Jacke

Like "bring balance to the Force" with Anakin Skywalker worked out so well for the Jedi. Guess they forgot to define "balance" first.... Perhaps try a few of them individually, if possible.

Welp, time to drag out my old plan for a Clown MM Primary. Where is it...? This was a repost, good stuff copied below: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/53002-marine-affinity-archetype/#comment-665933 As I posted on Discord back in 2022: 🤡

From 2005 August, Repeat Offenders have been playing this game and adapting to whatever the game was at the time, teaming however they wished, or playing solo. Sometimes finding ways, Team compositions, and Toon builds to "push the envelope" so to speak. 😺 Some content does need a Tanker(s), sometimes other Archetypes are needed or helpful, and Advanced AKA Hard Mode does demand certain Team Compositions and Incarnate Powers selections. But most of it at a low enough Notoriety can be played however you wish. Even higher Notoriety with a better Build and Tactics.

French knights in castles are the ultimate foe! Be careful or they will taunt you a second time! 😺

As @Rudra mentioned, Vidiotmaps is a Mod for Homecoming, maintained by @AboveTheChemist. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/37216-vidiotmaps-for-homecoming/ Check the section "Removing/Deleting Old Installations" to make sure you don't have some remnants of a manual install. If doing that and reinstalling via what I assume is Michiyo's City Mod Installer doesn't work, ask here for assistance. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/49175-city-mod-installer-released/

These should work. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/List_of_Key_Names

Take a look at the Build.txt file. It's more likely that MRB misinterprets "Strike" as "Lunge". If so, should report it as a MRB bug.

I think @Snarky's rather chill already. Also rather unlikely to warm up at all. Kind of goes with his nature. 😺

I will mourn for a long time that Tanker Energy Aura has no stealth. Sigh. Another Toon I'll have to use up one of the only 4 Pool Picks on Concealment.

I know the pain. And especially that of the obstacles that we always hang up on in the various hallways we traverse. Or the big open maps where we've got to do an MMO "Where's Wally/Waldo" (a target keybind that can be editting to have the name of the silly target helps here). A moment of thought also had me remember that the standard keybind for 'V' is "+ctm_invert": Hold down 'V' and your Toon will move to that spot. I very rarely use it. But perhaps I should use it more.

Too bad you don't run on Everlasting, Snarky. The Group (and Global Channel) Everlasting TFs (watch out for the exact spelling of the Global Channel as there are a few very similar) runs a lot of TFs and iTrials including getting all the Mastery Badges. I'm in Repeat Offenders but Everlasting TFs helped me get all the Mastery Badges on my main.

I'm not a Dev. I'm a Tester. I try to test a number of things I know well when there's a Closed Beta. And follow as much as I can. That's a problem with a lot of Epic Pool Powers. There's many that have such a long recharge and short duration that they are only really emergency powers. But few of them have enough impact to deal with any emergency. As to how this will be fixed, welp, get a chance on every Epic Pool change that comes up in Closed Beta. Won't talk about the details but I think I have contributed to making some changes less bad that they could have been. Testing is hard. Doesn't always get it right the first pass. There was some discussion and testing during Closed Beta (as there always is) about the Black Hole changes. I never tested that one. I think the problems with Black Hole as it was were so great that what was at least a potential change for the better was allowed to go to release to see what would happen with the wider community. As @Snarky mentioned above, it's actually worse in that one use case (making mobs intangible while going after a glowie) was trashed for next to no benefit. This one is going to need to get another pass. When, I don't know. Poppycock. Doesn't solve anything. Because we can't describe what the inside of a Black Hole is like, there's no real way to know if we're in one. Simplest assumption is to say we are not in a Black Hole. As for where all the Energy came from for the Universe and how it ended up having a bit more Matter than Anti-Matter, that one is still waiting on a good hypothesis to explain it, as far as I know. I love love love Dark Miasma. Black Hole was and is still a MUST SKIP. Maybe some day....

I think that's bad science. We can't observe any consequences. And I sure don't see anything like a Singularity (outside of Grav Controllers' Pets) in the vicinity. The Universe is what can be observed and what can interact with us. While that excludes some things we can infer but can't interact with us (like what used to be parts of the observable Universe but which now due to the expansion of the Universe (which is an expansion of Space) are receding from us at greater than the Speed of Light in a Vacuum), well, thems the breaks in an Expanding Universe. Saying we're in a Black Hole but can't notice anything different is just silly. In other news, I figure @Snarky's right about the revised Black Hole Power. Still a Must-Skip Power. Needs some serious rework again. Could have been worse. Could have accidentally introduced something out of Katamari Damacy and we'd still be working on getting Snarky unstuck from a big ball of stickiness in a Cave Map's Layer Cake Room. 😺

A core reason why Pets often underperform is that it's far too easy in a build to set up Pets--and Pseudopets--not to get to or even close to that necessary final ToHit of 95%. The reason for this is most Pet IO sets don't give the Pets enough Accuracy. Mids Reborn (MRB) also has a massive bug (so big and fundamental it's unfixable): The vast majority of Pets and Pseudopets don't benefit from the Casting Toon's Global Buffs. MRB shows them as getting those buffs. Some Pets (like Trip Mine) don't even benefit from Buff Auras like the Leadership Powers. That means Pets don't benefit from these things on the Casting Toon: Level Shifts (except from the Mastermind Inherent Power Supremacy) +4 Content is +4 to the Pets, while with a T3 or T4 Alpha Boost it's +3 to the Toon Global Accuracy Global ToHit Global anything Only a small number of Pets (example is Electrical Blast's Voltaic Sentinel) that are an extension of the Caster benefit from the Caster's Global Buffs. To avoid needing to calculate all the time what the Pet or Pseudopet's actual final ToHit is, I use these two Rules in builds: Slot ED-capped (~93% or greater) Accuracy. If critical Pet Powers aren't Autohit or have a Base Accuracy under 1.2, they also need: The Caster to have Tactics (even Mastermind Tactics with just the Base Slot is good enough). A good source of -Def on the targets the Pets are attacking.

Except for "the power of friendship", City of Heroes would be one of those dead games. 😿

Any game depends on a knife-edge balance of providing enough of a challenge without veering into being too tough or too easy. Often some of the things become at least routine with at least good enough Toon builds and operation. Currently I think the MSR is a good example of this level. A Hami raid is a bit more challenging but with a well formed League that does a current tactic to take down the Big Blob is rather safe too. I came into the game just as the Global Defense Nerf was impacting the game, but I didn't play at a high enough level to notice it. I did notice the impact of Enhancement Diversification. ED I think was necessary to stop some builds forcing the numbers too far and making some builds outstanding but somewhat problematic. We got back some of what was lost when the Invention System was added. Now builds are a rather steep cliff of design knowledge and I often wish that a simpler design system had been used (I think the one in Champions Online was interesting, but it also had its own problems like the Free-Form Builds being way too powerful). To a degree, a lot of that stuff is now baked into the game. Massive changes--including glibly turning back the clock to an earlier version--would demand too much volunteer effort. Even smaller versions of radical changes would be rather fateful; they risk having their own serious issues that weren't visible without letting thousands of players at it for a month or two to break. And making radical changes to a game long established has its own dangers as well. So we see step-wise refinement. I think most of the changes are good. And I can live with all of them.

The best example I can think of a TL;DR was from a Traveller adventure put out years ago. The Player Characters discover this long and rambling journal that bears on the MacGuffin they're wanting to find. So they feed it into a computer to summarize it. The first very tight summary was two words: We died. Now there's a story hook if I ever saw one.

I'm not that kind. Come on. Having the guts to wear that outfit for a whole film has got to count for something. Definitely deserves a homage. 😺 The male thing-high boots could work with a lot of other outfits from the past several centuries.

City of Heroes used to run on vibes. It wasn't that good a way to run a whole game. The original devs didn't understood numbers in a Role-Playing Game that well, less than I did at the time (from examining numerous Pen-&-Paper RPGs). I could have told them scaling up a factor by 3 or more would likely break something. Especially the more. Then as the game was released and they got some feedback, they realised that those vibes were not good vibrations. And we got a lot of massive changes in the first few pages. That many players still are sore about. Feel, vibes is important. But so are numbers.

Trying to remember for sure, but I think some Paper missions from Port Oakes drag the Redside Toon to Cap.

Lots of stuff here. Will have to dig into it laters. Of course. Blasters do that all the time! Sure, Stalkers may often be short on AoEs. So are many other ATs with particular Powersets. But ST Damage also gets rid of Mobs too. And that's where the Stalker shines!

There are some fiddly bits about some of these choices: The Tier 9 Power of Poison is Venomous Gas, a 15ft radius PBAoE toggle. The Tier 9 Power of Fire Blast is Inferno, a 25ft radius PBAoE click. Those tends to draw the Toon into melee range. The combo is still good (as most combos are), but I'd pair Poison with a Blast Powerrset that also wants to be in melee radius like Radiation Blast. There are some Blast Powersets that can do everything at range, like Ice Blast. Knockback is fun! But also can generate Ally Aggro on Teams and Leagues. Energy Manipulation and Electricity Manipulation are two of the Blaster Secondaries that Blappers (Blasters who fight a lot in melee range) use. And putting in a lot of KB>KD Enhancements to reduce the KB to KD in ALL Energy Blast Powers is rather harsh tax. I would pair Energy Blast with a good Secondary with a Tier 1 Power that provides KB Resistance to the Mobs so only the AoE Powers will need KB>KD Enhancements. That's not Energy Manipulation (Tier 1 Power is Power Thrust with even more KB 😺). I'm planning to pair Energy Blast with Atomic Manipulation, which has a fast casting Tier 1 Power with KB Resistance for the Mobs, Electron Shackles.

Now I'm wondering if Lucasfilm will use that right-side one and market it as a bowling ball. 😺

@arcane, that will just force all those mentioned Keys to be NOP, do nothing. That's not necessarily their default. If you want them to do what their default is, use unbind: /unbind [boundkeys] There's another fiddly thing about Keybinds, a setting that changes those defaults. It's in the Options window. Find by this: Menu > Options > Options window > Keymapping tab > at the very top KEYBIND PROFILE > Classic That has a dropdown to switch between these 4 options: Modern, Joystick, Classic, Launch (Issue 0) @arcane, I highly suspect you're used to Classic keybinds. @arcane, you likely don't need to worry about the next bits. That Keybind Profile is also reset in bind files by the top line having a line like this to change that: KeyProfile <1 of the 4 options> To really force a reset by loading a bind file, there's often this second line: UnbindAll Yes, the config is fiddly with big sharp nasty teeths! 😺

I have my own Ice/Cold/Ice Controller (Jacke Canada) and I love the combination. Still working on what Cold Domination Defender to build. It won't be Archery, because on Defenders and Corruptors I only pair Archery with Trick Arrow (just the way I am). And I'm a long time member of Repeat Offenders. Any Toon can add to any Team outside of the bleeding edge of difficult content. It is more how well the Toon is built and played.