Ananke

Myself a number of people I know never played COH before 2019. We're relatively oldheads now I guess, since we started before the licensing agreement, but we're still not former live players.

Have you done any 4* content? Seems like that's content that would be perfect for you.

that would be why I said "most content is super easy" and implied that comp is irrelevant

I honestly feel that COH does have a sense of trinity, it's just that instead of healers it's support debuffers and buffers. On the other hand, most content is so easy that you don't need to worry about it but if you're lining up to do 4* TFs, the roles are especially obvious. Sure, you could go without but why would you? ice/cold corrs, ill/rads, fire/kins, /FF, nature defenders, among others, are all really good.

Getting insight to proc depends on the situation. In PVP for instance, it ONLY procs if you actually land the hit, so I've gone up to 3 minutes before with no insight procs. It's absolutely wild, considering no other set seems to work this way at all. Others have it guaranteed, baked into their rotation on demand. This is also true, and I like it a lot! I just figured that shuffling with that stuff would make them more reluctant to looking at PM, since at that point it becomes more of a full revamp request than a couple of tweaks, while a bunch of the elemental sets are arguably more in need of tuning. Having a whole filler ability to increase the odds of proccing something other sets get as a matter of course is still very weird, and doesn't work for PVP at all. The hit has to actually land, so TK blow, sweep (and psi blade, tho we only use that for filler, really) need to hit through defense t9s to even possibly proc insight. Adding an ability into a build which doesn't even guarantee it would proc wouldn't help.

Could be quite decent depending on the accuracy values. Would theoretically also hit through t9. Removing the lockout alone doesn't help an awful lot if it doesn't proc in the first place.

The issue: Psionic Melee, unlike other sets, lacks a combo system or way of guaranteeing Insight, meaning that the damage is a random slot machine. This, compounded with the increase in psi resist, means that it's lagging behind other sets. Proposed solutions: Make it proc guaranteed off of TK blow, psi blade sweep, consumed by Greater Psi Blade, Psi Blade (with a special -res to psi resist when insight is consumed) and mass levitate as an AOE option, possibly with an additional effect. Make it not require the Insight proccer to actually land. This might be more of a PVP change than a PVE one, but very necessary due to how defense sets play out which is 6mins of stalling with dodging/eluding/etc. This would give PM the ability to build a defense killer build. It's worth noting that this is how Energy Melee works already: Total Focus gives you Energy Focus whether you land it or not. Rework Insight Lockout. Replace boggle with something like rend armor that lowers psi resist. This might still put it behind EM because of the double energy focus from crits, and behind sets like TW but I'm a little stumped on making a themed additional effect. Most mobs (and players) have high debuff resist, so the -rech doesn't do much. Currently, PM plays similarly to EM but is bafflingly worse.

CoH is an alt heavy game and veteran players don't want to have to re level their old live characters when they already suffered the tedium of doing so once before. There's a reason why level cap (or near levelcap) boosts are so popular in themepark MMOs, even the ones that aren't alt friendly at all. If people had as much time to dedicate to the grind as they used to, they'd be playing some real oldschool shit on either the Vanilla COH servers or some brutal MMO that hasn't gotten the memo about QOL changes.

There seems to be way more to it than that, which I can say because I've dished out 2-3bil to friends and have never had an issue. Thing is that we have actual, legitimate accounts: we have conversations, people on our friends list, SGs, etc. If an account NEVER interacts with others in any real way and is doing 10 hour farming sessions then giving piles of money to someone they've never interacted with, it's fairly easy to red flag.

"I wonder how much gravity, propel trash someone's auras could whirl up." Today thoughts, while sitting in Ouro watching leaves fly around someone in a cute circle.

There's about 30 seconds between each lightning bolt attack. You've got a good while to prepare. It's no one's fault but yours: you're the one controlling the character, the game didn't decide to queue up a long animation on its own. If you don't take responsibility for it then you'll never figure out where to adapt to improve.

I live in South America and play every game with 200-300ms ping. Don't talk to me about lag. Consider instead that you have bad situational awareness and you're nowhere as good as you think you are.

Shoulda played Bane Spider and Energy Melee as your first melees and then you'd be thrilled to find out that literally anything else is playable. Full disclosure that's what I did and I'm respeccing to huntsman and changed my grav nrg dom to a gravkin. FBM.

If you see "The Air Crackles Around Tyrant!" and stand there then the issue is you, not the powerset.

Don't play a like a moron and this will never happen. Any good player knows what mechanics are coming up soon and doesn't tunnel vision, so being animation locked is a non issue. This isn't a CoX specific statement either, you wouldn't want to do it in any other game or MMO either. This game handholds you so much regarding what mechanics are coming up that if you start casting some dumb shit like total focus then you legit 100% absolutely deserved it. Read the popups and stop staring at your bars.

At the same time, I feel like this is a non issue. We don't have a problem finding non TW players for groups because 10% ahead is actually not so much that people feel they HAVE to play something. Even The Really Hard Way runs don't discriminate to prioritize TW.

I'unno. My TW/Dark Scrapper is definitely up there I think, but it's also unplayable sub-45 on account of needing to be fed either ageless or speed boost permanently. Nevermind the annoyance of long cast times on trash mobs which die super fast, but that's just a general thing.

Power fantasy is why most people play this game instead of something else, to be honest. One of the recurring comments that people have about City of Heroes is that they FEEL powerful. Hard to blame them for wanting it to stay that way. My offender can also solo GMs but it occurs to me that this game never seems to have been rebalanced for sets or for the Incarnate system. We're essentially always up against dead content unless we turn on the optional 'no enhancements' and such when a TF is started.

Lol, I never use either of those even though I have them specced. They're there purely to hold my sets at this point.

Glad you're not a dev. The Wildstar devs were like this and their game imploded, partially as a result of their behavior regarding balance and revamping their content once it was cleared because they wanted to pat themselves on the back. I swear they were just trying to out bastard eachother as some kind of recurring office joke in which the playerbase suffered.

Hadn't seen that through the slog of nonsense in this thread, thanks for pointing it out! Removing the DoTs would work. Frankly, I do think a lot of other powersets just need help (please tweak Traps in accordance with the Devices changes, by God).

Stalkers are known by their crit, if anything. Nothing to do with single target or AOE base. You can't identify everything by AT because powerset is actually what dictates playstyle and utility.

If you're gonna balance something because of its pylon times you'd best remember that most of the content in the game is not level cap and you'd be making something unplayable. Tweak and give quality of life treatment to the other sets instead of trying to pinata something with a blindfold on.

Unfortunately, simming the way people do it on WoW isn't/wasn't available for City of Heroes so stoptimers are the best we've got to compare with, other than what Mids says (and I don't think it factors in PPM and proc chance). I don't think that you're going to get anything more reliable than that because no one's made such a tool. Were we capable of simming it, you'd get exact numbers and it'd probably spit out optimal enhancements too. But then, it'd be optimal IOing purely for damage because sims can be a bit retarded regarding defense/damage mitigation/healing.

Then I feel like minmaxing becomes a bit irrelevant there. If a standard, not great player is playing something supposed-to-be best in slot but they're mediocre then they won't be churning the same DPS because they aren't rotating their abilities like a really good player would be.