Omega-202

Labeling someone else's character concept as good or bad is inherently subjective and I am sure that you could share every one of yours and someone would find them objectionable for one reason or another. Last week, I played on a team with a blatant Darth Revan knockoff with a name and bio to match, a mostly naked TW Brute with a name that would have been generic'd on Live and someone roleplaying a pixie who wouldn't drop character in chat (on the nominal PvP server). None of that bothered me and I would never begrudge any of those individuals having fun their way. Live and let live. The fact that you take issue with a Vanguard member character from level 1 is weird, intrusive and makes it look like you're trying to impose your views on people who didn't ask for or care about them.

Just to play devil's advocate, people who want goals and gating can self gate and leave everyone else to play how they want. It might take a bit more creativity and self discipline but wanting a game to give you direction and a sense of accomplishment, that seems pretty sad. Works both ways.

No idea. The Mace sets, both Epic and Bane desperately need some review. Their animations are janky and way too long, the customization is weird or missing and numerically, the powers are generally undertuned compared to their nearest analogues. Personally, I avoid the Arachnos Mace if possible. Mu and Soul are just so much better from a pure efficacy perspective.

Yes, and a pass was made on HC to fix some of the outliers, like Zapp accidentally using the ranged modifier for years on Live. Brute ranged modifier was buffed to be the same as their melee modifier, so it doesn't matter, but it should be the same, and should all be using the melee modifier. Tanks are the only ones that actually use their ranged modifer on HC. When they got their melee modifier bumped up from 0.80 to 0.95, their ranged modifier was bumped to 0.80 and their epic ranged attacks use the 0.80. See the patch notes below

I am being selfish. Selfish is not necessarily an insult. I don't know where you got this idea of "courtesy" from, but not every conversation needs to be conducted like everyone's ego is as fragile as a sickly chicken egg. Basic courtesy is about respect. I don't think you're a bad person, I think your ideas are bad and selfish. Which they are. But on the flip side, I am also not advocating for a change to anything or demanding anything of anyone else. You and others in this thread are. And as has been stated, a more open, gateless system allows for people to self gate if they choose, whereas a gated system restricts the choices of people. I am not demanding you play my way, but you are demanding that I play your way. That is the difference.

@Lockpick You're practically stomping your feet and saying everyone needs to play by your logic with that analogy. I'm not attacking you, I'm just saying what I'm seeing here. As you said, what I do doesn't affect you, so why do you care? This isn't the army, this is a videogame where we dress up digital action figures to punch bad guys. God forbid we would like to use our imaginations a little. If you see that as an attack on you personally, then whatever.

We have the middle ground as it is. As you see, if I had my druthers, I'd push it further the other way. But, I am not one to stomp my feet and demand that everyone play by my rules, like some people.

I have made Vanguard characters that start as part of the Vanguard from level 1, who leveled up using as many Lost and Rikti arcs as possible. Without the level 1 free costume pieces, that character wouldn't have existed. What benefit is there for YOU to have made MY character concept unworkable? Seems selfish.

I think a P2W vendor alternative should be available for the accolades, if you've unlocked them on one character already. I think that it's too grindy as is, and its a disincentive for me when I want to make a new alt. Let me pay 20 mil/accolade to the P2W and get them right away, if I so choose. With the way the game is set up, you don't need a team for any of the TFs. I've solo'd or duo'd the whole TF Commader set anyway, so I don't see any reason we should be driving people to form teams to do it. RE: the Synapse, I would have just run it with whoever was willing to join, including just soloing it at min difficulty. It probably would have taken about the same amount of time, and the only benefit to me was that I was helping other less experienced players avoid the grind.

I strongly disagree with this viewpoint. I have people I play with pretty regularly, and people that are well enough known, but I honestly couldn't care if any individual was or wasn't around. I don't know them personally and never will, and it has no impact on retaining my attention in game. I also have never respected anyone based on gaming accomplishments. I have more respect for a bad player who seems nice than an accomplished player of neutral to bad disposition. We had a 5+ page thread a few weeks back about how so many people currently playing suffer from so much social anxiety that they don't lead teams and often won't join them. I don't see the social aspect as a make or break for the current playerbase. Also re: TFs, nobody is doing TF Commander for the epalauts. If you want to see if someone did it, you look for the accolade on their power bar or info. Also, in terms of incentives, I slapped together a Synapse last week in less than 20 mins, on a random week night on Indomitable. If I can do that, then there's no shortage of reasons to run TFs. And regarding the SS TFs, do them on double merit weeks. I have never had an issue getting a team on a double merit weekend.

Not everything is up for compromise. Here's an analogy: Right now, we have a nice park with a full baseball field on it. You come along and say "Remeber when there was a duck pond in the park? I want to put a duck pond back in the park", but the only place to put said duck pond is on home plate. Everyone says "no you'll ruin our baseball field" and you ask for a compromise where we put a little bit of a duck pond on first base instead... There is no compromising this. And yes it is nice to have things in a good place right now.

And yet, you're asking to change things in a way that would make the game feel like a chore for other people. I'm not sure @DSorrow is failing to understand you, I think you are failing to understand the opposing perspective.

That's completely irrelevant to Stalker changes. Stalkers didn't exist in Issue 4. That's not a citation, that's disinformation. Don't be like that.

Or, you were never in the majority and just thought you were. Which is exactly the case. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

That's fine and good. People can play what they want. But my understanding of the topic of this thread is that OP has done some self reflection and realized that they may be overlooking something (see the final paragraph of the first lost). Eg. their build and playstyle may have issues and that they may have some misunderstandings about how the game works. And the truth seems to be "yes" to both of those concerns.

For the Sonic and Thermal shields, I just refresh them between spawns. That works well for the pets. It's 2 clicks every few spawns basically. You get into a rythm. I also will say "let me know if your shields drop and you want a refresh" to the team, so it makes it so they know they can ask. It also reminds them that I can't keep you covered if the team runs off all over. Same for Speed Boost etc. There are also plenty of players who don't care about the buffs so sometimes they'll say so, so that I'm not chasing them down. Same thing when I'm playing bulky characters that don't care about the shields, I let them know so they don't stress out.

Alternatively, fixing up their build and changing their in-game "messaging" can go a long way. Nobody is going to give a "dedicated healer" the time of day, and there's not a lot you can do to change that. But with some tweaks, you can optimize the build and just advertise as an Ill/Emp Controller.

The concept of a "dedicated healer" comes with preconceived notions that your summary seems to fulfill. In today's metagame, Medicine as a whole pool is incredibly undertuned, added on to a very undertuned set in Empathy. Without seeing your build in the OP, I (and @Panache and others, probably) immediately knew your build was lacking basic tools, which is confirmed by your summary. If you only have 4 Ill powers, that means you don't have at least one of Group Invis or Spectral Terror, or likely both. Those powers would do more to prevent damage from being taken, making it so you don't need to heal as much. As for Res powers, why do you need 2? Resurrect with solid slotting and recharge bonuses should be on a sub-one-minute cooldown. Everybody gets a freebie revive P2W for cheap. You can get 30 charges of a res temp power from day jobs. If you find yourself needing all of those, you're doing a bad job of actually keeping people alive, and might have been better off taking Dark Miasma for Howling Twilight. A full reroll shouldn't be needed, but you really need to gut your build and start from scratch. You can still play a healer concept, but you need to mold that to how the game functions. EDIT: I just remembered a funny quote a friend said in game: "Advertising yourself as a dedicated healer in COH is like someone applying to a physics PhD program with 'proud flat Earth believer' on their resume. They might be a great guy, but I'm not dealing with that situation."

Oof. That might be a large part of the problem.

Black Scorpion is usually considered the quickest and easiest.

My biggest QoL suggestion would be to make it so that any re-earnable temp power has the maximum duration or maximum charges upped by double or more, and to let multiple purchases or rewards stack so that it's less of a chore to refresh them. It's inconvenient to have to go all the way back to RWZ to reload on Psi Shield and HVAS summons instead of being able to just stock up on 5 at a time. Or the Wedding Ring and Wolf Whistle. If I want to run the arc three times to get three instances, let them stack up. Balance is shot anyway at this point, so does it matter if I can summon a small army of reusable temp pets while wearing 4 layers of reearnable temp armor? At this point, I can do just that already, but it makes me have to tour the whole city to restock instead of letting me fill my pockets and be good for a while.

I think this is also something OP isn't appreciating when it comes to the fully fleshed out build. At 50, when built for perma-Disruptors/Perma-Hasten, Spiderlings recharge absurdly fast for a "long cooldown" pet power. They should be coming back at ~160 s, which is basically 3 times per average 10 min radio mission. So even if you lose one, they'll be back 2 minutes after they died.

You are misinterpretting how Crabberminds work. I also suspect that your build probably does not contain a sufficient amount of investment to keep your pets alive. You can play a Crab that has pets, or you can build one that gives your pets better defensive numbers than most Blasters. There's a world of difference between those two things. Crabs are not a struggle to build or play. Whoever told you that has no idea what they're doing. An AT that has 90% of a Blaster's damage, Brute level survivability, pets, an AoE attack that gives -20% res on a quick cooldown and auras that grant 21% defense to the whole team is basically the ideal endgame character. I encourage you to read through other posts on the VEAT board and to check out builds.

Poorly? They have a fraction of a fraction of the playerbase. "This person disagrees with me, therefore they are troll." - Hero of Light

A) Your suggestions would not make the game better, just more of a slog. B) You're seeking validation by looking for more accomplishments and goals to be added. Please stop pretending that we all weren't around for the old thread in the Suggestions forum. We know your views from there. You made it clear that you want shiny things to display that say "I did X, and you didn't" because you said as much in the past.