[I don't get why this is so much better than CO]

Yup, I was there as well and went thru similar things. Hell I even abused Proximity Mines to get to 40 as well! I knew they were going to be nerfed because they were just too damned good. Sure enough they were (and it was probably a good call, there was little reason to use any other attack ). Although I don't remember if they were nerfed just enough or if they over did it.. I am assuming they sledge hammered them harder than they should have.

 

Also to be fair to the day-one patch. Defensive passives were over performing. There was very little reason to take an offensive passive at all. One made you nearly unkillable, the other made you do 10% more damage.

 

Now they did not go about doing it in the correct fashion, but some balance in the passives was sorely needed iirc. And as mentioned, juicing up all the mobs just added insult to injury.

 

Which leads me to another problem I had with the game's design. Attacks, or lack of recharge on most attacks. It seemed to me that having more than 2-3 attacks was a waste. Most of them had no CD so unless they had some extra effect you were better off choosing a heavy hitter or two then just swamping the rest of your power choices with buffs and stuff.

 

It'd be like if Ice Blast had no recharge on any of its powers. What would you do? Probably level high enough to grab BiB, then respec out all the other single target attack powers because why would you do anything other than spam BiB? Might keep Freeze Ray around though cuz its pretty boss too.  (Exemping not-inclusive, as there was no exemping in CO XD)

 

I remember watching heroes spam that game's version of KO:Blow, and it was the goofiest looking shit I've ever seen in my life.

 

*raises hand* I was there for day-1 as well, and remember the massive cut in power (and exp!) that everyone got. It definitely made the game feel a lot more sluggish and annoying, rather than superheroic. Even in the teens you'd be fighting random street thugs, and 3-4 minions could make you have to struggle to take them all down. Imagine a fairly experienced superhero struggling to take down a couple of muggers. It'd be embarrassing!

 

The villain groups were far too jokey and full of puns, and the game clearly didn't take itself very seriously. Which means players didn't either.

 

The way they did powers was interesting, but it tended to promote a very "best at level" mindset, where you'd take the single best power for that level, or level up a bit more then completely rebuild your character to take the newest, best power, dumping the old one in the process. Too many powers were overly-weak and not worth taking at all (the pet powers were all notoriously bad), and other powers (such as super strength's "uppercut") were far too powerful compared to anything else you could take. For a game with tons of power options, you saw a lot of very similar builds running around.

 

I gave it a few months at launch, then got bored and went back to CoH. I really wanted CO to be a good game. I really did. I played the tabletop Champions game for years and years, and when CO first announced I was giddy with the idea that, since they had bought the actual Champions IP, that it would be somewhat similar. That you could build a character concept and run with it. Instead, we got a watered-down, powerset-limited mishmash of a game that had no real heart.

 

I've popped back in from time to time to see how it's doing, but man is it lifeless. And there's not really that much more content than was there when it went live. The fact that it's still around when CoH got shut down by NCSoft still angers me. To this day I refuse to buy any product that NCSoft puts out.

[Why no love for /COLD?]

I'm working on a ninja/cold at the moment. Given how squishy the ninjas are, I wanted something that would make them as durable as possible, and since they're def-based, I figure either /FF or /Cold would be best. /FF is very dull, though, so I went with /Cold. The -recharge debuffs combined with the +def means the ninjas rarely get hit, so they've been pretty survivable so far. Occasionally one of the genin will eat a nasty attack and drop, but it's been workable. The lack of a heal in /Cold is annoying, but taking Aid Other works well enough. Just wish you could change the animation for it, as my mastermind is meant to be a magic-based frost-spirit, so pulling out a little tricorder and tossing a heal seems a bit out of place. Other than that I've had good success with it, solo and in groups.

[Mastermind Wishlist]

I want some CONTROL-themed secondaries, not just buff/debuff stuff.  Let's proliferate some of the Controller and Dominator primaries over as MM secondaries.

 

Control secondaries might be a bit overpowering for us. I mean, the ability to lock down an entire spawn and then vaporize them with aoe damage? Might be a BIT much. Especially since immobilize is set to turn kb into kd now. Imagine taking the aoe immobilize power, and letting your pets just decimate the spawn...

 

Would be glorious, but a bit op. :)

[Bots/FF - best place for Overwhelming Force Proc?]

Once the Assault Bot gets those glorious missile launchers, the drones are more or less obsolete. I only still have them six-slotted to hold various special IOs that give pet-boosting effects in a radius. I'm seriously thinking of not even bothering to summon them anymore in remotely difficult content, because they're at a significant level shift disadvantage, get into trouble easily, and then the protector bots tend to waste heals on them before they die anyway.

 

Easiest way to fix that is to have a macro set up to specifically control the drones. The protector bots and assault bot are generally safe enough to just let do their own thing (or part of the "turn that enemy into a grease stain" overall command), but the drones do tend to be a bit more cavalier about rushing around. I usually have a key or two dedicated to shepherding them. Leave the prots and assault in bodyguard mode, and specifically target the drones on enemies, or tell them to park their butts next to me and then resume firing. If you have a set that isn't seriously busy (such as /FF), you should have the spare moments to give the drones a kick in the butt to keep them busy and increase your damage output.

[Advertisement: New Restaurant and Bar in Talos!]

Someone was asking last night in chat about "cool bases to go look at", so I pointed her at this place. She sent me a tell a while later gushing about how cool it was. :)

[I remember when...]

Back before the Fitness pool became inherent, and people would gloat about their set not needing it, so they saved 3 power picks.

 

Pre-ED, and 6-slotting stamina.

 

Pre-ED, and having attacks with 1 acc + 5 dmg mods.

 

And yeah, I remember the walking turd granite armor. :)

 

Taxibots.

 

Saying "empathy defender lfg" in broadcast would get you a half-dozen desperate group invites.

 

The first time taking hover, going into Perez Park and floating above groups of Hellions laughing maniacally while zapping the crap out of them.

 

Green line / blue line tram stations. I think there was a yellow line too, wasn't there?

 

Man, so many fun memories. :)

[Virtue Roll Call!]

I don't remember what my old global was, since I changed it so often.

 

Character-wise:

 

Tiny Whispers

Fantasy Star

Viperia

Fleure

Technopath

Sophia Rivalsa

Monolithica

Clemency

And a ton more.

["I can't afford enhancements." A simple guide for making money at lower levels.]

Another thing to remember is AE. There are some very quick little "farm" maps in AE that you can run, even as a lowbie with no enhancements, in less than 10m. Do one run with it set for AE rewards, and get about 200 tickets. You can use those once you hit 12th to get a few DO enhancements to pop into your powers. They cost 35 tickets each, and will be +3 levels above you, so they'll be good for 3-4 levels. Do your missions, explore, level up, then run another little quickie AE farm mission to get some more tickets, replace your now-outdated DOs, and go back to enjoying the storylines, and save your influence to buy other stuff.

 

You can also use tickets as you level up to purchase generic IOs, invention salvage (including rare salvage), etc. AE was always a good alternative to just grinding out in zones and hoping for rare drops.

[Patch Notes for May 30th, 2019]

The only concern though is that then because the ping pong ball has bounced back over into the ae side of the net, that they'll further pop it etc etc etc.  I get server stability concerns that were had due to the AE map server stuffs but the congregating to the trial was the direct result of that change.  Limiting choices in the short term is what leads to folks being funneled into something else.    Speed of leveling should not be a worry for the team, really outside of server related issues. We're not in the epistemic bubble days of the NC folks needing to figure out how to eek out as much time to play in the game to maintain transactions and subs etc.  Its a different perspective now.  Personally, my only concern is that there is a desire to continue to maintain nc's previous thinking (or a reluctance to let that go for what ever reason).  We're seeing a few of these decisions now and while trying to think of them in the context of the now, it still is compelling to have concerns of the direction that it may continue to go towards.  *shrug*.

 

Speaking of AE, the rewards for running content through there seem to have dropped off substantially as well. I was running some maps prior to the patch, and it would get roughly 220-240 tickets per run. Post-patch, those same maps are giving 150-170 per run. Larger/longer maps are giving the same reduced rewards, or about a 30-40% reduction in what you used to get. I don't know if this was an intentional nerf, or something that just slipped in, but it wasn't documented in the patch notes, so if it's another "undocumented nerf", that's a bit annoying. I'd hope it's simply a bug, or if it's intended, that they'd announce it.

 

[What goes well with Thugs?]

Pretty sure I had a Thugs/Dark MM, I remember it was a vampire and his thralls. It worked super well.

 

I had a thug/dark as well, a little imp named Tiny Whispers that was the "bad conscience" of a bunch of criminals. :)