Rudra

When you are given a task by a contact, you are expected to perform that task. In this case, you are specifically told to take the ferry, so you are required to take the ferry. Dr. Graves' arcs are tutorials, so they are rather stringent in how you complete those tasks. (You will see the same thing in First Ward where you are told to go talk to Mistress Nadia. You are given a mission marker at a door of the skyscraper she is on the top of. And if you just fly to her on the roof, you are not fulfilling the assigned task of using the door and so cannot progress the mission until you go use the door.) So if they say to use a specific conveyance or they provide a mission waypoint, you have to use the directed means.

Yes. So the Circle of Thorns as a magic origin faction will drop magic origin enhancements as example.

Given how powerful the Shivan Decimator is, prior to Lore pets and even now alongside Lore pets, Shivan Decimators were used by players to make seemingly impossible fights easy, I doubt the devs will agree to just let us buy them. They are a reward for risking ourselves in a PvP zone and successfully completing the mission.

Sure you did. That's how you know nothing about the Lost. Here is the link to the wiki page: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/The_Lost Here is their background copied directly from the wiki: Overview The Lost are an insidious villain group hidden between the ranks of the poor and the homeless. With all the misery caused with the Rikti Invasion, the group has no lack of hideouts nor potential recruits. Beware: despite their weak, harmless appearance, the group has powerful connections, access to untold weapons and, more importantly, a perfectly drawn goal. This group can be fought in City of Heroes between levels 5 to 30 and is present in City of Villains as well. Background Lost official info ( Copied from the City of Heroes official website [1]😞 The city's heroes did not overlook the rising jobless and homeless rates. Hero organizations opened their doors and turned their training halls into soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Heroes accustomed to using their strength and speed to smash villainy found their powers equally valuable when it came to building new, affordable housing. Tens of thousands who would otherwise have spent hungry nights sleeping on park benches made it through the crisis and eventually found work, thanks to the efforts of Paragon City's heroes. Unfortunately, it proved impossible for even the combined efforts of heroes, city government, and local community charities to provide succor to everyone who needed it. Even more unfortunately, there were other, less civic-minded groups out there waiting to capitalize on the situation. A variety of evil-minded organizations took advantage of those in desperate straits, a fact that explains the sudden swelling in membership of villain groups like the Freakshow and the Fifth Column, as well as the steady supply of experimental subjects rumored to have disappeared behind the walls of Crey Industries research facilities. And then there were those poor souls who just got lost. Paragon City's ancient labyrinthine subway and sewer systems had long been a refuge for those with nowhere else to go. During the invasion "those with nowhere else to go" also included the Rikti. The extra-dimensional invaders made their staging areas beneath the city, carving out caves or using the existing sewer and subway tunnels for their own purposes. Much of the war was fought in these underground chambers, and to this day Rikti still lurk in the dark depths. Naturally enough, the city has sealed off the old subway tunnels entirely and embarked on a constant battle to keep the sewer lines working. Although well marked as incredibly dangerous, numerous homeless people have returned to the underground in spite of the danger. For those who have nothing left in the surface world to comfort them, it sometimes proves difficult to abandon the safe places of old. There is no accurate way of counting how many of those who went underground were lost to the horrors below and how many just wanted to disappear of their own accord. Most of what's publicly known about this chthonic world comes from the reportage of a single, intrepid social worker named Shannon Price. Ms. Price was once a minor hero known as Starlight, and she had fought with distinction during the war. A long time advocate for the homeless, Price hung up her tights for good once peace had returned and focused all of her energies on trying to make Paragon City a safer, healthier place for its poorest citizens. Through her volunteer work, Price became quite close with much of the homeless community and was soon tapped in to all their circulated rumors and stories. She heard repeated tales of people going down into the underground and disappearing for weeks or months. This, she knew, was not surprising. She'd fought in those tunnels and knew how dangerous they still were. What was interesting was that these lost folk would then turn up again sometime later, often different than they'd been before. They were brusque and almost business-like, always moving with a purpose and never stopping to chat with old friends. They stuck together in tight cliques, and were rumored to have moved beyond simple foraging to armed robbery and other crimes. Price decided to investigate further, and calling in a few favors from her Dawn Patrol friends, she managed to wrangle an interview with one of these "mole people" (as other homeless called the underground dwellers) who had been captured during a bank robbery. Although at first silent and defiant, the prisoner became more and more anxious and unsure with each hour he spent separated from his cohorts. He began to babble incoherently of magic mists and green gods. He claimed that he was part of a new underworld order, a troupe of the touched, that he referred to as The Lost. Price could not make much sense of any of this, but when routine blood tests showed that some sort of mutagenic chemical was present in the man's blood, it became obvious that there was more to this problem than met the eye. Together with a her old friend Quint "The Fist" Velasquez from the Dawn Patrol, Price once again donned her costume and set off into the sewers, looking for some answers. It was three months before she was seen again, this time without Quint at her side. The Dawn Patrol sent several more teams into the sewers to search for the missing heroes, but they found no trace of them or their fate. When Shannon Price appeared once more, it was crawling up through a manhole in the middle of rush hour traffic. She was rushed to the hospital, since she had obviously suffered a great deal of punishment and pain during her absence. The intrepid social worker never achieved a mental state that one could call sane or even lucid. Lab tests showed that she had the same mysterious mutagen in her blood that investigators had found in captured members of The Lost. When questioned, she readily spouted forth a largely unintelligible tale. Dawn Patrol investigators were able to eke out a few solid facts from the garbled narrative. According to Price, The Lost seems to be a loosely organized confederation of the mentally ill, street people, and anyone else who has become desperate enough to find their way underground. The group has a transforming effect upon it members, not only by providing leadership and a purpose, but by actually changing their bodies. This was obviously the work of the mutagen found in Price's blood stream, although how exactly it got there is unclear. She spoke of a group of elders, or leaders who bestowed the changes upon the Lost. Price referred to these leaders only as The Lost, implying that perhaps they were the actual "Lost" and that their new followers had taken the name from themselves. Price was at her most deranged when describing these mysterious figures, referring to them alternately as "gods," "demons," and "artifexes." Beyond these rather colorful appellations, she offered no real clue as to The Lost's true nature. Analysis of the mutagen in her blood provided little other valuable insight, except the chemical composition of it defied every effort to pinpoint its origin. Since Price's doomed expedition, The Lost have begun to make their presence felt in the city. No one knows for sure just who they are or where they came from (other than underground), but everyone agrees that they are a tremendous threat. At first it was just organized bands of seemingly normal homeless individuals. Then, larger, decidedly less human-looking creatures were spotted terrorizing parts of the city. In addition to perpetrating crimes like robbery and murder, the Lost also engage in frequent kidnapping. Apparently they increase their own ranks by snatching poor citizens from the streets and transforming them into monsters. Every time a prisoner is captured he or she claims to be one of The Lost and refuses to speak until, within a few hours, utter madness sinks in and the prisoner becomes totally unintelligible. Recently, the Dawn Patrol managed to capture one of the more terrifying humanoid creatures that had started showing their faces above ground. This particular hulking beast attacked a Dawn Patrol headquarters, along with a cadre of only slightly less fearsome members of The Lost. The "champion" who seemed to be leading the attack was killed, and his autopsy revealed some shocking information. Although his DNA, dental patterns, and fingerprints had all been mangled by the mutagen, together they provided enough information to identify the beast as having once been Quint Velasquez. The former hero who had accompanied Price on her initial exploration hadn't been as "lucky" as his comrade. She had escaped with her body, if not her mind. He had lost them both. So yeah, sure you read the wiki. Or even any of the Lost mission briefings, debriefings, or comments. (Edit: And around level 23 or if you do the Vanguard arcs, particularly Dark Watcher's, you learn how the Lost and the Rikti are connected.)

Try rebooting the game. (Not the PC.) Edit: If you are using the HCLauncher, open your settings for the launcher and choose to have it reset your graphics. Your scale bar is way too long in the pic. *shrug*

Were you by chance on a level 41 character at the time? Because it still goes up to 50.

The Traps version of Trip Mine has a 4 second interrupt window. As opposed to the Devices version which cannot be interrupted.

Isn't Horus dead? So did almost all of my characters and several others. So did several detectives and other background characters. So why shouldn't they get their own TFs too then by that reasoning? If a character is a minor character, and in this case I would argue Thunderclap isn't even a minor character if he only showed up in the pre-launch comic as was stated earlier in this thread, then I don't see a reason to have them give out a TF. Edit: For that matter, why would you launch a TF from a PvP zone?

Thunderclap isn't a famous hero. Nor is he referenced anywhere for anything. This thread is the first time I've ever heard of him. And to the best of my knowledge, isn't a dev persona. So why should he get a TF or be a trainer? What about the other background heroes and villains we actually do encounter, why not them first?

Nah, some builds are definitely trickier than others. I wouldn't say min/max is the goal, though it does help. Mostly, just take a step back and evaluate what the sets you are choosing are good at, and lean into that. Don't forget to cover your build's weaknesses, but putting more focus into your build's strengths will usually get you farther.

It might have been that group thing with Twinshot. Ridiculous those things never fought the right enemies and died horribly. You couldn't heal them either. If you are referring to the Twinshot arc where you fight the Praetorians with the Shining Stars, then yeah, it very much depends on your build or being able to help your allies drop the Praetorians relatively quickly. That mission can be a handful and depending on your AT, it is recommended you have a team or check the Praetorians on the wiki to plan out what order you need to drop them in. (Proton with his rad attacks is my recommendation for dropping first, but depending on how your NPC allies break out, it is often best to help one of them with their target and then progress through the enemy line as you start to outnumber them.) Edit: I'm going to change my advice. When go into the fight against Proton and the Praetorians, ignore Proton. Help any ally defeat their foe as quickly as possible and then follow that ally to the next ally and help them defeat their foe, and the mission should get a lot easier for you. The times when I follow that strategy, I will often find that I ahve most of my allies left and the enemies are cleared. Edit again: And yes, you are slotting wrong. On your MM, your pets are your main source of damage. So you want to make them as strong as you can. For instance, using your power sets, I would have probably gone more this route: 1 Summon Demonlings (6 slots) 1 Regrowth (2 slots) 2 Corrosive Enzymes (2 slots) 4 Wild Growth (3 slots) 6 Enchant Demon 8 Mystic Flight 10 Spore Cloud (2 slots) 12 Summon Demons (6 slots) 14 Maneuvers (6 slots) 16 Lifegiving Spores (2 slots) 18 Assault 20 Wild Bastion (2 slots) 22 Summon Demon Prince (6 slots) 24 Tactics (4 slots) 26 Abyssal Empowerment 28 Lash 30 Overgrowth (3 slots) 32 Corruption or Crack Whip More focusing on making the pets powerful and supporting them with buffs, debuffs, and heals as much as possible. (Edit yet again: This is not a mandatory build, nor is it going to be the best build. However, it will give you way more robust pets with Nature Affinity's plethora of heals, increase your pets damage capabilities, boost their (and your) accuracy, and give you the ability to cut your enemies' damage, damage resist, ToHit, and regeneration ability making them drop faster to your pets.)

Do you remember the contact? Was it Ambassador Kuhr'Rekt? (And yes, Positron is an AV so he will only downgrade to an EB.) (Edit: No enemies will downgrade more than 1 step. So if you have AVs turned off, they downgrade to EBs. If you have bosses and EBs turned off, EBs downgrade to bosses unless they were AVs and bosses downgrade to lieutenants unless they were EBs.)

Is that why you are so insistent it be called Sorcery or Arcane? How is a Primal Forces or Chaos set not easily interpreted as a magic set (while still leaving it open to easy interpretation of anything other than magic as the player sees fit? Why must it be Sorcery Blast, Arcane Blast, Magic Blast, or Mystic Blast rather than something more open to players to define for their characters? Insisting it be called Arcane Blast (while not defining how the actual definition of arcane even applies because you don't actually mean the definition of arcane but rather the pop culture/fantasy gaming use of the word) or Sorcery Blast or Magic Blast or Mystic Blast by its name pigeonholes the set because other than arcane which does not have a magic meaning other than pop culture use (which I would contend is the more readily recognized usage) still tells the player "You are using a magic set". It can have more magic-themed animations like Demon Summoning has without using the name to pigeonhole the set. To insist that the only way the proposed set can exist is to have a magic set name with magic named powers using magic animations shows a narrowmindedness on your part. An unwillingness to accept a more character friendly set name that is more open to player interpretation and use for the sake of having a power set you can point to and say "Behold! The magic set!" because otherwise it isn't the magic set you want.

I could see that except the author specified many of the powers are turrets, not MM pets or pet upgrades.

Good point. My mistake. I'll strike out that part of the post. Thanks. (Edit: I was thinking having a team of 2 or more players restores bosses.)

Technology does not cast spells. Technology does not use spells, though someone can use technology to imitate using spells. So a Spellcasting set would limit the character to using magic or using technology to imitate being able to use magic, which goes counter to a great many technology characters. Correct, a mutant can have the ability to wield mana, aether, or whatever name. That doesn't mean the mutant casts spells. Just channeling any other form of energy, the mutant simply does. So you are again pigeonholing to a specific interpretation of that mutant. It's science. They understand it. And why would they wield it like they were casting a spell when there are much better ways for them to do so? Again, you are requiring them to use magic. The entities that wield such power naturally don't typically wave their hands and intone incantations. They simply wield the power to achieve their goals, like a mutant would. So again, you are requiring the natural to wield spells as if a magic origin character. No. It having a magic specific name with magic specific named powers using magic themed animations is what makes the set mandatory magic origin. Break that grouping and it suddenly opens up a wide variety of interpretation for players to use. Just like everyone else, you can use what the game provides however you see fit as long as it abides by the terms of agreement and code of conduct. Be my guest. See two comments up in this post. Also, see my post quoted below:

Immortality would be a self-rez power. You fall, you get right back up again. Duh. Great! So they can grab the self-rez powers from START or from their AT's own power sets. Now explain the rest to me including magnitude of powers like the synthetic army's number of pets.

Thanks but they are still bosses. Edited 11 minutes ago by sjj668 Possibilities to check: 1) The mission normally has an AV (which would downgrade to an EB) or an EB (which would downgrade to a boss). 2) Your difficulty settings are set up so the game sees you as being on a team. (Which can happen if your difficulty is set to x2 or higher). 3) You found a bug. (Like the overly high leveled Council reported on the Bugs forum).

Can you recall the missions that were upgrading to EBs? Depending on the mission, you may be encountering a bug.

Not at all. You are the one insisting that alternate animations, additional auras, and costume pieces are the solution instead of creating a new, unique powerset because you and others are unwilling to accept something that might have an implied origin because if it doesn't suit how you think of magic then what anyone else might want must be denied. Except you aren't implying anything. You are specifying a magic set, with an intended magic name and using magic animations. Magic is not an effect, it is a source. There is no visual difference between a magical fire any any other fire. There is no visual difference between a magic anything and a non-magic anything. What makes something magic or not is whether or not magic was used to create the effect. And the magic origin covers that. If you want more ways to make your character look like (s)he/they/it is using magic, then others will agree because more options are good. And those options would come from alternate animations, more aura options, and more costume options. If you want a multi-element/force/effect set? Propose it. You can call it Primal Forces or Chaos or Elementalism or whatever. It can even have a more magic in appearance animation. Calling it Magic <insert Blast or Control or other name> or Sorcery <insert> or Arcane <insert> is calling for a single origin power set. And I will always oppose that.

... you know that for game balance, even if this were to be implemented, they would not be any more powerful than other powers at the same tier level? And what would the listed powers even do? Immortality? You can just declare your character immortal. Godhood? You can just declare your character is a god. (And when you get your incarnate abilities, you fight as one too.) What would the zombie algorithm even do? How many pets and what type for synthetic army? What is the premise of the mutant jungle? What even is this suggestion?!

Yes, you can make a Bane Spider. At 24, Wolf Spiders can respec into either a Crab Spider or a Bane Spider. And if you maintain 2 different builds, you can have 1 build as a Crab Spider and the other as a Bane Spider. Though the way the code works, you will retain the Crab Spider backpack even in your Bane Spider build. That would be because like the Benevolo Labs costumes, your Nova and Dwarf forms are model swaps. And they have the priority. (Edit: Also, I'm pretty sure Benevolo Labs has a no refund policy. I could have sworn it at the cashier's stand. So... buyer beware?)

When the game was first launched, stealthy characters could sneak to the end of the mission and grab the glowie or just defeat the target boss, and the mission would complete. (Though you had to then make your way back to the exit.) When City of Villains was launched, that was changed to require clearing the last room for most of the missions. (Some you can still just grab the glowies and the mission ends.) It was changed because now there was an AT built around stealth, and that stealth was really good. So no more just dropping the target boss while the rest of his spawn is looking the wrong way and then sneaking back out, or just grabbing the glowie(s) and sneaking back out (for most missions), because Stalkers would be able to just keep doing what my Scrappers were doing before City of Villains to pretty much everything.

Please take your word magic and separate it from the power THROUGH MAGIC/Origin: You can use fire is just fire linked to magic channeling. ice Psionic energy earth water these differ from each other and are different powers that can be tapped into and created by magic mana. and so on, there is no such thing as a magic fire or whatever but you can use the power that is what we wanting sorcery through magic you and use and tap into sorcery energy. Correct! Because sorcery is just using mana, aether, magic energy, whatever you want to call it to create an effect, the visual of the power doesn't really matter. So you aren't talking about adding "magic fire" visuals to Fire Blast, or other magic versions of power effects to other power sets. Glad to hear that. However, you posted that using the combat only version of the Runes aura to portray magic being channeled does not change the visuals, so I am left wondering what you can mean. Because the combat only runes aura on the active hand does change the power's visuals. As would other auras like @PeregrineFalcon pointed out to be made to give more options for a magical visual. So if you are not talking about the addition of a magical effect like the runes aura gives when chosen as combat only and limited to the active hand(s) to the character, then I am left wondering what you mean by changed visuals? (Edit: Also note that on previous threads, opposition voices were amenable to alternate power animations, but you were not. Which again leaves me wondering what you are referring to as power visuals.)

And what does magic fire look like compared to any other fire? What does magic lightning look like compared to any other lightning? What does magic anything look like compared to the non-magic version of that anything?