Dispari

Soul Drain outdoes Build Up with one target in range.

Scrapper numbers:
Build Up: +100% damage for 10s, 90s recharge (11.11% uptime)
Soul Drain: +60% damage for 30s, 120s recharge (25% uptime)

BU equates to +11.11% (100 * 0.1111) damage while SD equates to +15% (60 * 0.25). Even if you account for SD missing with bad luck, it's still +14.25%. Against an AV, SD is going to contribute more damage for you than BU is, even with only the AV himself as fuel. Plus, it does damage.

We've been told there will be rewards available for villains who stay villainous and heroes who stay heroic. I also hope this is something that's not a one-time shot, meaning I can get the reward back if I switch to full villain mode, I just can't have it if I'm a rogue/vigilante. Otherwise at that point there really WOULD be no point.

There are going to be people who just don't care to go to the other side. Those people are more self-limiting than game-limiting. I have toons I'm going to transfer no matter what, for various reasons like RP, ease of teaming, or badges. But others will be sitting in certain places depending on what the reward is.

We've no word on what the "stay true" bonus is. It can't be too good or else people won't do rogues or vigilantes, and it can't be too bad or, as you say, there will be no reason to not be a rogue or vigilante. So it's a very thin line the devs have to balance out. Here's hoping they do it well.

I agree with them to a certain extent, and I know they've said this before. But they've had two successful revamps in the past, being Faultline and RWZ. They've also had very unsuccessful new zones, like Shadow Shard and Croatoa. There are examples in favor of and against revamps and making new zones.

I can see from one standpoint that they'd prefer to come up with new stuff rather than redo old stuff. So while I agree that that's a decent standpoint, I don't think this was a definitive answer meant to mean they'll never bother updating stuff again. Because some new zones fail, and at some point we'll have more zones than we know what to do with (blueside already does), and over half of them will be total ghost towns (blueside again). A healthy mix of revamps and new zones is the best way to go in my opinion.

Or, from another viewpoint, would you rather have 50 zones where 5 are used, or 20 zones where 15 are used? Of course, the optimist in us wants to say 50 zones where 50 are used, but there's no way people could divide their attention between that many zones. I also personally feel it's sloppy to have a dozen or more zones that nobody goes to as well. Or even zones that people only go to for one reason, such as Cim.

RWZ is basically one of my favorite zones, since it has content for both heroes and villains, a task force, a zone event, and plenty of story arcs to do for a wide range of people. It's an example of a great overhaul that went over really well, and the model to which future revamps should be done.

The Shadow Shard should be the next revamp, done in the same way. Give stuff for everyone to do, give some nice and friendly (and SHORT) task forces, with zone events and other things to do. The zone has a tone of potential and lore that were never finished. Now's a good time. Oh, and let villains in too.

Our game also has:

* Four basic ATs that are designed around the concept of teaming through a support set. They are less effective when soloing and are force multipliers for people in teams, making content go faster. CO has no classes and no penalties for taking certain powers, so if you can do high damage and have self-defense, why do you need support? CO also has, as far as I'm aware, only one buff/support oriented set, and it's pretty much all healing.

* A "looking for members" function where we can seek out people and invite them to our group to do content. I'm not sure of the extent of CO's LFM system, but due to the way we have defined classes, you know that if you recruit a Tanker he's going to tank, or if you invite a Corruptor he's going to have buffs/debuffs. If you invite someone in CO there's no telling what their powers are going to be without asking or sifting through everyone's skillsets, though odds are it's going to be damage/self defense.

* Teaming-encouraged content like task forces, giant monsters, zone events (though rare and sometimes limited to holidays), and AV-missions.

I'm on the other end, agreeing with people like Thirty_Seven.

Recoloring sets has opened up a lot of sets that I wouldn't normally play. I never bothered with Radiation until I could recolor it. I never had a concept or interest in making a character based on radiation, but when I could recolor them to be energy attacks of various colors, that "opened up" Radiation to me. I had the same thing happen with Invuln, as I'd always hated the black color redside. It's now mostly blue and white for me. I also immediately got a concept for Earth Assault and made a toon based on crystals. I'm also more willing to play some of my natural melee toons now that I can turn off their auras. I can make mages with green mystic electricity or a pyrokinetic with psychic pink flames. Power customization is content to me because it unlocked a ton of characters I would never have made or played before.

Revamped events give me new things to do. I did everything last year, so aside from earning badges I had no reason to run BNY content or participate in ToTing (though I did that for exp). But new event stuff means there are things for me to do and experience. Plus, new events is literally new content by the definition you guys give, so this one seems like the most likely to cater to your interests.

New powersets? Well aside from the ones "unlocked" to me through power customization, powers proliferated around gives me more ability to enjoy them on ATs I want. I could never get a Corruptor build with Cold Domination I was happy with, but once they came to Controllers I was able to make something I wanted to play. I've never had a concept I wanted to do for Stone Melee (and I hate Stone Armor), but I have a Plant/Earth Dom up to 41 now because I like that so much. And I know people who have taken advantage of sets winding up on redside that were previously blue only, because they really only play redside. To them and me, these are "new" sets and "new" chances to enjoy something we've never done before.

New ATs I wouldn't hold out for. New AT would require more work than any of this stuff I imagine. And we have a lot of bases covered already so it's hard to say what a new AT would even be, before you even worry about balancing and adding half a dozen starting sets.

New mission maps are always nice, but I wouldn't call that content. It's just a quick glance around to say "Oh neat," and then it's back to work.

New zones I feel are pointless, as we have a lot of zones already that we aren't using. And like maps, it's just a quick glance that says "Cool," and then you go do something else. And as interesting as Cim is, the only reason anyone goes there is for the ITF. If the ITF was put in another zone, Cim would be empty. I really don't want the devs to spend a thousand manhours to build a zone that has no reason to exist when we have plenty of zones already.

For the 1-2 toons I've taken throw-away powers for (Doms) for the purpose of throwing an IO in, I took stealth instead. Stealth and Grant Invis could at least feasibly be used in some situations, while I'd never use unslotted Maneuvers. Plus that pool has 3 powers you could put DEF stuff into.

Your team did however manage to find a solution to 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9 in my list. Maybe not "ideal team," but those are good odds.

One other thing that CoH has is that each of those different paths is a valid choice.

Having played games like WoW, Ragnarok Online, and Guild Wars, I know that there are certain classes that people just don't want at all. Past that, even if you're the right class, you have to be the right BUILD too. In all those games, if you want to team regularly, there's only so many ways you can build your character. You don't have the freedom to explore and try out powers and see what you like, because for people to take you seriously you have to be built in a certain way, and have certain powers.

In CoH, if I'm looking for a damage dealer I can take a wide variety of ATs. Blaster, Scrapper, Brute, Dominator, Stalker, VEAT, even Corruptors, Masterminds, and Khelds. What's more, if I do want a Blaster, it doesn't matter if the Blaster is Fire, Ice, Sonic, or Radiation. Each one contributes in its own way. A team can thrive with a Thermal on the team, or not have one at all. A team can have a powerful Tanker in the lead, or not even have a Tanker on the team. Pretty much every character and every build is a valid choice.

Hamidon? That wuss? I want the full Rularuu army MM set, including the big guy himself as the final pet.

Basilisk for hold is actually pretty good for this. It even only requires 4 slots. But most toons would only be able to slot 1 or 2 of those sets.

I don't know, though I also don't think it's even relevant. Personally I've soloed it on +2 (with AVs spawning as EBs of course) with my widow. But I think anyone who walks past four warning signs not to solo the arc, then goes and solos it, forfeits any right to complain it's too hard to solo. I outright say it's designed for teams and that I don't recommend people solo it, so whether they do it with a 6 billion inf Scrapper build or an FF Defender, I don't think they should complain either way.

And none of those are going to do anything for the OP because immob and confuse aren't going to cause detoggle or any real problems. I'm also pretty sure nothing heroes fight confuses (although us villains have a small handful...). The hold would be useful but I don't think any enemy units use mag 2 or less holds. The real issue is going to be random stuns, holds, and sleeps like from Rikti, Tsoo, Circle, and some other gangs. And for those your best bet is to just build for DEF to dodge them.

Rewards are a difficult thing for custom units. For one of my arcs, I worked pretty hard to try and balance the units so that they don't have Build Up or similar powers, and there aren't too many AoEs. At the same time, I tried to balance them so that they all give 87.5% exp (meaning one set is on standard and one on hard). I also put how much exp they give in their descriptions so nobody's left guessing.

But it's also possible to make units that are exceedingly difficult and only give 75% exp, or use a mix of sets that are just really hard to deal with. In those cases, the risk doesn't match the reward, and I'd probably give a lower rating because it's within the author's control to not make enemies really hard but also give low exp.

As for trying to please people or post warnings, I've had mixed luck with that. My main arc is designed with the ITF mechanics in mind. I like the ITF quite a bit, so my arc has 2 AVs and 9 EBs throughout it. There's a big orange warning when you pull up the arc's description, as well as another one in the description for mission one, and then red warnings when you get to the AV missions. The player is warned numerous times that it's hard, has AVs, and should be done with 6+ players. But still, the most common complaint I get in feedback is that it's too hard to solo. I don't know how to respond to those comments other than "You made your own bed."

Oh, and Cosmic Burst is Big Bang Attack.

I actually disagree that this is a bad thing.

Four sets that play similar to eachother: Katana, Broadsword, Axe, Mace. They have pretty much all the same attack mechanics, except Kat and BS have the parry abilities. But even those sets are different enough that they can even qualify as being different sets. Now take a vastly different melee set like Electric Melee or Dark Melee, and you can see how much sets can vary from one another.

Making all sets "standardized" means that in the end you're just going to have 10 sets where the only real difference is the damage type they do*. We already got some standardization of blast sets for the sake of Defiance. Standardizing all the sets so they do basically the same thing all around so that all Blasters "play alike" would make having different options for sets kind of pointless. A standardization like "all sets have 3 ranged attacks, 1 cone, one ranged AoE, one nuke, Aim, and one ST mez" would sound nice from a perspective where Blaster playstyle should be an obvious thing, but it actually just makes things pretty boring.

And from a balance standpoint I think this is actually a worse situation than what we have now. If the only difference between Archery and Energy was that Energy got to do a less resisted damage type*, there'd be pretty much no arguing that Energy is better and Archery sucks (except in very rare situations where enemies are weak to lethal). However, when you get complicated sets where the powers all vary, it's really hard to say whether Archery or Energy is "better" because there are too many variables to stack them side-by-side and reach a final conclusion. In our complicated mish-mash environment all you get for complaints is when a set vastly outperforms or underperforms on average compared to other sets. If one set is 5% weaker than another set, it's virtually impossible to quantify that or even notice.

* = Or whatever stat they vary on that players deem significant, such as secondary effect. Archery has pretty weak secondary effects, so standardizing all the sets to be very similar so playstyle doesn't vary much would make it underperform, while sets like Fire and Sonic would likely overperform.

I'm talking strictly in terms of damage boost over time. I know Stalkers get more out of BU than they probably would out of SD or FU. But wanting to replace SD with BU for other ATs is kind of undesirable. If anything I think we need MORE variety in damage buffs, cause just pasting BU into every new set is boring. And ranged sets have none at all, since they all have Aim (or nothing).

If it makes you feel any better, my Widow has BU instead of FU because it suits her playstyle better.

This is my take on TA, to a T.

There's nothing wrong with a debuff heavy or even debuff exclusive set. Rad, Traps, Dark, Storm, and Cold are all really close. They aren't pure since each one has at least a couple buff/heal powers, but the debuffs they offer are very strong.

TA is pure debuff; not a bad thing per se. There's nothing wrong with this, except that it's not good enough at it that you can actually rely on it. It has very little in the way of actual damage mitigation. Mostly just a small bit of -DMG, a small bit of -ToHit, non-consistent knockdown (which Storm and Cold get), and a few mezzes which are either long recharge, unreliable, or single target.

As it is, I don't consider a TA toon to be "support." If I'm seeking support toons and I wind up with a TA, I continue to seek out another support toon. Because while the debuff contributions of TA are nice, they aren't going to keep the team alive to any decent degree. TA is fine for the -RES and other various things it provides, but it's n ot going to reliably keep the team alive.

Cause cast time was apparently never a balance concern when they originally made powers, and as a result they're 100% arbitrary. It's the biggest problem I have with the PvP rules, because basing them on activation time makes every set totally random on damage, fire being one really ridiculous example.