Lazarillo

I've had a few ideas for characters that were "leader" types who could still hold their own, so for me, it wouldn't so much be what "sets", as much as some sort of melee/summon hybrid AT. Possibly with doppelgangers. But that would just be reaching (then again, isn't that what this topic is for, I guess?). Also, I love Martial Assault, but have had a hard time coming up with a good Dominator pairing for it, so translating some of the powers to a full-ranged "throwing weapons" set would be a nice alternative step in the first direction. Oh, yes, yesplzkthx.

Or just make it, maybe, so that only the league leader receives the temp powers (similar, if possible, maybe to how it works when defeating Hammy in the LGTF)? I feel like that would potentially incite less drama.

Well, if it's a self-challenge like many people here are suggesting, I'd imagine, "however you want". I remember there was an SG back in the old days (mighta been the "Iron Eagles" one mentioned above, but I don't know), where the rule was just "no teleports" (I believe they RP'd it, even, as, like, a religious thing). So rezzes of both the self and teammate variety were okay, as were Awakens, etc. Or even lying around a zone hoping somebody nice would give you an inspiration (though you couldn't ask...you were knocked out, after all!). I think they had a time limit, though, where you'd be considered "dead" if you hadn't been aided.

It isn't? It was back in the day. They won't acknowledge your background in it (prepare for Katie Douglas to hate you, Wardens), but you could go straight into it. I did it on a couple of alts.

That'd require whole new models programmed. Sure we have dogs and cats, but do you think the resources are there to program a lamb that could lie down on Broadway?

I am playing around with the new travel power and it's pretty neat, IMO. The immobilize on Jaunt actually seems to be a little shorter than on other teleports, and I dig that. In general, the animations seem pretty neat. One thing that's small, but kinda, like, let's nip it in the bud now: Please make it possible to disable the Jaunt bar by talking to Null the Gull. Or however it needs to be done. That got overlooked with Force of Will and never "fixed", so it'd be nice if we can see it already in place by the time the patch is "ready".

The animation for Defibrillate makes makes me laugh, in a good way. On the other hand, I'm not much for the do-the-whammy animation on Empowering Circuit. Any chance of it getting an secondary animation?

Is this supposed to be in the character creator, too, or in-game only? 'cause I just did a quick check on Savage Leap/Feral Leap, and they both still just show "Specialdamage"

On Homecoming, I've noticed if I get an Illusionist in a Hold/Disorient/Sleep, they will stay that way (and un-phased) at least for the duration of the mez effect. I remember that not being the case on the old servers, and that they could phase even if in a Hold at one point, but I am not sure if that was something which changed in the later days of the original servers, or changed by something the HC or SCoRE team did.

Generally, we want more to sink Influence, not create it. Using Converters as a secondary step to, well, convert Merits into Influence keeps inflation manageable. And inflation has happened since HC launched, though right now, we're still at this weird tipping point, where a few things are almost supplanting converters as the thing to sell. It'll be interesting to see if the scales really do tip, and what that might cause, or if we're effectively "capped" in a sort of Converter-based stasis.

Actually, I'm pretty sure this isn't a thing. I totally remember it being a thing, so it mighta been a Homecoming change, though. They'll still do their little drainy scream thing when they die, though (although I've never, on any alt, really every "noticed" an abnormally large hit to my end from those like some claim. Maybe I just suck at managing it?).

I don't think I really do this consciously, but this topic made me look over my stable, and when did, I realized, there is an oft-recurring theme of...I guess you could of control? It doesn't apply to all of them, but a lot of my heroes in-character don't understand where their powers come from, or how they work, or in some cases, have the whole "they work just as much to keep their powers in check so they don't hurt people" thing going on. Several of my villains are the sorts that sorta "gave in" to the corruption of their own powers, as well. Probably a good 30% of the characters I've built and kept on Homecoming fall under that motif. Weird how you don't see things, sometimes, until you look for them.

Ricochet's got some good ones, too, don't get me wrong, but she's kind of...overwhelming with it, and that dampens the impact a bit, at least to me. It's not like minding your own business and suddenly go from zero slams to two!

I read the whole thing, but it was all still founded on that mistaken premise, so the intent was to keep things brief. In practice, nothing ends up mattering about these defensive powers being popped except the defensive aspects, and those defensive aspects don't do anything meaningful to increase the challenge, only the time spent, and sitting around waiting is even more boring than "facerolling".

The problem with that supposed damage is that buffing a tiny number is still a tiny number, whereas the Defense buffs are additive. So only the survivability increases. Similarly (albeit for slightly different reasons) with things like Power-Protectors...if they were enough of a threat, then they're just as likely to kill you before they pop their Two Minutes of Glory. Extending the time they pose a threat isn't typically much of a thing because if they didn't kill ya up front, you're probably just running back from the hospital anyway.

The best Resistance-speak in the game has gotta come from the one Maria Jenkins' mission to go bust the Primal Scanner that they stole: "Hey! Finders keepers, scamper! Now you're getting two pounds of slambang for sneakin'! That's right. TWO pounds. Went from zero to - boooom! - TWO!" I don't know why but that always makes me laugh.

I think the problem is the "you can increase encounter time but not increase difficulty" part, 'cause that's essentially what happens with Nemesis soldiers. You end up with one or two guys who have so much stacked Vengeance that you can't hit them, but their own damage and ability to hamper you is so poor, you might as well just go fight the next set of enemies and ignore them completely. Or if you're on a defeat all, just alt-tab for a couple minutes. When the best solution to an in-game problem is not tread carefully, but rather to just stop playing the game, well, that's just not very inspiring. Nemesis aren't the only ones who have this problem, for what it's worth, either. Power-pattern Paragon Protectors having two minutes of "ignore them, it's MoG", Arachnos Tarantula Mistresses having an undodgeable, unremovable "you cannot see anything for 1 minute" debuff (the other half of which is a massive defense hit that is more in line with what they should be able to do), or even, coming back to Nemesis, the tendency of the fakes to just sit there with their "can't attack, can't be attacked" shield. What's the point? It's not adding challenge if you're doing nothing for a minute, then just instantly getting what you'd have had one minute ago if not for the shield the moment it expires.

HC has already "broadened" the Kheldian lore a bit anyway by expanding the origins that can be used with them (same with VEATs, granted). And honestly, it always seemed kinda weird that Kheldians were missing from Praetoria when they'd been around in Primal Earth for hundreds if not thousands of years. Did Cole just tell 'em all to bugger off when he took over?

Incarnates are weird little conundrum. You don't want to trivialize content, but at the same time, it should feel like a danged good return on investment and we shouldn't be seeing everyone and their brother getting "the power of the gods", or what have you. I don't think anything that's currently part of the system should be removed, but I definitely don't think it should be expanded without a very, very, very clear plan of how it's going to be applied and what will be the content it's designed for. The only category I could maybe dig some expansion of is Lore, but that's already pretty...varied. It might be interesting to add a "No Incarnate Powers" limitation to Ouroboros/Task Forces, and make the various "Master of..." badges require that box be checked, too. Of course, I say that as someone who doesn't do the classic "Master of..." badges on principle anyway and thinks those should all be overhauled, so my take probably doesn't count for much. As for which slots I like, I tend to prefer things that always benefit me. So Alpha, of course, is the nicest, Destiny can be if/when I can get the right high tier stuff, and Interface and Hybrid are both just things I see as small passive buffs (I do toggle my Hybrids on fairly regularly, but honestly, I can't tell the difference when I use them most of the time). Judgment is fun, but mostly just a gimmick due to the extra-long Recharge, and Lore, well, it's highly specialized but again, too limited to be something I really think about when I'm tweaking my characters. Plus, my OCD/anal retentiveness dislikes only being able to summon generic minions, but they have to be two different ones.

People talk about hard versus easy, but frankly, I don't think the Vengeance stacking makes things any harder...just more of a time sink. I actually do think it should be removed, but as part of a greater overhaul to make the Nemesis faction harder overall, because on the whole, even if the defense buffs make them take forever to beat, they're actually too damn easy, and too damn simple. Limit Vengeance to a single stack (or make it only effect the mob the LT spawns in, kinda like Rikti buffs), but give the LTs a wider variety of Leadership buffs in the first place. Give them "steam gunners" that can use Water Blast powers from their weapons (or if that's too hard, use the normal animations but say they've got steam projectors strapped to their wrists, maybe?). Make Warhulks not just explode but leave behind a massive Burn patch. Include some Traps, and some Trick Arrows... Nemesis is such a cool villain, but yeah, let's make his army feel like an actual army to fight, not a bunch of helpless mooks who can't hurt you while you leave your seat to go refill your drink.

I wonder about that, actually. I see so many bios demons out to destroy the world, and such, hanging out in Atlas Park...

Here's the thing: I'll do Synapse, because it's a decent low-level romp, even if it's a bit tedious, and the Accolade reward is nice. I'll even do Dr. Q, because at least the Shard is an intriguing setting. I did Barracuda once, for the badge, and I feel dirty enough just for doing that. I'm never doing it again. It's just freaking awful. I'm not fond of Kahn either; Mary Sue Bison is a terrible villain, and his "return" to the game was awful any way it got sliced (thank goodness for Max, even if it never got followed up on, not to mention being something a lot of players might miss), but Barracuda also has the terrible final mission that throws the whole "play what way you like" premise that every single other mission and TF in the game is founded on, and on top of that, has the horrible "we're going to cave and come up with why you're now an Arbiter even though it makes no sense" plot element added on. Crap mission with a crap story. Easily the bottom of the barrel.

Let us drown our sorrows in the satisfaction of our altoholism! I believe at least at first, there was a damage component, 'cause I recall (though it's been a long time, granted), that MMs were having trouble getting rewards in the early days of the Incarnate Trial grind. I also recall it was changed based on the initial troubles but after (and before) that they didn't explain what the requirements themselves were, presumably to keep people from creating liabilities by trying to raise their participation numbers. I wonder if anyone's try testing it out and just afk-ed through Trials on the current servers to see what would happen. Yeah, I was aware of the trial merit limits. It's the weird imbalance in drops that I keep running into at Hammy raids that's making me wonder. Again, could be just really weird luck, though. Good to know. Not that I'm inclined to leech anyway, but it's nice to have a full picture.

Just curious on some things, one about some old stuff I recall, another about stuff I'm presently noticing. First, I recall back in the day, there were "participation" mechanics/thresholds on Incarnate trials, that would weigh (but not guarantee) getting certain tiers of salvage tables at the end. Not completely unjustifiably, the old devs were a little mum on the nature of what these mechanics were and how much they played into things. Given that (a)HC has made some changes regarding reward tables and where they appear anyway, and (b)the code is presumably, a little less closely guarded these days, I'm just curious if there are any more specifics now regarding these mechanics, or whether they're even still in play. And if they are, where exactly do they apply. If I'm soloing a Dark Astoria arc, for example, one would think I should weight pretty highly on the "participation" requirements, but they may not even be in place. Second, is there a limit on the amount of dropped rewards that can be obtained within a certain time period. Particularly, is there some mechanic to limit the number of Incarnate Shards? Comparatively, I know that Enhancement Catalysts only drop once per character per day. I've also observed on Hamidon raids that the Mitochondria seem to have a very high chance of dropping Shards, and I can easily end up getting 5-6 in a single raid...during the first half of the "double header" runs that are frequently done. An immediate jump back in the jello results in maybe 1-2 Incarnate Shards, if any at all. To that end, I'm kinda wondering if getting a certain number within a certain period time puts the rewards into some sort of cooldown mode. It could be just a matter of bizarre luck, but I've seen it happening repeatedly, so I've started to get pretty suspicious. If there is a limit, what is it? Is it also per day? Per hour? Do the chances drop all the way to 0, or simply reduce significantly?

Ironically, there's a patch on the beta server to remove the incorrect text as of today.