Andreah

We could have group-relative buffs for "Incarnate Difficulty". Council would need quite a lot to really be a challenge. Although, it might surprise us how strong a relatively easy group gets when you give them just the buffs I suggested.

If we don't decrease or buff council, you can still go smash them at +4/x8. But people who choose harder content should not be relatively penalized by that, either. Instead, we could increase the XP/Inf drops the harder groups offer so they're rewarded consistently to their challenge.

I think either their base rewards should be lowered a bit, according to how easy they are, or they should get some love & kindness tweaks to their mobs or some special new mobs added.

Hrm. A special Notoriety flag for "Incarnate Difficulty", or ID. Available to any team leader running missions of any normal kind at level 45 or up. ID can be set to on for any other notoriety setting, including -1/x1. ID set to "On" gives every mob a +14 to-hit, +10 Defense (All). It also grants every Lt either "Leadership: Maneuvers" or "Leadership: Assault" at random, every Boss or EB "Leadership: Tactics", and upgrades a quarter of bosses at random to EB's by default. Mobs give +50% Xp and Inf when defeated, and have double the normal chance to drop shards, threads, and other special salvage. Mission completion always rewards an Incarnate Thread, a 20% chance at a Common incarnate component, and a 10% chance at an Astral Merit for those who qualify for incarnate drops.

Similarly to the Weekly Strike Targets for TFs/SFs, add a new feature to get people to run different radio/newspaper groups. Each day, a Hero and Villain zone is picked in rotation, and of the available enemy groups in each, one is chosen at random. For that day only, enemies defeated in those missions would be yield half again more xp and half again more inf, and mission completion rewards would be doubled, and one reward merit granted as well to everyone on the team. Alternatively, the foes could also be buffed for that day only. There would be no limit on how many of these missions could be run during the 24-hour period.

I was on a radio team on Everlasting this morning. Mainly doing councils. We steamrolled nicely. I'm on my non-softcapped, almost defenseless in-fact, kin/sonic defender, and the team has a good tank and is fairly well balanced - plenty of buffs. Not too many lower levels, not too many tier-4 incarnates. People were getting only lightly touched with damage. Then we got a "Defeat all Arachnos in Bank" radio, and oof, what a difference. We had some deaths; but we rezzed them. We got split as some of our people had to retreat, and others were scrapper-locked on the fight, it was hard and also fun in a good way -- the way that breaks the routine up, but doesn't make you struggle constantly and forever. A little later we got another such mission -- only it was Malta. That was even harder. But again, those missions are out there and they are not easily steamrolled by a pick-up group. A good team leader will sprinkle them in, just to remind Caesar he is mortal. I think some OPTIONAL tweaking of difficulty would be welcome. +4/x8 ought to be hard to run, even in tougher groups. But +0/x1 should not. Weaker enemy groups should not reward as much as tougher ones. Maybe what we could have is a "Weekly Strike Foes" which sets radios/papers with certain enemies to have extra rewards, just to get people to run more variety. Most AT's are vulnerable to defense debuffs. It's hard to protect against without a lot of "emergency" defense from destiny buffs, better inspirations, and so on. This could be tweaked on some enemy groups, too. Maybe certain council parasites would have a defense debuffing attack. This is also neat because it keeps people on their toes watching out for certain tactical situations; as much as we watch for Night Widows and their blindness, or for Sappers and their end drains. The softcap itself isn't necessarily the main issue. I do think the Purple Patch could be looked at as low hanging fruit -- I think the six level wide plateau of critters to-hit vs players was designed for old-style sidekicking, where you would often have people on your team sidekicked quite a few levels below the team lead. With super-sidekicking, everyone is either at the mission holders' level, one combat level shifted above (exemped with an alpha shift), or one below (sidekicked lowbie). I'd bring the increasing to-hit's back down to level +3 instead of level+6. That alone would move the effective softcap for the hardest content down, without explicitly nerfing anyone's powers.

It would be really cool if there were (fun) defeat/xp/loot mechanisms based on control, cleverness, and other non-damage means.

Rotten tomatoes has the Snyder cut at 73% reviewers / 95% audience. Not too bad at all.

I'm of two minds about the clicking. On the one hand, clicking is awful, and you have not suffered until you've bought, claimed, converted, and sold 1000 or more superpacks in a day. On the other hand, if it was easy everyone would do it, and profit margins would drop. 😄

Also, if you run Who Will Die, Episode 4, from Tyrka, as a villain or rogue (https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Tyrka), at x2 or thereabouts, you should get enough hero defeats to get Hero Slayer, and unlock Lord Schweinzer.

When you are offered a mission from him, ask to talk about something else, and he'll give you the full list to pick from. No need to fiddle with mission cancelling, etc.

1. Not if I have to die to use it. To be fair, I never take powers like this on any character, the whole concept is wrong to me. 2. It restores ~20% of HP at the cost of ~30% of end, and has to hit a foe to work. One medium Insp does 25%. Large insps do 50%, and Supers do 100%. That being said, my HP are almost never below max due to softcapped defense and 90% S/L, Negative, and Psi resistance; fire and cold at 85%, and energy/toxic at 65%. Situations where there's more incoming damage than regeneration can naturally take care of are pretty rare, and the inspirations take care of them. Just in case, I also carry charges Med Pack, just in case. I bought 100 of those, and used two in my trek up into veteran levels. I often use team insps, because if I'm feeling the damage, chances are others in my team nearby are feeling it too. I suppose we do, and that's okay. 🙂

We just can't take power that people have gotten used to having away from them. The only practical way to address difficulty balance is to have optional harder adversaries or levels of play, and those have to offer more in game rewards (inf, drops, badges) or people will choose not to do them. Most players don't run +4/x8 Council radios over and over because they enjoy the difficulty. They do it because the reward/effort ratio is better and it's not so boring as being on full-fledged doorsit farm. Give them optional harder difficulty settings that reward them proportionately somehow. I think there's a few ways to address this in regular content, such as, but not limited to: Add Oro-style enemies buffed challenge settings to regular missions which offers an appropriately bigger end of mission reward. Add +5/x12 and +6/x16 notoriety settings, both with some bosses promoted to EBs. Add Lt/Boss/EB leadership buffs to enemies at higher notorieties. Fix the Purple Patch, which has a six-level wide "shelf" of +0 critter vs player to-hit modifiers; imo, no longer appropriate since super-sidekicking. Any, or all of these, would bet set so that they do not change how things work at +0/x1. And any of those would merit a long thread of their own to discuss the gritty details.

I've been on a few PUG radio teams in PI. Most of them want to run at +4/x8 and fight council, and only council. Fastest, safest xp and loot drops, provided the team has minimal capability to steamroll that group. They don't want caves, and they don't want carnies or arachnos. But Arachnos, and carnies to a lesser extent, can be a lot of fun to fight, even in radios. If carnie illusionists didn't go pointlessly intangible (it does nothing but make the fight take longer), they be as much fun as Arachnos. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people build too narrowly, and then only want to fight for what they are purpose built to go against. Sometimes, when I'm on a radio team that takes the less traveled path, and goes up against Arachnos at +4/x8, people die. Brutes, and even Tanks, get injured; scrappers start popping their emergencies. Not all the time, and not everyone on the team. But it adds an element of risk. And that's fun. The group can still steamroll. But you may have to wake up, and pay a little attention to make it happen. Stop only picking out the easiest enemy groups. Yes, there's an occasional team that roflstomps Arachnos and Carnies too. Swap off your level 50 incarnate to a lower level for a while.

I wouldn't say they're the majority, but there are still a lot of people who don't use, or only lightly use, invention sets. So I don't think the game should be deliberately balanced around sets. At least, not at +0/x1. A player at +0/x1, without any invention sets, either solo or in small like-equipped groups, should be able to do most regular content. If these powersets having stealth helps them do so, then that's a good thing.

It does make sense, but I just don't see it commonly being used that way in today's game. In fact, if one wants to do that kind of play style, then in today's game stealth isn't the way to do it -- Combat Teleport would be much more effective.

Yep, I definitely do not play my Dark/Dark tanker that way. I didn't take Oppressive Gloom nor Soul Transfer. Self injury and death are not in my attack chain. I have Dark Regen but rarely if ever use it. Inspirations are better self-heals and dark regen does crap all for damage and costs too much end to use. Cloak of Fear seems decent enough. The fear rarely affects any mobs that aren't already about to die, but the -acc is useful, and it's a good mule for IO's. It's expensive to run though. The set works for me because I have soft-capped defense with it and have high resistances, just like many other fully viable defense sets.

I say this most of the time before I leave a team. Partly out of civility, but mostly so when the team was working smoothly together, whether we were fast, slow, or struggling. If we were killing efficiently and speedily, I'll mention that specifically too -- "Great team, nice steamroll". If I was not enjoying the social element, or if the team couldn't get their playstyle to anywhere coherent, I'll leave with a polite "Thanks for the team, have fun!" Killspeed is most always a desire on a PUG, but Fun is required.

I'm sure if you put in bids on enough different IO's, bids for "2" would fill decently fast. 😃

We went through this a while back on the Discord, and the devs confirmed there is only one auction house which is shared by all the Homecoming servers.

The resized mouse is an in-game, look in Options -> Windows -> Cursor Scale I thought there was a recolor option, but apparently not built-in, and it might be a separate thing hacked on to the install. I don't remember.

I have settings to suppress my own VFX, but "yours" are the problem. 😄

Losing my mouse cursor on the screen even though it's at 200% and recolored.

The problem is that SS ends up being all about how fast you can recycle footstomp. I would not mind footstomp being nerfed a bit, if that was the price for making the other powers worth using. I'd also like to see Rage no longer stack on itself, and also not have a crash if refreshed before it expires. This alone would give some room to buff the other powers. I would also like to see the other powers changed in a way that makes it more tactical on a team. Create conditions that help teammates in some way. Handclap could do something more useful than disorient, for instance. Or let the single target attacks put a stacking vulnerability of some sort on the foes. Like very small aoe or cone knockdowns. Damage the one target hit, knock that one target down, and then also possibly any standing next to it.

I have three notable tanker experiences on HC. 1. Inv/SS -- Iconic tanker with a lot of the VFX on minimal. Superjump for travel, Mighty Judgment. I don't like the Rage mechanic, but it did well enough even when I chose to skip using it. Fun to stomp, throw boulders, and occasionally hand-clap (KB->KD). Almost impossible to kill, but some enemy groups can be a problem -- I'm looking at you, Psi. Careful slotting can limit those weaknesses. 2. SR/SJ -- Positional defenses comfortably above the incarnate soft cap, defense debuff resistance, and slotted resistance plus scaling resistance result in outstanding survivability. Very mobile with a clean natural-origin style. Doesn't require a travel power if run speed is slotted for and athletic/ninja run is used. Survives stuff that makes my Inv tanker cry. And yet, defense is chancy -- it's good to have emergency buttons. I always keep large/super health & resistance insps on hotkey for those moments when big hits get through or are unavoidable. A great herding tanker. Combat jump, keeping sprint on, SR's basic mobility, all add to make a tanker who can momentarily rush ahead and get back to the group with adds in tow before most people know you slipped away. No need to jump up and down and tell people to "wait here" while you go herd. Herding is on the go. 3. Dark/Dark -- Thematic beauty. Can slot for defense soft-cap and has high resistances to most everything. KB is an issue, but again, slotting fixes it. Mine is a hover-tank, with teleport for travel, has combat teleport for instant herding, and Fold Space for crowd collection & scatter undoing. The constant damage aura means I can keep aggro while momentarily reflect and pan the camera around to keep an eye on what's next. This is the most fun of the three for me, so far.