Steampunkette

I know this has been done to some degree, already. But I'd like to see more Noise Freaks in missions both Hero and Villainside in their level range. And Meat Doctors Blueside. I'd like to see Sneaky Swipers and Shadowtanks and Rikti Freak Zappers blasting green lightning at everything that moves. And make it so that these things are all OVER Sharkhead and stuff! Create a Storyline where the Marcones and the Winters are at war. Call it the Winter War! Bring Marcones to Paragon and have them trying to get a foothold in Talos or Indy. Have the Winters start roughing up punks in Port Oakes as they work toward St Martial. How about bringing the Goldbrickers to Paragon? They work for Aeon, Aeon built Architect Entertainment with Crey Funding, and the Goldbrickers are his boys. How about adding Supatrolls to Troll Mishies rather than keeping them exclusively for the Rave Events that nearly no one participates in? Obviously there's some stuff that wouldn't work cross-side, or inside/outside of missions being swapped, like the Coralax who are devoted to the Leviathan or the Council Empire being outside Council World or the Rulu-Shin being...well... anywhere. But there's room for a ton of variety to mix things up!

Ohhhhh that's -brilliant-! Tanker getting 6% Resistance from a Body Armor autopower, Scrappers getting 4.5% Resistance on an Autopower... It's not a TON but it could mean the difference between Capping S/L or not. Could also play with Permanent Damage buffs? Things like "Reinforced Stikes" autopower that add +5% damage. Or even typed damage, so Reinforced Strikes only adds the +5% to attacks with an S/L Component, like the IO Set Bonuses? Give the set a later power that boosts the lower level powers, like the original suggestion, so that it plays into the Boxing/Kick/Crosspunch setup. Then you could combine this kind of set with something like Ninjitsu to get a more well rounded Gadget and Armor style concept going!

The Invincibles has a Subgroup called The Protégés. (We don't bother with the accent mark in game, obviously) We have actual in-character classes for characters to attend in order to reinforce the theme. Some classes are sitting around in a classroom in the school within the supergroup base (Which is laid out like a city zone) learning about Villains, Enemy Groups, or Morality. And there's even been mention of "Pop Quizzes" that could test your knowledge of CoH's History in a minigame sort of way with Influence Prizes. You know, 'cause Influence may function as currency, mechanically, but narratively it's literal influence on the world around you.

Performance Serum ignores recharge rate changes. You can get 1 minute of overlap 'cause the Cooldown is 3 and uptime is 4. But that is mostly there as an "Oh, oops." cover. Adrenal Harness only gives you 20% at full health. To get 200% you need to be at 20% of your maximum HP, with a sliding scale between those two points. Like the Scaling Resistance in Super Reflexes.

Easy to cap Resistance to S/L I'll give you. Ranged/AoE being easy is a -touch- of a stretch since there's few Defense/Resistance powers in the set to try and stack set bonuses. But half the Regen of Regeneration? What're you smoking and can I have some? It gets a maximum of 400% regen if it's at 20% or lower HP. Though if it were slotted I could see how it'd hit 600% regen with full slotting... It's still closer to 1/3 than 1/2. And still requires you to be really low on health to get that big of a benefit. Though you're at least somewhat right. I think I'll make the Regen Portion of both Performance and Adrenal only half-enhanceable. Also bear in mind: Either you're auto-firing Hasten -or- Body Armor -or- Performance Serum. Not two, and certainly not three. Even though this is a powerset which would -heartily- benefit from the Hasten power being on autofire.

I earnestly don't think there's a way to do that without retooling the AI and handing them an unlockable copy of Assault Hybrid. ... and that is one mire I don't think our Devs will want to wade through, much less to that small a result. It never occurred to me, before now, just how -limited- a Mastermind's Hybrid options actually were. Control and Hybrid are all but useless for them. The only things worth half a damn are Melee (For Tankerminds Only) and Support. Though for what it's worth, Support can grant all your pets a 12% damage, defense, accuracy, and mez buff... which, y'know... Nothing to sneeze at!

Yeah... my numbers are a little different. Assuming full saturation, and unslotted health, the Willpower character has 968% Regen which is 69.96 HP/Second and a max HP of 1733. They also have an end recovery of 3.06/second and a self-rez to play into their survivability. They also get a ToHIt debuffs baked into their Taunt aura which is useless against AVs but provides a 5.85 ToHit debuff giving them more "Defense" after a fashion that you don't seem to be accounting for. They also have a Tier 9 that jumps them up to 64.4% S/L Resistance, 46.8% Psionic, and 23.4% everything else. The powerset on it's face takes about 1/3rd of the damage anyone without a defensive powerset would typically take, recovers vastly more quickly than most sets with a bit of running, and it's T9, while on a long cooldown, has the lightest slap on the wrist crash in the game since it also provides a further 30% Recovery while it's up (3.56 end/sec) And I can't stress this enough: This is the weakest defensive powerset in the game. Without IOs and Sets it's tissue thin and swift to drop if you're not playing defensively. With Tough, Weave, Combat Jumping, and Set Bonuses? It shines like a crazy diamond 'cause it just does not run out of endurance... You're aiming -below- that, and shifting toward Debuffs and Controls. I get the impetus... I just think you've gone about it the wrong way. Aiming for Autopowers as a basis isn't the way to go.

This powerset is meant to play with the idea of Clicks, Recharge, and Low-Endurance Cost abilities under the identity of being useful for Natural heroes who use a little tech or some magic items. The most basic and Signature ability being Body Armor itself. Designed to be stackable pretty much immediately, with a generous duration, it provides decent Resistance on it's own, but quickly ramps up to providing very high S/L/E Resistances even without IO Slotting or Set Bonus Juggling. Due to it's nature, it would actually be less beneficial to slot it with full resistance sets as they rarely have as much recharge slotting as this power would actually benefit from, shaking up that dynamic, as well, and encouraging at least a bit of Frankenslotting. The only other "Standard" Defensive power the set provides is in the Defensive Drone power. Most attacks the player is likely to run into keying off of Elemental, Exotic, or Energy damage are Ranged or AoE attacks. There are obvious exceptions in the Circle of Thorns using Dark, Fire, and Ice attacks, or the Hellions and Skulls flinging Fire Melee and Dark Melee attacks, but that was my logic for making a single defense based toggle the only source of defense for Non-Physical attacks. Ablative Armor was just me hopping onto the Absorb Train. Toot toot. It's a nice and simple effect which affects gameplay in interesting ways. The rest of the powerset is designed largely around the idea of Utility. Stealth/Team Healing/Damage in the Pet Powers. Speed Boosts and Recharge Rate changes in the Mez Protection and Regen powers. A Self Rez with a stun component, and a Tier 9 power meant to let your whole team run away from a bad encounter rather than faceplanting. Even the Power Pack ability is meant to largely be a quirky and interesting power which alters the Utility of your character. Did Power Pack pop? Might be a good time to use the Buff/Debuff powers from your Epic Pool, or try to burn down a boss while you have extra damage and defenses, or use a Temp Power or Epic Pool Power that lays down a Control effect. I don't sincerely think this powerset is likely to be made. But it's an interesting thought experiment at the very least!

Level 50 Scrapper with SOs: 22.5% Resistance to S/L/F. 45% Resistance to Cold. 33.75% Resistance to Nrg/Neg. 22.5% Resistance to Psionic. 11.25% Defense to S/L. 16hp/sec regen (Including Unslotted Health) This is the durability of your average cobweb at 50. And they'll be setting aside their damage dealing for 3-7 seconds near the start of every fight on Flashbangs, Caltrops, Self Healing, and Stuns to try and survive the Alpha Strike of any group. Yeah, Puma, there are cases where the Standardization is put aside to fit Concept. Hardened Carapace has part of it's bonus deferred so that the Defensive Toggle can boost it up, the Efficient Toggle can shift Healing up, and the Offensive Toggle can be good for dishing out the DPS. And yeah, some powers have lower values from their Autopowers... Those powers tend to cover 3-5 different things (Or in the case of the 5.63% example: EVERYTHING plus some extra HP). Wanna know why Radiation Armor gets the 30% Fire/Cold/Nrg/Neg toggle? Look at the entire set. Instead of having a series of toggles and autopowers that provide comprehensive defenses the set relies on 2 Toggles (Okay, 3 if you count the Mez Protection providing a token amount of Psi/Toxic) to provide all the defense boost it's going to get. Everything else is a Click Gimmick, Self Heal, or a Damage Toggle. It relies more on damage deferral (Absorb) and damage recovery (Regen/Healing) than it's defensive values. Those things work in fights with AVs. Caltrops won't. Stuns won't. Smokebombs won't. I'm saying it's not going to have enough defensive ability. A Tanker with this set needs to be able to stand to to toe with an AV because all the other Tankers can. As it stands? Someone using this powerset would become very familiar with the different textures and patterns of Paragon Office Carpets.

Autos are 7.5% because it's Standardized. Because you're not spending any endurance on it, 7.5% is what you get based on the balancing metrics the Devs put into the game in the first place. Yeah, we could break the rules for your specific set to spend almost no endurance whatsoever... but why -should- we? So you can have a set whose gimmick is "Low End Cost"? We've got Regen and we've got Bio Armor and we've got Willpower. We're covered on that gimmick. All of them, by the way, also have good defensive values. And nah, I'm not saying "Without Enhancements". I'm saying 60% for a Scrapper/Brute as an SO Baseline would be cool. Strong enough to over halfway resist the most common damage type in the game. And Controls are all 'Fun' but there's a variety of enemies that Stealth and Debuffs have minimal effect on. Also Bosses and EBs. Unless you're intending this armor set to be used -exclusively- by Scrappers and Stalkers who just feel like being basically defenseless, it's got to be able to tank Recluse as a Defense Set for Brutes and Tanks. Yes, all of them should be able to tank AVs. Every Tanker should reasonably be able to fill that role in a group. Solo him? Heck no! But stand toe to toe with him (Or 15 basic Council Mobs or whatever) with nothing but SOs? Yeah. The concept (Armor set that is just normal armor in concept rather than superdodging or setting yourself on fire or something) is cool beans, to me. But your implementation is /Jranger.

The builds are doable... but the game can't look at your build and determine what powers you don't have to increase your power of a given NPC. Also worth noting: Any buffing of your followers would count against their maximum categorical buffing. More HP? Still capped at the same absolute value. More Damage? Still can't get more than X00%.

You'd need to set up a buff tied to the Mastermind themself for all Pets in the Area. A Second "Supremacy", if you will. And have additional copies of that buff applied at 6, 12, 18, 24, and 26. Then you'd need to apply a "Supremacy Debuff" to the Mastermind from each pet the Mastermind Summons to have it directly counteract the buff increase tied to them. So the first Minion counteracts the baseline level 1 buff, the third one counteracts the level 18 buff, explicitly. Get all 6 pets out, the buff is gone. Have only 1 pet out, 5 pets worth of buff on that one pet. But... This would just be a flat buff to all Masterminds in the end, since the loss of minions during a fight would increase the damage of the rest of their minions, rather than representing a loss of damage output. So I'm gonna /Jranger it, myself.

So... For a Scrapper/Brute/Stalker those Auto Resistance powers are going to offer up 7.5% Damage Resistance. 11.25% slotted with SOs. Defense autos are at 3.75%. Toggles typically provide 22.5% Resistance or 12.75% defense (Typed. Positional is 13.88%) So we're looking at a baseline of: 7.5% S/L/F Resistance 14.5% Cold Resistance 22.5% E/N Resistance 12.75% S/L Defense This character would get -destroyed- in basically any normal content. They'd be marginally more durable than your average low level blaster. Barring a near 800% benefit increase from the Treated Leather power (Boosting it from 7.5% to 60%) you're going to be having simply the -worst- time. And if the power was increasing the 7.5% resistance power up to 60% it would be -way- too powerful to also have a ton of other effects tied to it. It's just an unreasonable expectation of power increase. Also there's no way for CoH to do Retributive Damage based on the player taking damage. The game doesn't track the required information to make it work.

Locking it behind badges just changes how people farm it. They hit level 50 through farms, then get dragged through badge missions in Oroborous or Mob-farm out in Crey's Folly or wherever... I think putting it behind vet level 100, or even vet level 50, would work just fine. I don't forsee many players who don't know anything about the game getting invited into endless farms where they doorsit at 50 while the Spines/Fire runs off. It just seems like way too much time investment for a farmer to spend improving someone else's character and leaving them stranded with all sorts of choices and no information.

I dunno... For the longest time I was against an "Any Powerset Combo" character concept because of the inherent risk of self-nerfing into the ground. The issue that people might unintentionally take two powersets that are so -violently- terrible with each other that they'd destroy their ability to play or enjoy the game. But on the other hand, tying it to Vet Level 100 or some other "Play the game for a certain amount of time" function reduces the chances of such an occurrence down to "Vanishingly Rare" Yeah. Someone who has never played City before might jump on a "Vet level 100 Farm" team and spend literal -days- getting powereleveled all the way up through the Veteran Ranks in order to unlock the new AT... But that seems like something entirely unreasonable to presume at this point. So I definitely feel like "Set Scalars to the high end of Average and give them a 15% recharge inherent and a pat on the ass as they head out into the world" is a reasonable setup.

My Mids is telling me there's no taunt aura for Tankers in Evasion... As to the "Scaling bonuses plus IO Sets!" I'm not getting into that, here. I'm talking about the baseline abilities of both powersets. In any case, the Energy Tanker would have more overall utility. Stealth, PBAoE End Fixer/+Defense, Self-Healing on the regular, similar recharge rate bonus on average... S'veddy niiiiiice.

... shit... you're right! It's got craaaazy levels of DDR. I'd thought it was like Shield Defense: Tied up in the Mez Protection Stacking Game. SR is freaking badass on Tankers...

I'm at work. Just threw out a few seed-thoughts I had.

SR doesn't have a Taunt Aura. Energy does. SR doesn't have Resistances. Energy does. SR doesn't have a Self Heal. Energy does. SR doesn't have a Stealth Power. Energy does. SR doesn't have anything that benefits from having lots of enemies near you. Energy has 2 powers. (Energy Drain and Entropic Aura) SR gains a passive 20% Recharge rate boost. Energy gets a Toggle with up to 35% Recharge in their Taunt Aura. That said, SR can cap positionals leaving it with no holes whatsoever. So that's a nice benefit? But once Cascade Failure hits, it hits -hard-. Energy has those Resistances and a Self Heal to fall back on.

"Beam Control" Tier 1: Phase Burst. Single target immob as you hit them with a nerve-wracking blast that lowers their accuracy by overloading their nerves, making them lose partial control over their limbs. Tier 4: Sticky Grenade. Single Target Mag 3 Hold and 2 seconds later a PBAoE centered on the enemy Pseudopet Explosion that does knockdown and stun along with some damage. Tier 9: Overload. You put your beam rifle's resonating chamber into a closed loop and hurl it at your enemies. Targeted AoE massive debuffs/hold as the phased-burst overloads everyone's systems.

That comment made my eyebrow rise so hard it left my face... White Knight? Seriously? Jeeeeeeze...

Action movie logic. Everything is constantly on the verge of exploding and just needs the right impact.

Carpenters hit their own thumbs when hammering nails, occasionally. And sometimes when you swing at an object, you might hit it, but the hit glances off, not actually harming the thing you're swinging at beyond light paint chipping. And sometimes when you swing at an -unsecured- object, you're just gonna push it around rather than doing any serious damage. Different stuff happening. But I doubt you've ever punched your bedroom door so hard it exploded into dangerous shrapnel and knocked everyone within 12 feet on their butts.

Sure. But what combos -would- be broken in this design (assuming standard and no damage and same-role exclusivity is in place)? What could this archetype do that would be 'broken' compared to any other archetype doing anything similar? The only thing I could imagine would be Support/Control, assuming all powersets were made available for both primary and secondary. Because that would result in Defender-Level buffing while still having Controller Level -power- in the Controls, but not duration. Even that doesn't seem particularly strong, all things considered... We'd have to make it, though, so that Pet powersets (Both MM and Illusion) would need to be Primary-Exclusive. There's no character-function we can apply to reduce the power of pets, which are NPCs with their own statistics determined by their level independent of the player.

I think we'd actually be in option 3 territory. 3) Because it's damage values are lower than a Scrappers (at Scale 1 instead of 1.12) and it doesn't have Brute Fury, if you want a TW/Bio character there are better choices out there. The "Top Performing" set combos for this thing would be pretty much the same as any other archetype, but not actually -THAT- good because it would lack the inherent support to increase damage output or the HP levels of a brute/tank that allow it to survive extended periods in melee. What combos, really, would be outliers beyond the outliers that already exist in the game? (Melee)/Kinetics? Okay, but you're going into melee with no defenses beyond Tough/Weave/Combat Jumping/Maneuvers... Ultimately the AT would let you play with combos that don't exist elsewhere in the game. Like Assault or Manipulation as a primary powerset. But any combo you create is going to have some weaknesses compared to all the other archetypes. An Assault/Defense character would get some ranged, some melee, and thus have a slightly higher survival chance than your average Scrapper in a given fight but lack Alpha potential due to not having the big "Superior" and/or "Extreme" damage attack that Scrappers get in their sets. And you -could- try to build a Magetank by doing Defense/Ranged... but you'd lack a taunt, would have mediocre aggro-generation based on damage output, and wouldn't have the HP of an actual Tanker or Brute. So you'd get more survival than a Defense/Melee Incarnate, but you still wouldn't -really- be a Tank.