Steampunkette

I have Fast Healing to 5 for the 7.5% recharge. And Combat Readiness for the 2.5% Defense (Vector)/1.25%(Type) Though in retrospect I don't actually need that too badly... I could shave off a few slots, there, to slot another Kinetic Combat into Boxing or Kick for 3.75% S/L Defense pushing that up to 43... As far as getting the 7.5% move speed buffs from double-slotting performance shifter with an End mod, or putting the Knockback into Kinetic Combat: I'm already 0.5mph off the speed cap with just Infiltration and Sprint. And over the jump speed cap. Still! Very helpful, thank you!

It's ninja run, but enhanceable! I love it!

1) Stealth is nice to have sometimes, even if it's not a lot. 2) The verticality fits a character with super strength, too. 3) I feel like Infiltration gets so little love in the community. 4) At maxed out movement, the speed difference on flat terrain isn't that big, but the verticality of it makes it more generally useful than Superspeed in cluttered environments.

I'd love it if we had 'Plant Blast' with some Thorns stuff in it and a separate 'Nature Blast' set that's more animal-centric like Savage Assault/Beast MM powers. Like a plant blast "Thorncrash" targeted AoE where it plays the AoE thorns hold animation on all targets at 300% normal speed with Lethal/Toxic damage. Versus "Howl of Twilight" as a targeted AoE for Nature Blast that briefly has a Dire Wolf appear and do a big howl (complete with the dome effect) for a hit of Smashing/Energy. Or an "Infestation" power where you put a swarm of flies on your target as a DoT and then they generate the bio armor aura. And any enemy within the bio armor aura gets the DoT spread to them for 5-8 seconds or something. And then you could use the Corrosive Enzymes animation for plant blast to hit an enemy with a big splash of toxic damage as one of the first 2-3 attacks in the powerset. That would be cool.

You are deeply correct on the power-variety of the forms. How when you're in Nova Form you're using early power picks rather than later-game power picks like Solar Flare or Dawnstrike. You can't "Nuke" as a Nova, just as you can't "Blast" as a Dwarf. This is why I think the powers need to be collapsed and the forms functions as Scalar and Cap Modifiers. You'd still have your full list of powers, including Melee Attacks, as a Nova. But your Damage Scalars would shift to better represent a Blaster, including your Defensive Modifiers. So sure, you could keep your Resistance Toggles on while in Nova Form, and benefit from them. Light Form, too. But the amount you'd -get- from them would be lower. And you'd have a 75% Resistance Cap. Or. Hell. Make it 60%. So even if your Light Form pushes you to 85% in Human Form, it caps out at 60% in Nova Form. I imagine a lot of players would still take that trade-off. Do the same thing with Dwarf Form but also make the control aspect of powers (stun duration, knockback distances, etc) increase just like your defensive powers do. And give Dwarf Form a higher Base and Max HP while you're at it so when you pop Essence Boost in Dwarf Form you get the full benefit of it. Hell, if you wanna get SUPER wild with it, you could use power-modification structures to turn Energy Flight into Energy Leap for Dwarf Form and give them a spring attack in place of their Afterburner. Turn Radiant Strike and Incandescent Strike into short-ranged attacks with a commensurate decrease for the increased range for Novas while Dwarves get Proton Scatter as a melee cone with a commensurate damage increase for the smaller area on an AoE attack. And then, and this is the kicker... Allow people to choose not to shapeshift. Both in the 'Humanform is viable on it's own' idea, but also in the "Dwarf Form without model replacing" option, if it's possible. (I don't know if it -is- possible, given the constraints on Granite Armor, but it's a thing) That said... I wouldn't mind if there were also a bunch of "Alt Powers" spread throughout the Kheldian trees so I could make a PB that gives up Pulsar for a PBAoE heal or something. Where there's just more build variety across archetype identity for the Kheldians in general.

The reason I say that animation time is a part of the standard damage formula is, simply, Arcanatime and the game's core structure around TTK. There's a reason the game lists damage per cast cycle in the power window, after all. It's the rate at which you interact with the world around you, no matter how hard you slap Recharge into your build. A final arbiter of output. Hell, it's why so many top-tier builds wind up favoring short-animation-time powers because the DPS vs DPA doesn't line up well for testing metrics. It's -why- the changeling is so alluring, since you're able to outright -ignore- the activation times to increase DPS. Blows my mind how some folks will bend over backwards to try and excuse blatant exploits as perfectly normal and acceptable gameplay mechanics.

The Standard Damage Formula also includes animation time. Which you are specifically skipping. "Technically" correct my ass. I'm outright correct and you're hemming and hawing and hedging to try and preserve the illusion that the changeling gameplay loop is 'normal' but elevated play. It isn't. It's breaking the game for an advantage. If you're gonna play "But the Devs left it in!" as your canard, then hide behind that flimsy placard 'cause the Devs have also said they'll be addressing the Changeling after they decide how to bring Kheldians in line with the gameplay model they're looking to do. Because, yes, THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE ATs that needs fixing. That has been acknowledged, too. So we'll see that change come down the pipeline. In effect: Changeling is on borrowed time, as it well should be. But "We don't wanna mess with that mess of spaghetti 'til we have a plan on how to untangle it" is not "Changeling is the right way to play Kheldians."

Changeling play requires using exploits in the way the game's animation system functions to ignore the standard damage formulas and animation times that the game is based around in order to maximize your damage potential. It's not "Playing an instrument well". It's sneakily replacing every piece on your side of the chessboard except your King with a Queen and crowing about your ELO of 2800. You are fundamentally breaking the rules of the game system for an advantage.

1) Increase PB/WS Damage Cap to 400% an provide some debuff resistance This would go a -long- way toward making them more valuable on teams in general. And having some debuff resistance baked into their resistance toggles would make humanforming a PB a hell of a lot more attractive in general and give multiform PBs a reason to drop into humanform for longer than it takes to hit build up and a couple animation-canceled attacks. 2) Collapse attacks across forms. Bolt, Blast, Scatter, and Detonation, as well as Strike, Smite, and Flare (same with Emanation and such over on WS) could all be folded down into the base class so that you wind up less slot-starved with the form-changes and are able to use the forms as Scalar Boosts rather than having separate powers tied to the form-shifts. Yes. This would make the form-swap a little less useful out of the box since you'd still need to purchase the attacks that form can use as a separate thing... But that would make Dual-Form, and Tri-Form Kheldians a lot stronger overall without increasing the values of individual powers or anything like that, and would make it a lot easier to bounce between forms without feeling like you're underslotted, everywhere. It would also nerf the hell out of Changeling Builds since you'd be using the same attacks in humanform, nova, and dwarf, even with animation canceling.

What it says on the tin! Was hoping to maybe get a little feedback on this idea. Here's what the statline looks like with saturation on RTTC and such... As you can see, she's not capped against anything, hard or soft. The idea was to get a somewhat comprehensive level of defenses with some solid S/L resistance so that if I'm on a team with even a single Defense or Resistance buffer, she'll be able to softcap or get near cap from buffs. In either case, having 'decent' values in the other category just make things better overall. And then here's the slotting.... As you can see, not as much proc-bombing as is possible. Crushing Uppercut had to take Critical Strikes because the recovery time on Rib Cracker was too long to be able to toss off more than one attack in the Critical Strikes +50% window. By putting it in CU, though, I can get off an SB, an HB, and an RC if the enemy is standing long enough, but just -barely-. As you can see I went for Infiltration and Combat Jumping for some vertical with my speed, but I also went with Musculature Radial Paragon to get an extra 33% runspeed, bringing it to 92mph (148kmph) with a jumping speed of 78mph (125kmph) and a jump height of 82ft (25m). So what do y'all think? Are there things I could do better with this build while maintaining the movement? Velocitrix - Scrapper (Street Justice - Willpower).mbd

I'd be down with some account wide accolades. Not the ones we have, now, but things like "You have a 50 of every Hero/Villain/Epic Archetype!" accolades which give every character on your account a badge with a nifty title. Same thing with "You have 50 Magic Heroes!" and you get a badge that's like "Magician" or something similar. I think that'd be nifty.

Oh, sure. If you do it that way. I was kinda looking at it like an IO that improves Defense AND Resistance AND Healing on the individual IOs, rather than Resistance on this one and Defense on that one. 'Cause we absolutely can do that kind of thing. HamiOs show it pretty clearly with the +Control HOs. There are a couple power sets where that might be more useful than others, but it'd probably work fine overall since most powers just do one or the other and the ones that do both typically have the 'unenhanceable' flag on one of them. And you'd need to do the same thing for the Arachnos Soldier, Peacebringer, Scrapper, Stalker, Sentinel, and Warshade secondary ATOs, too. I would say "Widow" but their secondary is pretty much just Defense, I think.

You know... Creating an ATO set that can be put into your secondary, and doing the same thing for all the ATs, could be great. Except Tankers, obviously. You'd need to make an ATO set they can slot in their primary. Not changing what exists, but making a new third full set of ATOs for every archetype.

A lot of this thread reads like Giles Coren pissing and moaning in a 2021 Times article about how men aren't allowed to write anymore... Because in 2005 he wrote one of the worst possible takes on sex in an awful book. The passage that won him the award was a paragraph consisting of one run-on sentence 137 words long and then a 2 word sentence. The first contained things like "Rattled against her teeth" and "like a shower dropped in an empty bath" and the two word sentence was "Like Zorro". By all means. Go read the excerpt. Giles Coren, Winkler, 2005 Bad Sex Award is all you need to find it, though the keywords I've added above will help. A lot of suggestions, including many of my own, are bad suggestions. And other people may see the problems in the idea that we, ourselves, don't. In the same way Mr. Coren thinks that society shuns male novelists because he wrote something and didn't get massive fame and acclaim, and insults those who critique his bad writing, do we run the risk of holding our suggestions and ideas beyond reproach. Embrace critique. Go from there. Don't be like Giles Coren.

Starlight. ❤️

There's already an "Replacing this enhancement will destroy the original" prompt that you've just already turned off.

Verticality is an issue. The 2d bitmap you get for a map doesn't always include height variation for the zone which could result in you appearing way above or just below the map to plummet into infinity. There's also the issue raised of it negating travel powers/travel times, allowing you to circumvent obstacles, etc. All in all I just don't think it's a solid suggestion.

The only reason we don't see a bunch of new stuff like that is there's no 3d Modeler on the team. If anyone knows 3dMax, apply to the team, immediately, and prepare to get joyously embraced, probably!

Morales was Mayor in 2005. Christie is the person behind commissioning BWI, reopening the tram line, and various plaques in Kallisti Wharf. That all indicates he's the Mayor. After all, who else but the mayor can institute policies involving Vanguard in Paragon? The "Safehouse Policy" is not something some private entrepreneur can implement. When he was looking to rebuild the Wharf corporate patronage was important. Patronage doesn't make a lot of sense if he WAS the corporation and not the Mayor. -He- compromised and replaced the PPD with BWI. Some wealthy guy has the ability to do that with the city's funds? Probably not. He also confirmed Adamstown Infirmary as a protected historical site. Something else Mayors have the power to do but not rando corporate interests. Nothing outright -states- he's the mayor. But context clues indicate he's more than a lobbyist. Maybe he's the mayor of the Wharf but not of Paragon? Like how Bower is mayor of Salamanca?

My issue is: The lack of Allegory. That's it. The "One Step Separation" between reality and characters in a game. As far as Emil Christie: He is both the owner of a tech company and the current Mayor. The various plaques around Kallisti Wharf are meant to be a self-aggrandizing series of permanent public statements for his 'Legacy'. The corruption of the PPD in Kallisti is actually kind of great, as a story. Like the Back Alley Brawler storyline, it indicates that even the "Idealized" police force has rotten members. And in a district full of refugees and people struggling with mental and emotional disabilities (Awakened in the area are often presented as trying to reclaim their lives and control rather than just being crooks) there's room for some significant problems. And with Nemesis, Crey, and the Warriors who are trying to re-structure their image? It makes a lot of sense that it'd be the place with the most corruption. Especially while the Rail Line was down for an extended period of time. Personally I super liked the "Port Noble Citizen's Brigade" as a bunch of Fascists trying to pretend to not be fascists by wearing khaki pants and hawaiian shirts. Is it similar to reality? Yes. Is it the same? No. There's a degree of separation through allegory that makes it feel topical without being a direct one to one of reality. But then Major Ben is just... it's like someone went to their uncle's twitter-feed and copy-pasted the grievances directly from there after he live-tweeted his rage arguments at Thanksgiving dinner before being permanently uninvited. It absolutely fits that the guy would be bigoted, don't get me wrong. I'd just prefer the layer of allegory to make it obvious and clear without it being potentially painful for some people to experience. Y'all's arguments about centrist superiority or modern politics or bad writing are missing the point by a mile.

Magepunk.mbd

The only reason I'm uncool with how it was presented is: There is no content warning at all and you got bombarded with a lot of abusive text. That could be really upsetting for people with triggers and anxieties. I recognize this is supposed to be a comedic over the top ridiculous character... but yeesh.

My take on this is simple: City of Heroes is Sci-Fi and Fantasy. So tell this story, and those like it, in allegory. Have the Council be made up of people who hate "Mutants" and think Malta has taken over the government. That the Rikti Invasion was a false-flag for the UN to gather a bunch of power and military strength for their Vanguard to enforce a new world order. Have the Council be pissed off about the "Handouts" the Praetorians are receiving while good hard-working Primals are being crushed by corporate interests. Make it obvious, and allegorical, rather than just taking modern talking points and sound bites and sprinkling them about. I promise. I'll hate the Council -just- as much if they're hating on "Mutie Lovers" as I would if they were hating on "(Insert slur here) Lovers".

To be clear: This isn't a "Magic Wand Assault" set. It's -wand- assault. You can RP it as a Star Girl style techno-weapon, or magic, or whatever! Which also functions as a Warmace. Maybe call it Scepter assault, instead?

Tier 1: Pulverize Tier 2: Wand Bolt (Minor Energy/Toxic, Ranged) Tier 3: Jawbreaker Tier 4: Wand Gloom (Moderate Energy/Toxic. Ranged) Tier 5: Build Up Tier 6: Shatter Tier 7: Wand Burst (Moderate Energy/Toxic, PBAoE) Tier 8: Wand Blast (Moderate Energy/Toxic, Ranged AoE) Tier 9: Crowd Control Pretty much just uses the Warmace options for weapon models, with a few of the Staff options added in. Use the Volkov animations for the Blackwand attacks from Volkov Skulls. Blackwand Blast uses the Disruptor Blast animation from Mace Mastery. Toxic damage either represents the power of magic or the same weird energy blast Arachnos uses. Minimally resisted in the game. And then make an Assault Primary archetype and slap this thing on it as a flagship powerset.