biostem

Good afternoon, everyone! I hope you are all doing well. I've been stuck working home for a while now and looking for ways to stave off boredom. I've been playing a lot, but most of the characters I play are very similar, power-wise, (mainly brutes with fast-recharging powers like claws, savage melee, etc or ranged characters with archery, or doms/controllers using gravity). I would love some suggestions regarding different powerset combinations and ATs, which have very little downtime right out of the gate. Thank you in advance for your input!

Sub-optimal, sure - if you pull from too many sets, (especially in the case of attacks), then your performance may suffer. There are ways around that, once you understand the mechanics of the game a bit more. For instance, there's a martial arts ability that gives you stacking damage buffs for every attack that crits. It's not too difficult to build for a higher crit chance, so this ability works very well with any crit-oriented melee set, even if you aren't using martial arts attacks. As another example, there is an energy return power that grants you an energy-over-time effect whenever a power comes off of cooldown. Now, not too many powers in CO actually have cooldowns, but there are 2 I often utilize as a reliable way to trigger this - a fairly potent self-heal and a lunge (distance-closing) power - they have like a 5 and 3 second cooldown, respectively. So by using them every so often, you keep the energy coming in, and may never need to use your energy-builder attack. Most enemies are pushovers, but there are some really annoying ones that can temporarily cancel out your travel power or can do things like push you away. There's also a "break-free" mechanic where you have to rapidly push space to break yourself out of mez effects - there aren't really any full-on/24x7 mez protection powers, either. There's also no dodging attacks per se - all attacks hit, it's just that dodging them means they get reduced by a significant %.

Another thing to take into consideration is that many sets have mechanics that almost never exist outside of that set. For instance, many electrical powers apply "negative ions", while other electrical powers gain bonuses if used against targets affected by it, so while you can dip into many powersets with freeform, you are often unable to make the most out of that mixture.

There are several ways to build characters that only use click/tap powers, and many that have a charge-up option can just be tapped for a lesser effect as well. There are ways to set it to auto-target whichever enemy you put the crosshair over, but you can still tab-target as well.

I'll try to make the system clearer so you get a better idea of how things work. So in CO you have character stats. Two of those stats that are important for this discussion are endurance and recovery. Endurance determines how big your energy bar is, and recovery determines what your equilibrium point is and how quickly you recovery energy. Your equilibrium point is basically how full your energy bar is "at rest", (i.e. when out of combat). So, you can make a character with a high recovery to have a mostly filled energy bar while out of combat, thus allowing you to use more expensive attacks right from the get-go. There are also powers you can take called "secondary energy unlocks" - these return energy to you based upon some thematic set of conditions that must be met. For instance, there's one tied to firearms, which gives you some energy if you land a critical hit with a firearms attack. There's one tied to power armor attacks that gives you some energy when your powers come off of cooldown. There's one tied to supernatural powers that gives energy if you nearly deplete your energy bar using a supernatural attack. IMO, CO's system is a bit more cumbersome than CoH's in many ways, but with freeform, you get a lot of options. The question, to me, is whether investing in freeform is worth it to you.

Playing a Mastermind is not really a thing in CO. Basically, several sets have pet powers, and if you're freeform, you just take whichever ones suit your theme. Most pet powers do have a degree of customization, (different pet appearances), but for many, it's just different colors. A few, like one that has you summon 2 wolves, can be adjusted to have you summon bears, raptors, or even spirit wolves, which is quite cool. Still, the controls are fairly limited, and you're still basically making a character that also takes pet powers. What I've done in the past is to take one of the "aura" powers from arcane, which grants a defensive buff to nearby allies, then other support and healing powers, to bolster my pets' performance. As for control powers, while there are a good number of options, they basically come in 2 forms - ones with longish charge-up timers, which then only hold the enemy for a short time, or ones that require you maintain the power in order to actually get the hold effect. On paper, these sound good, but in practice, you might as well have just used some hard-hitting attacks and just killed the enemy. Enemies also gain stacking short-term resistances to your mez effects, which means you can't reliably stack mezzes for any meaningful amount of time. Still, I'll often keep at least 1 mez powers in reserve, in case I'm fighting a group with an enemy that heals, buffs, rezzes, or is otherwise annoying to fight. One other thing I'll say regarding pets in CO is that there are several "ritual" powers, which have you create a magic circle and summon a more powerful pet, but said pet only persists so long as you remain in that circle. Powers can normally be ranked up to level 3, (so base + 2 levels using advantage points), but these ritual powers can be made "unbound", so the pet persist without the circle - but you then lose out on being able to fully rank up that pet. It provides some more options & flexibility, but at the expense of maximum pet effectiveness. Also, and as I mentioned earlier, unless you're a paying customer or bought a freeform slot, there is no full pet archetype available...

I've been stuck working from home for almost a week now, and after watching a lot of retro movies and video games, I present to you a woman who also suffered a rapid change in lifestyle, only this time it's from Jazzercise to Justice: The Aerobics Enforcer:

Well, if you wish to continue using their servers, then you kind of have to abide by their ToS.

Play on one of the other CoH servers and use footage from there?

I think many such power customizations could be achieved via a 2-pronged approach, (without needing to introduce many or possibly any power customizations): 1. Add some large hand/arm cannon costume parts, and possibly tie them to "in combat" like how many auras can be setup. 2. Allow a "no weapon" model option for sets like dual pistols, AR, or beam rifle.

Is it possible to have such enemies generate a PBAoE placate-like power when they teleport, which only works on pets?

My thoughts, (in no particular order): 1. CO's freeform system is a double-edged sword - I find myself constantly tempted to just create tankmages all the time. 2. Because CO has you take an "energy builder" attack, you're basically shoehorned into a fairly boring attack, until you have enough energy to fire off the attack you actually want to use, (not always a big deal, but it's there). 3. With very few powers actually having a cooldown, it isn't uncommon that you pad out your build or otherwise take other powers, until you can get the actual attack power you want, and just spam it over and over again. 4. While the block mechanic is quite nice, I find it rarely rewarding to take an additional power to replace the default block. There are a few that provide a bonus while you are using other attack powers, but they tend to cost a lot of advantage points to obtain said benefit. 5. There are many fantastic costume options and a wide ability to customize your character, but regular human faces just look off and the facial expressions system they have look awful. 6. Mez effects are nearly useless in CO. 7. Being able to target yourself, like point 1 above, is a double-edged sword; Buffing abilities are generally balanced with this in mind, and rarely last more than a few seconds, and provide buff values that aren't that significant. 8. I love the variety of travel power available, but their function, (like how rocket boots have a faster in-combat & top speed, but need to ramp-up to their maximum speeds, while others can be charged to instantly put you at their maximum, but are slower in combat), means that if you want faster in-combat speeds, you must select certain animations. I'm sure there are more, but I'll leave it at this for now...

Do those "wings" flow like capes, or are they just a solid-color mesh that basically just stretches and distorts as she moves her arms? That's certainly 1 way to go about implementing things, but it wouldn't move and flow like a cape...

I don't know if the engine can handle flowing objects connected to multiple points, like for the "arm-webbing" of someone like Banshee would need to work.

I have a gravity/time controller. Name's Tivity, Rela Tivity.

Those powers provided the various effects BEFORE IO set bonuses were a thing, so no, (excepting Sorcery, which has no indication that its functions were added with set bonus muling as a design consideration), adding features to a power just to facilitate muling set bonuses doesn't have a precedent. Asking me why *not* to include such features does not answer my question; You either proposed or support said addition, so defend your position. I'm all for improving the teleportation set, but not in the name of further feeding the power creep.

Also a Tanuki statue for us anime fans...

What I find amusing is how the makeup is basically just a decal applied to the face - some of which have grins or other non-relaxed expressions, and look really silly. I'd love to be able to set 12 color for th eyeshadow and another for the lips. Similarly, I'd love to be able to set the "tendrils" on the organic face to one color, an the glowing eyes to another...

There aren't many options with flowing components. Try the 'bolero' torso option, and the wedding hairstyle. Cheers!

Yeah - You'll sometimes see, if you have your log open, an entry that says "Something" instead of the name of the source of the buff...

My hypothesis is that the game doesn't save your state between zoning, and instead sort of keeps a log of all affects/power applied to you, then re-applies them when you load into the new zone. It's sort of why a MM pets appear to die to other players when they zone...

Why should "can I use this power to mule set IOs" be a consideration when it comes to adjusting powers?

Why would you say that? The cape brooches are fixed objects that don't animate. The only one that may be problematic would be trying to use the vampiric brooches with the chain between them. Otherwise, they are things like a slightly raised diamond shape, a ring, or other geometric shapes...

Here's one I whipped up: diver.costume

Try adding the -usetexenvcombine option into the game client's launch options, and see if it makes a difference. If it does, then it means that one of the options or settings you have in the regular client is causing the issue, and you may need to systematically inch the settings up little by little until you find the culprit.