rolandgrey

The first Buffer/Healer I ever made was an Empathy Defender. I'd been with a few teams by then and had seen the common complaint "The Healer isn't healing! They don't know what they're doing!" Well, I saw the behavior of those teams, and the word "reckless" comes to mind for those memories. So, I decided to roll up an Empathy Defender to see how it went. I saw it as "Hey, you can't really judge somebody until you try it for yourself..." Not a great philosophy for everything, I know, but it's certainly good for a game where that option is available to everybody. So... That said... Empathy could probably stand for a revamp. Healing Aura, Heal Other, Fortitude, Clear Mind, and Adrenalin Boost are all great powers. Recovery Aura and Regeneration Aura are good, and people like them, but they're not as great. The recharge rate on them is far too long and they require the team hold still for a moment they probably don't want to. Sure, you can call out "Gather for RAs!" but there are other buffs that can be applied on the fly, recharge faster and IOs are readily available to help shore up a character's recovery or regeneration consistently enough that the teammates often don't need them anymore; and if they do and they miss out, that's a long time to wait for the next chance. The Incarnate abilities, Ageless and Rebirth, recharge faster. Finally, Absorb Pain is simply a foolish power to take. I know there are players out there who will insist that they use this power, that they think it's great, and no self-respecting Empathy build will ignore it... I ignore it, and nobody's ever complained about the healing I do. I ignore Absorb Pain because it's designed around a game design mentality that simply does not fit this game as it is now. It was made in the Emmert days, when he thought the game should be almost as punishing as it was fun (I still remember when somebody ramped up the defense, resistance and regeneration of all the AVs and Giant Monsters, Jack). Absorb Pain is utterly antithetical to the fast-paced gameplay we've been employing. It may be an "Oh crap!" power, but Heal Other will work just as well, it recharges faster and it doesn't try to kill you at the same time, nor does it keep you from receiving healing (including regeneration). If ANY power needs to be completely retooled, it's Absorb Pain (to the point of even replacing it with something else). Pain Domination is mostly the "Evil" version of Empathy. However, it lacks a Fortitude, instead shifting that ability selfishly to the player whenever they use Conduit of Pain to rez an ally (which then boosts you with +DMG, +To-Hit, +Rech, +Rec, though it weakens you after it wears off). It also doesn't have the RAs, instead using a regeneration aura toggle and a +Resistance buff that also boosts the Damage and ToHit of the team, but still not nearly to the degree of Fortitude. Still, it's an excellent buff set, and has a pretty decent debuff in it, even though it's a PBAOE (which is not the best place for the squishy buffer to be). However, it also has an Absorb Pain analogue in Share Pain, which functions mostly the same way, but it also boosts the damage of the player character (the question is whether or not the player thinks this is a good tradeoff). Personally, I'm of the opinion these "Self Harm to Heal Others" should be replaced. Force Fields and Cold Domination are almost like turning the team to Easy Mode. Force Fields especially can ramp the team's defense up to max with a minimum of enhancement investment and is often considered cheating in the Rikti Mothership Raid. About the only complaint I've ever seen for Cold Domination is that the ice armor messes with their costumes, which mostly goes out the window when the action kicks into gear. Sonic Resonance and Thermal Radiation are the Resistance alternate to Force Fields and Cold Domination, with Thermal Radiation also including some ideas from Empathy in terms of healing and buffing (though Forge is slightly underwhelming compared to Fortitude) and also comes with a nice single target debuff and a FANTASTIC AOE debuff. There was a time when players didn't like the resistance buffs, but I think enough players have realized that Defense is great to minimize how often you're hit, but the enemies WILL eventually hit you, so it's good to have buffs that mitigate that damage. Even better to have a mix going. Heck, if you've got one player doing Force Fields, one doing Ice, one doing Sonic and another doing Thermal... It's going to be HARD for the enemies to break through to your precious, precious hitpoints. When I played my Stone Tanker in the Paragon days, I always silently hoped for a Kinetics buffer to join the team. Kinetics is ESPECIALLY enjoyed by the modern team on the go. One quick zap and everybody's got super speed! One PBAOE buff, and everybody can jump really high. The melee guys dive into the middle of the fray and Fulcrum Shift turns the stalwart tanker into a relentless juggernaut and the Scrapper into a blender (even if they're using their fists). The ranged characters aren't left out of the buffs, either, because Siphon Power has a pretty decent buff in damage and ToHit all its own. It's got a pretty long recharge, but I've seen this thing stack up to four times, and any ranged character with THAT going is head-chopping Bosses quick. Nature Affinity is one I haven't played much. I haven't had a desire to play it, though I do have a concept in mind that I might want to dust off. I've seen people complain about it, saying its heals aren't as strong as healing sets and its buffs aren't as strong as buff sets, but I've always enjoyed the boost the set gives, so I might have to give this the Empathy Test after all. Time Manipulation is... Clunky. Granted, I've largely played it on characters that had weapons, so the redraw constantly nagged at me, but nowadays that issue should be largely negated. This set is a mixed bag regardless, though, as it seems to have been designed to be more of a balance between buffs and debuffs. Dark Miasma, Radiation Emission, Trick Arrow, Poison and Storm Summoning have buffs and healing, but they're largely debuff sets. Time Manipulation, however, has a balance of the Buff and Debuff. Its debuffs are perfectly fine, but the buffs and healing are... Odd. There's no single-target heal and the PBAOE Heal is slow-going and endurance-expensive. Temporal Selection is very nice as a buff, but a teammate can lose endurance fast. Chrono Shift is a bit of an odd duck, as its boosts to Recovery and Endurance are somehow barred to Masterminds for some reason, but is otherwise everything great about Empathy's RAs for everybody else, plus a boost to recharge. Electrical Affinity is great. It has one problem, though... You need to near-constantly be zapping your teammates or pets. You need to keep those Static charges up to really maximize the range and effect of Electrical Affinity. The Faraday Cage helps, but while you're waiting for it to boost you up, your team is in a fight for their lives. This is a very tense and anxiety inducing powerset, not for people looking to relax for a game. That said, I do enjoy it, both for its gimmick and its buffs, especially Empowering Circuit and Amp Up, and the Recovery buff of Energizing Circuit is always handy. Radiation Emission's buffs are few. You've got a PBAOE Heal, a Resurrection, and a PBAOE Recovery/Regen/Rech buff. People love this stuff, but it's not where Radiation shines. Its debuffs are the winners on the team, and not the focus here. A Radiation Emission PC that focuses only on the buffs will have a VERY rough time of things. Dark Miasma is similarly hamstrung, with a heal that needs to target an enemy, but will heal everybody around the player character in a sort of inverse of Kinetics's Transfusion. It also has a stealth cloud (that has to be turned off in MANY circumstances). The one thing that Dark Miasma is great for when it comes to buffing, however, is Howling Twilight, a power that will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat again and again. I have seen this power turn the tide in Rikti Mothership Raids repeatedly, and I've even been the one to make the save in some of those instances. However, the set is still mostly debuffs. Storm Summoning is in the same boat as Dark Miasma, but with no resurrection power. Plus, its heal is single-target and rather weak (with the justification that it's also buffing the character's perception and resistances to certain effects; but nobody is relying on it for that). It's not a bad set, but this isn't what you turn to for improving the party, it's what you turn to for obliterating the enemy. Poison is... Rather terrible. Its effects are STRONG, but mostly for single targets, and ONLY for single targets on the team. It's not a great heal (being rather slow to animate), it's not a great Mez Resistance (again, slow to animate), and its Resurrection power INFURIATES players ("Why am I not movi-I'M BARFING! DAMN IT, POISON!"). Again, this is a debuff heavy set, though, so when you bring poison to the table, you're not trying to improve the party, you're trying to destroy the enemy. That said, I have great memories of this set helping a team wipe out Romulus. Envenom used to completely tank an enemy's ability to heal, which made Romulus's "Healing Fluffy" absolutely useless to him at the time. Now, the -Heal effect has been reduced... But it still gives Romulus a REALLY bad day. Still... I do wish the "splash" effects were wider. I'm not enjoying splash attacks, of any stripe, which need enemies to be practically huddling together to spread out the effect while other sets have much wider ranges on their debuffs and are far more powerful for the effect. Finally, there is Trick Arrow and Traps. These aren't buff sets. Traps does have its Force Field Generator and Triage Beacon (which, let's be honest, isn't great), and Trick Arrow does have its new and improved EMP Arrow (the old one was built using the old Blaster Nuke rules despite doing a pittance of the damage while the new one makes a fancier Faraday Cage), but these two sets were designed around hampering and hindering the enemy. Any buffs they provide are entirely tertiary.

I'm a big fan of the Dean MacArthur arc. The writing is good, but it's the random mix of powers applied to the Flawed Clone for the big fight with Ajax that keeps me coming back. You get to see some really neat powerset mixes.

Market Crash is 40-50. No, the Malta Group doesn't have a TF, but they do show up in the Lord Recluse Strike Force for a mission.

Well, here's the Homecoming Wiki entry... https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Dr._Aeon_Strike_Force If you're well-versed in the lore of the game, then the Aeon Strike Force makes a lot of sense. I'm not saying that to knock on you, just pointing out a simple fact. The Aeon Strike Force's central conflict revolves around a device called the D-Rifter, a device that was a throwaway MacGuffin in a single mission provided by the Golden Roller in Cap Au Diable. Everything else in the Strike Force is derived from the concepts provided by the D-Rifter, a device that draws in random things from random dimensions. It's a run through the game's stories and events from all across the game, but with the twist that these are alternate takes on them. The average player who just tags along and beats up big groups of enemies to gain XP and level up to maximum or just speedruns through the maps to get end-mission rewards as fast as possible? This stuff's going to fly over their heads because they skipped the dialogue, the clues, the collecting evidence, and when the cutscenes came up, they rolled their eyes and grumbled or went to get a drink or snack. If you don't pay attention to the story in the rest of the game, the story of the Aeon Strike Force WILL fly right over your head.

Just because they're on a TF with you doesn't mean they're locked in. They can quit anytime they want to. Frankly, it's easier to refill your team on the arcs and other missions. Sounds like you're just in your own way.

Yeah. Dominators. I used to be unable to play them. They didn't make sense to me. Worse, my introduction to Dominators was a Mind Control/Psionic Assault Dominator, and I built it so it had almost no melee attacks. The thinking was "This is a squishy character, and needs to stay away from the enemies..." So, I've learned since that is a poor way to play a Dominator, but I'm still rather stung on the Mind/Psi Dom. Frankly, just about anything with psychic damage... At least, from the player's side. It seems NPCs have really powerful psychic damage, but players get this weird, sleepy version. Dominators are still a bit rare for me to roll up. I need a really good concept to slap one together. However, once I do, I've found them to be quite enjoyable.

I think Fire is about the only Control set I've never really gotten around to playing. I tried a few times back in the Paragon days, but I could never really sink my teeth into it. I am absolutely LOVING Illusions on Dominators, though. I've got an Illusions Controller, and it plays as expected, but on my Dominator, it really makes that particular character pop. He used to be an Ice/Martial Dom, but that just never felt right for his theme. Unfortunately, I'm not that into the concept of controllers or control powers. It doesn't inspire much passion in me, so this isn't going to be as verbose as my usual responses to these threads. It is nice to be able to lock down a large group of enemies, though, and turn the tide of battle with a single power. Probably my favorite set is Gravity, though, because it has a bunch of wonderful things you can do to your enemies. There's a collection of raw damage powers, true, but also Wormhole and Propel to place your enemies precisely where you want them or to bat clustered groups of enemies around. Plus, Propel leaves a surprisingly large pile of junk all over the place, and with the right use of the Singularity, that pile will follow you throughout the map!

Uh... *looks at post count* A lot of them. Back in the Paragon days, I used to post a lot to Roleplaying, usually my stories but sometimes I dabbled in the Forum RP. Eventually I got sick of the rampant "un-reffed" nature of Forum RP, so I stopped doing it and focused on my writing. Here, though, I haven't felt the urge to write much except my Protector Pops story. However, despite my rarity of posting, I do have one region I try to avoid: Suggestions. I have never seen so much negativity just poured into one region of this game's fanbase before. Suggestions is rapidly gaining a reputation of "The place where good ideas go to die," and the people circling that section of the forum like hungry vultures are certainly reinforcing that reputation. You have to adopt an attitude of "fire and forget" in Suggestions, because most of the feedback I see there boils down to "I don't want this because it changes things in ways I didn't consider and I only want the HC devs to change things the way I want!" Any little flaw in an idea leads to an utter and complete teardown, and eventually you start thinking these people are only doing it to massage their own egos. Say you suggest "Vehicles," and you'll get responses of "That's too vague!" or "The devs have looked into it and it's not possible." Give a detailed idea of a potential powerset and the same people who said another idea was "too vague" now come along to say the idea is "too detailed" while others come along to whine about the numbers. Meanwhile, there's a bunch that come along and complain "Well if they waste time on this idea, then they won't be able to work on the stuff they announced!" (which is nonsense, because the devs already have what they're working on; they're not going to let a nifty idea derail them when they're already in the middle of something). Is it any wonder we've been getting posts in General Chat that ask how we do with certain aspects of the game and also ask what else we'd like to see in that vein? The last two weeks have been Melee Sets and Blast Sets, each with dialogue asking for what players would like to see improved or suggestions for new ideas. It's friendlier (or at least more moderated) in General Chat. Suggestions is supposed to be fun, some little "Gee, I'd like to see something like this..." ideas for consideration, but some people go and ruin it for everybody by thinking they can play "arm chair developer."

When Knockout Blow misses, I feel it in my groin.

I run Goldside with great ambivalence and a lot of agitation. On the one hand, I like a lot of the story. The Praetorians are no longer simply mustache-twirling mirror opposites of the Main Game Heroes. We've got Redside characters that show up and some of them turn out to be just as monstrous as their Primal counterparts. We've got Blueside characters who show up that are still heroic. We've got the Praetorians dealing with a bad situation and struggling desperately to turn it around. The different arcs demonstrate the difficulty of trying to exist in a world like this and sticking to your ideals. Go the Power route, and morality never even enters into the conversation. Instead, you're just tearing your way up the ladder of social clout and popular privilege. Go the Responsibility route, and you're faced with the everyday corruption of the Praetorians, up to and including helping Praetorian Tilman (Mother Mayhem) to kidnap and brainwash people. Go the Warden route, and you're trying to help people, but you're constantly stymied by authorities who don't understand (nor can you explain the situation to them) or you're being hampered by your own allies in the Crusaders, who think you're not "hardcore" enough to make a difference. Finally, you go the Crusader route and you commit war crimes; there's no way to sugarcoat detonating a neutron bomb in Imperial City. I'm not going to go into the weirdness of the morality system. The highly complex Praetorian side, with convoluted and downright unsettling arcs that can be genuinely thought-provoking boils down to a binary choice once you reach level 20. Other people have deliberated on this again and again. I've got nothing new to add to the conversation there. What I do have to add, however, is how CRUNCHED the story feels. There is a lot of content in Praetoria, and even if you stick to one path, you run a risk of missing out on content in that path. I've had to turn off XP gain in order to finish some arc paths because I tried to do those paths with prior characters only to outlevel the content. The 1-20 Praetorian content could have EASILY been expanded out to level 25 by the Paragon Devs, maybe even out to level 30. First Ward and Night Ward could have served as the 30+ and 40+ content as a result (with the events in Night Ward running simultaneous to the arcs The Anti-Matter Collision and A Hero's Epic)... But I'm gonna get into those a little bit later. The difficulty of Praetoria is significantly ramped up from CoH and CoV. City of Villains was a significant jump from what you encountered in City of Heroes through the implementation of multiple elite bosses, arch villains and heroes. They're ubiquitous to Red Side while Blue Side is mostly long arcs. What did Paragon do with Praetoria after years of "Flavor of the Month" build discussions and lamentations that "the game is too easy?" They threw HORDES of enemies at us. The ambush mechanics are horrifically abused, with ambushes dropping in one after another onto the players. The maps are big, with many, MANY enemies. Do NOT go into these missions with a changed difficulty setting that's higher than the base +0/X1 or you will get well acquainted with the game's floors. On top of that, the NPCs are operating on the Architect's logic of enemy construction, rather than how the CoH and CoV enemies were designed, which means we're essentially fighting armies of broken down PCs, but with the boosts attributed to their rank at the same time. Minions have virtually no boosts, but Lieutenants gain health and resistance bonuses and Bosses gain more; slapping a PC suite of powers onto that makes enemies that are tougher than the game's difficulty settings were designed to account for. Praetoria is NOT a path for beginners to take. On top of that, if you are a good enough player to handle the ridiculous onslaught, then you will gain so much experience that you will quickly level out of the content. It's bizarre Going Rogue was made this way, and it needed a lot of tweaking... It's serviceable as-is, but it's very pointedly "not fun," and that leaves it a huge turnoff for most players. Throw in that there are no Task/Strike Forces for Praetorian Side and you're left with not a lot of incentive to go there, either. So, there's been speculation that Praetoria is New Orleans. The shotgun houses in Neutropolis and general "swamp" feel of the vegetation around the city implies this. However, the ever present "London Speak" brings to mind England... Then you go to First Ward and Night Ward. First Ward has characters talking about "The Gumbo," discussing voodoo, has a Native American contact who is also a mystic... But the architecture doesn't look like anything out of North America, and certainly not anything that would have stood in the swamps at the mouth of the Mississippi. Night Ward is supposed to be a dark reflection of First Ward, and is riddled with spooky Bobbies and characters are constantly talking in "London Speak." (Can you tell that Doctor Who was popular at the time?) This leads me to think that Praetoria is built on the ruins of New Orleans, but First Ward and Night Ward are what remains of London. The only way I can square the "London Speak" in Praetoria is a large refugee immigrant population... Or it's all nonsense and they just used a pastiche of Londoner speak in their writing because they were watching a bunch of BBC at the time, leaving the whole story a confused mess. At this point, the story really starts to fall apart as your character has to try to save the day despite the utter incompetence of your erstwhile allies and the abrupt stop of assistance from the Resistance (because First Ward and Night Ward's arc writing just assumes you're working for the Resistance now). Despite having some really good ideas in here, the experience is ultimately disappointing.

I built WAY too many Assault Rifle characters. I got to the point I started wishing we had DIFFERENT AR powersets, like one for shotguns, one for flamethrowers, one for machineguns or other military rifles. While I still kind of feel that way, I also think it could be done so that you could just expand the current Assault Rifle set to include a wider range of powers and that selecting some preclude others... Buuuuuuuuut... I've been told that's a headache and a half to program, so I'm not holding my breath. For now, I'll just deal with it by making characters that focus on one type or another. Snipers? They use single-target attacks for the most part. They still use Full Auto, because... It's the Tier 9 of AR. When it comes to Blasting sets, you do NOT ignore the Tier 9. I've got one character that has forgone all of the flame attacks, and actually feels like a proper soldier as a result. Another character uses almost all of the attacks, I just handwave the flamethrower as "venting plasma." About the only power I dislike is the M30 Grenade. It has WAY too low damage for its endurance cost. I've had all sorts of characters that had endurance issues before I removed the M30 Grenade from their build and suddenly they were far more survivable, they could keep up in the fights better, their food got better, I don't know what it is about the M30 Grenade, but it just drags everything down. Dual Pistols is just plain fun. It's like the Paragon Devs watched Equilibrium and went "That. The set has to look like the ending corridor run." Seismic Blast... When I first watched the rock fall and everyone died, I just HAD to take it against enemies that were way too underleveled. I went to Striga Isle, where I knew I would find large groups of enemies and the first thing I did was bombard a swamp full of zombies. I speared them into the trees! They didn't even bother animating their rising to battle, they just stuck there, dead. I have since had other hilarious moments, including one where I slammed Akarist into the ceiling while he was in mid-rant. I watched his text bubble slide along the contours of the roof before he plopped mostly dead at the mouth of the cave. I was laughing so hard my friends had to finish him off. All other aspects of this set are great, too. Archery is pretty straightforward. You pull out a bow and shoot a bunch of arrows at your enemies. Despite its largely disappointing visuals, the set still hits as hard as any other blast set. It just looks like it's lacking impact, leading to a surprising realization that all of your enemies are dead and full of arrows. It's still funny when the arrows are used against larger enemies, turning them suddenly into arrows hewn from tree limbs or whole tree trunks (such as when you shoot giant monsters). Beam Rifle wasn't quite what people were expecting when it first came out. A lot were expecting an expansion of the Pulse Rifle from Robotics Masterminds. Instead, we got a heavy combat version of the Ghostbuster Neutrona Wand. Why? Because MAD SCIENCE, that's why. The Pulse Rifle is lasers, light that hurts. That's boring compared to throwing fire from your fingertips, lightning from your butt or a big rock from the sky. What do you use to compare? Why a Beam Rifle that looks like the energy cascading out of it is dangerously unstable, that's how! Dark Blast suffers the same problem as Archery. It's perfectly functional, but largely unimpressive. It does have some helpful effects (-ToHit per hit and it stacks, some powers that knock enemies down or immobilize them), but it's all so blunt. Compared to the frenetic behavior of other sets, this one just doesn't leave a big impression. Fire Blast has the same problem as Dark, just without the utility. You throw fire at enemies. It doesn't knock them down. They keep attacking, they keep charging you, they keep being a problem. Fire doesn't slow them down, it doesn't stop them, it doesn't do anything any of the other sets do. How does it mitigate? Like every other fire powerset in this game: DAMAGE. Even things that would normally be resistant to Fire fall to the hard ball that is Fire Blast. Fire pumps out the damage because it can't stop them any other way. I suppose you could recolor Fire Blast and Dark Blast to make them pop a bit. Ice Blast, however, makes players think they accidentally slapped together a controller. Two holds, and a boatload of slow. Don't let it fool you, either, because most of the non-hold powers still do severe damage (skip Ice Bolt; minor damage powers are largely irrelevant) and Blizzard is scary the way it just makes enemies drop. Electrical Blast would be in the same boat as the other bland powers except for one thing: Endurance Drain. Sure, it recently got an update from the HC devs, but Electrical Blast fulfills the promise that the Fighting Pool keeps making (and failing to live up to). Electrical Blast DRAINS THE ENERGY OUT OF YOUR ENEMIES. You can get to a point where your enemies CANNOT fight back. They just stand there, staring at you, silently begging you to stop pummeling them. If they could get just 1 Endurance, they'd be able to stab or shoot you, but no, the Electric Blast character is still shooting them like a Gear on crack, keeping their endurance stuck firmly at ZERO. It's not often you see this happen with just one Electrical Blast character, but with two? Quite often. Three? VERY often. More? Almost always. It's a beautiful thing when most of the team is hurling lightning at the enemies and they just look on in abject terror as one of the most hated enemy attacks is turned against them. Energy Blast was the first blast I ever used, all the way back in 2006. It hits hard. It hits so hard, it's throwing enemies all over the place. Unlike a lot of players, I LIKE knockback. It's really entertaining. It's FUN. Max DPS is boring. Max DPS gaming is "I'm trying to maximize gains for a minimum of effort. I am turning my leisure activity into MATH HOMEWORK." TO HELL WITH THAT KIND OF THINKING! I want to knock enemies around. I want to watch them pirouette through the air, silently screaming as they anticipate the pain to come before they wrap around a railing and I punt them through the slats and shoot them again. Energy Blast is emblematic of the classic comic book characters who shoot cosmic rays and blast their enemies through the walls or just blast holes through them. Who cares if the Scrapper is whining that he has to chase some of them down? You're not playing a lump that sits down and radiates spikes! You're -oh wait, you're a Spines/Dark Scrapper... Well, you know what? You need the exercise. Go chase that guy I blasted down the hall. Radiation Blast is the bright version of Dark Blast, and it lacks an immobilize power. The snipe is fun, because it's basically Star Trek TOS's Photon Torpedoes (it's even using the same sound effect!). A gamebreaker once gave me some really useful advice for my Empathy/Radiation Defender back in the Paragon Days. Since I HAD to use Neutrino Bolt, I may as well make it useful. Slap an Achilles Heel PROC in it instead of a damage and it will VASTLY improve the damage output of all the other attacks. Why? Because you will be throwing Neutrino Bolts at enemies like it's candy, and that PROC hits A LOT. Suddenly your Defender is ripping large chunks out of the enemy. Wow. I haven't done this with a Radiation Blast Blaster, Corrupter or Sentinel yet, but I imagine the effect can only be even more pronounced. On that note... Sonic Attack. Screaming at the enemy. It's also reducing their damage resistance, and it's not a small effect. Still... It's visually uninteresting. It can also put enemies to sleep, stun them, knock them down, but in the end you don't care, because the air ripples and you're done. Bleh. Water Blast is weird and fun and it's funny watching the splash graphics. It's got the builder mechanics to make certain powers do different things. It can be somewhat clunky, but it's still a lot of fun "flushing" enemies before water spouting them into the ceiling. Storm Blast, I'm still getting used to. It's a bit clunky because its powers are different things, which means the blaster is going through different motions and there doesn't seem to be much flow between the attacks. On top of that, it requires heavy use of its pseudo pet to get the most out of it and it's really weird having a Tier 9 power that needs to be fed to get it to do the most damage possible. Finally, Psychic Blast. I like this set... But I feel like it's lying to me. A lot of the attacks feel like they're hitting softer than they advertise. Despite the "vulnerability" of enemies across the game, psychic attacks just seem to be batting them with pillows compared to what the other powersets do. Fortunately, the set has a lot of utility and allows for a lot of soft control. Finally, it's STILL a fantastic thing to use against enemies that use Tier 9 defensives, because practically NONE of them deflect or mitigate psychic damage. Strength of Will, from Willpower, can withstand it, but none of the NPCs use it. It's fun boring a hole through Marauder's brain in "The Anti-Matter Collision" arc, where despite the improvements made to Invulnerability, Marauder is STILL vulnerable to Psychic damage. Now, for a suggestion, I would love to see a Throwing Weapons set. We've already got the parts of one scattered throughout the game. Shuriken from the Scrapper Weapon Mastery Ancillary. Shurikens (which is three smaller ones compared to the big Fuma Shuriken from Weapon Mastery), Trick Shot, Masterful Throw and Explosive Shuriken from Martial Assault for Dominators. I prefer the Dominator Exploding Shuriken animation because it just reeks of style, but it would be nice if it had a REAL AOE effect rather than the "splash" version it gets. It could also take the Shockwave from Claws, as that power includes a weird thrown object in it as well. Really, the one thing the set would be missing would be a decent Tier 9, which could be something like "Falling Stars" and it could be a directional cone (where your character is facing when you activate, not who they're targeting) of throwing a series of shurikens. Or maybe it would just be an up-gunned Shockwave, I don't know. But there's my twenty cents.

I've got a bunch of melee characters. Super Strength is like a diesel engine, it takes some time to build up to feeling like super strength, but when you land that first Knockout Blow, you feel it. Titan Weapons takes that same impact and spreads it across the set. The set is all about swinging a big, heavy object at the enemies and that's just great. You are practically AOE Death with this set, and I love it! Dual Blades and Katana both satisfy that "quick and nimble" mentality. Neat thing about Dual Blades, you don't necessarily NEED to use the combo system to keep a high DPS, so you don't need to feel like you're missing out when you don't follow the combos. I kind of wish the other sets had Combo mechanics, too. Broadsword and Battle Axe are great for, well, feeling like Jason Voorhees, moving in and chopping your enemies into oblivion. I wish there was a dual wielding version of these, sort of like what we see with the Scrapyarders. Current Dual Blades comes across as almost like ballet. We just don't have a nice "vicious" dual-wielding the way that Broadsword and Battle Axe are vicious. I'm really liking Battle Axe's Axe Cyclone now, too, with how it draws enemies closer. Sort of like "You WILL pay attention to me! Come here!" I wonder if the HC devs are toying with the idea of a Ninja Weapons set, complete with Scorpion's Harpoon (rope dart), or heck maybe a whole Rope Dart set... I'll stop daydreaming now. War Mace used to just be the Smashing alternate to Battle Axe. I really like the changes HC has made to both sets, and both are behaving much better nowadays. A hard-hitting stunning set. Energy Melee is about as close to boxing as we'll get, I think. Punch-punch-punch-punch-PUNCH! I especially love that the HC crew has found a way to bring back my beloved Sucker Punch version of Energy Transfer. This is what I'm talking about with having the other melee sets have their own combo systems (as well as Street Justice and Staff Fighting), but it's mostly just a "Do extra damage NOW!" approach. Dark Melee is slow, but it hits hard. It can be useful for the right kind of character, but it's certainly not the go-to for fast-paced play. It's also thematic for vampirism and terror, so it's really difficult to multipurpose it for other character themes. Still, it's hard to argue with "Effective." Kinetic Melee is also slow, but it doesn't hit hard. It also eats up too much endurance for the small amount of damage it's doing. I like the idea of a martial arts set that feeds into the more "mystical" themes, but this one really highlights how impractical all those buildups are in anime cartoons. Filler is useful for cartoons that need to be cranked out every week, not so much for a video game. I do like the build up mechanic in it, though. Paired up with a Shield character, and you will make some really painful hits. Aside from Lightning Rod, Electric Melee is just boring. It hits hard, yeah, but the character sprite hardly moves. Electric punch, then electric tap, then a flying overhead smash... I get more dynamic motion by adding attacks from Pool Powers into the attack chain. Still, it's hard to argue with a hard-hitting Lightning Rod Fiery Melee and Ice Melee are just great. Some would think Ice Melee is too slow, but it's freaky how enemies are suddenly collapsing around you. Fiery Melee is damage and lots of it. Spines hits harder than it looks like it does. Toxic damage continues to be the silent killer in this game. Staff Fighting is fun and full of motion. Maybe a bit too much motion, but the damage is largely reflected for the animation times. Savage Melee... This is probably the power people think of when they think "Claws." Quick, vicious, and a REALLY low endurance cost. Super fun, I'm using it on a bunch of my beastly characters. Catgirls, Dogboys, Gator Men, it suits all of them! Speaking of Claws... This set is a bit disappointing. Most of its attacks look the same, because this set is built more around Vega Claws rather than Wolverine Claws, despite making the classic "Snikt!" motion to deploy them. It also has a pair of thrown attacks in it, as if the claws are somehow shooting energy in one and you throw what looks like the Beastmaster's Caber for the other. Was this supposed to be the Paragon/Cryptic Devs' initial approach to ninja weaponry? Still, while visually disappointing, the set is GREAT if you want to feel like a blender. The attacks are quick, quick to recharge and hit damn hard. Plus, that ranged attack that throws a random bit of metal at the enemies? It's fantastic at getting enemies off your back for a little bit. Street Justice... I like Street Justice. It's brutal and bone-crunching. As a Marine, I can say it bears a lot of resemblance to MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program), making it great for military-themed characters that you don't want to just keep using firearms. Or maybe you just want a brawler who fights like he just came out of a bar room. Either way, this set will scratch your itch. I would love Martial Arts, except it's ridiculously expensive on endurance. Pair MA with Super Reflexes, the pairing that was meant to be, and you can find out what it's like to suck wind for 90% of the game. Which is really too bad, because I love Crane Kick and sending enemies flying head over heels into the distance. Even on secondaries with extra endurance, like Regeneration and Willpower, this set can drag the character near to sucking wind. About the only one I haven't used is Stone Melee. I just never have a use for it. I did try it back in the Paragon days, paired up with Fiery Aura on a Brute. It was... Okay. It's a bit of a clunky set, with a lot of disjointed visuals. Sure, Fiery Melee and Ice Melee have similarly disjointed visuals, but it just stands out more on Stone Melee as you jump to wildly different particle effects. That said, though, it's a great utility fighter, regularly knocking enemies off their feet and stunlocking them as well as Energy Melee. Radiation Melee is a bit of an odd duck for the same reason as Stone Melee. The character keeps slipping awkwardly from one pose to another, and a lot of the animations look like they were chosen just to be a different from all the other sets. There's practically no reason for the set to use anything different from Energy Melee or Dark Melee, but there it goes doing a full-bodied double-hand smash or a leap into the air to titan punch the ground for its PBAOE (which was supposed to be the animation of the Mighty Judgement). It's like if you needed a set to be labeled "Try Hard," it's this one. That said, it's still very effective, and its Irradiated Ground power is deliciously unsettling. Try blending it with a Stone Tanker for some really nifty visuals! I love practically everything about Psionic Melee EXCEPT the gigantic psychic fist. Simultaneously, I love the gigantic psychic fist. I wish this was two different sets, one that is Psychic Slashing, and another that is Psychic Smashing. That said, I can deal with it as-is, and it's still plenty fun. Finally, there's the Fighting Pool. I love Cross Punch. I LOVE Cross Punch! This power helps round out just about any melee build. Need one extra cone attack for your Titan Weapons character? Cross Punch. Need another power on your Super Strength character that looks like they're clotheslining an entire group of enemies (or just drilling their fist through their heads)? Cross Punch. I've even got non-melee characters that use this power. Whoever had the bright idea to put this power in the Fighting Pool, thank you.

Well, a friend and I have been playing Redside a lot lately... Here are my forty-two cents... -How do you feel about the current state of Red Side? Writing-wise? Not bad. Some of the best arcs you can find on entertainment value alone you can find on Redside. Reward-wise, it's abysmal. There aren't as many arcs, the arcs aren't very long, and most of the arcs revolve around Longbow and Arachnos, two enemy groups specifically designed to be at least annoying to fight, regardless of your archetype. There's also an ever present sense of neglect. Mercy Island now has this arc involving liberating it from Longbow occupation, but Port Oakes is bereft of any cohesive story, is full of lore of the interesting sites upon it, but you have content that is related to about 10% of it. St. Martial suffers from this the worst, as it's "Island Las Vegas, a la the Mob," but the bulk of the story quests there revolve around the Wailer demons trying to kill Johnny Sonata. There is a mob war raging on the streets between the Frost Family, the Verandis and the Tsoo, with Freakshow running about, but you don't get to experience any of it because some screaming little "razor bats" want to kill the main money man. However, my main complaint is the rewards. Blueside gets heaps of rewards in merits for its content while Redside gets pittances. The explanation is always a trite "Well, it goes by mission length..." which is bull excrement. The merit rewards placed on Redside look like placeholders at best, as if the Paragon devs still needed to evaluate the actual difficulty of what they'd put players through. Blueside, you go through missions that are Defeat All, click 20 things, etc., but RARELY fight an Elite Boss or Arch Villain. You get anywhere between 40-55 merits, "because the arcs were loooooong." Redside, you get a mission from a guy who tells you to go beat up Positron, which leads to fighting Valkyrie (and, whoop! Positron showed up again!). Eight merits. Eight merits for a fight that will likely take you as long as the Blueside arc because you might be able to get, at best, a team of four, but will most likely be fighting Positron and Valkyrie with a team of two. -If you had you split your play time between blue, red, and gold, how much percent out of 100 would you say you spend playing red side? 45% -What do you think about the mission content of red side? As others said, the content is mostly filler. Most of the actual arcs were, while improved, still little better than the 40+ content on Blueside. It wasn't until later we started getting the more unusual, dynamic missions. So, the writings good, but you can definitely feel the "Okay, we put this here because we felt there needed to be something here..." aspect of it. At least it's not the same as the Citadel TF's second mission (which literally has you go right into the same door and fight the same mission all over again). -How about the atmosphere/weather? What weather? Despite heroes breaking Nemesis's weather machine on Blueside, IT STILL NEVER RAINS. However, the atmosphere on Redside is gloomy and depressing, but also has something of a Wild West feel due to the "Survival of the Fittest" mantra espoused by Arachnos. You can see how these Isles are such a hive of scum and villainy. -What would get you to play more on red side now then you currently do? MORE ARCS. Better rewards FOR those arcs. I keep coming back to the new Doc Buzzsaw stuff because that stuff's really entertaining. Kudos to the HC folks responsible for that. I don't even mind the self-insert, because the writing is so on-point and lore appropriate. You have so much to dig into, so much that was just left as set dressing but was just left to fester in our imaginations because Paragon only had the budget and resources to focus solely on the New Shiny every update. -What would you change about red side in general if you were able to do so? Better rewards, especially the merits. Despite being a setting involving characters who are doing what they do for selfish reasons, they never seem to reap any reward for it. We've got missions that end with our characters chortling about how much money they made on a mission, but their Inf gain is exactly the same as an equivalent Blueside mission and merit reward is abysmal despite regularly taking on much more difficult challenges. I'm not saying change it so people wind up "mission farming" on Redside in an effort to gain fat stacks of Inf for little effort, but the merits AT LEAST need to be adjusted.

DJ Zero got sick and tired of him, so he zapped him out of the building. It's not good business to have somebody sick in your establishment.

My Electric/Electric Scrapper is named Pop Roxy.

Tiny pets. Just little swarms of cats, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, beavers... Those little pandas on our shoulders and the kittens... The whole idea is that they swarm enemies and inflict severe slows. Equip and Mastery powers, the ones that buff the summons up into new versions of themselves and give them new attacks and abilities, would just add more animals to their swarms. So, the first summon would have three little fuzzballs, the enhanced version would be five fuzzballs and the mastered version would be seven. Their attacks would look like the little animals leaping up and attacking your foes, one at a time. The whole idea would be to attack with cuteness. 😛

So, the mission is " Get the PPD files in Independence Port!" in the "Good Villains Never Die" arc, from the contact Leonard. It's the follow-up arc to the "Me, Myself and My Other Selves" arc from Dean MacArthur. A friend of mine and I have done this arc repeatedly and it's not a fluke, the Freakshow that are supposed to fight the PPD simply DON'T. It makes the mission more challenging, sure, but it also breaks the immersion, as the Freakshow are supposed to have made a deal with your character to help bust out one of their leaders in exchange for helping soften up the PPD in the area. Here's an image of the Freakshow not properly freaking as proof... So, if we could get these guys properly fighting each other again as soon as possible, that'd be great.

The complaints about the CoT revamp were because this is what the Paragon devs did... Devs: "We're revamping the Circle of Thorns! No longer will they be a male-only enemy group, and we're updating their outfits to make them a bit more aggressive and fit in better with their latest story developments..." Players: "Okay. Cool. Those designs look great." Devs: "You'll also get to use Circle of Thorns costume parts!" Players: "Really? Even the old ones?" Devs: "uh... You'll get to use Circle of Thorns costume parts!" Players: "That very deliberately doesn't answer the question we very directly asked." Devs: "...Uh... You'll see." Players: "Oh, for crap's sake..." Like, there was no reason to play it coy like they did. Players had been asking for enemy group outfits, but enemy groups have special designs (Hellions, for instance, tuck their pants into their boots' ankles in a way no player can). The old Circle of Thorns robes just could not function with Player Character skeletons. By way of an example, the Talons of Vengeance parts we get to use are notorious for clipping issues. All the devs had to do was explain it, but they didn't, leaving it to players to explain for them. It was nuts. As for the Rikti redesign, I don't remember anybody really being that bothered. There were a couple Rikti outfits that vanished (like the solid-red Rikti Soldier armor; none of the new designs do that), but the Rikti outfits were near-universally praised... If only because they were something as opposed to the many, MANY naked Rikti. I still have an image of how they looked, I think... There it is. Pretty much the only thing intimidating about the old Rikti was their height. As for the diverse coloration for the uniforms, there's never been an answer why they were never distributed. Instead we've got a sea of pea green interspersed with some neat glow-paneled power armor.

I got some pictures of what I'm talking about. First, the normal outfits. Green. Brown shoulder pads and boots. BORING. Second, the potential for variety! I got the second picture from a mission in the Angus McQueen arc. The outfits were apparently assigned at random, so none of the colors corresponded to any particular jobs. That gold-dressed Rikti was a Guardian, but so was the black-dressed one.

So far, the worst combo I've had to deal with has been Martial Arts/Super Reflexes. Both sets are okay on their own, but together they're a ludicrous endurance hog. Which is odd, because they're clearly supposed to work together, with Practiced Brawler's "Bring It!" pose and no redraw on Martial Arts.

Yeah, that would be neat. I'm sure there's a bunch of naysayers out there, but it would be funny to be able to see the old "Naked Rikti" models again. 😛

No, I'm not asking for a massive overhaul of the Rikti. Just some of them. I feel like the Rikti Guardians and Rikti Communications Officers don't stand out enough. You wind up with a sea of pea green and pumpkin orange, topped with protoceratops heads. However, there are some Rikti uniforms that are criminally underused. They only show up in a couple arcs, but they'd be amazing to help diversify the rank-and-file Rikti. One's an orange uniform, practically all-orange. That'd be great for the Guardians. It would highlight their utility in a fight. The other is a forest green uniform with purple shoulder pads and highlights. That would be simply stunning for the Communications Officer, as its resplendent appearance would signify the enemy NPC as a character of rank and responsibility.

Grandville: Lord Recluse's Throne Room Stefan Richter was trying to busy himself with determining the logistics of some of his latest schemes. Recruiting was down and several regiments' worth of soldiers were "arrested" by Longbow forces in recent engagements in the Bloody Bay, Siren's Call and various locations between Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. While that would normally still leave him with plenty of troops to shuffle around, the bulk of the rest were tied up in the projects and schemes of his lieutenants. He spared a moment to regard them. Lately, he'd been keeping them in his throne room more often and having them coordinate through their minions. Scirocco's recent foray into "heroism" during the Dark Astoria Crisis and Ghost Widow's obvious affection for him made him understand he needed to keep a closer eye on his lieutenants. Black Scorpion could always be counted on to loudly blather how he was going to do something that would jeopardize Arachnos's plans. He was loyal, but he was stupid and greedy, and that could always be counted on to make problems. However, he was also a brutal taskmaster, and sometimes that was just what Recluse needed to get the troops, sorcerers and scientists in line. A smacking sound in the final corner caught his attention. This was what had been annoying him the past few days and making work difficult. He focused his baleful red eyes on Captain Mako. The sharkman was the one lieutenant Recluse never really had any problems with. If Mako wanted to make a play to conquer Arachnos for himself, he'd fight Lord Recluse, they'd beat the crap out of each other, Recluse would batter him against a wall and that would be the end of it. They'd already done that dance four or five times. In recent years, though, Mako seemed more content with his strange "memetic" status as the most eligible bachelor of the Rogue Isles. Stefan could only surmise it had something to do with the influx of more "beastlike" mercenaries and criminals that were populating the Isles. They were able to see past the toothy maw to the kind soul within. Richter couldn't help but chuckle at the thought. Mako with a kind soul? Some things were just too absurd to not be funny. However, there was another recent change, and this was slowly sanding away the Arachnos leader's patience. He watched Mako for a few seconds, trying to figure out what it was that the creature was eating these past few days. He pulled them out of a metal box at his feet every hour or so and nonchalantly popped them into his mouth to chew on for a few minutes while he analyzed reports from his various cells. Then he saw it, a little blue... Arm? "Mako?" he called out, "What is that you're eating?" "Hm?" Mako hummed as he looked back up to his overlord, "Nothing. Just a new snack food." "Is that... A tiny man?" Stefan asked. "What?" the shark man's mouth moved awkwardly to keep the morsel in while he chewed on it and tried to talk at the same time, "No!" "Wait-a-minute..." Black Scorpion grumbled, though he was eager for the distraction, and he peered at the shark man across the throne room, his cybernetic eye whirring as he zoomed in, "Is that a little arm!?" "Yes it is!" Recluse shouted, partly disgusted, but also somewhat amused, "We can see it, clear as day! That thing is struggling for its life!" "Help meeeeee!" they heard a tiny voice shout, "Help meeeeeee!" Mako sucked in sharply, pulling the tiny limb into his mouth and he proceeded to chew more intensely, leading to unsettling crunching sounds. Scirocco and Ghost Widow looked on in bafflement. "There wasn't... There wasn't a soul in that..." Ghost Widow explained, her confusion growing. "Okay, let me..." Mako paused to chew again, "Let me expla-OH!" His mouth was starting to glow with a pale green light. "Oh, it popped MOG! Aw, I love it when they do this! I can really grind my teeth now!" Lord Recluse and his remaining lieutenants stared in stunned silence as Mako happily chewed on his apparently still-living snack. There had to be a story here. ========== Two Months Earlier... "...Don't think of them as children... In fact, they weren't really people..." Doc Buzzsaw's voice came over the radio. "Really?" the creature known as the Shadow Bone Shark asked, "So... Does that mean nobody's going to miss them?" Her sister, the Electric Bone Shark, gnawed absentmindedly on one of the legs of one of the small, underdeveloped Paragon Protectors. She'd taken to calling them "Hero Veal." Their friends, Black Dogg and Gator Man were also chewing on their own collection of assorted parts, all from the Crey's Paragon Protector batch that had been sent against them to stop their heist for special fluids. "Well, Crey might get a little miffed about some of their property being stolen, but when has that ever stopped people like us?" Buzzsaw cheerily replied. "So it's okay if we eat them?" Shadow Bone Shark asked her more pertinent question. "Yeah, it's okay if you-!" Doc Buzzsaw stopped in mid-sentence, her voice catching in her throat with unfamiliar shock; once she recovered, she sounded positively ecstatic, "You know what, you guys? I'm gonna get somebody else to help with the rest of this advanced Vahzilok stuff... You, however, I've got a new plan for you!" "Does it involve more tiny Paragon Protectors?" Electric Bone Shark asked, "Because those are tasty!" "Yes!" Doc Buzzsaw replied, maniacal glee entering her voice, "And no! I'm gonna need you to hit another Crey cloning lab... But keep it intact this time!" ========== Present Day... Buzzsaw was busying herself with her new "The Doctor is IN!" stand, inspired by old comics that were still quite popular. She thought the cheeky humor was just what she needed to draw in more customers for her latest ventures. Below the malformed lemonade stand was a trapdoor to her laboratory, buried under nearly fifty feet of Rogue Isles detritus and shanty town rubble. When her Freakshow friends were helping her dig it out, they even found more of that weird red coral, which they promptly sold because she didn't want to deal with that stuff ever again. The extra funds helped her fashion and furnish a proper laboratory for her work. No more random dingy warehouses for her, no sir! Now it was just her own dingy laboratory. "Hey, Buzz," a clawed Freak holding a cardboard box announced as he arrived, "Got you some of those lights you were asking for. Our tinkers were really weirded out by the request, though. You really want these things to flicker?" "It's just not a mad science lab without flickering lights, Spark Jock!" she replied as she happily took the box and then placed a box of hands, actuators, hydraulics and other spare parts on the counter for him to pick up, "I'll be wiring the monetary payment to Rippershock later today!" "Cool, cool," the cyborg took the box of parts and walked away. Buzzsaw busied herself with adjusting the "IN!" sign to try to find the right angle between whimsy and derangement. If she put it at a ninety degree tilt, that would just be lazy. Mulling over this was why she didn't notice Spark Jock's grunt and the clatter of metal falling against one of the shanty houses. A few seconds later, though, and she did start to notice dark shapes flitting about. She sighed, but kept adjusting the sign, trying to get it juuuuuuuuust right. She could hear the heavy footsteps behind her. It was probably one of her Arachnos clients, using Bane Spider Commandos to spook her and try to weasel out of paying her. Well, she would show them! She would show them all! It was weird to have the phrase actually be for a tangible issue... She whirled around, syringer gun in her hand, and let out a vicious "HEYAAAAAAAAAAH!" At least, that's what she intended. She got the whirling right, as well as smoothly drawing her syringer gun. However, her battlecry caught in her throat halfway through when she saw Lord Recluse standing in front of her, resulting in a painful gag. "Take a moment to compose yourself, Doctor," Recluse's inhuman, gutteral voice sounded almost amused, "Somebody bring me a seat." A pair of commandos arrived with a large chair, one specifically designed to accommodate the spider legs that protruded from Stefan's back, and the large man sat down. Another Bane Spider presented him with a mug and poured him some coffee from an insulated flask. Eventually, Doc Buzzsaw regained her composure and settled against her stand. "I see you're upgrading," Recluse noted the seemingly ramshackle structure, but he already knew about the laboratory facilities buried below. "Ah, yes," Buzzsaw tried to sound cordial despite the terror gripping her heart, "I have been involved in quite a few projects that have produced a windfall as of late." "I heard about the new Freakshow monstrosities," the big tarantula man said, then motioned for one of his commandos, "However, that's not what I'm here about." The commando presented a thin-walled cardboard box and opened it. Lord Recluse reached in himself and when his hand reemerged, it had a wriggling humanoid figure trapped between his fingertips. It was a familiar appearance in its blue and yellow outfit and matching motorcycle helmet. However, Paragon Protectors weren't supposed to be six inches tall. Crey did have action figures they sold, but they weren't made of meat, nor could they move on their own. "Captain Mako's been snacking on these for the past week." "I-hi-hi can explain," Doc Buzzsaw giggled nervously, "Aaaaaah... Let's see... So, one of my merc crews did a mission against Crey, and when they were done, they, ah..." "Ate clones," Recluse rolled his hand at the wrist to show he was keeping up with the story and wanted Buzzsaw to move it along. The tiny body in his hand flailed comically as it was swung about. "Yes, well, the conversation I had with them inspired me!" getting more into talking the shop of things, Buzzsaw started finding her voice again, "See, Aeon has that NutriPaste stuff! I wanted to contribute to an untapped, but growing market here in the Isles! The market of the more monstrous mercenaries and rogues that have come to call these wonderfully chaotic islands home! So, I hired a few more crews and got to work gathering resources, material and locations to make my new vision a reality!" "You're feeding monster people tiny clones?" one of the commandos asked, his voice tinged with disgust. Recluse gave him a sideways glare and he offered a sheepish apology and a fist over his heart in salute. "I wish I was feeding them tiny clones!" the mad scientist practically laughed, "They'd pay top dollar for rare cuisine like that! No, I realized early on that Crey's Revenant Heroes are prohibitively expensive to grow. They're near-perfect human clones, with super powers shunted in. I wouldn't be able to keep making new cell cultures to keep up with the demand, but..." "But the first batch was clones, and you sold them to Captain Mako." "They were deeeee-licious!" Buzzsaw laughed, pointing across herself for good measure. One of the commandos groaned. "I can't be having you selling tiny Paragon Protector clones as food in the Isles," Recluse sighed in exasperation, "That might be just enough to make Crey himself wake up and go to war against us." He turned to the nearby Bane Spider Scout. "Write that down. Find out what's going on with Count Crey. I don't need that crazy vampire sneaking up on me." "Sir, yes, sir," the scout replied and started scribbling into a data pad. "Well, you can rest easy about the clones. Like I said, making that batch taught me how expensive that would be, and I just can't afford the overhead. The first batch itself tore free from the tanks, and I had to call in a crew to mop up THAT mess. Fortunately, they were happy to be paid in, ah, free samples. Mako somehow found out (I think he was sleeping with one of the Bone Sharks) and he's become an invaluable investor, even providing a garrison for the fabrication lab!" "You mean to tell me you have a cloning lab here in Sharkhead?" Recluse looked to the numerous dingy buildings scattered about the island. He was familiar with Cage Consortium's industrial processing plant, but the rest of the buildings changed hands so quickly he couldn't be sure who had what in any of them. "Well, yes and no... See, there was a cloning lab that the Fifth Column had running, but then some super villain got control of it, but then it exploded. It was a whole ordeal. But! That was prime real estate! I had Shadow Bone Shark and her friends clear the place out and we moved some new equipment in! It's a smaller affair than the last one, and our scope is limited to delectable snack treats, but it works!" Stefan blinked a few times at this. He didn't know there had already been a cloning laboratory on Sharkhead Isle. He would need to have a word with Arbiter Daos and be brought back up to speed on things. "So... What are they made of?" he asked, almost worried about what the answer could be, "You said they're not clones, and Ghost Widow said she didn't detect a soul in any of Mako's treats." Buzzsaw practically clapped with delight at the chance to explain her patent-pending method of creating what were essentially little more than moving meat sticks. She started with a lab-grown beef culture and worked to develop a cartilage skeleton to grow it around. The skeleton was almost human-exact, as she was able to use 3-D printers to get the shape she was looking for. Then it was a matter of properly molding and sculpting the beef around the skeleton and applying the vegetable matter to function as the uniform. "I got some help from Von Grun in altering some kelp for the project. At first, he thought it was a plan for taking over the world, got disappointed when it was 'just food,' but then started laughing his ass off when I showed him the finished product. Then we started brainstorming other applications!" "So, these things are basically just... Mobile beef?" Recluse looked at the little figure in his hand. "Help meeeeeeee!" it screamed. "So how do they talk?" "Oh that..." Buzzsaw shrugged, "That's actually the boring part. For 'brains...'" -she was sure to use airquotes- "...the Protector Pops have a small nanotechnology matrix in their heads and chests. It's a rudimentary nervous system, at best, and breaks down in about a month. I've got a couple stale, uneaten pops around here somewhere... They're basically jerky. They make that horrible 'eeeeeh' noise toys do when their batteries run low." "Dear god..." a commando groaned and stepped away, "I can't... I just can't!" Another commando led him away, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. Stefan was starting to wish he could join them. This whole situation was both more and less horrifying than he'd feared. It was definitely weirder than he was expecting, too. He would need to remember that for anything regarding Buzzsaw. Vernon Von Grun, too. "Anyway, the nanotech cultures can't be programmed for much more than a few phrases," Buzzsaw continued, "Screaming for help is a popular one. A few customers also ask for the standard cliches, like 'Halt, evildoer!' and 'Your evil ends now!' Ooh! That reminds me! I've actually got a sample! Wait right here!" Forgetting that she was being interrogated, Doc Buzzsaw rushed behind her stand, threw open her trapdoor and scurried into the depths below. Recluse, surprised at her sudden audacity, couldn't even comment. He turned to his commandos with a shrug. "I'm scared, sir," the nearest one admitted, "This woman's gone into places even Grillo refuses to tread." "We're all scared, soldier," Recluse sighed and settled into the chair some more, "But it's not going to hurt us, even if it doesn't do us any good. Compose yourself." Ten minutes later, they could hear Buzzsaw clanking back up the rungs of her ladder, cursing to herself every so often and promising to install an elevator. Recluse was certain she was about to talk herself into building a man-sized dumb waiter by the time she returned to the surface. "Here we go!" she gasped, holding up a cylinder, then getting a little light headed and closing the trap door, "Oof! I do NOT want to fall down there!" "It's not recommended," Recluse chuckled, "So, what's in the container?" Doc Buzzsaw took a few more breaths and stretched her arms. She pondered the mechanical arms extending from her backpack for a moment, wondering why she didn't have attachments to help her with climbing. After a moment, she set the container on the counter and smiled. "I gotta credit Grun with the idea. If we're able to make kelp-wrapped beef-and-cartilage Protector Pops, then why couldn't we make OTHER mini edible action figures?" "Aw, she said it!" the scout groaned, "She actually said it!" "Ta-daaaaaaaa!" Buzzsaw slid the outer lid off the cylindrical container, revealing a second transparent cylinder. Inside was a tiny feminine figure with blonde hair. It was clad in a blue and red skirt with white boots and gloves with golden shoulder pads and a little brown scabbard hanging off its gold belt. Stefan let out a low groan as he recognized the form of Ms. Liberty. "See, the little sword is like a toothpick!" Buzzsaw giggled as she held it up for them to see. "Halt, evildoer!" it squeaked at them. It was a bit unsettling to see the little figure's mouth move. ========== A Few Hours Later... Recluse returned to his throne room. His entourage had been sent to a therapy session and now he had his Bravo Team escorting him. He had them get to their positions as he walked over to Mako and held up the container holding the Mini Ms. Liberty. "Captain Mako." The shark man saw the tiny figurine and licked his lips. "Captain Mako. Look at me, not the morsel." "Yes sir?" Mako turned his nose up to Lord Recluse, but the overlord could see him stealing glances back to the tiny facsimile of Stefan's niece. "I understand you're the one responsible for the bulk of the funding for this project." "Yessssss?" the shark man was confused where the conversation was going, but eventually settled on being definitive, "Yes. I'm largely responsible for the funding of Doc Buzzsaw's Protector Pops. Ooh! Also! Doc Aeon's Trout-Yogurt NutriPaste! I thought about just stealing the stuff, but then it dawned on me, he'd make MORE if he made more money off of it! And that stuff's amazing! Sometimes, I like to dip my Protector Pops in-!" "Ugh," Scirocco groaned, "There went my appetite for the next few days." "You and me both, Sandy," Black Scorpion groaned, his skin looking particularly green. "Enough!" Recluse announced, then shook the Tiny Ms. Liberty at Mako, "I am never to see you eating one of these in my presence. Understood?" "Yes and no," Mako replied, "Yes, in that I will not eat any of Buzzsaw's new tailor-made mini-heroes in front of you. No, in that I don't know why." "I have my reasons," Recluse glared at the miniature Ms. Liberty, who was shouting her bland catchphrase at him. He was dreading the video call he would have to make to his niece about this.

That man shaped so many of our childhoods. It isn't right that it ends this way. This hits me harder than it should, too. My father's about the same age and also struggling with cancer.

If I could do that, I wouldn't be wading into the Suggestions forum to offer my two cents.