Jacke

Here's my custom popmenu that incorporates all the Fast Travel entries. It has a bunch of fancy features as well as temp powers that may no longer be available in the Super Packs, so you should probable cut it down for your use. I install it and bind it to P with this entry in my keybinds: P "popmenu commands-j" Commands.20201116a.mnu

It wasn't a PvP exploit. It wasn't even initially the bug, because that was only found when the changes were being implemented. It was glibly giving a GM command to all players all the time. I used /enterbasefrompasscode. But I felt it was not quite right. It trivialized too many things. Restricting /enterbasefrompasscode was going to happen. Just as a massively overperforming set like Titan Weapons was going to be considered and changed and those changes would reduce its peak DPS. I think the solutions to aid travel while restricting /enterbasefrompasscode are a very good set of changes to City of Heroes. And I've played this game since 2005, through many a nerf and buff and other sundre evolutions.

They're interesting ideas. In many cases, a doubled-roll with both having to fail to fail overall will help a lot. (Note that it will take the minimum chance to fail from 5% to 0.25%.) I think a more ED-like non-linear but continuous system that makes better use of buffs and debuffs is a better way to do this. But the problem is long recharge powers that have radical effects. Or when a failure causes serious consequences. This is why so many powerset resources, like Titan Weapon's Momentum and Energy Melee's Focus, now are gained from autohit effects of attacks. Because not getting the resource is a massive penalty with far reaching consequences. Not to mention the player may not even realise things are broken for several seconds and not adapt quickly. Even with a 0.25% chance to fail, that's still 1 in 400. Less irritating. Maybe I'd take Siphon Speed if it only had 0.25% chance to fail. I use Secondary Mutation and if I Rikti-Monkey meself, I just roll with it. Mind you, that's not in combat. Siphon Speed is used in combat. And if it fails, even only once in 400 uses, there's still the next 30s or so to get through.

Damn, if Regen gets nerfed again, I think it'll go straight through the entire Earth and come out the other side. Hopefully better for the experience.

I had pizza tonight. With pineapple and so much more. It was AWESOME!

There is a new version of Mids being worked on, not just database changes for i27p1 but much more. Hoping to see it soon, but as you say, we'll have to wait for it.

But if you politely but firmly make a good argument, it will always have benefit. The devs love this game too. They do read and pay attention. And they did all those changes, whatever we individually think of them, for good reasons. And as others have pointed out, feedback made the difference to many of the changes, greatly improving them from their initial form in the beta. To effect new changes, you need to come half-way. If you don't understand why the changes in Issue 27 Page 1 were done the way they were, you'll never find a way to convince the devs to think differently. If your argument is some form of "You were wrong. I am right.", it's not going to work. And if you just give up, then you will not contribute to any improvement. I don't like some of the things in Issue 27 Page 1, many of them in the changes to the Blaster Secondaries. If I'm going to convince anyone to revisit some of those changes, I will have to consider the wider implications and along with others test and report. I have to work to make things happen.

I appreciate SWTOR making Datacrons account wide (I'm looking at you, Coruscant and Nar Shaddaa, with your crazy jumping, and all the other pain-in-the-arse Datacrons). But Long Range Teleport is a heck of a lot easier than many a single Datacron. 1 Zone Badge Accolade or 1 hour logged on in Pocket D. I've done the Atlas Park badges so many times I can do them without the minimap in under 10 minutes, maybe under 5. And I often do the hour in Pocket D just to get the Time-in-Zone Badge. And more Account-wide features may be coming, but there are technical issues with adding them. All of them so far: Menu > Options > Options Window > Windows Tab > Beta Features, near the bottom: Power Recharge Indicators: Off, Bottom, Top, Center Chat Timestamps: Disabled, 12-hour, 24-hour, 24-hour w/seconds Chat Timestamp Color: White, Match message color A few others option settings were recently tried as Account-wide, but they had issues interacting with other changes, especially going from Tequila to the new Homecoming Launcher, so they were reverted. I'm sure making more account-wide features will be looked at again soon.

The short version on Day Job badges and charging Day Job and Day Job Accolade powers (if they have charges or time, as opposed to giving a buff or reward bonus), is: Day Job Badges take 100 hours logged out to unlock (4 days and 4 hours). Only exception is Patroller/Criminal which needs 30 bars of Patrol XP earned. Day Job Accolades need two Day Job Badges to unlock. After earning, Day Job and Day Job Accolade Powers with charges take 7 days to fully charge, to 30 uses (most common). 10 tickets (Invention and Tailor discounts), 2 hours (Traveller's Jet Pack), 30 minutes (Gladiator Accolade Combat Shield). Traveler's Jet Pack power starts charging as the Badge for it is being unlocked (Heroes Dimensional Explorer in the Shadow Shard, Villains Arachnos Official in Grandville), so it'll be charged to about 1 hour when the Badge is finally earned. Partial progress towards the next increment of charging is saved if you only log out for a short period of time. EDIT: I think upon gaining badges, either Day Job or the Accolade, some of the charging rates are increased so it takes under 7 days to fully charge. Not entirely sure about this one, but I think it does happen in some cases. There was a bug that was affecting at least partial progress on Invention discount tickets, but that should be fixed now. If you have a case now of partial progress not being saved, it's a bug and should be reported. The Wiki pages still need updating with recent changes, especially for Issue 27 Page 1, but they are good sources of information. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Badges https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Hero_Day_Job_Badges https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Villain_Day_Job_Badges https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Praetorian_Day_Job_Badges

One last post about this. It is off-topic, but like all the things being considered for change in the game system, there is some interaction between them. This does matter for considering reducing the minimum 5% chance to hit mobs and vice versa. It definitely affects all ATs, some in different ways. The 90% resistance cap ATs, Tankers and Brutes, can almost work with either Resistance or Defense based armours. Defense is easier to build tough, but a good resistance armour build can potentially be tougher, but the build is harder to get right and more expensive. True is same for the HEATs and VEATs at 85%. For everyone at 75% resistance cap, which is all other ATs, including the melee Scrapper and Stalker, armoured Sentinels, mixed mode Dominators, and all the rest, Defense is much better than Resistance builds. Go with a resistance armour set (Secondary or Epic), can get Defence to around 30%, so damage admittance against an AVs is: 0.20 (ToHit) x 1.5 (AV acc bonus) x 0.25 (damage after resistance) = 0.075 = 7.5% of DPS, 0.25 = 25% of damage spikes (like a big AV hit) while with a defense armour, Defenses will be over 45% and resists will be around 50%, so damage admittance against an AVs is: 0.05 (ToHit) x 1.5 (AV acc bonus) x 0.50 (damage after resistance) = 0.0375 = 3.75% of DPS, 0.50 = 50% of damage spikes. So the Scrapper and the Stalker will always be better with a Defense armour except against the biggest hits (think Marauder on the Lambda iTrial). But against the toughest hits, only Tankers, Brutes, and maybe the HEATs and VEATs can get a good enough build to take the biggest hits and not be defeated right then. Part of it is their tendency to greater HP and HP cap, so they have more HP to take the resisted alpha strike.

Yes. 🙂 And there's also going to be more Pages in Issue 27 before that.

You should make a post for that in the Suggestions forum. I did a search there for "warshade" and there's not one on it yet. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/45-suggestions-amp-feedback/

That's a suggestion for a changed set of resistance caps just for discussion. Those numbers would need hashing out a lot before a final settled change. As well as other changes at the same time. I picked 95% for Tankers to equal what they can get from Defense against Minions. Of course, all toons should layer all protections, Defense, Resistance to Damage, and Absorb/Heal/Regen. But right now, Resistance Armors are worse for all ATs compared to Defense Armors. Because all ATs can build more Defense protection than Resistance protection. And it's hard to get Resistance from Pool Powers and IO sets bonuses but easy to get Defense to build up the layers of protection.

That's another difficult issue that is interlaced with other stuff that does need to be reconsidered. Right now Defense is better than Resists because for squishies, not getting hit means not getting mezzed or other secondary effects, but even more so, all can get Defense (and -ToHit) high enough that the mobs have the minimum chance to hit (5%; Lts 5.75%; Bosses, EBs, Snipers 6.5%; AVs, Monsters, GMs 7.5%). While going with Resist Armours means mezzing still takes place and 25% of the damage gets through. The resistance cap is higher for Tankers and Brutes, 90%, and Kheldians and Arachnos Soldiers, 85%, but I think many should be improved. Say 95% for Tankers; 90% for Brutes, Kheldians, and Arachnos Soldiers, 85% for Scrappers and Stalkers, 80% for the rest. Such a change would need other adjustments and careful thought, testing, and review. But this should be looked at. The long existence of the Streak Breaker shows this is an issue that really does affect play. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker Although mobs get to benefit from it too, I think the players get more out of the Streak Breaker. What we're talking about is a real corner case, because with 95% chance to hit, you will only get one miss in a row (assuming there's no issue with the Streak Breaker). It's why I have "Last Hit Chance" at the top of every toon's Combat Attributes Monitoring Window. I want to know when my chance to hit starts dropping so I can do something about it. But then that 1 miss in a row happens to a long recharge power with no backup alternate power and suddenly things are very different for a great part or all of a battle To fit in the Pool and Epic Powers I want, I'm always looking to only keep the Powers from the Primary and Secondary that are the best. And those that are flawed get put on the list to skip. And because Siphon Speed is long recharge and the speed boost isn't autohit and will have that chance to miss--and radically alter what the toon can do--I decide not to take it and build the toon to move faster despite not having Siphon Speed. Because I'll need that 100% all-the-time speed anyhoo. Excellent thoughts, @Akisan. I too like the idea of an Enhancement-Diversification-like solution to give actual final calculate ToHits higher than 95%. And you're right about only so much +Acc, +ToHit, -Def (as well as +Def and -ToHit) is needed. Right now, I go into Mids and change the base ToHit to 48%, that against a +3 target. If I build to a final hit chance 95% or better on the powers, I know that toon is good in virtually all cases. Allowing more out of both player and mob buffs and debuffs can make more things possible, useful, and interesting.

Kudos to all the devs who worked to make this release and with the beta testers polished it for release. It must be something about the general case in many or maybe some particular zones, or some implementation detail that was changed. Because we still have /enterbasefrompasscode in a more limited sense. When close to a Base portal, including the summoned ones, or after invoking without using Long Range Teleporter, Base Transporter, or the Day Job temp power Monitor Duty Teleporter, /enterbasefrompasscode can still be used. Already tested that today.

Now that Issue 27 Page 1 has released, bugs should be reported in the Bug Reports forum. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/32-bug-reports/

On my Kinetics toon, I always take Speed Boost, because it delivers the buffs to my teammates 100% of the time. I never take Siphon Speed, but instead slot Sprint etc to get the running speed up. Because to have that Siphon Speed fail 5% of the time means that I don't get a chance to try again for 30s or whatever the 60s Recharge is enhanced to. And that means I now go a lot slower and need to change how I play a very dynamic toon. (There's a reason the Repeat Offenders Kinetics Super Group is called Pinball Wizards.) If I miss an attack, I've usually got another attack to follow up right away. On a toon that uses soft control from Knockback/Knockdown, like my AR/Dev Blaster, I've got 3 powers that do KB/KD. But for buffs, debuffs, mezzes, cage powers, etc., that have long recharge and few if no alternate powers to back them up, that 5% miss now means tactics have to be radically different when that 5% chance to miss, to fail, hits. 5% chance to miss, chance to fail, on powers that are going off all the time, means that almost certainly in every battle, I will have to deal with that 5% chance of failure. If there's a similar power ready to go, dealing is trivial. If there's no backup, it's serious. And a 5% minimum-chance-to-fail is not realistic. How many times swinging a sword or other weapons have I missed the pell? How many times have I not struck a blow with close to full force? Even against a person, when skill and other factors push advantage to the limit, there is no way there's a 5% chance to fail. There's a reason that there's now special handling for powerset resources like Titan Weapon's Momentum, Energy Melee's Focus, and other things that are parts of attacks. All of them used to depend on hitting the target. And having that 5% chance-to-fail for them had greater consequences well beyond that single miss. Now many of them are separate from the chance-to-hit to damage and if the power is used, the special effect like granting the resource is now 100% automatic. @Number Six, it's kind of like taking off the 95% ToHit cap and adding in a system similar to Enhancement Diversification. It makes those last few percent on the way to 100% non-linear. Of course, put in a system that makes it possible to push ToHit over 95% and approach 100% will require some other adjustments to things that are the way they are due to having the current 95% ToHit cap.

I think Sprint by default has the dust clouds. Was this with Sprint (and the Prestige versions) off?

If it's in the i27p1 RC2 Patch Notes and not noted as removed, it's still part of it.

A reason could be that a power is used in a bind, like I use Prestige Power Surge to contain the Celerity Stealth Proc: /bind G "powexectoggleon Ninja Run$$powexectoggleon Prestige Power Surge" but in one costume, I want to not have the FX of the Prestige Sprint, but not needing to change my bind when I swap costume.

Excellent post, @AboveTheChemist. I've long done the same, get all the Badges and read all the Plaques in one run. I usually just wing it with Vidiotmaps installed to guide, but I've done some zones so many times, especially Atlas Park, that I can do them without little or no help from the minimap. I recently added the Sewers and the Abandoned Sewers on a toon. They are special and are best done together. Running the Sewers is best done overleveled at 15 or higher. To run the Abandoned Sewers, should have a toon at 50. Full stealth helps lower those limits, though the Abandoned Sewers has Rikti with Drones that ignore stealth, so there should be at least 40 and just keep running. Vidiotmaps is essential because besides the location of the Badges and the one Academic Plaque deep in the Abandoned Sewers, it also has the best routes through both Sewers marked which run right past all the Badges and the Plaque. There are Sewers entrances in 5 zones, Atlas Park, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, Skyway City, and Boomtown. Each entrance has 1 Badge near it, as well as a door to the matching branch of the Abandoned Sewers, which also has 1 Badge near the start. Using a teleport power (like the Long Range Teleporter available to all come Issue 27, or Ourobotos to get to Atlas, or the Base Transporter power and a set of Base Telepads), in succession go to the 5 zones, then to the Sewers entrance and in, through the side door to the Abandoned Sewers, then to the Badge closest on the branch (all 5 Abandoned Sewers entrances have a Badge very close), back to the Sewers, down to the nearest Badge, then teleport and travel to the next zone. To get the last 3 Badges in each set of Sewers, modify some of those runs to add in the deeper Badges and the Plaque in the Abandoned Sewers. For the Sewers, it's best to get the deeper Badges from the Kings Row entrance. For the Abandoned Sewers, it's best to get the deeper Badges and the Plaque from the Atlas Park entrance after changing the sequence and getting the Atlas Sewers closest Badge before going into the Abandoned Sewers.

How about this for an AoE buff. I know, RC1, but.... Keep the Shadow Maul changes. Revert the Touch of Fear changes. And buff P2W (and even temp) Sands of Mu in place of changing ToF. Make it have the same AoE and target cap as Shadow Maul does now. Right now on my Dark Melee toons, I do an AoE chain of Shadow Maul - Sands of Mu - Shadow Maul - gap for everything else. Sands of Mu has the older narrower arc that Shadow Maul used to have. It's much harder to align to get more mobs in the AoE. But from learning to keep aligning before attacking with Shadow Maul, I've transferred that to Sands of Mu and I do hit more than 1 mob most of the time. Buffing Sands of Mu does benefit all toons. But I don't think it's an overwhelming out-of-control buff. And that would ease the delay in dealing with Dark Melee more thoroughly.

Yeah, partial name matching has to be used. Means you can target onto particular bothersome Lts and Bosses, not all of them. But also means the macro has to be tailored to each enemy group or a particular Task Force, etc. And with some you struggle to keep it under 255 characters. Quickly gets to be a lot of macros. Having a targetnext* command that would allow selection by rank and special function (sapping, healing, engineering, exploding) would help. Some of those functions are in the names right now, but not all.

I think I've adjusted my options to always show that info over the mobs. Still can be very hard to target just the bosses or any particular mob out of a crowd. Usually an appropriate TAB targetting macro (as I showed above) is needed to quickly lock onto the right mobs even in moderately fast play. EDIT: As @Sovera points out, the targetting macro can't just have ranks but needs a partial name to match a mob to to target it. Makes things tricky.

Some AoE thoughts. But I think my Dark Melee thoughts below are more important. Dark Melee, that I know. The -ToHit helps. Great to have the +Heal in a good attack and the powerful +Dam and +End AoE powers. As for how good at ST, I'd have to compare exact numbers, but I think it's at least reasonable to good. Shadow Maul is awesome and I think due to how the mobs move, the target cap nerfs don't really touch it that much. But I worry about the changes to Touch of Fear. Back in 2006, The_Gamemaster's guide said it allowed Dark Melee at low levels with some slotting to shut down Bosses with two applications and keep them weak until defeated. I think that it's received a bit of nerfing, but with enough fear and recharge from IOs it can still be stacked well. And if Dark Armor's Cloak of Fear is used, a Dark/Dark Scrapper, Brute, or Tanker can do a good Fear build (and would be better if Cloak of Fear was given some love). Fear Builds are still usable even in fast team play. Fear Protection is still rarer than Stun Protection among mobs, so it's stronger than stacking stuns. But the changes to Touch of Fear have turned it into a poorer Fear Power. Slower to cast. For slotting, now needs not just acc enh, end red, rech red, and fear enh, but also damage. Siphon Life has the same challenges with healing and damage, but there exists Accurate Healing IOs to help. Will there be Accurate Fear IO sets? Not sure the changes to ToF are worth it. So it's either enhanced as a damage AoE that seems to be underwhelming. Or focus on a Fear build and just get the damage as a bonus. And hope the extra aggro that little damage causes isn't much of a drawback.