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.

Yeah but Dragon's Tail, while IO'd, has a 3.5s CD. Does ~300-350 damage, 1.5s cast time (kinda short), and knocks down enemies. This is a solid power (Scrapper variant numbers). And even if it's "average", that's still more than a good amount of other melee sets. Is the goal from the HC team to balance the entire game around AoE and making sure every Powerset has great AoE? Dragon's Tail is more than enough AoE for the set, in my opinion, and I really hope HC doesn't move in the direction of making sure every set has A tier AoE. Powerset homogenization is not fun. I personally believe MA is not supposed to be, and never was supposed to be, an AoE oriented set and giving Eagle's Claw a cone effect like Golden Dragonfly is not the move to buff it. EDIT: Also, my main point seems to be getting ignored. "The power doesn't really match up like this thematically or aesthetically" Why would Eagle's Claw ever be a cone...? Obviously this is a super hero game and anything is possible but I'd like to have SOME base in realism. To have cone damage make realistic sense on Eagle's Claw, the power would need animation work, so as to not just have mysterious damage numbers pop up behind the main target. The current animation very much so looks like a single target attack. Any sort of AoE attached to the current animation might as well mean my character is using the Force in addition to Martial Arts. To me, it would be like making Nova a single target attack. It would just be plain silly.

I typically agree with most of the team's balance changes and in the case of the newest patch, I'm happy for almost every change. Especially the Energy Melee changes, they take the spirit of the current set and add power that feels good to use (seemingly). But... Eagle's Claw as a cone...? The power doesn't really match up like this thematically or aesthetically and changing the IO set type is going to wreak Havoc with MA builds. Eagle's Claw is the go-to power to slot Hecatomb for MA and Dragon's Tail is the go-to for Armageddon. It's not a huge deal, I just don't really get why the change is being made. I agree that MA could use a bit of a buff and I also agree that giving that buff to Eagle's Claw is a good move, as for a T9 power it does lack some oomf compared to others. But making it a cone? MA is not one of those melee sets that lacks good AoE, Dragon's Tail is a nice PBAoE power. Quick cast, good damage. I really just don't see why Eagle's Claw was made a cone. If I'm being completely honest it seems a bit uninspired, it's just making the set feel more like Katana or NB. EDIT: Thank you for listening 🙂

Listen lets start with baby steps okay? This is a really awesome idea but I think we're a ways off of that lol. I do think that as development for the game opens up, we'll see more new stuff. Will be really interesting to see where the game is in 10 years.

Agreed on the incarnate pets, they almost always break character theme. The companions wouldn't be a feature you keep on, it would be up to you when to have one out. You could do whatever you like with them, it would be a summon power, so it wouldn't affect any missions you didn't want it to. Also, the most important part about AE; that's my point. Why not just let your companions you create in AE join you in the rest of Paragon? IMO it would be an easier feature to develop that has a lot of interesting immersion/gameplay uses and it's already possible/balanced in AE.

Title. I've played a lot of MMOs over the years and tinkered with a bunch of different pet/companion systems in games. For it's pets, CoH does a pretty good job, MMs are cool and the pets function great... but I think there's potentially a big missed opportunity here, and to show that opportunity I want to look at another game's companion system. I'm a big fan of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWToR) for it's gameplay and story telling, but also for it's companion system that puts narratively driven characters into cutscenes and, more importantly, into the combat and the atmosphere. This increases immersion greatly by including companions in your missions/escapades/whatever because, well, most protagonists in a story typically have companions. In CoH, in a sense, we already have a base system design for having a companion. The pet system in CoH functions similarly to that of SWToR's companion system. Of course companions in SWToR don't always talk, but many times they do, even to story characters in cutscenes, further increasing immersion. CoH pets... currently do not offer much in the way of immersion, in that they do not add to your story. Maybe some unlocked pets do offer some, but not the way a companion can. And in CoH, while we don't have voice actors and what-not, we do have kick-ass bios, a kick-ass character creator, and a much more... "create your own story" vibe than SWToR's rollercoaster style storytelling. And since we don't have a pre-determined story with companions involved, companions would need created by players. I know what you're thinking; in CoH, you can currently create custom companions for custom mission arcs in AE, and potentially get your companion-driven immersion there. To an extent, this is true. AE could serve the entire purpose of what I want to propose. But also, it can't, as the characters you create in AE aren't "pets" and can't truly join you in the world for your adventures... but I think they could be, and why stop at limiting them to AE? I'm not sure how technically difficult this would be, but I see the "pet system" in CoH used in multiple places successfully and can't help but feel it's entirely possible. The difference between this pet system and others (MM/Lore/Vanguard HVAS/etc.) is that it instead of a predetermined pet, it would pull a "custom character" (created similarly to AE) thus creating a unique companion. My main reason for wanting this system is atmosphere, immersion, and role-playing. I don't know about anyone else, but my characters are created in a universe where my other characters exist. They're mentioned in each other's bios. I want to see my heroes and villains in the world while playing my other heroes and villains, and I can do that by "teaming up" with them (companion system). However, I also think it would add depth to the game and additionally help struggling players. Obviously there could be balance questions, but I think they're easily solved by simply disabling the companion feature while on a team, reducing XP gained while a companion is out, etc. The only real concern I have is if everyone has their companions out in a place where there's already a lot of players, this might cause problems. Tl;dr CoH has a good pet system that could be expanded in a way to allow for unique, customizable companions for player characters. As a disclaimer, I don't think this system is something that should be top of the priority list. But based on systems currently in the game I think it's very possible and something that would be cool to have down the line. Thoughts, suggestions, feedback are welcomed.

I was the one he was talking about and I have 1/5 your posts... so not sure what you're on about there. Also, as someone who gave up on PvP in this game after the botched "balancing" rework... PvP just needs to go back to working the same way as the rest of the game. The rework was a failure, almost the entire PvP community quit at that time and even though the old PvP system, aka the original game's gameplay, was unbalanced for PvP, it was fun. Now it's wacky as all hell and even HARDER to balance because there's two completely different systems. The way to solve both problems at the same time is to 1) revamp T9s and 2) revert the PvP rework entirely. There, problem solved, both aspects of the game behave the same, original way! PvP in this game is my most desired rework and all they need to do for it is revert the rework the devs put in place and get back to basics.

Thanks for clarification on Ice, I didn't know that. Shield and WP are both T9s with a crash, although Jimmy said WP is good so maybe my MIDS is out of date for these two? I do and don't agree with you on Stone Armor. On one hand, yes. On the other hand, back in pre-IO days, Stone Tanks were the Gods of tanking because of Granite armor and Granite armor only. I think to an extent, Granite armor is supposed to make or break Stone as a set because that's kind of like a piece of CoH history lol. I think keeping that intact by changing up Granite Armor would be awesome. I disagree on Regen, though. MoG is the poster child for a unique IO mule.

I'm glad to hear this is at least something that is being considered, thanks. Also, yeah, clones is sort of what we got on LIVE with regards to the T9s and obviously that didn't pan out long term (we're complaining about it in 2020 lol).

Dark and Fire for sure need it; a self-rez is not a power typically worth picking up. If you're planning on dying as a character with a defensive set, you probably don't want to be a meatshield to begin with. But there's more than just Electric, Energy, Super Reflexes, Ninja, and Invuln; there's Shield, Stone, Regen and Willpower as well. This goes for the PB Lightform and WS Stygian Rez too. These account for almost all defensive sets, and it's sad because the T9s are taken in jest, for aesthetics, or as a unique IO donkey. I don't remember what they did to Ice, but Hibernate could do more, IMO. If you look at Rad and Bio Armor, the two newest sets, you can see the devs were headed this direction too. Bio has an all-around unique playstyle around toggles and the T9 is a new defensive toggle. Rad has a T9 that functions similarly to the others, but is a toned down version with +recovery, +15% res to all, a dmg boost, and the endo crash is small, not massive.

Just my two cents, but please consider a total rework for defensive T9s. The abilities are legitimately pointless with IOs on the table, it's just signing up for an endo crash at a later date. Which is a shame, because they're supposed to be capstone powers. I think you could solve a lot of issues with defensive sets (by defensive, I mean def and res) by creating T9s that either enhance their strengths, diminish their weaknesses, or introduce something new. A theoretical example: as a Ninjutsu Stalker main, my T9 provides me with more def when I'm already def soft capped, and the set only has one real weakness which is defense debuff resistance. So I don't need more +def, and the set has one weakness (good!), so in this case it would just be something new. Personally I think turning the T9 into a 30s damage steroid would be really cool. Ninjutsu is an easy set to pick as it only fits the criteria of having a pointless T9, it's a pretty good set to begin with; many sets will need more tinkering. But I think leaving the T9s as-is would be a huge mistake and there's a lot of potential for great ideas here. Tl;Dr: Current defensive T9s are a waste considering they offer nothing to an IO'd character but there's a lot of potential for interesting, unique powers that could replace them.