ForeverLaxx

You said "tweaked Dominator Primaries" here and I assume you meant to say Secondaries, as Dominator Primaries are just control powers and not "damage" powers. Presuming you meant the Dominator Secondaries (the attacks), I have to wonder if this would end up the same boat as the Sentinel as having no real identity, or if it would shove Scrappers aside due to the debuffs providing more DPS potential than Scrapper Criticals. Scrappers are already fighting with Stalkers one the single target front and I wouldn't be surprised if something like this would end up pushing them from the AoE and potentially single target front too. I get that something being in melee probably needs some kind of personal defense, but cutting out all the "bad" powers in an armor set and replacing them with powerful debuffs just seems like you're trying to make a better Scrapper.

I thought his post explained what to do. Granted, Github is a bit... well, if you're not used to the layout it can be intimidating and some of the words used don't reflect what's actually on screen.

I'm a big fan of my Dark Armor/Stone Melee Tank. You're basically a melee-ranged AoE control machine and Stone Melee does good damage to single targets.

Good information to have there, @Bopper I just wish it was shown in-game without having to do testing and guesswork.

I'm willing to admit I could have gone a tad overboard, but I wanted to be able to use the power regardless of facing and as quickly as possible. To that end, I put together 6 binds that are all very similar. Four of them are mapped to lshift+movement keys (WASD), one is mapped to lshift+space(bar), and the last is your more standard teleport bind with lshift+lbutton (mouse clicks) to use while traveling. The character does not have normal Teleport so there's no conflict with the mouse click bind. So I have these set up: /bind lshift+W "powexec_target Combat Teleport" /bind lshift+A "powexec_location left:80 Combat Teleport" /bind lshift+S "powexec_location back:80 Combat Teleport" /bind lshift+D "powexec_location right:80 Combat Teleport" /bind lshift+space "powexec_location up:max Combat Teleport" /bind lshift+lbutton "powexec_name Combat Teleport" This lets me teleport in any cardinal direction, or straight up, just by hitting the appropriate movement key and the left shift key. The "standard" mouseclick bind for the power is to assist in using the power for travel purposes in much the same way one would bind Jaunt, so I didn't need a bind specifically for "forward" direction as clicking the mouse when no target is available fills that role. The best part about the "back:80" bind is you can combine it with powers like Lightning Rod or Savage Leap if they happen to come off cooldown in the middle of the fight and you want to boost their damage.

My only characters that actually uses the Fighting Pool for its attacks (and not just for the toggles) are my Petless MM and a slotted Boxing for my Energy Melee Scrapper. I've had no complaints other than that the powers have no data in-game to show their damage due to the synergy mechanic and I don't think I can trust Mids' information on them.

I have that power set to cast off 6 different binds just to get the most out of it. It's great.

I don't think they'll be able to get the system to work inside a base without completely changing how works under the hood. Opening the menu loads the data into the map and keeps it loaded until that map despawns. This would do the same thing to missions, except as more and more people access the data inside a mission (or base, they use the same program), eventually the server would strain so much that it would crash.

We're going to see a lot of the same comments, such as "fix the last sold display bug" and "extend the last sold menu to more than the last 5 only", and these are good suggestions and fixes for people that use the market often. Having to click around to multiple different enhancements before the one you want will finally populate the sale price listing is very annoying, and only seeing the last 5 sales means you could be seeing only someone who was very impatient buying everything up. Then there's the bug that shows you the wrong sell data entirely... there are lots of things with the sale display that needs fixing. However, none of this addresses what I think is the real issue. The HC dev team has expressed their opinion that ALL players are expected to utilize the market on at least a basic level (selling drops), but nothing in the game really directs a player on how to go about doing this. The invention tutorial, while it does break down the basics in crafting, never has you interact with the market and can be completely skipped/ignored with no indications that you're missing anything. This is fine in a world where the original dev team wanted these systems to be unobtrusive and optional, but we're in a version of CoH now with a different team that fully expects all players to be taking advantage of this system. So what I think needs to happen is some way to introduce players to the market on at least a basic level. I would go so far as to suggest some way to mention Merit rewards, their role in the system, where you can find them (many newer players don't know about the Salvage menu at all), and how you can use those Merits to either buy items you want directly (which probably needs to be looked at on its own; the price for things in direct Merits is too high) or use them to buy enhancement modifiers that can be listed on the AH and sold for profit to bankroll non-set IO crafting. If players are going to be expected to engage with this system, then the system needs to make its presence known.

Adding new critters to existing mobs is one thing, but I know that most of the enemy factions are only workable in the level ranges they were designed for. Even the "all-levels" types like Arachnos start replacing critter types with new ones as they increase in level because many of the older, lower level enemies just do not scale properly past a certain point. At least, I seem to recall this being said by the original Dev team way back in the beforetimes when players were asking for "harder content" back then. But what is actually possible in the game engine? We have "annoyance mobs" already like Sappers, Engineers, Medics, etc that can be handled by slapping them with a Mez first, but they're often only LT or Minion class and just get deleted with the rest of the spawn. You'd have to propose some kind of enemy that can't be dealt with on raw offense or defense values alone and I'm not convinced that the CoH combat engine would support anything like this. The closest we really get to a "puzzle" enemy are the ones that go invulnerable until you click something or stand somewhere while getting swarmed. We don't have facing in the traditional sense, our crowd control is very binary, and nearly every attack an opponent has will have some kind of flag to defend against. Something would have to change with the underlying systems to create workable "puzzle enemies" and I just don't really see that as happening anytime soon, if at all, so I have to look at this from the perspective of "add new enemies (that follow the same rules we already use, which makes them subject to the same Tankmage Problem), and/or scale current enemies beyond what they're probably designed for" and I don't think that's a solution either. All I can see working, from how I understand the CoH combat and mission system to function, is the creation of entirely new mobs or factions that are designed to be tackled by people pushing defense and dps caps... and I personally don't think that's healthy for the game either. To me, to make the game harder, IO Sets and Incarnates need to be tuned, but that ship will probably never sail at this point.

You might want to reconsider your position of "no Defenders" considering how powerful a Poison/Sonic Defender can be. If you're soloing, you'll do more damage as a Defender than as a Corruptor also, particularly due to the larger -res numbers you get for being a Defender.

Right, but that feeds directly into what I said in what you quoted in my post, which was: I'm not against "harder content" on the face of it. What I have a problem with is trying to retroactively apply this "harder content" to the original base game using the systems already in place to push the scale. I've found that many of these "harder content" types want to change the entire game so they can be challenged at any point, finding the current +4/x8 system inadequate (we'll just ignore that they're likely going to PL to 50 in the AE anyway, whether or not the base game is somehow moved upwards in difficulty). Since I don't think it's really possible, or even desirable, to modify the base game, that just leaves the creation of new content. That new content can be whatever difficulty the creators want it to be from the outset, before any team scaling modifiers are applied to it. Just like when Cimeroa was first added to the game and people were faceplanting to groups of minions, or when the Vanguard spawns could blow you up immediately, there is room to add foes that are inherently more dangerous but I don't think there's room to modify existing content. Plus, with the underlying design philosophy of "anything works (within reason)", I'd be wary of adding entire factions that require special steps to defeat without assistance. We've already got AVs and GMs on the list of group-required content, barring specialist builds of course, and I'd prefer that any new content being added could be tackled by a solo player using any "normal" character build (no, I don't expect my Petless MM to be able to do certain things). Honestly, this may just be a pipedream anyway unless IO Set Bonuses and Incarnates are given a serious looking at. IO Sets allow essentially everyone to become a tankmage with enough money, and Incarnates just exacerbate that problem even further. Inserting content that only an "approved min/max build" will find adequate may end up alienating much of the playerbase, as it's essentially the devs telling people that they're expected to maximize their character numerically in precisely these X, Y, and Z areas or they aren't "playing correctly" and they aren't good enough for this content. I'm a PvPer in nearly every other game that allows it, and that's the kind of attitude you have to have if you're going to PvP seriously. Bringing that into the PvE game is not something I'd like to see in City of Heroes, personally.

What would you even do for a "hard mode" that the CoH system would be able handle? That's my initial problem with the idea of just "adding" additional difficulty to the end of our existing +4/x8 system. Many mobs were never designed or intended to scale beyond a certain point, so it can't be a simple matter of making them scale even further into the Purple Patch. All that does is shift build dynamics and we're back at square one all over again. We already have a way to scale a solo player up to the challenge level of a x8 team with +4 level mobs, on top of disallowing temporary powers while suffering debuffs in addition to buffing the mobs even further... where do you even go from there? Stuff a mission full of AVs and GMs for "added challenge"? I just don't see how the CoH game system can handle a retroactive "make my base game harder" option further than what it already does. To get harder content, you'll have to create harder content, and I'm not really interested in content that can only be tackled by the community-approved "best builds". One of the joys of this game is that I can play anything I want and still find success. When I want a meta to dictate how I build and play a character, I'll go back to PvPing for that.

I believe this hole is different from the one posted in the tech map earlier. I found it on the "Test Your Clones" missions redside and is located in a section of the map most players don't even see (I only found it because I have a tendency to want to explore all the corners). I don't know if this hole exists in other versions of the mission map, but I imagine it would since they're all pulled from the same place.

In this same vein, people that use the "language evolves over time" excuse to justify their incessantly lazy and incorrect use of terminology.

I haven't ran into any issues with CTP that weren't just me overestimating the range, but then I also have 6 binds specifically for the power so I might be a little crazy.

It could have, had ET been put on fast animation all the time with a 15 second cooldown and decoupled from Total Focus. Not being able to turn and smite a LT whenever I want with a single attack unless I first throw a TF into the fight annoys the hell outta me. But I'm well aware that I wasn't one of the Chosen so it didn't matter.

I'm still playing it because it's undeniably a stronger set numerically than it was before, but it still doesn't feel like Old EM, which was my problem with it when it was on beta. I still only take a single AoE (Power Crash, since it comes earlier, does more ST damage over time than Whirling Hands, and animates faster due to not having a weird "do nothing" period tacked on the end of it) but I will never like being forced to used TF before I can realistically utilize ET. The set actually feels fine until that interaction comes and I wish it didn't exist. Always felt the set would be balanced, particularly in today's world, without those powers being coupled together. Unfortunately, it seemed that mechanic was someone's pet idea they were too stubborn to get rid of so we're stuck with it now.

Right, and I don't disagree. I can just see it from the angle I believe they're trying to argue from, even if it's inherently a bad faith argument to begin with. The ones that went even further to suggest that not having the command "all the time" would somehow hurt PUGs in TF missions made me laugh, though as I never used the command and was never "late" to a mission during a TF (but then I know how to get around effectively without it). The few times a mission would throw you at the back of a zone to then throw you to the back of some other zone two loading screens away, someone else would toss out a Mission Transporter, which people still do so I'm still not left behind. I've not touched the command even a single time and have never seen the inside of these so-called transport hubs. From reading the entire thread (I did skip a lot, as I was in the feedback thread originally and saw where this one was going), much of the complaining is coming from people that wanted LRT to be exactly what /ebfp was: a restriction-free, take me anywhere I want to go power. It was never intended for that purpose and those people will never stop arguing that it should be, in their opinion. A few select individuals have made it clear that they apparently spammed their macros fast enough for a continuous string of base loading screens for 3 minutes and frankly I have no idea what it is they're doing to need to hop in and out of bases that frequently beyond a simple "because we can" excuse. To the general thread at hand: we have lots of alternative options to LRT for people who like to spam their base macros. Those players don't want to get them, for one reason or another. That's their right, of course, but when they insist LRT just become the new /ebfp and be wholly unrestricted... well, that's just not happening. If you need to hop bases so frequently after leaving a base, then grab one of the other 3 or 4 options that let you use the command in conjunction with LRT's allowance of the command. Each of them cools down in 10 minutes; surely you don't need to jump bases so frequently that all 4-5 of those powers will be on cooldown at once? Heck, even if you do, there's the one with NO cooldown that runs on charges to keep you covered. I just do not understand how people don't understand that this system, while intended to replace the command in spirit, was not intended to replace the command wholly in form. I do understand that some people choose to not understand this because they want /ebfp back in its unrestricted form, but that's just not a very useful stance to take.

@Flintlock BurnfurNot that I'm defending the "it's a grind" people (because I'm not), but I find that most of those people are already at the level cap, with accolades, are holding vet levels, and just see that they've lost something they now have to go "out of their way" to get. They aren't picking up those explores or other badges while doing other things because they've already done the other things. Many of those players have multiple characters that applies to, so take 5 minutes per zone per character and it can add up. That said, I don't think it's really a big deal even in that circumstance. It's pretty simple to "ignore" zones you almost never go to and only grab badges for the select zones you frequent often, to save the other less-traveled zones for a later or more convenient date. And frankly, we were told last year that the command was going to be removed/restricted in some way and it's been a long time coming. I think the real lesson here is that players shouldn't rely on something the devs have said is going to change (and the devs probably shouldn't leave in anything they don't have to so players don't get accustomed to it).

All of my characters get a bio because I don't make a character without a concept for it first. Sometimes the story I come up with just isn't good enough and I'll rewrite the bio (before leaving the creator/tutorial) to something that has the same general start but a more believable middle and end. Sometimes my story is too long and I have to rewrite it in order to condense it down to the limit without it feeling like it's being condensed. I probably take it a bit too seriously and don't really have any "silly" backgrounds or "just because" reasoning since I see these characters as existing in a "real" universe. Pretty sure my "silliest" character is getting deleted and remade into something else soon, and that character is basically just a soul that's been transferred into a crystal orb that controls an artificial body. Might be getting rid of that one today, come to think of it. Anyhow, yeah, every character I make gets a bio I put effort in to. I don't RP any of them, though. Go figure.

This only seems true when fighting vaguely human-sized enemies. You can see how messed up hit boxes become as foes get larger and the Drowning in Blood Trial, fighting the two giant Shivans at the end, really make it obvious. Melee players are clustered all underneath a "central" target point, which often has the appearance of you hitting nothing (as the monster's legs are on either side of you). Creeping up to said legs in order to hit them doesn't actually put you in melee range of the enemy despite the fact that its legs keep stepping on your character model. It really makes controlling its facing a problem since you can't really see much without zooming way out. What I suspect could be the problem for these small AoE effects so rarely hitting more than 2 enemies is that the hit box for a mob is just a bit smaller than the geometry collision of the model itself. There used to be a time when enemy mobs had zero collision with each other and could stack in the same spot. When that was changed to make dumpster farming less efficient, I'm going to bet the mob's hitboxes weren't adjusted to that same collision radius.

When I saw my notification for this thread, I was pretty sure I never posted here so I was marginally confused to see I had a "quoted" response. For what it's worth, my statement was in the context of Energy Melee being forced into a specific opener for every fight if you want to utilize the primary buff and my lamentation that it seems more and more newer sets over the game's lifespan focused more on building combos or buff stacks to "release" them. It started with Dual Blades and we see it with other sets like Water Blast and Psi Melee (I'm not going to list them all, of course, but DB, WB, and PM get the three "flavors" of minigame across). Energy Melee has been added to that list when it wasn't on it before, and I just didn't want to see that trend repeat whenever an old set gets "reviewed" for changes. That said, my post was, again, in context of primarily Energy Melee and I would appreciate it if you didn't use my opinion on trends to spread your doom and gloom over theoretical Stone Melee changes that, as far as we know, don't even exist yet. Thanks.

Considering this thread was always a thinly-veiled rant/vent location for people who got upset that their shouting down dissenters got pruned with the rest of the "negative" feedback, I'm surprised it's lasted this long.

I too found this odd, but couldn't really put my finger on why. The effects of Spore Cloud aren't really that dire so early in a set for PvE content, and often the character can't effectively use such a draining toggle that early due to slotting issues. Frankly, I find most people running /Plant aren't picking the power at all until very late in their career as filler or utility once everything else is taken. Putting it early just means it's skipped a lot sooner and can mess up some low-level builds like yours that rely on Thorn Burst for low level AoE damage (though I don't pick this up either, so the change is a wash for me personally).