Lazarillo

It's usually not sounds for me as much as visuals. There are a lot of powersets, mostly with regards to Melee set options (though not entirely limited to them), where I feel like there's just one power that's really very important to the set as a whole, but has an animation I really hate (for example, Shin Breaker in Street Justice, Concentrated Strike in Kinetic Melee, Follow Up in Claws), or in some cases, which goes the opposite way with a somewhat weak power compared to the rest of the set but has an animation I really want to have in my repertoire (Thunder Kick in MA, Slash in Broadsword), and I cannot reconcile my ability to play a "strong" character with my dislike of the animation, to the point I can't enjoy playing the set at all, unfortunately for me. This is probably good for my altitis, but bad for my ability to enjoy almost any of my melee characters since the restart (despite being pretty melee-inclined back in the day).

To some degree, inflation is going to be a thing. It's just the nature of the game when Influence is so much easier to earn than anything else. HC has done a pretty good job keeping major upticks nipped in the bud, I feel like, with the various little tweaks they've made to how the market works, but all in all, the longer things go on, the more the cost of certain things is gonna slowly keep creeping upwards.

I feel teased. Does anyone else feel teased?

So since the latest patch changed Snipes, the VFX on Proton Volley has been a little off when the mid-combat version is used. The particle stream uses the customized colors but "balls" in that make up the main visual effect for the attack use the default coloring, even when the power as a whole is re-colored. The out of combat slow version still recolors them properly. See the included picture for what it looks like now (my Proton Volley being customized to red/blue).

As is Penetrating Ray, though not every time. Near as I can tell, every power that has a %Chance to spread Disintegration currently has that %Chance to cause it in the first place.

Much obliged. Couldn't remember if anyone other than Seers were "drafted".

Correct. You still start by using the LFG tab, it's just you already have your league ready to go. I don't know how things go on Reunion, but pre-planning seems to attract lots of people on Everlasting. "Tomorrow at [X] PM, GMT, I'm gonna hold a DD iTrial" gives people time to be ready for it. ...also, if you're not actually interested in Trial-ing just trying to clear Dream Doctor's mission, be aware there's always auto-complete, too (not saying you have to do that, but since you mentioned the mission, just something to keep in mind).

So for any/all lorehounds who still remember, I'm curious if anyone knows (or if it was ever discussed): how does Praetoria treat mutants with noncombat powers? Do they still have to enter Powers Division? Do they still work it, but get "desk jobs" (like the one Primal Contact who's a member of GIFT and his only power is "he sees more colors than normal people")? Or is it just one of those "it never comes up" things?

Well, besides actually Nemesis. Life is good as a tankermind, really. I can handle most sizes of spawns, which is a good thing, because the one constant thorn in my side is "that one enemy who runs two mobs down and then opens fire while I'm still clearing out the group where I'm at". And of course, it tends to chain. Doing RWZ missions and I think I managed to aggro the whole map in Levantera's second real mission, thanks to Sefu and Dietrich also getting in on the "fun". I'm thinking Spectral Interface for the immobilize spam once I hit 50?

Really kind of interesting that if you pull out all the Spines/Fire farmers, that particular secondary on Brutes still ends up being the second most popular, but Spines drops to being the second least popular.

Something to hope for I guess, while in the meantime I figure out if I can work in the rather delightful changes on my Fire/Earth.

Still unsatisfied with "Martial" Assault getting the "Martial" part made even weaker than it already was, but the other stuff remains nice looking.

So, yeah, I want to make a Spines/ stalker and I want to make a Psi/ Stalker, but I can't decide to pair with either one. Other than "I don't want to use the same one twice" and I'm not really "into" the idea of Shield or SR, though, I'm can't really decide. Does either one have any notable synergies with any of the defensive sets (or vice-versa)?

In a word: Hemorrhage. I ran some pylon test-y stuff a couple months back and for reference: Hemorrhage does lots of different things based on how much Blood Frenzy you've got and whether it lands a Hidden/Critical hit, so I tried it a few different ways. The other "interesting" thing about Hemorrhage is that always does the same upfront damage and then appears to always register a Critical hit for the additional Frenzy-based damage (whether you have any to contribute to it or not). It then deals 2 simultaneous DoTs, both of which scale up with additional stacks of Blood Frenzy. If you do land a Critical Hit (or a Hidden one) the actual critical damage on the initial hit is lumped in with the faux-critical damage, but there's secret additional critical damage in the form of a third DoT that, like the other two, scales up. It can get pretty wild! Here's how the numbers came out: Non-Hidden, No Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 33.75 "critical" portion, 244.5 damage over time. Non-Hidden, Max Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 40.62 "critical" portion, 399.1 damage over time. Hidden, No Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 80.11 "critical" portion, 667.56 damage over time. Hidden, Max Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 80.11 "critical" portion, 996.89 damage over time. And for fun, I added a Build-Up to that last one: 134.21 base portion, 134.21 "critical" portion, 1401.88 damage over time. So, yeah, Hemorrhage is happy time. It actually is better than AS from Hide, which really helps the fast-and-furious approach of the set. That said, avoid Savage Leap on a stalker. From the same playing around, I got up to 174-ish damage at best range, but from too far away, it appears it bugs out and does no damage, so it's a gamble, but on top of that, it breaks Hide, and has a 0% chance to deal Critical damage even when Hidden. And point-blank it only does around 105, so it's not suited to Stalking. If you want to leap in, grab Spring Attack instead.

The one I've heard rumors on the wind of sounds like the opposite. It's for not leaving Praetoria (at least, not when it's first available). But that's the funny thing about rumors and fast-scrolling Help channels. Sometimes wires get crossed.

Just curious when it comes to hunting badges, I've heard tell that there are a couple badges that can only be obtained by characters who start Praetorian as they require not picking a hero/villain side until higher levels. Can anyone confirm whether this is the case? And, similarly, are there any that are specific to starting as Primal? Or if I want to make a "true" badging alt, is Praetorian simply the way to go? Oh yeah, one other thing, sort of an off-shoot, are any other badges permanently missable at this point? Or does the existence of Ouroboros, plus various other HC tweaks, allow for going back and obtaining and/or re-trying everything (except for maybe the one mentioned in this thread that I've heard of) at this point?

I'm a little curious on this one. As I recall it (granted, it's been 7 years), Spinning Kick getting extra damage despite cone status was due to it being a "facing" cone, rather than a targeted one, and, for that, working differently from essentially every other cone in the game. This is also the reason the target cap was much higher. And in its current form, the jankiness of its aim (pretty much always missing anything that's at an incline to your character, particularly), and the fact that unlike other melee attacks, it can't be used on-the-move, it feels like it needs...something. Martial in general is already disappointingly weak in melee, IMO, especially given it's named after a melee set! If it's gotta be one or the other, in Spinning Kick's case, keep the damage, and just turn it into a pure tier-2 ST attack, perhaps?

Ah, yeah, I'd suspect there's not a lot of overlap there, though I've misunderstood the thought processes of my "peers" in the gaming world before, too. I'd suspect CoH is going to be a weird little blip when compared to most other games going forward anyway, due to the whole part where it's financed via donation/truly "free".

Since this is kinda lacking in context it's hard to say. First and foremost, how can a game that's not even out yet be a "classic"?

I suspect it's because it's a slang term for a portion of the female anatomy. A weird choice to be certain, but probably the cause. Though this reminds me that back in the day there was a certain enemy you couldn't actually say in chat because it had a rarely-used racial slur in the middle of it. I cannot for the life of me recall which enemy it was, though I do recall a lot of people had never even heard it used.

Usually 2 or 3. I tend to keep towards the back, plus I've found that some maps have debris that causes...issues with clipping/getting stuck on the 1/2 side.

That's fabulous, thanks guys.

So as I understand it, Eagle's Claw has a "secret" effect of increasing the user's critical hit rate by some unspecified amount for some unspecified amount of time (given the Tank equivalent raises damage for the duration of about 1 attack, I'd assume the Scrapper crit buff is the same). The Scrapper ATO Critical Strikes proc also boosts chances of a Critical Hit by 50% for also an unspecified amount of time. I'm curious, though, how the two effects interact, if at all. Would this mean it's a waste to stick a Critical Strikes proc into Eagle's Claw, for example? Or that you'd see something like a guaranteed critical instead? Assuming it's the latter, I'd imagine launching an Eagle's Claw and then following up with a Dragon's Tail (or against a big target, Crippling Axe Kick) is where the good money is. If it's the former, I'm kinda stumped. I suspect Eagle's Claw might still be worth taking, but tips for slotting it (and for MA in general, especially with regards to the ATOs) and using it would be appreciated.

I'd imagine so, but I don't know enough about how this works to actually do it. Perhaps someone enterprising can use this as a first step, however!

I'm not sure. Seems slightly smaller than the radius on Inferno, so my best guess would be 20 feet.