Vanden

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.

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.