Steampunkette
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Posts posted by Steampunkette
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Changing the buffs that Serum gives doesn’t solve the problem it has. What it does is not the problem. The problem is that it has a ridiculously short duration for its enormous recharge time, and makes the pet you use it on useless for an equally ridiculous length of time, compared to its duration. All these suggestions to rework how the power functions at its core are missing the forest for the trees.
I suggested making it into a 0 endurance toggle with a 1 minute recharge rate.
What part of that doesn't deal with the short duration and enormous recharge time and the uselessness of a pet?
The uselessness would only happen when the toggle gets taken off... but that's only liable to happen when the pet is killed or between missions as team composition changes so... *shrug*
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Through art we've conditioned people to see this as the way things happen. The way it works. Once those ideas and mindsets are stuffed together in an echo chamber long enough you get the "Nice Guy" and eventually the Incel. Hey, remember Elliot Rodger? Yeah. This is how he wound up where he was that lead him to going out and shooting women 'cause even the ones he never approached didn't fling themselves at him for sexual favors.
Have you looked into the Elliot Rodger story?
I'd sooner blame the fact he grew up in a broken home as a momma's boy taught to hate his father who is the person in his life meant to teach him about women and relationships. Media had nothing to do with it, unless you want to bring up media depictions of mothers getting undue custody of children when, in reality, it's probably better if the father raises the children after age 8 (especially for boys). But I guess that's a media depiction we've been socialize to reject...
Isnt there an arc where you poison an orphanage?
Just making sure that one is cool too
... not only has it been commented on, it's also not a pervasive cultural issue in the modern world..?
Ooooh ho ho ho...ho oh no...lol no no no. You don't want to touch on the modern acceptance of poisoned orphans subject. No no no...
Woof. Let's unpack this...
Elliot Rodger had his Dad in his manifesto. And his dad's girlfriend. Lived with them through at least 15 for a week at a time. I dunno about you, but I had every "Birds and the Bees" variation from parents, grandparents, and sex ed classes by 13... so... *shrug!* I didn't read his manifesto after age 15 'cause good god the indulgent bullshit of the whole thing became far too much to bear. Don't think his dad being gone had nearly as much impact as you're suggesting...
Also the idea that boys need their dad more than their moms for learning relationships is just... so much conjecture and ignores just... SO MUCH. Like. If Elliot Rodger had eventually had kids instead of committing mass murder, with all this shit that's in his manifesto still in his mind: Do you still believe he'd be better to teach his kids how to have relationships over their mother?
As to "Media had no impact on it" I just laugh. No one is immune to societal depictions of interactions. You get exposed to a specific perspective long enough and it becomes the one you believe is normal. That's how you get extremists. Whether Incel or Nazi or Daesh. They're all people who have focused in on a narrow enough band of socialization that it becomes the core of their understanding. And media is a powerful tool for it, for good or ill.
As to the modern acceptance of poisoned orphans subject... I'm gonna assume you're trolling? Haha. Meme. Good job.
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Because individual children are poisoned (Typically by their mothers, fathers generally pull the trigger or use another weapon because, again, cultural conditioning!) in rare instances (because no matter how you slice it that's a pretty rare freaking occurence) we should place the same level of cultural weight to poisoning an orphanage (which... has that even happened in a hundred years?) that should be applied to women being murdered by would be paramours (Which happens with shocking regularity)?
... I mean... that's a unique hill to die on, friend, but so long as you're on it rather than me... Go for it.
Imagine telling the victim of a crime that they have to shelve their sense of disenfranchisement because the offense against them isn't, I dunno, fashionable or something.
Were you a poisoned orphan or something? I ... I don't understand where you're going with this, here. Why is this example so key to your identity when there's several missions about lawyers getting killed or kidnapped for not getting their clients off on all charges, endless muggings, and so forth which are all much more common than poisoning of orphans..?
Are you trying to suggest that it's a binary situation where ALL violence must be taboo or no violence is? I Kant understand that.
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Pat Robertson once said that it's a long downward slide to legalizing sex with ducks if two men can stand side by side in marriage.
Slippery Slopes are a fallacy. An argument from emotion presenting a terrible outcome as the clear result from an only tangentially related topic (In Robertson's case: Expanding marriage rights to gay couples being equated to expanding marriage rights to bestiality)
Stop it.
and again i urge you to think for longer than 5 seconds. This arc is similar to the terra arc. She is forced to become a monster and lay eggs. Slippery slope absolutely applies because there is enough evidence to point that this is the next "This is sexist" arc to get changed hence "slippery slope".
I don't think you understand this, yet... Slippery Slope NEVER APPLIES. It's a logical fallacy.
Maybe someone will present the Terra arc as being problematic. Maybe they'll do it as a result of this discussion. But any argument about that is a separate argument. Not a "Continual Trend"
And it absolutely won't lead to "Female Characters are Immune to attack!"
See, it's that last part of it where you go from a reasonable discussion "If this arc is a problem, would this other arc also be a problem for similar reasons?" straight to "PANIC and DESTRUCTION!"
"A is B. Is C also B?" is a continuing discussion. "A is B, therefore C, D, E, F, G, and all other letters are also and thus we can't have anything related to A or B unless we ignore A is B!" is a logical fallacy. It presents an emotionally charged potential outcome of -many- different discussions down the line as the logical outcome of making the current decision.
It is maddening. Stop it.
Also, the patronizing ad hominem "Think for 5 seconds"? REALLY not conducive to constructive discussion.
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That said, isnt this potentially a slippery slope if this is changed on the reasoning of having a real world analogue? Like, instances where you are using violence by a Male player character to defeat female npcs... as ludicrous an example that is, isnt that worse since you are actually doing it especially if you're a Male villain beating up female protagonists?
It's exactly that. Soon we're changing terra arc and then the orphanage arc, and then we're removing "Hellion girlfriends" and soon there just won't be target-able women in the game. This entire thread is one person over-reacting to a story line. Changing this story line just because shes a women and therefor nothing bad should happen to her is probably more sexist than the actual story line. "Shes a women so she shouldn't get killed" ok bud
On a side, the nav text could probably be changed to "Defeat the longbow" or "Defeat lt page". The girlfriend thing doesn't make too much sense given the story.
Pat Robertson once said that it's a long downward slide to legalizing sex with ducks if two men can stand side by side in marriage.
Slippery Slopes are a fallacy. An argument from emotion presenting a terrible outcome as the clear result from an only tangentially related topic (In Robertson's case: Expanding marriage rights to gay couples being equated to expanding marriage rights to bestiality. In yours, explicit targeting of women in retaliation for rejection becoming an outright ban on violence against female characters at all)
Stop it.
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If people poisoned Orphanages on the regular it'd make sense to compare the two... but they don't. So it doesn't.
Which is always great consolation to lone victims everywhere.
I'm... trying to parse your reasoning, here, but I just can't.
Because individual children are poisoned (Typically by their mothers, fathers generally pull the trigger or use another weapon because, again, cultural conditioning!) in rare instances (because no matter how you slice it that's a pretty rare freaking occurence) we should place the same level of cultural weight to poisoning an orphanage (which... has that even happened in a hundred years?) that should be applied to women being murdered by would be paramours (Which happens with shocking regularity)?
... I mean... that's a unique hill to die on, friend, but so long as you're on it rather than me... Go for it.
Isnt there an arc where you poison an orphanage?
Just making sure that one is cool too
... not only has it been commented on, it's also not a pervasive cultural issue in the modern world..?
Like... you get that's why this is being brought up, right? Not "It's a bad thing to do!" but "It's a bad thing to do that is frighteningly common in the world today and based entirely on the sort of sexist/misogynistic violence which is so pervasive to western culture that you can hardly play a video game, read a comic, or see a movie/tv-show without it being placed front and center"
If people poisoned Orphanages on the regular it'd make sense to compare the two... but they don't. So it doesn't.
That is fair, and that is what I get for only having a moment to look and respond.
That said, isnt this potentially a slippery slope if this is changed on the reasoning of having a real world analogue? Like, instances where you are using violence by a Male player character to defeat female npcs... as ludicrous an example that is, isnt that worse since you are actually doing it especially if you're a Male villain beating up female protagonists?
Slippery Slopes are a logical fallacy. They assume that because A to B, therefore C through Z must occur. As if humans can't draw a line of difference at any point between B and Z.
A superhero punching criminals regardless of their gender on the basis of the socially acceptable nature of punching criminals is not sexist. If he were to ONLY punch female criminals, or ONLY punch male criminals, then sexism could hold weight in the discussion (either a personal hatred of women leading him to ignore crimes committed by mens, or a more traditionalist 'benevolent sexism' based on cultural assumptions of women's weakness)
Similarly, a villain kills whoever between him and his goal is probably not going to be targeted with calls of sexism unless he explicitly targets only shit that women own or otherwise are in control of/protect.
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You're right! I forgot about that in seven freaking years. (SO GLAD to have City back!) The whole "They'll just cycle the fastest attack" issue.
Could make it to an aggro-buff for that one merc. Sort of an "I'll die to keep the rest of the squad safe!"
Point is: Create some extra function to it that is unique to each Merc type, make it a toggle for constant effect, drop the recharge to maybe 1 minute.
It'd still be a unique ability to empower your troops, but it'd be more fun and tactically useful to apply it to different pets in different situations.
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Isnt there an arc where you poison an orphanage?
Just making sure that one is cool too
... not only has it been commented on, it's also not a pervasive cultural issue in the modern world..?
Like... you get that's why this is being brought up, right? Not "It's a bad thing to do!" but "It's a bad thing to do that is frighteningly common in the world today and based entirely on the sort of sexist/misogynistic violence which is so pervasive to western culture that you can hardly play a video game, read a comic, or see a movie/tv-show without it being placed front and center"
If people poisoned Orphanages on the regular it'd make sense to compare the two... but they don't. So it doesn't.
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Okay... so... different suggestion:
Give each of the different Mercenaries a new "Unlockable" power like they get from the usual upgrade powers. Tie it to Serum.
Then make Serum a toggle on your target. 0 end cost toggle.
You put it on the Commando and he gains damage resistance and all, but also unlocks an additional power. Maybe a "Bolstering Cry" where your Commando buffs your other pets at random intervals. But only your pets.
Give the medic a big AoE heal he'll throw off once in a while on pets and players.
Have the Spec Ops apply an immediate 100% aggro-shed and gain an aggro multiplier of 0.
Let the basic Mercs get a huge recharge rate buff that they can apply as an AoE to pets and players.
It being made a toggle means that it's 100% uptime for -one- of your pets, and it becomes a tactical question of which buff you want. Do you need more AoE heals? Would increasing your team's attack speed be useful? What about making your spec ops into stealth units so they don't get killed? Or are you solo and need to put it on the commando to increase every pet's relative power while making the commando really hard to kill?
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So... two big things:
1) Art reflects or critiques our world. There is no alternative. Even landscape paintings portray reality as what the artist saw of it, or wished to see of it, which is why something like Starry Night is so different from most of what Bob Ross put out while still being the same basic thing: A landscape painting. Even the works of Jackson Pollock are meant to press the viewer to apply meaning to the paint splatters on the canvas... but art is also more than paintings. Music, movies, video games, any form of storytelling comes with assumptions of shared values, like 1984 assuming the reader likes freedom and doesn't like the idea of Big Brother being a thing. You get the idea.
2) No one is immune to cultural and societal influences. That which we see in art has an impact. Even, if not -especially-, mass produced media which constantly reinforces concepts through widespread repetition.
A lot of the recent Incel attitudes are based on guys expecting love to work like it does in the movies they watched in the 80s and 90s. You hang out with the girl you like and perform big grand romantic gestures and then she's in love with you and chooses you over the other, presumably more handsome, guy she's been dating 'cause your love is "Real" and women in those movies have minimal personal autonomy.
Through art we've conditioned people to see this as the way things happen. The way it works. Once those ideas and mindsets are stuffed together in an echo chamber long enough you get the "Nice Guy" and eventually the Incel. Hey, remember Elliot Rodger? Yeah. This is how he wound up where he was that lead him to going out and shooting women 'cause even the ones he never approached didn't fling themselves at him for sexual favors.
This arc reflects a particularly painful part of reality. That women are -vastly- more likely to be murdered by a man who they're either in a relationship with, or who -wants- to be in a relationship with them. 4 out of 5 domestic homicides are perpetrated by a man on a woman. And that's including LGBT relationships where the people involved are both male, both female, maybe neither, and women killin their husband/boyfriend/ex/whatever. ALL of those fall into that last 20%.
Stating that "It wouldn't be a problem if the genders were reversed" is a false equivalence. It ignores the greater realities involved in favor of pretending there is no difference.
And yeah. A lot of male characters die to further the story of other male characters. No doubt! But. Big but. Particularly in superhero comics female characters make up the bulk of romantic interests, rather than the bulk of superheroes, and have for a -very- long time. And they tend to get fridged for a male character's emotional growth (I like to call it manpain!) at a much higher rate than male characters get killed off for manpain.
Heck, Gail Simone (Comic Writer) created the Fridge List in the first place. And yeah, there's a few dudes here and there, but most fridgings by a factor of seven to ten are female characters getting killed off.
There's been a lot of bad faith arguing, here. As a woman (A trans woman in particular) I feel like the arc definitely has a place in the game. It touches on an ugly part of our reality, definitely, but it is part of our reality. Rather than seeing it removed, or even the ending changed, I'd rather see trigger warnings given to it and perhaps a few of the other questionable arcs that exist in the game. Simple statements letting players know that this concent is pretty damned sensitive and rough.
Westin Phipps, in particular, could use such trigger warnings.
Could add it to the contact dialogue. Or maybe a popup warning. Not sure. But yeah... I think that would preserve what exists in the game while also making it more comfortable for people who wouldn't want to be exposed to that kind of stuff.
Also I loved Captain Marvel. Best MCU film since Black Panther. The reason a lot of people think it is bad is 'cause it's written from the perspective of a woman overcoming emotional abuse through superheroics and such while emotional abuse is largely background noise in most people's lives. It's a women's power fantasy to overcome trauma instead of the traditional "Woman cries a lot and overcomes emotional abuse by finding a good man while spending time with friends and family who love her"
Also, of course, the hate that was lobbed at it before anyone saw any of it. So drastic that Rotten Tomatoes had to change their system from all the sexists trying to bury the movie. >.>
No one is immune to propaganda!
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How much of this EAT was completed..?
I know we have the powers lists for it, including what enhancements would be applicable to each power. But were the mechanics put into place?
A lot of the animations could be taken from other powersets and, honestly, it looks like Savage Melee and Beast Summoning were made from powers taken from the archetype, so some of their animations and such could be used in both places...
The two Shapeshift Powers are probably the biggest and baddest obstacle for this archetype. Outside of asking a modeling team to pop into 3dMax to create compatible models for replacement (Male, Female, and Huge for both Werewolf and Werepanther) it'd be pretty close to impossible.
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My advice would be to use it so long as it fits your character's theme. But I would like to also suggest you look at Energy Armor if you're looking to do a Psychic. Nearly bottomless endurance, situational toggles, some defense and some damage resistance, it's an armor set that works really well with the Sentinel's Defensive Opportunity, since it doesn't have a whole bunch of regen or self-healing on it's own.
It would have a Psychic hole, though. You could offset it a bit with IO slotting, but don't expect to cap it.
But with the right power customizations it becomes a soft pink-purple glow on your character and a duodimensional set of concentric broken rings that really help to sell the "Psychic" aspect.
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"It is said that some people are born to be heroes. Others become heroes by the decisions they make in the long years of their life, or only minutes before their end. For me it is more... complicated." -Khamsen
Identity: Khamsen (Coptic for Sandstorm)
Name: Tasherit El-Masry
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 180lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Skin Tone: Black
Ethnicity: Egyptian
Born: 1988
Deceased: 2012
Khamsen was a moderately well known superhero in the early 2000s. One of only a small number of Pyraterrakineticists, she had the ability to impart directed motion and random motion to silicon particles at the same time, vibrating sand to high temperatures as it launched toward those she sought to fight. She took the name of Sandstorm as a result, but due to registration issues, translated it into Coptic Egyptian.
Born in Cairo in 1982 to wealthy parents, she immigrated to England by the age of 5 and grew up in the London school system. Her powers manifested during secondary school (8th year) she managed to keep it relatively secret, sharing the information only with her parents and a single close friend whom she eventually began dating.
In 2002 she moved to Paragon Rhode Island to begin her superheroic career. While she would never attain the level of superstardom that she had some hopes of reaching, her impact was widespread in the community, focusing primarily on fighting against those who sought to abuse innocents, such as Crey and the Family. During the Second Rikti war, she gained some notoriety among the Heroes Upon the Hill of Talos Island by being so dedicated to protecting her allies that she spent months recovering in a hospital bed after saving a fallen ally by shielding him with her body.
During the Praetorian Incursion of 2012 she became trapped in a Brickstown office building while attempting to lead a group of civilians to safety away from an incursion site. In the end she made the ultimate sacrifice to save those innocent lives, collapsing a portion of the building on herself and the rampaging ghouls who were coming to consume her charges.
Her body was recovered and her identity revealed in a touching farewell to what many remembered to be the kindest heroine they'd ever met. Her body was enshrined in Paragon at her parent's wishes, in a tomb that bore her costumed likeness on the door. One of many in the graveyards of Paragon City.
Seven years later, the tomb was found opened. The body missing. Now a new hero calls herself Khamsen.... or is it the same person, after all this time?
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Illusion would be terrible for Dominators.
Dominators rely on Hard Controls to shut the enemy down and stop it from attacking so they can wade into melee range and beat all of their foes with brutal efficiency.
Superior Invisibility and Group Invisibility don't impact that at all. In fact they're ways of avoiding combat, rather than engaging in it. Spectral Wounds? Dominators already have ranged attacks.
And then you get to the pets which are largely aggro-control for a form of soft-control, forcing the enemy to waste time pounding on decoys that you can still pull aggro off of in some cases.
There's also the Domination effect being useless for several powers (And only marginally useful for Phantom Army)
Honestly? I'd rather see Masterminds get Illusion Control as a primary than Dominators.
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Gonna touch on a few of the arguments here, lightly, but there's one that deserves some specific attention:
Dominators aren't particularly fragile. And giving them Melee Attacks doesn't make them more fragile.
Broadly speaking, every fight has two time values that determine the winner. TTK and TTD. Time to Kill and Time to Death. You die you lose, you kill you win. Suuuper simple.
Every Combat power in the game either increases the TTD clock (Heals, Defenses, Buffs to Healing and Defenses, Debuffs to Accuracy and Damage) or reduces the TTK clock (Damage, Defense Debuffs). Some of them do it quickly, some of them do it slowly, but by and large it's all about those two clocks.
Control increases the TTD clock just like heals and defenses do by reducing the amount of incoming damage. Whether it's an immobilize keeping the enemy from using it's melee attacks alongside it's ranged attacks or a hold stopping the enemy from attacking at all. The exception is Confuse, which affects both TTD and TTK.
Dominators use a powerful "Active Defense" system to lock down enemies and pause their damage output completely through stuns, sleeps, holds, knockdowns, fears... Rushing into melee as a Dominator isn't particularly dangerous because everyone who could hit you in melee (or most of them) can't. 'Cause they're mezzed.
Throwing Assault on this AT just gives them the option of remaining close for buff leashing while also picking off flyers or runners or whatever else. It might make them a hint safer now and then (When they're using Ranged Attacks exclusively) but that's the player not realizing they want to play a corruptor.
As to the "What about the Epic Pool Hole Filling?" question... Eh? You could hand an Assault/Efflux character pretty much any epic pool and it would round out their build by giving them some control or AoE damage (Which is part of what Dominators get since Assault focuses on ST mostly).
Also: Dominators shouldn't weave in and out of melee. They should stand, firmly, in melee, completely untouchable by the petrified statues of their enemies, and tear them apart while their victims watch in mute horror, unable to even look away.
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I'm not particularly interested in either assault primaries or armor/support hybrid secondaries on non-EATs; and less yet for both. The traditional balance trades of CoH would make the resultant AT unable to do any job. Ignoring those metrics gives every overlapped AT an identity crisis.
I'm all for a melee/support AT with a very strong identity and a good distinguishing inherent; I personally imagine something "paladin"-like, anchoring typical Support debuff toggles on themselves. A "domscrapruptor" just seems like an attempt to change CoH into a freeform system without respect for why ATs were implemented to begin with.
Not every superhero fits into the nice clean ATs the game provides.
As to why ATs were implemented in the first place... meh? The game has changed so much since then that Dominator can have permadom and great defenses and Tankers can wipe out a whole enemy spawn with a giant fireball with more damage than a Blaster's Tier 9. We also created a Ranged/Defense AT that essentially functions like a tough to kill Corruptor who forgot to take any of his support powers.
I earnestly don't want "Freeform" character design. What I would like is new ways to play this old game we all love. All the "Main Roles" for team-based MMO combat are covered twice over at this point by "Secondary Roles" that can step over any gap they might have keeping them away.
The only new ways we can approach the game are to expand the powersets that exist (Adding more, which requires shitloads of art and time) or mix and match powerset types on new ATs like the powersets are Legos and we're pulling apart the house to build a spaceship.
Does it mean we're ignoring the "MMORPG Team Design" dynamic? Sure. But who cares? Once you get above 5 people on a team it doesn't matter what the new people are so long as they add more damage/heals/controls/whatever unless there's something your specifically lacking. Take a team of 7 characters of randomly selected ATs and it doesn't matter what the 8th one who joins is 9 times out of 10.
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Could we swap the Primary powerset from Melee to Assault? More character variety that way instead of yet another Melee AT.
Brute, scrapper, stalker, tank
Blaster, defender, corruptor
Dominator
Needs Moar assault!
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So @Chaos Ex Machina sent me some tells in game with a pretty solid idea!
What if we use SupR as an in-character conceit and specifically do so through an in-game Global Chat Channel for IC RP Recruitment? We could still use some shorthand stuff, or describe emojis being attached to messages to show off character personality, maybe even have players describe short videos of their characters posting alerts and the like...
We could also set up Virtueverse "Profile Pages" for SupR and the like, so people can browse through people's SupR profiles.
Would this be something the community enjoys?
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The issue comes in Magnitudes and Durations. Control is a primary powers because if you took the mags or durations down it would be largely ineffective. And if you didn't, you'd have an AT with full blasts and full controls.
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I've visited a few times, now, during off peak hours. It's great for a semiprivate dining experience with friends or a potential date!
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If there's a red-side equivalent of this, it should be called "Arch-Find." :P
... holy frack that's great!
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I added a correction and some corrections to that thread, actually!
And yeah. Thank you! Sorry for the inane thread!
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So hey. Whips are cool. But petless Masterminds are almost always weak as a blown kiss.
Is there any way to make a decent Whips-Only Mastermind? I figure Hasten would be 100% required... but have no idea what else the character would need to be more than useless.
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Powers the set would "Need":
SelfBuff (Typically Aim or something similar, doesn't require much animation design)
A new heavier attack (Something like Disembowel)
A capstone attack (Like Headsplitter)
PBAoE attack (Whirling Sword, though the current cone could be repurposed into a PBAoE and a new cone created)
A "Quasi-Unique" power (Like Chain Induction, Parry, or Boggle)
Thanks to the animation for Abyssal Empowerment (A lash around the target's neck and fire running along the whip within a certain range) we have the animations for 5 powers (Aim doesn't require anything new after all!). We could have the neck grab be the heavier attack, capstone, or quasi-unique. Perhaps it could set the target on fire for a pulsing DoT to the enemy and nearby enemies? Not certain.
But what could we do for the other powers? Make it explicitly magical (Like Demon Summoning appears) with Runes used to ensnare enemies or get launched as blasts? If so, we've got animations for those as well. How about forgoing the PBAoE and having the whip-set created a Targeted AoE at short range by doing a basic whip-strike attack (Lash) and creating a rune-patch explosion like you're summoning a demon but the demon doesn't come: The ground just breaks?
Could alternatively make that the capstone. Use the Water Blast "Jump into the air charging fist" animation and go into a ground-strike where the eart splits open Demon-Summoning style...
Rewrite Lt Harris's arc redside so it's not so offensive
in Suggestions & Feedback
Posted
^This
The guy made the rhetorical suggestion "Oh so women who need protection don't exist?" as a nice Strawman Argument to shove over.
'Cause logical fallacies are a big part of the internet...