Greycat

Out to EAT - Epic ATs in City of Heroes This is an expansion and update of my EAT at War Witch’s guide from back on live. This is not a “how to build/play” for the Epic ATs we have or even a deep dive into the lore behind them. I’ve simply been fascinated by, and a fan of, the Epic AT concept since running into them way back in Issue 3 on live. What’s the purpose of this guide? Information and my own entertainment, mostly. This is meant to be a look at the concept of Epic ATs and what was proposed. We had some information on them back on live - some were mentioned ages ago and never came to light, or came to light differently - and some were mentioned afterward. Some, we have quite a bit of information on, some just a quick mention in passing. I would not expect Homecoming or any other successor server to come up with a true EAT. Even for the live development team, EATs were a lot of work - coming up with powersets and everything associated with them such as animations, then coming up with storylines from 1-50 specifically for them and, going by what they’d done before, only playable by those characters. For many of these, design was done, as well as some animation, but art and content were not. (Hosun Lee, 2013 AMA.) So what is an Epic AT? An Epic AT is an AT which is tied to some specific aspect of game lore. The “Epic” moniker is meant in the vein of the Epic of Gilgamesh - a story. It’s meant to set these apart so the player knows that there’s going to be story attached, and with it some restrictions and / or something special related to that story. For example, Kheldians (Peacebringer/Warshade,) the first EATs released, were initially locked - you had to get to level 50 to make one. They were restricted in origin, had special enemies, had certain power pools restricted, and can’t be made on the “wrong” side (not that there was a villain side when they were released.) In return, you got an extended power list and a unique shapeshifting AT, a special contact and story arcs running from 1-50. Even though only a scant pair of concepts made it all the way to having an AT in game, there are hints and traces of others throughout. Some were realized in other ways, some have their impact in the game environment, story arcs or clues. Some never had anything player-facing show up at all. Some of what I put in here will be guesses, and I’ll endeavor to be clear about them - if you see “Likely” or “Possibly,” it’s obviously a guess that I think makes sense with what we know about them.

Precisely. If someone specifically is asking "I want a high damage set/high AOE set/etc," that's another matter and can be answered that way. But the "I like this set but someone told me it sucks, did I make a mistake?" - no, you didn't, and that sort of attitude about "only the high damage stuff is best" is nothing but damaging. No, I don't think @Ghost misread it, because the OP says *exactly that.* They build for concept, but: So, yes, for someone like this? It's fine to say (say) "Earth/FF on a controller is going to be slow, just so you know" or "Plan for a fire/storm controller to be an END hog" or answer about performance for people *asking for damage-above-all* with rankings and whatnot. But when they're being told it sucks *and it directly ends up lowering their enjoyment of the game,* then letting them know that playing for concept is fine and perfectly viable *is* the appropriate answer. No matter if other people don't like that answer or not. Play to your own goals and enjoyment.

"Vengeance is mine!" sayeth the Defender who took Leadership. 😉

Lemming things badgers are revolting, noted... 😉 (I'm actually surprised this wasn't mentioned earlier, though. Even by me...)

Nope.

Merits, yes, salvage, no. Threads can also be used to purchase "super" inspirations in Ouroboros from Luna if you want something else to burn them on.

I like it. >.> While we're at it, how about a "greatest american hero" flail (granted, I think that was mostly when he was trying to land) or one with the character resting on their back, head propped in their hands, not even looking where they're going... >.> (I have plenty of non serious characters - and even a few of the serious ones - who'd use any number of things like this.)

Pistol mullets. And that works.

Not sure I'd join, but something to consider for your costume challenges (on off weeks if someone doesn't have ideas) - For a while there were color palette contests run (well, challenges, not contests, no prizes other than "look at these!") on live. I did them for a bit as well - and finding a good palette can be challenging itself - but just throwing out a 3-4 color palette and giving folks X time to come up with something is surprisingly fun. (Think I used to use Kuler, but the site was either down or paid last time I checked... some time ago. Other sites like colorkit.co exist, though. ) (In other words, doing something like "Match this as best you can and see what you can do with it!" and just giving these colors to work with: )

I keep expecting a suggestion for a new GM with some of the Water based powers from the title. As far as the OP? Yeah, GMs aren't going through gates - they'd get zapped. (I'd had to intentionally do that on live a time or two.) Even if they didn't, I'd ... really rather not have them crossing zones, and *really* not if it were awarding double merits - that'd be exploited to hell and back. (And, personally, I'm not fond of the "announce who did it!" thing, but that's more a me thing.)

No it isn't. There's nothing to the original post but "this NPC has no chill," and nothing to be added with further discussion. There's no "fresh look" to be had. Especially from a post *From 2019.* This is why there should be a lock on posts after some amount of time with no activity.

I'm *suspecting* not. Or that it might not be desirable to the dev team because off the length of some of the old TFs (old Posi vs Posi 1,) or just to avoid confusion. Or, well, game code prevents it. But those are just my guesses.

Nope, it was created after. Some people liked the fast non-snipe and wanted it 24/7. (And yes, I want an IO that does the opposite and prevents fast snipe.)

I've heard this from one or two other folks, but haven't experienced it myself - though I rarely change the color of my windows. Curious about this myself.

There are actually three types of ambush behaviour I've noted: 1. Goes to preset location. Usually if you find something or rescue someone. Avoidable by ... walking slightly to the side and watching them run by, even if not stealthed. 2. Goes to player-location-on-triggering. More noticeable with waves. While they act *much* like #1, they'll end up at different locations - either where you were at a timer, where you were when it triggered, or where you were when the last enemy (apparently) of the last wave defeated or the body vanished. 3. The heat seeker. The ones that hunt you down no matter what, follow through elevators, if a teammate dies and comes back they run to the door JUST to kill them again. Ignores stealth. (I *want* to say there's one that's kind of a mix of 2 and 3, that'll run to a location *then* start hunting, but they're a little hard to determine... they're very easy to miss if they're doing this.)

... worst bowl of Lucky Charms ever.

Mm, yeah, had to double check, Parry gives a Melee/Lethal damage buff, but not Smashing. Edit: Heh. @Rudra, ya jinx... 🙂

Well, I did put in "Def/Res" later. And depending on the set, some *are* fairly drop-dead simple to cap or near-cap. 🙂

I do. Still no issue. And the OP did mention blasters.

... which might be an argument *against* it, depending on how the team feels about how close it may come to automating things. I'm ... eh, not really for or against, personally, probably not something I'd use but right off the top of my head I'm not coming up with downsides to consider.

Positional shouldn't be bad, but typed does have duplicates. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that gives (say) Smashing but not Lethal def/res, or Energy but not Negative Energy. So tracking one is tracking the other. But, still not against being able to track more. I'm not sure how hard "more than one window" would be, given how touchy UI stuff seems to be. Wouldn't argue against it though.

I haven't seen them disappear "every few days," but getting new attributes to monitor - you'll note "Gravity" was added recently - breaks existing windows, which is *really* irritating. (Sort of like what happens at the tailor with new costume parts... not infrequently, with perfectly fine costumes now being "invalid.") And I suspect for the same reason, as besides having new and exciting empty spaces, some (many) of my characters with these windows now had things I wouldn't care about tracking tracked. (Trivia: This can also apply to powers, though the situation only came up once. Back when Patron, then Ancillary pools gained five powers on Live (after the devs looked at all the torches and pitchforks from initially just replacing powers in the patron pools and decided "Adding? Adding is better, yes,") it broke both Domination and Kheldians by "bumping" Domination and Kheld powers "over" a slot without changing the icons. So you'd, say, want to fire a blast and change forms instead. Took a little bit to fix in beta when that happened.) Edit: And *Yes, please!* to being able to save layouts.

Well, no. They rise if there's someone in range. I try to finish them off with the Nemesis Staff specifically to avoid this. And their health, as I recall, is tied to how many people are in range.

*just reads the title* Well, you don't want them to RUST now, do you? ... ok, that out of my system, I think it'll depend on just what you're playing. If you're in Bricks, you can do the Zig breakout with all the Freaks in the middle portion. Ignoring the "Break the event because some run away," it can either be rather easy or annoyingly difficult depending on the character and how they handle drains, stuns, knockback and the like. I think Freaks are ... probably all right. They're petering out in the 30s, having been introduced at 20. They've had tweaks made (such as the sonic tanks and super stunners.) It kind of feels like they *should* be at the end of their run pretty much by the time you hit 40 - in some ways they take over from primal Clockwork who've had their run from 1-20 (looking at similarities with things like end drain.) While they do linger a bit past that (DreckWorld, for instance,) they're not really a major focus or all that relevant - you've graduated to groups with more tricks and things to concern yourself with (DE being introduced in the 30s with their varying buffs/debufs, Carnies, Malta.) So... yeah, I think they're about right for what and when they are.

... and you necro'd a nearly *four year old thread* (last response, October, 2020) for this why? Psychics are supposed to see the *future,* not the past.