tidge

The nuCouncil is effectively demonstrating that they can now leverage certain "player tricks", at an appropriate mission level... whereas before, pretty much the only "player annoying" tricks were Warwolves running away, and Ascendants being untouchable. The Council was grossly under-powered considering the level range of content they appear in. I continue to suspect that it is only because the Council had been seen as punching bags that they are specifically being singled out. The CoT has been briefly mentioned, but somehow their updates, like Crey before them, are not drawing attention.

Do either of the follow matter? The powers and abilities demonstrated by the NuCouncil appear in the lore well before level 50. With the exception of the random FREEM!, those nuPowers are not radically different from powers exhibited by other factions bosses.

I am not saying true feedback doesn't appear, I'm saying that I witness a very large chaff-to-wheat imbalance. One potential sign that a suggestion/feedback is started in good faith, with specific merits that can be evaluated is IMO that it doesn't degenerate into arguments about logical fallacies, or about how the forum moderators did somebody wrong. See also... 1) I don't know why "questioning other people" even comes up in the suggestions game forum, unless this is a specific comment along the lines of "I have a question only a dev can answer". 2) I think you underestimate how infrequently /jranger is used, especially compared with the first several years of Homecoming. Frankly, often when /jranger is used, someone else almost immediately comes along and explains why the suggestion probably merited a /jranger. See "Bring back Prestige"

More related to the question posed: I really wish we could get a revisit of several of the Armor T9 powers. I find it embarrassing that often a handful of Inspirations can do what a set's capstone power can do, with less investment and fewer negative consequences.

Tell me more about this power "Unstoppable"... it sounds like it may the fix for all of Invulnerability's problems! /s

I observe many more instances of what @Ruin Mage describes (i.e. "roll it back, I hate it" *1) in suggestions than anything else except threads started by players (who often appear to be new-ish, at least to HC) making suggestions that appear to be a stray thought that crossed their mind about something that simply happened to peeve them. I don't consider it brigading when multiple people point out the triviality of suggestions or the (often) many ways too avoid being peeved. I also don't think it is brigading to defend HC dev decisions that have empirically been good for the game... e.g. most assets are fungible, with a limited number of Influence sinks that mostly don't affect in-game performance. Actual feedback on Beta is a mixed bag... I deeply appreciate the beta testers because for a while I wasn't able to Beta due to my own laziness about not changing launchers. I have occasionally chimed in on a Beta thread, but for the most part I'll just read them because I can almost never offer constructive feedback without having tried the Beta content. Full Disclosure: I want to say the last time I had a shared opinion on Beta content without playing it was the GM revamps... The GMs did become slightly harder, but not by the means I would have chosen. Frankly, if the devs had implemented my suggestion (or at even tested it) there probably would have been a louder player revolt than whatever is bothering people about the recent Council and CoT updates. (*1) Something new to HC players should keep in mind: Homecoming has had several "The sky is falling"/"Things have changed" moments in the years before a 2024 player joined. Based on some of the comments made by new players, I can easily imagine them making similar posts about how the game is ruined because they can't get to Echo Dark Astoria from a SG Base, or how they can't instantly pop into a SG base, or how the Crey Confuses are ruining their play experience, how their Fire Farms are ruined, how the economy is ruined because of Vanguard/Empyrian merit conversions, how they lost a billion inf because of level 53 Hami-O's, whatever.

The KB resistance must be checked first; I noticed a SR character with no extra KB protection aside from Practiced Brawler was not affected by FREEM! at all.

Invulnerability on HC doesn't have the Psi hole it did on Live. Energy Aura has more of an issue with Psi, IIRC.

I've written a lot of RNG jibber-jabber, the dominant effect is that the RNG is certainly pseudo-random, in that it it will (try to) flatly populate numbers over the entire range (as observed), so not rolling a "natural 20" on one roll makes it more likely that the next roll will be a "natural 20". This is not the way real randomness works! perhaps the biggest mystery for me is: It's not clear to me if RNG "throws away" a "roll" when applying streakbreaker, or not. I believe there is a discarded roll, with high confidence but low power...there are so many RNG rolls in the game but AFAIK only Streakbreaker only applies to the ToHit rolls of attacks. The dimension that confuses me the most about implementing streakbreaker: If the RNG is a flat-fill of number space, there should be no reason to implement streakbreaker. Writing another way: If streakbreaker was implemented only because of (player) perception bias, then any remaining (player) complaints about a streakbreaker implemented on top of RNG can't be dismissed casually by saying "well, that is just perception bias".

Players may have feels about preferring the hero side over the villain side, but I disagree that it is the writing of the arcs red side. The best blue-side writing is IMO the original, slow reveals of the relationships of the different factions... but as much as I like this, it is really confusing (Lorewise, at least to me) why some contacts are forcing "investigations" on PCs about enemy types when there really can't be any mystery about what is going on, given how certain enemy groups appear (especially if Tips are used). There really is no agency blue side, except 2XP I suppose. "Who will die?" is pretty bad for player agency blue side, it offers IMO slightly more red side. I will give a thumbs-up to the revamped Faultline arcs blue side. The red-side arcs are a mix of contacts trying to take advantage of the PCs, as well as more mercenary type of missions, until the PCs ultimately best whatever the contacts have. Playing red-side makes it possible to defeat almost all the named blue-side heroes/trainers, as well as all the villain patrons and lackeys, simply by doing arcs. You can even get your revenge on multiple different contacts that may have treated you "wrong". You want to face a CoV Patron blue side? You are generally limited to hoping they decide to rob a bank, or go to Recluse's Victory.

This might work for some NPCs, but I feel like there would be more unintended consequences for others. For example, the Mayhem Hostages might easier "freeze" upon seeing a critter, and Fusionette doesn't need to have more of a reason for her behavior.

^What they wrote. This is almost certainly your issue. There is an occasional display bug for invention badge progress that won't show the bar increase, or what the actual count/progress is at for inventions, but this is a flaky UI issue that isn't particularly common. I usually encounter that problem in the SG base, but that is where I tend to be doing the mass-creation of inventions... I haven't been able to duplicate (or resolve) that issue by opening/closing the sorts of UI things that cause other issues in SG bases (storage racks, costume, vault, recipes, etc.)

Maybe it wasn't 5%?

That sounds like all kinds of nightmare. I feel like I can easily adapt whenever a PUGorganizer advertises speed/non-speed, but the one common advertisement that always confuses me is "Kill Most". I've been on many "KM TF" that we didn't even fight half the critters on any given map. I'd like to point to the spot on the TF doll where the leader threatened to kick me for drawing more aggro that we were otherwise ignoring.

I like Global Accuracy as well. The fifth LotG bonus I was referring to was the 5th piece set bonus offering S/L and Mezz Resistance.

Never admit to such a thing in forum-PVP, or people may start posting pictures of their builds with the franken-slot pieces all in different locations. Slightly more seriously: at some point, on build with Hasten, I started boosting the two level 50 Recharges in Hasten to 50+5 (as opposed to 2x50+4) just because I didn't like having "extra" Enhancement boosters floating around.

I like the immersion of the escorts that stop following you if they get too close to an enemy, or if you get too far away or go stealthy... yet there are clearly some classes of NPCs that are really good about finding/staying with players. There are enough that I wonder why more can't be like those. I think the simplest update would be to grant the hostages/escorts an increase to their base movement. I don't mean "sprint"... it takes very little for a player to have a base movement increase that can completely outpace an NPC even with all travel toggles off. I'd explore turning up the distance by which hostages can see players, but this could have unintended consequences.

I realize it is almost pointless to make suggestions to someone's build once they've committed to boosting LotG pieces to +5 and commenting how they love it for "hard mode", but here goes: I'd revisit both Invincibilty and Build Up... and possibly Tough Hide. Personally, I suspect that the 5th LotG set bonuses are doing less that expected. Having significantly MOAR S/L isn't nearly as important as it once was. With that written (to consider sacrificing a 5th LotG piece), I'd put the Gaussian's %Build Up piece in Invincible, and use at least one Hami-O Cytoskeleton in it to also boost ToHit. Build Up is fine, and I like the "on demand" 90% chance of %Build Up with energy Melee, but if that is the reason for having it, I feel like Build Up should have a second slot with an IO Recharge in it. I find that even a near-perma-Hasten doesn't quite get Build Up where I want it when I have it slotted with the Gaussian's %proc. I ended up moving it to Invincibility because it was giving me more output at the expense of simply looking awesome against MoG Paragon Protectors. I think either way is fine, it just looks like there is sort of a half-commitment to the %proc. Tough Hide is a decent enough power to hold the Kismet +ToHit, should the slots need adjustment.

IMO, no Patron shield is redundant or useless. It's a no-pre-requisite required (other than Patron unlock) power that allows slotting of Defense (or Resistance) sets (*1) for bonuses or globals/uniques. The higher the Defenses (also Resistances, but that is somewhat secondary) on a Mastermind, the better /Dark is always going to be a decent secondary choice for MMs: It gets several powers very early that make things surprisingly easy: the -Res slow in Tar Patch and a PBAoE heal in Twilight Grasp. By the time the MM has added Shadow Fall, a /Dark MM can start to feel like it can handle anything; it is time to start counting down the levels until Dark Servant. The only personal concern *I* have about /Dark (on MMs) is my belief that, because of the PBAoE heals and defense buffs, it can lull a player into a sense of security about certain tactics that don't work in all circumstances. This is true about most MMs, but since Dark gets those PBAoE tricks so early, especially the heal... it often appears to me that /Dark MMs aren't always focused on debuffing or controlling enemies. Setting aside my minor personal issue, I think /Dark is one of the top choices of secondaries. IMO, the most important power for a level 50+ /Dark Mastermind is Tar Patch, and you probably can get by with only 2x50(+5) IO Recharge pieces in it. (*1) I do try to add the fighting pool to MMs, but as a practical matter I never toggle on Tough and almost never toggle on Weave... unless I don't bring out the henchmen.

Re: Paladin... be thankful that HC shifted away from the "Shining Stars" variation. It ended up changing Knight Errant, but the current event is much better than what it was. Not everyone needs or wants the Knight Errant badge, some would prefer the merits, etc. The spawns themselves offer more XP (and certainly more salvage/recipe drops) than the Paladin.

I can see that, but there aren't many places in a SR build to add resistance pieces. I'd prioritize the +MaxHP piece, so getting some Endurance help from 2x Unbreakable Guard is one of my default choices.

I'd rank the Sentinel's Inherent (as currently implemented) to be one of the better Inherent powers... none of which are particularly well-explained in-game IMO. As far as being able to see it having an effect on defeat times... at early levels, it will be hard to notice much of a difference, with the difference being "how many attacks do I have to make to defeat that single target?". On harder targets, and in group play, it becomes much more of a force-multiplier.

A couple of nits to pick: If the Kismet piece is going to be used, I suggest putting it in the first Auto power taken, so probably Agile. I don't know why it would be put in a toggle, except possibly force of habit. The +ToHit only works if the power is toggled on (or in an auto). I generally like the 4xUnbreakable Guard bonuses, but for SR I think you could probably stop after 2 pieces. With the other slotting I suspect Melee is well above the non-incarnate softcap, and probably pushing the incarnate softcap. It won't be as if DDR is that big of a concern.

I came here to write this. The 7+ foot tall Council mooks always surprise me. I'd expect the shorter guys to be put on cave duty.