Lazarillo

You are a flea, and you need to be loved. Just like everybody else does?

I feel like Assault sets probably wouldn't/shouldn't be as high of a priority just because they're only available as Dominator secondaries. Rather, it's more time-efficient to create more Control sets, since two different ATs would benefit from those. ...unless, of course, HC wanted to create a whole new AT again and give them Assault sets, too, or something?

Nothing would make me run any faster than NCSoft seeing so much as a dime at this point. They had that chance and blew it long ago. I love the HC experience, but I'll sooner virtual machine and solo exist for the rest of my days than participate in a system in which NCSoft gets anything. That said, I also don't think NCSoft has any real match of HC's desire to "negotiate" anyway and figure they're just ignoring them like they've always done, so I'm not really "worried" from that side of things.

I mean, he's the Prussian Prince of Automatons. If he speaks with an accent, it's probably a German one.

You could do that with a sub-pet, too. Just have the upgrades give a new sub-pet that replaces the old one (similar to how upgrading Thugs removes their initial one-pistol attacks while granting them an equivalent dual-pistol power).

I've got a hard no on the Beam Rifle thing. It's just...not in concept for "Mercenaries". You want lasers, go Robots. Plus, having each Merc be unique doesn't really fit the "army" theme either. That said, I haven't played them much since the old days (I had a Mercs/Thermal who got a fair bit of playtime back in the day and was generally "fine" but not exciting), but I feel like...are sweeping changes really necessary anyway? Cut-down the activation times, drop the Recharge on the Spec Ops controls drastically since the AI doesn't know how to use 'em. And cut the recharge/remove the crash on Serum. Bada-bing, bada-boom. You've got your ranged tank-y/control-y pet set.

I have two /Storm characters, and I think they're both pretty awesome. Number one is a Demons/Storm Mastermind where the combo works surprisingly well thematically as just a general "sorcerer" feel, and absolutely rips enemy mobs to shreds. It's pretty melt-tastic. Number two is an Earth/Storm Controller, and that combo is lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. "When you've gotta CC so hard you mez your teammates' graphics cards too", I like to say. Definitely more of a support build than the MM, but on a team, it makes pretty much every encounter into little more than a speedbump.

I'd always assumed most of the buildings in Paragon were designed by Ivo Shandor.

My Time/Rad Defender only skipped Electron Haze. My Ice/Thermal Corruptor only skipped Ice Bolt. Those are the closest I've come on any character I've actually made and played. I do have a couple hypothetical maybe-some-day alt ideas that have them all, but they're still shelved. There are also probably more builds that I would take all the powers from both, if it weren't such a slotting nightmare, though.

There already is a non-gun Beam set. It's called Energy Blast.

Because it's not fun to just stand around. There's nothing really strategic about Rage. You play the game for a couple minutes, then alt-tab to do something else until the crash wears off. If it were on a support AT or something where there could actually be some benefit to changing from "offensive" to "defensive" play? Sure. But on ATs where attacking is all they do, it just encourages going afk. It also doesn't help that the reason they pulled the buff was because people just were whining it wasn't OP enough, essentially.

If they're working on melee sets as seems to be hinted, I'm still kinda hoping that they'll try making Rage not suck again (and/or just port the set to Scrappers in a way that doesn't balance the set around a power that kills the fun factor).

For the hero zones, I had to go with Galaxy. Maybe I'm just waxing nostalgic now that it's gone, I dunno. It was the first zone I ever went to (after the tutorial) the first time I played the game. I always liked the aesthetic more than AP. Heck, when the servers were going to go down, it's where I went to take my "last" screen shots of the game. I've just got a lot of sentiment for it; it's got a special place in my heart. Hazard Zones? Striga's such a cool zone in terms of atmosphere and lore. Always kinda reminded me of Madripoor from the old Wolverine comics. A leeeeeetle lacking on the story side (there's definitely some there, but it's still pretty par-for-the-early-game stuff), but in general a neat area, and "this is a rough town, but nobody likes the nazis, so just go ahead and beat the daylights out of 'em" is all you really need to be a hero, I guess. I just re-ran the arcs in it with a character the other day, and despite how many hunts and boats it is, I really felt like I was having fun from start to finish. And for villain zones? I like Port Oakes. Feels kinda like reverse-Striga. Not so many nazis to beat up (well, there's Vendetti's arc, but he's awfully easy to out-level), but just something about the "rough town" atmosphere, prolly for all the Fambly running things and fighting in factions. St. Martial's similar, but it's a little too on the nose with its...flaked gilding, so Port Oakes always had a more fun feel for me.

I mean, yeah, but AFAIK those 0-AoE sets are generally considered rather poor on Stalkers in general. That may just be a matter of correlation and not causation, but the very fact that others exist means DM probably doesn't need to be made into yet another.

Stalkers still have Midnight Grasp in Dark Melee for a big oomphy crit. Taking away the set's only AoE is probably not the ideal solution.

While I'd be all for expanded APP options, I will note that the Patron Pools, like the default APPs, have powers that can be recolored.

Can we first make that animation not bug out when you're in quick mode?

Blueside is the same. Detectives only start filling your "active" list if you haven't picked up a police radio from one of them yet (which Brokers also do if you don't have a newspaper).

The hope that Rage will be replaced by something that will be useful without zeroing out your damage every couple of minutes is the main reason I'd want to see Super Strength on Scrappers in the first place at this point. They already shelved buffing Rage once because people whined the buff wasn't OP enough, let's not demand unrealistic performance here and ruin the chances, too.

The Phantasm disappears when the MI is defeated, however, if the Phantasm summoned a decoy, the Decoy will remain. Probably something messing with pets-of-pets in the spaghetti code (not sure if this happens to players, too). Same thing happens with Longbow Wardens that use Illusion Control (their Spectral Terror also remains, though like player Spectral Terrors, it's untouchable).

You can have my Eviscerate animation when I can have Shin-Tickler look like an attack that would actually one-shot an enemy.

Given they finally fixed No Redraw on Katana in the last "Page" (and the various sets that used one), I'd imagine, they'll next be going back and fixing No Redraw for all the various sets that already have the buggy version. And after that, or maybe even with that, VEATs will be on the table too. But it seems like there wouldn't be much point to do the bugged way that all the non-Katana sets have now, only need to fix it again.

That sounds like something only a villain would say.

I've seen it a few times; I think it might be tied to some sort of low-level ambush mission.

It has never allowed them, though the flytext claimed otherwise. HC corrected that in one of the patches they've done though. That is, they removed the flytext inaccurately claiming it...they didn't add that capacity to slot those sets, as Terrify doesn't have a -ToHit component.