Redlynne

Fair warning ... you'll need to run Praetoria with FOUR DIFFERENT CHARACTERS in order to get ALL of the content! That's because you'll need 2 each for each faction in order to see the Secret Resistance and Secret Loyalist stuff (Calvin Scott and Provost Marchand) extras ... and who shows up at your "going away party" when you exit to Primal Earth is different based on which choices you made along the way, so the Betray Alignments and Accept Alignments paths wind up with different NPCs to talk to when you leave Praetoria. And as if that wasn't enough ... who gives you your final words of guidance when you leave for Primal Earth is different based on whether you're going Hero or Villain. If memory serves, you get a send off from Marcus Cole himself if you're a Loyalist who is turning Hero at the end, but not if you're a Loyalist who is turning Villain ... so you might need to run through Praetoria with EIGHT different characters in order to exhaust ALL of the permutations possible(!!).

Granted. Dimension Shift CAN be used badly in ways that are counterproductive to team efforts ... much like how Knockback CAN be used badly in ways that are counterproductive to team efforts. It's the responsibility of the Player to coordinate with the team in ways that are NOT counterproductive (which can include educating the team in how Dimension Shift works, and why it can be helpful). In context, melee monsters on the team ought to be unaffected, but it can be an issue for ranged attackers outside the bubble trying to attack into it (and vice versa). The Dimension Shift bubble of AoE is simply an Attacks Do Not Cross boundary for attacks. So inside can attack inside ... and outside can attack outside ... but you can't have inside attacking outside, nor outside attacking inside. What confuses most people are the ... subtleties ... of how to use Dimension Shift effectively/cooperatively in a team. Most melee attackers won't even notice when Dimension Shift is used (since it will typically not "foil" their attack strategies), while ranged attackers might need to reposition to be inside the bubble yet still out of melee range to continue attacking. Also granted. There are a LOT of Players who simply can't be bothered to learn the subtle uses of their powers. Laziness is A THING™ among Players. It's why I went out of my way to be informative about how to use Dimension Shift in my Gravity/Time build post so that fewer people would be able to credibly use laziness of thinking as an excuse for making poor decision while playing the Gravity Control powerset. 😎 There's no such thing as foolproof ... merely fool resistant ...

It's a TOGGLE. Your impressions of HOW IT WORKS are outdated. I did mention the requirement to be ... ... because if you are, you can use it right, even in a team context. The problem is all the ways you can use it "wrong" that aren't helpful. That said, it will find a lot more uses in the solo/small team context, rather than in the full team context. And just because you haven't seen it used well, doesn't mean it can't be used well.

If you're clever and have built for it you certainly can ... /em knowing look

Could start with this layout for new Slow sets and just swap out the Damage enhancement for Slow ... for use in Slow powers that do no damage. Acc/Slow End/Slow Rech/Slow Acc/End/Slow Acc/Rech/Slow End/Rech/Slow Equivalents: 1.625x Accuracy SO 1.625x Endurance SO 1.625x Recharge SO 3.375x Slow SO = 8.25 SO Since that's more Slowing than is "useful" under ED, I personally would want to swap out the Slow on the last enhancement for a -Range proc (standard 8s duration in PvE) which would yield the following: Acc/Slow End/Slow Rech/Slow Acc/End/Slow Acc/Rech/Slow End/Rech/-Range proc Equivalents: 1.625x Accuracy SO 1.625x Endurance SO 1.625x Recharge SO 2.875x Slow SO -Range proc (8s in PvE) = 7.75 SO + -Range proc

I would use the example of Inertial Reduction in Kinetics ... because IT WORKS.

Could switch out to sets that are more triple/quad based. I know that I wind up using the Acc/End IO as a frankenslotter a good deal in my builds where you don't get a lot of accuracy or endurance reduction out of say ... Target AoE sets. Try this basic formula on for size. 1: Acc/Dam/Slow 2: Acc/End/Range 3: Acc/Range/Slow 4: Dam/End/Slow 5: Dam/Range/Slow 6: End/Rech/Slow Equivalents: 1.5x Accuracy 1.5x Damage 1.5x Endurance Reduction 1.5x Range 0.5x Recharge 2.5x Slow = 9 SO equivalents Note that if you swap out the last IO (the end/rech/slow) for a proc you'd be dropping the only recharge enhancement in the set for maximum proc chances with the set 6-slotted with a proc.

Blazar ... Magnetar ... there are so many fascinating astrophysical phenomena to choose from ...

I can attest that Hunstman builds "gain more" out of blending with Crab powers (which enforce the backpack, even if you don't take any powers that "use" the backpack) than blending with Bane powers. Pretty much all of the advantages of being a Bane rely upon using melee attacks, so the primary advantage of sticking with Bane powers on a Huntsman build basically comes down to not having the backpack enforced upon you and a different "flavoring" of how your protection scheme "works" for you as a Bane rather than as a Crab. The loss of a Dull Pain styled power however makes Bane-based Huntsman builds a LOT flimsier. For my take on these questions, have a look at some of my older build posts for Huntsman ... 1 and 2 ... I have a feeling that at some point I cross-compared the protection schemes for Bane vs Crab and came away with the sense that Banes just trade away "too much" in a Huntsman build context relative to the Crab alternative. I even looked into the possibility of trading in the Soldier Rifle for the Bane Mace for all the ranged attacks, kind of like how you can trade in the Soldier Rifle for Crab Backpack attacks (aside from a grenade attack that MUST be used from the Rifle), and found that the result was gimped beyond belief when trying to stick to an all ranged Bane Mace build (trust me, it was ... horrid). Best I can say is that doing a Bane-based Huntsman results in a VERY different style of game play, mainly because the strengths and weaknesses shift rather dramatically relative to the Crab-based Huntsman builds.

If I could grab and hold the aggro of FIVE RIKTI MAGUS with a mere Martial Arts/Super Reflexes Scrapper(!) back on Virtue ... you ought to be able to do the same with almost any kind of Tanker here on Homecoming. Just take the Taunt power in your secondary if you're having trouble figuring out how to do that.

WoW tried that. Multiple times. It never ends well ... and it ALWAYS results in a stats crunch in order to move things back into the "sweet spot" mathematically speaking. Request Denied.

I'd be happy to have an "Exemplar Option" for outleveled contacts where I can just walk up to a Contact that I've outleveled, choose to Exemplar down to their level range, and just do their missions ... and then when I'm done with them I can click to undo the Exemplar to that Contact and go on my merry way at my (full) security level. You only need the Pillar of Ice and Flame for Flashbacks.

Now you're going to have to create a Warshade named The Last Starfighter ...

The reason for that is because the main character (Maple) is the epitome of the Casual Gamer™ who is just playing to have fun rather than to min/max (or compete, really) and she just isn't all that interested in the internet culture/forum culture side of the game outside the game. And since most of the story revolves around her, the subject just doesn't come up all that much (aside from the chat forum that Kuromu participates in).

Crab Backpacks are limited to only showing up on Arachnos Soldiers who have taken Crab Powers. The fact that Crab Backpacks show up in the Costume Editor of any other Archetypes is a bug.

Part of that is simply a question of ... when everything is Stunned/Immobilized/Held ... how much Defense are you going to need (really)? I mean, you're a Controller. So long as you can move 99% of the game into lockdown so mobs can't attack you, Defense starts becoming somewhat superfluous in a LOT of situations. There will, of course, be edge case exceptions (AVs and GMs being the most obvious), but they're the 1% exceptions rather than the rule. And while you can build towards specializing in being able to handle that 1% edge case scenario, that means you're substantially sidelining your potential against 99% of the game (or words to that effect). So ... yeah. For Controllers, I consider +Defense and the complimentary -ToHit to be "nice to have" but nowhere NEAR as necessary to have as on other Archetypes who lack the mez power(s) to neutralize $Targets as effectively.

Even something as simple as -1 MAG per Human form shield would go a LONG WAY towards making the bubble shields more attractive for Human form ... even if you have Light Form available and don't "need" the extra Resistance of running the shields due to the 85% hardcap. Of course, being able to keep your Human form shields toggled ON while in Nova and Dwarf forms (and Light Form, obviously) would make for a very large Quality of Life improvement(!) as well as creating "unique looks" for some Kheldians who could form shift and keep their bubbles up on themselves.

Heh. You can have him back in the LRSF, but it's the PCs that kill him, not Darrin Wade ...

Agreed. 😇

Why would (bat)Manticore "have to be brought back from a very dark place" ...? (bat)Manticore was already something of a Vigilante. Turn the Alignment wheel just a little bit more and he could turn Villain ... and wouldn't THAT be interesting to see!

Change ALL Peacebringer KnockBACK to instead be KnockUP. That way, Peacebringers are not "forced" into paying a "Knockback Slot Tax" on builds that are already STARVED for slots due to all the extra powers that need to be slotted up in Nova and Dwarf forms to make those forms "viable" (per se). It's bad enough that Tri-form Peacebringers need to spend very nearly HALF of their additional slots on form powers ... but then to saddle them with a "Knockback Slot Tax" ON TOP OF THAT is just adding insult to injury. Would be really nice to test to see if altering their totally (fixed) RNG based Knock* effects could instead be modulated to be a sliding scale dependent on Accuracy so as to allow Players to influence their Knock* chances through their build strategies. Peacebringers would make an almost ideal "road test" candidate for this kind of update to their powers, and if the methods used are successful, the worst thing that could happen is that other Archetypes will start clamoring to have the exact same thing(s) done to them next (boo hoo!). Just about the only thing that could possibly be done to relieve the Slot Crunch™ that Tri-form builds labor under (for both Peacebringers and Warshades) would be somehow cross-linking the number of slots that Form Powers have to the actual Form POWERs themselves. Have 1 slot in Nova Form and all of your Nova Form powers have 1 slots in them. Have 6 slots in Nova Form and all of your Nova Form powers (now) have 6 slots in each of them ... courtesy of slotting up Nova Form. A sort of "a slot here adds slots there" type of functionality, which to my knowledge is completely unsupported by the City of Heroes game engine elements governing this part of the game system.

PBAoE is a Target AoE with Range = 0 ...

The only way to add Statesman content to the game, without opening up an array of cans of tentacles, would be to do it ALL as Flashbacks. Pillar of Ice & Flame type of stuff (and all that). That way, you GO BACK to when Statesman was alive (before the whole Who Will DERP? arc) and have "adventures" involving Statesman "back then" without upsetting the (misfired) canon of Who Will DERP? As for "converting" Tyrant/Marcus Cole ... via import/naturalization to Paragon City (and thus abandoning Praetoria) ... that is a SERIOUSLY BAD IDEA. For one thing, Lord Recluse would never stand for it ("YOU KILLED ME!" being a powerful motivation, for starters), and he would never be "our" Statesman. He may look the same, but it makes about as much sense as letting the Reichsman fill in for Statesman. Just Say NO.

Even if it's just an ALTERNATE animation available through the Costume Editor. Where's my +billions button for this option?