Scarlet Shocker

I just want a Cherry Picker set now with the T9 being "You're Plucked!"

I love slotting the KD PRoc you get from START in Caltrops. That's a thing of beauty for sure!

They certainly used to be great back around Issue 9. I would regularly PVP with my friend Proximity and they would be devastating. But with the insistence of the player base that KB is bad it's been nerfed to near on impotency. It used to be that Knockback would be one of the most effective defence mechanisms - it would send enemies flying, then they'd have to pause, get up and run back into the fight. Now they just get back up and punch you in the face. Players are idiots sometimes.

I love Poison as a set but I've never seen it as stand-off. It's primarily a melee set and it has a lot of powers that are team oriented and the T9 requires you to be in melee range for it to be effective. I would love to know your thinking on this

It's not important but you're welcome to search! My point is that it's about the outcome of that conversation not that conversation itself.

Referencing a conversation with @Snarky re his corruptor build it got me thinking of other sets that are great at stand off combat for characters with few defences. It would seem relatively obvious that a controller set would come top of the list given their ability to lock down and immobilise foes but I'm wondering what other ATs and sets excel at this and what your preferences are. I'm imagining a scenario where you want to do reasonable damage (not many controllers' fortes) and yet not get clobbered by bosses before you've had a chance to deal with minions. What would you choose and more importantly, why?

"Because it's there!" George Mallory

I wouldn't change too much - I would not remove, retcon or otherwise bugger about with what has gone before for a myriad reasons, not least that people have played and enjoyed a lot of this already and to change something is ultimately going to piss a few people off to no good end. I would move the story forward in significant ways: FINISH the fucking Praetorian arc. It's been dangling going nowhere for over a decade and it was so close to being done then Matt Positron Miller got bored and decided to move on to the next shiny without finishing what he'd started. Bring some of the less well known signature characters into the spotlight. There's a habit of creating new important NPCs characters when we have perfectly viable existing characters who could do that job and it would flesh their stories out significantly. Hero1's story needs finishing properly. Poor zombie bastard's been in hellish limbo for a very long time and deserves either fixing or putting out of his misery at last. Who is Lady Grey really and what's her deal with Nemesis? Interesting plot points abound. Bring Back Statesman and Sister Psyche. No don't just bring them back as if they'd never been gone but update their stories, give them new, exciting and different roles in light of past arcs. Nobody in comics is dead forever, why should they be different? Scirocco and Frostfire also deserve some story love. Where are they going? They seem to be seeking redemption (a mistake in my opinion) but they're also stuck in limbo. There are so many loose ends that need tying up. I know we've got limited dev time for new stories and arcs but some of this stuff is important. Also: Where are the Praetorian signature characters? Are they alive, dead, in gaol, or a different dimension? Similarly, Reichsman. What is Praetorian Hami doing? With Praetoria in disarray why hasn't he decided to destroy it after Cole broke his word? Who can stop him?

A thing worth mentioning: It's an important arc in Lore. If you're a newer player (which I sense you may be from your original post) it may be worth being familiar with all the signature heroes in game (try doing the relevant Task Forces) before attempting this and I'd strongly urge you to do the WWD arc in sequence.

I'm not even sure how a Praetorian shard would work. What would it bring to the player experience and to the game environment? The existing shards tend to function for specific communities in a very loose and "unofficial" way. Reunion is aimed at European players, Everlasting for RPers and the other shards give you options for your population preference. We don't even have a specific "Villain" shard or even Hero oriented shards (not that one is needed) so I have no clue what OPs vision for that would be. Remember, we're a niche game with few resources and an entirely voluntary management structure. What we have serves us well but even trying to get a Goldside team on Excelsior is enough to make dogs cry and babies howl sometimes so creating a new even more ghostly shard seems like a great waste of resource and unless I'm missing something, adds little to the game. Rather than adding to choice, this would seem to detract from our existing choices.

However hip you think you are, it would be a waste to encourage that kind of thinking

I have found that as I've aged my vertical progression has largely become static whilst my horizontal progression seems to increase exponentially.

This I find genuinely interesting. You're playing a 21 year old game, with a huge amount of history, and for the vast majority of players, a huge amount of emotional attachment, that literally came back from the dead and you buy into none of that? I'll take what you say at face value but I admit to finding it strange.

Curiosity is a thing sometimes

That rather depends on the size of the room and the radius of the sphere doesn't it?

ok so let's assume that we are in a sphere, for the sake of argument. Where is the locus of the sphere? I'm guessing around your groin/stomach area, but it could be feet or head.

This sounds like it should be moved to Bug Reports

That does sound like an interesting combo

I think that's what is being pointed out. It's inconsistent with the whole power set. Ice should by definition slow stuff down even if it doesn't fully lock down a powerful opponent.

I think I give you top marks for callous honesty but not much else.

I need to find a way to create the villain "Oblate Spheroid" in game. A cross between Hamidon and X-Blob maybe?

I do not believe any of the existing maps should be changed or altered in any way. Legacy maps and missions are good learning experiences for those who wish to and it's not just about learning how to play it's learning the history of the game's development over more than two decades. To change or alter some of the maps is to cheapen its legacy. It's not too different to making Independence Port smaller to get across it more easily. The game is the game. Add to it, sure, but retrofitting it for modern tastes is a big No-No in my book. That's not just a "We had to do it so you should too" but it is "this is the experience that made the game great and why enough people fell in love with it to keep it alive against the odds. Nobody really hates the blue cake cave. They love it really - because it's a great memory. We remember the annoying stuff more than the easy stuff. That's human nature. Advocating for change can be extremely dangerous in unanticipated ways and this is, ultimately, just a game so let's keep those annoying things in because they are few and far between and give us amazing stories to tell which is why we fell in love with this whole thing in the first place.

The worst room in the game is the one you couldn't get into while the game was shut down. There are precisely zero worst rooms in this game in its current iteration.

I'm not @Snarky in any way, shape, size or form. 😎 I have never been @Snarky