how Willpower got changed for Sents, I'm guessing that the Sent version of Shield would just give a flat bonus instead of scaling based on nearby enemies. Or possibly get replaced with something else like a sustain power (since Sent armors that lack sustain on other ATs are always given some). Bio is definitely not in any danger here because of just how bonkers of a set it is, and Fire is just kinda weird since it has less damage than Bio with less armor too...

Every time this comes up, I have to shake my head and marvel at just how incredibly janky shield's animations were handled. I admit I don't know much about goes on "under the hood" in this game, but I would think that the live devs could've handled shields as an extension of the left glove costume piece where it just gets mounted onto the side of your wrist so both hands are free to hold stuff. Like seriously, look at this cheater over here with his AR/Shield Sentinel:

It's not terrible by any means. When the stars align, like during large clusterducks of enemies in a KMITF, it can kick more ass than any other blast set. Basically any time you have a continuously-refilling mob of baddies, particularly with some kind of taunt/mezz allies to keep them clustered, is when it shines the brightest. And Lightning Strike/Direct Strike has straight-up the best animation in the game. Unfortunately, the stars aren't gonna always align. That's when the set feels like it makes you jump through more hoops than it's worth. This is so far the only blast set where I felt obligated to take an immobile power from epic pools to try to keep baddies in place. On some enemies this works pretty well, but on others they just run/fly away immediately no matter how many times I stack the immob on them (5-slotted with a purple set). And the setup times can be a problem on some steamroller teams if you don't make sure to always run ahead of the pack. But all in all, it's not trash or terrible. It could use some polish but there are quite a few worse sets in the game that should come first (like badsword).

Besides the visual effects and theming/naming, what secondary effect would a light blast set even have? Because any new set needs to have some kind of functional/combat difference to justify its creation.

Also, relevant meme:

Brainstorm has insta-50 already so that mostly fulfills the purpose as long as you don't mind the ghost town.

I think a big part of the issue is the fact that the player market is the only practical way to acquire most items. Either you're entirely at the mercy of RNG for drops, or you have to deal with the wildly overpriced merit vendors. The market isn't an optional side method, it's the de-facto primary way to get nearly everything. IMO merit vendor prices for most enhancements, recipes, salvage rolls (still RNG but at least not a total rip-off), etc. should probably be lowered to put them somewhere near the median price of what those items sell for on the market right now and be locked in at that price. The special "salvage" like converters and boosters would be unchanged. And I also think we should be able to directly buy completed enhancements, not just recipes (recipes should of course be a bit cheaper than the finished product). That would set an effective upper limit on the market price because if somebody tried to charge more than the merit vendor then people would just take their business to the merit vendor. Ultimately, the important thing to remember is that this is all about getting items into players' hands since this thing is basically standing in as the game's unofficial item shop. I don't worship at the altar of muh freeeee market. I want a consistent amount of playtime/effort to translate to a consistent amount of rewards (not just the xp/inf but also enhancements and stuff).

The main thing that holds me back from playing a buffer is that I don't want to have to pay close attention to other people on my team and/or make sure that debuffs are kept active on baddies. I just wanna enter a room and start blasting/punching because I'm lazy and also I tend to get very tunnel-visioned. I also like having mezz protection built-in to my base kit, which limits the support sets I could use anyways.

I think a first easy step for this would be to just tone down the mezz protection/resists of the high-end enemies a bit rather than creating artificial "must-have" scenarios.

Steven Sheridan: The Organ Grinders is another really good one that goes deep into it but that's another high-ish level arc (35-39).

Montague Castanella: Lost and Found There's also a few other arcs here and there that reveals the Rikti/Lost thing without being as detailed, like one of Timothy Raymond's and one of the RWZ arcs. I think there was one other blueside arc that I can't quite remember who it's given by.

It's definitely intentional. I confirmed it with Bopper in Discord. I still think it's a strange choice but they're not changing it back.

Play the final mission of Scirocco's "Hammer of the World" arc. Use KB to fling enemies off the edges into the infinite abyss for a one-shot kill. If you have a -fly effect, you can even instakill Scirocco himself by luring him over the void and then grounding him (Storm Blast's T1 attack is good for this). I also did this to Ice Mistral when she came to his aid. It doesn't give much XP to kill them this way, but the hilarity makes up for it tenfold.

When it comes to building stuff with shards, waiting for shards to drop randomly then convert them to salvage is extremely painful and not recommended for anyone, ever. However, if you do very specific TFs/SFs you can get the salvage outright (i.e. Ancient Nictus Fragment from ITF). In theory this could be pretty fast but in practice some of the TFs aren't very popular (like LRSF/MLTF) so that knocks the wind out of the sails of that approach. IMO it's less trouble to just combine shards into threads and use those for everything. I don't want to have to either wait around for rare TFs or learn how to host them myself and wait for people to join.

I don't think the buff pets should be unkillable because then that makes them a mandatory for everyone. The bonuses are small, yes, but I'd still rather not have that. The vanity pets however pose no such risk so those being unkillable would be completely fine. I think the buff pets should just have similar health as an underling or minion. Enough to survive a sneeze so they can better fulfill their purpose of making the early game a bit smoother. And perhaps a reduced threat level or minor stealth or something because right now enemies like to prioritize them even when you're playing an AT with higher base threat level like Sents.

IMO the pool should have a taunt aura on T2 or T3...it's kind of criminal that it doesn't.

For the first idea, that sounds like it wound require multiple different ability choices on each tier, making the total set around 30+ powers. The devs have stated that the mutually exclusive thing they did with Sentinel SR was a one-time thing so that's not happening at all. As for a change element toggle, that is possible in terms of coding but I don't like that it would step on the toes of DP (assuming similar elements like ice and fire). If there was to be another stance-change blast set I'd rather it have totally different damage types that DP doesn't have (en, neg, psi). Not very elemental though...

A free respec is given every 10 levels, so you would have had 2 on that character. It's kinda hard to use up both of them so early, but at least the first respec trial is only 3 levels away (24). Opening superpacks with a more established alt can also yield you some extra respecs that can be used by any of your other alts.

There are a few other missions that give you uber god powers. The two I know of are the last mission in Vincent Ross' arc (redside) and the last mission of Pandora's Box Part 5 (you have to kill the Warhulks to get it). As for making that permanent...gonna say probably not to that.

Thank goodness, I was scared for a second that I'd have to re-engineer a bunch of builds in Mids. Crisis averted!