Lazarillo

I was running the Ubelmann the Unknown arc on one of my alts over the last couple of days, and it wasn't quite what I expected! It's now (back to) having the 5th Column as the enemy group, rather than the Council, and Ubelmann himself is an Elite Boss. Was this something the original dev team did after the 5th was brought back to the game (it's been a long time since I did that arc), or was it added in by the HC team to add some variety to some of the older contacts? And if the latter, are there any more old arcs that have been tweaked like that? Just curious.

Thanks. Bummer, but thanks. I was thinking of actually trying it on this new character for the variety, but if that's the case, I guess I'll put it off again.

Curious on this one, too, how does the "Core" side of the Control Hybrid interact with Terrorize? And does it work with pets? With an Illusion controller, those are kinda bread and butter, and whatnot.

Martial Assault's Explosive Shuriken a Single Target attack with a bit of splash damage (like Electric's Thunderstrike). So it wouldn't work as a nuke. At least personally, too, I'd hate to see the gimmick dropped, so yeah, my take on it would just be to have it be a t8. An unarmed Typhoon's Edge could work okay as a nuke animation, though, too. I'd take either, at this point!

Fair point. Because of the stance initial post, I was thinking more of leeching than griefing (since a zone cap makes leeching self-defeating, ultimately). Then again, I don't see many griefers, either. Maybe I'm just lucky and/or about to jinx Everlasting's raids. But from that perspective, I can see how an instance does make a touch more sense.

I mean, would it make a difference? You have 50 people in the Hive or you have 50 people in the LFG/instance. Either way, if someone's dual-boxing, you have someone else not getting in. It makes more sense to have an instanced MSR (though on my main server of Everlasting, it doesn't get used anyway) because the zone is used for other things. But the Hive/Abyss are basically a Hami instance in and of themselves anyway.

I had a similar idea for a "throwing weapons" set, only my thought (which granted, would be slightly less viable) would be to move up the Martial Assault version of Exploding Shuriken and have a more "proper" nuke that would be something like a rain-of-shuriken power. Using the animation for Bullet Rain from Dual Pistols (only without weapons in hand) could probably pull off the idea of throwing a bunch of stuff into the air, but there would, admittedly, still need to be some sort of visual for them landing/raining. That said, while I'd like a nuke of some sort, I'd take what I can get for a set that lets me play a "natural" Blaster/Sentinel without the redraw limitations on animations.

So I was part of a discussion on this in-game last night, and I just thought putting it into a more public forum could be fun, but it's notable that all the various "Lore" powers use generic-type enemies that nonetheless only show up one at a time when summoned. Which leads to a potentially interesting alternative: what about Lore sets using named NPCs? Maybe, like, one for each faction, or something? A "Hero" Ally tree with Faultline, Fusionette, and Penny Yin, maybe, (or Dillo!) or a villain one with Maelstrom, or Dr. Graves, etc. Maybe one for Vigilantes, one for Rogues, too? I feel like it'd be more fun than generic minion A and generic minion B.

I had no problems at all for the last week or so, but today, the spats started up again. 4 over the course of about half an hour, after which I left the house, came back in the afternoon, and had no issues until maybe half an hour ago during which I've got the boot 5 more times. I tried swapping my connection during the morning spat, using a hot spot instead of my home network and the boots still happened, so it's hard to imagine it's a problem with my ISP. EDIT: So upon further playing around, I tried the VPN solution that I saw mentioned in this topic and elsewhere...and it appeared to work. It honestly kinda surprised me since swapping ISPs didn't, but, whelp. Not sure if this is because there are spikes on my end but the VPN stays connected, or something. I rust runnro, Raggy. Heck, it could be coincidence, but I did 2 runs of nearly an hour each with no issues until I disconnected from the VPN and re-logged, at which point I was dropping in just a couple minutes each time again. VPN isn't a great solution for me since I have limited bandwidth; it's more than enough to play CoH alone, assume I plan to play less than 15 hours per day, but obviously, multi-tasking would cut into that (and I often work on stuff in the background). But at least until more information can be determined/a fix can be made, it might be the only route available.

Isn't it? Last I checked, all the Blaster secondary powers that ticked an Absorb effect put the little "+50" (or whatever number) above your head every time it ticked. The self +Regen powers don't (since they don't produce specific ticks of such), and I believe when I checked, Cauterizing Aura (which ticks a heal, rather than an absorb) actually didn't if you were at full health, but the Absorb ones do.

Does this also mean not always having a little number ticking over my head every couple seconds? 'cause I'd be all over that.

I mean, I doubt Tankers are getting the majority of their damage from their primary either.

They really don't. And I say that as someone who spends a lot of time playing a Widow...there's already very few things that they don't do extremely well, I don't need even more excuses to feel like "might as well be playing my Fortunata instead" when I jump onto other characters.

There isn't a defense set in the game that provides enough Toxic resistance for such a dream to be viable.

It's funny that Eviscerate has never bothered me much, but this is how I feel about a ton of other sets. There's, like, a "this just kills the set" animation for me in the form of one notable power from pretty much every set. Animation option increases all around, please.

Yeah, the victory lap just doesn't really feel like one anymore (and I'm not sure, in practice, it ever did, since I don't think Jack Emmert's vision of everyone street sweeping ever really took off). Either way, I'd say the TF needs a pretty good overhaul anyway just because the story's...not good. Numina: "A hero has gone missing!" TF: "We found him!" Numina: "No, actually, he was missing too, but it's somebody else." TF: "Well Crey kidnapped this other hero, but they killed him a long time ago." Numina: "Well then clearly that hero isn't missing, he's dead. Go check with Nemesis" TF: "Nope, Nemesis also killed a hero, but didn't kidnap anybody." Numina: "Fuck it, just beat up everybody until someone admits to kidnapping someone." TF: "Well, we beat up every villain group that exists below 40, even the ones we already knew didn't kidnap anybody, but there was still nobody kidnapped, just the Devouring Earth also killed a hero." Numina: "But when that hero died he became a ghost and I know where the ghost is now meaning he's not missing, so close enough. Hey, wanna do the Eden Trial?"

This is about where I stand, though the mapserver's been pretty problematic for me in that regard as of late. I wouldn't mind a "bonus" that includes no more damage crash on Rage, after that nasty tease on the test servers, though. I was really looking forward to that...

There really seems to be something weird going on here. I don't know but I am starting to suspect it might somehow be tied to the overall load on the game, as I can typically play during the daytime without issue, but during peak hours, I'm getting mapserved every couple of minutes. This isn't an issue with my connection because nothing is interrupted. I've tried changing servers, or even swapping from the "live" servers to Pineapple just to see, but it's happening all the same.

Just imagine how cold she must be in that thing, and that should limit any feelings of jealousy.

I see people talk about proliferating Illusion to Dominators, but I always thought it'd work pretty great as an MM primary. The set would do a little higher damage than normal, and all the pets would have at least one attack with a chance to Confuse mixed in, balanced by being Psi damage, and partial "illusion" damage that healed back. t1: Spectral Wounds - Low damage attack. More or less same as the controller version. t2: Phantom Army - They'd have to be changed to take damage. Like the original decoys, they might use random animations but be functionally the same. Mostly melee with a default ranged attack for just in case (a la Ninjas) t3: Blind - Mid damage attack. Swap the Hold to a Sleep or a Stun, lest it be a little too strong, though, I suspect. t4: Typical first upgrade t5: Flash - PBAoE, like with Blind, change the Hold to a Sleep or Stun, add a small amount of damage to give it parity with other MM sets. t6: Phantasm - For bit of a "special" mechanic here, the second Phantasm would still be an invincible decoy, but its "life" would be tied to the first Phantasm. Ranged focus. t7: Group Invisibility - Long duration click power that Hides and grants defense to the MM and all pets. Pets attacking from Hidden status would do no extra damage, but their first hits would be able to apply a low magnitude Confuse. t8: Spectral Terror - Same general look, but is mobile and can fly around now, and has both damage and controlling powers. Ranged focus. t9: Typical second upgrade

If that's the case, then shouldn't buffing their damage also be a non-issue, though? You're not considering Bruising when you're teaming with a tank anyway, so I assume you're not considering the amount of damage they bring to the table (or not) in the first place? I mean, the game's generally in a "balanced" enough position that, indeed, you don't need to, but that aside...

But are you looking at your damage, or your team's? Because again, that's what Bruising is for, as much as anything else. I agree the lack of stacking means that the change means you have less diminishing returns on a team by having multiple tanks, but I don't see how saying "eh, screw it, just ignore the bad powers" is a better fix than, well, fixing the "bad" powers.

I don't see it. It adds to an entire team's damage, and gives a reason to use the t1 attacks, rather than just taking-then-ignoring them, or passing them over completely (then again, I'm firmly in the camp of the devs back in the day, who took the approach of "no primary/secondary power should be considered an easy skip").

It's fabbo. Can I have a minimal FX version though, please?

I suddenly started having these issues constantly today, myself (and not any sort of similar disruptions in any other net traffic), and "turn it off and on again" is often my goto solution. Unfortunately, I was back on again for about 5 minutes before another one just kinda "bam!" outta the blue. This does seem a little weird, as it's not like the issues that normally arise when I'm having connection problems, but I can't figure out the pattern to them, either.