Ukase

Update. One of the sillier things I've done. I made an ice/dark controller again, without constraints, because I wanted to get a feel for what the character would actually play like. Now, Bad HOs is sitting in Ouro at level 50, unslotted. It's never killed a thing. But Apache Frost is level 38, and resting in RWZ as I've come to realize that Arctic Air and Cold Snap are fairly worthless. I was in an MSR, and had just chosen Arctic Air because I felt like I might finally have enough end recovery to use it a little bit. And I was running out of endurance even with all the buffs in the MSR. So, I'm going to respec and get rid of it. Seems a shame, because thematically, it would make sense. But the end cost is 1.04/s - and that's the highest end cost for a toggle I think I've ever seen. Does anyone use this power? Is it just for the opener, then you toggle it off? That's what I'm thinking. But, Glacier works just fine. If I get a bit more recharge, it'll be up every group. The damage is ...well, poor. And Jack Frost is not the best pet. I tell him to attack my target, and he'll run back 40 feet to blast him instead of blasting him at 5 feet. Still, the combo with dark is nice. Dark is just a great secondary for the controller. It's odd to me that with all the slotting choices for dark servant, pet enhancements aren't one of them. I figure tar patch is debuff enough, I'm using him as a mule set for Gravitational Anchor. I've got Fade and Soul Absorption perma. Ball Lightning...I can proc it, or I can just go with the full power transfer set. The extra recharge really doesn't help me. But I was thinking of using an alpha that boosts recharge, so it would potentially gum up the proc effectiveness anyway. I'm sure I've overlooked something. I'm tempted to forgo the teleport pool for the fight pool, and I currently have sorcery in lieu of leadership, but Spirit Ward on a pet? I've seen the videos - but my secondary doesn't really help Jack out much. If I were Natty, with the tohit and damage boost, I could see it. But what's the point? He's not going to hit any harder with it. And I'm only running at 0/8 or +1/8, depending on the mobs. I could go higher, but the bosses take too long to kill as it is. And, when I get mezzed, Spirit Ward toggles off, and I have to take time in the midst of the chaos to put it back. I just don't see any real benefit for the pet. And, I'd lose out on the leadership pool, which is giving me 15% global recharge. Sorcery is just not that great of a pool with Rune of Protection being so bad with the horrific recharge. And having to turn on fly before you can teleport...that's just lame in my eyes. I gave it a shot on my plant/dark controller. Just not a fan. Apache Frost - Controller (Ice Control - Darkness Affinity).mbd

I am not so meticulous as good @lemming is. But given some of the "drop challenges" I've tried at various times, the HC wiki tells us this: Now, given the 1/175 for Jump, the 3/175 for run, the 5/175 for Fly...perhaps we should all choose TP as the travel power of choice, as the range is a whopping 17/175. No idea why the distribution is the way it is. Source is here

I like it.

This is kind of interesting. On the one hand, I'm trying to put myself in the OP's shoes, but they don't fit my feet. Unfortunately, and I could certainly be wrong, but it doesn't matter what any of us think, but the issue - as I've understood it - is that the shield limits the utility of a two handed weapon system. I'm not saying it can't be done, or shouldn't be done, or should be - but I believe the animation and activations would make it problematic. And, if it's problematic, maybe it's better to work on something else. <shrug> Leaving the "can they" and "should they" questions aside, it'd be great for you to get what you want here. But, I'd like to get a horse head in the tailor, too. And it seems like that'd be way easier. Well, more specifically a donkey head. My alt Donkey Hotey is being insistent.

Kelly Nemmers I'm level 32, on an ice/dark controller First mission - Defeat Tuatha in the Misty Wood Neighborhood. Clearly, I'm in the neighborhood. Yet, these defeats aren't counting. (Some are, that were further away) Weird. DIdn't have this problem with my alt last week. I basically followed the same path.

Why? Buff up and hit him. 30 seconds later, you get paid. The signature ability of the fire tank is burn. Back in..issue 4 or 5, maybe, they put fear into it, hoping that the xp greedy fire tanks would invite others to help them corral the npcs into the burn patch. It worked for a little while, but really most folks just started playing other characters, until they removed the fear fairly soon after they put it in. I've never played a storm defender, so I can't speak on what it's signature ability is. I do think that while your repel might be useful for all kinds of things, just because it's not useful in BAF prisoner phase doesn't mean it's taken away. I experience this often with my stealth. I'll be in a mission, stealthed to 65 feet, and yet, a mob will see me. Did it take away my stealth? No. It just had better perception. Same with these prisoners. Never doubt a prisoner's resolve. They've got nothing but time to think of how to get a specific task done. You could lock one guy up in a building with only a cigarette, and another in a building across the street with a lighter. Given enough time, if the two know about each other and what they have, they'll find a way to get that cigarette lit.

Matthew Habashy's arc. You enter this map, and the building's on fire. And yet it has you take an elevator to the next floor. So, that in itself is pretty stupid behavior, even if my character does have super powers. And if the room I need to get to is on the 2nd floor, why don't I just fly through a 2nd floor window? Why must I almost always use a door? This entire game requires a suspension of disbelief. Why should a story arc where the contact wants you to do silly things be any different?

Interesting signature at the bottom of your post. The majority is often wrong, but I don't know that it makes anyone an idiot. Here's my point of disagreement with your premise. You see predictable outcomes as boring. I think there are so many trees in the way, you're missing the forest. I'm not a game designer. I'm not a math guy. I can do math, if I need to, but it's not something I embrace, unless I'm analyzing earnings per share, or something that really matters in real life. Now, that's not to say what you really want - some variability in outcome isn't a good thing. It's perfectly fine for a strategy to no longer be viable because the mechanics, or even in some future update in 50 years has AI taking over what the npcs will actually do, and they make adaptation of the players necessary. But if I look at what you suggest, here's just an example of what I see happening for my own experience. I have a level 30 ice/dark controller. I have shadow fall, so it gives stealth to my pets, (I presume it does. Doesn't matter) I enter a mob of 11 npcs, because at least on the last map I was on, there were 11 ghosts in each group. I enter in the middle and use Glacier, and it holds most of them. The cap on this power is 16, so if the accuracy/toHit check passes, I'm fairly safe. But, even with my pets Jack Frost and Dark Servant, my dps check bounces like the check I wrote to Dominos when I was a freshman in college. I just don't have much of it. I can never clear these mobs before that hold duration expires. But, Jack is pretty good at dps, and he can clobber a few of them, while my immobilizers and ice slick and the debuffs from tar patch and my dark servant help keep me from getting clobbered. Now, if you had your way, I'd go in with this strategy, and sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn't. And you know what the end result would be? A reroll into a blaster. There, there isn't a strategy. Just kill them. The only variability is the accuracy. The dps is a given, as long as I'm accurate. What you're after is a different game. Not this game. And that's fine. I get it. Who doesn't want a challenge from time to time. You can get that variability through Ouro by removing your temp powers, or your incarnate abilities. Or even your enhancements. It's certainly not the same kind of random challenge you want, but it's still likely to scratch this itch you want.

I actually like this idea, but my concern would be that people would lean towards not teaming to avoid it. Maybe reduce the duration to 5 minutes. I've had characters that were doing very well solo, on challenging settings. Only to team up for a tf, keep those same settings, and teammates get you killed by aggroing a group and then running next to you and you take splash damage, while you're focused on something else, like reviving a teammate, or killing the last mob of the the previous group.

The easiest fix would also kill it thematically, I'd guess. Reduce the activation and animation times. Spending what seems like 3-5 seconds (it's much shorter) before you hit something is pretty bad.

For me, it's the Red Caps. The dialogue just strikes me as amusing. "Hey! You not a prisoner. I want to kill a prisoner!" The way they just pop out of the ground, the little guy the bigger one literally throws at you and the little guy goes all piggy back on you and starts banging on your avatar's noggin? We just don't see anything quite like the red caps. I've always wanted to throw a teammate at the npcs. But I never could!

I did the same; it's awesome. Mind you, I never played it before the nerf, so no basis for comparison.

Why in the blue hell would you want to do this? And why would a GM even need this if the players can't use it? Is that a case of rank having privileges? That's a slippery slope. How in the world do you think this would add balance to a game that has never had any balance? What does that word even mean? I'll tell you. It means about 5,368 different things to the 5368 people that play this game. And yeah, I pulled that number out of thin air. Let's reduce the inf cap to 100k while we're at it. Dude, what in the world am I supposed to do with the inf I have stored in those emails? Buy a bunch of winter packs that will take me even longer to open? I still haven't opened all of them from the last time they were on sale! I know, I'll bid on non-existing items like Iron Will, and next patch, they'll get snuck in and I'll have blown 700 Billion on Iron Wills. Yay me. I don't really care what they do with procs, but some consideration needs to be considered about them. Is it rational to have a proc in a power where it won't fire but the minimal 5% of the time? No. So why is it in that set that goes into that power? If you can slot it in a power, it should work every time it passes a toHit check. And that should all be clear to the player before they slot it. Let me get this straight. You want people to log in, and not enjoy the game. Am I smelling what you're cooking? If that's what balance looks like, I don't want it. As for MM pets being the same level, that's a no-brainer, and should have been done before they were released. Incarnate stuff being only in incarnate content? Fine by me. I rarely use them outside of incarnate stuff because when I'm 50, other than the labyrinth, I'm only doing incarnate stuff. (except maybe for a weekly, but even then most of those are sub level 45 and you can't use them anyway.) Controller ranged modifier increased? Fine by me, but it doesn't need to be increased. Why? My plant/natty and plant/dark were chewing up mobs at 0/8 at level 26-28. Couldn't quite handle +2 with the natty, but the dark had more options for more recharge, and chewed through the +2 easily. Granted, not every controller primary is plant, but if you raise it across the board, some other adjustments would need to be made. And all of that effort would just result in masses of people despising the changes. For what? Balance? None of those changes would balance the game. Blasters would still be king of damage. Tanks would still be kings of survivability. Corruptors would still scourge. All your proposed balance changes would do is piss off 90% of the players. And the other 10% should probably remind themselves of how boring it was with 2 accs, 3 damage, 1 recharge or some similar variation in their slotting. CoH somehow rose from the ashes mainly because of it's people. Not because of the game balance that never existed. (at least, not for me) Right now is as close as anyone can get to feeling super in this game, and you want to take it away? How does that help you have more fun? Say you got all those things, and suddenly your version of balance is in game. How does that help me have more fun? Or you? Does my accessing the AH from a remote floating island in ouroboros foul up your playing experience? Does my blaster using blizzard and then having to retoggle everything help you enjoy your game in some way? How? How does limiting emails have anything to do with game play? I hear about people putting ultimates and such in their email. I've never done it. I don't have room for that trash. I have an insp tray for that garbage. I doubt many people use email for that. In battle, they open their email and have to scroll through and find the right insp? That's just madness. It doesn't even make sense why anyone would need to do that. But hey, people do things that don't make sense to me all the time, and I can't assume my experience is typical. But that's the only thing I can think of that you're trying to prevent - people using email for inspirations. There's easier and better ways to stop that. I kind of think this whole post was just trolling, it's just so bad. Balance? Madness you mean. Insanity.

For me, it absolutely doesn't matter to me if Praetorians can access any zone. So what? We all know there are people behind each avatar. We all know that a lot of people would rather team than solo. So, if they get bored of the solo play on gold, let them access any zone they wish after a little visit to null, at any level. Like what zone the OP wants to go to is going to have any impact on my play or anyone else's play? Unless they take a spot in an MSR or Hami Raid, like what difference does it make? We're all people behind the avatars. This alignment business, in spite of the lore, is just silly. I like the merits. (which I only rarely pursued before Mark & Recall) But the lack of access to this zone or that...just silly and unnecessary. Now, from an RP perspective, this is a role the player chooses to play. That role is self-limiting. I have no sympathy for a self-inflicted limitation. But if my vigilante can go to Ouro and run through the praetorian arcs, why can't the praetorian character run through the praetorian arcs? Or the hero or villain arcs? Because of lore? The only lore is the lore the player reads. Those rules don't need to apply to characters who aren't familiar with that story. I should be forbidden from playing a portion of the game with my character because of your lore? Or CoH's lore? We've already broken the lore with a number of QoL features. I see no harm in one or many more. (within reason) That said, I've no idea what kind of time or trouble this would take, but no argument from me as long as nothing breaks.

I wouldn't say no. I'm more of a function over fashion player, so as long as it works, fine by me. But, some characters are getting a little macro heavy; having a method to organize them by color might allow me to stop using a custom window - which candidly is annoying. Custom windows are fantastic, look great. If only they'd stay in the spot you put them in when you close the client.

Yes, I did...well, that's part of the mystery solved. Thanks. Now...why is "legacy salvage" still a thing? And who's buying it? Or is it just a reflection of something else in the bucket?

So, I got this odd drop on my new controller. So, I consult the HC Wiki. An obsolete piece of salvage. Yet, the HC devs seeded this for some reason. Why? Or was it just one of those things where all salvage in the list was seeded. Probably. And, further, I'd guess that history was for something else in this "bucket". Because, I get that some folks might want some obsolete salvage that doesn't seem to take up space in the salvage "inventory" for nostalgic reasons. But surely not 43,682 pieces of it..surely not. Any guesses what I'm looking at? What bucket is this?

There was a time when I agreed with this position. Even now, I tend to give a measure of respect to players with a badge count over 500. Yet, my anecdotal experience contradicts with my own premise. It's tough for me to admit I'm wrong, but in this context, I clearly was. On paper, it looks like a good idea. But even in the Army, you recognize pretty quickly that most officers don't have a damn clue how to win a war. They just know there are too many dandelions in the courtyard, so they pull a mechanic off his current job of maintaining the armored vehicles to pull dandelions.

Influence trading? I'm sorry...but who trades influence? Lately, when I do dfb, and we get that Cadaver Cleanser badge, I'll announce to the team that I will give starter inf after the trial is over. All they need to do is walk up to my character and open a trade window. And then I give them 200M. I guess because I say starter inf, only a few folks take me up on it. Now this might rile your feathers, me giving away my influence. But they earned it. They had to cooperate with a player like me. That's almost as challenging as a posi with Snarky. Almost. I give stuff away all the time, when it's my idea. Now, if you ask me straight out, the answer is usually no. Some folks love to grind and earn what they get. I respect that. But some folks just don't have the time to do that. or they lack the knowledge. Some of the ebil marketeering is darned tedious. It's not for everyone. If I want to help someone out, at least they'll be able to have some decent enhancements, and hopefully, they bought a team teleport.

That's just it. The way it's implemented, unless you definitely know what level IOs you've crafted previously (if you have), You're going to guess. You'll be right, and you're fine. Or you guess wrong, and you have to make one more. Take the guessing out of it. Either we, as players, choose to not craft any common IOs until we know if we're going for those badges or not, or we continue to guess, or a tool tip or some other method tells us what else we need to craft for a given badge. Alternatively - they could just not ask for the one extra.

I can just see the clown with a bucket filled with confetti, blinding the eyes of the opposing npcs...

So, let me just share an anecdote. I'm level 32...and I see Eochai in tree form. I broadcast their location, and I form a league. I tell myself, I already have the badge, so I just need to get my hit in for the merits. So, I'm league lead on team 1, solo. And there's like 6 players, one or two are level 50, the others between 20 and 35. A player not on my league, a level 50 decides to not wait until I can explain to a 50 that I want to pass star to them and have them put me on the team so I'm not solo - and there I am at level 32 and suddenly there's a lot of level 50 fir bolg around Eochai. I had to be very careful to not aggro them lest I get clobbered. Fortunately, they didn't last long, but they were still a concern for me. Now, I know to avoid them - have to avoid that pumpkin patch anyway. But not every player is going to see this in time. Is it just supposed to be a learning experience? Maybe. But I do agree with the OP that this should get looked at and addressed.

I think this is the crux of the minor annoyance. When I pursue these badges, I have my closest to completion tab open. Sadly, I'll have made some of these as I leveled up. And I won't have any notes or memory of which ones I might have bought or got from a bin in my base, or which ones I might have crafted. So, I see my closest to completion, and for example, it shows 3 of 17 in the hitman category. I think if the game could show which were made before, that'd be great. Because at the moment, I've no idea which levels I've crafted on this character. Now, is it really that important though? I've no idea how much time it would take to change as per the suggestion. It might be easier to just up the requirements to 9 of each instead of 8 and one more of either.

Do you mean like a server tray, like we have for the travel powers (like speed phase for SS and Afterburner for Fly)?

And suddenly, my ignorance is bliss. It's been a year or so since I've done the Anton Sampson or Christopher Maxwell arcs. Might have to see if I can squeeze one in through ouro. I don't recall ever having any real problems with Nemesis, other than the 2nd mission of that Jaeger's SSA in steel. Those ambushes are awesome! (if you've got good AoE, fast recharge and a lot of luck) Mind you, many of my characters run through this stuff at 0/1 because I want the badge and/or merits, not the XP. But I am playing newer character at +2/8 for the XP, so I'll have to see if I notice any of this.