Jacke

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.

A lot of interesting comments here. Has me thinking things over (many not Super Strength related). But the Toon does care about the End crash from Hasten's buff ending. In many cases that's made builds weak on net Recovery fall apart due to the -15 End loss. That could be due to -Rec and -End from the Mobs that just pushed things to the point where the Hasten crash did in the Toon, dropping toggles and then doing like Blasters often do and eating the floor. (I say that as my main is an AR/Devices Blaster who sometimes (but rarely now) lives the Blaster moto: Face down and proud!) Sometimes those crashes matter, sometimes they don't. But when those crashes still happen, sometimes they will matter when other things are happening. I don't care that the Rage crash is just 10s in a minute or two. I don't care that there are ways to work around the crash (but they're very awkward). I just do not want to experience the Rage crash at all. I know about the history of Rage. I've had an idea for an Inv/Super Strength Tanker for a long time. Recreated that Inv/SS Tanker on Homecoming. In all the recent builds since the bug that stopped the Rage crash was fixed, I've skipped Rage. But as I learned from @Psyonico and my own experience, Super Strength without Rage is just lacking. Can get away with it more on Teams when the Tanker is Tanking and the rest of the Team picks up the slack in Damage. But I solo a lot. I also don't do multiple builds on a Toon (just too much admin fiddling in a game with way too much admin fiddling already, as I've learned on my main AR/Dev Blaster, who does have 3 builds). It's just one build and I'd not want Rage on my SS Tanker. But that Super Strength Toon will be weaker for it. So I used the Secret Weapon for not-right Toons: I rerolled the Toon. Instead of a Inv/SS Tanker, it's a SS/Shield Brute. I have other Inv Toons, but that will be my only SS Toon. I've thought of changes to Rage that just won't work in a game. If a Super Strength Toon really did rage, it would be a menace to its friends as well as its foes. But if a Power was changed to add self-Confuse, that's worse than Knockback. And see how welcome Knockback is on Teams. I've thought of one working fix for the problems with Rage: add an alternate excluding Power Pick at the same Level as Rage called Mellow. Started as a joke, now meant to be serious. Because Superman is certainly Super Strength. But Supes only truly rages rarely. Which ain't how Rage works in City at this time.

Back pre-Shutdown, I rolled a lot of Toons as Magic Origin to take advantage of the old Yin-Origin Enhancements (also called Talisman Enhancements) which for Magic were for Accuracy. A higher Level Toon with access to Yin's Market bought them for the lower Level Toons who could use them. Cool, SO-scale Accuracy from L10 up, long before low Level SOs from DFB runs and L5 and up SOs were introduced. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Talisman_Enhancements#History Recreated those Toons with Magic Origin on Homecoming in 2019. But for some of those Toons, I felt that having them as Magic Origin was wrong. In those cases, I've rerolled those Toons as Natural Toons, which seems right. That Origin change can't be done without rerolling a Toon. But these days, that Origin only matters in a few rare cases, mostly dialogue in some missions. But I still needed to do those rerolls. Because their Origin was wrong. That's how important getting those little details on Toons right for me is.

One thing not being considered here is that all these Pets and Pseudopets do not get the benefit of the Caster's Global Buffs. A few Pets (like Trip Mine) don't get benefits from Buff auras either. (Only Pets that are an extension of the Toon and can't be targeted, like Electrical Blast's Voltaic Sentinel, get the benefit of the Caster's Global Buffs.) These Pets see no Level Shifts. To a Pet, +4 content is actually +4 (not the +3 that Toons with a T3 or T4 Alpha Boost slotted experience). No Global Accuracy or ToHit. No Global +Damage. Etc. I've worked with 2 rules to avoid needing to calculate the final ToHit of Pets to get that near to 95%: Slot the Pet Summon Power with ED-capped Accuracy (93% or more). If an important Pet Attack isn't autohit or doesn't have at least 1.2 Base Accuracy: The Pet also needs either: Tactics (even a single-slot only Tactics on Masterminds is enough). -Def on the target the Pet is attacking. Those attacks like Trip Mine that ignore external buffs like from the Leadership Pool (and only have the benefit of the Enhancements slotted) fortunately have 1.2 Base Accuracy on their attack.

Have to remember that Kallisti Wharf, though a Co-op Zone, is part of Paragon City. Heroes (with Vigilantes) and Villains (with Rogues) don't fight directly, but there's Mobs that are a threat to both. Sort of like a non-hazard version of the Rikti War Zone. I think a Ferry link from Kallisti Wharf to Talos and Peregrine should be added. As well, there should be a Arachnos Black Helicopter link to the Rogue Isles. But not a link to the Rogue Islands Ferry line, as there are no direct ferry links between Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, as the distance is much farther and also crosses an political border where the two sides are at odds with one another. A Toon is limited in what Zone connections they can use based upon their current Alignment, even when there are connections. So Villains can't use the Kallisti Wharf Tram as it only connects to Zones where they can't go. If Kallisti Wharf has other links added, they would be similarly limited. As well, Heroes (and Vigilantes) shouldn't be able to use Arachnos' Black Helicopters even when they can access the destination Zone, as Arachnos in general doesn't give access to them. This is sufficiently awkward for Villains without access to a SG Base with a Teleporter to Kallisti Wharf that I think an Arachnos Black Helicopter link should be added.

Welp, I don't know about Ship of Heroes. Will try to find out more, but I can't see me going with it when it launches. I've tried a few other MMOs and it's tough to get them right. Even some times getting things too right hurts; example is the original The Secret World which was just too good about making things feel like a Eldritch Horror World. Just didn't have enough space where I felt safe. I still feel I will get more out of City of Heroes here on Homecoming than in any other MMO. Yes, Ship of Heroes beat Star Citizen on getting to release. I also expect we'll see Half-Life 3 and a good Duke Nukem sequel game before we see Star Citizen released. 😺

I've had to change my thinking on this. The Layer Cake Cave map is not the worst. That one I understand well and though I still dislike it, I can handle it well enough. More hate for the Council/5th Column Pool Room. Also some other caves where there's crazy vertical twists with parts of the cave going over itself, so the minimap doesn't help that much. I'd rather have the Layer Cake Room over them.

Something has to be done about Rage. That has to be done.

I just wish more of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles were less of a Potemkin Village and had more places with cool interiors. I know that's quite demanding, but I'd still like it.

I've never played WoW. But I played SWTOR (AKA WoW in Spaaaaaaaaaccccce!) at launch. And WoW isn't the best MMORPG. City of Heroes is. And Homecoming is the best version of City.

The Day Job check is on login and it checks if your login location is tagged for a Day Job. Those are volumes set and adjusted by the devs. If you're in a Day Job volume (normally checked by which is the left-most Day Job indication on your Buff Bar), then the time your Toon was logged out will be credited to the Day Job. Patroller::Criminal is another separate check done if the Day Job Badge is unearned and if you've accumulated more Patrol Duty time. As well, the check will credit Day Job Accolade Powers as well.

Flea is quite right. Like other loaded files, it's done while the City client starts up. The client needs to be exited and restarted to see any changes.

The solution to this issue is saving the Chat config ("/chatsave"). Because the Chat config stores where the split line is in the main chat window. Reloading that saved Chat config ("/chatload") will reset the Chat config as it was saved. Important note: Any Chat Tabs with a default Global channel will have no default channel. Edit each such Chat Tab to set a default channel.

Not sure, but I think it's because you commented on that topic and when there's a link inclusion, it grabs all sorts of images.