Heraclea

Fields of the Nephilim - Lasr Exit for the Lost

Simply done: make Master badges for the lowest level TFs in the game. Master of Rule of Three/Posi 1 is going to be much, much harder than Master of Ms. Liberty.

Make it accessed through Ouroboros and that is not a problem.

I don't know what kind of content creation tools the HC team has, but another such zone might be a good idea. Maybe make something like Storm Palace accessible to people with any travel power. Just for the love of God don't use IDF, Resistance Elite, or Neuron/Antimatter Clockwork in it. Arachnos and Longbow now have serious competition for mobs I'm tired of seeing.

Indeed. Now in i23, knockback was counterrproductive on a willpower character because of their weaker taunt aura. For a soloist that never was an issue. Now that taunt auras have been equalized on Homecoming, there's no reason not to. Again, if the OP isn't so much fond of knockback as much as he enjoys the mess it makes. Ice Melee is also worth considering.

A Willpower tanker with either War Mace, Battle Axe, or Super Strength as a secondary could slot for knockback while being quite tough. Kinetic Melee is also an option, as is Ice Melee if you enjoy watching mobs flop around helplessly. All of these combos are also available for Brutes, and most for Scrappers. They will be more than adequately tough and kill stuff a bit faster.

Take the Trip Mine; skip the Time Bomb. It's still going to be a solo thing most of the time. This is one area where adding knockback actually helps; it's one more tool for shooing away too-friendly mobs. Oddly, blasters seem to benefit more than melees from the Preventive Medicine proc and Regenerative Tissue Regen proc. Give Field operative five slots: three endurance mods and those two. Caltrops does fine with its default slot; use it for Pacing of the Turtle -recharge proc. Make a macro powexeclocation target_self Caltrops. (I think that's the syntax, don't count on it). Caltrops is for when mobs get too handsy. Smoke grenade - go with the -tohit and recharge. IIRC it doesn't take accurate to-hit debuff buttons, so you will want to add a regular accuracy. 5 Dark Watcher's inc. the -recharge proc and one Accuracy is what I run. I eventually dropped Taser. My blaster is archery/dev; purely ranged, and the range was just too short for it to be useful, especially since the character is built to keep mobs away.

For me, this game is a palette with which I can create characters and superhero concepts, and with some time and effort make them mighty enough to overcome all reasonable obstacles. This is why I find the constant refrain that 'the game is too easy', and the resulting nerfherding is a threat to the value I find in the game. I have characters that could handle +4/8 spawns solo easily. The rad/electric brute could handle that from Malta and Carnies. But that tends to bore me as well; one spawn takes too much time. I love CoH because it is a relaxing and creative pastime. The encounters don't generally send players to Discord or Ventrilo (when I played those kinds of crap games, it was Ventrilo) to do the catherding necessary to complete badly designed encounters in elitist and unpleasant MMOs. This game does not need gear scores, threat meters, dps meters, healing meters, or boss prompt mods, or any of the other junk that turned team content in those other MMOs into a second job and a joyless chore. I like the game even better now because Barrier Core Epiphany is available on the Ms. Liberty task force. Now the only inspirations I have to hoard are EoEs and Ambrosias.

Well, sometimes. The BAF rings don't have anything to do with dodging. They seem mostly to punish tankers for trying to hold aggro on the AVs. More "You can't play right now", in other words.

Ted Nugent - Just What the Doctor Ordered.

The game overall for me is mostly just right, with a few odd difficulty spikes. I've been running a lot of old school content on stealthy, mission-specialist characters. Content that others would find tedious (find five glowies on a large outdoor map) is relatively easy for them. Then all of a sudden an elite boss pops up. And it's Nosferatu. The game is at its best when teams can just socialize rather than focus on the sort of tedious fight mechanics that other MMOs routinely serve. Crap like the blue patches on the Battle Maiden fight on the Apex TF, or the rings business on the BAF trial. This was the sort of crap other MMOs would routinely dish up, that sent me running back to City of Heroes. Anything that goes 'You can't play right now' or 'Stop what you're doing and go stand over there.'

The safest blaster I've played is Ice/Plants. 3 ranged holds, going to take this one to Hamidon. You also get a rain power that somewhat works like Caltrops, making mobs flee slowly. Your nuke is a rain that periodically knocks down mobs in its AoE. I took no melee attacks in the secondary; instead I took Concealment to Invisibility. If you're trying to do as much content as possible at even level this one will work well. If you're willing to twink the character a bit, I recommend Defiant Barrage Chance for Mez Protection in a t1 or t2 attack.

The Who - I Can See for Miles

Katrina and the Waves - Walking On Sunshine

Thus far on my newest blaster (Ice/Plants) I have slotted Defiant Barrage in Bitter Ice Blast, and Blaster's Wrath in regular Ice Blast. Did I get it backwards? I did so following the new conventional wisdom about procs; that if you slot them in slower recharging powers, they have a better chance of firing per activation. Since I value Defiant Barrage's chance for status protection more than Blaster's Wrath chance for fire damage, I wanted it to be slotted in the slower of the bread and butter single target attacks. But it dawned on me: the tier 1 and tier 2 attacks will fire even if I'm held, slept, and so forth. So do I put that set in one of those attacks, instead, so it can fire and possibly proc under the circumstance where it is most valuable? What does the group mind say about this?

But St. Martial is where the action is....

Not really NPC chatter, but this act looms large in my personal in-game mythology. The name is just too perfect, especially for 2004: This poster is in a low level Hellions mission from Azuria. Firemullet appears in 'Lawyers of Ghastly Horror', and my Everlasting SG is 'Firemullet Groupies'.

Most of my mains have ties to Cimerora. In actual play, too; that's where they usually go to log out. The Amazon Army base is on one of the Talos outlying islands, though; it has diplomatic status. Heraclea says, 'Cimerora is where we go to be at home. Warrior Earth is where we spend the weekend.'

Maybe a rerun of the Rularuu, Nemesis, or Council invasions? Better yet - Issue 2 Winter Lords.

Right now I am heartily enjoying a blaster build that I thought would be quite scarce, but according to the March data enjoys middling popularity: Ice/Plants. Made it to claim the joke name 'Ice Minstrel'. With three ranged holds and Vines, this is the safest blaster I can remember playing. Have felt no need to take any melee attacks from the secondary. AoE is a bit lackluster before the t9 but looks like there is a lot of possibility to slot exotic procs. Has invisibility, recall, and hasten; full up on pool powers instead of melee attacks.

I enjoyed a Radiation Melee/Electric Armor brute so much that I eventually made her the character who does what limited badge collecting I do. Radiation Melee is kind of like Dark Melee's red headed stepsister. You can't rely on the self-heal, but you're spreading debuffs around. But it kind of works like a Spines/Fire: all you have to do is show up and stuff dies around you. While being tougher out of the box than Fire to boot. This will be a long hard slog to get to 35, when Power Sink makes it a lot easier to play.

If we really want to try a BAF I can kick Vanth over to the host server for an evening. Although my tanker that's most useful on a BAF is Impetua (wp/mace) because she has Salt Crystals and Quicksand.

I also did the arc with Protean on the stalker. Decided to wait until I had several levels on him before attempting the Protean mission. Roy Cooling is much more fun but offers similarly small rewards for the time it takes. Anything that lets you beat up Captain Castillo is never a waste of time.

Did Provost Marchand on a stalker . This was rather difficult, involving many unhelpful 'allies' aggroing random spawns and a battle with an elite boss Silver Mantis. The reward: 6 merits IIRC. Ran the Lou Pasterelli arc "Unity Plague" on the same stalker. This was quite easy and quickly done. Most of it is glowie hunts, boss room defeats, or named mob hunts with IIRC two relatvely easy defeat alls The finale is a long tour of the Freedom Phalanx TF givers plus another destroy the glowie hunt. No EBs. 43 merits. Something here seems amiss. Generally I think that any old line mission with multiple parts or timed missions lurking behind a first mission ought to give some merits.

Johnny and the Hurricanes - Reveille Rock