OverkillEngine

Edit: At least this is the best I can think of offhand without also tossing out the cottage rule and doing something like turning one of Boxing or Kick into a passive or a click self buff, etc.

I mean hell, I could bring up how Concealment: Your entry powers are a choice of a self toggle or an ally buff; both within the same theme but different roles/target. Or Medicine, a choice of an ally heal or a foe/ally applied debuff/buff, so while you are partially restricted in choice of target they are still a different role within the theme. Similar for Presence, you get a choice of a taunt or a placate. Different functions, same theme. But I figured people could get the point without me being that exhaustive. Guess not. Out of all the non APP/Epic pools, Fighting and Leadership are the odd men out. And Leadership's entry powers are good enough for it to not be an issue, on top of it potentially providing something that a character has none of in their primary and secondary - team buffs. And at least they are different buffs, instead of just the same buff with a choice of sprinkles. Every build has access to attacks with a secondary effect (otherwise they'd not be able to level solo). Fighting's entry powers are indistinct in function from each other.

I do like the idea that as far as player characters go to change it to granting a temp version of default flight; then it is up to the recipient if they want to use it, and if they want it recharged they have to get back within the effect radius.

I absolutely can because they are still competing via the same opportunity cost mechanism.

Yeah that's the thing with Boxing and Kick, is that even if one disregards their purpose as a power tax, even with investment they are under most circumstances still inferior choices to take for even the majority of builds they have the most synergy with (AT's with decent melee damage modifiers). And they occupy the same damn role too. So you can pick a crappy attack....or a crappy attack. But if you take both and a 3rd crappy attack later on, they kind of might reach mediocre status! Oh Boy! 🙄 Flight Pool does it right: If I don't want or need the melee utility of Air Superiority, I can take Hover which occupies a different role in the same theme, or vice versa. Leaping Pool does it right: If I don't want or need the melee utility of Jump kick, I can take Combat Jumping which occupies a different role in the same theme, or vice versa. Sorcery Pool does it right: If I don't want or need the ranged utility of Arcane Bolt, I can take Spirit Ward which occupies a different role in the same theme, or vice versa. And on top of that, there are good reasons to take those powers even without them being power taxes.

Ima skip past the multiple pages of pointless bickering and chip my shillings into the pond on the Fighting Pool, and by extension, all the general pools: I don't mind the concept of prerequisites in the general pools. What I mind is the execution. To put it nicely, Boxing and Kick both suck outside of some very extenuating circumstances, even if you burn an additional power pick on Cross Punch. Sure they don't suck as bad as they used to, but they still suck (unless your idea of fun includes 6 slotting Brawl), and investment in them mainly just makes them suck less at the expense of slots that could be been far better spent elsewhere even on builds where melee attacks is at least within theme. Which is extra galling when if all you wanted to do was to pick up a bit more personal mitigation due to a lack of it in your primary and secondary, but it is being gatekept behind garbage. At least some of the other pools do it right and one of the two early picks performs adequately as a one slot wonder if one so desires, while still also being worth slotting. Makes me kind of wish the Fighting pool had been split into two pools instead, Close Quarters Combat and Defensive Training. But it's a bit late for that, so best compromise that I could see is maybe swapping the position of Kick and Tough. And then doing a review of how Tough and Weave might need rebalanced if not being forced to waste a power pick makes it too easy for melee AT's to become immortal.

Yeah I'd prefer if it at least followed a lot faster to save on recasts. The set feels clearly balanced around using this power with continuous uptime. Or if just *having* the power enabled a proc chance to summon it on your other powers as a way of forcefully relocating it.

Yeah I want Katars/punch daggers.

I'm positively ancient as far as modern gamers go, so I use a really archaic control scheme that predates WASD: Arrow keys with my left hand for movement, some camera and targeting controls bound to the home key block immediately above, CTRL to jump. I use the mouse in my right hand to manually target and/or click the powers in the tray. Combat in CoX is slow enough that I can get away with that, otherwise in games that require faster power execution I rebind the number row to the number pad in those games.

I'm down for at least considering any possible changes that would result in less disruptions to the flow of combat. Ideally, any changes would work similar to how Stalkers are able to utilize AS at need if it is off cool-down, but the system rewards the player doing it "correctly".

This mentality has been the bane of so many MMO's that otherwise would have been so much more successful that it isn't even funny. Fuggin execs get this stupid idea in their head that they have to beat WoW by becoming it, instead of beating WoW by not being WoW. "All those neat abilities you spent all that time getting? Yeah, you aren't going to get to use them, and here's some godawful QTE based fights."

Raise the aggro cap but give me Ninjitsu on Tanker in exchange. The version with Smoke Flash. Why? Oh, no reason....

Acid Mortar busts through the wall OH YEAH!

I was thinking of actually a separate set for each element, just like how the elemental blast sets are. For example, Earth Elemental Summoning could crib models, FX, and powers from the Minions of Igneous, while the non pet/pet buff powers are drawn from Seismic Blast. Over all damage types for that set would be mainly smashing, with maybe some lethal, toxic, and fire sprinkled in. Then do similar with the other elements to make specific sets to each element. Would possibly save some design time and effort since they would not have to make something from complete scratch. Edit: as far as appearance customization, could maybe port the Illusion set Phantom Army functionality where the golem pets can be a clone of the master to at least have something other than the default.

Like a Bronze Age comics version of Hide the Pain Harold:

*Slams beer on TV* Swap the Pets from 26 to 12 (where the AE hard controls other than immob tend to first be) and give the AE holds the nuke treatment of 1-2 minutes base cooldown. Smooths out the leveling curve on control sets that way since you can share aggro a bit with pets and they contribute the damage you lack even with Containment. May not even need to do this on Dominators, it's mainly Controllers that have the atrocious early game. As much as I love them and know what value they bring to the team, I have avoided making a Controller since I got back due to knowing how annoying they are to level until they get into their 20's-30's where they take off.

And that's why I think a server with GM or Rikti zone event code applied to all mobs might be interesting. Or at least not any worse than the AE itself if one is prone to repetitive farming. Might have to redo how the harder mob groups grant xp though, to ensure there is a reason to fight them as opposed to sandbagging on Skulls all day.

Or just say screw the cottage rule and turn the upgrades into aura toggles instead of clicks. Did a Posi 1 TF a while back with a team that cranked it up to +4, and I was stuck as the primary healer/support as a Demon/Dark, and splitting my attention to replace pets and keep them at full power so I didn't die while also keeping the tank with paper armor from dying with my other powers was getting pretty obnoxious. Too much animation lock to keep up with everything.

I could have sworn this set was complete on Live at some point, but for the life of me I cannot find the matching gloves and boots. Screenshot attached.

+1 on disliking the Orangebagel and Blue cake cave maps. No redeeming qualities to them. Just time waster design to a completely unfair and unfun degree. Pretty sure their designer would fail a psych test. The multi floor branching elevator Crey Lab maps are annoying, but they have *nothing* on the prior two.

It's definitely satisfying to punch some mook and watch them fold into a flesh pretzel.

Stealth powers. Think about how you can see yourself. Plus as @Luminara noted, there are other ways of suppressing FX on a client-side basis too. Eh, I see mine as simple since it is just flipping a visibility toggle for cones and AoE's on a single menu option instead of trying to figure out where to put it in the aura costume menu; the latter of which means turning it on or back off requires a visit to the tailor or swapping costumes entirely.

Rather than making them an aura option, put it in the options menu - self only visibility of course. Maybe display the cone/AoE marker while the power is queued and animating, with a .5 second or so afterimage fade out after execution. Again, visible only to the player. Then once you no longer need/want them you can just turn them back off any time via the menu.

Speaking from experience in other games, even what should be privately viewable only stats will get abused to gatekeep if they are accessible enough to share; unless the GM's go full on authoritarian and permaban happy for attempting to solicit or share those stats in any form. Simpler to just not provide them and deny fertile soil for that sort of behavior. Also, the tendency for people to number/KD chase to the detriment of team cohesion and content completion blows goats. You see that crap all the time in games like Overwatch where people pull a C9.

Oh god this. Was just on my new /Electrical Affinity MM today and while I was able to finagle a macro to target the closest ally and execute rejuvenating circuit, it was still annoying to have to keep a copy of the power in my tray so that I could see the recharge timer. Or a behavior option added to assist targeting that would reset it to normal targeting if the attempted power execution failed twice in a row due to invalid target. Then macro shenanigans would not be needed. Just mash the power button like you can with normal targeting to auto-target the closest valid target.