Steampunkette

What I eventually wound up going for. Focusing almost exclusively on having strong attacks, softcapped S/L, decent S/L resistance, and having enough recharge to have PA up almost permanently. (16 second cooldown) Between them and the Spectral Terror being available every 13 seconds I'm pretty decent at shrugging off large scale Alphas and cleaning up spawns fairly quickly. The character is currently 30 and pretty solid, honestly! She's never going to tear up Pylons in 20 seconds or anything, but that's never been my goal.

There's some really good advice in this thread. Allow me to add a little more: Snipe the everliving daylights out of someone to start the fight. Pick a dangerous Lieutenant, pop aim and build up, and remove them from the equation. Then grab some cover. As a Fire blaster, drop Rain of Fire between you and the enemy group. Sure, overlap -some- but in front of them so they run through it to reach you. The "Avoid Damage" part of the AI may cause some of them to turn around and run away. Since Rain of Fire is a ground target area of effect you can place it around corners while you're enjoying your cover, keeping you from taking all the alpha in one shot. Assess your HP/Defense and how many people are running through the rain. Pop a green if you need it, purples and oranges if it looks like you're going to get run down. Fireball and Breath of Fire as your next two casts on however many of them got through the rain. Then single-target any still-standing lieutenant. The remainder of the spawn should be easy to mop up after that. Mingle in your /Rad melee to tear them up quick and efficient. If you're feeling -particularly- froggy, or none of them run away from the Rain of Fire, drop Inferno instead of fireball/breath of fire for the big AoE damage to wipe the minions, then hit the LTs with your fireball and breath of fire. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Aggressively is the BEST way to play Storm Blast! ... as a Sentinel. Sincerely, Sentinel Storm Blast -shines-. It's never going to wipe groups like a true blaster, but throw down your Storm Cell and then drop C5 every spawn with a bunch of lightning..? *chef's kiss* The problem with most Storm characters is that they're not Sentinels. So they have to waste a bunch of their time clicking powers from their secondary powerset instead of just having a few toggles providing them everything they need to survive while they focus on destroying everything.

I just meant the saturation and brightness of these Skyboxes so that they'd fit in with the Aesthetics of the Isles, not "Make the Isles Greyer!" Like make a copy, drop the saturation/lighting to match the Isles' current saturation/lighting and then put it in the Isles. Rather than having bright blue skies and the colors/aesthetics of the Isles clashing with it.

Kind of a silly idea, but I know a lot of players dislike the "Night = Blue" filter that many zones apply. So what if we started using Praetorian and Kallisti skyboxes for various zones? If it's meant to be a grey and overcast zone, slap the Imperial City skybox on it. If it's meant to be grey and overcast and dirty, slap the Neutropolize skybox on it. If It's meant to be cloudy but still bright, slap the Nova Praetoria skybox on it. If it's meant to be bright and shiny, slap the Kallisti Wharf skybox on it. And then maybe work on a Redside version of all the skyboxes which is just those four skyboxes but with the brightness and/or saturation dropped sharply.

So I've got this sweet and dorky character I need to pick a badge title for. And I figured I should ask the people who know the most about badges what they think would fit her best! She's an ex-Outcast heroine. She used to be on the swim team. She's 7ft tall and skinny as a post. Her swim-teammates called her "Pool Noodle". She's a Redhead. Powers-wise she's a Stalker, she's got Electric Melee and Super Reflexes. She also has the infiltration travel power because I didn't wanna get SS/SJ. Her epic pool is Energy Mastery just for the two recovery boosts. Currently I'm using "High Voltage" because the song is hilarious and niche enough that she'd probably know it.

Y'all are -awesome-! ❤️ Thank you! Gonna mess with this 'For Steamy' build and have some kicks and giggles, maybe!

I love the assault sets. I sincerely think the Sentinel would've been way cooler if it were an Assault/Defense hybrid archetype with some number tweaking to make it hit hard and have solid AoE rather than needing to have a nuke installed. So I've got this concept to make an Assault-Focused character whose main active contribution to a fight is throwing things, martial arts, and using her duplication power to add additional versions of herself to a fight (None of which are able to duplicate, but each has their own superpowers). So... I think my main goals, here, are going to be defense and resistances, mez protection as I can get it, and enough recharge and recovery to not die at enemies while flinging ridiculous numbers of shuriken at them and hoping my minions tank for me. Right now I'm looking at Ill/Martial/Psi for Link Minds and Indomitable Will. Probably with Superior Invisibility for the added defense, there, and no travel power to speak of. Has anyone done a build like this, before? Are there any suggestions for specific ways to make it work? It'll never have the lockdown or sheer dominance of a permadom character, I recognize that. I'm just looking to have some fun with it. Please don't bother to jump into the thread to talk me out of having a little silly fun.

S'truth. What if you had a new button, a Brute-Specific button, to sacrifice Fury for a Recharge boost? Like lose 50% of your current Fury for a 30% Recharge bonus lasting 10 seconds? Sort of a "Fury-based Build Up" mechanic? Not Mez Protection, just Resistance. And probably a 1% to 1% resistance to slow/mez/regen/recovery. Most of the time you'll wind up "Capped" at around 87% resistance increase from Fury, making you ridiculously hard to debuff but not impossible unless your armor set also provides resistance on top of it.

Increasing a Brute's damage output by much will threaten Scrappers... Increasing a Brute's ability to gather aggro by much will threaten Tankers... So how about their ability to ignore effects? Right out of the gate there was a suggestion to add Slow protection to Brutes and I think that's a good start. Giving them increasing -Recharge and -Speed protection as they generate fury would absolutely fit within the archetype of becoming an unstoppable "Hulk" type character. But I'd probably take it further than that. Add -Regen and -Recovery protection. Add Mez resistance. Maybe add in a ToHit Buff and +Perception so enemies can't smokebomb or use Dark Blasts to floor the Brute's ability to keep fighting. (These values much smaller than the slow protection, but still present. Like a 20% ToHit at max fury) Scrapper? Best at damage. Tanker? Best at survival. Stalker? Best eliminator. Brute? Unstoppable rage beast. You can't slow them down, you can barely debuff them, even if you manage to Mez them they break out of it faster. It wouldn't make them hit harder, but could make them hit more consistently with all the force they've got.

I'm earnestly curious where Gen Z and Gen Alpha are getting $120 to blow on a game they don't even want to play but feel like they "Have to" in order to not be a loser. As a Millennial staring down a $60 price tag on a game I -want- is rough enough... The disposable income the aforementioned people have is impressive!

Instead of leaving at 20 you'd leave when you complete the arcs and choose to leave? *shrug* And yeah. People are going to continue powerleveling to 50 and not bothering to slot a single enhancement 'til they get there because that's the game some people like to play. Do I think it's fun or healthy? Not really. But whether or not Praetorians start at level 1 or level 20 they're still going to do it so what impact does that actually mean? That some people might make a Praetorian to skip the fastest 20 levels of PLing to 50? Oh no! If people are going to play that game they're going to play that game. And short of making PLing impossible, which the Devs have shown no inclination towards, nothing is going to change that. This line of thought is just fearmongering and pearlclutching.

Attuned IOs make everything post level 27 a cakewalk except iTrials... Mainly because you have to rely on other players in iTrials who may or may not have issues with latency or knowing what they're doing.

From what you're saying it's a cakewalk at level 30 so what's the difference? 😛

Wow that'd be a lot of work... but I suggest it for several reasons. 1) Praetoria's enemy groups were designed with IO Set bonuses in mind to handle players in Incarnate Trials, so even the "Low Level" threats in the Going Rogue starting areas are painfully overtuned since they were just scaled down by level. Yes, it allows for some players to enjoy "Hardmode" runs, but I don't think this change would severely impact that. Giving players access to more powers (particularly more controls/defense for the majority of ATs) would make things a bit more fair. 2) Praetorian characters are presented as stronger/tougher/more resilient because of the dystopian world they were forced to grow up in. Starting them at level 20, or even just level 15, would help to reinforce that idea. 3) It would give new and returning players a good and solid reason to do the Praetorian content since they'd be able to start out at a higher level than characters in CoH. And let's face it: The zones look amazing and the storylines are written with a more focused narrative voice than the older CoH and even CoV content. 4) Making First Ward and Night Ward levelless would allow the higher level Praetorian characters to leave the initial Going Rogue content and move on to the First Ward without having to boost First and Night Ward content up separately. Though I would suggest having the "Auto Grant" of First Ward/Night Ward contacts still happen at or after level 20 for Primals and after leaving Praetoria for Praetorians. Alternatively, you could make all of Praetoria "Levelless Content" which scales with the player and then set it to grant level 20 to characters that leave the Praetorian Tutorial or make a new character in Praetoria. That would also allow Primal characters to "Infiltrate" Praetoria at any level and do the Praetorian content, as well. Making that expansion far more accessible to the playerbase. It could also be a lot of fun as a CoH character to get up into the 45 range and do the Portal Corps arcs before transitioning to Praetoria to help the Resistance... THEN move on to Incarnate Trials. You know... I had one intention at the start, but now I just think Levelless Praetoria and Praeto characters starting at 20 is a better idea by far.

As you can see I'm not in an AE Arc. That's just a regular radio mish directing to the pillar.

Ohhhhhhhhh Yeah. That's never going to happen. The whip isn't a prop object like a sword or axe, where you can specifically replace it with something else, it's specifically an effect, like the blast from fire blast. S'why it always looks exactly the same every time it comes out even though you'd think the flames would be "Random" Creating the whip powers took as much effort for the original game developers as animating 8 separate powersets. Like all 9 powers in 8 sets for 4 powers in 1 set. Colin Brown, one of Paragon's animators, did a whole dev diary post about it for MMORPG.com, though it's since been lost to time. In it, he discussed how incredibly intensive the efforts were and how it was kind of ridiculous the amount of effort that was put into getting one set -just- right. But the Going Rogue brass wanted Desdemona to be the coolest character they could manage soooo.... Even if using the physical animations of the character moving could shave off 3/4 of the time of creating an electric whip alternative you're still looking at 4 powers for the cost of the animation development time of 18 powers. Maybe if the dev team, here, got paid a lot of money and were able to get some more artists and animators on staff they could do that. But it'd cost 2 potential full powersets to just move over the 4 current animations. And if you wanted a full attack set (with build up or aim taking a 0-effort time) you're back to looking at 8 full sets of animation effort for 4 more powers, -plus- the 2 sets time for the 4 powers that exist. 10 powersets worth of effort for 1 powerset. I just don't see anyone involved thinking that's a reasonable use of time and resources. It's why I suggested the plasma whip instead. It'd be a new damage setup and give the designers some options while just recycling the 4 powers animations we currently have.

At what point did I say that plasma was electricity? I said "Energy Damage" which is right there with Radiation which works fine with Plasma. You're the one who said it winds up looking like the plasma from a star and not electricity. I'm confused by the goal, here.

Plasma that is in the sun and plasma that we make on Earth is the same thing. It's a higher state of molecular and atomic excitement than Gas. Nothing more, nothing less. The Plasma-ball (electro-orb) from Spencer's Gifts doesn't -actually- contain plasma, just low amp high voltage electricity passing through a noble gas (Usually argon or neon, but krypton and xeon are also options)

Keep it like it is, color it blue-purple, and call it Plasma. Fire/Energy damage with a -Def function.

Sentinels are Stalkers who trade Crits and Assassin's Strike for larger AoE range/shaped but not bigger target counts. When well built they're incredibly durable and do decent damage. They're particularly good at taking out one enemy through using their Opportunity button to weaken their target. Especially bosses which melt when the team is all also hitting the same target. Their big "Claim to Fame" is throwing off their T9 blast power every 30 seconds or so once thoroughly slotted for recharge. For DP that means doing the gundance every pack.

Fair. Though the tech for auto-power suppression also exists: In the AE buildings. All powers, including autopowers, cease to function there. You'd just need whatever object is there copied and tweaked to only disable one autopower. But it still doesn't fix the bridge problem. And with places like Skyway in the game... well. Then again. You've got Snow in the tunnels of Atlas Park so is it -really- that big a deal? Not my place to judge. Just brainstorming a way to have 'weather' in the game.

That is a -very- good reason, yeah. You'd have to put in some kind of auto-power suppressor within buildings. Like they do with the Zombie Apocalypse Spawning while you're inside an Icon. Wouldn't help with Bridges, though.

In what way would this put unneeded strain on the servers? It would be an autopower and a skybox change triggered by a zone event. The tech for both already exists. Any "Strain" would be just as "straining" as any other zone-event.

... in Atlas Park, we can have snow thanks to an overlay setup that basically makes the snow tied to your camera. It's not an actual thing moving around the zone, which would probably cause just -so- much lag, but a graphical effect... Can we do the same thing with Rain? On a separate note, the skybox and lighting can be set to various options during events. Can we set up an 'Event' where the skybox turns grey and stormy and the light becomes notably dimmer? ... and can we combine the two? Have the event trigger a zone-wide 'Debuff' which shows rain in your vision and makes the skybox and environment darker? Could we then make "Weather Events" a random thing that hits EVER ZONE with rain as the main Weather Event replaced by Snow in winter?