Jade_Dragon

Serious answer: If you got bubbles from both your Bots, no MMs would ever play anything but Bots. No other MM Primary gets any buffs from his henchmen at all. (The Mercs Medic may possibly heal you, but I don't think he actually does)

Even with only one shield, Bots MMs still make the best psuedo-tanks. The devs tested it, and it just made Bots MMs too powerful, especially compared to other MMs.

Knockback is definately one of those things that looks good on paper, and it definately sets CoH apart from other MMOs and gives it that "superhero" feel, but it needs to be used responsibly. When you knock a foe away from a Tanker, Scrapper, or Brute, you are making it more likely that 1) the foe will come after you 2) the meleer will lose taunt effect on even more foes as he moves around and 3) the meleer will lose magnitude of scaling defenses such as Invincibility, increasing the damage he takes. Oh, and 4) he will do less damage.

On the other hand, when you knock a foe down, it can take him considerable time to get back up, particularly if he gets caught in a corner and the "ragdoll" physics makes him flop around indefinately. So it's a balancing act. Personally, I think the best use of single target knockback attacks is to single out a foe that is NOT directly engaged with the tank, and pick him off away from the main group. Just be ready for him to come at you, and if he does, either finish him or knock him back into the tank.

Flying overhead as mentioned can knock foes down, not away, and circling around to knock runners into the tank can be an effective use of your knockback, too. AoE knockback is really going to be the biggest problem, either again target foes that not engaged in combat with the tank and knock them into him so they are, or wait until the tank has built up aggro on them really well before unleashing them AoEs. You're also likely to kill more outright if they've already taken a lot of damage, which will solve the problem of whether they are knocked back. (No one cares if a dead foe is flung away from them )

Yeah, it seems to me that there are going to have to be some pretty big UI hurdles to overcome with the Power Pools and Epic Pool customization, so hopefully that will help.

I mean, think about it, if you just include all of the Power Pool powers you will triple the number of options in the power list in the Customization editor. It seems to me more likely that you will just get the (up to) 4 Pools that you have chosen from listed. That may mean waiting until you pick a Pool power at 6 before you can customize it, but I don't think that's a big sacrifice.

Kheldians, though, are pretty unique, in that their form powers are Inherents. The interface could look similar, maybe an additional pulldown in addition to the Pool ones, but no other AT would need to have that option. And as mentioned, their Power list would just be longer in general.

Now this is the kind of thing I like to see!

Well, I don't think I'm going to "turn" any of my existing Warshades, but I will definately be creating a new one to be a Nictus. Really, when you get down to it, the only difference between a Nictus and a Warshade is the philosophy. Warshades ARE Nictus, just over time they have changed their minds about dominating the mind of their host, and have decided to give the Peacebringer idea of asking the host to be a willing partner a try. Nothing says that they have to keep believing this choice is a good one, or that once they have changed their minds once, they can't change it again.

My backstory is that my Nictus will have come to Earth with the idea of combining with a willing host, but just through luck he ends up combining with a Skulls gang member who already happens to be a pretty unsavory character. Once he starts to understand the power that his symbiote wields, he begins to want to use its power for his own ends, undermining the Nictus's attempt to "go good". Eventually, the pair come to the conclusion that willing partnership is a good thing, but that doesn't mean you have to be a weak goody two shoes who bows to every inferior meat creature that comes along.

I was originally going to create him in Praetoria, but since it looks like that won't be possible, I may decide to take one of my existing Warshades and rename him, and change him over to the new concept. I have duplicates of my two Kheld concepts, so I have one I can spare.

And VEATs give the same bonus to Kheldians that other Kheldians do, it increases their resistance to recharge rate slow effects. Not really all that useful, but at least there is an effect.

Laser Pistols would do Energy damage, not Lethal. A power set can only do ONE type of damage. This is why, for instance, Mace can't use any customizable weapons that have an edge on them. Mace does Smashing damage, so none of its choices can have a blade.

OTOH, Dual Pistols does have a mechanism to break that rule, or at least bend it. It has changable ammo, doing Fire, Cold or Toxic damage in addition to Lethal. So I suppose in theory it could have "energy bullets" that do Energy damage.

The design seems to be that the changable damage type is on top of the primary Lethal damage, though, and no more than 30% of the total. So the bullets could not be pure energy, they would have to be like electric bullets that shock you, as well as doing impact damage.

In short, while a cool idea, I don't think it will be added as an ammo type.

A better option might be to campaign for BaB to add a laser pistol as a customization for Energy Blast. There would be some hurdles to overcome, obviously it would add redraw time to a set that currently doesn't have any redraw, but if the blasts you fired from the pistol took the same animation time as the current attacks, there would be no change in cast time.

A totally new Power Set would be a possibility as well, although a very slim possiblity that would probably take a lot more time.

I once again will bring up the term "Skill Based" I use to describe all those heroes with no super powers that don't fall into the "Natural" category of aliens, non-humans, or those who have unlocked incredible powers through their mystical training.

And you can still regard a lot of Power Sets as Skill Based. Invulnerability is skill based if you are wearing a suit of armor. Super Reflexes is skill based if you are a martial artist. Illusion Control is skill based if you are using "smoke and mirrors". It all depends on your ability to role play your powers, and to an extent ignore some of the graphic effects.

Okay, first off, I've heard of Steelclaw's Surgeon's Canvas before, and thought that was good and creepy back then, too. So definately one of my favorites.

Second, Lady Arete's Lady Arachne reminds me of my own Arachnophelia. (Intentional misspelling, her real name is Ophelia, and Arachnophilia was already taken) She's completely obsessed with spiders, to the point of wanting to become a Crab Spider specifically to have herself fitted with the backpack. I don't know if she'd go so far as to have the little factory implanted in her, though...

My most disturbing character is one I came up recently, for a Widow concept. I have a Claws/Inv Scrapper who is an AI from the 26th century. She travelled to her past with her partner, Alan Midnight, to investigate apparent changes in their history. What they found was that it was another version of Alan, from another 26th century, that is changing the past. The two Alans are each trying to make their own future happen instead of the other's.

The evil Alan (who unlike the good Alan is a cyborg as well) has several AIs, but still his most powerful is a version of Rachel. He was trying to get some components advanced enough to build a body for her, when an Arachnos Widow, coincidentally named Rachel, happened to stumble across him. She tried to stop him, and so the evil Alan brutally killed her. Then, amused by the coincidence of her name, he implanted her with a cybernetic brain, and downloaded his AI into her. Then he sent his "reprogrammed" Rachel back into Arachnos's army to act as a spy for him.

The original Rachel personality is almost completely gone, but enough remains to be disturbing. And she says creepy things in combat, like, "I'm really a real Arachnos Widow, and not an AI that's reprogrammed her brain or something." This is a parody of the good Rachel, who flirts with her foes to attract their attention and act as a tank for Alan. With the good Rachel it is just kind of cute and funny, but when the evil Rachel tries to flirt, it goes all wrong. (Since she is not flesh herself, she doesn't quite understand "flesh creatures")

Actually, the half human half machine character is pretty much a theme for me. One of my main heroes is a teenaged girl named Sandy, who was implanted with devices that were supposed to help her walk, but then they went out of control and "ate" her from the inside out. (Crey was involved, of course) What's disturbing here is her backstory, the transformation into a cyborg was incredibly painful, and even though it's stabilized so she's about half human, she has to constantly struggle to control her machine half, which is programmed for combat. Her worst nightmare, that she will lose control and become a machine, actually happened to her Praetorian version, which I picture as looking something like a zombie stretched out on a mechanical frame. Even more disturbing, the alternate Sandy is still in there somewhere, although her mind is totally gone. She can only watch as her body rampages through the Rogue Isles and kills everyone it runs across.

There is also my Dark Corruptor which is a robot, but a demonic entity has been bound to it by a spell. (Crey again) So it feeds on human life. It has no need for money or power, the things that drive most villains, but it just takes missions so it has plenty of prey to drain to keep up its energy. Originally I role played it as not speaking at all, although now I will have it say just the very minimum to accomplish the "objective", in a robotic tone.

My Dominator, Dragon Lord Morgon, was a wizard back in the middle ages, who discovered a spell that allowed him to take over to body of any creature. So, he used it to switch bodies with a dragon. He was so powerful that he almost conquered the world, but the Circle of Thorns stopped him and imprisoned him. He recently managed to get free, but the spells still limit him to a half human form. What's disturbing, though, is that he is incredibly sadistic, he learned his body swapping spell by torturing and experimenting on people, and he continues his research in the present. But he's very cordial and polite, and in fact seems almost noble in his bearing. So it's only occasionally he says something that makes you go, "Wait, what?"

Yeah, body snatching seems to be the common theme here...

Oh, and for crazy costumes, I have Psycommando. He's not really disturbing, but kind of wacky. He's an ex-soldier, that seems to have lost touch with reality. He thinks he's spreading a message of peace and love and passing out flowers and sunshine, but instead he's mowing people down with his machine gun. He's an MM, so his henchmen are actually the sane ones, and are constantly commenting about how "this whack job is going to get us killed".



The costume is not as much of an eyesore as it COULD be, but that's not really the point....