oxmox

They've put out 2 new story arcs and a number of balance changes. I think Homecoming is focusing more on making sure everything is stable and sustainable so people can play CoH as they remember it. They are planning on moving forward with new content but I think it's a safe assumption that the smaller servers are always going to move faster with adding new stuff. Smaller communities allow the devs to take bigger risks.

Tactics is actually +tohit as well. Basically, you multiply accuracy x tohit to get the chance of an attack hitting. ToHit is a constant value for your hero/villain and accuracy is a stat for each individual power. (Though there are global accuracy buffs such as the Blaster's Wrath set bonus that will work for every power). By default, ToHit is 75% (.75) and accuracy varies by power but is usually around 100% (1.00). Multiply the two together and you get a 75% hit chance for most unenhanced powers. ToHit buffs are typically more important. Higher starting value and ease of slotting accuracy enhancements means your accuracy will almost always be higher than your ToHit (ToHit chance decreases vs higher level enemies as well, accuracy is unaffected). When multiplying two things together you get more benefit from increasing the smaller number than the bigger one, so +ToHit buffs should take priority. Here's a more detailed look at how it works: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics

Disabling xp at 50 actually does increase inf gain. It's less than the double bonus you get from exemplar though which is why people farm at lvl 49. I can second the statement that it's typically better to leave xp on to gain emp merits for your incarnate stuff. Getting T4 incarnates will take longer than affording enhancements unless you've got an absurdly expensive build and/or emp merit donors.

Or it's extremely fun depending on who you ask. Think we can agree CoH is mostly not focused on the this playstyle though.

I don't agree with the OP that villain ATs are stronger, but there for sure is a shift away from the balanced teams of old. It's simply because of power creep. IOs and incarnates are super strong and most of today's players are veterans who play better than the average player during live. Even the incarnate trials ostensibly designed for full teams of incarnates are super easy, let alone radios and TFs. When you run 8 man teams in really easy content it removes the need for defense of any kind, making tanks/controllers/support less useful. There isn't anything wrong with the ATs themselves, people just aren't playing content hard enough to need what those classes provide. Soloing AVs and GMs will make your debuffs shine. Soloing +4/x8 DA missions is no harder than council radios if you've got them locked down. For people who want to run 8 man incarnate teams and still be challenged enough that support feels useful, I don't think the game really has many options. Could try running small Hami raids or iTrials with minimum team sizes I suppose. As for designing lategame content that makes control useful, there are some pretty easy answers that don't involve touching the AV system. Make an enemy group where everything has 4x the normal health and does obscene damage or has strong stacking debuffs like hurricane that shut off when mezzed. I can guarantee nobody will play it, but it would certainly make control very valuable.

Ridiculous forum post from the early days of CoH that got turned into a meme. It's even sillier than it looks at first glance because it predates IOs, so there were no rares.

I am in the process of doing basically what you are wanting to do. I actually did have a list of every arc separated by level range for red/blue/gold. Sadly it didn't occur to me to save it for others and I've checked things off the list as I go by deleting them so it's now mostly empty. I put it together by clicking on each contact listed on the wiki page and scrolling down to see what arcs they offered. Then in-game whenever I ran into one that was missing from the list I would add it and make a mental note to make another alt to go through them. Hopefully you can find an already compiled source, but if not listing them out the way I did really didn't take very long.

Idk about a 100% complete list but Paragon Wiki has almost all of them. It's missing a bit of the newer content but it's probably the best starting point. Going off the contacts page is better than the story arcs page; the latter is missing more stuff. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Contacts_By_Level Matt Habashy and the ones he sends you to plus those 2 KR arcs are some of the only ones not on there, but you've found those already.

Definitely a lot more people on blueside. However I think people exaggerate how hard it is to find redside teams. I play on the least populated server (indomitable) and don't have trouble filling teams as a villain except when I'm playing at off hours. It's so easy to switch sides for a quick teamup that you can usually get people who are lfg blueside too.

IIRC the kheld missions are all story arcs. Once you've started an arc you can finish it even if you've outleveled it. You should be able to abandon and retake the mission. I'm not sure you'll be able to raise it all the way to 47 though. Missions can usually only scale up to the highest level for that arc, though with higher difficulty settings I guess a 40-45 arc could get up to lvl 49 enemies. Sunstorm might not have this issue since he gives missions all the way to 50. Idk if the level limits on a mission are determined by the range of that arc or the range of the contact.

Pretty sure you don't have to do this or the map spawns eventually join in with running at the portal. I played this one not long ago and we beat it by just camping the portal until mission complete popped up.

I'm like 90% sure the CoT have always spanned the whole game. They were in KR, Perez, steel, faultline?, Talos, DA and FF right from the start and then got included in PI and the shadow shard when those came along. Not sure if they were in any of the intro missions in atlas or GC. I mostly just can't stand enemies with stalling abilities. Phasing carnies, fake nem bubbles, MoG protectors, the council shield dudes. If they were only part of TF/trial finales or other climactic fights that would be okay, but crushing through normal mobs then waiting around for godmode to end is annoying. I've got a particular dislike for Nemesis in bigger groups. They've got long range and all their guns have the exact same explodey sound/visual that gets obnoxious quickly. And the only thing worse than waiting around for a fake nem shield to drop is taking a full minute to get the boss low in the first place because the last standing nem in any group always has half a dozen vengeance stacks on them.

Sets that exist as both a secondary and primary have lower values as a secondary. Buffs/debuffs/heals have smaller effects, damage is reduced, damage resistance/defense is reduced, etc. However, the exact amounts vary between ATs, there's no consistent multiplier that covers all sets. (e.g. controller secondaries have higher values than Mastermind secondaries).

Anecdotally it feels like x4 or x5 often give one boss per spawn. I haven't done any kind of real testing though so I'm not totally sure .

Coral Bonanza (Crash Cage) Old friends, new enemies, and new opportunities (Vincent Ross) Renault Strike Force In addition to the ones you listed. Most of the sharkhead arcs feature at least some passing mention of the coral but these are the major ones. I have not yet played Mako's patron arcs but I wouldn't be surprised if those have some relation as well.

On Homecoming (idk about the other private servers) you keep gaining xp past 50. Each time you 'level up' you gain a veteran level and the xp bar resets. Vet levels give 20(?) incarnate threads per level and 20 emp merits every 3 levels. These numbers decrease over time and past vet level 99 you get nothing. Vet levels won't take you to 51 and beyond or anything, just a way to get incarnate stuff faster. Edit: this isn't a Warshade specific feature. All ATs gain vet levels.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Timeline Newer content generally happens later in the timeline, so working through the above article may help figure out where each story you're interested takes place. Earlier content that sets up the world building but doesn't necessarily need to be done in any order for it to make sense would be the 'normal' 1-50 arcs and original TFs and SFs blueside and redside (posi, synapse, old sister psyche, citadel, manticore, numina for blue, and tarikoss, mantis, renault, ice mistral for red). These original arcs being the ones starting from city hall contacts and their branching networks that go all the way to 50. On redside it's the default Kalinda/Burke route on Mercy and then contacts unlocked via paper missions for the rest of the game. The various unlockable contacts (via badges or w/e) should also take place in this earlier time period unless it specifically warns you otherwise. Outside of establishing the basic setting, most of these don't play into Statesman/praetorian content at all. Only ones I can think of are the redone Maria Jenkins and Tina McIntyre arcs, which now take place after the events of WWD. The specific hazard zone arcs (hollows, faultline, striga, croatoa, RWZ) can be done concurrently with the above. None of them are really important for the Praetoria plot, though Faultline has some characters that recur in both RWZ and states/praetoria related stuff. The Striga arcs (and the kheldian specific 1-50 arcs blueside) are again not specifically related, but give a little bit of background that comes up during Cimerora and then again in new Dark Astoria. The Ouroboros TFs set up incarnate content which is heavily entwined with Praetoria, same also with the Mortimer Kal SF. The Rularuu TFs blueside (4 of them 40-50) will also familiarize you with the rularuu, which will come into play with WWD. The Ms. Liberty and Lord Recluse TFs don't really play into the Statesman story, but have been updated to reflect what happens there so you may want to wait until after WWD to do them. Now you'll need to establish the background for Praetoria! Goldside essentially has 4 separate paths: good cole supporter, evil cole supporter, good rebel, and evil rebel. These storylines all play off each other and set up Praetoria leading directly up to the invasion of Primal Earth. I believe the Dean MacArthur/Leonard and Keith Nance/Jenny Adair arcs also tie a bit into the coming praetorian invasion. The above has all just been setup, now on to the actual content you're interested in! 1. Who Will Die? A 7 part series of short TFs dealing with assassination attempts on the Freedom Phalanx. 2. Tina and Maria arcs 3. Apex TF 4. Tin Mage TF 5. BAF trial 6. Lambda trial 7. Admiral Sutter TF (could be earlier with apex/tin too, I don't think it references the other invasion content much) 8. Keyes trial 9. First Ward (to be done any time after 1-20 goldside arcs and before Underground iTrial) 10. Underground trial 11. TPN trial 12. MoM trial 13. New DA 14. Diabolique trial 15. Night Ward (any time after First Ward but before the rest of the list) 16. Belladonna Vetrano arc 17. Magisterium trial 18. Provost Marchand / Mr. G arcs 19. Number Six arc Pandora's Box SSA? No idea if it plays into this storyline and if so, when. I haven't actually done all of this myself, but this is the order I'm doing things in after a bit of asking the same questions you are. I can't promise all the later stuff is correct and I've surely forgotten a ton of stuff since there is so much content to cover. I think that should steer you pretty straight for covering the whole States/Praetoria story though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/cwnoqs/solo_build_for_challenging_content/ Reddit thread from a little while ago on the same topic may give you some ideas. Ill/Rad controllers are the OG AV/GM solo heroes, I'm sure that with some adjustments to your build or playstyle you could've taken them down solo.

In case I get tired of the original outfit or come up with another concept for the character or improvement on the original design. I usually end up with 2 or 3 costumes per character.

Small container or box, often (though not always) made of the metal, tin. 'On the tin' is making a comparison to the label you would see on a tin, stating what the contents are. In this case the topic title is the label on the tin, and OP is stating that label adequately describes the question.

I think this is kind of the same as people complaining that tankers are useless now. My suggestion for both is to spend more time playing at sub 50, or to only do 50+ content with smaller teams. Though once you add in incarnates and everyone can solo +4/x8 the smaller teams won't be enough to make things more challenging. Ultimately you need two things in combat. Damage to clear enemies and mitigation to stay alive. Tanking, lockdown, heals, and defensive buffs/debuffs all help mostly with the survival aspect of combat. The issue is that once everyone has incarnates and IO sets, most mobs pose no threat. No need to control groups if they can't scratch you regardless. It's even applicable in the reverse to a degree. When builds are maxed out, even controllers and tanks are dealing decent damage. A team with no damage focused AT will still crush everything, just a little slower. It's just that clear speed can always be increased (up to the unrealistic limit of instant clearing everything) but once you reach the point of nobody dying, extra mitigation is useless. Only real solution I can see is shrinking the gap between players and mobs, either with some harsh global nerfs or by super buffing 50+ enemies. If mobs are actually threatening (and take longer than 2 seconds to wipe), control and other mitigation regain value. Of course that requires some pretty sweeping changes of the sort that most people probably don't want, so I wouldn't expect this to change anytime soon.

Yes. Late stage MMOs like CoH face a difficult issue in that they need to court multiple player types at the same time. For vets who want to play with builds, tons of money earned quick is great, it lets them do partake in the main reason they're still playing a 15 year old game. There are also newer players (or returning players trying to relive their old experiences) who prefer the normal pacing of the economy. Getting money to equip sets is another progression system just like xp. Managing it and getting enough to buy the next set of item is fun for a lot of people. There's a reason almost every rpg has some sort of economic system and almost none of them just give you infinite money right off the bat. Optional farming lets both groups be happy.

What then would you propose as a change? As others have stated in this thread, many of the players are long time veterans who have played through all the game's content multiple times. For them, the main appeal of the game is trying out different power combos and tweaking high end builds. The high xp/inf from farming is pretty important for that, and the game would be a lot less fun for those people without that. Do you suggest increasing the rewards of everything else to match? That kind of screws over players who prefer the normal pacing of the game and are trying to play through storylines rather than hit 50 in 3 hours. I feel like the current system with farming/PLing available but listed as optional content is probably the best compromise for a late life MMO.

It's never been especially difficult, but the tools are there to challenge yourself if you want. Most pre 50 teams will struggle on +4/x8 vs any group or tougher enemies like first ward/night ward. You can also just do things with teams smaller than 8 people (while still set to x8 of course). If you're talking full teams of incarnates then yeah, it's all easy. But that's your hero's peak, it's supposed to be easy. You could always try the tougher iTrials or Hami with the smallest allowed team sizes, or just see how much top end content you can solo.

Controllers overall really jump to mind when you mention this. I think they have to be the AT that covers the widest variety of playstyles between different power sets and builds. Fire/Kin are AoE damage machines and Illusion with a debuffing secondary can solo almost anything. Then on the flip side you have something like earth control which has enough lockdown to deal with more enemies than you could ever reasonably fight at once. Then you've got more middle of the road sets like grav and mind that combine solid lockdown with some decent damage options that let you play more like a dominator. Combine that with all the varieties of buff/debuff/heal/control/damage available in the secondaries and you could probably make a dozen controllers before getting any that play the same way. Though I guess at that point it's less one controller going 'outside their role' and more 'the role is whatever you feel like'.