DeltaPangaea

Ay, while we're propagating customization stuff, last I checked Necromancy Masterminds don't have the same customization options as Dark Blast for things like Gloom and all that. Like the No Skull and Soul Noir options. Could we get those fixed up?

Praetorian Police please! We have the animations and VFX! Hell, they're even already bundled up into abilities, since the Police have a bunch of abilities they use! Even some unique ones! Hmmm, some kinda skates or slide as a move-speed equivalent to the jumping of Combat Jumping and the Flight of Hover. A bike or something as the Fly equivalent, good for moving around but slow in combat. A jetpack for flight, OR if you wanna be REALLY cool, use the jumppack effect from the Jump Pack p2w power and make a jump pack that doesn't switch off after 30s and break its cooldown half the time. ... Dunno what for the last two.

I feel like new players are more likely to go and do the thing the game tells them to do, talking to contacts and stuff rather than immediately diving into a trial that's not signposted, y'know? And if someone doesn't know how to get enhancements at level 20, that's 100% on them since they evidently skipped the tutorial. Or clicked through it at mach speed because who reads quest text in an MMO, amirite? Honestly I feel like the answer would be 'Have trials at that level aside from DFB'. Also off-topic but it's a fucking crying shame that people only seem to run it Heroside, when the writing Villainside is so much more entertaining. Arbiter's gotta get his coffee.

Then logically shouldn't their pools also have a little bit of everything? Rather than just 'Hey here's more ranged damage.' Actually looking at it again, Mace Mastery is the only Patron pool where VEATS get something different to Tankers and Brutes. They get Shatter Armor instead of Focused Accuracy. Honestly I'm cool with that being there, it's mostly the overabundance of ranged damage powers, and with them being obligatory to take as a tax if you want anything later. Leviathan is Ranged damage Ranged Damage Cone +Immobilize Ranged Damage Cone Ranged Damage Cone +debuff Summon. Mu is Ranged Damage Ranged TAoE Immobilize Ranged TAoE Damage Ranged Damage Cone Summon Mace is Ranged Damage Ranged TAoE Immobilize Ranged TAoE Damage Melee Damage and -res Summon Soul is Ranged Damage Ranged Cone Damage + Immobilize Ranged TAoE Damage Darkest Night which I couldn't be bothered trying to parse into regular text Summon Y'see the trend, right? I'm cool with them doubling up on things they already have, but it'd be nice if it was anything other than just 90% Ranged Damage. Like y'know what I think'd be cool? If each of the Patrons had an Armor Upgrade as one of their two initially available powers. An Auto Power that does something nice based off that Patron. Ditching the first 'ranged damage and little/nothing else' power from each for that would fix things up nicely I think. Or hell, scrap NOTHING and just increase the number of powers that they get to pick from. Up it from 5 to say, 7. They ARE Arachnos people, it's kinda silly that they get the least from their epic pools, y'know? Especially since they can't get at Ancillaries.

So aside from the fact that Soldiers and Widows don't get Ancillary stuff (Which I can deal with) it honestly feels like the powers they can get from Patrons just... don't do a whole lot. Which is ironic given that they're from Arachnos. With every other archetype, Epic pools are meant to cover holes, like Blasters getting defensive powers and such. But Soldiers and Widows get the same Patron power options as Tankers and Brutes for some reason, providing mostly ranged damage and summons which they already have and have had access to for a while. TL;DR of it is that all the other archetypes, their epic pools give them something they lack, something to patch their holes. These ones are just... more of what Soldiers and Widows already got, mostly. I know they're weird jack-of-many-trades archetypes who could end up as a number of different things, but their pools being consistently 'ranged damage' feels redundant. There's nothing in there I can get excited for really.

If I can be probably-unreasonable for a bit, what'd be SUPER nice would be the ability to customize our basic animations. Like, our run animation, our sprints, the idle animations we use, our flight/hover poses... Likely unreasonable, but it'd be nice.

I mean you basically just add some animations to the power customization at a Tailor's and you're golden aren'tcha? No need for an entire powerset. I can see it being tricky if you want to extend it to weapons as well as kicking though, since it'd require a Weapon customization option so you could pick which to use... Unless you gave Fighting its own Weapon slot. If you wanted to be barehanded you just leave it barehanded, or maybe be able to pick some big punchy gauntlets, or a sword or whatever. You'd need to then pick an appropriate animation for it so you aren't just punching with a sword in your hand, but... I can see it working.

Speaking of Robotic Arm options, it would be nice if they were equalized a bit. Like 1 is 'upper right arm', 2 is 'upper both arms', and 3 is 'all right arm' and has specific options that make use of that, like the crystal arm which I don't think anything else has. Would be nice if We could do things like 'just left upper' or 'full both arms', y'know? Just squish them all into 'Robotic Arm', and then a second option within it for which layout you want. I think it'd only be 6 options. Left Upper, Right Upper, Both Upper, Left Full, Right Full, Both Full.

Their Inherent ability feels kinda... clunky to me. Necessitating you keep both of your first two powers, one of which you might not even pick up, in order to activate both halves of it, and it activating just whenever as opposed to you being able to control when it's used like Dominators can. Eh.

So I'm just doing Praetoria for the first time, and I'm seeing a lot of really cool, unique vfx on these boys in blue. The standard energy blast, a rapid fire one, a cone-effect wave of some kind, a beam that puts a blue damage-over-time lattice over the affected target, the melee punches, the twohanded melee slam... And then there's the swanky energy field effect when they get hit, and the power gloves... I'm not even level 5 yet and I've seen this much, and given that you're reading this part you've read the title as well, so I'll cut the preamble. I think it'd be sweet as hell to be able to actually get to play with all this ourselves, either just as a powerset, or as Praetorian Epic Archetype. I've heard that the idea was bandied about BACK IN THE DAY, and at least one other person's suggested it in the past since the revival. I know that our capabilities for New Stuff are somewhat limited due to animations and probably other things beyond my ken, but the pieces already exist as far as I can tell, it'd just be a matter of putting them together. Yes? No? Thoughts and opinions on my thoughts and opinions?