Replacement

Now imagine all of this effort spent on something that already has taste.

Oh I hadn't thought about that. You're saying the white-on-yellow, white-on-purple, etc? That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for whipping this together to check it! (I'm a little embarrassed I didn't think about this, considering I'm in the process of a pretty big accessibility update of websites at work...)

Depending on how hard this is to mock up (is this just CSS?), I'd love to see a version with colorful backgrounds but standard white text. I think it would certainly be playing it more safe with color blind players.

This may come as no surprise to anyone who has noticed my complete lack of forum/discord avatars, but I'm not really fond of descriptors. I tend to avoid the word cloud and keep things simple. If I could choose to hide my character name from others unless targeted, I would. I still change the colors of my UI to match my toon's, while almost never changing my text bubbles from default black-on-white...

I would certainly (make my friends) play a magic character with this, with the staff light blue, and say they're wielding the spooky ghosts of dead trees. Maybe Smokey's Revenge.

I'm not saying this is a good idea, just idle conjecture about what Incarnates could have been. This may have turned out terrible and frustrating, but I muse all the same: I find myself wondering what it would have been like if the Incarnate stuff was all a mode change, like a Kheldian shapeshift. And so the different Incarnate slots would represent templates of stat and archetype. And then perhaps it would be a sort of gameplay prompt or minigame where Incarnation is something you do in response to a situation. That situation could basically be something like a reverse quantum gunner unit - one that is lethal and unchallenged by standard mode players. Perhaps a special rank classification and an aura around a regular unit that flags it to ignore most stuff a player throws its way. So then assuming their spawn incidence rate increases with number of incarnate players on the team, when you see them, that's your cue that at least one person needs to give up their normal powers and role to handle the Incarnate threat instead. Of course, since the Incarnate powers themselves are varied, you might still have roles to fill within the Incarnate bubble. Under this incarnation, I'm imagining you could choose to ascend more or less at any time, but the powers you are granted would be "just ok" against normal threats. Other gameplay prompts that could be done instead. Something like Domination. Build bar and unleash for a while. Or a simple toggle with a max duration lower than its unenhanceable recharge. In this version, you keep your other powers. The only true advantage in this over live is the feeling of a true moment of glory for players to continually come back for.

You know what a good example of cherry picking looks like? Ignoring Dev explanations of DM's razor's edge balance, due entirely to Soul Drain. Ignoring their point of making a decent aoe to last you until Epic powers and not necessarily to be used in addition to them. Basically, reading any of their posts saying "I hear and disagree" and instead asserting... "Feedback is either being cherry picked or completely ignored."

It's that time again? It's that time again!

You could certainly combine Energy Aura with Force Fields, I bet. Nature + Regen. Poison is one balance pass away from being almost melee-worthy as-is. My issue with this approach is that it seems armor-first. It's easy enough to find an armor set and then find support abilities to fill it out. But I've seen those armors before. Four times. While many would be unviable to launch with (i.e. Storm), I think you would need to come at this with a game plan to eventually port in every Support set because that's what's being requested in the Melee (notable exception: Trick Arrow probably feels out of place on a melee support). But then, @Tyrannical, if you remember some of our previous discussions this, you probably already know my opinion biases towards avoiding direct armor powers when possible. That said, your approach to more rigidly defining what powers should do combats one of the large unsung issues with melee/support: Time spent Supporting. It's very clear from literally any melee AT subforum that melee players must focus as much of their time on swinging as possible, which means the more passive a Support set, the better. This is not a good look for a dedicated AT, which your proposal pretty heftily avoids (or at least greatly diminishes).

You're posting bad information and I'm cleaning it up so others don't get the wrong idea. ToF didn't "lose" aoe -ToHit.

This at least mentions teleporting allies (at least now), but I would push for it to have an added line specifying that teleporting allies is zone-wide.

Fixed. (as of a while ago. Just closing the loop on this)

Just for clarity: I assume you mean toggling Shinobi, here? Do you happen to remember what your Ammo Swaps were set to, at the time?

This section, especially the bolded part, is incorrect. On Live, it deals no damage and affects a single target. On beta, it's also an aoe damaging attack. It may not be great, but it's still everything it is Live and more. They cannot "take away the to hit debuff from the AoE" because it never had it.

I don't think the argument holds water that "Total Focus is now unskippable and that is bad." Anyone arguing for "fast ET all of the time, no conditions" -- that is majorly unskippable. Instant Assassin's Strike, regardless of AT? You think that would be skippable? And do you really think the rest of the set wouldn't suffer to pay for that?

You know, 51 pages in there's something I'm not sure I've honestly seen: Thank you for making EM interesting. A simple 1-2 punch mechanic is simple, but decisions add depth to it. Simple+depth is always a gameplay win for me, so I appreciate this. (point of contrast: dual blades has a high burden of knowledge, along with many technical "gotchas" to be aware of. This creates complexity masquerading as depth.) I'm sorry some OGs don't like it that way. But it's freshened up the set in a more impactful way than just numbers and I appreciate it. Source: have been testing EM on Tankers, Stalkers, and Scrappers (in order from most to least).

I wouldn't say I want you to go. Just that any time someone hedges their argument about how we should be keeping the game pure, I'm going to remind them that's not The vision of this server. And if I can, I'll remind them of all the good things Homecoming has done along the way. 🙂

No, @Tore. They never said they wouldn't nerf things. They said they would continue on the development course Paragon operated on. As for the rest of your entire opinion... No, sorry. A nerf down to "still probably the best set in the game" isn't worth this level of dramatic reaction. Enjoy that momentum is now actually more fun. If you really want the pure experience you claim you're after, maybe try Rebirth or one of those servers that have backed out all Score changes, has not eased merit and incarnate material requirements, has no double xp option, etc.

It's always katana. Athletic Run leverages your intensely metal workout, allowing you... Athletic Run leverages your P-60Z training, allowing you... Athletic Run leverages your Nazi-punching physique, allowing you... Athletic Run leverages the Justin Sinclair full core workout box set, allowing you...

Athletic Run is definitely failing to override stance occasionally. For a bit it was 2-mississippi like clockwork, then suddenly it started flickering even more. most of the time. I had my details a bit confused. Beast Stance Athletic Run. Beast stance mostly wins out, with Athletic only occasionally and briefly asserting itself. Of course, I'm not sure why you would choose Athletic Run but a non-standard stance.

This is actually the in-game description and I love it.

Can we get a way to check a server for update without restarting client? I understand this occurs automatically every hour or so, and I understand I may be in a vast minority for wanting this behavior. I play in the beta environments more than the Live environment these days, and tend to be trying to log in as soon as I see forum notification of patch notes. Would be nice to just have an Update option in the dot menu, alongside Verify, Settings, and Uninstall.

Thank you for the Devices > Operative alt theme. So frustrating to have a theme character I can't even see (even in combat!). I did some testing with it including with some different toggles running and costume swapping. So far no breaks but none of my testing was focused on combat effects.

I find I actually want to move a bit, from time to time. I've been grabbing teleport on a lot of my test characters, just getting to fold space, so my views on regular ol' tp are reinvigorated. And I find one of the things missing is minor course-correction. Ending a teleport just outside of range of a mission door, for example. Another example would be trying to veer around a building in two hops but your 1st doesn't quite clear it, so you end up making a 3-hop turn instead of 2. I think that would be more valuable, and ultimately more in flavor, than an infinite directionless hover.

I liked this post a lot more than your previous one. Thank you. I'm only pulling out this line because it feels rather cornerstone (I'm not trying to remove context of your other points): I agree with this. This whole thing is actually a perfect example of it: End of Time isn't that far off of Fire Sword Circle, for example (I believe they both follow the design formula). But the art of it is understanding that higher recharge/higher damage is itself a large buff to a blaster, who doesn't feel the downtime as strongly (they have a lot of clicks to work with, relative to a melee AT, and aren't full-time in range to use a pbaoe anyway). My belief is you understand the rules, like an artist understands their assorted brushes and techniques. Then you understand how to break those rules. End of Time getting the mini-nuke the other secondaries wish they had? If you're going to give any single blaster secondary the "larger than the rest" big damage/recharge aoe, does it really sound like it should be Time? Sidenote: keep in mind this was a late set - in fact, it might be a Score-added set (it doesn't even exist on either wiki!). Judging by comments elsewhere, Powerhouse believes most of the i24 and i25 blaster stuff was largely overperforming. I think Temporal made it through that nerf-gauntlet pretty well, all told.