Ston

Ice/Bio - 4:17 T4 Musc (R) T4 Ageless (L) T4 Degen (L) T4 Assault (passive) So clocked my fastest trapdoor time yet at 4:17 with... ice melee?? I'm very impressed with ice's AoE clear speed. Could probably get down to 4:15 if I really get the Frost positioning down. For a cone, it hits really hard.. even in a ST rotation.

It would be great if all GMs could be triggered like Caleb, Ghost of Scrapyard, and Deathsurge.. given it is easier than ever to solo kill them.

This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.1.2.5 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! As requested! I should note that this is a pylon-oriented build. In a real build I would probably try to get more s/l defense and pick up lightning ball instead of assault (and probably take the slots from tactics to 5-slot it with ragnarok). The chains would alternate between GD>GC>SD>Zapp and GD>GC>SD>GC

Katana is definitely a top set when it comes to sustained ST dps. They don't know what they're talking about. The AoE clear speed is no slouch either.. my kat/rad could clear trash mobs pretty quickly.

Hehe thanks for noticing! I definitely button mash when doing normal content... but I guess on pylon tests it helps me keep track of my attack chain if I only hit each key once ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kat/Bio/Zapp Scrapper - Averaged around 1:20 with hybrid off, 1:10 with hybrid active. Record my two best runs with hybrid off/active (1:15 & 1:05)

I had an open mind about this suggestion but I'm going to have to give a hard pass. What would stop someone from using this on the meteor map across several accounts to generate influence 24/7?

This part is interesting to me. The previously mentioned idea of the self-rez going off automatically on death is something I would be onboard with. However, I think that is very similar to what I'm asking for with being able to use it while fighting. It would be like having Reconstruction on auto but it only goes off when your HP is at 1%. I'm fine with this mechanic. I'm just saying this is basically turning it into a self-heal.

I did say only for melee ATs in the OP. I'm also not sure the Fiery Aura population statistics are a valid argument to leave the set alone. The numbers are inflated by AE farming which is about as niche as you can get. Building Fiery Aura for fire farming is drastically different than building it for general content, which is what this post is concerned with. Outside of AE, I rarely see Fiery Aura characters in the role of the main tank. When I do, they are often faceplanting several times.

I'm with Arcane on this one. Confuse is insanely powerful and I can't imagine it needing any buffs. Seeds of Confusion is basically a win-button. ST confuses can completely change the battlefield. Not to mention the contagious confusion proc. I think this is already possible based on your strategy. For example, in the Positron Task Forces, it's a popular tactic to confuse the Spectral Daemon Lords or Ruin Mages so that their buffs/debuffs will benefit your team. I'm curious about your justification for these points. If a target has been debuffed, I wouldn't expect them to be cured of those debuffs just because they've been confused. Now.. if you want to be able to buff a confused target after the fact, I think that would be a different point (and maybe something I would sign up for). This I support 100%.

Well "death" in this game is 0% HP. Now... on the "brink" of that is probably subjective, which is why I would suggest the self heal to scale. If you use it at 50% HP, you won't get much benefit from it. But if you are at 5% HP and one hit from a boss away from dying, this would be a great option to buy yourself more time without having to die, lose any buffs you have, rez, retoggle, etc. However now I realize one problem with my suggestion is that the offensive portion of the power wouldn't really be able to scale with your current HP... but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing?

While I know this will probably receive negative feedback, I'm interested to see what kinds of points are brought up in the conversation. My suggestion is to change these two rez powers to the following only for melee ATs: Remove the 15 second untouchable period (if this is too big a nerf, maybe add a flat absorb amount?) Adjust the "Cast When" property from "DeadOnly" to "DeadOrAlive" (similar to Unrelenting) Have heal % scale with current HP Everything else would stay the same. The idea is to give these sets an "oh shit" button that other sets have. Sure, healing flames and dark regeneration exist, but these sets already have a major weakness in no knockback resistance.. not to mention damage resistance holes. In the current meta, it's hard to justify taking these powers with all the self-rez and ally-rez power available. I think it would also make sense thematically. Take the Soul Transfer power description and just remove the first clause:

I think the clamp should be removed entirely. If you build for enough accuracy, then you should hit your target. It's so aggravating to buff up, cast your hard hitting attack, and miss on a 95% chance tohit roll. If there's a balance issue with that, give mobs more defense, tohit debuffs, etc. So +1 from me for this suggestion!

Not opposed to this idea. Don't see any power creep or harm in improving the Aim power. Also gonna shamelessly plug my archery suggestion here:

Yeah the revamped Family have beam rifles. It certainly makes them much tougher to fight.. and it's always amusing to see teammates get caught off guard when they can't steamroll them. Would definitely be nice to see Council get some better weapon tech. Maybe add a lieutenant with the Surveillance power for some resistance & defense debuffing?

It looks like there's around 15-25 active players on Excelsior that you can find in RV, in fightclub matches, or running small-scale arena matches. It usually isn't hard to find PVP activity if you know where to look and who to ask. But it's very rare to see new people coming in. Wouldn't mind the Homecoming team doing something to draw more players to try it. I don't really see the meta changing, so probably no ways around that.. but maybe people will still want to try it if there's new PVP modes or increased rewards?

I think if you were to implement this, you would have to forego the additional mez protection that those powers come with. These powers have enough recharge to stack on pretty much any build. It might as well be a toggle if an auto-reclick mechanic is introduced.

I'm going to have to disagree with this one. I don't think every mez protection power needs to be the same. Practiced Brawler gives better mez protection than toggle powers such as Fallout Shelter with the tradeoff of not being a toggle. However, one thing that would be nice is to have a secondary layer of mitigation added to Practiced Brawler on each click. Perhaps some absorb or regeneration?

Pretty straight forward request here... Can we put practice dummies in the hero & villain bases of the PVP zones that are flagged as players? Was thinking 3 in each would work. I see this as a QoL improvement for when I want to test characters based on observation instead of spreadsheets. This would help test characters using PVP combat changes. It would be even better if the dummies had a fixed amount of HP & resistance so that we could do DPS tests similar to Pylon testing. I was thinking they could die but respawn quickly. Currently I've been using the pillbox turrets to test my characters. However, this can get annoying because they A) fight back and B) don't have standard resistance values.

I'm not sure I would be a fan of nerfing Radiation Armor as it's one of the most fun and popular sets. I would much rather have the lagging armor sets get improved to be more competitive. I think PPM adjustments would be the most obvious balance fix to Radiation Armor since it currently has similar offensive firepower to Fiery Aura. Another issue is Rad Armor's weakness (cold dmg) is very rarely seen in the game which makes it feel stronger than Dark Armor & Electric Armor. But in my opinion, most of the armor/defense sets are pretty strong out of the gate in terms of survivability (with KB resist) and even get some tools to boost recharge/damage. And then you have sets like Fiery Aura and Dark Armor that are weak to common damage types and debuffs (-def particularly) and on top of that... no KB resist.

A Fiery Aura or Dark Armor tanker will need to dedicate 6+ slots to resist any of these attacks. There's a much longer list of attacks that can be resisted with 5+ slots. This is pretty substantial considering the value an extra slot can bring to a build., let alone 5-10. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Knockback/Enemies_with_Knockback_Powers I also think this list is wrong. If you look at MLTF LR's Suppression power details in game, it says 51.93KB. And after applying purple patch to a lvl 54 AV, that gets increased to around 70. Which makes it virtually impossible to resist solo without buffs/inspirations.

I was just using LR as an example of a high mag KB encounter. But what you guys are saying is fair. I guess knockback is just annoying because of its binary nature. Unless you have 9999% resistance, you either have enough points of KB protection or you don't.. and if you don't then you're going to spend a majority of the fight on your back without being able to do anything. At least when you have low resistance you can click heals, accolades, run away, etc. Dark Armor and Fiery Aura have their own resistance/debuff weaknesses to worry about on top of getting knocked back.

You have to dedicate 12+ slots on Fiery Aura and Dark Armor to resist Lord Recluse's knockback on the MLTF. Rad Armor can make 2 mini-nukes with those slots and still have plenty of KB resist, resistance, absorb, regen, recovery, etc. to be an amazing tanker. This is incredibly unbalanced and should definitely be changed. Aside from Lord Recluse, there are plenty of attacks in the game that will require more than a couple KB protection slots. These slots are very valuable on armor sets that already have glaring weaknesses. Sure, Fiery Aura has Burn and Fiery Embrace... and Dark Armor has Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom... but are these powers really tradeoffs for KB resistance when you consider the tools their competitors have?

I agree with this 100%. If KB resist was taken away from Dark, Fire, and Electric because they have tools for offense, then Bio and Rad should get it taken away as well.