Kai Moon

Not strictly an i27-3 badge, but Volcanic is now quick to get in Cavern of Transcendence, because of the extra boss type and infinite ambushes added. It was one of the more time consuming badges before.

It's obelisks done, I think. Last run, I told the team to park in the open, and then I ninja'd the glowies alone. Ambushes got steadily more frequent as I went, until they're nearly nonstop after all 8 are done.

On a couple of my support alts, I'm accustomed to targeting an enemy or teammate, hitting a combat teleport macro, then healing or buffing or debuffing. With the most recent patch, this is a crap shoot. If the target's behind a wall, sometimes I can teleport there, sometimes I can't. In all cases, the destination is valid (after all, an enemy or teammate has walked there), but it's completely unpredictable whether the destination validation will allow it. For now, I'm putting my teleport macros on hiatus, since they fail just too often. (Yes, this is PvE.)

Maybe. I was also Everlasting. I was on my kinetics corruptor for that disastrous first run, claws/invul scrapper for the intentional farm run. I don't know if there's a limit on the ambushes, but both times, we stopped fighting the ambushes when we got sick of them, not because the ambushes stopped coming. Volcanic badge is 100 bosses, 2 bosses per ambush, so well over 50 chain ambushes in each run.

Ran again with 7 different randoms. Except this time, I advertised and approached it as an infinite ambush fire farm, not a normal trial. We did fine, farmed tons of ambushes, got some levels, all got Volcanic badge easy. Finished the trial too, for those who wanted that badge, but that took a lot more coordination. We basically wiped on purpose, restocked insps, team transporter, rushed the rear room.

Solo'd a few times, looks like the old speedrun route plus Koago still works. Koago just an added speed bump (insp mail exploit), ignore all other Igneous spawns (ambush AI exploit), rush the objectives, smash the Exit button. So it's only the "hey let's get randoms together and fight stuff and have fun and be superheroes" route that got shut down by these changes. Speedrun or die. "It may need a balance check" You can balance before, looking at comparable level 12-15 mobs and see if things are in line or not. (They're not.) You can balance after, too, but that'll be hard if only speedrunners and hardcore badgers are attempting the trial anymore.

Ran it in a team of 7, some low level, some high. None of us enjoyed the run. Here's 4 reasons I think why. 1. The enemy design. The new minion and LT difficulty is far above existing level 15 minions and LTs. The new minions have a huge DPS attack chain - at least 4 of the boss's damage powers. The new LTs have all that DPS, plus the hold too. Multiple LTs stacking holds will break the tank's mez protection consistently at level 15. Then the team is in danger of wiping because the incoming DPS is so much higher than level 15s can handle. Compare, for example, Scorcher, a level 15 Outcasts LT with just Fire Blast and Scorch. A level 15 tanker can handle that. 2. The encounter design. Before, the lack of minimap could cause adds from splitting. Now the adds are guaranteed, by infinite respawning ambushes with no breaks in between. By the time our 12th ambush wave in a row, we wised up, and saw that running the trial normally would get us nowhere. We shifted to a degenerate strat: ignore the ambushes, push forward with mission objectives, pop insps to compensate. I expect the optimal strat will be even more degenerate: maybe hit all the glowies simultaneously, ATT / rush to the end room, clear it before the ambushes arrive, smash the Exit button. Ordinary level 15s won't be savvy or patient enough to figure this out. More likely, they'll get on the treadmill til they wipe, disband, and go back to something that they can make progress on and complete, like DFB. 3. The team size scaling. Some spawns don't scale all the way down to solo size. The rest don't scale down at all. This wasn't an issue in the team of 7, but when I reran it solo, I saw no solo size spawns. Some single bosses, some LTs plus 2 minions, and some full size team spawns that I completely avoided. 4. The reward. Boosted from a paltry 7 merits to a paltry 8 merits. This would be fine, if rushing the end and smashing the Exit button is the intended strat. Any slower than that, though, and you're better off doing anything else. ----- But also two small things we liked: 1. The minimap. Hiding the minimap added difficulty through UI shenanigans and repetitive cave appearance. Also an accessibility issue for anyone with memory impairment. Adding the minimap is absolutely a good thing. 2. The Volcanic badge. Counts the new Pumicite Lords as expected. Farming ambushes for this badge seems to be a fast way of getting it. Our team of 7 got it in about 15 minutes without trying.

This regression occurred on i27p3 beta and is now live. (See https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/32417-architect-entertainment-contact-hologram-errors/) Steps to reproduce: 1. Start an AE arc. 2. Enter the mission. 3. Exit the mission (mission complete or just leave, doesn't matter) Expected results: AE contact retains appearance. Actual results: 1. If the AE contact is a stock NPC with modified colors, the modified colors are lost, and the contact reverts to the stock NPC appearance. 2. If the AE contact is a custom NPC, the contact reverts to the hologram appearance.

This bug went live without being acknowledged or fixed.

Now that I've chewed on it a while, I'm tentatively planning to respec my defender out of Tesla Cage and into Shocking Bolt instead. He'll still have a solid hold, without the chance of losing Static if I accidentally use it in the wrong situation. Maybe the new Tesla Cage will have a place in some other builds, I dunno.

Upthrust also plays sound effects, while no other powers in the customizer do. This is jarring, because sometimes I have my volume up for quiet background music.

Had the same problem. Ran updater again a few hours later, and it was ok. I guess the manifest just took a little bit to update, so update again and it should work.

Redownload 6 GB? No thanks.

Anyone else seeing this? 1) Leaving the mission (whether completion or just leaving): * changes the contact's pose (default idle pose rather than atease) * changes the contact's appearance (custom char resets to hologram, custom colors reset to default) * begins throwing many "Part Name is missing. Is that right? Using bodyPart" errors in terminal. 2) Leaving the team or ending the arc does not reset the contact's name and appearance back to Contact Hologram.

Now that you mention it, yeah, the control versions have double the debuff magnitude (after adjusting for AT modifiers). Questionable design choice, with procs being endgame meta for defense debuff powers. The blaster version does it right imo. Just feels bad knowing my earth controller will have the inferior versions.

Someone insisted I was wrong so. Blaster version accepts defense debuff SOs, accurate defense debuff sets, and defense debuff sets. Controller version does not.

Detailed info might be kind of hard to edit. I meant adding info to the description for autohit sleep powers. "automatically hits most" should provide enough context to make sense of otherwise contradictory messages (acc slotting, Hit Rolls "autohit" messages, etc). Something like:

For Mass Hypnosis and Spore Burst, adding "This power automatically hits most targets." should be a good enough clue. I asked around, nobody knew what "raid target" means, so better leave that detail out. "Most targets" vagueness also leaves the door open if PvPers complain and force a change. For the other sleep powers, "This power's sleep effect automatically hits most targets." maybe?

Are there plans to update the power descriptions? An in-game explanation should help future players reconcile the parts of the game suggesting these powers have a to-hit check (e.g. acc slotting, no damage on "autohit") with the parts of the game suggesting these powers are autohit (e.g. Hit Rolls log, sleep hits but no damage).

Upthrust plays sound effects in the character creator, but should be silent like all other powers. This is fixed on beta as of Nov 6th

Does "they" refer to the confused elite boss, the final objective boss, or both?

Looks like elec blast will be super fun and kind of OP for a week or two, while lots of people are playing electric blast, and constantly setting Shock up for each other. Elec Affinity was also super fun and kind of OP for a week or two for similar reasons. As for long-term popularity? Shock looks to be the biggest upside, a solid DPS boost against normalsauce +0 radio mish enemies, accessible to both the Short-Circuit-in-your-face or Tesla-Cage-from-range playstyles. But I see downsides too. Changing the end regain from enhanceable to unenhanceable will raise some average end costs for players who already slot endmod. Difficulty Shocking +4s, AVs, and anything else that's hard to drain might keep both DPS and fun factor about the same as where it is now, in those situations. Tesla Cage buff looks fun, but I have doubts about reusing the Static combo mechanic. A bonus only for a specific primary-secondary pair runs against the free mix-and-match design of the other 99% of powersets. Remember the old Sniper Rifle - Targeting Drone kludge. How about making the Tesla Cage chain condition the same as Shock instead? The lower the target's end, the bigger the chain. First, Tesla Cage would interact with a variety of other powers. Imagine Lightning Storm and Tempest procs setting up a Tesla Cage chain. Second, players wouldn't have to mentally juggle another combo mechanic. More Shock, more chain, easy.

Also makes them legible even at small sizes, e.g. buff lists or watching a stream in low res. I never have to pester a streamer what-power-is-that, because City of Heroes chose legibility over, I dunno, whatever the point of making icons all look different is. Accessibility, it's not just for old people! Tombstone, in particular, is already hard to tell apart from the hold icon at full resolution, so rip its legibility in the above scenarios. The sniper symbol on that background color would still be unique - no other power would have that icon - while also being easy to understand in all situations.

A long time ago, the CoH devs had to slap in some hurried changes to endurance drain powers, after they inadvertently made end drain useless in most situations against higher rank critters. With that in mind. * AVs gain 53 endurance per tick. A 25% recovery floor would guarantee ticks of 53 endurance every 16 seconds or faster. * GMs also gain 53 endurance per tick. A 50% recovery floor would guarantee ticks of 53 endurance every 8 seconds or faster. * Recovery floors would slow down, and potentially prevent altogether, the increasing chance to Shock as endurance depletes. Electric blast could lag in DPS against AVs and GMs due to these floors. Worst case, an electric blast user could get no chance to Shock at all against any AV or GM. * AVs and GMs ignoring endurance costs would be in addition to periodically getting to use any attack costing less than 53 end. For example, with infinite endurance drain and recovery debuff, Kraken would get to ignore endurance costs on Spit and Pummel, on top of getting to Foot Stomp every 8 seconds - only slightly slower than Foot Stomp's normal cycle rate. * In particular, Lusca and her tentacles have no attacks that cost more than 15 end. Lusca would be functionally immune to end drain.

Derp, I thought PGA and Static Field had an initial long duration tick of sleep, in addition to the sleep over time. But they don't. Thanks for setting me straight!