Andreah

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.

I have a dark/dark tanker, and the stealth from Cloak of Darkness raised a chuckle on me. On other tanker's I've taken time to right-click and dismiss stealth effects when others happen to put it on me -- I'm a Tanker -- I WANT to be seen! On the other hand, in practice it seems to do nothing bad. It's only stealth on myself, when I'm out of combat the thinly transparent appearance it grants is consistent thematically with my character, and in-combat I'm constantly doing damage and taunts and doesn't seem to be active. The only downside is when I'm trying to get a hostage to follow me out of a rescue/kidnap mission.

I haven't seen much, if any, "build intolerance" lately. Perhaps it's still out there. I've been on lots of regular content with lower levels, un-set-ted higher levels, and even unslotted levels, and no one seems to care. So long as the team lead is willing to drop off +4/x8when the team isn't up to it, it's all been good. I am interested in new options for difficulty, and think the game could benefit from the one proposed here, overall. One might even look at the entire set of Oro challenge settings, and ask if they might be applied to regular content too. There might need to be badges, enhanced drops, or special rewards earned from them, but it could add some spice and unique experiences for those who wish to do them. I've also been mulling over some ideas for enhanced optional difficulty myself, and may post them in due course.

A radio mission in PI taking you to a Portal Corp gate and then on into a sewer; most likely in "The Sewer Dimension". A radio mission taking you to the AE Holo-thing. "I thought we were doing radios!?" A radio mission having the same Boss name as the previous. "Did he escape the police already?" C'mon, make up some more names already.

That's sad. I've run several kin/ defenders on HC, some very offensive in their style, and I've had great team experiences with them. It goes to show how a bad initial experience can color things in a bad way for a long time.

Well I have a little search-fu, so I can find a few for you: Each of these has one or more MIDS builds in it, and to my (superficial) look they seem fair solid. Hope this is what you need! I found them by going to the controller forum, putting "grav storm" in the search field at the top right, and then in the search drop down, limiting search to that forum, and requiring both words to be in the posts it finds. Then I scanned down the list to look for topics about grav/storm builds, specifically.

When you complete the Keyes Island trial, and you don't get credit for Antimatter because your team didn't get the kill shot on him. Everyone in the league should. In fact, XP and other kill rewards ought to be shared across everyone in the league on a league scale task. Reduce them by the number of teams if we have to for balance.

I have mine bound to the keypad "/" key using powexec_toggleon. Destiny right next to it on the "*". Then I put my personal Lore adds on the keypad "+" using powexec_location self, so they just pop in right where I am, and I don't have to fiddle finding my mouse cursor when I need them badly.

Someone industrious could scrub a very nice QoL to-do list out of this thread.

One of the perks of being in-game wealthy is you can run amplifiers all the time. Having all three amplifiers active is a very nice boost: Survival: +15% Max HP, +20% Recovery, +40% Regeneration Offense: +15% Damage, +10% ToHit, +15% Recharge Defense: +5% Def (All), +7% Res (All), Mag4 Protect (Hold, Stun, Immobilize, Fear, Confuse, KB) It's like being a level higher. One could buy these from the P2W vendor, or, if you buy a lot of Superpacks, run them out of your email item claim. If one isn't wealthy enough to use them all the time, they're very good for those special occasions -- the harder task force, or itrial, etc.

I've had a blast with my ninja/dark stalker. I added combat teleport to the build, with a single-key bind to "Goto" my current target "/bind g powexec_location target Combat Teleport" and I can teleport around while in hide and set up assassination strikes. Thematically, it really holds together when you recolor the pool powers to match the dark theme.

If you look in the controller sub-forums, there's lots of builds. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/16-controller/ You can also do a search by keyword in there, and limit the search to that forum, and you'll probably find a lot of grav/ and /storm listings, and probably some that are both. Sounds like a cool combo!