TC

Please just not nostalgic. I'm so tired of seeing this word lol

This is a bit of a necro, but I have to ask: I notice the requirements for a lot of the "villain" badges is much shorter. Is this the same badge for heroes? Would it be more efficient for me to switch to villain real fast and snag the easy arcs, or is the badge different?

It used to make Stone, by far, the best tank in the game because it did what IOs do now - make Tanks (and to an extent, other players too) nigh invincible. After IOs, the armor became completely obsolete, but myself and many other OGs (probably you!) remember the days when Stone tanks were considered gods. I, too, came back and was surprised at how weak the power was.

This is a recurring issue I've noticed across every single one of my characters. Keybinds are saved server side, per character (afaik) with the option to save them locally. I do not save mine locally, and for roughly the first 5-6 changes, they stick. Anything past that, the keybinds do not stick. This problem has occurred on both my old rig and my new rig. I have to make sure I perfectly plan out my character at level 1 so that all keybinds are located in the correct place. But lets say I've changed my keybinds 5-6 times, IO out a character, and then realize I missed one for an incarnate slot. I can set the keybind to what I prefer, but if I zone into a new instance, it goes back to what it was before. Am I the only one who notices this?

Agreed on all counts, MA is very fun to play and the animations are top notch.

No problem. As a disclaimer, with this many IOs, pretty much everything you can play in the game will kick ass to some degree. With that said, it's very durable thanks to Ninj on Scrappers being Ninj on Scrappers, but MA underperforms in the damage department. It needs a bit of a buff that may be coming in the near future (they scrapped changes in the previous beta build due to community feedback). But, you know, it is fun and you will probably never die in pretty much all content. Solo, it's a Scrapper, so it absolutely crushes it. But you will kill things faster with a different primary.

I was having trouble sharing my build on Reddit for some strange copy/paste reason and wanted to get it over to some people who wanted to check it out. Here's the code, I think it should copy correctly here? Yep, looks like it does. If anyone has questions or input, feel free! | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1480;683;1366;HEX;| |78DA6594596F125114C7EFC020B21711BAB075B1656B69511F5C624CB56A628B69A| |CF1C10D47B8B663484B184CECA35F41139768DFB4EA8B1FC4F56BB875714B6D35C1| |C39C7F11C324E407FF73CFFF9C7BEE5CF2B726DC2F4FDD3E2A14EFF1B2661885996| |255AB5464D596D766F5A2A0C77356964A7A2D3F7E469FBF91B39312DE5E54C8CBB2| |94D9BC56ADE95AB9305EAD19DDCDD884BC2EE70D996DA4E935E3A6704E2F2C94B33| |315294B6EF3EB94D42AFAFCAC6FFB4749568D39BDE2317F9FD467E76A14F59FA8E8| |C5ECB185D26221AF1935595DECA21612F4B9D7E8C57CEA36F1CA2A444E1596D7E01| |BA6FA167CC7DCF19E694B519A82DC55C4D698EE75A6F72BF88DD9F11DEB285741AE| |E25438E662EE72831EE66E2FE863F653CF56CE55AC19616A21D04EBE368E596D415| |E1F9AE49AB998F88F0FC9C78EBDDBAFAAA6B65303AF319D45B0C4744BC4A98EC3DC| |7C5D3850FB0199B9E0E77A6231B5AEA7E032B3E719F89C1979C11CA05C0FE70ACF0| |8FB39A8860F7EBE0DAE1BF9C58C6D825BE06F66EF1FE623F2F323D77FA171D814BB| |085E62F65D06AF301305A693EA06901BF8C0B3DBF309FCC81CFA027E06579821AA1| |BE4F98B20E6EF27AD135A27B4C7A475730DB5FB00CF2071103CC44C1D068F305DD4| |5718671B6E184629B697EB8E0EE36CC14EF28F629ED1246B4BA4C551333EC49EC30| |93009A6982319A64239FDF0E9EF611F2B6983E863F007D74FFF0437C04DDC195A9B| |C4DE93D8FB390A65E09959A23A01552CD3E167799D257B9F6B8F9E56CCF3183DCF7| |91EDAFF18F2C6E015519BF75708F417579BF7B23E996EC6EBE9D6B5757AC4589B92| |6B53F6B529FBDB94A956056FEFB48A264853CC558E0EBAB7E865C5D9BCFF4241C69| |AB3E53F21C2F3EB8B320762601CECC5FBD8C75C6DF5C379AFFFD32CCA1D9C2B663B| |7297B9152260567F0129E6DC04| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Rename it Agility again? Gymnasts do far more jumping than running.

How is the speed buff an unfair advantage? It's just extra movement. Other sets have their own unique quirks, too. Energy Aura, a purely defensive set that is only available on tanks/brutes, has a random stealth thrown in because you're bending the light around yourself with energy. It's not helpful, in fact if you're trying to keep aggro it can be harmful but you get a lot of +def from it with just one slot so you should leave it on. But it's cool, so it won't be removed or changed. As a Ninja character... I should be fast. It's just cool/fun.

I strongly disagree with your statement that it moves Ninjitsu a lot closer to feeling like a bad cover version of Super Reflexes. As it stands, Ninjitsu currently is a much superior version of Super Reflexes. Yes, as you mention, you lose Defense Debuff Resistance in return for utility. But I think that the utility FAR outweights the loss of defense debuff resistance. You can easily buffer defense debuff with extra defense IO sets as it's super easy to do so with melee/ranged/aoe defense sets without really sacrificing much. But the utility from Ninj... my goodness it's so good. My MA/Ninj build has 54% defense to melee/ranged/aoe (buffer%; helps with lack of defense debuff resistance), 175% recharge, 50% s/l res, 42% fire/cold res, 45% psionic res, and, most importantly a 15s CD heal with a short animation and a 15s CD endurance steroid for 70% of my endo. I think Ninj is the gold standard for delivering everything a player could want out of a defensive set. It's awesome. I can see why they may want to consider nerfing it, although I think that buffing Super Reflexes to be up on par with Ninjitsu would be much cooler. However, I strongly agree with everyone saying this movement nerf is just... why? It's a... flavor... nerf...? Why...? I'm so confused.

I agree, but I think the ship has sailed on this idea in the dev's minds. They said in their update a month or so ago, they want to add new, harder content (awesome! amazing!) but the game needs balanced first; namely, many specs need brought up to speed and a couple need tuned down (also amazing news!). In the current version of CoH, you can obviously play whatever you want, but on teams, AoE characters outperform everything else because every character with AoE can stack AoE with other characters and yeah... we've all seen +4x8 PI Radios with even just a 50% IO'd team. It's an absolute slaugher. Hell, one AoE focused IO'd powerhouse can carry the whole thing! So their idea to balance some sets is to bring them up to par in the AoE department. This is where I disagree. Yes, I am very excited we are getting quite a large number of balance changes. And with the exception of the AoE being thrown around for lots of sets, I like the changes; they're creative and good for the most part. The Energy Melee changes are great. However, I think when we get into this "harder content" they're talking about, I like the idea I've seen get tossed around where the in-game team size is limited to 4 or 5 (only for the new, challenging content). Content based around this team size would give both single target and AoE sets value while changes, buffs, or nerfs for these sets can be focused on their unique playstyle and making them feel better instead of dishing out extra AoE to all of them because every team will want to go as an 8 man team and stack AoE. But yeah, I think this ship has sailed. Admittedly though, while I don't like going the "give every set good AoE" direction much either, for the most part, I'm very happy with how they're moving in this direction.

Your first point, if we really need to get super technical, the AoE from MA is "ok". It's better than some and worse than plenty others. If it needs buffed, though... just buff Dragon's Claw itself maybe? In regards to the Nazi robots, this is correct. My MA characters are very strong and not natural heroes, probably around Captain America strength. They can definitely smash some robots and other hard surfaces. But they're not All Might, Superman, or a Jedi. They can't kick air so hard it knocks people out behind the primary target. I may be reading into it too much, I admit, but the strength required to break metal isn't anywhere close to the strength required to propel air so hard you can break bones in the distance. I can break metal in my backyard with a sledgehammer in real life. However, I do not have a vacuum gun that shoots air at mach 1 to take down my neighbor's unsightly bushes. Do you mind me asking what the philosophy was behind making Eagle's Claw a cone? I appreciate your response but it doesn't really provide me much insight into why the change was made. It still seems very silly to me that we'd change Eagle's Claw into a cone instead of two other powers that both already sort of look like they could be cones, Crane Kick or Storm Kick. Also, do you happen to have any input on the homogenization thoughts? This has happened with a few powersets now, and while I agree I think some baseline AoE would be nice for most of the powersets in the game, I really hope we don't start seeing every set get good at AoE. If I had it my way, MA would get mild damage buffs to Dragon's Tail and Eagle's Claw. The set already feels pretty great to play, it's just a little undertuned.

I was thinking about this last night. If they wanted to pump some AoE into Martial Arts, why not consider Crane Kick, or Storm Kick as a couple of others have said, for cones? Thematically and aesthetically this makes way more sense. What I think happened was they wanted to push some AoE power into Martial Arts (don't think a single target set needs to have this much AoE focus, but whatever) and the most lacking power in the set is Eagle's Claw (great damage, but iffy to use with the super long animation.) So they tried to give the set AoE while simultaneously buffing Eagle's Claw. But I said it before, it just flat-out doesn't make sense, and honestly is not the change that Eagle's Claw, or Martial Arts, needs from a gameplay stance. Also, it's just adding the effect from Golden Dragonfly... more homogenization. Want to give Martials Arts some more AoE power? Okay, sure. I disagree that it should get AoE buffs, but I'm not going to care that much about this part, even if I strongly dislike powerset homogenization. It just makes no sense to me, from a thematic and aesthetic approach, that the AoE buffs would be on Eagle's Claw instead of Crane Kick or Storm Kick. It looks silly.

Sure, but my character isn't Bruce Lee. I have two Martial Arts characters and neither of them have the power to kick wind strong enough to break bones in their themes. With Katana/Ninja Blade's Golden Dragonfly it's fine because the animation that accompanies the power makes it work; it has added effects, and hypothetically the sword could cut through someone and hit people on the other side. But Eagle's Claw is a righteous kick to the head. And nothing else. If they want to add an animation for splaying wind or force or whatever out of the target's head and on to targets behind, I suppose they could do that. But it just seems like an overall weird thing to do to Eagle's Claw.

I agree with this, I'm currently leveling my MA/Ninj Scrapper to 50 so I can get Hecatombs in, although I care more about the fact on the beta I'm hitting targets in the head with phantom ghost kicks behind the target I actually kicked. Not that this has to be the solution, but I don't see why they don't just give Eagle's Claw a little more damage and call it done. The main thing wrong with MA is that EC's damage is low for it's animation time.