Zeraphia

"Funny memes XD," "you just don't get the joke!" no, I got the joke, I considered the power worthwhile for consideration in a way that's practical and feasible (not just there because oh cool knights throwing out grenades is funny!). The snarky comments are just unneeded. Nowhere in my post was I rude to you.

I will thumbs up the post because I do think it has many more good intentions and ideas to create a unique set than the specific nit-pickings I have with the design of it overall. So let's start with the very basics of the set. I think knights is a wonderful idea and concept. Broadsword minions are surprisingly not a theme MM minions have crossed yet except for the Grave Knights. Though perhaps the powerset is a little too close for comfort for what those minions in specific do, I think the powerset as a whole is a different flavor enough for most people to recognize it as still pretty unique overall. There is already precedent for mainly melee MM minions especially with what's been established for Beast Mastery. I think we're at a point now where an MM walking into melee range is going to be something harder to play and deal with, but isn't so bad with the pets to peel for you and overall not the worst AT to go into melee range. So I think establishing an interesting "MasterCrapper" playstyle with bodyguard mode could be an interesting and unique playstyle though I doubt it would be a great idea lol. I honestly think the "holy hand grenade" should be entirely re-conceptualized but the power itself is a decent idea for the set. You instead should just rename it to "KnightPet: Burn" that's a special TAoE power with all the things you listed in effects. Creating a fire during the battlefield or during a cold winter for the minions isn't that unexpected for knights. I would remove the "grenade" thing and just keep it as just the same power but no grenade animation and burning the ground. As for the personal MM attacks, I think a lance could be a part of the animations sure, but I also think there could be for example, some broad sword attacks or mace instead of full only lance. Possibly even, you just have the option to use whatever weapon you'd like in character selection and the powers remain sort of the same in combat effect (DPA, accuracy, aoe or st, etc.)

You sir are so shady. Good lord. Love it thou

This sounds rather interesting. I think in theory this could potentially work, but you'd end up with a lackluster archetype because of how crucial the support secondary is to help the henchpets function. That said, I'm definitely not against the idea and think it's a step in the right direction at least for new archetype ideas!

I don't think you understand how this process works. In theory anyone can take the game's writing and format their own version of this game. There are lots of servers that I'm sure exist for only like 5 or 10 people. Theoretically, you cannot stop this from happening. Second of all, people fundamentally want different things for CoX. It's really quite like the suggestions forum which you're posting on. Some people will like your changes, and others will not. Some people hate AE and removed that version in their CoX and are completely unwilling to work on any CoX version that features any form of AE. It's just their personal wants/ethics. It would be quite hard to get all parties involved to create a conclusive consensus as to what CoX should be and include. I'm generally not in favor of this suggestion, let people enjoy CoX in the ways they see fit. There will be multiple developers who aren't willing to work together, and do not have cohesive design philosophies with one another. Hell, some may even be using programs that are entirely different and incompatible for designing the game in the way other designers typically do so.

I think we have to just come to the conclusion that a huge segment of the community favors these instant level up options without any room for compromise, and the other half is vehemently against any form up leveling up boosts and feels double XP and current AE farming suffices the needs or is already too good. There really won't ever be consensus on this.

Not that I'm against increased sources of obtaining it, but I'm pretty sure you can just buy them off of the Auction House.

As I said, "possibly" because I knew people would come up with the topics you are bringing up right now and the limitations of what people would want to see on how something like this would be implemented. This does not mean I support said limitations, only that I acknowledge others may have differing opinions on what can qualify someone for this or if there even should be qualifications at all. It's made as an "I think this is an acceptable limitation for a suggestion like this" beforehand, and wanted people to voice their opinions. It wasn't meant to promote elitism.

I didn't look immediately at the replies to this thread, whew... I can see this is unexpectedly a very unpopular idea with a lot of people, and my opinion clearly isn't shared with many. Understandable. Your analysis and argument is very coherent and well-put. I wasn't considering the economic impacts of prices in the AH, as I mostly consider this a secondary effect but I recognize its importance. The place I'm coming from is mainly as a player who does not enjoy farming, and finds the activity so horrendously boring that it prevents me from playing new combinations of characters I'd have fun enjoying the game with and leads me to wanting to play the game less. 😐 Elitism was not the intention of this post. I also said "possibly only accessible if your account already has a specific number of already level 50 characters. I'm pretty open to suggestions on what people come up with." Not that I implied I was of this mindset, more so that some people might use that as an argument against what I was trying to suggest and a way to safeguard concerns surrounding it, and allow people to come up with what limitations they think might be needed (again, not that I personally think there needs to be any.) 👍 Edit: looking more closely I see where you're coming from where I titled this for "experienced players" as an immediate safeguard, and I removed it. I understand what you're saying, but I do have to argue respectfully, that some of this information is subject to debate. AE farming is not necessarily the frontrunner for farming anymore, but it is the most widely available option that is still highly efficient for exp/inf, the alternatives being not much better and hyper-niche/requiring far more additional setup. But additionally, I have to say from my own personal experience, like I said in my initial post, I feel the changes. They hurt. They've increased the rate at which I could farm level 50's by about 40%. This severely hampers what players are able to create and have fun with, especially with so many powerset reworks and even new powersets added. When you have done the 1-50 "legitimate" grind over probably 20 times, it's just not appealing anymore for a lot of people to do it again. Thus they resort to farming.

This title probably sounds a bit misleading, and I'm aware there already exists some S/L PvE farms people do, but I'm looking for a more official area/place that is dedicated solely toward people wanting to quickly level characters. Like a set of missions that you complete that quickly level you 1-50, but at the cost of gaining no influence and forfeiting all drops entirely on all characters in the instance in exchange for a huge amount of exp gained. The set of missions could be lengthy, it could feature hard content that is challenging, but I would like this sincerely over powerleveling a character with how painful it now currently is or doing another full 1-50 content run (sorry... sometimes the run just gets a little old.) Possibly only accessible if your account already has a specific number of already level 50 characters. I'm pretty open to suggestions on what people come up with. The purpose is to just entirely forfeit any form of influence gain or loot drops in favor of quickly leveling 1-50 in a faster method than is present with the AE nerfs that is legitimized.

The only issue I have with pets honestly is that there really needs to be some sort of power outside of kinetics +ally speed boost power for them to quickly travel over areas. I really really hope there's some form of this added as an incarnate power, power pool power, specific APP for MM's, honestly ANYTHING I can get to quickly speed up my minions and get them to where I actually want them to be and not just unable to keep up with the pace in group play would be such a massive and welcome addition to MM's that it would make this class come online much better than where it is. I just really want some way to improve pet mobility. I'll take build sacrifices or power losses in my pool to do so.

Strongly agree. I did my own experimentations with this power because on paper it would seem to do a lot of damage, also act as a good engager, and while I wouldn't quite call it entirely useless, I think if you're playing a lot of team-based content (ITF, MLTF, LRSF, iTrials, etc.) it massively loses its value. In solo content it works better because you can stand at a distance and fire off the rocket (therefore the animation time doesn't matter quite as horrifically even though it's still painfully long.) Because it is a cornerstone power of the set, and the main appeal of why you're picking the set, I do believe it should be a decent power (perhaps lose a bit of its damage in trade for a fast-snipe version of the power?). Mace Mastery is kind of just better because Scorp Shield is just a one and done too good power while having a similar theme of "natural weapon user" feel. I had a similar situation where I had a technology themed rocket/munitions blaster with Beam/EM, but I just felt obligated to choose the other APP instead.

I don't know if I'd tie this directly to badging itself, but I would like the devs to try to expand the list of existing costume types and branch out to more unique costumes of iconic characters for "funny RP impersonation" purposes. Or... even objects... As possible rewards for completing specific storylines as a token in addition to the badge. I'm not going to list specifics here but I'll leave the idea to what people should interpret it as.

You know, I am aware that this clearly isn't what the post was trying to start off as or get to but... I really would *actually* like a new HEAT/VEAT/EAT archetype and something with interesting fresh new gameplay mechanics.

Uh... Okay, assuming no ill intentions here and this isn't in fact a troll post/account yourself, what I'm referring to is basically if the devs decided to keep the P2W features accessible to the community and removed paywalls (by definition of the structure of HC, they cannot receive profits), reinstalling a paywall feature could potentially violate the contract they'd have. That in fact sir, does harm things. I read your post, it's not long or hard to read. People simply do not like this suggestion. I cannot find even a single post of support for this suggestion. We are not trolling you, we are not calling you names, we are simply disagreeing with your suggestion.

This is what I thought happened as well, and for this exact reason, I think this alone should probably warrant shutting down the suggestion in addition to the well... obvious unpopularity...

This is actually a pretty good hot topic. If you make it so that the character you're playing on's salvage inventory via getting drops/loot does not increase, while theoretically having access to craft IO's from your other characters inventory's for the strict purpose of crafting, I could definitely see how this only has upsides. I'm unsure of if I support allowing incarnate salvage into this equation, but for inventory salvage that's non-incarnate I definitely think this kind of suggestion could help improve the crafting experience and avoid needless influence sinking. +1 for me if I understand the idea properly.

Honestly... I agree with this. I know it's a topic that's very shaky in terms of community reception, but I will state my opinion and just leave it at that. I understand the sentiment that you shouldn't just ask to be "spoon-fed" everything that the game has to offer, but at the same time... The farming nerfs are just extreme. The nerfs to burn, the way minions interact now, the builds that are viable now vs aren't, etc. just hit farming as a whole so hard I think it's added on about half the amount of time it took me to level up a level 50. If we were being truthful to ourselves, very few of us truly enjoy AE farming. To most people it is very repetitive, boring, and bland. It's something you do because you have to in order to get access to level 50 content and powersets in a short timeframe. For the part people don't honestly want to hear or address, and this doesn't come across in any comment that I've seen, a lot of people quit the game because they want to try more characters they haven't gotten to be able to enjoy yet with their friends, but cannot bring themselves to farm because of its extreme banality when other games offer instantaneous freedom to do what you want to when you'd like to. There's even a huge segment of the CoH community I'd bet you, who have a crap ton of influence or reward merits just laying around across various characters, but genuinely nothing to use any of it on that's significantly meaningful because they just do not want to farm anymore characters. Above all else, reward merits are time-intensive currencies, I believe that if you've completed X number of activities to acquire reward merits, that should maybe purchase you X number of levels per merit. If people want to be really nit-picky they can ask for higher reward merit counts at higher levels after a specific level point due to exp being harder to get.

Fear is a bit mediocre, I took it on Mind Dom so I'm familiar with the power, and I'd have to say the Stun is a much better lockdown power. TAoE is better than PBAoE in most circumstances. The fact you don't have to get into melee/the thick of a mob to use that power is a huge bonus in itself. The Hold is decent I grant you, but it is still a 4 minute cooldown baseline power. But the Hold alone at least to me, isn't going to warrant the much higher damage potential that PA can output, especially in a single target scenario. Those pets do less damage than PA, yes PA has a longer recharge timer, you can still perma them with IOing. PA also cannot die. Those pets you mentioned, from what I have experienced in x8 or +2+ die incredibly easily. PA just doesn't die. It's incomparable. Illusion has simply the best pets of any control set.

While I do understand this sentiment, and wholeheartedly understand your frustrations, revamping the henchmen who have probably more combined different powers than the actual mastermind set itself, probably needs to have some transparency as to the changes made. Henchmen are especially complex because you cannot see the exact implementations on just stat screens due to upgrades given throughout the set. I don't believe I commented on the last page where you gave details of whatever change you made. However, if I personally have made you feel like that at any point, my sincerest apologies.

So earlier I made a post that stated this set was so good it could receive a possible nerf. I didn't really state the specifics on why it would or the highlights of the set. I suppose in comparison to other things in the game (for other archetypes), Illusion Control is fine. I will however point out some points on why this would probably be the best set on Doms: Gleam is literally a 1:1 with Flashfire which is one of the strongest AoE controls in the game on reasonable cooldowns. It has a faster cast time (less vulnerable than FF), and has the same Radius/target potential. Stuns completely lock down mob groups without the chance for them to give counter-play. In comparison to Mind Control, the closest tool it has is Terrify. Terrify is ok, but works almost the same as Sleep, only difference when you hit the enemies with an attack, and the enemies hit you back, they can go back into fear. With Gleam, they simply just become statues that move slowly. Gleam is just really good. ** This next point is more important than people realize/give credit for. The ability to single target confuse enemies. Mind had the best version of that, until Illusion came along and decided to get a 1:1 copy of that power but for Dominators. People really underestimate how impactful Confuse on higher level targets really is in gameplay. It's crucial for specific high level incarnate content, if the duration to cast time is good enough, you can chain-confuse AV's. This fact alone, given how I know that Mind Dominators can indeed perma-confuse +4 AV's when properly built, means Illusion Dominators can do the same thing, but with PA doing a lot more damage than any tool Mind has to offer. It makes it the best solo AV dominator set. PA and Phantasm are just ahead of every other control set's pets by far. This has been shown with pylon tests many times, once the enemies are focused, they just shred high priority targets, but even in groups these pets still do tons of damage. Way more than what other sets honestly get from their pets, and they cannot die except for the Phantasm. Plant still does a bit better because of Seeds in the AoE department, but it falls short on single target, where Illusion greatly out-shines Plant in that department. In short, it's really strong where Mind was strong (single targets), and it's very good at AoE where other sets out-shined Mind. It kind of takes what made Mind great, and gets better AoE and damage tools.

Please don't take this post the wrong way, and this is not me advocating for it not to be ported over, I do have to be a bit honest here... This powerset is just obscenely strong. Like leaps and bounds above every other control set for Dominators. It's basically stealing every single thing Mind had really going for it, and getting the best of what Dark had over Mind, and converging the two into being an unstoppable beast. I don't hope for nerfs, but if this were ported onto live in its current state, I would not be surprised if half a year or so later, they decided to nerf some of this set. It is extremely effective in solo and group play, and is just a force to be reckoned with.

So before I commented on this AT and the changes (not just the inherent), I did a lot of preliminary testing on live vs beta for the performance differences for Sentinels. My thoughts are: 1. The scalar (1.1) actually makes a huge difference as to their solo capability and it does dramatically impact their utility as a whole. Before, when I played my Fire/Bio sentinel I couldn't really "oneshot" with inferno most mobs except low level minions. With the changes, you can "oneshot" any minions in a group with your T9 reliably. You do about half of Lieutenant's health on higher difficulties, and oneshot or get them to about 80% on lower difficulties. They also have about half the cooldown on their nukes. This improvement in damage for the T9 and the "fireball" TAoE of blast sets does indeed bump them up drastically when completing missions. 2. The inherent is still a bit underwhelming but better than it was before. The time it takes to solo a higher level AV or even a regular AV has gone down substantially following these changes. Pylon tests do not reflect this due to how impactful the true -15% debuff is at all levels. Better attack chains also open up for not having to use the T1/T2 to proc your inherent, the natural inherent is much better. Overall, these changes are badly needed for Sentinels and bring them into being a worthy character choice even if they're not strict specialists. Before they completely lacked identity and specialization. Now they didn't necessarily gain those things, but they are now worthy of the "jack of all trades" designation, rather than just being entirely out-classed in every regard, especially in comparison to things like Tankers/Blasters/Scrappers.

Ah, you're correct apparently, this bonus applies only to PvP.... Which is so misleading, really badly worded, and desperately needs a new description. My apologies, I thought with the Fire changes that this might've been a bug!

I have run extensive amounts of testing to confirm this. And I have confirmed that on live servers, FE does NOT have these same issues on the live server. Specifically, what I have noted was that the particular section about "significantly boosting the damage of all your Fire attacks for quite awhile," is not functioning. In any fire powers, whatsoever. It will grant fire powers only the same benefits as other non-fire powers. What does that mean? The about 45% damage increase procs you would see on Energy Melee as fire proc damage will also appear for Fire attacks, but it will not apply the "significant boost to your fire damage attacks." It *only* applies the second effect of the power. As it stands, this is actually a major blow by over 10-15% of the set's maximum potential DPS, and can dramatically alter its performance relative to other sets. I honestly believe this issue is significant enough in its impact to warrant major attention.