Jacke

The interrupt on both Trip Mine and Time Bomb have been removed. But as @Redlynne points out, Time Bomb is crippled by being barely better than Trip Mine but with 18 times the recharge. My AR-Dev can drop a Trip Mine into every group of mobs. If taken, Time Bomb will be on recharge most of the time or forgotten about. It is a waste of a power pick and any extra slots assigned to it. I really love Assault Rifle-Devices. Had one back in Issue 5 on Live, who I've recreated. Currently working on a Munitions Master build, but I also have Force Mastery and Mace Mastery builds planned for him. As usual, to get the Pool Powers I want, some powers in the primary and secondary have to be passed over. I didn't take either Stun power as high-recharge single-target stunning is a problematic tactic while damage with some knockback and knockdown is more reliable. Of the two, if I could, I'd take Taser as it's does better damage. I do like Smoke Grenade, but it go pushed out to include Recall Friend for great team support. I also pass over Full Auto. It's a narrow cone, tricky to use, and it freezes my toon for over 4 seconds. If I'm going to be stuck for 4 seconds, I'll drop a Trip Mine next to a mob who's either not seen my fully stealthed toon or is otherwise distracted. Trip Mine and Ignite are the true nukes of the AR-Dev build. Caltrops is a good mob control power too. Ignite and Caltrops are respectively bound to Ctrl-Leftclick and Alt-Leftclick for ease of use. Shift-Leftclick fires off a combined command to trigger any teleport power (), which I use while Mystic Flight is active.

I think the only toon that could properly pull off the title "Sweet" would be a Dancing Demon with such wicked threads you'd swear has his own jazz soundtrack and reminds you of Hinton Battle. 🙂

Of course, after saying my SO drops match my characters' origins, I follow them over the next day or so and see they don't. LOL

More details, tested on a L45 character. A L50 Damage/Recharge Exploit Weakness CAN be converted as Sniper Damage. An Attuned Damage/Recharge Exploit Weakness cannot be converted as Sniper Damage, only as Uncommon or In Set.

More details, tested on a L45 character. A L50 Damage/Endurance Air Burst CAN be converted as Targeted AoE Damage. An Attuned Damage/Endurance Air Burst cannot be converted as Targeted AoE Damage, only as Uncommon or In Set.

I've not put anyone in City of Heroes, back on Live or here on Homecoming, on my ignore list. I've been lucky and never had anyone I thought I should do that with. Though I understand the need for ignore. I've had interactions in other MMOs that were ignore worthy (I wish SWTOR had a setting to autodecline dueling requests after having some idiot pester me for over 10 minutes; only later did I wonder whether there was an ignore feature I could have used). As for being put on ignore. Last week, I put together a league to take out the Council Goliath War Walker in Boomtown. I'm not practiced at handling a league. As well, I was on a mid-level toon, so I had to arrange to swap the league over to a Level 50 right before going at the War Walker. Get the league near full, give out a call for last joiners, then swap league leadership and go after the Goliath War Walker. After it's down, I get a tell from another character thanking me. I reply you're welcome back. Then I get a reply and realisation hits: the first tell was very sarcastic. I'd missed the person's request to join the league and they lost out. I reply back with an apology, but they've obviously put me on ignore. This lead me to change my chat layout hopefully to aid me not repeating this mishap in the future. As @Tahliah points out, people have bad days and sometimes screw up. Live, learn, and improve.

Could have just named them all Bruce. (Full disclosure: I had a Martial Arts-Super Reflexes Scrapper on Live named Jack Bruce. Someday, he will be back.)

I think this might be the video from 2003. He only mentions in passing the Origin effects in the game at that time. After launch, Origin used to determine the Origin Power a character would have. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Origin_Powers But now the P2W vendors allow any character to have any one of the Origin Powers. Currently, Origin only made a difference for DOs, SOs, and especially Yin Market SOs. And this change will make Yin Market enhancements more economical SOs. There's also now the Origin Power Pools, of which we have 3 so far (Sorcery (Magic), Force of Will (Natural), and Experimentation (Science)) and which a character can only have 1 in their build. But that's decoupled from Origin choice at character creation. Which is good, as my Natural Origin AR-Dev Blaster has Sorcery powers. 🙂

I think one change that needs to be considered is that proc and global IOs should all have another enhancement aspect. Some do, for example the Luck of the Gambler global recharge reduction, which also has a Defense aspect. Some IO sets badly need this to supplement some aspects they're poor in, for example Positron's Blast is somewhat poor in Accuracy (even with its 4-slot set bonus).

When I first saw this proposal, I thought it would be best to restrict enhancement upgrading to the enhancement vendors and shops. The commands and interface features we have that allow us to skip certain hubs (/ah, /enterbasefrompasscode, trainers who also allow costume editing, etc.) are great timesavers. But they've turned more of the game into parts we don't use anymore, in a game where there's already too much of a false front. There's all these wonderful shop fronts all over Paragon and the Rogue Isle. And most of them we try to enter say we can't. Anyhoo, I really do think TOs need to go. More unsure about effectively dropping DOs as well. However, there still seems to be problems with the DO drops to a character being unuseable, due to the character not having either of the two origins. I can't recall that ever happening with SOs. Interesting idea, "Power". A way to get out of all those enhancements being mostly unusable for most characters. But the problem is that some powers have a lot of enhanceable aspects. Take for instance Dark Miasma's Dark Servant. Effectively a Pet Controller, outside of Accuracy, Endurance Reduction, Recharge Reduction, and Range, its powers have: Damage Heal ToHit Debuff Immobilize Hold Making an enhancement that buffs all those would be rather overpowered. It would be like an uber Hamidon Enhancement. Currently the HOs that buff the most aspects are Endoplasm Exposures (Accuracy & all Mez) and Peroxisome Exposure (Damage and all Mez). And I think it would have to be coded like those 2 HOs, with a buff for all the aspects explicitly included (thus an entry for Damage, Heal, all the Mez, Slow, ToHit Buff, Defense, Resist Damage, ToHit Debuff, Defense Debuff, I think that's it). Assuming there's no technical limit to those, it's still a rather overpowered enhancement for some powers.

I was lucky. When I started with City, I made notes on each costume design for each character, allowing me to recreate them when I started on Homecoming last year.

Inf comes from players running characters through content and receiving Inf for every in-level-range enemy defeated, completing missions, and selling loot drops to vendor NPCs. I believe that completely covers Inf generation. Everything else is moving Inf around between characters, either directly or through the Auction House, or making purchases from vendor NPCs. Magnetism is a natural consequence of having the electric force in a universe with Special Relativity.

I remember back on Live reading very early, around Issue 6 or so, that TOs--besides Accuracy and maybe some Endurance Reduction--shouldn't be slotted but sold for Inf to buy DOs at level 12. The low-level ToHit buff Beginning's Luck when added made this even more so. Later I regularly had an alt stationed at Yin's Market to buy them sweet lower-level SOs for my toons going from levels 10 to 22. I think better QoL tools for SO use convenience a good idea. The exact system to settled on will require testing and reflection. SOs are a completely legitimate choice for leveling and to a degree for level 50 play. I'd made a Katana-Fiery Aura Brute for my first 50 as an agricultural specialist. Took him on all the content anyway as he's a good toon. Up until a few days ago, over half his enhancements were still SOs, including all his attacks. Even when farming at +4x8. It's why I have Rise of the Phoenix in my build, to allow for when things get away from me and the mobs take him down. But he didn't drop that often. Sure he's more tough now I've got IOs throughout. Not as tough as he'll be when I get more PvP IOs and especially WO enhancements into his build. But he was completely playable at the highest content with over half of his enhancements as SOs. Even Linea's brutal 801 AE maps, full of Incarnate killing mobs. Sure he died several times. But he also stayed upright a lot and I had fun. Part of that was due to having the benefits from the AT and the primary and secondary powersets to allow play on such tough content. Part of that was down to me learning how to play the toon and play him well. And getting a few key IOs and P2W tricks. It takes time and effort to slot even just common IOs for a toon. And making those common IOs available ready-made at a vendor is a much more major change. Improving the ease with which SOs can be used is a good alternative.

It's even worse. Air Burst is still considered a Targeted AoE Attack set when converting other Targeted AoE Attack IOs. So if you're trying to get a particular Targeted AoE Attack set, you could end up with Air Burst, which can't be converted as a Targeted AoE Attack but only as Uncommon. This is very frustrating.

It's even worse. Exploit Weakness is still considered a Sniper Attack set when converting other Sniper Attack IOs. So if you're trying to get a particular Sniper Attack set, you could end up with Exploit Weakness, which can't be converted as a Sniper Attack but only as Uncommon. This is very frustrating.

I can confirm this. Level 42 character, attuned Exploit Weakness IO. Can't convert as catagory Sniper Attacks.

I can also confirm, attuned Air Burst IOs can only be converted outside of set as Uncommon, without allowing conversion as Targeted AoE Damage.

This has happened to me a few times, most recently in this case I petitioned, wondering if a GM could determine more information on what was going wrong. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/support/9632/ During play on a mission map (I think they've all be in door missions, whether a building or an outdoor map), I discover my character can't jump. Can run back and forth and do other things, but can't get off the ground. In that recent case, I did more testing. The character has Mystic Flight. I could turn on Mystic Flight, but the character would stay stuck to the ground in a sort-of hover. While walking or in flight, could go up building steps, but couldn't get off the ground. Could use Mystic Flight's inherent teleport power. If teleported to a point off the ground, would fall straight back down to the ground, still stuck to it. Tried to get the mobs to knock me back but they either didn't have an attack that did that or knockback didn't happen or failed. Going into an alternate screen like Menu > I.D. didn't change the stuck state. I believe from previous experience, zoning clears the bug. I may have found another way to do that, but I can't recall for certain. Exiting the mission after completion clear the stuck bug status. Could now jump and fly normally.

I did the same thing, though it wasn't planned. I was part-way through my usual routine, which included making Efficiency Adaptors and then converting them to Performance Shifter Chance for +End procs. After the patch, I quickly saw that the Performance Shifter proc was still the highest average selling price Endurance Modification set IO, but with 3 extra sets in the L21-50 range, it was taking too many extra converters to get to Performance Shifter. At the time, several hours after the patch, I decided the best thing to do was to convert until I got a rare set IO. If it was in Performance Shifter, I'd carry on converting until I got the proc, otherwise put them up for sale. Most have moved by now, so I also helped provide the new IOs on the first day.

Part of the problem with this is that some things that are globals are called procs, even in their ingame descriptions, like the Preventive Medicine Absorb special. It's called a proc, but the power it's in doesn't need to be activated for it to work, which means it's a global. Some of this may and will change from what was on Live, which is covered on the Paragon Wiki page @MunkiLord quoted above. The list of special IOs is incomplete even for Live, as it's missing the 2nd sets of Archetype Enhancements. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Set_Enhancements_with_Special_Effects

Let me show you the whole screen. The stack of 6 power trays is put together to cut down on the screen space it takes up, as well as have them all close together. I primarily activate trays 1 through 3 by keyboard, with the focus on the leftmost half of them. The other powers are there so I can see their running and recharge status at a glance, click them when needs be, and swap powers around when I exemplar or tinker with the arrangement. I can close down the map and the extra chat windows 1 and 2 for more screen space. My cloak ("+Clk") and shield ("+Sh") turnon macros are customized for each toon but are always keybound to 'S' ( powexecslot 9 3 ) and 'F' ( powexecslot 10 3 ), right beside my rebound movement keys WERD for quick turn-on after rezzing. Tray 6 slots 8, 9, and 0 contain travel and other special powers, with those 3 spots being keybound with powexecslot to H, J, and K respectively. It's a UI I developed over 7 years of playing City of Heroes on Live, reinstated and revised since Homecoming started up last year. Keybinds, popmenus, the screen layout, and macros all interconnected. Most is common between all my toons, set up right after creation with cut-and-pasted commands out of a settings info file (example "/bindloadfile c:keybinds_base.werd.txt"), as well as loading my versions of the standard options (opt.txt), window layout (wdw.txt) and chat configuration (chat.txt) via the Options window. Only what powers are in what power tray slots and the contents of some of the macros change between my different toons. Interesting system. It works for you. Kind of do some of the same thing, shift things around due to changing priority. Example, I normally fire off the added teleport powers like ATT etc by one of my popmenus, but to see their recharge status, I put Mission Transport, TT, and ATT in tray 4 at the bottom. Now they're there, I often don't use the popmenu but just click on them. For some reason, the addon trays have wider tray selectors (" < 1 > "), making them slightly wider than the main stack of 3. No idea why they didn't make them the same width. Unless no one ever though of stacking them like I did.

Agreed. At least the Blaster can still use the first two Primary powers and the first Secondary power while mezzed. There's also the Blaster AT Origin Enhancement Set Defiant Barrage Recharge/+Status special enhancement. Put it in your Tier 1 Primary Power. It stacks to build up status protection. Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, Masterminds, and Dominators out of Domination depend on Ruin, Clarion, or a teammate with a power like Clear Mind. When you don't have any of those things.... While a certain amount of optimization is nice, I'd like to have the wider range of possible viable builds that have 5 or more Power Pools. Primarily just so I can try out a power pick or two from other pools, to explore something I've never experienced before. Or just to have Recall Friend on more toons to help out teammates.

Indeed. As well, the original design also had a problem with Tank Mages, characters with well crafted selection of powers that combined to make them both massively durable and massively destructive. Archetypes reduced both problems. Funnily enough, when Cryptic Studios went on to design the system for Champions Online, they went free-form. But some very powerful powers were very easy to get, with little or no prerequisites. Tank mages were back. And later for free-to-play players, archetypes were a requirement. I think a free-form system is possible, but it would need a really good design to prevent trivial Tank Mages and good player support and guidance to make gimped builds less likely (likely including something like CO's Powerhouse, a place in the normal game environment where a player can tinker with a build and test it). I know databases. I know how code can and should access databases. I can't remember where I heard it from, but during Live, a developer mentioned that the code makes assumptions about the nature of the build in the database. This certainly made it a major effort to add more slots to characters, at least on the order of magnitude of what had to be done to change Fitness from a Power Pool to an Inherent Pool. The selection of powers could just be a list with complete flexibility, allowing a small change to expand the number of Power Pool picks. Or there could be this cruftiness to the nature of the character build records and the code that manipulates them. Which would make changing it on the back end much more complex. Until we have a comment from someone who's seen the implementation of both the database and the code, with an appreciation for it overall, we don't know how easy or hard it would be.

I too really really want to see this. Even just getting 5 Power Pool picks would help immensely. There's no way a system with even a moderate amount of complexity can be designed to prevent poor choices from screwing things up. You just have to have the knowledge and experience to avoid them. And I don't think aiding newbs was the reason. I think database limitations was the reason. [ Sif again in the quote ] I think it's not so much the powers info but more the way the character builds are stored in the database--and what the code assumes are the properties of character builds (rather than being thorough and looking it up every time...)--that makes changes to build limits hard and require a lot of effort . Can't find the reference, but apparently back on Live a dev (Castle?) was thinking of giving players a few more enhancement slots, I think it was changing from 2 to 3 slots at a time before level 31. And the effort required to do the change and program a tool that would transition a characters build from the old to new version without error was massive. This what was done with making Fitness an inherent Pool and so they had a good example. So no matter how much we would like things like more Power Pools, more Slots, even more Power picks, etc., it requires a lot of resources to do it right and correctly, on top of whether to do so from a design perspective. Best guest, we will likely not see such changes soon. There may be a breakthrough on changes to the back end of the character database that makes things different, but until we hear about it, well, we can only dream of this.

I too would love a quick way to both lock the position of the power trays as well as another to lock the powers in the trays. I have a setup that means I almost never now move the trays, so I don't want to drag them, but I often swap which tray I show and even reposition powers in a tray and between trays, looking to improve that or substitute alternates. I display 6 trays in the lower left of my display, 3 addons on the bottom stacked on top of each other, with the default 3 trays above them. It's compact and it works. Trays 1 through 3 are the powers I use via 1 through 0, Alt-1 through Alt-0, and Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-0. Tray 6 and the start of Tray 8 mostly have whatever running toggle powers I have. Start of Tray 4 has click location powers I normally activate through keybinds to see their recharge status. For the hidden ones, Tray 9 contains my tab targetting macros, active ones in slots 0 and 9, Trays 5 and 7 contain extra powers I may swap in, as well as what I use with Kheldian form change macros to swap the main tray, currently show #1 here (Kheldian form change macros normally sit in Tray 2). (As well, I keybind ("powexectray") Tray 3 slots 9 and 0 to fire off my cloaking and shield toggle turnon macros as well as Tray 6 slots 8, 9, and 0 to fire off travel and other powers.)