DrunkFlux

I brought this up with a friend, she pointed out that, it doesn't help that the proc nerf still hasn't happened yet, which probably could have solved some of the over-buffing.

Except for tanker damage being slightly higher than it should be, tbh, this actually gives me confidence to try a wider variety of melee sets out.

Whats funny is that, I do agree tankers are probably to good, it's hard for me to think about where they should be in damage. The trouble is, before the buff, tankers were objectively inferior to brutes; brutes had the same max damage resistances as a tanker and yet better damage. When you look at high rank IO's and also consider buffs from teammates, brutes end up on-par with tankers in terms of durability. This created a major problem; Tankers were easily, and justifiably, seen as brutes on training wheels. It was on live, considered by many experts of the game to be the weakest archtype in teams. The same problem occured with sentinels, they were effectively blasters on training wheels before the buff. Only difference is, tankers bring more utility than sentinels do, with higher agro control and, well, stronger AoE power. So nerfing the damage back to pre-homecoming may seem tempting, it could be disasterous in that, it'd just relegate the AT back to being considered the most useless archtype in the game. Not to mention i'm sure some people would probably leave over such a nerf. But tankers are certainly performing better than the other melee damage archtypes.

The real risk I had taken on the last part was me and my friend could in fact have been reported for it or banned, they got others banned(though those in question were especially toxic to everyone else to). And yes, it was hugely risky of us. The move was largely successful, largely due to a lot of the rp community also having comparable feelings about them. It didn't get rid of them, they are still especially stubborn, but they tend to turn everyone on them in record time now. Largely due to how off-putting they are, or how offensive they get, and others can confirm with newer people the kind of rper they are.

Only provided clarity since you misunderstood why I trolled them, your right it was a troll move. And perhaps I made a mistake sharing the username here, I normally wouldn't do something like that, in fact I hesitated in sharing the pics but once someone took what Iw as saying a little out of context, I felt I had to clarify. Whether you think me crossing the line or not is up to you. I don't truely feel that way, the god-moder was so far out of line with my friend and others we ended up feeling we had to do something :/. It's kind of like a case like how players deal with toxic players at d&d stories in reddit I guess. Would they have been banned from a report to gms? No, they(the gms) really don't care about roleplayers or drama, and anti-rp trolls tend to get away with it. Honestly my only hope was the mary sue player would learn there lesson, of course they didn't and continue making a fool of themselves, at this point I tend to ignore them.

Oh certainly, I know people who think defense should not be used on tankers(at all, hp and resistance only), or heck even the very old "Healing is the only viable form of support" mentality. It's called the "Scrub mentality". Explained by this video of a guy playing titanfall 2: Reality: No one cares if you think x or y or z is the only way to play, or your better for using x over y or a less powerful y over x. It only gets annoying if your very forceful of others about it. Best you can do is learn to adapt and improve at things you enjoy or keep an open mind and try new things. And you need to be aware of when you say variety and encouraging it that your not also really just saying "I don't wanna do x I only wanna do y because it was overpowered." to. I've seen that before, where players tell themselves they are pro variety but not in reality or practice, in fact the video in the post above, the scrub mentality is very guilty of that kind of mindset.

Well you kind of bring up my point or reinforce it a little, there shouldn't be only one way to play the game. My critique is on those fire farmers who spend far more time complaining here rather than adjusting and adapting to the changes to continue doing what they like to do. Everything changes over time, AE is not likely going away anytime soon if ever, in fact probably never will. If AE was to overpowered to many people would flock to it and hurt those who want to do other things like radios or task forces. You cannot do task forces without teams and when theres no one doing them, and only doing AE farms well, there you go. No one should be forced to play a way they don't like, yes, but that needs to be considered when leaving specific activities so rewarding as to effectively drown out every other activity and force players to those overpowered activities. If AE was to remain OP, there would be less and less players doing anything else, many who'd rather do other things wouldn't be able to simply from that alone. But I should also bring up that if AE was to remain as OP as it apparently was, it could slowly damage the economy. Rewards in other forms of activity being behind AE was actually a major problem on live, even at shutdown, due to hyper-inflation of the market directly hurting it. Even here, in homecoming I cannot help feel that AE farming was indirectly responsible for the removal of e-merit/merit conversion; farmers could make alts on separate accounts exclusively to be leveled for the e merits, convert those to merits and sell masses of items for immense influence gains. That could have eventually destroyed the market. Sadly, the nerf removed the value of E merits almost entirely beyond filling out the 5-7 at the most tier 4 incarnate powers and then see E merits just get ignored after, rather than doing something about veteran levels in AE, but they also don't want to make it to easy-to-get immense influence from AE like before to with the old "turn off exp at level 49" exploit. Balance changes usually are done, when done right, in consideration of everyone, rather than a hand picked few, which is actually why I feel the nerfs 'anywhere' or changes anywhere for that matter seem to be in a good direction. I keep saying, saying it again; people already found solutions to the AE changes.

To complete a mission, you need to swipe a card, it has to be swiped at a very, very precise speed. Also a villain could assassinate you at any time during the process making you start over. If you are assassinated, the mission mobs respawn, but all influence and experience gained from defeating them is completely removed. (Edit: Could maybe condense this and my two other posts since they are super close together, if a GM sees this anyways, considering how close in time I made these).

For missions you must first get a piece of paper that is a search warrent, to talk to the judge to get that warrent however you must fill out forms R 0451, RX8, filed your taxes, signed up badgames.-52gov, play Champions Online to level 40 and run QZone 40 times, Run through all missions of superman 64, make sure you have proof you have played through champions online and superman 64. The warrent must include plausible reason for search warrent and you need extra forms T10 and RX7, which are the same forms as R0451 and RX8.

To receive training for new powers, you must pay the trainer 1 million influence for every new power, and an additional 4 million influence for every enhancement slot, additionally demand will effect prices, so more players training will increase training costs exponentially. Influence drops will be reduced to a very low minimum and will never increase per enemy levels you fight at 100 influence for bosses, 50 for lieutenants and 5 for minions. This will NEVER be adjusted for training inflation. Requests for a raise in influence gains will result in permanent suspension of hero and villain licensing and remove all influence from defeating mobs, PPD/Rogue Isles police will attempt to arrest you if you attempt to fight anything. Attempts to organize for influence increases will be met with wealthy highly slotted heroes and villains to destroy you in pvp and perma account bans.

(Dunno why it's wanting to reply to my own post, didn't even hit quote on that post, but deleted the entry here anyways). I keep saying it, if people who complain about having it harder as a fire farmer would spend more time adapting to the changes and adjusting there AE farms and builds they wouldn't really have a problem. Alot of players already have solutions. It's like they adamantly believe that there way of playing is the only way to play. Like +4 PI radios dont' exist, ITF doesn't exist, ToT currently ongoing doesn't exist hami raids don't exist. And on top of fire farming being the only one true way, so to was there old build the only one true way.

It's unfortunate that it becomes to easy to pick on them, but we cannot really blame them. When a human being relies on anything specific for an especially long time they get so accustomed it becomes impossible to develop new skills. It's unfortunate human beings are ingrained to get specialized but it's a fascinating trait we all have really, because in the old days it did help us survive. Nature expected us to learn how to hunt and gather and never have to learn any new skills after, so we had to force ourselves out of that and begin farming and writing so we could record our progress on the path that is scientific and technological progress. Of course they never actually knew that we as humans love to get comfortable and we humans also hate being pushed into the unknown. Many people do not like having to change, even if we(and also they)do enjoy stories where protagonists are forced to change to achieve their goals. And it's unfortunate that many have never actually tried to change or objectively look at themselves and how they play, even making the claim they refuse to do so on the premise of how they play. But of course without carefully watching every detail and an unwillingness or inability to self reflect ultimately prevents adapting. The only solution left for them at this point is to try and rightfully protest in the forums against the change.

Honestly farming is about adapting to the changes as is 'anything' in the game. When it comes to the meta of 'anything' in 'any' game in fact, the meta can generally be expected to change. Now I understand 100% if you don't like the direction of the new meta, I mean, I didn't like champions onlines heavy handed forced balanced changes towards effectively melee only. In comparison to here, I feel the changes in this game have at best, if a nerf happened, mild at best. On afk farming, yeah, this game isn't factorio/minecraft/starbound/terraria. And honestly the existence of AFK farming made me wonder about players with extremely high veteran levels that are just not remotely realistic for anyone. I mean compare two players both working 40 hours, and have maybe 20 hours free time, the afk farmer in an extreme circumstance, especially if working from home, could easily make an afk farm and restart it constantly the entire shift. Thats a LOT of experience compared to the other player, even if that other player has effective farms of there own, the fact they aren't afk farming would mean they could never possibly cover such a gap. It'd be like cheating, and I have had, as I'm sure some here may also have shared, experiences with being accused of cheating for simply doing well and playing honestly. Honest players who are good look bad, and afk farming far as I can tell it easily makes anyone who has 1000+ veteran levels look very dishonest.

Heres a pic of someones response to me. Quote on quote: "Unfortunately Griz94 seems to take any critique of there given RP style to which in my experience is based on his character being a Mary Sue, in that Kara seems to have unlimited capabilities at least in a military or confrontation, can't be approached stealthily, can take out dozen of aggressors single handedl, is engineered to be superior, has access ot vast arsenels, I could go on for an hour. All of which he seems to willing to provide evidence of establishment with his own documentation." "One the one hand I appreciate such an attention to detail when it comes to characters and development, but the take away has to be a certain ammount of leeway when it comes to RPing with others and Griz offers none. I have tried to compromise in the past and was met with rebutle and lectures on why they can't change their character. 'It's already established' is what I commonly hear." (mispellings included from screenshot)

I didn't need a character validated because they didn't exist, you clearly didn't read the post or took it out of context. So I'll clarify. Want the real reason? Read the post about there endless bragging about a super space station and my characters bringing up how easy it is to find for it. THAT is why I did what I did. Accused ME of god modding when she was literally spelling out every single thing about her space station in local chat. My character even HINTED at how sloppy she was as she was bragging quote 'well now I know what to calibrate my scanners for'. Like a villain explaining the whole plot and how to stop it on top of that before attempting it and the hero saving the day by foiling it, just imagine the villain crying mary sue when it inevitably happens. And they did that to other players a lot. The person was trolling practically the entirety of the rp community, if you want I can share a screenshot of the complaints people had of the person in question. We did that specifically to reveal the kind of person they were. The thing was they did all that damage to themselves in how they reacted to my bait drow; they could easily have laughed off my characters shenanigans, instead they(predictably) took things so out of context that they verbally assaulted me and my friend openly. The mary sue player did, in bullet points to be clear(Some was mentioned in the previous thread): *Gave themselves unlimited resources without earning any of it rp. Then gets mad at anyone who has a powerful or wealthy character. *Put a station in a spot, bragged about it's location, it's makeup ect and then blamed everyone else for knowing where it is. *Made there own originating faction ridiculously overpowered, and anytime anyone had anything that could be powerful they just one-upped them further. *Made there character impossible to sneak up on or engage in any way, unbeatable in fighting ect. *loaded up bad anime tropes. Then got mad at anyone else who ended up with any trope. *Bragged about boob size(Obsessively to) and then accused everyone else of having over-sized boobs(even characters with small or even flat-chested). *Bragged about being the ultimate gambler. *Tried to God-mode someone by murdering there toon. *Demanded everyone only make toons she approved, rules including nothing from outside of star trek. Yet dated a players toon that broke that rule she made up. break her rule and she'd attack you for it, of course it didn't apply to her. *Tried to do everything they can to get said friend of mine to defriend me and every, single other person in the RP community in an effort to isolate them from the rp community. A common tactic narcissists do. In fact, add any skill? They claimed the toon was the ultimate at it. Someone even joked "And you probably have Q countered huh?" to them. For IRL? They claimed to be super mercenary ex military, accused others of stolen valor(even though every story they told was to good to be true) and constantly also harassed said friend of mine. They also spout racist stupidity and everything else. That was on top of that last bullet point I made. AND frequently harrassed said friend bragging about how awesome there car was in real life going over 110mph on a highway(at night no less, and they included a screenshot), pictures of 100 dollar steaks ect. It got to a point where my friend was creeped out from it. We all ultimately concluded they were a major narcissist. Edit: A few edits to clarify, bunch across a few edits in fact. To clarify, the drow character I made was not even a character I had in STO until we decided to pull this stunt. I made her as part of the stunt; we knew 100% how they'd react in advance because they were especially predictable(verbally abuse players and when confronted, would be more than willing to justify it without even questioning their own actions). And it was largely to expose their hypocrisy and bad behavior. I actually expected to be banned at the time(they got others banned for far less). Honestly none of it would have happened if the person wasn't so hypocritical and mean spirited. I made the drow because they were dating a drow character while holding onto a rule that nothing from any other media from outside of STO was allowed. And we all knew exactly how she'd react. Any rules she made up just flat out didn't apply to her, at all.

Meteor > Upthrust > Rock Shards = dead mob, even without a KB to KD in meteor the shards will usually still hit, and the entire mob is dead. You just need to be willing to push forward quicker than normal on a seismic. Oh yeah, chain-kd-stun is glorious, enemies cannot do damage if they are constantly being chain-knocked. Really, Seismic is a defensive blast set, and I love it for it.

I'll make another comment on creativity: You'll be surprised how often you may come up with an idea, people even love it, but then find you accidentally had a plot similar to a popular work somewhere. When it comes to plotlines/stories/themes its very hard to come up with something because we as a people have come up with numerous crazy concepts in stories already. The only thing that innovation 100% perfectly exists, is in inventions and technologies in real life, and scientific knowledges of the universe/biology ect that we learn in science. City of heroes isn't the first work to visit on the concept of aliens turning humans into themselves, nore is it the last nore are the current last be the last, as an example. Heck, one idea of mine I found ended up being a plot in a few games on accident, but me and my friends(this is in STO) joked about it and moved on, and I came up with other ideas for that same character's direction. You know your a nerd when you recognize a plot from something right away being done, even if by accident.

I admit I saw lots of drama to, and not just city of heroes homecoming, I can also think of the other game I rp in(though rarely now, due to hardly any rpers left), Star trek online, and I notice a lot of it happens with people on a power trip. But I also noticed it happen with prudes and lack of communication. In the case with STO, the worst person I met on an uncontrolled power trip made there character both very foolish yet insists they are super geniuses, stronger and faster than everyone else no matter what. With infinite resources. The ultimate example is the location of her personal space station that is supposed to be super hidden. That space station everyone concludes is in a briar patch(not the same as the one in the beta quadrant) in the delta quadrant bordering right on borg territory...in the delta quadrant. So that narrows it down super, super easy. Any of my toons could find it in the snap of a finger because lo and behold process of elimination! But no, if you point this out, the player instantly calls your character a mary sue. How is it everyone knows where it is though? Because his character CONSTANTLY BRAGS ABOUT IT, IT'S TYPE OF LOCATION AND THAT ITS ON THE BORDER OF BORG SPACE. Constantly brags, even bragged about it's material makeup. Could they give any more information? Nope, because they just spill the beans to the max. The old saying "Loose lips sink ships". But they call everyone who points out the stations location a mary sue. They also have major double-standards on whats allowed and not allowed in rp, like a drow-like toon? Nope not allowed, but there own sue is allowed to date a drow-like toon. Actually they had to insist on having a say on every toon other people made, and frequently took everything out of context, made zero effort to know the rpers they attacked ect, or make any effort for example to learn which of my own toons are my own creation(quite a few) vs those that have a loose basis on another character somewhere else. (Me and a friend actually plotted, and succeeded, in exposing them on this hypocrisy using there above perception of me, I made my own drow-like toon myself, rp'd some jokes, and boom, they exploded in local chat calling me a mary sue rper, saying I should stop copying from some anime(in actuality my toon was based on one I made HERE). Everyone caught onto the mary sues hypocrisy and they lost a lot of friends in an instant.) (To Clarify: They basically had a rule that any toon from another game/tabletop/anything not star trek that toon shouldn't be rp'd. Yet they started dating a drow someone made(thus breaking there own made up rule). This was one of a long, long list of hypocrisy in that, any rule they made up, didn't apply to them or the sue they rp'd. We were tired of the double-standards and hypocrisy they were shoving on us constantly day after day. So I made a drow, flew her to DS9, started interacting with someone about 30 feet away from them, my toon made some jokes about my other toons, and boom, they exploded in a verbal barrage, everyone in DS9 saw it in broad daylight, I elaborate the level of hipocracy this player was prone to in a post below. The stunt took less than 30 minutes and they took the bait on the first try, the didn't even hesitate). Then there were the other drama queens with no IC/OOC lines who couldn't separate in-character relationships with IRL relationships, me and my friends were creeped out by it, and they also went full karen on others repeatedly over it. They proved to cause major splits though in the rp community of STO. I'll have to make a different post about CoH rp, if I get time anyways.

Can totally work, just don't make said professor the only one teaching what they teach :). It's the same as anything, make sure your character is balanced out well enough they don't break stories ect they can work well with others. Edit: I'll elaborate a little since I feel I was just a parrot just now. One of my characters was a professor(just not ended her career to persue other things), a chaos mage who specialized in forms of chaos magic. Was she the only person on the topic? Not really, but she was balanced enough that I could include her in quite a few stories if I chose to do so. Some people like bringing her into plots quite often, even if a minor role. Her praetorian counterpart just got involved in a bigger plot and she to is a professor(with different personality, course, more chill/cheerful than the primal). It's true of all characters of any background, as long as they are not mary sues(or part of a mary suetopia) that will practically one-shot someones plot or problem, they can work fine.

Before the patch landed, I got rid of every single E merit on my toons beforehand well in advance. I still have a massive stockpile of merits across multiple toons as a result. I did this even on toons without fully developed incarnate powers, specifically since I still had plenty of vet levels that granted e merits left on those toons. My thoughts are two fold: E merits become less valuable over time as you have your chosen incarnate powers advanced to a point. Many tier 4 incarnate powers are actually not 'that' useful or enough of a gain. IO's however are a much bigger gain. So I often used E merit to merit to fund my toons IO's before going back to getting tier 4 incarnate powers. Cost opportunity; tier 4 incarnate powers are most part not enough of an increase in power per the cost of upgrading from tier 3 to tier 4. three hundred and eighty to 400 or so merits for a power that was about 10-15% more effective when I could use that influence to get 3-4 IO sets, world of difference. What changed for me ultimately is now many of my toons are far less IO'd out than before, and while I'm playing them longer before I max them out, I'm not as caring or valuing of E merits, in fact as far as I am concerned anything rewarding E merits, but not merits, certainly wouldn't be worth running at all. I mean why should I bother with them if i have almost everything or everything tier 4 by the time I'm even vet level 30-40 now? I know some people think E merits should only have been used, exclusively, on incarnate powers but all it means is they are simply way, way less valuable now.

I think I should repost it a bit here so it's now drowned out by my last paragraph in the post above to reiterate: AE should NOT become the only way to play the game either, but if it remains to good it could easily become that. When enough of a majority of players only play AE, it hurts everyone else who doesn't use AE, slowing and removing there ability to get any teams formed ect when everyone else is waiting around for an AE farm to form or is getting on board with an AE farm. That can be just as destructive. Plus AE has always had a hard impact on the economy, including especially on non-AE farmers. Because it's where a lot of influence gets printed(and the prices thus effected by it, in fact I worried quite a bit about inflation effects when E merit-merit nerf hit, i'm shocked the prices didn't skyrocket everywhere yet). It's probably a good thing recipies (including purple) can drop in AE now, otherwise we'd have half billion price tags on purple IO's like on live.

Honestly I don't mind farms as long as players can be active in them(in fact, the biggest beef I have AE farms is how they often discourage active participation, getting exp by just sitting, doing nothing while someone else does all the work used to be seen as leeching in the day, when I described AE farm power leveling to my father he stated "sounds like cheating".) I had a long conversation just now with someone who was defending fire farming zealously, all the while I was making numerous points as to why it cannot and should not be the only way to play, why specifically it being overpowered is bad for the game, as it slowly turns into the only way to play from existing as being to powerful. I mean, they nerfed E merit to merits on veteran levels being easily grinded up to 100, and then the toon being discarded after the E merits and merits were exhausted. That was probably done by a scant few players, but it was enough the devs felt they had to nerf that feature, it was probably AE to blame for it. That took away a key part of my strategy for funding my toons, I wasn't happy at all losing E merits to merit conversion, and I was left looking at AE as the culprit. Like i'm slowly being forced to only play AE to fund my toons, which I really rather not be doing, I want to enjoy the rest of the game. I prefer my income through trade, not having my toons sit around doing nothing while someone else(or me on another account) destroys mobs with a toon who's effectively immune to the only damage type on the entire map. Complacent Gaming Syndrome - TV Tropes So I was thinking of peoples reaction to the fix to AE experience bug that happened, and then came to past personal experiences ect, and I end up thinking of that trope. Players get very complacent towards only one way to play, and I also came to another conclusion about AE, that it remaining powerful for to long it left me worried and bothered its existence can end up slowly rendering and removing all other aspects of the game. I think the last thing we should want is to see AE become the literal only way to get a lot of experience and/or influence. We saw that happening to a degree on live, in fact I'd even say AE saw the decline of CoH, and before we blame the devs we have to remember, it's players using it and abusing it that also didn't help the situation with AE. Many players in mmorpgs don't see content as anything else but a way to get lots of experience and influence, and don't care at all about the games content or it's story. So devs had to nerf AE multiple times, I'm sure some players left even with the first nerfs out of frustration they were bound to experience when it'd be nerfed the first times, like enemies have to be given attacks ect. I'm sure some players went to a diff private server exclusively so they could have pre-shutdown AE experience levels, *shrug*. But theres a massive amount of content in the game that i'm positive just never gets played, at all, by 100% (not 99%, 100%) of the player base. Some of it may be due to it's quality being low, but then theres content I'm sure is only played by 1-2 people at all due to AE and PI+4. I know I certainly hadn't played Croatoa or faultlines story archs since homecoming started(even though they are some very fun archs).

The new inherent will be an amazing Archvillain killer. While stalkers are the melee AV killers of the game, sentinels will be the ranged AV killers. -resistance thats unresistable is nothing to sneeze at. Not to mention -defense will help lower level teammates hit more reliably to.

I should also mention many defense debuffs can hit through defense ratings easily, such as freezing rain and sleet; they only need 1 tic and the debuff applies. So it's not end of the world. If anything, leadership is most useful for alleviating weaknesses in support within a team.

Well I also thought about other support powers, and the higher * ratings I do appreciate they increase the value of support significantly. My only issue perhaps is the feeling of leadership becoming a necessity, it can hurt build variety in the same way stamina did during the pre-inherent fitness days. It's easy to take that for granted. On the other hand, thankfully, leadership powers can be pushed till the end of your build, where your down to largely optional ancillary pools. It's also easier to skip travel powers if necessary with athletics/ninja/beast run available. Leadership is much more a "pool power you have to very, very strongly consider, even potentially feel you 100% MUST take". Instead of a key power in a primary/secondary it's a pool, which is kind of where I draw the line on 'necessary' powers. Even hasten is actually very optional in the long run; a heavily IO'd build could very well have so much cooldown reduction hasten may have little impact(like on my main blaster, hasten litterally only cuts a few seconds from geyser, not enough to warrent a full power slot, when I could, well, fit leadership tactics in). But to-hit is far harder to come by naturally and is very rare in main/secondary power sets, build up and aim do NOT count; they are not permanent, you will always have lots of downtime with them, and so less to-hit in those times, even with a max cooldown reduction build. Thats why Leadership: Tactics is so valuable, and useful. Support builds can consider, of all classes, actually skipping leadership: tactics, if they have strong built in to-hit buffs already. I actually only have TT: Leadership rather than leadership; Tactics on my widow, largely due to mind link also providing some +to-hit and I have TT: Leadership slotted for extra to-hit. I still have just about every other leadership and tactical training power, exclusing leadership: Vengeance(only need TT: Vengeance). The weakest leadership power though, is still Leadership: Assault, if only because unless they load a lot of enemies into the missions with taunt/placate, the damage buff is the only factor you typically see from assault, and it's damage boost is miniscule for it's endurance cost. So it's still skippable most part. At least leadership is only 2 powers to be effective, rather than 3 powers like stamina used to be.