Coyotedancer

Just tossing out another bit of "experience seeing these in the wild"- I went into a scanner at +1/x6, which is the usual "cruising speed" setting that I use for Amtes, my Demons/Time MM. She's a full Incarnate with what I'd call a decent, but not seriously Min/Maxed uber-high-end build. (She's probably pretty close to an average "finished" Homecoming character that belongs to someone who's serious, but not necessarily a MIDS-master.) Over-all, she handled it pretty well. The spawns were absolute HELL on the minions, though... I eventually gave up resummoning them and just went through the rest with her two lts, the Prince and our little Hellfire implings, plus her Lores when they cycled. It wasn't worth the END to try to keep the little guys around and upgraded. They died too fast. That worries me a little. If I was having trouble keeping the minions alive at +1, which is usually a low enough difficulty not to make life impossible for them, the revamped mobs may prove to be an absolutely non-starter for Mastermind pets at +3 or +4.

I don't consider the current bounce rate an exploit... so... in this particular case? Yes. The ideal solution would have been to make Bonfire less of a complete disaster in the first place, but I guess this was easier.

Nope. This was a regular spawn off on their own. There were no others anywhere nearby to get individual critters mixed up with.

If they were interested in "fixing" Bonfire they would make it less of a garbage power to begin with.

Hmm... 112% not a fan of the change in bounce rate with a KD enhancement in the Mastermind version of Bonfire. It's not a small nerf and I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of it. Honestly, I feel a little like we're having our collective wrists slapped for daring to turn an otherwise garbage power into something that was actually sort-of useful. I mean... how DARE we. The nerve! 😝

I suspected they might not be working as intended by doubling up like that (Given that some lower-level effects, like the Quicksand that Earth Thorns can cast or the Dark aura that the big Spectral Demon Lords do, are one-at-a-time effects-), but just hadn't been noticed/mentioned yet because having two of the same mage type in a given spawn group appears to be rare.

We can have Clown Masterminds at long last?

*nods* Yakety Sax would be the way of it, yeah. 😝 And I finally got a Nyctwolf! He was sort of adorable. In a creepy fuzzy-dark-thing sort of way.

My wish-list is modest... To have those extra few Circle costume bits that males got ages ago ported to female characters... A Tuatha Champion or Bres Aether transformation costume... To be able to use wings with the tuxedo tails coat again... An Earth epic pool for Sentinels... A purple Fear enhancement set... Oh... and to get those nifty Nemesis steam-ponies as a Flying Carpet/Void Skiff/Rocket Board style travel power! Just because they're cool looking. That's about it, really. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with whatever we have.

I'll have a look at DA this afternoon... and good to know re: our gaggle of ghosts. Is the layered Tar Patch working as intended as well? I never did find a group with two of any of the other magi varieties, so still no clue if the Earthquakes are also coming in multiples. ETA: The Circle in DA seem to be properly Old School. No sign of any of our new-fangled friends spawning with the groups.

Was running around with White Thorn again a few minutes ago and noticed one potentially odd thing... Should the Masters of Death be allowed to layer their Tar Patches when you have more than one in a particular spawn? I ran into a group with two and they promptly did so. Which was problematic, even on a character as tough as Thorn. ETA: Running through the rest of the map, only that one group had two Master magi of the same variety. The others all had only one of any given type, which I assume is the "usual" expected spawn. Given that, I wasn't able find out if a group having multiple Ruins could also layer Earthquakes. Oh, and I encountered one particularly large spawn that was nothing but a collection of assorted Spectrals. I hadn't seen that before in any of the missions I ran with Kestrel, or in Thorn's previous runs. Every other group on the map had a wide variety of things, so that also seemed strange. RNG weirdness but otherwise working-as-intended?

You won't get a sword, no... But they have both a self-heal and an ally-heal.

They are great fun now, aren't they? I took one of my toughest Stalkers (White Thorn, the Hero-side version of Kai, who's KM/Bio-) into a run with them last night... Solo again, since that's typically how I play. I figure the "Always Teaming" sorts will cover how they handle with a group... And they gave her a pretty tough time of it. No deaths, but I ended up leaning a lot more heavily than I'm used to on her iToys and inspiration drops. For reference, this is the Stalker that I successfully took through the entire Dark Astoria arc series solo at +4/x8 just to see if I could. She's no slouch. That said? I think the Circle groups at +4/x8 as they stand now on Test are actually more of a challenge than those Incarnate level BP and Talons were. Which make me wonder if the changes to the regular high level Circle are also going to show up in Dark Astoria's Incarnate version of the faction... I haven't been out there yet to look.

I've said this before... but I'm still going to say it again. Locking away costume parts in a game that's as much about character customization as City has always been is STUPID. It was a bad idea back when the old devs did it, and the idea hasn't gotten any better with age. Want something to grind for? You have PAPs. There's your little "rare drop" carrot dangling at the end of a stick, that you can turn into a weird aura effect or a MiniMe if that's the kind of thing you need in a game to feel accomplished.

Oh goodie. Typical MMO "gear grind".... No thanks. I had to deal with enough of that in Aion to last me the rest of my life.

Over on Ev we're roleplaying a server that matters....

Over in Perez Park, a group of magi and their followers watch with interest... as one of them, a fellow called The Accountant Dire by his cabalmates (and just "George" by his friends-), ticks off a careful count on a parchment scroll. "So," one curious Guide asks, "How many of those floating red windsocks did they bring along, anyway?" "I count one hundred and sixteen so far," the Accountant Dire answers with a flourish of his Fury-quill pen. "This should be a most useful windfall for the Currently Incorporeal among us! We shall give them a few days to settle in and become secure in their victory. And then?" He grins. "We begin the collection. It was most polite of Archnos to bring us a fresh supply of magically-attuned body donors. And the descendants of our old enemy, no less!" [Villain Rule 1: Never waste an opportunity. XD]

Allow me to recommend a Human-only Peacebringer. That's how I did my Heliomancer character. He pretty much plays like a photonic Sentinel who isn't afraid of melee, and has a good mix of ranged and in-your-face options. They also have a heal and some self-support powers if you really want to lean into the classic Cleric thing.

The Shivan will be good fun... I'd love to have a big, stompy Tuatha option myself.

Mine were still bouncing around all over the place, but..... yeah. /Willpower scrap. She's used to getting more of a "Pffft. Whatever, man-" reaction from the goons than a proper "We hate you! MUST STAY AND SMASH!" 'Shaggy nutballs gonna nutball.

Alright, I'm going to start off by qualifying this a little... While I do prefer red side, generally, I don't play Big Bad Villains. My CoV characters are, to a one, Rogues. They were rogues-in-concept years before rogues-as-an-alignment were introduced. I actively avoid the mission arcs and contacts that would make them act like complete bloody monsters. Selfish? That's fine. Untrustworthy? Well... yeah. The Isles are just that kind'a place. Up to no good? Define "good"... Interested in furthering THEIR OWN GOALS over Recluse's? Absolutely! Being a murderer or a world-destroying terror? Err. No. Not so much. The world is, after all, where they keep all their stuff. Anyway. I find myself liking the content that was added late in the game's commercial run. We get to plot, and scheme and make our own plans... and we get to KEEP the things we gain by doing so. At least on proverbial paper. (My main back-in-the-day was all about her new ship, for instance. And I was giddy that the old devs actually let our red-siders keep it at the end of that signature arc. I fully expected us to lose it, like CoV characters tend to lose any other potential gains they might make along the way, in way too many arcs. If the game hadn't ended, I hope it would have been mentioned again in later content, or that we would get to use it again.) So... I want to see more of that kind of content. I think it would go a long way towards getting rid of the impression that a lot of players seem to have of the red side being "Oh, It's just City of Minions. Red-side characters are all chumps working for The Man".

IIRC what's been said about the pieces in the past... The top and bottom parts don't quite meet in the middle, so to speak. You can't see that mismatch when it's worn with the very wide sybil belt, but it's obvious with thinner ones or no belt at all. That's why I wondered if the wider belts we have like Elemental Order (I think?) or the Imperial one might work.

Oh boy. After putting a Kestrel-shaped hole through the new high-level Circle, I decided to take my DB/WP Scrap and her Adept partner Council-bashing, just to see what a solo melee run at them would look like. I went +1 (So, even level for an Incarnate character-) and x8 (Just to have a better chance of spawning some of the new goonies-). Kes herself handled them pretty well. Poor Cardinal got pancaked INSTANTLY. *With* a fresh T4 Barrier and T4 Support Hybrid running. I was fully expecting the poor guy to get beaten up with spawns that size and AoEs flying all over the place, but not like that. Not that quickly. I feel sorry for any not-very-well-built/equipped squishies who wander in there. O_O

Sybil costume bits work just fine with a KM Stalker's animations and the Spectrum under-bits. I do find myself wishing we could use some of the other wide belts with it, though. That Roman one is a little.... loud, let's say.

Over-all... fun stuff. But I also think that the Think Tanks skull is a fair bit smaller than it ought to be. That head-to-bod ratio makes him look a little more Jojo's Bizarre Adventure than he ought to. 😅 And... yeah. Aside from that I'm with others up-thread who aren't pleased at all to see locked costume parts make a return. In a game as much about customization as City is, that was always a bad idea. It was silly when Paragon did it twenty years ago, and it's still silly now. I get that a certain segment of the player population won't be happy until they have a bucket full of things they have to grind for.... But costume parts should not be among those things. Stick to vanity pets, special effects and transformations if you feel like you absolutely MUST add more unlockables and grinder status items to the game.