Oneirohero

I haven't played this change yet, but my Scrapper will be happy not having their combo ruined by missing the first or second attack in a chain. Obviously missing the finisher is annoying, but a miss is a miss regardless of powerset. Honestly this change is the highlight of this patch for me. I am sad to see Empower no longer stacks, though, although it kind of looks like the combo effect is the one that can't stack. Hopefully that means the power's actual buff remains intact, especially since it's a smaller boost than the combo effect.

Increased duration for Rune of Protection (at the cost of a higher cooldown, exact ratio however) is welcomed, I feel the power is finally at its peak utility now. The lowered endurance cost and cooldown for Spirit Ward as well as the 50% absorb potential upon casting also has the same feeling as before, though I'm not exactly sure how the AT modifiers might affect things, as a Tanker it'll be interesting to check out the numbers and see if it's still useful. Can't wait to hop back onto my Tanker to try these changes out!

I'm so glad that the recharge time for Rune of Protection got reduced instead of just having its duration nerfed. The T5 Power Pool recharge times all need looking at to be honest. What was the worst part of the patch has now become one of the best, along with the other powers. At least for myself. Spirit Ward being a toggle to protect a single target with Absorb is actually pretty neat, now I can set'n'forget on the weakest team-mate in need of some indirect tanking. Arcane Bolt getting a cast-time reduction is also a major plus too, it often feels like the enemy dies before I'm able to finish firing the projectile most of the time in teams.

So why isn't this choice prevalent in any other aspect of City of Heroes? Why isn't there any other feature that negatively impacts performance due to a choice you make? Boosting aspects far beyond what is needed never has a downside because it pads against debuffs, No other enhancement type has these issues aside from Recharge, the game was balanced around having a limited number of slots to enhance with, not 'how' you choose to enhance with. Saying that people should know 'not to use too much recharge' is just a intuitive as someone saying it's not 'legible' and requires looking through guides to figure out it out. What you're smelling isn't poor design, it's inconsistency. I don't know what you have against proc-monsters or whatever, but considering PPM is controversial, that means there definitely is a problem here and should be addressed at some point in time.

I'll admit that when it comes to powers with radius/cones the system is way beyond me, but legibility is no reason to abandon the system outright. The game could really do with calculating the chances for the player and display it in the description text of Proc IOs/ATOs. Why it wasn't done earlier is either a complete mystery or due to development being cut short before it could be resolved. Placeholder values are already present in many enhancement descriptions, particularly when it comes to percentages; extrapolating the actual proc chance and putting it into the description text is definitely possible if the game itself uses it during calculations. Ideally it should also calculate as you hover over powers so you're not having to trial and error with unslotters just to find out the odds of each one.

The old way allowed faster-charging powers get a massive advantage in procs per minute whereas PPM at least gives slower charging powers a chance to activate as much as faster ones. It makes sure Procs are more effective on fast and slow recharging powers instead of just fast. Not sure what is currently controversial about PPM, I will have to wait on your response on that. Procs are used by many players who have any interest in optimizing their character's power, so it is an issue when two Alpha slot trees negatively impact it when no other trees do. As recharge affects PPM in ways that other buffs do not.

If what I know is correct, the calculations for Proc PPM is determined by the modified recharge rate of a power plus its activation time, therefore the greater the recharge enhancements applied to the power, the more negatively it is impacted in PPM chance. The only exception to the rule is Global recharge given by set bonuses and powers such as Hasten. Now I'm not against enhancement recharge affecting PPM in this way, what I am against is the idea that the Alpha slot does, it makes such sets as Agility and Intuition (I may be wrong on that) PPM breakers since they count as enhancement bonuses. And I am not a fan of options functioning as secret downgrades to character performance. The solution seems simple: Change the portion of recharge that ignores Enhancement-Diversification into Global Recharge instead of an ED-defying enhancement bonus. The function is exactly the same since Alpha affects all powers that accept recharge and still ignores ED like it too. And since the recharge bonus is global, it will affect PPM much less (especially at Tier 4),

According to this thread, the issue could be there are no default binds for gamepads, which would explain why nothing worked. If it's true then it's still possible my friend can use a gamepad, but we'll have to look it over and try setting up the controls properly. Thanks for the link all the same.

I managed to bring back a friend who was into City of Heroes, but after I discovered the recent issue added enhanced gamepad features to the game. He says that he would actually play City of Heroes a lot more if he could just play it with a controller instead of keyboard/mouse (I prefer keyboard/mouse but that's not the issue here). We got into the game and tried to test out our gamepads but no matter what we tried, our characters wouldn't respond at all, not even so much as a bit or movement. The game certainly detects our pads, my friend who has three connected to his PC said that the game was able to detect every single one. Even when we 'Apply'd the option none of the buttons or sticks would do anything, and holding down the triggers didn't even enable virtual mouse mode. So the game knows what controllers we're using but there's either something missing or we have to bind the buttons ourselves? There are no tutorials anywhere that we could find, and if there is I'd much rather someone 'uh, acksually' me a link to the guide so I can help my friend set up, I would like my friend to enjoy the game as much as possible with his preferred input type. A quick summary: Me and Friend got into game, both tried switching to our detected gamepads, pressed 'Apply' just in case, tried all face buttons, tilted and clicks in sticks, tried all shoulder buttons and triggers; ultimately nothing happened. Tried to find a tutorial somewhere, found nothing, looked up problem threads, found one with up to two people confirming that virtual mouse mode doesn't work, sounds broken, made a thread about it in relation to me and my friend.

Are those Rikti boots on that Huge-looking Freakshow?

Is this the issue where somehow the chance for secondary Interface procs being reliant on the first one passing before it would allow the second one to check? For instance if there's a 25% chance for proc 1 to trigger and 75% for proc 2 (so a lot of the Radial versions) if proc 1 failed it would not check proc 2? I'll be happy if it will allow each proc to activate individually instead of being reliant on the first one if that's the case, especially since a bunch of people said the former was intentional but the wording implies otherwise.

I only have one Tanker and he's my first 50 since Homecoming, he's the one in my avatar (circa Febuary 2020). Invul/SS. Since hitting 50 I played with other characters and was absent for some time waiting on the changes, thankfully the changes went through and I notice the increased damage and areas of effect, especially with [Hurl] and [Force Bolt]. Feels even better to play than before and I already made him into a clicky juggernaut as it is!

I keep Brawl on my tray1-slot1 even up to Lv50. At zero endurance cost it's perfectly good to use alternating between my normal powers and Brawl, especially on characters where Endurance becomes an issue. Lower DPS but better endurance management without having to idle as much. The fact that Scrappers get Critical hits on everything but Brawl seems weird considering how much I use it. As for whether it taunts, I'm not sure, there were Gauntlet changes recently and I'm not sure how that works yet. If it's global it should but otherwise non-Tank/Brutes might not get taunt with Brawl.

Very simple suggestion this time. [Inherent.Brawl] doesn't seem to count for the Scrapper's AT inherent Critical Hit, even though practically every other power including power pools benefit from the proc. Solution: Make Brawl count for Critical Hit! That's pretty much it.

I like this idea! That's all I can really say about it.