Yomo Kimyata

It would be inhumane to not allow mez protection, so I'm allowing Obsidian Shield so long as I don't enhance the psionic resistance. And I'm not counting Siphon Life as a heal right now, since that doesn't suit my purposes... First cut:

Challenge accepted. I'm going to have to think about what powers count. Initially thinking a Dark/Dark/Soul brute.

Not if you kill them first! You'd need a lot of knockdown. Whirlwind!

How about a melee alt that doesn't take any resistance, defense, or healing powers?

I think it is always nice to have options and tools, but I agree with a lot of people above that players are going to need to want to lead teams, to recognize that the reason they don't currently want to lead teams is because they are not familiar enough with how it works, and then to go through the actual process of remedying it. We can provide the tools, but we can't change their nature. We can only help them execute on their desire for personal change. For me, if I am doing something I am not overly familiar with, I will start a team and let people know from the outset that it's not a speed run and that I'm not super familiar with it and ask if they are ok with that. Seems to work for me.

The suggestion has been made before, but I feel that if you could use a catalyst to *unattune* an attuned IO to its maximum level, it would add some benefits with no particular downside that leaps to mind.

"Few days" my butt! Sorry, I've had some unexpected travel. Let's clear this up so we can get on to the *REAL* contest. I've enjoyed everyone's thoughts and here's what I'm going with at this point in time: Martial Arts/Shield -- You had me at thematic, but adding some AoE to the primary sealed the deal. Staff/Dark Armor -- I'm happy to stance dance early on to make DA more palatable, and Dark Regeneration is a good force multiplier. Dark Melee/Invulnerability -- Perhaps a classic for a reason. Some defense help in the form of -to hit for a mostly resistance secondary. Plus, invulnerability is boring but DM is certainly not. Dual Blades/Bio Armor -- Frankly, here I'm matching a pretty vanilla primary with a secondary that might make every other option unbalanced. My bias is showing but I haven't actually played bio in a long time, so let's keep this interesting. Claws/Super Reflexes -- Honestly, I find both of these to be boring sets. But this is a fan favorite, and maybe I'll change my mind. I've done that before, once or twice. The last few I've struggled with a bit and gone over all the options. Energy Melee/Ninjitsu -- I'm going to have to work hard on a theme here. I've got an evil leprechaun war mace/ninjitsu in his 30s, but I only seem to play him on St. Patrick's Day. Ninsitju seems like a nice set, but I'm not enthralled with the synergies here. War Mace/Energy -- I fought this for so long, because I will always be in the shadow of strong and pretty. But there really aren't any shadows, because I'm emitting light, so I guess it's ok. Broadsword/Radiation -- I could have gone with Ninjitsu or Energy, but nah, I want the big glowy sword that will never miss. I'll pass out the inf I promised, and post on the next (final) leg hopefully tomorrow. What I have been doing with the also-rans is running the same or similar content mostly at double xp and that's a good pattern. On playing days, I can usually take two alts through a given arc or two, then follow up with the other two the next time. I talked about making a bracket, but it seems better to just eliminate half at each point. Example: When I get all 4 of the also-rans to 50, I will take two of them into incarnates, and then one into full incarnates. happy hunting!

That's why I feel that all this head-banging over minutia is pretty much like pulling a knife on someone because their lifeboat on the Titanic is a prettier color than yours. This isn't setting out a constitution and framework for a game and a series of games that will spread throughout the universe spreading peace and love. This is a small town, with a small number of officials who will do what they want. People might move here because they like the school district, but everyone seems to be angry at someone else who isn't following the HOA rules. I've mixed too many metaphors. I'm gonna lie down for a bit.

Totally curious. How are you estimating the playing population (I'd say that is number of unique active accounts)? I'd personally guesstimate that total number of unique active accounts is something between 2 and 10 thousand, and I would make the over/under at 8 thousand +/-5. There's a reason that they haven't updated user stats in almost 2 1/2 years.

I like this one! They are paying attention.

Don't be silly, of course I could. But it doesn't serve any purpose. It would involve a large commitment of time and inf, and would lose lots of money. It wouldn't break the system. It's very amusing to read all these doomsayers, both pro and anti farming. Farming is irrelevant. It is literally a rounding error. The real danger to HC's /AH over the next few years is that people will lose confidence in it and just stop using it and again start complaining why they cannot buy common salvage for 5 inf while they are selling it for 1000. I'll be long gone by then.

I view certain aspects of certain sets to contain trade offs. Intentionally or unintentionally, bio and rad armor have some annoying visuals. Shield does too, as well as having limited partner power sets. If you want shield powers without actually having a shield, then you are making the case that it is an overpowered set. You could choose a bunch of other sets that don’t have a shield. All of the rest of them, actually.

Good on you for making a tool! I'd love to have about a hundred more new IO sets, but balancing them would be a real bear. Don't see any issues with this set either. Normally, someone will say, how about this set, with 9% recharge as the 2 piece bonus. But this looks pretty balanced. Thumbs up!

What should we do with Empyrean Merits? What should we do with Empyrean Merits? What should we do with Empyrean Merits Early in the morning?

Or, *OR* we could just get rid of ED altogether and make everything Schedule D. Why bother with balance at this point?

I'm assuming OP is referring to the four star system specifically as opposed to just engaging in challenging content? I'm glad they instituted it as a system, but I feel it's a few years late in the process. I mostly solo, and I'll probably run some two star content to see if I can, but probably not more than that. +4 AVs are generally doable in most of my builds, but it's tedious and spending twenty minutes doing that without any specific "reward" probably isn't worth my time. I feel that there are far too few players in the HC system to get a real variety of play options running. It would be great if you could want to do an Aeon at a given time and have a choice of 4 star or 2 star or no star, but that's probably no longer feasible. So I'll just solo it at my own pokey pace.

did I miss something in the beta notes that makes endurance reduction less effective?

Why would anyone do such an inane thing?!?!?

No no, I mean it only works when you have inf to burn! So you have 10mm in inf and when it runs out you either have to get more or the xp bonus disappears. I guess then you would default to regular xp and regular inf until you reactivated it when you had some inf banked up. But the intention would be that if you had no inf to burn, you don't get the bonus xp,

How about: every unit of xp *costs* you a certain amount of inf in real time. So not only are you not earning inf, but it's quietly eating your reserves until you realize that you've been grinding for an hour but didn't realize you ran out of money.

Strange flex, letting me know you were one of the first ten recipients of Social Security, but I'll allow it!

I send all my inf to @Yomo and you should too.

Your CoH character name is your first pet's name as your first name and the street you grew up on as your last name! Also, how much inf would you have if you had as much as your social security number?

I was going to make a big fort.

Who is this Jones dumbass? Guilty as charged. Market indexes are worthless in this game, because prices are made by the buyers. I could make every single Trap of the Hunter IO trade north of 10mm for the next few years, but why? There are very few macro trends that markedly affect the sellers of finished goods. If it costs too much for you to buy right now, you can wait for someone else to offer it cheaper, you can make it yourself, you can blah blah blah. There's maybe 10k active accounts nowadays. That's hardly an "economy".