How about some Hero Patrons? And maybe a general Epic expansion?

[JKPhage]

Okay, hear me out. It occurred to me the other night while I was reading over another topic that Patron Powers seem like such a cool idea that it's a shame it only ever extended to those four villain patrons, especially once we gained global access to Epic Pools on all archetypes and the ability to unlock Patron Pools by switching sides temporarily on a hero. Then it struck me that, considering we've seen the HC team retool powers and such, wouldn't it be cool to have a handful of signature heroes hanging around, say Fort Trident (like they already are) able to give out a short high-level mission arc resulting in characters learning a bit about their powers or how to use some new abilities from them? I don't think *every* hero should have such a pool, but I think keeping it to four "Hero Patrons" would be reasonable. As-is, epic pools have a sort of.... limited scope of flavor, especially when one considers the vast variety we have in primary/secondary powers. I can have a Rad/Atomic blaster, but don't really have a good thematic match among their epic pools, which are basically fire, ice, electricity, guns and generic energy. What if Positron was able to teach us how to use a bit of his tech, or refine existing radiation powers to give us a few rad-themed epic powers (repurposed from various rad melee/armor/blast/manipulation sets easily), or how about Penelope Yin offering psionic training to heroes so they can learn how to confuse enemies, shield their minds, or further improve their existing abilities? Maybe round it out with Numina offering some ghostly powers and BaBs or Citadel (please BaBs because he's criminally underused) offering some super-strength/tech related feats, like Hurl as a ranged attack, footstomp/whirling hands as an AOE, etc. Combine those with the Patron Pools and suddenly it becomes a lot easier to fill in thematic holes in the Epic Pools.

 

At the same time, perhaps we could add in a few new epics to round out said thematic holes? It's all well and good for some people to have a Fire/Spines brute that also throws lightning balls, but some of us want a little more thematic cohesion. Controllers have Electric Control AND Electrical Affinity now, but have to unlock Patron Pools to get Mu Mastery and then recolor it to match if they want a corresponding epic pool. Likewise, a Cold/Ice or Rad/Rad Defender, or even an Ice/Ice, Elec/Elec or Psi/Willpower scrapper are kinda left out in the cold. While a Penny Yin psi patron would fill some of those holes in certain spots, and Positron could cover Rad, it'd be pretty nice to see some of these thematic holes plugged by just general epic pools that aren't too similar to existing Patrons, or that are different enough to justify it (looking at Dark Mastery and Soul Mastery on Corruptors/Defenders here) so we could have more choices and maybe get closer to our image of what our character should be without having to sacrifice a ranged attack on a melee toon because we can't justify our Ice manipulating tank suddenly hurling a fireball or lightning bolt, or resorting to throwing shurikens when they have super ice powers.

 

Considering that most existing epic powers are just numbers adjusted versions of existing primary/secondary powers, it doesn't seem like it would be terribly difficult to cherrypick an armor, a soft control, a hard control, and a couple grab bag options from any given "element" of existing powers and proliferate them across the epic power pools. Likewise, a Positron Patron Pool could easily hand ranged characters a Rad Armor power, something similar to Beta Decay/Choking cloud, a click heal, a debuff and maybe a self-rez similar to Rise of the Phoenix that has a damage burst with the atomic blast effect attached. It wouldn't require any new animations and could simply copy/paste existing powers into new mini-sets to allow players the ability to stick closer to a theme. Any of the team care to weigh in on the plausibility? Anyone have any ideas that might be good for this? Perhaps a better signature hero than the ones suggested as Patrons? Even if new "hero patrons" are a no-go, I'd still love to see an epic expansion for fun and flavor!

[Alchemystic]

I got brought up a lil while back in the weekly discussion

 

 

[JKPhage]

Well that's cool! Sad I missed that when it came around. That said, I love your ideas and kinda hope that that's implemented, especially if this was something of a "Please submit community input so we can use it for future content" kinda thing.

 

That said, I'd also love to just see a general expansion of epics because as cool as it would be to just be able to snag Numina/Penny powers for psi characters, Numina has very specific control-esque powers, and Penny has her own flavor, neither of which really line up with the general psi flavor that is the general Psi Mastery pools. Like, I might just legit wanna have psionic tornado, world of confusion and mind over body on my character, without having to do a character arc, and Penny or Numina might not offer that particular flavor. Likewise we need some more straight elemental (fire/ice/elec/dark/etc.) pools on all the classes that are missing them, because at this point all the basic elements are represented in blasts, armors, controls, and supports, and not having a matching elemental pool to pick from just kinda sucks.

[MTeague]

If you enjoy Patron powers, that's great. 

I virtually NEVER take them, ever, not even on my villains.

 

I do not care how handy Scorpion Shield can be.

I do not want someone ELSE's powers on my character. I want powers that thematically fit my character. 

And I would never ever take an Arachnos pet summon power unless I was going ot STAY redside, and even then, not unless I was a Widow/Soldier.

 

I'd far rather see expanded selection of Epic Pools to fill the gaps (Electrical Epic sets for AT's with no electric option, Psychic Epic sets for AT's with no Psychic option, etc)

 

 

[BadMinotaur]

I would love to have hero patron pools, and the chance to run missions for some signature heroes to get them would be icing on the cake. My only request there would be to make them all more interesting than Black Scorpion's arc =P

[JKPhage]

11 hours ago, MTeague said:

If you enjoy Patron powers, that's great. 

I virtually NEVER take them, ever, not even on my villains.

 

I do not care how handy Scorpion Shield can be.

I do not want someone ELSE's powers on my character. I want powers that thematically fit my character. 

And I would never ever take an Arachnos pet summon power unless I was going ot STAY redside, and even then, not unless I was a Widow/Soldier.

 

I'd far rather see expanded selection of Epic Pools to fill the gaps (Electrical Epic sets for AT's with no electric option, Psychic Epic sets for AT's with no Psychic option, etc)

 

 

As I said, *hero* Patrons. Likewise, it's not even the existing Patron pools are intrinsically tied to their respective characters. Mako has ocean/water-themed powers. I took them on my Atlantean/Aquaman character who wields a trident in battle so he can summon sharks, call down a water spout and bring along a big, beefy coral golem sometimes (because some pools actually get a non-coralax pet!), and I also took it on my literal shark-themed character for obvious reasons and have shark blasts based on his totem animal and the ability to spew sea water as an attack. Both of these characters are straight heroes. Scirocco? Not so much themed around him. If we had a pool giving us Scirocco's powers then we'd have sand storms and wind attacks, but instead we get mu powers, with red lightning. Before power customization, this was perfectly on-brand for any generic electric power villain, and after? You can use it with any electric powers and nobody could tell the difference. Ghost Widow is much the same, with dark powers, though some particularly flashy colored ones in certain cases. Scorpion in the only one with a particularly strong theme of the Arachnos mace, and even then you can wave that away as being an Arachnos operative if you're a villain. By the same token, you don't *have* to take the pet. Most people really don't take the whole epic pool with very rare exceptions, so skipping out on a long-recharge temp pet power at high level isn't exactly a strange choice.

 

As I also mentioned, most of the hero patron ideas could very easily fill in gaps in Epic pool themes, with Radiation for Positron, Psionics in two distinct flavors from Numina/Penny Yin, and even Energy and/or Super Strength for Citadel/BaBs. Synapse could even offer some electric powers for archetypes that lack an electric option. And here's the kicker: they don't *have* to have pets! The Arachnos Patron pools do mostly as a sort of flavor option showing that you've made yourself a figure of high standing in the organization and earned the right to boss around their minions. The Freedom Phalanx... doesn't have so much of that kind of structure. Positron doesn't have specific croneys tied to him, nor does Numina. One could make a case that Penny's pools should include some way to summon her Psi Vortex pet as a neat trick that she can teach you, and that would be a very cool pisonic power to earn as an incentive to pick it over existing Psi Mastery pools for classes that have it, but it doesn't have to be a thing. Likewise, Positron's patron pool would likely be bog-standard Radiation powers. He doesn't have a monopoly on them and it wouldn't be like you were using *his* powers. You just had to do a thing to unlock the ability to use that pool and expand your existing Rad powers.

 

I think it would make a great batch of story arcs for fun, a handful of flavorful options that will be available to all characters (Posi, Synapse and Penny/Numina alone plug the rad/elec/psi gaps in epic pools by simply existing) and if the devs want to proliferate some extra epic pools around the party that fill some of those same gaps then go for it. Psi Mastery generic pool is likely to be a very different offering than Penny's particular brand of psionics (which would match the visual style of Psi Melee better, btw) and giving us an electric pool to choose from is liable to offer some more standard stuff like elec armor and ball lightning versus some of the more speedy lightning powers that Synapse would probably have on offer. And just to clarify, I'm not proposing one or the other, I'm proposing both. We don't exactly have to choose if the devs are willing to do this sort of stuff for the community. In the end, more options is not a bad thing, and frankly, I see it as the only way they can justify a "radiation mastery" epic pool, which would be a bit of an odd choice for spontaneous powers that manifested at high-level for many reasons. I'd love to have a handful of character arcs where we work with specific members of the Phalanx. We can get to work more closely with Numina, who's a little lacking in content related to her, see how Penny operates now that she's a high-level hero, do some errands for Citadel that *don't* involve running around seven thousand square miles of caves over and over and over, etc. Give us some generic options, and give us some more patrons, then let us enjoy having to decide which of the possible 18+ epic pools fit our character best!

 

BTW - Tyrannical's suggestion in the thread he linked to add Recluse and Red Widow as Patrons so we can have a pool for each of the six remaining Phalanx members is fantastic, because it would expand the options available to exclusively Villain characters as well as giving us some new stuff to play with for side-swappers.

[Razor Cure]

3 hours ago, BadMinotaur said:

I would love to have hero patron pools, and the chance to run missions for some signature heroes to get them would be icing on the cake. My only request there would be to make them all more interesting than Black Scorpion's arc =P

And by extension, VIllian Epics?

With the Hero Patrons REQUIRING a arc to unlock, THEN 2 more arcs too unlock MLTF. All while vills get their new epics free, and the ability to start RSF.