Shin Magmus

Eiko-Chan, it's your topic. If you just want to complain, you certainly can do so. But if you don't have any experience with something, and you additionally don't have any facts about it, but you still want to complain about it based entirely on hearsay and assumptions: don't expect anyone to listen. I've already answered everything I can relevant to the original discussion: which was that the devs are significantly more receptive to feedback during beta cycles than 4 months after the content has been out. Other people mentioned that stuff even got changed during those cycles. I additionally pointed out that since the NuCouncil have been live for several months now, changes based on one person's feedback are pretty unlikely. You'd need to provide some sort of data like recorded mission times (showing how much slower the NuCouncil are now compared to their old version) to make a "case" to get the devs to even begin to evaluate making a change. It would need to be well-reasoned and backed up by evidence. I only mentioned Advanced Mode because other people are bringing it up... again. You can't know you don't like something without trying it first.

"I haven't tried it but I know I don't like it."

As one of the people who actually plays "Hard Mode" stuff (it's Advanced Mode now): it's not that hard. Every single difficulty below 4*, for all 3 TFs, excluding very implicitly obvious optional superboss challenge stuff, can be reliably PUG-completed on Everlasting... the RP casual server. I've literally never failed any tier of starred ITF, and although I have been on teams that failed 4* LGTF... the leader was very new to it and I approached their team with the assumption of making it a learning experience rather than a completion. That team that struggled with 4*, would've cleared 3* and been fine. The perception of the content is more difficult than the execution of the content. It's also 1: more engaging and interesting than the rest of the game and 2: more profitable to incentivize players to do it for the huge bonus Reward Merits, Empyrean Merits, and Prismatic Aether. I'm consistently shocked when people bring up Advanced Mode stuff unprompted on other forum discussions about balance: I know the people complaining about it don't even actually play it. I took my triple-nerfed Rad/Fire Brute to a 3* PUG ITF and basically got carried: this is a Brute who has literally no place on any endgame anything after being eviscerated by the balance team... 0 deaths, it's not that hard.

I 100% can't help you there. The actions of the GM are mysterious; scientists debate the role GMs have in the ecosystem to this day.

For you @Player-1, I'm going to fill out a Google sheet of runs and just log every single completed run unless I make some sort of real mechanical error in my flowchart. But I'm pretty diligent about running these mishes the same way every time. For example, since Ston's map has a timer, I use all my buffs right before I talk to the NPC and then immediately jump in to the mish to remove those first few cast times from the run time of both characters. I recorded my first runs (after practicing the mission to learn the enemy group) for both characters and uploaded them: but the Psy Blast character has a significant lead that's even more severe than I would've predicted. Could be an abberration; I'll grind out 10 runs on each character tomorrow, and do good old averages. Seismic Scrimblo: 7:11 Psychic Scrimblo 6:01

I believe the topic was supposed to be something along the lines of how enemy groups getting revamped was handled? Are they too hard now, when and how does OP give feedback on how they dislike NuCouncil and such? I think the feedback is historically most likely to cause changes during the Closed/Open Beta test periods. I think that's a good thing to talk about.

Y'know... when I make a personal attack against another poster: I'm subject to immediate retaliation. Ghost, PeregrineFalcon... an escalating series of personal attacks against each other does literally nothing but summon @GM_GooglyMoogly to delete your comments and tell everyone to "Be Excellent To Eachother". I've used pattern recognition over the past few months and learned a few things. You guys have fun.

Who am I?

I was waiting on a multi-enemy group simulator test arc that Ston is working on, to average powers and resistances from several groups at the same time. I can test other stuff in the meantime I suppose, if you have an idea for something with less randomness than the office simulator AE arc.

Here's another video, showing my favorite testbed TF: the humble Penelope Yin TF, at +0 (typical speedrun for 20 merits). You can see how the magnitude of the KB is even higher when enemies are only +0s or +1s, making TFs with any sort of conditional defeat all or defeat group triggers ripe for this type of trolling. My first few Meteors are just wildly inconvenient and annoying, but my last one manages to lodge an enemy inside the Train Tracks (completely unexpected) and get another "true stuck" softlock; talk about trollish griefing!

The scientists will FAIL TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO WALK UP A RAMP AND ACROSS A BRIDGE, and proceed to fall off 5 times in a row no matter how you position yourself or how slowly you move. It was insane, especially because that ramp/bridge combo is MANDATORY for completion of the quest. I genuinely don't know how anyone did this on live while being attacked by other players simultaneously.

Personally, I think the game already has an issue with too many Archetypes and redundancy. Sentinels are not in a great spot, in either power level or identity (ranged Scrapper is a bald-faced lie), and there are other ATs in serious need of help next before any new stuff. Both MMs and Khelds are on the devs' radar for reworks already: much-needed reworks that I still appreciate. VEATs just got their big buff patch and are much better off for it. I'd rather see the stuff we have now ALL BE USEFUL and endgame-viable, than see more new ATs. Human-only Khelds operate at a level of weakness that is inexcusable and unmatched by any other AT. At the very least, I'd hope that gets fixed before they release another new AT.

Escorts in CoH are some of the worst in any game: due to pathing that is basically them rubberbanding to you. Want to experience true pain: go escort a scientist in Warburg to unlock a Nuclear Launch temp power. It's always been bad, and I'd love improvements here but now we're talking about pathing AI code. I just don't know if it's technically even possible.

I would like to play the Faultline "defend the dam" Trial, but I think it overlaps with Posi2 TF now. Seeing scrapped content is always interesting though.

To be perfectly clear, if someone joined one of my TFs and spammed Meteor enhanced for KB (doing what is demonstrated in my video): I'd kick them immediately. They can form their own TFs and lead their own content... and see how many players want to join and deal with... this.

@Player-1 Here's an example video showcasing Meteor, when enhanced for KB (this is allowable by the game but hopefully uncommon, as it enables vicious trolling behavior) on the Moonfire TF. Many cave tilesets have always had the potential for enemies to get "stuck" in the walls and ceiling after getting KB'd, but this video shows that Meteor really takes the cake. Jump to 1:14 for the most disruptive "True Stuck" enemy who I can't hurt in any way, but watch the whole thing for stuck enemies left and right. I tested the power without the KB enhancement and it's obviously still capable of producing these issues, but they're at least less common with lower magnitude KB. I think that this video is a great demonstration overall. This is why players feel forced to pay the slot tax on KBtoKD.

The debuff that Vulnerability provides *is* useful on end of TF bosses and GM-hunters, but that's about it in my general opinion. When I use it on a boss, I agree with some other posters that it doesn't feel impactful. Most content in this game doesn't have regular EB spawns either.

Yeah I just assumed that it would be the same power (+dmg, +def, +tohit) but slightly weaker and PbAoE.

The main thing people agree on is the need for some sort of buffs to the set, but an argument that isn't brought up as often is that many Empathy players are extremely bad and don't use Fortitude often or at all. The average Empath will use Fortitude on only one teammate, while Lumii with (400 vet levels) will go an entire TF without using Fortitude or Adrenaline Boost at all because "nobody needs them". These are real examples of real gameplay that happens. Replacing Fortitude with a weaker PbAoE (that also buffs the user) causes it to hit 4x more targets minimum than most Empaths currently do with Fortitude, and like 100x as many on an MSR with pets out. This suggested change was already implemented in Pain Domination, by the live devs, with World of Pain. It's hard to argue against it after teaming with Empaths.

Empathy needs buffs and, at this point honestly, I don't care what form they take or whose suggestions make it into the game: please for the love of god just buff Empathy already. To my knowledge, nearly EVERY OTHER buff/debuff set in the game has received at least one buff since Homecoming started. Cold Domination is the only set that was nerfed, TA/FF received overwhelmingly powerful reworks and shot up in power, and tons of other sets have received a random one-off buff including animation times in Radiation Emission, and cooldown reductions in Thermal and Sonic Resonance. They've also added the new set Elec Affinity which eviscerates Empathy when it comes to purely defensive ability to keep targets alive, and is S-Tier on MMs. Even Traps got a pretty significant buff last patch with the new Temporal Bomb power. All of this... while Empathy sits in dead last place and I just can't understand why. Tons of uninformed players pick Empathy and spam Healing Aura on auto: thinking that they are helping when they aren't. It's gotten to the point where irrespective of the powerset's issues, Empathy players now have a bad reputation as generally being useless. Like a lot of people have mentioned in passing, my first lv50 (on live) was an Empathy Defender; This state of affairs is just depressing. The main point that most people agree on is merging the RA's together and giving Empathy a new power: I noticed that immediately in OP's suggestion. This gets said fairly often, and is in my suggested rework thread too:

...lol, if it only gave 4 reward merits nobody would do it.

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).