Lazarillo

Well, yes and no. They weren't meant to be so, but their pets were. It didn't work that way, which is why Bodyguard came in, but that was the idea.

My main namesake character is a Time Manipulation/Radiation Blast Defender. I like to point out to teammates that the little blue shield beside my name is to indicate that I'm there to be a tank. Having a melee based debuff aura toggle that floors enemy accuracy, an erectable bubble that ensures all those highly inaccurate, reduced-damage attacks come exceedingly slowly, and up to three PBAoE attacks depending on level, mean I'm pretty good at gathering up a big old gaggle of enemies around me and holding their impotent attention. Doesn't do so well against hard targets (I've debated dropping a concept power or two for a taunt, though), and if I'm not at Incarnate level, I can be taken out by the very, very rare mezzes that actually get through, but other than, I definitely feel more like a Tanker than a Defender.

So I can see where the idea comes from. Very Batman-y, coming out of nowhere and using the advantage of surprise for the psychological effect. In execution it needs a little...something, though. As noted, mixing the Manipulation sets with some Defense set elements would give a mix of control and armor for survivability. But the question is, for an AT that uses Stealth, what's it using Stealth for? Is it just the standard "critical hit on your first attack" that Stalkers and VEATs get? Or am I missing something? If it is, then, meh, we've got that already. This could maybe be where the idea of a passive comes in, like you do an automatic PBAoE Confuse or Terrorize or the like when coming out of Hide. I'd definitely lean heavily into the control with this concept, I think, to make it work best.

I mean, from the sound of things, the code is indeed pretty cryptic. ...I'll just see myself out.

I typically don't mind having to take a travel power separately, to be honest, since they're pretty much all good out of the box, and with inherent Fitness, Enhancement slots are at a much greater premium than power slots anyway. I got no beef with Afterburner either, for the reasons mentioned above, though I'd argue Mystic Flight needs...something. Granting a teleport power sounds nice, but given the combined Endurance costs of flying and then teleporting (and the fact that no Enhancements can benefit the teleport side), it's pretty lacking.

Sorry, y'know it didn't even occur to me, 'cause I used it from back when the servers were closed down before there was a "launcher", but you just launch it directly from the directory CoH is installed in, rather than going "through" Tequila.

Also prolly worth noting that the costume creator for Titan Icon (at least, I never messed around with the "in-cty" part) can be used while offline, so if you're net's down and you just want to screw with the costume creator, you can use it for that.

Then it's not worth it, straight up.

Yeah, I'm aware of what the mission is and how it's needed for the badge, I was more curious if there was anything to explain why it was connected to the lore of the character, I guess.

So I was sorta wondering the other day, 4/5 of the badges required for the Atlas Medallion have an obvious connection to the hero in question: Top Dog is on top of his statue, Pupil is all facts about him, and Slayer and Silver Bullet were (at the time) the two badges for defeating 5th Column, and fighting Nazis was kinda one of Atlas' notable feats. ...but where does Spelunker fit in? Does anyone know if there is any sort of intended Lore connection there, or if it was just thrown in as a different type of activity to do?

Finished tweaking and re-published an old arc I did back in the day. Would love if anyone has any sort of feedback on it, or just wants to enjoy some lowbie villainousness (or Rogueishness? I actually flagged it as Rogue since I could only pick one, and it's somewhat...mercenary, more than evil). It ties to the end of the Hollows arc/Cavern of Transcendence Trial, so you'll probably get more out of it if you're familiar with those, but I tried to make it clear enough without having played them.

It's almost...gratifying that this server is big enough that even the Chinese Gold Farmers are starting to take note. Mostly annoying. But almost gratifying.

What is the uptime on Noxious Gas, anyway? There aren't any numbers for it at all.

In fairness, I'm not sure either of those really violate the cottage rule. Both powers fully retained their original effects, they simply applied them differently; instant healing went from a toggle to a click, but was still about making sure that you, well, healed instantly when you took a hit. Energy Transfer had its animation time increased, but simply went from dealing self damage in order to have the best DPA of any melee attack in the game to...dealing self damage in order to have the best DPA (if less) of any melee attack in the game. Cottage rule means changing the way a power works entirely. Nerfing a power does not violate it.

Then just "a second ranged attack identical to the first one with the same endurance, recharge, and relative damage values as the melee attack"?

I've seen some players who treat it as both. Can't speak to whole SGs, but "I took a time portal to 7 years in the future and...no time passed. What happened to the world that caused it suddenly to blink out and them come back?" seems to be the basis for a lot of bios, at least.

That's the thing. I'm doing that on my Fortunata, too. Fortunata durations for Total Domination are about the same as Dominator base, and Mass Confusion is equivalent to Dominators with Domination up Rarely is the extra mag needed, and for the few it is, just toss a single-target on that one exception. Don't get me wrong, I like Mind Control, conceptually, but I really don't see anything that it can do that a Fortunata can't.

They get the mez protection aspect, and I'm not sure that Domination makes up for better defenses, team buffs, and a freaking nuke. I'm not too sure Mind Control needs a pet either (though I'm not especially fond of pet powers on Dominators in general, so I may be biased). But I feel like it needs something (although...maybe that "something" is "better secondaries"?).

The roughest thing about Mind Control at this point, especially for Dominators, IMO, is that most of its nicest powers are also given to Fortunatas.

Anything still going on with this? I had to miss a few weeks due to travel (and just being kinda burned out at one point), but last couple times I've come to "meet" I haven't seen anyone. Everyone else just get busy too?

My general take is that anything that's "balanced" by me running and getting a refill isn't really balanced anyway. That said, I'm just as happy with them not doing anything to make most of the t9s in defense sets remotely desirable to my playstyle. Just frees up a power pick.

Thanks. I'll just stick to Batzul for now, then. It's pretty close, if not perfect (it also doesn't seem to respect "put this in the front/back!" settings for certain objectives, and it still feels better than the generic cave I used before.

I had an arc back in the day based around a sort of epilogue/villainous complement to the Hollows stuff heroside, and I found the file and wanted to put it back up. However, I've noticed that several maps have been added since the days I originally made the arc and have been twinking it. If I can get the actual Cavern of Transcendence map, that'd be awesome! ...but I can't find it on the list. Just in case, though, does anyone know if it's available, and if so, what it's under? (I'll prolly use the Bat'zul map as a backup, since they're similar, but I'd really like to use the CoT).

The problem with minimum-1 trials is that it makes it so individual players can't use the LFG system to, well, LFG.

Yeah, that's all pretty reasonable. I'll just keep holding out hope that a good compromise is found (or that I can think of I can recommend to you to be summarily denied? 😜 )