Verfall

The answer is brute. It's always brute. There is no other AT that is so easy to play and is newbie friendly. Other ATs have sets that are newbie friendly, but pretty much every brute combo is straightforward and simple to figure out. Simple playstyle. Go punch things, damage takes care of itself. You get survivability, good damage and less complexity to ease yourself into learning, or in this case, re-learning the game. You can solo most "solo" content. You can do some tanking in teams. Fury makes the early levels a bit easier, when damage is harder to find. In the overall "meta" brutes are kinda being left behind, but for a new player a brute gives the most honest City of Heroes experience imho. The intricacies of the other sets can be a bit of a learning curve, but most people can understand "SMASH!"

My memories fuzzy, but I believe the breaking point for most of us was, after reducing defensive numbers across the board and saying there was going to be "no more nerfs" we got handed ED. As an Invul tank, we went from herding maps to anything non-SL hurting a ton. Did we need reigning in? In hindsight, of course. But at the time we went from gods to street level practically over night. Now if he had done ED first, than tweaked numbers after, who knows how we would have reacted. But throwing an uppercut after a right hook, only to basically tell us we were playing his game wrong...ya...

Other have already stated it, but yeah, this game never had the "Holy Trinity". It had inklings of it, but that was more of an "old mmo mindset". All the content could be done with any mix of toons. Did leaning towards trinity make some stuff more easier? Yeah. A well balanced team can make any content trivial. But the sheer beauty of the fact that I could do almost anything with a mishmash of god only knows what toons was why this game was so damn beloved. The fact any toon could solo was also an amazing thing. Were some slow to do so? Of course. But with patience and practice any toon could solo 85% of the content, probably more now. The best part of City of Heroes, the reason so many of us loved it, could be summed in one sentence, "F@k your Trinity and F@k your team, I'm a goddamn super hero!"

I've always wanted a Sentinel like AT, where the primary is ranged/melee, i.e. pistol in one hand, sword in the other; and the secondary is control/armor. Basically dominator meets stalker and sentinel in a consensual relationship...

Um....I'm confused. How are blaster numbers lower than corrupters? Are you sure you got those numbers right? And blaster secondary attacks are not weaker than their primaries in most cases. Often the melee attacks are the strongest attacks in a blasters arsenal.

I've seen them spawn on Sunday late nights near the Talos tram many times since relaunch. Over 20 on multiple occasions. At one time, 7 of them at once. Sunday has been the most common day. The odd's of that being player driven are just not possible. I'd put money on a bored GM. And they come from multiple directions. I once racked up over 300 merits killing Kronos in Talos. Again, it is possible it's player driven. But the amount of planning to get them spawning like that for over an hour just seems not plausible.

Well if you're going to get Da Beetus, might as well go all in...

But you made a pretty costume only to not see it? That would be sad.....😁

We're playing a nearly 20 year old subscription game, for free, with access to stuff that would have cost even more. And they're adding retail strength content every so often? This is like the antithesis to the entire gaming industry. Please devs, take your time and do things the way you want, cause we owe you wayyy more than we could probably ever repay.

My main. My Invul/SS tank. Verfall himself. When COH first launched, I was in the middle of dealing with a severe back injury. Fell through a floor on a construction site. Every day was just pain, pain and more pain. Doped up to the gills on Oxycontin, trying to do rehab for a "soft tissue injury". It was hell. Herniated every disc in my lower back. Had to have 2 surgeries before 28, probably have to have one more in my 40's at some point. But this game, and that toon, saved me. I'm not even joking, if it wasn't for this game and the friends I made in it, I probably would have killed myself back then. I was in a place that no person should ever have to go to. But that toon let me be powerful when I was weak. I did perma unstoppable, I did tele tanking. I herded wolves, I herded nems on the docks in PI. I respecced very time they did something to change Invul. I got into a full on argument with States himself on the forums over what he was doing to my beloved tank. I survived ED. When homecoming came around, I remade him as a Stone/Bio brute. It was wrong. Just felt wrong. I tried to like it, but now that version is in limbo on everlasting I think. It's hard to mess with something with that much emotion tied to it. Of the dozens and dozens of toons I've made, Verfall the Invulnerability and Super Strength tank, in his red and black suit of powered armor, has had an effect on my life that only other gamers truly understand I think.

I go for the merits and the dad jokes on Excel when Oklahoman runs them. Got nice collections of both. Did the last one on chocolate edibles which greatly enhanced the experience. But whatever floats boats, your mileage may something, yada yada yada.

No they're warmer; https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/weather/saskatchewan/regina https://www.theweathernetwork.com/us/weather/alaska/fairbanks

Well it is minus 39 Fahrenheit outside right now so you're probably right.

One of my favorite memories of this game was jumping rooftops in Steel Canyon opening presents late Xmas eve, early Xmas morning in around 2007ish I think. I was close to getting my first back surgery which would let me get my life back together. My family was mostly healthy and happy. Life was just good, so hopping around at 2am was just icing on the cake. So when the first Xmas event started on Homecoming, and I was able to do that all over again over a decade later, I'll always owe an unpayable to debt to the folks running this game now for letting me embrace that memory once again.

And the bolded and underlined part shows me you only just picked out certain things I said for the sake of argument. I never wanted a crashless rage. Never even entertained the thought. I wanted Rage blasted into the sun. Gone. Poof. Vamoose. I want SS to have a gimmick with no crash, that puts it on par with the rest of the sets. I hate double stacked rage. Do I use it? of course. Would I miss it? Probably not. Unless you're chasing DPS, rage is a giant pain in the butt. I want consistent damage, on par with the other sets, with a new gimmick. Give me something that if I put SS next to every other set, I could be in the middle to upper range of damage without twiddling my thumbs for 10 seconds, or in my case, using sands of mu or a taunt in a team. Super Strength is one of THE super hero sets. Like top 5. And yet the way it's implemented here is so bizarre. Relying on a power that imitates a minority of the SS using heroes from the media this game is based on to make a set functional is not how it should work. Hell, to put it mildly, I want SS nerfed. Nerf it to the ground, than build it up using 2021 knowledge. It is not 200whatever anymore. There's a wealth of game knowledge we can look to to make the set, a SUPER HERO DEFININING SET, much more fitting of the name. Gut it, than rebuild it.

And the underlined part is the problem. Show me another set that has a ridiculous crash incorporated into the set to get the set to function on a level roughly equivalent to the other sets in its pool? And yes, the rest of the SS powers are kinda terrible in comparison to other sets. I remember people begging to have jab and punch switched back in the day. You wanna talk penalties for use? Granite armor. Lots of penalties, but you become god. And what has happened to stone armor? They removed the penalty from rooted, and now have eased the ones on granite. And still, those penalties were not as harsh as the ones SS gets for using rage. As well, they could be worked around. Show me the IO set that cancels out rages damage crash. Rage is an 80% damage boost, which honestly in parity, is the number really that high? How much of the % is wasted just bringing the SS attacks on par with similar tier attacks on other sets. 30%? 50%? So truly the tohit buff is the only fully useable bonus for the power, until its double stacked. Every single one of stones powers surpasses SS except tremor. And now that fault will be getting damage, the disparity is greater. But honestly, my argument is simple; Rage with a crash is dumb, it kills the playability of the set, and thematically just makes no sense except for one subset of comic archetypes which now have an ENTIRE AT based on their concept. Take rage away, buff SS damage up to on par with other sets, come up with a new mechanic to make the set unique. Bring back the old bruising idea where every SS power has a chance to bruise and lower enemies resists. Come up with something for rage that doesn't boost damage. The bruising effect will work similar to a damage buff anyway, and with the current proc meta, actually be sought after. And bloody well give it to scrappers already.

I'm looking at that and all of stones powers except one outdo rageless SS. Why seismic and footstomp are on the same line is kinda dumb though. Hell, seismic alone, just look at that line. But truly, outside of foot stomp and maybe KB, SS is garbage. Unless you use a clickie that has a moronic crash attached. You can't tell me there isn't some other way to make SS unique that doesn't involve archaic game design. Heck, with the changes to stone melee on beta it will pull even farther ahead. In hindsight, if I knew about the tanker changes and the stone melee changes over a year ago, my tank would have been Invul/stone. I got lured in by nostalgia and foot stomp...that sexy, sexy, foot stomp... But that's just stone melee, the original "other smashing set". It's 2021, can we not make SS functional without the inherent flaw? Can we not find a compromise? Again, I point to practiced brawler/master brawler on sentinels as a good starting point.

From what I remember SS is designed to underperform without Rage active. The set is balanced around doing less damage without it. By using it, it brings the set to parity with the rest of the sets. Now I may be wrong about that, but it sticks out in my memory for some reason. So is it an actual 80% boost, or is the boost making it equal to stone melee? Honestly the most powerful part to me isn't the damage, it's the tohit buff.

Which they in turn made into the basis for an entire AT when villains came out. Brute's are what Rage should have been from day one. Screw making it a toggle. Give SS a damage modifier equal to one stack of rage, than make it a smashing version of fiery embrace. Put a small minus resist proc on the first 3 SS attacks to make them special and call it a day. Or anything else. I dunno anymore.

In a team situation the debuffs seemed almost wasted. But as a blaster, you notice the damage pretty quickly. I found that if you want to build an archery toon for the debuffs, than go defender for the max debuff values. If you want to build to feel like green arrow or hawkeye, go for archery/ta blaster. You get the debuffs, but your arrows actually feel like they're hurting the enemies versus tickling. The damage makes up for the debuff numbers being lower, less targets, etc. On a fun scale, for me, blaster won hands down. It's the one debuff set that I find the corr version gets lost in the shuffle. Lethal damage is heavily resisted, so the corrs lesser damage is more noticeable. And while the debuffs are great, at that point you might as well go defender.

If I'm on a team, of course, but if I'm solo, no real point. I'd rather save those for something difficult. It's fired off every time it's up. Unless I'm hurting, again, no point. Honestly, on teams it's less noticeable, it's solo or in small teams that the annoying factor cuts in. The only other toon I have that relies so heavily on a click to perform is my dominator, but I get less performance if I don't click the button, and god mode if I do. With SS, you click and you get relative parity with the other sets followed by annoying or dangerous crash depending on build/io's etc. On my main, it's an annoyance. On my ss/invul brute that I only play solo, it can be downright dangerous. There's plenty of reasons why the crash is dumb/outdated/bad game mechanics/ out of theme, etc. But we stick to it out of a combo of nostalgia and those that stack it for more performance. Forums tend to have more of the latter by nature, so the outcry to keep the status quo tends to be louder. I use it, I stack it, I make the best of it. But it's still a stupid mechanic and would love to see it gutted and redone into something useful without the 10 second gut punch. Why does it need three negatives? It is nowhere near that overpowering for 90% of players. I'm sure there's someone who could show some metric that has double stacked or triple stacked being top tier dps or some nonsense. Again, stuff that only applies to an elite minority should not be the qualifier that defines how goddamn annoying a mechanic is. Can it be worked around? sure. Should it have to be worked around? Not anymore.

I did both. Started as the corr. Found it underwhelming. Even after the changes. Remade as a blaster. Wayyyyyy more fun.

It's just annoying when you're on a roll and all of sudden the brakes get thrown on for 10 seconds. Or when you fire up a KB and...5 damage... The game is so fast paced now in the higher levels that the crash, while manageable, is so damn archaic feeling. I know it's been looked at a gazillion times, and both sides of the argument have valid points, but I would not shed a tear if it got changed into something less annoying. Hell, do something like SR for sentinels practiced brawler, and put on an option to have it be a toggle that's less powerful but no annoying crash. Half the damage buff, half the to hit buff, make it cost endurance like any other toggle, hell if I know at this point. Or just leave it the same, but by using a toggle version you don't get the double or triple stack. Again, dead horse, stick etc etc.

Have it on mine, use it all the time.

The chitin helm in helmets is bugged. Was bugged on live too I think. The patterns in the secondary colors don't appear. If you look at my avatar when you select the streak pattern you should get the red eyebrow ridge. Doesn't do that anymore. None of the pattern choices are visible.