Glacier Peak

Damn that's sad as hell! Wish I could play on a regular schedule and team with you, but real life tends to get in the way. If you're ever on, add me and if I see you on at the same time I'll send a tell to do anything. @Glacier Peak @Glacier Peak 1 @Glacier Peak 2 etc, etc, you get the idea 😆

Thinking about this, I come up with more questions and not answers. Needs are driven by objectives. What is the purpose these needs are addressing? Expanding the player base interest in PvP? To what end and what will that achieve? If the objective was to expand interest in PvP and the method was by decreasing the player skill ceiling, well that was what happened in Issue 13. There should absolutely be a low entry barrier for newer players who have never tried out the PvP mechanic. At the same time, there should be a high skill ceiling to allow for competition to flourish, which itself drives increased interest. Sure, I would love for my Ice/Cold Corruptor to be as great as it was in Issue 13 (web cocoon, drop sleet and Benumb, then drop Ice Blasts), but the meta is what has really changed, not the effectiveness of my build. Damage output is what absolutely makes the most difference in social and competitive settings. Why waste 2.5 seconds casting a debuff on an enemy when an effective damage spike can take out 2,000+ HP characters in the same amount of time? If the goal is to defeat other players, time over damage output is the formula to do it. Incentivizing, regulating, laissez faire, whatever stance (or even a mix of them) the HC Team takes, some things will work and others will not due to things that can't be controlled. When Homecoming went live in 2019, there was an active PvP player base, many weekly (sometimes daily) events ran by both players and GMs, rewards, social events, competitive play. Once the sheen of nostalgia wore off, the player base interested in PvP leveled off to what we are seeing now. I would recommend looking through the PvP sub forum and through Indomitable's sub forum to see all the events that were hosted and ran (and the prizes offered - Gold Titles, billions of Inf, permanent temp costumes, etc.). So incentivizing has happened. Regulating gameplay, in the forum of listening to the PvP player base and deciding what improvements to make, that is a work in progress. Sometimes things work out nicely (PvP fakkolades, new arena maps, for example) other times, the changes aren't as well liked (cryo pistol animating canceling bug fix). The laissez faire part is what's been going on lately, but its not an intentional "lets keep away and hope it dies" kind of attitude, its more like "lets have the player base do what they want, organize events, migrate to larger population servers to have more opponents, etc." I don't have any name calling, except other than to say that name calling is actually a very important part of PvP. When communicating over voice chat. As in, attack this target in 3, 2, 1, fire. 😄

I don't mind the idea of making mez valuable again (past caging, taunts, and 3-4 second mez limits). I don't mind the idea of Telekinesis being reverted back to its former "glory" either. At the same time, there is no escaping the damage meta. Either you contribute to the damage spike, survive and disrupt, provide anti-damage (aka healing) and support, or you are wasting a potential slot on the team. Edit: Oh also important, even if you aren't contributing as any of the above, if you can call targets in voice chat competently and distribute teams evenly in pick up matches, you can fulfill an important role 😄

Spirit Ward is worth the price of admission, in fact, invest power choices in any Sorcery pool power and I believe you won't be disappointed. Past tweaks by the HC team has made it one of the best pool powersets.

Yeah the benefits of Insight are less than the two purple damage procs I can slot in Greater Psi Blade.

What do you mean? Aren't player created stories already available to play in AE? There's also the Dev Choice story arcs that have been selected which provide normalized xp/inf. Edit: Here's a convenient thread a member of the community made that consolidates all of the Dev Choice story arcs:

Thank you for taking the time to write that @MJB

You're not wrong.

Come to Indom! There is plenty of room for multi-boxers! We welcome everyone!

I absolutely recommend participating in either the Saturday or Sunday weekly runs. I've done a few when time/real world permits and they are a ton of fun. @TraumaTrain and the gang always have a good time. If you can't find anything any other day of the week, the weekend gameplay is always well done and a good time. They even have sign ups in advance for folks, check out their threads:

I'd say if you're going to suggest it for Melee attacks, might as well do it for Ranged too.

That's the least of your worries - remember what happened to the Freedom Phalanx's base in Boomtown? 😄

Headless Head, Fire Aura on the head I believe.

I suppose they can exist wherever the creators want them to be. There's no in game lore to tie them to anything, as far as I can remember.

I had a Dual Pistols / Plant Blaster named 'Guns N' Roses' Other than that, I've not played Poison because Cold Domination is already the best debuff set in the game.

For any Legend of Dragoon fans on Indom, I released 'Kongol' and 'Haschel' last week. I also released 'Meru' about two years ago now. Have fun!

Very informative! Thank you for taking the time to write that up. Seeing the larger picture and not just the usability of Fly itself makes it easier to understand. Part current meta, part build priorities and not having spectacular enough other pool choices to justify not taking other movement powers.

@M3z I've got a follow up question for you since you've done a good deal of kickball, zone, and competitive PvP with Masterminds. Here me out as an amateur who rarely PvPs anymore. My question is - Why is Fly the least used travel power, if not used at all in PvP? By my testing, Hover + Fly + Evasive Maneuvers + Fly Protection IO = 10.3 or so Magnitude Fly Protection. Web Grenade can apply a -10 Magnitude Fly Protection (but can also be easily casted a second time in less than 4 seconds base and the -Fly effects can stack). So the Fly user can manage to escape by smashing the space bar as long as they can get out of range of the second Web Grenade. This is assuming a 1v1 situation and not dedicate target tracking/attacking from a team, but... I've been told that Group Fly (which has a 60ft radius) can apply Fly Protection to each user and stack with each caster (though I am not sure exactly how much since Fly Protection isn't an attribute described in game). In my little experience in organized/competitive play, I don't see anyone using Group Fly. I know it has it's downsides of endurance cost for each additional teammate and its 60ft range. So yeah, why isn't Fly used as a travel power and should this be changed in the future for PvP?

Recommed you use the Homecoming wiki, it has most of the updates made on Homecoming since the game was brought back. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Main_Page

Cold Domination has semi-control themes with its -speed and -rech targeted and location based AoEs. Pair it with Ice Blast and you pick up two holds and a complimentary power set full of -rech and -speed.

They have asked for community character ideas and input on future content...

Glad to see you're back at the CoH PvP streams. And I'm happy to see the Energy Melee/ Stone Armor Stalker Scrapper build in action. I've had a Stalker version collecting dust on the beta shard after doing testing a while back, but I've been meaning to see it to fruition on the live shards.

I'll throw some nice cheerful information in to this post since a lot of this thread is depressing. Indomitable has great server ping/latency. The ingame world doesn't stutterly nearly as much, or if at all, since the population is usually low. I played a lowbie in Atlas Park on Indom, then jumped over to Excelsior to PvP and on my way to Recluse's Victory, Atlas Park was a terrible mess of stuttering. Mind you, I was seeing a crisp 165HZ refresh on my monitor in both Indom and Excel, so I'm tempted to believe that the reason Excel Atlas Park was stuttering was because of the number of players. Yeah so chalk that up to a win for Indom's lower server population 😄

You can already do this in the AE mission testing mode. Now if you're looking to get any xp or inf out of it too, then I'd say that's not how the game was designed and AE already gives players plenty of leeway.

I wouldn't draw any particular conclusion, one way or the other on that thread count, other than to say it is indeed higher than all of the rest 😄