Ukase

One of the few times a player was a jerk to me without any kind of interaction between me and them previously was when I buffed them with my two cold shields on a cold/ice defender, about 4 years ago. I stopped buffing the league, because they're AoE buffs. If anyone had complained about a lack of buffs, I'd have outed them publicly, you betcha. I still haven't seen the tailor because they had the nerve to insist I go out of my way to a tailor and change how my buffs looked so as to not obscure the costume they had that I never saw before or after the buff in question. (As if I was so familiar with the tailor that I'd have known how to do that, lol) So yeah, anything a player can do to keep from pissing on my leg about their costume and my buffs is a good thing. Now, fast forward a few years later, I'm a bit more sensitive to people's love of costumes. I don't think I'll ever be any good at making them. But lately, I'll use the RNG to make the costume, and then make a character specifically to fit the costume. Or at least try to. But I am not going to visit a tailor to specifically minimize the fx. An ice shield isn't going to kill you, but it might save you.

Sorry, but this is..well, it's not good advice. A good build can be painstakingly difficult to put together. There are never enough slots. And you would have people burn up a slot because of KB. That could be seen as selfish, and frankly, a weak position. I get that improperly timed and positioned KB can be annoying. Even the folks that use kb understand that. But it's just a bad suggestion. People need all the slots they can get to eke out more important things like damage or hitpoints. Anything but kb to kd. There's no point in my explaining how simple it is to deal with undesired KB. That's been done. But I think the players that don't like it cannot or don't want to see it from another perspective. Some players are new. They haven't learned the hover above and "KB" them into the ground, not down the hall. They'll figure it out eventually, or they might just play something like a tank or a scrapper and see for themselves the annoyance that it can be. But wasting a slot is just bad advice. For one, while they're cheap to a veteran player (or most veteran players) to a new level 20, they're not cheap. 2M or so. 7-10M if they go for the best one in the Overwhelming Force set. Now, I'm sure there's a line of players that would gladly pay that for any player to not have to deal with it. Frankly, if such a thing were possible at Null, they'd have probably put it in place already, for free, just to have 100 fewer pages on the forums. KB is damage mitigation. It's every bit as relevant and worth having as the immobilizations that controllers and other ATs use. Or the stun that some energy characters make use of. Or the sleeps, the terror/fear and other mez tactics. It's all mitigation and it all works. If it slows things down a bit, but keeps a player from dirt napping, I'm cool with it.

So, another crazy idea that I haven't allowed to die in my head - make every zone we have co-op, except for pvp zones. Then if it's too crowded for a villain in Pocket D AE..they can go to Nerva, or Cap ...or Faultline. Wherever a PD may be, they can go. Until that day comes - you might try doing what I do. Go to another zone. If you're villain, do your thing in Cap or Port Oakes. If you're a hero, you can do your thing in Faultline, or Skyway. Let's face it - it's crowded in PD AE because it's convenient. But there's nothing in PD AE that's not in every other AE, provided you have base teleport and a base with a trainer, a store, and a merit vendor. (and really, I know some folks don't even have a base - which boggles my little brain - but they can always use the public hubs, they have all that stuff in their bases) The easiest solution, OP, is for YOU to go to another zone's AE. It really is that simple. Now, reading through the posts again, it's clear to me that some will always have some unpleasant taste in their mouth when considering farmers. That's fine. I kind of get it. They're typically one-trick ponies, and some of them don't even do the trick well at all, and need help just to do their map without face-planting. (that's a different discussion there) The idea of creating an area specifically for farmers is interesting if it played out the way Okie hopes for. As for AE in pocket D...the truth is, other than certain times of the year, there's nothing going on in AE anyway. If you took AE out of there, the zone would be dormant, except during February, Spring, Christmas, and whenever someone wants to go use the ski chalet. I imagine the occasional iTrial might form there. Hey, Okie - you could start forming your MSRs in Pocket D! Just kidding. I keep waiting for you to recruit for that from a base, but I know putting the code out and having to repeat it ad-nauseum would be super annoying.

Close, it's the safeguard exploration in the Founder's map. It may be worth pointing out - if you're hero/vig, and you have this, it's called Founder's Protector. So, you could have it, but not be looking for the right name.

I can't speak for how it was pre-patch, but post patch...I noticed the creepers would often get smacked by the npcs. My combat log said a vine was defeated. There's no pet window, so no idea how many of them there are to begin with. Still...the power is excellent in conjunction with roots. I've never had such fun playing a controller.

I don't hate it. But there are times when it is annoying because it increases my risk. Labyrinth on Excelsior is predominantly run by Goddess Laucianne. A large number of her SG mates are PBs that as most know are woefully short on slots. I cannot blame those who don't use the kb-kd IO because it's a wasted slot, imo. But when that malevolent fog I was blasting gets kb'd into mobs that are +7 to me, that now creates a level of risk I'd rather not assume. All they had to do was attack from above, or move to the other side, but very few are that savvy about positioning, or it's just more fun for them to let things loose and not sweat it. Sometimes it goes somewhere safe, but I still have to reposition myself - as do they - and it can slow things down a few seconds. Not the end of the world, but still a minor annoyance. Generally, when I encounter KB, I consider the source, and the context. Like that scaffolding/bridge that the team attacks Dr. Vahzilok in the Positron II TF. Now, we have to potentially sift through a fair number of other cadavers and reapers to end the tf if we can't find the one that got knocked off. These situations are when it's most annoying. But, in a mission...if I'm melee, I hit the F key. If not, I blast per usual. While I grasp that melee folks might find it more annoying, it's not the end of the world.

Just anecdotally, I know that if you ignore the Hellions starting the fires, and you're the only one putting them out, things can go badly, and the building explodes with something crazy like 10k worth of damage. Or is it 100K? It's more hitpoints than my characters have, I know that much. Your strategy has to change if there are other folks putting out fires or worse, killing the Hellion fire starters. When they kill them all - you have no more fires to put out. Where's the fun in that? So, if you have any control over it, the only time to waste the Hellions are when the fires are growing faster than you can put the fires out. Using the temp, it might be good to put out 4-5 fires, waste a few Hellions, put out another fire or two. Just depends on how much fire there is when you get there, and how fast you can put out the fires.

I've never taken Entangling Aura on any of my natties. And I like them just the way they are! Mind you - the only content the natties do are hami raids. I've leveled one up organically, the others in a farm. On the last run, I don't choose a reward, so I need to have a different character to use the following day to get those extra 40 reward merits. Yet, when I exemp to pursue badges and such on them, they do very well. Solo'd all the red side tfs but Aeon just fine. As for my blasters, my fire/mc blasters spend a lot more time in melee than my ice/ice. But they all go in and out of melee. That's just part of being a blaster. Not "Blapper" which is as clear a misnomer as I can find, for all blasters are blappers, and all blappers are blasters. So why even have the word? A ranged blaster is just a one-dimensional blaster. But that's another topic. As for the controller...well, I'm no expert. My least played blaster has logged more time than all of my controllers put together, probably. So far, with this ice/dark...glacier makes going into melee necessary. No idea why it was designed like that...but it is what it is. Fortunately, shadow fog lets me do what I need to do before the npcs know what's up. Usually. It's the first character I've played where I thought group fly might be worth taking. But I quickly suppressed that thought. Taking on the seeds of hamidon in First ward..and all my dps was on the ground...ugh. But other than the MSR drop ship and the arachnos flyer, there's no other instances I can think of where flight might be useful.

I appreciate the suggestions. I'll head to brainstorm and see how different uses of AA plays out. I've never used Hot Feet. Hot Feet should be available for brutes, tanks and scrappers - the characters that stay in melee. The way my characters tend to hop about, it's not a good fit. Still, I'm going to go back to the drawing board, and try to give your suggestions a chance. I think my way is probably a little too boring anyway. Edit: On Mids, I have a rule of thumb. The recovery metric has to be roughly 2 units over the end drain. With Fade and soul absorption off With Fade and SA on This build is nuts. I'm not even trying to build for resistance or defense. (vengeance is not on) The problem will be if the flow of battle gets mucked up somehow and there are no mobs with souls to absorb. But I guess I can turn the toggle off if that happens. Exemplaring might also be an issue. Time will tell.

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?