IanTheM1

If that's their justification, then it's an absurd one. For one, villains don't get much wiggle room to skip Newspaper/Mayhem missions. Plus Flashbacked Safeguard/Mayhem missions would not give out contacts and would presumably not have repeatable temp powers, meaning there would still be a reason to do them at-level.

In other words, I'm not seeing what is so special about Safeguard/Mayhem missions that requires them to be gated in such a way, after the fact. Keep in mind that Ouroboros allows you to skip a contacts "filler" missions and go straight to the story arcs and badge missions, both of which offer comparable rewards.

(Also yes, I agree, reducing the newspaper grind somehow would be nice. Let's start by lowering the threshold to 3 missions at all levels. Changing to 5 just because you're high level was a bad idea.)

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Again, particularly if cape elements were involved, yes. A post from Back Alley Brawler a while back spelled out that capes are the most graphically expensive costume piece and therefore bog the game down even worse when multiple capes are rendered in an area, which are quite likely to be present in Icon. This is also why player characters are not allowed to wear more than one cape element at a time. I believe reflective costume pieces are more expensive than normal as well, but still less than capes.

Adding such pieces to mannequins that nobody pays attention to in the first place for the sake of advertising or prettying things up at the expense of performance is foolish.

The weird thing is that there is, but it was only shown on that G4 Cinematech City of Heroes special. I'm not sure why it was never added to the website. I don't think it actually showed much of Sonic or Archery though.

The point is that most of the booster pack costumes have a higher graphical cost than generic pieces, especially the ones that include cape elements. When the choice is between keeping something old or adding potential lag to Icon, I'll stick with the status quo, yes. I'm not sure why that pegs me as being "stuck in the past" though.

After that is the Praetorian Underground where we'll finally be confronting some Devouring Earth. Confirmed from PAX East info.

Not sure if that's a great idea. They did something similar by putting animal-themed NPCs in Pocket D when the booster came out, but I don't think we should increase the graphical load in an area where people will be swapping between costumes/auras/capes/etc. with regularity.

90 seconds, actually. But yes, it's quite annoying. Not sure which is more annoying - resummoning Gun Drone or Voltaic Sentinel.

My goal was to bring the costs in line with similar powers. Dark Servant, my inspiration for this whole thing, takes 3.17 seconds to summon, costs 26 endurance, and recharges in 240 seconds but is essentially perma by default with a 240 second duration.

That's pretty close to what I suggested for Gun Drone, excepting the recharge/duration, which I suggested as I did to slightly restrict slotting options. I wouldn't be opposed to bumping the duration up a bit, however.

(Your first example comes close to Too Awesome To Use, but as long as Gun Drone is perma-able and the costs are tolerable, it still really doesn't apply...)

APPs were Issue 3 as well. Yes, for the first couple of issues of the game you didn't actually get anything new from levels 40-50.

Issue 11 for DB, Issue 13 for the rest, I think? Also Issue 11 was Willpower.

I'm undecided if Regen is a bad example to use or a great one.

Keep in mind that Regen has been through so many revisions that it simply doesn't follow traditional set design anymore. Instant Healing became the set's true god-mode along the way and Moment of Glory used to be the Tier 9 that actually reduced your survivability, and simply had to be changed into something that wasn't absurd and broken.

On the other hand, if you convinced me that Time Bomb was Device's true Tier 9 (and after examining the numbers on it, I'm not really clear why it's quite so loathed), I might change my tune.

Gun Drone is a tough bugger, but also dies too fast? Sorry, that contradiction jumped out at me. Everything you're saying though proves Gun Drone is not Too Awesome To Use. Every single one of those downsides make it thoroughly not awesome. Gun Drone is, rather, Too Mediocre To Use.

There's also the tangle that "Too Awesome To Use" is more about expectations and lack of fore-knowledge of the game ahead. It's about holding onto your I Win Button as you weather fight after fight, because surely you'll really need it later on down the line and yet that situation never comes. Have you ever actually said to yourself "I better not summon Gun Drone right now, I'll need it later."?

I don't disagree with your points really at all, just the misuse of a trope.

My original suggestion was for both. I'd like to see the downsides reduced, but also the value of the Gun Drone itself increased.

So what animations from Dual Pistols, Demon Summoning, or Kinetic Melee are shared by other sets?

I would normally agree, but Gun Drone is the Tier 9 of the set. Even if they made it not suck, it would still just randomly spam Chain Gun around and not really get a lot done. In fact, I'm pretty sure even if you improved the end/recharge/cast time, Voltaic Sentinel would potentially be the better power of the two. In other words, Gun Drone still wouldn't be worth using for me.

Also, Too Awesome To Use really mostly applies to things that have some sort of finite use (such as Inspirations, to an extent). I'm not clear how that applies to any version of Gun Drone, theoretical or not.

Huh. I highly doubt they'd continue to allow that if they added debuffing capabilities to it, however.

No other traditional pet can have more than one copy of itself out at once. Why would they break that rule for Gun Drone?

This is mostly what I meant. I wasn't saying that a raid leader always needs to do a total info dump before the trial begins, I was saying that a good raid leader needs to make sure everyone has the basics down. Bonus points if they clarify what strategy they're using. Giving contextual instruction during the raid isn't a bad thing, either.

But I've been on a lot of raids where they announce courts/helipad/keep 'em separated five seconds before that phase starts, which leads to confusion. And I've been on quite a few Lambdas where people immediately throw the whole league into a panic by going down the elevators during the prep time, hence why some kind of explanation before the raid can be advantageous.

Of course, "if you get confused, stick with your team" = "at the first inkling of confusion, run blindly into danger!!".

To be perfectly honest, if your raid teams are giving instructions *after* the raid starts, you're joining bad raid teams.

And this confirmed it.

Does Disembowel not count? It can look a bit off depending on the enemy/angle, but it is kind of meant to be you thrusting into their guts..

Both the Infected and Contaminated are pretty well explained.