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What stat are you suggesting they have lowered/removed? I assume that any adding of end redx into Taunt IO sets would piss off someone when some other stat was removed. A suggestion that might be more generally palatable would be to add new Taunt IO sets that included end redx.

You can make the barbed wire pretty low-key by matching its color to the wraps. But yeah, it's always been a strange omission.

Not how that works. Scourge chance is calculated once at application of effect. It's not like a rain, which has a pseudo-pet that applies powers that happen over and over again.

Having a backstory is different from having a bio. Bios ought, in my view, to either communicate a little elevator pitch teaser for what this character is like, or else to communicate public or non-visual information that's really apparent to people interacting with them but awkward to for into RP.

Well, it's slottable, so you can make it faster and/or jump higher than Athletic Run. I think it also has a lower end cost? Though I'm not sure. This doesn't seem like enough to me, but it's at least something.

Fair.

Yeah, I know. It's a small number of characters who appear in a small number of missions. And I like those missions! But just 17 characters would, I think, get over-exposed if they were in massively more missions. It'd start to feel like, "Jesus, fuckin' Blast Furnace is everywhere, man." So I'm proposing considerably more characters to cycle through the world, but to break out of "just tip missions and one or two other places." The Rogues Gallery and the Shining Stars can be the B-listers, as opposed to the C-listers that I'm proposing. The C-listers don't get an arc or the same importance as the B-listers -- they're basically there to make the world more colorful.

I think it would be neat if Paragon had more of a presence of a population of actual costumed villains (not just gang members), and the Rogue Isles had a mixed group of heroes/villains who operated out of it. These wouldn't be big important, central figures, just people where you'd be like, "Oh, yeah, I saw that guy before." Here's how I'd do this: 1. First generate a fairly large population of these characters. Crowd-source it on the forums. Tell people to post costume files, level ranges, powersets, and one paragraph info blocks for characters, with the understanding that they were assigning the copyright for such characters as were selected to Homecoming. Encourage people not to use their best material here, these people are supposed to be C-listers. Ask players to police each other on making sure there are no IP violations, and to vote for characters they think are cool with reactions. Then harvest the thread for let's say 50ish villains for Paragon, and maybe 25 characters for the Rogue Isles. 2. These characters would be ordinary Bosses, not EBs or AVs, with probably level ranges that are something around 15 levels. I'd omit most of them from the very low levels, since in modern play people spend so little time below level 10 or 20. 3. Now, get those characters into the game. a. For Radio/Newspaper missions that involve a named boss, make it be a 50% chance that the named boss is, instead of a generic member of the gangs, one of these C-listers. Yes, they work with the existing gangs -- the lore is that like Darkmaster The Darklord is temporarily working with the Council this week, and then next week he's hired by the Outcasts. If feasible, we can make it so that each character has a list of groups they will/won't work with, but it's not really a big deal if they'll all work with everyone. b. Make them a possible, if rare, street-spawn in zones in their appropriate level range. c. Then in a slow-but-sure way, take an opportunity each page to see if there's a place to put them into various arcs in non-starring roles, just as like a random boss spawned in certain missions. And obviously they'd be available for considered placement in any new content developed. d. Maybe make them show up randomly in Safeguard/Mayhem missions, not as the robber/hero, but as a spawn somewhere on the map. The idea here is to create more of a sense of, like, "Oh, yeah! That guy! I put him in jail one time!" Generate some of that grist that you get in classic superhero comics where people say, "The Lady Frog! I remember she showed up in the X-Men! Kinda a fun character!" Just add a little bit of personality that we don't get with the generic gangmembers.

Can rest actually be meaningfully enhanced at all? It should probably be unslottable. It has no recharge time or endurance cost, and I believe it hardcaps your regeneration, doesn't it? If so, it can't have its healing meaningfully enhanced. Edit:. It can have its interrupt time reduced. It takes endmod and healing enhancements, too, though I'm not sure that they do literally anything and I am sure that they don't do anything meaningful.

Given powers take enumerated lists of types of sets (including, potentially, no sets). This generally works like "this power takes heal sets if it provides healing bonuses," but there's not actually a reason it has to. You could make a bog-standard melee attack power and have it not take Melee Damage sets, but it does take, I dunno, Sleep sets, even if the power doesn't cause Sleeps. Like, they wouldn't, but you could. No part of the CoH code examines a power and says, "Well, this power 'should' take this set category." So specifically for Rest, they don't want you to be able to slot Healing enhancement sets in it, presumably so that you don't have another essentially "free" slot to stuff procs into.

That bothers me, but Boomtown also just kind disappears in my experience in the game. You're reminded that Boomtown exists at all maybe once every three months of playtime. Pretty much the same, maybe it's a little more prominent than Boomtown. This definitely bothers me! It'd be on my list to fix, albeit below the RWZ. However, Arachnos just seems like more of a credible threat than the Rikti to me. I mean, just to start with, Arachnos mobs are much more dangerous than Rikti mobs. We also see the many, developed Arachnos supervillains backing up their armed forces. But I think more so, again, the Arachnos bases can kinda disappear into the game experience. Like, you don't really have to think about the Faultline base once you're no longer dealing with the Faultline arcs. Siren's Call is like probably the least important zone in the game. But MSRs happen all the time. Vanguard is a very prominent organization in the end-game, and its raison d'etre is dealing with the Rikti. You are personally invited to try (apparently fruitlessly, for decades) to win the war against the Rikti and beat the mothership. The RWZ zone is just vastly more prominent than Siren's Call. And at least some of the Arachnos activity is more recent than the Mothership's interminable liminal state.

That doesn't stretch my suspension of disbelief at all? I mean, what does it mean " clear all that out" for gangs? Presumably they get put into the justice system, some of them get back out immediately, some of them serve relatively short sentences and get back out, and they continue to recruit new recruits. Obviously there's a level of artifice necessary for an MMO in how ominipresent the gangs are and how there are multiple violent crimes going on every block of the city 24/7, but the idea of it being impossible to stamp out gangs that can offer their recruits supernatural powers doesn't bother me. And, to be clear, having some Rikti around doesn't bother me either. It's having this downed mothership in the middle of a US city for 20 years that feels kinda ridiculous.

I probably should have. I was thinking of, I dunno, enemy groups where some of their global threat come into gameplay in ways other than instanced missions (with the acknowledgement that the Praetorian threat doesn't, really -- but it's SO pervasive that it feels different, to me, than say "that Arc where a Fifth Column person is trying to change history to create a Nazi win in WWII."). But Hamidon raids seem like they count as that. To me, it feels more naturalistic that the Hamidon is an undying threat that can be contained and stalemated but never truly beaten. The Rikti aren't that.

That's not how CoH worked when it was live. The city changed and developed. Galaxy City was destroyed. Faultline was partially rebuilt. Praetoria fell. Dark Astoria was changed by Mot. Yes, the old content stayed available, but there was a clear sense of an advancing now. That's what HC should do as well, within the limits of their resources.

Vanguard's base would still be there. Tinpex, Number 6, and LGTF would be unchanged. Mothership raids would be moved to the Echo (or you could do them from the then-current RWZ, but only as the instanced version, I guess). The Vanguard story arcs would have to be banished to Oro.

Pedantically, I would like to point out that that .00000000001% of the world's population is about 0.0008 human beings, and the population of Homecoming vastly exceedss 0.0008 human beings.

An element of the whole superhero genre has always been about idealized physical forms, the fantasy of having this very embodied power. I think it's very natural that this bleeds heavily into a sexualized view on superheroes. (Which is not, at all, to say that I think we should have bared female upper bodies, and, like you, I'd have appreciated a lot less in the way of permanent wedgies for female characters.)

I have no particular comment on the specific idea here, but a taunt-that-only-affects-confused-targets seems like an interesting thing, and as far as I know it would be possible within existing powers technology (that is, you can check target status in power effects, and only do something if they have a status). Not sure how Taunt would behave if you were taunted for say 5 seconds against an "opponent" that you were only an opponent of due to confuse, and then one second later your confuse dropped off.

They're just there to gas up at the gas station, obviously.

Somewhat inspired by the RL ending of the 20 year war in Afghanistan, this is presumably not a very doable suggestion, since the amount of work seems like it'd be too much for the current size of the HC team. But I think it's a valid suggestion if the team ever gets bigger. It seems like there's been eternal stalemate in the war against the downed Rikti mothership for long enough. The Rikti are the earliest and the weakest of the three to four big worldwide threats that CoH presented (the others being Praetoria, Mot, and perhaps Arachnos). Their mobs are not particularly dangerous. Their plot has not gone anywhere since I don't know when. 2008 or something? Earlier? So, I propose: 1. Banish the current RWZ to Echo status. People can still do MSRs there. 2. The event is that the peaceful faction of Rikti take control and negotiate a cease-fire and peace. The Mothership gets taken away (but there are still some buried surprises in the ground around the RWZ). There are maybe some quest-lines for people who are now trying to salvage discarded Rikti tech, and finding cells of still-warlike Rikti in hidden underground bunkers. 3. Vanguard reorients to, I don't know, maybe fight the Battalion if we can ever get that moving, or to contain demonic/multiversal threats out of their current base in the RWZ, with a new quest-line or two.

Definitely not effective, he's almost certainly getting few or no set bonuses from about half of those purples due to the rule of five.

I think Electric Melee needs Thunderstrike to be good AoE. I don't know if it's not good AoE at 3.3 seconds, but yes, there are four powers in the set that do AoE, but Lightning Rod can't be all your AoE, it's on a long recharge. Jacob's Ladder is a bad, narrow cone. Chain Induction is perfectly fine, but doesn't hit many people. Thunderstrike needs to be solid. (It's also weird comparing them to Blasters, as a /elec blaster will very reliably get more than 4 AoE attacks (a cone, a TAoE, and the nuke in their primary, then Thunderstrike and Dynamo in their secondary).

I believe thunder strike for blasters and dominators is 2.5 seconds, but thunder strike for the melee classes is 3.3 seconds. That's what CoD says, anyway.

What I actually did was correct someone who was factually wrong, to which his response was, "Oh, I guess I'm wrong, but I'm somehow right." You will note that I have at no point advocated breaking into Captain Powerhouse's, er, house (powerhouse?) and forcing him to work on my priorities. There's nothing wrong with advocating for the stance of, "This is fine, and there's no point in changing it," or "This is high priority and causing problems." And there's nothing wrong with saying that, "In retrospect, we spent a lot of time solving nonexistent problems." And you don't really need to get out the fainting couch because someone suggested that there are elements of the game that are higher priority than other elements of the game. Your hysterical tone is silly.

Because end debuffs aren't a debuff to the primary mitigation technique of Electric, which is resistance. I'm not arguing against buffs to Regen. I just don't think that RDR is the right kind of buff.