ThatGuyCDude

The changeling macros allow you to initiate a form-specific attack while appearing in the form for a fraction of a second (or sometimes not at all). Both Nova and Dwarf attacks animate properly in human form. As such, a Minimal FX power option might work if the model swap selected is simply the player's current model, much like how Mini Mode swaps the player's model with a scales-floored version of itself (You can tell this is happening if you try to make a costume change while it's active, or if you look at your ID). Kheldian form customization already does this to some extent, as the color-customizable Nova (and I assume Dwarf) are different models from the standard animation (Nova has no tail). Resistance to the idea has been that the Kheldian energy being is reshaping the body into a lifeform it has previously bonded with (IE: It's lore that the character changes shape). I generally disagree with this argument. It's been suggested before that a 'minimal effects' option should use the player model as a base with some forced additional effects--like shadowy tendrils from the back while in Nova or lobster claw auras around the hands while in Dwarf. Other proposals suggested a mini-pet version of the existing models hovering behind or near the character, or some kind of spirit silhouette of them. Personally, I like ALL those ideas and I'd like to see several implemented.... maybe even a color-customizable eye glow too.

Gang war summons a bunch of entities from what I gather is a custom enemy group. It calls about 10 of them, but I don't think there's ten unique models for them (there's definitely more than two, though). Three tier 1 henchmen slots, Two tier 2 henchmen slots, One tier 3 henchmen slot, and One control-set pet slot (though that could share a slot with tier 3 since there's no overlap, unless a future archetype pairs them up)... so there'd need to be six (maybe seven) 'hidden' costume slots at the end of the list that could be edited through a separate interface (to avoid confusion and bloat at the Tailor and in the costume menu). Ten (or Eleven) if you throw in Patron Power pets. Doesn't help with Beast Mastery, though (unless the human skeleton can animate Beast Mastery attacks, of which I'm uncertain), or with mix-and-matching vanilla and custom assets. It makes sense that this has been such a back-burner feature, it's quite a pickle of complicated interactions. [I still like my 'henchmen' enemy group idea, though.]

Could you please add to the guide that the only way into the Core of the Labyrinth is to beat the Minotaur or to teleport to someone who is already there? You reference the Core repeatedly but don't explain how to get there, and the mote hunting in particular sounds like something that could be done solo but can't because of lack of access to the Core.

Right. It comes down to whether they can still animate at all when using 'animal' powers with human models, or vice-versa. As a working example, Kheldian Nova-form and Dwarf-form attacks have animations that are viable both with their unique models and when the player is in human form. I imagine the player would be able to mix-and-match existing assets and their own created assets into each category, so they might drag wolves into their Tier 2 (Upgraded) category to coexist with--say--a custom werewolf costume using the <Huge> body model... or even a model from a hologram they've unlocked with Prismatics. Of course, if it's impossible for a wolf model to animate properly with say thug henchmen powers (or a thug to animate properly with wolf henchmen powers), then the system would have to exclude Beast Mastery (and possibly the bots) and stick to henchmen that are interchangeably 'human enough'.

I think the answer lies in the Mission Architect. More explicitly, in the ability of Mission Architect to create 'enemy groups'. The enemy group editor lets players assign custom entities to various ranks (Minion/Lieutenant/Boss/Elite Boss/ArchVillain). These entities can have player-created costumes, and more than one entity can be assigned to each rank. The custom enemy groups take up a certain amount of space when incorporated into architect missions and that eats into the data limit each player is allowed for missions they create and share. MasterMind Henchmen could work with that same kind of interface and setup. Give the players an enemy group window that lets them assign any number of costume files they may have (NOT their costume slots! Files from their saved costumes, just like in AE creation) to each of the three henchman tiers (and separately each of their upgrade states). They can then select however many henchmen group files they want to load into the game at large... provided their total space does not exceed the amount allotted to their account. Then, character by character, allow the player to dictate which of these henchmen groups they will use (or if said character would use the default). Doing so would immediately dismiss all henchmen and cause new henchmen summoned to draw their costumes from the henchmen group selected. This interface would need to be accessed in a fixed safe location, probably City Hall/Marconeville Arachnos Headquarters/Pocket D. I'm also not sure if it would conflict with Beast Mastery or Robots either... I don't see why it would but there might be some animation incompatibility. Still, it's at least a different place to consider than using the costume slots.

It's a problem with Teleport to Target powers. Savage Leap (Savage Melee) has the same trouble. It's because the location of the inanimate object is in its center rather than adjacent to it, so there is no valid spot to which you could teleport. Not sure if there's any way for the game engine to address it.

Being able to pick a shovel, a baseball bat, a sledge hammer, a pipe wrench, a mallet, or a nightstick for the Mace Mastery mace would open a lot of costume concepts late game... it'd almost be worth picking an otherwise throwaway power in a build just to put one on the character's back. Right now the only maces available to Arachnos Soldiers and Mace Mastery characters are very magical or high-tech in design. Granted, the grenade-launching component breaks the illusion if you're shooting it out of a sledgehammer, but leave that to us to come up with an explanation for it.

A Hero showing up in court like that makes sense, because they are in possession of authority granted to them to carry out the pursuit of justice. A Hero under those circumstances would require a search warrant to enter and examine a premises... just like a police officer, right? The only difference then between a Hero and a regular officer is relative independence from the chain of command and the presence of preternatural ability. The reason a Vigilante's evidence from an illegal seizure is admissible in court is because the seizure itself is evidence of *another* crime: an act of unsanctioned vigilantism. I agree that such a Cape showing up to court would be a BAD idea: unlike the Hero who possessed the authority to pursue the case, the Vigilante is looking to face a mile-long list of charges the second he steps into the courthouse (as you described in your original post). He could trade what he's found for immunity from prosecution depending on the prosecutor, but the criminal they're hoping to nail to the wall would have to be a BIG fish... and Lady Crey's a big fish who always slips the net. So what makes the Batman scenario fall into the first category instead of the second? In most instances Batman works in the same capacity as a private detective: when he comes across evidence he tips off Gordon and then the police obtain a warrant to search the location legally. Heck, Gordon even has a signal to call Bats for help! There's a degree of 'by the book' behind the Bat that helps soften the blow of his otherwise criminal actions. But neither situation seems to apply in this case: I didn't get the impression of court in that last mission. Rather, it struck me as typical arbitration: both sides agree to compromise to keep the matter OUT of the courts. Still, this mission line feels more like the start of something rather than the end of it, so perhaps the conclusion is dissatisfying because it's meant to be a cliffhanger.

Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! I love the new zone, but there are things I'd like to try in it that it currently doesn't allow (for instance, like navigating it solo at -1x1 instead of its native +4x8). An instanced version would be amazing, even if it had to have additional restrictions (like no Follow through Fog or a mission exit timer... I dunno, instanced Mothership doesn't have many differences from the zone but it doesn't seem to react to Notoriety settings either).

Let me put it another way. That floating problem where New Council missions were spawning inappropriately overleveled enemies? It happened because there were mobs with nonstandard minimum levels in the level ranges of those missions. So the game tried to scale them to the player's level, they hit their minimum and stopped, and then proceeded to mop the floor with the player. The pets summoned by the Arachnos Soldier's "Call Reinforcements" secondary power have a minimum level of 20. Because of the level required to take this power, this may have seemed like a non-issue in the past. However, because of the way the doppleganger mechanics work, any pet that a player can summon needs to have a minimum level of 1 to respect the difficulty settings of low-level content that features doubles. At the moment that's just the Positron 1 taskforce, but since the problem has revealed itself it is better to future-proof it NOW rather than trip over it again later.

I had a similar idea, only mine was using Armor sets for the secondary instead of the Melee sets (heh, MegaEricZero beat me to the reply). The mechanic to make it function was a bodyguard-reversal: the player takes a portion of the damage FOR their pets (as a pseudopet hit that has to roll to hit again), thereby making them more durable by funneling the damage over their own resistance/defense. A fun way to test these kinds of new power selection mashups is with the Mission Architect: if you make a boss-style mob with the powerset combo you're planning and then flag them as an ally, you can try to have them clear missions by themselves (you stand there or stealth) to see how they perform.

The trouble is that macros and binds are functionally equivalent to typing a slash command into the chat window, and while powexecs tell the native copy of powers to animate their cooldown timers and toggles, there's no appropriate slash command to do the same with a macro button. Which suggests we perhaps need a slash command to do so. Maybe "/powmimic <powername>" that you can add to the tail of a macro command to make the button animate in the same way as the specified power would on a bar? Wouldn't work for a power chain, obviously, but would certainly help for those macros that are intended to address target troubles (like teleports). There are some powers that conditionally change their icons (The Fire Armor pinnacle comes to mind), so there may be tech there that can be explored for macro function.

Okay, so I was confused by the language of their descriptions; I believed they were just going to stop having any effect after their level cap, but they're actually just fixed in power after that point. The attuned enhancement selection was a large contributing factor in that confusion, which in any other context makes no sense at all. I mean, of course a level 30 IO works as a level 30 at any level, that's exactly how the 'training' recipes work! Why couldn't I understand that? o_O Maybe the Praetorian enhancements from the START vendor contributed to that confusion, they have similar language and their effects actually DO deactivate after level 20 as far as I am aware. Knowing that the procs don't go dark after that level opens a lot of possibilities for me... I love making two-piece franken-sets and with this new knowledge I have a LOT more combinations to play with. Thank you everyone for your input. (I also agree a standard 7-50 level range would make the whole thing a lot less confusing and might even balance out their prices on the consignment house, but I don't feel strongly enough to propose that as a formal suggestion. Others more informed on the subject would make a stronger argument for it anyway.)

Enhancements with the 'Effective until Level 20/30' nonsense... do you ever use them? I always auction off the recipes when I get them, since I won't get any endgame benefit from them otherwise. Still, some of their set bonuses are interesting and their proc effects intrigue me. A few sell for quite a lot, too, which makes me think I'm missing something. Do you ever think it might be more fun to make builds if those sets didn't have an effectiveness level ceiling? (This is specifically about level-capped IO Sets and NOT the Praetorian/START enhancements. I'm wondering why the former aren't evergreen like the 'training' inventions, and how the game might be different if they were. Basically, I'm hoping to gather opinions here before I inadvertently make a jerk of myself in the Suggestions subforum)

I get the position against defense, but I can't understand taking a stance against Absorb. Mechanically it's a lateral equivalent to +maxHP: it has a different cap and the added benefit of being able to watch the bar to see how much is left... but with the drawback that it can't be healed back up like +maxHP can. While Moment of Glory can save you from a single Alpha strike, its long cooldown makes it an unacceptable solution for tanking purposes (which is a problem when you're a Regen Brute and the team decides you should tank, even when you can't take a hit like that over and over). Being able to alternate between that and an absorb buffer would make a huge difference. Heck, it could even be a string of small absorbs that fire off in succession, so that it doesn't overshadow the powerset relying heavily on the Regen stat. IE: You get 5-some statuses with different expiration times {3/6/9/12/15 seconds, or maybe 5-second intervals?} when you activate the power; each gives you a 20% or so HP absorb when it expires to soften the hits that follow... not enough to ignore an entire Alpha Strike but enough to keep you alive through it until you can heal.

In the last phase of the last mission of Positron 1, the team is forced to fight a Shadow Simulacrum party summoned by the Circle of Thorns. These copies have access to every power in the player's pool. Unfortunately, this means an Arachnos Soldier copy has access to "Call Reinforcements". So what's the problem? We were running a +2 version of the TF, and the Boss was level 17. But his summoned minions were level 20, not level 16 like the power dictates they should be. The Arachnos Soldier spider minions need a lower minimum level so that they can be an appropriate (read: not overleveled) threat in that fight.

What about simply adding conversion formulas that let the player break Shards down into Threads? It'd be a loss conversion: 1 Shard -> 3 Threads... IE less efficient for Alpha than using Shards themselves at a 1:5 ratio. That way, players who don't want to deal with the split material formulas can just smash everything into threads, whereas those who maintain both get a discount in the long run... especially if they run a lot of Incarnate trials or if they're building all the T4 Alphas. Oh, it's there, it's just ridiculously expensive. Disregard this post.

With regards to the changeling form-shifting keybinds... I had an idea which seemed to work out really well. Rather than binding to specific powers, I changed my binds to use "powexec_slot #" so that I could shuffle powers around within the existing interface. This gave me another idea... if specific slots are for specific form powers, other slots can have binds that automatically revert to human form. So you might have: /bind 1 "+$$powexec_toggleoff Black Dwarf$$powexec_toggleoff Dark Nova$$powexec_slot 1" for a human power in slot one of your primary bar, and /bind Alt+2 "+$$powexec_toggleoff Black Dwarf$$powexec_toggleon Black Dwarf$$powexec_altslot 2" for a dwarf power in slot two of your secondary bar, and even /bind Shift+4 "+$$powexec_toggleoff Dark Nova$$powexec_toggleon Dark Nova$$powexec_alt2slot 4" in your tertiary bar. Provided you dragged a power that the corresponding form uses into that slot, pressing that button will shift you into the appropriate form to use the power, period. This makes it really easy to shuffle pool power attacks into the rotation, because even if you didn't get the rhythm right on the toggle presses you can still activate your other powers without needing an extra drop-form bind. It's a little tedious to set all the slots up like this, but it's like butter once they're there. Also, thank you for the guide. Couldn't have played this archetype at all without it.

It's not a false comparison, it's absolutely apt as the travel powers from the START vendor you yourself referenced were ALSO prestige powers (or in some cases cash shop powers). The history doesn't matter (and don't try to school me like I wasn't there), those powers are available to everyone at the start *now*. That's a paradigm shift, and the powers available for selection on level up need to be changed to address it. Why would anyone willingly take a power pool intro attack when--even unenhanced--a prestige attack outperforms them in virtually every regard? Even the challenge builds I've run were out of desire to see how ridiculously bad those attacks actually are: again, they're traps designed to trick new players into wasting a power pick and having to respec, and that's bad game design.

And people buy Sands of Mu at the START vendor too, an ability that hits multiple targets and does superior damage to Boxing, Kick, and even their Tier 1 attacks. Intro power pool attacks are traps. They even have descriptions like "Good if you need another attack power", but they're not. Yes, they are a prerequisite to get to the higher-tier powers. No, having a prerequisite be useless compared to another option is not acceptable. Let's look at Spring Attack. It's a T3 power pool power and it's actually a pretty good PBAoE attack... it does damage comparable to a T2 or T3 in the regular Melee power sets and it has a neat mechanic (teleport to location, or teleport to target if you macro it). How is this power able to be so interesting and be in a pool at the same time? Because it has a long cooldown. Even though it's a great attack, it's never competing with the character's primary clicks because it takes a long time to recharge: even with capped Recharge boosts it still takes about thirty seconds to refresh. THAT'S what Power Pool attacks need. They can be good if players have to wait to use them... they can be good if they can't be spammed immediately after they've finished animating. If Kick were a sweep-kick like Dragon's Tail from the Martial Combat set--with a knockdown based solely on hit rate, rather than a 15% lead-in roll--and a longer cooldown that maybe STARTS at 15 seconds instead of 3, it would be a legitimate choice over Boxing even if its damage stayed at or below T1. Not asking for nukes here... just asking for the power pool attacks to be better than enhancing Brawl.

Actually, Flurry isn't even a cone attack. It's a single-target with a long root animation, low accuracy, and a terrible chance to do a disorient that almost never works. Having done a few pool-power character challenges, the intro pool attack powers are in a miserable state. They aren't even comparable to a Tier 1 in damage: they fall just ahead of using Brawl for every attack... they don't even keep up with enemy regen and basically waste your time to use. Their rider effects should try to trigger EVERY hit (like Air Superiority), and they should do at least as much damage as a character's Tier 1 power, if not between Tier 1 and Tier 2 because players are giving up one of those powers to take a pool attack. Air Superiority is "almost" in the right spot for this... Brawl gets close if you take all three (Brawl/Kick/Cross Punch). These attacks should be brought closer to the baseline of prestige attacks like Sands of Mu: bigger damage but longer cooldown so that you actually have to take several of them or sacrifice some enhancement slots to use them in a rotation. The animations could be made better, too... like, Jump Kick ironically can't even be used while you're in the air (in a pool set that encourages you to jump around)! Kick's animation is atrocious and awkward, unlike other kicking attack animations that are more engaging and flexible in a rotation... it's like a playground shin-kick. Flurry should attempt several shorter DoTs so that it can try for procs multiple times in its dragged-out duration, or it should be allowed to hit in a cone like the other attacks with that same animation. (1) Give them more damage, put them at least between Tier 1 and Tier 2, or preferably at the same level as the Prestige attacks Sands of Mu and Ghost Slaying Axe. This goes for all pool-power intro attacks including the ranged ones. (2) In conjunction with #1, INCREASE their cooldown time; there should be a reason to slot recharge or use recharge-reducing abilities with power pool attacks. (3) INCREASE the rate of triggering their rider effects: they're low-magnitude anyway, they should be attempting a rider with every activation. (4) Change their animations and their awkward restrictions: Jump Kick shouldn't have an 'on the ground' restriction, Flurry shouldn't have an animation root, Boxing and Kick shouldn't feel Super Strength slow.

It'd be better if they added copies of the tech teleporters to the magic list and vice-versa, rather than make the beacons interchangeable (so "Magic White Hole" and "Tech White Hole", rather than White Hole reading both beacon types). There are some tricks you can do with tech and arcane beacons within the same door space that cease to be possible if portals can detect beacons of both types.

I think a lot of the design decisions for these sorts of changes are aimed at making the game more challenging for teams, thereby encouraging players to seek out each other for support (a community-building measure, at least in theory). Unfortunately, anything that makes team content more challenging also makes solo content more challenging... at a geometric rate of growth. If we could set advance modes on all content through the notoriety system instead of strictly on a smattering of TaskForces, then players could opt into advanced enemy mechanics like they can opt in to bosses and archvillains. The reworks thus far do seem to target particular character strengths, though: for instance, my Regen Brute handles late-game Council just fine but turns into a pile of goo against Arachnos (that's at x1, mind; I'm a filthy casual player). Perhaps the changes are being exaggerated because they're targeting your playstyle?

I want hapless civilians! "Everybody drop their Lores." *NPCs run around doing nothing* "Okay, who the heck is running Haps?" With a serious suggestion, though, I'd like to see PPD added to the Lore options as a counterpoint to Arachnos being there. Would love some of the high-tech police from the later zones as my personal minions. There are already 21 of them, though, and that creation menu is pretty difficult to navigate already... personally I'm anxious about asking for anything that would lengthen it further. I like Storm Elementals where Lore doesn't fit my character's *Lore*, if that helps with your nature character concepts in the meantime.

Please please please! It's a huge gap in inspiration drop management, and disabling the three sizes does NOT have the same result (it instead disables *all* inspirations, including the team ones). It's a small fix for Masterminds, but would be greatly appreciated. (I do think it would pair well with an addition to their archetype power to increase the rate of those team inspiration drops, but as you said that's not a matter for this thread).