Lazarillo

It's not a matter of whether the damage is "crap" or not. It's a matter of whether it's worthy of being the only melee set in the game that penalizes you with downtime. If not dealing damage is acceptable for the amount of buff Rage gives, then, say, long-animation TW attacks should also do zero damage. No other set has to "pay" to achieve, not even the sets that are (per the previous posts) more damaging than SS.

His comment was literally stating that "game balance" was SS using Rage, and being penalized for doing so, being a couple tiers down from the top despite that penalty was "balance".

It's balance to penalize SS for being weaker?

The whole "perma" thing for me comes from a different direction. Having a non-perma buff means, effectively, that I don't need the buff. A power that won't be on all the time is one that I might as well not take, because I'll have to be able to approach any content in the game without it anyway.

It's not a SF, but TV does have an arc that invokes that specific reference already.

This gets things into a bit of tangent, but this sort of thing hits me hard. Like, for example, I have a hard time playing Street Justice because I hate the animation for Shin Breaker, and so I don't take it, but I still end up with this little voice in my head reminding me that I'd be "better" if I did and so I kinda beat myself up over it any time I don't do quite as well as I'd like, and conversely, Martial Arts, where I really like the animation for Thunder Kick, but it's "objectively" the worst attack in the set. And actually that ends up applying to SS, too, because Jab, like Thunder Kick, is an attack where I really prefer the animation over Punch, especially, but I know I'm handicapping myself by using it, which just brings the set down even more on top of the Rage crash being so annoying.

In Tyrant's defense, Praetorian Hamidon is an entirely different problem. Bear in mind, he was fully willing to invade Primal Earth despite it having a Hamidon too, and was completely unconcerned with that. Honestly, IMO, the biggest error in judgement he made had more to do with his hubris and his keeping people like Mother Mayhem, Chimera, and Neuron in charge. Calvin Scott, on the other hand, yeah, that was just disastrously bad writing. They set up a "twist" in which the only people who believed the lie to be true were the players. Not the player characters, not any of the NPCs, but just us, the players, and then thought it was so clever to "reveal" something that nobody in-universe had ever believed to be true in the first place.

This is likely why they won't bother trying again. People slammed a straight-up buff.

Expanding the level ranges would, with just that alone, be a huge help. It's too easy to out-level the story, and the story's basically the main reason to start there. There's presently no reason to make it more "team friendly" or add TFs, or the like, because if you were to team, you'd miss the entire reason to play there in the first place! Keeping the minimum levels as they are while expanding the caps would allow for more options, and unlike a lot of blue/red content, IMO, you wouldn't necessarily even need to worry about enemies getting too easy because, well, let's face it, most goldside enemies are punishing as-is. Beyond that, I guess, just make it possible to transition more naturally to First Ward? An actual contact path for Loyalist/Resistance (I could swear there was one in the old days), and stuff like Katie Douglas not going from "you saved my life and all I hold dear and I will never forget you" to "I have no idea who the hell you are but I will never stop telling you how much I hate you" to the Wardens (and similar with Ghouls and Crusaders?).

It's a neat idea. But I think just about anything would be better than the current "might as well alt-tab when it crashes" current form. I don't really even think there would be a need to "double stack" it if you tied it to incoming attacks/damage. Just scale it fully based on that. However, the problem they ran into last time was people whining that the changes weren't OP enough, though, so a reasonable approach would probably never gain traction.

I don't know. Doing three missions back to back with the same goal for 15 minutes, or doing one single AV fight for 15 minutes...I think the former might still technically offer more variety...

I very rarely play "matched" characters...I'm not sure if I deliberately avoid them or if it's just coincidence, though I almost lean towards suspecting the former. It's just more interesting that way, I think, most of the time, to come up with why certain "unmatched" sets end up being matched together? That said, I do have a few. An Archery/TA Blaster, and, similarly, a TA/Archery Defender, an a Electric/Electric Brute. Of those, the Brute is definitely my favorite. My first-ever level 50 villain back in the old days made right at the onset of i7, and one of the early re-makes when HC came around as well.

I mean, given how little effort Adamastor involves...

Been hoping for this one for a while.

Depends on the character that's saying it. Generally somewhere slightly between "suh-PAIR-uh-dine" and "soo-PAIR-uh-dine" depending on how "refined" the accent I imagine for the NPC in question. Particularly thuggish types and Trolls in general tend to slur it more to "SOOP-ruh-dine".

The latest big patch fixed the animation issues "No Redraw" caused for various weapon sets. Now it's just a matter of proliferating said option to Spines, and VEATs, and epic/patron pools...

I'd hate to see Confront changed to be AoE or a *vomiting noises* gap-closer. It's honestly pretty great right now as a pulling tool and for peeling tough enemies off of squishier allies without interfering majorly with mobs or tanking. Plus, it's nice for certain raids/trials and such for picking up slack from all the Brutes, especially, who are too cowardly (or too farm-obsessed) to take their own taunts. If Confront were to get an AoE component, I could see it as maybe something more like a ranged ST taunt (with a higher magnitude?) so it keeps its current functionality, but maybe with a PBAoE taunt effect (along with maybe a minor immobilize), to prevent enemies from running away from you. Basically, you keep what you "have" in terms of aggro (which is zero if you're pulling), but can add to it.

Given that, per the Newspaper missions, there's a "Freedom Phalanx" MMO on Primal Earth, I'd assume GoP is its evil mirror-universe counterpart.

If you stealth past NPC allies so they don't follow you, you don't lose any!

'twould be nice, and for Clarion, too (hell, more for Clarion, since it creates more "noise" directly over your costume). But alas, 'tis not so at this time.

It has less to do with who you have to talk to and more that if you don't do Montague in advance, you outlevel Mercedes as she has a very narrow window to start her arcs,

In my experience, it's generally more than sufficient. I main a Claws/WP, and stuff still doesn't run from him.

She used to be a lot worse than she is (most notably, she had a self +Perception buff that meant she'd aggro enemy NPCs from extremely far away, even while you were fighting something else). The original devs fixed her up, but for many, the memory is ingrained...

If you finish it before 20 you also unlock Mercedes Sheldon's arcs.

I've always hated the qualifications for the "master of" TF badges anyway. Rather than just expand them in this fashion, I'd rather see any new or revamped approaches to them (or similar) work more like Apex/Tin Mage/Incarnate Trials, and reward "Master of" badges based on going above and beyond in terms of achieving the goals of the missions.