Sakura Tenshi

Sort of my take on this is that Praetoria is specifically actually built in Florida. In Neutropolis we see Row Houses which are common designs in the Southeastern U.S., the land around Praetoria also seems rather flat and swampy if First Ward is any indication. Though this could place it in a lot of places in that region and not necessarily just Florida. This headcanon actually comes from someone else back on live who, on top of all these things, mentioned Florida already has isolated gilded utopias with massive undergrounds: it's called Disneyworld.

but my farmer Nuclear Flare really should be trapped in AE! The dude is a hardline Marcarthyism Jingoistic “patriot” who has been around since the 1950s and responded to anti-might for right act and Vietnam war protests with just nuking people! Thinking about it, he’s basically an even worse Homelander. Which says something.

To confess right now, a lot of my headcanons are a side effect of my character Gaia Redeemer having been a reincarnating soul across the ages, so much of this ties to his own off-handed comments Romulus is NOT that specific Romulus Augustulus (the last Western Roman Emperor) but rather the naming is largely coincidence. Cimerora itself occurs around 60 AD during the reign of Nero with the island in question having originally been a Greecian citystate that was later settled by Romans as their empire expanded, and largely it's seen as kind of a quirky place and while Imperious, by all rights, should not call himself king, he does pay his dues to the Empire and thus Rome itself hardly cares. The military arm of Oranbega was the Circle of Bronze (as for all their advancements in magic, they didn't do much with metallurgy) and had proposed simply deploying mass War Golems to literally crush the Mu uprising though the Circle of Thorns had little respect for the Bronze (seeing them as dull and unintellectual) and thus opted for demon pacts. Relatedly, the Mu-Oranbegan war was not the first time Oranbega had practiced demon summoning. As a society of magically gifted nerds and geeks without social skills, succubi and incubi were popular summons and filled redlight districts. Nemesis' tech might look primitive but all of it is relatively up to date. The backpacks on the Fake Nemesis suits are actually micro nuclear reactors (which, in reality, are giant steam engines), the reason the fake citizens are always so wonky is a mix of improper maintenance (notice Nemesis Army lacks engineers) and Nemesis' AI coding is just kind of crap in general. Part of the Etoile's maintained legitimacy as a nation is maintained by Recluse having a network of Nightwidow sleeper agents holding many world leaders under knife point as well as lots of psionically collected blackmail. That said, even with these threats Recluse knows he can't push his luck too too far. especially since the end of Who Will Die basically confirms Recluse only allowed Marshall Blitz to hold onto Warburg for plausible deniability and it's now known Etoile is a nuclear power. And here's a few relating to the greater world: While the Rikti invasion was devatating, the Rikti still were operating on limited numbers due to mixed support for the Legacy of War, even in light of the attack, and thus the Rikti focused much of their efforts on larger population centers such as LA, New York, Paragon, etc. and thus a number of more rural regions ended up getting off with only a few bombing runs that were more to disable military bases than anything. Japan in the City of Heroes' verse is, on the surface, animeland. A country full of brightly colored and bombastic superheroes in mechs with martial arts and ancient magics. The truth though is that it's a facade for much deeper issues. The Imperial Japanese government was one of the first to create a super hero registration act, though once much closer to the later Might for Right act requiring metahumans to be in service of the Imperial Japanese government and ultimately the state Super Group "Imperial Wind", all this was due to a tight control over these people for concern of the issues they could cause in society, resulting in 'ronin' becoming a word synonymous with vigilantism and criminal metahumans. When Japan surrendered at the end of WWII, one of the agreements was a restriction on how many registered active metahumans there could be, and it was something the government was all too eager to agree to and enforced well past when other restrictions were lifted. This bit them hard in the Rikti War when the Rikti cut through much of the registered heroes, and new ones who rose up to protect their country lacked training or proper support to use their powers to their full potential and were cut down just as brutally, and school-aged 'magical girls' being melted by Rikti plasma in desperate last stands to protect their communities became a rallying cry in the post-Rikti War era to reduce metahuman registration restrictions in a fight that continues to rage through the diet to this very day.

I’m kind of the opposite mindset myself. I’d want to replace the spirit tree with one of the bigger, more robust ones out of Nature Affinity. Currently the tree of life looks like a damn sickly shrub Charlie Brown picked out for a Christmas play trying to cosplay as a messenger to Moses!

Honestly, it’d be impossible to balance but I’d just want Heightened Senses to boost positional defense (which is what the power name and description implies) instead of typed defenses. It’s honestly kind of somantics but it’s always bugged me.

I thought blaster psi-blast doesn't benefit from the increased base range? I mean, otherwise you could probably get the same out of beam rifle or archery and energy manipulation.

I just want to say: if Hasten wasn't a thing, I'd almost want to suggest that Travel pools were something you picked as part of creation and automatically unlocked as you leveled.

After thinking on it, my top priorities list would be: Archery buffs/revamp, Cold Domination and powerboost issue, and Stormblast improvements: these directly impact enjoyyment of existing characters and playstyles. And one of them sounds like a bug. Story Missions: Loathed as I am to turn away from new shinies of powersets, its important we have content to actually run with those powers and characters. Hardmode TFs have honestly been a great idea for giving some challenging endgame content as well, though I do find myself feeling a dearth a lot in the mid levels. Wind Control: it's kind of a long awaited thing for people. Other - New Costume Pieces/weapons/power effects: I kind of feel this is one of the major things this server does lag behind on compared to others.. I understand there's a number of technical issues to, and more important things, thus why this is kind of low on the list, but new costume pieces can do wonders for increasing player expression and a good costume can make even repeated powerset combos feel fresh for some.

You’re asking me what I would do as a dev? With carte blanche to alter enemy factions?! You fool! Now I will never shut up and you will all be doomed to bare witness to my TED talk essays on how I would like to update various factions! but I am tired and need a nap so for now I’ll just give my personal priorities for enemy groups I feel need an update: The Legacy Chain: really needs to be a group that can go all the way to 50 and have plenty of good material to go with. Feels like live devs had plans but gave up half way through and decided to just sic villain players on circle of thorns instead. Wyvern: basically same reason as above: give villains more actual heroic groups to fight than just Longbow non-stop. No, Vanguard and Midnighters do not actually count. Sky Raiders: honestly wouldn’t even need too too much of an update, mostly just have human bosses instead of relying on Sky Skiffs and just generally flesh out their ranks and lore so they’re not just lapdogs to Nemesis or Praetoria. I like them conceptually because like the Freakshow they’re flexible in what stories you can drop them into. Freakshow: in theory the Freakalok ARE their update but Freakalok feel more like replacements/alternatives. Plus, for anarchist punks with makeshift cybernetics, they’re awfully uniform. I’d kind of want to expand their roster, namely by throwing in Pyro cyborgs and Toxic cyborgs as mentioned above, I kind of like the Freakshow since conceptually you can fit them in about everywhere. edit: @GastlyGibus I think the KoA were effectively intended to be written out for the most part with the DA storyline. I mean it’s mentioned their ranks were basically wrecked or converted, and they were never supposed to be a big group to begin with. Which I felt was a shame: the group finally got some diversity and interesting stuff and it was just to kill them off.

I’ve actually kind of wanted this myself. It’s definitely a pie in the sky pipe dream with how animation is incredibly difficult if not practically impossible for this game, but it’s still on my own wish list if anything was put in the table. some specifics I would have is also making katana have a “one handed” animation variant with some broadsword customizations opened up, mostly to allow for fencer type fighters and all that.

oh, and what if it’s not supposed to be “just a stick”? What if I’m playing Sun Wukong the Monkey King of Chinese my this wielding the gold banded staff Rui Jingubang? Neither wielder nor weapon is “just a stick”? Hey, tell me what power sets you play and I’ll tell you why in a world of super heroes your power sets should be weak and irrelevant against armies of godlike beings. in case you can’t tell, I detest the logic you submit because it basically discourages people from playing what they want by soft locking them from content and creates “trap choices” in game design which is an absolutely terrible concept. And as someone who started playing katana/SR on live and dealt with the BS of even street level thugs having lethal resistance and almost all enemies at level 50 resisting almost half my damage as punishment for my earlier choice in character concept I hate it still!

I just want the temp powers you can get from mayhem/safeguard armsdeal side missions plus maybe the minigun too from the Chance McKnight mission in Praetoria. Really, I just want my monster hunter guy to have a shotgun.

@Akisan I just want to point out that the idea of Practiced Brawler being perma'd out the box was that it could still be enhanced further, with the idea of it being possible to multistack enough to theoretically make SR effectively unmezzable outside of its holes and AVs with ludicrous mag powers. (or a looot of stacking). The other thing is that dodging and evasion is considered by many martial artists to be the most energy efficient form of defense as a parry will still require you to maneuver your means of defending to deflect and attack, and blocking outright gets taxing pretty fast as your expending energy to resist and incoming force and even strike back at the attack. And I admit the elude idea is a little absurd, though I've been kind of reticent about giving SR a lot of additional resists to fall back on since it is a bit counter concept, but without that or regen, I couldn't think of much else besides just playing on SR's best defense being to add to its offense. @Doomguide2005 As far as fear, placate/taunt being rare, well, yes, but pretty much any mez that isn't KD/KB, Hold, Stun, and Sleep is fairly rare, but you tend to end up grateful for them when you do have them and feel it when you don't. Especially in endgame mobs and even just some that were added far latter in the game's life cycle (and even those being added by the Devs now) you start to see some of these rarer forms of control being used. But as mentioned Taunt/Placate was primarily because it'd not only be unique but also because being placated (which is autohit) can be very annoying when you're softcapped or near it and stand there while the placate-er whiffs for the next minute. And while I defend my points here, I do want to say I appreciate your inputs and thoughts so far.

I want to preface this by saying that I actually think Super Reflexes is overall an okay set and perfectly balanced. It's not top-tier, end-game godmode like some other armor sets in the game but, honestly, not everything has to be. That stated, there's also the fact that the numbers I'd proposition are purely examples as I'm not a theorycrafter and am a rare breed of 'Asian who sucks at math', so feel free to suggest better numbers. Lastly, I would like this to be a bit of an open discussion so feel free to hijack the thread with your own ideas and proposals, even if we've probably heard them before. Let's get started: 1. Buffing Practiced Brawler Now, I just want to say, as someone who has switched from a /SR main to a /Will main: I DO NOT WANT PB TO BECOME A TOGGLE. I've lost endurance, and with it, my mez protection which consigns my brute to instant death from lockdown, where as I've been able to recover from end flat-lining on SR and other click mez protects. However, it is extremely 'basic' compared to other click protections, /nin offers psionic resistance, which can be stacked to resist cap even (another reason not to disrespect click based mez protects), meanwhile, /shield's mez protection provides total mez protection (something neither SR or Nin can boast) and does boost defense debuff resistance, which is helpful on a kind of 'jack of all' set like Shield. So here's what I might consider adding to Practiced Brawler either as individual buffs or all together. +1000% Placate/Taunt Resistance: conceptually, a the power name would suggest one is an experienced fighter, and as such perhaps you'd be able to ignore distractions like attempts to placate or pull your focus from your intended target. Mechanically, this is because placate is VERY annoying on high defense characters as the placater will lock you out of attacking them and if they're the last one in the mob, you can just end up in a staring contest for a minute or so as they whiff and keep whiffing. Possible gravy addition: the taunt/placate resist becomes a team buff each time you activate it so your team is similarly not stuck. +25% endurance discount: Perhaps another benefit of a practiced brawler is learning to pace yourself for the long haul of the fight, or even you've just grown so used to keeping up your guard it's not a big drain as it would be for others. Mechanically: for some reason /sr feels oddly endurance heavy for a set with three toggles. I have no idea if it's just me but compared to other sets like invul and all that, end poofs pretty fast. Shorten recharge to be permanent out the box: pretty self explanatory. 2. Altering the passive resistances Agile, Lucky, and Dodge start to give you sliding resistance scales for all damage types except toxic and psionic (which is now a somewhat dated concept for this server) starting at 60% of your max HP and caps effectively when you're at 1% to... 60% resist to all but psionic and toxic. Now, maybe it's not so bad if you're not a scrapper or a stalker except it definitely is. Tanks would have about 68.4 HP at this point and at level 50 would be killed with brawl from your average Council mook. It gets a little better if you've invested in IOs, but this game is not, and has never been balanced around IOs and IOs should not be needed to complete any given powerset. So, my proposals would be as follows: Front load a solid percentage of resistance into each power, perhaps only for a pair of damages, say 10% (on tanks for example) per. With the ability to slot resistance enhancements into the power. Start the resistance scaling sooner and cap it sooner as well: let's say the resistance scaling starts at about 90% or 75% HP, just when you're starting to bleed and stops at about 40% or 25% HP, with the scaling resist component adding about 40%. A lot less, yes, but you'd have far more HP and be getting more resistance for remaining HP than current. 3. Improvements to Elude This is not an issue necessarily unique to Super Reflexes, but indeed, many of the old armor sets still have the old '90 or so seconds of godmode followed by instant death crash'. It's something I feel can be a take or leave it, though I understand a lot of people seem to just end up leaving it, even if they're not aiming for a super optimal build because the cost of the crash is often too steep to accept. Plus, I think the biggest issue is that even without IOs, it's not that hard to cap defense on SR and all Elude does is give more of the same, which might make some thematic sense, but I think it could be better. Shorten Duration, reduce defense buffs, eliminate crash, reduce recharge rate but make it unaffected by further recharge reduction: my rough number ideas would be - 45 second duration, +30% defense to Melee, ranged, AoE (tanker scaling), Rech time: 300 seconds (unenhanceable), recovery and movement buffs would be unchanged. Additional buffs (self): +Recharge (40%, this is part of why I'd have the recharge rate for elude locked), and +20% ToHit buff. These additions are meant to play on the idea of going into a sort of 'ultra-speed' mode, tohit being because it's much easier to target enemies when they move so slow in relation and a recharge buff to stack with quickness for maximum attack spam. Additional debuffs (foe): -Spd, jump, fly, recharge, and tohit and a magnitude 2 hold chance in an aura extending in a 35 feet around the user for the duration of Elude. Basically adds martial combat's 'reaction time' to Elude's effects. And in summary this adds a sort of offensive boon to elude on top of its defensive features. Anyway, that's my musings, I await the ratio'ing. I can't say for sure how much or how little these could or should be implemented, and I do think of legacy powersets, SR's probably one that's doing among the best, especially with defense changes and the level requirement reduction. But it's always had a softspot to me since live where I can never not think of how I'd wanna make it better.

I mean, given the framework for the design of Crey (which the additional mobs partially inherited) dates back to issue 0 on live under Jack Emmert: yes, you're supposed to be softlocked from content without a team by their own logic. Edit: Also, if I recall, ordinary bosses were originally not meant to be solo fought under Jack Emmert's design philosophy. Heck, he didn't even want people being able to take on more than four or five minions. Now obviously, things changed even back on live, but like so many things and as with many games, we're stuck dealing with the legacy of old design concepts which are not necessarily true.

As someone who played a katana/sr scrapper on live, I’m just going to say that while I understand why lethal is so commonly resisted, it doesn’t feel like good gameplay design that it’s also so highly resisted. I get it: superhero game, no one just shoots Superman, but gameplay trumps “realism” and making lethal damage options effectively noob trap choices is really crappy. now that all being said, I understand there are plans to look at the game and mob designs to be a bit more evened out, and there are probably going to be ongoing tweaks with existing sets in the future. for my own personal suggestion to this, I’m sort of half and half, I’d want to suggest lethal damage sets getting a buff, but only because it’d theoretically be less work intensive than going through every single mob in the game to normalize resistances and such. But generally I feel like unless an enemy is an AV, there’s no reason they should have more than 40% resistance to anything.

I, too, wish to be a spess mareen.

In some ways I feel like VEATS are overtuned, especially compared to HEATs who suffer a lot for their ability to have armor and ranged attacks, but I do see why some people feel otherwise, I mean Fortunata, while they do have a pretty spammy and strong nuke, also have a kind of limited amount of AoE damage period, and ironically all their single target attacks to my recollection lack a bit of burst damage, plus, the Inherent really sucks and honestly seems like it was tacked on purely because the live devs were like "oh, yeah, they need an inherent, uhhh... let's give them a crappier version of Fitness!" Anyway, here's a few of my own rough suggestions within my kind of narrow experience band of playing VEATS (I've only really played Fort and 'Huntsman') New inherent - Survival of the Fittest: Arachnos’ Darwinist teachings instill nearly sadistic sense in its best soldiers. Anytime you defeat an enemy you will be healed for a small amount of HP depending on the strength of your Target and recover an amount of endurance. (2.5%hp/5%end-minion, 5%hp/10%end-Lieutent/boss, 20%hp/100%endurance for EBs and stronger) Additional powers for Arachnos Soldier - Sniper Rifle at level 22 and Full Auto at level 26* *Yes, I get this basically invalidates Assault Rifle as a powerset but dammit, I hate the Frankengun! Giving VEATS (and HEATS) access to APPs, figure sharing with Sentinels seems like it might work with some power selection tweaks.

It's a topic that's been beaten to death, but I just wanna give my hot take: I don't mind tough and weave being where they are as they are. I just want the attacks to be freely available and improved/alt animations for punch and kick. Edit: man, I was expecting thumbs down. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who loves the idea of a "Brawl: the full chain" for those times you want to say 'screw super powers, I'm punching you in the face!'

If they don’t track their caster, why does the Sky Raider Engineer shield projector change sides only if the caster engineer has been confused, even after it’s been summoned?

Also, if you want to see shield and blast sets, try it in AE. It theoretically happens but several times the attack itself won’t animate properly besides the effect or the shield vanishes to accommodate and it’s not consistent which one happens. Now there are times when it works just fine, presumably because, as mentioned, they’re animations that are already added in through Epic PPs. then there was the la creaturea I spawned amine time when I gave an AE boss dual pistols and shields. Dios mio… his guns kept getting locked halfway into the spinning draw animations while bullets emitted from his chest.

While I do agree with the idea of replacing one of the Ms. Libertys, preferably with Back Alley Brawler, I also should note Ms. Liberty isn’t a unique instance of having two copies in the open world: Penelope Yin has both a contact for a normal arc and her TF replacing Sister Psyche. A bit more confoundingly is that the TF occupies only the next level range up from Penny’s arc in Faultline. I suppose the overall best change would just be to put Faultline Penny on contact phasing so she’s only present when you are taking her arc. But I notice contact phasing doesn’t seem to be done too often by the current team so it might be too complex.

@Luminara is this still Excalibur or are talking about Caliburn the Sword in the Stone? Or are you one of the people who doesn’t accept Arthur having had a sword before Excalibur? side note: given Arthur historically fought the Saxons and a Viking tactic was designing their shields to be soft enough for swords to get stuck in, it does make sense that a mythically strong sword would just split the shield and the person behind it all the same.

I mostly used metallurgy as a bit of a shorthand. But, basically, yeah. I’m just saying Excalibur would not be confined to being a one-handed sword, it might not even be confined to any single form. If I’m recalling a wiki article right. Excalibur’s etymology is thought to mean “Steel Cutter”. So it may wel be that whatever medieval times people thought it was made from, it’s possible they already were imagining of something better than steel. if we were to go by pure in-city of-verse thoughts, I might wager Excalibur is an Impervium blade, given one of the things, as I recall of the lore, is that Impervium is so strong you need magic to shape it.

I feel like I should clarify that while I would like content levels of access to open up across the board, I bring up the Hollows specifically because the contacts tend to have a very narrow level band relative to the length/exp rewards of the arcs, and as mentioned, Talshaak is especially bizarre with only having a level range of 12-14: two levels.