Lazarillo

I initially wasn't interested, but after how potent it's made me feel when teammates have it, I'm thinking about giving it a try. Torn between Earth/Marine Controller (coral crystal theme) or Demons/Marine MM (Lovecraftian horror).

I mean, I'm not sure how anything other than making a Technology-origin hero with red and yellow power armor could be called an Iron Man challenge. And my Poison example was more a barb about the idea that permadeath really makes sense from any sense from a Watsonian perspective in the first place. It comes back to the main point of "it's literally just something you do only for yourself, so you can make it be whatever rules you want". and how it at least seems more engaging if you're actually turning it into something that fits within the game world.

Well an "iron man" is whatever you decide to make it be, so you can decide what counts. Not that I'd ever find it remotely compelling to actually do either way, but IMO, the best take on it that I recall was a pretty large group back in the game's original lifetime that played it with an in-game justification, as something like "objections to mediporters since there's no way to prove that they aren't just killing you and replacing you with a clone". In that regard, someone giving you a wakie seems fair, or even beyond that, kinda rude to suggest that a friend Poison user can't reanimate you with their Elixir of Life.

See, that thought is also what I'm thinking, and maybe I'm reading something incorrectly, but when I look at the in-game numbers, the t1 has a DPA of 97.87 at level 50, and the t2 has 82.05, the opposite of what you suggested. Piercing Beam, meanwhile, only has 56.97, so it's a pretty sizable cut in exchange for the Resistance debuff, it seems like. (And Penetrating Ray, meanwhile, which you mentioned, isn't in the Sentinel version of the set: they get Refractor Beam which is a "chain"-type small AoE instead). Hence why I was wondering whether the Resist debuff was worth the much longer windup time.

I couldn't care less about defensive debuffs. +Nothing mitigates the "my attacks do no damage." effect.

Rage crash on anything sucks.

Despite my initial misgivings I've been so impressed by Marine from teammates while playing that I think I may have to give the set a try myself. Right now trying to decide between an Earth/Marine Controller, or a Demons/Marine Mastermind. Both have their appeal points (figure the former would probably do better with a team, the latter being more solo-friendly).

Off the top of my head, things I remember seeing/being a part of. Some of these may have been during the game's original lifetime before HC made it much easier to get decked out endgame characters that could turn the tables pretty heftily: I've definitely seen unprepared teams get messed up by Jack-in-Irons Terrorize effect and be unable to beat him, though I don't recall if it wiped the team or not. I've seen at least a couple teams wipe to Deathsurge spamming its Lightning Rod equivalent and its Endurance drains. I've seen teams unable to bring down Ghost of Scrapyard. I don't think they actually wiped to him though, just couldn't beat him. I've seen many, many, many teams wipe to Lusca. There was a time (this musta been in the beforetimes, just due to how spawning worked) when the Paladin-pit in Kings Row was an "okay, we're gonna basically wave attack these guys and wipe over and and over again until we can get them clear, so that the zone will start spawning construction for the badge again"-type of situation.

Or better yet, missions where one of the "guards" has an always-on damage aura that kills the NPC you're supposed to rescue. Sometimes in missions where there's not even a failure state and you just have to reset and run to the end and hope you can do something about it.

Yeah, that's about in-line with my expectations for late in the build. Kinda related to the 2nd question was the idea that I could work Disintegrate into the chain, but if it just "refreshes" a single DoT it'd be less useful than that. I'm like you: I usually expect DoTs to stack. It's just that this one seems like it might be a little different, and I can think of one (well, technically, a few, but all from the same source) example, which is Interface Incarnate powers, where AFAIK, you can only stack 4 of the same DoT on a target at a time. Since BR came out around the same time, I thought it's not unthinkable it might have similar mechanics. I appreciate the insight, regardless.

Been finally getting around to a Beam Rifle Sentinel that I've had a concept for almost since before HC launched (I was gonna make it as a Huntsman Spider concept that I'd had just before the initial cancellation got announced). I'd had it on hold due to visual glitches and kinda being ambivalent on Sentinels, but all that's resolved now, so it's time to play! Just one question though...which two outta three of the following attacks should I go with: Single Shot - This used to be my "skip" because of how the animation glitched when hoverblasting, but since HC fixed that, it's back on the table and of the three seems like the best one to keep, since it's a quick filler, good damage for the speed, and even has a -Regen debuff. Charged Shot - What I'm using right now as my "fast" attack (despite only being level 25). It's a little more sluggish, comparable but slightly lower damage/time than Single, but a little meatier in itself. Piercing Beam - Even lower damage/time than Charged Shot, but can hypothetically hit multiple enemies and has a -Resist debuff. So barring anything I'm not realizing about Single Shot, I guess it comes down to whether the resist debuff on Piercing is worth the more sluggish windup time (and resulting lower damage/time aspect)...any thoughts? Also, just wondering about Disintegrate...the attack itself does damage over time, plus a Debuff and tags the enemy. Yes, good. Does re-hitting an enemy with the attack before the first DoT is done start ticking another round that stacks with the one that's ongoing, or does it "reset" the and start ticking just the one DoT from the beginning again? I know most powers in the game do the former, but given the other special status involved with the attacks, and that I feel like I don't see multi-ticks happening, it seems like it might be doing the latter?

Now that the calendar's gone, is there a list of upcoming weeklies somewhere else?

Both would win, as, faced with such a prospect, they'd be far more inclined to call a truce and work together to beat up whatever cosmic force it thought it could push them into fighting each other in the first place.

Fair questions. Mostly I take an interest in testing things I'd have an interest in playing live. Powerset revamps or even sets that keep the complicated power interactions to a minimum are up there, or new costume pieces more generic-style power customizations (than just a goopy teleport, I don't see myself using) as are new story arcs (which, incidentally, now that that's been added, I'd planned to take a look at...but I'm living in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl at the moment and can't test even things I would want to test...oh, irony).

My feedback on hardmode-style content is generally not relevant because I don't like hardmode style content on principle and basically will never try it. Even "normal" ASF was very un-fun for me, but that appears to be what the current dev team likes to produce. We'll never see eye-to-eye on that. I can't see myself playing it because, again, precedent tells me that the kind of sets they like creating tend to not be the kinds of sets I like playing. I don't want to build stacks of "Frenzy", or have my powers vary depending on how many are stacked in the same place, as the notes indicate. I don't need to play it to know that I didn't like stacking mechanics in Seismic Blast or even back in the old days in Street Justice. So for me, a set built around that is gonna be a wash (uh, pun not originally intended, but I'mma claim it anyway.) I'm sure they'll be just as exciting as all the current Accolade powers I ignore and/or forget having because a minor 30 second buff once every 30 minutes isn't really meaningful. Except for that last thing, those are already in the game, AFAIK. Well, if they add more, maybe there'll be something that'll be both interesting to test play. I don't expect there will be (because "what if maybe there's gonna be more stuff in the update" has been a mantra, that's been with the game since before its original closure), but I'll be keeping an eye out, because it does seem weird that it's so bare-bones compared to the previous "page" update. That may also have to do with having only half as much time in the dev cycle this time(?), but it's a weird choice to call that a "page" and this an "issue" unless there's some plan from the seekrit server clique.

These are all really just one thing, and well, meh. I figure it's the same as every other hardmode TF, just open world, and those aren't fun, so why would the new zone be? Seems needlessly complex/laden with janky mechanics. Can't see myself wanting to figure it out when there's more straightforward stuff out there. A system I've never thought was worth engaging with. Lost interest in badging a few pages back. Ironically they became such a slog that I stopped trying to get more. There's, uh, one new Teleport, and a change couple changes copy/pasted from Energy blast to the Energy APP, and from what I saw. Was there more? You can't, and I ain't saying it ain't grand for people who like this stuff, but it's a pretty bare-bones feature compared to what the last page was, especially if you don't care about farming Aether the way someone on the HC staff really, really, really, seems to think people should want to.

Nothing in it really strikes me as being interesting to test...

I don't know about the "main theme", but there's a a lot of public domain music in the game. So it's not unlikely at all that the shows you were watching got stuff from the same bank. Place I used to work, we had a bunch of the "City of Heroes OST" as background music in new employee onboarding/training videos.

That's more for a thread suggesting how to address some Dominator-related design flaws, than anything related to the alignments themselves, I feel like.

Mostly, I make a build in Mids that's fully decked out, and one alt gets to 50, I've put together enough INF with them to pretty much buy out all the Attuned enhancements I need to put together the build as planned while leveling on the next one.

As a teammate, I like to see a Kinetics user, because I love getting buffed by Kinetics but I hate playing Kinetics.

From what I recall of the way the original EULA was set up, I suspect he still would've been, because it basically said "you're giving NCSoft the right to use any characters you create and play on our servers to uses as our own intellectual property", so I suspect they wouldn't even let original owners keep their own characters (assuming that story was true), lest some dicey legal issues come up.

Pulled this out of my old screenshot archives. Seems an appropriate occasion:

A note on your Neuron and Bobcat assessments, the Neuron one is correct and confirmed in the Mr. G arc. The arc also reveals that she's been effectively depowered after Vanguard drugged her, but as far as I remember, she's still at large, rather than "awaiting trial" after the arc wraps up. Praetorian Infernal is just as easily presumed dead because, much like various other characters, Dev!Doc Aeon hated him and had him written out. Though since it never happened on camera, I guess HC could bring him back if they really wanted.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! That'll never fly. You have to insist they're totally different, like how "Seismic" blast can't be "Stone" blast and "Symphonic" control can't be "Sonic" control.