macskull

A lot of the AV's really big attacks scale based on HP, so if you're at full HP you'll take way more damage than if you're at 10% HP.

Not really. The existing TF/flashback difficulty options mostly centered around making your character weaker, not making the enemies harder, and offered no incentive for completion aside from a few badges. Both of those core issues are being addressed with these new difficulty options. I'm sure the majority of players will not utilize them but at least now the option is there for the players who do want to use them.

At least on the highest difficulty level, this decision is already made for you as you can only use wakies. Not really much of a meaningful decision in "better bring 20 T4 wakies." [Emphasis mine] This is already the case in the baseline game, not much is really changing here. The sets that are overshadowed in regular content will continue to be overshadowed in challenge mode content. I haven't seen this phenomenon in the game at all. Players are only going to continuously run harder content if the rewards make it worthwhile and I'm still not entirely convinced they do.

The intention with the challenge mode buffs is absolutely to promote teamwork. Sure, there will probably be some builds that are able to handle portions of it solo but it's 100% balanced around having teammates to provide you with things like that extra tohit (or defense, or -def/-tohit on the enemies, etc, etc.).

Scrapper ATOs in higher demand, is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

There is, but the app/site in question requires access to the character database and isn't available on Homecoming.

Standard code rant applies in this case. TL;DR: Account-wide badges are not by any stretch of the imagination easy to implement, code-wise. The code to make AE badges account-wide is a nightmare.

Case in point: I have characters with the slash command for exiting a mission bound to the movement keys.

Most things in this game expressed in % are assumed to be a % of the initial base value, so "5 endurance" and "5% endurance" are the same thing since base endurance is 100. The hit points stats work the same way in that they'll grant you an additional 5% (or 10%) hit points above your base. Atlas Medallion should probably say 5% for consistency's sake though.

As for your first question, any power that does not ignore recharge bonuses can be slotted for recharge. Whether it's worth the slot is a different matter. As for your suggestions, it's impossible to enhance damage buffs (and conversely damage debuffs) without breaking the game because of how closely damage and damage resistance are tied to each other in the game's code. Basically, if I were able to enhance a power's damage bonus, any resistance I had would affect that power's damage bonus as well.

Buff icon: These values get rounded for display even though the game displays two decimals. Detailed info: You're viewing the power as a Mastermind, so the game is going to use the Mastermind AT modifier tables to show you a value. In the case of Force Shield that value is "0.75 * Ranged_Buff_Def" which for a Mastermind is 0.75 * 0.075 = 5.63%. Combat attributes: This is showing you the actual buff value affecting your character. As in point 2, Force Shield is still "0.75 * Ranged_Buff_Def" but the entity casting it is your Protector Bot which uses the "Lt Henchmen" tables for Ranged_Buff_Def. This comes out to 0.75 * 0.1 = 7.5% base. With a +3 defense SO slotted that works out to (1.23 * 7.5% = 9.23%). TL;DR: All three values are correct but for different reasons.

It's also kind of a self-sustaining cycle - when a player discovers CoH is back (or discovers it for the first time) they're likely to only hear about HC because it has more of an online presence, and if they are aware of the existence of other servers they're still probably going to gravitate toward HC because of its larger population. There would need to be a significant player migration in order to change any of that.

I'm not entirely sure we need more inf sinks which is funny because back on live I would've been crucified for saying that. Prices on high-end items are lower now than they have been historically which is the opposite of what everyone's expected to happen.

Any function that pings the character database will reset a character's "days offline" counter, such as supergroup rank promotions/demotions and using /altinvite to invite your own characters to your SG.

The live and test shards share an account server, so you cannot be logged into the same account in both places at the same time.

I know it's almost three weeks later, but you can't currently connect to the test server using Island Rum because the necessary manifest update was never pushed out (and won't be until the next major update gets pushed to the test server). This thread has instructions on how to get the new launcher running on MacOS. The instructions in this thread describe how to do it for legacy launchers (Tequila, Island Rum, CreamSoda, whatever else is out there) but as I said above you won't be able to get on until a manifest update is pushed.

For what it's worth, many of the post-shutdown QoL improvements came about in response to a much smaller population while the game was still in hiding. Specifically addressing veteran levels and incarnate rewards here, but based on past developer comments some of the "streamlining" that was considered necessary at the time is now the source of significant frustration from a balance standpoint. I would not be surprised to see the incarnate-related rewards from veteran levels significantly nerfed at some point in the future.

Procs are - and always have been - flagged "cancelonmiss" which means if the power they're slotted in misses, the proc won't do anything. In the case of autohit powers though you ended up with what is essentially autohit damage. The two biggest examples coming to mind are Caltrops and Corrosive Vial, which is precisely why the change we're talking about was made. Proc rolls are always performed after the hit roll but it happens so quickly it might as well be simultaneous. In the case of Infrigidate, if you miss your target none of your procs will fire, but if you hit your target then the procs will check against their % chance to fire. In the case of Corrosive Vial, the procs will do a hit check and then either do nothing (missed the hit roll) or something (check % chance to fire and either fire or not).

This was a relatively recent change and only affects damage procs slotted in autohit powers. IIRC the hit roll for those is affected by global acc and tohit buffs but I'm not entirely sure.

Also worth pointing out that while the power itself is autohit, the procs slotted in the power are not.

They're going to get that overhaul eventually and unfortunately that's likely the direction that'll be taken. The powers dev has said on multiple occasions that epic pool powers are supposed to have a "penalty" (usually implemented as a recharge time increase), but then the increased recharge time makes them good proc options. You may recall that during one of the beta cycles for a previous update Scrapper and Stalker snipe powers were tweaked to have an "internal recharge time" that was half their actual recharge time to specifically nerf their interaction with procs. While I agree that some of the epic and patron pools could stand to be looked at, I don't think everyone will walk away happy from it when it does happen.

Mids is correct, though I would expect the Dark Mastery version to get the nerfbat at some point when the powers that be get around to an epic/patron pool overhaul.

In the case of Corrosive Vial I'm pretty sure its base damage is low enough where you won't get much mileage out of straight damage enhancements and would be better off putting damage procs (i.e. "chance for x") in there instead.

While I appreciate the extra inf in my pocket, I'm now curious if/when this changed because it was not working for me when I last tried it right after the patch which got rid of the +/++ system for combined enhancements. I spent a lot of time trying to game the system and combine what I had in my base bins to take advantage of the price spikes of level 51-53 enhancements but ended up a bit frustrated.

While these special enhancements can be combined, they can only be combined with an identically-named enhancement (no combining Hamis with synthetic ones, or Titans with Hydras, etc. etc.).