Triumphant

Well, I don't know about that. I play more Blueside than Redside, but I'm not offended by one guy's opinion. On the other hand, I know there are plenty of AE babies (I confess the name makes me chuckle, and I have done my share of AE door-sitting, believe me) that hang out Redside, so I take the comment with a grain of salt. There are less of them than there are on Blueside, but that's only because there are comparatively fewer players on Redside. The ratio of the AE babies feels about the same to me. Typically, I play villains/redside when I want to let my inner misanthrope out of the bag to run riot. If you do that in the real world, you get thrown in jail. Not so great. 🤷‍♂️ Better to indulge myself this way in a fantasy game. 😉 I've played most of the story arcs in this game (both red and blue). I don't find redside to be significantly more challenging than blue. JMO.

Yeah, I can't agree with you here, sorry. When you run an AE arc, a prompt comes up with a comment box and a star system rating. If you submit an AE mish for public consumption, you are tacitly agreeing to have that mission critiqued. Honestly, if you can't handle honest, constructive (CONSTRUCTIVE, being the key word here) criticism, don't put yourself out there. Constructive criticism does not mean complimentary, by the way. Sometimes it is the opposite, even if phrased in a diplomatic way.

Maybe. Maybe not. I'll get back to you.

#1 is a pretty good suggestion, actually, if I can find players willing to team with that limitation. Not wild about #2, as I'm more of an RP'er that also enjoys challenging combat on teams. I find Hamidon and Rikti Raids both incredibly boring. Rote, easy, no strategy apart from "attack the things in this order". I wish there were more SF/TF designed like Imperious Task Force (though, perhaps not quite so LONG. lol). ITF's are a good mix of interesting foes with different capabilities, tough enough and in sufficient quantities that a team of very powerful characters can have a good time and be reasonably challenged, with everyone having something fun/interesting to do. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I really DO like #1 quite a lot. Not sure if I can find other interested parties, but it seems like a viable way of dealing with the problem if I can work it out. 👍

I don't get it, either. Perhaps they have the exact play environment that they desire and they're afraid that if players try something new, they might enjoy it, and that it will cause a shift in preference that will alter the play environment in a way that they find unsatisfying? I wish people could be more open-minded and less paranoid, and not have knee-jerk reactions to a simple suggestion, but this is perhaps too much to wish for from the human species in the 21st century. 🤷‍♂️

My personal experience has been this... Solo Play: Challenging from lvl 1 to Incarnate, because I can dial notoriety and number of enemies up and down until I hit the "sweet" spot. Almost every archetype is fun to play. Team Play: At lower levels it's not bad, if a bit frenzied. At high levels, melee toons will often only get a hit or two in (and this is after combat teleporting directly to the target) before powerful ranged characters nuke all the mobs. I find this to be pointless and incredibly boring. My solution: I only play blasters now, so I actually get to have some fun during team play. Am I satisfied with this solution?: Not really. What to do about it?: I have no idea. 🤷‍♂️

I play all of them, but my favorite morality/alignment to play is Rogue, which I guess is technically Villain, and the one I play the most. I tend to view it more in D&D terms as more neutrally aligned than evil, though- and tend to play it as such.

An approximately 4 in 10 chance every minute is pretty good if you've got a power loaded up with 5 different procs (for my rad/sr sentinel, Neutron Bomb is my choice for this). If you've got more than one proc-bomb going, it can be surprisingly effective. But if people are really obsessed with doing the "most" damage above all things, they need to play a Blaster or Stalker or Scrapper. I want to do a decent amount of damage, but doing the "most" damage is not a priority for me. I'm more concerned with building my hero/villain to represent the character concept that I'm going for. I also tend to view Sentinels as a support class that supports in a pure combat role, so I'm expecting tanks and blasters to have most of the AOE issues covered in group combat and the Scrappers and Stalkers to zero in on the heavy hitters to bring them down. My job as a sentinel is to lend combat strength to whichever of these needs the most support, be alert for when squishier toons need to be defended, and otherwise just blast and batter down foes as opportunity provides. Of course, the reality is, combat in CoX is almost always less tactical and more frenetic and chaotic than that, but I do my level best to perform the above-mentioned functions and I enjoy doing them.

He wanted to play a melee oriented Sentinel. I thought his disappointment was in that it didn't feel like a melee character (i.e. more close-in punchy, like Superman/hulk, etc.). I also wish to play Sentinel that has a more "punchy/brawling" feel to it, so I was sharing my plan to make my own character play that way. Sentinels are a ranged combat class, so they will never be high performing as a melee toon. Besides this, they are also weaker than the other ranged combat classes (blaster/dominator/corruptor), even if they are a little tougher and more forgiving to level up. If he was asking how to turn the Sentinel into a power build, I apologize, b/c my advice is not useful in that regard. I don't pursue power builds because I find the game so easy- even played at +4/8- that power builds are redundant (and even boring) unless you want to play those crazy 801 AE missions people make.

I would ditch irradiate and take second wind or moment of glory, instead. If you want to get in their face and melee, you need more melee attacks. I would ditch mind probe, psychic shockwave, and link minds. Take Air superiority from flight pool, Cross punch from fighting pool, and Knockout blow from leviathan patron pool, instead. This is similar to the build I'm shooting for with my Radiation/Super Reflexes Sentinel.