macskull

So the game basically has four melee DPS ATs right now. Sure, you could make the argument that Tankers aren't melee DPS but the Tanker damage scale and target cap/radius buffs suggest otherwise and prior to those buffs Tankers struggled to find a clear role in the context of the game. At least in the case of the melee ATs the similarities can be excused because there are clear and obvious playstyle differences due to AT inherent powers. Sentinels unfortunately get stuck with a downright awful inherent power and give up too much for what they gain. It's like the developers set out to make a new ranged damage AT and then kneecapped their ability to deal damage at every possible opportunity (haha pun!).

I'm not at all worried about HC's population as long as the monthly donation window closes as fast as it does. There's been a definite spike in population since the last update but that's pretty typical - steady decline of players once the "new shiny" wears off which bumps back up again when new content is released. HC releases major updates at a slower pace than the other CoH servers so it's no surprise there's a population decline but when HC's lowest populations are orders of magnitude higher than other servers' highest populations it's not particularly worrying. That being said, HC can't advertise due to agreements with NCSoft (so we are told anyways) so relies entirely on word of mouth to maintain its population. Old-time players who haven't heard the game is back over the last two and a half years will sometimes find it and trickle back in but getting new people involved is important for the health of the game too. Streaming and videos are probably the single best way to promote the game in the current environment - whether people understand it or not is irrelevant.

Slog through a series of missions in which none of your powers work like they're supposed to, all buffs on your character are subject to diminishing returns, and performing any action triggers unavoidable travel suppression.

Anecdotal evidence here, but the streaming ban really put a damper on my desire to play as often as I used to. It also hurt the PvP community quite a bit because players were relegated to having to watch private, invite-only streams for PvP events and as a result there's very little PvP footage out there from the period when streaming was banned.

Keep in mind that's only really useful in a "something is actually broken" sense if you have a whole lot of entries. A few dozen - hell, even several hundred - entries may still not be enough to prove anything.

Yeah, I'm over here like "I didn't realize it went anywhere."

Temporary powers are disabled in iTrials?

You can slot it at level 7. Totally worth the slot if you have a power that can take it.

I must have missed this, where is this in the patch notes?

Sorry. My post wasn't directed at you, just at the existence of this thread in general.

(This is how this proc gets nerfed)

Eh, I'd expect them to still be 10m. These turn into a huge inf sink and I doubt sales would go up significantly if they were only 22.5m.

That's the purpose of pretty much everything at the P2W vendors. They could've made everything there free but chose not to.

This is why I use Reactive on a few characters but the rest of the interface procs are so awful that I don't bother.

This is part of the reason degenerative is the only really worthwhile interface ability (and to a much lesser extent, reactive). AV resistance isn't a thing for -HP and -res.

I feel like this is a solution for a non-existent problem. If you're leveling the "normal" way and buy 8 hours of amplifiers at level 1 with some inf you emailed yourself you're not getting that many levels before those 8 hours are up.

No thanks. That effectively stops amplifiers from working as an inf sink for level 50s.

I'm with the others here - if it's a decision between 1) amplifier timers still run while temp powers are disabled but the cost scales by level and 2) amplifier timers do not run while temp powers are disabled but costs are fixed at 2.5m/hr for all levels, I'll stick with option 1. Amplifiers are a nice extra in the low levels when a character can barely afford enhancements - setting the cost at 2.5m/hr regardless of level eliminates that flexibility.

How is this different from most Blasters already?

I think the reason they got as popular as they did is because they were a cheap, easy farming build in a post-burn-nerf world. Spines/Dark Scrappers were somewhat popular as well but they required a different playstyle. It was a series of events which sounded the death knell for Fire/Kin as a premiere farming build: Issue 12: Mental Manipulation is released for Blasters. Arch/Mental was a very popular farming build after that, arguably faster than a Fire/Kin with enough IO investment. Issue 14: AE is released. It's sort of telling how almost every patch between I14 and I15 involves some sort of AE-related bug/exploit fix. Fire/Psi Dominators are the farming build to beat, at least until the Dominator rework in I15. Issue 16: Scrappers get Fiery Aura. Issue 18: side-switching and elimination of side-specific ATs means I no longer have to wait until level 35 to get PL'd by a Brute or Dominator in RWZ, I can just do it right from level 1. Issue 25: Brutes get Spines. Radiation Melee is released. The end.

Have you updated to the HC launcher from Tequila or a different legacy launcher recently?

Positron TF: available at level 8, at which point many characters won't have any enhancements, period, let alone IOs, unless they're exemplared. Aeon SF: available at level 35, with the advanced difficulty modes specifically intended to be a challenge for fully-IO'd, fully-Incarnated level 50s. Would also like to point out that there were challenge mode runs completed during closed beta where the leader was level 50 and the entire rest of the team was SK'd just to see if it is possible. Turns out it is.

You definitely don't need voice chat even on the highest difficulty levels, the team leader (or someone who's run it before) just needs to communicate in team chat. If not, it's still doable but it'll be slower and people will die more.

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.