PoptartsNinja

Elaborate?

Some other things to consider is power slotting, and what you're choosing to slot. You don't need to six-slot everything right out of the gate; but maximizing the benefits you're getting for your slots is important. And some things feel more or less important than they actually are. Some general slotting tips: - basic (non-set) IOs don't provide much benefit below level 25. At 25 they're slightly worse than an SO, while 30 and 35 are slightly better than SOs. - Sets can be hit with Enhancement Catalysts, which means they will grow with you. Their benefits will increase as you level, making them more valuable. - PVP sets do this automatically, but they only scale up to the level of the PVP IO, so you usually want to wait until level 50 to pick up a PVP set - Purple sets work the same way PVP sets do, but are only available at level 50 Attack Slotting Tips: Basic slotting for attacks is pretty straightforward. Ideally, you want to maximize how often your attacks hit, then damage, then reduce their cost, then increase how often you can use them. So, a basic slotting plan using SOs or Level 25+ basic IOs would be: 1 acc , 2 dam, 1-2 end redux, 1-2 recharge. Harder hitting attacks tend to cost more endurance, and attacks are where the bulk of your end costs happen. So if you have an attack with a very high end cost, it can be worthwhile to slot an endurance reduction before damage or two slot endurance reduction. Defenses (Toggles): Defense Toggles look like they're a pretty hefty end drain, but that's not the case. What defense toggles do is slow the rate that you regain spent endurance. You want to keep your toggle costs below your energy recovery rate, and as a general rule having recovery 2x your costs is good (but not required). Toggles are your primary form of defense. They get far more benefit out of being slotted than an auto-power does, so the toggles are the powers you want to prioritize first. For basic slotting, you can maximize the effect of a defense or resistance toggle with only 3 slots: 2 defense or resistance, 1 end reduction. I usually put in the end reduction last, and it can be skipped if you're fairly toggle light. Improving your defense or resistance to damage is a significant boost to your survivability. Defenses (Auto Powers): Auto powers provide much reduced benefits in exchange for being "always on." As a general rule, they don't need active slotting until higher level when you're trying to push the maximum performance of your set. Auto powers can be very beneficial, as they're a place to put one-slot-wonders like the the Steadfast Protection +3% Defense, Steadfast Protection Knockdown Protection IO, Unbreakable Guard +Max HP, Luck of the Gambler +Recharge, or other special IOs Many auto powers are perfectly fine with a single slot, and a basic SO or IO boosting defense or resistance or whatever other benefit they offer until late game or you run out of other powers to put slots into. Support Powers: These are clicks you use on teammates or yourself, and how much slotting they need tends to vary. If it's a debuff that targets an enemy, you'll want to prioritize accuracy; while if it's a buff that improves you or your team you'll want to improve what that buff does, reduce its costs (if the costs are expensive), or improve how fast it recharges (if it has a long recharge time). So a good debuff setup is: 1 acc, 1-2 end redux (depending on how high the end cost is), 1-2 recharge redux (depending on how long the cooldown is) And a good buff setup is 1-2 [whatever the power buffs (like healing, or defense)], 1-2 end redux, 1-2 recharge redux. Travel Powers Travel powers usually don't need slotting, but it's good to keep in mind that they can take a few special IOs. Winter's 20% slow resistance is nice, but for characters like the Arachnos Soldier that doesn't have knockdown protection, Blessing of the Zephyr's Knockback Reduction IO can be slotted into any travel power. Fly, hover, group fly, teleport, combat teleport, teleport target, team teleport, super speed, combat jumping, and super jump can all take a Blessing of the Zephyr, which will give you 4 knockback protection. Blessing of the Zephyr is non unique, so you can stack multiple of it if you have enough unique travel powers. So, as a few general rules I personally like to follow: - If a power doesn't hit, it's completely wasted. Accuracy is the king and should usually be the first thing you slot, unless you've got a power with a very high base accuracy like a blaster Tier 9. Once your powers hit reliably, you can start looking at increasing damage or minimizing costs. - bringing recharge times down is important, but only if you have the endurance management to handle the faster recharge. That's why I usually recommend picking up end reductions before recharge time reductions in attacks and (click) support powers. - Toggles do not drain as much endurance as you think, and while bringing their costs down is helpful for avoiding long periods of down-time, you don't need to go overboard. Your attacks are consuming far more endurance than your toggles ever will. And this advice is Soldier specific: Combat Training: Accuracy is hot garbage. Which is to say, it's actually a reasonably OK power on its own but it's completely overshadowed by another power in the set. Boosting accuracy sounds nice, but accuracy merely modifies the to ToHit roll and it has some pretty hefty diminishing returns. Boosting ToHit directly is significantly stronger; so Tactical Training: Leadership is superior to CT:A and boosts the ToHit of your entire team making everyone better at doing damage. TT:L with nothing slotted at all provides more benefit than CT:A does with an SO slotted. The Soldier leadership toggles are all very strong. The weakest one is Assault. Edit: And for build planning, I definitely recommend looking into Mids' Reborn. It's a standalone app that's set up for CoH Homecoming and lets you pick powers at the levels they unlock in game, add slots, and see directly how adding accuracy, damage, and etc. boosts what you're doing. Even if you don't use it to plan a build, being able to see if any of your upcoming powers are huge end-hogs or have unusually long recharge times or do a lot of damage can be helpful.

Because aside from the two sets with re-applying sleep patches or hyper-niche endgame use cases, sleep is only useful in team play as an interrupt. The goal isn't to make sleep better across the board, it's to make sleep powers more attractive to use in team play without removing its current use-cases.

I've been mulling over ways to improve sleep. Before we can do that, I think it's important to recognize what sleep is, so that we can identify its strengths and weaknesses more clearly. Sleep is a Fragile Hold, that both completely shuts down an enemy but also breaks immediately on any form of damage. Because it is fragile, sleep tends to have a longer inherent duration than other control types. Sleep also sometimes has a higher base magnitude than other control types, and sleep magnitudes stack. The only thing I’m not personally clear on is whether or not sleep stacks linger for the full duration even if the target wakes up early, or if they’re lost entirely if the target gets woken up. Experience tells me that the latter is probably true, but I could be wrong so I don’t want to make any assertions. General Assumptions about a possible Sleep Buff - I believe any buff to sleep should be focused on improving its performance in a team environment without making it significantly better or worse for soloists. This means we should be able to buff sleeps without negatively impacting their current magnitudes, but that their durations could need fine-tuning. - I believe any buff to sleep shouldn’t remove or hinder any of sleep’s current strengths. - I believe any buffs we give players should also benefit mobs. This helps combat power creep and could make sleeps a more attractive tool for mobs as well. Sleep’s strengths: - Stops incoming damage while active - Interrupts player toggles, clears most NPC “toggles” - Stacks magnitude from all sources - Long duration Sleep’s weaknesses: - 100% binary, it’s either working or it isn’t and it stops working the moment a mob takes any damage no matter how small. - It’s rendered almost completely useless by the caster’s own Interface DoT procs, which I feel is aberrant behavior. - Situationally useful, but the situations where it’s useful are only slightly less rare than the situations where Phase Shift is useful. So, let’s run through some ideas real quick, starting from the (seemingly) simple and increasing in complexity. Suggestion 1) Increase the Waking Threshold This one’s pretty straightforward: damaging hits that do less than a certain amount of damage no longer wake the target. Whether this is percentage max HP based or just flat is up in the air, but I favor percentages because it means you can adjust things to make certain enemies, enemy groups, or even player ATs vulnerable to sleep without putting an actual hole in their status protections. For example: Sentinels could have a very low sleep threshold so even a small hit is likely to wake them up; while Tanks and Avs are beefy and might require a much harder bonk to wake. CoT Demons, Freak Tanks, Nemesis Automatons, Malta’s robots, and Carnie Strongmen don’t really feel pain so they might also take a pretty strong hit to wake up, but pain-adverse Rikti, cowards like Maestro, or the hyper-vigilant Warriors might wake at the slightest pinprick. Either way, against most enemies at level 50, we’re looking for hits that deal less than 20 to 35 damage to not break sleep; which means most player damage auras, caltrops, and immob DoTs won’t do the trick, but a proc bomb sure will. Positives: - “Chip damage” like weak AoE dots, most immobilize powers, and player damage auras will probably no longer break sleep. - This fixes the aberrant relationship between damaging sleeps and Interface procs, as that damage will always be well below the wake-up threshold. - Allows certain ATs, enemies, or enemy groups to be made stronger or weaker against sleep, situationally without relying on direct sleep resistance. Negatives: - Doesn’t actually change that much, but allows AoE immobs to deal their damage rather than being “wasted” if cast on sleeping targets. - Some powers like Rain of Fire/Ice won’t wake enemies when they probably should. - Will almost certainly necessitate a reduction in sleep duration to avoid weird edge cases where spawns could be soloed in relative safety with a fast recharging long-duration sleep and a damage aura. Suggestion 2) Wake-Up Hit This suggestion is straightforward too: the hit that wakes the target crits for some extra damage. This could function either like the Assault Radial Hybrid where the damage received is proportionate to the power breaking sleep, or like Storm Cell where a flat amount of extra damage is dealt. Percentage damage would make sleep more useful as a set-up tool, giving tactical options to stalkers and blasters trying to maximize assassin strike or snipe damage; while flat damage would be more consistent and mean throwing a sleep into a rain of fire wouldn’t just be a waste of end. The wake-up hit would probably need some sort of lockout period, somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds, to keep re-applying sleep patches like Static Field and Sleep Grenade from turning into damage monsters if thrown onto caltrops or whatever else. A wake-up hit triggering once or twice over the course of a sleep patch’s entire duration seems reasonably fair. Positives: - Flat damage on a wake-up is probably pretty easy to implement. - Makes breaking sleeps a little more fun for all parties involved, without breaking any molds. - Very fair to mobs, especially If percentage damage is used. Mobs could deal some surprising burst damage to a slept player if a strong attack breaks a sleep. Negatives: - Percentage damage on wake-up could be tricky to code. - The lockout period could still result in “wasted” endurance if the sleep recharges more quickly than the wake-up proc can trigger. - Doesn’t make sleeps better for control. - Doesn’t fix the Interface problem. Suggestion 3) Sleep into Coma Instead of doing damage on break, Sleep could instead apply two magnitudes: sleep as it is now, and a coma magnitude that does nothing until it reaches a certain magnitude and then transforms into a hold. The exact magnitude would need to be balanced, but as a rough example: After achieving coma magnitude 12, the next sleep would clear the coma magnitude and instead apply a mag 4 hold. The exact amount of coma magnitude could then be balanced by powerset, but ideally a solo mind controller would be able to score comas on the regular. This would make stacking sleeps—or parties with multiple sources of sleep—more helpful as part of a control rotation. This would also open up a fun debuff which could be added to existing buff/debuff sets, or even as a lingering effect that happens if a sleep is broken by damage: Lethargic: A lethargic mob gains coma magnitude more quickly. Positives - Makes sleep better as a form of control. - Breaking sleeps early giving the target the lethargy debuff would make stacking coma magnitude easier, making breaking a sleep beneficial for control in a team setting. - More status options is always fun, especially if they’re niche. - If the code to convert one CC type into another works, then theoretically any CC could be converted into a hold for Hami-fighting purposes which could open some fun doors for controllers and dominators. Negatives - Probably tricky to program. - Stacking magnitude is difficult for enemies to take advantage of, so this is unfair to mobs. Mob sleeps would probably need higher coma magnitudes to compensate. - Doesn’t fix the Interface problem. - Might necessitate the addition of coma resistance but since coma does nothing on its own, normal hold resistance is probably plenty. Suggestion 4) “Loud” and “Quiet” powers This is similar to suggestion #1. Powers would essentially be split into 3 categories: “Loud” powers would always break sleep. These are your nukes, your snipes, your ‘extreme’ damage bops, or most anything with a knockback/knockdown component. Normal powers would instead have a percentage chance to break sleep, with the percentage to-be-determined (75%?). “Quiet” powers would either never break sleep, or have a very low chance (10%?) to break sleep. These would be the more subtle powers like other damaging sleep powers, mind probe and subdue/subdual, beanbag (and the other blaster primary controls), dissonant whispers, and etc. This would turn sleep into a tactical tool that a skilled party could play around; and would open the door for extra status effects that could be added to buff/debuff power sets, such as: Numb (Soothed?): A target with the numb (or soothed) debuff has a reduced sense of pain, and would either treat attacks from normal powers as attacks from a quiet power for the purposes of breaking sleep, or would have the sleep break % reduced significantly for normal and quiet powers. This would be a great addition to empathy, healing aura (or even absorb pain) could apply the soothed debuff to enemies without breaking the power curve. Agony: An agonized target has a heightened sense of pain, and treats all attacks as ‘loud’ hits for the purposes of breaking sleep—so sleep would function as it does now. Agony could be potentially used as both a buff and a debuff, and would be a fun addition to Pain Domination to protect the party from sleep or (if wake-up hits are a thing) as a debuff for enemies to guarantee wake-up damage or potentially even increase its frequency. Positives - Makes sleep better as a form of control. - More status options is always fun, especially if they’re niche. - Giving the devs control over whether certain powers do or don’t break sleep is another interesting balance tool. Higher-damage sets could be given more ‘loud’ powers, while lower damage or more subtle sets (like psi blast) could be given more quiet attacks to compensate. - DoTs and interface procs could all be flagged as quiet, allowing them to work without breaking sleep functionality. - Certain procs (like knockdowns or purple damage procs) could be made loud to force wake-ups - Fair to mobs as they could have loud or quiet powers too. Negatives - Adding tags to existing powers would be time consuming. - Runs the risk of a powers with obnoxious sound effects (like the entirety of sonic blast) breaking kayfabe if they’re not made loud by default. I think any one of these suggestions would be pretty reasonable, but I could also see a combination of them working well. Wake-up hits are exciting and allow for team combo play; and combining them with something that fixes the aberrant relationship between damaging interfaces and mesmerize (and other damaging sleeps) would be great. What are your thoughts on sleep? How would you improve it, if you had carte blanche to change it in a way that benefitted both player characters and enemy mobs?

Pet SJ isn't the same as player SJ, it's almost exclusively for covering vertical distance and they only use it if they can't find a valid path to a walkable place you've asked them to stand (like the top of a street light). I discounted Pet SJ entirely because it doesn't grant them any extra movement speed. Mobs don't jump unless they have to.

As long as there are powersets with powers that rely on ground contact, Group Fly will be disruptive. The fact that there's no way to correct an oversight in the middle of a raid or other content is a genuine problem. Disabling it really needs to be a full menu option or a slash command. I do like the idea of pets inheriting a travel power when their player picks one up. Either fly if their owner chooses fly, or maybe a special teleport that automatically teleports them to their owner if they're more than X feet away for y amount of time and don't have an active target. Then group fly could be phased out in favor of something else.

We do, but the idea is: making SOs levelless with a flat 33% bonus reduces some of the overall complexity that's built up over the years. I feel that makes SOs kinder to new players, because the situation changes from: "Get enhancement, put it in power--immediately level and enhancement gets worse (or stops working), making it harder to tell if it's giving much benefit or if enhancing is even worthwhile." to: "Get enhancement, put it in power. Is it any good? Well, even if it isn't, it's not making things worse." Edit: SOs losing their effect also makes them feel like a complete waste of time and whatever currency used to buy one. This is especially bad since you can spend merits on SOs. If SOs were levelless, that inf/merit expenditure wouldn't be the total newbie trap it is currently.

Honestly, my wish for SOs would be to make them evergreen. Levelless. Reduce or remove their drop rate, keep them purchasable, remove their scaling (So no more +1/+2/+3; or require boosters to scale them). You get an SO and you slot it for a 33% benefit, but if you want better you have to look into sets or acquire boosters. The problem with this is it removes value from the basic crafted IOs, so we need to think of something else to do with those. Like merging all the IOs below level 50 into SOs, which gives another venue for acquiring SOs instead of drops. So you can buy or craft SOs that provide decent benefits while leveling; and keep the worse-scaling but stronger at level 50 basic IOs for people who want to make endgame builds and the like. It'll never happen, but SOs are an investment and a newbie trap if they don't realize they can just craft IOs at level 25 that will see them through to 50. The level 10-22 gap where the OG devs expected everyone to basically never have enhancements was always weird.

I think you're on the right track with the tip replacement, but the process should check the level of the tip it's replacing not the age (or: level, then age). If the tip's a higher level than one you have, it should replace and if they're the same level it shouldn't. That way when people level up, their old tips will get cycled out for more appropriate ones without turning into a constant stream of announcements; and then once they hit 50 the feature's served its purpose and they just keep what drops.

Scale up the blue/purple(CoV brown) caves by 20% and remove the layer cake room and they'd be better.

That's a bug that pops up sometimes. I actually like it, and wish a lot of zones would have their 'fog of rendering distance' turned down significantly. Or at least modified by /visscale settings.

I was a bit worried about this so I had to check it in person, and it goes from blue to green to yellow to red. So, not as bad as I was expecting and it's an optional feature. If the devs are willing to entertain the idea of variants for the color-shifting option, a colorblind mode where it shifts along the value spectrum (Dark gray to white?) or goes from a dark-ish purple to light blue would also be nice. I'm not colorblind but I have friends who are. The growing icon was friendlier to the colorblind, so I'm definitely for keeping that as a menu option.

I like the badges, more badges is always fun. One thing that might be worth considering in the future, if you really want to track (and reward) which ATs get used and which don't: Give the ATs a primary, secondary, and (maybe) a tertiary role. Then have the roles 'fill in.' So if you have one controller on the team, they fill in as control; but two controllers together also fill in support because two controllers worth of support is probably pretty solid for any team. You could then safely add more categories like pets, split control into hard control (lockdowns) and soft control (knockbacks/slows/taunts/etc). And if need be, the number of ATs necessary to hit the tertiary could be adjusted to make it a bit harder for popular ATs, like three blasters might only count as soft control but 4-5 could hit a hard control requirement. Something like: Tank Primary: Tank Secondary: Melee Damage Tertiary: Soft Control Brute Primary: Melee Damage Secondary: Tank Tertiary: Soft Control Blaster Primary: Ranged Damage Secondary: Melee Damage Tertiary: Hard Control (Blasters were originally intended to be the off-mezzer in the EQ1 Tank/Support/Mezzer trinity CoH was built to emulate, their powersets have a surprising amount of control and three blasters can generally keep spawns pretty near helpless) Defender Primary: Support Secondary: Ranged Damage Tertiary: Soft Control Corruptor Primary: Ranged Damage Secondary: Support Tertiary: Soft Control Mastermind Primary: Pets Secondary: Support Tertiary: Ranged Damage Stalker/Scrapper Primary: Melee Damage Secondary: Off Tank (because two stalkers/scrappers worth of melee damage is pretty reasonable for tanking team alphas) Tertiary: Ranged Damage (if an APP ranged attack is unlocked) Sentinel Primary: Ranged Damage Secondary: Support Tertiary: Off Tank (because three Sentinels in a team should make for a reasonably tanky team, even if they have to trade agro to tank an AV) Controller Primary: Hard Control Secondary: Support Tertiary: Pets Dominator Primary: Hard Control Secondary: Ranged Damage Tertiary: Melee Damage I know this doesn't really fix the "bring fewer corruptors to Hard Mode TFs" problem, but that's always going to be the nature of hard mode TFs. They're a puzzle, and people (in general) will usually seek the optimal solution to a puzzle. That optimal solution probably isn't going to be a rainbow team.

One of the purposes of this seems to be to separate out Defenders and Corruptors, to encourage people to play Defenders more in high level content. So the question is: what about high level content is hostile to Defenders (and Masterminds, and Kheldians)?

I suspect the reason why Defenders and Masterminds were put in support is because they're comparatively rare, while a lot of teams run a lot of corruptors anyway. Which, I suspect, is the same reason why the EATs/VEATs count towards multiple things. I think this misses the mark, because it prioritizes some rare ATs over others. Stalkers and Sentinels are uncommon too, but they get put in the same categories as blasters and scrappers. I don't think this is the right way to encourage people to play rare ATs, but I'm not sure what I'd do instead. If corruptors are overperforming, maybe their buff/debuffs need a slight nerf. If Defenders are underperforming maybe they need some sort of buff? Masterminds are good but unforgiving, maybe they need some scaling pet resistance below level 20 or 30 to make the early game less frustrating so people can see them start to shine? A 'teamed with a rare AT' bonus would be more straightforward than this, and the 'rare ATs' could be adjusted over time (or even per server) based on what server stats say people are actually playing. And if an AT suddenly turns rare again the moment it's not on the 'rare AT' table, then that AT probably needs some sort of buff. I just know the bonus isn't enough for me to ever worry about team comp; but at the same time I know it will make some of my SG mates anxious or not play characters they'd prefer to play because they'd be "letting everyone down" by not getting the bonus. And I'm sure we've all teamed with people who no amount of saying "we're fine, you don't need to switch" will convince to not switch, even over something so small.

I dislike changing the long range teleporter to be 10 exploration badges on its own. Being able to pick it up safely in Atlas Park is a good thing, it's the first thing I like to do once I have my travel power and forcing me to duck into the sewers or King's Row is a frustration. Could that change be made into an Either/Or? Either get a zone explore accolade or 10 exploration badges, so people who know can get the LRT quickly and people who don't will still probably stumble on it quickly?

I love AE. I like building missions for my SG team to take on, and while I do personally have a predilection towards making difficult enemies and combinations, I’ve always loved making new enemies and enemy combinations. My only disappointment with AE involve some of the few things that it won’t let us customize: enemy types and power colors. I know a lot of AE is limited by its UI, so I have a few suggestions I think might be doable without breaking that UI. Power Color Customization CoH’s power customization is fantastic… except in AE, where everything uses the original colors. I can’t make a custom CoT boss that uses demonic green flames; a vampire using blood-colored water in the upcoming water blast; a dark control/dark blast that has matching powersets as one will be soul noir and the other will be black fuzzy original flavor, or an electric armor electric blast combo that isn’t stuck using both red and purple lightning. While I know adding the power customization options for all custom mobs probably wouldn’t work, what I think would work would be power-color presets with a few options for players to choose from. I think these could be added as an expansion to an existing menu using a function that menu already has. This could also give us access to the dark version of powersets that have a dark version, even if it was limited to a default black/black. Rather than being a simple selection, my suggestion is to make each powerset a collapsable fold-out that then presents customization options. For example: I feel that this would add a lot of value to AE, as people could further customize their mobs even if they couldn’t choose the exact specifics of every power. Enemy Type Customization Minion, Lieutenant, Boss, Elite Boss, Archvillain. That’s the primary choice we get to make for all enemies in AE, and while the choice is significant it’s also… limited. We’re stuck at the baseline power scaling, and it’s difficult to tweak the difficulty of enemies. My suggestion is to change the current Fighting Preferences tab to a scrolling list that enables certain AT-specific bonuses, so that we can give our AE mobs a pseudo-AT of their own. To avoid forcing difficulty, we’d keep the current melee and ranged options we already have (maybe changing them to ‘base melee’ and ‘base ranged’ for clarity), and then add something akin to the following: Tanker +30% base mob HP, making the mob tougher by default (which also inherently boosts the power of any armor sets it might take) DPSer Mob gains the equivalent of 1 SO in accuracy and damage for all damaging, non-control powers. So the mob gains a 33% accuracy and damage boost. Critseeker Mob gains a reduced accuracy boost (20%?) to attack powersets and powers can crit like a scrapper. Supporter Mob gains an SO equivalent +Buff All/+Debuff All/+Heal All and prioritizes using support powers over attacks until it’s the last mob standing. Controller Mob gains an SO equivalent of accuracy for all control powers, adds +1 mag to controls (maybe?), and prioritizes using control powers. Pet Controller Pets summoned by a pet controller have +30% hp Enrager +15% base HP, mob gains a scaling damage bonus as its HP is depleted, achieving maximum damage (maybe 2 or 3 SOs worth?) bonus at 20% or so. So it hits hard towards the end of its existence and is a little harder to put down, but doesn’t get any bonus accuracy. So it’d look something like this: I think this has a lot of potential for letting us tweak mobs, and potentially opens the door for some more advanced AI if the devs are willing to go that route. It could also be expanded if other ideas come up, or if one mob type turns out to be too strong. For example, supporter could be split into Buffer, Debuffer, and Healer if getting +Buff All/Debuff All/Heal turns out to be too good. Or if the Kheldian powersets get added, a Transformer enemy type could be programmed to try to use a transformation power whenever its health drops below 80% And while we’re on this screen, how about expanding the ‘flight options’ into travel options and adding the Tsoo/Rikti/Smoke Bomb Random Teleports, and super speed? EAT (and VEAT) Powersets The Kheldians and Soldier/Widows of Arachnos have been left out of AE. I know Soldiers may have problems due to their costume being different, as some people might enjoy making custom Arbiters while others might want to use the mace blasts on other custom characters; but Kheldians really shouldn’t have that restriction. The problem with Kheldians is they just have too many powers to represent with one attack set and one defense set. So I believe the Kheldians should be presented as a trio of powersets each: Luminous Blast 1: Gleaming Bolt 2: Glinting Eye 3: Gleaming Blast 4: Proton Scatter 5: Inner Light 6: Pulsar 7: Proton Seekers 8: Bright Nova Luminous Melee 1: Radiant Strike 2: Luminous Detonation 3: Reform Essence 4: Inner Light 5: Incandescent Strike 6: Solar Flare 7: Dawn Strike 8: White Dwarf Luminous Aura 1: Incandescence 2: Shining Shield 3: Essence Boost 4: Thermal Shield 5: Quantum Shield 6: Restore Essence 7: Conserve Energy 8: Light Form Umbral Blast 1: Shadow Bolt 2: Ebon Eye 3: Gravimetric Snare 4: Shadow Blast 5: Inner Darkness (A warshade version of Inner Light: 6: Gravitic Emanation 7: Dark Detonation 8: Unchain Essence 9: Dark Nova Umbral Melee 1: Umbral Maw (a warshade version of Shadow Maul: / Umbral Strike (Radiant Strike with Warshade particles: 2: Essence Drain 3: Gravity Well 4: Sunless Mire 5: Orbiting Death 6: Stygian Circle 7: Inky Aspect 8: Dark Extraction 9: Black Dwarf Umbral Aura 1: Absorption 2: Gravity Shield 3: Penumbral Shield 4: Shadow Cloak 5: Twilight Shield 6: Shadow Slip 7: Stygian Return 8: Eclipse I feel this would be a good way to represent the Kheldians in AE, giving access to all of their forms and powers in usable combinations that can be added to ranged blast, melee attack, and defense categories respectively. This would open up a lot of fun options for flashy NPCs, let us make our own custom Council Galaxies, and etc. If a way to choose between Arachnos/Normal costumes could be implemented, the same could be done with VEATs using Huntsman, Bane Spider, and Crab Spider for Soldiers and Blood Widow, Night Widow, and Fortunata for Widows.

My personal want would be to give Banes the Stalker/Scrapper APPs since they're more damage oriented and it's weird that they can't get the mace sniper attack; while Shatter Armor effectively gives them two of a power they already have. With them getting easier access to venom grenade, the appeal of shatter armor drops off pretty hard. I haven't played Widows so I'm not sure if Fortunatas/Night Widows are in the same boat.

Can I see it?

All of the melee pool attacks should scale with and be modified by the fighting pool. So you'd be looking at something like: Air Superiority - +10% base damage for each fighting pool power taken, +5% base damage to fighting pool powers in return, grants -fly to Cross Punch Jump Kick - +10% base damage for each fighting pool power taken, +5% base damage to fighting pool powers in return, doubles Cross Punch's knockdown chance from 40% to 80% (or maybe even guarantees it) Flurry - +10% base damage from boxing and kick, +20% base damage from Cross Punch, +5% base damage to boxing and kick, +10% to Cross Punch So if you took all three and fighting you'd wind up with: Air Superiority +30% base damage Jump Kick +30% base damage Flurry +40% base damage Boxing +50% base damage +current fighting synergy Kick +50% base damage +current fighting synergy Cross Punch +60% base damage, -fly, 80% (to 100%) knockdown chance, +current fighting synergy Or something to that effect. Edit: Then let them all grant +5% base damage to brawl. 😄

Field Control Brief Description/Idea: Force Fields as a control set, inspired by early CoH videos that showed Sister Psyche using her bubbles offensively. The set focuses on knockdown effects, but also dips into Forcefield's intangible effect. Because intangibles are (rightly) unpopular, it also provides a way to attack intangible targets (in the form of Bubble Slam); which should be a fun surprise for Council ascendants. Tier 1: Leg Lock - Ranged, Moderate DoT(Smash), Foe Immob, Foe Chance for Knockdown Description: You wrap the target's legs in force fields, immobilizing and potentially tripping them. Tier 2: Bubble Slam - Ranged, Moderate DMG(Smash), Foe Vectored Knockdown, Foe -fly, Special Description: You lift the target in the air in a force field bubble, disrupting their ability to fly before violently hurling them at the ground (combines Lift with a bubble around the target). May be used on intangible targets, deals bonus damage to intangible targets. Tier 3: Containment Bubble - Ranged, Moderate DoT(Smash), Foe Hold, Foe -DMG Description: You encase your target in a bubble to contain them. Even if the target isn't held, they are still constrained and deal reduced damage (non-stacking debuf) until they are no longer contained. (Standard force field bubble animation). They take damage over time as the bubble slowly runs out of air (combining a bubble with the choking animation would be fun). Tier 4: Detain - Ranged, Foe Capture(Special), Timed Toggle Description: You detain a foe in a force field, rendering them intangible. This is a timed toggle that lasts up to 30 seconds, after which the toggle automatically ends. Tier 5: Bolt Storm - Ranged (Cone), Moderate DMG(Smash), -Res Description: Discharges multiple bolts of force that knocks down foes in a cone and deals Smashing Damage. Foes struck will have their armor shattered by the force of the impact, leaving them with lowered damage resistance. Uses Psionic Darts' new mechanic to launch individual bolts at applicable targets in the cone. Tier 6: Cavitation Bomb - Ranged (Location AoE), Minor? DMG(Smash), Foe Knockdown, Foe -Jump, Foe -Res (non-stacking) Description: You create a rapidly expanding and contracting force bomb that deals damage and knocks foes off their feet. Should have a higher damage than Ice Slick/Bonfire but half the duration. Animation should combine Force Bomb's basketball throw with Repulsion Field's knockdown waves in the target location. Tier 7: Wrecking Balls - Summon Wrecking Balls: Melee Minor DMG(Smash, Knockdown) Description: You summon a trio of ultra-dense forcefields (basically: use a wisp model and put a little force field bubble around it). These pets move quickly, dealing smashing damage in melee and potentially knocking foes from their feet. They're most powerful when they can riccochet between foes and should try to target a new enemy in range after each attack; but deal reduced damage if they attack the same target twice (if this is trackable; if not maybe they could get a temporary flight speed increase after swapping targets to make them even more chaotic?) Tier 8: Containment Field - Ranged (Targeted AoE), Foe Hold, Foe -DMG Description: Bog standard mass hold Tier 9: Force Bubble - Ranged (Location AoE), Vectored Repel, Immobilize, Timed Toggle Description: You place an immobile pseudopet that immobilizes in a radius and draws all contained enemies towards the center. Any enemies outside the bubble radius are slightly repelled away from it. This is a timed toggle that lasts a maximum of 30 seconds before dissipating.

I do kinda wish VEATs got to choose between the brute or stalker APPs/PPPs. Banes are the closest we'll get to a War Mace stalker, and Black Scorpion's PPP feels so thematic. But instead of getting a sniper beam they get a duplicate of Shatter that does -res? Also, it feels a bit bad that the PPP mace beams so drastically outdamage their core kit.

I have no idea, I haven't seen CoH's code. Ideally you'd attribute the damage done by the pet to the player directly, so instead of seeing: Skull Brawler shoots Skull Brawler with Pistol you'd see <Playername> shoots Skull Brawler with Pistol. I know it's not feasible, but that's why I called it a wishlist item not a practical solution to Mind Control's woes.

Track the damage done on an invisible pseudopet?

My personal wish-list for Mind Control would be to make its version of confuse semi-unique in some way. Let it stack with normal confuse magnitude from other sources, but let it overpower them as long as it's active. It shouldn't be more effective than the current confuse (Mind doesn't need higher magnitudes), but should grant full XP for the damage dealt by the minions because confuse is mind control's thing. If you want to take it a step further, you could call it "Enrage" or "Berserk" and have it give the target mob an unmodifiable, unresistable accuracy and damage buff for the same duration as the confuse, to add a little element of risk if the confuse breaks due to insufficient magnitude (because suddenly now you've got a buffed and angry enemy). Or just keep calling it confuse and make the difference more subtle. Edit: Then give the single target version to CoT Succubi.