Kaika

Um welcome to CoH? Most maps have been in use since 2004. This is normal.

While I don't disagree that CoH has less of a emphasis on player skills I don't agree that it's not a major factor. As someone who used to run 801s all the time, execution played a very heavy role with success or failure. It wasn't just "we lost so we need to take a look at our build/team comp" often failure was due to bad positioning, approaching a fight in the wrong way , damage not being focused right, or not reacting quickly enough to something. Yes RNG is a major factor, but it can be reacted too and mitigated with good knowledge and quick thinking, I don't think there was any time we lost a run and went "well the numbers just didn't work out" generally it was something we felt at fault for. Just because the RNG is there does not mean it's the only thing at play, this is not a turn based game. CoH has PLENTY of places for mastery of execution, they just aren't as emphasized and often overlooked by the broader player base. Just because you don't have the ability to actively dodge or block does not mean execution can't assist in play. Movement for example is a often undervalued and very in depth piece of this game, especially on melee ATs that want to position properly to get the most out of their AoE. Due to actions locking your character, the quicker and more efficient your movement the more actions you can take with greater effect, the person who spends two seconds repositioning for a cone attack deals less damage then the person who spends 1/2 second. You're also kinda sweeping the "attack chain optimization" portion here under the rug, since optimizing that is actually rather complicated, and often has to be done on the fly with how variable this games fights are. Even if you know exactly what power to prioritize, and in what order these things can change within the same fight with, enemy variety and weakness, enemy positioning, ally position, target prioritization, your positioning, ect. ect. As someone who runs with 4* speedrunners on occasion, and tries to optimize my gameplay as much as I can, I can tell your the difference between a player who is well practiced with the mechanics of the game and a player who is simply getting carried by their build is alot greater then most realize. I honestly agree with the overall sentiment of your argument and I think it's something that alot of people don't realize, that at it's core CoH is very much a numbers game, and a fairly easy one at that and while don't think this was your intent, to claim that mastery in execution does not exist here is frankly a little insulting to those who attempt to master it.

Please tell me this mysterious change is upping the proc rate of this power, it was in a good spot.

Yall are getting really off topic talking about kheldians in a patch that does not mention them. The exploit is around and allowed because it's oddly balanced in terms of whats possible with other ATs and the alternative is that kheldians are the worst AT is the game by a mile. A kheldian rework is probably on the horizon at some point but I don't need to be a dev to tell you it's out of the scope of this patch and I don't see any timeframe where the changeling glitch gets patched unless kelds get a full rework, which is likely a pretty massive undertaking. Otherwise though, looking forward to this patch coming out, specially now that tanks get to keep their cones.

Um what? That's not how it works at all, have you even tested this? That would be TERRIBLE design, especially considering the size of the cone. The recharge caps at 10 targets, which is also the target cap, there is no hard limit to the number of stacks you can have. It's intended to punish you less for hitting less enemies, not to punish you more for hitting too many, that would be awful. Edit: whoops it does cap at 11, really should be in the description of the power if the buff is capped, however it does not change my point, as there would be no reason to hit less targets with it, since you would still want to refresh the buff on all the stacks

I said it before and I'll say it again, no stalker/Scrapper would ever want a cone over a PBAoE, please give them Consume Psyche instead of Devour Psyche. I don't care if it technically covers a larger area, it requires you to reposition which cuts into DPS on the more DPS focused AT who are going to be in the thick of it anyways. If it remains like this, it's another set I probably wont bother with as it's central to the whole set(lack of taunt means it's already dead to me on scrapper but it could be fun on stalker). Honestly It's just a bizarre choice

Having already tested it, I can confirm it's still very worth it to proc bomb if that's your thing, it hits for very respectable damage with 4 procs and no recharge. It's just no longer a pocket nuke that heals/recovers end. Rad kinda needed a nerf and honestly this feels rather well directed. I do agree though ground zero could use a slight reduction in it's activation time here, but I feel the set isn't exactly hurting for AoE presence.

ALL of my builds use LoTG, it's simply one of the best enhancements in the game, really should have been unique like the unbreakable guard Max HP proc, but it was one of the first IOs so hind sight is 20/20. Unfortunately it's too ingrained to change at this point as it would practically require most high end builds respec, or if they grandfathered it in, suddenly you can't respec the character without losing it so it's here to stay. Honestly as someone who plays every toon with perma haste, I actually wouldn't be all too sad to see it go, it would make reaching that harder for sure, but it would not inflate the value of +Def powers more then they already are with+def as strong as it is. In the grand scheme of things though, it's not that big deal, Def as a stat is insanely strong on practically all builds and even without multiple LoTG def has some very good sets and procs. This is just how a complex gearing system usually works, the best stuff gets used the most, if something is universally useful everyone will use it. Not every build has 5 of them though, not every build will have enough powers to fit 5 of them and there are other procs that can be more useful but are single use like sheild wall, reactive defenses or Kismet For the record it's not even just LoTG btw, quite a few procs are practically universal in builds: Performance shifter +end Panacea end/HP Steadfast protection and gladiators armor 3% def In just about any high end build these are practically a guarantee just due to the usefulness they offer for only one slot,. You don't HAVE to use these btw, you can make a perfectly functional and even good build without utilizing any of these enhancements, it's just it's alot easier to do with them.

Pretty sure, the devs already mentioned they intend to buff kin melee at some point, unfortunately this is a entirely volunteer dev team and these things take time and they want to do it right the first time to not cause more work down the line. Melee is fine btw, good even, they tend to have some of the best raw single target damage in the game that's realistic and good sustained AoE, you just need to learn to move. This isn't even bringing taunt into the equation which tanks/brute/scrapper get alot of or them having the best damage mitigation. Oh and yes, blast sets CAN farm better then melee, it's however ALOT harder and usually you bring a tank or brute anyways as taunt stops enemies from running, and while you can, you don't normally do that solo. Honestly if a blaster couldn't out DPS a brute that would be a way bigger issue thats kinda the point of blaster. Oh and as someone who both plays a changeling PB and plays with alot of changeling PBs, they aren't that busted beyond what you can do with say a scrapper, they are also REALLY damn hard to set up and play properly. Seriously I've seen some wild takes in this game but "Melee is underpowered and needs buffs" is one the of the wildest.

Hah I appear to be mistaken, though I know you can do the same with Time, either way getting def up to the point of practical immortality isn't all that hard so I still stand by my points.

Honestly I was kinda just getting my thoughts out on the subject but I figured it would add to the conversation. More to the point though It's why I agree with the statement that Stalker/Scrapper tend to have the best ST damage realistically, at least from my bias viewpoint simply because as pure damage dealers I feel they have the least amount of caveats twords accessing that damage, and tend to not rely on support powers that would give others the same DPS boost. While I don't want to belabor this point they are simply alot easier to reach those damage values as well, specialty for the kinda person to ask "whats the best DPS" in the general forums, not to throw any shade at the OP of course. Either way though, this is one of those things where I feel everyone will have a different opinion of where the line of judgment is drawn, but a interesting topic none the less. And yeah SAME, I completely get why people specialize but if my character feels weak in any situation it's usually back to mids for me.

Yeah Division 2 is around where I would consider it, temps just feels bit cheap in the grand scheme and I general don't include things like lore pets due to inconsistency, cooldown. Not to say it's not already very valuable but I find lores/temp pets cause -res to get overvalued. Not to discount the effort that goes into these, they are certainly a useful resource but most of the builds used are tailor made for just pylon testing, optimizing everything for shear single target damage with little to no AoE, sustainability, or utility and often aren't realistic in many ways like having crabs pets actually all attack the same target and survive or abuse things like assault incarnate transferring to MM pets if summoned after activating. While I think pylon testing is still a useful benchmark at a certain point it's only really checking how quickly you can burst it down rather then some level of overall performance. It's still obviously worth noting and something to account for I just often don't think it's realistic specially outside of coordinated situations. It feels more like a "whats possible" rather then a "What will work the best". On that note though I don't have a better benchmark to replace it with and I'm not even gonna try to argue my opinion is right because it's very up to interpretation, just kinda how CoH is. Either way just my two cents

Invun is a solid stalker secondary, not meta, but not far from it, I play it on my main and she can solo basically everything at 4x8 fairly quickly, only having to really try with some of the harder groups. Dull pain is very powerful, but high recharge so you are somewhat vulnerable to getting whittled down if you don't have any other tools for sustaining yourself, but its not nearly as bad as shield or SR on that front. Build wise it's pretty flexible and slots out pretty well, you can end with most res maxed and most def types at 40-45% without having to go too hard. It can have end issues though, but thats just stalker in general and it is possible to get it under control without having to slot hard into it, this lets you be fairly flexible with your Destiny slot, as just about every pick has it's niche if you want to go through the effort of getting all them.

In the origin of power arch, if you are a mutant, Yin specifically states that she IS NOT a mutant, and has no specific powers, she's a extremely powerful psychics by nature, just like some people are naturally talented athletes. She isn't alone either the PPD has a full division of psychic police and widows are natural origin as well, it even used to be forced on the VEAT. So a there is a ton of room for a natural origin psychic to play with the big leagues. At the end of the day, it's whatever you want, CoH has always be extremely open to any interpretation of power source and power level. There are plenty of examples of characters with really goofy lore at even the high end (Shout outs to my boy Bad Penny in the Miss Liberty TF) the game is a creative sand box and it's crafted to allow just about anything.