Lunar Ronin

I honestly do not understand the whole "you have no agency red side" argument. I'm sorry, I just don't. You have no agency on blue side either. You either perform a heroic deed, or you don't. Red side, you either perform a villainous deed, or you don't. Same thing.

Please. I'm just saying that using x8 as a solo baseline is flawed, because then what? There's been lots of people complaining over the past five years that they feel useless on a team because mobs are nearly immediately dead. And they're right. Why have a team at all if you can solo x8? The truth is, characters shouldn't be able to solo x8. Just Paragon Studios and Homecoming have both increased characters' power level so substantially over the years that that is now a thing... but it still shouldn't be a solo baseline.

No character is meant to be able to solo x8 anything. The base difficulty is +0x1. Every character can solo that now. Being able to solo at x8 is a sign of a broken OP character, because that's a difficulty size meant for a team.

That needs to be updated then. Excelsior is now the unofficial PvP shard as all of the PvPers on Indomitable migrated there in 2021. Indomitable is now just a regular ol' PvE shard, but with double XP for the moment.

Just a reminder that this is Saturday for anyone interested. There are three spots remaining.

That hasn't been the case in over two years, and its designation of being the unofficial PvP shard was officially removed in mid-February.

Yeah. Double XP is clearly no longer cutting it for Indomitable and Reunion. Honestly, if the goal is to spread out players among the six shards, then a reward increase would be needed on Indomitable, Reunion, and eventually Victory. Either increase drop rates, increase Infamy, and/or increase reward merits. Honestly, I would increase reward merits so you would have to be outside of an AE building. But there would be a few very good reasons for not doing any of that, so I very much doubt anything will change.

There is, Victory. It will be a permanent sixth shard for Homecoming.

All right, so I did another Eden Trial on Brainstorm this morning. This time with Personal Force Field up in addition to Dispersion Bubble, Hover, Maneuvers, and Weave, giving myself 141.12% ranged defense, 130.49% melee defense, and 119.23% AoE defense: As you can see, Crystal Titan spammed his Prism Blast attack, but not once did it show anything about the Energy damage. So while the attack roll does not display in the combat log, there must be an internal roll going on, all of which missed due to PFF. So the end result: Everything about the Crystal Titan is working as intended. Ambrosia inspiration works fine. The Energy damage from Prism Blast is not autohit, nor is the Smashing damage from Foot Stomp. What has changed (intentionally), is that all of the Crystal Titan's Unique DoT damage is now autohit. That's a lot of damage that adds up very quickly. That's why the Eden Trial is much more lethal than it used to be, and why it seems to be run less frequently than it used to be, (which wasn't much to begin with). I know that I'll probably never run it again unless I want the badge for some reason.

I figured it out. In the Page Three patch notes, which can be found here: So, yes. The Crystal Titan is in fact much more deadly than he was prior to Page 3, because defense is now useless against his unique damage. In fact, I didn't see a single missed roll from any of the Crystal Titan's non-unique damage either. I don't think that this is working as intended, but I'll run some more tests.

All righty. I did a series of tests on Brainstorm. Eden Trial at +0x1, no Ambrosia: Eden Trial at +0x1, with Ambrosia: Master of Eden Trial at +0x1 with Ambrosia: So the Ambrosia inspiration does seem to be working as intended. Still, that's an absolute crapton of AoE damage, all in rapid succession. No, Ambrosia never did stop all damage from coming in. But something changed over the past couple of years. The Crystal Titan is now much more lethal than he was. As you can see from the logs above, he does an absolute crapton of AoE damage, all in very rapid succession. You didn't need to fly before Page 3. No, I don't think most melee ATs can handle that 1,998.11 points of damage in about five seconds. Stalkers and Scrappers certainly can't, some Brutes can't. Tankers are about it.

Yeah, see this there where it was reported before. - I'm going to try to get some testing done on it. Something is clearly broken and has been broken since Page 3 went live two and a half years ago, just so few people are doing it that it has only been reported a few times since.

It's been said elsewhere: No, Vanguard characters will not be able to move to any other Homecoming shard. That said, it's easy enough to make a new character on Homecoming and level it up to level 50. Heck, if you want, you can make it on Indomitable or Reunion and power level it up to level 50 in a few hours. Obtaining badges will take time, but that's part of the fun.

Yep, all or nothing. The only way around it would be to make a second Homecoming installation that you use for specific characters only.

The thread announcing the patch notes always seems to go live up to ten minutes before the patch notes become viewable. Just give it a few minutes.

... Excuse you. I played it yesterday.

No macro needed. Force Field bubbles are AoE now, has been since Issue... 20? I usually cast two of each every three and a half minutes to catch everyone. If someone isn't caught in the double application, oh well.

For lower levels, yes. As a hero, you can eventually go to a zone called The Hollows called around level 6, where you'll find a little storyline, and a zone called Faultline around level 15 where you'll find another little storyline. Then another zone called Striga Isle around level 20 with another little storyline, and another zone called Croatoa around level 25 with another little storyline. But they're all independent and not very long. Nothing game encompassing or grandiose like Star Wars: The Old Republic or Final Fantasy XIV. Again, villain side has a storyline from the start, but it's more subtle than newer MMORPGs. There is a third side that has what you're looking for, called Praetoria or gold side, which is several years newer than hero and villain sides, but you won't find teams there and it only goes to level 35-40 where you have to become either a hero or villain. It's also significantly more challenging than playing a hero, and a bit more challenging than playing a villain, so it's not advised for new players, but it is there.

Welcome to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles! City of Heroes isn't like newer MMORPGs. If you're playing hero side, there isn't a main storyline. If you want a storyline, you should play a villain. Even then, the villain side storyline isn't like newer MMORPGs, it's less overt than the storylines of newer MMORPGs but there is one.

They're not Incarnate trials, just regular co-op Task Forces. I'd say an average speed run would take about 35-40 minutes. Half that for a very good speed run team. I've done it with only four people several times, which averaged about a hour IIRC. But it wasn't a PUG group and the other three were all really good players, better than I am.

Hamidon raid is an extreme outlier and honestly needs to be either made significantly more difficult to account for how much more powerful Homecoming characters are compared to live, or have its rewards nerfed. Outside of Hamidon raids, the next highest would be Apemage, (or Tinpex as some call it). That's an outlier as well, but not as egregious as a Hamidon raid.

Rebirth has done it. You automatically get four additional enhancement slots - two in Health, two in Stamina. So it can be done, just the implementation is no doubt tricky.

Ugh. That's an old myth from live that still refuses to die to this day. Stealth auras have nothing to do with spawn rates.

They're also four years old and don't take any of the game's changes since then into consideration. If you're looking for a Mastermind build, I'd suggest limiting your search to 2022 and later.

They should have the Request channel automatically anyway by default.