Apparition

They are not as good at farming due to their lower resistance cap, and lack of AoE taunt. They will always take 15% more damage than a Brute or Tanker, and with lower HPs.

Now that the Barracuda SF no longer needs a Defender or a Mastermind in order to complete the SF, I stripped my one and only Defender character in preparation of deleting him. Anyway, I put some of his enhancements up for sale on the auction house. However, something really funky happened when I tried to put up some of his +5 boosted IO enhancements. It didn't happen every time, but it happened three times. I moved the +5 boosted IO enhancement from the enhancement tray to the auction house window, got the "Do you really want to do this?" prompt, answered "Yes." Then suddenly there were multiples of the IO enhancement listed in my auction house storage for a split second, then condensed back down to one. Suddenly *BOOM!* My game client crashed. Again, this didn't happen every time I put up a boosted IO enhancement on the auction house, but it did happen three times.

Yep. I'm in a Discord server with approximately forty friends from City of Heroes. Just about all of us played daily back in 2019. It started to wane a bit in late 2019. Out of the approximately forty, only about six still regularly play, including myself. I've had to PUG a lot the past four months or so whenever I want to do a SF/TF/Trial, and that is making me want to start to wander away.

It's been nine years (I feel old, but I digress), so my memory is a bit fuzzy. However, IIRC, at the time (Issue 22 - 23), Blasters were unpopular and widely seen as inferior to both Corruptors and Scrappers. I'm not saying that that was correct or incorrect, but that was the common perception at the time. So Paragon Studios decided to try to buff Blaster survivability to make the AT more attractive. It was probably needed, but they may have went just a wee bit overboard with the HP.

Yeah, I think there are a whole host of new players to the game who just simply don't know what a SF/TF is. Lately, half the time when I form one up and advertise in the LFG channel and mention the level range, people will still try to join anyway no matter what level they are. Like last night, I formed a PUG Barracuda SF, which is level 45+. I mentioned this in the LFG recruitment message. I received a tell from someone saying that he was level 22, and asked if he could join anyway. Last week, I formed a PUG Silver Mantis SF, which is level 20+. Someone asked me if he could join at level 17, and I had to reply that he couldn't. The person got mad.

It is both. The overall player count is lower, so the people on the already lower population shards are moving to the higher population shards.

That is a big part of it. There are a lot of new people to the game who treat the entire game like it's a farm. All they know are AE farms, PI Council radio mission farms, BAF farms, etc. That's why I suggested this:

If you ever find out, let us know.

Yeah, I definitely don't want something that prevents people from logging out during TFs. Real emergencies pop up, I understand that. I just think that it's apparent that a large amount of people new to CoH (either new new, or people who played back in 2004 to 2006, stopped playing, and have just returned), legitimately have no idea what a Strike/Task Force is and do not know that they are expected to stay with the SF/TF until it ends. I'd just like a new tutorial that helps explain that and explain the ramifications of what quitting a SF/TF early are to the rest of the team. Now they can still be a jerk after and DC or quit SFs/TFs early, but at least they'll know now that they shouldn't.

Discord will, in fact, not be acquired by Microsoft nor anyone else. They've decided to go it alone and are exploring a public IPO. Per Game Informer: *Breathes sigh of relief.*

Because part of the game's balance depends on your character being rooted. No root = game out of balance.

Per chance, is this only in Atlas Park and/or Mercy Island?

This may be an unpopular suggestion, but please remove the flickering from Fade. I played a steamroll/kill through ITF yesterday with an Illusion Control/Darkness Affinity Controller who kept Fade up. I never noticed this before (I've been told by friends that this has always been the case but I guess I'm really not very observant), but throughout most of the ITF the Fade power kept my character flickering. The flickering effect honestly, and I'm not joking nor exaggerating, gave me a headache by about halfway through the ITF. Would it be possible to just have Fade make characters semi-transparent like stealth effects?

All of the Blaster changes... raising the HP cap, giving all secondaries a sustain, and crash less nukes... were done by Paragon Studios in the Issue 24 beta. It was inherited by the secret server, and now Homecoming. None of it was done by any current or former SCoRE or Homecoming developer. These were all things that would have went live with Issue 24.

I lead raids on Excelsior, and over the past few months I have seen numerous people mention that they just transferred over from Indomitable because the shard is dead. The more transfer, the more dead the shard becomes, the more people transfer.

Unfortunately, the Homecoming player base has been slowly but steadily consolidating on the Excelsior and Everlasting shards, slowly but steadily draining Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion to the point where Indomitable and Reunion get down to the double digit number of players on late at nights now. I don't see it getting any better, I'm afraid.

Howdy, y'all. With the Issue 27, Page Two update today, I would strongly encourage you to talk with Null the Gull in Pocket D and disable Group Fly prior to joining a MSR, especially mine. Group Fly is now a valuable travel power, especially for Masterminds, and especially on MSRs, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it in use by players at some point in the future.

It depends on what you want your role to be. Do you want to mainly be a damage dealer? Then no, you don't need Taunt. Do you want to mainly be a tank? Then yes, you need Taunt.

I think some sort of tutorial to Strike/Task Forces may be needed. If there's some way of making it mandatory for one character per account (not all characters), that'd be swell. Here's the deal. I, my friends, and many other Excelsior server players have noticed a trend over the past few months of people disconnecting in the middle of a Strike/Task Force without saying a word to never return, quitting in the middle of a Strike/Task Force without saying a word, or in the middle of a Strike/Task Force say something like, "This was great, thanks for the team." and quickly quit the team. The people that disconnect in the middle of a Strike/Task Force, I'll do a /getlocalname on their global name a few minutes after they DC, and sure enough most of the times they're playing on another character. So they switched characters in the middle of a Strike/Task Force without saying a word. My friends and I talked about it, and we have reached the conclusion that many people new to Homecoming and veterans returning to the game after many years have no clue what a Strike/Task Force is and what signing up for one entails. They essentially think that it's another PI Council radio farm with more variety, where they can join for 20 minutes, get some levels, and leave without saying a word. So I think some sort of mandatory Strike/Task Force tutorial at... say... level ten (again, mandatory for every account, not every character), teaching new players and veterans that haven't played in many years the ways in which they're different from regular missions, AE farms, and PI Council radio farms. I don't know what that would entail, but IMO something needs to be done 'cause I've kind of gotten sick of now having to expect to lose at least one player on a PUG SF/TF/trial.

I play all characters no matter the AT as Brutes. Mastermind? Played as Brute. Corruptor? Played as Brute. Blaster? Played as Brute. If there's a Tanker or Brute on the team, I'll compete with them for aggro... and usually win. Sometimes I won't survive, but most times I do. I've successfully tanked Romulus in the last mission of the ITF on both Blasters and Corruptors while there was a Tanker on the team. So, yes, I aim for softcap defenses on all characters, usually S/L/E. As for the Agility Alpha, most of my characters take it. I simply do not care about damage procs and anticipate the inevitable day that they're nerfed to the ground. Trust me, it's coming.

I have builds for a Katana/Electric Armor Brute, Thugs/Time Manipulation Mastermind with Group Fly, and a Dual Pistols/Sonic Manipulation Blaster ready to be made. Probably a Gravity/Dark Controller at some point as well.

Wait until the shards come back up. It's fixed.

It's not just mid-level teams. I've seen it a lot, and I do mean A LOT on Tinpex TFs. I don't mean between the Apex and Tin Mage TFs either. I mean people just DCing or quitting while on a mission. I don't get it. I understand that people may have time constraints, but don't sign up for the TF/SF/Trial then in the first place. I've been playing on another shard the past couple of weeks just to compare, and I haven't seen it there, which only strengthens my suspicion it's due to the extremely heavy farm culture on the Excelsior shard. It's taught newbies to the game to play the entire game like it's a danged farm.

Nope, it's not just you. My few friends that still play have all seen the same thing as well over the past few months. We blame all of the farming between AE and PI Council radio missions. It's taught newbies that how you do AE farms and PI Council radio mission farms are how you play the game. I.E., join for twenty minutes, get a few levels, and then quit or switch.

Not to mention additional support sets and even an entire support AT were added way after toggle exclusivity ended, and the Defender inherent was completely overhauled in Issue 17 to make them more solo friendly.