Dispari

If I have to pay $49.99 for wagging tails, I'll consider it a bargain.

Is there any chance we might get, say, NON-animated wings we could toss on?

My main character, whom I have 5 of (25 costumes!) has a tail on every outfit. I want me some belts!! This change will be awesome if it goes through.

Animated tail would be totally killer too, since I never use back options anyhow.

The biggest lesson not learned I think is the open power system.

They tried to do it with CoH, but it created so many problems that they decided it wouldn't be feasible. It would make it too easy to create tankmages or create gimped toons. So they went with a class system. Open power system doesn't work; noted.

Then the first thing they do with CO is create an open power system and plow through all the issues associated with it. As Arc pointed out, it just creates one class. To prevent people from making tankmages (they still do, just not as overpowered as you might think), the choices you make don't change your overall ability as much. You can't heavily build for defense. Pretty much everyone has the same defense. So deviating from "tankmage" is pointless. The only logical build is "ranged Scrapper." And while you can do other stuff, there's really no reason to.

Common Sense is the mandatory tier 1 from the secondary. But most Trolls consider it useless for their needs.

Oh, and you're welcome.

I was going to do that, but didn't have as much room because I wanted to get the full effect out of the others. So I went with Absolute Amazement so that I could get the complete stun effect from the ridiculous Circular Logic.

Personal choice there really. I think Trolls do better with Fly so that they can hover over a conversation and just pick off the topics they feel are worth contributing to, and ignore the other ones by outranging them. I do know people that take Super Speed though so they can zip in, tag a topic, and flee before there's any retaliation.

Trolls aren't very good at inflicting fear, so I went with -DEF slotting. Hyperbole is really good as an opener so that you can catch someone's attention and lower their defenses, putting them in the perfect position to two-shot them with Outright Lie and Blatant Flame. It also helps when you lower their defenses because Conspiracy Theory is so inaccurate that you really have to jostle someone before they'll buy it.

Those are good choices, but overall I wanted to make an effective Troll build that can sweep into a topic, unload on someone, and stay at a safe range from real logical arguments. Rage is a really potent power and Foot Stomp can be useful if used right, though the powers I picked let the Troll play with more of a sense of authority and correctness, so that they can pretend they're always in the majority and talk down to people like they don't know what they're talking about. Rage and Foot Stomp work better for a crybaby build.

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I heard a rather truthful quote once... "If you didn't leave a bid overnight you didn't really try to buy it." If it was two weeks ago you could've had all the stuff you wanted by now. Or even a week and a half ago. Only doing on-demand purchases at buy-it-now prices is the worst approach anyway.

Like how Jack learned so much from CoH?

You might be right on Bad Analogy, but I think Trolls should have Recall Friend so that once everything else fails they can just drag a friend in to agree with them.

A group of all Sonics is reducing incoming damage by 75%. While a group of DEF-users would be reducing it by 90%. So that's one reason the all-RES approach wouldn't be as good. But if they all took Maneuvers and maybe CJ or Hover, everyone would be soft-capped too. And the you'd be reducing damage by 97.5%.

But, past 2 or 3 Sonics, you're wasting a bunch of +RES powers that you could be using on something else. Even if you only take Dispersion and skip the individual buffs, and don't even slot it, you'd be capping everyone who could possibly be on the team. So as Katten said, you only need two at most to cap out everybody. So unless you just want to shoot for really severe -RES (which you could do with some other sets anyway), I'd avoid doing all Sonic Dispersion.

Patience? How long will that take?

Okay, so we are a bit down compared to our general trend, but not enough that it should really be a concern just yet. And we should also expect another spike when GR is released.

Now to wait for Washington to note that this new chart proves the game is dying, after posting on the first page that charts prove nothing. vv

CO's not off to a good start then.

There's A LOT in that article that I disagree with, but I think this is the worst:

No matter how good a game is, people are going to slowly trickle out of the game as they get bored or new things come out. Left alone, every game would eventually die just because not every player will stay interested forever. Every game needs to worry about getting at least some new players. I don't disagree that you should be catering more to your existing ones, but you should always be looking forward to new things that existing players and new players alike will enjoy. Jack makes it sound like after launch, you don't need new players at all.

Also, "you are what you are at launch" is a terrible perspective. Every game at launch is going to get a huge influx of players trying out the game and seeing what's going on. Then, odds are, a massive amount of those people are going to figure out it's not that fun, or isn't what they're looking for, and leave. You can't honestly judge what the game is doing for at least three, if not six or 12 months down the road, once things have evened out and you have your devoted playerbase down pat. Judging the game at launch is counting all your chickens before they hatch. In that sense, CO is too young to even tell what's going to happen to it.

CO had a really rocky launch, followed by refunds on lifetime subscriptions, and people migrating back to where they came from. I don't think "you are what you are at launch" is a good perspective at all.

That's kind of misleading, as you're comparing different roles. Controllers are mez/support, while VEATs are something like damage/defense/support. Controllers are better from a team-support standpoint, but they do low damage and don't contribute as much to an AV fight. If you're looking to speedrun, getting support and damage is better than getting support and mez, for most applications. Especially for ITF where enemies resist mez, or ITF/LGTF where you need to power through very durable AVs (and all the AVs in the LRSF, but Controllers can't go there yet anyway, so).

When I did daily speedruns on ITFs, LGTFs, or LRSFs, we'd tend to look for VEATs primarily because they have stacking buffs, are self-sufficient, and deal high damage. Past VEATs, we'd get Brutes and Corruptors, since they also offer high damage, and Corrs can do all the needed debuffs that Controllers would otherwise be contributing, like -RES and -regen. But also, Blasters and Scrappers were good picks for damage slots. There's no need for mez at all, and it would be slower to be tossing out low to no damage skills.

Granted SOME Controllers would be really awesome to have once you get to an AV fight, like kin or rad, but I'd rather have someone who deals a lot of damage outright to make it go faster, and as well is able to speed through groups of foes solo during the running bits. As such I'd rather take a Corruptor over a Controller from a speed aspect, because mezzes don't make things go faster, just safer. And if you get to a certain level of safety, more is wasted.

Note that all this is from a speedrun perspective. If I'm doing a TF for fun or I'm not doing it quickly, I could care less who comes. My VG and I did an 8-MM ITF last week just for the hell of it.

I didn't see anyone calling the game an unkillable juggernaut, just pointing out that the game may be near a low point in its career but is still far within the realm of sustainability.

On the other hand, I DO see someone claiming that the game is on its last leg, just waiting for that last straw to take it down, despite the fact that it's been trucking along steadily for nearly six years now.

Why would you need a Tank if you have 7 Corruptors? For one, with that degree of buff/debuff, you could completely get away with not having a melee at all.

And if you did have a melee, a Brute would do you better because there's no way the Brute would have trouble staying alive with all that, and his damage would be buffable to much higher levels.

That's fine; I wasn't even thinking of that so I'll give it that bonus, since I overlooked it.

However, please don't handwave or ignore the fact that Dark does more -DMG and about three times the -ToHit, in one power, than what you showed Trick Arrow as being able to do to support a team, in addition to having about six or seven other powers that are defensive in nature and allow the Defender to keep the team alive. Or that Rad has FIVE times the -ToHit in addition to all the defensive powers it has.

I'm the exact opposite.

My favorite travels are Fly and NR (previously Fly and SJ). Villain zones are small and few in number. I hate having to travel all over the place blueside to go anywhere. I hate not being able to just pop to Steel Canyon from Ouroboros. I hate that everything connects to FF even though there's no reason to go there. And I hate there being two trains and a ton of zones only accessible through other zones. I like Cap being a hub to EVERYTHING.

Most of my friends are redside. And some of my favorite zones (Cap and Martial). I also hate the long and boring blueside task forces that are just "defeat all X" 10 times in a row, the way more numerous hunt missions, and the fact that contacts send you all over the place which makes the aforementioned travel bother even worse. I also seriously favor the redside accolades because they're way more solo-friendly and less time-consuming.

That said, I'll probably be making most of my toons rogues and vigilantes. Just because more options is better.

Even if they did that, this would still be on delay. -1 wasn't the only issue with the system, so all you'd be doing would be removing options from players for no reason.

Okay, I'll assume you're talking about Defender numbers so I'll go with that.

You cite Flash as being "like Weave" and being able to offer about 6-9% -ToHit, and Poison Gas for -31. To be specific, Flash can slot up to just under -10% (-9.9%) and Poison Gas is -31.25%.

Now first off, those are debuffs and are going to be resisted by enemy level, rank, and inherent resistances. So as soon as you start fighting +1 enemies or non-minions, that -9.9% is going to fall. Even before the resistances, that's a really low amount. UNSLOTTED Ice Shield gives +15% DEF which isn't going to be "resisted" until you fight +6 enemies, or rare enemies with ToHit (which works against -ToHit too).

Second of all, Darkest Night does -37.5% DMG and -18.75% ToHit, in one power. Radiation Infection+Enervating Filed is -31.25% ToHit and -25% DMG, as well as offensive debuffs. Both Dark and Radiation can outdo the defensive contributions of TA with the same number of powers or less. This is ignoring the fact that they have other defensive powers like heals, resistance, and other debuffs.

TA's defensive powers just aren't powerful enough to rely on to keep a team alive, unless they're powerful enough that they don't need it to begin with.