Vanden

Ice Secondary is perfectly fine. I play it and like it how it is. Good control and many tools to keep enemies out of melee range.

I’m not sure what to think about this. On the one hand knockback is actually considered to be “better” than knockdown, so when you slot a KB-to-KD IO you’re technically spending a slot to make the power weaker. I also never really liked having to use a slot for that, because any power that you want to convert to knockdown has to make do with 5 slots. On the other hand, unlike knockback, fear effects are usually an intentional downside to the powers that have them, so maybe having to spend slots to reduce them would be more balanced? I don’t know.

My gut says the big downside there is that if a fully-Serum’d squad is possible, it’ll get very frustrating when the pets inevitably die, or the MM levels up and needs to resummmon to get the pets to level up too. It’s possible that Mercs is at a point that making perma-Serum achievable, with the numbers you gave, might not be too unbalanced. It could be the Mastermind equivalent of Super Strength, with its perms-Rage. It would need some downside like Rage has, though.

I just can't find anything good to put into Energy Torrent on my Energy/Energy Blaster. Explosive Blast has the Overwhelming Force set, so I can't slot that. It still needs a KB-to-KD IO, so I only have five slots to work with. Positron's Blast sucks, and Frozen Blast is very expensive. I need the 6-slot set bonuses from the Blaster ATOs, so those have to go in other powers. And Ragnarok is both expensive, and would be very overslotted for damage; usually I'd skip the pure damage IO, but the proc would be counter-productive so I'd have to use it. I dunno, is there something I'm not seeing? Am I just gonna have to settle for a set with bad set bonuses like Annihilation?

Code it where the requirement is that the NPC is verified to be in the wall? If they could code it so the game could tell when and enemy is stuck in the wall, we wouldn't need a special power to fix it.

Virtually no info on these characters exists, beyond their names, as far as I can tell.

If that's accurate, the pets are written in a way that no other buff aura (e.g. Dispersion Bubble) is in the game. It seems like they could be revised to use the non-broken version of that effect. I remember a dev post that the engine could calculate mob aggro based on a lot of things, like who's doing the most damage, who's healing, etc., but most of it never actually got used. That post might have been before the buff pets were implemented, and they might have decided to unearth those mechanics for them.

Enhanced recharged. Recharge buffs from powers and set bonuses are ignored; enhancements are not.

Vanden, there are 2 big suppositions in your concern. 1.) That the original devs are the only ones who understand the true intent of CoH. I don't see how that's true. There are many times we've questioned Dev's decisions as a community. There were times that the Dev's made changes to things they themselves implemented. Had the game continued, some Dev's would have left, new ones would have been brought onboard and new philosophy's would have taken root. 2.) Slippery Slope. The challenge here is that Slippery Slope is that we assume that if A happens, it automatically will lead to B happening, and that will lead to C happening, until we hit H or I and the world is falling apart...But that assumes that we aren't capable of making rational informed decisions along the way. We should evaluate each change on it's merits, or lack thereof. I submit 3 examples that I think have made the game better and that were NOT part of the original Dev's vision: Capes/Auras unlocked at creation - SCoRE could have kept it the old way, but updated the vision to include no locked costume parts... Eliminated TF Minimums - SCoRE updated the vision to players can solo all content Elimination of Prestige for Base creation These are all much bigger changes in the game from the Dev's intent, but none of them have ruined it... You have great opinions sir, please feel free to share more...Don't take offense, as none is offered. There are absolutely people on these forums and in this community that don't know or don't care about the original design intent, and see the revival of CoH as a "devs are asleep, we can do what we want" situation. (Not that I'm accusing TC of being one, but they are real.) Letting that kind of mentality drive decisions on changes can only result in bad things. And it's not a "slippery slope" argument, it's a question of gradual drift. Contrary to what I posted earlier, the buffs given by the buff pets are actually significant; I actually looked at the numbers and they don't suck. They're on par with certain very rare global IOs, and they're available to all players at absolutely no cost or build investment. If we change those to remove their only significant downside, that's just straight up power creep. Eliminating TF minimums, removing base costs, unlocking costume options from level 1, these don't actually make players more powerful or the game easier, just more convenient. Buffing the vet pets, however, would have a real effect.

A Hero tip mission for hero characters in the 30-40 level range features two heroes, Shade Edge and Dusk Song. However, for some reason they just use generic civilian NPC models. I thought it might be a fun contest to have the community design costumes for these heroes, given only the names to start with. The winners could be placed in the actual mission to be used as the models for the two NPC heroes.

I would do Fire/Ice Blaster myself. Damage, damage, and Ice! A Fire/Ice blaster can be good. With Shiver, Frigid Protection, and Ice Patch, you'd have to tools to keep enemies from running out of Rain of Fire. That's some good synergy.

I'm concerned about throwing out the intent of the original devs. If we start doing that willy-nilly, eventually what we have won't be CoH any more.

I'm with Philotic Knight here.

Every AT besides EATs will let you do a Fire and Ice concept, even Masterminds if you're willing to wait until ancillary pools. So you have a lot of options. Fiery Aura and Ice Melee are a popular combo, since it lets you drop an Ice Patch followed by Burn, to keep enemies from escaping the DoT from the patch.

For better or worse, the intention behind the pets is that they would easily die in combat if they were attacked. If we're just going to throw out that intention, we might as well just make them untouchable instead of bothering with half-measures like a placate aura or reduced threat level. The benefits they give are so small as to be virtually meaningless either way.

Shiver helps keep them at range, though. Frozen Aura I need to be in melee for. If you take Frozen Fists, Ice Sword, Chilling Embrace, Ice Patch, Freezing Touch, or any T9 in the Primary Power, you will already be in melee. Not with Ice Blast. Its nuke is ranged, Ice's melee attacks are weaker than most of its blasts, Ice Patch is equally good at keeping enemies out of melee range, and Blasters don't get Chilling Embrace, they get Frigid Protection which has a 30ft range. That just leaves Freezing Touch, which is nice, but with 2 holds in the primary it's not worth going into melee just for it.

Shiver helps keep them at range, though. Frozen Aura I need to be in melee for.

Force Field is a set that is not being helped by the Cottage Rule, I think. For example, it'd be great if Force Bubble did +Dam and +Res to all allies in range and -Dam and -Res to all enemies in range. But then it wouldn't be Force Bubble.

Panacea is a heal proc, it heals you a little when it goes off. It's not a +MaxHP buff.

3 in Fly and 3 in Afterburner is a little overkill; with 3 in Afterburner you only need 2 in Fly. And you can hit just slightly under that with 2 in Afterburner and 1 in Fly, by using level 50+5 common IOS.

Drain Psyche would be way too good on melee archetypes.

The ability to have a second aura would be great.

My level 50 Tanker has 1874.08 HP without set bonuses or Accolades.

Well then why give them a buff aura or make them target-able at all, other than to taunt players? The were originally a veteran reward, added for a tier of vet rewards where putting truly useful items was becoming less and less attractive because of how long a new player would have to stay subscribed to get them.

I've seen a couple people recommend Frozen Aura and I can't imagine why. It looks utterly skippable to me, just a minion sleep. No slow, no damage, not even a good Defiance buff. I guess the Call of the Sandman proc might be interesting in it, but that doesn't seem like enough to make it worthwhile.