Maelwys

That's the most convincing argument yet to actually try to make it happen... 😆 Ehh, it took until my fourth post in this topic to bring out the /jranger, well after it was already obvious that the OP wasn't actually reading the linked threads. And afterwards I still ventured another few follow-up responses with reasoned arguments that were bordering on helpful before this delightful exchange started. But that's quite alright, by all means add mine to the other 19 matching opinions that you're dismissively ignoring whilst accusing us all of not understanding that the non-profit game we've been happily enjoying for years needs to suddenly change because a specific way of playing other MMOs has recently become popular on a particular Video Streaming website... 🙄

Let's recap, briefly. Your average CoH player also tends to NOT ENJOY PERMADEATH. Again, just because a handful of players do not enjoy something does not mean everyone doesn't. It is demonstrably not "a handful" of CoH Homecoming players who do not enjoy permadeath. Iron man SGs were a very niche thing even back on live, and you only need to read the threads I linked earlier to see how those very same players are now in even more of a minority to the point where the practice has become practically extinct. A few players might, yes. But you're ignoring the fact that almost Every. Single. Response. to this over the years has been overwhelmingly negative, even by the standards of the suggestion forum. So of course I can make statements like "If you polled the entire Homecoming playerbase right now with 'Would you be willing to play on a server with built-in mandatory permadeath?' you'd get fewer positive responses than a PUG Dr. Quaterfield run." . Because it's obvious from prior feedback that this is a deeply unpopular idea and (as has already been pointed out) it is also an notion that makes no sense whatsoever given the game's existing lore, balance and power selection; and would require substantial development and ongoing revenue. And it has even been tried already with no observable benefit on other non-HC servers. I therefore refer you to my previous /jranger.

Your average CoH player also tends to NOT ENJOY PERMADEATH. If they did... you'd see a lot more Supergroups out there like the old Iron Eagles one. And introducing Iron Man Mode might have breathed some new life into Thunderspy; regardless of how "unofficial" or "small" they are. And the folk on HC who actually enjoy playing challenging content and pushing their characters would be nodding instead of naysaying every single time this crops up.

Twitch? That's the guys who are trying to compete against Usenet, right? Fancy-smancy MMX technology. It'll never catch on. I maintain that games that are hard and/or make it tricky to avoid "dying" aren't exactly a new development.... ...it's just not something that the majority of the playerbase here at HC are into. (( see also: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard )) I very much suspect that you could log onto Reunion at about 4am GMT and divide the number of active players by 10; and the resulting figure would be a reasonable approximation of what the peak population of a Homecoming "Enforced Ironman Mode" server would look like. Maybe. On a double XP weekend.

If joining random Four Star content runs is your goal; by all means choose one of the specific flavour-of-the-month builds. Whilst that content can be run by almost any toon; it's considerably faster whenever you choose toons/build combinations that go all-in on generating maximum damage output and leave the bulk of the damage mitigation to constantly rotating Defensive Incarnate Clickies. So naturally stuff like Ice/Cold Corruptors are often going to get first dibs; especially if you're PUGing. However personally I'd always choose a Sentinel who was conscientious enough to make a separate dedicated build for 4 Star content over another "meta" DPS who just rocked up with their generic do-everything PVE build. Further Reading: That said... Four Star content is a very niche thing; even assuming you view CoH as one of those games that doesn't really start until after hitting the level cap (and over all the years I've been playing... I can count the number of players I've encountered who hold that view on one hand!)

Personally I definitely found Powerboosted Fortitudes to be worth it back when I was playing an Illusion/Empath Controller on Live. That toon's PB Cycle time was ~29.5s which meant that it could keep a PB'ed Fort on up to four people constantly plus a non-PB'ed fort on the other three; for +31.87% Defense buffage on the squishier folk instead of +18.04%. Plus it affected Group Invisibility too; for another constant +5.26% Defense to everyone. Admittedly I was PUGing quite often so the more mitigation I could throw on everyone the better; and very few players back then were T4'ed up... but I'd still shy away from skipping it if I were to reroll that toon today. The other obvious potential use case is Forcefield. On a Defender a case could definitely be made that the extra +Def from PB is overkill unless they're running Incarnate content. But on a Controller/Corruptor/MM? I've got a (admittedly seldom played!) Demons/FF MM. PB brings her pets' defenses from a constant [17.68%+12.01%+10%=39.69%] to a constant [25.06%+12.01%+10%=47.07%] so technically 2.07% of that is "overkill" on the pets outside of defense debuffs... but any player character teammates would still be sitting at a mere +37.07% defense. Which still leaves some room for the usual culprits like CJ/Maneuvers/+3%DefGlobals and Barrier. I do agree on the "being locked into a particular epic/patron pool" thing though. MMs probably have it easier since Mace Mastery meshes better with other +Def Buffs; but locking Controllers into Energy Mastery and Defenders/Corruptors to Soul (or Energy if you're a total masochist) can be rather annoying...

Homecoming is intentionally low effort and high reward. People aren't here for a grind, they're here for the fun of playing the game. (Sure, PUGs may be quieter about it. But join a SG or hang out on Discord...) That's why it has a comparatively high population. Also the whole NCSoft legitimacy thing, but that's still a relatively recent development. On live you had to grind for Incarnate stuff, IOs were far pricer, and stuff like START and at-will Triple Exp wasn't a thing. There are still grindy servers out there. And some of them even have caked-in Iron Man Mode. But the players here generally aren't the right target audience for that stuff. So to recap: (i) It's been asked for before on multiple occasions. (ii) It didn't go down well then and unsurprisingly nobody has since warmed up to the idea. (iii) This is General Chat. The "Suggestions" subforum is --> thataway.

It would, however, still be a total ghost town. HC already makes it totally possible for you to play in "Iron Man" mode if that's your kink. There are even supergroups committed to the idea. It doesn't need a dedicated server for it. Just watch that honour system.

No.

It has. There is. And it isn't.

It's sorta ironic that folk keep reviving the idea every so often...

I mean... the game isn't balanced around permadeath, it'd make a fair number of powers pointless, and a LOT of the lore would need rewritten... ...but if you want to make those tweaks and then host the result just for poops and giggles?

Last I checked Energy Melee, Fire Melee + Katana were all pretty much within a hair's breadth of each other (with MA hot on their Heels) in terms of raw damage output. Katana's Lethal damage and Energy Melee's Smashing Damage Component are both resisted much more frequently + severely than Fire damage though.

My Tuesday night GM swapped from Roll20 to Foundry VTT shortly before I joined the game* and it's been quite successful so far. Few niggles with recent upgrades temporarily breaking spell macros etc; but the gameplay has been grand + much better environment than roll20. Only 4 of us at present too (sadly our 5th has health issues and probs won't be back for a bit!) but it's a decent number + gives everyone a chance to contribute. *2nd Feb 2021 judging by my session notes. The party had just hit Lv5 and we're currently a bit shy of Lv14. They're taking it SLOOOOOW!

Try "Bless" or "Shield of Faith" instead and if anything gets past tell 'em to take a short rest and use their hit dice to recover like proper adventurers 😛 (Healing Word/Cure Wounds certainly has its place... to pick someone up from unconsciousness. Just don't do that in the initiative order right before the enemy. Heh...)

Condescension notwithstanding; I'm afraid not. To illustrate; I refer you to my earlier post: In scenario (c) you would still SUFFER THE FULL (UNREDUCED) AMOUNT OF DAMAGE. You would just recover from it a bit faster than someone with no Ice Pack. And that is the problem with "healing" in CoX. Healing in this game SUCKS in comparison to proper damage mitigation like Defense and Resistance buffs (and to a lesser extent; +Absorb and +MaxHP) because it does not stop you from dying to big hits of "spike damage". It just stops you from dying to lots of smaller hits of damage that are spread out over a long period of time - "chip damage" - which by its very nature is not going to kill you immediately. Healing can certainly be useful; but it does not reduce the damage someone takes. It is a reactionary recovery measure taken after a non-lethal amount of damage has already been applied to someone's healthbar. Which brings up another problem: often the person damaged will act faster than the "healer" and use their own recovery measures.

Knockback could stop an enemy from getting in range to attack you --> Damage reduced Healing cannot stop an enemy from attacking you or reduce the amount of damage that is deducted from your healthbar --> Damage not reduced Slows could stop an enemy getting an additional attack off before they are defeated --> Damage reduced Tactics (as-in planning; not the pool power!) could stop an enemy getting multiple attacks off before they are defeated --> Damage reduced 100% Agree on the others, but still a big "Nope" on Healing.

But healing does not reduce the negative effects of damage. Reduce [Verb] To make smaller or less in amount, degree, or size. The effect(s) of damage in CoX is to lower the current value on your toon's health bar and/or kill them. "Healing" does not reduce/lessen/negate those effects at all. Healing and Regeneration recover from the effect of damage; they do not reduce it. There are some games out there where healing can provide some actual damage reduction. Some rulesets allow for healing to grant temporary hitpoints (along the lines of what CoH calls "Absorb") or for any form of healing to give a temporary increase in a stat (such as "Constitution" or "Armor Class" or "Sanity" or whatever). But not in CoX. Anyone here who has considered "healing = mitigation" for many years has simply been wrong for many years.

yes it is healing is one of the three basic pillars of mitigation in the game and has been since the beginning you resist the damage you avoid the damage you heal through the damage resistance defense healing Resistance reduces the damage. Defense avoids the damage. Healing restores your hitpoints after you've already taken damage. The first two are mitigation. The last is recovery. Let's try putting this another way... Someone takes a swing at your face. You see the punch coming. Do you: (a) Block it (b) Dodge it (c) Just take it like a chump but put an Ice Pack on afterwards?

That's not farming, that's growing Cress on a Q-Tip. Even a single non-optimized passive ("AFK") farming toon should be making more inf than that without selling any drops... 🙈 That said... there are so many ways to earn decent influence in this game that anyone getting annoyed at ebil marketeers for doing it a little faster/more efficiently is ridiculous. It doesn't cost more than a few days effort to fully purple out a toon even if you just earn merits + swap them for converters/boosters + dump them on the AH at "sell now" prices (you're welcome, flippers!) Smack the idiot upside the head with a trout and move on.

Panacea is a Healing Set, so can't fit in Stamina. It is however the best bang-for-your-buck in Health.

Generally whenever a character is in their "finished" state, I'll always aim for them to have a recovery surplus of at least 2 Endurance/Second (not including Panacea). That tends to give enough leeway on most characters. The exceptions are characters that have zero endurance reduction slotted into their main attacks (e.g. 2x Acc/Dam + 4x Damage Procs) or specific powersets like Battleaxe and claw-focused Arachnos Widows that just plain guzzle endurance.

There's one thing that Archery still has going for it... Rain of Arrows is the only power Sentinels get across all their Primaries (there are one or two such as Ground Zero on their secondaries) that has a target cap higher than 10.

My reading of Carni's log snippet is that it's the Shifting Tides power itself that's contributing damage rather than external IO damage procs (there's a separate line for the Armageddon Proc), I remember testing damage procs within it a few months back and they had a fair chance to kick in on cast and every 10 seconds thereafter, but not for every hit of Cold damage... which roughly corresponded to the predicted 25ft Radius Toggle = ~15.3% activation chance for 3.5PPM procs. I've just performed a very quick + dirty test on Brainstorm to see if anything's changed... with 3x damage procs slotted in Shifting Tides and repeated castings on groups of eight enemies in PI. Twenty applications saw an average of just over three-and-a-half damage proc activations per casting... and 3.5/(8*3) = 0.145833 or 14.6% activation rate; which is close enough to the expected 15.3% for government work. I did see some "wasted" procs kicking in on the dead bodies after the ten second mark which might be inflating the logs a bit (I'm guessing they can't shift its 'Entities Affected' to "Foe (alive)" due to the need for an anchor...) So yeah, whilst you certainly can slot IO damage procs in it; from what I can tell it's not activating them any more regularly than any other 25ft radius toggle.