Steampunkette

"You want to murder unarmed and unpowered people!" No. I want to -arrest- them. Shocking, I know, but I don't play murderers. You know who else is unarmed and unpowered? Warrior Pankrationists. And they hit like a freight train because "Natural" is a catch-all bucket for people who don't spit laserbeams. Sure. They're not holding a gun to anyone's head, so the arrest should probably be nonviolent or minimally violent, at worst. But they're still criminals working with a terrorist organization whose goal is antithetical to everything the City of Heroes stands for. They do not pose an immediate threat, but a long term one. Every person they recruit will become a member of guerilla army that uses literal brainwashing, evil nazi superscience, and alien technology to try and do harm to the people of Paragon. They should be stopped.

At the end of the day you are a person who values being uninformed and ignorant who is trying to convince someone who has a better grip on the topic at hand that you, somehow, through innocent and simplistic terms, are in a better position to provide a clear understanding of social dynamics... And also do so while trying to dictate my motivations and intentions without knowing fuck-all about me as a person. Is it so blissful to be both willfully ignorant and eager to share it with the world?

Authoritarianism. Fascism is a more complex issue than "Using power and influence to change things" Fascism, specifically, is a hypernationalist right wing authoritarian political philosophy which uses xenophobia and othering to scapegoat minority groups or outgroups for national problems. It protects corporate power while specifically undercutting labor laws and protections, involves rampant cronyism, corruption, and sexism. And works to use the targeting of minority groups to roll back human rights as part of a campaign focused on 'restoring law' by expanding the immediate power of both the military and the police for use by the state to enforce control. It's also marked by a disdain for intellectuals and the arts while doing its best to hearken back to a fictitious 'Golden Age' of art and society. Please. Learn more.

It was meant to be a joke! That said, yeah, it'd be best if they just surrendered into one of several "Hands up" poses or something and then despawned after 5-10 seconds to represent them being arrested.

That part is far more compelling, yeah. So we give them all a pistol attack power...

I would say that the 'difference of opinion' issue is a red herring. Someone can -think- the 5th Column is a good idea and be shunned out of society until they change their opinion, sure. The recruiters aren't doing that. They're hanging out with a known international terrorist army in the streets of Paragon encouraging passerby to sign up for a fresh brainwashing by an army attempting to occupy Paragon City, which openly and flagrantly attacks superheroes, cops, criminals, and passerby. That goes from tacit support to material support, and opens them up to legal action and arrest... Via battle axe to the face.

Did you read the post I was responding to in which kelika2 asked "isnt using power and influence to get your way and force others to think like you fascism?" Which is different from asking "Is the fifth column fascist?" I know reading comprehension isn't a priority for some folks but yikes. Someone proposed a false definition of fascism which amounted to "Is all authoritarianism and use of political power fascism?" and I said "No". Because it isn't.

No. You should probably go read more about fascism from a reputable source if you do not understand what fascism is. I could outline the various characteristics of fascism, but that's not really what this forum is for and would likely result in moderator activity.

Power Pool: X-Treme A riff on 1990s "Extreme" characters and their abilities. Tier 1: Doubletap You draw two pistols and fire two shots at your target. Basically the same power as Dual Wield from the Dual Pistols powerset. Tier 2: Brood Autopower. When you use Rest you get a scaling damage bonus based on how long you rested. Each stack lasts 15 seconds and improves your damage by 10%, maximum of 5 stacks. You gain 1 stack every 2 seconds while resting. This power is modified by your class's damage bonus scalar, so classes that don't get as big of a damage bonus in general will get 8% per stack or whatever. (Great while solo, garbage on teams, perfect for Xtreme heroes!) Tier 3: Hoverboard You get your hoverboard, which is the Rocketboard, Void Skiff, Etc. You do the ice-slide animations on it, and you gain running speed, jumping speed, and jumping height roughly on par with the Infiltration power from the Concealment pool, but with way more slide to it. Tier 3 Sub-Power: Rocket Boost While you have Hoverboard toggled on, you get access to a low-cost click which makes your Hoverboard power also grant a fly speed for 20-30 seconds before the buff falls off. Tier 4: Spinkick You do the Martial Assault Spinning Kick. This is a skillshot power with a short cone. Tier 5: Piercing Shot Long range narrow cone maximum of 3 targets, just like the Piercing Rounds power from Dual Pistols. Unlike the Fighting pool, you do not get a damage bonus to your attacks based on the number of pool powers you have. Instead you get to take Brood. Also no Swap Ammo function for the dual pistols attacks, here.

I'm not reporting it and it doesn't seem like a statement worth a warning, anyhow. Anywho. Yeah. There's ways to make stacking Sentinels on a team better than it is currently, which was all I was looking to highlight.

This is -WHY- I'm saying you're comparing apples to carburetors: None of those archetypes boost the entire team's damage with their inherents. Their inherents are entirely internal, self-contained, and provide benefits only to themselves. Sentinels are the only AT in the game whose inherent applies externally. And that is where the problem lies. Their inherent doesn't stack from multiple Sentinels, so you can only benefit from -one- sentinel on the team. What you're doing, here, is strawmanning the absolute shit out of my position by trying to claim that I'm "Only talking about the inherents of all the classes" which is not what I'm doing. My argument is that the Sentinel's inherent makes it worse to have more than one of them on your team instead of picking up pretty much any other AT there is. That their inherent not stacking with other sentinels makes two sentinels a weaker choice than one sentinel and any other DPS AT in the game.

You are comparing apples to carburetors. Yes. The inherent of a MM or a VEAT or a Blaster or any number of other classes does nothing for the team. The Sentinel's, SPECIFICALLY, does. And only one of them can provide their benefit on a hard target at a time. Which makes additional Sentinels redundant. "But they can do damage!" So can ANY OTHER ARCHETYPE while also bringing Crits, Fury, Domination, or in the case of VEATs their built in AoE buffs to the entire team. A Dominator brings more damage to the fight than a second Sentinel. Which is BIZARRE since Dominators have a lower damage scalar. Sentinel Energy Blast at 50 Power Bolt: 61.17 Power Blast: 100.32 Power Burst: 129.69 Focused Power Bolt: 178.62 Dominator Energy Assault at 50 Power Bolt: 52.83 Power Blast: 103.55 Sniper Blast: 237.74 Power Burst: 236.04 Sure, the Sentinel's secondary makes them more survivable. And if the target is Vulnerable their damage will go up, considerably... but if you've got a Sentinel on the team already: SO WILL THE DOMINATOR'S. For standard content, this isn't highly important. A team of Whip Masterminds with no pets will take down pretty much any mission you throw them at by rolling their face across the keyboard every 4-5 seconds. But at high end there are folks who will refuse a second sentinel 'cause they already have all the debuff they're going to get out of one sentinel, and a scrapper or blaster or stalker or dominator or brute or corruptor or VEAT is going to put out more damage than that sentinel, often while helping the team with their other powerset. Except Blaster, Scrapper, and Stalker, who will instead be dishing out way more damage than anyone else.

This isn't an argument against doing something to allow multiple Sentinels on the same team to benefit the group as a whole with their overtly offensive inherent... Multiple controllers on the same team stacking controls, or dominators, could be useful with their additional stacks of controls from their inherents... if the game weren't specifically designed to give them the middle finger. And there's nothing about a Mastermind that makes having multiple MMs on a team redundant. And not only is having multiple VEATs on the same team not a problem it's actively a benefit to the entire team. But Sentinels, whose inherent is specifically a single target debuff, are by nature less useful to a team if you've already got one, because one can make the hard targets take more damage, but several can only try to snipe the chance to dump Vulnerability on the target before someone else makes the attempt.

Ostensibly, sure, it could be done a different way. I'm just referring to how it's coded, -now-. Which is to not apply to a target that already has vulnerability on it regardless of the source of that vulnerability. Removing that lockout results in a 'problem' that has to be solved in one of several ways. I offered one. However, putting Vulnerability on two targets isn't terribly effective in most scenarios so it wouldn't be much of a nerf at all. Ignores level differences, but not resistance to debuffs. AVs and GMs both have resistances that already apply to all the other powers in the game from all the other archetypes. So it's not like 8 Sents would instantly reduce any AV or GM to a quivering puddle of goop. It's definitely true they'd probably remove or reduce the level difference ignoring functionality, dropping the potency of the debuffs against higher level targets by up to 60%... but if you've got some kind of alternative that would allow for multiple Sents to be useful to the team and have their inherents matter at all on high end content, I'm all ears.

So... potential solutions to make Sentinels feel like they have more identity and make them more useful in groups rather than there being only one on a team: 1) Tie -something- to Opportunity so that there's a cost to using Vulnerability, and make sure Vulnerability is good enough to make that an important decision. There's lots of options, here. Could have Opportunity grant Global Recharge, Accuracy Bonuses, End Discounts, Etc. Make it scale by Opportunity just like a Brute's Fury, and spending half your opportunity kills half the accrued benefit. 2) Allow Vulnerability to be applied by different Sentinels on the same target. Yes. The way it currently works, you -cannot- do that so that a Sentinel can have two uses of Vulnerability stored up without being able to dump both onto the same target. Just set Vulnerability's recharge rate to the same as the duration of Vulnerability -1 second, and make it immune to recharge changes and cooldown resets. Tadaaaaah!