Apparition

Yep, exactly. That's why I have lately felt completely ineffective when playing a melee character on a team, unless I stay way ahead of the team. Between that and the average PUG team having a bunch of damage and Tankers with no debuffs, I pretty much just play ranged anymore.

AVs running like triathlon runners isn't new, unlike what the thread Bill Z Bubba linked says. Hopkins, Director 11, Romulus, et al. taking off like a bat out of Hell has been around since live. It's just the consequence of not having a Brute, Tanker, Controller, and/or Dominator on the team. Melee heavy teams face the consequence of AV and GM fights taking a while due to little or no debuffs. Teams without a Tanker, Brute, Controller, and/or Dominator face the consequence of AVs running all over the place. IMO, the "ideal" City of Heroes team composition consists of one Tanker or Brute with taunt, one Controller or Dominator, one buffer (can also be a Controller), two or three debuffers (can also be a Controller), and the rest damage. Of course, you can replace the Tanker or Brute with a Warshade with Dwarf form, and the Controller or Dominator with a Fortunata. Also of course, this is City of Heroes, so you don't need an ideal team composition. Just that there are consequences for not having one. :D

SSPS.

There's a P2W power called "Only Self Only" or something under Utility. It pretty much does what you're asking for. Use it before you want to stealth, and you keep your power but it doesn't aggro anything. I have it on characters with Shadow Fall so I can just use that when escorting NPCs instead of turning Shadow Fall off, my Brutes, and my Dual Pistols/Sonic Manipulation Blaster.

If the team lead says that he or she wants the team to stick together during a TF, SF, or Trial, then I'll stick together with the team. However, if nothing is said, then I may go off on my own. Reasons: 1. The difficulty is set at +0 or +1, the team is obviously kicking butt without me, and thus I'm bored. So off to find my own fun I go. This is probably on me, but I have difficulty taking +0 or +1 seriously, especially at higher levels. 2. I'm playing melee. Lately, I find playing a melee character to be a slow experience compared to some other ATs and don't feel like I'm contributing if I'm staying with the team. So I like to jump ahead a couple of groups of everyone else and stay ahead. 3. We're fighting Council. It's... Council. Any one of us could solo it, so sticking together is boring and inefficient.

That was me. I stopped forming them in Pocket D back in November 2020 though because there were several major issues, and started forming them from inside the instance like I do now. It's much easier on everyone to form instanced Rikti mothership raids from inside the instance.

@Faultline , @Number Six - I believe that I know what the core issue may be. To make things easier for @Anyad and myself, along with everyone else, we form Rikti mothership raid leagues from inside the instance itself. We queue in while having the raid locked to ourselves, and then invite people once inside. Works great. Now, say that you have 30 people in the league. That’s three full teams and a fourth team with six players. Then someone in team two either leaves the instance, logs, or disconnects. So teams one and three are full, team two now has seven players, and team four has six players. Now Anyad or I invite another player into the instance, and he or she begins loading in… only to be booted right back out with an error message. The league leader has to move the sixth player in team four to team two, so team two is now full and team four has five players. Only then will someone new be able to successfully load into the instance after being invited. This is just much more pronounced and possible once the league reaches six teams, since more players in the league means that there is a greater chance that someone will quit the raid, log, or disconnect. Which is why I thought originally that it was due to the size of the league, since the issue is usually encountered when the league has six teams. But it happened last night when the league only had four teams, because someone in team two logged or disconnected. Also, this would still occur if we formed and queued normally like an Incarnate trial. We always start the raid without a full league, and pick up people during. To sum up: If someone leaves, logs off, or disconnects during an instanced Rikti mothership raid (and I'm sure that this impacts Incarnate trials and the Cathedral of Pain trial as well, just that it's less likely to occur due to the smaller league size), then no one new can join the instance until the league leader fills the missing spot on the team that the person left/logged/disconnected was on.

1. Blaster. 2. Trick Arrow.

I get the vine counter sometimes, other times I don’t. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to it.

Dual Pistols is my favorite ranged damage power set. I love it. I love the animations (including Piercing Rounds), and how absolutely smooth it feels in play. That it is one of the few ranged damage power sets without a snipe attack is a nice bonus as well.

Both ranged sets have a self-heal. Dark Blast has -to-hit and knockback. Water Blast has knockdown and slows. Which do you consider to be “safer?”

It's a visual bug, and has been in the game since Homecoming went live. The pets do keep their tier 3 abilities.

The City of Heroes community is too small to fracture any further. You keep wanting to put people into nice easy boxes. "Power gamer." "Casual." "Farmer." It doesn't work like that. It can't work like that. I have friends that exclusively speed run. I have friends that exclusively steamroll/kill through. I have friends that mostly solo. I have friends that mostly team. I have friends that farm. I have friends that don't farm. I have friends that regularly go to Hamidon raids or even lead them. I have other friends that wouldn't touch a Hamidon raid with a ten foot pole. Heck, I even have friends that PvP, as distasteful as I find it. Yet they are all friends I like to play with. You can't silo us all away into nice easy boxes because we don't fit into one single box. Also, power gamers aren't the only farmers. I know plenty of "power gamers" who don't farm, and I know plenty of farmers who are far from "power gamers." You just have to deal with the power gamers like we have to deal with you.

As Zag knows, I moved from the Excelsior shard to the Torchbearer shard several months ago. It was one of the best City of Heroes-related decisions I've ever made. You still see the occasional "PL me please!" messages in LFG, but they're few and far between compared to Excelsior, and playing on the shard is a delight. On Excelsior, I pretty much completely ignored the LFG channel after a while. On Torchbearer, I look at it and don't feel like I will lose my sanity if I keep the channel open.

Yes, single shard larger group events are usually quite pleasant and fun. Cross-shard larger group events, I assure you, would be quite different, for the worse. On a single shard, you have player recognition and accountability for your actions. Cross-shard has neither. So people are more free to act like jerks or treat everyone else like NPCs with funny names and costumes. It's the same on every MMOG that started with single-shard grouping and eventually added cross-shard grouping.

At the cost of utterly destroying what's left of the City of Heroes community, just like it destroyed any semblance of community in every other game cross-server stuff was added to. No thank you. While I sympathize with your problem, the solution you propose has too high of a price, IMO.

God, I hope not. That would be one of the worst ideas ever and would quite possibly drive me away. Cross-shard stuff kills off any semblance of a shard's community and just enables jerks to be jerks without any penalty. See: World of Warcraft, every other modern MMOG.

See this thread:

As of Issue 26, Page Four, yes.

Welcome home! Be sure to check out the Champion Discord server here.

Well, there is precedent for the idea in Kallisti Wharf. The left side of the zone is the hero side, nice and clean. While the right side of the zone is the villain side, with lower class housing and warehouses.

As some may know, Paragon Studios briefly worked on City of Heroes 2 back in 2008 and 2009 before NCSoft nixed it. A writer for the MassivelyOP web site mused today on what a City of Heroes 2 would look like if developed in 2021. You can read it here. Personally, I'm not a fan of the action combat idea.

SCoRE and now Homecoming have been putting up permanent memorial characters in game over the years. See here. Right now there are thirteen scattered throughout Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, but one central place is a good idea.

War Witch is the Pocket D trainer.

@Piecemeal mentioned last year that he would work on something for Halloween and Winter this year for the Rogue Isles. Edit: Here's the link to Piecemeal's post.