Peacemoon

FF we always fun for me because it let me buff everyone for 4 mins and then spend most of my time with my other powerset. FF is great at protection and increasing defence, as you’d imagine. So if you really want to double down on it, then dark powers with -acc are a great combo - but maybe pretty overkill. What can be fun is to pair with something wild and aggressive, to bring balance. Earth control brings a heavy amount of -def for enemies. While you won’t do a lot of damage yourself, it makes everything easy to hit. Sonic attacks are good for this reason too, to leverage the -res.

The 'us vs them' vibe is strong here. It sounds rather like contempt. Sad to see, if I'm honest.

Would have been better to just lock it and try bring people together. No idea what happened after I posted.

When you were sidekicked you were always a level below your mentor, not equal level. Task force enemies were always the max level for the range and not based on leader’s level. Each sidekick needed a mentor, so if you had too many low levels you might not be able to sidekick them up.

Changing powers completely is a bit of an Ooof. Sticking to the original vision but with a slight reimagine because it wasn’t working, or adding extra layers of awesome on top of what already is there, are both fine with me however. Note that having to rebuild or respec your character can be fun too, and even if they just buff a power that was previously 90% always skipped, you may want to respec anyway to include it in a new build. Basically.. can’t easily get away from it unless you just have No Changes. Which would be a bit boring. I agree that deleting a power and putting something completely different in its place should be avoided, and I think it generally is except for the absolute worst offenders?

For some sets the offensive toggles are what keeps them alive, so every second that they are not working is a very dangerous second that could result in death. So let’s not treat a few seconds difference as ‘inconsequential’, it’s not. What the OP is referring to is that normally you would recast the offensive toggles straight away to ensure survivability, and you can do that a lot faster than the 5 seconds that they remain suppressed. This is why the whole idea of suppression with a delayed restart time is so controversial, because it is not a ‘straight buff’ to how things were before. In many cases it makes life more dangerous, because not only are you vulnerable while mezzed, you now also have to count to 5 in your head before you can stand toe to toe with what you’re fighting, rather then just immediately recasting your protection. The other point is, this is not people being ungrateful for small buffs when they wanted bigger buffs, this is people finding the newer system, under the guise of convenience and improvement, worse than the previous system, and being unable to explain why to people who aren’t used to relying on offensive toggles to survive. Also explains the frustration and emotion you hear in the posts. Personally I agree with the OP and am not a fan of invisible suppression times that are hard to gauge, whether it’s 1 second or 5. If toggles are suppressed, it should only be when your character is mezzed, and there should be no delay before they restart working. Just like defensive toggles. It makes little sense in terms of gameplay, isn’t intuitive, and doesn’t make sense from a RP perspective. Either my character is mezzed or they aren’t, I don’t see why ‘lingering weakness’ should be a thing. Anyway just wanted to add my thoughts in support of the OP.

This is true and I was going to highlight this earlier in the thread. Cone attacks in CoH have to be cast with an enemy as the target point, so any trickery around cone width or cone range is hard for players in this game. In other games you can rotate the cone around your character (or it just shoots forward from the direction your character is facing) and you have a visual on the ground to see the width, the range, and the ‘inner range’ so it’s really obvious what is being hit. I’ve added a photo of this from Heroes of the Storm: Basically because of the way cones work in this game (they have to target an enemy, like you say), plus there is no visual clues as to what you’re hitting, I personally am against the fear and the slow part of this power from having either a different width or different range. I don’t think it is going to be fun or a good experience in this game. I think looking at play styles, and other posts in this thread, using this power as an opener so people can then enter melee range seems to be the way to go. So I reckon trying to facilitate that would be the best way forward.

I haven’t been able to test this, apologies. But what happens visually while the toggles are suppressed? For example, radiation infection and enervating field - do the mobs still look debuffed even though the toggle is suppressed, or do the visuals hide during that time? I think it’s important that offensive toggles are only visible when they are having their impact, otherwise it is going to be confusing to players (both the casters and others) when mobs appear debuffed but aren’t. Some other feedback: my Rad Defender will normally recast toggles straight away if he’s been mezzed in order to help survivability. So if the toggles have already been down for x seconds while he was mezzed, the quick recharge means he can usually recast them straight away. I don’t think toggles need a delay to come back on. They are already suppressed while you are mezzed - once you regain controller of your character I’m struggling to see why they should still be suppressed. It seems illogical and confusing. I don’t see this as a QoL issue, it is a balance issue. Offensive toggles should either just drop, or be suppressed; I don’t think there is much middle ground here that will be satisfactory.

I don’t agree that any of these examples match this situation. You are talking about charge powers that have increased damage at the point of impact, that plays very differently to having a cone power that is effectively two cone powers in one with no easy way to tell which part will hit which mobs. There are no examples I can think of where this has been done before, and for good reason, as it’s going to be really difficult for players trying to use it. As for Hurricane the powers effects have always matched the visual perfectly. You have to touch the mobs with the repel in order to debuff them so I’m not sure which part of the power is a 25ft radius? The debuff lingers for 10 seconds but you always have to tap them. With regards to the more melee play style of ice.. cones are not good for this fullstop. It would be a better power as a targeted AoE, and a ‘cold snap’ targeted on an enemy and around them would probably fit better thematically anyway. This would give ice a more unique style to other sets and could be pretty fun with some other secondaries they benefit from this too.

Honestly I have no idea why we have to tiptoe around Control set power in a game where melee ATs are so powerful, and are just having their defences even more buffed against damage gaps that usually have to be controlled to be avoided. I cannot understand how ICE CONTROL (of all sets) having a fear like Terrify or Fearsome Stare would make the set overpowered, either by itself, compared to other control sets, or even compared to other ATs. The whole primary purpose of the set is about control; they should have among the best versions of these powers. I think reducing the cone width for the slow so that the fear can be fully incorporated into the power would be much be a much better play experience for everyone, if a compromise has to be made. For the record I’ve never found the cone width on Terrify wanting, so not sure how much benefit there is for a wider cone anyway? The version we have now I would question what the point of adding a fear to it was in the first place. It just seems like it will be completely unwieldy in game to know whether a mob is near enough to be hit with the fear or not, in a way no other power to my mind has such considerations when using.

Doesn’t seem much point in us feeding back about it then?

Multiple people had fed this back but no idea what the devs reasoning is for keeping the cone widths like it is. It is going to cause a lot of confusion (to the players, not the mobs!)

🤷‍♂️ I’ll just stop wasting my time then

GM Miss used to do some fabulous weekly discussion threads on the general forum where the community would discuss different powersets and ideas for improving them. They were actually high quality discussions, but those ideas and feedback never seemed to be picked up by the devs, who just seemed to be doing their own thing. For example one of threads discusses APPs and creating more themes, like a radiation one, which would be easier now there is a radiation armour set. Also there was a lot of excitement for a new control set based on a tech theme and using gadgets (gadget control), and people even came up with ideas on how to reuse existing powers from other sets to go about creating it. There is a lot of good stuff in this update (and I have commented on it already), but I agree that my enthusiasm to suggest ideas went quite a while ago..

Also people hoarding names is not against the rules, even if it is inconsiderate to other players. I think it’s hard to for the devs to ‘target the worst offenders’ if there is no policy or rule that they are breaking. The nice thing about this system is it will just generally free up names over time automatically, with clear warnings and and clear consistent rules that apply to everyone equally.

I think a lot of games have a ‘name release’ function these days and overall I’m perfectly happy with it. The fact that max level characters are immune is perfect, and this is a nice system that runs by itself with clear warnings to the player. I’m not sure if every month should be required though for level 1 characters. I think 3 months sounds fairer. That gives people less chance of losing a name due to a brief period of inactivity, whilst still freeing up names that haven’t been used in quite a while. Otherwise it’s a bit of a culture change for CoH, so will take some getting used to for some, but overall I think very beneficial for the game.

Terrify also has great damage (boosted by containment). A direct comparison of Shivers and Terrify leaves Shivers as quite wanting. I actually think adding damage to shivers not ice slick would be a great boost for the set and a much needed damage increase for a set that is quite light on both damage and control. Also just to repeat I think having two different cone widths in a single power is a very bad idea and will cause a lot of confusion and frustration. Anything hit by shivers should be feared AND slowed.

Also regarding the cone effect of Shivers, I’m a bit worried at how intuitive it is to have a power with 2 different cone widths? I can’t think of any other cone power where part of the effect has a wide cone and the other part, a narrow cone. Surely this will be extremely confusing to anyone not in the know, and I imagine they’ll think the power is bugged. On the damage front, is ice slick’s damage amplified by containment? It should be. Rooting enemies on the slick with Frostbite should amplify the damage I think, which would be a neat effect.

Frostfire's father was a mad pyromaniac who tried to torch Paragon City. This is Frostfire's story of how his childhood was dominated by his father's madness, and how he was destined to carry on that legacy. Relive the moment his father torched downtown Paragon City - and experience the reoccurring nightmare where this act replays in his head over and over again, despite the setting.

Players usually choose the path of least resistance, even if it is to the detriment to the game as a whole (and their own enjoyment). This is why you need Devs who are prepared to make changes to the game to guide players back to what is in the best interests of the overall player experience and the game's future. It happens in every game, and outside of gaming too. That is why nerfing is a thing. Would people do other content if the AE wasn't so lucrative? Would that be advantageous to the playerbase as a whole (more content being run, more fun) and the game (more players sticking around and more community)? The Devs obviously think so, and I'm inclined to agree. Remember though all this fuss is about veteran levels. Last I looked no changes were being made to influence, recipe, salvage and enhancement drops in AE?

I think it’s a really great change and completely unexpected, lovely surprise! Also the extra weapon choices! There will be clipping issues but I guess it is up to the player to decide what clipping they can cope with. Clipping is an issue in most games though, especially when you can customise appearances! (And CoH has one of the best/most varied character creators!)

Oh that is something. Still I’d be interested in how much control Ice Control can reach. It was quite a long way behind the other sets, relying very heavily on Ice Patch which lets be honest, is the sort of soft control that non-control sets usually rely on. I like the confuse changes to Arctic Air. I just think if Shivers was also a targeted AoE skill it would create a really cool play style where you could control from melee range.

Hmm but the terrify cone on Shivers is quite narrow - unlike Terrify and Fearsome Stare which have nice wide cones. The wide cone part of Shivers is the slow, but that won't do anything against the initial volley. The nice thing about Ice Patch damage will surely be the slotting opportunities? It is a power which is difficult to slot at the moment as all you need is a few recharges.

The real test with the changes is can Ice Control control a group of mobs without getting hit by the alpha? I don’t have a huge experience of ice control, but from memory ice slick doesn’t always do the job. Artic air is a PBAoE toggle whilst Shiver is a cone, which normally makes for a difficult pairing (having to step out of melee to line up a cone).

Also my other feedback is I think people would be more concerned with the post-50 incarnate rewards being harder to obtain rather than no vet xp per se. It’s just the way it is currently implemented the two systems are intrinsically linked. Perhaps there should be more incarnate rewards for the first playthrough of incarnate content? Like the dark Astoria story arc - perhaps the badges linked to it could give incarnate threads, etc. So when you complete them for the first time you get a nice surge of resources (and because it’s linked to the badge it wouldn’t affect repeat runs, they’d stay as they are now).