Lazarillo

I don't forget that. But I can also taunt and do damage with all my Claws powers all the time. I don't have to fall back into non-concept powers that won't cover the entire downtime anyway, and yet still add meaningless clutter to my power tray. Really? Then why is one of the excuses for Rage to have a crash so often "it's only 10 seconds I never even notice"? You're not entirely wrong: I think that if SS is the only set that is penalized with mandatory downtime, it should also be comparably ahead-of-the-curve. But I've said in the past that if they wanted to, say, nerf Titan Weapons so that it did 0 damage on any attack that built Momentum, that would at least balance things, for example.

And no damage. Thus, again, not permanent. Rage has an enforced period of time during which you cannot derive a benefit from Rage. Furthermore, stacking Rage, increases the amount of time that you are forced into downtime for.

The only real downside to this is that I might very well end up losing all will to play anything else.

It's an intriguing story hook, IMO. There are at least a couple late-game Rikti-affiliated villains that saw the process as a general step up in their lives, and while the cult-like tactics and drugs that are used to transform and manipulate the members definitely put the group as "villainous" over all, it's not hard to see where people down on their luck would still prefer it. That said, the Lost are, ultimately, still pretty villainous. You could apply similar "what if"-type situations to members of other groups. Like, if you took away all of Vandal's robot parts, it'd probably still be clearly wrong for him to want to go running back to the 5th Column and getting up to all his nazi antics because he preferred his life as a cyborg, no? (And heck, one of the aforementioned Lost->Rikti mutated characters who found satisfaction in that life was already a super-villain, too.) That's not to say there isn't still potential for a story in all this, regarding how average citizens, as it were, have to deal with life in Paragon. But it's also something to consider.

It's not permanent. In fact, it has a mandatory "twiddle-your-thumbs time" during which you'll be just as productive by hitting alt-tab. And all double-stakcing does is increase the amount of time you're hit with the mandatory downtime. And that's really the heart of the matter. SS is the only set in the game that has to pay a penalty to achieve "run-of-the-mill" when not penalized.

Basically, people whined that the straight up buff didn't benefit them because they wanted to stack it and be immune to the crash, and the devs said "well, fine, if you're going to complain that it's not OP enough, then how about no buff at all?" Given how it all went down, it's pretty unlikely they'll revisit it, sadly. I mean, in fairness, most Super Strength players of note claim they can never tell when they're doing damage anyway.

Quick question on Regrowth: is there a way to automatically turn a character to face a specific target before using it? I'm thinking in a more roundabout way, I could double-tap the 'f' key to "follow" the target for a fraction of a second before firing, but I wasn't sure if there was a more efficient way to do things, with a handy keybind, maybe?

This is a jot-down I did for it back right around the time of the game's revival on an Ice/Martial Dominator. Though beyond this one I haven't experimented with it a whole bunch. Character in question was doing this in DA with 3 Incarnate shifts, so bear in mind it's probably going to be the highest possible end of performance. Numbers tested against level 52 "Vanquisher" KoV minions (for the most part, note below) Block of Ice: 104.66 damage from power, 28.45 damage from EV. Shuriken Throw: 68.21+50.52 damage up front from power, 20.93 damage from EV. Thunder Kick: 213.31 damage from power, 35.54 damage from EV. Spinning Kick: 214.07 damage from power, 24.45 damage from EV. Dragon's Tail: 143.85 damage from power, 23.82 damage from EV. Caltrops: 3.08 damage per tick from power, 0.62 damage per tick from EV. Explosive Shuriken: 287.01 damage up front from power, 19.02 from EV. Cyronic Judgment: 475.47 damage from power, 16.01 from EV. Also tried fighting some BP with greater resistance to Ice/Smash damage; what I found was that even when the base attack deals less damage, the EV proc was exactly the same (so for example, a Thunder Kick against an enemy with 5%-ish Smash resistance and no toxic as far as I know, did 202.65 damage, but still 35.54 toxic from EV). So as we can see, the toxic bonus seems to vary depending on the power, although it doesn't appear to be a flat percentage, with Judgement only getting about a 3% boost, while Block of Ice gets over 25%. All the Assault powers in question have ~90-98% damage boost from enhancements, except Caltrops (has none). Block of Ice has ~50 damage boost. If I were mathier, I could probably look at just the base values and whatnot and come up with some more accurate formulas, but considering it's perma-able if you're going for Perma-Dom anyway, it seems pretty nice to me.

In some ways, Nemesis count as both, for me. I love them for the lore and for Nemesis himself being such a clever, outrageous villain, and for just the fact that when you get down to brass tacks (pun intended?) he and his followers are so downright vile that clobbering them feels so very cathartic. Unfortunately, they're utterly un-fun to actually fight, due to boring, repetitive power choices and mechanics that provide lots of time-sink but little challenge. So I love what they are from the story and lore side of things, and hate them for squandering all that on being completely terrible in terms of gameplay.

See, the problem is, the more I let stuff like this get my hopes up, the more confident I am that I'll inevitably be disappointed by not having my day. 😕

See, the irony is, this just makes me feel set up for disappointment, because I bet there really will be "a plethora", and I bet none will be ones I've wanted. This is not to be judgey. Just bemoaning the cruelty of the universe and/or the unfortunate uniqueness of the things I like about the game, I fear.

Oh, you just had to open this whole can of worms, getting me to think about the faction that's lore-wise right near the top for me, but in terms of in-game execution, is so frigging boring in both presentation and game mechanics. Below, the list of beefs: First off, consider the overall faction distribution. There are 12 different types of human minions, but only 3 variations in actual powersets. Similarly, there are 7 different types of lieutenant-class enemies in the faction, but all of them have the exact same abilities. That's not even counting the automatons, which are identical, and as a result have giant muskets to pull out despite being so capable of infiltration. They are a faction in desperate need of variety. Additional steam-based powers using Water Blast seems like an obvious fix. Second is that they are primary a time-sink faction, having Vengeance to stack defense and make them take a long time to kill, but does not really pose any notable additional threat during that time, and similarly, Fake Nemesis being able to use a PFF to be completely unkillable, but, even moreso, literally can't attack at all. The nature of these powers is generally automatic and thus doesn't really lend itself to strategy, as a result, either. If you fight a group with three LTs, you are going to have at least one unhittable enemy going all Gin'nosaji on you for the next few minutes. Possibly a whole mob of such if mission placement is particularly close together. Not to mention this always kind of struck me immersion breaking. The soldiers' tactics get better as their commanders die off? It makes a statement about useless middle management positions, I guess, but I want to believe the Prussian Prince of Automatons is more Doctor Doom than Dogbert. With that in mind, potential fixes to said major issues, I think, would generally revolve around expanding the level ranges of the mobs but giving them all more unique abilities: As noted above, add Steam Gunners at all level ranges using combinations of Aqua Bolt, Water Jet, and Steam Spray (from a gun if possible...otherwise...maybe give 'em fancy gauntlets?). Human Nemesis minions and LTs could also have a set of "skirmisher"-type fighters that use fancy, ornate-looking broadswords (along with a couple portable steam gauntlets for when/if they're forced into range). The "surgeon"-type minions should likely get buffed a little. Make their heal faster, more potent, and maybe add a non-stacking buff when used (it does not seem beneath Nemesis force..."performance enhancers" on his subjects). Work a variety of LTs into all level ranges, with each one giving one or more specific leadership buffs. This will allow players to prioritize and strategize for effectiveness, similar to DE and their emanators (take the Cairns down make things vulnerable, then the Quartz so you don't die, etc). It would likely, even, make Nemesis even nastier in terms of alpha strikes and early battle than DE (especially if buffs stacked...though that might be too much, especially since DE buffs typically don't), but, maybe somewhat realistically, even, have groups become weaker as more are defeated, as the soldiers lose cohesion and strategies fall apart. Maybe keep Vengeance on one type of LT, but have it be the player-style Vengeance where they can buff the group when the first minion is defeated (non-stacking if only because I feel like the hit to morale would cancel it out after a while...and working in that much morale is something I've thought about, but is probably too complex). If old!Vengeance must be maintained, the occasional Pointy-Haired LT with a profile indicating he earned his rank through nepotism, or something, could show up occasionally. Rework Automatons to be much more unique, since they would have built in weapons, rather than need to be equipped like humans. Have Automatons trade their muskets for sub"cutaneous" steam emitters (water blast/fire blast), taser devices (electric melee/manipulation), or enhanced power core technology (electric blast/rad blast/rad melee/rad emission). Remove leadership abilities from them. At first I thought it might work as some sort of combat algorithms, but while Nemesis likes machines, but it's noted he has great distaste for digital computing, so that's even more reason to make the Automatons fully unique. Add a boss class too so it's more than just Warhulks among a bunch of "infiltrators". Also, to be clear, I think the damage potential on these things should be pretty high. A Nemesis Automaton should feel like the Terminator has you in its sights. Jaegers are both generally fine. Maybe add a little variety in the Jaegers (there are three types sharing one same skill pattern), but not much. Maybe turn 'em to Underlings so that they appear in greater numbers? That's about it. Bosses are also pretty okay, outside of Fake Nems needing to lose PFF, which adds nothing, makes their associated mobs weaker anyway (since they don't get the big bubble buff), and just sinks time. Maybe make 'em explode like Warhulks. Classic Nemesis booby-traps, and all that. Finally, yeah, I do like the idea of flying Nemesis ponies, or some sort of air-support. Maybe have one or two types of minion and/or LTs that have steam-jetpacks?

FWIW, I saw this on an ITF last week too, though outside of "Rommy hadn't eaten through all his fluffies but the mission registered as complete, then he ate the last fluffy and came back", I can't think of anything else irregular that happened. It seemed the same as all the other runs I was on. But I can affirm, at least, that it's not a one-time fluke (because that wasn't the team I was on).

I have distance-closer. It's called "jumping".

Malta don't show up in police scanner missions.

The lore says players don't discover "the Malta group" even exists until near the end of an arc you've been fighting them all along, only for Roy Cooling to come along 20 levels earlier and be like "you know, the Malta group, everyone's heard of the Malta group". Or how they are just randomly outed in the newspaper all the time in Grandville. Maybe that's the trick. Rikti are fine to play as long as you're on Redside.

The most effective power to use during a Rage crash is alt+tab.

The abdomen looks like Chaos Leather but the upper arms don't. Curious what you're using?

I don't use much in the way of inspirations. Part of that is being kinda OCD about having a messy-looking tray that I can't tell how many/what I'm really carrying around. Part of that is just generally preferring to build characters for more or less universal utility, and figuring anything I can't handle anyway for one minute needs to be very, very rare anyway. So I tend to disable small inspiration drops starting around level 25, and mediums as well at level 50, just to save myself the trouble of managing them. To say nothing of not storing them in email. That's one spot it's probably better that I ain't in charge, because the whole "carry 6 trays worth of inspirations using mail" mentality that so many people seem to have strikes me as more exploit than anything, and while I try not to judge when folks play the game the way they prefer, it does bug me when it's suggested as a legitimate alternative to more proper game balance (e.g., frequently seeing "armor sets don't need terrorize protection, they just need to mail themselves a bunch of Break Frees").

In fairness, Carnies have enough Psi-specific defense that you won't have to worry about them dying too fast on a Psi Melee character anyway.

I have a Psi Melee Stalker and while I like the concept, I can't say the execution really speaks to me. The Insight mechanic is terribly janky. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you want it, but can't get it, sometimes it would be better to "save" it because what you need it for isn't ready, but it expires. And then you get locked out for an arbitrary amount of time. It's like all the worst parts of the Savage Melee mechanic (which I'm also not fond of), combined with the worst of the ones from Water Blast (probably not surprising that both Psi and Savage were half-baked, unfinished sets at the time the game originally ended).

To sort of expound on ideas from this, in the CoX setting, psychic powers are actually "naturally" occurring. It's a talent that anyone can hypothetically awaken and train (though some might have more natural ability with it, like many talents). So in some ways, a sort of street-clothes vigilante could work surprisingly well, especially if you had a character that wanted to be more subtle about it, or have a more "neighborhood vigilante"-type characterization.

I've played Necro/EA to 32 and it's been a blast so far. And though I haven't gotten to that point yet, Amp Up feels like it'll have great synergy with the Lich because it has so many potential effects to buff.

*stares at this line in Fire Control*

That's fair, but that's where that pesky "if" kicks in. If those two powers do fine enough from that perspective, then they're not the ones that need a boost, as I see it. This is where things like Poison Trap (already discussed) and Noxious Gas (which is pretty underwhelming for a t9) probably need looked at instead.