Sakura Tenshi

No offense, but this kind of seems like a bit of a mess. For one thing, it's only hold is an AoE one which will probably be painfully long cooldown, and every single Control set always has at least one ST hold. The next is that the AoE stun requires a corpse, which limits your options for controls that actually mitigate damage. (Immobilize is honestly worthless in many respects). A time control set sounds interesting, sure, but with what you presented it's honestly going to be frustrating and lackluster.

Hellions (and skulls until they were updated) have Submachine Guns (gunner, the ones wielding the UZIs) and fire burst, the Buckshot Lt.s are the ones you're thinking of, and that was it. The skulls got updated to include the Death Head soldier with a full assault rifle that had Burst, Heavy Burst, and Lead Spray. (which makes them a real pain in the ass. Also upsets me because I feel like a third Hellions/skulls Lt. should have used thugs MM Dual Pistols)

We were at base difficulty, but as a team of 4 with two of us sidekicked up, it meant that for half the party the mission was +1. We were a controller, a stalker, a dom, and a fort. So what's the lower difficulty "break the team and run solo"? @Onemantankwall @aethereal Ah, and here's the 'git gud, challenge should be frustrating and painful!'. We were getting locked down by timestop bosses with holds, forbidden knowledge lt.s with immobilizes, crystal balls and ice clouds with massive collective -recharge and we would be hit with this all before we even finished the respawn animation. It was not a damn challenge, it was impossible until we cheesed the system using the base macro.

So, I'm running the finale of the Ward arcs from Night Ward where you defend the Midnight mansion. I have three friends with me and the spawn size when Ward turns against you is literally impossible because not only do you face multiple bosses, all with control powers and ward himself who is an elite boss, but the respawn location is just off to the side of the mansion itself, and if you die, you are in aggro range of the mobs and even respawn in base forces you to teleport at the mansion in the mission instead of in your base. You are stuck in a cycle of dying and returning only to be held and killed again. Edit: the problem isn't the location of the hospital, it's that the ambushes are permanently aggroed onto players, meaning the second you spawn into the mission or even if you can survive getting up and fleeing, the mobs will lock on and follow you, even if they downed another teammate on the otherside of the freaking map. What moron at Paragon studios came up with this?

You're right about natural origin not necessarily meaning 'someone who trained to achieve their powers', but Superman's origin is science since kryptonians are not inherently capable of those feats in their natural habitat (a planet with a red sun, also possibly higher gravity since he's a John Cart of Mars expy), it's being on earth that made Superman special. (which, from a narrative standpoint you could read as: it's earth that gives superman his strength to defend it. He's an outsider who was charged with the earth's protection)

Well, I'm not big on making them buy only, but the idea for this was to have an inf sink, right? So, it needs to be something you need to spend money to obtain and restock on if you want to use it. Or at least have SGmates stock up and throw into a bin. The idea of it being sold strictly by NPCs also regulates its value so people can't just get them and resell them on the market.

on the note of confused engineers, something weird I notice is that the generator seems tied to the engineer's loyalty, even if it doesn't despawn after death, which implies the two are lastingly connected. how the heck does that work? Does this mean pets dying with players is something they have to actively flag on a summoned entity?

that seems to be a two-fold issue of fire-damage generally being 'too good' (doesn't seem terribly often resisted and it's secondary effect is more damage) combined with dual pistols on it's own being a lethal set, and lethal damage is honestly awful right now, but that's another matter, really. DP does seem a little slaved to Incendiary ammo though and it makes me question if anyone makes decent use of the other two munition types at all. Honestly, if a change was made to Dual Pistols, I'd like Executioner's shot to deal bonus damage against Stunned/Slept/Held opponents, giving it a synergy with suppressive fire.

I like these ideas as with a lot of your stuff, @Galaxy Brain, but to be honest I'd rather just abandon the assault rifle set to develop an 'Automatic Rifle' set, a 'Sniper rifle' set, and a 'Trench Broom' set. Edit: I should note I don't seriously want Assault Rifle abandoned. But I still want a dedicated 'sniper' and 'shotgun' powerset. @Yomo Kimyata Maybe in a higher level version, but one thing I kind of hate about the new Skulls is that they have 'Gravedigger soldiers' and 'graverdigger strikes', and 'death head assailants', all three of whom kind of break the pattern of those lowbie gangs in exchange for loading them up with extra attacks with extra -def which, like with the Praetorian Syndicate, really freaking hurt in the sub 20s game even if you're not a defense oriented character.

For not a terribly serious suggestion you certainly seem pretty defensive about it.

That really does not make it any better, honestly. Are we really going to start balancing this game purely around IOs and Incarnate abilities? Because for more than a few people, none of that stuff even comes into play until level 50. Plus, you know what other powers are built entirely around the Tier 9? Stone armor, and that's considered a very VERY troubled set because of how it's Tier 9 effectively invalidates the rest of the set.

I'd like to add to this suggestion: tier 1 - 20% +recharge tier 2 - 40% +recharge tier 3 - 60% +recharge Incarnate tier - 100% +Recharge Mechanics: does not stack, only increases duration (maximum 5 minutes) Does not naturally drop, must be bought from vendors. smalls can be purchased at hospitals for 5000 inf, mediums can be purchased from high level enhancement vendors for 10,000 inf, larges are bought from higher level contacts (give the contact stores some use) for 50k inf. Incarnate tiers are bought from Ouroboros incarnate vendor for 10 threads and 100k inf.

@aethereal I won't say I'm completely opposed to this because I made a similar suggestion, but you CANNOT JUST raise the tohit of enemies across the board without some player compensation. Yes, Defense is king, but do you know what makes Defense king? Sets with incredible resistances too. Willpower, Invulnerability, BioArmor, Rad, etc. all have powerful resistances and other mitigations and get only better through softcapping defenses. You raise softcap by adding accuracy to enemies and guess what? those powersets will still be strong. You know what sets will be screwed over hard? Super Reflexes, Ninjutsu, Energy Aura, Ice Armor, and other sets with negligible if any resistances (trust me, I've gotten /nin's resistances up to around 35% across most damage types, still drop fast without defense) because you just kneecapped their primary survival means. So if you wanted to just stonewall non-melee ATs from being able to take on higher difficulty mobs, that's one thing, if you want to make it so high resist/regen/absorb can't just body all content thoughtless, that's understandable, but doing this and telling defense based characters "lol, just use your tier 9 at the very beginning of a spawn" is an awful idea because you're basically dragging out gameplay by forcing them to be on constant stop and go as they have to balance themselves around their crashes between mobs. And if they happen to be stuck fighting for longer than the 2 minutes you get? Well, it doesn't sound like you care so why worry?

@WindDemon21 Having played Willpower and lost endurance, there have been times when I find myself suddenly wishing more sets used click mez protection toggles.

of Cimeroran stuff, I'd just like the toga skirt bottom and the chest sash detail, don't even care if the latter has the flowing cape thing. Oh, also the hair. Men are in desperate need of more hair styles and even if that hair is just the laurel one sans the laurels it would be a big help. Edit: Also, the sandals. Men have no good sandal options while women have all the stuff from the Talons of Vengeance!

I think the biggest issue of proliferating ninjutsu to brutes is just the 'stealth strike' mechanic. With a zero'd out end bar, Brutes have the worst melee attack modifier in the game period (least if I recall), so a lot of their damage is from their fury bar which is meant to build up in a fight. So the only way a stealth strike mechanic could work well for them would be something along the lines of giving them either a truly ridiculous damage bonus to make it worth it, or making it so the 'from hidden' thing actually forces brute fury to maximum which would probably be horribly broken.

I feel like the only ways to really redeem AE would be to add a lot of new features so AE authors who don't want to just make another farm can have the freedom to fully make the stories they want to. The AE content idea thread in suggestions and ideas has a lot that would improve the Architect system, but some simpler things that I think might help is, at the very least, increase EXP percentages per-custom power picks (so that way people running will still feel assured they're getting full rewards like they would on a real storyarc or farm instead of just running another damn farm) and updating the custom critter power options to include new stuff.

City of Heroes has been crashing for me every so often where the whole screen got black briefly before returning with the game window suddenly gone. I was wondering if anyone else has had problems like this. For a bit of reference I'm currently playing the game with a new Nvidia RTX 2060 Super, I also reinstalled the drivers in hopes that might help but I thought I'd still ask people around here if they's had a similar issue.

Vincent Ross’ arc is pretty fun mechanically. It’s magic themed and provides more leviathan lore and allows you to make use of a lot of old contacts like maros, and some others in sharkhead. quasi spoiler since it won’t make sense until you play it but mechanically the arc is effectively an anti-TF/SF.

i would actually dare to say scrapper and sentinel ninjitsu feels stronger than stalker. The built in KB protection adds so much and I have noticed lately a lot of enemies you wouldn’t think have knockdown powers actually so (equinox parasites seem to have it in their basic smite which players do not have and death head soldiers have it in their version of burst, nevermind the number of things that definitely have KB and KD) and Shinseiteki Kyoyo giving an infusion of endurance is pretty damn helpful before one starts slotting sets and if an end boost on stalker version we’re added could help with the fact that assassin’s strike powers, though meant to now be seen as an opener and part of the chain, take up quite a chunk of endurance per-activation. Stalker ninjitsu’s big plus is caltrops which work pretty well as an active mitigation tool even without profs. otherwise, as others have noted ninjitsu is a strong set on any AT and on scrappers and sentinels is one of the few sets with total mez protection (shield and willpower being the only other two) and benefits from a number of useful tools for many situations with it’s great weakness being a painful albeit ultimately fair one of suffering from cascading defense failure. Said weakness is only trut frustrating when dealing with foes like tarantula mistresses who possess an incredibly powerful defense debuff (mental scramble) which is not only ranged but is an autohit, giving no opportunity to mitigate it. (That and mental scramble also is a massive tohit debuff and -perception that crippled a lot of other power sets) noteably examples of similar powers like mask of weakness and vitiation do have tohit checks. Wow, that turned into a longish rant on one particular power of a specific enemy.

This is sounding a little spooky. A little too spooky for me.

I feel Tip Missions these days are "updated/more engaging Radio Missions". also if you do enough you can get a spiffy 40 reward merits. (I mean, it is running 11 missions, many of which can be pretty long, so it's about as long as some launch TFs)

Serious response: this actually seems like one of the more inventive ideas for a new AT, blending the old Guardian concept (assault/support) with Mastermind Pets. Or pet in this case. At the same time it's a fresh enough take and seems to work relatively within existing assets that it does feel as labor intensive as the insane number of new powers Guardian seemed to ask for, this also gives the benefit of giving some additional mileage out of assault and pet sets. To a degree. joke response now: well if this goes through I'd probably roll up a STAND user and go on some Bizarre Adventures throughout Paragon, the Isles, and Praetoria.

Stalkers and some powersets reliant on stealth also cannot wear the ToT costumes in my experience.

Think of it this way: you kill fire wire because he's a sniveling little rat that sold you out and is probably going to keep doing it to others for his own self-gain. Lt. Harris is a freaking nut job where allowing him to live is probably a bad idea in general because he decided to murder a bunch of people because his 3d irl waifu sempai wouldn't notice him. Having either of these things running around in the world seems like a worse option.