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Anybody else do this? I find myself often creating discordant characters. Huge characters who hang back at max range buffing the team and bloodthirsty, tiny gal toons who race to the frontlines. Since there's no in-game banana for scale, here's a pic of Mo'Hawk during his tutorial.

There are a number of auras that slow or applies a debuff of some sort, and many can take damage procs. Not sure if this was what you had in mind, but just adding for the sake of completeness.

It's Hasten. Even post-ED. It's probably the most common ability among just about every power build created. By itself it's pedestrian, but being able to attack faster, use abilities faster and speed up getting your T9s, etc. Even if it was the last power in the speed pool, just about every power build player would probably get it. Is it mandatory for a power build? Absolutely not. Do I think it makes every build better? Yes.

Hmm... I guess I went a bit of different direction. Mesmermaid, I took more literally as a mind control, fighting maid. Mind control/martial assault dominator? Intimidate foes with your fearsome mind powers and if that doesn't work, kick em by the short hairs? Sort of a riff of this character: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/56505/maid-to-kill

I hadn't been paying attention to all the stuff about the Well, and I had a lore-obsessed SG mate who extolled that everything came from the Well of the Furries. Took 2 seconds from another SG mate to exclaim we would be entering into a new Golden Age of the City of Catgirls. But yeah, I don't like the whole super powered McGuffin is responsible for all powers thing either. Bleh.

No, that would be too easy. You'll have to retrieve a magical McGuffin from an entire different dimension, talk to some rando reporter who has a lead to turn it into some sort of bomb, and then fight the Praetorian version of the Council (who are good guys) to set the trigger. No common sense stuff like flooding tunnels, cutting power or just nuking from orbit allowed!

I have a couple things that are true only in my head, but obviously isn't in the lore. These two (Janet Kellum and Maxwell Christopher) are totally dating. Janet always considers Maxwell grumpy because he can't ever establish a proper separation between his work and social life. The bartender messing up your Martini is not a Nemesis plot! Meanwhile, Maxwell is both attracted and terrified of Janet because big sis is Valkyrie and she carries a big frickin' spear. The FSBA is both an efficient operation and a scene out of Parks and Recreation. Also, Azuria secretly moonlights as a hero. She's pretty bad it, and you have to constantly save her in the Rescue the Fortune Teller mission. She always gives a false alias (Lady Rose, Mistress Camille, Mystira, et. al.) because she's embarrassed about her incompetence, and doesn't want folks to know. I think it's leaked because her reputation is somewhat in tatters. I think Montague Castanella, her old friend, knows her secret and hopes that she sticks to her day job.

Because I hate using inspirations so I use the cheapy/small ones first. I get this strange idea that the bigger ones are harder to come by when they're really not. And yes, they have to be sorted by size, lol. At least for me.

That would actually kind of kill me because F1 through F4 would all activate a flavor of Respite and I'd have to manually mouse click something else.

Ugh, they are not! The Acc/Dmg enhancement is in the second spot! What was I thinking?!?

Must color coordinate power tray!

This bothers more every time I look at it...

Only one has a dish named after him so therefore he must be the most superior.

This is all self-rated, so yeah pretty relative. What prompted this was a recent TF I joined and there was a DM scrapper that was just amazing lining up his cones. Also had really good situational awareness. Used a ranged attack to pull a mob off of one of squishier teammates. And seemed to beat everyone to the mission door using only super speed. I think I’m pretty good, but I wasn’t as good as that dude. Edit: ratings are just for funsies

So first off, I think City of Heroes is a pretty accessible game and has a low floor for being proficient at it. Reading the tutorial information gives you most of what you need, and experimentation plus Google can get you the rest of it. However, there are definitely areas of skill in this game. Movement skills - this can be everything from perfectly landing a super jump to avoid the "lava" to being able to line up mobs so that AoE cone can hit all targets. Some players are very good a this. Leading task forces/raids - I'm not talking about just getting them done, but doing them rather efficiently or at the various challenge levels. Sure, familiarity can compensate here, but I think an understanding of game mechanics, how certain encounters work, what powers are needed, etc. is skill based. Character builds - some players are really good at min-maxing builds, some are not. It's interesting to me that the meta for this has changed somewhat. With access to pretty much any IO and with the full incarnate system available, players build as much for damage (heavily using procs) as they do for various defense caps and recharge. Badging - getting exploration or plaque badges require almost no skill, but some of the defeat and achievement badges requires a pretty good understanding of where to make headway in that badge efficiently. Key binds - there are a lot of binds and macros that make the frustrating into the simple. Mastermind binds by themselves can elevate an entire AT's effectiveness. Binds for finding hard-to-find glowies or hostages make frustrating missions potentially a lot easier. In-game knowledge - most of this feels like familiarity instead of actual skill, but knowing where things are and what can be done in certain situations is definitely skill. For someone like me who left several issues before the live game went end of life, I'm amazed at the pieces of information I don't have (e.g., I had never seen Kallisti Wharf until yesterday). This also shows up in the ability to make innovative and original costumes. So how do I rate myself? Movement - 3/5 (still stymied by CoT cake layer cave) Leading task forces/raids - 1/5 (I've forgotten too much, and am completely unfamiliar with newer content, challenge ratings, new power sets) Character builds - 4/5 (I build mostly old school style circa 2012, but I've adapted pretty nicely I think) Badging - 2/5 (mostly owing to Google) Key binds - 0/5 (sadly I'm too lazy to use key binds on most of my characters to my obvious detriment) In-game knowledge - 2/5 (anything issue 19 or older, no idea; I've also forgotten a ton)

Save the Fortune Teller (Spelunker badge). It's a badge that is necessary for the Atlas Medallion accolade. It's super easy to miss especially if you're teaming a lot on low levels. It's not so annoying anymore due to Ouro.

I'm not telling anyone how they should play. I'm simply pointing out one of the reasons why the game feels unbalanced to some. No game goes out of its way to provide every player the top of the line gear this easily. With that said, this is a nostalgia game so who cares, right? I agree with Yomo above that the djinni has been let out of the bottle already.

I like Inventions. I think they add depth and complexity to an otherwise bland itemization system. I also appreciate that they allow for further customization of your character. I've seen a number of threads stating that IOs break the balance of the game. In its current implementation, I would agree. However, the game breaking part of them is how easily they are acquired. Back on live, the Miracle proc, the Numina proc would be tens of millions of influence. The Gladiator Armor Defense / TP protection was around a billion influence. PvP IOs were also extremely scarce due to them being loot that fell when in PvP zones. In other games, your character doesn't have access to legendary gear at the ridiculously low cost of 5 million influence (the price I bought a Luck of the Gambler / Global Recharge IO yesterday). In an extreme example, in classic WoW, you may have to wait weeks and constantly raid to get a specific piece of gear that would allow you to progress. Scarcity, cost, progression are all barriers in other games that limit access to the most powerful gear. In our current state, the most powerful gear in the game is so easily available that we see complaints about how it trivializes content. In addition, because you can buy the very best, why settle for second best? There are some invention sets that just go completely ignored because your average player can afford to go top tier immediately. Many of the second tier sets don't have the game-breaking bonuses top tier ones do. Would anyone object to someone getting 4% regeneration or 1.5% endurance recovery? On live, I remember waiting on the availability of certain scarce IOs/recipes but mostly settling on builds that factored in affordability as much as function. I don't think it's a bad situation to have some more second tier sets get more use. I think like many of you, I'd like to see game difficulty better balanced. At the highest levels, support ATs are often unneeded and the availability of top-tier IOs + Incarnate abilities have made tank-mage characters more prevalent. However, I think balancing discussions that don't factor economics, scarcity and perhaps gates on certain materials are not the way to go. It's not enough to simply add higher difficulty modes. Nor do I advocate raw global changes like buffing all enemy hit points or damage. I think scarcity made the live game more balanced and the current economic implementation broke it.

IOs were a response to enhancement diversification, arguably the most drastic nerf implemented in the game (though the lesser known global defense nerf may actually been worse). In my experience, IO-based characters still had to rely on support characters from when they were introduced (issue 8?) all the way to issue 19 when the Incarnate system was introduced. At least that was my experience during the live servers era. Would you say that pre-Incarnate teams in the game today still don't require support characters? I suspect it's the Incarnate system that ultimately tips the scale. Though there's a lot of things that make the base Homecoming character way stronger than when they were on live. At the top of my head: SOs available at level 1 Mezzes not dropping toggles Inherent fitness (more power choices, and stamina/health at level 1) All the P2W items While I agree with your premise that there is a material increase in character strength without commensurate increase in game difficulty, I don't think the issue is strictly an issue with Inventions.

I'm in Portland, home of Salt n Straw, and able to partake some extraordinary flavors: Salted Malted Chocolate Chip Cooke Dough Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Black Pepper Honey Lavander Pear and Blue Cheese While I like all of the above, I usually settle for Double Fold Vanilla (their house vanilla) or their Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons (their house Sea Salt Caramel)

Agree. In fact, in many situations, it was suboptimal. You would really miss that rad defender if facing a tough AV.

Back in the day, I used to go out of my way to avoid players advertising themselves as a "healer". It told me that you didn't know how to play your AT. After multiple team ups with Empathy defenders who only took their heals and skipped out of Fortitude and Clear Mind, I only played with Empaths who I knew personally. It wasn't just Empaths either. Worst was a Rad defender who only had their area heal and the full medicine pool. I like that you can use a lot of different combinations of ATs to put together a successful team. I like you have hybrid ATs like Warshades, Masterminds, Fortunatas, etc. Some of my best experiences (and I think this goes for a lot of vets) is when an oddball mishmash of characters synergizes so well that they smash through content. I think you have some points that the game difficulty needs to be adjusted to create more utilization of support ATs and that power creep has trivialized what used to be hard content. However, where you and I disagree is that I don't think bringing back dependence on the trinity is the solution for the problems you mention.

Great topic! Respec missions used to be so hard! The mission itself wasn't that tough, but the folks who often showed up on that mission often had gimped builds. I had a Force Field Defender with Medicine pool which I used to help a lot players through that mission. And even with that I think I still failed about 20% of the time. Hami-Os used to be the bees knees. True end game gear especially since Hami raids early on would fail a fair amount of the time. I remember when capes were announced! For the graphics capability of the day, I thought they looked great, clipping issues aside. Pre-travel suppression / non-diminishing returns PvP was really fun. It was completely unbalanced and had it's very own meta, typically blasters with an emp defender. It was obvious that many powers, range vs. melee, hit points, defense, tohit, debuffs, etc. were mechanics that were never devised with PvP in mind. It was flawed, but fun. Should have never been introduced in the game in that state. Putting badges in PvP zones...probably the most drama inducing thing that old devs could have done. A terrible idea that pitted two fervent communities against each other. Sappers were really fearsome back in the day. Pretty overpowered and could single-handedly cause entire team wipes. I loved manning a tank or a /rad controller and helping someone past the AVs in the Tina Macintyre or Maria Jenkins missions. Really felt like a hero. I loved the utter domination of all defender or controller teams. I've always liked that CoH didn't adhere to the strict tank-healer-dps trinity. I remember when AR/Dev blasters and Fire Tanks were meta. Then people discovered regen scrappers and fire controllers. Invulnerability used to be awful causing a character to be rooted in place. People still picked it because they wanted it to pair with Super Strength and be Superman. Post-ED blasters were really bad. I remember respec'ing one of mine and discovered that blasts wouldn't one-shot most minions. Post-ED tanks were almost as bad. Early game, the devs purposely obfuscated how powers actually worked. Frustratingly you only saw descriptions of high or severe damage, stuff like that. I remember the grassroots efforts to start cataloguing activation times and to better understand attack chains. How defense really worked (no one understood that 45% soft cap until player testing revealed it), resistance caps, stealth, tohit, or other significant game mechanics. I can say with certainty that most of the early players essentially played blind, picking suboptimal powers because a lot data was just hidden from us. I was blown away how popular badges became. I think CoH was one of the first games to implement them. I couldn't understand why some players obsessed with this particular metagame but I noticed that accomplishments/badges had proliferated and had become normalized in many other MMOs of that era. Sidekicking and Find Team functions, even at launch were pretty amazing. I remember being a level 16 fire tank who was invited to a level 30ish team mission. It was great to immediately access high level content. Fighting Crey with training and DOs though wasn't as great of an experience. Thanks for indulging this trip through memory lane.

That’s too bad. I was hoping for plug and play from AE to live.