Scarlet Shocker

I don't know why? If you can have a natural origin character shoot flames or electric bolts from their fingertips then how does judgement differ?

I disapprove of this post! 😛

would the Confuse mag stack with Seeds of Confusion or other confuzzlement powers? What I'm taking from this is that many of these "powers" are actually pretty crap and it's barely worth the effort to slot and build them. The only real benefit I see is the level shift that some provide during Incarnate content. It kind of almost feels like a bit of a con - this whole new system but actually it's not that valuable to most players. At least with Judgement and Lore you actually get something you can see, an additional attack, pets etc. I'd say the Alpha slot does seem worth having but the rest seem very "meh" and all rather pointless.

Lore is easier simply because I go with what fits thematically. But you're correct it is less than ideal.

Is that per player, or maximum? ie if 4 players on a team who can use it, would it reduce max hp by -16000 or would it just reduce it by -4000 effectively for longer?

This is really interesting, and far superior to the core data in game but still leaves me with questions. A quick example is Degenerative - Caps at 1000 what exactly? So we get them to 1000 and that's it, it doesn't take any more of these 1000 off? This is kinda getting into Tony Stark "I love you 3000" territory. It's completely immeasurable. It's info but without context it fails to give answers but thanks for posting it

That's good enough for me. Thanks 🙂 I do think the whole thing needs at least reworking descriptively. I'm having exactly the same issue with Destiny. The descriptions leave so many unanswered questions hanging there. With Destiny they all seem to be PBAoE +Ally. Does the caster get any benefit at all? Do pets benefit? There's a drop off in effect over time but how does that work in practice?

I remember once on live back in the early days, playing a Kinfender - around I7/I8 from memory, I had a stone tank (remember them?) offer to pay me a million inf (when the cap was about 6 mil IIRC) to keep him speedboosted in a mission. I didn't actually take him up on his offer, for reasons I no longer remember but mostly I think there's a combination of factors. The game's been dumbed down immeasurably since Inventions onwards, and Incarnates especially. There's also builds that are "in vogue" at any given time. I remember Fire/Rads often superseding Fire/Kins in popularity if not effectiveness. Then there's the plethora of travel powers, additional pool powers, new power sets, that just make their general efficacy less productive. And of course, although this environment is reasonably well populated, it's less busy than many of the live servers. It's not just one single factor, but a combination of smaller factors that mean they are less necessary than they once were, and given we have so many additional choices that are almost as good if not better...

I've been reading the descriptions for the Incarnate power Interface slot and frankly it's just left me scratching my head. The descriptions are so vague on many of them as to be next to hopeless, and it seems almost impossible to get any actual numbers out of them. Even "Detailed Info" tab in the description of the powers is about as much use as a rubber duck in the Sahara. So how is one to make an informed decision about what powers to actually take? Even the phrase "Adds a chance of X to most damaging attacks" is vague. I'm presuming that this actually means most attacks that you do to an enemy which involve doing damage to said enemy will have this chance, but it could also be read as the attacks that do most damage have a chance to proc. The language seems unclear and unsatisfactory. The data just doesn't seem to be there. Descriptions of powers seem to have no actual values in them. Activation time and recharge time are both given values of 0.00s. This is exacerbated by some powers being hard to understand - I'll use Degenerative as a good example here. Degenerative Core Flawless Interface adds a -Max HP debuff proc (75% chance) and a Minor Toxic DoT (25% chance) to most damaging attacks. What does that mean in real English? Does it actually reduce the Max HP of a mob 3 out of 4 times? Does it stack? If it does, by what value is that HP reduced? How long does it last? Target type is listed as "Self" in detailed info. This would lead me to suspect that if I attack a mob, my max HP reduces. That makes no sense whatsoever. Effect area is "Single target" but what happens if I cast an AoE and it procs? Does it pick one target at random? What's the determining factor? So much of these descriptions make my head hurt. I appreciate this is a hangover from live but is there any way to get good info that allows us to make an informed choice, because as things stand mostly it's guesswork.

interesting thought. I rarely play fire characters and cruppers even less often. I might roll one just to compare/contrast.

sounds good. Be interesting to see it, thanks!

Question (caveat - I've not read every post in the thread) but does it not depend also on the AV in question? Romulus is relatively easy to hold on ITF - and if you get the drop on the four horsemen, Recluse's henchmen in MLTF, they can be held relatively simply one by one. But some others are just not doable easily even when stacked. Is there a table or data for what AVs are susceptible to what powerS?

I had a Fire/TA on live and I dug a copy out the other day for the first time in an age. But of course, I rarely ever played anything Fire, and TA I know got a workover somewhat recently. So I'm a bit lost as to what I should be aiming for. I'm also sucky at Mids and building a good toon. I want something that's good all-round - in teams and solo. I remember on live it was quite impressive solo - but that was of course a long time ago and memories are faulty etc. I've searched here and only seen a couple of discussions of this power combo so it seems pretty uncommon - which frankly surprised me but that's ok. Anyhow, all assistance is welcome.

my two favourite solo/all-rounders are Plant/TA which is immense (but remember to ensure you have something to ignite OSA) and my Dark/Poison, which is positively evil and kills unsuspecting PVPers in RWZ. For teaming and giving your comrades a boost, however I cannot speak highly enough of Earth/Thermal - plays well with others, massive debuffs and good shields. If you want something more damagy without doing the fire/kin/rad thing, a Fire/TA is also a lot of fun and is very mobile. Honestly, Trollers are the best AT in game - no other game has anything like them* so play them all and rediscover the entire game. *that I have played

I'm putting a solid hand up for Earth/Thermal. Really strong controls, great team support and has everything you need on a team. It's not bad solo at high level either but the caveat there is that it doesn't kill too fast so many mobs can overwhelm. The main benefits of Earth/Thermal are very solid controls. Lock a group of mobs down, and keep them locked down. But also give your team some great shields and buffs. Rocky is one of the more survivable pets and you can in emergency use him as a sacrificial alpha strike tank. Debuffs are very solid, and both primary and secondary mesh well together giving you some surprisingly good -Def to mobs. Most important of all, it's a ton of fun to play. (you can also get psychedelic with the shields too)

I'm late to this and haven't read every response but for me it's when I'm hit by some inspiration for a character. I have some characters that I'm emotionally invested in, maybe a concept character that has come to me when I'm not even in game. So those are the ones likely to get the bio and wil generally be significantly more successful in terms of my playing style. I make many toons but the majority of those are simply "I wonder how this powerset combo will work?" and those do not get a bio, unless they prove exceptional in play or something significant happens to them in game, such as joining a really good team (often repeatedly) or an SG that involves its members a lot, or perhaps an exceptional Mission Arc/TF/SF that brings inspiration. I do find that the bio page is very hard to edit and write up so that is an absolute disincentive to write up a good bio. Character length is also an issue so many of my bios come across akin to a tweet, a short burst of info that tells you the most salient points such as "Once an ordinary shop worker, caught up in a Rikti raid, injured simultaneously by a Rikti blast and a magical spell, a strange confluence of opposing forces and MagicBlasterBob was born" or similar. Only my dearest characters get a "proper bio" and rarely at the very beginning of their existence.

there are far too many currencies in this game as it stands. In a way I have a certain sympathy for the OP's suggestion but put simply, no Given a choice, I would reduce the game's currencies to 3, Inf, Shards & Merits, just let them buy more stuff and have done. There's no reason to add artificial gates to playing a game that is effectively free.

I knew of it but I didn't have the ability to watch it but I did see a few stills and Christian Walker was too small and unkempt for my liking. As an aside, I believe having spoken briefly with Oeming that they would be very open to a Powers MMO - which would completely rock.

Powers Maus Danger Girl Queen & Country

Which is kind of my point - Cole could have negotiated, and Primals would probably have been open to that, since if PraeHami got past Cole, Earth would be a prime (pun intended) target. And even if Freedom Phalanx wasn't open, if Cole negotiated with Recluse, who might even be more open to an accord. With Cole on his side, Recluse could take Paragon City for his own.

See above. Praetorian Imperial Secret Service was exactly that (although I grant that it was conceived originally as an envelope pushing joke that even got Avatea to laugh (and approve) but it soon became quite serious due to the realization that this was a huge hole in the canon. If the players take the view that Praetorians are not fundamentally evil, that they go about their lives in the day to day, trusting in their government to do "the right thing" and work in their society's best interests, then that is a basically good goal. There must obviously be a cadre of people who are close to the edges of power, if not directly connected to it, who believe in Cole's mission, ideals, and core beliefs. They may not believe or accept his methodologies (especially in later arcs when we see what an insane twat he becomes) but still believe in the primacy of their society and the right of their people to live the life they live. Would those people have been sanctioned by Cole? He's a dictator. If history teaches us anything about dictators is that they are paranoid, unable to work well with others on an equal footing and the whole bloody world is plotting against them. Of course he would have created something like that, and probably a separate and distinct inquisition too (probably mutually exclusive too, both organizations unknown to one another - feel free to pick that ball and run with it - but don't tell me you didn't expect it!) But once the structures of power fail (and we see them failing over some time - although the actual scale is hazy by default) then these sub-orgs have to define their own remit and raison d'etre . It is not hard to argue, given the data we have, that Cole's original over-arching view would be reasonable given the circumstances. So a small team, charged with maintaining order, seeing that vision through, could have legs in the ongoing arcs. This is turning into a novel and I'm not yet ready to write this arc. But what if the basic premise of the arc was "We've got Praetoria now: It's safe for the moment, and you Primals have done nothing but screw it up. So either you bugger off or you'll go to war by any means necessary" It leads to very intersting potentials. Insurgency, straight forward conflict and also diplomacy and economic realities. We will never know what the original Devs planned but this was always a squandered opportunity.

I'm finding I need a bind to turn Whirlpool into a targetted AoE rather than a Ground AoE Is there a good bind for Poison Trap too?

As golstat2003 remarked, that is a very interesting point but the writing is so shoddy that isn't what came across (at least to me) nor did there seem to be any kind of build up to it. With the scene you mention, we saw the lead in, we understood what was happening and the tensions were there because we, as viewers could see where that could potentially lead. I would excuse that if it were well written but it was just so crappily sub-par that I can't forgive it.

You do not have a bad time playing City of Heroes. Count your blessings.

HAIL COLE!