Lazarillo

Probably not, but to be clear in this case, the Defiant Barrage proc doesn't work in any power in any meaningful way.

First character I ever considered my "main", back during the game's original lifetime (starting around i5 for reference), was a Claws/Invulnerability Scrapper. I liked the concept but wasn't a big fan of the animations, particularly with Follow-Up, which had a weird slowness to it. When Dual Blades came out later, I changed to DB/Invuln instead and generally had a grand old time. However, when HC came around, I kinda decided some of those animations (notably 1,000 Cuts) now were kinda unappealing, and the Claws ones didn't seem so bad. So I swapped back, this time as Claws/Willpower, and man, lemme tell ya, upgrades to the set over the years, and the ability to convert Shockwave's KB to KD, made me a true believer. The biggest frustration now is the degree to which it feels like nothing else measures up.

It's always worked this way on HC. It did not in days of yore, but I'm not sure if it was a change made very late in the game's original lifespan, or very early in HC's (or in the intervening time when what became HC was hidden away). Guess I could go fight some Carnies on Rebirth or something, and see what they're like there. That'd maybe give some insight into the exact "when" of it all.

Other way around. It would be very easy, just would mean a player never pushed themselves while playing the character.

To be honest, I found Valeria kind of a confusing mess. Some of that I chalk up to maybe being intentional, because time travel to/from times we might not have traveled to ourselves, was involved? But the very note that I'm just sort of guessing that is part of the reason it'd maybe be nice to see that, I dunno...cleaned up a little? I typically like Nictus stuff, but this one didn't do much for me, FWIW. On a sort of related note about overabundance of narration, btw, I'm curious because when the Doc Aeon SF was released, I (and a couple other people) brought up the idea of creating a "SSA mode" for it, since verboseness, particularly in TFs, is kinda hard to follow, and I don't recall who (mighta been Cobalt?) said it might be worth looking into, but I haven't seen/heard any sort of further murmurs either way. Is that still something even on the table, or is the idea just solidly nope-d at this point?

See, the thing is, the Skulls are not known for being really effective villains, y'know?

The new Vigilante arc is really good. I only ran it a couple times on beta, granted, and that was on different characters so I still haven't gotten the "true ending" that comes from repeating it, but overall, I really liked it. The missions progress fairly naturally, it's an intriguing concept, and feels very "vigilante". One of HC's better offerings, IMO. The new Rogue arc, I was a little less impressed by, but that might be at least in part because my expectations were really high (HC's best so far, to my way of thinking, was their first Rogue arc). I absolutely loved the focus on Striga Isle for a good portion of it, but it was kind of messy and disjointed, and has a couple points I rather dislike from a "lore" standpoint. I still want to try playing it on characters that have met the various cast members in it before, but haven't done that yet. If there's some acknowledgment of those past encounters, it'd probably scale my appreciation for it up a little bit, I admit.

Okay, another thought. If a non-combat hostage if following you, it can still take fall damage. Perhaps you were leading something that fell a time or a few, or perhaps a combat hostage was following you and counting towards pet damage? Alternatively, you mentioned being on a Mothership raid. Did you plant the bomb? Maybe it fragged someone and that counted for you?

You ever pull out a temporary pet? Their damage counts towards your damage, IIRC.

If all the HC team did, ever again, was to expand power customizations to add new animations and such...I'd be pretty fine with that, actually.

Psychic Scream feels pretty "iconic" for Night Widows. IMO, give it a little buff and it'd be fine. Although frankly, Night Widows are good enough that they probably don't need anything, even in powers that are maybe a little beneath the rest of their kit. So the most important buff to give it would be to make it colorable.

I don't know that I make too many deliberately odd overall build choices, but poppa don't play the procs game. One in a power, when I've already got others from the same set in that power, and/or if it's especially concept-friendly? Then sometimes. Sometimes. But mathing out max proc efficiency with Hasten or whatever else the git guds are on about? Never.

Just want to say I noticed in the Patch Notes that Storm Cell has a faster Recharge now. Not sure when the patch went up and was too busy today to test it anyway, but on paper that sounds like a really big improvement. I'll plan to give it a try soon, but just wanted to toss out a pre-thank-you on that front. Not sure what the perception chances will mean to it, but if it cycles faster and I can put it where I want, it sounds solid enough that it doesn't matter.

I'm gonna compare it to Ice Storm mostly because Ice Blast is a little closer in terms of performance, but with that in mind, if Ice Storm goes down: Frost Breath still doesn't scatter mobs. Bitter/Freeze Ray still apply a hold. Single target hits still slow targets This is the critical point. Storm Blast operates at a handicap without Storm Cell. If Storm Cell was just a damage power, fine. But it's not, it's designed as the cornerstone of how every power in the set works. And when a set is introduced with the concept of centering it around a specific mechanic, and that mechanic can't be used reliably, then that whole set is a failure.

Then it needs to be removed and balanced to account for this, because as-is, it's a detriment to the whole set.

If they fix the jankiness of Storm Cell (or alternately, fix how janky the rest of the set is without it), then /Electric Sentinel is high on the list, as I've been doing testing with it and it feels like a nice, thematic pair. Alternately, Storm/Storm Corruptor because I've been wanting to do a /Storm Corruptor for a while now. Though I may do Water/Storm instead (since Water's looking really nice in the new update).

Illusion isn't built around the idea that the other powers in the set are deliberately hamstringed when used against stuff not aggroed by Phantom Army.

4. Play a set that doesn't require a janky workaround to a problem that didn't need to exist in the first place, just to achieve basic functionality.

I did not enjoy this one as much as the vigilante one. A little too...spread apart. The mission maps, in a literal sense, which just felt unnecessarily huge, but also just kinda the disparate plot points. I'm also kind of a stickler for "continuity", and to me, putting this arc at level 40 despite taking place after the Marchand arc, which in turn takes place after the Incarnate arcs (even if Marchand can be started at 30, it's post-50 in plot terms), made me disappointed that I can't approach it properly in order, either. Also, while I did this on a fresh character, I would hope that if I'd done the various Praetorian arcs that allow you to meet up with Houston, Arvin, Tunnel Rat, etc (or the Primal arc with Alexander the Great), that that gets properly acknowledged. But I didn't have any characters ready for testing that could confirm those, unfortunately. I also feel like Arvin becoming a villain felt a little...contrived. The Center has mutant charisma, not, like, active brainwashing. I feel like there needs to be more on why a Resistance Warden would join him. Also, I apparently got the "hero" ending, which I'm not sure what the key difference is? It seemed to be because I didn't beat up Ravenstorm and the doc, which felt to me less like a moral stand, and more like a "enemy of my enemy" thing. So with all this, I realize there's a lot of complaints, but I will say it was solidly fun, and neat to see how all the various characters interact with each other. Plus, even if, as the player, I didn't get to hang out at the Mermaid Tavern, my character did, something I've wanted (along with more Striga content in general) for a long time. So thanks for sending me back to one of my favorite places.

Yep, so now Storm could be bad 50% of the time instead of only 25%!

Per my previous experience, with about a 30 second recharge, allowing me to drop it on around three of every four mobs, when solo and moving relatively slowly on large groups. Storm Cell following me does nothing because I need it in front of me where the enemies are.

I don't see how this would fix the problem that it's not up every fight. Right now, Storm Blast is basically "fine" when Storm Cell is up and in place, and far too limited when it's not. The set should not have to pay a penalty in downtime to be "fine" the rest of the time. True, Faraday Cage is a very nice power that Electric Affinity is worth taking almost for that, alone, though EA makes due pretty well even without it. ...while Storm Cell is literally the power that all of Storm Blast's performance is built around. The set as a whole needs to be buffed, and needs to have its intensely team-unfriendly repel removed, if it can't rely on its keystone power. Just flat out. If the intent is to make Storm Blast a gimmick set for people to make "proc it and git gud" posts about, then feel free to disregard this, I guess. My opinion doesn't really matter in that case anyway, since I'm just a peon, and I'll avoid it. But if the intent is to make a set that's fun for regular play, and doesn't tick off people on teams who aren't dealing with it too, then it needs to be...properly configured.

Did a quickie run through the arc. Maybe a couple notes: 1. Let me start off by saying the writing felt spot-on. This was a real "City of Heroes" story, and one in which it still felt like I was the "main character". I love it, to the point I'd say it's one of my favorites of HC and even the original run's late-made stories that I've done. Of course, I saved the Rogue one for second because I'm more of a "Rogue" kinda guy, so maybe I'll be right and that'll be even better, but if so, cool beans. 2. On that note, there seem to be a lot of branches, that's cool. It's interesting enough that I can see myself wanting to play it on multiple characters. Earning alignment points as I go was a nice touch too. I accidentally picked the "wrong" ending for the character I was playing on, though it sounds like there's...more to the arc than meets the eye. I'll have to try it again on another character, maybe. I am a little curious, based on comments in this thread, it seems the arc's a little different from Ouroboros (makes sense!), but if so, is the first Ouro run going to look like the "did it at the natural level" arc? Or is it gonna be different from the start? If the latter, I might encourage this to have its level cap raised. I'm pretty sure all the villain groups from it go to 50 anyway. 3. I was playing a character of the Science origin, and after the first mission, there was an origin-based option to talk to the doctor about his research. Not sure if all the origins have this or not. He gave his justification and whatnot, and yeah, seems well-enough-written and whatnot, but I noticed that there was another option a little further down where he basically went through his reasoning a second time (his examples were different, but it sounded very repetitive). I think it's the one about the kind of experiments? Yeah, I mighta been reading a little too fast. Regardless, this could maybe stand be streamlined a little?

Okay, same character (Storm/Electric Sentinel), but this time, I did a set build, to kinda compare it to what my other builds can do, and so here comes my next (final, until/unless there are some changes?) round of feedback. Without Mids, or anything, this wasn't a totally tweaked build, but was fairly high-end-ish, included Alpha slot (Cardiac VR), and I ran solo at +2/x4, Bosses on, which is kind of my "this should be nice, brainless fun at this level of build" gold standard. I put a KB->KD IO in Category 5 because it's kind of unclear which powers do KB and which don't, but that was the only one of those I used, however, I did take Frostbite from the Epic pool and that's got some -KB too (wouldn't work on the Jet Stream repel though, unless there's a special mechanic I'm unaware of, or didn't notice). Anyway, that's the context: Once again, it just really, really, really feels like being able to place my Storm Cell and keep it in place is the key to success or failure. When I can do that, I make pretty short work of the mobs I face. When I don't, things start getting out of hand and are messy to clean up. With the sets and enhancements I used, I got it down to about a 30 second Recharge, which handles things about 3/4 of the time when soloing but isn't likely to cut it on a team. When longer Recharges are factored in due to non-optimal builds, or leveling, or even, maybe honestly just not having an Immobilize holding stuff in the field (I let Frostbite lapse once or twice), stuff scatters and things start going much more poorly. The Storm Cell seems to meander a bit once mobs start taking the "flight" option of their fight-or-flight choices. All that said, once again, my experiences suggest to me that the most important thing this set needs is a SIGNIFICANTLY faster Recharge on Storm Cell. And honestly, coupled with that, it probably should be immobile (the second summoned pet seems already to replace the first...I saw the icons stack at at least one point, but I'm pretty sure the pet itself de-and-re-spawned). I want it where it "belongs", not wherever its AI thinks it saw a shiny thing (again, it's usually not too bad about this, but a couple times, I saw it wander). I feel like Cloudburst could maybe use some love. It does about the same amount of damage as Lightning Strike, but it's a DoT (albeit a reasonably quick one), and has a longer activation time, and time before the hit lands. It is a better damage power than Hailstones, in a set that really only needs 3 out of the 4 single target attacks, and it might be intentional to choose between the two for damage, versus control? If so, I feel like on that note, Hailstones could use a little more oomph, too. Maybe instead of 25/50% to KD depending on Storm Cell, make it flat out 50/100% KD? And in addition to the debuff, maybe 1-2 more ticks for Cloud Burst if used with Storm Cell? A lot of the power descriptions are very unclear. I'm not sure the best way to handle that, but for example, Intensify says it increases "storm strength", and has a +Special, but that's not very descriptive. I assume that means it's buffing Storm Cell to more often tick damage, maybe? Or that it enhances the secondary effects when powers are used in Storm Cell? Or something else? I'd like to know what I'm getting out of it, besides the normal-ish Aim buffs. Similarly, Storm Cell itself. I can slot it for damage or knockback, but the numbers in the power don't reference how much, if any, it's actually doing, or what the chances of it ticking are, etc (also, by default there's a ring around it...I'm guessing, but that means I don't currently have a cell active?). And same with Category Five. It talks about growing in power and synergy with other Storm attacks, but it's really unclear how any of that works, if any of the damage ticks it mentions are connected to that, or the different KB chances, etc. It definitely seems to be laying waste to my foes, but it would be nice to be able to better understand the process by which I'm doing it. So, summing up: give faster Recharge and better placement control for Storm Cell, maybe a small buff to Cloudburst and/or Hailstones, and let me know what my various buttons do besides "make something awesome-looking happen".