Rudra

You're off by 7 days. Entertaining though.

Yeah, given how things already break in this game, I don't think that is feasible. Like you said, standard code rant.

Seriously? Let's set aside Gale for now since most people seem to not like KB. Storm Defenders get: Snow Storm: This power slows the movement rate and recharge rate of enemies within its radius with a base -62.5% effect that can be enhanced. Slower attack rate means you and your allies aren't getting hit as often. So you're less likely to suffer defeat. Steamy Mist: Aside from the stealth effect this power grants the Defender's team, it also improves their defense against all attack types and improves their resistance to fire, cold, and energy damage. It also grants the team a Mag 8.65 protection against confusion effects. Freezing Rain: This handy dandy little power does a little bit of damage in area for a sustained duration. It also slows enemies' movement and recharge rate just like Snow Storm does. And the effects stack last I checked. Even better? It also near murders enemy defense and damage resist values. Hurricane: This power is one people like to hate on. Slot it with a KB to KD convertor though? And all you have to deal with as a negative is its repel effect. Which is only Mag 1. Otherwise? It reduces affected enemies' attack ranges by 75%, forcing them to stay as close as the power allows to hurt you and your team, making it easier for the melees on your team to crush them. Thunder Clap: I'm not a fan of this power and the others like it, but at a Mag 2 Stun effect, it can help stop some enemies from being able to attack for almost 15 seconds. Tornado: I don't know anyone that hates on Tornado. Especially if slotted with a KB to KD convertor. Keep all the baddies sitting on the ground while the tornado and your team chews them up? Sounds good to me. Lightning Storm: The signature power of the set, this power lasts for a whole minute and each of its lightning blasts has a range of 100 feet with a 5 feet effect area centered on the struck target, imposes a 5 second Mag 50 fear effect (though this can also be a negative depending on whether the targets just cower for those 5 seconds or try running away), slightly reduces their END value, and has a chance to reduce their recovery rate by 100% for 4 seconds. So how is O2 Boost the only power in the set that 'can truly help the team directly'?

Ask a dev, I don't remember the specifics. All I remember is that the game cannot handle accessing things like the AH from inside instances. And SG bases are all instance maps just like mission maps.

MM pets start with 1 or 2 attacks. Zombies for instance, have 1 attack only. The MM player has to use their two upgrade powers to grant their pets their full suite of attacks and defenses/resists. Controller pets on the other hand, are summoned by 1 power with all their attacks, defenses, and resists. Gremlins for instance have 3 different attacks when summoned without needing any upgrade powers to get all those attacks. I don't see where you are coming from with this. The most pets a Controller summons from their primary is Fire Imps at 3 imps. Those imps are summoned at -1 level to you. (They should be summoned at -2 levels to you, but hey, Controller pet advantage. Controller pets get better scalars for everything and don't suffer the -2 level shift MM pets suffer for there being 3 of them.) So unless the devs decide to keep Controller pets capped at no more than 1 negative level shift for some odd reason, at 6 pets, just like if a MM were to be able to summon 6 pets with a single power, those 6 pets would be at -5 levels to you. That means those 6 pets for your level 50 Controller would have the amazingly good (note sarcasm) base hit chance of 30%. Even MM T1 pets at level 50 have a base hit chance of 56%. So fighting +0 enemies, your 6 pets would be doing almost nothing to your enemies. Go up against +4 foes? They run into the floor of 5% chance to hit. Correct, MMs have the advantage of being able to command their pets. However, like I already said, Controllers have eight other powers in their primary to affect their enemies with. MMs? Have 3. There is the balance. MMs are the pet AT, so almost everything they have is tied up in their pets. So they need to be able to command and control their pets. Because they have a whopping 3 powers at their disposal from their primary set to do anything else with. Controllers get pets that start with more attacks, have better built in defenses/resists, and scale up better than MM pets, while also retaining eight other powers that they can personally use to control and win their fights just in their primary. So saying to give Controller 6 pets because it is fair to Controllers because they can't control them is not the least bit fair to MMs who devote almost their entire existence just to their pets and being able to support them with their secondary, which Controllers also get in their secondaries. And if the 6 pets you want Controllers to get don't level down like MM pets do but instead follow in the footsteps of Fire Imps, staying at -1 level to the Controller? Then there is absolutely no reason to play an MM any more. So what if the Controller can't control their pets. They will still now get the same number of pets as MMs do, those pets are going to be individually better than MM pets because of their better scalars, they won't suffer level loss the way MM pets do, and the Controller still gets 5 more powers that they don't have to invest in their pets to do whatever they want.

Except doing so adds a whole new layer of coding complexity. Right now, old zone maps are removed from the active zone and left accessible via Ouroboros as an echo. You're talking about doing that dynamically, as dictated by each given character's actions. Which then runs into the added problem of which versions is an echo or active zone when you have up to 8 people on a team that can have different versions of the zone as echoes. This is a much more complicated thing than just the phase mechanics the game already uses, and the phase mechanics are... broken....

In the options menu, go to the Windows tab, and increase your UI scaling.

Doing that runs into the same problem CO has with different stages of the same zone. You can be in Apocalypse (whatever that city is called), exit, go to after Apocalypse version (where you are now back in time trying to prevent the apocalypse), and still have the pre-Apocalypse version of the zone that you go to in order to finish some missions. It breaks immersion and story in a really bad way. And in CO's case, they at least made some effort to force you into only 1 version of that zone, but they failed to account for all the ways you can access all 3 versions at once. And now you are introducing 3 simultaneously active versions of the same zone, so characters can just freely move between them without being locked into 1 unlike what CO tried. This part has been discussed in other threads. I am disinclined to repeat myself, so I'll just say that the phasing has issues, starting with having 2 of the same contact in the zone that you will be able to find/see even if they are both in differently phased maps. Also, they are still rebuilding Boomtown and Faultline, and those have been under construction for far longer than Galaxy City. ( Edit : Especially since Galaxy City is still in the immediate aftermath phase. So they haven't even begun assessing the damage to the zone yet, let alone starting clean up for rebuilding.) So you shouldn't see a rebuilt Galaxy City until after those 2 zones are done rebuilding. The city doesn't have infinite funds, personnel, or materials for rebuilding.

The point is to define and style your character. You don't need alignment tip missions or the morality mission at the end of the 10 to define your character's nature, you do that with your character's bio and how you choose to roleplay the character. And if starting out as a vigilante or rogue at level 1 is important, then like @Lockely said, go talk to Null the Gull in Pocket D and have him make your character a level 1 vigilante or rogue. After all, if your character starts out as one, then why should your character have to wait through 10 missions to have the correct alignment?

The echoes lack their own missions because they don't exist any more. They aren't kept in a temporal bubble. There was a reason why they weren't just deleted when they were updated, but they are there because they weren't simply deleted for whatever that reason was. And because the echoes are no longer part of the current story line, there are no missions in (most of) them. Players can still go experience them, but they are not alternate means of experiencing the game. They are just there so players can go back to the old versions of those zones. (The content itself exists in the current version of those zones. Galaxy City does not have a current version so its arcs/missions are gone, and the hazard zones never had their own arcs/missions, so they weren't carried over, but existing versions of previous zones still have their old missions/arcs. You just aren't directly sent to them any more.)

My guess is that this isn't a bug because it is rather difficult to punch the ground without inverting yourself while flying.

No, a Blapper is a Blaster that tends to use their melee attacks like they are Scrappers. You're thinking of survivable Blappers. 😊

Phase Shift used to be a toggle. It had a very high endurance cost, but as long as you could pay the endurance cost, it stayed on. So players slotted enhancements to make its prohibitive END cost manageable for indefinite use. This resulted in players using it to avoid defeat in PvE and PvP, run through maps in absolute safety, and tank everything by virtue of being absolutely immune to harm until the target turned its attention elsewhere. So the Live devs took a planetary nerfing device to it and we have the version of Phase Shift we have now. (Personally, I don't see the problem with how Phase Shift was being used prior to the nerf. It took a lot to get the END cost down to manageable levels and you can't harm anything while you're phase shifted. [Edit: Besides, the original version of Phase Shift was appropriately thematic for my first CoH character, a shadow demon. Now I don't know anyone that takes Phase Shift except for me on that character, but I don't use it because it has become so niche in application. {Edit again: I forgot I respec'ed the character out of Phase Shift. So I don't know anyone that uses it any more.} As a 30 second toggle, devoting the enhancement slots to bringing the END cost down doesn't seem like a worthwhile endeavor to me any more.])

Because unlike NPC enemies, we as players have to have our ATs balanced around themes to keep the game interesting and not just let everyone play a tank-mage like they supposedly were back in the alpha state of the game. Also, depending on how you build your characters, you can already achieve the same things the Outcasts and other factions do. Sloth the IO sets (and/or procs) that boost your damage resist, and you're most fragile AT because more durable. Especially if you also slot for HP and regeneration rate. Pick up ranged attacks or melee attacks from your APPs, and your Scrappers, Stalkers, Tankers, and Brutes can freely cycle between range and melee combat. And with some procs, any of your attacks can be holds, immobs, sleeps, and stuns. So in short, if you want to play the utility character? Build for it. Blasters and Dominators for instance are excellent ATs to achieve your goal.

Not sure, but I don't think so. It just looks like the existing mobs were taken from their factions and given echo appearances to be Lore pets. Which is why the BP Lore pets needed to be (and finally were) nerfed.

I'm doing the 2nd mission in the Crossfire arc from Arbiter Leery. One of my ninjas needed to be healed, so I triggered Twilight Grasp on the +1 Crab Spider Slicer I already had targeted. This is where it gets weird. I had already shot the Crab Spider Slicer with a bow attack and the Crab Spider Slicer still had more than half his health left. Yet when I triggered Twilight Grasp, I lost my target and no heal happened. I re-clicked the Crab Spider Slicer making him my target again, saw he still had more than half health left, and tried Twilight Grasp again. This time it worked.

The only way you will ever see that happen is if the devs add some code (that doesn't break the game) that stops team ally NPCs from rendering. And I'm willing to bet that will never happen.

I'm not happy with my level 50 Stalker, so the bot is sidelined. I'll try to remember to keep an eye on this for when I resume playing the other Stalkers. If I can remember, I'll take screenshots and post it as a bug report. (And no, there were no caltrops or other effects that should have broken my stealth.) Edit: Just for clarification, when I say the character is a bot, I mean the character is a robot character.

150 feet from Hide. Council snipers, Nemesis snipers, and Crey snipers most typically. (Most often Nemesis snipers.) I don't know. I haven't run my Stalkers in a while. So there was no convenient range listed on their target window, but minimum was 100 feet away on several occasions. I never expected to be having this discussion, so no. (Edit: I currently only have 3 Stalkers left. The 32 and the 18 haven't dealt with snipers yet. The 50 hasn't been played in a while.)

I agree with @Akisan, the thread title says you want nukes to be nerfed, and then you rule out all the ways to nerf them. And if everything is dead, like when you use Aim + Build Up + Assault + incarnate buff (plus a few reds just to be quadruply sure), then who cares if you just aggroed their corpses with your toggles suppressed?

And yet they shoot my Stalkers from the other end of the room past the hall I just started entering....

That depends completely on the faction populating the map and the map hazards. Like CoT maps with their plethora of pain crystals in the middle of hallways and intersections? I ahve to go through. Longbow Wardens with their non-toggle spine bursts populating maps? I have to slip by them in narrow halls on a regular basis. I get what you are saying, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Non-combat defense bonuses serve to help keep your stealthy character stealthed when you have to slip by something and you don't want to fight it.

If all you do is look at how powers work in combat, then you completely ignore the other benefits and themes of lots of powers. Hide's non-combat defense bonuses, like Stealth's non-combat defense bonus, work to help you sneak around without losing your stealth to random mobs with AoE effects or map hazards. Too much emphasis is given to how powers work to make it harder for enemies to hit you in combat or how powers make it easier to defeat enemies in combat, and the non-combat elements of the game are getting dumped on because of it.

That non-combat only +37.5% AoE defense means you can slip by AoE effects that would render others visible, so you maintain Hide. It makes you a better sneak. That isn't minor.

39.38% AoE defense (in Mids and in game) or 39.375% AoE Defense (in City of Data) is considered a minor convenience?! To who?! (Edit: And that is straight level 1 Stalker Hide with nothing slotted anywhere.) Edit again: Hide grants a base 1.88% defense out of the box. That gets modified by 3.75% for select defenses other than AoE which is +37.5%. So even Hide's base defense bonus is equal to Stealth's. (It just has additional defense buffs stacked on top of its base defense bonus.) (This data was pulled directly from the game. I made a brand new Stalker to check Hide's stats.) Edit yet again: I also don't see the devs agreeing to put a placate effect in a travel power. All you would have to do is leave your travel power on and you would constantly be placating enemies during combat. Unless you made it a click, at which point it stops being a feasible travel power. Teleport works as a click because you have to place the marker for where you want to teleport to and each click sends you 350 feet away.