Captain Fabulous

They were always designed to be a jack of all trades, master of none. A little bit Blaster, a little bit Tank, and a little bit Sentinel all in one AT. Prior to Sentinels they were the only AT with ranged attacks and armors. And in some ways a human-only Kheldian is better than a Sentinel as they get a few hard-hitting melee attacks and a number of utility powers Sentinels don't. I think part of the difficulty in building them is that you have so many options. They are not clear-cut or cookie cutter like most other ATs.

The only time I skip is the defeat all in Black Scorpion's patron unlock arc.

Looks like you have a corrupted game installation. I would save any personal info (binds, costumes, window layouts, etc), delete the Homecoming folder, download the installer from here and install it again.

IO bonuses that aren't unique (limited to one) are limited to 5 of any one type and value. While you can slot more than 5, the extras won't apply. When building for defense the goal is to reach at least 45% in either positional (AoE, melee, ranged) or typed (smashing/lethal, energy/negative, fire/cold, psionic, toxic) defense. For normal content, going above 45% provides no extra benefit due to the way the to-hit formula works, tho it can be beneficial when fighting critters that can reduce your defense. For hard content I believe the goal is about 65% (hard mode critters have a greater base chance to hit), but that's very difficult to achieve on your own.

For reals.

It wouldn't even be practical. Unlocking a powerset requires one power slot, which gives you the T1 and T2 powers if a primary set and the T1 power if a secondary set. To get nine T9 powers would require 18 power slots. Doesn't leave you much for anything else since we only get 24 slots. I built a comfortably-powerful mostly-melee character with Foot Stomp, Shield Charge, and one T9 and honestly it works pretty well. More AoEs would be overkill, and would come at the expense of more useful powers.

Everyone is focusing on some theoretical massively-OP build that's all T9s and every defense power in game and how evil and boring it would be, but not many are talking about the cool characters they could make that would be genuinely fun to play (y'know, the reason I started this thread). Here are few concepts I'd like to explore: A melee staff fighter with nature powers who can summon animals to his aid. An elementalist with fire, ice, water, earth, air, and electricity powers. A weapons master with access to an entire arsenal of blades, blunt weapons, rifles, pistols, and gadgets. A paladin-like melee fighter with support powers. A mixed-range fighter with an Assault primary and armor secondary A Blaster with full mez protection (!!!) A regen-based character that doesn't suck 🤣 It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. If a godly build isn't fun for you then don't build one! Build something else that you will find fun!

By far the tastiest Uty!

'K byeeeee! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Well newsflash, this already happens here. The power differential between SO builds and full IO builds is massive. and the game is balanced around SOs, not IOs. Don't act like this hasn't been an issue since IOs were created. By your own argument, IOs should be removed from the game because people simply can't help but make themselves omnipotent, steamrolling and trivializing content, and wrecking the experience of those who don't have IO builds. Not to mention all the friction of building a team only to have a few people with IO builds ruin the fun for everyone else. I mean, how much fun can be had when one guy with a full IO build plus Incarnates one-shot nukes every mob? Yup, IOs and Incarnates need to go! They're ruining the experience Jack so lovingly created 20 years ago, where 1 hero = 3 minions, no evolution allowed. It would appeal to the same people who min/max and do full IO builds now. I'm not seriously advocating it be done here. I know it's not gonna happen. But I still think it would be cool.

A lot of the weapons don't display properly on Paragons. I suspect the shield won't show.

Their security certificate expired. The guy that runs it has been ill for the past few months from what I read. There is a discord channel you can pop into and bring it up if it's a concern.

In general I find soloing to be a slog, especially at lower levels. It's slow, it's not particularly enjoyable, the rewards and XP are minimal. Just not fun. I can sometimes make it a little bit better by setting the level to -1x2 or -1x3 which gives it a little bit better of a dynamic. But all in all it's not all that enjoyable. Which is why we do everything we can to skip over those levels as quickly as possible. The whole 1 hero = 3 minions or 1 lt + 1 minion was always a craptastic baseline. But with a boost to damage and defenses this no longer is the case. You can easily fight larger groups at higher levels with little difficulty. To me, it's a significantly improved play experience that's actually pretty fun. It's like the difference between Wonder Woman jumping into a room full of Nazis and cleaning their clocks versus the Greatest American Hero landing next to three common street thugs and getting his ass kicked. Which feels more super? And yeah I get that not everybody is going to enjoy the same experience. But this goes back to what I've said twice before in this thread, you have the flexibility to build your character however you wish. You don't have to take all the T9s, you don't have to take the best bits from three or four different armor sets. You don't have to necessarily build yourself to be omnipotent if that kind of play doesn't appeal to you. Which is no different than here. You don't have to use IO sets. That's a choice you make. Fundamentally it's no different.

Freeform in CO was great in the beginning, but over time as they introduced combos, dependencies, and secondary effects it actually became a hindrance. You were essentially penalized for diversifying. It makes sense considering over 90% of the playerbase are F2P and using fixed ATs, but it definitely hurt freeform builds. That being said I had a lot of alts and nearly all of them were pretty fun to play. It was never as good as CoH, but was entertaining enough that I played for many years. I stopped once they started wiping all event tokens at the end of the year. Pretty dumb move.

I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy... 🤣 The thing about people saying it makes the game too easy, it's not any different than what you can do in HC, it's just easier and can be done sooner without IOs. You don't need to wait till your 40s and have a billion INF. There's something pretty cool about fighting at +0x4 in your teens and +0x8 in your 20s and it actually being fun instead of a slog. And that's on top of the freeform power picks allowing you to make some very specific themes.

Yeah, you can totally make one there.

Like everything else it's what you make of it. While you *can* make yourself godly you don't have to (not much different than here TBH). The appeal to me is the mixing and matching of powers to create characters we normally can't make.

The beginning of this video I think is what you're looking for. You get one extra enhancement slot whenever you get slots. So instead of getting 2 or 3 you get 3 or 4.

It's based off of Brutes. I think ranged sets use the Blaster modifier but I'm not 100% sure. You automatically get all the inherents. Travel powers too. And a ton more enhancement slots.

Like the available powers? Or something else?

The ability to mix and match any powers from any set with virtually no restrictions really allows for soooo many unique and themed builds. I gotta admit it's incredibly fun to play and kinda wish we had the ability to do this here (like perhaps one slot per account, but for sure the /powercreep brigade would lose their goddamned minds). It's a shame the population is so low, every time I log in I end up soloing (which honestly isn't too bad because I can crank up the difficulty even on lowbies and it's hella fun, not the slog it is normally). Another downside is that a lot of the new stuff is a bit buggy here and there, but nothing that's game breaking (at least not that I've found so far). In many ways it's like playing on the test server, but even more unlimited. Anywhoooo, just sharing. Highly recommended if you're looking for something different and new. DO NOT use this as an opportunity to flame ND in any way or it will be locked. Keep it fun and civil please.

You must be new here. Welcome!

Make sure you're using the latest Nvidia drivers. If so trying doing a clean install. You can also try doing a game file verification and graphics setting reset. Another thing to try is to put all the graphics options on the lowest setting, see if the problem persists. If not then you can adjust settings one by one until you find the one(s) that cause the problem.

It would help to know what hardware you have. CoH uses OpenGL, not DirectX, and it could be an issue there. Sounds like you're getting the flicker whenever you manipulate 2D UI elements that are sitting on top of the 3D rendered game world.