Steampunkette

What it says on the tin. Set all the NPCs in the zone to scale based on player level, so whether you're 50, or 1, you can enjoy the very cool zone. Similarly, make the Missions in the zone scale to the widest possible margin. I'm not gonna ask you to make level 1 Warriors, obviously. But let's not lock it all up as 50 content or anything. This could actually encourage players to level in and enjoy the zone as something new to do at any level range!

So... I've been playing Dark/Martial as a "Blappy" type character. And so far? It's pretty great. The AoE Immob holds enemies in Caltrops which I've budgeted 4 damage procs to, though I might swap one for knockdown. The fear slows incoming damage, but if it's still too great, Heart of Darkness stops it altogether. Add in some ninja-star ricochets, leg-sweeps, and a cool spinning kick, and it's pretty cool. I'm RPing the character as a D&D Roguelock. Grabbed Infiltration and slapped a Stealth IO into my sprint for near-stalker levels of sneakiness. On Teams I can rush ahead in stealth, pop Heart of Darkness and Caltrops, then pop out of melee to fling the Immob before diving back in for kicks and stuff. Only 28 so far. But I put this build together for her. Mistmourne - Dominator (Darkness Control).mxd

Rikti -are- Earthlings. Woops! Spoilers. >.>

At the time, global suppression was the only way they knew to make it work without the animations breaking in relation to movement. Specifically: Swift. Because Swift is a globally active power that always increases your movement speed the walk animation would have you gliding too far in relation to how fast you were actually going. At the time of Walk's introduction, the ability to change a character's Movement Speed Cap on the fly hadn't been invented, yet. So everything was managed with speed increases and decreases. Part of why Hover has a massive fly speed penalty tied to it (Largely 'cause the Engine understands "Fly 1" as a defined value of speed and they had to lower it for hover to not just be flight since it is all based on Magnitudes) Now that we have the ability to just set a defined speed cap (Through all the work done to create Afterburner) and use the Walk "Animation Priority" in the same way Hover has a higher animation priority than the standard flight pose... It's possible we'll see it in time. But it's gonna take a lil' while.

Etymology Time! "They" comes from Old Norse. "Sa". "Sa" was gender neutral and referred to one or many people. It became "They" in Old English, that is to say: English old enough that Shakespeare would've been like "Thy speech is most strange 'pon mine ear. Whither came thy mother and father?" Along with "They" came Their, Them, That, and The. That's right. THE came from Sa. Again, this is -OLD- English, which was really more German than English as you'd recognize it, today. Remember that "Thy" from Shakespeare? They became super common in use because the nordic Thin (Pronounced Thine) meant "Yours". And that became "Thou" which eventually became "You". "They" as a pronoun is older than "You" as a pronoun. Ain't that somethin'? Don't get me wrong. "He" has existed for almost as long as "They", in various forms. But the idea that it was the default "Person of Unknown Gender" for a thousand years ignores that They has been around just as long and is still in active use and has been THE ENTIRE TIME. It would be linguistic revisionism to pretend that "He" is and has been the default.

Buff powers are not like armors. There's a reason you can't put invisible thermal shields on somebody, or invisible force fields, or invisible ice shields. It's so there are visible indicators that a character is currently under the effects of your buff. Leadership is no different.

For two reasons. The first is as follows: And the second is: The game has no way to track "Overhealing". It's just not something the engine does. When you're healed, you gain X amount of hit points. If you're at the cap, you gain X amount of hit points but nothing happens. It still just tries to give you those hit points and a separate function keeps them from applying beyond a certain point. It doesn't actively track how much was or wasn't applied.

Damn. You're right. Back in September of 2019 he stated we wouldn't see more exclusive power choices for the Forseeable future. In fact Master Brawler was an experiment that was supposed to be reverted 'cause it's a bit of a hack job in the code, but they didn't, and now people love it, so it's remaining. Well... still! There's always hope for the unforseen future from 2019...

How about this for a change... Dull Pain and Durable Regeneration as mutually exclusive options. Durable Regeneration is a Toggle which increases Max HP by half the value of Dull Pain and provides a 20 second duration Absorb Value equal to the other half of Dull Pain's max HP increase every 20 seconds which dissipates if the toggle is removed. The Absorb Shield is not enhanceable, while the HP Increase value is enhanceable. There is no heal effect of the toggle. Then a player could aim to take alpha strikes with their small absorb value (267 at level 50) while losing out on a portion of the max HP buff which decreases the effectiveness of all of their other regen-centric powers and gain a small cyclical absorb shield to slow down their HP's drop to the tune of 13hp/sec which is about equal to +115% regeneration as an up-front value. For reference: Dull Pain on full power increases your HP/S from Regen by about 10 outside of Instant Healing and by about 50 during Instant Healing. It would lose about 1/3rd of it's overall power. So Durable Regeneration would cost you about 3hp/s regen from Fast Healing and Integration, and a further 15hp/s regen during Instant Healing for a constant 13hps. Lose 18, gain 13, but those 13 function as a shield... ... I think it could work.

OH! Yeah. That doesn't work at -all-. No way for it to function in the CoH Engine without designing a whole new system.

There is nothing that you can ever do to encourage people not to farm up incredible amounts of Inf or to PL characters up to 50. It's too simple and attractive for people to be like "Mmm... No. No. I can use Purples at 22, now, so I don't need to be 50!"

If you're fighting an AV, GM, or other superpowerful enemy (The Incarnate Trial bosses, for example) a single Sentinel can mean a -lot- more damage from the team during specific burst windows, since the debuff affects proc damage and is unresistable. Unfortunately it's plagued by 4 important problems. 1) It charges based on attacks, meaning you often can't pull it out on a spawn without "Wasting" it since many enemies are dead, or badly wounded, leading the Sentinel to hold it. 2) While holding it, you cannot use two of your baseline attacks, often cutting into attack chains and making the character feel syncopated rather than smooth. 3) When you do use it, it doesn't feel -strong- or -powerful-. It honestly doesn't feel like much of anything, even though the rest of the team is hitting harder. 4) Damage values feel universally low, making the archetype feel like it's floundering. We already know that Sentinels are Opportunists, so how about Containment? Containment, specifically doing extra damage to targets that are currently stunned, held, asleep, immobilized, or under a Fear effect, could make them feel stronger without significantly altering their overall damage output, and give them an explicit role on the team: Taking out controlled targets before they break free. An the narrative role of taking advantage of openings and opportunities. Combine with the current Sentinel Mechanic and you'll have a Sentinel and any control characters attempting to nuke AVs while the Purple Triangles of Doom are down. Further, outside of Dual Pistols, Energy, Fire, and Water Blast, the other blast sets all have the ability to randomly, or specifically, apply stuns, sleeps, or holds to targets, usually while doing very nice damage. And each of the Epic Pools has one or more Control Powers for Sentinel characters, ensuring every Sentinel, whether Solo or on a Team, has options to benefit from this aspect of their inherent power. Give their AoE attacks a 25% chance to do +50% damage and their ST attacks a 50% chance to do +50% damage to controlled targets and I think you'll have a winner.

When it launches, it will be dramatically Unreal. As in the Unreal Engine. For all the good and the bad that that entails. Here's a Procedurally Generated Office Mission Map. It is clearly something they're still working on, but they undershot their production schedule estimates by an incredible margin. MMORPGs are not something that takes even a full time Studio 2-3 years of effort to put out, unless it's going to be Shovelware. Amazon, owner of so much money it isn't funny, -announced- that they were working on New World in 2016. That game had already most likely been in production for a couple of years by that point, judging by the presented materials. It won't be released until August of this year. CoT is probably going to reach release. And it's probably going to look like an Indy game, no matter how many years the team puts into it. But no one had any understanding of just how -long- an MMORPG takes to create when they started. Much less as a purely Volunteer studio of people putting in passion-efforts in their spare time.

This kind of powerset would inspire me to make a "Savage Lands" team. Savage/Bio Stalker, Shadow/Savage Dominator, Plant/Nature Controller, Savage/Bio Brute, Wild/Sonic Defender, and a Beast Mastery/Nature or Beast Mastery/Wild MM. Tun everywhere we fight into a Jungle and prowl in it.

Yeah. Right now Combat Flight uses the same pose as Fly or Energy Flight or Mystic Flight or one of the Jetpacks. It just looks kind of doofy. Granted, it's how the Hover Power originally looked before they put the hover animation in. But we're beyond that!

I'd like to have the option to do a PB who flies around in the Hover Pose, rather than VERY SLOWLY leaning forward like I'm flying at 90 miles per hour, cape flowing in the breeze. Pls.

Honestly... My actual best is probably Cyclone. Kin/Bio brute recolored to grey and grey-blue for "Wind"

Sorcelle. Petless MM because I'm a masochist who likes the new Sorcery Pool and how it looks with Whip. Hard to see, there, but her chest and mask are the darkest violet, to match her boots and gloves.

Oh, I was just referring to ground target buff/debuff. Things like Distortion Field, maybe. Lightning Storm and Bonfire are both Damage/Control. Though that -is- a good note about Liquefy. And this could also work for Heal/Regen things like Tree of Life.

This made me think... What if Tar Patch and other "Ground Target Buff/Debuff" effects were given a sort of Faraday Cage treatment? Strip the Cooldown off of it, but make each cast destroy the last one. That way you can -always- put down a Tar Patch, at a cost, but -only- one at a time?

I think I might have just solved the issue of an Assault/Defense hybrid melee/ranged character... One of the big reasons that Assault/Defense characters are generally frowned upon as an archetype concept is that there's simply no reason to not get in melee and just stay there, using such a character. Your defenses (Plus IO Sets) offset the danger, and ranged attacks can't have a -minimum- range they fire from, so why not? One of the common suggestions is to create some sort of "Stacking Buff" mechanic which causes all the ranged powers in the Assault set to get Combo Levels based on how many melee attacks you've fired off, and vice versa. But that doesn't solve the inherent problem, it just encourages people to combo up their ranged attacks by doing a bunch of melee and then staying at point blank for the ranged attacks. So what if their inherent actively cost them damage for doing so? What I propose is an inherent similar to Invincible or Evolving Armor. One which gains stacks based on how many enemies are nearby. Each stack of this power would provide a Damage Debuff and a "Defensive Strength" Buff. To keep it from being -too- drastic, let's keep the Debuff at 2% per target, and the buff at 3% per target. At maximum Saturation, 16 targets, you would have a -32% to damage. All damage. And a +48% bonus to Defense Strength. What do I mean by Defensive Strength? Same thing that Power Build up modifies: The amount of defensive benefit you get from powers, not a direct bonus to resistance or defense. For the sake of argument, let's say you're using /Bio Armor. You've got Hardened Carapace toggled on granting you 17.5% Smashing/Lethal/Toxic. 3 SOs you're at 27%. Get into full saturation and you're Resistances jump to 40.4%. Got 16.38% defense to Energy/Negative with 3 slotted Environmental Adaptation? Get into full saturation and it climbs to 24%. But you -lose- 32% of your damage. That's a big pile of damage lost. Meaning an Assault/Defense character would need to decide when to jump into melee, or out of it, to keep themselves in fighting shape. Should you fire off your ranged attacks, first, and only close to melee once there's only a few enemies left standing? Or should you dive in, right off the bat, to gain the increased defensive strength to soak an alpha? Should you jump into melee once the team's support drops or would that only delay the inevitable? Further, should we allow -control- strength also play a part in this? If you're at full saturation, should your KB hit with 48% more strength as a way to get out of full saturation? Could be an interesting way to go with it.

The suggestion boils down to Incarnates and Inventions. Once you hit 50 as a defender, you can become a -really- strong character. But on a team, your ability to shine is gravely diminished. Take a Dark Miasma for example. Twilight Grasp is a really nice group heal. Works all the way through to 50 really -really- well! Tar Patch: If you don't put this power down before the first Judgement or Blaster Nuke lands almost everything will be dead before you finish the cast time. Darkest Night: Your Anchor exploded before the cast time ended, and everyone on the team has soft-capped defenses, anyhow. Howling Twilight: Really powerful group rez, assuming anyone dies! Strong Stun component, too! Shadowfall: Really strong and useful PBAoE Stealth and +Def buff. Mostly to get yourself to softcap, 'cause everyone else is already there. But hey, it's debuff overhead! Fearsome Stare: Everything that would get Feared is dead by the time you finish casting it. Petrifying Gaze: Everything that could be held is dead by the time you finish casting it. Black Hole: Very few people bother with this power, and you'll probably get yelled at for trying to use it. Dark Servant: More damage is good? The rest of the pet's powers are useless. Granted, Dark Miasma is one of the more extreme examples, but Radiation and Sonic face similar problems. Electric, at least, provides benefits in unique ways and unique values to make it more useful overall at high end. Which I think may have been part of it's design ideology. Maybe there's a better way to take it than minor buffs that allow for wider build variety, I just haven't really given them much thought. But support classes, as well as Khelds, are against a brick wall at high end.

Defense values equal to 50% of resistance values are interchangeable. 45% defense results in you taking 10% of incoming damage in the same way 90% Resistance does. Whether the values are 3.5 and 7 or 5 and 10 it works out. But if you give 10 and 10, holy crap does that favor Defense sets! I respect the intention, though. Spreading the value to the caster through passive increases. I would probably lean toward the 3.75 and 7 range, personally, including for things like bonus Damage from powers or Recharge. Regen is a stickier wicket, and I haven't thoroughly examined how the values would interact. But generally speaking they, and recovery bonuses, should probably be closer to the order of Health and Stamina than 50% of whatever the original value is. In this way, a Support Character could get -some- baseline defense/resistance/damage outside of their Epic Power Picks and PBAoE effects, on which they could stack set bonuses, without it being huge. Which would free up set bonuses for other types, like recharge or damage so they can better contribute to putting the enemy down through more debuffs, more team-buffs, and more damage.

Reducing values to balance the AT... okay... If it's Control/Defense most of your attacks would be doing like 3-15 points of damage early on, with damage auras putting out somewhere in the 2-3 range per tick. (Assuming you -have- damage auras). Baseline, I mean. Assuming Controller damage scalars because it would be using Control Sets. Or do you want to give them Blaster's 1.125 damage scalar and bump that up to a whopping 5-23 damage and 3-4 damage per tick? And hey, don't forget about the Design Formulas Leandro posted two years ago to show off the guidelines. You'll still be doing incredibly low damage, or have outrageous recharge times and end costs to balance it out, which just back-loads your wait time while trying to defeat a group. Sure, they could "Reduce it" by making your control effects last a shorter period of time or your defense values lower, but unless the damage values are in the 1.85 range (A higher damage scalar than any AT in the game) you're still going to do -way- less damage than a Defender flings out because the baseline damage of the powers involved is so -incredibly- low. And Defense/Support... uh... and the Damage comes from... where? Enemies just -decide- to take a bunch of damage? 'Cause the /Support sets basically do 0 damage. Now if you wanna suggest an entire new concept of attack/support set and defense/control set that's... Okay. Weird? But I'd be absolutely down to see a type of powerset that uses both active absolute and passive relative damage reduction. Don't care much about the attack/support, myself. But if -that's- what you want, that is what you need to suggest. And design up a quickie example so that people know what you're talking about.

If it has a Control Primary and an Armor Secondary there is no way it could be made "Fun". Effective, yes. Very survivable. But not "Fun". Same for Defense/Support. Don't care what values you tie to their defenses, controls, or support abilities, it would still suck a whole bag of rocks to try and play that character for any length of time. Early on you wouldn't be able to do much of anything. Then in the late-mid range (35-45) you'd get -kind- of useful. And then in the Endgame you'd go back to being largely useless. And I "Assume" they'd follow the current archetype paradigm because there's no reason to assume they'd completely discard all their current balancing setups -just- for this one archetype. Full on discard all the end cost, effectiveness, ,damage, and recharge time mechanics, Archetype Scalar Priorities based on Primary/Secondary Sets, and other levers. Because there's no reason to assume they WOULD be willing to completely start over from scratch on balancing just to make this one incredibly slow and plodding archetype to function. Why in the world do you assume they'd do all that just to try and wedge this archetype that can barely do anything but "Not Die" in the general direction of the NPCs into the game? And can you imagine how hilariously unfortunate it would be to try and take this behemoth into PvP? Woof. That's what I'm gonna call this AT 'til you come up with a different name. The Behemoth.