pyrocumulus

Soon I shall be powerful enough to feast upon the Demon of this Isle!

Several of my more malicious villains have done Westin Phipps' arc. There are actually multiple resolutions to it; you can deliberately choose to fail the last mission, with a unique Souvenir for doing it (Miss Francine writes you a letter). I'd also add Dr Creed to the 'I am really quite evil' list, personally: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Doctor_Creed#Kidnap_homeless_people_for_medical_experimentation

I made stone melee/bio armour as a scrapper when stone melee was proliferated. As you say it's a great combination and @Xeph will have fun with it. For the notably tricky visuals I went for a sort of 'fey summer champion' thing with the bio FX themed as living wood and vines and the lava FX coloured green - it looks like moss-covered stone. A leafy aura and a leafy cape later it all came together: The Hedge Knight

5/16/96 - Beam/time blaster ... Sure sounds solid, but doesn't prompt any non-obvious concepts. 61/64/44 - Ninjas/pain mastermind ... hm, I can think of something nifty here... 87/19/69 - Dual blades/radiation stalker ... Too similar to my fully IOd DB/elec stalker I already have. Bonus roll - 34/28/80 - Dark/thermal corruptor ... I'd like to give this a go but need a cooler character concept. Therefore my first roll from the slot machine, clawing her way out from Hell by force of will with the suffering shades of sinners following, is... Hungry Ghosts, ninjas/pain MM

My Poisoner is a Defender, but I went with Dual Pistols. I felt the -dam of Chem stacked nicely with Poison's debuffs and Hail of Bullets and Venomous Gas have positional synergy. Also worked well for the 'trench warfare' theme I went for.

Leave a bid on the AH for a stack of Level 31 Kinetic Crash recipes. They'll fill over a day or two. Craft them and then Convert Out of Set (Knockback). You'll get a mix of Force Feedbacks and Sudden Accelerations. If you're lucky you'll get a Sudden Acceleration (KD to KD). If not, you can convert in set to get one. You can then do what you like with the remaining rare enhancements - use them, or convert them and sell them off to make a profit.

As of this evening, I am astonished that in 2 years I am the first person on Excelsior to attempt to name a plant controller Hedge Fund. Does anyone else hear a phrase or idiom in normal conversation and feel compelled to rush to log in to see if it's free as a character name, or just me?

There's plenty of time (the character is L26) and respecs are cheap. Taking Charged Armour softcaps S/L/E resists and leaves defences across the board at 19-22%. Seems quite solid but I'd be concerned about mez, Sonic Dispersion is pretty nice but low mag protection. How often do you get hit by mez? Electrifying Fences also nullifies KB, which is great on Bots, but would negate my Wall of Force soft control, which is another element to consider. They get 10% ToHit from Supremacy and the slotting above gives them about 50% extra Accuracy. Do you still find it's adequate vs +2 and up enemies without Tactics? Or do you slot more heavily for Accuracy (the only way I could fit this in really is to remove the procs). The pets suffer with diminishing level difference returns, that +2 mob is +4 to the poor T1s. It is pretty tedious, for a not too impressive +def bonus in return. The ability to sneak pets around a map is nice, though. In my current respec I've taken Wall of Force first and haven't got GI yet, but I had it before I slotted all the IOs. I'm surprised you needed GI on a Ninja/FF, unless it was for concept?

Slowly, I'm doing solo content on this in between normal play on other characters. Currently just dinged 26. It was downright painful leveling this before 22, when I slotted IOs (with commons or SOs to fill in where the build uses min lvl 30 IOs). Since then I've done a full set of vigilante tips and the i27 Agent Watkins arc*; post-IOs, the build is far more viable as the pets are significantly sturdier. I still can't push higher than +0x2, though, I tried +1x2 and +0x3 and got smacked down in short order. I found the playstyle that makes this combo function (prior to any significant personal defences from IO set bonuses and Scorp Shield, which I won't see for another 10 levels) plays completely differently to my other masterminds. The tankiness is all in the pets; it's trivial to get them to nearly 70% S/L resist at level 22 between natural resists, unique IOs, the Sonic shields, and Sonic Dispersion. If I feed them a couple of oranges, they'll softcap. My MM has virtually no survivability in comparison (Sonic Dispersion, Manoeuvres), and Res does nothing for the pets' survivability when they take Bodyguard damage. Therefore if I can use the environment to bottleneck a wall of pets with Goto/Stay in a tight corner or corridor and always have them start the attack, I can stand with relative safety behind them healing and buffing. As they're all ranged, they can stay in position for the whole fight, and using all 80ft of their range means they can take minions down before they get anywhere near melee. I Sonic Siphon any Lt or Boss and have Disruption Field running on one of the pet-wall; any mob trying to get to me has to try to run through it. However, this breaks down against ambushes, on outdoor maps, or vs flying mobs; I have frequently got overwhelmed in these conditions and had to run off and resummon. TBH, I could have achieved the same sort of playstyle with mercs/traps, which I suspect is a stronger combination, but I already have a corruptor trapper I play frequently and I didn't want to repeat a set. I am expecting that Web Envelope will be pretty useful at maintaining range. The two Spec Ops' flashbangs and spamming Wall of Force w/ Overwhelming Force together provide a definitely helpful level of soft control, albeit a bit random - it would be nice if the flashbangs had shorter cooldown, or higher magnitude, or Overpower, but such is life. I tried M30 Grenade out, but it costs a fortune in endurance and has a higher recharge time than Wall of Force. *The two EBs were beyond my sustainable capabilities; I got an sgmate to help vs Pathogen and ate a whole tray of purples vs Cortex.

I really, really like this idea. What could be more fitting for incarnates than taking on an insane god-entity in his own dimension? Firebase Zulu (and maybe the Cascade Archipelago) could remain 41-50 content so the TFs and few lower level missions there still have a home, and the Chantry and Storm Palace be Incarnate zones?

I'm a single data point, but I was one of these players. My friends were CoH players from launch who all converted en masse to CoV at the release of Issue 8. I played a 14-day CoH free trial, promptly took out a sub to CoV only, and played red exclusively until both sides of the game unlocked for the cost of the single sub in ... issue 12 I think. By then all my mains were red ATs. Nowadays I have a mix of all 4 alignments in my roster with a slant towards rogues. Personally, I love the sense of dark humour that suffuses the Rogue Isles from day 1. Paragon City can be a stuffy, straightlaced sort of place. Do a DfB for each side and tell me that Arbiter Sands' snark isn't infinitely more amusing than Positron taking himself so very seriously, or that blowing up scenery in a Mayhem isn't just hilariously petty compared to a boring Safeguard.

Recall Friend got replaced with TP Ally/Foe. TP Foe got replaced with Combat Teleport. So... yes you will have to respec. But you get Recall Friend for free to make use of with Superior Invis, which isn't a bad trade in my mind. Me, I have to work out how to re-do my Warshade's teleport binds to make use of the new TP powers.

I did not advocate for any change or nerf to the Incarnate system in any way. I advocated for a challenge option to switch off Incarnate powers in non-incarnate TF and Ouroboros content and associated badges to provide an incentive to run it that way. Look at all the AT forums in which people are doing no-insp/no-temp/no-defeat 'Master Of' solo TF challenges, there is an audience out there for further self-imposed challenge. I explained my personal feelings about the impact Incarnate abilities have on non-Incarnate play as my reasoning for wanting such a thing, but my proposed solution has absolutely no impact on anyone who doesn't feel the same way.

As I implied when discussing the ITF (which is why I specifically said L35), they don't directly affect lvl 35-44 content, but my game experience in PUGs. Every PUG I join in which I am sidekicked to a 45+ exemplar will inevitably have incarnates in it. Yes, I could explicitly just run Ice Mistrals and Morty Kals and Manticores until I ding 50 to avoid it, but I still find being stuck with the choice of 1) PUG above L45 and be an utterly useless deadweight or 2) deliberately avoid any and all L45+ content or 3) solo makes my personal game experience less fun.

Level 35 is the lowest level for ITF. If you attempt to run one at L35-44 you will struggle to form and keep an 8-man team unless you agree to give the TL position to a incarnate and sidekick to them.