Vanden

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.

I noticed the damage bars in the Info tab are showing the DPS of the powers. How do I get it to show the damage of one activation?

The buff pets were never intended to be truly useful.

It's certainly possible; back before the shutdown a player had made a program that could assemble icons in any existing color scheme with your choice of inner symbol and border. AFAIK, the devs had a program that did that too and that's how they made them in the first place. That might even be where when player got the program from, rather than making it themselves; I don't really know how it came to be, or who made it unfortunately. Anyway, to put that in the game they would have to make some kind of UI for creating a color scheme. The program that I saw couldn't do that, only read image files of a gradient, and those had to be created with some other kind of image editing software. Of course, I don't know how creating power icons on the fly would run; probably pretty well on modern machines, honestly.

This is the normal pace. The XP curve was adjusted waaay back in issue 11, resulting in a faster leveling rate across all levels.

I'd more describe the power tripping RPer to more closely resemble the example I quoted from that RP thread. Power Tripping would be taking advantage of the leniency of the base concepts of the origin system while also disregarding the established rulesets that come with the base premise of the environment you're playing in. To illustrate what I mean: So you're a magic guy who got his powers from some kind of magic circumstance outside of his control. Gotcha. And he has no knowledge of magic thus when confronted with a situation of casting some kind of spell, he can't do it off the cuff. Reasonable. And he also can't be arsed to try to unravel any intricacies of magic despite the source of his power hinging on it as a source. Hold on, does he not want to improve his powers then? And he'll never need to because his magic will just grow depending on just getting stronger. Wait, but it's kind of ingrained in magic within the background of CoH that knowledge is power. At that point, you're starting to power trip as the setting doesn't require the magic guy to be a skilled spell caster with memorized spells but if his power comes from magic, why would he not want to learn how his powers work so at the very least he doesn't screw something up. But most of all, if he has any aspirations to get stronger, save lives, destroy heroes, get money, etc, why *wouldn't* he want to figure out a simple ritual spell if the outcome can be a better understanding of his own power as well as an outcome that he desires? At that point, it's not a matter of the game powertripping (not even sure how that would happen) into making your character do stuff out of character but rather the player needing to explain why he can't do something that most in his shoes would. I am not a big role player, but I'm pretty sure it's not okay to tell someone what their own character's motivation is. And who did that? The answer is, both of us. How can you make that argument without sounding hypocritical? You had to make up a specific suggestion with specific flaws and then create a specific character concept that doesn't fall under the flawed umbrella idea you concocted. The difference between our perspectives though, is from mine, such a character concept you concocted could just NOT do that specific mission lol Sure, you could just not do it. But the whole point was to write an arc for specific character types. If you wrote an arc that excludes the vast majority of characters, and then large portions of the target audience are just not running it even though you specifically wrote it for them, what was the point? If I were you, I'd question if you're arguing for the broadest appeal rather than just assume you've got what it takes to speak for said broadest appeal. I know exactly what I'm arguing for.

I’m not seeing a Numina’s Healing/Absorb in Pines so I assume that data bug or mismatch. Getting past that though, I see 2 pieces give +12% regen while the Regenerative Tissue Regen gives +25%. What am I missing to make the set set bonus better than the Regen Tissue bonus? I'm talking about the enhancement in the Numina's Convalescence set that only enhances Healing/Absorb. It enhances the regeneration buff of Health, that and the set bonus add up to more Regeneration than the Regenerative Tissue unique.

This is an example of the powertripping roleplay that Leogunner is talking about. It's reasonable to assume that a character has a human-level intelligence, that they are familiar with the setting that they inhabit. It's not reasonable to assume that a Magic origin character is the "cast spells and perform rituals from memory" type of Magic character, or that a Science origin character is also some sort of scientist. What was assumed? That a magic-based character in Paragon City might try to contact another magic-based character if they think that they could help them with a problem? That some spellcaster used his abilities and the spell led them to your character? That some seer might have seen your character as the one that must undertake the mission? That some other magic-based contact might have told their magic-using friend that you were a good hand? You've assumed that the Magic origin character has intimate knowledge of the mystic arts, or that they have some investment in the magical community. If the contact themself has some kind of magic way of identifying the character as the one who could help, that's fine, but I can't see any reason why it would limit itself to Magic origin characters without the writer just insisting it has to be a Magic character and then railroading the player character. All I have done is suggested that they could make origin-specific arcs that only characters of that origin could play. Something that would do it's little part to set aside the different characters of different origins. Something that might encourage people to not just re-roll new toons with different ATs, but to re-roll new toons with different origins. A natural hero would have at least one thing in the game that would play to that origin. Their own story arc that only natural heroes could do, and that it wouldn't matter if that natural character was Batman or Superman or Captain America. Yes, you suggested they could make arcs. But you didn't write any compelling reason that they would be limited to certain origins. If Batman and Superman alike could easily enjoy the arc, then Green Lantern and Wonder Woman could as well, but they're excluded for some arbitrary reason. Again, if every character has even one exclusive story arc based on origin then origin matters more. Yes, it makes origin matter more. It's not up for question that adding arcs exclusive to origins would make origin matter more, obviously it would. It doesn't, however, offer any reason why origin should matter more, how adding these exclusive arcs is a good idea. Other people have. It would be better to say that in response to them, then, not to me. Because the current content doesn't look at what your origin is and try to make a connection with your character. How is that so hard to understand? Then it's not an argument against the suggestion. That is, to clarify, bringing up how content assumes your competencies in a piece of origin content in a game that already assumes your competencies in other content. How is this so hard for you to understand? Assuming that your character can function in society is reasonable. Assuming that your character falls into only one or a few subsets of valid concepts under an umbrella that houses many valid concepts is not. That is an extremely reasonable character concept. Ever heard of Greatest American Hero? That guy fits this concept to a T. Then see the portion of my rebuttal about holding other concepts hostage for a minority power-tripping roleplay. So because it fits the concept of some character you mention, we always have to build the story for every tech character to assume they are incompetent and thus an outside source is always required to progress the story. Any mission content written runs the risk of not being appropriate for certain character concepts. My argument against origin-based content is that it immediately becomes innapropriate for 4/5ths of characters. The idea is that in exchange it then becomes much more appropriate for the remaining 1/5th of characters, but the reality is that there's so much variety in even that 1/5th of characters that that benefit never comes to fruition. There's only so much time in the day. Writing for the broadest possible appeal just makes sense. At this point, the arguments you're responding to are in direct response to your previous claims. To be clear, you've railroaded the argument AWAY from trying to make origins matter toward how story can be origin based/centered. You should really clear THAT point up (likely by dropping it) before further discussion on HOW origins could be focused on. I'm really not sure what the issue is here? The poster I was responding to responded to my claims that origin shouldn't matter with a bunch of plot outlines for possible origin-based content. It didn't support the argument that such content should exist, it only brainstormed the actual content.

How is it any different from current where an artifact or ritual is needed to progress the story and it all just works out without intimate knowledge of the workings? Your argument crashes into the brickwall that is the already existing content. Because the current content doesn't look at what your origin is and try to make a connection with your character. How is that so hard to understand? That is an extremely reasonable character concept. Ever heard of Greatest American Hero? That guy fits this concept to a T. Pretty sure they do that now, don't they? No, that's virtually never done. The only example I can think of in the game currently is a mission in Praetoria where the way your character disarms a bomb depends on your origin. I honestly can't see how you would draw this conclusion from what I wrote. I never said anything about immersion. Sounds fine so far. This writer isn't trying to make the player's Origin matter. Aaaand you've lost it. You've assumed something about the character based on nothing more than the origin, and will most likely be wrong in a large amount of cases. What is the point of these arc descriptions? How do they support the idea that origin should matter in the game? I'm arguing that it shouldn't, and you specifically responded to me, so I think you're arguing that origin should matter, but all you've written here is some plot outlines that don't have anything to do with the topic at hand. (As an aside, the Council are a Science origin group, not Natural.) Again, how does that support the argument that Origin should matter more? I never said anything to that effect.

*doesn't want to use rare and expensive sets* *15 PvP IOs, 6 winter event IOs* Anyway, as for your build, if you put the Numina unique in Health, you get a better regen buff by then slotting a Numina Healing/Absorb and getting the Numina 2-slot bonus than you get by putting in the Regenerative Tissue unique. The Panacea proc is very weak in Dull Pain. While it will have a 90% chance to activate, the benefit it gives is very small, and you want it going off as much as possible; it's better in Health or Physical Perfection. I assume you put the Freebird: Fly Speed in Mystic Flight because you wanted the set bonus but didn't want to be transparent from the +Stealth IO? If not, that enhancement is wasted, because Mystic Flight caps flight speed unenhanced.