ForeverLaxx

Like a lot of things in tech or science that gets marketed for consumers, it's aimed at people who take them for their word and based on unverified, flawed, or purposefully vague studies. In short, they're marketing companies chasing the latest trend.

I'll do this on my Dark Armor/Stone Melee tank sometimes if the group moves fast enough. At that point, I'm just there to take the alpha away from the Fire Blaster and taunt everything. Maybe I'll throw in a Fault or something now and again if I get bored or I see things dying slower than usual.

Oh, perfect. I've been using the link/unlink workaround and glad to know this option exists instead. I doubt this works for the Tech Knight belt with the waist cape attachment but hopefully it will do the same there.

Any enemy that deals "special" or otherwise untyped damage makes Regen uniquely suited to handling. This is because, I'm sure you know, Regen doesn't have any particular resistances worth noting so all damage is functionally the same to it. The set is designed around this, giving it the tools it needs in order to survive where other armor sets, like Invuln or Willpower might fail. Those tools, of course, are the click heals. Unfortunately, you don't really see this much in-game. The best example is Hamidon and you don't even really "need" a Regen character to clear it despite being the best at handling it on paper. As an aside, it's still a strong melee armor set for PvP unless something drastic has changed. Melee isn't great in zone PvP, but the nature of how combat works there in a 1v1 scenario (mostly jousting) plays directly into how Regen wants a fight to go.

An actually good T9 that gives the armor set it's part of something completely different than what the rest of the set does by itself. Invuln doesn't really need Unstoppable, SR doesn't really need Elude, etc. MoG granting boosts to things Regen doesn't have natively is a huge boon when you need it.

The green dot should only be for powers that are click buffs with a duration or toggles. The yellow dot is for a proc, such as Force Feedback, which will be where the green dot is on any power that isn't a click buff/toggle, or adjacent to the green dot for those that are.

I'm a big fan of my Dark Armor/Stone Melee tank. Essentially a very beefy PBAoE stun machine that can also permaStun bosses for fun. Recolored the Dark Armor to appear like sand to better match Stone Melee's aesthetics.

Yes, it should. But then again, they advertise these boxes as elevators when they're clearly Wonkavators.

Because I think Air Superiority's interpretation of that effect is unique. All the other "knock up" powers seem to just be knockback with a vertical vector, when you consider how the targets of those powers ragdoll like a normal knockback effect would achieve. AirS, however, forces the mob affected to do a flip in place with an entirely separate animation. I'm not sure if this was the reason it was excluded, since it's technically not knockback, but it's something to consider.

This only really holds true for single slot, and somewhat for a second slot. ED pretty much nullifies any useful boost at the 3rd slot, effectively normalizing the SO and Generic IO values to which the powers are already balanced against. Shifting the "balance stick" to Generic IOs won't be moving it very far. Even if you get a player using Boosters in order to make 2 slots of Generic IOs pull the same weight as 3 SOs, ED once again shows up to severely limit any additional increases after that second slot, making the "Booster Player" only stronger in the sense that they have more floater slots that they can put in powers they otherwise couldn't afford to slot more than the base slot. As much as Generic IOs are the "new" SO, their impact on player builds doesn't push them outside of expected parameters of the old SO-only builds. Not really sure how your suggestion would change anything.

For what it's worth, I'm not against avenues of optional increased difficulty in order to let people really challenge their expensive "+4/x8 is now babymode" builds. But what people advocate for is rarely this, and it rarely shows itself in that manner down the line. What many people fight for, and what usually ends up happening, is that the entire game gets pushed into the "we need to challenge min/maxers" direction, leaving players who don't want to, or don't care to, indulge in reaching defensive and offensive softcaps in the dust. It's the classic case of balancing for the hardcore at the expense of the casual, and CoH at its core is a casual game. I say all this, again, as a min/max player in nearly every other game I can do it in (and when I eventually get to 50, I'll do that on my characters too, to whatever their concept dictates). My primary character in Dark Souls 3 uses a whip and "crappy" Pyromancies and I beat the hardest optional boss in the game (Midir) with just those tools. I'm not against challenge -- I'm against enforced build dictations by developers. CoH was billed as the "build your way" MMO and it set itself apart by being a mostly casual, jump in for an hour and feel like you accomplished something experience with characters you designed yourself. For the most part, it succeeded in that vision and many people, including myself, play it simply for that reason alone. Many tentative changes never happened because they would run counter to that initial draw, or in another way, would have turned CoH into every other generic fantasy MMO on the market at the time. I'm still here now, today, because the game is still very much a "jump in and have fun" casual beatdown with cool powers. It's not a numbers game unless you want it to be, and I love it for that. Comments like these: completely miss the point and seek to paint those who like the game the way it is as some kind of regressive, anti-challenge crowd and do nothing but perpetuate the overall impression that people wanting "moar challenge" are seeking to make the way I and others play no longer possible. I'm no longer engaging with these people because it's clear to me that the health of the game and its playerbase aren't their concern; they just want to have a captive audience to flex on.

Some buffs are less buffs and more sidegrades. Reductions in single-target power in exchange for AoE power, making AoE more spammable (but less impactful per use) so you have something to do in this fast-paced "AoE all the things" meta so you don't feel like dead weight, etc. It's not really a direction I like, but one I'm living with.

Declarations of fact that suit my argument but not yours are not "confirmation bias". Confirmation Bias is taking the natural progression of buffs/nerfs and the utilization of an entirely optional system to argue that the game is now easier by default and design. Which is what you're doing. But please, continue to project. I won't entertain you further anyhow. Shout into that void.

Which has already been addressed previously. Barring the travel changes, everything else is standard fair for underperforming sets. Some sets even got weaker overall, like Titan Weapons. Disabling bosses in solo play was always possible if you had enough control powers to stack. If you're talking optional build avenues that aren't required to progress and aren't taken into account when designing content, powersets, or power numbers, you don't really have a case or a point.

And nerfs, by the same token, make things harder. I'll give you the changes to Travel, though. So? Even a team of only SO people made the game "easier" because that's the nature of teaming with people who can click buttons every so often. The values that powersets are created under haven't changed. The values of SOs haven't changed. The base difficulty of the game hasn't changed. It doesn't really matter if you accept or believe it when we're not given any data to know one way or the other. What I do know, though, is that I don't want pre-50 content to be adjusted to account for this "obvious majority" of people covered in set bonuses. As soon as I'm forced to utilize the IO system in a manner that dictates every choice for me, I'll be quitting.

Which doesn't change the actual balancing factor of the numbers themselves, what they're balanced against, and what the game expects of you as a player. You are aware that "those people" existed on Live before it was shut down, yeah? The game's balance is the same now as it was on Live. The game systems haven't changed to make anything easier under the hood. Potential player access to better, optional, slotting has improved but that isn't the same thing as the game being easier on a design level as was indicated.

Explain how the numbers of enemies, the numbers of player powers, and the numbers of SO/Generic IO slotting haven't changed, but somehow it's still easier. The numbers in the system don't agree with your perception.

Easier due to experience. I run generic 25 IOs, which are inconsequentially weaker than SOs and the game is just as "difficult" now for my characters as it was after ED was introduced into the system. That is to say, still not difficult by standard measures as CoH was never really hard to start with, but to pretend the game is magically easier now than before with zero slotting system updates is absurd. The top-end power level is definitely more accessible than it was on live, to be sure, but the game didn't adjust itself downward just because everyone else had an easier time pushing themselves upward than before. The game's balance didn't change at all, but the costly barrier to access Set IOs was reduced, causing more people to be "tricked out" than before and skewing the perception that game is now easier when in fact, nothing really changed under the hood. It'd be like saying Dark Souls is easier because you knew the trick to get the Drake Sword early on, or Dark Souls 3 is easier because you knew to use a Raw modification on the Astora Straight Sword you find early in the game. This is why I'd want new content for Incarnates rather than a rebalance of old content. People who aren't using Set IOs shouldn't be expected to use them simply because they're "better", especially since the entire system is still 100% optional -- no contact even directs you to a University for the purpose of learning the crafting system. I'm not going to get into the muddied nature of the creation of new powersets as I feel too many of them these days require too many powers picked from the set to even function (I much prefer sets with minimal "must haves" with additional cool flavor/role powers to fill out choices for character diversity), but only Dominators really seem to have been built with permaDom status in mind. Even in the Dominator's case though, the damage that was granted during Domination was rolled into the base AT itself and Domination really only provides increased mez duration and magnitude, on top of an endurance refill and a nominal ToHit boost -- hardly anything worth being concerned about for standard content.

I never really said it was difficult. I'm pretty sure I implied the opposite in that you can pretty much build however you want and enjoy yourself without missing much, if anything at all. The only "challenge" is when you're completely new to a system and trying to work things out. For example, compare Dark Souls 3 to Dark Souls 1. People will tell you that 3 is a lot easier than 1 because their memory tells them that 1 was harder due to being new to the concept, but by the time 3 rolls around they're much more experienced with the system and what to expect. After I made a handful of characters in Bloodborne and DS3, I went back to play Dark Souls Remastered and was amused at how comparatively easy it was to 3. So amused, in fact, I could no longer really fathom how Dark Souls 1 was touted as a "ball-busting difficult game that doesn't hold your hand" simply because the lessons learned playing later editions to the series made the original practically a cakewalk. While I'm not against new content designed to challenge Incarnates, as that's a system you're introduced to and actively directed to engage in to further character power in a lore-based way, I am against increasing game difficulty to account for set bonuses that you can't even guarantee people are using. Hell, you can't even guarantee that people are all using the same ones! Yes, when it comes to a min/max perspective of getting all the "correct stats" a lot of builds start looking the same, but not everyone is going to go in that direction. Once you start heading down the path of changing enemies to account for higher "base" values of player characters, any character that isn't reaching that threshold is no longer able to compete and hits a wall until they incorporate powers slotting that has now become "the dev's choice" instead of your own. I understand you're not really advocating for that level of change, if any change at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure you've stated that you'd rather the game be left alone unless I misunderstood or missed a post somewhere. I'm just sharing my opinion on the matter, garnered from years experience in other games where the dev team involved decided the players were too safe or weren't playing "correct".

Hyperbole to make a point. I guess that's lost on some people these days. I've made multiple posts in this thread already, for what it's worth. My point, which you missed, is that re-balancing the game for how it's "obviously played by the assumed majority" will essentially ruin what the game already is and why we already play it. The powers formulae exist under an assumed SO slotting value, the AT modifiers are designed to maintain parity under an assumed SO slotting value of powers, and enemy numbers are balanced against the player's assumed (scaled from TO/DO/SO) slotting value. The whole game, from the ground up, is built upon SOs. Only the latest Incarnate content throws a wrench into this design, but even in that case, it's added difficulty because of Incarnate powers and not because of set bonus advantages. To go back and try to undo all of this so that min/maxers (which, again, I'm one of most of the time) can start feeling what it's like to be "challenged" again is a fool's errand. It would be a ton of work for even a paid development team, let alone an entirely volunteer one. Irrespective of that, it would alienate every player who isn't pushing their build to the limit. That's not why I play City of Heroes.

Yes, thanks for the condescending retort.

Well, Blizzard North anyway which got dissolved before Diablo II was "officially dead". In fact, much of the Runeword system and the entirety of the "synergy" system had no Blizzard North involvement. WoW was initially designed by ex-Everquest people and the Blizzard that oversaw its development, while the same company, was not the same people of Blizzard North who did Diablo 1 and 2. It's for this reason I tend to have the opinion that Blizzard "died" when North was shut down, as that's the studio responsible for much of the nostalgia Blizzard relies on to this very day. To get back on track, I feel I have a unique view regarding this game. As stated before in other places, I'm a min/max player. I like looking at numbers, I like figuring out how to best avoid "wasted stats" when crafting characters, I like to PvP where min/maxing really seems to matter most, but in games where I have more control over what my character actually does (such as in Diablo, Path of Exile, Darksouls, Bloodborne, and here in City of Heroes) I tend to build a character around a concept then min/max that concept. Except, City of Heroes hits differently for me. I'm on the forums a lot, even if I don't post as much as some of the rest of you. I look for ways to improve my character designs, contribute to threads/discussions where I think my opinion or knowledge would be relevant, and complain about things I feel could be better. In short, I'm part of that "typical forum crowd" that is often just a small section of the playerbase... but in City of Heroes, despite being a habitual min/maxer, despite having a planned PermaDom build that also gets soft-capped S/L Defense, I play the game itself much more casually. I solo most of the time, level pretty slowly because I'm bouncing around to multiple characters every couple of missions, and try to avoid powerleveling because I just don't find the basic 1-50 game boring at all. Despite the fact that I could easily jump into a farm and PL to 50 in a matter of hours, I instead spend almost a year and a half to get my highest level character to 38. City of Heroes, for me, is a place where I can build any character I want, as slowly as I want, and still enjoy results. I even have a Petless Mastermind, something that's probably harder to use than an Empathy Defender with zero attacks. For some reason, around here, my focus shifts entirely to character concept, costumes, and watching them in action. For me, it's not about racing to 50 in 2 hours, loading up on Set IOs, chugging down Incarnate juice, and slapping BP around. What keeps me coming back to this game is the freedom to design my character the way I want to and not be overtly punished for it. I never want to see CoH be changed so that the "expectation" of 200% accuracy and 59% defense becomes the only way you can play because it's the only way you can even survive.

Misogyny of a different flavor, perhaps. Rather than outright demeaning women, they just didn't care much about them or elevate them. In other words, they weren't thought about at all. To the ancient Greek, the man was the ideal form and women just existed in their shadow, not worth devoting brain space to. Though there is something to be said that even the Amazons, a group of warrior women that were said to be the equal of any man in combat, would often be depicted as still losing to men when directly challenged but that's about as far as their art goes to "put women in their place", as it were. Women just weren't on the minds of the ancient Greek most of the time. It makes sense then, to me, that the Warriors, which are based on ancient Greek lore, wouldn't have women around. It's not that they think women are weak, though: it's that they don't think about women enough to see anything wrong with having none around. Your requirement of updating the lore for the Warriors to include women in their ranks would essentially be required, and on that I agree. Although, while writing this out, I decided that it would be better for the Warriors to remain male exclusive and instead have a "spurned" woman who wasn't admitted create a splinter-group of women-only Warriors... Amazons, if you will. Have them steal some of the water the Warriors drink, give them a bit more emphasis on using magical gear than the Warriors, whatever makes the most sense for what is essentially just a genderswapped version of the Warriors.

Depends on the character backstory. Anything can be "natural" if given the right framing. That's part of what makes this game interesting. For me, the deciding factor between whether a character is Natural or Technology (or even Magic) comes down to how that character functions as a whole. Are the gadgets mostly in the realm of one-shot effects designed to even the playing field while the majority of your skills comes from years of training and martial skill, or are you essentially just a squishy nerd without your power armor? This is the difference between Natural and Technology, at least in regards to basic humans, in my opinion. Batman vs Ironman: both are geniuses, both build tools to aid them heroing (depending on the version of Batman, of course), but only one of them is a threat in combat without any such gadgets. In another example, I have a Magic-origin character based on the technowizard class from Rifts. It's a class of magic defined by its reliance on technogadgets that are nonfunctional on the inside unless you have magic energy to dump into them to "turn them on", so to speak. To an outsider, those guns, grenades, etc are just fancy children's toys; but in the hands of someone with magical prowess they function as you'd expect they would were they mechanical. While this character is entirely dependent on "gadgets" to achieve effects, those gadgets are useless without the character's innate magical ability to power them, so he's Magic-origin. When it comes down to it, you're Technology-origin only if the technology is pulling the heavy lifting in the majority of cases. There's obviously going to be crossover depending on story needs, such as when Batman has to wear a powersuit in order to "stall" Superman in direct combat, but that isn't the normal situation for him. Ironman has to use his powersuit every time. Back to the thing about the Warriors, I personally feel that if the guys at the top of their gang's inner hierarchy were to use select magical gear it wouldn't affect their Natural origin. While they are in contact with artifacts on a daily basis, only the guys at the very top are "trusted" to use one or two of them. You can even limit the magic they're willing to use to things that simply enhance or compliment their physical training: a power bracelet that works better on someone already strong because it multiplies the wearer's strength (giving a Warrior Super Strength, for instance, where a normal civilian might get something closer to Street Justice). A belt that raises the durability of the wearer, making a Warrior effectively bullet-proof due to their higher physical prowess over a regular person who might only be able to shrug off punches with the same item. They could even use items for special purposes, like the Vulcan gauntlets or Peeble's Ring that have an in-built "timer" forcing the wearer to not become reliant on them in the event the timer ends in the middle of combat. I could go on and on. My point here is that you can sprinkle in aspects to make the faction more interesting to fight that also enhances their backstory rather than runs contrary to it. They don't have to just be guys in yellow vests that swing big swords around and talk a big game.

@Bopper I just tend to put Numina and an SO at the same level because, in the end, an extra 1.67 endurance gained per minute isn't going to matter that much. The cost of the Numina IO is more than a generic IO, and I find more personal value in spending that slot in Stamina to get a movement bonus with Performance Shifter than putting it in health for less than 2 endurance gained over the alternative. Still, it's worth being as accurate as possible.