JusticeBowler

That is incredible work and I applaud him doing it, but I can't think of anything more useless and it goes exactly to what I've always struggled with when it came to CoH's "tension" between casual and hard core players. Balancing always seems to be about what the twinked out power players with unlimited time and budget can possibly obtain. That's why things like Tar Patch are up less than half the time even ED-max slotted with SOs at lvl 50. There's no point in calling DM or Fire the winner if they are only a winner when all the power cycles pull the hardest hitting attack chain far outside the range of 98% of the player base. I don't blame the previous dev team or the current folks. In a sense this problem isn't solvable. I'm merely lobbying for things to be bent more towards that end of the base. I'm perfectly aware that doing that might mean that under just the right set of 1 billion IOs a Regen scrapper might again be immortal. I don't care, and like "farming" I really don't understand why anyone would care. Besides, think about it. If there really is some hero who has worked thousands of hours and honed their knowledge of the game to such an extent to become as powerful as Statesman, maybe it is OK that they are as powerful as Statesman. We are supposed to be their successors after all, right?

There's a lot about this list I don't understand. Like are these guys tricked out with IOs I can't afford, with things like perma-hasten? It would seem that some other secondaries add damage (fire, electricity, rad) yet AAO even out performs these one-on-one ... I guess, but how could Super Reflexes? Bio has a number of odd mechanics that look to improve DPS. Then there's the issue of damage type. PSI theoretically gets best chance of getting through. If a katana strike and a psi attack have equal damage, but the psi attack is 2/3rds PSI it is going to do more effective damage. Dark Melee and Fire feel like they get a huge advantage here over Lethal in particular, but I assume there are villain groups with very high resistances to these types as well. Maybe not? And I have no idea how to figure out Kinetic Melee's mechanic. But it looks really good on paper. (thanks for pointing that out, Redlynne) I am glad to see at least one broadsword up in the mix, I played one for a while and I hated listening to the katana folks talking about how their set was in every way superior and broadsword is just a flop. One thing is definitely true, there's a lot of poor performers (like ice, ax, and mace which have always been terrible and the devs seem to like them that way because of the minimal mitigation they offer... as someone who ran Ax on his tank I can tell you the mitigation is effectively zero because of the recharge times on mob attack chains.. it feels like you are putting them down but despite the animation of them falling down and getting back up the next swing comes just as quickly). I certainly have a lot more to think about.

So, if I want to hit one thing, hard, what's the set combo? I don't care about speed, end, survivability, any of that. I don't even want to take AoEs, the fewer the better. I want all the other mobs to just stand there safely in terror at what I'm doing to their friend. I want to look at one foe and know that he's about to expire as fast as the game mechanics allow. What does that look like?

/signed I like this solution for a lot of the powers that without them, I'm gimped, but they need to be balanced against abuse. Turn them into toggles. (I'm looking at you Phantom Army!) But this goes to conflicts between play styles. "How the game is supposed to be played" vs how folks actually try to force the sets to work. I don't know that the current team has all that different a philosophy on this.

There really is only one thing that is truly an ED-fallout problem. Some powersets have specific powers (sometimes only one or two) that have recharge times that are BALANCED around the idea that someone might have three recharges AND Hasten up most of the time. They are balanced assuming someone will twink out their character with IOs. My request is that the current dev-team review all the powersets looking for these one or two deliberately gimped powers and shorten their recharge time so that they are "close to" perma with a full set of three SO recharges in place. Things like Tar Patch, which is hardly a game breaking power, shouldn't need every dark controller/defender turned into a speed gunky on their entire powerset and invest hunderds of millions in specialty IOs to fix. Traps has a couple, there are certainly others. Hasten and IO twinking ought to be for people who are trying to develop speed over their ENTIRE set and the costs involved should of course, reflect the benefit they get from that. This is the real problem and the only real problem with ED in the end (now that we have IOs, sets and Incarnate stuffs). That sometimes ONE power is balanced against a completely unnecessarily ridiculous character build, rather than what should be ordinarily achievable at around lvl 40 when base powersets are complete. Don't make NON-twink character PAY to TWINK just for one or two powers.

Naming policy. /signed In fact, after hearing people complain about it, signed, sealed, and delivered. Good lord folks, you got lucky and nabbed "Spiderman" but you only played him for an hour and now you want to make sure no one in the game can ever use the name just in case you ever feel like playing him again. Name squatting has to be the MMORPG equivalent of a 6 year old demanding the piece of cake with most frosting at a birthday party and then never actually finishing the piece of cake.

Yeah, OK. I'm starting to get it. That is, as much as I'm trying to avoid obsessing over global recharge. I might have to give in a little bit here. The number one thing I detested about "Enhancement Diversification" is that even if you only had one or two powers you really needed to drop the recharge time on you were stuck maxing out hasten and IOs for everything and turning your character into a amphetamine junkie. The bonus for acid mortar isn't all that much better than what Sonics do with their offensive power for jeeper's sake. It isn't like the thing is so insanely over powered that it would break something for it to be "near" perma. You'd still have to set the bloody thing up over and over running from group to group anyway. I'm definitely going to look to FFG to provide my "base" assist to the group. I've noticed the thing is a little slow though. Tricky jumping into a mob group and leaving it behind for a few seconds. I'm going to have to watch my own speed. I think Caltrops is more useful though. In smaller groups and with good recharge (assuming people aren't spamming immobilize AoEs) it provides some interesting damage mitigation. It freaks mobs out and messes with their attack chain (I seem to remember someone saying there's a hidden "fear effect" or something in the power). Unfortunately these days I'm seeing a lot of controllers in PUGs (more than blasters or defenders, sometimes more than both). I'm with the scrappers on "scrapper lock" problems and believe that controllers overvalue immobilize AoEs .. it makes them feel powerful but isn't nearly as damaging (or mitigating damage) as they think especially if the Tank is providing good soft control via aggro. The gravity set all but proves my point. I don't care much about damage and am not so much worried about that (except to assist with AVs and GMs). Other people can crank out the DPS. I will say, I'm really enjoying my /Dual Pistols secondary though. It is a hoot. Not sure I'm hurting the mobs much, but it is fun-silly with the animations.

But I honestly just don't get it, but I want to! My wife used devices back in the day as a "once in a while I'm in a fix and some device will help me solo a hard boss"... but as a defender that actually needs to be, well, mobile... the set just makes no sense. Worst of all is the absolutely punishing Recharge times. I mean, the bubbles guys get bubbles on "everyone all the time" and healers can spam heals. What am I not understanding about the mechanics of Traps that made devs so worried about them being overpowered that they were painful to actually use. I'm going to keep going with this build, but I could really use some input from the Defender geniuses out there.

I made a Peacebringer back in the day because I just didn't dig the graphics of the WS and even though it isn't a major mechanic, I didn't like getting buffs from "like" ATs in the group. I mean, my whole thought was that I wanted to be what the group needed, not more of what it had already. But I built a new Warshade and with just the squid and the lobster and the team-friendly free teleport and such... I could just play this as is! I mean, I'm only lvl 25, but I feel like a complete character. I don't even care about going all tricked out with MF-WS form switching in combat to boost from human form stuff. I suppose that will be necessary at some point as high level content difficulties will probably punish me if I don't, but I am having too much fun for now. ...though I still don't like the graphics much. So much of this game is the insane character design options. I rolled a Fire/Fire Sentinel that I hope to SenTank for duos maybe even a trio. He's fun to play. I called him Laphroaig and colored all the flames blue so it's like he is throwing whiskey-molotov cocktails at people. I know I can't ever tank for a big group with him, but wow it makes me wish I had more "reach" when I play my tanker toons. My Water/Time Blaster is a bust. It's just too much overhead to be keeping track of two different systems of Combos. Got him all the way to lvl 21 and love the costume, just can't bring myself to delete him. I'll keep him around and maybe try again in a month or two after I've played some others. I'm trying a Savage Melee/Radiation Brute. Yes, I'm trying a brute again... I love that Fury bar building, but it still feels like an addiction, in a bad way. That feeling of being nerfed every time you run down a long hallway or look for a clickie puts a pit in my stomach. Still, the animations are fun and the sets are totally new to me, so the first 20 lvls have been more fun than I thought they'd be.

I rolled a Water/Time blaster and while I love the sets for their unique build up features, keeping track of two different systems at the same time is a pain. Stalkers though, look like they could pull this off better. For example, Street Fighting builds Combos (Savage Melee gets Blood Frenzy) and Stalkers in general build Assassin's Focus. It looks like there would be a attach chain that would stack the two effects together nicely. What sort of experience do you Stalker experts have with this? Or it could be that the mechanics of the two are just enough different that you are always struggling to line them up...

That not only makes a lot more sense, it would speed things up considerably in normal play. Thanks.

So, I'm deep in Alt-itis again and wanted to revisit all-the-things. I remember really struggling with my stalker back in the day and now it sounds like some things have changed. Maybe for the better. Here's how I used to play stalker: see new mob group, identify big bad. hide, run into group AS big bad hopefully for a good chunk. use placate, hit again with something else big. from then on run through "easiest target to kill" with standard attack chain. hopefully eliminate sources of damage before they eliminate me. rinse-repeat. All of this was always slower than any scrapper I played... so I wondered, why am I playing a stalker? Especially since AoEs messed this whole thing up so it felt like I was "restricted" to single target attacks or at least not taking auras. So I figured I'm doing something wrong because this looks like what a scrapper does, just with taking the time to hide to get a buff at the beginning, and then having less survivability because of a smaller HP pool. It sounds like folks don't even bother with placate now!? So mostly I'm here to be corrected on how to play a stalker.

I've noticed that Stalkers and Masterminds are the least represented ATs I've seen so far in the PUGs I've been in (though there always seem to be MMs standing around in Atlas and Talos). Not one Stalker yet. As I recall I struggled to get my Stalker up to SOs back in the day and then really liked the character, but had a hard time going down in teams due to low HP. Is there a way to get enough survivability especially at lower levels to enjoy the PUG life? What's the recommendation for a secondary and slotting to support an attempt (I'd like to actually enjoy the trip to lvl25).

I love it that some folks can sit around chatting in local and enjoying just "storytelling." But for me RP is like the costume and powerset for my character. It's something I do in process, especially PUGs. I love to add flavor, if I can, and I hope it makes the game more fun for everyone (so I try not to over do it). But I have to admit I'm rusty and I might need to work up some BIND files just to help myself along. Switching from monkey-button-mashing in a PUG running hot reds and purples, to typing in flavor text into the chat box ... how the heck did I do this before? I used to be able to have conversations sometimes right in the middle of a mob group. Anyway, I promise. I'm working on it.

This is the server my family (wife, son, daughter) and I chose to call home. Everyone loves the game and we finally have enough boxes in the house to all play at the same time. (I'm not terribly proud of how much money we burn on tech, but nerds are going to nerd, right?) Anyway, so far, apart from my daughter (10) commenting on how some of the girl toons are "inappropriate" (my wife and I never said a thing, this is more what she picked up from things like Roblox)... Excelsior has been youth/family safe. But then honestly I haven't seen anything anywhere on the boards or the chat channels that wasn't. I mean, I'm not the guy who says, "language" but there's not been so much as one curse word or unveiled innuendo. I don't want to make any rules about that, but it sure is a relief not to worry about it. Look folks, I want you do have fun and I'll do what it takes to make sure every other person playing this game has fun, so if you don't mind this one teeny favor? No strings, no demands. Just an ask. If not, I understand, but I thought I'd ask.

I'd certainly rather have higher capacity servers rather than more servers. While it can be a bit silly to spawn in Talos 3 (Talos!?) I love the intense level of activity on the server and the availability of big crowds that are going to be essential as folks spread across Praetoria, CoV, and all the high end content on CoH. Right now I can get a pick up group in Steel Canyon almost as fast as I can ask for one (though I doubt the same in Skyway City... but who knows). Talos was only a bit longer. That sort of thing is essential for my prefered support builds who can only solo on "I'm in the mood to be in this blue cave a long time" mode (which I don't mind, but I'd hate to spend a whole evening soloing on day I was really hoping for a team). Now if I could just convince people to use the team finder... Anyway, higher capacity servers, not more servers. (Assuming the code supports this.)

This seems to make sense. I get the feeling that a key factor is that -REC. But there's still quite a bit about the underlying mechanic that I wish I understood. For example, if a mob doesn't have the END to pull off a snipe (like a Rikti boss psi-snipe) are they hung up on their attack order or do they just move to an attach they can use? I assume they will just start brawling (or their mob equivalent). Anyway, I've got a E/E scrapper I just rolled up and my friend has a E/fire Controller. We'll slot for -END and see what happens. Fire secondary has some -REC in it as well, so we should be able to setup some reasonable tests.

I had a Electric/Electric blaster back in the day that was a hoot to play in part because of the animations, but also because I thought dropping the END on mobs would be cool. But in practice, I face planted next to the Tank all the time. It was a spectacular way to fail, but PBAoEs are where the fun is at in that set and that means getting up and personal with the bad guys. However, I seem to remember the mechanics of -END really being better in PvP where you could actually get other players to drop their toggles. I remember bottoming out a mob's END didn't really stop them from attacking or drop theirs. Does anyone have a good understanding of the mechanics of what happens when a mob's END is at or near 0?

Yeah, just a little too early for me. As alt-itis is already setting in, I suspect that it'll take a month (or three) to get someone up to join in the fun.

Everyone who's anyone is here now. Even some people that are nobody.

There was a time when the leveling was indeed a grind. Waiting so long to get things like travel powers (while it did make the game seem "bigger" in the beginning without them) and other quality of life stuffs (life before radio missions) did pull away from the fun of just getting to missions and exploring the content... (I'll never forget exploring Skyway city for the first time with no travel power and a slower default run speed. It was frustrating at times, but also it was larger than life.) Anyway, I get why that needed to change. Especially once alt-fever sets in. But it never once occurred to me to "get to 50 by power leveling and then I can finally play the game." And now, with all the improvements so that even fighting whites and blues doesn't feel like a grind (in fact, I level faster than I can complete story arcs) I'm even more clueless. Still I got mad at Statesman for playing a bossy Dungeon-Master-type demanding everyone play his game his way. So I'm not going to be that guy. If people think the game "starts" at 50 then let them do their thing. I really enjoy the journey to get there, even some of the bumps along the way (which are totally lost of you rush things). For example, the first time you have to deal with the Tsoo is a total mess, and it should be. If everyone is lvl 50 and already slotted up with everything before they get there, then Tsoo is just another wash-rinse-repeat pile of nothing. In fact, all of the factions with their unique challenges along the way get lost if you already have all the tools to deal with them by massively overpowering every encounter. I get it though, some folks just want to push buttons and watch things explode on screen. As much as I love feeling superpowered, that just isn't me.

I certainly wish it could be undone, at least partially, but you couldn't do that without breaking everything. The whole game balance and economy is now built on that foundation. Besides, the reasoning (making the way for Inventions) isn't without merit. However, it did cripple the ability to make truly diverse builds, even worse than that, it actually locked in things like Stamina and Hasten as universal necessities just to tweak a few specific powers in each set. Why should someone have to take hasten and invest hard in that just so they can have one power (like Tar Patch) perma? That was the irony. It made every build the same. Even with IOs all they do is give you more bang for your six slot buck. They aren't really diversifying (except for exotics like procs and set bonuses). But ultimately the reason wasn't about Inventions, it was about how Statesman wanted people to play. That is, certain powers not being perma was a decision that was supposed to force you to play the way he envisioned you playing. He wanted Tar Patch to be "every other group" and not perma during an archvillain type fight. And I get why he believed this. But I want other people to be free to disagree and play differently. The truth is, with modern XP scaling taking hours instead of days to level up even going slowly, the powergaming side of what ED broke is probably better left broken. I'm playing on the servers now and if anything I level up a bit fast in groups and feel like I'm missing out on content and storyline in the lower levels. The only reason to break ED would be to "be creative" and "do weird stuff"... which would be a hoot, but not necessary for the price that it would cost to undo what was done.

The danger in obsessing too early is that I'm just not setup yet with toons that can do serious badge work. I need to get to level 50 first, that's the goal (no powerleveling) with at least one toon; then I can think about what a badge-getting machine might look like and how to jump in with both feet to get all of them (that don't involve farming or things now impossible do to game changes).

So far I've been deliberately role-playing up the ambiguity and mystery of it. One of the things I like about the Elder Scrolls series of games is that various factions ("historians" "researchers" "whatever") have very different ideas about "what really happened." I'm perfectly fine with the idea that some people "noticed" 5 years missing, other people don't. Maybe it was an illusion, maybe some people really are quantum copies from some other shard. Maybe it is just another needlessly complex plot by Nemesis. At any rate, two of my characters will insist that something happened but they have no idea what (they are low level yet after all and don't have a reputation or access to the sorts of things that would tell them what happened) and the other character will absolutely insist that nothing happened at all and it is just another conspiracy theory. Let there be no right answer.

I can't help but think that a number of the devs (some we know by name and others we don't know) aren't on already. Several of them played ordinary player characters as a part of the community even back then. I suspect, as much as any of us, they still have enough nostalgia in the bank to want to pop on and poke around a bit. I suppose if they want to stay hidden, then I'm more than happy to accept their choice (though it would be fun to see them again).