Lazarillo

Can I just say @Vanden I don't think I've seen your proposed changes before but I think they'd be pretty danged close to perfect at maintaining the feel of the set and bringing it up on par for both ATs. I regret that I have but one thumbs up to give!

Mind Control could be better. In general, it has problems compared to other control sets for Controllers because of a lack of maintainable, consistent sources of containment. Thus, while it seems to have been intended as a more "direct offense" set (and probably was, before Containment, but that was well before even I joined the game), it ends up falling behind. I also feeling like it's lacking on a Dominator because I find myself thinking when I play my Mind/Dark, "anything I can do on this character, I can do better on my Fortunata, who also has a nuke, and mez protection, and team buffs, and defense, and....". That said, I am firm believer in ye olde cottage rule, and wouldn't want to see the set get a pet. Buffing Mass Confusion would be a good start. Maybe making Terrorize flag for Containment (although from what I understand, that would be...difficult), and boost up Telekinesis to make it more broadly useful (it's a neat power, but mostly only works as a gimmick right now). Take the tools the set has and make them better, essentially, don't replace.

I don't think all the blame here can be assigned in a "kids these days!" sort of way. Everyone has a different reading pace, things like that, and teams can't necessarily compensate for that. Doubly so when some of the content like Becky or Psicurse in the ASF, speficially, only converse until the first person to talk to them is done. Plus, even if teams were more tactically-minded as you described, that's still time that those players are going to be spending on working together, not going off on their own to read story stuff. A lot of it is in how the story is told, I think, too. ASF is extremely wordy and info-dumpy, and filled to the brim with fairly complex stuff showing up even in captions or talk balloons that can disappear quickly or get hidden under various system text (or even under the next round of captions/NPC chatter!). It's very "tell" over "show", for lack of a better way of putting it. That's not inherently a bad thing in a game like this, but it doesn't fit the teaming experience. Compare it to the old ITF, for example, where the story is much simpler and told through visuals and through actions. You learn about the Nictus involvement through the mountain of ambushes in the first mission, and the 5th Column causing trouble when you turn that corner for the first time and get that maiden-run-magical "wait, what!?" when you see the mech. Of course, the reasoning behind the story is also much more straightforward. It can afford, more or less, to tell the story that way, because the inherent issue of "Cimerorans good, traitors bad" is pretty much the whole driving force. The ASF by comparison involves the Goldbrickers doing something involving alternate dimensions but what they're doing, what you're doing, and why, gets buried deep within text blocks that some team members won't even have access to when playing with others.

Stick the Councils on mounds of trash so when we flatten them they can land comically under spoiled banana peels or the like?

I finally got around to doing one yesterday, though I was on a /Willpower character. But amusingly(?) I ended up having to deal with both of those at once! There was a situation where the tank kept getting Confused against Ripplesurge while taunting, so I had to spend half that fight limited to a PBAoE because I was being forced to attack a teammate I couldn't actually attack. Got the badge for that fight on my maiden run, though, so can't complain too much.

Hrm, that definitely didn't used to be the case. Out of curiosity, were they the old Elites (Fire, Dark), or the new ones that HC added last patch (Rad, Psy)? If it was only the latter, then it may be the new mobs just aren't properly flagged. If it was the former, or a mix, then that sounds like a bug.

That's actually a neat idea, I feel like, though I don't think Dominatrix has the...discretion necessary to pull off such a ruse. Maybe Chimera? Manticore rubs everyone the wrong way anyway, so it probably wouldn't be difficult (and he's also one of the few Praetorian AVs who IIRC we never got the final fate of).

My man Scirocco really deserves this. It'd be frustrating not to still get to be all judge-y of all the "heroes" who nonetheless sold their soul to Black Scorpion for a defense boost, but I suppose I could live without that for a good redemption arc.

Wasn't BaBs the original alt-Statesman for the endgame Hero TF? I seem to remember they did that to give him something when Galaxy got destroyed (and so Mizz Libby wouldn't have to be in two zones simultaneously). Not sure if that was something the original dev team never implemented or HC changed it back or something, but I distinctly recall that being a point of discussion in the old days.

I joined one for the first time earlier today and it was a lot of fun. My only notable beef (but it's a big one) is "Why is this a Strike Force?". Seriously, it's so heavy on story and dialogue and when you've got seven teammates rushing forward, to borrow a phrase, ain't nobody got time for that. But soloing it is also infeasible because as a SF, it's filled to the brim with AVs (and worse!). My villain's inevitable kingdom for an "SSA" version or the like that lets me actually enjoy all the story, the dialogue, and the Becky.

Something vaguely Widow-centric would make sense, given the 20+, 25+, and 35+ SFs are connected to minions of Scorpion, Mako, and Scirocco, respectively. So GW got left out. I'm not sure what sort of story would really fit her side of the organization in that range. Something DE-ish like Vanden mentioned would be a cool bit of lore, but I don't know that it would fit. Or, ooh, rather than that, another bit of background lore to maybe touch on is how in the Rogue Isles, everybody just kind of knows who/what Malta is, even though they're supposed to be super-secretive even through most of the first arc that actually introduces them heroside (never mind Roy Cooling's terrible, retcon-y arc please). Given that Malta takes an interest in Wretch during Scirocco's patron arc, maybe something that could "introduce" them to the setting and give an explanation to the public awareness of them, while also giving a little bit of background on what sort of special interest they might have in Widow/Wretch in the first place?

The thing about that aspect is, though, that even if the absorb gets used up, the bubble stays, so it doesn't quite fit that aspect. You'd have to make it a ticking absorb which would lessen (a)the purpose of power-boosting it anyway, and (b)be kind of annoying out of combat.

I have a Thugs/Traps who's very similar. She took down a gang too "minor" for the heroes to do anything about, and decided to reform them rather than arrest them.

I honestly like Infiltration a lot and would rather it mostly stay as-is. That said, the toggle being mutually exclusive with other Stealth-granting powers is, while reasonable, also pretty annoying on a travel power since it detoggles other stuff that might considerably more...build critical. I wonder if there would be a way to suppress just the stealth part while other similar powers (Mask Presence, Arctic Fog, et al) are in place.

Well, I know I'd play the heck outta this sit with it like this. I feel like the HC team prefers to rebalance with gimmicks (see Energy Melee, Electric Blast) though this is more along the lines of how I'd want things to be done. Keeps to the cottage rule and makes it a solid set. If anything, it might be a little too strong with the changes to Repulsion Field. The ticking-KD would have to be pretty infrequent to make it not effectively hold enemies in place while close to you, which isn't quite up to snuff with the current form. I think maintain it as KB would keep the area denial (while still allowing a KB->KD enhancement that could reduce the rate but eliminate the KD, a la Bonfire, rather than Hot Feet).

Were they on the same team in the league? Rewards are not league-wide, you only get credit for what your team does.

From what I understand of it, it's the the "Well of the Furies" is more or less a nickname that was given to it by the people who discovered it (most notably Marcus Cole, a giant mythology nerd), while "The Furies" are, y'know, the actual figures of myth.

I haven't done it yet but am thinking about trying a Seismic/Nature Corruptor. Not only does feel very thematically sound, but it seems like there would be some mechanical synergy too, being able to drop and stand on Lifegiving Spores to buff myself while Seismic Pressure makes the area less happy for enemies that try to get to encroach on my little mobile Eden. Assuming I understand how Seismic Pressure works (janky mechanics and I don't exactly get along great). My big wonder is with Stalagmite and whether it's worth it. How "Extreme" is "Extreme"? Is it worth giving up the KD aura (which, granted, Shards does too, but it seems a little more overtly "worth it")? Or should it just be seen as an easy skip (or alternatively, should one of the t1/t2 powers be skipped instead...I doubt the set needs all five single target attacks)?

I feel like sets are a little too gimmick-crazy as-is these days.

I mean, I'm just not getting the feeling that we should apply our pitiful, three-dimensional understanding of space to where he's standing in the first place. He did, actually. In fact, he was added specifically because they needed a band-aid for functions that they couldn't add to the option menu. So if anything, the idea of being able to summon him is, to my mind, honoring the original intent best of all (since it's not like you have to go anywhere specific in-game to open the options window...or do you think that being able to change whose broadcasts you see from anywhere is also spoiling players too much?). That said, of course, in the game's original form, he couldn't change alignments (which as others have noted, is probably better off being left out if an idea like this one I have is implemented anyway). The only other functionality HC added to him was disabling the extra travel popup bar, but that's because HC added that bar in the first place. So I don't think leaving that functionality in a summonable version would be too over the top, either, since it only wasn't on "live" because the problem it solves wasn't there either.

That's a fair point ( @MHertzcaught that, too), so yeah, I think the best choice would maybe be for a summonable Gull not to offer that particular service, maybe?

Actually, this raises the point of whether it might be helpful to have a tag in the fashion of Helper/Help Me/Roleplaying that people can use to show themselves as actively streaming, too.

Operating under the assumption that the options for Null the Gull are still not in the options menu rather than being confined to a somewhat-out-of-the-way NPC for mechanical reasons due to spaghetti code and whatnot, is there any chance that said NPC could be made more convenient by granting a new power, purchasable via the Pay-2-Win vendors (or otherwise) that allowed characters to directly summon or call it from the field, so to speak? It'd be a real boon when, say, my team gets to an Oranbega mission and suddenly those run speed boosts are not helpful, or joining a raid and discovering once you're there that someone's running Group Fly, or heck, even just on new characters so they don't have to go running a zone or two away to disable the popup when they get their first travel power. Plus, it's just not good for a seagull to be cooped up inside a sweaty (and likely smelly!) ravehouse all day.

First thing I'd note is that you probably shouldn't for now. One of the "drops" gives you something useless and that won't be fixed until after the event ends. That said, they'll be put into your salvage. You just right click, open pack, and then the items from the pack are placed under the "Character Items" section of your in-game email for any of your characters to claim.