ninja surprise

I made a new Staff/Super Reflexes Stalker and Assassin Strike has what I think is a weird animation bug. While in Hide, sneak up to a critter, trigger AS. Character gets into AS position, and look like it's holding a pool queue. When the Strike actually triggers, AS plays the "pull the staff off your back and then hit something" animation, but the staff was already out. Is that a bug or working as intended?

It appears you both don't realize that Shield Defense provides defense from attacks from all directions, and not just from attacks against the shield bearer's left/front side. It protects against floor-based attacks without requiring the user to stand on the shield and against AoE attacks without requiring the user to spin super duper fast to block fireballs and rockets, for instance. Literally all the game mechanics show that Shield Defense doesn't operate the way you both imagine requiring shields to work in order to justify a physical shield on an arm. It's OK if you both have shield concepts that require a physical shield on the arm and nowhere else, but it's also OK to have imagination and other creative character concepts. So if I put a shield on my back is it still a shield or does it become invulnerability? What about arm bands that I use to block attacks by interposing them between me and harm? What if you take Shield Defense from the verb definition: protect (someone or something) from a danger, risk, or unpleasant experience. The shield could be a magic amulet, robes of protection, Thor spinning his hammer super fast to block attacks, a Staff user blocking attacks with their staff, or that episode of Robotech where the SDF's shields were down and they had three women moving tiny shields around the surface of the ship to block attacks. Shield could include the Hyuga clan's (of Naruto) Gentle Fist technique where they block attacks with chakra. It doesn't have to be a knight in shining armor as the only possible type and user of a big metal plate.

It's super frustrating when travel suppression is combined with attack rooting, so I can't move while the mobs take off at top speed. A somewhat extreme example: today I was hunting those Circle of Thorns demon chickens in King's Row with my level 50 Water dude. There was a spawn of 5 chickens on top of a building so I put a Whirlpool in the middle of them. Only one was caught in it because they were spread out, so the other 4 took off in different directions. It was a lot of work to chase them down one by one, wait for rooting and suppression to wear off, then chase down the next. But the real hassle is in Boss Defeat missions, where you're clearing the last room and a couple dudes suddenly decide to get all their steps in before getting arrested and take off across the map so you can't finish the mission until they get tired and walk back.

Huh, I've never heard of these. Time to hit the AH! Still, it sure would be nice to have a Hami or IO version of this.

And you could also create costumes based on a shield concept but without a massive shield on one arm, like power armor, or magic wrist bracelets of protection, or a type of forcefield, etc. I have a ton of Shield concepts that don't require a physical shield.

Sure would be sweet to have a Hami-O enhancement that does Acc/Rech. There's a handful of powers that don't take sets and would be fine with a single Acc/Rech enhancement.

The ideal solution here is to have a "minimal FX" option where there's no shield visible and it uses normal animations. That'd be pretty cool to get any day of the week.

I totally forgot about this toon, I'm going to have to dig it up and see how I like it now.

Is it actually beneficial to +5 boost a proc? Does that make it proc more often or do more damage?

I've been dreaming about this option for a looong time.

What is this "two charges" thing?

On a defense-based build I'll 6-slot Gaussians for the M/R/A defense bonuses. Then I combat TP all over the place to trigger Build Up.

This would be great. I'd love to have more elemental options instead of only being able to tweak the colors and pretend.

They're already sorted bottom to top by minimum level. It would be cool if the contact was its own sortable column. Or even if the contact name was first, then the name of their TF (example: Positron Pt. 1 The Rule of Three)

I have incarnated out Ice/Cold and Fire/TA and both are a blast and can melt big crowds. For my person "fun" and playstyle I prefer the Ice/Cold because I got burnt out on all of Trick Arrow's targeted anchors. Too many binds and macros for placing all the arrows. With Ice/Cold there's three rains, which I bound to F2/F3/F4 and target location. I didn't even need to make different team and solo builds because the three teammate buffs carry useful IO set bonuses. It can stealth, take out big bosses, and do some amazing things on teams and solo.

Yep I have an Earth / Time Controller that can lock down everything but defeats nothing. So I'm trying it on a Dom to get mez + damage. And I like the AoE stuns in Earth and Illusion the most - they are super fast animations.

Right now there's a boat at Peregrine Island that sails to Talos, how about having it sail to Independence Port too? It'd be great to be able to traverse those three zones by boat.

Whereas you're apparently saying that because a hero has ranged attacks, they cannot have melee attacks. That because they have a gun, they cannot shoot someone nearby. You're the only one comparing knife range with gun range to justify your position, and trying to support your assertion that because one screen on the character creator says "Ranged" then the AT obviously shouldn't have any non-ranged powers. But it's your game and you can play how you want. People make petless Masterminds, you can make a Blaster who switches from fighting to healing when the mobs get too close.

Is Time Bomb really worth using? Do you pull crowds to it, or drop it in combat?

I've teamed with Blapperella a few times and she's very effective. I was on a +4 ITF yesterday and the team leader was a Blaster. But like UltraAlt describes, the Blaster team lead wasn't the alpha absorber, but he did call out instructions on where to go, etc, so the whole team was going the same direction. It was a cool team with ~4 Blasters (including me on a DP/Devices), a Corrupter and Controller or two, a Brute and a Stalker. No single person was always first to the next spawn; often it was either me or the Stalker sneaking in first. But the Blaster was still leading with good communication.

So if you're playing a Blaster and some mobs run up to you into melee range, do you feel like you have to stop attacking because they got too close? You have to wait for some melee ATs to come punch them? What if you look at it a different way: Attacks are typed in order to match up with defense types. Instead of thinking of it as a melee attack, think of it as a short range attack? You can plan out your attack circles in distances of 7', 10', 40', 80', etc. Then you can consider all attacks as ranged attacks with different effective distances. And the Blaster's short range attacks typically do the most damage. Did you know you can completely skip the Playstyle screen and go straight to Archtypes and then you're not limited to choosing a Ranged or Melee playstyle? You can choose your Origin, then go to Archtype and pick a Blaster with intent to have melee attacks. It really does sound like you'd be happier with a Corrupter, maybe a Psychic/Thermal. Then you won't have any melee attacks offered to you, and you can heal yourself and your team, and rez and buff fallen teammates.

I wonder how the devs came up with this super convoluted power? Right on, that proc chance was one of my big questions.

Looking at Volcanic Gasses in Mids and trying to figure out how well it works... It says it has a 60 sec duration and the slotted Mag 3 Hold is ~8 seconds, plus a 1s Mag 50 fear? Does this mean things walking through the patch have a chance of being held for 8 seconds, then they can start moving and maybe get held again? Does Dom boost the hold mag and duration? Is it really worth taking or stick with Stalagmites? It's pretty much Perma with 27s recharge and 36s duration. But I like dropping Earthquakes and Gasses to block hallways and catching ambushes unawares. Second question: is it worth damage proc'ing Earthquake? Or would they just fire once on drop?

The few times I've seen this I thought, "Oh cool, a couple" or good friends or something, and assume they're good players because they put effort into it. The Player Info window shows their backstory, if any, powers, badges, and set bonuses. If they have those then they're active players and I'm happy to have 'em along. I'll most likely add a 5-star note on them during the missions so I can recognize them later.

1. That person is an obvious doodie head. 2. I don't think bots are or ever have been a problem but some people who came to CoH from other games where bots are a problem might think that happens here too. I'd be pleased as peaches to have a pair of incarnate Elec/Energy Tanks on a kill-most ITF. Y'all could pull twice as many traitors for the harvesting!