Jacke

Some of those replacement powers, the P2W ones, are more limited in game than Pool travel powers like Super Speed and Infiltration. I think they're considered like "temporary powers" and are disabled on some Masters runs and in iTrials.

Considering the intense desire for commenting on the Rune of Protection change--and that it is overwhelming any feedback on the other changes--I suggest it be split into its own "Feedback" thread that can allow the community to express its support and/or frustration.

This is definitely a problem in some circumstances. Unless Singularity can be controlled, the point of attraction can't be determined, so it'll often be a problem. Is there anyway the attraction can be put in a secondary power of Singularity (like Translocation is with respect to Mystic Flight), effectively allowing the Controller to tell Singy to "PULL NOW" ? The Controller ST immobilizes provide high DPS and DPE attacks for low levels, as well as keeping mobs away from the Controller and thus only using their weaker ranged powers. They also provide AV immobilization for later levels (all are Mag 4 base I believe) to lock down the runners and keep them in various patch debuffs.

Why do stealth powers lose ANY Defense when in combat? I'd like an honest answer. And saying it was always so isn't good enough. If the player character can be seen by the mobs and gets aggro, I think the first attack has the full Defense because the PC is not flagged as having attacked, been attacked, or clicked an objective. Unless somehow being attacked somehow flags the character before being hit or even the roll to hit, which is not what I think happens. From that point on until all of those flags expire and go away, the Defense is affected. Rarely untouched, usually halfed, now sometimes quartered or removed entirely. If the player character can't be seen, then it's only by happenstance affected if the player is in an AoE and gets hits and then flagged as been attacked. So, the vast majority of the time doing anything useful, the player is going to have the lower value of in-combat Defense. Which makes the higher values of Defense out-of-combat effectively useless.

I believe the Range enhancement in Universal Travel IOs buff its range. Even without that, I've seen on Live Translocation being faster than Fly. EDIT: And @Glacier Peak just tested this on the current Beta and Universal Travel IOs do not buff Translocation range.

So it's either steamroll or perma-Mez to death?!? If squishies should be affected by Mez, why not all ATs? Reduce all status protection on all ATs so if they get two mob Mezzes, they get affected. Have them enjoy their agency in the game suddenly taken away and having few tools to deal with it. Or how about taking the solution for Blasters and give it to all squishy ATs: T1 and T2 Blasts on Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, and Dominators can be used despite Mez and give them an ATO Enhancement that builds a Mez shield allowing them to burn their way out of Mez when it stops them cold. Instead of just having to suck it up and die. The problem is Mez. Players want a better solution than paying up to 2.5 million Inf/hour for Defensive Amplifiers. Nerfing Rune duration weakens one of the main Mez mitigation tools. Fixing the issues with Mez even partly will be hard. But that's an area that should be addressed sooner rather than later.

I don't like that the change to the duration of Rune has not be justified. I also get that some changes need to be tested by actually releasing them live to get enough true sense of their impact. But the problem here is that a major Mez mitigation tool is being nerfed without any attention to the broader issue that Mez is a binary threat that some ATs can almost completely ignore and for others is a matter of life and death. This is like removing free-range /enterbasefrompasscode without improving other tools to replace it. Although fixing Mez is a much harder thing, because it has been wrong since the beginning of City of Heroes. Else why would nerfing player Mez be one of the major differences between PvE and PvP. How player mez is in PvP is an attempt to make Mez less of a problem, not as good as getting right at the start. But getting it right at the start was more a matter of luck and that didn't happen with Mez. Mez should not be binary, doing nothing or removing player agency. It should have levels. Perhaps Slows should ramp up to immobilizing and Recharge reduction should ramp up to holds. But fixing Mez in an established game is hard and would generate more grief for the devs than Page 1 and Page 2 put together. So I understand their not touching it. But alas, nerfing Rune is touching on Mez. But it's still there with Defense Amplifiers, at 2.5million Inf/hour. And I strongly disagree with your position here.

Checking the numbers and actual impact, I find Boosting helps when the number of slots in a power are few. In almost all cases where there's a set of 5 or 6 IOs, I've looked at the numbers and Boosting to +5 all of them has little impact due to already being deep into ED enhancement limiting, not to mention the reciprocal diminishing returns of Endurance Reduction and Recharge Reduction. I'm alarmed that the devs seem to think Boosters are overpowered when what they do is effectively give a build a few extra slots, especially for those powers with only 1 or 2 slots. Builds are tight enough as is.

I'm with @Linea here. I've known him a long time and his theory and practice of toon building and running is excellent. Mez in City is just bad. Some ATs don't have to worry about it. Some of it you just can easily adapt to. I'm running a Claws/Dark Armor Scrapper without KB protection and with the right play don't even mind it as it helps "tactically redeploy" me around the current combat area. 🙂 But the harsh binary of Mez means that it kills toons. Mez should have been a small number of scaling effects. Not a binary that can either be ignored or kills. The nerf to Rune will hurt, but I'll still be taking Sorcery on a lot of my toons. Some only take Mystic Flight, flying and teleportation combined. Others go Mystic Flight + Spirit Ward + Rune of Protection. Spirit Ward isn't completely useless (duration is too low) as Spirit Ward can mule the Preventive Medicine special IO, which is a powerful survival tool that doesn't need the power to be used and the L20 IO is good exemped down to L17. And even with the nerfed duration, Rune is still a strong protective power especially for non-melee toons. Sometimes Controllers swap MF or SW for Arcane Bolt to get another attack. With only one Origin Pool (out of only 4 Pools) allowed in a build, it's going to be Sorcery. The other Origin Pools are just not as good. I've looked at them and I'm yet to see enough to make me pass up Sorcery. I find the hardest limit on virtually all my builds along with the 24 power choices and the 67 extra slots is the 4 Power Pool limit. It makes every choice vital. Some melee toons don't even have a travel or Origin Pool and make due with P2W travel powers. But if there is room, it's almost always going to be Sorcery. After Page 2 goes live, I may take a look at the other Pools again and see if I can make a toon with them work for me. But most will likely stay with either Sorcery or none.

I don't have time to test and I suspect besides bug fixing, there's not going to be a lot of changes to what's planned for Page 2 before it goes live. However, if there was one thing I'd try to change, it's differences in Defense between out-of-combat and in-combat. WHY?!? Part of stealth going away makes sense. Having Defense bonuses halved when in-combat is painful (and petty considering how weak the full buff often is) but it's been common in City. Having ALL of Defense bonuses go away in-combat is just mean. I'll likely stay with Sorcery on a lot of my toons as well. Some only take Mystic Flight, flying and teleportation combined. Others go Mystic Flight + Spirit Ward + Rune of Protection. Spirit Ward isn't completely useless (duration is too low) as Spirit Ward can mule the Preventive Medicine special IO, which is a powerful survival tool that doesn't need the power to be used and the L20 IO is good exemped down to L17. And even with the nerfed duration, Rune is still a strong protective power especially for non-melee toons. Sometimes Controllers swap MF or SW for Arcane Bolt to get another attack. With only one Origin Pool (out of only 4 Pools) allowed in a build, it's going to be Sorcery. The other Origin Pools are just not as good. I've looked at them and I'm yet to see enough to make me pass up Sorcery. I find the hardest limit on virtually all my builds along with the 24 power choices and the 67 extra slots is the 4 Power Pool limit. All 3 of those limits makes a lot of these arguments about better Travel Pools a bit moot, when taking them almost always limits survivability for non-melee ATs. As others have mentioned, I've got many toons I don't even have any travel powers on besides the P2W ones (like melee toons that even pass up Sorcery). And added slots don't go to buff travel powers (except on one or two toons), they're used to make attack and protection better, whether in the powers themselves or by IO set bonuses. But I do try some strange builds to see how tough they can be, like my Dark/Rad/Dark Defender, who if I'm really on my game and using all the powers can just take Dark Astoria at +4x8. So when Page 2 goes live, I'll think about trying them out.

Defense and -ToHit should be additive. However, the -ToHit will be reduced by Purple Patch effects. At 50 and especially Incarnated, no one ever just fights even-con mobs. In Mids, I change my base ToHit from 75% to 48% (the value for being -3 in level with respect to my toon's targets) so I build in enough ToHit and in-power and global +Acc. All builds have to be a compromise of offense and defense. Try to find the ways to build them up with as little investment as possible. It's why I always try to have the Preventive Medicine special IO in a build, because its Absorb shield is amazing at helping to save my toons when their HP drops, for just one slot in an appropriate power. Not slotting Dark Melee's Smite is a grave weakness in offense. Especially for a Brute that needs to attack a lot to build Fury.

No, I'd not done that. Are they really in total in the 20-25% range, because that's what they'd need to be. I'm basing it upon knowing how few mobs produce pure Fire and Cold damage as well as the other mitigations the toon has (defense + -tohit, damage resistances, absorb + regen + heal). They're not worth nerfing a major component of the ST attack chain.

Rune of Protection isn't as useful on melee toons with toggle or click strong mez protection or even other toons with other good access to mez protection. It is definitely not worth putting in a build for a DM/Rad Brute. And Rune of Protection is getting seriously nerfed in Issue 27 Page 2 (duration going from 90s to 60s). I took a quick look at the build. I am just not that familiar with Radiation Armor to make a build for this powerset combination. But for Dark Melee, there is something wrong with a build with a useless Smite. The sixth slots in powers with a WO set as well as the fifth slot with the Aegis set are candidates to be moved to Smite, because the Defense bonuses for AoE/Fire/Cold aren't worth it to get to the 25-30% range. The extra slots in Health and Stamina are also candidates to move as they are marginal improvements and not worth underslotting Smite.

I haven't looked at the entire build (don't have the energy for that right now), but one thing I did with Shadow Punch on Dark Melee Scrappers is only give it 3 slots total (put in half of the Scrapper's Strike ATO set that I was splitting between it and Siphon Life). Shadow Punch isn't used in the best attack chain (Midnight Grasp - Smite - Siphon Life - Smite) but it is useful if exemplared. I never quite liked any build with Dark Melee where I skipped Shadow Punch, so if you can spare it the power pick, I'd say do so.

I have sympathy for the original post. I also think it was a bit too harsh. I've been playing City ever since 2005. The 2012 shutdown was devastating. But we got City back and even in the open for the last 2 years. For now it is not completely secure, but it's better than not having it at all. City is an old game, originally designed over 20 years ago. It roughly followed the commercial MMO practices up to 2012. The game evolved quite a bit. But being a commercial product, it has factors in its design that created a degree of complexity and busywork beyond what a game needed. And even from a game point of view, many facets needed attention. From 2012 to 2019, several things changed and a lot of Quality of Life was added in. Then it came back into the open and the company of people who operate and improve City expanded. Now more things are possible. But City being an old established game has its version of what the Sciences and Crafts have, which is Richard Feynman's Imagination in a Straightjacket. Advancement doesn't really overturn what has been well and properly investigated and developed so much as it extents knowledge into new areas. For a game of long standing, there's a limit to what can be changed. Because change almost always mixes both improvement and disruption. For a brand new game, the range of possible design choices is much larger because there's not the sunk cost by the community of adapting to the existing game. For an established game, there's going to be pushback to most changes, from respectful to rather more heated. We saw that with Issue 27 Page 1. There's things there a lot of people didn't like, me among them. But I also realised that some change has to happen. And I liked a lot of what Issue 27 Page 1 brought. And some changes have to be tested and polished not in a beta but rolled out to the live game. Because only then in the months that follow can the change be observed in all its details and interactions. No beta will ever catch everything not quite right. I want to see more changes in the game. I also realise that some changes have to be vetted carefully even before they go to close beta because they are so radical and will challenge the community if pursued. But @Gavric is right to point out that City is not very friendly to new players. Others including the devs realise that. This really matters because every community is always losing members and needs to recruit and be open to those new recruits to survive. Dr Vahzilok already implemented it. @Bionic_Flea, is there a master index of your "But Jimmy" posts, sort of like the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition?

This would be a useful tool to have for so many reasons. Hopefully it will get some dev notice.

If only the Siren's Call minimap is having issues, it's got to be the replacement map for it somehow getting mangled. Here it is in a 7zip. map_V_PvP_03_01.i27p1.7z Extract the file "map_V_PvP_03_01.texture", which is @Juggy's updated version of the Siren's Call replacement Vidiot Map, and put it here in your City install. <root>\data\texture_library\V_MAPS\Static\

@ember7401, did you have a manual install of Vidiot Maps before using @The Philotic Knight's CoH Modder? If you had an old Vidiot Maps install, CoH Modder won't overwrite those files, including the one of Siren's Call with West at the top instead of the current North. To fix that and the most likely of other issues, I suggest you do this: Tell your current install of CoH Modder to remove its changes. Remove the current install of CoH Modder. Find your City install root folder, which I refer to as <root>, using my guide. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/24822-finding-your-city-install-root-on-windows/ Remove the folders and files of any existing manual Vidiot Maps install. Under <root>, the folder "data" contains all the files that modify the defaults in the City client, including Vidiot Maps 3 folders under "<root>\data\texture_library\" contain the maps that make up Vidiot Maps, "MAPS", "P_MAPS", and "V_MAPS". Move these 3 folders to a safe location to save them for now. Download the most recent version of CoH Modder installer and reinstall it. Tell CoH Modder to install its latest version of Vidiot Maps, which has the corrected Siren's Call map.

Definitely a fun time tonight, @ineffablebob! Took my toon from Level 26 to Level 29. Now all my Enhancements except one are red. Total Magic SO drops: 1. 😞 And of course, with Classic Influence Income, there's no way I can reslot with all SOs with my income in the 20's Levels. And if I use DOs on red SOs, that wastes them. Did Accuracy, Jump, Endurance Modification, and some of the Endurance Reduction and Recharge Reduction. Rest will have to wait until I get more Inf. Like the Classic Mission arcs, Classic Task Forces do like to send the team all over Paragon City for their missions. I stuck to proper Issue 0 transit too, Wasn't too bad. I am thinking it's going to be bad when we get to a Classic Numina's Task Force. 🙂 Here's a grainy shot of the Task Force with names showing just before we started. 🙂 And the moment we won! Missed a single hostage on the way to Clamour, so it we had to work most of the way back to finish. 🙂

I had Jacke Shadowclaw on this week and got him to Level 26, so I'm good to run Sister Psyche tonight. (Have to be 26 to get the mission in the Pillar of Ice and Flame.) Citadel is WST from Feb 8 to 14, so that's 2 Monday's away. And what is it with contacts for the Classic Badge missions (which must have been added at the same time as Badges, so not Issue 0) being coy about giving their Badge missions. No, no, no, they want you to start their arc. Which I always outlevel before finishing. 🙂 Thanks for pointing that out, @Soyuz. Back on Tuesday night, I gave your method a try. Here I am at the base of the Towering Inferno looking to the NE at @Soyuz's tilted building. Running up it to its top was easy. The first time I tried a direct jump to the Badge building, but that fell short. Here I am the second time, with the better target to the left, the biulding to the E of the Badge. Which got me high enough. Here looking W to the Badge. And success!

Thanks for the screenshots. I don't think either of those is the @TheUnnamedOne's BadgeReporter Popmenu nor my version 20201211a. They may have been developed from an earlier version of BadgeReporter before mine, or they may have been developed completely independently. Compare them to the screenshots of 20201211a in the initial post and you'll see that the menu structure is completely different. For your first screenshot, what I think is happening is in the folder for Popmenu files: <City install root>/data/texts/English/Menus/ there are at least 2 files with the same internal menu name, these lines near the top of the file, with the very first open brace '{': // Menu "badgereporter" { With 2 or more files with the same internal name, it's a toss-up which one the City client uses. It appears to be picking the one that's not 20201211a. You'll have to look at the files to figure them out, see if they have any comments saying who wrote them. The first one appears to have been put together sometime after Issue 23 was released.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "by issue" menu. Can you provide a screenshot? The in-game screenshot won't work as when you press the key for it, the popmenu will disappear before the screenshot is made. Normally the operating system will save a screenshot on the clipboard when you press the PRTSC key on your keyboard. You can then paste that screenshot into a program like Irfanview and save it and add it to a reply here in the forums. I'm not familiar with the Badge Reporter Expanded. Can you attach a copy of the .mnu file for it to a reply here? The next version will have features that guide getting the Accolades, which often require getting many other badges.

I can't remember when Inspiration combining was added either. When we know, we try to hew to how things were in Issue 0. But we can't change many things. And some changes were such improvements, some of us have a hard time to pass them up. Like simulating the split Yellow and Green Monorail Lines. I've avoided combining Inspirations. Sources of information below. They're incomplete too, but they document so many changes. The per-Issue pages listed here https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Issues The Guide to Issues aka "When did they add/change that?"

I only have the one Classic toon who ran on the Synapse Task Force last Friday. So tonight I brought my Rad/Rad Defender Jacke Rad to help irradiate things. 🙂

LOL, I just realised my 2nd account Everlasting anchor toon, Jacke2, though only Level 6, will have a temp flight power and Assemble the Team, so I could get "Towering Inferno" on my own. But it's trying to get these Badges as if Badges were in Issue 0. Which I see others are trying too. 🙂