Gulbasaur

Honestly? Most of them. I'd definitely run through the First Ward and Night Ward arcs if you haven't already; I really think they're about as good as it gets for storytelling in the game, outside of Dark Astoria (which is also quite good).

I take Provoke because I enjoy tanking and teleport target because it's handy for groups. If you don't want them, pick something you do want. Everyone plays differently.

I usually just stack up the damage ones, to be honest. Musculature etc. Really pick what you think looks good.

Nothing against either. Talos has some cool arcs, particularly. Definitely worth spending time in both places. This is a completely insane thing to say as it shows just how unemployed I was in 2020-2021, but Skyway's roads don't link up in any sensible way and I've never forgiven the zone for that. I think one loops back without joining onto any other roads. I tried to walk from one end of the city to another on only roads and Skyway was such a mess it didn't work.

Don't be silly. They're clearly talking about Dance Dance Revolution.

Sorry, I thought I'd replied to this a few days ago. It's unlikely now. My life is just much busier than it used to be! Redlynne's guide is pretty comprehensive, though.

I am going to ask outright because I think some people would like to know: does the licence agreement require, or indeed permit, HC to defend or protect the licence, for example by requesting other extant servers not affiliated with them to cease and desist operation? While I think it's a good thing that you have successfully protected Homecoming, it would be a great shame to see other smaller servers suffer as a consequence.

That was basically endgame in the very early issues. That and endlessly farming the warwolf map.

In the study of linguistics, the word pidgin has a very specific meaning. I get that the general definition is a bit looser (and that's fine), but we're discussing academic linguistic theories here so it makes sense to use the academic definition. It's more to do with social status than advancement and is quite tightly linked to colonialism and enslavement because of the the nature of how languages interact. With a true pidgin, multiple substrate (low status) languages come into interaction with one superstrate (high status) language. They tend to have very unstable grammar and vocabulary. With Old English and Old Norse, there doesn't seem to have been that kind of social stratification and there's no clear substrate-superstrate system. A language that formed from their contact would be a contact language, rather than a pidgin (or creole, which is a pidgin where the grammar has become systematic, typically around the time that the first generation of children start to speak). So, you could argue that it was a contact language but it meets almost none of the conditions to be considered either a pidgin or a creole, but they're different things by definition. It's a fairly outdated theory that has disproportionately high representation on Wikipedia, which is a problem with Wikipedia generally (although it's otherwise very good for linguistics). In the case of late Old English, the elision of endings (which often contained case and gender information) was likely to do with contact between English dialects, rather than English and Norse. The timeline doesn't add up, the geography doesn't add up (attested changes in areas with no or minimal Old Norse linguistic influence) and the cultural interactions don't meet the criteria to fall under the definition of a pidgin. It might be more accurate to say that grammar changes in English may have been accelerated in some parts of England due to contact with Old Norse speakers, but that's not the same it being a pidgin or creole. There is some more acceptance of it as a "semi-creole", but that's not really an agreed upon idea. There was likely a language continuum going on, but that doesn't mean it was a pidgin or creole (or semi-creole). The Talk page of the Middle English Creole Hypothesis is very interesting and highlights a lot of the issues of the theory.

This theory, sadly, doesn't hold much weight. Partly because pidgin means something *extremely* specific in academic linguistics that Old English and Old Norse contact doesn't even remotely fit the criticia for and partly because the timescale just doesn't match up. The loss of case and gender happened a bit later. People in medieval England moved around a lot for a medieval European society and while dialects coming into contact with one another almost certainly caused the elision, it's not as simple as an Old English and Norse pidgin and, as I said, the timeline doesn't match up with the criteria for a pidgin. It's slightly complicated by the fact that Old Norse speakers left almost no written material in England, but that's more a piece of trivia than anything else. Like I can see why they arrived at that conclusion and if you take the loosest possible definition of *pidgin* then yeah kinda I guess, but it's a fairly niche theory that isn't enormously supported by textual evidence. Tldr: only if you're very loose with your definitions but it's not enormously supported as a theory in its "pure" state

Occasional German speaker with a degree in linguistics and another degree which involved the use of Old English* here - it's arguably the other way round. English used to have grammar that's very, very similar to modern German. German didn't really develop them; English lost them. Or both. It's probably a bit of both because nothing in life, love or linguistics is ever simple. English has a couple of linguistic oddities to it that are easy to overlook if you're a native speaker of the language, particularly when compared with closely related languages. One of them is that it has unusually strict syntax (word order, more or less) for a Germanic language. Another is that is it one of only a handful of languages in its language family to have almost totally lost linguistic gender. The very closely related Scots doesn't have gender, but Frisian (English's next nearest neighbour) does. English and Scots are genderless oddities surrounded by either two- or three-gender systems. Celtic, Romance and most Germanic languages all have gendered nouns. With German specifically, learning which word endings map to which genders helps enormously to the point where it starts to feel natural. That also helps with German plurals which feel quite unpredictable until you realise that it's almost entirely linked to whatever the last syllable is and what gender it is. After that, it's just vibes. * that's one hell of a noun phrase

I remember during the first valentine's day event event when villains and heroes could crossover for the first time, and a villain whispering me on my peacebringer asking how I did that after I transformed.

Kevin Conroy, hands down. Played the character the longest. Brought Batman into the modern era. Portrayed Bruce Wayne in animated media, games and (once) in person. There's a reason that, for a lot of people here (I'm sure), his voice is the voice of Batman. Cinema, games, TV, all of it. He was outstanding. I loved his portrayal. He more or less originated having two distinct voices for Bruce Wayen and Batman. Bales' Batman was cinematic but shows the worst elements of Batman as a flat character. No Batfamily (other than Alfred) and no real human connection other than his disposable girlfriend. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the films, I just think that Bales' perfomance was a bit charmless. So yeah, Conroy's Batman is and, I imagine, always will be the Batman for me.

I'm going to agree with Tidge (as I frequently do, we seem to have very similar favourite playstyles)... while I really wanted it to be good, it just ain't. Part of the reason (in addition to what Tidge says) is that the proc rate of the IO and the proc rate of World of Confusion are actually out of sync, so not every application of WoC actually even has a chance to proc the IO effect (unless this has been changed).

(In fun. Anything that brings us closer to Arachnos ideals is welcome.)

One design thing that floats around in the back of my head is how empty a lot of the early blueside is. It's content for the sake of content. Maps for the sake of maps. So much of it is just there. Atlas Park got a refresh. Galaxy City got destroyed. The Hollows got a revamp. Perez Park has nice worldbuilding but bugger all to do there other than some occasional missions. Ditto Crey's Folly - there's a flippin' shanty town out there with ties to the lore and all you really do is fly over it. Eden is full of very cool design, but apart from the Eden Trial, there really is no reason to visit. The Hive had the Hamidon Raid, and that's about it. Dark Astoria got a very large revamp and so did Faultline. There's just so much that was put out at launch with so little to do there. The post-launch zones of Striga and Croatoa aren't perfect, but they were very solid content releases each with 4 story arcs and a task force relating to the lore of the zone, as well as an additional one in Striga linking to the Kheldian storyline. OH! That's not even counting the Shadow Shard, which have some cool lore but the task forces are the epitome of time-filling exercises. In the early days, you could expect to stretch each one of them over two or three play sessions. Part of me recognises that gameplay norms have changed; the grind has fallen out of fashion in gaming and street-sweeping isn't as popular as it was. The Rogue Isles just feel tighter. Each zone kind of has its own identity. Each zone (more or less) has its own story, although some did get revamps. The Task Forces feel more unique. The landscape feels more unique. The maps kind of follow the Peregrine Island model where there are street-sweeping areas, but not zones. I didn't love City of Villains when it came out, but in hindsight I do see a bump in quality. Part of me has always wanted to write a kind of travellogue guide to the zones. I'm never going to get round to it and I'm not sure how interesting it would be

Edit: Mids was wrong. The scrapper numbers are more likely the higher ones.

I could be wrong! The combo point in Street Justice system basically adds damage to an already high damage attack.

Strap in, folks. Things are about to get mathsy. Part One: Hitting Hard First of all, lets identify the strongest-hitting single attack. Melee, as a rule of thumb, hits harder than ranged and ranged, as a rule of thumb, hits harder than AoE (apart from nukes). So, our answer is probably a melee attack. Of the mainly melee archetypes, there are two that can critically hit, which doubles damage under normal circumstances. The damage potential is: Scale Cap Potential Scrapper 1.125 500 562.5 Stalker 1 500 500 So, scrappers theoretically do slightly more damage than stalkers (just over 10%), but the offset of this is that their crits are random, whereas stalkers have control over their critical hits. In addition, some of the powers don't quite fit the model and you get the odd outlier that does more, or less, damage than it "should". Using the very technical and innovative strategy of pissing about in Mids, I would purport that the highest single target damage attack is probably a 3-combo-point, critically hitting Crushing Uppercut with Fiery Embrace running at 487.4 damage on a scrapper. It's not! Stalkers' Crushing Uppercut actually hits harder. My settings in Mids were a bit off, giving me average damage and not maximum damage. They can do 574.7 damage, before enhancements and procs. See what I said about outliers? Boom, baby. Outlier. Mids gets things wrong sometimes, but that looks respectable. At damage cap, that's about 2873.5 damage. However, we can add to this by 6-slotting the power for procs and getting our damage boosts from an external source, which can add another 501 damage, and running an Interface power adding another 66.93, giving us 3,441.43 damage if it hits (max 95%); it crits ; the player is getting a +400% damage buff from an external source (e.g. Fulcrum Shift); your Interface hits for all 5 procs (~24% chance); all six procs fire off (6% chance of them all going off at once). And lets face it, that's never going to happen. According to my very rough calculations, it's about 0.13%. So, you'd have to do approximately 1000 attempts to have a chance to see this. Part Two: Making Squishy Per the Homecoming wiki, the minimum damage restistance a character can have is -300%, which effectively multiplies this amount by four (-100 is double, -200 is triple, -300 is quadruple damage). There are a few ways you could do this, such as five Cold Domination defenders casting Benumb on the same target. This gives us a highest theoretical single target damage of 13,765. So, the answer to your question, @Shocktacular, is yes. Five-digit damage is theoretically possible, although it would likely involve one street justice stalker, two kinetics defenders, five cold domination defenders and almost astronomically good luck. Although, lets be fair, you're probably overjoyed with that 2k damage. Bad news - you probably can't. Under normal circumstances, you won't need to. That's crazy damage. Two or three hundred is generally seen as very good. Inferno with Molten Embrace would likely be the hardest hitting single attack for a Sentinel at 253 damage before enhancements. The damage cap for Sentinels is 400%, so that's 1012 at damage cap (no crits, remember). With perfect proc luck, you could add on another 250 to that, adding up to 1262.7 damage from a single attack. With the -300% resist debuffs, that's 5117.33 theoretically maximum damage to a single enemy. HOWEVER you can hit up to 10 enemies at once with Inferno... so, if every enemy is hit; Molten Embrace is running; all four procs go off on every enemy; all interface procs go off; all enemies at at -300% damage resistance; and you're at the damage cap you could hit for 51,173.3 total damage, spread between the ten enemies. Seriously, though. 200-250 is pretty good. @Eoghnved, I think you've got the scale of numbers a bit wrong. In City of Heroes, you're generally looking at high double-digits to low triple-digits for most attacks.

May 2023 version With the power availability level changes, the redraw changees and a few little tweaks. Again, this is what I am using - please roll your own and play with it. It's a springboard, not a limit. Comments and Changes The significant differences here are swapping out Psychic Scream for Dart Burst - the lack of redraw just makes it more appealing and if I'm totally honest the sound effect was beginning to annoy me. Does more damage in general. Cuts it a little finer with defence. A few more putples in general. Feel free to swap out TK blast for Total Domination with something like the Unbreakable Constraint set. Code in spoiler below.

I've been asked about this more recently, so here is the build I'm currently using: More defence, more offence. Is it the most optimal? Maybe not. Is it a ton of fun? Yes. Main changes are my constant fiddling around with the ranged attacks. I could probably free up a slot from TT:Leadership. Have fun!

I usually turn XP off at levels ending in 4 and 9. There's a lot of content you miss by skipping to 50. Not all of it is available in Flashbacks and teams are locked for Ouro stuff anyway so you have to find a team and just run with it, you can't pick people up as you go on the LFG. Go slow. Go sideways. Take the scenic route.

I have noticed a bit of a "we don't use the LFG channel, join our Discord to find out blah" trend , so it feels more like a ghost town than it is at times. If you put it on the LFG, people will come. Sometimes, you have to take the lead. I'm in the UK and play on Everlasting because from experience RP servers generally have a nice atmosphere and this game ran playably on dial-up so lag is rarely a problem. A similar thing happened on the NA GW2 servers but not the EU servers (well, to nearly the same extent) where the NA LFG is a ghost town because the LFG peand the EU LFG is live and well as long at it's not like 3am on a Wednesday.

Thank you very kindly! I am planning on doing a bit of an update when the next patch is out to add in some newer content and a possible pathway I missed!

... they are literally tanks! Back in the early game, peacebringers and warshades were the second-best tanks in the game!