ZemX

Have you looked at Force of Will pool? Seems practically tailor made for Jedi/Sith toons. You don't get Acrobatics, but you can work around that with KB prot from IOs. Losing CJ would hurt me though. I'd rather give up Leadership, myself. But it's something to look at. Force Push is just so iconic. Almost a shame these powers are knockdown instead of back. More useful that way of course... but less thematic in this particular case.

Yeah, I don't think the database is the blocking issue either. That's probably the easiest part. It's all the places in the spaghetti code of server and client that pass names around and how those names are handled by the UI that's the problem. To really do this feature right, you also want nice things like auto-complete to allow you to select the "right" Super Dude when you type in that name and find out there are ten Super Dude's online right now. It'd also be nice if the game could display the global in a muted color or not at all by player preference (maybe mouse-over or something like that). Or only display the fully qualified name in global chats or in teams where there's more than one person using the base name. The fact the team that invented this game waited until their NEXT game to implement this feature tells me most of what I need to know. The reasons for that were likely both due to technical challenges AND not dealing with the social blowback of changing an existing system which could be popular with some and not with others.

It's there on the bottom left: "Entities Autohit: Foe (Alive)". What I'd love is if everybody took Nemesis Staff from the S.T.A.R.T. vendor and then used it on these jerks. I do this when I am tanking to try to punt them away from the team. Even if it doesn't completely prevent their rez, it often results in them hitting fewer teammates and thus doing less damage and earning the Stunner fewer hit points on the rez so you don't have to completely kill them twice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_(1994_film) My guess is that after generic'ing a few Crow look-a-likes back in th day, the name probably got put in the name filter. Then when they later made the Praetorian NPC they figured it was safe since they were creating an original character with a different look. Not sure why it would be blocked on a pet, unless the game just uses the same name filter for character creation/naming as for pets.

Then it was probably because of this guy. Which makes it odd they later went ahead and made an NPC with the same name. But it was probably done by different people at different times.

There are exceptions on a power-by-power basis, but Super Strength is an example of a powerset that gets no area size improvements on a Tanker. That's because Foot Stomp is already a 15ft radius for everyone. Other Tanker PBAoEs are either 8ft or 10ft radius and they get a +50% bonus on Tankers. Foot Stomp stays 15ft. Hand Clap also is 15ft radius, so it is excluded as well. That said, both powers get the Tanker higher target cap benefit of 16 for PBAoEs. So they still get some benefit from Tanker inherent. Titan Weapons has three cones and one PBAoE. Only the PBAoE gets expanded (from 10ft to 15ft radius). The cones are all already 120 degrees and excluded from getting any bigger. Shadow Maul in Dark Melee is a little weird in this respect in that it DOES go from 120 degrees to 180 degrees on a Tanker.

They might just have dumped all the NPC names into the block list. Crow is a mission contact in the Praetorian Underground.

So you're saying this is the mistake we're all making in Posi 1 by telling people NOT to go near the City Hall steps? 🤪

12 doesn't buy you anything vs. the new critical KB feature the Council have. You would need 16. I don't even bother with that on my Rad Tankers that have 10 built-in. And I'm not getting tossed around that much even despite having little to no defense. Critical KB is only a 5% chance on certain powers. It'll happen if you're tanking a whole spawn, but it's not going to be "beach ball" action by any stretch of the imagination. At least that has not been my experience with it on Rad.

I don't know if you want to change anything. What they did is give certain Council a "critical" KB chance. Doesn't seem to happen that often but when it does, it seemed to be accompanied by a "FREEM!" message and it was enough to knock back my Rad tankers with their built-in KB protection. For example, per COD, the Council's rocket folks have a Rocket Launch ability that normally does Mag 1.2 KB. But it has a 5% chance of mag +14 KB. There is no point trying to build for that on a toon with no KB protection.

Well.. only one of us always plays with @Snarky on his team! 😈 But to be serious, I also don't run into problems with this all that often either. These are the same PuGs that botch the City Hall Steps in Posi 1. The difference is they are likely waaaay stronger for Sutter than they are for Posi. Unless the team is poorly built and/or running +3/+4, they can pretty much stumble into that portal room, ignore the comps, and still succeed. That said, I have some stories. I was once on a Sutter that went so bad, everyone but my stalker and a corruptor quit on the last fight. Then we completed it. *flex*

Adaptation is the only one that affects the others directly. That said, there aren't really any stinkers in the whole set. They're all pretty desirable. If I had to skip one, I might skip the damage aura. Wouldn't particularly want to even if I didn't care for the damage because it also does a bit of -dmg debuff. But if I felt like my survivability was good and wanted room to take, say, an epic ranged AoE... I'd consider it.

I've actually never bothered to find out what, if anything, shutting down the fuel lines accomplishes. Is it just optional objective XP award? Does it change something in the portal room fight? No idea.

It takes around 1 second before the effect lands. The effect being the creation of the Earthquake pseudopet. At that point, it begins ticking 5 times per second a 7% chance to knock down the enemy. So it's not unexpected they could stand there a couple seconds before the KB chance knocks them down.

If this is how it works, then worth noting not all AS are equal in terms of the animation time after the interrupt period. They're not wildly different but I can see it being the difference in something like this. So it could depend if you're on a faster animating AS set or a slower one.

If you've done it on Brute then I'd say Tanker will probably feel too similar. You'll be tougher and your AoEs will have a bit more reach, but that's it. Stalker would be my suggestion, but keep in mind you lose Whirling Sword to gain Assassin Strike. Basically, Broadsword will perform better against single targets on a Stalker and better against crowds on a Scrapper. Shield is good on either since both ATs tend to fare better with defense-based armors than with anything else. It's a little weird on Stalkers in that Grant Cover actually adds some stealth to allies within 15 feet of you. Keep that in mind on hostage missions. Though it is nice to help cloak the team when you enter a mission and there's a group near the door. Overall, the way Stalkers and Stalker ATOs work will be a much different experience than the Brute. You might enjoy it.

Depends when you start the clock. When I am playing a Stalker, I consider that clock is only running while the fight is happening. Someone else who is more focused on total map clear time may have a different perspective, but to me at least, if that's what I care about.... I'll play a Scrapper. What I like about Stalkers is deleting dangerous enemies fast. It's what the AT is designed for. So my clock starts when AS lands, not when it begins. Scale 7 damage and a nice AoE debuff... in zero seconds. But like I said, depends what you value in your gameplay. When I play a Stalker, even on a team, I consider my value is boss killing or dealing with otherwise dangerous or troublesome foes, instantly. Or as fast as possible anyway. I am not looking to maximize my total average damage output over a whole mission. If I am dropping bosses around the same time the rest of the team is annihilating everything else with an AoE barrage? Job done. Hence I will skip to the next spawn early if there's nothing worthy of my attention in the mop-up phase of the previous fight so I have plenty of time to select a target and set up to time the AS landing right at the time the team arrives. I am not there for sustained DPS. I am a specialist. Just sucks when that AS misses in full view of the team is all. 🤪

No misunderstanding. With an 8 second recharge and 1.87s cast time you can cast this roughly every 9.87 seconds. In other words, you can cast this about six times per minute. At a 57% proc chance that translates to an expectation of... about 3.5 procs per minute. Depends on the proc. Damage procs are easy to evaluate. Just multiply their damage by the proc chance and compare that to the damage you'd get from slotting another damage enhancer instead. Less obvious are things like hold or debuff procs. Some people favor more reliability than long-term average benefit and hence only bother with procs on long recharge powers where they can max the proc chance.

It's the worst on a team. Like I will try to leave just a few seconds early so I can find the next spawn's boss, line him up, and get into the power-crouch before the rest of the team arrives to nuke everything. And then whiffff.... just as the rest of team is arriving to witness. "Uhh...nobody saw that, riiiight?"

A b-list villain from the best b-list villain group around, "Rogue Isle Villains". https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Blood_Thorn

This has to be some AI driven nonsense. I love how it just slaps an image next to each of these that sometimes has nothing to do with City of Heroes. Devouring Earth? Picture of Earth! Council? Here's an image of a bunch of people sitting in front of a table. Poilce? Yeah here's a stock photo of a cop. Interestingly, when I do this same search it actually says "Las Vegas Raiders" but if you click to expand that part of the list, at least some of the links are legitimately about "Sky Raiders"

I really feel like an old man when I see anybody complain about AT balance these days. Like I'm on my rocking chair on the porch telling them how we early Stalkers trudged uphill both ways in the snow to our missions through 16 whole issues before they finally addressed Stalker balance! AND WE LIKED IT! (no we didn't).

Yep... psychology. 🤪 You probably aren't actually missing more with AS. You just notice it more because it's more of a big deal moment and when you miss and the enemy doesn't even notice? It almost seems like an insult. AS has inherently high accuracy (1.2x) to begin with and you're enhancing it a further 58%. Hitting a +2 enemy is 56% base chance. .56 x 1.2 x 1.58 is greater than 1... so you should be hitting capped 95% chance toHit unless the enemy has high defense or something. If you want to be sure, go to the Combat window and start monitoring "Base->Last Hit Chance" . This way the window will always show your most recent attack's chance to hit. It should show 95% in this case. I think we've all noticed the same thing, but there's no hidden mechanic here. Just good old human brain mechanics. 😈

Probably what throws you looking at them walking around is that the actual enemy mobs never walk. They always hover.

Hologram costume of a Rulaaru Wisp?