Redlynne

Actually, if the Turret is meant to be a DISPOSABLE aggro magnet, the recharge time on the power ought to be reduced to something like 20-30 seconds, just so it will have SOME uptime (at all).

The only thing that would be reasonable would be attempting to copy/paste the Malta Turrets that get summoned into the parameters for the power. If THEY can do it, then WE ought to be able to have the same performance profile.

Okay, I've told this story to people who know me (and who know just how thoroughly I can "break" game systems), but I haven't shared it on these forums yet. Some 20 or so years ago I came up with the most absolutely game breaking power that ANYONE had ever seen in a Champions character build ... and even now, I can describe it to people who know the Champions system and just watch their jaws do this ... ... and then I tell them that in the context of the overall character build I put the power into ... IT ONLY COST 1 CHARACTER POINT TO GET THE POWER. And it's at this point that I figure I've got the attention of every Player who has ever played Champions. Because the power that I created ... was called ... PRATFALL ... I'm pulling this from memory, so if the numbers don't add up exactly right, it's only because it's been a while since I had this written up on a character sheet. So the Pratfall power was made for comedic effect(!) and it basically became the ULTIMATE POWER that the GM wound up being helpless against simply because it was just too flipping useful in too wide a range of circumstances. Even the other Players in the campaign started getting in on the act and ganging up on the GM with offering ways for my character to use Pratfall to foil the GM. Pratfall became the commonly agreed upon most powerful power anyone had ever seen or could possibly use ... even though it only cost 1 character point. Pratfall was basically this as far as the game mechanics were concerned: 1" Running movement Usable Against Others(!) Ranged(!) Variable Advantage(!) = 15 Active Points The way the power worked was that my character could make anything "not nailed down" (and not flying/swimming/etc.) move involuntarily for a SHORT distance (up to 1" of movement as specified by the power) ... however I argued that I didn't need a target to "move that far" to trip over their own feet and simply "fall down" where they were. It was designed as a comedy power. MY power makes my enemy (or enemies) simply fall down where they stand ... because it MAKES THEM PRATFALL on "command" by my character. The REAL kicker though was the Variable Advantage. The reason why is because the base cost of Running was SO CHEAP (at only 1" of movement) that you can then afford to have a HUGE Variable Advantage ... which then lets you get up to ALL KINDS OF TOMFOOLERY with the power. I could make it an AoE. I could make it an AoE with a hole in the middle(!). I could make it an AoE with a Personal Immunity(!). I could make the power Sticky so as to make additional targets Pratfall if they stumbled into each other. I could give the power Variable Effects so as to increase the comedy value ... such as having a bowling alley bowling ball sound and pin strike sound when they fell down. I could give the power multiple stacks of Ranged in order to be able to "reach" far enough to a distant target. I could (and quite often did!) give the power Fully Invisible Power Effects(!) so that no one would KNOW that it was MY power that was making them Pratfall(!). I could make the power Autofire(!) with the potential for Way Too Many Hits and make affected targets cartoon flop around on the ground (because I was controlling their movements). I could add a Time Delay to the power. I could add a Trigger to the power(!). In other words ... it was the most intensive TROLL power that anyone had ever seen put on a character. Let's just say that the permutations of what kind of absurdity I could get up to with a Variable Advantage that large was for all intents and purposes very nearly impossible to guard against, since I could "tailor" the Pratfalls around my character to the situation VERY effectively (and unfairly skillfully). And because I had a Movement Pool (for Running, Flying, Gliding, etc.) ... and Pratfall was a Movement Power ... I was able to add Pratfall, as a 15 Active Points power to the Movement Pool as a Fixed Slot in the pool for a cost of only 1 additional character point. Which is why I say that the Pratfall power only cost me 1 character point. The GM for the campaign I was playing this character build in looked at what I'd done ... smirked at the comedy power ... asked for an explanation (which I gave, with examples) and then figured that letting me have a 1 character point "comedy" power was rather clever, but didn't really grasp the potential of what he was allowing, and okayed the overall character build ... including Pratfall. After all, Pratfall wasn't a power that would do damage ... at most all it could do is make an enemy "fall down" involuntarily (woop de fricken' doo) ... so it wouldn't be that useful. Once I demonstrated how useful the power was in game, I calculated that I could use it to knock over every fan in attendance in the stands of a 50,000+ football stadium. 😎 The first time the GM started to get an idea that Pratfall was ... too powerful for the campaign(!) ... was during the first game session. The GM had a Big Bad™ for us to fight prepared ... named ... THE WHITE BISHOP. We had been street fighting for a bit (our brick had picked up a manhole cover and used it as a discus) and THE WHITE BISHOP enters the fray. White robes, funny hat, WAY HOLIER THAN YOU PAL ... the works. The combat round progresses to my turn to do something and I ask the GM to tell us where THE WHITE BISHOP was located on the street we were fighting on, since he'd made an extremely grand and cinematic entrance (that the GM was incredibly proud of, and for good reason since it basically put all of us Players ON NOTICE). Other Players started offering possible locations where THE WHITE BISHOP ought to be placed on the battlefield, but none of their proposals made enough sense (all things considered) ... so the GM asked me where he ought to be. I mentioned the manhole cover that had already been thrown by the brick and suggested that THE WHITE BISHOP ought to be in the center of the street beside the now open manhole (that went down to the sewers, and the manhole cover was long since thrown and gone). Since this put THE WHITE BISHOP in the "center" of all of the action where he could threaten everyone equally, the GM readily agreed. It "fit" with the entrance scene the GM had already described and made THE WHITE BISHOP the center of attention. So with that bit of battlefield positioning decided, I informed the GM what my action was going to be ... I used Pratfall on THE WHITE BISHOP to make him fall into the open manhole beside him (and thus down into the sewers below street level). To put it politely ... gameplay had to stop for more than 5 minutes as everyone tried to survive the laughter that resulted from the declaration of my action. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 The GM ruled (when he regained his composure, and that took ... a while ...) that THE WHITE BISHOP was caught completely by surprise by my Pratfall power and he fell through the open manhole beside him into the sewers. There was of course a screaming fall sound ... followed by a tremendous SPLASH sound ... followed by the most mournful wailing of horrified despairing "YEUGHGH!!!!!!!" ... and ... THE WHITE BISHOP was "defeated" ... mainly because he was no longer ... um ... WHITE and PURE ... so he fled the scene down in the sewer rather than allowing himself to be seen in his now disgraced state up at street level! MORE rolling on the floor ensued as everyone laughed themselves silly ... and it took a while before anyone could stop giggling long enough to put more than a few words together without succumbing to the sheer sense of absurdity of what had just happened. My character had "defeated the Boss" of the episode ... by damaging his dignity, rather than his HP, beyond recovery. So of course I "won" the MVP award for that first game session of the campaign. In later game sessions, my Pratfall power started taking over the campaign as THE most "powerful" and "useful" power to have in almost any situation or circumstance. At one point in the campaign we broke into a Ninja Stronghold™ ... THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR ... All of the PCs were in a van and we just drove in through the front door into a big atrium courtyard with lovely hedges and trees around the perimeter (because, of course). As soon as the van screeched to a halt in the middle of the courtyard, one of the other Players asked ... "Are there any ninjas?" The GM dutifully rolled some dice, theatrically noted the result and then said ... "You don't SEE any ninjas..." The other Players start worrying about being ambushed and not knowing how many ninjas we're now up against inside their own stronghold ... you know, the usual. I let them fret and worry for about a minute and then I tell them ... "Guys, I've got this." ... and slowly turned to look at the GM, and I swear the GM started to look worried when I did that ... I used Pratfall on the entire area of the courtyard via AoE radius, with a hole in the middle so it wouldn't affect us in the center of it all. Ninjas fell out of EVERY hedge ... EVERY tree ... off the roofs around the courtyard ... out of the windows of the buildings around the courtyard ... I'd gotten ALL OF THEM within the AoE of Pratfall, and falling down ruined their camouflage/stealth while also costing them the initiative. And with obvious targets in a target rich environment, the other PCs simply SURGED into the fight and it was about as lopsided of a steamroll after that as any City of Heroes Player could wish for. When the campaign wrapped up, EVERYONE who had played in it (including the GM) agreed that the Most Valuable Power throughout the entirety of the campaign, from the first game session through the last, was simply no contest ... since the power of Pratfall was simply too overwhelming for any other power to compete with. Pratfall was a "spoiler" of a power that would spoil almost any setup or ambush or any opponent too fashion conscious (or proud) to "survive" the humiliation of a Pratfall. The Pratfall power itself did no HP damage ... but it totally "reshaped" the battlefield to our advantage in more ways than anyone had ever anticipated might be possible. The GM practically had to go out of his way to find ways to constrain how I could use it, and even then his success was limited simply because there were simply too many ways to use the power to set up all kinds of (comedy laced) failure modes for NPCs. And that is how I made THE MOST POWERFUL power anyone had ever seen in a Champions campaign ... and it only cost me 1 character point to add it to my character sheet. It did no damage ... but it totally changed the game. 😎

You only "need" 59% Defense against Incarnate content. Against most everything else in the game, 45% Defense will suffice (except in situations where Defense is rendered meaningless). In other words, I wouldn't be too worried about falling below 59% Defense for Exemplar Levels 1-21 all that much.

Actually, I'm more amazed that Ninjas don't get Nemesis Vengeance so as to "properly" enforce the Conservation Of Ninjitsu ... ... so that when one gets defeated the survivors become more powerful ...

Yes. Wait ... you didn't KNOW THAT ...!?!?

Warshade solution from a "cold" open with no buffs Toggle on Orbiting Death, Shadow Cloak and Shields (if any) Select $Target ... the Quantum (obviously) Retreat around a corner Starless Step $Target to the ceiling above your current position (so they fall down into Orbiting Death) While Starless Step is animating cue up Nemesis Staff, which on hit will Knockback the Quantum (possibly before they even get a chance to shoot you) Shift to Nova form ... blast the Quantum into oblivion Mop up adds that chased to your kill circle for the Quantum Once you get Gravity Well, you can Starless Step them into Gravity Well and HOLD the Quantum upon arrival and just wreck them before they can attack you. Peacebringer solution from a "cold" open with no buffs Select $Target ... the Quantum (obviously) Click Inner Light Use Nemesis Staff to (try to) hit the Quantum so as to Knockback the Quantum as your alpha strike Shift to Nova form Close range on the Quantum who got knocked and use the Cone attack to hit the Quantum and everyone else as you close range Blast the Quantum into oblivion Mop up the adds around the Quantum that are mad at you now The key difference between these two approaches is the use of Starless Step/Teleport Foe so as to fight the Quantum SOLO ... on terrain of YOUR CHOOSING ... rather than trying to take on the entire group the Quantum is in all at once. Defeat your foes sequentially ... not just in parallel.

And I agree with you. You'll note that at no point did I advocate for REMOVAL of the RNG ... all I advocated for was a means to introduce a BIAS factor into the RNG so as to improve the odds of success via modification ... not removal. More reliable than before ... sure. TOTAL reliability ... well, that depends on a multitude of factors ... including, I would note, level differentials affecting accuracy. Meaning ... even if you can build your way to 100% proc chances versus a +0 $Target, it might perhaps be kind of difficult to achieve the exact same performance profile against a +4 $Target. Possible? Maybe. Worthwhile? Depends on what you need to sacrifice in order to achieve that. Wise?!? Well, that's a judgement call for individual Players to make, now isn't it? Or to put it mildly ... ACTUAL gameplay might contain more possibilities than are dreamt of in your philosophy (or words to that effect).

Careful what you wish for. 🙂 I'm not real good on Cause & Effect ... why is that ...?

Down volume? Now that's just CRAZY TALK right there! 🤣

There are other Trainers you can interact with who are silent. You don't HAVE TO go to War Witch in Pocket D for those services. Heck, there's even a SILENT(!!) version of War Witch to be found in Croatoa if you absolutely HAVE TO use War Witch for your Trainer services. As for being annoying to hear her slurping all the time ... try standing farther away from her. There's a LOT of room in Pocket D in which you can conduct your business/RP. You don't HAVE TO stand right next to her all the time if you don't like listening to her. However, if your feet are nailed to the floor beside her, I know who to give my sympathy/pity to ... and it's going to be War Witch for the way you're crowding her space and complaining about it on the forums here.

The problem with the Numina TF street sweeping is that you're way overleveled for most of them so they're just time wasters of trying to find the right mobs to hunt. I can imagine a ... fun(?) ... version of this being an Ouroboros type of Task Force where you (and your team) are tasked with street sweeping All The Zones and that the entire team gets auto-Exemplared to zone appropriate Levels for each zone hunt mission and you progress through the zones/levels as you street sweep your way through the Task Force. The whole thematic of the Task Force is simply street sweeping from start to finish ... as a team ... but you're facing every different NPC Faction and you're touring all of the zones along the way (minus The Hive/The Abyss).

So it's not modifying your Jump Height/Speed?

That is NOT how you write keybinds inside of bindloadfiles! It's how you write keybinds when you're just typing them into the chat window, but it's NOT how you write them when putting them into files to load. I gave you three links with working keybind files in them. Look at them to find the pattern of what you're doing wrong. It'll jump out at you once you notice it. Also, anytime you've got a $$ separator do not leave any spaces on either side of it.

Because War Witch ... ... is War Witch ... ... and the (nigh constant) slurping of her drink is something that the original dev team at Paragon Studios put in as an inside joke/dig at the developer due to her ... shall we say ... "drinking habits" ... in the office. I first posted this answer on 29 Aug 2019 ...

Numina TF wins the spot of being the worst for me. The time waster middle missions of street hunting in EVERY zone of Paragon City is the very definition of being given the runaround. It's worse now (of course) than when the TF was written because you can have multiple events preventing the street mobs you need to defeat from spawning in a particular zone, making the whole TF take longer than it needs to simply because some event (Rikti Invasion, Zombie Invasion, Pointless Invasion of Invasions, etc.) is happening there.

The game is more challenging/interesting WITHOUT Incarnate power ups.

For Mercs/TA ... stop thinking of the bow as a bow and start thinking of it as a QUIET GRENADE LAUNCHER(!). Trick Arrow is all about delivering "payloads" to locations at range, and those payloads are extremely similar to what you'd potentially get out of a grenade (although Oil Slick is questionable on this point, but work with me here). You're just using the bow (and arrow) as a way to "throw" those payloads rather than chucking them bare handed at whatever it is you're up against. The Mercs "make the noise" while your Mastermind exploits their diversion(s) of attention to deliver debuffs and damage. Also, Achilles' Heel procs combined with the -Resistance debuffs of Trick Arrow can start stacking to rather useful amounts ...

Counter-proposal. Change the Taunt effect to a Placate ...

This is the formatting I use to load my bindloadfiles from the chat window in game: /bindloadfile "./binds/.txt" I simply created a folder named "binds" inside of my CoH package and put all of my bind files that I want to pull in inside of that folder. The ./ syntax uses relative referencing to go to the "root" folder of the CoH package on OSX and then you simply do the standard DoS file pathname formatting from there. So to rewrite your chat window function call, I would edit it to be this: /bindloadfile "./binds/hero.txt" I found this method of addressing bindloadfiles on OSX the hard way when developing my keybind files for my Mastermind, Peacebringer and Warshade builds (in case you're interested in subscribing to my newsletter™) for which bind files are a MUST in order to be able to play effectively/usefully. Once I realized that the game client wasn't recognizing my NUMPAD keys (as being distinct and different from the keys above QWERTY) and that the game client simply wouldn't let me do combinations using $$ and loading other bind files, I had to make some workarounds in order to get everything operational under OSX ... so you might benefit from that experience in my build posts if you're having trouble with your own bind files.

Okay, now THAT's a reasonable response and position to take. This is why I structured my proposal in the form of "THIS can be done with THESE existing components" so as to outline the possibilities that might not have been recognized ... and then proceeded to outline how the notion could be tested for validity in case there was dev interest in exploring the possibilities offered in a way that could be both managed and controlled without devouring unreasonable amounts of the finite resource of dev time (and attention span). More of a "What If?" than a "DO THIS NAO!" kind of thing ... because it helps to have an offer of HOW to do (and test) an idea, rather than just an exhortation to "Make It So!" from the get go. First you have to find the path. Then you have to illuminate the path, so others can see it. Then you invite others to journey down the path to find out if they see what you see along that path. And I agree with you that there are often times unreasonable excuses offered for why a suggestion should NEVER appear on a white board of ideas for devs to consider. Principled objections are fine ... but all too often we are faced with either maximalist unprincipled objections (for reasons that don't hold up under scrutiny) and/or outright bad faith (because it's easier and the path of least resistance to getting what you want). That said, there's the old maxim that 90% of everything is crap ... and that is certainly true when it comes to suggestions! The trick is figuring out which suggestions fall into the "10% not crap" category and then make judgement calls from there as to which ones are reasonable/achievable and would have a positive impact on the overall architecture of the game, even if that impact isn't something that will be felt immediately(!) but rather something that will pay off/pay for itself over time. Code Refactoring is one of those areas in which the immediate gains are marginal to slightly negative (since ideally nothing apparent changes much for the end user despite the work put into the effort), but the long term gains are decidedly positive since the refactoring ENABLES other developments and things to happen more easily/cheaply/quickly. After all, retiring technical debt can have a value that end users might not see/sense, but which the staff will certainly appreciate as they continue to develop and support a product. But every development needs to start with a First Step on the journey ... and a part of making that first step is knowing where you're trying to GO and what you'd achieve by going THERE. After that it turns into a judgement call as to whether or not that first step on that journey is worth taking (let alone that first step). The better you can explain the desired destination and the means to get there, the easier it is to make that judgement call as to whether or not that journey is worth considering.

@Chrome You do realize that taken to a logical conclusion ... your repeatedly stated position amounts to the notion that NO ONE should ever dare to suggest anything to the devs, because they're always going to be too busy to do anything that any of us might suggest, because Zero Sum Game. And yet we have a suggestions forum ... for people to propose ideas and suggestions ...

I made a Gravity/Time hero(ine) for Paragon City ... and at some point I'm going to find the time to finish making a Gravity/Kinetics counterpart that will start in Praetoria. When I finalize the Gravity/Kinetics build I'll post it here in the forums, just like I have with all of my other builds. My Gravity/Time Controller is named Topheavy Gs ... and she needed to develop quantum gravity manipulation technology as a defense against the onset of puberty(!). I've already reserved the name Gravitoned Gal for my Gravity/Kinetics Controller ... and she'll be a "fitness nut" with a sculpted hardbody (and a remarkably similar bio/backstory).

Actually, the REAL solution to Group Fly is to set it up as being a Click power like Inertial Reduction in Kinetics. 60s duration ... 60s recharge ... easy perma right out of the box. Problem solved.