Nerva

I don't know you, dude. Nor did I participate back on the official boards back when I played. Your history there doesn't matter to me, and honestly, I don't really care what your credentials are. You want to talk points and counterpoints? Fine. But don't think you can just scare me with credentials. Don't act like because you're some ur-veteran that I have nothing I can teach you, because I'll prove that wrong right now. As it stands, you're you're coming into this thread basically asking for a mechanic that makes VEATs what they are to be removed; for their first costume slot to become generic, and for the unique parts on it to be available on other costumes. You're also demonstrating an ignorance of the way VEATs work; one I don't blame you for, since not everyone realizes it. VEATs have 11 costume slots: one extra costume slot over and above what other archetypes get, thanks to a mission from Brick Johnson in Port Oaks. This costume slot doesn't appear in the costume change window. You can only change to it via /cc commands. My point stands - you are not losing out on a costume slot just because you're a VEAT, you still have 10 and you also have your uniform slot. In short, yes, you do get an extra. It's just currently in need of support from the game interface. Ever delved into Arachnos philosophy? Arachnos is essentially organized Social Darwinists. Rules are made to be broken, so long as you can either endure or avoid the consequences of breaking them, or change the rules to make what you're doing okay. This includes replacing leadership. The powerful only stay in power as long as nobody challenges them and wins. In theory, someone powerful enough could join Arachnos, walk right up to Mako while he's in mid-conversation with Lord Recluse and choke him lifeless right then and there and be offered a job as Mako's replacement. If you win, you were powerful or cunning enough to deserve to win. If you lose, you were weak or dull enough to deserve to lose. Your first mission from Alan Desslock, the one that makes you a Destined One? Involves changing the list of Destined Ones to include your name, and then clearing out any witnesses. Nobody knows you've broken ranks with Arachnos just yet. By the time anyone figures it out, you've already made a bit of a name for yourself as a Destined One, and as such, Lord Recluse is eager to see where you take this, just like with all the other listees. In fact, you discover later in the story that changing the list like that wasn't subverting the system - you were accidentally correcting the list. By having the ambition to grab the list of Destined Ones and put your name on it, you made a destiny for yourself the equal of any of theirs. So hey, good job. You put yourself into the Destined One program by sheer cunning, tenacity, and force of will. No penalty; you might not be directly part of Arachnos anymore, but the options available to you beggar what you had previously.

Most of my characters, even if they look human, aren't. I enjoy alien mindsets and figuring out how their psychology would work. Tiltowait's a good example of this. He's an Animus Arcana (specifically a Tiltowait spell - AKA "Ka-Blam!" or "Nuke 'em 'til they glow" from the Wizardry series) given human(-ish) form. He lives to magically explode things. He loves explosions in general. There's nothing more fun to him than indiscriminate and total destruction over as wide an area as possible. But he's also got friends (the few good folks in Night Ward), family (other Animus Arcana) and stuff, and he's found out that when those things blow up, it makes him feel bad. Then he realized that when he blows up those things belonging to other people, he also feels bad. He's a spell of wholesale mass destruction, but he's got a conscience. So he's now in a constant dilemma of reconciling his primal desire to violently reduce things to their component atoms with the fact that if he does so without regard to what things he's exploding, he's going to harm people who don't deserve it. The solution, was to take up superheroing. This puts him in an environment where lots of things need to be exploded to some degree or another on a regular, and so long as he does it right, he doesn't need to feel guilty about it. The problem is that, like most Animus, Tiltowait is very young. In fact, since he's not a first-generation Animus, he's younger than most. He has the body and intellect of an adult, but the personality and emotional maturity of an excitable hyperactive ten-year-old. He's relentlessly cheery, hard to perturb for long, wears his emotions on his sleeve, and is (sometimes literally) trembling with enthusiasm for blasting things with tremendous amounts of energy. Sometimes this enthusiasm gets the better of him and he gets carried away, but when gets carried away, things go boom, and this is the source of most his personal conflict. He's desperately trying to learn self-control when it absolutely does not come naturally to him - a Tiltowait spell exists for the purpose of wanton destruction, and he's trying to tone that down to conscientious destruction at a minimum. He understands right and wrong on a basic level, but the subtleties of it sometimes escape him. Then there's the body to consider. Tiltowait's unusual for an Animus in that he's not an enchanted object or a coalesced mass of magical energy, he's somehow either inhabiting or has generated (he keeps the specifics a secret for what he believes are good reasons) a humanlike body. It's something that, again, he's not used to. He hasn't quite mastered body language, and things we take for granted are new and novel experiences for him. Like caring for your hair and teeth, being hungry, cold, or hot, even things like itching or just breathing. He's mostly adjusted by this point, with the help of his extended family in Night Ward, but there's times where he just doesn't seem to get some things that would come naturally to a human. Thankfully, since he's posing as a superhero, a little weirdness is expected by most people. He's also a bit monomaniacal at times with regard to destruction, explosions in particular. It's fair to say it's his raison d'etre. He intently studies everything he can about destruction and explosions. Destructive magic, bombs and the creation and defusal thereof, fireworks handling, firestarting, nuclear physics, military and weapon history... he's got an Internet search history that might worry the FBI, but for him it's mostly recreational. Some of it does come in handy though; for instance he's recognized as a bomb defusal expert, a skill he's cultivated because he hates seeing explosives misused. If Oranbega has a public enemy list, he's also fairly high up it for the same reason. Seeing destructive magic misused infuriates Tiltowait like few things can. After all, those spells might be cousins of his one day! Hellions, Skulls, Arachnos Mu Mystics, the Banished Pantheon, the Carnival of Shadows, the Carnivals of War and Vengeance, and the Talons of Vengeance tick him off for the same reason. Tiltowait keeps his language fairly clean, but if you want to see him cuss enough to scare a sailor or descend into incomprehensible angrish, just show him any of the above toting around a bomb. Then find cover and plug your ears. I love exploring odd or outright alien mindsets like this.

Now, just to preface, I'm not saying this to refute your idea, but explain the reasons for these things being how they stand. Because there are actual reasons! VEATs, regardless of what your concept for the character is, were meant to be more closely integrated with the lore than any other Archetype, even the HEATs. This is why they have an entire unique story arc explaining (starting with a single mission from Alan Desslock in Mercy) whose whole purpose is explaining how an ostensibly-normal Arachnos soldier or widow (you) managed to get into Project Destiny and rise above their peers by guile and sheer effort. This is why you have the Arachnos uniform in your first costume slot; you're not a conventional villain character, at least at first - you're a uniformed mook, and that costume slot is your uniform. It isn't until Sharkhead (and access to the tailor there) that you've broken away from the Arachnos heirarchy enough that you can really start setting yourself apart from the rank-and-file Arachnos and develop your own costume. But by that same token, you also have less access to the Arachnos heirarchy and the resources it provides. Not no access (every villain has access to basic Arachnos services), not minimal access (you know the system from being inside of it at one point, you can get things a little easier than most villains), but definitely not as much access as you would've had if you'd just toed the line and rose through Arachnos's ranks the conventional way. This is why you can't really use Arachnos parts outside of the Arachnos uniform - you don't have access to those bits anymore. You want to be a Destined One? Fine, you'll have to make do with the resources available to all Destined Ones, plus whatever you can finagle using your connections and know-how from your time as a goon. Keep in mind, those extra costume slots you start the game with? Yeah, on Live you wouldn't have had those unless you bought them. Your uniform would've literally been your only costume slot until you earned the second one by levelling or story rewards. Point being, it's supposed to be a bit chafing to have limited options on your first costume slot - Arachnos doesn't let the rank-and-file modify their uniform completely as they please. You're supposed to have a few options there that you don't have on the rest - it's your uniform from when you were an Arachnos mook, and Arachnos mooks have parts most villains don't have access to. Keep in mind that your Arachnos uniform is actually an extra costume slot - over and above any other costumes you may have. If you get all the costume slots available to a VEAT, then the game doesn't penalize you for having that extra Arachnos-specific uniform. Since we also start with all the purchaseable costume slots from Live, you could just ignore the Arachnos uniform and treat the first regular costume you have as your character's default. Free customizations below level 10 and all. So, if you really want to play a VEAT your way, then go ahead, the game's not stopping you from playing the concept you want. But the game assumes that if you're playing a VEAT, you're wanting to play the concept it has behind VEATs - that of an Arachnos goon who broke away from the organization and hijacked Recluse's Project Destiny as a fast route to real power. So TL;DR - Epic Archetypes are different from the others. With regular Archetypes, your storyline is entirely your creation, and the game has to keep your involvement in the story arcs it offers fairly generic as a result. Some of the later and more cleverly-written story arcs will give you different dialogue options based on assumptions that can be made from your origin, or archetype, or rarely powersets, but these rarely effect the outcome of the arc. Epic Archetypes were supposed to tie your character to the lore of the game more closely than other archetypes, which means they're mechanically tied to the storyline surrounding the archetype. This is why Kheldian HEATs cause Quantum enemies to spawn, and Arachnos VEATs have limited costuming options and underwhelming powersets at first.

Essentially, you wanna Yamcha people.

For Tiltowait, he'd do a couple things! First thing's first, well it's not quite his. As much as it would be nice to use it, stealing is wrong even if it's little things, and there needs to be an effort made to return it to its owner. But if it can't be returned or the owner were to give it to him... First, a sizeable donation to the Paragon P.D., specifically for the purposes of researching quicker and more thorough bomb defusal techniques. Seems like every villain under the sun's trying to blow up something with a bomb, and while explosions are fun, explosions that hurt innocents are the absolute worst and thoroughly infuriate Tiltowait. Bomb defusal is something Tiltowait takes very seriously as a result. Second, a donation to the Steel Canyon branch of the Paragon City Fire Department. Buildings in Steel Canyon get firebombed more than any other place in Paragon City, and that would be fine if the stupid Hellions would stick to buildings condemned for demolition or something, but nooooo... those cretins gotta use their explosives for evil! Anyway, he'd hope the PFD would put those resources to use super-empowering some firefighters to put out burning buildings and put the Hellions on ice in the process. As fun it as it is to blast Hellion arsonists, his powers don't exactly lie in the area of firefighting and there's only so much extinguishers can do. With whatever's left? Oh man he's going to stage the biggest fireworks show Paragon's ever seen. Turn night into a kaleidoscopic daybreak for at least ten minutes! People are gonna see it all the way to space! Blowing up stuff is fun and it should be fun for everybody! Might just satisfy his explosive urges for at least half an hour, which would be a new record honestly.

Hunting those camper n00bs is its own reward, but I wouldn't say no to some recognition for pwning them. Seconding Snipe Hunt for a name.

Spagh dammit! That's the one I missed! I went back this morning and got it, by going to Imperial City and tagging its counterpart there. In hindsight, I should've realized that was possible because the badge credit locations are clearly marked and numbered in Vidiotmaps, but for some reason it never dawned on me that Nova Praetoria and Imperial City share the River Rat credits that occur on Nova's west border.

The Problem: Arachnos Soldier VEAT characters on their initial uniform costume cannot choose to go without a crab backpack. The Back category has options for standard and customizable crab spider backpacks, but no option to go without one. It shouldn't even be present unless the character is promoted to Crab Spider Soldier. The "Bane & Crab" option correctly allows for "None" to be selected in the back category. Unfortunately, it seems that Bane/Crab Epic Archetype option has both a "Back" category and a "Crab Backpack" category. Unless promoted to Crab Spider Soldier, the "Crab Backpack" category shouldn't be present at all. If promoted to Crab Spider Soldier, it should be the only one of the two present. Correction on this last pic's caption: The "Crab Backpack" option should only be present if promoted to Crab Spider Soldier. Bane Spider Soldiers and un-promoted Soldiers should not see it. What this currently means is that All Arachnos Soldier VEAT characters who aren't using the Bane/Crab type are being forced to wear crab backpacks, regardless of their promotion or lack thereof. Those using the Bane/Crab option may be able to avoid getting a Crab pack forced on them, so long as they select the Back option after selecting something in the "Crab Backpack" slot. Further testing shows that this happens for Female and Huge Arachnos Soldier VEATs as well, with the same conditions for reproduction. All images above were taken directly from character creation for an Arachnos VEAT character. They have been cropped in the interest of space and had text and indicators added to explain the issue. No other alterations have been made. What should be happening: Arachnos Soldier VEAT characters should have no options for backpacks under the "Wolf" and "Wolf & Helm" Epic Archetype Options. They have Cape options instead. Under the "Bane/Crab" option, they should have the full range of Back options - None, Standard Issue, Standard issue & Cape, Custom, Custom & Cape. They do not have the Cape option (to prevent them from wearing two capes - one attached to their armor and one attached to their small spider pack). Arachnos Soldier VEAT characters who have promoted to Crab Spider Soldier (and only those who have promoted to Crab Spider Soldier) should not have a Back or Cape option at all regardless of Epic Archetype choice, but instead have a "Crab Backpack" option instead. This option only has two choices - Standard Issue and Custom, and no option to remove the Crab Backpack at all (since it's required for their attack animations). Those who promote to Bane Spider keep their existing costume options for this costume, unchanged.

River Rat is a perpetual thorn in the tuckus for everyone trying to get their exploration badges in Praetoria. It's an irritating cuss of a badge, mostly because of its positively janky hit detection for awarding badge credit. Would it be possible for the devs to take a look at River Rat's awarding 'hitboxes' and extending them so that they're more reliable? Another idea would be to put buoys in locations where the badge awards. Maybe ones with lights on them, if they exist. That way you know if you can get close to the buoy, you've got the badge credit, or should have gotten it.

Whoof, this thread blew up a bit since the last time I had time to respond to it. First off, I do appreciate that despite some active back-and-forth, everyone's thus far remained civil. That's a bit of a relief to me; I really didn't make this thread to stir up a hornet's nest, but to help identify the problems with Sentinel as an AT and put forward some potential solutions and get feedback on those. A lot of other ideas have come up in the meantime, and I appreciate that. Firstly, @aethereal, I certainly hear you that Sentinel damage seems underwhelming but @MHertz has a point that just a flat damage increase doesn't necessarily solve their problem; or at least, doesn't necessarily solve the problem in a good way. Some testing to get performance numbers on just how the Sentinel underperforms is actually not a bad thing, and I wouldn't be averse - when I have more free time - to putting together a Sentinel alongside a few others and recording our experiences through the midgame. Especially if I can get my grubby mitts on a combat log parser somewhere, so that I can offer hard numbers alongside the "feel" of the character. If I can be frank, I don't want to see Sentinel become just a 'ranged scrapper' and increasing its damage damage outright so they're outputting Scrapper numbers pushes them in that direction. I'd rather see Sentinel leverage its seemingly-underutilized Defense set some way that increases its damage and yet reinforces its identity as being separate and unique from Scrapper as an AT. This is why I put forward the idea of a offensive stacking-per-enemy buff or debuff toggle operating in long frontal arc or cone; it's a unique twist on an idea used by Tankers and Brutes (and Scrappers, admittedly) to shore up their defenses when operating at ideal damage-dealing range. Since Sentinel doesn't really need its defenses shorn up thanks to operating at a longer range, these toggles would boost damage-dealing ability instead. Sometimes, a straight increase in damage output is the answer, Sometimes it's not. I'm not averse to the idea, I would however like to see some testing done to determine whether it is, indeed, the answer, or if other avenues should be considered. It's also possible it could just be an answer, but not the best one for the AT's future. Testing, done right, would discover this. I realize, looking around the boards, that Sentinel is something of a sore topic for some people. I just want to see the AT thrive and find an identity; there's a potential for something really neat in it, it just needs to find a role in a team setting that it's desired for. The AT can't tank without taunts, can't directly support teammates without support powers, and doesn't have crowd control, so it's never going to be anything other than a ranged damage dealer. That said, there's only one pure ranged damage dealer in the game other than Sentinel, and that's Blaster. Stalker, Scrapper, and to a lesser extent Brute have proved that multiple flavors of melee damage dealer aren't a bad thing, so finding a way for Sentinel to fit into the ranged damage dealer role and yet offer something different from Blaster and the melee DPS classes would only improve CoH as a whole.

You kinda answered your own question there. Notice how, for every situation you pointed out, you named multiple ATs that could fill the role? That's typical of CoH AT design. The idea that "the Trinity means bupkiss" is still alive and well in CoH, and the evidence is right here. Just because a Sentinel does something that another AT does doesn't make it bad; it just offers another option and playstyle that can fill the needed role on a team. With my idea, the Sentinel is a sturdy ranged damage dealer that can survive getting in close enough to to hit any given target, and gets stronger (or weakens enemies, or both) the more foes are available as targets. When AVs break out the BS, or raids/Monsters get splash-heavy and there's risk of Blasters and Corruptors and Doms going squish if a defense buff or resistance buff fails at the wrong time, a Sentinel will stay standing, and fuel not only their own DPS but the rest of the team's as well. Now, with that said though, I'm not going to call your idea without merit, because honestly, it's pretty neat. It's just that if we're completely honest with ourselves, none of us really know what the devs intended a Sentinel to do. I limited my idea to what it is because it roughly fits what a Sentinel would be doing now in a team - hovering closer to a fight than a blaster or defender might, and focusing down the biggest, most dangerous enemy out of a mob, unafraid to catch a bit of splash due to the defense set. So let's discuss yours. If I'm totally frank, I'm of two minds on this this. On one hand, I don't think every class with a defense set needs a taunt of some kind. And let's be real here this would just be a fancy, highly-controllable taunt. On the other hand, it's a fancy, highly-controllable taunt. One that would be unique in CoH. Heck, you could make it ally-targetable or enemy targetable - target an enemy, grab that enemy. Target an ally, grab all enemies that are targeting that ally. Blaster gets in over his head, calls out "I've got aggro!" in chat? Click their name in your team list, pop your taunt on him, and suddenly all the things on him come barreling towards you. Then the Tanker or Brute can grab them off you with their AoE taunt, and the situation is back under control. So long as you don't target the main tank (and you're disincentivized from doing so, as your taunt is literally the only thing at this point that's able to be used on other players), you're golden. And hey, if the main tank gets in over their head and needs a second or two to breathe, you can target them, steal their entire mob (or at least enough to leave the tank in a much better position), and offtank for a few seconds while they get their wind back. Then they just taunt off you before you get creamed. I like this idea. If I'm totally honest, I wish Scrappers' Confront worked like this. I'm just worried it's veering too far away from what the devs intended for Sentinel to do, because to my knowledge they've never had access to a taunt and everything that could taunt in both of their powersets has been stripped out. Only the devs can answer that for sure.

Letters to Tiltowait are typically delivered to a P.O. Box that Ward or others have to remind him to collect. Ward has insisted on teaching Tiltowait basic divination magic and wards for his own safety... which he remembers to use about one time in four unless reminded. Yes, he's careless with his own safety, but a little flippancy with concepts like 'due caution' and 'wariness' are to be expected when you're a magical nuke in human form. Things tend to work out though. Tiltowait doesn't exactly get a lot of mail, and the last time someone sent him a letter laced with magic he summarily exploded the demon that erupted from the page. Cleanup was horrible though. It takes a hell of a cleaner to get fiend ichor out of a rug, and there was one bit that flew behind a bookcase that Tiltowait couldn't find for hours, and he only located it because it wouldn't stop screaming. Tiltowait had Ward trace the message back to Oranbega. He sent a thoughtfully-worded thank-you to the conjurer responsible, for providing him something new and entertaining to forcibly remove from existence, and he didn't even have to feel guilty about it! In return, he laced the letter with explosive runes. After all, this conjurer was nice enough to send him a demon, he ought to be nice and send his own specialty back, right?

Y'know, por que no los dos? Why not both? Have the first target in range provide the biggest boost, with diminishing returns for each additional mook? I think several powers already do this. That way, you're strongest against a large group, but you still get the bulk of your damage even against a single foe. And if you happen to be fighting a large single target that happens to be surrounded by a lot of easily-thrashed chaff (like the average mook-maker AV, or when your Tanker jumps into a mob with a Boss/EB in it), even better!

Fair enough. But consider this: my idea can go a ways fix that as well. Boosting damage per enemy in range (as opposed to survivability with most 'stack per enemy in range' auras) will do a lot to fix Sentinel's flagging damage output.

Snip mine. Honestly, I can see your point here. My biggest issue, I guess, is that the primary set, Blast, has not a terrible lot of synergy in typical play with the secondary set, and doesn't play well with the Inherent at all. Since you brought up Brutes and Scrappers, let me point out what I mean using them as an example. The Brute inherent Fury allows their Melee powerset to inflict more damage. Their secondary set, Defense, allows them to survive long enough to bring their primary set to bear and endure hits that generate Fury. Further, their secondary set typically has a taunt aura that also provides buffs to its user or debuffs to surrounding enemies, becoming more potent as more enemies stack up around them. The Scrapper inherent Critical Strike allows their Melee powerset to inflict more damage. Their secondary set, Defense, allows them to survive incoming ranged attacks long enough to bring their primary set to bear, and last long enough for Critical Strike to proc. Scrapper can taunt single targets out of a group if need be, and Defense allows them to survive doing so. There's a synergy there. It's weaker in scrappers, admittedly, than it is in brutes, but both of them have tools that require their Defense set to use properly. This isn't the case with Sentinels. Sentinels, despite being shorter ranged than most ranged ATs, aren't so terribly disadvantaged at range that they're going to be shot before they can close the distance. Lacking any kind of taunt or aggro bonus (both of which are possessed by Brutes and Scrappers), there's no chance of them catching aggro over any other AT with a Defense set. This means that in any group with an AT with a defense set, Sentinels are just a short-ranged, weaker Blaster without Manipulation and a fiddlier inherent. I want to see the Defense sets of Sentinels matter more in team play, and synergize better with their inherent and primary set. Having their secondary set provide buffs to their primary set when operating close to the fray and at risk of taking hits, or debuffing crowds of enemies without necessarily being in the thick of those crowds (if you're in the thick of them, your blast set may as well be a downtuned Melee) seems like a logical way to do this.

Just about all of the Animus Arcana in Night Ward are family for Tiltowait. Fireball is the cool uncle (heh, don't let him hear you say that!) everybody knows and gets along with. He can be warm, but has a scathing wit when he wants to. Trilogy's always got cool stories to tell, and if you pay attention over multiple nights, his stories can roughly be fit together, if a bit out of order. Dispel Magic's a grumpy old sourpuss that most people can't stand, when he's not abjectly terrifying. Tiltowait gets along with him though - he knows what it's like to be feared for what he's capable of. He makes it a point to visit whenever he's in and around Night Ward. Ward is constantly monitoring Tiltowait due to the danger he represents. Tiltowait finds him a bit insufferable, even if his intentions are noble. As Tiltowait's not an Animus directly descended from Ward's subspells, he's sorta like a grandad that's constantly poking his nose into your affairs and urging you to keep your own nose clean.

Tiltowait likes building things. He often spends his time goofing around with erector sets, lego bricks, and whatever other building toys he can get his hands on. He's also a fan of constructing more practical things. Only problem? Well... he's a spell of cataclysmic destruction by nature. Building things is fascinating, but he's a bit impatient and impulsive and thus really bad at it unless he precisely follows exact instructions. He's gotten over the urge to blow things up when they frustrate him, but if he tries to get creative and it fails, expect to hear him grumble about "lousy laws of physics." On a similar note, cooking likewise fascinates him. That said, Tiltowait is not allowed in kitchens without supervision, under any circumstances. He also practices expression with flashcards and a mirror. Humans don't express themselves in the same way Animus Arcana do, so since he's found himself with a human body, he's striving to master the subtleties of human expression. If he seems to express himself just a bit too enthusiastically, this is why. Then again, he does everything enthusiastically. 'Subtle' he isn't. Online videos of humans doing dumb stuff for the sake of awesome are also a favorite. Especially if explosions are involved and nobody gets hurt. He's been thinking of starting a similar sort of video for supers, but he has a hard time of thinking of awesome stuff that wouldn't be patently illegal or risk getting someone hurt or killed, so for now he's just content to watch.

Try Sonic! Give your allies huge damage boosts, and then weaken the enemy's resistances with your own attacks! Everybody loves doing more damage, and Sonic/Kin is just about the king of helping everyone do MOAR DAMAGE, even if its own damage isn't ultra-fantastic.

My only real headcanon/metaplot contrivance is that there's a level of development for Animus Arcana beyond becoming a Fracture - a Personification. Just like Embodiments coalesce into or inhabit objects, a Personification creates or comes to inhabit a compatible human (or at least sapient organic) body. My character Tiltowait is one. Fractures are enormously powerful and enormously dangerous, and tend to live brief, violent lives, drunk on their own power. When they die, they don't become zygotes again and repeat the circle of Animus life, they're simply gone, their magic basically dispersing into the 'background ether' of an area or absorbed by other Animus. Becoming a Personification allows them a new lease on life; initially the transformation severely weakens them, but also allows them to grow to heights of power unheard-of for even Fractures. It just requires something most Fractures never achieve in their short existence before they're dispersed - empathy. Tiltowait's currently the only known example, and he's kept quiet about the exact process; it's the one secret even his excitable, easily-amused, childlike mind regards as dangerously sacred.

So the Sentinel. I've seen a lot of people talk about it calling it the 'redheaded stepchild' of ATs and the like. As a post-Sunset original archetype, it kinda feels awful to see that kind of thing bandied around. I'm not going to say that those people are wrong to do so, however. Sentinel lacks something that most other ATs have, and that, namely, is their role in a party. Let's look at the Sentinel from three angles. Their Inherent, their powersets, and the unique permutations on their powers vs. similar powers in other ATs. The Sentinel Inherent is Opportunity. According to the wiki, Opportunity slightly reduces the base defense and increases the damage an attacked enemy takes from additional attacks from both the Sentinel and allies, and occasionally opens up a whopping 25% damage increase periodically. Now, one look at that and you'd think "Oh, they're a support. They support by attacking the enemy and thus making it easier for other attackers to deal their damage." And yes, they can do that. But the rest of their design doesn't bear this out. So let's look at their powersets, specifically Blast primary and Defense secondary. You might see this combo and immediately draw parallels with Scrappers and Stalkers. "Oh, they're a ranged equivalent of these classes, or a tougher Blaster" you might think. And it would be reasonable, except that doesn't jive entirely with their inherent. Let's look at how their powers differ from others. Their defenses are Scrapper-level, but their primary lacks a taunt. Their Blast sets are roughly Corruptor-level, but have less range than Corruptors, Defenders, and Blasters. So just what roles could they fill in a party? Ranged DPS? Well, in theory yeah, but they're not particularly good at it. Even with the bonuses from their inherent, they really do not have the kind of offensive moxie to really DPS. Compared to a scrapper, dom, blaster or corruptor, they're really not putting out numbers. Further they have shorter range - sure, they have the defenses to survive a bit of splash, but they aren't rewarded for putting it to use. If they're ranged DPSing, they're not making use of their Defense set. If they're in the face of a target, they're just risking splash for no gain; Sentinels lack the powers in other Defense ATs that increase their effect for every enemy in close proximity, like Against All Odds in Tanker's Shield Defense. This makes sense because their primary would generally keep them out of reach of these powers. The only exceptions are the occasional PBAoE click, like Bio Armor's Parasitic Leech, or the click and two mez toggles in Dark Armor. Offtank, like a Scrapper? Well no, they have no aggro control. Sure, they can survive hits more easily, but in any situation where they're teaming with a partner that deals more damage than them, foes are going to peel off and attack their buddies. Sure a Sentinel can survive damage but can't make use of that to any real benefit in a party. Support? Aside from their inherent, they really have no support abilities. So what can a Sentinel actually do? Well, they can gather for Controllers and Doms; once the enemies are locked up in CC, taunts are unnecessary. They also make fine soloists, since there's nobody else to take their aggro, and they have the defenses to survive what they get into. But that's kinda limiting, isn't it? So... on to a suggestion: Give Sentinels back the stacking-per-enemy powers... but with a twist Sentinel stack-per-enemy powers would not simply count the enemies in a radius around them. Instead, they're frontal arc powers with the range on them increased. And rather than being defensively oriented, like most stack-per-enemy powers, make them offensively oriented - increasing the user's damage and ToHit, and applying things like -regen, -res, -def, and -tohit to enemies, akin to Against All Odds - the more foes in sight, the meaner they get! Thus, sentinels are rewarded for keeping their targets in sight and working the edges of the mob, instead of being in the thick of it. They're close enough to catch some splash, but they have the defenses to survive it. They help their allies by pointing themselves at the biggest threat in a mob and not only pounding it mercilessly, but also encouraging others to focus it down by slapping fat Opportunities on it. Meanwhile their malevolent gaze either strengthens them or withers the capabilities of the rest of the mob and makes the Tanker or Brute's life easier. This makes the Sentinel better at dealing damage, gives them something to support a party, and gives their secondary set something to offer even if they're not at immediate risk of catching hits. Win for all concerned, I think. Your thoughts?

For Tiltowait, adjusting to human life is a constant, pleasant crisis. But, that's to be expected when you're running around in a newly-acquired human body, and everyone thinks you're a superpowered human, when you're really the spellcaster's equivalent of thermonuclear annihilation given form and sentience! For instance, Tiltowait enjoys exploding things. He understands that some things - and especially people! - shouldn't be exploded, but sometimes it's a little iffy on what should go boom, and what shouldn't. He kinda understands ownership, but it gets kinda weird when he sees people ripping up chunks of road to toss at fleeing villains, or causing small-scale eruptions that leave intersections unusable until a repair crew can come along. Does that mean that City infrastructure's okay to blow up? Because he did that once with a dumpster, and got chewed out by the police for it. Apparently doing it to stop criminals is fine, if consterning; doing it for funsies when you're bored... not so much. Less clear-cut, what about exploding things that are kinda like people, but aren't? Like robots. Apparently some of them are okay to explode; especially those little brass electric-shooting ones that are everywhere. Or those neckless clawed robots the Council sometimes use. Others aren't, especially the ones that operate as heroes, or are used by the PPD and Longbow. But there's so many kinds of them, ranging from simple beeping trashcans on legs to ones you could mistake for a human if you didn't spot the little mechanical details. What's a poor, bewildered Animus Arcana to do? Probably the worst part is when you're trying to stop a crime. Now, killing is wrong, but it's also very, very easy. Exploding someone will stop a crime, sure, but it also kills, and killing is wrong. So the best thing to do is learn how to stop the crime without just exploding them. The trick is to explode things near them, or blast them with the results of a directed explosion, to hurt them enough to stop them without actually killing. It takes restraint and cleverness, but c'mon - destroying stuff willy-nilly is easy. Tiltowait's got standards - he's an Animus Arcana, not some mindless big bang attack. What's really tricky is that it seems a lot of 'em have different responses to getting blasted. Sometimes a little boom next to their head and they're out cold. Others you have to really pummel until they collapse in a heap! And you gotta be careful not to use too much force, or you might permanently harm them, and that's almost as bad as killing! It's hard to tell the ones that go down easy from the ones that take a beating at times. Then there's the things you're allowed to kill, like those Devouring Earth thingies. Trees and mushrooms and horrid betentacled aberrations, all indiscriminately rising to attack! Nobody minds if you just blow them to smithereens, except the cleanup crews. But even they don't mind if you straight-up disintegrate the target. Nobody really cares if you splat those little hairless monkey things the Rikti keep around, either. It's nice to be able to let loose on them, but you gotta be careful not to get too carried away; never know when there might be innocent bystanders or other people fighting them, or just criminal people amidst the botanical, geological, and other biological horrors who must be taken in alive if possible. It's a lot to take in, and it just comes so intuitively and naturally for other heroes. Tiltowait's a little jealous, but that's not going to stop him. He'll just have to work harder until he understands the differences as well as anyone else. Still, having other heroes around to take cues from can be a godsend in the less clear-cut scenarios. Like... are the Rikti monster enough to kill, or should they be handled with a bit more care? Turns out, it's the latter - it's quickly becoming apparent that when in doubt, shoot to disable, not destroy.

That's assuredly a false positive on the part of your malware scanner.

There's a character I had pre-Sunset that I've been wanting to re-make, but the name Tiltowait is taken. I was hoping to make him my first character coming back to the game after waffling for so long. If you happen to release this name, would you consider messaging me here? I would sincerely appreciate it.

If they can't stand on their own merits despite Homecoming's existence, why should we care what effect Homecoming might have on them? They obviously aren't quality enough to bother with if a fan-run recreation of a seventeen-year-old game is still enough of a superior product - and holds its own fanbase firmly enough - that they can't get a playerbase because of it. If anything, all Homecoming does is set a standard, a minimum level of quality that these 'successor projects' need to exceed to be worthwhile. This. Even at its absolute worst, CoH was barely monetized compared to most other MMOs of its day, and gave you a bevy of content for what little it asks of you. It wasn't chasing moneymaking at some core level of its game design, like most modern MMOs are. It existed, it was good (and still is good!), and the money it got came to it because of that. The fact that it still has a viable playerbase seventeen years after its release, despite publisher switches, being unceremoniously shuttered, and becoming a fan-run project, especially when most MMOs don't see a third of that over their full lifespan, is telling.