Akisan

Can we instead get a "no Thread drops/incarnate XP" option in the menu, for those rare characters on a Silver- or Golden-Age challenge run? (Ideally, they have to earn their incarnate powers through iTrials/DA, as it was on Live... assuming they're even allowed to get them in the first place). And Shards do have some nice utility - they're a cheap and easy way to fill out your Alpha slot. Only problem is, the quick-start veteran level rewards are even better utility. If we didn't have those, there'd be a reason to save Threads for the other Incarnate slots. (Also, if can easily get on teams running end-game TFs, it's possible to build a T3 Alpha with just Shard materials in a day or two - assuming you get 8 Shards to drop across 8 or 9 TFs.) (And I do get it - the whole "Shards are useless" misinformation campaign got old a few years ago)

I could see quite a few Vigilantes working with the cops (there's a few contacts that are cops) - they'll still take the same missions (go save this person), but the perpetrators will "mysteriously disappear" instead of being teleported to the Zig infirmary. (Whether said disappeared mobs die, get taken back to a hideout for "interrogation", get fed to Rularuu, or whatever, is 100% up to the player to determine). As far as visiting another zone's trainer (because you don't want to deal with cops) - many Paragon City trainers effectively are cops. They're generally registered as Heroes, which means they do what they can to stop crime and assist the PPD when they need to. If you don't want to deal with the law at all as a Vigilante, a trainer hidden away in a SG base (whether as a raw NPC or cleverly set up inside a training/meditation area) would likely be more in-character than going to a shady trainer hidden away in KR. As for Rogues, they're still technically Villains. They're tolerated in Paragon City (unlike true Villainous characters), as they're ostensibly there to clean up their act and become proper Heroes. Visiting a shady, open world trainer might be in character for their attitudes, but doesn't do them any favors as far as continuing to pretend to be cleaning up their act. As an aside: given the text of the tip that leads to the (Wo)man of Vengeance badge, Blue Steel is less "former cop" and more "Paragon City's Chuck Norris": "If you can see Blue Steel, he can see you. If you can't see Blue Steel, you may only be seconds from defeat."

Scramble Thoughts no longer being Autohit is very welcome. As for my relying on CC and Positioning, that has less to do with Type vs. Positional Defense and more to do with not being at the Defense cap. Some enemies I let into melee so I can either shred or perma-hold them (Like EBs or tougher, low-priority mobs), others I have to keep at bay (most AVs). Letting myself get surrounded usually ends badly. That's a playstyle preference, though, since I like that it keeps combat more interesting. It also means that buffs to enemy groups generally do more than simply slowing me down, which seems to be the main complaint that many capped builds have. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to suspect that that cap is what's being balanced around, which really shouldn't be the case, as that'd discourage build diversity. I thought that was called living off the land, which is a whole 'nother kind of challenge...altogether. The only time I've ever even attempted that challenge also involved a lot of stopping XP - both so I wouldn't outlevel arcs, but also so that I could even pretend to have any realistic fighting capabilities. I can't even imagine trying to keep more than half of my enhancements from going red doing that at normal XP rates.

Crey was updated on a previous page. Arachnos got changed on page 7 though: Bane Spiders (all) got 4 pts. of CC protection, as did minion Crab spiders (Lts. and Bosses already had it), Blood Widows were added, and the auto-hit Scramble Thoughts (-perc, -acc, -25% def.) from the Tarantula Mistresses is no longer auto-hit. (As I recall, anyways. It's been a bit since I've engaged them solo, since I rely on CC and positioning to stay alive, and they're rough to play against now.) And as far as my comment about them having too much CC protection: Bane Spiders, Crab Spiders, Widows, and Fortunata Mistresses all have 4 pts. of CC protection. Only Mu, Tarantulas, and minion Fortunatas are vulnerable (at level 50 anyways).

I'd noticed the bit about keeping tails, didn't know about the holstered weapons. Bug or not though, I do like the bit about keeping my tail while disguised (it's true to lore and in-character - according to some legends, kitsune can shapeshift, but can't ever shift away all their tails). If this ever gets fixed, can details like that be an option at Null or the tailor?

And? That entire arc should have been flagged as higher difficulty content anyways (just like most of Praetoria), or at the very least, not actively pushed by the contact pop-up system. I can't count the number of times I've helped people clear either Chernobog or the very heavy-handed ambush mission (3x player-seeking, door-camping ambushes, and a double boss fight is way more than a lot of solo level 7-11 toons can handle). Sorry about that - there's a few issues/topics that the community's pretty divided over, and, unfortunately, game difficulty's one of them. I'd much rather players ate a few well-deserved, high-end nerfs (like diminishing returns for set buffs, or crippling Incarnate powers in non-Incarnate content, or doing something about Fighting/Hasten, or keeping us off the soft caps, or <rant continues...>) instead of continually buffing enemy groups, as simply buffing enemies makes the game that much harder for newer (or non-meta) players (and really reinforces the gap between them and the "elite" group of players that have mastered - and thus trivialized - all the game mechanics). That's rather unlikely to happen though, but hey, a girl can dream. That said, I am a fan of the Council and CoT buffs - they really needed them! Those two groups were really stale at 50. Not a fan of the buffs for Arachnos and Crey, though. Arachnos was already either pretty dangerous (way too many of them have CC Protection now), and while Crey needed a refresh (they were a slog to wade through, with no variety), their buff felt a bit targeted towards countering Lethal-centric builds. As for handling the refreshed groups, Council and CoT don't do well against hard CC. Holds/Stuns keep Council Lts./Bosses from transforming (and stop most of the Nictus shenanigans), and take most of the buff/debuff capability of CoT Bosses/Lts. away, and both groups go down pretty easy after that. I'll get back to you guys on proper handling for Crey/Arachnos... right after they get off my Do Not Engage list. (They're rather unfun to play against right now - even Malta's a better choice of groups to fight, and they're supposed to be one of the more obnoxious groups. Your mileage may vary, though - just because they're counters to my build, doesn't mean they're counters for yours!)

Yeah, one of my teachers put the following on the board. It does a great job of summing up how awful English is for spelling/pronunciation. These are all pronounced the same: Narc Nark Pnark Knark Gnarque (One of my brother's friends got P is for Pterodactyl, an alphabet book with a lot of silent letters, for my nephew. Here's a reading of it!)

The real painting is "hidden within plain sight" - He's already a high-profile (and high-risk) target, why not make things that much more interesting for art thieves? Besides, it's also simply possible he really likes what that particular painting does to the aesthetics, and doesn't care that most (or all) are forged.

Or my personal un-favorite: The MM who took Team Teleport and used it to teleport all the squishies into melee. As the opener for each fight. Often right as (or just before) the Tank was engaging. (AKA: The reason I have the teleport prompt enabled on all of my toons.) As far as KB goes: There's good KB (keeping critters off the back line, mashing entire groups into walls/corners, perma KD), and bad KB (keeping critters off the tank/front line, scattering groups, knocking critters into your support). (I don't have a good, succinct way to explain why/how KB can be good to a nay-sayer. Breaking people of that kind of dogma is surprisingly hit or miss)

So... can we get half (or quarter) XP weekends instead then? So we don't have to mess with stopping our XP while running arcs? Levelling speed is kind of a thorny issue, so it may be better to offer a non-XP related reason to run regular contact missions (or equivalent Ouro flashbacks) - something like higher recipe/salvage drop rates (either from enemies or from the mission completion bonus), brainstorm ideas granted on mission completion, higher inf. rates, or even a (small) chance for a super pack to drop as part of the mission bonus (like PA occasionally does). Heck, I'd even take Legacy Salvage dropping, if only because it fleshes out the lore of the villain groups.

"ERIS" (based off of Discord), which has (various) users send players to perform crimes for them (some of which might undo the player's previous work). The arc could involve the player being the proxy for 2-3 competing entities, without any of them realizing it, so the player gets to get rich over maintaining the status quo between them (con game?).

Having actually had more time to solo a few of the upgraded Council and CoT - the new versions of these groups are more fun to play. I actually have to prioritize targets against the Council now (including tossing a Hold on every non-wolf Lt./Boss before they reach critical HP), and the CoT has more variety now, so they're less of a boring slog to wade through. My only complaint about the groups so far is the "Freem!" mechanic. I very deliberately put my main up to 13 pts. KB protection so I wouldn't be tossed around - and that's much less about the "unable to act" portion (Stuns/Sleeps do that just fine, thanks), but really about how jarring it is (as a player) to be suddenly sent flying. Having random 20 pt. KBs throwing me around is not fun to play against.

Several other easily-perma powers (Practiced Brawler from SR, Active Defense from Shield) have components to them that stack. Is this the case for Kuji-In Toh? (I don't have a /ninja Blaster, and the wiki/in-game tooltips don't specify if it stacks or simply replaces itself).

Kinda have to agree with this one - between power effects, music (in-game or otherwise), background noise, CoH sounds turned too far down or off, the glowie sound isn't always audible. A separate volume slider that only affected the glowie sound would actually be a nice addition. And no thanks on all the extra noises - footsteps, NPC "rescue me" noises, etc. The game's already busy enough, audio-wise.

This is also great in Echo: AP with the clockwork (lower level = more KB, and Clockwork have an inherent weakness to KB...). (Echo: because they added all those huge buildings that block flying clockwork). Besides, the clockwork might actually survive landing on Mars, so the King could establish the first Martian colony!

(Mostly) unchanged from Live - each room could only have so many storage racks in it (1-3, depending on room?), but each base was still hard-capped at 18 total storage racks. HC removed the restriction about how many storage racks could be in each room (as well as the restrictions for which rooms they could be in), and bumped the storage cap per salvage rack to 100 (from 30). And yes, each item in storage counts against the 20,000 item cap. I'm fine with storage limits as they are, but then, I have a smaller, mostly inactive SG and only use 13 storage racks (6 rare salvage, 5 enhancement, 2 inspiration). If my SG was larger/more active, I'd probably add several more enhancement and inspiration racks. (It's very convenient to be able to pop back to base to load up on super inspirations if a particular AV is giving me a hard time).

It was fun, but it was really awkward (and somewhat toxic) having blasters ask (or in some cases, demand) to not be healed. (I played both a Blaster and an Empath defender in those days, and yeah... awkward on both sides. I *did* get really good at maintaining my HP between 10 and 30% though!)

A lot of these say "eldritch" or "chaotic" energy, so... maybe it rolls a random damage type (and amount) each time? It might be a fun way to bypass some of the resists that the various factions have, but in the long run it'd basically be applying damage against the average of each groups' resistances. (For all we know, there's no relation between the netherworld and the various eldritch energies - these eldritch powers could deal any damage type).

Blue Steel has Vorpal Judgement - but doesn't use it because it would make the fight "too one-sided".

While this would be great to have as a challenge/preference option (I can't count how often I've wanted to disable my level shift [but not the attribute enhancements] while teaming with 45-47 teams), please keep in mind that that level shift only affects your effective combat level. For the purposes of rewards, a 50+1 character is still level 50, so you get the same reward from a level 50 Boss - regardless of whether you're 50 or 50+1 (or 50+3).

You're absolutely right - it needs to be at least 5 keys for proper nerd cred. From my base building days back on Live - knowing exactly which pieces hid things, or allowed the camera to pass through would have been nice. I'd made an obstacle course of several kinds of crystals & rocks, and didn't learn until testing it that A) it was nearly unrunnable due to the camera jumping in and out as I ran the course, and B) nearly all of said camera jumps caused my skirt to disappear (most translucent things did back then, including water. My Sailor Moon inspired quintet avoided IP and FF like the plague back then). And more recently - some base objects emit sound. I had no idea, as most of my base editing consists of me turning off CoH sounds and turning on my music. At least I got lucky, and my base is pretty quiet as-is (no need to go around fixing the sound).

/TA would like a word. Range is an excellent mitigator for incoming damage - not all builds can just sit in melee range and be fine (hence the existence of tactics like hover blasting and jousting). Also, our secondaries aren't "Melee" (all attacks, like a tank or scrapper) - they're "Manipulation", a mix of melee damage, controls and utility powers (designed to keep us alive by either keeping foes at bay or quickly burning down any that do reach us). Yes, melee attacks (usually) hit harder than ranged attacks, and some secondaries lean into this, but that's not the only viable strategy. And this would be one of the reasons why the nerf to Fire Mastery > Char hurt so much - it lowered the effective range on my controls to 100 ft (from 135 ft), which is in range of most return fire (most enemies have 80-100 ft range on their ranged attacks).

Range is underrated, yes. Especially if you do any CCing: any mob you can immobilize outside of the range of their attacks may as well be Held - and immobilize powers tend to be fast recharging with long durations. As an added bonus, AVs don't have special protection vs. immobilize, so you can easily mitigate AV damage this way.

The geysers are still quite accurate (even with SJ/SS/Sprint on), but there is a trick to them - all travel powers (including sprint and hurdle) add some amount of air control. If you hold any movement key while launching or after launching, it'll throw off the jet and you'll (likely) miss. The only reliable method I know of to be accurately launched (nearly) every time is to run up the channel on the geyser, and stop moving as soon as you touch the geyser. (If you hold forward even a moment too long though, it overwrites some of the imparted momentum, causing a miss). With this, it's pretty easy for me to navigate the Shards with SJ left on (for easy correction if I slightly mess up a jet), and a jetpack handy (in case I really mess up a jet).

I'm guessing this would be a bad time to pitch a trial reward called "Mentoring" that gives someone else a bar of Patrol XP? I'll occasionally take the "Choose Nothing" option if there's no reward I care about (of my remaining choices, if on diminished returns). It'd be nice if the HC Devs got tallys on that choice so they have an idea of what trials need better reward tables.