Dr Harmony

I think Malta's "fat" baggy clothes are perfect.

They look practical. They're above the superhero game of turning up dressed like a ballet dancer to a gun fight.

Look at the guys who invade the school in XMen 2 - they all looked a bit tubby because of the amount of equipment they're carrying on their person on top of loose fatigues.

I think a leaner tighter look would make them look like they were playing superhero/villain, which is not what their organisation is about.

I think its a great idea, and a very efficient use of developer time in terms of the added customisation it would provide.

I'd love to have the new TUNNEL system lead to Fort Trident.

Ever since Atlas was revamped with the newer textures, my laptop has the occasional crash on zoning in.

It would be great to be able to bypass Atlas and get into Fort Trident some other way - the TUNNEL seems like a good choice.

Electricity seems like a good fit. Dark could be recoloured for Water, couldnt it? Pretty much anything except Fire in fact, and even that could have some "four elements" theme to it.

I'm in no big hurry to read the words "You immobilise an opponent by using your control over water" (or Radiation or Sound) in the UI.

I'd much rather see a Martial Arts secondary than something with the same name and secondary effects as an existing primary.

I'd be a bit surprised if this single IO turns the Knockback in Bonfire into Knockdown, because a high damage knockdown patch can be very powerful - one click to neutralise and defeat a spawn.

I think there was an exploit a while back with the KB-resistant robot minions of Neuron or Synapse could be kept in a Bonfire if they were +5 or so, and special code was put in place to prevent people from doing this.

I was doing this on the weekend - crossposting in broadcast and LFG for a sewer trial that I had ended up stepping up to lead.

I did this because it worked - I got more tells after a Broadcast message than after a LFG message.
The LFG channel is by default a non-attention grabbing blue that matches the hero UI, and only appears in your top pane. People arent used to monitoring it yet.

Hopefully in time this will shift, and most team forming will occur in LFG, but these things are a little bit organic. Until then, is it really that hard to put up with in return for an active pick-up group community?

I love the team finding tools that we have available in this game, and the community on Virtue who are up for joining PUGs as they form.

I've formed task force teams during the Aussie weekday evenings (the absolute low point of the daily cycle) without much fuss, just using global channels and a bit of searching. It'll be even easier now with the new LFG channel. It's great.

I'd avoid Sonic Resonance for a solo character, as it offers little more than the mez resistance.

You get:
- 24% Resistance to most attacks
- a single target non-stacking resistance debuff that does nothing else for your animation time and end spent on using it
- a cage power
- Liquefy on a long recharge timer.

Its great on a team, but many of its best powers require an ally. Traps or FF provide much much more for a soloer if you want mez protection.

Sonic Blast is generally the best blast set all the way due to the -20% Res on every attack. It debuffs resistance on a single target better than any primary.
It also provides a mass-sleep up every spawn with Sirens Song - great for soloing.
Its main weakness is low end area damage, but thats less of an issue solo.

Fire hasnt ported fantatsically well to Defenders since they dropped the damage on Rain of Fire.

Pair with Traps, Storm or Rad for a good solo SO build.

Its a cool idea.

But, unless you have a snipe purely as a mule, you'd want to slot it for damage. And the same with the Medicine powers, you probably want to slot them for healing if you take them.

Maybe have some small 3-piece sets with OK bonuses? (Like Blessing of the Zephyr or the low level knockback ones?)

e.g.

Int
Acc/Int
Acc/Int/End

2 pieces: +2% Recovery
3 pieces: +1.125% Health

That way you can fill up with generic IOs for damage or healing.

Or I guess have six piece sets as well and the player chooses whether they're using the power as a mule or useable power. We already have this, like say slotting Gale with Positrons Blast for the Accuracy and Recharge bonus.

Yeah, thats often my preferences too. I know where you'r coming from.
And there are options for exactly what you're describing - team support with good soloing.

Traps, Dark, Radiation, Storm and Time all boost a team's performance significnatly while leaving you a capable solo-er when you choose to do so. My first defender was Dark/Dark way back and I was suprised how good he was solo.

Even with a non-solo friendly Defender you aren't unable to solo, just less capable. I recently ran a Beam Rifle/Pain Corrupter to 50, probably a similar experience to your Empathy/Elec Defender. (Pain Dom being a mediocre team set that doesnt offer much in the way of personal protection).
I'd solo on and off, and it was never amazing but it was doable at +1 or +2. I'd teleport-kite Shock Treatment with her god-mode up because I couldnt hold or stun her reliably.
I even managed to solo Darrin Wade and his Rularuu ally in the SSA where Statesman dies, although I cheated in a pretty extreme way, using the temporary PPD power and stacks of red and purple inspirations mailed to myself.

I've played the other non-franchise superhero MMO, where team buffs are much less potent and everyone's a rugged soloer, and it sucks because no-one ever teams up there. (Although there are other reasons too.)

I'd really like to see the game mechanics of team-friendly soldiers and shapeshifters not be gated behind single-alignment story-driven archetypes.

Yes, it makes sense for Arachnos Soldiers to have to start redside. But the mechanics of the archetype make for a great soldier-type character of any concept. Space Marine/Nick Fury-esque agent/Black Widow esque superspy/Parallel Earth police and so on. And none of these are innately villainous.

I did exactly what Kazz did, and retconned away the first 20 levels and the strict Arachnos connection on my Huntsman.

I'd hesitate to add a buff to all buffing sets across the board. Time and Cold are already top-tier compared to say Trick Arrows, which would receive nothing from this move. You're widening a gap that already exists here.

Even Force Fields (a less uber buffing set) doesn't need much help soloing bosses with mez protection, 16% defence, and Force Bolt.

I also like the existence of ally-only buffs. They're easy to avoid if you dont like them - pick a set that focusses on debuffing (eg Rad, Dark) or that applies its best buffs to the user (eg Time, Traps).
They encourage teaming.
They're the price you pay for having massive force-multiplier abilities that are not diminished by AV resistance. Dark or Rad's mitigation falls of quickly against an AV compared to Force Fields or Cold.

I think that we should have a clearly marked option on character creation to make a character who's bottom of the heap for soloability and top of the heap for teaming, which is pretty much what we have with, say a Thermal/Psi.

I like the huge variablity in roles provided by the support powersets, and don't want to see them smoothed out.

I really enjoy the occasional street-sweeping as a change from instanced missions. Unlike an instanced mission you can push yourself moment to moment, take on the odd +4 or +5 boss while mostly facing +2s. So I'd prefer not to use invasion style code that makes everything +1.
Plus Im in favour of more open-world interaction with other players.

Some sort of meta-game around this would be cool.
We already have defeat badges and some street sweeping required to trigger giant monsters (eg Deathsurge). More of this type of thing would be cool, or bounty missions as suggested.

As an Earth Dominator, I loved Perma-dom.

Stalagmites, the area stun, becomes capable of instantly stunning all bosses in a group, and at permadon levels of recharge it's up every group. So Domination meant that everyone I ever fought was stunned, bar a small 5% who didn't get hit by the initial strike, and they couldn't mez me back.

I don't think Electric Control has any power that benefits as much. Tesla Cage can perma-hold a boss, and Paralysing Blast will hold a whole group, but your bread and butter area controls dont benefit from Domination do they?
Does the chain confuse get Domination on all targets, or does Domination just affect the first target? I don't know.
Also, you've got tools like end drain and knockdown that DO affect bosses straight away without Domination. As an Earth Controller without Domination up, my only power to cause instant effect on a angry boss would be Earthquake with its 3 second cast time. You've got Jolting Chain from the get go, plus end drain tools.

That may be why you find Domination underwhelming - because you've picked a primary that gains a lot less from it than some others do.

The forced hover and immobilise kill it for me.

Targetting a spcific point on the floor (say behind an enemy) is tricky, and if you misjudge your landing spot, you have to teleport again (and possibly miss).

Combat Jump helps in that it breaks the immobilise and lets you hover at base speed.

My ideal solution would be that you hover for a couple of seconds, no immobilise at all, and any movement breaks the hover immediately.

Fire Blast does more damage than most blast sets, at the expense of having no mitigation like holds. Time covers these holes very nicely.

Ice provides very good mitigation (two holds and slows), but with the defence, recharge debuffs and the boss level hold in Time you don't need this too much.

However, for Defenders, Rain of Fire does reduced damage, whereas Ice Storm does full Blaster level damage, so maybe Fire loses its damage edge a bit here. If you go Fire, I'd very much recommend a Corrupter instead, because they do get Blaster level Rain of Fire.

Both rain powers synergise well with Distortion Field either way.

The tricky part is coming up with an idea that works for all Defender primaries - the support sets are the most diverse in the game in that they all work using very different mechanics.

For example, Sypher, your idea has a bonus that happens when you apply shields. Only a few sets do this: Force Fields, Sonic, Cold, Thermal, Empathy and Kinetics. Some debuffing sets do "protect people" in a vague sense eg Storm and Dark have +defence/resist auras, but how would you apply this bonus? What about Trick Arrows, which does absolutely nothing to any ally ever?
For the sets that do have shields. Doesn't this encourage spamming of shields to up your bonus? The alternative would be to only give the bonus if the shields weren't already on the target, but this encourages bad play too in that a Defender is rewarded for letting their shields lapse.

Milady's Knight - your idea of using your primary powers suffers the same problem. How do you differentiate the spamming of shields or rocking the aura from legitimate use of primary powers? I guess the maximum number of stacks help, but its still going to lead to some power spamming between fights.

The current Vigilance (end reduction and +damage in small teams/solo) is fine by me. It's very plain, but at least it works for all Defenders, since all Defenders use endurance, and all do damage.

I completely ignore the descriptions that come with Accolade powers, especially Demonic. Its up there with buying Cyberhearts and Telescopic Eyes from the shop.

I got Demonic on my Fire Scrapper and Electric Tanker while I was redside - both just toughened up a bit from living in the Isles for a while and could focus their power for short bursts.
When Dr Harmony got it, it was just another use of her transmutative powers and invulnerability.

If I've got a character where bursting into flames for short periods of time really doesn't make sense, I'll probably skip the accolade, or maybe only use it if no-ones looking.

Its a common place to hang out when recruiting for supergroups.

You see all the new arrivals and read their bios while they stand still to train. If anyone looks promising you can shoot them a tell.
You can broadcast to Atlas Park that you're recruiting, and describe in a few words where you are, and people will be able to find you.