Charistoph

Endurance is a big issue with Dark Armor. An incredible number of toggles, and the end cost of Dark Regeneration is considerable. It's almost too bad Death Shroud couldn't pull a small amount of End per enemy hit as an offset. I would like to address a couple points about Dark Armor beyond that, though. Cloak of Darkness is currently rather pointless for Brutes and for Tankers. -Perception is nice when you're between missions, but for the two ATs for whom attention is part of who they are it is contra-indicated. Would it be too much to either remove the Perception aspect and either increase it's Defense to All or trade it for that missing KB protection? Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom are also useless for Brutes, because stopping attacks isn't part of what they want to happen (I won't even go into the counter-productiveness of killing yourself to stun those around you). I don't know if this can be properly addressed, or even should. If I was going to fix these two, it would be to have them no longer be toggles, but clicks so they can be OS buttons rather than a consistent area control. Toggle would be fine for the Tanker, but I think this could be spread across all the Dark Armors which have them as a toggle.

Centaurian-style lower bodies would be good to have. Not just horse/deer, but other animals, too. Arachnos is almost begging to have some good Drider (dark elf torso on a spider's face) options. But getting that to work? eesh. At least it's not as big a problem as gorgon/snake bottoms would be in most fantasy MMORPGs where gear slots get lost as a result.

I hadn't thought about the tri-forms, but yeah, they'd be the worst. For Tankers, I'd probably say Stone Armor/Dual Blades. That Rooted pretty much requiring Teleport to do any significant movement complicates Stone Armor's use.

Well, until you get those IOs, it is rather useful for Dark and Fire Armor set users.

Shield's Aura also doesn't do damage, so the aoe sleep in Ice Melee shouldn't be affected, either. The natural slow from Ice Melee and other controls make it a very Tank-friendly setup, and the damage seems to be on the up lately. Thematically, there is even an Elemental\ Ice Shield for a costume option if that is something that is desired to help tie a costume theme together.

With a lot of the powersets being proliferated around across the board, along with some new options being brought in since Mastery Pools were created, why haven't some of the Mastry Pools being proliferated out? For example, Ice Melee is available for Scrappers and Dark Melee is available for Tankers, but Scrappers don't have access to Ice Mastery and Tankers cannot use Darkness Mastery. While it wouldn't be completely perfect and allow a Mastery for everything, it would give some new options to explore that fit with some of these characters that came out with the Proliferation. What do you guys think? Should a round of Mastery Proliferation be considered for the future?

Then it sounds like something used to stop spammers from broadcasting in Atlas Park with brand new characters. If you go through the Tutorials, you're probably not in it to spam.

Bio Armor is almost broken it's so good.

Are these on characters that bypass the Tutorial area, or did it happen to those you took through the Tutorial?

Too bad one doesn't show the time of all the characters. I move around too much, but then, my highest character is only about 30, heh.

My Handle, Bludd Quartz, was a Stone Armor/ Energy melee Tanker before Sunset. Stone Armor is obvious as to the reasons why, but I chose Energy Melee at the time because of its recharge time. That changed, but I still enjoyed it most of the time. With Homecoming, the character as been rebuilt as a Shield Defense/Stone Melee Tanker, with the story moving to the original's nephew. Not much of a AT change, but a significant change in playstyle. Thermal Bloom was a Plant/Fire Dominator before Sunset. He actually worked out pretty well and progressed the farthest of my Praetorians back then. Coming back to Homecoming, I built him as a completely different person in both outfit and AT as he is a Nature/Fire Defender now, though I'm wondering if I would enjoy him better as a Corruptor or back as a Dominator. Emerald Shillelagh is a hero whose concept I created on St Patrick's Day. He's one that I've recreated across Tanker and Brute powersets numerous times on live as I played around with his feel. With Homecoming, I decided to try him out as a Radiation/Bio Scrapper, and I think it feels quite right for him. Magma Rider started out as a Stone Armor/Fire Melee Tanker. I'm trying him out as an Earth/Fire Dominator, but he doesn't seem to hold my attention as such. I may end up switching him back. There's only one other character that I remember from before Sunset, a Dark Melee/Fire Armor Brute that I don't have any strong feelings of recreating as such. I have so many new characters that I've been playing around with that I don't think I'll get around to recreating him in any form any time soon.

Before Sunset, my highest Praetorian was a Plant/Fire Dominator. It did rather well there actually. I remade his name (but not his outfit) in Homecoming as a Nature/Fire Def. I think he was more successful as a Dominator...

I honestly can't remember what I played during Beta (or even if I was in Beta). I have a huge amount of altoholism and like to explore every class and powerset I can get my hands on. The first character that I remember devoting enough time to that I would consider it my first character was a female Mutant Kin/Rad Defender with a hairstyle and face reminiscent of Jean Grey and went with the Chitin body suit theme with green and I think red. Maybe I should bring her back on Homecoming. I had been playing as a Theurgist in Dark Age of Camelot, and enjoyed that class a lot, but I also liked the debuff and buff aspect of the Kinetics. Radiation Blast was brought in to play to make it easier for the Kinetics to hit.

One of the things I did after getting my feet wet in Homecoming was roll up some Praetorians. I started a lot of them before Sunset, but never carried any character much in to the first arc of the second area. I would either not be satisfied with the powersets or get distracted and go play SWTOR or WoW. Truth to tell, that was the case with most of my characters (and still is now, for the most part) and then I started knuckling down on my Stone/Energy Tank namesake so didn't spend time in Praetoria. After finally pushing through 4 different characters on Praetoria in Homecoming, the rest of the blue side arcs seem easy, while the red side arcs seem almost bland and boring.

So sad that I never had a Tanker high enough when those days existed.

WoW Classic is in an odd place for me. With everything where it is, I actually preferred Wrath's general set up out of the older expansions of WoW, and that's mostly because I was a Druid player and could actually play a druid the way it was intended. Classic was rough as a Druid, though. So, I didn't vote for it. I would often share subs between CoH, WoW, SWtOR and occasionally one other. Besides CoH (which is the only one on there I see as present on a technicality as last year it wouldn't even BE on the list) I voted for Dark Age of Camelot (though, I should have submitted for SWtOR, too), as it scratched a different itch for me and had a lot more interesting builds, over all, out of all the MMORPGs I've tried. The Theurgist was the first character I had ever reached max level with in a MMORPG, though I never got him up to max Realm Rank or the other alternative advancements with him. I didn't do it with WoW until Draenor, and I still haven't done it City of Heroes, even with Homecoming (WAY too much altoholism in this one). SWtOR I managed to get a couple characters to max level before their first expansion, but the story drive of it helped keep me going and pushing forward with it in a way that no other MMORPG did for me, but I haven't moved on from the original, and won't until I complete all the class' stories. Oddly enough, I think that is why I like Wrath, Pandaria, Draenor, and Legion out of the WoW expansions as they had a steady story to drive your questing, while most of the others sent you all over the place on fetch quests.

I still have 7+ hours to go in my more mountainous region.

I put in a suggestion for a Saurian MM Primary on the NCSoft forums ages ago, May of 2006, I believe. In short: 1) Thorny Assault - *copy/paste from Dominator/Thorny Assault w/o the spines animation. {Good for a basic starter attack, poisoned thorns imply your own affinity with the darker times of history} 2) Dilophosaurus - You summon 1 to 3 of these relatively small, but poisonous Sauri to fight for you. {Initial Abilities include Spines/Barb Swipe, Combat Jumping. Boosted Abilities add Poisonous Vomit that does Toxic DoT, -Acc. Mutation adds Spines Lunge and Health} 3) Impale - *copy/paste from Dominator/Thorny Assault w/o the spines animation. 4) Boost Metabolism - You inject your Science Projects with a metabolism booster that improves their abilities. These improved abilities differ depending on the pet applied. 5) Fling Thorns - *copy/paste from Dominator/Thorny Assault w/o the spines animation. 6) Velociraptor - You summon 1 to 2 of these fast and deadly Sauri to fight for you. {Basic Abilities are Claws/Swipe and Combat Jumping; Boosted adds Claws/Slash and Leap Attack; Mutations adds Health, Claws/Focus, and Claws/Eviserate} 7) Venison - Tosses nice raw venison to your Target, your pets have a 50% chance of being taunted to this target, any attack on this target by your pets will heal your pets. (Pet: Heal over Time) 😎 Tyrannasaurus Rex - You summon the King of Lizards for your army. {Basic Abilities: Head Bash, Leadership/Assault, Presence/Challenge, Resist Physical Damage; Boosted Abilities: Dull Pain, Leg Gash, Charge attack; Mutated Abilities: Presence/Invoke Panic, Chomp (bites target, gets some health back), Health} 9) Mutate Saurian - You inject dangerous mutagens vastly improving your little pets. The results will defer depending on the target.

There may be nothing to suggest a problem with magic and tech in CoX, but there's nothing discluding it at all. We're talking about a specific character here with their own magic system. I pointed out Robin as a way to signify that some people take pride in being all natural when fighting crime. I didn't say they were smart, just that was their choice. Phobia would be a good reason, too. You don't know what a person's tech is built with. It could be operating with a singularity that makes jumping difficult. Mediport system could be different than the personal transporting system. But again, everything is what the individual decides to build in to their character. You may not like it, but that's why you don't build your characters that way.

I can think of several: Magic: Arcane forces they have access to do not work with such tech or causes the tech to fail, so they go without. Natural: "I hear that super powers are over-rated anyway" - Robin (Tim Drake), Young Justice Tech: Too much mass/Tech is incompatible. Mutant/Science: It gives me a rash. It burns when I use it. Whatever.

I think the bolded and italicized parts are the exact reasons why they don't. They don't have to spell it out as RP, but nevertheless, that is what it is: Matching the image of the hero to their expectations within the system.

It's not that gamers' expectations changed, new gamers came in to the scene and they were loud and noisy (or maybe just the old ones were fatigued). The Souls genre is a demonstration that not all the perceptions of those expectations are completely real. Heck, Pantheon is banking on a group of people that appreciated the challenging aspects of Everquest. Still, all in all, it's interesting that CoX went with mostly just providing more powers and changing access time rather than going the Legion route of being able to slaughter hordes solo in seconds. But CoX didn't last to that same amount of time, did it?

Science always sent you after Vahz. It varied for Mutants depending on your starting contact and what seemed to be a random dice roll (story arcs weren't really a thing in Atlas Park or Galaxy City for a while). The only real "mutant" groups are the Lost (technically would be Science, but they are attributed to mutant) and the Outcasts, and you don't hit those guys for a while.

Yeah, as stated, CoH sucked at launch compared to now, but compared to other systems and mechanics at the time, it was actually really really nice. I came over from Dark Age of Camelot (I couldn't get in to Everquest, but I had been on Earth & Beyond off and on, too). Compared to DAoC, the system ran smooth, there was stuff to do, and most everything was useful. Of course there were problems. Controllers had to group before they got their pets, because they had no damage capacity (this was before Inherents like Containment were brought in). Tankers were more likely to run out of Endurance long before they ran out of Health. For the most part, I like most of the changes that happened, and for the better.

"Hey, Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his Joy level?" "It says, 1006." "Wha? Really?" "Wait, that doesn't seem right..." *Fiddles with equipment.* "Nope, I had the scouter upside down. It's over 9000."