Rangle M. Down

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon

No thanks. We've got far more than enough of this kind of thing happening already.

Originally Posted by Angryellow

I like the idea a lot, but...Think of all the players who would want to register a hero/villain, and the odds of their hero/villain being chosen at random. I'm concerned about the butthurt that would come when peoples' hero/vill never gets chosen for an incursion or safeguard, or even if their seems to be a noticable bias toward selecting certain players' characters. All I'm saying is, this type of thing could lead to a lot of bruised egos and subsequent tension amongst the player base.

Originally Posted by Cyberforce

I guess since Cryptic owns all our creations anyway, they could just go ahead and do it, but I would offer mine as well, as long as it's understood that I'm not playing them. I mean, AI can only go so far and I (of course) wouldn't be so easily defeated...

Originally Posted by ketch

Odd. I've noticed several people indicated a few issues. Now I may rail against Dimension Shift at the drop of a hat, but that's because it's broken. It may be broken in a way that helps the player occasionally, by allowing them to phase a GM for example, but it is broken nonetheless.

The other big issue is Propel. I think some folks have gone a bit overboard in their suggestions for it. Reduce the activation time and we're good. That's all it needs.

Finally, we come to Lift. As has been already noted this power has been normalized with Levitate for doms. They just need to finish the job and do the same on the controller side.

If Lift and Propel were corrected then Grav would gain significant single target damage, perhaps enough to justify its early lack of control. While they may never reshape Dimension Shift into something I would like it still needs correction so that it behaves in a clear and predictable manner that is in line with other mez effects.

Originally Posted by Cyberforce

I fully support the idea of costumed heroes and villains fighting one another in a Zone incursion event. As it is, we must defend a bank or go to a PvP zone to accomplish this. It's a huge draw in the comic industry to have certain popular villains/heroes interact across book titles. I'd love to see it, if the Devs could make it work.

It would take a lot of work to create that many villains/heroes, at least 200-400 I would guess, each with their own unique name. Mightn't it be easier to create NPC SGs and VGs with a set "cast of characters" and let them attack a bank or try to take over a section of the city?

I'd love to see "The Legacy of Evil is loose in Steel Canyon!" broadcast like a fire alarm. I would definitely drop everything to fight a group of costumed super villains, especially if they were as hard to defeat as those damn zombies....

Originally Posted by Smurch

I think it's a great idea ONLY if I could check some kind of scoreboard to see how my villain did on his last "incursion" into the city.

If I could have something like that, I'd think it's awesome.

Originally Posted by Sigium

What's always bugged me about any zone in City of Heroes is the lack of enemy-environment interaction. Rikti Warzone broke this boundary by having Rikti forces making their 'mock surges' against the Vanguard Base... Fat load of good those always did, eh?

What about a zone where those bad guys could take over? Where your actions in stopping them would make the difference between the zone looking like a slum, or looking like a metropolis?

I propose a new zone that would experiment with this. I don't have a name for it yet, but it's a work-in progress.

This zone will be composed of 8 Districts. Each district will have a major infrastructure that is recognized as what sets the district apart. Here's the list of the infrastructures:
District 1: Cyber-Engineering Industry
District 2: Hospital
District 3: Tram
District 4: Mall
District 5: Tailor
District 6: Power Plant
District 7: Trainer's Field
District 8: The Park

Once every so often, by a number of hours, an enemy group will try to siege one of infrastructures. Each infrastructure will have a number of guards on the premises to try and ward off the defenders, but will fail more often than not. It's up to the Heroes of the city to defend these structures.

Normally, these zones will flourish. They will shine, people will frolic and everything will be perfect and wonderful. However, should a district be taken over by one of these enemy groups, it will fall into a state of disrepair. Graffiiti will line the walls, people will slump around wearing tattered clothing, papers and litter will fly through the air and buildings will look far more dilapidated, but more importantly; you won't be able to access whatever it is the district is used for.

The zone itself is a Zone Event. Whenever there IS a takeover, you must enter the infrastructure itself and battle the forces that have taken it over. There will be several different skins for the same buildings based on what group has taken over. Defeat their ranks, defeat the boss, and the district will begin seeing improvement.

The zone's overall status will determine any strengths/weaknesses affecting your Hero. For instance, if the zone falls into a state of disrepair, the enemies will be stronger and you may suffer a few debuffs like -End Recovery due to smog filling the air, etc etc. If all 8 zones flourish? There might be some Temp Powers available from stores, or even some discount enhancement stores, or some other goodies. Maybe a store that'll sell costume parts.

"But how can you reclaim the zone if you've got debuffs making combat impossible?"
The answer is 'Reinforcements'. Occasionally, the PPD will come to the zone in a small, assembled strikeforce. These people, alone, will have a 50/50 chance of taking back the infrastructure, giving the zone a chance of it's own.

So, there you go... A living, breathing zone that puts enemies and the environment on the same level, and it allows for Heroes to feel as though they're making an impact, rather than just being a small, insignificant part of something.

Originally Posted by je_saist

I see one big potential problem with this.

Somebody from Paragon Studios would have to sift through the inevitable flood of player names that reference drugs, reference sex or sexual acts, try to bypass the profanity filter, or have intentionally rude or offensive names. I can already see myself "fighting" the Reefer Man in a t-shirt with an afro and a headband with black jeans.

While I might be wrong, I think the sheer amount of developer initiated moderation of players and player names is one of the reasons in the past the developers have stayed away from producing events based on Player Characters. It wouldn't be like the current AE where your experience may change during online play, nor the current naming and character creation system where the developers seem to rely on the community to catch most of the... distasteful or T.O.S. violating... elements that enters the game. It would have to be developer initiated since the developers would be the ones publishing the content directly in an event.

While I like the idea of using player-based characters to fill in the world of City of Heroes, I just can't see it being a practical solution given the number of punks and jerks that many of us have probably ran into in the game.

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

I'll have to leave the /ice part to others but having played two stone tanks to 50 here's my take on the set:

Rock Armor should be your level 1 pick, it's S/L defense which applies to the vast majority of damage you'll take. It offers more than twice the base protection of Stone Skin... which you will also want, but it can delay a bit. Basic slotting should be 3 defense, 1 endurance. For IO's I like the Gift of the Ancients set, 4 of them does nicely here.

Earth's Embrace is your classic dull pain power that boosts your HP and heals you. It's going to be highly valuable to you in the early game and still useful occasionally after you get Granite. Slotting is 3 recharge/3 heal or 5 of the Doctored Wounds set.

Rooted is your status protection and a regeneration buff coupled with a massive runspeed debuff and -jump. You WILL NOT be able to jump over anything while this power is on and you'll move veeerrrrryyyy slooooooly. Base slotting would be 3 heal, possibly an endurance reduction. For IO sets anything you may want to use or you can simply frankenslot heal/endurance IO's from a few of the lower demand heal sets for cheap basic enhancement in only 3 slots.

Mud Pots is the PBAOE taunt aura, damage aura and a slow. While it's a vital power to have it's also rather endurance heavy so you may want to delay it until after Stamina. Slotting can be tricky, you want to enhance accuracy, damage, endurance and, ideally, slow. I generally frankenslot it with Multi-Strike and various slow sets for ED capped damage and ~40% accuracy/slow/endurance.

Stone Skin is S/L resistance in a passive power... it's well worth having but it's less useful than the above powers. I generally slide it in around 22-24. Slotting is one damage resist in the base slot. For IO's I'd toss the Steadfast Resistance 3% defense unique into that base slot.

Granite Armor is your "Nothing can hurt me" power, you absolutely want this at 32. With Stone Skin it will cap your S/L resistance at 90% and your E/N/F/C resistance will hit 78%. Additionally it provides ~30% defense to all but Psi. Drawbacks of course are reduced runspeed, recharge & damage. It also prevents jumping like Rooted. Slotting is 3 damage resist/3 defense. For IO's there's so many possibilities but don't shortchange yourself in resistance or defense... both of those should be enhanced to 95%. I recommend slotting resistance first, then defense.

Personally I never found any need at all for Crystal or Brimstone armor... they're highly skippable. For one, Rock gives S/L defense which does apply to most E/N/F/C attacks. Since those damage types are rare, and your level 1 armor already covers most attacks of that type these armors get dropped into file 13. This is a good thing as it opens up your build for more valuable powers.

Minerals is useful, but only in a very few situations. It's a sizeable amount of defense to Psionic, but Psi is extremely rare. In PvE I come up with about a dozen or so missions where Psi predominates, all of them in the 40-50 range. Is it worth taking for those few missions? Your call, but personally I tend to think no. If you DO want it level 41 is about the right time to get it.

I HIGHLY recommend Teleport for your travel power, I know it's a pain in the butt but it's also the only way to have combat mobility with Rooted or Granite running. Yes, a Kinetic will solve the problem... until you have to get over a curb.

Swift from the Fitness pool is very useful as well in compensating for the -run in Rooted or Granite, I recommend 3 slotting it with runspeed.

Hasten will counteract the -recharge in Granite while it's active so it's also very useful. Typical slotting is 3 recharge.

Beyond that my experience is that Taunt is near-mandatory... you're, um, mobility challenged so a ranged attention-getter is very useful. I also suggest picking up several attacks, this helps you to still have a full chain while in Granite. One of my Stone tankers found room to add Hover to the build, it made zone travel with TP much easier as you no longer had to worry about falling out of the sky.

Good luck with your tanker, Stone isn't for everyone but if you can deal with the drawbacks it makes the most durable character in the game. Even on an SO build it's nearly unkillable.

Originally Posted by SerialBeggar