Spaghetti Betty

Spaghetti Betty was something I came up with in high school joking around with a bunch of friends. There were a lot of names on the list, "Linguini Larry", "Bowtie Barry", "Ravioli Ronaldo"... I had no idea about the doll.

It depends on the entree in question, but I prefer to use corn when I can. Nothing beats carnita and a little queso fresco and pico on a corn tortilla. Also makes better enchiladas. My job in pizza has me really tired of pizza, so I took to bulk buying cuts of meat and setting aside days to roll out dozens of burritos and freeze them. Those have to be made with flour tortillas.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

My answer was 25-30. A lot of toons really start to see their worth here. You've gotten a few of your cornerstone powers and have a handful of slots in them, just in time for all IO sets to be available at 27. But with all that being said, I think the most important aspect of this lvl range is that toons still have flaws.

Ok, but how many converters would be a fair cost per conversion?

This was fun. Glad I could make it.

In my experience, Assault Rifle is pretty middle of the road, but gets pretty crazy when you consider procs. I ended up slotting a FF proc in every power that could take it. Full Auto coming up every 10-15 seconds is nothing to sneeze at.

To each their own. I've found that I prefer ragdoll physics as a CC over sleep 90% of the time.

Not knocking AoE sleeps as an option, just seems like a redundancy in the set with Shockwave being an easily loopable and oftentimes more effective CC while soloing. Neither are really that worthwile in team play.

Since Shockwave is meant to be a Gale clone, I feel like it's fine. Siren's Song, however.. No idea what they were thinking giving a blast set an AoE sleep. Personally, I would just get rid of that power entirely, but I'm not a dev. If any power in Sonic needs a damage buff, it's Screech, IMO. The set really lacks another decent ST blast. If you're bouncing a sound wave off an opponents ear drums so precisely that it overloads their senses, I feel like that should do some heavy damage.

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but does this mean in theory that a Plant Controller could use Creepers to increase the proc chance of Gaussian's in Tactics?

Yeah, KB is an intended weakness. I figured my version of the set would turn you into a damage king that ignores death, so it needed some kind of flaw. KB seemed to foot the bill as an easily patchable weakness. Vigor adds +Recovery, on top of a modest resistance to slow. Unless you mean add more somewhere else. I can see where you're going with refreshing Second Chance as a panic button, but I feel like in practice, it'd be pretty hard to faceplant after Fury expires with all of the other tools available.

Ok, now that I'm at my desk, I wanted to throw some Spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Here's my take on an offense-focused Healing secondary. I'll go into detail on things that aren't self explanatory. Healing (Click Self Heal +Res(Debuff Regen)) Constitution (Auto +MaxHP, +Regen, Res(Debuff Regen)) Resilience (Auto +Res(All DMG, Stun) Ignore Pain (Click Self +Absorb) Battle Frenzy (Toggle Self +Recharge +DMG +Res(Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Fear), Foe Taunt) While toggled, you gain a small amount of recharge and damage bonus for every foe around you, up to 10. You also gain protection to Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, and Fear. Vigor (Auto +recovery, Res(Slow)) Second Chance (Self Revive, or Heal) If you are defeated, you revive with a base 50% HP and 75% END. If you click this while alive, you heal a scaling amount of HP, gaining the most when you are near death. Undying (Toggle Self +Regeneration, Foe -DMG) While toggled, you gain an amount of Regeneration for every foe around you, up to 10. Surrounding foes also deal less damage. Berserker Fury (Click Self +Special +DMG +ToHit +Recharge) When activated, you enter a Fury so deep that you ignore blows that would've otherwise defeated you. You still take incoming damage, but your HP cannot go below 1. You also gain a tremendous damage, accuracy, and recharge bonus. This effect lasts for 15 seconds. Since the idea is "my defense is healing", I didn't want to include a lot of other stuff. Absorb felt like a no-brainer. The idea behind the not-MoG is that instead of making yourself invincible so you don't go down as fast, you just don't care how fast you go down in order to clear out the stuff that's hitting you in the first place. Although having a RttC clone plus an absorb barrier might be a little too good. I dunno, this is just me expanding on a wild idea.

I like this idea. A more offensive-leaning Regen set. If we're gonna get rid of Integration, why not give it a version of AAO that has mez protection? It would be in line with the theme. And as far as the rez goes, in my eyes a Berserker is more about staying up in combat through sheer fury, instead of having a way to get back up after going down. In D&D, high level Barbarians gain the ability to ignore death as long as they are enraged (you know, unless they get hit with something like Power Word: Kill). They still take all the damage, but their HP can't be reduced to 0 until their Rage is over. Just a thought to set this further apart from Regen. I have no idea how it would work mechanically.

Deer - Murdeer Duck - Duck and Cover Sheep - Baaaaaad Guy

My vote is gonna be for a Fire/Dark Tank. I just recently rolled one of these bad boys out and got it to a pretty high lvl (47, before altitis hit again). It just works. It will have you wondering why anyone would say Tankers are low damage. It's actually pretty damn safe for Fire Armor, and despite the obvious holes (no KB protection), you can pretty much go nuts with IO slotting. Since I can rotate Consume and Dark Consumption, I just loaded them up with damage procs. Between those and Burn, the AoE damage is ridiculous.

I could say the recent success of something like Elden Ring could argue that as a non-issue. For those unaware, that game tells you absolutely nothing about how to play, except how to attack and dodge. Then tells you to go kill god (metaphorically). It's very punishing in the ways it teaches you, but that's what keeps players invested. Those that want to learn will reach out. The problem (IMO) lies in teaching them the cheap way that bypasses all of the challenge. It lessens the impact of the experience.

You can definitely dump me into the "grumpy isolated hermit" crowd. Now, in saying that, a lot of my views on this topic are gonna come off as real pessimistic, but I also say it with the experience of opting to teach a newbie or two the game proper. This is an old game with old mechanics. It's a fun game, but it's covered in old. It's just not going to be for everyone. On top of that, players that do get their foot in the door and give HC a shot are met with a ton of confusion. And that isn't really on them. This is a private server for a really old grind-based RPG that has been given a lot of shortcuts to appease long time vets. That is both a good and a bad thing. Perfect example, switching alignment. New player asks, "is it possible for my Hero to become a Villain?" In this situation, I would rather them learn the long way first. Yes, tip missions will start dropping at lvl 20, and you can do those to change your alignment. However, that question is quickly answered with, "Just go to Pocket D and talk to Null the Gull." Content avoided. IMO, that answer didn't really teach the player anything. It just taught them a shortcut. That's prevalent everywhere. It's no one's fault. But stuff like this contributes to people leaving more quickly. Ease of access ends up mentally cutting out a lot of the content available, because players are just not being directed there. And that's what eventually culminates the "grind to 50, do 50 stuff, move on" mindset. I know I sound like a hypocrite for saying this, since I fly solo, but more effort needs to be made to make new players aware and understand what's really available here, without shortcuts, in order to improve retention. If we can retain the new players by allowing them to fully grasp the concept that is City of Heroes: Homecoming and enjoy it, those same players would be more inclined to teach people they know about the game. And I do understand that that is not an easy process, and it's super easy to teach the shortcuts, but to me, that is not what City of Heroes is. But we can keep Montague Castanella's arc in the trash where it belongs.

Lots of Elden Ring. Literally dropped around $400 on new hardware for my rig so I could play it. Currently 60 hours in.

And keep the structure of classes mostly intact, yeah, I could see that having potential.