Riverdusk

Yes, you can and I've done so. Only thing it won't do is track hours played (that I've seen anyway). Handy for taking screenshots and easily sharing them though. Can also add it in through GoG galaxy and there it will track time played (or time you have the launcher open technically). Personally I think it would be cool for it to have an actual Steam page though.

Just logged in. That's some amazing big news! Grats.

Agreed. Only characters I have that'd really miss it are my masterminds. In level 54 content without that level shift the tier 1 pets are fighting +6's, which means they are basically worthless. Other than that, really not needed.

And yet I don't think it is what CoH was ever about (and am happy for it). I remember even the first years on live having a ton of alts. IMO, CoH has always been more about the journey and less about 'end game' than any other MMO I've every played, especially back during live. And that is a big reason why I stuck around. As to the game being too easy, my biggest pet peeve isn't IO's, it's nukes. Removing the crash was good, lowering the recharge on them so much I think was a mistake. Too late now of course. Incarnate nukes also I think are too much. Insult on top is that controller/dom's aoe holds are still stuck at 4 minute base recharge.

My build ended up similar. I'd love to fit more procs into them, but also ended up with just the achilles heel and the overwhelming force kd. Can't find a way to do more without giving up stats I feel they need while also fitting in all the pet IO's, and getting the recharge bonuses I would want from splitting up Mark of Supremacies. I did fit 4 SCotM's into spec ops too though. One quick change you might want to look at is swapping out temp invuln for charged armor since that is the only power you are taking in the pool anyway. Basically in exchange for giving up about 4% s/l resistance you get an extra 42% or so energy resistance (assuming near max resistance slotting). Well worth the trade off imo considering energy is one of the more common damage types. You could also go with dark embrace if you wanted to stay more on theme and pick up some extra negative and toxic instead. The 'split' resistance armors I always find more worthwhile than temp invuln basically unless there is something else in the pool you are going for.

You know the best thing about endurance draining that I discovered by leveling up an electric/energy sentinel? That paragon protectors without endurance can't MOG. Mezzing also works, but that I found harder to do if you have several of them at once. I never had such an easy time fighting what often otherwise is a really annoying mob to fight. Anyway, electric blast on a sent is top tier regardless so the endurance drain is just a nice bonus.

Definitely good choice. Beast/cold was exactly my favorite beast combo (the level 50+ one I still play sometimes). Beast/time also worked well (/time pretty much always works well). Being all melee pets I find having a secondary with slows or extra controls helped a lot (runners being more of an issue to melee pets). So /pain wouldn't be a choice I would recommend, to get back to the original question.

Well, they may be ranked last to probably most people now, but I'd disagree that I wouldn't recommend them to anyone and that they can't be 'satisfying'. It wasn't like they were actually nerfed (that I'm aware of?). They are only last now because of buffs to some other sets and people used to find them plenty satisfying before other sets got buffed. On some of the old rankings and testings of actual kill speed and safety they were often A or B tier back in the day. Can't deny that necro is my favorite now, but beast MM's can still hold up just fine and can be a lot of fun. I'm definitely not against them getting some love for sure. But I also think how 'bad' they are has become a bit exaggerated.

Very often, although I prefer to do a lot of it outside of Oro while leveling up as it feels more 'natural'. Impossible to do even close to everything without it though unless you turn off xp gain all the time. Also virtually almost always solo. They are hard to recruit for since they are run like task forces and for that people generally just want to do the regular task forces.

Oh, and don't forget Croatoa. It was like the devs said, "Oh, you don't like zone specific hunt missions? Now we're going to give you neighborhood specific hunt missions, take that!" Luckily they don't tend to be too bad. I only remember sometimes having problems with one fir bolg one where they didn't seem to gen much in the right neighborhood and I often have to find some and drag them to the right area (which also thankfully works.)

Also a caveat to doing it this way is if it is a hunt mission that is linked to immediately go into a regular instanced mission. Unless they fixed that bug, if you do the entire hunt inside a radio instance it will bug out and not bring up the next linked mission. I always do radio hunts like that until I have one left of what I need and then exit and hunt that last one outside, just to be sure.

I'm still of the idea that necro/sonic is the ideal pairing with /sonic and the one I have, the synergy is very nice in a lot of ways. Interesting to see it tried with other sets though, it is a rare support set to see. I skipped sonic repulsion myself, the set already has such endurance issues. I'd also be curious as to how that works out for you though. I'd almost think you'd need incarnate endurance help to run it along with everything else. Have also heard it can be quite audibly obnoxious, not sure if they fixed that, but it also turned me off of it. And yeah, really really wish they'd re-evaluate liquify's recharge time. It's recharge needs to be cut in half imo to really be decent. An epic pool power - bonfire, as someone else mentioned is the superior power and it only has a 2 minute recharge instead of 5 minutes. Always gets me that so many control type powers have 4 or 5 minute recharges when nukes that recharge in 2 minutes are out there that just flat out kill everything instead. Always seemed backwards to me, but that's a whole nother argument.

Only /sonic I ever enjoyed was a necro/sonic MM. Going all in on the resistance buffs it turned the zombies into absolute tanks (80%+ resistance to most things), they had their own tohit debuffs for defense, and their own healing as well as me getting my own heal. Disruption field worked well on a grave knight. I found it very impressive, and that was even before necro got buffed as a set. Fire/sonic might work well though, especially if you have multiple like you said.

Dark/cold would probably get you the most potential damage of those choices. Definitely the most damaging primary out of those. Cold then gets you a proc'd out infrigidate for another 'attack' and the very nice resistance debuff from sleet, and the AV killer called benumb if you want to hunt those.

LoTG's +7.5% recharge piece is a set bonus to me, and that is all. I think calling it a "global" actually just makes it more confusing. The game itself calls it a set bonus. You can go to Menu-Personal info-Powers tab. LoTG +7.5% recharge is listed right there as a "set bonus" on your character info. It acts as a set bonus in every way, it is just a special one that is a single IO. I guess that is the part that confuses people. How can a single piece be a "set" bonus. But that's really what it is in every way that matters. Basically think of it that way and if you know the rules to how set bonuses work, that's how that piece's +7.5 recharge works.

As others kind of brought up, damage debuff isn't affected by AV debuff resistances. It is only resisted by resistance (and purple patch). So, if a particular AV has a lot of built in damage resistance they'll resist a lot of a damage debuff, but they don't get a flat 85% resistance (at level 50) to it like they do for most other debuffs. A level 54 one though, if you are level 50 would still resist half of it right off the top I believe. Per the wiki "Archvillains are also noteworthy for having strong debuff resistance that scales by level. As of Issue 9, this resistance applies to -RunSpeed, -Recharge, -Endurance, -ToHit, -Defense, -Perception, -Regeneration, and -Recovery. In general I agree with you about the power. Being single target it doesn't usually make a noticeable impact outside of maybe some AV fights. Corrosive could use something else imo. If not -defense then maybe a slow, an immobilize, or something. It is kind of sad that it doesn't take any IO sets at all. Luckily it is skippable for everyone now and we aren't forced to take it anymore even if you have it as a secondary. If I have room for a one slot throw away power it is okay, but not something I feel is a must power for the set.

That one I can definitely get behind and have mentioned it before myself. Radiation infection got its horrendous 3+ second cast time reduced to 1.5 seconds. Darkest night and spore cloud are similar toggle powers and could use a similar reduction (even shaving them down to around 2 seconds would feel a LOT better).

I'd also love to see some -defense added to the power, but I think you lost the argument when you said the whole point of it was to just allow IO proc slotting. That's a really bad justification for it.

I'd think DM would be better on a scrapper or tank. Soul drain's +damage buff just seems more impactful on either of those and is a big part of the set.

Ah, the end point of all the AT debate threads, we've reached it already. If you want to use that criteria the majority of the game's AT's are "sub obtimal" in a completely min/maxed team. Best example is the thread about it in the controller forum "what's the point of controllers at level 50?" I know it isn't the only AT forum to have such a thread. I know tanks used to have one as well, but now I think it's moved to brutes too.

One neat trick if smoke plus flash really does give you full invis would be that you could click glowies (which normally surpresses your stealth) in complete safety. Would be nice for when you want to speedrun a hunt glowie mission anyway. Just thought of a perfect place for it as matter of fact. That one mission on Posi where you have to click all the bombs that are surrounded by clockwork and inside by CoT. You'd be the hero on that one. 😁

Not anymore it doesn't. RI's animation time was shaved a while ago. More than twice as fast now. Would be nice to see darkest night and Nature's spore cloud get the same treatment.

Do sentinels really do that much less damage than a blaster now a days though after the upgrade? Their ranged damage modifiers are now extremely close. In exchange they get a lot more survivability. Also, too often I see these arguments only looking at end game and to me that is far from the whole experience. At end game almost everyone is a tank and everyone is a nuker anyway, AT's in general lose their distinctiveness to a big degree. So to me the bigger difference is the leveling up experience. Sentinels level up with a very different feel than a blaster does imo. Closer to a scrapper, but still a different feel there as well. So, I think there definitely is a point to them existing as they are currently. I think giving them more melee would make their leveling up experience even closer to a scrapper to me. I'd be very much against that.

Just as an aside: the various epic pool's energy torrent is only .67 knockback by default, so knockdown in almost all cases. I take it often on my scrappers and controllers, never had to worry about knockback.

Agreed on provoke and I would go ahead and try that switch. I was never a fan of that playstyle, but I think it has fallen out of favor for MM's generally. I'm sure some people still do it, but I don't hear it talked about nearly as much as it used to be. Demons are one of the tankier sets from my experience anyway. Once you have all the resistance from the pet special IO's and the resistance that pain gives along with their own resistance, and combined with some healing, they should be pretty sturdy. I was going to suggest diamagnetic interface as my usual goto for even more tanky-ness (pets can give everything -20% tohit with it pretty quick, which means still about -10% even against +4's), but I see you went paralytic. It's damage debuff might work out to be just as good. Might want to eventually try both and see if one works out better than the other.