Shred Monkey

And water manipulation is much more logical.

On live, I used to farm Kora Fruit. I suspect 90% of the playerbase has no idea what that is, much less how to do it.

turn the water blood red and see how you feel.

I find nearly all of life's choices can be boiled down into choosing between "long term happiness" vs "short term happiness." One can substitute for happiness with words like "gain" or "fun" but it still comes down to taking the long view or short view. In the gaming industry decisions to "nerf" or "rebalance" are often made for the long term improvement of the game at the sacrifice of short term pleasure enjoyed by the players who were benefiting from the imbalance. The 2009-2012 version of CoH was unquestionably a better game then it was in the first few years. But an enormous number of loud speaking people complained about Enhancement Diversification when it happened. That had to be a difficult decision, but it was the right one. You shouldn't ignore the short term completely and forever, but long term gains (or loses) have far greater consequence then short term ones. Therefore, the long term view should be prioritized over the short term. Some game developers, business managers, and politicians believe you can stack up short-term gains forever and be ahead of the long term focused competitors. But this is the same logic that has lead us to economic crashes, retail stores filled with inferior products, click-bait news organizations, and a global climate crisis. It's not good. And in some cases, it's very very dangerous. I can see an argument that this is a game, and a game should be about short term fun, right? But MMO's can turn into long term games. People play them for years... decades even. If you want to create a game that people truly "love" that means prioritizing long term development goals over short term "events" to keep people logging back in. IMHO, the microtransaction model has destroyed the gaming industry. It might have made some people rich, but it left many serious gamers unsatisfied. I think if Homecoming has proved anything, it is that a game that's being developed with zero short-term profit incentive is a far superior product to those that are cash grabs.

Trip mines are an OK AoE power now, but nothing spectacular. The recharge time is a little long, imho. Using them as a trap to pull enemies onto them takes a lot longer then just blasting things down with your main attacks. The one time I've found where it actually does do something of value is to lay mines on Nightstar while their pulling Siege in a BAF run. But even then the main benefit to entertain myself during a lull in activity.

Short answer, Stalkers are kings of the endgame! Personally, I look at it this way. If a stalker is doing more damage then a brute, then the only reason to play the brute is to improve my survivability. But unlike damage output, survivability is binary. There's no bonus for keeping your hitpoints over 50% for an entire mission. There is, however a benefit to killing things faster, both in terms of reward/time and, IMHO, level of fun. Since fully built in endgame content my stalkers are generally not dying, they have a binary score equal to the other melee classes in survivability. And therefore, I can't justify playing a scrapper or brute. AoE damage vs ST damage is one area where I'd lean away from stalkers, but in that case I'd personally move toward the blaster, not toward the scrapper/brute. Granted, if you want to do some crazy solo-endgame content with handicaps specifically chosen to require extreme survivability, then of course more survivability is needed. But that survivability requirement is not found in normal endgame TFs and Trials.

I'm in my late 40s. But think your data will be skewed. I don't know when the cut-off is, but I know of nobody in my children's generation who read forums.

Are you sure about this? I recall reading in release notes somewhere that rank did affect drop rate. Also, just adding to the thread details... you can only have 1 tip at a time from each zone... so if you have one from atlas park, you can't get another one from atlas until you drop it or complete it.

I think if it really is a new player, 20M is an ok gift. It's enough to allow them to experiment and make some mistakes on their "first toon" without completely taking away an essential part of the the "first toon" experience.

I've had this happen a few times... logging out and back in always fixed it.

I don't know what level I was, but ran both Posi's solo on my Beam Rifle/devices blaster solo while leveling up. I hovered over him out of melee range. I don't recall specifics, but I'd imagine I used inspirations.

For me, it's the Arachnos art style. It just does nothing for me. I get that there needs to be a red side "government" role for story purposes, and their backstories are all fine. It's purely a visual thing to me, I just don't enjoy it.

Was reminded of this from a different thread. Salvage drops come from a couple of pools, so while they're random, if you need a magic salvage you need to kill a magic type enemy or you'll never see it... tech comes form tech types. Since most people aren't restricting themselves to not use the AH, this doesn't matter, but in this case, it does.

You might be disappointed when you get defense debuffed and it cascades on you. If you have a weakness, this will be it. I'd aim for 57 defense so you can take a full 12% and still be at softcap.. Infact, if I were to 3-box I'd aim for 70 since that's probably within range and would put you a full debuff above incarnate enemies. Also, I"m pretty sure the arachnos defense debuffers use psi attacks, so you do need to pay attention to that.

Assassin's mark is very good, indeed. Both of the tanker ATO procs are also sweet to have. Getting away from the procs, some of the sets (scrappers strike for one) give +5% defense to smash/lethal with just 3 slots, so you can franken slot them into 2 powers for a total of 10% defense bonus using only 6 slots. That'd be a great thing to have on my blasters.

I think I'd allow merit usage. Relying on drops is too harsh in a game where drops are all random. If there was a way to target drops in this game (why have so many RPGs abandoned that?) then this would be more reasonable. I'd probably just plan a toon based on not needing enhancements. Probably a brute for unenhanced damage... maybe claws/rad or claws/regen brute for endurance efficiency and easy attack chain.

Hide doesn't shed agro... that's what placate does.

Stalkers have fewer hit points. This makes them more vulnerable to hard hitting enemies, even with soft capped defenses. It also gives them lower regen and smaller self heals since those are based on max hp. Stalkers also have lower base damage, so the same attack from a stalker does less damage then a scrapper. Stalkers also give up an AoE attack to get assassin's strike. Personally, I prefer stalkers, but it's not true that there's no downside to counter their upside.

We're all stuck in a time loop anyway... that's why we have to run the same TFs over and over... they never stay completed.

Nerf team size. (not really advocating for this... but if you play with teams at x8 with 3-5 man teams, it's a much better game imho. Similarly, there's a sweet spot of soloing at +4x4 that makes missions still quick, but not ridiculously easy.)

Sally is real, but the beach looks fake.

I've never done this, but you might try using LFG to load into a mothership raid instance on +4... the hospital trip is just back to the starting base so no zoning required, so you can jump right back into a fight really quick.

I build my toons over the course of leveling to 50. I change costumes and often change names as I go. Usually they're settled in to a final name and costume before 50... but they may not have a backstory yet. I'll almost always fill that in eventually, unless it becomes a toon that just gets shelved because I'm disappointed in them. And the Bio comes last. The Bio usually is written from the perspective of the backstory, so it doesn't tell the whole story, it just introduces... more like the opening paragraph of a novel, rather then a summary of the novel.

When calculating an attack chain, I account for the probability of adding a stack with each attack and use that to determine my chance to crit AS. Some sets don't achieve a guaranteed 3 stacks because there just aren't enough long recharge attacks in the set, or the ones they have are poor DPS powers. Generally I don't play those sets. When I have, I felt them underperforming compared to the sets that do achieve 3 stacks. However, I also don't skip AS if there's no 3rd stack. It's the best DPA attack in the game. If there's going to be a space of no attacks while I move from target to target, I'll skip another attack power and go with a 2-stack AS.

Ironically, while I'm strongly against this as a person at a keyboard, if I were really in game, I'd head straight to AE and get someone to PL me some free levels so I can defend myself.