rolandgrey

The only thing I can suggest at this time is that there should be more Shooting Stars when you do the prison break mission on the new arc. I understand that at this point Flambeaux has gone ditzy-doodle and is pretty much horsing around on her solo career as a morality yo-yo. Then, of course, Proton had his mental breakdown at the end of the Shooting Stars arc, so, their absences are understandable. However, Twinshot could (nay, SHOULD) have been recruiting in the meantime. One character that comes to mind is the low-level martial artist No Mind, who shows up in the third Shooting Stars arc. You could have tossed in Frostfire or somebody from the Mayhem missions. The main thrust is that the fight should be more challenging for a larger sized team... Or for a team that does something crazy like I did, and duoed the arc on x8 (initially, it was just to spawn more Paragon Protectors, but then I forgot to turn it down two-thirds through the next mission and since my buddy and I were doing fine, we just ran through the rest like that).

Corruptors would probably normally be considered a superfluous archetype except for one problem: they demonstrate how a simple transposition of power sets can fundamentally change the experience. Even without the Scourge ability, their damage output is still rather decent. Coupled with the ability to provide some very decent buffs to the team or debilitate the enemy (or, for a few sets, both), Corruptors wind up being the workhorse archetype, or perhaps the "Jack of All Stats" archetype. Sure, Defenders have them beat on buff and debuff strength, but then the Defenders fall WAY short in the damage output department. Blasters may beat them on damage output, but they are pretty much just walking artillery anyway. The melee archetypes are their own issue entirely. Corruptor buff/debuff ability isn't really that different from Controllers and Masterminds. Really, about the only bad thing about Corruptors is the the name. "Scourge" would probably fit them better. In any case, I've tried my hand at a number of different Corruptors. A couple Assault Rifle ones (AR/Traps, AR/Poison), I remade my archery Defender as a Corruptor, I'm toying with a Water/Ice one and then there's my Beam Rifle/Time one. About the only one I haven't rebuilt from the Paragon days is my old Dark/Dark Corrupter, and that's more because of storyline reasons that occurred during the interim (meaning he's dead in my mind). It's fun.

Favorite storyline? Mysterious General Z. It opens with a fantastic rescue mission where the people you rescue are all heavily armed. I miss the version from before the RWZ, where General Aarons still had an assault rifle. If you rescued all of the hostages, you wound up as a proto mercenaries mastermind. Fun times. Now, Aarons just has his pistol. Also, Ambassador Alwani's guard has been turned into a "Diplomat," a heavily armed "Diplomat." I think this was the Paragon devs subtly hinting the guy was actually with the Malta Group, but the Sky Raider attack was so far out of their plans, they decided to let it slide and work with the rescuing hero(es). It would explain why Alwani and the nameless diplomat vanish from the rest of the arc. Sadly, the rest is built with old technology and features a bunch of fetch quests and Defeat Alls, but the writing is superb, introducing a world of political intrigue to the playerbase and showing the Sky Raiders are more than just lackeys to the Nemesis Army like the lore hints. Least favorite? Henri Dumont's Disturbing the Dead. First, you need to unlock the contact, which takes beating up a bunch of the miners. Then he sends you on a boring series of standard fetch quests and a hunt mission before sending you into a generic cave to deploy a magic bomb... Which does nothing but finish the mission. No special enemies, no unusual mechanics. Just a bunch of enemies who otherwise act the way they would in any other mission. The dialogue is perfunctory and uninspired, the assets are all generic for when City of Villains was released... It's so bland compared to Doc Buzzsaw, another unlockable contact who pits you against weird and strange Freakshow enemies with hilarious dialogue (both from her and the Freakshow).

The game was designed for SOs and never adjusted after the introduction of IOs and IO Sets. If you're able to play well with SOs, you're only going to be able to play better with IO Sets. There is no need to farm ALL THE MONEY to cram every single Purple IO onto all of your characters.

The Arachnos Soldier was what I was expecting when I thought of "Epic" Archetype. The Kheldian was an extremely thematic, story-linked archetype. It was made to be balanced with the game, and in doing that, the original devs overcorrected and made a pair of cumbersome archetypes that take a LONG time to even BEGIN to feel powerful. Not so with the Arachnos Soldier. Wolf Spider or Blood Widow, then Bane, Crab, Night or Fortunata, it doesn't matter. You feel like you can kick butt right off the bat. To begin with, it has what the Kheldians lack: MEZ PROTECTION. These are clearly frontline ATs, what with their combination of medium range blasts, a generous helping of melee attacks and a nice combination of defensive and resistant powers, it only makes sense that archetypes meant to be in the thick of battle have Mez Protection. After that, the Arachnos Soldiers have excellent base team synergy, with a smattering of archetype-based Leadership powers that they can then link up with the standard Leadership Pool. This creates a stacked Leadership effect that only becomes MORE pronounced as other players bring in their buffs. A team of Arachnos Soldiers becomes a supremely viable, even overwhelming, attack team. It's much more effective than the Kheldians, which for a long time couldn't even synergize with each other, and even when they did, the effect wasn't particularly effective (10% Recharge Slow Resistance? Yaaaaaay... So, with a team of Kheldians, no glue will keep us from shooting back and THAT'S IT). Everything after that is gravy. Bane and Crab Spiders get robots, explosives and the Venom Grenade, adding elements to the fight the game, quite frankly, wasn't designed to deal with. Night Widows and Fortunatas gain Stalker-like sneak attacks and more team buffs. Each version of the archetypes operates in different manners as well, with Bane Spiders performing like Rambo, Crabs are walking weapons platforms, Night Widows are stealthy assassins and Fortunatas are team leaders. It's an absolute thrill to play these guys. That said... The only real drawbacks I can think of are cosmetic. The crab spider backpack, for instance, is sorely limited. It would have been nice to see alternative weapons systems that make use of the technology or architecture (rocket launchers, Rikti blasters, heck, even the Meat Doctor Backpack). Instead, every "supervillain costume" of the Crab Spiders uses the same Arachnos-labeled Crab Backpack. You can't even get rid of the Arachnos logo! Every Bane Spider uses the Arachnos rifles ONLY. If it weren't for the Celestial Hammer, they'd only use Arachnos Maces, too. I get the power animations can't change, but that can be handwaved anyway. The weapons options being so severely limited REALLY harms the immersion factor, especially when the characters are ostensibly being incognito in their non-Arachnos outfits. I get the options being restricted in the Arachnos Uniform outfits, but the non-uniform outfits should really have their options opened up. And that last point brings me to the last thing that bothers me about the Arachnos soldiers. Their non-uniform outfits are entirely divorced from their uniform outfit. This means you better not have changed your height slider on your initial outfit, or you're in for a slightly jarring camera shift every time you change to another outfit. Even if you did see a surgeon to change your initial costumes, of which for the first six you need to start entirely from scratch, you'd best have remembered what you set your height to. Changing costumes shouldn't be such a roller coaster ride.

While I do already play on Redside, I would have to say a big part of the problem with it is the risk/reward ratio is terribly skewed. Redside arcs give, usually, a pittance of merits (6 on average) while Blueside's arcs dole out huge amounts of merit rewards for arc completion (at least 20 a pop, with some of the 30+ arcs doling out 40 merits or more). It's not just a matter of a lack of content (some Redside arcs are simple "Hey, you did a job for me. Good."), but that the content isn't as rewarding as Blueside.

Not enough damage output to be primary damage. Not enough resistance to tank. Its one Heal isn't strong enough, nor does it recharge fast enough to properly provide support. No mez protection. Essentially, a lot of the same complaints that one keeps seeing about Sentinels, with a lack of mez protection on top of it. The Peacebringer's only saving grace is its versatility, with a plethora of powers available to the archetype that can make any two PBs vastly different from each other. I remember the old days, when having a PB on the team was considered more a burden than anything, even though through their inherent power, a Peacebringer was intended to be whatever the team needed. More Blasters and Scrappers made it tougher, more Tanks and Defenders made it stronger, Controllers gave it that mez protection (-ish, it's actually resistance, which makes mezzes shorter) that was oh-so-sorely lacking. However, they came with that nasty possibility of spawning a team-killing Shadow Cyst Crystal, which would spew a full team of Nictus clouds for each member on the team, blasting everybody to pieces unless somebody buffed the Hell up and ran a Bolivian Army Ending against the crystal in the vain hope that the resulting explosion would destroy the entire spawn. This has, of course, led to a stigma that continues to this day, with people forming teams loathe to invite Peacebringers and their Warshade cousins (while the opposite is true for VEATs, which were apparently designed for stronger raw synergy with teams, so players often enjoy inviting VEATs to their teams). So, that said... Improvements that can be made: Peacebringers would definitely benefit from a stronger front-loading of damage output. I imagine Corrupter-range damage output rather than Defender-range. It shouldn't take a full team of Defenders and Tankers just to bring a PB up to par. Protection from Holds, Sleeps and Stuns should be worked into the resistance auras. This is an archetype that's supposed to be a variable threat response, but it keeps getting clonked over the head and kept out of the fight by everything past level 10. This means the PB better have a strong alpha strike, or they're gonna faceplant and serve little better than as vengeance fodder. Glowing Touch seems superfluous. It's nice to have, but it largely goes unused. The time when we get it, we would also much rather invest enhancement slots into our attack and resistance powers. Speaking of superfluous, Quantum Flight could probably get the axe, too. With Quantum Acceleration, we get the intense speed boost the same as we see in Afterburner. I'm sure some folks like the Stealth it provides, but this stealth is unreliable as it keeps phasing in and out every thirty seconds. Last thing you'd want is to suddenly phase in as you're passing by a Rikti spawn on your way to fight Dra'Gon. Tweaking these powers or finding powers to replace them would be nice. Maybe a debuff for the enemy to replace Glowing Touch or add some other buffs to it. Maybe a team buff in a similar vein to the VEATs. My take on the alternate forms is less intense because I don't use them. The times I have, I've found them lackluster. The Bright Nova has no defenses and gets cut to pieces easily as its powers don't recharge quickly enough to defeat even the most basic spawns. The White Dwarf has nowhere near the same resistance as a tanker, nor does it have enough attack powers to properly wage combat with the enemies. Both forms suffer from a lack of access to human-form powers, and investing in the alternate form powers restricts one from investing in their human form powers. The AT gets way more powers than it gets enhancement slots to properly outfit when you go for alternate form builds, with the speccing for Tri-form needing the player to be very precise, both in build and tactics. One improvement I can suggest on this front is granting access to human powers in alternate forms. This would go a long way toward improving their versatility, with the Nova gaining more resiliency and the Dwarf getting more damage output. And... That's all I've got for now.

So, if we don't have a general chat channel, can we make one?

After some shakeups on one of the TF channels, I got to thinking. Do we have any social channels? Is there a listing of channels or does anybody have any friendly channels for just chit-chatting and aren't focused on a particular topic? Back when I was on Protector, we had Jello Shooters. Granted, as I understand it, it started as a Hamidon Raid channel, but it was eventually overtaken as a general chat channel (at least, it was by the time I was playing the game).

Heya, folks. I've been playing since almost the beginning of Homecoming, but hardly post anything to the forums, so this is a belated "Hello." I was MrGrey when the game was live and was fortunate to acquire the same global here.