Greycat

Personally? Instead of going through others opinion of what's good or not (because, frankly, other than about 3-4 sets, pretty much anything you ask about seems to have 99% "that sucks, you're stupid for taking it" answers) - you've got 1000 slots. Sure, go with suggestions, but just make a few combos of your own that *you* think sound interesting and play them. They may stink on ice, sure, but you may just find you have fun with some "bad" sets.

For the OP. Male, female or huge model? Female has several shorts options. Male and Huge have the boxing shorts (which you'd found) and the "Bare" option if you want to run around in briefs. There's a costume suggestion thread around here somewhere. Go there and ask for male and huge shorts. (Because honestly, I see more kilt options there than I've seen people wear kilts in real life.)

I'd have to add that - unless you're PVPing - you're not in competition with anyone else. Perfectly fine to not be min/maxed within an inch of your life and try things out. 🙂

Chewing on this a little more: I don't know if this is doable or not, but part of the "goals" of other zones are, as mentioned, getting contestible items (rocket launch codes, shivan shards, bunkers, heavies.) So, on top of the current standard four PVP missions (buff/debuff damage and resistance for each side,) how about "Go through the walled off city to get components?" These would be components for monitoring (hero) / spying on (villain) the zone (better tracking of bounty targets, indication of stealthed characters - not nullifying it, to be clear, but maybe an alert if one's within 30 yards or something, indicating directions of travel for friendly/enemy reinforcements for the battle, that sort of thing,) or... well, something else. You choose to enter the mission, fight to the end to retrieve the component and get it out. (This could also be done to sabotage a completed buff, perhaps.) Up to... say, 75-85% completion, an opposing player can enter and face you at the end, either up to "even" teams or the missions could be limited to 1-2 players. If it completes past that, they can't enter the mission, the boss group at the end spawns, and the player fights that. To keep someone from just stealthing to the end, make the last room need a key, perhaps. You then take the component to some location in zone to set it up/repair a device/something. (Also, obviously, something the opposing side can contest.) I'm not sure if this is technically doable or not (watching for a player to come in to determine if they can spawn the end groups.) But it would give a goal and another setpiece to PVP in. Edit: Should that *not* be feasable, perhaps (still more.. 🙂 ) missions where you affect communications for one side or the other - which determines if the "get a component" missions have a more difficult guard at the end (they're alerted) or not (communications are disrupted.)

If you're curious for examples on what enemies do what, you can always go to paragonwiki.com. For instance, I did, looked up Council - here's a Nebula Buckshot's entry on powers. Shotgun (Ranged) Cone, Lethal, Foe Knockdown Good at close range. Fires a cone of buckshot pellets and can knock some foes down. Brawl Melee, Smash Council brawling attacks. Versus a Nebula Elite Marksman Cryonic Rounds (Ranged, Lethal/Cold) Foe -Recharge, -Speed Your movement and attack speed has been slowed by the Advanced Rifle Cryonic rounds. Incendiary Rounds (Ranged, Lethal) Minor Damage over Time, Fire You are taking Fire Damage over Time from the Advanced Rifle Incendiary rounds. Brawl Melee, Smash Council brawling attacks. So, if you (somehow) have only Smashing and Melee defense, there's nothing to counter that shotgun, the Cryonic or Incendiary rounds. But you've got some defense if they come in to brawl, since those are smashing/melee. If you have no "typed" defense (smashing, lethal, fire, cold, etc,) but have ranged, AOE, and melee defenses, you've got defense against both of these mobs attacks. They can of course still hit you, but they have a lower chance to. There can be some intricacies (+ mobs, defense debuffs, anything over defense caps, incarnates, etc.) but ... bluntly, I don't care about it enough to keep the math in mind. 🙂 Plenty of people do and can explain it until you're trying to find defense vs math.

1. A solid "it depends." It depends on you, your connection, your usage, your ISP's load, the server load, etc. I'll note that, at least around here, internet providers are reporting slower speeds in general with so many more people working from home. 2. Yes. I couldn't tell you what they were right offhand, though. I'm on and off at weird times. Watch the server load indicators. It's never felt "dead," though. 3. Couldn't say. 4. I haven't *heard* of any but I haven't heard that people don't. Start one! (I don't know if Repeat Offenders has started back up on any of the servers.) 5. Define "Before?" If you played at shutdown, there's a new AT, some new power pools, a few new enhancement (IO) sets, and a bunch of QOL tweaks. If you last played, oh, I9 or so... strap in. 6. Monthly request for donations, which tends to get filled and closed quickly.

You... should be able to now? They generally apply some sort of visual effect or pose on the enemy as it is now. (And there's always the power analyzer, not sure if that helps or not.)

This feels like a completely unneeded tangent.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Control : Powers that reliably prevent enemies from acting at all, such as Holds or Disorients, are considered "hard" controls, while less reliable effects such as Knockback or Sleep are called "soft" controls Confuse is a soft control. Not only can the enemy act, they act against their own allies.

Yep. PVP zone. On live, this was one of my favourites - before we got the "+5 powers when exemped" code and, really, IOs in general. It was the last zone that didn't just turn into a T9 fight. I had fun there. That said, this zone could use some help. No, this is not "Make a pvp zone a pve zone." I think they should generally be left alone (though a non-PVP without the rewards, but with story and standard PVE rewards, could be interesting.) There are two big annoyances with the zone. 1. The battles you're supposed to help out with are... not very dynamic. Pip comes up on the map. Rush there. A few stragglers that were on the wrong side of the lines are cleared up. The two sides stare at each other for what feels like an hour. About when you're ready to fall asleep, someone finally attacks. Yes, players can initiate attacks, but it doesn't seem to actually trigger the *battle.* It is... just flat out boring. There's nothing else to do in the zone but grab the explore badges, stand around for the time-in-zone badges, and do a set of repeatable, fairly generic missions (available in every PVP zone to buff or debuff damage or resistance.) As a goal, this just... wasn't done well. Bloody Bay? You have the meteors, at least, so you have to keep moving, and the only place you're generally pinned down is the firebase. Same with Warburg (codes) and RV (turrets and heavies.) The battles need to be sped up - and yes, I get "giving players time to get there," but this is a bit much - or something else needs to be added to the zone that can be fought over. (Or at least gives a *goal.*) And of course, goals mean rewards, which... er. 2. The bounty system. All right, so there *are* two "goals," of sorts. One is to get control of the zone, which ... takes... a... while. Your reward for this? Two tiers of temp powers which are.... ok. They'd probably be in the cheaper tier of P2W. The other is "Bounty," which you get by defeating other players and participating in (or, apparently, at least being there at the end of) victorious battles. Your side loses, you get nothing. Your side wins, you get 100 bounty. Don't leave the zone, or it vanishes. At 1000 bounty - which, sure, is easy if there's another player, usually, and you win, but the zones aren't exactly *lively* (and I just spent over an hour getting this...) you can pick from - wait for it - a *medium inspiration.* Not even a special one. Plain old medium inspiration. At 6000 bounty, you can get... an SO. Now, yes, the zones came out when SOs were what you mainly slotted with, and getting SOs at 20 (the level the zone opened) would be great. Now? Or even "Most of the time on live?" With these rewards, it's not worth *playing* for bounty. (Which would make #1 less rewarding, if addressed.) The only other reward (which you can only get from 20-30) is by doing the easiest mission - completing a patrol - and getting a temporary Combat Invisibility power. Which is useful and along with the 5 merits for all the exploration badges is pretty much the only reason I tend to go in there. (Oh, and a gladiator, if ... wait, nobody does that. Is that even active any more?) Compare with: Bloody Bay: A few minutes of grabbing meteor shards, a little time taking down a firebase, and you get a useful (to varying degrees) Shivan pet, 5 uses. Do the patrol, get Hyper Stealth. Warburg: Three different missile types that give buffs/debuffs/damage (I think. It's been a while.) And a temp phase shift. Recluse's Victory: Longbow/Arachnos heavy. (Maybe not as impressive, but it does carry a good bit of firepower.) As a 50, I'm fairly sure I could get *all* these rewards in the time it would take me to earn one SO through battles in SC. No wonder besides being a PVP zone that it's abandoned... So what to do? I'm not completely sure, but the zone could use a revamp. Speed up the battles, as mentioned. No more staring menacingly (or, not, really, they just kind of stare) across the field at each other until someone swats a fly and the rest think it's time to attack. Maybe give the player a little more agency in them (at the risk of triggering a battle and having an enemy player hit them right at that moment.) Put more in the zone to do - turrets would probably not make much sense, but things to help or hinder the other side - set up (or destroy) sensors, transmitters to call for aid, or similar items that you'll have to "complete a set" of. And of course fix the rewards. The insps are fine... but maybe put them at 150-250 bounty. Complete zone missions (without losing your bounty from "leaving" the zone to go into a mission...) and get some bounty. SOs... eh, if you're going to keep them, put them as extremely cheap. Common (non set) IOs, as well. Keep the multi-thousands-bounties for *good* things, random IO set rolls which could include PVP IOs. I'd say "let your imagination run wild" here. Eh, and let's add a temp power - nothing *huge* (these are repatable,) but there are already PPD officers and Crab spider temp powers. Maybe the Crab and a ... nullifier or warden. Or see what else we can come up with.

I think containment was only set up by "hard" controls (hold/immob) and not soft (fear, confuse, sleep, knock up/down/back/over/under.) At least by memory. But, eh, why not.

*looks at the number* Yes, I can definitively say that THESE.... *slaps paper down on desk* Are numbers. (The one that sticks in my mind... I don't recall if it's just MM or Poison in general, but I'm remembering the heal as "slow and expensive" as well.)

While I know we don't have missions, maps and zones in game for them, alternate terrain would be nice. Retexture hills to sand dunes. Give us some jungle. Let us runda tundra. Something swampy (though one or two outdoor maps kind of work for that.) More "neighborhoods" (like the one Praetorian one.)

Custom mobs can do that. Standard mobs, depends what's available - they'd have to remake the mobs in general (or someone would have to step in and do so.) WOuldn't mind seeing it myself. One thing I've wished for in the past is a player-chosen starting point. RIght now you can't pick "THe player/team starts in a cell" if you want them to break out, for instance. I don't *remember* seeing an option for "Boss teleports/med-ports away at X health" (for enemies or allies, counts as a defeat if you're "defeating" the boss.)

I didn't enjoy "Stand at the door and wait for the tank to herd the map here for a nuke" play in I3, I wouldn't enjoy it coming back. No thanks.

There is absolutely *zero* requirement for hasten. If that's the position you're starting off with, *you're starting from a faulty position.* I've played this since I3 to shutdown on live, and now more time. I've built literally hundreds of characters. Hasten has been needed on absolutely zero of them. When it *has* been taken, it's been a "Well, this would be nice" power, and has never been perma'd - I don't perma anything. Something I've stated repeatedly elsewhere. If Hasten were a requirement, it would mean characters would not be playable. Know how many of those hundreds were unplayable? I'll give you a hint. First syllable - sounds like a striped horse with a woman's foundational garment removed. Second syllable - what you do to get places with a rowboat. Now, some *builds* use hasten, yes. If you want to perma things, hasten is useful, yes. All of those things are *personal choices.* Absolutely none are required. And they affect my game *not at all* that others have those builds. If you feel like you're not "measuring up," that's on you, not Hasten (or Sprint or Brawl or Burn or any other power.)

First, the post was made six months ago. There are more characters at 50. Second, unless it's someone else using the same name - I know Steampunkette. I like her. But she's also indicated as a member, not a dev, so the question still comes - where did that number come from?

For the first - I probably have a good percentage of Peacebringers and Warshades, so "powersets," sure, "builds," there's a bit of variety. Other than that, rarely. FOr the second - unless I've got reason to ("continuation" of a character evolving into a new powerset,) rarely.

Are you a dev? Do you have access to the numbers to back this up? Especially given comments about people removing hasten in other threads because they don't need it thanks to IOs?

Well, I used to make copypastas, but someone else can do that now.

Large text does not make an opinion more right. Personally I don't care if people take hasten or not, don't think it needs changing, and have zero builds with perma-anything and few that took hasten, even with hundreds of characters on live. And honestly, so what if one player is at "an advantage" over another? The only place that makes a difference is PVP, PVPers know about it and work around it. I'm not in competition with anyone else. Hasten is fine. Nerf font size.

*To me* - a non badger - - I like exploration badges. I think encouraging people *to* explore and learn some of the lore is great. Some easy, some should be a bit of a challenge to get to ("Destined for Valhalla" is a favourite of mine.) - Defeat badges *in general* to me, if tied to a zone, should be something a player could reasonably get within spitting distance of through normal content. (For instance, play Croatoa's content, you should be able to get the defeat badges - even if running solo - without too much more work. Running with a full team of 8, you'll have it. Maybe run a Katie to mop up.) There can be "reach further" badges (like we have for skulls and skull bosses.) But they shouldn't *feel* like a grind. Onerous and ridiculous would be something like.... Defeat 50 Elite Bosses using nothing but Brawl. You might do it to challenge *yourself* but really...

Grinding tends to be less "content focuses" and more "Ugh, I have to kill 1000 rats to do this." IOW, more time-sink (that generally is to encourage people to continue a sub to be able to finish it, or to sell a microtransaction to bypass it.)

I think I'm missing something there. How would anyone expect a developing COH not to have more badges? Once Kallisti has content, I'd expect something like (say) new enemies to give defeat badges, for instance, or maybe a Kallisti TF/SF to have one, just because it's been the pattern for other content.

None at all. *Playstyles* might be. The sets themselves would be fine.