Shin Magmus

But that's a boring topic Lauci, can it be about *my* victim complex instead? I boot up the game... the first thing I do whenever someone posts something in LFG chat, that I want to join, is click their name and hit the Add/Edit Note button. That doesn't just tell me their global, but also shows me a rating and anything I wrote about them before. Most players reveal a blank screen: I join. My friends reveal little blurbs about them and the character I met them on, so I can remember who's who: I join. And then there's the trolls, with their 1-star and colorful phraseology in their note: I shrimply do not join. That's the end of it, simple non-interaction. This is how I know -not- to join another team led by people I've had bad experiences with. Adding the ability to toggle on and opt-in to seeing global names just makes it easier to recognize players at a glance: whether they be friends or people you want to avoid. However, those in this thread who are so against this option... you need to understand that we already have 3 pages of comments reiterating that the function to check global names already exists in the game... it's just extra clicks. This entire suggestion is just to remove tedium and clicking, and if you want to remain hidden in the game, just use all the functions on the /hide menu and don't type in Global chat channels.

I TOO WISH FOR A STANCE THAT DISABLES BREATHING! WE'RE THE ROBOTS!

Proton Sweep is the most optimal single target attack in the set actually, then Devastating Blow (but slow like you said), then Smash/Strike. Proton Sweep's DPA is solid but the real draw is slotting 2x dmg procs and 2x -res procs into it: both Achilles and FotG. This means you use Proton Sweep first to soften up targets for your follow ups. After that, it's not unrealistic for Epic Pool attacks to be your best options. If OP wants to make a Dragon, then the only ST attacks he should really need are: Proton Sweep, Radioactive Smash, Fire Blast, Char (5 dmg procs), and one extra Rad Melee attack as filler... from the 3 available choices Siphon has the most utility but Devastating Blow has the best DPA.

Sorry friend: Spines is not allowed to ever receive any buffs, adjustments, or changes of any kind: on CoH Homecoming. Even though Blaster Plant Manipulation and Dominator Thorny Assault have had "Spines-adjacent" powers like their Impale and Thorn Burst respectively buffed: with animation time reductions to improve DPA, that will never extend into comparative buffs for Spines. All suggestions to improve Spines in any way, including this one, will be ignored. This is because the HC Devs hate AE farming more than they care about balance in the other 99% of the game. Radiation Melee and Spines will not receive needed buffs until the playerbase quits farming with them, because the buffs in the rest of the game might translate to a minor (and we're talking ~1%) increase to AE farming efficiency... and that's unacceptable (to them).

I rag on Sentinels a lot, but the Vulnerability on 2 things came up recently for me. I was leading a TinPex and the team had strong builds (far above average, some people had brought their 4* characters) so when we got to Neuron+Bobcat the play was to put Vulnerability on both of them at once. That fight went very fast because there were other entities to capitalize on my debuff, and we clocked in at exactly 10:00 finishing up Tin Mage. Toggle Vulnerability would have been worse here. But... context is always important: I'm commenting to agree about how Vulnerability works but NOT to imply that Sentinels are good. I was the only Sent on the team and brought the team down. I could have (and have) had a faster time by just playing my Poison/Fire Defender instead. With the 2 AVs together: I could stack the direct target and splash target effects of Envenom and Weaken, while debuffing both with Venomous Gas, and simply performed the role of AV debuffer better. We killed *too quickly* so my Sent did not recharge sufficient Opportunity to use Vulnerability on both War Walkers; whereas my Poison/Fire Defender can put their full toolkit of debuffs on every enemy thanks to low cooldowns.

"He doesn't know that I'm stalking him! I'm getting away with it!"

I don't think this particular subforum had ever cared much about necroposts so I wouldn't worry. People revitalize topics here fairly often, or when they start a new topic it inevitably ends up including a link to the old one(s). Glimpse of Hope is a good name too: there's so many options for a new buff or debuff in this set. So much untapped potential for ideas, that all fit, as soon as the RAs get merged. That's echoing my one biggest request for the set.

This was mentioned in a different thread, bringing up Instanced Hami Raids as well as Instanced MSRs: but the simple barrier to entry of having to communicate to the Leader and the threat of getting "booted" out of the instance: simply causes such noxious players to not join in the first place. Those tiny extra inplicit steps in Instanced content weed out the trolls who show up in open zone content. It's like magic, but if you understand sociology it's really just human nature. The rest of your points were good too; I love Instanced MSRs. I play in an awkward time zone but I try to join the nightly Instanced right before bed every weekday.

I homestly don't even know why someone on the dev team thought that a common enemy group being unique to have RANDOM unresistable KB would be fun for anyone. Here's a list of unresistable KB off the top of my head: special AV attacks on a few Trials/TFs (Admiral Sutter etc.), the defeat explosion of The Crimson Prototype, and ???Every Single NuCouncil Boss??? That was a genuinely baffling idea.

Granite Armor debuffing you in any way makes it a hard pass for me already in this game. But the crippling stat debuffs (including to Recharge time, YUCK) are nowhere near as debilitating as the Costume debuff. The fact that all Granite Armor users look exactly the same instantly (and permanently) turned me off ever messing with the set. Now that the HC Devs have revamped Stone Armor to be good outside of Granite: I pretend the power doesn't even exist. So hey, +1 for the suggestion and I'd love to see any customization at all for Granite... then I might even actually tolerate playing it.

K. Well just so you know, the frequency of changes based on player feedback during open Beta periods and leading up to patch releases, is about 100x greater than the frequency of changes based on player feedback at any other time. I'm sorry that you personally were very late to the party, but I'm just letting you know to temper your expectations and expect literally nothing to be done to the Council in the future. I'd be shocked if they rolled back or nerfed any of the stuff they did to Council or CoT after sitting on the changes for this long.

Did you watch my video proving how incredibly weak and borderline-useless that Knockdown aura truly is? Anyone using any knock of any kind will suppress the effect of Seismic Shockwaves on that enemy for 10!!!!!!!! seconds. You can perpetually Knockdown enemies with Upthrust at a frequency that makes Seismic Shockwaves literally do nothing. It's in the original post.

This is yet another "weakness" of Seismic Blast. This entire thread; my entire point, is predicated on the fundamental common sense argument that powers with extra weaknesses deserve equivalent extra strengths to be worth consideration in this game. Seismic Blast as a whole, and Meteor in particular, underperform for no reason while having a bad damage type and unique weaknesses relative to every other Blast Powerset in the game. It's not logical, and it's not fun.

Thank you. The amount of comments on this thread that are *just* OP making incorrect assumptions about beta testers, and people correcting them, are too high. Listen... OP... Eiko, if you really have such a huge issue with Council and CoT now: this is like 4 months too late to bring it up. Everyone had the same opportunity to spend a little bit of their time testing things on Beta and providing feedback about it. Sometimes, the feedback does result in positive changes that make it into the game before stuff goes live. Other times, you get Beanbagged. That's not important though, what's important is the effort itself. I respect the concept of putting forth effort. If the game changed in a way that bothers you this much: put forth more effort next time to get involved in beta testing and at least try to voice your concerns when changes are still likely. For all the futility of the struggle, I did see a couple positive changes made to Arse Control between Open Beta Ver1 and what we have now on live: so it's not hopeless.

Look, I don't know about you, but I'd kill for a "cone of shame" head detail, or chest detail if that's where it needs to be implemented. Imagine a Werewolf costume but the lower body is "mummified" bandages and he has a cone around his neck. Make him a Brute and call him "neutered".

Fortunately, when you're soloing you have all the time in the world to set up Meteor and ensure it hits your targets. Now on teams... good luck buddy. Even if the enemies aren't killed before Meteor Lands, who's to say your teammates didn't use KB, Repel, or Fold Space and forced enemies to move out of Meteor's area?

Would you like to enable push notifications?

Player-1, I've spent significant time on these builds and this testing to get you data that shows Seismic Blast underperforming... not relative to the best sets in the game, but relative to Psychic Blast. I picked this exact comparison because of the below reasons: 1 - Both Seismic Blast and Psychic Blast have 1 TAoE and 1 Cone, and the TAoEs both knockdown(up) allowing the same sets. 2 - Psychic Blast is explicitly not Fire or Ice Blast, which are the best sets in the game and are apparently viewed as outliers by some of the devs. 3 - This is the most important reason: Psychic Blast was very recently buffed and adjusted. This means that Psychic Blast has been brought up to a higher power level "viewed as acceptable" by the devs. I am comparing these 2 sets in good faith. I did runs on the test server on GalaxyBrain's Office AE Map, on +3 / x8 (because +4 is kinda hard for most solo Defenders if we're being honest), and did multiple runs on both characters, selecting my personal best for each. The builds are Pain/Psychic and Pain/Seismic, and they are nearly identical to each other on purpose. I do not use attacks outside of the Blast sets in order to keep the comparison fair, although I do buff myself with Spirit Drain and debuff with Anguishing Cry. I also specifically avoid using Judgment or Lore powers, because they add large influxes of flat damage that partially equalizes performance across all ATs and powersets. I don't want to test how well a build is carried by Pyronic Judgment and Banished Pantheon pets; I want to test the merits of these 2 Blast sets against each other. All that said, I do use Red and Purple insps but in equal measure and with the same starting insps and drop rules. I also have all 3 START vendor "Amplifier" buffs active, but no other external buffs. This stuff is mostly so I can function and not die. I personally think both of these runs are pretty good too, having cut my times down a lot over the course of many attempts on each character. Psychic Blast: 6:26 Seismic Blast: 7:25 (15.2% slower) Now that I've done the legwork making these characters, I can produce more tests and more data if you want to see just how much Seismic Blast is underperforming. You just let me know what I need to provide, in order to get this set the buffs it deserves. I stand by my points in my original post, and I've edited it to add these videos up top.

If that is the case, maybe Sentinels should be given an Inherent that matters? I mean if this is how the content plays out, then the Sentinel raison d'etre, as well as one of their ATO procs, is worthless outside of EB/AV/GM fights? Does it feel that way to you?

Citadel TF always starts that exact way. I know things about the game... I play it a fair bit. I actually do try to warn people now to not waste their TT.

This always makes me laugh. It's also funny when they do a SG Base power even though the next mission is in Talos or IP: and an Ouro portal takes you right there in just as many clicks but less movement.

TFs are mostly fine the way they are. Because of QoL feature creep: there are so many "cheater" ways to fast travel in this game now that a lot of players reflexively use Ouro/TT/Long-Range-Teleporter/SG Bases and literally do not know how to manually travel to their destination. In addition, all actual travel powers are roughly 35% faster (when enhanced) than they were in the past with the exception of Teleport. I think Teleport's range was not buffed, but it's by far the fastest travel in a straight line regardless. You can get from Point A to Point B so quickly that the idea that you actually "travelled" is hard to believe IMO. I just don't see the issue I guess. TFs that *actually* involve a lot of travel (such as Dr. Quarterfield) routinely take 1/4th the time on Homecoming that they took on Live when they were first added. What are you suggesting exactly, moving all the doors for such a TF to be the same rock in The Shadow Shard?

I just want to add that the Vulnerability power, much like Domination, does require to be clicked by the player. I realize that this seems like a silly thing to point out, but anecdotally I've teamed with at least 10 (I lost count) Sentinels of varying level ranges who completely failed to ever use Vulnerability at all over the course of a TF. In some cases I'll bring up the subject in a tell, asking if they know what Vulnerability does and how to use it. OP is right that the game should do a better job explaining this. Eventually though, I just stopped caring about the AT enough to even try to help people with it. They can just be present as Sentinels cheerleaders and I'll do the work: I accept this status quo. Maybe they respecced and used /cleartray, and didn't know you have to re-add the power. Maybe they just don't know what the power does. Maybe they had an older Sent and didn't respec: so they never even knew what changed. I can't know the reason, but I can tell you that people don't use the debuff.

Anecdotally: none of my characters have the Medicine pool, and none of them ever will (in its current state). If you want to Support better, not only are you looking at the limitations of only having access to 4 Pools tops, but also the competition for Medicine. Evaluation the other pools puts all of them ahead of Medicine, but let's examine why... For anyone: be they Support AT or meathead melee, the absolute best power you can take to help keep the team alive is Maneuvers. Hilariously, Maneuvers also affects yourself in just one pick (Aid Other / Aid Self require 2 picks). This locks you into Leadership, which contains other very useful buffs for offensive purposes, and utility such as: perception / protection from confuse / Vengeance for when a situation gets dicey / 2x LotG mules for your IO build. After that, there's another strong pick to keep one person alive very well with Spirit Ward in Sorcery (a good pool with other stuff to offer besides), and a more niche but not bad pick with Experimental Injection in Experimentation (this power grants an ally buffs not unlike having doubleHealth + doubleStamina, but it also grants mez protection). Taking Leadership + Sorcery is already 2/4 pools, and assuming that you have Hasten that's 3/4. Your last pool will usually be reserved for some degree of proper combat mobility: meaning Combat Jumping -or- Hover + Evasive Maneuvers -or- Combat Teleport. Skilled players do not move at turtle-speed, so they will have one of their pools be specifically unsuppressed combat mobility. That's it: there's simply not room to even consider Medicine until it becomes better than those other options. I'd take any buffs suggested or any buffs at all to Medicine as a pool. It's in a dire spot when the S.T.A.R.T vendor powers are so strong. While I mentioned none of my characters have Medicine, they ironically all have an Ally Rez anyways because I bought the temp power from S.T.A.R.T. I saw the point that this power is disabled on certain content... but if you're doing that, Medicine's Rez definitely isn't going to be very useful either.

I genuinely didn't even consider this. I know it's possible to add Trainer NPCs to trials because they exist on DFB for that reason. It's been so long since I've joined a MSR on a non-lv50, that I forgot how important that mid-raid training session was when you hit lv50 on them. Great suggestion all-around: it should be simple enough to add one somewhere in that little vanguard base where we all spawn in.