Hopeling

It goes off significantly more than half the time in Foot Stomp (assuming numerous nearby targets) on live already, y'know.

If Foot Stomp is slotted with, say, 60% recharge, it'll give 2*(2.1+20/1.6)/(60*2.6875) = 18.1% chance to proc per target, under i24 rules, which means a ~85% chance to go off if it hits 10 targets. This is pretty awesome, but not incredibly better than the ~65% chance for the same cirumstances it has under i23 rules.

I think it's very intentional that the t9 repeatables are all consumables, not points. It lets them give us long-term subscribers extra stuff, without undermining their own sales of stuff like powersets and costumes.

Ah, the "why aren't all powersets free for VIPs" fallacy.

Remember, all powersets WERE free for VIPs for years. How often did we get new ones? Not very often at all.

Now that some powersets are not included with the subscription, how often do we get new ones? Since Freedom, which is almost a year now, we've gotten Beam Rifle, Time Manipulation, Street Justice, Titan Weapons, Dark Control, Staff Fighting, Water Blast, and Beast Mastery (I'm not counting Dark Affinity and Dark Assault because they're closer to proliferations). That's seven powersets in under a year, which is WAY more than we got under the old "everything is free for everyone" model, and by the way two of those seven sets ARE free to VIPs, leaving five you have to pay for, which is 10 months of stipend (less, for a t9). In other words, as a VIP, you can already have every powerset that has been released for no more than the cost of your subscription. If you haven't gotten the powersets, it's because you're spending your stipend on other things instead, which you presumably want even more than the powersets.
Oh, and there are four more sets coming down the pipe, one of which is reaching live in a few hours, and two of which are also free to VIPs.

"Make all these powersets, and give them to all VIPs automatically" has never even been on the table, here. It isn't an option. The options are "Get a whole lot of powersets, but possibly have to pay for some of them" (the current model), or "Get powersets rarely, but all included with the subscription cost" (the old model). Personally, I far prefer the current model.

Also, comparing what you'd spend on points over the course of five years versus VIP is a little silly, because if you like the game enough to stick around for five years straight, you probably like it enough for the VIP-only stuff to be desirable.

If that is advantageous to you, yes, you might as well do that. That's what the option to go premium is for.

However, you should sit down and calculate just how much the VIP features you'd want to purchase would cost. There are more than you might think. For example, here's my breakdown:

I'm a tier 9 VIP. I would retain access to the market, IOs, large inspirations, etc. For the sake of argument, I'll also pretend that I don't care at all about any of the VIP-only features, and just compare the stuff points can buy. I also bought Going Rogue back when it came out, so I have that content and those power sets already.

If I dropped to Premium, I'd lose 10 (? not sure if this is the correct number, but it's around there) character slots on Freedom, which is the only server I play on. If you play on multiple servers, you'd lose this many slots on each. Even buying 5 at a time, slots are 320 points each. So I'd need 3200 points to get those back.

I'd have to re-purchase the Time Manipulation powerset to use one of my most active characters. Possibly also Dark Control if I ever get back around to that Dominator, but I'll assume not. 800 points.

I'd want at least one SSA arc, to get hero merits. 400 points.

I'd need the Imperial Defense costume pack, since I make extensive use of it. 400 points.

I'd have to buy the Widow AT to retain another of my most active characters, unless I happen to be one of the people that benefits from the unlock bug for VEATs. 1000 points.

So I'd have to drop 5800 points as a Premium just to not have a dramatically reduced ability to play. Buying powersets would be extra on top of that. And I would soon lose the use of my solo SG base, I wouldn't be able to do Incarnate anything, I would have only a single SSA to play, I'd have a smaller recipe and salvage inventory, I wouldn't be able to obtain upcoming VIP t9 costume sets, and so on.

If all the other things that come with VIP aren't worthwhile to you, sure, don't pay for VIP. But the VIP subscription does include a lot more than just powersets.

There are definitely ways to use unresistable and/or autohit effects that are obnoxious and stupid, but I don't think that completely getting rid of all such effects is a good idea, either. Nova Fist is a textbook fight mechanic - when the boss does this, everyone is supposed to move. Making it resistable, even as an exotic damage type, would dilute that (even further than it is already diluted by the one-shot code and healing powers) and make the fight more boring. Similar for Keyes Disintegration, Apex patches, etc.

I also don't agree about the mez/debuff stuff - when you find yourself in a situation where you cannot possibly win due to debuffs or mez, regardless of your actions, it's IMX almost always because you/your team already passed the Bad Decision Point Of No Return and/or are doing things so difficult that you have forfeited the privilege of complaining about difficulty. When you get yourself into a nasty situation without the tools to deal with it, you are supposed to lose. There are things I don't like about the mez system, but this isn't one of them.

Personally, I'm indifferent on the first two suggestions; what "animation penalty" is the second one referring to? Do you just mean playing the whole animation for the missed attack?

Only the Partial Radial and the Radial Superior have the 10-minute recharge, though. Total Radial and the plain t2 Radial are still 15 minutes.

I'm not disputing that it is a catastrophe, in more than one way. But it has not pushed the human race to the brink of extinction.

That clause at the beginning of the prediction is just saying "assuming you're not looking at a post-apocalyptic wasteland, my predictions are..."

There's a staff pack on beta right now. It's not specifically part of i24; since it hit beta sooner, I'd actually expect it to reach live some time before i24 does.

Pics here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=294073 (warning: this thread will disappear when the i23 forums are deprecated on Friday)

Yeah, it's a stock sound file for police radio chatter or some such. It shows up in a lot of places.

As I understand it, this actually happens with a lot of different sound effects, because it's way easier and cheaper for a video game (or movie, or etc) to license a library of stock sounds from a sound studio than to create all their own sounds from scratch.

Part of the boost from Musculature bypasses the ED cap, and that's the part you actually care about, because every build slots for damage. You'll pretty much always be running into that ED cap. If that ruled out Musculature, it would only be used in rare corner cases.

A Musculature Total Core Revamp (for example) will take you from 99% to 125% damage enhancement. That's a pretty solid increase, despite ED. But if you then remove the third damage IO, you only drop from 125% to 119%. Musculature isn't wasted, Musculature is making a signficant difference. 99 -> 125 is a pretty significant difference. 119->125 is a much smaller difference. Either way, Musculature is giving you a nice boost, but if you want, you can swap that third damage enhancement to something else and not lose much.

Also, Musculature increases the damage of your Judgement and Lore powers, once you get those, and that's a nice perk too.

Took me a minute to figure out you were talking about Electric Armor. EA usually refers to Energy Aura; Electric is usually abbreviated to Elec or ElA.

It is possible to get good or even softcapped defense with /Elec, although usually only to one or two types/positions. But that's fine, because the high resists mean you don't need to be softcapped to everything to survive pretty well. Building for S/L defense is particularly effective, since so many attacks have an S/L component. Another option is to build for moderate defense, and then use purple inspirations or Shadow Meld to softcap when needed.

All Alpha powers, including Musculature, partially bypass enhancement diminishing returns (commonly referred to as ED, for historical reasons and because it's shorter). Specifically, 1/6 of the bonus bypasses ED for a tier 1 power, 1/3 for a tier 2, 1/2 for a tier 3, and 2/3 for a tier 4. So Musculature is nice, even if your attacks are slotted to the ED cap (which they usually are).

However, since part of the bonus IS subject to ED, you can change your slotting to take advantage of that, if you want to. Two generic level 50 damage IOs, plus the portion of Musculature that doesn't bypass ED, will put you at or very near the ED cap for damage, so you lose almost nothing by removing the third damage enhancement, and then you can use those enhancement slots for something else.

New poses as options? Sure, I guess. Standard code rant, etc, though.

As a replacement for the current pose? Hell no.