Redlynne

That's our cue kids! If you're having buggy Interface proc issues, you need to document what's happening and deliver that info to the Dev Team for Powerhouse to crosscheck if there are any outstanding issues.

Some locations are "safe" locations where there's not going to be any combat (or even a chance of combat) so the logout happens immediately.

So your "best fix" is to throw ALL of Redside in the trash and start over from a clean sheet of paper. And just how many man hours do you think that would take to implement? 1 ...? 10 ...?? 100 ...??? 1000 ...???? 10,000 ...????? 100,000 ...?????? 1,000,000 ...??????? ... more ...???????? How is this in any way a PRACTICAL, let alone ACHIEVABLE(!), suggestion you've offered? Inquiring minds want to know. I mean, you're basically saying "make a different game!" here.

I pulled this snapshot of the server population just a few minutes before posting this reply (which, granted, is early morning North America time, but it still illustrates the point). Torchbearer ... 3.86 to 1 Heroes Excelsior ... 6.22 to 1 Heroes Indomitable ... 3.44 to 1 Heroes Everlasting ... 3.76 to 1 Heroes Reunion ... 4.06 to 1 Heroes Total ... 4.47 to 1 Heroes If you're wanting to solo ... forever ... that ratio imbalance is Not A Problem™ for you. But as soon as you want to team up for a Strike Force, let alone a Redside Hamidon Raid, you're in real trouble. This means that a significant portion of the group content is "out of reach" for Redside Players, simply because the population "density" just isn't there to (easily) support forming groups for that content. When there's under 50 Villains playing, that means that you need 1/6th(!) or more(!) of the presently online population to join your group in order to run a Team-8 on Redside. That's a pretty high bar. So the answer to the @DrInfernus question is ... YES ... we do WANT to increase the quantity of Player who are committed to playing Redside as opposed to merely incentivizing what I'm going to call "Day Trading in Villainy" via use of Null the Gull for rapid alignment shifting On Demand. Moving the ratio of Heroes to Villains so that it's closer to a range of 3 to 1 or even better yet, 2 to 1 in favor of Heroes would vastly improve the playing experience on Redside as far as group content is concerned (because soloists don't care about server populations). What we have right now on Blueside is a Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game (MMORPG) on essentially all of the servers. What we have right now on Redside is a Massively Singleplayer Online RolePlaying Game (MSORPG) on essentially all of the servers. That makes group content for Redside MUCH harder to fill, unless you're dealing with co-op zone group content. So if increasing the number of people playing Redside is the goal (which, spoiler alert, is the entire premise of this discussion) then what should be the means to achieve that goal is the entire point of this discussion thread. What can Homecoming DO to encourage (not force, but encourage) more people to play Redside? Well, I've given my answer for what they could do game mechanically to incentivize more "durable" commitment to playing on Redside. As for the visual aesthetics of Redside ... the "drab and dreary grimy look" that people have been complaining about since Issue 6 ... I'm thinking that a significant portion of this impression could be changed by some subtle yet simple changes to the global lighting of zones. Allowing the Rogue Isles zones to randomly have a DAYLIGHT daytime lighting that is comparable to the daylight lighting we see in Paragon City and Praetoria would go a long way in this regard. Likewise, allowing the Rogue Isles zones to randomly have a NIGHTLY night time lighting that is comparable to the overnight lighting we see in Paragon City and Praetoria would also go a long way in this regard. It seems to me, and to a lot of other people, that the Rogue Isles have this sort of Eternal Cloudy Skies Lighting feel to them which washes out all of the color of the Rogue Isles in a way that you don't get with Paragon City and Praetoria. If the Rogue Isles cycled between Overcast and Clear Skies as part of the day/night cycle in the Rogue Isles, that would improve the appreciation of colors in the Rogue Isles zones so it wasn't all just Drab And Dreary all the time. Note that this simple lighting change for Day/Night cycles is something that ought to be relatively easy to test on the test server. Better yet, no additional assets would need to be created in order to enact the change ... simply use the already existing skybox assets from Paragon City and Praetoria to test out how much of a difference a change in lighting would make. Now, ideally speaking ... having a way to randomly choose "what the weather is going to be like" for the next Day/Night cycle so as to determine how the zone is going to be lit for the next Day/Night Cycle is something that ought to be determined during Twilight between Day and Night. That way you don't wind up with an "eternal sameness" of Day/Night lighting for the respective zones, but rather it can VARY from day to day (and night to night) in a way that presents a subtly changing color palette for the Rogue Isles that isn't the current eternal Drab And Dreary Grime And Grey that we have right now. So that's two things that can be done by Homecoming with relatively little difficulty that wouldn't require creating whole cloth NEW assets for Redside Players to enjoy. Incentivize Players to STAY with playing Redside, via passive rewards tied to the Frenzy (Villain) or Duplicity (Rogue) Alignment powers (which are thus lost immediately upon switching Alignments!) as a game mechanical element. Vary the zone lighting of the Rogue Isles so the place isn't always (quite so) Drab, Dreary and Dirty looking under cloudy skies at all times. I'm thinking that simply making those two categories of changes would make life (and thus playing) on Redside "more enjoyable enough" to shift the balance of the Hero to Villain population ratio sufficiently for our purposes with regards to this topic of discussion.

There are two intertwined issues related to low villain population ... motivation and retention. Motivation speaks to ... why are you playing as a Villain/Rogue instead of playing as a Hero/Vigilante? Retention speaks to ... are you going to keep playing as a Villain/Rogue or are you going to hit up Null The Gull to switch to Hero/Vigilante at the drop of a hat? Quite right. When alignment switching is TOO CONVENIENT and available "for free" (essentially) then there's very little retention going on to staying Redside. So here's what I propose. When you complete Morality Missions you start a 7 day countdown to getting a buff for that Alignment. Once you complete those 7 days of waiting without changing your Alignment you gain access to an Alignment Power. Homecoming could add additional modifiers to the Alignment Power reward for sticking with Alignments through the 7 day countdown ... but deliberately NOT make the additional rewards symmetrical (so Blueside doesn't get the same benefits as Redside because Blueside doesn't NEED the "carrot" to get people to play Blueside). I'm thinking specifically that while a PC has either the Frenzy (Villain) or Duplicity (Rogue) powers the PC passively earns more INF from Redside Contact Mission Completions and bonus INF from Redside Bank Robberies (on top of the Mission Complete bonus). PCs who have either the Frenzy (Villain) or Duplicity (Rogue) powers also earn extra Merits for completion of Redside (only) Strike Forces. The point of all of this is that the incentive structure is greater rewards for PLAYING on Redside become available when playing CONSISTENTLY on Redside. Rogues could still travel to Paragon City "as normal" and participate in Blueside activities, but they wouldn't be getting the same advantages playing on Blueside as they would playing on Redside as a Villain or Rogue who has CONSISTENTLY been a Villain or Rogue for more than a week. Likewise, Vigilantes would still be "welcome" to visit the Rogue Isles, but they would not earn the same bonus rewards as CONSISTENT Villains or Rogues would. Beyond that, you could do something like have 1 Weekly Task Force on Blueside while enabling 2 Weekly Strike Forces on Redside. All of the above are going to fall into the "tinkering at the margins" of the incentive structure for playing the game category, but I'm thinking it would be enough to tip the balance JUST ENOUGH that more Players would decide it's worth their time (their most precious resource!) to play on Redside, without the proposition becoming so lopsided that it's more of a No Brainer that makes EVERYONE figure they ought to be in the Rogue Isles and everyone "votes with their feet" to move en masse into Redside. The basic idea though is that you want to incentivize Players to want to not only PLAY Redside but also want to STAY Redside, rather than becoming "day traders" of Alignments who come and go on a whim. Would it be "unbalanced" to do all that? Duh ... YES ... of course. That's kind of the point. The only way to get more people playing Redside is to modify the incentive structure in a way that MOTIVATES and then RETAINS them to continue playing on Redside. The best means to measure that Movation+Retention of Redside alignments is ... tracking if the PC has either the Frenzy (Villain) or Duplicity (Rogue) powers. Mischief managed. 😎

The wind would whirl around you ... it's just that you wouldn't be spinning with it. Kind of like how Hurricane works in the Storm powerset. The visual FX swirl around you, but you don't have to swirl with them. It's the visual aesthetics difference of the whirlwind being "caused" by your spinning around Way Too Fast™ ... versus the whirlwind "being there around you" and you yourself simply Stand In The Eye Of The Whirlwind unaffected by it (while everything that gets close to you is not standing in the eye of the storm and ARE affected by it).

Reasonable. I mean, if it can be done for Dark Armor ... This also makes sense and sounds reasonable. You can keep the Whirlwind sound and visual FX of the swirl ... just allow an option where the character avatar doesn't have to be rotating as well (so they keep their "normal stance" instead of spinning). Adding such an option as an alternative via the costume editor is also a reasonable suggestion. This ... is beautiful. Giving the Whirlwind power access to a "sub-power" Toggle (see Origin Travel Powers) that functions as an exact copy of Jump Pack, with one exception ... a 30 second recharge instead of a 150 second recharge ... would be ideal. Just have the character assume the "jumping with Jump Pack" pose (with or without spinning rotation added) while not on the ground and you're good. EXCELLENT suggestion!

To be fair, even the web archived page for Terrify at City of Data shows that -ToHit debuff enhancement ought to be allowed in the power, despite the enumerated effects of the power explicitly not having any -ToHit debuffing to enhance.

If that's the case, what error of programming is causing the +33% damage buff to appear in the combat attributes but then NOT have that effect show up in the damage dealt reporting in the log? Something isn't adding up right.

There's also a common saying that common sense is often in short supply.

There was a bug report some time back that the proc chances were getting "doubled" in the sense that they needed to be rolled TWICE and that BOTH proc rolls needed to be successful for the proc to happen. So an advertised 20% proc rate would in fact have a 4% chance of actually happening in game (20% of 20%). It's something that @Captain Powerhouse noted and worked with the community on devising a remedy. I forget if that resolution has been published to the Live servers yet.

I presume that's an error of omission rather than commission by Paragon Studios. It's probably the case that when the Accurate ToHit Debuff sets were added, the Devs at Paragon Studios forgot to enable the new invention set on Terrify. This oversight has not been corrected by Homecoming ... yet ...

Um ... no ...?

They most certainly CAN do something about it. They don't have to allow themselves to be USED by subversive manipulators in the first place.

Edit done.

or C: Has already been called out by multiple other posters across multiple threads for repeatedly engaging in this behavior. The part of it that I find most disappointing is the GMs who aid and abet this kind of thing by "protecting" the subversive poster while punishing the more up front poster (who is stating the already obvious) but not the subversive poster. Allowing themselves (the GMs) to be used this way just makes it clear that their judgement isn't all that it's cracked up to be, leading to a loss of respect towards the GM(s) involved ... which once lost is difficult to regain. What it means is that the GMs are perfectly happy with allowing the abuse of subversion to continue, because if they weren't they sanction the subverter who "created" the situation that led to the confrontation/complaint in the first place ... and it's THAT kind of permission structure that is the most insidious. What's worst of all, though ... is when a GM accuses you of saying what you clearly didn't say (and you've got the quotes to prove you didn't) and the GM simply replies with a message that boils down to, "I don't care." ... as their excuse for letting the sanction stand. That doesn't engender or rebuild respect for the GM (or their judgement) in question either. Trust is a valuable commodity that can take a long time to accumulate, but which can be lost in an instant. Squander it at your own risk.

So ... Flight, Invulnerability, Speed and Strength. In other words ... FISS.

In my opinion, Time Manipulation is the "best fit" for Ninjas (because of the whole "We Be Fast And They Be Slow" angle). As enumerated above, Ninjas have essentially NO PROTECTION TO SPEAK OF when they are "fresh out of the box" even after being equipped/upgraded. They get a piddling on the leg of Defense and nothing else ... which means (absent support from your secondary/pools) they get hit A LOT and have no resistance to all the damage they're taking. This means that it is absolutely imperative(!) for you to build a Ninja Mastermind who can extend protection to your Ninjas ... whether that be your Mastermind acting as an Aggro Magnet in Bodyguard Mode, +Defense and/or +Resistance, or a combination of all three together ... AND ALSO be able to heal whatever damage they do take in a timely fashion so you don't have to re-summon and re-equip and re-upgrade them all over again (because that takes time and a huge pile of endurance). Force Field and Cold Domination can supply the necessary +Defense, but they're both lacking on being able to heal damage taken by your Ninjas. To mitigate this deficiency, you'd need to take Aid Other from the Medicine pool, which is QUITE inferior to any of the AoE Heal options you'd have in any other powerset. So these secondaries can make Ninjas "tough yet brittle" in that they don't cover both protection AND healing/regeneration all that well in the secondaries. Cold Domination at least has Frostwork which can be used as a sort of makeshift Heal power in a pinch, but it's still a single target on a long recharge and won't let you heal up all of your Ninjas in a single power use like an AoE Heal would. Dark Miasma offers "inverted Defense" in the form of -ToHit buffing, but it's somewhat dependent on catching everything in the radius and debuffs lose potency as +/- Level differentials bite when dealing with +3 and +4 $Targets (which are often times plentiful in Incarnate content). Dark Miasma has a Target AoE Heal power, but it needs a $Target to use and it's only a 20ft radius around your Mastermind, meaning that positioning for it isn't always convenient relative to where you and your Ninjas are at any given time. It also means that you can't use Twilight's Grasp to "top up" your Ninjas AFTER a fight is finished, but would need to use Twilight's Grasp BEFORE the fight is over, with yourself and any Ninjas that need healing being within 20ft of the $Target you're hitting with Twilight's Grasp. Needless to say, this can get ... finicky ... to manage, particularly in group settings which can be extremely chaotic. So Dark Miasma is more of a "Hard Mode" secondary to use with Ninjas than some of the other options. It can be done, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't recommend it to a Beginner Mastermind who is just learning the ropes. Electrical Affinity would be a somewhat curious combo, since it would allow something akin to neutralization of opposition via debuffing, rather than relying on beefing up the protection on your Ninjas specifically. I can also imagine that Electrical Affinity would make Tankerminding easier for you on a variety of levels. You'd also have access to AoE (via chaining) Heals, which could also chain back to yourself. Faraday Cage becomes your "plant the flag" move determining where you want to fight, and you can use Defensive/GoTo as a way of keeping your Ninjas from wandering/running off too far afield as a way of keeping them within the Faraday Cage and better protected from mez effects. An interesting option that I would consider for a Beginner Mastermind. Empathy along with Pain Domination can both (obviously) cover the AoE Healing needs for Ninjas, and arguably Pain Domination would be better at this with the 15ft radius Suppress Pain toggle power, but both of these secondaries do basically next nothing to protect your Ninjas from incoming damage ... meaning that they're going to need A LOT of Healing (too much, I would argue). Of the two, I would say that Pain Domination is superior to Empathy for supporting Ninjas, but neither is truly adequate to the task of keeping Ninjas (who run all over the place at high speed!) upright except under the most favorable and controlled of conditions. However, if you build for a Tankermind (so +Defense and +Resistance on your Mastermind) and act as a permanent Aggro Magnet for your Ninjas (so they can't pull aggro from you at all), you can be surprisingly successful with either Empathy or Pain Domination ... but only so long as you're able to maintain control of the flow of combat (which in a chaotic team environment, simply doesn't happen). Kinetics is kind of an oddball as a Mastermind secondary, particularly when combined with Ninjas. Kinetics has only one power that can directly help protect Ninjas, and that Increase Density since it adds some +Resistance (not enough for Ninjas, but it's there). A lot of what makes Kinetics great for use on PCs has remarkably little use on NPCs like Ninjas ... I'm referring to Recovery buffing, Movement speed buffing and Recharge buffing (all Mastermind Pets are completely immune to both Recharge buffing and Recharge debuffing). You get two powers that can indirectly help your Ninjas survive in Power Siphon and Fulcrum Shift, since they will do -Damage debuffs to your $Target(s), so your Ninjas will take less damage when hit ... but it's just not enough since both of those powers are debuffs, so you can't use either of them "on demand" in prep before a fight (unless using Stealth+Grant Invisibility to perfectly position yourself and your Ninjas for an alpha strike from Stealth, which doesn't work on $Targets that can see through Stealth). You also get a Target AoE Heal power in Transfusion which can also apply -Regeneration debuffing (although 1/10th of what Howling Twilight in Dark Miasma can do) so the whole complicated setup of needing to use a $Target to AoE Heal from seen in Dark Miasma happens here too. Again, it can be made to work, but I also (again) would not recommend it to a Beginner Mastermind who is just learning the ropes, since Kinetics is also a kind of "Hard Mode" playstyle. Nature Affinity would make for a really interesting combination with Ninjas, mainly because it's possible to blend together a mixture of AoE Healing, AoE +Regeneration, Target AoE -ToHit and -Damage debuffing, Absorb shielding and even a PBAoE Hold Aura (that needs to stack, but it works). So the powerset is light on added protection but gangbusters on being able to cover everything else you'd want to keep your Ninjas alive and kicking. Nature Affinity is also relatively easy to learn but with enough complexities of usage to be difficult to master, making it a compelling option for a Beginner Mastermind. However, a lot of how you'd want to use Nature Affinity involves "plant the flag" stationary strategies which may not necessarily be optimal for a primary powerset like Ninjas. Poison and Trick Arrow are just all debuffs and nothing but the debuffs ... although Poison does have Alkaloid as a single target heal. Pretty much the only way to use either of these secondaries with Ninjas is to go all in on Aggro Magnet Tankerminding so the Ninjas take as little damage as possible. Poison at least can apply enough -Damage debuffing to be actually useful as a mitigation strategy that would also help your Ninjas survived. I would consider blending Ninjas with Poison to be a "Hard Mode" style of play ... while mixing Ninjas with Trick Arrow is just "Stupid Mode" because Trick Arrow does next to nothing for your survival, let alone the survival of your Ninjas, and you'll need to rely on pool powers (like Aid Other+Aid Self) for survival. I can't honestly recommend either for use with Ninjas, but Trick Arrow is simply the absolute WORST secondary to pair with Ninjas (and often times the worst secondary for any Mastermind primary due to the underperformance of its debuffs). Radiation Emission is a very compelling option because it offers better survival by debuffing while also having an AoE Heal power. There are some Target AoE toggles to juggle here, but they can be used as alpha strikes to "get the party started" and help your Mastermind act as an Aggro Magnet for a Tankermind style of play. I'd rate this secondary as being a beginner to intermediate difficulty to learn and use well, which can become rather successful when played skillfully. Sonic Resonance simply does not "resonate" all that well with Ninjas. The +Resistance is helpful, but without a Heal power to go with it means that the Medicine pool basically becomes mandatory to be able to recoup from incoming damage. The status protection is "nice to have" but ultimately not a game changer. And since Ninjas are a mixed ranged+melee set of pets, being able to prevent melee contact with Ninjas does more harm (to you) than good, since keeping Ninjas out of melee range deprives them of their most damaging attacks. So Sonic Resonance winds up working at cross-purposes to what you're really wanting and needing to support Ninjas. Storm Summoning is the power of CHAOS applied to the battlefield. You can use Gale and HERDicane to neutralize entire swaths of the battlefield. Steamy Mist can hide yourself and your Ninjas so as to make ambushes (you'll still want to cast Grant Invisibility on your Ninjas though). Freezing Rain is "caltrops from above" ... while Tornado and Lightning Storm are additional damage dealers that can also be highly disruptive. You even get a single target Heal power in O2 Boost. Powerful and versatile with IOs and procs slotted into it, Ninja/Storm can potentially be a powerhouse if you learn how to ... guide ... the chaos it unleashes to your advantage, so I'd rate this combination as being good for intermediate and above gameplay. Thermal Radiation basically takes Sonic Resonance and repackages it ... in a way that is actually useful when blending with Ninjas. You have a PBAoE Heal in Warmth that instantly (as of Level 1) makes this secondary better for Ninjas than Sonic Resonance, but you also get Cauterize that is a single target Ally Heal. Thermal Radiation is this sort of curious mashup of Sonic Resonance and Pain Domination, which actually works somewhat decently with Ninjas. It's not a perfect fit because of the Defense vs Resistance side of things, but it's still good enough to be used by a Beginner. Traps will play a lot like Electrical Affinity and Nature Affinity, in that there is a very definite "plant the flag" aspect to how Traps get used. The secondary is something of a grab bag of everything, but the secondary really shines when you're "allowed" to fight pitched "static" battles that don't move around that much. Since a lot of Traps involves "summoning" various stuffs and effects, the secondary has a sort of "rhythm" to how it wants to be played, and so long as you can get into that "groove" you'll be fine. As soon as you get knocked off your game, or need to move more often than you'd otherwise like, you start leaving your buffs/debuffs behind you as the battlefield moves from spawn to spawn (very common in team and league settings). Another secondary that can be somewhat forgiving to beginners when they're soloing but doesn't necessarily scale all that well in fast moving team contexts. Time Manipulation is ... in my not so humble opinion ... the PERFECT FIT secondary for Ninjas. It basically does everything you need ... PBAoE Heal (on demand), -ToHit debuffing, AoE +Defense and +ToHit buffing (the latter being VERY important to Pets!), in addition to +Regeneration buffing among other things (like Slow and -Defense and -Resistance debuffing!). Time Manipulation just BRINGS IT ALL and gives you everything you need to make Ninjas "sturdy" and keep them alive, and it benefits EVEN MORE from Power Boost buffing than a lot of other secondaries due to the diversity of effects Time Manipulation brings to bear (both offensively and defensively). I've even been known to have some thoughts on the subject from time to time. HIGHEST possible recommendation for any Mastermind who wants to play with Ninjas (even if I do say so myself).

Actually, she's a FISS.

Order of the Stick #428

You know ... if people weren't averse to setting cottages ON FIRE and dancing the night away ... I'd love to completely reimagine Black Hole, so as to change it from something "useless" into something that would be "useful" (so to speak). Legacy power link: Black Hole (Controller) Basically it's a Click power that imposes a 30s duration Intangible in a 20ft radius sphere around a Target Location on a 120s recharge. Because it's a Click instead of a Toggle the duration cannot be canceled early on demand like with Dimension Shift ... which basically does the same thing, but in a better way game mechanically speaking. So if Black Hole were to be ... reimagined ... what could it possibly do instead? Well ... Why not convert Black Hole into a Location AoE Teleport Foe? Specifically, a power that would "scoop" all Foe $Targets within 20ft of the selected location and Teleport them "to" that same location and "dump" them there? Essentially, make Black Hole "pull" everything within 20ft of the selected location to that same location (so it's not a copy of Wormhole, which can pull from one place to dump in another). The behavior would be an "in place" implosion (using Teleport mechanics). So, basically one of these ... But we also know something else about Black Holes (the real astronomical ones) that we didn't know back in the 2000-2004 years when Cryptic Studios was working on City of Heroes ... that Black Holes tend to do ... well ... THIS ... So in game mechanical terms, what I'd want to see done to the Black Hole power in Darkness Affinity is basically this ... (changes bolded and in larger font to make them stand out) ... Level 35 Type Click PvE damage scale 0.000000 Accuracy 1 Modes required Modes disallowed Disable_All Range 50 feet Activate period - Interrupt time - Cast time 1.03 seconds Recharge time 120 seconds Endurance cost 13 Attack types AOE, Negative_Energy Effect area Sphere Radius 20 feet Arc - Max targets hit 16 Entities affected Foe Entities autohit Target Location Target visibility Line of Sight Nofity Mobs Always Target: 3 Immobilized for 30s 0.3 Immobilized for 0.6s 0 Translucency for 1.5s 4.1 Teleport (mag 3) (after 0.9 second delay) 18.694 Knockup (after 1 second delay) -75% Str(Range) for 30s That's all you have to do. The "new" Black Hole power would "scoop" (via Teleport) all Foes within a 20ft radius of the Target Location and teleport them to that same Target Location (not a different one like Wormhole, the same one!) ... clustering them all up at that point. The power would then "toss" them all UP (via KnockUP) ... rather than "hurl" them sideways (via KnockBACK) like Wormhole does ... so they fly upwards (like an astrophysical jet) and then rain down in place around the same Target Location. The power then "limits" the Range of their ranged attacks (Black Holes are known for their "deep" gravity wells which take a lot more energy to escape from) for the 30 seconds of the power's effects after Click. This would effectively allow the Darkness Affinity powerset to "forcibly herd" a Target Location AoE onto that specific Target Location. Got some idiots who haven't stepped into your Tar Patch yet? Use Black Hole to "plop" them into it! Did someone use an AoE Immobilize before all the $Targets dogpiled onto the Aggro Magnet (in the dumpster, that's now on fire)? Use Black Hole to "plop" them into it! Got a runner (or runners)? Use Black Hole to "plop" them so they can't keep running! Need to "herd" a pile of XP for T9 Nukes? Use Black Hole to "plop" them together where they can't get away! This would allow Black Hole to become an Escape Denial power (which sounds about right for a BLACK HOLE, wouldn't you say?) in addition to being a Reposition Your Foes power. It wouldn't be quite as versatile as Wormhole in the Gravity Control powerset, which can move $Targets "through walls" when teleporting them from Here To There (since the pickup and drop points don't have to be the same for Wormhole) ... but then you'd want Black Hole to be a different kind of power anyway that PULLS STUFF IN (and throws stuff out at the polar jets) right where the Black Hole is. That way, Black Hole is similar to, but not an exact copy of, Wormhole ... while also serving much the same service. Your turn, Homecoming Devs ... ✨

Clever ...

That's because of the legacy Full Auto power of Assault Rifle, which Mooks and Family also use with their Tommy Guns. It's basically the "older" version of the power. Contrast that with the Heavy Burst power used by Arachnos Soldiers which does essentially the same thing in less than half the animation time. Here's the difference between the two: Full Auto (Blaster) Cast time 4 seconds 17 * 10.13 Lethal damage every 0.2s over 3.3s Heavy Burst (Soldier of Arachnos) Cast time 2.67 seconds 7 * 8.66 Lethal damage every 0.3s over 2s The "obvious" solution is to modify the Full Auto Laser so as to cut the animation time in half and just double the damage per damage tick (and just do half the ticks). Kind of makes you wonder how ... difficult ... that would be to do.

12 responses in a week (ahead of this one). Yeah, there was a huge pent up demand to talk about this powerset (apparently). /em snerk

I always entertained my teams when fighting Paragon Protectors when they would use their MINUTES OF GLORY power which made everything Miss them. I'd Taunt them (which was autohit) and then emote Newspaper while they whiffed away at my over 45% Defenses. My teammates found it hilarious.