Eldagore

So after reading some more of this thread, I wanted to comment on jet packs.

Dear devs, (or dev, as Arcanaville says only one dev MAY read this, and may or may not even remember it)

I would like to have some jet pack costume pieces for my numerous tech flying heroes. I understand there may be some art issues, clipping, etc. These issues do not bother me.
You see, since his creation in Issue 2, my scrapper has been magically conjuring this gigantic sword from behind his back to swing at bad guys. And I mean, this sword is freegin huge. I have even watched him from the back, to try to see where he is grabbing this monstrous blade from, but to no avail. It truly is a magical thing, to see him reach up behind his head, and unsheath this giant sword from thin air.
He does it all the time too. Starting a fight? Abracadabra! shing! Heal himself with reconstruction? Abracadabra! Shing! I have been tempted on numerous occasions to make his second costume slot that of a classic magician, top hat and tuxedo, such is my amazement at his slight of hand.
But wait, there is more! Sometimes he forgets to put his magic sword away. Like when I have him do that one jumping dance, and he holds it up and the blade is straight through the side of his head. Or when I have him do jumping jacks and he repeatedly stabs himself in the brain. He truly is a good entertainer, slight of hand second to none.

So, with that in mind, some singed legs or backpack/jetpack/flamethrower backpack/backpack full of napalm/jetpack with numerous pouches really doesnt feel like a big deal to me.

Also, more rocket boot options plz.

The holloween stuff reminds me very much of that game MediEvil. Maybe the devs could put a Sir Daniel Fortesque contact in. Very nice, classic styled visuals. But you can chalk me up on the "me want solo" side- something like that should have a different type of mission model. For instance, optional in mission goals that require team mates- like unlock the hidden treasure for some bonus influence and maybe some NPC easter egg comments or something- but the core map and mission would accessible to all including the solo player.

Reading this thread makes me sad. It is obvious to me that whoever was on the dev team way back yeasteryear that put the Gundam costume pieces in(like titan crest) either does not work there anymore or is not important enough to be able to have input on this set.

What I am getting at is in any cartoon or comic or whatever I have ever seen, the person shooting the blaster doesnt have to "tag" their target with some goofy weopon effect before they can blast the crap out of them. I mean there are two basic forms of laser guns....

G.I. Joe style from the original 80's cartoon. This is the laser machine gun style, you remember. red and blue lasers cover the sky, people shoot 1000 rounds of laser blast off in all directions, pew pew freegin everywhere. Even in this style, the bad guys were usually defeated handily by a shot or two. It was just the hits were'nt as frequent. This style, while visually entertaining, wouldnt be a good fit in coh unless most of the animation for the blasts were "fluff" laser sprays going all over the place. So long as the attacks were simply hit or miss, without correlation to the visuals, it would be fine, and would offer tons of pew pew without this silly combo buisness.

The other style of laser blasts is the Gundam style, wherein the beam blast is immensly powerful, and "aoe" simply means the power output is cranked to the max and the beam becomes massive enough to encompass multiple foes. This style would also not work, unless the visuals were correlated to the power output, I.E. no ZZ gundam ultra forehead beam cannon. This is the style I was hoping for, with powerful single target on a slightly longer rech, and aoe cones with a "charged up" big beam that encompasses multiple foes(though wouldnt outright destroy them) or at least a nuke like that, that would destroy them.

Instead, sadly, I read we are getting an underpowered set that requires "extra" attacks in order to have suitable damage output.

I wish the devs would realize players are generally happy with the mechanics of current sets, and seek new visuals and style over function in the new ones, especially somthing as "deffinition of blaster" as a freegin laser gun. Save the combo crap for something a little more off the wall, like water blast or earth blast or something. Laser blast should equal straight forward pew pew blasting goodness, not some tag the enemy first with a 10 second dot. gah, as if a blaster has 10 seconds to kill a foe before getting massacred. I mean, just reading the 4 step process for aoe profit above makes me cringe. Its a laser/beam rifle... I dont want to "set up" the damage, I want to pull the trigger furiously and paint the sky with red and blue laser blasts.

My dreams of pew pew may forever be dashed.

Ha, Nemesis dead? yeah right. The simple toymaker was likely a decoy. I am sure Nemesis discovered alternate dimensions well before Cole and crew and simply escaped to a different dimension.
As for Recluse, he is likely around somewhere also. I would think praetorian recluse would be a stand up guy looking out for the people.

Of course, I would like to think they are both around. The story may be easier to write if they are dead, but it would be a far better story if they were not. Maybe we will have praetorian oroboros or praetorian midnight club etc in the future. I hope the writers brainstorm on all that before writing irreversable lore into the game.

I gotta chime in on this.

Nemesis was always very striking to me, partly because his look was so different then the pre-updated rikti and blah police looking crey and knives of artemis foes that were in the same lvl range. Also, warhulks were one of my favs. Not to impressed by the rest of nemesis army though. I liked The clockwork king for similar reasons, there should be more 1950's mad scientist/Dr. Who/ Flash Gordon type stuff in the game.
I like Maestro, and his ascendant guardians. Animated shields ftw. I always enjoyed the massive gattling guns the council/5th pull out of thin air too.
Other villain notes: The upgrade to the rikti was fantastic. Anyone that remembers the old rikti mesh would agree with me. On that note, a few other groups could really benefit from some work. Freakshow come to mind first. I dont want to spend much time on groups, so I will just say any of the pre- CoV groups could use an overhaul. Also, and more importantly: AS AWSOME AS GOING ROGUE IS, THE ONLY GROUP THAT MAKES ME LOOK TWICE ARE THE CLOCKWORK. The rest are just...well....meh. Biker leathers for a group that the whole background is they blend into corporate culture? Wouldnt they wear suits then? lol.

Anyway, on the hero side, I gotta go with Infernal. I mean, his story is so good, when they went to make Praetorians for the peregrin isle stuff, they just left him as Infernal. I will say, I agree with the other poster above me, his armor could be made so much more detailed in today's game engine. Living demons? Add a few blinking rularuu type eyes to it, and update his aura, and his ax.

If anyone reading this doesnt know the story on Infernal's ax, go read it now.

Otherwise I like BaBs. Even without the gloves, he looks like he could do some apocolyptic beat downs. Always thought he could use some more backstory though. Maurader, I mean...Mr. White..... has like 10,000x more personality. On the opposite end of that spectrum is citedal, who needs a mega costume update, but who i really enjoyed in the comics.

Oh and the vendor i Peregrin Isle...Ghost Falcon i think his name is. I always liked his story, but he needs his "scales" adjusted as he was designed before we had so many sliders. His backstory was always one I wanted more about to. His script is very mysterious, but really never gets explained. Very "friend or foe". But his costume was very striking the first time I saw it.

As for GR.... I like Warrant. Oh and the one girl in the top dogs...I can't think of her name for the life of me, I think she is a defender type. her costume is elegant and flows nicely. Her dialogue is fairly polite and reserved, and I always thought her look fit well. Oh and the retired mage guy who had his amulet smashed, retired mage in giant robe thing.... and pants. Fits his pencil pusher back story well, but has plenty of allure and uniqueness to it that you know he used to be a real formidable power.

So I read like the first 2/3 of this thread, and i dont really have a side to pick. But, I have been playing since issue 2, and so I thought I would put my opinion on here....

I solo. I team, when I get random invites. I play on Liberty, and mostly on weeknights. Not so many invites. So I solo. As such, certain AT's just dont cut it for me. I have like one controller(ill/storm) at lvl 23 I think I play like once a year lol. I have no defenders, though I have played them into the 20's a few times. I have a couple corruptors on an alt server, and A dom at lvl 8 I just started to try the earth assault set. I play lots of Brutes, scrappers, and yes a pretty big pile of blasters. I have some older tanks, but powerset proliferation mostly made it so I just roll brutes instead. The big difference between blasters and scrapper/brute? Easy mode. It is possible to set difficulty on scrappers and brutes to "so easy I can watch tv while pushing 1-3-2-3-4-1 etc not even looking at the game" I find that, after the early levels, and sometimes even then, blasters dont function that way.

I find blasters to be great fun. Until somewhere in the mid 30's. Early on, they do stupid damage output, and have fun powers available. I mean stuff like, build up+fireball, TK thrust, power burst.... blasters get them early, and use them to great effect.

But then, somewhere in the "peak" of their development( I mean in regards to primary/secondary, not where people start investing in IO builds and app's etc) the play goes from "It's ok to blast the hell out of everything as fast as I can, I will get by on INspirations and stupid high damage" to something more like "dammit I have to snipe every spawn or pick targets really careful or kite enemies non stop because somehow I die really easy and cant seem to kill them off fast enough"

And really, I think thats what irks some players. I have this giant list of blasters, and like all but 4 of them havent seen lvl 32, and two of the 4 are at lvl 33. Some of the combos I have played are early power monsters, some take a little bit to get going, but all of them start feeling the squeeze as they progress.

Now, I dont mind difficulty ramping up, I dont mind AT's that have morphing playstyles as they level up. But the one thing with blasters is how much that difficulty and playstyle changes. I have an energy/fire at lvl 46. Made him years ago, before ED even i think like I3. I have tried different approaches to make him more survivable. I built him with IO's to max out acc, dmg, end and rech in the 30's, and did really well. That doesnt cut it in the 40's. So i tried to reinvent him, and his play style. I dont want to spend a fortune on him for a def build, and he just doesnt have enough tricks up his sleeve. So i snipe, I kite, I run away. And to me, I just dont like it. If I had made him as some kind of assasin droid or something, I wouldnt even notice really. But he wasnt like that, and it feels(yes I know really factual) like I am getting my playstyle of this character pigeon holed into a sniper. And I think, for most combos, blasters get that in the higher levels. the exception of course is IO's, and how much you mind picking as many pool powers as primary/secondary. I tend to like staying out of pool powers and using the unique character's powersets, and while I do enjoy crazy IO builds, I have so many characters I can not realistically expect to IO and purple them all. Heck I have deleted enough characters(level 30 and down) to fill up 3 other servers. Blasters are unique as an AT in how their power level alters over their career.

This is turning into a wall of text, so I will sum.... Blasters playstyle morphs as level increases. And some players do not like the way it morphs. And also, where some AT's gain MORE options as level increases in choice of playstyle, blasters appear to lose options, and get shoe horned into the snipe/kite/run or build for IO def style.

And again, this is from a solo players perspective. it is always amazing playing blasters on a well oiled team IMO. A team easily covers for the weak spots in the AT.

As for the "dont play the AT" thing, well, I like to play the blast sets. they are flashy and pew pew. If there was an AT that used blast sets, but had the difficulty range versatility of scrapper/brute, I would be all over that. In fact, I do not see why the blaster AT cant be that way. If brutes and scrappers were given some ranged aoe, but then forced to snipe/kite/run at high levels to survive there would be threads like this for those AT's too. Again, I am talking solo. group play is a whole different animal, and most of what I have put here doesnt apply, or at least is greatly diminished. And of course it's all IMO, for what it's worth as a long time player. Have a nice day!

- Elda

Ice armor without hibernate....

I dont know if anyone remembers the guy, but in the waaaaay back machine there was a player named Circeus that pretty much mastered his Ice tanker back in like I2 when ice armor was really quite horrendous compared to the other....3 primary sets...lol, the good ol days indeed.

Anyway, he had dreamed up a new tier 9 as a theoretical revamp to ice armor he was proposing. his revamp had taken some of the regen/recov in Hibernate and split it into a few other powers, and then made a new tier 9 he named "Abominable"

in short, it was similar to granite armor, but without th movement penalty and I think without the dmg redux, but it also didnt have the monstrous gain in res/def. I think it allowed the other toggles to still run and added some minor resists and a little def. It also transformed the player into one of those giant snow monsters(not like winter lord giant, minion size).

I still bring that idea up once in a while, because i thought it was awsomesauce. First, it would avoid all the problems with "onoz patron powers!!" and second, YOU GET TO BE A SNOW MONSTER!! It does need to come standard with the roar and come get some idle animations built in, and of course the rediculous ragdoll physics if you were to actually be overcome by knockback.

I dont know however how much animation work would need to be done to have the snow monsters do martial arts kicks, wield broadswords, swing claws or a katana, or perform a spine burst- so maybe the idea has grown outdated.

As for ice swords, I say bring it on. I have been wanting to run that attack set, but I just dont play tanks anymore. I would actually be really pumped to see Ice/ coming soon for scrappers.

stone/elec brute

I have one. After all the "swoosh!" aoe of a fire toon, the smash! of stone is refreshing.

Hit guys with giant hammers. Smash the ground and make whole spawns fall down.


Seismic smash.

If you invest in IO's, you can use seismic smash a lot. I like to use seismic smash a lot.

So I rolled up a psy/EM blaster the other day. I was enjoying him in the lowbie missions in praetoria, got tired and went to bed.

So the next day it occurred to me, "hey, this guy is going to have like zilcho aoe". So, experianced psy blasters, am I going to be seriously dissapointed later on with this guy? Dont get me wrong, I am ok with a ST type blaster as i solo a lot anyway, but looking at the stats on the attacks, I was not super impressed that the ST makes up for the lack of aoe.

So I guess the real question is, will the ST dmg later be enough to keep me happy soloing? Or will I think "shoulda just played my ice blaster". I have boatloads of alts, enough my home server is strapped for character slots, so I dont want to "waste" time leveling this guy to like 35 and then go meh and delete him.

Story time!! Good or bad, whats the skinny?

So I was reading the "blaster secondaries" thread and the discussion turned to a dark secondary right at the end. So I thought, hey why not post a thread for ideas on one? Maybe the devs will read it and we can avoid getting a new secondary full to the brim with blaps and no utility powers. heres what I would like, or something like it....

1. Some single target immob, with the "WORMS!!" animation. I would prefer a knockback power, but I cant think of a single one in the dark sets that wouldnt require a basic re-inventing of the power.
2. Smite or shadow punch
3. Shadow punch or smite
4. Death Shroud. Eh, dmg auras are ok, and its sorta like a dot attack that doesnt take a precious spot on the power bar where my primary blasts go.
5. Boost Range. As a toggle(I wish)
6. Soul Drain. Its not build up, but it already exists and takes more then one IO set. And does minor aoe dmg. Kind of nifty, has a different flavor.
7. Opressive gloom. Because it is awsome. Cloak of fear would be ok, but I prefer stun. And Cloak of fear hasnt had its Acc fixed. For 7 years.
8. Shadow Maul. Because I want 3 or less blaps and people will cry if it isnt in there lol
9. I reserve this spot for tenenbrous tentacles(spell?) because I htink there is a 1% chance that power will stay in the primary dark blast when or if it gets ported. I think it will get replaced with that dark "fireball" type power from villain side. And dammit, cone attack worms is too awsome for blasters to miss.

Anyway, thats sorta what I would like. I would even throw out one of the blaps for like a revamped dark pit or something. Save the "blap attack!" secondary for the martial arts one IMO. We need another bells and whistles parlour tricks secondary.

Feel free to post your version below!

"Clearly they have some kind of duplication power at Paragon Studios that they aren’t sharing!"

You heard it here! Our next power set will be duplication! Surely giant growth isn't far behind!!

So, I read in another thread that during hero con Posi mentioned something about being able to make stronger lvl 50's, by completing difficult tasks. This got me to thinking about a suggestion I had made a looong time ago. Into the way back machine! all the way back to before inventions!

Anyway, way back when the university build areas were still big dirt holes with guys with shovels in them, I made a suggestion about a system to give players small permanant buffs to their characters using the (at that time) apparently useless university. Where in, a character could go to the university and see an instructor. This instructor would give the character tasks- missions essentially, but missions that would give no XP, or bonus. The trade off would be at the end, the instructor would award a minor permanant increase to the character. Perhaps recovery, or regen, or acc. or dmg. The class could be repeated X amount of times, where X would perttain to the characters lvl. For instance, Steel Canyon could enroll at lvl 10, run the class 5 times. Talos would enroll at lvl 20, run the class 10 times, etc. At the time, I had suggested the buff be something like say, 1% for a dmg buff. five times through the class in steel canyon would give a 5% buff, with no more abvailable till talos island. 5% dmg buff at lvl 10 did not seem overpowered to me, and the amount of time needed to run the class five times would seem fair for the buff. 10% more from talos, maybe 10% more at lvl 30, and 10% at lvl 40 would be roughly an SO worth of dmg buff at lvl 40, but you would have run that class 35 times also.

These buffs would then be granted to the character in the form of an inherent power, which at the time I had suggested would be coded as a lvl 51 power so the auto exemp systems in PvP would automatically disable it. Nowdays, it could likely just be disabled for PvP by other means.

Now, as for how this relates to this statement from hero con, my idea suggested that once a character reaches lvl 50, there would be no limit to the number of times a class could be run. in effect, this would give players a reason to play 50's besides PvP or farming. with Xp not an issue, influence would not be awarded for the classes instead. This would allow players to continue growing a character past lvl 50, making them stronger.


So, I found it curious that Posi had mentioned something of a stronger lvl 50's system, as I had figured this whole concept had been largely dropped when inventions were introduced.

Not to say this idea is what is coming down the pipe, I am purely speculating and strolling down memory lane.


So,

speculation number 1: the above, or something along those lines.

speculation number 2: forget all of that, they are writing up some standard issue common MMO blah blah raid stuff with "gear" (or this games version of it) associated etc, like everyone else and their brother has.

Myself, i hope for a system like what I describe above, so solo players, casual players, any player can participate in the system, rather then writing up a few giant raids that take hours to complete and make a giant lag fest etc. The whole "difficulty by requiring huge numbers of players to defeat" concept is old hat.


So, I invite you to speculate with me! what is the new system Posi hints at, what do you hope it will bring for you? What would you like to see it do for your characters?

well, i will chime in here.

Elec armor, i have a stone/elec brute. elec is really nice for "slow" rech type sets like stone, and for "fast" rech sets, if the extra rech allows for an attack chain to be greatly improved. basically, if its slow it helps to get it back to average, and in certain cases of fast sets, it can help push them over the top-like katana. a mega recharge slotted type build can make katana damage climb really fast, by allowing the tier 8 and 9 to be used much more often without filler attacks. stone is like that too with enough recharge, siesmic smash and heavy mallet can be used much more to push the dps up dramatically.

now, for dark melee, it depends on what you are after build wise. the ol buzzsaw builds use the fastest animating attacks filled with procs etc for dps. here, a certain amount of rech is needed, and beyond that it is somewhat of a waste. think of it in steps, at a certain point the rech is useful, but additional rech wont really help until you get enough to get high enough for that next step. if you are interested in this type of build(it is quite single target oriented, but fast at it) i suggest looking for some DM/SR builds, or DM/SR buzzsaw builds to get a feel for it as SR has the same +rech built in. elec will play a little diferently, and you cant stuff it full of LoTG but it would give you an idea of how much rech is useful, and how much rech others have set as their goal for the build.

now, if you arent going for that buzzsaw type single target build, or want to try to use more aoe with DM, then i would go DM/Fire. I have one of these, and it is rather fun. lots of synergy. Fire armor is deemed a little squishy, and it can be at times. the res numbers arent really quite enough to push yourself, however, synergy number one: siphon life. the heal over time works really well witha res set, and it happens to do a good chunk of dmg. if you need more healing, healing flames is there on a good rech as well. DM to hit debuff helps a little here as well. other notes on survivability, i am slotting mine with touch of death etc to get some solid melee defense, obliteration also has a big bonus on it. stack 3 or 4 of those 3.75% and it gets really noticable on the incoming dmg rate(mostly on big piles of minions)

other DM/fire synergy: dmg aura for aoe, and also 3 utility types of pbaoe that can be slotted for dmg. with two pbaoe end recovery, you can alternate them and slot them for dmg/rech/acc (and recov if there is room left) and not really suffer because you have two of them. soul drain is another, you want max rech obviously, but some dmg is good too. DM/Fire is a single target primarily, but thrives in big spawns too because of the utility tools as pbaoe. if you can swing it, obliteration sets work really well in this combo, one in both recov powers, one is soul drain, i think shadow maul takes one- this will give you a nice melee def bonus and solid rech bonus too, and all 3 pbaoe will have great rech slotted in them.

last and not least DM/fire synergy, midnight grasp wit its immob and burn. it's mag 3 immob, really easy to stack, so those harder targets that can put a hurt on not so tough fire armor
can be kept in a burn patch to take them down much more quickly. plus thats a lot of DoT on one target, its fun to watch.

anyway, I lean towards DM/fire, but i will also be the first to admit that DM/elec is likely easier to play with its built in KB prot. elec's major downfall in the past was its lack of heal on a res based set. and while this was adressed, siphon life works very well here too. really, DM/elec is going to be easier to play, but also have less tricks up it's sleeve. against a really hard target like an EB or while facing AV's, the elec is going to be more survivable with it's tier 9 available. fire will do more dmg here, with burn and fiery embrace.

so thats my two inf. hope the info helps, it really depends what you want to do with the character as far as play style goes. good luck!

I have a MA/regen. I hate lvl 1-25 or so on MA. first 10 lvls are ok, but its a long haul till you get new attacks etc.
That said, it took me like 5 trys to get one to SO's. shortly after, willpower was released, and every time I play my MA scrapper I wish I could swap secondaries from regen to WP. I love quick recovery with MA. makes it possible to skimp on endo redux and favor rech redux in slotting. I dont much care for clicky regen though. Used to like it when IH was a toggle, not because of the extra regen so much as the less clicking. WP would be relatively similar survivability sans regen's clicks.

but that wasnt the question. Still, thought I would throw that out there if you hadnt thought of it. its sort of like the middle ground between the two sets you are looking at.