ABlueThingy

Male, Female, Huge: Head > Full Helmets > Chitin Helm > "Masks" should now work properly. If you have a lot of Chitin helmet costumes (for those that reported this issue), you can open your .costume files and update the texture path to include '!face_' before the pattern name so it passes validation when loading. Still doesn't seem like the Chitin helm has any masks on there? Assuming this means the textures and not just the geometry

If I had to guess, to encourage diversity of content at max level. So everyone isn't doing the same content over and over. There will always be a "best content" for whatever your goal is. But if one thing, AE farms, are the best at EVERYTHING then that's all people do and it kinda makes everything else redundant. Makes the game world feel small

Ehhhhh I dunno how to formulate my thoughts on this without sounding like I hate everything... I hate most of the combo mechanics as they exist now. I also hate it when a set has no quirky mechanics to it. I also hate it when a set is overly reliant on a quirky mechanic. But I love this game so, idk. Hm. When this game was in Beta there was a "Weapon Master" type set that used Broadsword, Axe, Mace and Katana powers. There was only a few powers for each. The copied the animations and shared them across all the weapons to make the four sets. Katana originally used the same animations and later was given it's own unique ones. I hate that all these sets feel so so close to identical. Instead of "What does someone who uses a Broadsword do that a Katana wielder doesn't?" or "How are Axe and Mace wielders different in various heroic narratives?" They are different by only power order, a few numbers here and there, changes on a spreadsheet for dmg/rech/end calculations. That has always felt gross to me. The original weapon sets are the worst offenders but a lot of the original blasts have similar issues. Trying to fill out slots on an alignment chart for stats where your axes are Fast-slow, AoE-ST, Dmg-Special FX. This kind of design eventually runs into a wall where you've filled out the whole "alignment chart" and any new sets will be redundant. Where everything is just NRG Blast with some of the numbers swapped around and maybe a ST replaced with an AoE and a new coat of paint. Adding in more quirky mechanics allows you to create more axes to differentiate sets from one another. I would have frankly been disappointed if Seismic Blast was just a variation of Energy Blast but with KB swapped for more disorients and slows or something and rock effects. Every Placate and Assassin Strike and BU and Stealth feels like a total waste in Stalker. Every Aim and BU and Snipe in Blasters. Every BU and Taunt for Scrappers. And so on. If they're so important that the AT needs them then just bake them into the AT. Give Stalkers Stealth/BU/Placate as an Inherent and do something unique with the space given. If Scrappers would break without BU such that every set needs one or some variation of one(and most people seem to agree the quirky BU replacements are kinda shit). Then give all Scrappers BU as an inherent and put some other kind of unique power in there. In my opinion the control and buff/debuff sets handled this better. They're still a bit constrained but you more readily see "What can someone who controls Fire do that someone who controls Ice can't" shining through. Empathy and Force Field are VERY different without relying on weird combo mechanics or anything. All that said though... the melee/blast sets with additional mechanics felt like they've handled this somewhat poorly? Every melee/Blast set without a mechanic just feels like picking up enough ticks for AoE/ST to make a repeating attack chain to fill my time with. Most of the powers feel skip-able or that there's an incentive to skip as many as I can without making holes in my chain. But all the ones with combos and "Must have" powers feel unnecessarily constrained. DB without a combo system is just Katana with more AoE/DoT and less direct dmg. Building for the combo just means picking powers specifically for the combo effect which is... idk, it feels off? Every power I pick up in Darkness Control adds a new kind of thing I can do in combat, a new unique tool to use. Some new problem I can deal with now, a new way to deal with old problems. I don't get that feeling from Melee/Blast sets. Every power should be a gain to pick and a loss to skip. Maybe DB is a good example to look at here? There's multiple combos to pick from. Maybe if DB had a few more combos to pick from for even more flexibility that would be a good way to look at the design? If the set had a condensed "minimalist" version with the sharpest most damaging attack chain for people like BillZ that just pick the most brutally effective and simple combo. But picking up the rest of the set expanded on the tools and there was multiple tool sets inside a given set? Aargh I don't know what point I'm trying to get at. I don't like it when a powerset with "must have" powers to pick up, but I don't like when sets have "Must skip" powers. I don't like it when a power set type is samey but I understand why ATs need to have standardized rules to make it even remotely possible to balance and have a fun experience. God knows a controller set without a ST Hold available at level 1 would feel like shit to play.

If I was designing a CoH 2 I would likely add in a "Morale" bar in addition to Health and Endurance as a secondary method of defeating foes. You could be depleted by having nearby foes defeated, being held, being debuffed. So some characters could win through more non-violent means. A lot of fights in comics are won against minions by Iceman just locking the whole room down and moving on or Spider-man sticking someone to a wall. Would be nice to have those methods available. I feel like kind of a jerk holding someone and then beating them with a stick until they can't move. Buuut beyond something as huge as that getting added in the best "Pacifist" character would likely be a Mind Controler with Emp, Kin, Sonic or FF. And just focusing on sleeps and support abilities. If you're going for more RP type thing maybe... An MM? Necro or Demon + Emp. And having the zombies/demons being reanimated/summoned unwillingly by your character. They just have so much life energy spilling out it attracts these things like Remora latching onto them. And as you're their food source they defend you against your will.

Skintone used to have more options back waaaaay early in the game but were nerfed down to what we have due to nude costumes. But that's as far back as nipples existing They also nerfed the colors we can use for the costumes a bit as I recall

Doesn't Blizzard have bonus damage for being a long DoT that people can just walk out of? Again, Meteor has average damage for a nuke. It has an advantage in control from KD/KB and the delay, large area, large range all allow it to pull some tricks that other powers can't. In addition to being able to break it's Dmg per Rech formula with the inherent set bonus to recharge. That is, for any other primary set with a nuke of comparable damage and slotting. Meteor should be doing more as it's recharge can be leveraged for more casts WITHOUT suffering a damage penalty. So yes, some nukes have tricks that Meteor can't do. And Meteor can do some tricks that no other nuke can pull off. If you want it to do more damage you're either asking for it to lose some of it's unique traits as a trade off or you're asking for it to break the balancing of powers visa-vie Dmg:Rech:Secondary effects.

Min-Maxers will always be sad that a new set it's not better then every other set in the only ways they care about. I personally think that building sets around "Fast recharging, large aoe, instant cast, mob wiping dmg" and judging all sets that fail to reach as broken, bugged, or otherwise lesser is a dark path. There's already so much AoE damage that on a moderately well built team it functionally invalidates half the kinds of ways of engaging with combat. Mobs violently explode into particle effects the instant the team reaches it. You can't built sets around that paradigm.

If you're on a team, that complaint applies no matter how fast you are. It's an issue in the design of the game. I don't want every power built around the idea that you have to first-hit a massive nuke for it to be worthwhile. Seismic Blast might not be the power set for you. That doesn't mean it's a bad powerset or otherwise designed wrong. It's big, slow, heavy hitting and requires a bit of forethought. If you can do that, it does catastrophic damage. To make up for the speed, it gives you some defensive powers as well. In addition to being able to speed itself up. It fills a number of both thematic and mechanical niches while still being competitive with existing sets.

You know Meteor having that lag time makes it stack up alongside Upthrust and Rock Shards nicely. If you cast BU/Aim->Meteor->Upthrust->Rock Shards rapidly after one another then all the attacks will land at the same time for a single burst of damage more then virtually anyone else can achieve. Meteor has a long lagtime on dropping in and Upthrust has travel time so they both land about the same time if stacked one after the other at just the right distance.

As I recall "jumping" is actually reverse-falling as far as the game engine understands it. Jump mechanics are wired in a very weird way. That's part of what gives it that unique feel. It also makes it hard to mess with. There was an Arcana post on it some years back when she busted open the demorecord to see what was going on I think. This game was build out of paperclips, twine and chewing gum. Every patch re-enforced that foundation with extra prayer.

This... and this. Are contradictory. A game with "The Trinity" means a game that requires a tank/healer/dps to complete the content. Nothing but the Tank can survive the damage but they can't survive long without a Healer and neither of them can output much damage so they need a DPS. That has never been true in COH from the Beta onward. In both mechanical reality and design intent by the devs. I personally tanked multiple AVs with my Kat/Regen on a "DPS" class. Before CoV launched I had acted as the tank for every AV in the game. So pre IOs even. I had even tanked Hami. "Healers" are the weakest form of support in the game. Debuffs and Buffs beat them out. I've personally seen Blasters tank the pretorian AVs in, again, SO era. Before difficulty sliders. This was always both a strength and weakness for the game. I remember the purple patch. I remember City of Blasters. I remember the Tanker nerfs. I remember City of Statues. I remember the time before the PTOD. I remember the arguments about Blasters being worthless because Def could output more damage at range when accounting for buffs/debuffs and Scrappers could do about as much but never die. I remember the scrappers complaining they were worthless because Blasters did more damage but they couldn't even tank. I remember Tankers complaining they were useless because an FF and Dark Miasma on the team could turn anyone into a tank. I remember Controllers complaining that Tankers could lock down mobs just like they could and Defenders had better support so THEY were useless. You never needed a tank, but people thought you did. You never needed a healer, but people thought you did. You never even needed DPS. But people thought you did. Every issue it would cycle out and someone new would be the "Most useless AT" and every 3 issues there would be an upset and things go wild. And the truth was always that literally any AT combo could work for any content up until CoV. Not every powerset combo could, but every AT combo. All Tanker, All Defender, All Controller. 7 Def/1 Scrap. 1 Blast/1Def/6 Tanks. As long as the powesets were right it would work. You just needed enough HP, spread across the team, to survive the damage. And enough damage to reduce the enemy HP before yours ran out. You could use a Tanker or a Blaster and just have raw heavy numbers. Or you could use a Scrapper and buff them into a tank. Or a bunch of Controllers and debuff/lockdown the enemy until they couldn't hurt you. AND NONE OF THAT IS EVEN TOUCHING THE INSPIRATIONS! Lord! That was the whole point of the Insp system, to specifically shatter the trinity into bits. Anyone could pump themselves full of insps and take on any content. A team of (the right kind of)Blasters could use Insps to power through anything

Alright, so Rage is the issue right? It makes/breaks the set. Can we just convert some portion of the bonus damage into a smashing Proc? Like if Rage gives 80% damage now just cut it down to 50% or 40% and add in a 100% chance for Smashing Dmg Proc to all the SS powers equal to the missing amount of damage on each power. It would stop the Crits from giving Scrappers an Assassin's Footstomp worth of damage but still give them a huge amount of damage. If you wanted to be fancy you could make the proc damage unresistible or untyped or something so they have an edge on all the crazy amounts of smashing resist in the game.

I was actually considering trying a Grav/Storm and seeing if I could load down the storm powers with Procs and make a little death bubble using DS. But I've never gotten a grav up that high. Would that work? How do psudo-pets work here.

I would not like it if Soul Drain was turned into a basic Build Up clone, we have too many Build Ups as it is. Frankly we should be looking for ways to get rid of Build Up and Aim and Taunt and Confront and Placate type powers that are cloned across sets.

This is why the Devs shouldn't ever let anything go. People get real entitled to stuff.