Steampunkette

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.

Flagging? Would be a NIGHTMARE. So right now most zones basically have a super simple time of flagging a group as Hostile, Neutral, or Passive to players, and a handful of groups have a separate flag of hostile toward other NPC groups (Which is why the Ghost of Scrapyard and his pals will wreck Arachnos they run into). To flag out zones so that different characters are only hostile to Heroes or only hostile to Villains would require some different flagging options made available. That said: So far as I'm aware, any zone that allows both Heroes and Villains in it will automatically allow hero/villain teaming in a Co-Op Style. And there's no way to stop that from happening. My suggestion is to not care about that, and write Heroic and Villainous content without regard to whether or not some Superman character will team up with a Lex Luthor. If he wants to do the Villainous content that's on him. Functionally such a zone would be Co-Op. But we don't have to support that narratively, is the general thrust, here.

I'd like to weigh in on the Striga idea just a tiny bit: Change nothing. Add stuff. Instead of "Taking Striga" from the heroes or creating an "Echo: Striga" why not just add all the villain contacts to the island for various missions against the Council and have it be later in the narrative? The vast majority of missions are instanced, so write up a lot of villain missions and a few heroic missions opposing the new villainous actions on the island and go from there. Villains can invade the Council Base to "Defeat 30 Council Soldiers in the Throat" or "Fight 30 War Wolves in Striga" just fine. No need to make it a Co-Op Zone, either. Heroes do the Peebles Missions, Villains do the New Stuff. And never the twain shall join forces against the Council (Unless you create a new TF). Just put a few little Islands full of Villain contacts around, throw some new NPC spawns into the town where whichever baddies you're adding to the zone are fighting the Council or harassing the locals, put in a new base of operations in one of the many less-utilized areas, maybe throw in some Longbow for Flavor™ and have at. We should start thinking of these types of things as -shared-, not -swapped-. Not Co-Op. We're picking the new direction of the game, folks. Let's make it interesting.

Those are really good reasons against making a bunch of new whip powers, for -sure-! Which is why I suggested we make precisely 0 new Whip Attacks and instead make a series of buff-powers that apply to the 4 Whip Powers that exist in the game currently. So instead of a new cool whip animation, we get a build up like click that makes all whip powers do a double-hit. Or add a Bleed/Burn DoT. Or increase target caps or something similar.

On a tangent... Now that Ambrosia and Essence of the Earth apply to a Mastermind and their pets at the same time (Absolutely an incredibly needed upgrade!) is there any chance you folks will make -all- Inspirations affecting Masterminds also affect their Pets? A Mastermind deals and takes damage and control effects as a "Team" all on their own. Their own personal damage is understandably low because their damage is split between at least seven entities (Themself and 6 Pets). So why should it cost 7 times as many inspirations to get the same amount of Damage Buff as anyone else would have to use to benefit from an Enrage? I just feel like it would be a nice solid QoL buff to MMs while also bringing their Inspiration Use Benefit in line with other characters.

They don't have an Assault, Ranged, or Melee primary or secondary. Neither does MM. Every other archetype does. Well... I guess not the Epics like PB/AS. But everyone else. Ranged: Blaster, Sentinel, Corruptor, Defender. Melee: Scrapper, Stalker, Tanker, Brute. Assault: Dominator. 9 of the 11 current "Base ATs" would get access to this Whip Powerset. (And MMs would still have Demon Summoning)

There's always a way where there's a Whip! But yeah. Make it a Ranged Set. Or an Assault Set. Make it all three, honestly, to make it available to literally every archetype except Mastermind and Controller. I'd be 100% down for that.

Sort of. Have you used the Corruption power on Masterminds? It sends out a little fire-ball from the tip of the whip. Just add that to Lash. And then have Crack Whip fire off a bunch of individually targeted little fire-balls like the Peacebringer's Cone.

Totally fair. It would also 100% work as a Blast or Assault set, depending on the amount of range added to the four attacks. And you wouldn't even have to change the other powers. You -would- need to swap out the Provoke/Placate/Taunt for another power which modifies at least two of the four attacks... could make it turn Corruption or Lash into Superior Damage?

Yeah, yeah... We keep coming back to it. Sue me! But this time I have a really interesting mechanical idea, Instead of trying to cram in Fire Blast powers or Psychic Sword Pets or something similar, how about we play with Mechanic Generation? So. Obviously there are only 4 Whip Powers. 3 attacks and 1 Summon/Buff. Taunt/Placate/Provoke and Build Up each take up a slot, giving us 6 powers for a Melee Set. So what if we used 7, 8, and 9 for new mechanics? Tier 1: Corruption. Just take off the Ranged Component and give it the same range as Lash. Moderate Damage Tier 2: Lash. Pretty much as is. High end of Moderate Damage. Tier 3: Crack Whip. The set needs some kind of AoE at a decently low level. High end of Moderate Damage Tier 4: Build Up. No big deal. Tier 5: Thundercrack. Autopower. Generates 1 stack of Thundercrack every 6 Seconds. Maximum of 3. Using Corruption, Lash, or Crack Whip consumes 1 stack of Thundercrack to deal additional Minor Energy Damage and apply a 15% Damres Debuff. Tier 6: Taunt/Provoke/Placate. Pretty standard, really, all things considered. Tier 7: Strangle. Apply the Hell on Earth Animation, Moderate Targeted AoE damage with a short duration high magnitude Hold (Same duration as the Animation), give it the same range as Lash. High Damage (Primary Target) Moderate Damage AoE. Tier 8: Razorwhip: Toggle. While active, all Whip Melee attacks deal a Minor Lethal Damage DoT. Tier 9: Whip Mastery. Clickable power which generates 1 stack of "Whip Mastery". Consuming Whip Mastery causes Strangle to deal additional High Fire Damage and increase it's area by 10ft or Crack Whip to increase it's cone from 30 degrees to 90 degrees and deal additional High Fire Damage. (Recharge Rate: Long. 20-30 seconds) So you walk into a fight with 3 stacks of Thundercrack and have to choose whether to spend all the charges on Crack Whip (To deal that added damage to multiple targets) or burn one target with Corruption and/or Lash. And then during the fight you're either aware of whether you've got a Thundercrack coming so you can alter your positioning or you don't really care and you "waste" charges on low-health enemies. Whip Mastery gives the player a choice between "t9 Attacks" by allowing them to either use a cone or a targeted AoE based on which one might be more valuable at the time. And a Cone with Thundercrack and Whip Mastery deals more damage, but it only hits 5 targets instead of 10 and targeting is a little harder. With less active attacks, the Whip Melee character is more vulnerable to -Recharge Effects than other characters, but through Razorwhip gets a slightly higher base damage by direct power comparison. (Razorwhip's End Cost should be comparatively high. 0.52/sec seems appropriate to me. Maybe 0.36 if 0.52 tests too costly) You wind up with a melee set that has a longer reach, a handful of attacks, and a lot of cooldown management. It becomes far more vulnerable to -Recharge effects from enemies and other players, but it's slotting requirements are -significantly- curtailed... which in turn reduces it's slotting options. For Stalkers, put Assassin's Strangle at Tier 4 and Build Up to Tier 5, then put Thundercrack at Tier 6 and Placate at Tier 7. Assassin's Strangle: Same animation as Strangle but with an Extreme DoT during the hold duration/animation when used from Hidden and no AoE whatsoever. Have Whip Mastery grant Assassin's Strangle it's AoE Damage Component.

Snagged Absynth. Awesome name for a Sonic Hero

So far I've been playing Sonic/SR, yeah. I also have a build set up for it that I'll link, below. I did correct the 25%-20% thing but not before you replied! Looking at all the debuffing levels of the different classes... Sonic are the -worst- at Debuffing. That 9.6% is much lower than Defender 20% or even Stalker/Brute/Blaster's 13%. I sincerely wish they'd give Sentinels higher Buff/Debuff values, since it'd make them better at playing around with Pool Powers and powersets that have debuffing effects. Anywho. Here's the build.

CoH Modder has a great Banshee scream mod! It makes it sound -much- cooler. I'm looking at making a Sonic built around -Res procs in a few choice powers. So it'd be 5% Sentinel debuff, 9% Sonic debuff (per hit for like 6 seconds?), The -20% Proc debuff (I think it's 3 per minute per enhancement... could be wrong), and then a whopping 20% unresistable from Vulnerability very quickly. That seems like a really good way to improve your team's damage and push a little past the Sentinel's damage cap issues...

Random thought: You get more opportunity per-shot from Cone Attacks. Sonic has 3 different cone abilities that all do decent damage as a Sentinel. A Sonic Sentinel could easily fire off 2 cone attacks and go from 0 Opportunity to 100 opportunity in the cast time of those two abilities. Plus the Sonic -Res stacks with the -Res from Opportunity -and- Vulnerability. Why aren't Sonic Sentinels more popular?

I went on a bit of an installing spree, not gonna lie. Nothing installed that interfered with anything else (I thought). Just downloaded the "All (v1) mod and now CoH Modder is slapping me, repeatedly, with an application error of how it can't find mod '' in the server mod list in C:\Projects\CoH Modder\ CoH Modder\Main Form.cs:line 792 I don't have a Projects folder containing 2 CoH Modder sub-folders nested in themselves. Please advise?

Character: Water Blast/Bio Armor Sentinel level 29 Relevant Powers: Offensive Adaptation and Athletic Regulation On characters that use both Offensive Adaptation and Athletic Regulation the speed bonus from Athletic Regulation is most likely meant to be doubled by the Offensive Adaptation effect. However it is, instead, buffing all movement rate increasing powers by 100%. Sprint provides 22.54mph increase from the enhanceable aspect and an additional 7.16mph from the unenhanceable portion. Athletic Regulation is providing 10.58mph. Swift is providing 13.98mph. Athletic Run is providing 55.42mph. It is not increasing Flying speed, Jumping speed, or Jumping Height at all.

1) Your grasp of history seems... flawed at best. If you don't understand how economics have changed since the 40s and particularly since the 70s I don't think anyone can help you. 2) Your supposition that I'm doing "Nothing" to fix things is laughable at best since you know basically nothing about me. 3) The Boomers -are- the Government. Average age in Congress is about 60 with those holding the most power being in their 70s. Trump was born in '46 making him the quintessential Baby Boomer in Power. And the big one: 4) Racism isn't Ended. Jim Crow Laws still have an impact on modern lives. And they may have protested Vietnam, but they were all about jumping into the Middle East. As to the "Every Generation" thing... yeah. Because the next generation is almost invariably more progressive and understanding and aware. Hawking spoke of Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, but it applies to literally every aspect of society. All the progressiveness of the Boomers was great! But then it stopped. They reached the end of what they personally considered "Progressive" and the boundary to what they considered "Radical". "Interracial Marriage? COOL! Gay Marriage? Now hold on a second!" Same thing happened with Generation X. Same thing will happen with Millennials. And Gen Z. And every generation after them. Because what we consider the edge of progressiveness and "Radical" will advance with the next generation who view what we see as being "Progressive" as "Normal". As baseline. And their ideals will move forward from -that- point. This is the source of the idea that "Everyone becomes Conservative, Eventually" comes from. But that, again, comes down to understanding history and cause and effect so... y'know... Ok, Boomer.

And that's why "Ok, Boomer" is so much -easier-. See how it's worked out, here? I've tried to explain a bunch of stuff, and instead of understanding or an attempt at an equal exchange, I get this as a reaction. Ergo: Ok, Boomer.

I don't blame Boomers for "Everything" wrong. Just the things that they, as a generation, have done. Like foster an overreliance on the idea of college as core to personal value leading to multiple subsequent generations carrying $1.6 trillion in debt that, in many cases, turns out to be useless to their economic advancement. My husband, for example, as pushed by his family to go to college and studied teaching and history... Now he's a Postal Worker. That overreliance, of course, being fostered by watching their parents and grandparents performing grueling physical labor and coming home exhausted and often drunk and thinking "I want my kids to have a better life than that!" which is super noble, on it's face, but severely weighted our society away from infrastructural and lucrative essential work, like Garbage Men, Janitors, and other 'dirty' or 'menial' work that is required to keep our society functional and healthy. And yeah, our society needs teachers and historians, but not like it needs Plumbers or Electricians. One advances, one maintains, both are needed and only one was societally valued. And, of course, the huge McMansion craze that they created which made housing less and less affordable over decades while they did their best to maximize profits with minimal raises and... yeah. Just so much shit. I get it. You like to think of yourself as strong and special and self-reliant and whatever else. But we live in the course of history, and causes have effects. Ignoring that is self-blinding, and will ultimately lead to Boomerdom. No. I'm afraid you're mistaking Philosophy for Religion. Religion by -definition- requires a belief in the Supernatural as a basis for a Philosophical Ideal. Religion is -a- Philosophy, but Philosophy is not a Religion.

Ok, Boomer.

So... Few things: "Ok, Boomer" is a bit more specific than "Baby Boomers ruined Everything". It's about how much time and effort Millennials, Gen Xers, and the Zoomers have spent trying to explain "Things aren't like they used to be" while the Boomer generation refuses to accept it. As a teenager and a young adult I had Boomers telling me "Just go into the business and apply face to face. Ask to see the manager! That's how I got my job!" Sure. That's how you got your job 40 years ago when that kind of thing was the Norm. Now every company out there wants an online application because if you bring in your resume it goes in the garbage. Do you know how many times I've asked for an application in person and been told "You have to do it online?" But I'd tell the Boomers that and get a lecture on how I wasn't "Trying" hard enough. "Ok, Boomer" became the "I'm not going to try and explain this to you because you're clearly not interested in hearing or understanding things that don't fit your out of date worldview." It's not rank dismissal. It's frustration and it's defeat. It's "I'm not going to waste my time and energy on this anymore." See also: "Why haven't you moved out?" "You should be saving for your future!" and "Why don't you have kids, yet?" which all often boil down to "I literally cannot afford those things because of the market forces your generation created." Now, yeah... some of it is probably rank dismissal or 'typical' generational infighting. But the bulk of the issue is that life has changed more rapidly in the past 30 years than it has in nearly any other point in history and the generation currently holding the greatest amount of wealth and political power initiated those changes but have no clear understanding of what those changes -are- or the impact those changes have created. Yeah the invention of the Automobile and the Refrigerator and whatever changed things in the world... But the Internet and the massive socio-economic changes around it are massive beyond almost any period of history. Ok, Boomer would not be a good badge for CoH. But it's a great badge for real life.

I feel like having a 60% chance to lock down an AV during the Purple Triangle Window (But only if you're stacking controls -fast-) for a brief time ('Cause duration is still a thing and mez resist is separate from protection) is a good goal to try and aim for. It allows Controllers to actually do their absolute damage mitigation function. That said, getting a group of controllers together to completely shit on every AV could get pretty boring.

Very nice mathing! But! You didn't include durations in your calculations. Someone could have a Overpower Hold with a duration overlapping into the purple triangles phase, applied in the down triangles phase, and thus need only to trigger a second Overpower to lock the AV down. Also if you have two controllers yadda yadda yadda. Point is: It would be pretty effective, but not perfectly so.

Earnestly... I feel like it might be better to skip the idea of randomness to avoid permanent control. Purple Triangles exist, after all, on a 50/25 rotation. Why not leave Overpower "As Is" for proc rates and such, with no sub-check for levels of overpower, but increase the variable value to +20 rather than double-value? That way a single Overpower Proc could hold most targets pretty well, but a pair of procs back to back could cut through purple triangles like butter, without requiring massive amounts of additional work. Functionally, Overpower would work the same way as it always has in normal content, except now you'd occasionally be able to meaningfully Overpower specific hard-targets. And because of the PvE/PvP mechanics split, we can just not mess with Overpower in PvP mechanics, leaving it unchanged, there.