Gulbasaur

/e stands on his soapbox and clears his throat. The HC/SCORE devs made IOs much too cheap and this has caused a power bloat. I'm a bit torn about this because it really does make building a character more complex and more interesting, but also +4x8 should be a challenge, not the default for some archetypes. Defence is too easy to stack from IOs. Blasters shouldn't be able to hit tanker numbers. Yes, I know that DDR is a thing but game mechanics are part of the game. Global recharge should never have been a concept. The OG devs said that Hasten was too powerful and now everyone and their cow is rocking around with global recharge that makes Hasten look mild. Mez duration should have been shorter to start with (with cooldowns shorter to compensate), suppressed toggles to start with and mez protection should never have been a thing. I'd rather see lots of short mezzes than 8-second gamestoppers. Brutes need to go down a threat level to be parallel to scrappers, not tankers. Their inherent rewards bad tanking practices by providing a damage buff for jumping into a big group regardless of what the rest of your team is doing. Mastermind pets should be sturdier and have a higher threat rating so they actually hold aggro. I read something around the CoV beta that masterminds were the counterpart to tankers, throwing their minions in to hold aggro. In actual gameplay, pets are mostly backline DPS. Tanks should have to have a special tutorial titled "Line of Sight and the use of Corners: an idiot's guide to pulling". Appalling tanking is as much a problem as immobilisation spamming. The aggro cap should have been in from beta. The "hundred enemies in a dumpster" tanking was never a good idea. The aggro calculation is bizarre - taunt duration should not be one of the overriding stats. Taunt magnitude should be more relevant. It would enable things like very strong but very short taunts where you could effectively take over as an off-tank temporarily. -Res and -DMG powers should be able to have that aspect enhanced, but I realise both stats are applied in bizarre ways. Some set bonuses would be nice. Kheldians struggle to find a place in the current meta - they had a good place in the pre-IO game but the "blasters now have tanker defences" issue means that they are sort of sentinels with a slot problem. They're really fun so I'd love it if they need a bit of dev focus. The VEATs, conversely, are possibly slightly on the strong side. Edit I thought of more I liked having to unlock capes and auras. They made them feel like a rite of passage. I realise it's a bit of a "carry on where you left off" thing for a lot of players, so having them available is nice but also changes the meaning of them.... If they were an account unlock or something, that would be cool. We should have to actually go to the auction house to use the auction house. Using /ah is too much of a cheat code. Likewise, alignment changes with Null the Gull. It would be nice if that was an account unlock or something like the HEATs and VEATs were.

Several of my heros would find themselves having a suspiciously similar backstory to certain other superheroes... My dark/dark tanker (soul noir 4 eva) Corona Borealis is to Kheldians what DC's Apollo is to Kryptonians... the victim of an experiment to try and create their own weaponised version who turned out to be pretty badass on his own. I've been playing him a bit less since the onset of the plague for name-related reasons, but I think he and Apollo would have deep and sad conversations long into the night about what it's like to be both an imitation of something and something else in its own right. Mother Blight is basically Mother Panic but radioactive instead of cybernetically enhanced. Father Fright is her but Praetorian and stealthy (and a man). They'd probably all have a massive row, get drunk, then wake up in bed together and all never speak to each other ever again. Doctor Fortune would probably have a good time in Bludhaven. He's more a Nightwing ally than a Batman one as he's somewhere nearer rogue/anti-villain and Batman gets constipated about morally ambiguous people. The Dark Watchman is Red Hood with the serial numbers filed off, so they'd probably get on pretty well as casual business acquaintances. Storm Lantern would slide neatly into Justice League Dark, although sudden-onset indoor weather would probably be less useful in story than in game.

I've done a few. For some, it's absolutely fine, for others it becomes more a test of patience than of skill. Positron's ones are fine, although Vahz is a pain in the bum because of the layout of the map - he seems to want to go to certain locations. Katie Hannon's one is okay if you can deal with the unrelenting first mission. The three Ouroborous task forces are pretty simple. The two Striga ones are unremarkable but not too problematic. Numina's hunt missions take a long time even with a team and I wouldn't recommend soloing them. Citadel's task force is not exactly scintillating content. The Shadow Shard enemies have a lot of mez, a lot of -def and a lot of confuse and fear protection, and perception high enough to make stealth difficult, making them easier for some builds than others. My fortunata got hammered. I also tried to solo the respec trial with the Ritki and I was completely fine until the bosses stacked up and I couldn't take them down fast enough to keep up with the damage they were doing to the reactor, but that was several builds ago and I think I could probably do it again with a bit of planning of when to set off the "big" powers.

Nah, that's where all the bodies pile up. Gotta keep the shoes clean.

Dark/Dark is one of those pairings where it all just works harmoniously. Hover mitigates most of the problems with knockback. Dark Consumption takes care of Dark Armour's heavy endurance tax and the -ToHit adds to survivability. The Fear aura means you can effectively ignore minions and focus on a boss, while also offering whole-group damage mitigation because Fear effectively lowers enemy attack rate, which takes a lot of AoE out of the fight, making it very sidekick-friendly in those cases where you can't just delete everything. Tis a beautiful set.

Apparently, you can kite the two bosses onto each other and let one beat the other then take down whoever is left. Infernal is tough, but has no specific protection against psi, toxic or negative energy damage so some builds will find it easier than others to knock him out. Assuming you've got a tanky endgame build, grab some envenomed daggers to tone down his regen and it becomes a war of attrition.

I'm fairly certain I've seen them - I think the game spawns them when there isn't a quantum option for an enemy group.

Striga is just fun as a map. There's a lot going on and it has a lot of variety. The story arc chain there is really good, too. Conversely, I've never like Croatoa. It has some nice set pieces, but a lot of the map is just there. I have a lot of affection for First Ward - the storytelling is excellent and it feels like a zone on the edge of the world.

"Doom, but it's carbon-neutral."

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but my experience is that the absorb shield more than makes up for it. The meta can be a bit focussed on defence and defence debuff, but being able to summon a thousand hit points out of nowhere is pretty helpful. I'd also add that most teams at top levels are drowning in defence buffs so it's much less of a problem in game than on paper. It's more "regen with resists" than "invuln with heals" in how it plays,

Probably accidentally, but facade/"fake" buildings are occasionally used to cover up city infrastructure.

My AE baby story: I once duo'd with a fairly friendly, chatty fire armour brute. He'd been told they were easy to level. We were fighting Sinclair... Maybe? Baddies Praetorian Manticore. The one that gets harder as you go because he level shifts. The poor little blessed thing couldn't take two hits without getting downed while my fortunado stoically stab-stab-stabbed. He rezzed about four times and got downed each time. At one point I had to go AFK and answer the door, leaving my attack on auto. He thought the whole thing was funny, luckily.

I'm a grumpy old sod who thinks that everyone plays it much too safe with their builds, but I accept that that's a relevant distinction.

Hi! You probably don't need two slots in TT:Accuracy unless you're specifically not slotting for accuracy anywhere else. I'd say the same for Mental Training. TT:Leadership is a good place to put the extra slots - Gaussian's is a really good set to put in there. The +Build Up proc goes off at a higher rate on larger teams, because it has a chance to trigger on each teammate it affects, which means you get a passive damage and ToHit bonus from teaming. I've never felt that VEATs need Tough and Weave; they're pretty solid out of the box and have high defence without much building, but how high is high is a matter of debate. I beat up Giant Monsters and AV-tier mobs on my Fortunata without them. Will you run into endurance problems running that many toggles? Put this into an AoE attack - it procs often enough that the fear effect (which works like a short-term hold, it doesn't make them run away) is actually very useful.

The game is already too easy when you hit top level and round out your character. Current end-game blasters often have higher defence than old end-game tankers. Power creep is already an issue in many aspects of gameplay, both in terms of what's available for powers (the later ones are generally stronger or better rounded than earlier ones, which are often one-trick ponies) and cheap IOs have caused a massive power elevation already. The game needs harder content before it needs stronger characters.

I have - they seem to happen on map changes. I generally get one a day.

Controllers get Containment, making the fighting pool fairly viable for them. I know you'd lose them in pistols, but they're worth looking at. Defenders get the same raw melee numbers as controllers, but no double damage. Corruptors get a slightly higher base amount plus about a third of the damage again through Scourge. A melee-friendly set like Time would work out fairly well. Storm could work as well as it has a lot of soft-control and decent damage for a support set. The Defender version of storm is arguably better in a few ways (including damage) but it's a good set either way. Dark is also a solid set with a lot of defensive and offensive capability, plus you get a mildly useful pet. So... I'd go corruptor. I'll second the Tactics Gaussian's trick - in large groups it's something like a +25% damage boost overall. I think of it as a sort of off-brand crit mechanism.

Dehydrate is reliable as long as you use it in your normal attack chain. I'd put the Theft of Essence endurance proc in it somewhere, though. It does help. Likewise, Performance Shifter's +endurance proc in Stamina works out better than an endurance enhancement under most circumstances. Water Jet has a unique interaction that it resets, rather than recharges, if you use it with tidal power full... meaning if you skip putting recharge in it and put damage procs in it, they've got a better chance of going off. Damage procs do a flat amount of damage, so lower damage archetypes like corruptors get a lot of mileage from them. Also - maneuvers or combat jumping would probably go some ways to helping you survive. Dark Consumption is on my "take it, just take it, don't ask questions" list... it's basically a second endurance bar when you really need it.

Bots/sonic overlaps defence and resistance and I found it to be very sturdy. There's a -res aura that you can slap on your bots if you can persuade them to get into melee range. People like to treat sonic resonance as force field's inferior cousin but it's actually pretty solid if never spectacular. Res boosts are harder to come by that defence boosts so it complements things well.

I think it was basically a localisation beta rather than a content beta, if that makes sense. I gather it was deemed too western for the Korean market which favours different gameplay trends and the superhero genre was deemed as too culturally foreign for the market in the same way that anime-style and wuxia-themed games haven't ever really held a market share outside of Asia.

I mean, it helps when it helps and it's worth looking at what else you could take in its place.

I'd say that PDD are almost incarnate tier and I wish there were more mobs like that. I'm one of the "the game gets too easy too easily" people and mechanics that can't by bypassed by just having lots of defence are always welcome. Oddly, fortunatas (and mind controllers) might be the best weapon against Peacebringers - psi damage is their weak point.

I say this as someone who likes to tank... I can think of maybe two enemy encounters with anti-tanking mechanics whereas debuffs scale down, mezz protection is widespread and ranged attacks are almist exclusively less impactful than melee... so anything that adds variety to playing as a tank would be nice.

This is already my headcanon. My main, Doctor Fortune, has his PhD in architecture, paid for by Arachnos.

I mean, put it up in the suggestions area but it's so low priority I wouldn't expect it any time soon. As the powers are all literally taken from other powersets, it surely wouldn't be too hard though.