Lazarillo

Just remember, planning to test a buff doesn't mean they'll actually do a buff. Consider Rage. They buffed it, but it wasn't OP enough for people, so it got pulled. Expect similar to happen to EM when the "buffs" don't involve using the old 1-second ET animation while also doubling the damage on it. Honestly, ET's current animation doesn't look like a "transfer" at all to me, though. More like a "Total Focus". The idea of "Energy Transfer" looking deceptively subtle for its extreme power sorta fits, to me.

I don't get this one.

The problem with Unstoppable (and t9s in general) is typically in the balancing. One With the Shield and Strength of Will, for example, mitigate the crash, but I always end up dropping them because I barely even notice them during their (relatively short) uptimes anyway. So putting Unstoppable on par with those still makes it an easy skip, I feel like (and I agree, that nothing in a primary or secondary should feel like that...although from what I understand, that is not the HC powers philosophy in general at the moment, so folks like us may be outta luck anyway). I think something more along the lines to Moment of Glory is closer to the theme of an "emergency button". Maybe changing Unstoppable to be something like an entire health bar's worth of +Absorb? Sort of like a "pre-loaded" self-rez. It'd probably need a pretty extreme recharge, or fixed recharge, though (I'm not especially fond of the latter, either, but most seem to tolerate it).

This is a biggie. Part of the reason I dropped Spinning Kick when HC nerfed it was because it was already pretty sketchy when it came to targeting, especially when it came to vertical differences. If the cone ain't huge (which Spinning Kick is very much not) you'll likely hit nothing but air, with the "facing cone" powers.

Not true. Cottage Rule just means not taking away functionality that exists within a power and replacing it with a different functionality. You can add new functions to a power that work on top of the originals, though. Look at certain Blaster sustains like Touch of the Beyond and Force of Thunder. Originally, they were a single target Terrorize and an AoE Stun/Knockback. Now they are a single target Terrorize and an AoE Stun/Knockback that also buff the user's Regen. You could do similar things with Force Field to maintain all its original purposes while adding thematically-appropriate sorts of expansions to the powers. Maybe something like taking Force Bolt and saying "the recoil from knocking back the target fills the area around you with energy, increasing your damage and that of nearby allies for a short time". Or by adding some +Absorb to the team buff shields on top of the Defense they already provide.

I hope I can speak for others on Everlasting when I say "most of us'll miss ya". Hope Excelsior's a better experience for you, though.

As others have noted, it wasn't going to be a "full time" shift, or at least, not as far as it had been previously plotted out. And IIRC, the trend in the game's story (which was, similarly IIRC, more or less confirmed by the story staff) is that "evil Statesman" was the default. The Marcus Cole of Primal Earth was actually the exception all along, as "dude with a rather self-righteous view of justice" + "empowered by the literal incarnation of leadership through overwhelming power" = "we're gonna conquer the world and do things my way", 99% of the time. So in a way, the "mirror" Marcus Cole is the one that died.

I like this idea a lot as well, it's even a nice sort of balance to Warshades, whose powers tend to have a "gravity" theme, the idea that PBs would, to the counter of that, make enemies "float" is kinda neat.

"Return" is probably not the right word. I'd like to see his removal undone. It didn't really add much to the setting except confusion over continuity, and it took out some of the more "epic" moments of the game. I suspect that even as HC moves to slowly-but-surely add new story content to the game (like they already did with some of the new arcs) we won't see won't see any real advancement of "canon", as, even assuming NCSoft negotiates in good faith (I still have my doubts), they'll want to hold on to the characters that are considered their "intellectual property". So the idea of moving the "canon" forward from the rather messy state it was in as of i24 is not going to be fixable. Better, then, to revert it just a touch, IMO.

The whole of the Kheldian war stuff is one of the cooler parts of the CoH setting, IMO, so I've been wanting to get back in and play a PB for a while now, but it's kinda hard to get into 'em. Dwarf and Light Form feel too...redundant with each other, especially when Dwarf, especially, requires a lot of mutually exclusive slots to make work. And then, of course, there's the knockback-scatter effect on some of the AoE attacks, and having to cope with that by using an extra enhancement slot. That's not necessarily a PB-restricted issue, but the fact that the AT is so starved for slots does make it even trickier to manage. Oh, and while I get why the animation was changed on Solar Flare back in the day, honestly, I really wish it were still an option to use the old one. Any chance of getting it back in the Dwarf version, or maybe even when using the human-form version when not flying (sorta like Air Superiority and other attacks with the same animation play slightly differently when flying versus when on the ground)?

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.