Psi-bolt

That is really a treat when it happens.

Did you get the Midnighter Badge from Night Ward (It's right inside the door of the big house in the middle of the zone)? That should at least allow you to access the club. I think it opens up the Midnighter contacts too.

Same, was too late last couple of months.

When I was first writing the OP, I wanted to add a part about the TF forcing all mission doors to be on main Talos Island. I see the point of doing IP since you need to go there for the hunt. BTW - to further address Psyonico's point, my goal isn't to reduce the length of this TF at least directly, it's literally to make it more engaging by adding some variety. Uun idea above to reduce travel would also be welcome.

Most of the idea is just to change the maps so you aren't doing 9 Council cave maps. But I appreciate the feedback.

The suggestion is to streamline the Citadel TF, to hopefully make it more engaging. I am suggesting doing this by changing one mission's objective from a defeat all to a click the glowie mission, and changing the maps of most of the other missions. Details: Citadel consists of NINE door missions: Investigate Council base (Investigate by defeating all Soldiers in base 🙃) Defeat all Soldiers in base Defeat Base Leader and Guards Defeat Base Leader and Guards Defeat Base Leader and Guards Defeat all Soldiers in base (click 3 glowies) Defeat all Soldiers in base (click 3 glowies) Defeat all Soldiers in base (click 4 glowies) - Elite Boss mission with Bulwark Defeat Vandal and minions So how would I change that. Well, unlike with Synapse, I don't think you need to reduce the number of missions. These are 25-30 level characters who can kill much quicker and have the potential for better tools to manage endurance and such. That said, I think there are some relatively minor changes that could allow for a quicker less monotonous experience. The first mission, is stated to be an investigation, but you investigate by beating the heck out of everyone there. I think if this mission were changed to click a computer and perhaps kill a boss/boss room that would help. The second mission I would leave alone (including the quirk about it always being the same door, no matter how silly that is). For the next three missions, I would suggest changing the default maps to warehouses (similar to the Hess early maps) and locking them into being somewhat smaller. I love the Council's endless caves as much as the next hero, but they get to be a bit much. For the three defeat alls/glowie missions I would change them to the tech/laboratory type maps and again lock them into being somewhat smaller maps. Reason being that in the story you are supposed to be shutting down production plants. But you get there and it's Council caves. Vandal can stay where he is in his cave. That's it, that's the idea. Basically change the objectives of the unannounced defeat all, change some maps to warehouses, and some to labs so that you aren't only fighting in cave. Finally, making the maps default to smaller sized maps given the length of the TF. As always the original can go into Ouroboros for those mad lads who want to do it (or do it solo). Merits to adjust according to the reduction in time.

So, I kinda stayed out of this thread because...... But reading the responses, I just wanted to note that Sentinels don't really need anything to be fun. Personally, I play my Sentinels when I want to veg out and just shoot stuff. There is not a more relaxing AT in the game. Range is a BIG benefit to survivability and having an armor secondary on top of that means you basically don't have to worry about dying ever. The damage is lower. As it should be. You're playing a VERY low risk AT. All that said, if we're looking for buffs, I would lean into a semi-support role. The word Sentinel means loosely a guard, one who stands watch. What if, as part of the Sentinel "inherent" their Status protection power had a small AoE buff to status protection. Like if the Sentinel gets 8 MAG protection, the AoE buff would be 3. More for flavor than anything else, but you could act as a bodyguard, a sentinel if you will over your squishy ranged buddies.

In Ouroboros, the Clockwork King would be able to be spawned as an Elite Boss if you're solo. While there are some builds that can defeat a psychic Archvillain at level 20, they are few and far between. My guess is that the majority of characters could defeat an Elite Boss. Hardly anyone does it because the Yin TF is so accessible, but Clamor at the end of Sister Psyche can be an EB now.

Absolutely agree, and I have a whole post on that: But to play my own devil's advocate, having two TFs would provide more content in the early game. We would basically get three TFs at that point. The original (which would now be soloable) and the two smaller TFs. That said, I absolutely would prefer it just be shortened.

So I'm nowhere near the best Kheldian player. I forced myself to level to 50 on both as a goal. So if what I'm about to suggest doesn't make any sense, I will not have any hard feelings if you all say the idea is dumb. But what I really wish for Kheldians is that the forms were ONLY buffs that didn't lock out all your other powers. Like I wish Human Form had all the ranged and melee attacks and that Nova Form buffed damage, to-hit generally, and recovery and Dwarf buffed the damage of the melee attacks only and your resistance + status protection. The Kheldian travel power would be a copy of the sorcery power Mystic Flight without the magic fx so that both Kheldians could fly and teleport when they wanted. The forms would be mutually exclusive from one another like Dual Pistols' stances, but otherwise you could switch back and forth. If I were really being sassy, I would add a minimal fx option to both so that you could have the buff on, but not need to use the sprite. More specifically, Nova wouldn't actually add any powers anymore since there is an analogue for all of its attacks in the primary. With respect to Dwarf, I would add the taunt & Smite to the primary and give the Dwarf toggle a taunt aura. This way a Kheldian could switch between a Blapper stance and a Tanker stance.

I mostly agree with this, but I think with Sentinels it's better as well. New Regen is an above average set on its own. When built for resistance and max health it's stupidly survivable, but as someone else said in the thread you do lose some damage potential to doing that in the form of less +recharge.

I think you're correct that this is the status quo for ATs. I wonder, however, if this is balanced. I'll give you a concrete example: I've been playing my EM/EA Tanker recently. While I agree that it is intended that melees risk extra aggro, I would say that the compensations they have for that make that a net benefit. The tanker in question can take on large groups of enemies with little danger. The ranged ATs, even ones I have gotten softcapped can't do that. Is that balanced? I don't know to be honest. I think the melees are fairly balanced against each other. I almost think that the ranged units are playing a different game. Maybe that's the idea. I do love my Blasters and that dangerous playstyle. I don't get the sense, however, that's what's intended for the other ATs.

I'm aware. I meant why they don't get a toggle in human form while having armor toggles.

That was probably true at the beginning....to a point. Damage auras existed for Tankers at least, but later sets have added actual attacks to the secondaries. And outliers like Fire exist, but that has internal tradeoffs for its attacks. They do, but understandable since they are "epic" ATs. Why Kheldians don't get status protection has always eluded me other than the default, "status effects have to effect someone." So I don't exactly disagree with this. But are these the tradeoffs solely to status effects or are they baked into the combination of offense, defense, etc. that makes up a whole AT? I would say the latter. If we look at the ATs as a whole, then I would probably agree that Blasters after Defiance probably have the best tradeoffs. Extreme damage, extreme risk. That's fair to me. It's actually fun in a way. I usually don't even try to increase the protection on my Blasters. It's a different playstyle and can be really fun. The rest....well I'm not sure that the tradeoffs are exactly worth it. If Defenders/Corrupters/Controllers/MMs could use their buffing powers on themselves, absolutely that would be a good tradeoff. This is obviously a matter of opinion but I don't see the same tradeoffs on an AT level. Some individual sets like Kinetics are clearly worth the risk in teams at least. Conversely, Sonic and Force Field (and even Electric to an extent) just provide status protection and so the tradeoff there is more intra-AT. On balance, I am persuaded that status effects have to do something and so just giving every AT status protection for free is undesirable. But I likewise don't think it's a problem if there were a way to build your character to reduce or eliminate. We can do that now with Rune, Acrobatics, etc. I don't think an Invention is too unreasonable. Perhaps spread it out more, reduce the MAG to 2, make it strong resistance, etc.

Is it free? Or too easy? To gain status protection against all the effects noted here you would need: 1) A defense power (admittedly the easiest requirement with Hover, Maneuvers, and Combat Jumping) 2) A resist power (not too difficult, but will require two power picks for most non Melee/Sentinel players until Epic Power Pools) 3) 6 additional slots I've been thinking a lot about the arguments that Rudra and MsSmart made earlier in the thread about what the devs intended. And I guess it is as good a time as any to describe why I thought it would be worthwhile to post this even though I intuitively agree with you that +4 status enhancers might be too much. My thought process about this suggestion started with a question: Is there a balance reason why melees/Sentinels get mostly full status protection and other ATs (mostly) don't. And I kept coming to the same conclusion. I think that the ATs that don't have status protection baked in, don't have it because status effects need to affect someone. Now I know some will reject that framing, but I would argue that there isn't a significant tradeoff in this game between having status effect protection and not. If you have status effect protection even the worst player will understand that they need to take those powers immediately. Status effects in this game last a very long time and it is possible for NPCs (going to ignore PvP for now) to mez lock you and kill you. That would kinda be OK if there was a significant tradeoff. Like ATs without status protection had some countervailing benefit. Blasters arguably do have such a benefit in the extreme damage they do. I'm not sure about the rest. Like many issues in this game, status effects seem to have been haphazardly implemented. This necessitated giving melees pretty much constant protection. Melees used to have drawbacks on some status effect protection. For example, Unyielding and Rooted used to require you to be immobilized to have the protection. That was take away to support tanking and to reflect how the game is actually played. But when they did that, they set up a pretty big disparity IMO in that some ATs ignore status effects and for others it's a deadly threat. I just think that's a poor implementation. I have played other games where status effects worked on everyone, but their effect wasn't so overwhelming. Star Wars the Old Republic had a good implementation I think. In that game basically everyone had a stun (which operates how holds do here), but it was on a 1 minute cooldown, only lasted 4 seconds and was single target. There were limited abilities that improved it, but for the most part that's all you got. Also, every character got a power that allowed you to break free of status effects on the same cooldown. Obviously that implementation wouldn't work for City of Heroes at this point. I mention it to note that I don't think that status effects are terrible, I think their implementation in this game is terrible. So with that in mind, I think that the status quo is simply unfair. I genuinely think that every character should have a means to obtain some status effect protection and not merely resistance. I don't know if my suggestion in the OP is the right way to do it. Maybe for ranged units it would be better if they had a "break free" type of click power that had a cooldown and several seconds of extreme protection to deal with situations where a character is mez locked. All that said, I appreciate the discussion.