dangeraaron10

I'll accept that. I guess that's another reason this game is so good. I actually settled on Beam/Energy. Went more "space marine" than "Iron Man". It works pretty good and managing my Disintegration keeps me more engaged, while Energy Aura is a well rounded secondary that's toggle and forget, letting me focus on Beam Rifle's packed kit.

Things get even more dicey if your character is something other than Human. I'm not talking about a shapeshifter, either. Either some sort of monster, fantasy creature, or alien. I imagine various organizations would be keeping uncomfortably close tabs on you at all times. I imagine my alien bounty hunter loiters around on his grounded ship, tweaking his gear and weapons until needed. I mean, good luck being an alien looking for a day job. "Reptilians Need Not Apply" in the window and all that.

That makes a lot of sense, thank you. It's one thing to look at different builds and get some opinions on what might be good or bad but it's another thing entirely to actually know yourself what makes a good build. I imagine to help differentiate CoH from other medieval fantasy MMOs at the time, there's next to no shared terminology. "Inspirations" are essentially consumables or items, and "Enhancements" take the place of equipment or gear, or even "enchantments".

I see. I got nothing, then.

Don't let Paragon City's lawyers find out about that. We'd be out of the job!

I would love if you could interact with the crime levels in places like Atlas and such. No matter how many muggings I stop it seems like every block there's someone about to get assaulted or have a purse stolen. Either having crime rates reduce if more crimes getting stopped, with crimes increasing when ignored, feels like any solo or group of Heroes could make a noticeable impact on visible crime going on. It's nice when phasing technology turns a group of Hellions burning a building down into a group of police apprehending them so it feels like you can finally take a breath and say "My work here is done" and you're not going away knowing that crimes are going on behind your back but you don't have all day fighting a never-ending stream of crimes. No wonder everyone just hangs out by the Atlas statue. Out of sight, out of mind. Crimes aren't happening if I can't see them!

What I mean by "Knocktoward" is that enemies caught in this AoE will fling towards the user as opposed to away from it, basically reversing the direction of Knockbacks. The strength of this Knocktoward would be tied to distance. Farther enemies will be knocked toward further and enemies closer will be knocked toward less, with melee-range enemies being knocked down instead. Though I imagine this would be extremely useful for any Melee AT and I'd certainly be envious of it if I wasn't a Tanker.

I don't really have much of a dog in this fight, but I was wondering if there was anything in the game that functions as a "Knocktoward"? As opposed to a Knockback. If not, I wonder if Tankers could be given a PBAoE "Knocktoward" to act as sort of a AoE Deathgrip using WoW terms. It seems like knockbacks and enemy placement is a huge point of contention for most all levels of team play and if Tankers got an ability that allowed it to clump scattered enemies in on itself it could have some additional utility. If Tankers getting more aggro/defense amounts to nothing since you can't only have good enough defense/aggro control that Brute can achieve, and increasing Tanker damage is a non starter as it will either still fall behind Brute or exceed Brute and make it irrelevant (which is a non-starter since we'd be back to square one in addition to a Tanker/Brute powercreep), I think Tankers could benefit from additional group utility. The Hero ATs seem to focus more on the group and less on the self like Villain ATs. Maybe give a PBAoE Knocktoward to Tanks in each primary or secondary powerset or adjust existing AoE to have that effect. This could be a great qualify of life for Controllers/Dominators and just about anyone that focuses on AoE damage. Thus makes them more desirable in groups. If both Tankers and Brutes can fill the defense/aggro quota (with Tankers just doing it earlier), what would differentiate Tankers from Brutes is that Brutes would have more damage and Tankers would be QoL for the group that would increase everyone's DPS by a fair margin.

Ah, I must have gotten the names mixed up, I meant Hopeling. Thank you for claification. And this is all good info, thank you. I've definitely been over-thinking it. Rad/Rad looks great but definitely needs some investment to make come into its own. I'll have to think on it a bit more, while keeping an eye on this thread for more write-ups to come out.

Thanks everyone who contributed to the thread so far. It's been extremely helpful, especially @Sunsette's write-ups on Energy Blast, Beam Rifle, and Energy Armor. As well as @Hopeling's Electric Armor write-up. I'm eagerly awaiting write-ups on Electric Blast and Radiation Blast. As well as Radiation Armor. Elec/, Rad/, Energy/, BR/ along with /Elec, /Energy, and /Rad are all powersets I'm looking at to bring my power-armored alien Sentinel to life. I've been extremely indecisive as of late and rerolled my character half-a-dozen times. All feel "okay" but it's hard to know which sets come into their own at later levels before the indecisiveness takes hold. I'm concerned about how important it is across most Sentinel sets to "softcap" defenses for a variety of damage types, and most armors I'm interested in have none outside of Energy (that being Electric, Radiation, and Fiery Aura). There's a lot I'm learning and I recently did a crash course on how Enhancements work because when I first played CoH it was all just sort of gibberish to me. I like the idea of focusing primarily on primary ranged power-sets with a couple of thematically appropriate epic powers to add a bit of variety in attacks or control. That's one thing great about most of these Sentinel secondaries is that they primarily consist of toggles and passives with the occasional click ability that you may or may not have to use. I generally use Fly/Hover and I don't really like the idea of dipping into Leaping or Fighting just for a couple more toggles but I'll do it to shore up defenses and you can usually just toggle and forget they exist if your Endurance can support it. As for each of the primary powers I'm interested in, Radiation seems to focus more on DoT and it feels fairly ineffectual when in large groups while leveling up, but it looks really good aesthetically. Electric Blast wouldn't be my first choice in a thematic power-set but it still fits the powered-armor feel and it does really good damage. I'm intrigued to actually make a "Sapper" build along with Electric Armor that can actually keep enemies drained (though I seen in the Electric Armor write-up that Endurance-drain is a disappointing form of control at endgame). Energy fits the theme perfectly but after watching @Sunsette's frustration with Energy's low damage output in addition to the crazy KB (as fun as it is, you'll run into trouble in teams unless you position yourself perfectly, which is something I'd be willing to do if Energy's damage was higher). I guess what I'm getting at is I'm trying to think what combination of Electric Blast, Radiation Blast, Energy Blast, Electric Armor, Radiation Armor, and Energy Aura tends to give you a well-rounded, effective Sentinel at endgame.

Very excited, and anxious, to see what kind of deal the HC team and NCSoft reaches. I'm quite shocked that these talks are being held at all. I can only guess NCSoft sees CoX as generally not worth their time but could find some use in these servers that costs them nothing to obtain user data from. If that's correct, one of two things will happen: A: The servers become very successful and NCSoft can use data and metrics gathered from HC to inform a new game in the IP or a new IP altogether B: The server populations dwindle below the 10k mark and validates NCSoft's previous stance of the IP not being worth the trouble I guess whatever deal is being made is somehow better than just shutting down the private servers and reviving the game themselves. I don't think anyone benefits from the servers being shut down and the game staying dead, nobody can enjoy or profit off that.