nihilii

I'm saying I can see the case for bumping it to 10! Yours is a strange answer to more or less call me an idiot for basically agreeing with your point, only with less emphasis.

I'm more of the following school of philosophy:

It's amusing to me as a shameless powergaming munchkin, I went from "all Brutes no Tankers" on Live to "all Tankers no Brutes" in today's Homecoming. The pendulum took a long time to swing back, and to be fair much of the difference also came down to Scrappers going from weaker Brutes to offensive juggernauts with their ATOs and other changes.

I think the Pendulum stats make sense if we treat it as a TAoE, which it is now, rather than a cone. Subjective: I'm OK "paying" that end/rech tax for the convenience of AoE over cone. NewAxe can chain Cleave -> Pendulum -> Whirlwind for massive AOE damage and reliable KD at no effort. Axe is fairly light on end what with Cleave essentially being used like a ST attack that hits multiples for free. Battle Axe has excellent flow as a result. - edit: perhaps a closer comparison would be to Spinning Strike from Street Justice, another TAoE. + 96 damage (vs 84) - 6' radius (vs 7') - 16s rech (vs 15s) - 15.184 end (vs 14.352 end) + 10 targets max (vs 5 targets max) ~ can be boosted slightly further with combo levels (IMHO a negative, because in practice you'd rather save those combo levels for Crushing Uppercut...) = 50% chance to KD It feels relatively similar like this. I could see a case being made for bumping Pendulum to 10 targets max. Hypothetical higher performance that is in practice leveled by Axe already chaining AoEs. That is, the amount of time you're going to have 6+ targets in range of your 7' TAoE might not be so significant in real gameplay. I could also see a case for saying everything is fine, no buff needed.

There's so much lore in Praetoria I'm barely aware of. At low level Praetoria story arcs are half broken and have so many conditionals you'd need a guide to go through them. At high level the lore is doled out in Incarnate trials, when everything is on a timer and everyone jumps around like crack bunnies. The Homecoming wiki is great to fill the gaps. But I wish I could experience this ingame. I love this idea.

One of my favorite ways to help PuGs, pop team insps on my teammates whenever I would use a normal insp of the same kind in their situation. Most of them don't notice either. "wow, I rocked that fight" 😄

I treat my pickup partners as magical floating pixies with unknown abilities behaving in mysterious ways. I would not dream to get between the pixie world and its manifestation in our plane of existence. Sometimes the flying dreamers merge into a steamroller, some other times they decide to enhance my experience by increasing the challenge. Either way, it's never dull, so I stay quiet and enjoy the ride.

How many layers of AE tricks are you on, my man? Impressive stuff!

I think smoothing out values across the board is more likely to kill diversity than to enhance it. The lesser the differences, the easier it is to zone in on the optimal choice and stick with it. For example, if I understand your idea correctly, this would kill +5 purple IOs (as they'd have to be attuned to reach the same performance as a +0 purple). Which would remove a build option in slotting, for example, a single +5 Apoc Damage in a power and get +66% damage enhancement from this. This is something I like to do on dominator holds, maximising either procs or hold power while keeping decent damage. It's interesting to me you name perf shifter and miracle as part of a shallow pool "we" feel forced to pick, when most of my builds don't include either proc. On the other hand, I will always have Kismet unique, but I've seen many players not even consider this one. Purples and ATOs being generally good (but not always), rather than a detriment to diversity, actually enhances it because they are indeed uniques. So you have to consider where each of these options can be deployed to best effect. The "make everything unique" part of your proposal matches that dynamic, but only up to a point: with normalized scales and bonuses across the board, comes greater interchangeability. It should become relatively easily to "solve" for the optimal build then, by looking at the set bonuses you want most and going down the list from the best fitting set. Personally I'd love for the game to go in the opposite direction and introduce more cool uniques and sets. Which forces choice! Which IO is in, which IO is out? Do I want this new unique giving me a chance for a +20% damage buff lasting 30s, or do I want a perf shifter? This is what the devs have been doing so far so I'm in luck... Although they have been, reasonably, relatively conservative with these introductions compared to the (indeed) awesomeness of LotG and the like. So we're perhaps not feeling the squeeze of opportunity cost just yet. I look at these new travel uniques and I think, this is nice, but is it *really* worth one of my slots... I've had back-and-forths with Synapse's Shock compared to Power Transfer, and even Perf Shifter as a distant third, though. So there's proof-of-concept there.

It's viable for sure, and great fun. Advantages: - extremely potent in the early game. You get many good attacks fast, they're light on end. - Spin is a monster on a Tanker. Tankers/Brutes got a beefed up version of Claws to start with, and the Tanker buffs pushed that further by increasing radius and target cap. - having your best singletarget attack as a ranged power (Focus) is quite convenient for aggro control. - a KB-to-KD IO in Shockwave will turn it into great AoE control + damage + aggro at range. Pitfalls: - offensive output will scale down in the later stages of the game relative to some other secondaries who deal more exotic damage or get access to their cornerstone powers later - Claws' optimal performance relies on constant machine gun attacks, keeping Follow Up +DAM stacked as much as possible. This may not play well with some playstyles, should you want to be more focused on repositioning for aggro purposes The advantages are ++++ and the pitfalls are -. I think it's a great combo. Not a high-end one, but not a stinker either.

I came to CoH from korean MMOs, so the leveling process here never felt like a grind even all the way back. But I remember fondly my perception of The Hollows as this mysterious post-apocalyptic zone where death lurked everywhere. I joined in I3, so the pacing went like, start in Atlas and do this hero-themed city stuff from level 1 to 5-6 or so... Then boom, you're thrown into this large open zone where the police is barely holding an outpost, with superpowered criminals and trolls and mystics, and all the terrain collapsed in the middle. No travel powers before 14, leveling speed being slow enough (*and* the desire to alt), the zone itself lasting until lvl 15ish... All made for a great combo to be hooked in. I don't know if this was purposeful, but as someone who is not into superhero culture and tried CoH as one of many other games, The Hollows is what secured my interest. It's got that mashup of fantasy and sci-fi energy, everything is familiar yet bizarre, and you're too busy being in survival mode to wonder if you're into this or not. You want to discover more about this world. Newbie pickup groups tales of Frostfire and Atta fueled a level of social lore beyond the game lore as well. It was an awesome experience.

SR/MA: you will be practically invincible at low levels. Getting to the Incarnate softcap is a breeze later on. While arguably this combo could be missed potential, you may also use the freedom to focus on different aspects with your build. WP/MA: Storm Kick will shore up WP's so-so defenses very nicely. It's true WP has poor DDR, but in the end having 40% defense and almost no DDR is better than having 30% defense and almost no DDR.

This is how I handle it as well, as a mostly solo player. I generally pick Barrier rather than Rebirth to round up those max offense builds, so if the situation allows, I also keep that ready when I know Elude will soon drop (I use Barrier once during the first minute or so of the Elude cycle, so I know it will be up again right before Elude drops). I would lie if I said I never mess it up and end up eating the pavement, but... that's also part of the fun.

DDR, end recovery, defense against +tohit foes. Runspeed and leveling/exemplar comfort are also nice. There's definitely stuff out there these days that will punch through 70% defense but not 160% defense. Or even from back in the old days. Soloing large groups of Rularuu with eyeballs is an instant wipe for me with 70% defense, but 160% defense floors the eyeballs again. The recharge is closer to 5 minutes (slotted) on an IOed out build. So you're looking at 3 minutes up, 2 minutes down. In the past 2 years I've come to love Elude-like T9s on every AT with access to it. It allows for building extremely aggressively in damage output, while retaining strong defenses. That is, to truly go all out with procs one must usually grab Ageless. But an Elude build can proc out attacks and sustain endurance use through Elude, which allows for picking Barrier or Rebirth. Of course this top performance is only attainable ~60% of the time. Yet I actually find this peaks and valleys rhythm optimal - i.e., very rarely will I have to sustain absolute top end resilience for more than a couple minutes if that; so the "base build" while Elude is recharging, performing maybe at 80-90% of what a standard build would do offensively, is still good enough for me. Big YMMV obviously. I suspect for most people who play on large teams and will find themselves with stacked Destinies whenever they tackle the hardest content, the above is largely irrelevant. So Elude just adds a crash for no good reason.

If the devs can implement it, an Echo Zone would give you the old Mercy Island, minus the NPCs. All other mobs would be there in their usual spots, and you would be able to access it through Ouroboros and level through patrolling. So this would be doable from level 1, even though it wouldn't be a direct option straight from creation.

I don't mind the new Mercy, but I'm 100% with gabrilend in feeling like the flow has become weird and awkward. Old design made use of the core geography of the map and moved you logically, new design moves you in non-patterns without clear landmarks or progression. Also echoing Naomi on spawns. Boy does it feel gimmicky to watch 2 longbows pop in front of you, slap them, then watch 2 more identical longbows pop up 20 feet away. This is the good old MMO sin that moves a game from immersive experience to theme park.

I like the Phantom one that gives you Adrenalin Boost. It will use Adrenalin Boost 2x during its life cycle, and it's a great buff.

I don't think there's anything evil with players behaving rationally either, but I think the Winter Pack sale was a pretty poor system objectively because 1) it scales so well 2) it's limited in time. It breaks the risk/reward formula in a way almost unlike anything else in game. Even AFK farming is more linear, as you at least have to log on your characters and enter/exit a mission every few minutes. I bought something like 40B or 60B inf worth of Winter Packs 2 years ago (when they were 10M), and resold most of them for a 2x+ profit. I completely abandoned doing anything for inf in the game, this netted me more than I could ever need. I'm still not done burning through that inf, and who knows if I ever will be.

Disappointing. * poster may not be disappointed but loves a good forum chain

I think we're looking at more than a -10% difference with AR. In my opinion, the problems come down to: - slow animation times - no T3 singletarget blast - mixed bag secondary effects - cones of various arcs and ranges require a great deal of positioning, which is a hidden damage tax compared to easier sets where you just click your TAoE/PBAoE on a mob somewhat close to the center - Full Auto used to be the unique thing of AR, a crashless fast recharge nuke. However many sets with better crashless nukes have been introduced, and ultimately nukes' crashes were removed. Even though FA got an animation time buff and DoT speed buff, I think there's still more that ought to be done for parity I'd look at these for potential fixes: 1) give the Screech treatment to Beanbag: turn it into a legitimate T3 singletarget blast 2) speed up Flamethrower from 2.5s to 1.8s. Speed up M30 Grenade from 1.8s to 1.2s. 3) increase Ignite damage by 50%. Goals being to 1) give AR a decent singletarget rotation 2) make the AoE rotation less limited by animation times 3) turn Ignite into AR's special thing, more ST damage should you set up your environment to make the most out of it. But I'm no AR expert... The set just lacked something for me everytime I tried. That awful Blaster change way back when they pushed old animations for T2 blasts to 1.848s really didn't help. The dead pause in Slug feels completely unnatural, and given that AR only has 2 ST attacks (now 3 with fast snipe), you have to live with this.

Got it. I'd still argue less liquidity is the likely culprit. You're competing for less demand with people who price their IOs lower than you. If the last 5 is 2M * 5, for all you know, the seller stealing your lunch is listing them at 1,610,000 or even 1,111,111. Whenever I sell loot, I generally price them as little above the flipping price as to make them unprofitable to flip. So in my 8M, 7M, 5,042k, 7M1, 5,042k example above... I'd list my IOs for 6M1 or so. Flippers aren't going to touch that, and my IOs will be the first sold for at least 7M (save for the very rare freak bid trying out lower numbers). Even when flipping stuff, it's sometimes a good strategy to list things at breakeven prices if you're confident the actual price most people will bid is profitable.

All the problems you see could be explained by lack of liquidity. A market with less liquidity will have less items on sale at a given moment. This means more time needed for bids to fill. Things you could buy instantly before might require posting a bid and wait, if you're not willing to up your price. In terms of flipping, this also means the pool of items you're competing for shrinks. Say Bob the Evil Flipper used to buy 20 miracle +recovery per day at 4M to flip them for 5M. If 50 miracles are marketsold per day, Bob snatches 20 of them, and you could have a fair chance at getting up to 30 by also posting 4M bids. Volume both covers and creates inefficiencies If only 10 miracles are marketsold per day, and if you put the exact same bids as Bob, it's a crapshoot whether they'll end up in your pocket or his. FWIW, I haven't had any trouble getting items in a timely manner (24 hours) by taking the obvious "flipper" bid for any item and adding digits. i.e.: I see an ATO last 5 looking like this 8,000,000 7,000,000 5,042,000 7,100,000 5,042,000 I put my bid at 5,111,111. Next morning, I have this ATO in my pocket. Never fails.

This was already picked, but my own worst would be WP/Elec. WP doesn't have much going for it these days. +recovery used to be special, not anymore. Once unique psionic edge has been spread around. Layered defenses without significant DDR means many ways to fall. Regeneration simply doesn't cut it compared to other boons when difficulty increases. And the primary does nothing for your damage output. Elec does godawful ST damage, and mediocre AoE damage. Between a Lightning Rod doing X damage every 30s, and a Foot Stomp / Atom Smasher doing 3/4 of X damage every 8s, give me the latter any day. No question you can make this a workable character, and even enjoy it. Everyone is super in Homecoming. But, some are definitely more super than others... 🙂

0 defeats. But now that I completed a Master ITF and got the badge there, I see a difference. In the Master ITF, I got 0 defeats in green - Succeeded! and Selected Challenges: Master of the Imperious Task Force, also in green. In the Master LGTF, I got 0 defeats in green - Succeeded! with Selected Challenges: Master of the Lady Grey Task Force, in red this time. Could there be hidden requirements? i.e., not fail any mission? I let the hostages die, out of habit.

See title. If it matters, this was the first LGTF completion for these characters. So they got the "Apocalyptic" badge, but not the "Master of Lady Grey" one.