ninja surprise

How about some standard IO recipes, that can be purchased from the crafting table, that provide multiple enhancement values? Like Hami-Os, but regular IOs? Like: heal/recharge damage/endurance reduction dam/end/rech acc/dam def/end etc, but not in sets and available from the IO crafting table like standard IO recipes. Reason for the ask: frankenslotting is a standard practice when you don't care about IO set bonuses. But some categories don't have a lot of sets available, or don't have a lot of variety in the sets, and availability on the market can be spotty. Example: Targeted AoE only has 4 sets, excluding the PvP and purple sets. Only one set has an Accuracy/Damage/Recharge, no sets have Dam/End/Rech or Acc/Rech. In contrast, Ranged Damage has 10 sets excluding PVP and purple, with much more variety in enhancement types and available recipes. Having multi-function standard IOs available from the store would be cheaper than dipping into uncommon and rare recipes, be more available to casual players, and hopefully increase the variety of enhancements available for powers.

And same goes for the Police/Detective contacts for Safeguard missions heroside. The cops have radios and cell phones - we need to be able to call them!

It's clunky in that the menu doesn't show you what you've chosen, and if you mis-click the menu disappears. So you have to open your Mission tab to see current settings, click through the menu twice to set team size and level offset, and then check the Mission tab again to verify the setting. And since it's on the mission tab, it shows your own setting even when someone else sets a mission so you're not totally sure what the actual setting is.

Key ask: GUI option to show only the buffs my character puts on the team. The Team window can be expanded to show buffs and powers. There's options to hide Autopowers, change stacking, etc. How about an option to hide all powers except what my character has applied? The goal being to make it easier to see when buffs need to be re-applied. This would make it easier to keep track of Speed Boost, etc, for max effectiveness.

I think it's really sad how much the core game gets nerfed and squashed for the sake of PvP. How about making PvP zones: no travel powers no slash commands no vet/P2W/temp powers no enhancements no inspirations just Sprint, Brawl, and your Inherent origin power And then in PvE allow universal base transporting, travel powers without suppression, energy melee that works, and so on.

I wish Practiced Brawler could take those Uniques.

To clarify: with click-protection like Practiced Brawler your status protection is active for the next two minutes whether or not you have any endurance or whether any of your other armors are running. So when an Invulnerable character runs out of endurance and Unyielding drops, so does all status protection. That's when your toon is no longer under your direct control and you go in panic mode. If a Super Reflexes character already clicked PB and gets toggle-dropped while fighting a bunch of witches or sappers, PB is still active. You're still status-resistant to KB, holds, etc. You can run away, click a big Purple, or just keep fighting because who runs away when critters need punched in the face?

That's darn sad. This is just the tip of my pipe-dream power customization & crafting system. Good thing the game is still so much fun! Thanks for the explanations Steampunkette! If only there were a way to change how this chunk works.

Do you have a Supergroup base? It's (relatively) easy (but still time consuming) to respec, drop all the loot into base bins and then email the Inf to yourself.

Pretty much, until you want to do a different damage type. You gotta be really strong in the RP game to color a fire blaster white and call it ice.

Thank you so much for the horrifying explanation. I expected it to produce exponential results but not quite like that! Just to clarify: I'd only been thinking one global setting per costume, i.e. on the Power Customization screen it'd change all the attacks to the same setting. So keeping it simple would be an yes/no switch and then the choice for secondary damage. That would "only" multiply the powersets by 5... But then we'd have five times as many power combos!! I know there's always worry about balance and I have no idea how this would play out. Sets based on exotic damage have secondary effects from the type: cold slows, fire DoTs, negative -ToHit, etc. This wouldn't bring any elemental secondary effects, just straight modification of damage type. Too bad the enhancement method Jaack mentioned isn't viable either, that was an alternative I thought about. A proc that simply changes the damage type 100% of the time instead of adding bonus damage.

Holy moly I'd never noticed that before! Can't wait to try it!

tl;dr: Add a power customization to the smashing/lethal melee sets that lets you change the damage type. Reason for the ask: To enhance role play and thematic character creation and to get the dang sets to match costume options. This would allow creating a War Mace toon with the Tech Mace and have it cause some energy damage, Claws with the Vanguard blades colored purple doing Psionic damage (simultaneously satisfying those asking for "only blade" options on the Psionic Melee set), Stone Melee with the Lava skin, doing some Fire damage, or Crystal skin colored bluish with some Cold damage, Dual Blades with the Fire and Ice 2, causing fire damage, or the VK-99 Event Horizion with some Energy or Fire damage depending on what color is chosen for the blades, A Broadsword / Shield villain with the Dark Elemental shield using the Fire and Ice blade colored black with some Negative damage, Super Strength or Martial Arts customized with an aura and doing something besides just pure Smashing damage. With this, we could combine Origins, weapons, and auras into amazing hero or dastardly villainous combinations! You could use a /cce costume change emote to change your costume and damage type mid-battle and RP to victory! This would only apply to the pure smashing/lethal sets: Battle Axe, Broadsword, Claws, Katana, Martial Arts, Dual Blades, Super Strength, War Mace, etc. Implementation: add a checkbox or set of radio buttons that lets the player substitute a percent of S/L damage for another damage type, Sorta like Swap Ammo but at the character creation screen. For instance, Pick your power set, then: Modify damage type: Energy Negative Psionic Fire Cold Choose Percentage Swap. This could be a standard/max 25% substitution, or multi-choice: 75% S/L, 25% Typed 50% / 50% 25% S/L, 75% Typed 100% Typed Could be in exchange for a change in endurance cost per attack, or all costs and total damage kept the same. Most S/L sets have some sort of secondary effect, such as stun, KD/KB, etc, and this would not change anything besides the base damage type. Personally it drives me nuts making a Tech character who, in 50 levels, can only create one sword that can only do lethal damage. Or a Magic character that can't do anything beside summon the same basic attack set. And I can't bring myself to choose a costume item that doesn't match what the power does, it's just so sad! I don't know how difficult this would be, but it would be equivalent to exponentially expanding the number and variety of powersets in the game.

How about modding it to, or adding, a team Spring Attack-like power: "Surprise It's Us!" or "Team Wormhole" Teammates within 30' radius of the caster teleport to the chosen destination Each teammate spawns a 7' radius knockdown Hilarity ensues It wouldn't need to do damage or stun, just gives the entire team the alpha attack. Similarly, add a melee-KD radius to normal Teleport to show how teleporting next to someone surprises them and knocks them off their feet.

Good to know, thanks!

Rolled up an Illusion / Dark yesterday and ran a couple DFBs, noticed that after defeating a spawn Darkest Night was still active when I'd try to use it on the next spawn. Slowed down and saw the anchor get defeated and Darkest Night kept running on the defeated body. Is this expected behavior? I always thought those toggles dropped as soon as the target was defeated. On the one hand it's nice - the debuff stays active even after the target's defeated, which often happens sooner than you'd like. On the other hand, I have to manually turn it off, wait for recharge, before activating it on a new target.

And I throw a Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction in there, if I don't have a Resist power for the Steadfast Protection one. Super handy!

On the other hand, if you don't like getting punched 'till you pass out, Hot Feet gets critters to back off instead of hitting you.

It appears the game allows only a one non-alphanumeric in a character name, such as hyphens or single-quotes, thus prohibiting a multitude of Scottish and Googie inspired names: Something-O-Somethingelse Blast 'n' McBlastie etc, actual names much more clever yet still impossible due to some name limitation in the quantity of ' and - allowed.

You didn't say what your goal was, but just wanted to say this: (43) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) isn't the IO that gives a defense bonus, but it does give a smidge of Resistance. I kinda want to try fire/MC now.

The other day I was one of three /Kin controllers on a team and we had the Blaster nuking constantly. It was a riot. Did I care that I didn't have enough time to use slow-as-molasses Propel? Not one bit.

And you say you were /FF? Sounds to me like the bubbles were working. Sometimes you have a bad mission or a bad TF, or an oddball team. Brutes should have kept the aggro off you. Maybe you can get sets to boost your own defense to the soft-cap and be less squishy. Your personal bubbles + sets should make you fairly difficult to hit, and mezz-resistant. Mind has Terrify and Mass Hypnosis - both useless in your example situation. Total Domination is cool but takes forever to recharge. That leaves some weak single-target attacks plus mass confuse. I've never gotten far with Mind before giving up. Earth / Time has tons of controls but squat for damage, but I love to play it on teams. You might get more mileage out of Ice Control. Jack isn't so hot but slows and knockdowns are excellent. Ice/Time would slow big groups to a crawl, /Storm would rock. It would be funny with /Trick Arrow to flop a spawn on an Ice Patch, shoot it with an Oil Slick, then light it on fire with your inherent Taser or bonus Fire blast. Just remember - the cost's the same regardless of how many alts you have! Try another, maybe a different AT entirely. Maybe scrape the bottom and roll a Sentinel.

Interesting take! Another Grav/Kin favorite here. From early levels I'd open with Crushing Field, stand near enough to something I can heal myself while cycling through the 4 single target attacks, siphon power, and siphon speed. Later you buff yourself with Transference and Fulcrum Shift. You can solo as long as you want to while still being team-friendly, and it's a blast. Storm and Time (and others described in this thead) also sound great so that's where your playstyle and preferences make the difference. The way Rocketmandb described Traps sounds good, but I don't have the patience to set up traps; I'm more scrapper-style. I have a Earth/Time in the mid-20's and it's great on teams but can't solo and it's so sad.

So why don't you befriend and continue to play with these good people here? I just wish the DFB xp didn't start to decline until a little closer to 22 so that it's easier to get into level 25 IOs. Once I get those I stop worrying about money entirely and just play for fun/content up till around 42, then start looking for IO sets and set bonuses.