ZorkNemesis

Generally no. There are some powers that give status protections (for instance Burn in Fire Manipulation gives Immobilize protection and Wild Fortress in Plant Manip. has Confuse protection) but a Blaster would usually have to heavily invest in pools for status protections and that's not really viable. Rune of Protection is the best option if you want status protections but it requires two other powers in the Sorcery pool to get and can't be up 100% of the time due to a non-enhancable recharge. Blaster's best status protection: kill them first. Use your powers to prevent then from acting and kill them before their statuses can go off. Use your nukes to alpha strike, abuse knockdowns if you have them, some sets get weak AoE controls that can help with set ups or when things get hairy. And don't forget that if you do get controled, Blasters can still use their T1 and T2 primary powers and their T1 secondary at any time so you can still fight even if you're encased in a block of ice. Worst case scenario if you're really struggling, the Defense Amplifier from the P2W vendor gives some status protection. As long as you're not getting focused with controls that they get layered to hell it should give you plenty of leeway to work with. If you're worried about being knocked over, look into a Blessing of the Zephyr or Karma knockback protection enhancements. You can slot one in a travel power or defense boosting power and knockdowns will never be an issue again. Very, very few enemies do more than Mag 4 knockback so this would cover pretty much anything that isn't Diabolique or a Fake Nemesis.

Something that kind of bothers me are the rewards for the arcs added to the 15-24 range. Heroes get five badges and two temporary powers from Laura Lockheart and Grahm Easton, but Villains only get two badges from Bane Spider Ruben and Brother Hammond. Why is there such an imbalance in rewards? I know for the heroes this does mean doing each arc twice to get everything but still the Villain rewards get kind of shafted here. My suggestion: There's a perfect place already to add a branching reward in Bane Spider Ruben for another badge and temporary powers, similar to Grahm Easton and sparing/killing the Tsoo leader. At the end of the arc you are given the option to either hand the Suggestion Engine to Arachnos or keep it for yourself. If you give it to him he'll remark that you still have the psychic damper that you were given early on. Here's what I think: if you keep the engine for yourself you should get the Gifted Speaker badge as usual but get a ten-use temporary single-target Confuse power as a bonus so you can actually use the engine for a bit before it fails as suggested by the writing. If you give Ruben the engine you should get a different badge instead, something related to being unable to be swayed or hypnotized perhaps? You should also get the Psychic Damper as an auto power which can provide some minor Psi defense and some Confuse protection for a few hours in-game. I know this isn't a terribly big thing but the imbalance of rewards for these four arcs always kind of bothered me. This could help a bit. Thoughts?

I had a friend of mine try Outbreak, he's only played the game once before where I took him through Destroyed Galaxy (bad idea in hindsight). Outbreak is certainly a better tutorial than Galaxy for sure but there's still a few nuances that don't get well explained however he agrees that it was certainly a better tutorial to start with. He had difficulty navigating at times when it came to the compass telling him where to go, the worst cases where upon exiting a mission there was no prompt to go back to the contact (Coyote in particular) and the compass doesn't tell you where the Contaminated are, I had to point him in that direction since he also is the kind of person to skip through text. I'll run it again myself to compare it to what I remember, but I think it's a good start. I would also like to point out that he decided to get the Isolater badge. I only told him about it after he started aimlessly KOing dudes after the first two. I'm not sure the game's clicking for him but if he sticks around we might have a future badge hunter in the making. Whatever popup is supposed to appear upon collecting an Explore badge the first time appeared as a placeholder instead.

I admit I don't have a whole lot of variety. Most of my level up paths follow the same story arcs and I typically play solo. I do mix up which arcs I play, like sometimes I'll go Hollows while others I play Twinshot. Gold i'll pick a path based on my character headcannon and what they would do for/against Praetoria. It's rare for me to do radios/papers, but I enjoy tips (devs: please add more allignment tips, they're the best villainous content by far) and often run those between major arcs. Occasionally I jump into TFs, I keep the LFG tab open and if I see a shout I'm in to i'll go for it, but I generally don't form teams myself.

Stalkers are about subtly and assassainations. A morningstar or hammer really isn't the best for trying to be unnoticed as they're heavy, clunky, and messy. Of course we might get them repurposed for Stalkers, but Mace and Axe are very much not "stealthy" weapons.

Here's a thought, to better give new Heroes a nudge toward explore badges and get that popup sooner, can we potentially have the Rookie badge taken from Echo Atlas and have it placed on Ms. Liberty's feet in modern Atlas? Maybe exchange another badge in the process like Hero Corps Insider or Silent Sentinel. Villains and Goldies have an explore badge pretty much as they leave the tutorial, but the closest badge to new Heroes is at the top of the statue which isn't somewhere people would think to go first.

So I know this isn't part of the tutorials you're going through, but seeing as how Twinshot and Dr. Graves stories are meant to be expanded tutorials of sorts, would it be possible to expand their level ranges for all three arcs so that you can do them at any point between 5 and 19? As it is now if you reach level 10 and haven't started the first arc you get locked out of all three arcs for whatever reason, and the same for not starting part two before 15 locking you out of part three. Seeing how easy it is to level from 1 to 10 in about an hour, especially if you're being pulled into DFB runs, missing out on those stories can hurt a fair bit.

The news of NCSoft officially licensing the servers got a lot of attention across gaming news sites. In addition there's a major update set to release in a few weeks so there's understandably a lot of hype at the moment. It got me back in the game after a little over a year off, that's for sure.

According to City of Data, Haunted applies a Taunt effect to Darkness Control shades, as well as Shades spawned by Drudges and Maestro (The Aeon SF version has Shades of some kind) so that they will prioritize the Haunted target. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.haunted&at=controller

I had an idea for a Knights powerset for Mastermind a while ago. It came up in a weekly discussion topic when one of the HC team was posting them. Here's what I had for each power if I recall. 1. Crossbow - Basic crossbow shot for lethal damage. Same kind as CoT guides or Luddites 2. Summon Squires - Calls up to 3 Squires. The first Squire wields a sword (lethal damage and -def), the second a club (smashing damage and stun) and the third is an archer who keeps his distance. 1st upgrade adds new attacks, 2nd upgrade gives them a shield (melee defense) and more attacks (the archer gets AoE shots) 3. Aimed Crossbow - Slower and stronger 4. Train Knights 5. Explosive Crossbow - exploding crossbow shot for AoE damage, see Battle Maiden's crossbow attacks in Maria Jenkins' arc. 6. Summon Knights - Call up to 2 Knights. They look after their squires and cover them with their shields. 1st Knight has sword and shield, second has a mace and shield. The shields give them melee defense and give ranged defense with training. Training and upgrading grants new moves with some focus on team support (Grant Cover and maybe something like Centurian's command shout that removes statuses) 7. Crusade - Temporarily buffs pets somehow but I don't think I actually had an idea as to what. 8. Summon Champion - Calls a Champion who wields a Titan Weapon sword. He is tanky and taunts foes. Training and upgrading adds new attacks. 9. Upgrade Knights

If I recall, when you're Hidden nearly all auras from your secondaries that would affect foes are suppressed until you do something that would un-Hide you. Also Stalker auras don't have a taunt effect in general as it would mess with their playstyle of stealth and assassaination. Very hard to stab someone in the back while you're keeping him busy shouting obscenities about his mother.

I have a Radiation/Regen Sentinel which is quite fun. Difficult to kill but I also attriubte that to my attack cycle having two PBAoE Knockdowns (Irradiate and Engulfing Darkness slotted with chance for KD procs) followed up with the nuke giving things less chance to fight back. Off the top of my head I believe I only skipped the Rez power but I did so without realizing that it can be used while alive and haven't gone back to see if it's worthwhile which it probably is. Reconstruction isn't great. It gives the Toxic resist but is on a slower cooldown than Healing Flames, plus the heal doesn't account for your max HP boosts and feels less effective as a result. It's still good to have but it's pretty underwhelming when you have the absorbs and high regen rates healing you up anyway. But i'm no expert, if someone else wants to tell me i'm wrong let me know.

Pulled up my characters to check. Looks like I went for prioritizing recharge speed, with the LotG unique in all the defense powers and five slotting Red Fortune as well. Dampening Field is muling the procs to further increase defense, Energize has a full Preventitive Medicine set. However i'm not an expert, I usually aim for max recharge anyway.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

War flashbacks keeping track of Bayld, Dusk Stone +2s, Cruor, Imperial Standing, Kindred Crests, and everything else ensues.

I'm guessing it's a visual bug with the power indicators as there shouldn't be a way to double a toggle aura. Slotting Obliterarion shouldn't be making it tick or apply more often, that's not what Recharge does.

I tend to struggle with Tankers, a little low on the damage scales for my liking, but I've gotten two to 50 so far. Willpower/Titan and Fire/Dual Blades. Willpower/Titan is a little basic but the lack of clicks in Willpower helps you stay focused on your burst damage when Momentum is going and the armor's all-around good for pretty much anything. I bet I could do better but I skipped Arc of Destruction due to an insistance on being a flying tank (small fairy with a giant sword concept) and AoD requires being grounded, didn't want to bother. Fire/DB was surprisingly solid. Despite DB's shortcomings the AoE size buffs help a lot and Fiery Embrace yet again clutches with the bonus damage. Good slotting shores up the defenses and Healing Flames is up every 10 seconds anyway so getting in too deep is no concern. Put KB procs in Typhoon's Edge and Sweeping Strike and you'll have most everything knocked over in each attack chain. Another insistance on flying though (burning valkyrie concept) caused me to commit the cardinal sin of skipping Burn but I'm still doing well without it I think. Before my hiatus I was also running a Radiation/Broadsword too. I'm not entirely sure what direction I was going with that without logging in though but I got it to 40 so that must mean I had liked some aspect of it.

I can't afford to contribute sadly, but i'm amazed that the goal is twice as much and it's already at 90% in just over two hours. Crazy stuff.

I wore it to high school one day actually (god damn it was that long ago!?). School spirit week had a super hero day so even though Arachnos are the villains I had a legit excuse to wear the cape. Nobody knew what it was...

I've still got a few vintage CoH things. I know among mh collections I have the original Issue 0 Game Manual (remember Cone Range enhancements?), the CoV preorder disc, a Black Scorpion HeroClix figure, maps of both cities, the Architect Edition. I also have one of the Arachnos capes from a press kit; my brother worked at Circuit City at the time when CoV dropped and was able to get it for me. It's still hanging in my closet.

It's awesome that Indomitable isn't a ghost town for the time being. Seeing so many people in Mercy Island was a major breath of fresh air in the otherwise extreme dank of the Rogue Islands (not long ago I would often see maybe 15 villains max across the server during my usual play hours). However outside of that it hasn't had much impact on me besides being more active in the Help and General tabs. As a 90%-of-the-time solo player teaming isn't my thing most nights.

I remember someone asked about a Carnival costume some time ago, before Aether Particle stuff. I still have the example I made. It's not a 1 for 1 but it's a pretty good look for a Ring Mistress at least.

Stop the Ritual, which is a kill-all in disguise on a big map and mobs run for an exit. Automatic skip in my books, one of the few I do that with.

On the contrary, I actually like the tight timed missions. Prior to more recent updates before sunset, pretty much any timed mission that wasn't from Efficiency Expert Pither was far too generous for it's time limit. The short timers add to a sense of urgency in the narratives (the building's about to explode, wrap things up and get the hell out!) while also making you have to focus for a change. Also, in the case of Veles, that arc may not have actually been fully tested and ready. It was part of the major update that was set to come just before the shutdown was announced. It may have some issues stemming from the development's plug being pulled.

There is a policy in place that hasn't been implemented but warnings exist in the interface. I think if the policy is implemented now, characters below level 5 can lose their name in 30 days of being offline, while anything 5-49 has a year to login and keep it. Level 50s are locked in. Live didn't have any name release policies if I recall, but there were twice as many shard so I don't think it was as big a problem then either.