TheMoncrief

Not sure that these specific ideas are necessarily the correct ones to address the problem, but the problem in the title is absolutely one that needs to be addressed. Mastermind pets are super squishy in any environment outside of soloing.

Super Strength is pretty much the most popular melee set for AT's that can have it. By that standard, it's overrated - it is not good enough to represent that much of the total melee player base. That does not, however, mean that it is *BAD*. It's quite good. Just not as good as you'd expect from a power set that's so popular. Its popularity is largely carried by its iconic nature, as we can all think of many classic heroes who have Super Strength. I personally do not like Rage. I also do not like that Super Strength is largely balanced around Rage, which is very strong, however much I dislike it. I would love a Super Strength set balanced around getting Build Up instead of Rage. But this is all a matter of personal preference. As nearly as I can parse objective reality of the set, it's a reasonably strong set as long as you make the most of Rage, bordering on extremely strong if you are able to double-stack Rage. And Foot Stomp is amazing and incredibly satisfying.

The ancestors were crazy smart. I picked up a book that I hadn't done anything with for like years... and the batteries weren't dead! It worked just as well as it did when I first bought it. I have some doubts over the security, though - even after all that time it still didn't prompt me to log in to my account.

Or a Mastermind. On a Mastermind, Choking Cloud and its viny twin from Nature Affinity are incredibly potent for keeping your pets alove. I can't argue with the assessment that on Defenders (and probably Corruptors) they are absolute skips. A lot of endurance spent for not much benefit.

There is some merit to this position. On the other hand, a Blaster who does not use the damaging and support powers from its secondary power set is significantly less damaging than a Blaster who does use them. Sentinels generally have little or no damage or support powers in their secondary power set - it's all or nearly all self protection. Also, Blasters are most desired for their sick AoE damage, and Sentinels... don't get that. Their AoE caps are consistently lower than Blasters, and while their nukes recharge quickly, they also don't hit nearly as hard. So even if the damage numbers on Sentinel Blast sets were the same as what Blasters get, they'd still be less damaging than Blasters in the case where people actually want Blasters. I personally consider Sentinels fun to play solo or on small teams, functioning mostly as ranged Scrappers more than anything else. For a Blaster, a larger team is where I want to play. But the AT is certainly not bad enough to merit all the trash talk. That's the nature of trash talk - somebody has to be the least popular or powerful or whatever, and human nature means everybody else is going to dogpile on that somebody.

Thank you! I'm in.

Yeah, that's not working for me either. Clicking a link gets an invalid invite error. I can only join a server with an actual invite code I can put into the Discord app. This is not limited to Homecoming, it is the case for every Discord I've tried to join since... well, a long time ago. I'm not the OP, I just have the same problem they do.

I believe a Bayonet strike was suggested earlier in the thread. I haven't read the entire thread closely, though, so if there's a reason it was skipped (like no appropriate animations or something) my apologies.

If the devs had ample time and resources, sure, I'd like to see the game made a little prettier. Or a lot prettier. But yeah, I'm not eager to see the very limited resources available for continuing development of this beloved game spent on a quixotic quest to upgrade to a more modern engine.

On your road to 50, Entangling Aura will be a game changer. It will change big groups of enemies from dangers into free targets for your pets. Once you get it, until you start doing Incarnate content, you will face very few encounters that seriously threaten you. AoE for the pets is... laughably bad, but the single target damage is enough to rip through spawns quickly enough. Other than Entangling Aura, the click buffs will be the most significant secondary powers. They'll make your pets truly fearsome, and respectably tough for MM pets.

Redside content kind of lacks on the villainy front in several ways. First, you're mostly just a flunky, doing what you're told. Sure, you sometimes get the option to double-cross your contact, but you're never *REALLY* in command of your own destiny, even after Lord Recluse acknowledges you as a true villain. You still just do what you're told. There are few missions that feel like real schemes to dominate the world, or even a portion of it. Not even just get filthy rich. You just go find somebody who did the real villainous part and do what he tells you to do. That works for heroes, because heroism is a fundamentally reactive endeavor. You're not there to pursue your agenda, you're there as a hero to stop the bad guys from ruining everything in the pursuit of *THEIR* agendas. Second, it was all developed in the mindset of "The villains aren't allowed to win." Any *TRULY* grandiose villainous scheme is destined to fail. So you may kidnap a few victims to deliver to Vahz for pocket change, but you're not going to blow up city hall or hijack a Rikti ship to do an Independence Day on any target anybody has actually seen. You won't lure Praetorian Hamidon into Primal Paragon City to distract all the heroes while you steal all the tech from Portal Corp. Even if you try, you'll fail, because the status quo must always be maintained. And maintaining the status quo is what heroes do. Villains are agents of change, and change is forbidden.

Plastic Man, Mr. Fantastic, the Elongated Man, any other stretching character - no stretching power set. Beast Boy or any other shapeshifting character - shapeshifting is strictly limited, basically only Kheldians who don't match pretty much any comic book character. Ant Man, Atom, Tom Thumb, Giant Man, Mount Lady, any other size changer - no growth or shrinking powers. Flash, Quicksilver, any other speedster - the Speed pool doesn't include hardly any of the powers that comic book speedsters typically have, many of which would be completely game breaking anyway. Like time travel, phasing through solid objects, travel to other dimensions, and the like. Iron Man, Reed Richards, any other genius inventor - inventors are mostly strong because of their ability to constantly change their powers to something often completely different and specialized against a particular foe. Thus, they really won't work in a game where you need to commit to limited power sets at character creation. Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate, any other powerful mage - See inventors. Mages gain and lose powers to match the plot of the comic book they're in, doesn't fit a game like CoH.

Is there an interface setting or such that will allow me to display my own pet's health bar while I am playing solo? I'd like to see when my Phantasm is nearly dead (depressingly common) so I can heal him or (more likely) prepare to summon his replacement. Thanks!

I'd have gone with Military Assault or some such. I'd also have put in a bayonet attack instead of the punch. But it still seems like an interesting set, in spite of the inevitable juvenile jokes.

Both implementations are perfectly usable without any binds or macros. Both have faults. One implementation has faults that can be addressed, by players who care about them, through a bind or macro. The other has faults that cannot be addressed by players at all. If targeting-radar made the power unusable, or absurdly hard to use, I might support converting it to an enemy-targeting power. Because you should not be required to use a bind or macro to use a power at all. That's the problem I've always had with the Teleport movement power. But it is a matter of convenience, not necessity, and enabling players to not have to bother customizing their UI to suit their needs. And I don't support that over a matter of convenience, when it is a change that would make life materially worse for people who actually like the powers as they function now. The desire of one player to be lazy should never trump the desire of another player to have control over the way his power works.

I have to disagree on your take on Brutes, especially when you recommend Stalkers over them. Brutes play solo mostly the way they play in teams - get there in the thick of combat, get all the enemies attacking you while you attack them to build up Fury and do even more damage. It can lead to pacing issues, endurance management issues, and aggro tug-of-war when you have multiple Brutes and Tankers in a team, but the first two are universal to every AT in the game. Stalkers, on the other hand, are encouraged to use the Hide and Assassinate style, even though it is often not even preferred for solo content and is almost never applicable in teams. They don't actually play the way you'd expect them to play from the description. It is far more likely for a Stalker player to learn the wrong lessons from solo play that will hinder their ability to integrate into teams. And they're also likely to learn the wrong lessons from solo play about how they should be optimally playing solo. They're not a bad AT by any stretch of the imagination, but they suffer from a dissonance between the AT fantasy and the AT reality that Brutes don't really suffer.

And some players would tell them to learn to use the tools they have, because at least *THEIR* problem can be (mostly) solved with the tools they don't want to use. There is no equivalent solution to convert powers like Feral Charge into location-targeted powers with a targeting radar for people who like the targeting radar. Exchanging a problem that has a solution some people don't feel like using for a problem that cannot be solved by any tools currently in the game is not an intelligent choice for the devs to make.

I'll stick with the targeting radar, at least for AoE attacks. It gives me some versatility if I ever want to target to someplace where there's nobody to attack, and I'm comfortable enough with macros to make them function as enemy-targeted teleport attacks if I want to.

How well (or poorly) do you think that would work out switched to Water Blast? I have a Water/Time Blaster I've been wondering what to do with...

My pet peeve - the way any area based enemy attack completely erases your pet AI. Like, I cannot do any Knives of Artemis mission with a MM, because they 100% ignore my commands in favor of running halfway across the map because there's a caltrops field somewhere. I guess it kind of makes sense for the MM sets that are supposed to be alive and free willed, serving you because you pay them or something. But my Robots should dang well be willing to stand in the middle of a nuclear blast if I tell them to. Heck, they *ARE* willing to do that. But god forbid I tell them to stand in a field of sharp rocks.

I know that whenever I play a character that depends specifically on controlling the enemy, nothing but Fungi lieutenants show up. Defense sets? Crystal lieutenants. The crystals are particularly annoying, because their eminators are called Quartz - the exact same name as the crystal minions. So while I'm desperately trying to find the specific Quartz enemy that is giving all enemies the massive to-hit buff, the entire spawn is brutally mauling me because they can no longer miss me when they attack. I don't actually believe that DE spawns are actually set to counter the specific solo player they are facing - but it does feel that way sometimes. They are probably my most consistently disliked enemy faction to face, at least hero side. Villain side and Praetorian side do have some even more dislikeable enemy factions, I admit.

A transparency slider would be great. The fact that my character is visible as nothing but an outline is the problem - if he was just a bit translucent, I wouldn't mind so much. Although I'd probably just turn off the transparency entirely if it were an option. If that interferes with my ability to see whether he's stealthed or not, that's on me for choosing to turn transparency off in the costume creator. Although possibly calling it "minimal FX" might not be the best name, just to signal people that it is turning off a source of actual information about your character.

And let's all be thankful that they're doing such a good job of it. Keeping inflation in check is not easy, and MMO's with full (and more than full) staff rosters of paid professionals typically do a much worse job of it than the Homecoming devs have done. I'm honestly really impressed, which is part of the reason I choose not to quibble too much with things that I personally wish were different. Like, I'd love a Winter Pack sale, but the devs are doing enough right with the economy that I'm not inclined to complain all that much.

I like the Energy Aura power set, except for one thing - my character is invisible if running Energy Cloak. I mean, I get it, the power grants full Stealth, but I don't like not being able to see my character and costume when I'm using it, and it provides too much Defense to just ignore it. Can we please get a Minimal FX option for Energy Cloak and similar powers (I think Ninjitsu has one) that provide non-suppressing Defense and Stealth in the same power, for those of us who don't feel like playing our Brutes and Scrappers as if we were roleplaying Stalkers?

Somebody has to be at the bottom, and now BM is it. It's still nowhere near as bad as Mercs used to be, but it definitely could use some work. I feel like Demons and Thugs just need to be modernized with actual enhanceable effects in their upgrade powers to bring them back to glory, but Beasts do need more than that. They were nowhere near as good as Demons and Thugs before the changes, so they really need some help.