Maelwys

Yeah the changes to how enemies beyond your aggro limit behave (e.g. start shooting at you rather than just standing there oblivious) really ramped up the amount of incoming damage that a solo AE farmer has to mitigate. The resulting minimum ~35 HP/Sec regeneration requirement on top of 90% Resists and softcapped Defense cripples most non-tanker AFK-farming builds (and it's really a bare minimum - my Stone Armor Brute still faceplants occasionally with 40 HP/Sec regeneration + 5x Power Transfer/Panacea Procs!) I'm actually also not a big fan of using builds that are "fully optimized" for AFK farming. Assuming that a character is always going to be sitting in a +4x8 Fire Farm (for example) does let you build some very niche and powerful setups; but the result tends to be largely useless at running regular content. And whilst keeping a dedicated alternative build to swap to just for AE farming is also possible... to me that feels a bit too much like cheating and it's also quite jarringly immersion breaking. So personally I'd much rather have a "Hybrid" build (in this case meaning a build that can solo AFK AE farm and also run regular content) that is a smidge slower than a fully optimized setup; but can still whomp its way through a 10-minute Asteroid Farm at a decent rate of knots. "Active" Farmers have it a bit easier; as all they really care about is maximum AoE damage + they can go a lot lighter on the passive-mitigation side. Many Active Farming builds do pretty decently in regular "kill most" PVE teams. Aside from the obvious glut of Tankers; I currently have two Brutes that I still enjoy farming on (the aforementioned AFK-farming RadM/Stone; plus an Active-Farming BA/Fire) and occasionally I'll break out silly setups like Masterminds or Crabberminds or Dominators or even an EM/RadArmor Scrapper (which is capable of Active Farming at a decent pace as well as being one of my favourite all-rounder melee toons!).

The thing about using multiple accounts for farming is that for "maximum efficiency" it's best to throw two independent AFK farming toons into separate 10min AFK asteroid maps whilst you simultaneously active farm with a third toon. That way the three toons are not having to split the gains and you have much better chances for decent recipe and salvage drops; and your average inf/hour skyrockets. However if you're after safety (or amusement!) over speed then by all means combo whatever toons you want together. Even a few VEATs and/or Masterminds can layer up and obliterate a single farming map together pretty quickly in complete safety if that's what you're into ( @Neiska 's thread below is a good read, although these days the introduction of Marine Affinity has shifted MM powerset rankings around a bit!) And obviously the disclaimer applies about only using multiple accounts on servers that are not under heavy load 😉

After. Think of it as extra "Temporary Hitpoints" over and above the cap.

It'll stack with itself up to the cap, which is 100% of your "base" maximum Hitpoints. The mechanics can sometimes be confusing; because often the more hefty +Absorb buffs will "overwrite" themselves but the +Absorb already being granted by the previous copy is subtracted from the cap. E.g. If you have a "+800 Absorb" power and 1000 MaxHP after it overwrites itself you'll only have "+200 Absorb" active.

Yes. For Single-target damage it's passable on a Stalker.... and for AoE it actually veers into "decent" on Tankers as Gauntlet drastically buffs all three of its area attacks.

It'll function for regular Clicks like Blaze and DoT powers like Full Auto; but not for pseudopets like Blizzard (because these work by having the pet make lots of little separate "attacks" and the damage buff will wear off very quickly) I've not personally tested the gubbins of how Targeting Drone's damage buff duration interacts with power Animation Time Before Effect; but purely from eyeballing it... it looks like if the power you're activating afterwards has a ATBE of longer than 1.25s (such as Inferno) then it won't affect it either. [EDIT: A quick test on Brainstorm proves that it is affecting Inferno, so ignore this. I'm guessing that the "out of combat" flag doesn't actually get removed from your character until the attack's effect fully kicks in instead of at the start of its cast time; so TD's damage buff should work on any click attack power. Just not on pseudopets!] It'll depend if the target you're trying to have it Taunt possesses the "RAID" flag or not. Unlike Arsenal Assault's Tricannon (for example) the inherent Gatling Gun attack of Gun Drone only taunts foes that are not flagged as "Raid". It does also have a taunt aura passive but that has a low target cap and radius and is unaffected by Threat Duration or Accuracy enhancements (so +4 critters will not be permanently Taunted by it and it'll have issues hitting Raid-flagged foes and you need to keep the Drone on top of the mob for it to work!) That one's easier: Yes.

See also: Battle Axe. Spine's only real niche these days is standing there like a lemon and letting Quills tickle the mob to death... and even that's trounced by Rad Melee's Irradiated Ground.

Also this: And MacSkull's PPM Calculator Spreadsheet (make a copy) plus City of Data v2 for the base numbers to plug into it. And maybe this for some other info + illustrated examples:

Ehh. versus Giant Monters maybe. I'd much rather have -res versus AVs/Heros/EBs. (30677.2*0.05)/(15) = 102.2573333 HP/Second regeneration for a level 54 AV. 102 DPS is pretty trivial to outpace these days; and any -Regen debuff would be working against both AV inherent debuff resistances and the Purple Patch. Versus Giant Monsters/Monsters? (70679.18*0.05)/(10) = 353.3959 HP/Second for a "regular" level 50 one and more of the -Regen debuff is likely going to land on them due to the level scaling.

-Resistance ? 😉

It isn't. It's important to qualify if you mean ACTIVE FARMING (when you stay behind the wheel and activate powers/clicky defenses) or PASSIVE "AFK" FARMING (when you just enter the mission, stick one PBAoE attack on autofire + then come back 5-10mins later)? Those two goals each need very different types of builds to be effective. Active farmers don't need much regeneration and can get away with uncapped defense/resistance; because you'll be there to pop inspirations. They also often don't bother with multiple damage auras; but they do want lots of AoE powers; all crammed full of -res and damage procs. Passive farmers absolutely require 90% Resistance and 45% Defense and >35 HP/Sec regeneration. And they'll generally want two damage auras and one decent high-radius and high-target-cap PBAoE that can be procbombed and set to Autofire. After that it's a case of cramming in as much global +Damage and +Recharge as you can. Depending on what form of farming you're after (Active or Passive) Brute killspeed may not be too far off that of a Tanker. But only a few Brute setups can actually survive Passive Farming on +4x8 nowadays without making large build concessions (in terms of trading damage output for survivability)... it's basically a shortlist of one secondary: non-Granite /Stone. Stone Armor Brutes also have a major advantage over Stone Armor Tankers as the additional "damage procs" granted via Brimstone Armor benefit from Fury.

I hardly ever slot the Perf Shifter Proc. Panacea and (usually) Miracle in health, sure... but Stamina's Base slot is almost always a 50+5 EndMod and the second slot is typically a Power Transfer Proc. The only time Performance Shifter gets used is if Stamina ends up 3 or 4-slotted. It's just too unreliable + spikey. As for LoTG +7.5%s? Typically any of my powers that I'm already taking which accepts Defense IO sets will get one. But I very rarely go out of my way to take specific additional powers just to slot extra LoTGs.

If they're listed here- https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Vanity_Pet they're cosmetic only. There are a limited number of pets that can buff you - see https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Veteran_Reward_Powers#Combat-Buff_Pets They can be aggroed and have extremely low HP and die to a stiff breeze; but can provide a useful buff to recovery (for example) at low levels. The "useful in combat" ones are https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Signature_Summon It's 10,000,000 Inf for 5 charges (so 2m "per summoning") and their full power listing is here

The additional defense from Evasive Maneuvers gets suppressed in Combat.

That wasn't actually what was said in my post. What I posted was: "Homecoming's published Server Infrastructure Cost for last month alone (for the current 6 shards) was $4,853.37. That's a average of a smidge over $800/month per server shard". A current average of $800/month per server doesn't necessarily mean that adding a new HC server would automatically cost another $800. However it does show that running six HC servers is pretty expensive; and suggest that adding another would likely require an additional non-trivial monetary cost. As far as I'm aware the way the HC hosting platform currently works, multiple server shards can be spun up and hosted within the same shared resource bucket. And the hardware limitations of that bucket will likely care much more about how many maps + critters are loaded into memory simultaneously rather than how many individual shards are online and accepting logins (certainly a few years ago when I had more free time to dabble with the SCORE code, RAM consumption was the major bottleneck...). So if the current setup has sufficient unused capacity then it might well be possible to spin up a new server without shelling out for extra hardware. This sort of thing is generally referred to as "technical debt" - an additional hardware/processing time requirement that is not properly covered by a new project's budget but instead gets absorbed by existing ICT infrastructure. It will always eventually catch up with the organisation and eventually need "paid for", and typically this happens whenever the relevant hosting/licensing contract comes up for renewal and you end up with a far bigger quote than before (because all those little extras have accumulated to bump your requirements into the next performance tier!) so wherever possible these additional requirements should be acknowledged and budgeted for ahead of time regardless of whether or not you'll get affected by them right away. All of which (alongside the reduced need for a forked codebase and major lore changes) is a big part of why I'd be far less against the idea of adding "Permadeath mode" to the existing servers as an optional extra.

AFAIK moving the original set of three trays to the very top and docking the inspiration tray there is the only surefire way of stopping it wandering.

That'd certainly require a heck of a lot less attention from the powers devs; but it gives me the jeebies thinking about all the scenarios where a lowbie toon on a TF could die to splash damage from someone else's fight and then get dumped straight to "game over" without even knowing how they died or being able to check the combat log (let alone being able to bitch about it to the offending teammate!) 🤣

I mean, I can only think of two possible situations for what happens during "permadeath". + One is that whenever the toon dies things get "paused" temporarily - the toon is stuck in a state where nothing can bring them back to life; but their body hangs around (if that doesn't make good "Vengeance" fodder I don't know what would!) and the player can still type in chat etc to say farewell before they eventually timeout and their character gets wiped. Potentially at this point the player might be permitted to choose to "chicken out" and forever disable Hardcore Mode and continue as a regular player [EDIT: which upon further reflection would allow the badge-gatherers a way to get to level 50 as a 'hardcore mode' player before intentionally dying + choosing the chicken out option and starting to farm their debt badges…] + The other is that as soon as the toon dies they instantly get deposited back on the Character Selection screen. No hanging around. No chance to activate Inspirations or get rezzed. No chance for Teammates to Vengeance your body or commiserate with you. Gone. Immediate game over. The first would definitely need HC to implement some way of disabling rez effects both intentional (self rez) and non-intentional (allied rez, getting enough EXP via teammate activity to level up, etc) on the toon whilst their body is still hanging around.

To be fair; if they're looking for ways to drive up adoption numbers then Die Hard (groan!) Badgers are probably a perfect target... 😜 Assuming we're talking about the optional checkbox deal (so other players on the server would still use rez powers just fine + none of the Game's Lore would need to be changed; aside from possibly a brief note about a few new heroes appearing who are "Conscientious Objecters to Mediporter Tech" or whatever)... then I imagine that the easiest way to tackle self-rez powers would be to disable choosing these on level-up using the same conditional prerequisites that are currently set for stuff like Sentinel Super Reflexes Practiced Brawler and Master Brawler - these are mutually exclusive; and it's done via a prerequisite power possession check. (i) Grant the Ironmanners a Silent Invisible Passive Power immediately after character creation; called "RezImmunity" or whatever. (ii) Set "not possessing RezImmunity" as a prerequisite for choosing each self-rez power in the game. (iii) Tweak the other rez effects so that they cannot affect any target that has RezImmunity active (similar to how Null the Gull turns off "Group Fly" effects) (iv) Disable the effect that is attached to Rez Inspirations- not just getting them as loot drops/purchasing from AH + various reward vendors/attaining via combination, etc. And currently levelling up whilst dead revives you too; because you gain the effect of each of the Large inspirations.

This is what the discussion about an idea is for. Finding better or more efficient ways for something to be added. Congratulations, you did it. Actually... YOU did it. Unfortunately the OP has thus far only ever expressed an interest in a dedicated environment where everyone within that environment is forced to play the same "hardcore" rules. And whilst voluntarily adhering to a set of Hardcore rules or even joining a Supergroup full of like-minded people might seem like a reasonable compromise, it was already suggested but not accepted by them. "It is time for a HARDCORE SERVER!" "Its the future, I'm positive its going to happen! So many other games are adding Hardcore servers as well" "if there is a hardcore server made, guarantee it would be the most populated by far!" "It's not the same to set "self rules" or even group rules. A server that makes your character immediately unplayable upon death is completely different, especially if every person you see has followed the survived thus far. Seeing lvl 50s actually would mean something" So congratulations @Super Atom; I can get behind your suggestion👍 Let's hope the OP can as well.

+ Powers and Lore tweaks so that these and all this does not become utterly pointless. + Sufficient Demand to Justify the Ongoing Cost (for a Server) and the Dev Time (for both) The former is probably surmountable if the latter is achieved. It's worth pointing out that the vast majority of dissenting comments in this thread (including my own) have not shot the idea of IronMan-mode CoH down; but focused instead on how deeply unpopular and financially unwise implementing a mandatory version of it on a new dedicated Homecoming server would be. Enabling HC-mode via an optional tickbox on the existing HC servers is a drastic departure from what the OP's original stance and ask was. And given that adding that wouldn't require an ongoing monetary drain on HC or an alternative codebase (self-rez powers could be locked out or redirected rather than removed; and allied rez effects could be made ineffectual on ironman-enabled players) the only real drain would be on the Dev Team's time. Therefore it'd be far more doable technically. Whilst all it would really be doing would be removing the need for self-policing (the "honour system" that the Ironman-mode players currently adhere to)... unlike the original ask it's neither utterly ridiculous nor harmful; and a few people might benefit from it. So yes; perhaps it'd actually have a fair chance of eventually being added to the Dev's ToDo list. But... THIS. The difference between an Optional Checkbox and a New Dedicated Mandatory Server is Apples and Oligarchs.

IMO this analogy is pretty spot on. Gasoline-powered devices certainly exist. They're useful. And rather popular. And people even enjoy watching streaming media about others using them. CPAP machines are a very niche product and their user base is a very specific demographic of people. So: TERRIFIC IDEA In order to make the leading brand of CPAP machines more popular, lets strap a gasoline engine to it and then stream the results on Twitch. (DAMMIT ALL YOU SILLY CPAP DEVICE USERS WHY CAN'T YOU SEE THIS IS THE FUTURE AND EVERYONE WOULD LOVE IT YOU'RE ALL WRONG AND TOXIC AND I SHALL NOT BE DETERED BY YOUR WEIGHT OF OPINION, EVIDENCE OF PRIOR FAILURES, COST-BENEFIT DISPARITY DISPLAYS OR SO-CALLED COMMON SENSE!) The "criticism" of the idea started in the third post in the thread. And the first two posts were the OP.

We're still glossing over all of the backend coding work that would be required behind making that checkbox actually DO anything though, right? And all of the lore and power selection bits that would need tweaked for the gameplay experience to remain even remotely sane, right? Right? Right. Never mind then, carry on...

Well darn; that's me told then, isn't it...