Soyuz

Solo'ed Hess at +0/x1 on a 29 Ice/Atomic blaster the other day, so it's definitely possible for some characters on some TF's. Nothing special about the build, generic IO's only (no sets) and the only temp power I used was the wedding band. I owe it all to Mystic Flight - Archon Burkholder's much less of a threat if he can't reach you, since he'll spend a lot of his time bouncing around trying to get you into melee range. Burkholder doesn't mez though. I don't think the same character could deal with any AV that does, and she's had real problems with EB's that can fly. Stupid Talons...

I've always thought it was odd too. There seem to be things baked into the design of the game which are taken from the superhero genre and others which obviously came from the MMO genre. Happily, most things have a foot in both camps, but ally-only buffs seem to me to be something which was just legacy MMO design - done that way because it always had been. I've usually got around this by playing debuff-heavy sets like Storm, which don't have the problem to the same degree. I have sometimes had people try to tell me to "just heal" though. Never teams I've stayed on for very long, needless to say. Regrettably I think it's something that's unlikely to change now. It's been part of the game for far too long and people are used to it. I'd love to be proved wrong though.

The only NPC that ever irritated me in the slightest is No Mind, who definitely has some sort of death wish. The first character I was actually able to keep him alive with was my Ice/Atomic blastroller. Even my tanker couldn't do it! He's nothing to do with the Faultline arc though. Faultline is great for so many reasons. 'Netty is just one of them. I wish there was more content like it.

I only re-discovered the game a month ago, and I last played on retail in late 2008, so there's a lot I've forgotten and a lot that's simply new to me. I do play through the levels and always did, to experience the content, but just like Lines I mainly solo, and for the same reasons. Teams feel rushed more often than not. There's no time to simply enjoy the stories and the scenery.

Thanks for what looks like an excellent guide. CoH always did have a good storyline, which was one of the things that caused me to miss it so much. As a returning player this is going to be very useful to me. Maybe not as useful as the XP toggle though! This is something I always wanted in CoH and might just be the best QoL enhancement I've seen in the game. Thank you for that, I had no idea it was possible.

Data point for Issue 6: Ragdoll physics added. I absolutely loathed ragdoll physics for their negative impact on certain powers and playstyles, but I seemed to be in the minority at the time.