Psi-bolt

In the D&D campaign I am currently in, an Earth Elemental was hiding in a wall and got surprise on our Paladin with a smash. I'm all for Stalker Stone! I also think re: Tanker/Brute Ninjitsu that you would need to boot Blinding Powder. That could be a good place for a taunt aura though. If they wanted to be fancy you could do that silly thing they do no Naruto where they create Shadow Clones of themselves. It could be only a visual cue too, and just be a normal taunt aura otherwise.

Recognizing the issues with Rage discussed in your other thread, I still don't see why it would be a big deal to proliferate SS to Scrappers/Stalkers. Hand Clap obviously becomes Assassin's Blow/Smash/Knockout or whatever. I don't think you can just go with Build up, but it seems to me that a +DMG/+To-Hit toggle (so no crash) called something like "Focused Strength" with perhaps equal to-hit but much less damage buff (25-40%) could work.

That Stalkers don't have War Mace is really surprising since that's basically what Bane Spiders are. I do think thematically, Ninjutsu is a little silly for a Tanker/Brute. I'm all for silly, but the changes that would need to be made to that set for it to function as a Tanker would change the character of the set so much that it would be functionally no longer Ninjutsu.

Although it would devalue base portals a bit, I think just having an exit portal that goes everywhere a player has access to would work. Have that exit portal be off to the side somewhere. The entrance portal could stay the same.

Recently, I stopped using Mids, and just build the characters as I go. I also really pay attention to how they are doing in the content that I play the most (TFs). Outside of Tankers and Brutes who are soaking up damage, I've found that an excessive focus on min-maxing really makes a lot of characters less fun. Even focusing on damage can make a character less fun than they could be. It's a hard habit to break, but I think it's worth it because having dozens of soft-capped, max damage monsters is cool, but then you start to wonder why not just play one character; why keep building new characters if the concept always devolves into unkillable steamroller.

I think that's the key that I wasn't thinking about. I respecced into it, and added two procs and I like it a lot. I kept Aqua Bolt because I just like that animation more than Hydro. But liking the attack chain at present.

That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking specifically for the TF to be shortened. I feel this way for the Shadow Shard TFs as well. As I have stated multiple times in the thread, I think TFs get the most engagement when they are 4-6 missions. A global accolade would greatly reduce the number of runs of Synapse. I want people to do Synapse. I just want Synapse to not have random filler. As for your comment about "good exp task forces," I guess I don't understand this. By what metric are we saying that Synapse is "good exp." The best exp TF for that level range is probably Positron 2. Two zones with most occurring in Faultline. Still have clockwork, but you have Lost, Vahz, and CoT as well. Shorter so you can crank up the difficulty without it taking two hours. Once you cross into level 20, Yin beats Synapse on exp per time spent by a lot given it occurs all in IP.

Agreed wholeheartedly. I think this is why both the reconstituted Positron TFs and Yin are so much better. Positron has always been about the three villain groups designs on the dam and that changes it up in both parts. With Yin, the break with the Council getting involved for...reasons is a nice interlude.

Question: why Dehydrate over Aqua Bolt? Or neither? Not a challenge, I'm thinking about my own Water/Marine build and I didn't really consider Dehydrate because of its cast time

I agree with you obviously on shortening the TF, but I wanted to comment on this. The great thing about this 21 year old game is that there is literally no end of stuff to do to level up. TFs, at least in my opinion, are opportunities to showcase major villains and their plots (Posi, Synapse, Manticore, LGTF), culminate stories (KHTF, ITF), and/or explore the lore (Moonfire). They give great exp since you're often on teams, but the teams running radio/paper missions are almost always available. Besides that Yin, is run much more often for exp than Synapse since most people don't sign up for that slog more than once per characters (outside of the WST).

I think having to do the whole Freedom Phalanx makes sense and the TFs are introductions to the members of the Freedom Phalanx, so I think it's fine to have to do them. I think it should be changed because all the old TFs should be changed. TFs should be no more than 6 missions or so. Citadel would absolutely be next on my list, if I were the devs. I mean the story of Synapse can be told in one sentence, "Stop the Clockwork King's plot to siphon power from Steel Canyon and defeat the King." Citadel can be described as "Stop Vandal's plot to use misuse Citadel's technology." Neither of those require 9-10 missions to accomplish. They were created in a time when there was a LOT less content. Basically none of the TFs that came later were built this way. See e.g. KHTF, the ITF, LGTF, etc.

This would be my preferred option too. Personally, I would just write a shorter snappier story ala the Yin TF that is 5 missions.

Who said anything about taking it away? You can still do the old Positron TF and the Sister Psyche TF in Ouro which functionally work exactly like doing a TF. Same with this. Streamline the TF, put the original in Ouro. The old one will still get done. I have personally run both the old Positron and Sister Psyche ones on multiple characters. But nearly every hero needs to do this TF for the accolade, so why not streamline it.

I think most Task Forces are best when they tell a tight story told in a reasonable (4-6) number of missions. The Freedom Phalanx TF series saw two of its TFs basically cut in half: Positron and Sister Psyche/Yin. This made both much more reasonable to jump in, play for an hour or less and then log off. I think we see that the shorter Task Forces get much more traction from players. Synapse and the Shadow Shard TFs are just extremely long slogs from a time where the devs thought a group of friends would treat them as a multi-session campaign. That's not how the game developed. As for comparing the other TFs, here are the number of missions in each of the Freedom Phalanx series: Positron Part 1 - 4 missions (No Defeat Alls) Positron Part 2 - 5 missions (No Defeat Alls) Yin - 4 missions (No Defeat Alls, but to be fair the pathing of the mission encourages kill most runs) Citadel - 9 missions (5 Defeat Alls) Manticore - 6 missions (2 Defeat Alls) Numina - 6 missions (1 Defeat All) The only one that is really comparable to Synapse is Citadel but you're dealing with higher level characters, a more reasonable villain group (Council) and the maps are shorter. Even then, I think that Citadel could lose 2-3 missions itself. That TF has you do a lot of running back and forth between IP and Talos.

I wonder instead of a server wide boost that folks can't opt out of, why we couldn't just add more options to the START vendor. There's no profit motive, so why couldn't we have a 3x, 4x, etc. buff at the vendor. Gives people more choices but doesn't force people who don't want that to have it. I'll admit that I thought it was both awesome and kinda sucky to be level 33 after doing DFB, Posi, and Synapse.

Currently, the Synapse Task Force has 10 door missions, five of which require you to defeat all enemies. The remaining ones include 4 Boss room fights (Bertha, Long Tom, Clockwork Lord, and Clockwork King) and one rescue the captives. Most of this is just filler and the TF could be pared down without losing much, if any, of the story. I have great faith in the developers' ability to rewrite this TF, but I would offer the following. It seems that the TF is in two parts: Part 1 is foiling the Clockwork's plan to divert Steel Canyon's power to the Clockwork King; First defeat all to investigate what's happening; Find out what the plan is from Positron; Run around to three substations to stop Clockwork; Part 2 is tracking down and defeating the Clockwork King. Having stopped the plot to divert Steel's power, Synapse wants you to Patrol and then track down King. After the first patrol, you get sent to an office building to a defeat all because your scans showed a high concentration of Clockwork After clearing out the building you get sent on another Patrol to find Headquarters which is unsuccessful. Synapse then hears about a big Clockwork named Bertha going into an abandoned office building. Upon defeating Bertha you find a distinctive Clockwork piece. Synapse sends you to the place the part comes from. Upon defeating Long Tom and rescuing the Foreperson, he tells you that they sent the piece to only three locations. The remainder of the TF is going to those three warehouses where you first rescue hostages, defeat the Clockwork Lord and finally, the Clockwork King. Babbage come over to play after the Lord. That's how it stands now. There is a lot of filler even in the story. The first mission isn't described as a defeat all and I think if it were instead an investigation mission or a Boss room kill it would be better. Next, I think you could combine all the substations into one mission. There is no story based reason it has to be three missions. That could eliminate 2 more defeat all missions. The last defeat all in the abandoned office is likewise filler. It is not the headquarters, it's just a lead that turned out to be nothing. Getting rid of that would reduce another mission. Perhaps eliminate the first patrol and have the second one lead to Bertha. For the remainder, Bertha is fine, but I would put the Foreman in Long Tom's mission into her room. Then you can get the part and the info about the three warehouses in the same mission. The rest of the TF could proceed as normal. That would leave it with one defeat all mission and six total missions. Of course, the original could be in Ouroboros. And yes, after running this three times this weekend, it's nearly driven me insane, but I still think folks would enjoy a snappier TF. Reduce the merits accordingly.

I actually wonder more what they would feel the need to do to Knockout Blow.

Tell the truth, if you had a personal aircraft like them would you ever get out of it? 😉

But we like to debate here! 😃

I leveled an EA/EM to 21 last night, it's pretty smooth both solo and in teams with just SOs. A brand new player wouldn't struggle any more with EA than Invulnerability or Shield in my opinion. It's a solid set leveling so far, and I know it's going to be stupid good once built out.

I agree with that so long as the game's challenges and rewards reflect that reality. Which I think CoH does not. That's not the Homecoming staff's fault, it's baked into the original game. This game rewards defeating large numbers of NPCs as quickly as possible more than just about any other activity. The exceptions I can think of are notable, things like Incarnate trials, Hami raids, etc. An easy example can illustrate this. Let's say you have a kill all enemies mission with a very strong Elite Boss at the end. The AoE set will finish quicker and probably by a lot. The ST focuses set gets a benefit on maybe 5% of the mission's objective, i.e. killing the Elite boss. Even if it's a kill Boss and minions objective, it's often better to be AoE because the disparity shows up very quickly. And I don't think there's any content in the game that rewards the ST focused set in a similar fashion. Even if you have a mission where you have to defeat just one enemy, the disparity in time will be negligible most times. For example, my AoE focused Tankers can kill Trapdoor, Hero 1 and the Minotaur in the Mender Ramiel arc at nearly the same rate as my ST focused Stalkers. While at the same time, other parts of that arc (i.e. the Rikti portals) are very quick for the Tankers to clear. I say all that to note that there are some minimum standards that need to be in place to avoid the large disparities you mention.

Don't get me wrong, Power Armor is definitely better and by a lot for Tanking. I do see why they didn't go the mutually exclusive route since for the unwary, taking the stealth power over Power Armor is a suboptimal choice. Hell, I'm not sure I would take it on the Tanker over Power Armor since I wanted Superspeed anyway. As for the comparison to Shield, I likewise can see that comparison. It feels more like Invulnerability to me because of Energize. A set with multiple layers of mitigation with a heal on top is generally my preferred set up and really makes the set a good generalist.

While I agree wholeheartedly regarding the loss of Energy Cloak, I don't think that the Tanker version was nerfed or that it's weaker than SR. SR is a one-trick pony, focused purely on positional defense. It's the best at it, hitting the normal softcap with SOs. That's nice. EA is a layered defense set where you get good defense, decent resists and a heal. It also get the utility of Energy Drain. That works better for my playstyle. With reasonable to obtain IO sets, you're looking at an easy road to the softcap in everything but Psi/Toxic. Alongside 30%+ resists to Sm, Le from just the set. On beta with a hastily put together build, I was in the 70% Sm, Le, Energy resists along with being at the softcap for those three. EA really feels to me to be like Invulnerability, but reversing the emphasis on resists with defense. I do wish it still had Energy Cloak though.

So with the most recent patch, I took the Tanker out on the same mission again. This time I finished at 14:57. This reduced the difference from it taking 37% longer to 25% longer. Please note, that I don't think my Tanker is optimized even if it has good sets. I literally just slapped it together quickly. So I think with some tinkering I could reduce both the Brute and Tanker numbers. But in general, I think it's in a good place. Tankers on teams will be able to add to the AoE damage while keeping aggro and leave the killing to the ATs whose job that is. Nerfs suck, but Tankers on live really feel too much like an obvious choice in most situations. They're still good on Beta, they just don't seem like the unqualified right answer for melee ATs any longer to me.

In the interest of science, I did the Trapdoor mission at +1/x8 with a: Axe/Regen Brute Regen/Axe Tanker Identical slotting in both builds for the primary/secondary except I had the appropriate AT sets for each. The Brute had Tough but otherwise, their pool selections were very similar. I did the Tanker first. It was honestly a bit harder than the Brute, it was clearly slower. Early in the spawn things went well but it really slowed down as the targets died down. For the Brute it was much more consistent. While I might have been hitting less targets, I think I was doing signficantly more damage. My final times were: Brute 11:55 Tanker 16.21 So it took roughly 37% longer. I did the Tanker first, and probably played a bit worse, since this was my first use of this combo. To be honest, I'm not sure that's a reasonable difference. I can't test that particular combo on live, so I'm sure how it would do.