Kaika

1: Pretty sure it does, but you don't really want to be using it anyways since its really bad as a attack (same with boxing) 2: No, this hasn't been a thing for years now. Every time you zone you only draw your weapon the first time you pull it out. after that it has no draw animation (unless you hit escape with it out)

Because it's hard to get into. You're entering into a place where experience is key, and you are entering with little to none. In open world/PvPvE content by nature it's difficult to impossible to ensure you will find players near your skill level, so it helps to offer some secondary goal that doesn't require good pvp skills to obtain, or some way to even out the odds, so a player doesn't leave empty handed. Elden Ring is a really good example of this done well, as the Host has a MASSIVE advantage over the invader, they are always a higher level, they get twice as much healing resources and they have access to powerful great runes that the invaders don't get, and thats before we consider that they will always outnumber the invader. This is done to smooth over the process and in a way that evens out the playing field. Even if you get REALLY good at pvp in those games, it's very easy to just get caught between two players and a wall and get blended. Even if you can't take out the invader you can always use your back up to speed-run to the next checkpoint or boss door(which send the invader home), which to alot of players would be considered a win. This is why rewards in PvP zones in CoH tend to be very strong but don't really require you to ever touch another player, it allows you to avoid pvp as a practical way to obtain these rewards, which in a way trains you on how to get into the heads of other players and think in pvp way. It's just not really well designed and the games balance has always been atrocious.

Those "Distractions" are entirely what makes this kinda content interesting and what serve to get players into this kinda content in the first place. I do agree that it should never be "Forced" things like villain accolades requiring entering a pvp zone was a stupid move. However those quest/node/whatever serve to get you into the zone, they are the carrot on the stick to get you to try it and the rewards for sticking it out, often you don't even NEED to pvp to get them, just risk encountering it. Elden Ring is a fairly good example of this working. People summon Co-op players to help them with difficult sections of the game and having another player with you provides a MASSIVE boost in power, however it opens you up to pvp, something you wouldn't do if the reward wasn't so worth it. This exposes players to pvp who otherwise wouldn't, and to many it seems like just a obstruction added to the co-op mode, which gets these players to try to find ways to combat it, and just like that a PvEr is engaging with PvP in a meaningful way by just trying to overcome a problem between them and their co-op. This often leads to them deciding to help with co-op as helping people is fairly fun, and by doing that they engage in more pvp, learn more about it better tactics, until suddenly, you aren't scared anymore when a invader shows up, your looking forward to seeing if your new build works. By trying to stop the invader from ending your co-op, you've basically become a pvper. This goes on until maybe you decide it's a good idea to learn more about how invaders work and you try it out.... and its fun. This is the core pipeline of the Elden Ring co-op/invasion system, a system people use for mainly by people just trying to PvE, which has lead to a fairly thriving pvp community. Ugh this. Look honestly answer like that are more the kind that sound cool, pvp is big on individualism and self expression and people tend to say stuff like that. I'll give you a honest answer of why I like this kinda pvp: There is nothing quite like the thrill of facing down a unpredictable thinking being, in a unpredictable environment. Hunting down and setting up the prefect kill on a target, while trying to make sure they aren't aware of me until the time is right. Watching their behavior to gauge how much knowledge they have and how much of a threat they are, and ensuring they can't get away once it starts. Challenge is part of it, but it's more nuanced then that, it's more that it's hard to predict where things will go when you target can think, and you aren't quite sure what their goal is. Sometimes your the hunter, and sometimes you're the hunted, and and you never know when a third or forth party will show up and change everything. This is the contract you sign when you walk past all those warnings into the pvp zone. This is why they try to add incentives that pve players would be interested and only require exposing yourself to pvp as there is a huge learning curve no matter what you do, the more your expose to it, the more you learn how to handle it. Honestly this is kinda still on topic, since badges are incentive to expose players to pvp. Games like Halo or battlefield can't replicate this experience simply because everything is very clear, everyone has a clear goal and objectives. They are really set up more like sports, everyone is there for the same reason, side are supposed to be evenly balanced, and objectives are made clear. It leads to a much more predictable experience. Look I'm not gonna defend the pvp balance in the game, it's never been good, however everything you listed there has counters accessible by all players if you know what to do and care to find them. While I really enjoyed zone pvp in CoH it wasn't very well designed, I can understand why you would see it this way if this was your first exposure to pvp content like this, but the principles it was built on CAN very much work. I stand by my point earlier, it's just not for everyone, and you are very clearly one of the people it's not for, and that's fine.

To be fair alot of that was only in the early days of pvp. Stalkers were a problem early on but there were counters to them in the game though not a huge amount but many were quickly added, people just took a while to catch on to them. If you could see a stalker, they were effectively a really weak brute unless they really knew what they were doing. I'm not saying this wasn't and isn't a problem though, eventually people figured out how much burst damage blasters could output and now you have the same issue but from a mile away. I disagree with the statement that pvp can't work in this kinda situation, I've had alot of fun in games like this, I used to live in sirens back on justice, and played WoW, Rift, Warhammer, and GW2 in open world pvp rather often. I think this issue really is that it's something that not alot of people enjoy, and by it's nature can be unwelcoming to players new to it. It doesn't help that alot of people simply see it as a excuse to grief people but, thats part of the point. PvP zones are about the human experience in a way, you have freedom to approach it however you choose within the establish rules of the game, which are usually extremely loose (no cheating, no gamer words, no legitimately harassing people), everything else goes, you are free to be to villain of the game that everyone hates, or the hero who protects and teaches the new players. Everyone who enjoys these sorta systems usually have boatloads of story's to tell about the players they knew, and battles that happened. It's not really a thing in most MMOs these days because it's niche, and it often faces players with a reality/ego check they aren't ready for, that they don't know nearly as much about the game as they thought they did. They die once to a player who's put way more hours into it, declare it terrible and unfun content only played by jerks, and never touch it again. For the players that enjoy it however it very much does work, with a air of unpredictability that you just can't get pure pvp arena style games. Games like Elden Ring with it's invasion system and Sea of Thieves are pretty good modern examples of open world pve goals and content mixed with pvp working well, it's just not for everyone.

To be fair, thats the entire reason why they are so powerful, but it's such a hassle to get them, to encourage players to steal them from each other.

If you ignore the big warning signs posted out side and the loud countdown when you enter the zone, that's on you. That's sorta how pvp works in games like this, as long as the game doesn't forbid it, it's allowed. "Etiquette" only exist to people who are willing to follow it, and if no hard rules enforce it, to many people it doesn't exist. This is a big part of the appeal of open pvp in games like this. The game gives you all the warning in the world that "People can and will attack you here" and they are entirely within their rights too as long as you remain in the zone. Personally, back when I used to PvP everyone was fair game at least once, and anyone who entered that zone was a valid target. However if I already killed someone, there was a cooldown where you get no rewards for doing it again so if it seemed they were just here to collect some badges I would let them go. Unless they started getting mad with me in chat for killing them once in a pvp zone, then it became my duty to show them how pvp zones function.

Keep in mind, you don't NEED to do any of that as well, you can go in with a few people, or are just strong enough on your own, and just fight stuff. Sure it's easier if you know how the place works but you don't really have too, and the enemies in there give massive amounts of XP and influence. It's like never ending, harder radio mission, with a insane variety of enemies that can actually give a bit of a challenge to teams. I rarely see anyone just in there for casual murder (outside of the EB room) but I highly recommend it.

Forgot about them, but just checked some in game, and they use the same animations that thug MMs use.

The issue is as magericzero says, animation time is a major factor in DPS to expand on that, this means that you can't change those without majorly effecting the sets DPS. This also means to enact these changes you would basically have to entirely remove the current animations if you wanted super fast snappy ones, and create brand new gun animations. You can't have a powers effectiveness be impacted by the visual animation you choose, for numerous balance reasons and I'm not even sure if thats possible in the game engine, so everything would have to change to accommodate. While I'm not against dual pistol animations not having you go through a entire ballet routine before firing, alot of people really like the animations the set has right now, and adjusting the animation time by anything more then a fraction of a second would kill alot of the current animations. Not to mention how much animation work that would be for the dev team. If you look at the animation new sets they've added, you'll notice they basically all use preexisting player animations and mostly repurposed and combined effects. It's a efficient way to design set that fit perfectly into the games style and are light on resources, but even then it's still alot of work. What you are asking full is a full secondary set of animations, for a preexisting set, that need to be created from scratch effectively. Sure there is a handful that kinda fit the bill in Thugs and with groups like the resistance but these aren't enough to fill out the entire set, nor do they fit the power profile of the set. Is it possible? Yes. Is it a crazy amount of work and extremely unlikely, also yes. I'm all for seeing dual pistols get some kinda rework though, fun as the set is, it lags behind a bit.

Auto hit or close enough to not matter, ran it on my SR tank and not a single attack missed.

Yep, straight up Will Smithed me on stage. (Artistic Recreation)

Look I heard the PvP timer and everything went red, the pvper in me just re-awoke like I was some sorta sleeper agent. I got the one death while I was trying to figure out how to damage a GM, he slapped me once and that was all it took XD. Murder aside, it was a absolute blast, Monty and the crew really outdid themselves (and the extra 250 mil in my pocket ain't too bad either :D)

AV solo testing is one of the first things I do with every 50. No insp, no Temp, no daggers, no lores. It's ALOT easier then people think, I main melee and even my tanks can all solo 54 AVs in a reasonable time and none of them are specifically built for just that. You just need a solid build and a good understanding of how DPS works and how to string together a decent rotation. All you need to do to solo most AVs is beat their regen, which is only around 100ish DPS(at 54), anything after that is just speed. From my experience this gets easier the lower level you go as the game expects much less from lower level players. A fully kitted out 50 can absolutely make a low level AVs look like EBs in TFs like you saw, regardless of AT. Corrupters are very good at this as well as strong debuffs sets make it trivial to beat the regen, and their damage is high enough they they can likely manage even without, specially with a set as strong as fire.

I'll give you that, didn't realize you were going THAT far back, however I still stand by what I said. Howling Twilight being usable off oil slick is very clearly an unintended niche interaction, removing it was more of a bug fix then a nerf. It just isn't a good example, especially considering it requires knowledge of the game balance from 2004-5ish. If you want to use old Dark miasma as an example of a under-preforming set, that was a good explanation, but that specific change isn't. Anyways this is getting a bit meta. Edit: Also looked it up just for clarity sake, Afraid was changed to fear in issue 3, the -res was added to tar patch in issue 4 and TA as a set was added in issue 5, so dark was good when that interaction was patched anyways

No Dark has ALWAYS been good, TA honestly used to be horribly underrated but was always ok (and is now insanely good BTW). In particular this interaction was nerfed because it goes against the strengths/weaknesses of the established powers and caused them to over-preform in a niche setting (hami raid). Oil slick arrow is target-able just due to needing a way to be lit on fire, howling twilight needs to target enemies as a condition to both add a level of risk and limit the powers effectiveness. Using oil slick to activate howling twilight, while a neat interaction from the player side, goes against the intention of how both powers are used, removing the risk and requirements for howling twilight's incredibly strong res, while using the oil slick in a unintended way. This is what we call a exploit, when abilities in a game are functioning correctly but able to be used in a unintended manor. If anything the change you are talking about was less of a nerf and more of a bug fix. Neither Dark nor TA got any worse outside of the specific niche scenario, where you have players with both sets together, alot of player bodies, and no enemies to target off of. That's not really a nerf or anything "underpreforming"

Are you just... trying to make up an example here or...? Trick arrow and Dark miasma are both considered very good atm in end game. Even if you are just trying to give a hypothetical here I'm not sure what your point is under-preforming sets aren't like that because the devs have some vendetta against them. They are considered underpreforming because they are considered to preform below the standards of their peers, this doesn't mean they are unusable junk the devs nerfed into the ground because someone found something cool. An underprefoming set can still be good in isolation, Just that the sum of their parts arguably adds up to less then that of other choices. Not counting beta I'm pretty sure kin melee has never been touched by the nerf bat, it's just that the damage is a bit lower overall and tends to be loaded into the back of the animations, making them often hit dead targets in groups, it has long animations which don't quite make up for it in DPS, and the build up replacement it gets is kinda bad. It's still fully functional, hell most players probably wouldn't even realize it's a underpreforming set if played in isolation (see OP for example) but when put side by side with something like energy melee it falls behind a bit in most situations. That's all underpreforming means.

From a efficiency stand point you generally don't want to do the long AS after a placate as in combat even with no crit fast AS does more DPS, though if you want the fear effect or just want make sure something gets deleted it can be nice. I usually see Placate as a weird mix of people overvaluing it or undervaluing it. When leveling its absolutely amazing but once you get with enough recharge/survivabilty it tends to not get used and alot of high end builds skip it. It IS however very fun to use, and still nice utility, love it on my bane where it tends to get more value due to it being their only method of criting after combat starts.

Considering his behavior here I would say they were 100% justified in kicking him, there is no way he didn't throw a tantrum like this when they asked him to turn it off. Null or not if the leader ask you to do something you do it or get the boot, regardless of if you think it's justified or not. Seriously he has a GM in the first page flat out telling him the leader did nothing wrong and he is still going.

This. Sorry short rant I have a unfortunate habit of helping out in help chat, and the question "Which of these sets/combo is better/deal more DPS" is a very common question, and every-time that question gets answered with a genuine opinion and analysis of the sets, someone always comes in to call elitism and assure them that you can "play whatever you find fun" and start to derail the whole conversation. I'm not talking about just stating they like a set, but using the "I find this fun" and the "play what you want" notion in a way to just dismiss discussion, sometimes even going as far as to say "don't listen to those guys" as they bravely try to save the new player from their desire to play a efficient set. It makes discussion of balance into a absolute mess as people join into defiantly claim "I find (under-preforming set) fun!" or "I have a (under-preforming set) character and it does really well (no further context given)" despite that not being the question asked. For the record, I'm not talking about disagreeing that a set is under-preforming, that's fine, performance is very variable and sometimes sets have bad rep for really no good reason. Nor do I think there is a problem with playing a "under-preforming" set or with a odd play-style, but when someone ask a question like "which or these two sets preform better" getting defensive because you find one of the sets personally fun, isn't answering it. I get it, fun factor is a very important thing in this game, in any game really, but we don't need people swooping into every discussion about efficiency to remind us that you should have fun when playing the game, believe or not, some people find efficiency fun. It's just not helpful. anyways rant over

Honestly I prefer smaller teams but you rarely see them outside of SBB. Something that always bugs me is people who complain about everything being a steam roll but never play in small groups. CoH is a game that has a really big focus on force multipliers, even on SOs a team of 8 will usually always stomp due to this. Bring less people and you get less force multipliers and more personal responsibility, it's still very possible that things become a stomp, but even then you usually get to do more. I see messages in LFG all the time that clearly want a slower paced group but are still looking for 8 players, and that's honestly just not gonna happen with 8 players these days, no matter what your fighting, unless everyone is under-leveled, 8 players will evaporate it.

I actually do this quite a bit My stalker "Kaika" is normally Db/invun, but I also have alternate version where she became a PB named "Ghostflame". I have another alternate version where her mutation advanced and changed and now she in a TW/Bio scrapper going by the name of "Void Rat" to hide her identity, or something along those lines, still need to finish the back story. I even have a Preatorian version of her a Arc/nrg sentinel named "Woodwind" though you could argue that's technically a different character. My blaster "Unluck" due to her natural origin makes her rather flexible power wise, she is normally a AR/Nin but goes undercover in Arachnos as a Bane, and has another alternate character where she becomes a warshade. Basically the idea is that they are all from different story archs, in the characters overall story. Different variations based on different situations. I try to make sure every character can stand on their own though design/description wise, but try to leave hints to their identity, or even outright say it if I feel it doesn't take away from isolated story. As much as I find it fun I can't expect anyone to follow my own little internal lore for my characters, but there has been one or two occasions where someone has picked up on it.

First of all, There are tons of scenarios where a teaming build may differ from a solo build. The fighting pool for example is almost a given in most solo focused builds, but can be skipped for team builds as the extra survivability isn't often needed with support backing you up. On AT's like blasters I almost always take Scorpion shield from mace mastery due to it's extremely good def increase, however if I was making it for more team oriented play i would skip this in favor of something that adds more offense like fire mastery. Corrs and Def solo build will skip anything that can't be used on themselves, which there is quite alot in many support sets, as these have 0 use solo, but can often be absolutely amazing on a team. I mean just look at empathy, 6/9 of the powers in the set literally cannot be used solo. If you look at 4* speed run builds they forgo anything purely related to self sustain (aside from hold protection and LoTG mules) in favor of things that increases their DPS and ability to sustain the team, due to not needing it from the sheer amount of buff their teammates give them. Also runners are very much a issue on high optimized, high surviviability, high DPS builds. Enemies are more likely to run if: Alot of them die very quickly, They can't hit the target due to high defense, they are taking alot of instances of damage (Rain, caltrops, burn, ect). In really effective builds, this can happen extremely quickly, as you can often take out like 70% of the group in a few seconds, and it happens even faster if your set includes alot of DoTs. While only a few enemies might be left, if they all start running in a random direction, it can get really annoying really quickly. This is is a massive headache on well optimized stalker as well, as they always lack a taunt aura. It's also a huge headache when soloing AVs as without taunt aura they will inevitably run for the hills. It's very much a thing

I think they do, but I can't imagine they would. I recall the OG devs talking about controlling Rikti in the original invasion at the end of beta

Oh I know, I wasn't referring to those uses, taunt is a plenty useful power. I was referring to people taunting enemies already in melee with them, specifically like a AV in this case. They continue this regardless of whats going on in the fight, as if it's just another attack.

There are some tanks out there that for some reason taunt on cooldown, and just..... never stop. I've had the same thing happen to me in a MoM a while back, these also tend to be the types to slot taunt for duration which makes it even worse. Never understood this, since if you are in melee your taunt aura and punchvoke takes care of it, and if anyone is able to generate as much aggro as you they are likely as well equipped to tank the boss, spamming taunt on a enemy you are attacking is just waste time, or in this case worse. The few times I've seen this happen we tried to tell them to stop, and they didn't, i doubt anything malicious I just don't think they were paying any attention. The worst I've see was someone got confused at the final boss and hit Shalice with a tier 4 rebirth, giving her absurd regen.... yeah we lost XD