Dispari

It's not like I was struggling the whole way. I had other goals in mind and did other stuff. Least of all, played a dozen to two dozen characters due to severe altitis and ADD.

Though you're probably right that the speed of how fast your first character hit 50 is the only measure of how good you are at the game.

Hey, it took me 2.5 years to get my first 50, and I have lots of other characters who will probably never hit 50. That's not too bad a rate!

I could technically get to 50 by dropping +4 missions every three days!

Pain Domination isn't Empathy. Pain Domination is Pain Domination.

Come GR we'll have people running around redside with Empathy just because of side-switching, so I don't see any reason Corruptors and MMs can't be empathetic.

I'm 105% sure Defenders have Elec as a secondary.

As for Elec Control, I'd say it at least 75% exists now. There are holds, immobilizes, AoE immobilizes, and some other powers already. A pet could be a gremlin. There's no doubt new powers would have to be made though, if only a couple.

As for an elec buff set, what would it do? There aren't any elec buff powers right now, so it would have to be a totally new set.

How can they attack you if they're all shivering in fear?

I've actually spent a lot of time coming up with sets and combinations. I'd help out even if they didn't pay me!

Just for fun:

Body Manipulation:
1) Palm Thrust - Nearly identical to Power Thrust. An open-palmed strike which doesn't do much damage, but consistently deals a high mag knockback.
2) Thunder Kick
4) Focus Chi - Build Up.
10) Storm Kick
16) Cobra Strike
20) Physical Perfection - +20% regen and +12.5% recov is pretty reasonable considering Mental Manip gets Drain Psyche.
28) Dragon's Tail
35) Boost Range - You focus your senses and chi and whatever to boost the range of your ranged attacks! A utility power, and a second set with the option.
38) Crane Kick - Eagle Claw would be cool here, but Blasters don't tend to get tier 9 melee attacks. TF is debatable since I'd say ET is the tier 9.

Ice Melee (Stalker):
1) Frozen Fists
1) Ice Sword
2) Frost
6) Assassin's Blade - Replaces Frozen Aura; Stalkers almost always lose an AoE option for AS. In this case, an AoE that also puts foes to sleep might be pretty powerful for a class that relies on hiding and not being attacked.
8) Build Up
12) Placate - Replaces Taunt
18) Ice Patch
26) Freezing Touch
32) Greater Ice Sword

Ice Armor (Stalker):
1) Hide - Replaces Icicles.
2) Frozen Armor
4) Hoarfrost
10) Shiver - Replaces Chilling Embrace. Instead of a toggle which will definitely screw up a Stalker's hiding, replace it with a similar power which is a click. No -DMG, but higher -RECH.
16) Wet Ice
20) Permafrost
28) Glacial Armor
35) Energy Absorption
38) Hibernate - Keep this? Already one in epics. Could be replaced with another form of a tier 9 instead. Maybe a large +RES power, or a more SoW/OWtS-style tier 9.

Weapon Assault:
1) Pistol - Like "Pistols," but with one pistol!
2) Gambler's Cut
4) The Lotus Drops
10) Dual Wield - Might be a better name for this, even though you're technically dual wielding weapons. Just not two pistols. Same as the MM power, though, just with a different visual.
16) Build Up
20) Sting of the Wasp
28) Targeting Drone - Yes, really! For the +ToHit and Perception. 28-35 tends to be a utility power for Doms, like snipes, Thorntrops, or Consume. If Targeting Drone is too nutty, Caltrops would also fit here.
35) Soaring Dragon
38) Empty Clip - Same as MM version, but with one pistol.
Set relies on having a katana in one hand and a pistol in the other. To prevent redraw, both weapons appear whether you're using a melee or a ranged attack. Mix of katana and dual pistols (thugs) sets. Most attacks do -DEF and sometimes knockdown.

I do. I know someone who subscribed to the game several years ago and left it on autopay, but never really played. Her vet badges are higher than mine, somewhere in the 50s, but she really only has a couple months of actual experience under her belt.

And, sometimes she lets her friend play who not only hasn't played CoH for even a month, but hasn't played ANY MMO ever before, despite having a 50something vet badge in her info.

Vet badges only track time paid for on the account. Not time played, or even the person currently playing the game.

The only time I ever pay attention to vet badges is when it's 3 or less. Then I try to be helpful and ask if they want any help or information.

Actually, I would enjoy a toggle in options to disable costumes so everyone appears generic, just so I don't have to deal with as many visuals during mothership raids and rikti invasions. That's the only time I'd use it though.

Your analogy and canon explanation would hold up if it wasn't possible to trade inf at all. But it is. It doesn't matter what canon explanation you come up with for not being able to trade inf from your Blaster to your Defender, because at the end of the day you can still trade inf from your Blaster to your friend, who trades it to your Defender.

Absolutely nothing stops people from transferring inf from one character to another on the same account. There's just an extra step. If there WERE a canon reason why you couldn't do it, you wouldn't be able to trade inf with ANYONE, because the logic is identical. You can come up with "the characters don't know eachother" excuses or "it's not real money" reasons, but those can and would apply to you trading with anybody, not just your own characters.

The only thing a bank would do would eliminate the middleman and make trading more fluid. It wouldn't allow anything that isn't already possible with extra steps. If you want to press the "your characters don't know eachother" concept, that's a player-made decision, not a dev decision. Let the player decide if they want to limit themselves thusly.

Just for reference, here's a full listing (unless I forgot something) of every powerset that can still be done, just as a straight port. Not to say they won't need balancing or consideration, just that there shouldn't be much need for new powers and animations.

Blaster: Dark Blast, Dark Manipulation*
Controller: Dark Miasma, Pain Domination, Poison, Traps
Defender: Pain Domination, Poison, Thermal Radiation, Fire Blast
Scrapper: Battle Axe, Energy Melee, Ice Melee, Stone Melee, Super Strength, War Mace, Earth Armor, Energy Aura, Ice Armor, Ninjitsu
Tanker: Broadsword, Claws, Katana, Martial Arts, Energy Aura, Ninjitsu**, Regeneration, Super Reflexes

Brute: Broadsword, Ice Melee, Katana, Martial Arts, Ice Armor, Regeneration, Ninjitsu**
Corruptor: Psychic Blast, Empathy, Forcefield, Poison
Dominator: Illusion Control
Mastermind: Cold Domination, Empathy, Kinetics, Radiation Emission, Sonic Dispersion
Stalker: Battle Axe, Fire Melee, Ice Melee, Stone Melee, Super Strength**, War Mace, Earth Armor, Fire Armor, Ice Armor, Shield Defense**

* = Manipulation and Assault sets require a mix of powers from various sets, but shouldn't be too hard to put together in the end.

** = These sets might not make much sense on the ATs they're given to, but what "makes sense" on each AT is subject to interpretation. I probably wouldn't've given Brutes Claws or Dual Blades, but they have them.

That's not to count all the "almost" stuff they have which can be tweaked. For instance, an Elec Control set shouldn't be too hard to make. Nor should Radiation Melee/Manipulation/Assault since PB attacks are basically radiation secondary effects, and we have Shivans. And we could also have some nice sets like a Blaster secondary with Martial Arts powers (perhaps infused with Body Mastery style powers).

I didn't say that your options should be limited OR that I don't like black. I think all the powers should have the full spectrum. I wanted my thorns to be white, but best I can do is a 50% gray.

What I did say, is that for some reason when you give people every color in the rainbow, they go right for black. That's why everyone has made their stuff black since i16, and why black dye is the most expensive dye in Guild Wars and Ragnarok Online. I can't explain it, other than I suppose people just really think black is cool, but it does make me think people lack creativity!

But I'll give you a pass since you've made other non-black alterations.

I, for one, have seen enough black martial arts, black forcefields, black fire, black super strength, black energy, black regeneration, black psychic blasts, black illusions, black radiation, black earth, black empathy, black willpower, black electricity, black gravity, black spines, and black invulnerability that I don't think we need black ice!

I don't want to stifle creativity and I do believe ice should have the full spectrum, but the point of having a full spectrum is there are colors other than black.

Most of the -DEF debuffs are in the low levels, which is really weird to me. Not that they don't exist all the way up through Malta and Knives.

But DEF "resists" -DEF in a roundabout way. It allows you to dodge it in the first place. Resistance is more susceptible to -RES, since it will hit a lot more often. DEF still has its cascading failure of course.

The biggest bonus is that DEF also allows you to dodge all other effects as well. If you have DEF, you get hit by -RECH debuffs less often. You get hit by holds, stuns, and sleeps less often. You get hit by slows, -RES, and -recovery debuffs less often. RES buffs don't do any of those things.

RES might be more "reliable," but there are a lot of advantages to defense, least of all being able to have effectively 95% mitigation to all damage on a squishy. Something tanks can't even generally maintain all the time.

My widow only dies to "bad luck," which usually only happens when she fights AVs or other very high-damage enemies. It's worth noting that those enemies would kill her just as fast, if not faster (since the most she'd be able to get would be 85% RES), if she was RES-based. And she'd get debuffed a lot more often too.

At least until all four PvPers get one.

I think changing the RES bonuses would be a step in the right direction. Even if that was done, it would still be pretty hard to pick up any good RES bonuses. There are no bonuses or uniques that give RES to everything, unlike DEF. And the RES bonues that do exist are few and far between. I can't make any build without getting a bunch of DEF bonuses, but no build I make ends up having much more than a sprinkling of energy/negative RES. Even if the bonuses were coupled and doubled, you'd still have to go pretty far out of your way to get S/L RES (like knockback sets), and probably wouldn't even be able to get more than +20% max, and that may be a stretch.

The RES bonuses also aren't smoothed out like the DEF bonuses. DEF bonuses all follow a pattern now:

1) +S/L DEF, +melee
2) +E/N DEF, +ranged
3) +F/C DEF, +AoE

RES bonuses are still random and non-linked. A set may only give smash (Kinetic Crash), or cold (Winter's Gift), or negative (Scirroco's Dervish). Some are linked, but all of them should be, and the values should be doubled.

I know. Perhaps I didn't explain it very well. But you and I are both saying the same thing.

+45% DEF = 95% mitigation BECAUSE enemies miss 50% of the time to start with.

+90% RES = 95% mitigation BECAUSE enemies miss 50% of the time to start with.

EVERYONE starts off with 50% mitigation simply because base hit rate is only 50%.

Someone with capped defense only gets hit 5% of the time. They have GAINED 90% mitigation over the baseline. It's exactly the same as someone who has 90% RES. They've GAINED 90% mitigation. Both characters evade 95% of incoming damage. +45% DEF = 90% RES. I explained it with the basic 50% hit rate because a previous poster was saying RES should cap at 95%.

To explain more. An enemy attacks you, going to do 100 damage.

A normal character takes an average of 50 damage because it only hits half the time.

Someone with +45% DEF takes 5 damage because it only hits 5% of the time. 100 * 0.05 = 5. They will take 100 damage when hit, but only be hit 5% of the time.

Someone with +90% RES takes 5 damage because it only hits half the time, and they reduce it by 90%. (100 / 2) * 0.1 = 5. They will take 10 damage when hit, but only be hit 50% of the time.