Steampunkette

I think when the Devs state that it makes Repel more useful I think they mean as a Devkit Function. As in something they can apply to -new- powersets. Like Wind Control, for example. Or some sort of Gravity Melee that allows you to yank people into melee with you by making a massively strong -Repel or +Draw effect (how ever it gets phrased). That said... It -would- be a pretty cool increase in functionality for powers like Black Hole or Telekinesis. I think it'd be amazing to have a TK Popup Tray for Mind Controllers to choose whether to draw TK enemies closer or push them away by activating a secondary toggle which makes the power's function swap!

So I had this wild idea to put together a Psi/Mental Blaster and focus all of her slotting efforts into constant increased damage values and faster recharge times. With Assault on (Very important to note that, I think) she winds up with a constant +50% damage and the ability to gain another 261% damage with Build Up and Aim. She's got Permahasten so she'll have permanent Drain Psyche stacks and Psychic Wail every 34 seconds. I know a lot of people swear by making their characters super survivable for soloing/farming/wild 8-man incarnate teams racing through radio mishies, and a lot of others swear by Procs because a /Kin can max out your damage buff limit for extended periods of time. But is going for a constant big boost like that and a ton of recharge viable for normal content and TFs or would I be better off aiming for Softcap Ranged/Melee?

We get that it's an April Fool's Joke... It's still actually a kinda cool suggestion, though. I feel like you'd have to either make the defense values fairly low (Since it's practically just SR but better) -or- swap them from Vectored to Typed... which could be pretty unique. Specifically, what would you think about giving them strong Lethal, Fire, and Energy defenses and modest Smashing/Cold/Negative? Toss some Psi Defense onto the Clicky Mez Protection and let it stack with itself if their recharge is high enough... You'd finally have a decent Defense Set where slotting for specific damage types would be interesting. It would also leave the Plot Armor character most vulnerable to Circle of Thorns and Skulls which would be nifty, considering the number of characters with Plot Armor who get kidnapped by those two groups...

Sentinels are cool. You know what would be cooler? Slotting a Taunt Proc IO (250% maybe?) into Fireball or Rain of Fire as a way to sort of make your Sentinel into an Off-tank. I know the Presence Power Pool Taunt exists, but if a Tanker can put enough Proc IOs into Handclap to make it go from a PBAoE Stun to one of their highest DPA attack powers... I think we could get a few Taunt-IO Uniques. It would also allow Widows, Soldiers, PBs, Warshades, Dominators, and Masterminds all pick up the mantle of "Off Tank" if they feel like they've got the slotting and survivability.

If I am 3/4 of the way through the Freaklympics arc, then gain the 1 level that puts me out of it's level range, I'm SoL on the Reward Merits. If I go through Oro, I have to go back and do all the missions leading up to where I was over, again. And while doing it I'm in "Task Force Mode" so I can't bring friends along unless they're present when I start the arc through Oro. It's a good and solid system, but setting your level on the fly would be more immediately useful going forward and keep people from missing out on rewards for effort put forward.

@Hallucinogen created "The New Outcasts on the Block" at Arc ID 19731. Level 1-54 Outcasts rising up under new leadership with Frostfire turning Hero. @Shocktacular created "Legacies Unchained (aka The Corrupted Chain) at Arc ID 21164. Level 1-54 Legacy Chain former members working together toward apocalyptic ends. @Narcotic created "The Police Radio" at Arc ID 12492. Level 1-54 alternate radio missions with more variety than the Peregrine Island offerings. @Echo's Echo created Radio Missions, too, at Arc IDs 38283 and 38284 which focus on the Destroyers (From Praetoria) as well as a new gang "The Scorpions" in a Radio Mish style format. There's lots of little things like that available.

The issue is that they literally do not have enough powers and power variety, currently, to scale to 50 without being more laughably pushovers than the Council at 50. Adding more powers and variety to the SG group would be fine, of course. But that's the reason they haven't just been set to spawn at any level without a thorough redesign of the villaingroup. That said, people make entire AE Villaingroups of upgraded street level enemies. Thanks to @Echo13 I personally have access to most of the game's low-tier supervillain groups as AE villains using player-powersets, so I can write short AE Arcs for level 50 skulls and stuff. Gonna be doing a lot of that in short order.

I unironically love this suggestion.

Suppression was added for a set of reasons. 1) The aforementioned jousting. It's still possible to "Joust" in PvE, notably by jumping in a given direction, firing a power while in the air, and landing some distance away from your opponent before the rooting of the attack animation ends. But it's far less ridiculous than it -was-. 2) To make it harder to pass through Hazard Zones without interacting with mobs. Not "Impossible", obviously, as Fly and Teleport show, and as any speedster worth their salt can zip around most NPC groups without getting caught. But if you got tagged suppression would kick in and you'd have to fight. Remember, this was back before a bunch of "Mission Teleporter" type powers existed and you used to see dozens of players moving through the Hollows to go fight Atta because Hollows Teams were the "fast-leveling" meta. 3) In PREPARATION for larger scale PvP than the Arena. With CoV on the horizon, the Devs knew they'd be adding PvP Zones for hero and villain joint use. They also knew how incredibly unsatisfying it would be to be trying to fight someone and then have them zip off your screen... -especially- if you also met the criteria for the fourth reason. 4) Player Computer Disparity. City of Heroes had it's bar for entry as -low- as possible, to try and get as many potential players as possible (Which why it wasn't as pretty as other games released around the same time for solo players or small groups of people playing together). Travel Powers could result in such players winding up rubber banding or otherwise dealing with huge gouts of lag in combats as their slow computer tried to keep up with everything happening and the player's location plus the particle effects. Travel Suppressions reduced the distance a character could travel, which reduced the rubberbanding issues. Number 4 on the list is arguably the most important reason to apply travel suppression, back then. But if it were openly acknowledged it would likely result in bullying of people without access to more powerful computers and flame wars about how people shouldn't play if they can't afford X, Y, or Z computer upgrades.

Slightly different angle: What about creating multiple "Teams" of different levels of heroes? You could have the 35s/38s as your group's "Top Tier" Heroes. But then also have some 22s/25s as a lower-end band of heroes who focus on Protecting the City rather than Global Scale threats. Your Batman or The Question type characters who occasionally get pulled into the World-Event RP type stuff. Could take it a step forward and also have a Teens Team where everyone is under level 20 and focused on street-crime. That way your World-Class team can sometimes drop down to deal with Gangland Threats and pull their punches while still looking like absolute badasses, to help reinforce the illusion of being particularly powerful (But not Cosmic Level) heroes. ... also the AE Exists, so you could make level 20ish content that the 30s and the Teens both join up on so it feels like everyone is stepping up to handle a particularly dangerous, but not massive scale, threat as a single group. You could even use the in-game SG Ranks to set up multiple in-character teams like that, and actively graduate characters to higher level content... or depower characters (Reroll) and have them drop to the lower level teams. A Single SG Coalition, basically, like the JLA. A bunch of heroes banding together to combine resources and information, but still largely working on things of their particular scale and interest.

I have now, finally, completed both arcs. Holy heck they were amazing. Seriously, a level of quality equal to or greater than the late-game Paragon Studios offerings. I beg you of this: Make the Freakloks and upgraded Vahzilok available for use in the AE, add them to the Newspaper/Radio missions, and let us enjoy the new hotness outside of those arcs. Let us take what you created and make more content with it, because they're freaking COOL.

Improving the enemy's AI -flatly- means more scripting of AI. Handing a robot designed to swing a hammer an axe to change the job it can do does not change it's AI. It's still just mechanically swinging the heavy end toward the target so long as XY and Z parameters are met. This isn't Smarter AI it's just a new tool. As to the Girlfriends from Hell and Chi Masters and stuff: You're not talking about adding some more damaging/summoning powers. You're talking about giving them access to strategy-changing abilities. When you face a Chi Master or two in a pack of the Olympic Whirling Hands Team you're not making a significant tactical restructuring in place of a couple of Ancestor Spirits. It's still just incoming damage from a Lieutenant. Have that Chi-Master teleport the party's support character into the middle of that Whirling Hands Team to get stunlocked to death and you're actually forcing a tactical change. And that tactical change is: Spike the Teleporter first, then clean up the rest. At best you're basically adding a Sapper to a spawn. Not in direct function (Fuck Sappers, obviously) but in targeting priority. And creating a new group based on these powers and tactical changes means pretty much the same thing, unless most if not all of the members of the group can use the new tactic to change how things play out. But that still means players have to specifically seek out missions with -that- villaingroup to get the marginally more interesting but not significantly more difficult fight. Also the Splats thing is another "More interesting not more difficult" thing, though I didn't really express that, before. Because -all- of this still relies on the same base-game system where powers have to hit to have an effect and players who are softcapped or teleport resistant or whatever else can just ignore the new special interesting mechanics you're putting out and smack things around. Seriously. Paragon has fires and if you're 90% Fire Resistant or 45% softcapped you can stand in it and not a single Empath will shout over Ventrilo "-50 DKP For standing in the fire!" 'cause it misses.

None of what you've described requires "Smarter AI". It's just making new NPCs. Access to more player-style powers? I'm down. I like the taunts and the force-taunts the ghouls do. Teleport Foe would be interesting... especially with Fold Space on the board. But then you're just creating new NPCs and most likely NPC groups. If you drop some Teleporters and Taunt-Forcers into the Council as it stands, players will just prioritize -that- target and nothing else will change. You'd also have to mess around with the narratives of those groups to add them in. So making new groups is more immediately engaging for them . But that doesn't really "Increase Difficulty". That just creates another group that you avoid, like Invulns avoiding the Carnies and most everyone avoiding the Circle of Thorns for most of their leveling career. I'm absolutely down for more NPC groups. 100% down for more interesting NPC powerset options. I'm even down for revamping the extant villaingroups to make them more interesting, too... But at the end of the day? A Judgement Fireball and a Blaster Tier 9 don't care who the Blaster is targeting as long as there's other enemies nearby, 'cause those things are addressed "To whomever it may concern". To actually increase the difficulty in the light of the sheer huge numbers players are able to access pretty much requires increasing the numbers the NPCs are working with. Otherwise all the Teleport Foe powers will just miss 'cause Softcap, y'know?

"Mechanics" is super nebulous as a term... and would include increasing enemy levels above player levels to bring the purple patch back into play for 50s. As to "Adjusting the Purple Patch"... no. The idea is to use it to create higher difficulty. Adjusting it to make it easier would be counterproductive. The idea is that if people want to play a -8 relative to the content for bragging rights they'd be able to. But there'd be no Bridgers in this scenario, 'cause super-sidekicking already exists. When it comes to "Smarter AI" there are 3 big problems: 1) Developing smarter AI requires a huge investment of knowledge and effort. 2) The Paragon Studios Devs -created- better AI and the result was massive frustration as the NPCs spread out to avoid AoE, ducked behind walls for LoS fighting, etc. 3) AI is irrelevant once Immobilizes and taunts start flying 'cause then the mob is stuck and unable to attack anyone but the tank, negating any effort creating AI improvements. And one little one: 4) Smarter AI generally means a change in tactics gets you right back to where you started. The new AI scatters under AoE? Hit 'em with an AoE Control first to stop that, then kill as normal. Now by "Mechanics" what are you referring to? If you're talking about increasing numbers the Purple Patch is just a way to do that with relatively lower dev time investment, since it means updating a series of spreadsheets and call tables with NPC levels going up to 60. If you're talking about WoW "Floor Circles of Doom" you're more likely to get pushback from the various players of the game who dislike WoW style Dungeon/Raid Mechanics which are largely a sort of meta-mechanic.

It does not matter how great your build is with soft capping and damage resistance at 90%. Once an enemy is six levels higher than you, or further, it's damages multiplied both by its increased level and by the level difference between you and it. Further its accuracy is magnified while yours is significantly hampered. To get an idea of how this would work in play get yourself to level 40 on some brute, scrapper, or tanker. Use whatever means are required to maximize your defensive abilities. Perhaps by four purple inspirations and several orange ones. Then pop enough of them to get yourself to 45% defense and 90% damage resistance, 85% if you are a scrapper. Then rush into a group of level 50 enemies while you are level 40. You will die. You might be able to take out a few of the minions before you die. Normally your base to hit chance on an equal level enemy is 75%. Against enemies who are 10 levels above your level your base chance to hit is around 5%. If you manage to leverage 300% accuracy out of your build you'll wind up with a 15% chance to hit your target. Similarly they will have a significantly higher chance of hitting you even through your soft cap defenses. Because the requirements for a soft cap against a target much higher level than you are significantly higher thanks to the inherent to hit buffs that they receive based on their increased level relative to you. The reason that I say it might make farming marginally more effective is that if you get a good team together with enough buffs you might be able to clear a map in around the same time you've normally would at no more than plus six to your actual level. The drop rates would likely be higher but the kill time would be much longer under most circumstances. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch Just linking the purple patch here for everyone's edification and to remind them that this purple patch is separate from NPC rank. So an arch villain who is much higher level than you is additional magnitudes more difficult.

You're right about the +3. It's literally been over a year since I did anything with Incarnate Shifts, so my bad! As far as reward capping on this one? I don't really see a reason to do it. The players are actually fighting an uphill battle against significantly stronger foes and should get the reward appropriate to that. That said, it could make Powerleveling -marginally- more effective, since you might be able to squeeze a +5 or +6 in, instead of a +4... but the difference shouldn't be significant enough for it to matter worth a spit. Though another benefit of making the enemies scale to 60? If and when more incarnate stuff comes out, there'll already be a mechanical structure in place to put in more dangerous foes!

A lot of people have made suggestions, recently, about how to increase the difficulty of the game, and I respect that. The game -is- too easy once you've got full set bonuses and get your +4 total Level-Shift rolling and can easily steamroll any +4/x8 content pretty much on your own. And there's invariably counterarguments that largely amount to "Nerf Yourself". I get it. No one wants global nerfs or self-nerfing (Well... a few of you do, but the vast majority don't seem to be). So how can we increase difficulty -without- nerfing everyone? Well. I can think of a few options, actually. 1) Increase the Level Scaling Tables to a maximum of level 60. (+10x8, anyone?) Right now the maximum is 54 with the different NPC ranks involved. Once you've got 4 level shifts under your belt, you're basically fighting even-con enemies. Letting players go to "+5" would be the same as fighting +1s. Not -super- helpful to increasing the overall difficulty. But if the highest powered enemies in the game were level 60 enemies, and the highest level players were essentially 54s, the game's purple patch comes back into play. Enemy Attacks do more damage. At +10 players go from having a base 75% chance to hit to a base 20% chance to hit. They also do only 15% of their normal damage to the enemies. Debuffs take a similar hit to effectiveness, as does control duration. Oh. And Softcap goes from 45% to somewhere around 75% I think? Well out of the range of most characters. +10 would basically become the "Masochist Setting" that no one ever really uses but is there to throw yourself against if you're willing to hang with a bunch of maxed out Support and Control characters. But +7? That'd be like a +3 for non-Incarnates. And +8 would be like a +4 for non-Incarnates. It would use the game's already extant systems to allow players greater difficulty than they can currently find once they hit level 50+. Bonus Points: This specific increase in difficulty -can- apply to literally any character at any level range! You'd be an absolute -fool- to fight +10 AV Vahzilok at the Faultline Dam, but the bragging rights if you ever succeeded would be LEGENDARY. 2) All Boss Spawning. (Disabled in the AE, for Inf's sake!) We have the option to spawn solo fights with 0 bosses, so how about spawning nothing -but- bosses? It'd make Controllers gnash their teeth a bit as most of the enemies would still not be locked down, but at least it would be because they're more resistant and require stacking rather than instantly dead because the Blaster dropped a Nuke and Judgement. Might need to tie an XP Nerf and Droprate Nerf to this difficulty setting, just to keep it from becoming the "New Farm" rather than being a difficulty increase. 3) Literal Self-Nerfing. (Yeah, I know I said no nerfing, sue me!) The option to disable Level Shifts. This goes back to number 1 and bringing back the relevance of the Purple Patch. By allowing people to temporarily disable their Level Shifts they can fight at +4 difficulty and have it actually feel like +4, again. You still have your Incarnate Powers with all the wonderful buffs and neato judgements... but things are harder. Getting everyone on the team to agree to that difficulty setting might be a little difficult (see what I did, there?) but it's way better than any difficulty setting that just excises the entire Incarnate System or IO System with the flick of a switch.

I'm sure you do. I don't. I know that if and when I start playing at "High End" every group is going to melty pretty much instantly to the procced out aim+build up recharge-intensive nuke crew. You folks are going to run in, click 3 buttons, and devastate everything and everyone you can in a single burst of insane damage. I'd rather do more damage at all times and not have to click a couple powers whose only function is "Make your other powers hit hard for a few seconds" It's entirely a playstyle choice in the end.

Alternatively, lower the damage of every single attack by about 10 to 20 points at max level and give each attack power a chance to proc an 8ft AoE on the target's location that does 10 to 20 points, which is affected by damage enhancements. Maybe toss on a tiny knockdown proc effect. Call the proc Impact when it triggers, and allow Hand Clap to trigger Impact. The set's overall damage stays right about where it is, it gets a little bit more AoE, the visual improvement of knocking down a group of people occasionally, and maybe we'll finally stop hearing people suggest new ways to fix super strength. But I doubt it.

Per target. Up to 10 targets. Slot it for End/Recharge and you go from near death to full health in the cast time and for a reasonable end cost and pretty often. Granted, you don't particularly need it 'cause you slotted for maximum durability. But someone who slots for Recharge/Damage/Etc in their set bonuses (increasing their damage output) can use it to cycle back to full health with a quickness! Especially if they use Oppressive Gloom for a low-grade DoT on themselves for a constant massive PBAoE Stun. My hubby, for example, had me do up a Recharge Set for his Dark/Dark Brute. To do that I had to sacrifice a lot of survivability. But the character only has to survive 10 seconds between uses of Dark Regeneration and hit 2 or more targets to max out his HP on a given cast. With Oppressive Gloom and/or Cloak of Fear active enemies can't hit him with any rapidity to drive that health down in the first place. It's just a different way to reach the same sort of survivability, but with a very high recharge rate. (166% without incarnate stuff) https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1351&c=635&a=1270&f=HEX&dc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

Honestly? Just cap your team at five people, set yourself to plus four and eight players, and enjoy. With slightly less players you'll wind up with a lot more room for character or player interaction through chat. When you have eight people the text messages tend to just pile on top of each other assuming people are even interested in talking. The smaller number of players will also mean that the spawns last a little bit longer because there's less overlap of massive damages. Another good option to improve this even further is to take a balanced team rather than whatever randos are available. If you're a support look for one tank, one dps, one controller, and maybe just to mix things up toss in and Mastermind or another Jack type character. Once you get to incarnate stuff on your team just do incarnate content if you're going to have randos on your team. Otherwise it doesn't matter what you're doing everyone's going to split off on their own and just murder everything.

Dual pistol/ninja training for the win. No need to bother with build up or aim, go for the teleport powerset and toss a single stealth IO into Sprint. Between Shinobi and Sprint you'll be running around as if you are a stalker. Grab fold space and you become a monster! Sneak into the enemy group use hail of bullets, immediately click fold space to grab any stragglers or ranged characters that you might have missed hit them with a couple of sword strikes, and make it rain bullets. Congratulations you've just wiped out two spawns back to back with no waiting! And it will be even more powerful with the next patch when they make hail of bullets cast twice as fast!

It certainly a fully viable defense set. And there's really no wrong way to play with it. Set bonuses really changed the way a lot of people play the game. This is one of those power sets that was designed for use with single origin enhancements. And when you play it the other way it doesn't deal nearly as much damage, because it wasn't supposed to. The invention origin enhancements allow us to do way more damage than the original game design allowed for. The question is whether or not we should buckle and build the game around invention origin enhancements or hold to some of the original design intentions. By and large I think the goal is to use both. To leave the old sets more or less single origin while the new stuff is designed around inventions.

Absolutely! Contacts can be flagged to only give quests to certain people. Superman could still tag along on Lex Luthor's team... But he wouldn't get the Story Arc Bonus, souvenier, badges...

I feel like this is a disconnect between Developer Intention and Player Style. Yeah, you lose the benefits of stealth when you deal damage or debuff an enemy. But that's when you no longer need the stealth benefit as a Scrapper/Tanker/Brute. Dark Armor on Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers uses a staggered recovery mechanic for the primary survivability. Yes, they also get the decent resistances scattered across their powers, but their main survival tools are Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Fear, and Oppressive Gloom. The Stealth is there so you can get closer to your enemies before triggering their Alpha strike and smacking you through your comparatively low levels of resistances and essentially nonexistent defense values. Your Cloak of Fear then reduces the incoming attacks to 3 second intervals, and you've got your lovely little self-heal Dark Regen to recover the lost health. Similarly, if you're fighting Fear-Resistant enemies, you've got Oppressive Gloom to provide Stuns instead. And if all else fails, there's Soul Transfer to pick you back up. Energy Aura is built in a similar style, generally speaking, but rather than focus on control effects to reduce incoming damage values, it uses a combination of -Recharge and -Endurance. Energize fills the same role as Dark Regeneration (Though to a lesser degree). Neither one has Stealth to the degree that you can pretend to be a Stalker without using a Stealth IO slotted into Sprint because it's not meant for that purpose. It's meant to let you get close enough to apply some debuffs/controls/effects that reduce the amount of damage you're about to take as part of the set's design.