Seldom

I always thought the power should be a toggle.

Activating the power causes the 'plant bomb' emote, and spawns an untargetable bomb at that location. (This first part being interuptable) After that, deactivating the toggle power 'kills' the bomb pet, triggering a massive explosion.

Viola! Time bomb is now a remote controlled bomb!

Eh. Just what I'd do with it.

From reading how the 'walk' functionality seems to go, (And thanks for that one, devs! It's fluff, but tasty fluff!) I got an idea.

This from another 'npc' moving emote: the crouched over, sneaking one. I thought this would be a cool alternate 'walk' if devs had the time, but then thought: "What if, along with the sneaking 'crouched walk' animation, this gave a stealth component?" (Essentially giving all characters a inherent stealth option within a 'walk' power?)

The speed could never be buffed, unlike concealment powers. There would be no extra defense, unlike concealment powers. You could not attack while this would be active. Travel powers and jumping would be disallowed. On the other hand, it's a 'free' stealth power. This would give all characters a 'sneaky' option for missions. (Though obviously slower than other concealment options.) It would stack with other stealth powers, to a limited degree, but have its own 'stealth cap' so that one would always be visible when in touching distance. (No matter how sneaky one is, it take real invisibility to walk right under somebody's nose.)The power could also be "interruptible," so once attacked, it would deactivate, with a longer recharge than any sprint-like power.

With this, the devs could also add more sneaky objectives into future missions, as all characters would have a way to accomplish such things.

Just a thought.

Don't know why, but my first thought was "Hmmm...what if instead of serum, merc masterminds could give a merc incendiary rounds?"

....Nah.

The walk animation was in the game already. They didn't want to put it in emotes, as you'd just do the animation in place. Since the only animation you get from moving is running, they couldn't put walk in as well. There's just a moving/not moving mode in the game, so a gradiation from standing>to walking>to running wouldn't work.

So, we get a power that makes the default moviement animation the already present 'walk' animation, and they do stuff the remove abbilities to do other stuff that would look wonky/require more work. Honestly, I bet this was an easy job. Make a power, it's movement animation is the one aleady in-game, select its speed, make it dissallow certain actions/attributes. The bugs you mentioned are probably FAR more time intensive, and for a different developement section.

As one new to the game, I'd wait on /kinetics. It's a pretty 'button mashy' set, and can leave you vulnerable. (It does give awesome buffs, though.) /radiation is a great 'easy but awesome' set, in my opinion, and is excellent both solo and on teams. Bring break frees, though, when solo, to keep toggles up against stuff that messes with your head. The -resistance makes your damage better, and it has some good -tohit to stack with you blasts for extra enemy whiffs. The immobilize from dark/ will keep toggled debuffs from running as they like to do.

/Dark is great for theme, and another great solo/team set. More controls than /radiation, but not as many weakening powers. (Still excellent, nonetheless.) With dark, this is about as crazy -to hit as you can get. Stuff will miss you like crazy.

/Traps is good, but you'll need to learn timing/placement to get some good use. Your -to hit from dark helps stack with the excellent defense from your forcefield unit, and the immobilize keeps them in traps effects.

/Storm has excellent debuffs and protection, used right. It has a learning curve, but once you're good at the set, you'll be rewarded by the awe-inspiring simultaneous mixture of chaos and safety you have. Be warned, this set plays very differently than just about any other sets. The crazy -to hit from hurricane stacks well with dark/, and you can knock things into a clump then tentacle them for AoE goodness.

/Cold is good, the early shields are great on teams, but may be less useful solo. Still, good tricks to be had. Your dark/ -to hit stacks with the defense you get from /cold, but be warned, /cold corrs get less defense than their team members.

/thermal, sonic, and pain are just better on teams. If you solo, they have fewer tricks for you. Thermal is heals with some solid single target debuffs and some decent ally armors, sonic gives armor and makes stuff take extra damage, (though it has a few skippable powers) pain heals and gives extra damage.

/Trick arrow is, well, tricky. Not much damage mitigation, though your darks/ -to hit helps this, and the immobilize keeps stuff in arrow patch effects.

Whatever you choose, check the forum guides on the powers. You can find guides on support sets in the corruptor, defender, and controller guide sections, though some tactics may be different for a corruptor. Still, it's good for knowing ahead of time what powers do what, what's worth taking, and some good way of using said powers.

People don't realize that every bit of text entered for easter eggs, detail depth, and so on=extra space. I love putting in extra details to arcs so that the more patient are rewarded for peaking around, reading, and so on. I get disappointed when making a couple custom groups eats up the space so the details/extras are sparse. So yay, more size!

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say the whole reason for my human-only PB is thematic.

No other character type in the game exemplifies so well the idea of using light. Light armor, light ray blast, light melee attacks, it's all there. And as a customization nut, having a standard NPC for a form isn't a big draw.

Yup.

Just as one of my pet peeves with villains is their lack of proactivity, (i.e., they never make plans of their own, just do errands for contacts) I find heroes' lack of reactivity a bit stayed as well. A hero shouldn't, in my limited book, need to go to a contact. A contact should call them for help. A hero shouldn't wait for something to do, they should be out fighting crime; it just always seemed more 'alive' to me if the city itself gave missions. Try to stop a purse snatcher, he ducks into a building you can pursue him into, finding a gang hideout. If you're standing in a neighborhood, a civilian may approach you and ask for your help. and so on.

It's pie in the sky, yes, but I think 'thematic' things like that would give a better 'feeling' of heroism in the game.

Now about those villains...

'Dark control' would have more of a netherworld/fear component, in my mind, than a re-color of present control sets. There is something to be said for the functional theme of powers: you can re-color invulnerability to be dark, but it doesn't play half the same as a dark armor character does.

But as for dark/dark controllers, it gets real tricky. Not only do they have to gut out miasma's 'over-controllery' powers, they have to replace with something still good that doesn't exceed Dark/ defender capabilities. Not just that, to bar extra work, the resulting dark control would have to work on dominators without stepping on a dominator dark assault. Which couldn't have the dark powers from the dominator dark patron pool. In other words, it's real sticky/tricky. As such, I expect to see easier proliferation first.

The cynic in me looked at the MA as a way the devs could let players 'take care of themselves' content-wise, whilst the devs could let such things go and allocate the resources to bigger, more distant things. (Like Going Rogue.)

Unfortunately, some penalties on that system scared away genuine writers, so the MA has gone by the wayside, and the pressure is back on them to make their own content, even as I'm betting they have diverted some resources to further-term assignments.

And oddly enough, we now have red names trying their best to get people using the MA again. Hmmmm.....

Yeah, I'm doubting that we will have an in-between issue, and that the push for AE involvement will get more and more evident...

Ever since pistols was suggested, the idea of a dual pistols set made me wonder how many Pistols/Dark Miasma characters I'd find in a black fedora/heavy coat/cape, red kerchief over half the face, and a creepy laugh.

Not expecting a lot, but when I see 'tribute*' characters, I get a hint as to the preferences of the player, and it's fun for me to see semi-obscure ones as mentioned above.

*read: copyright objectionable

Running on walls, I expect, will come with a swinging/wall crawling sets. That is, when they re-code all surfaces in the game to allow said interaction.

Hate to say it, it's a limitation I doubt will be overcome. The way much of the game seems to work is around flat surfaces, vertical surfaces seem to function as nothing more than barriers. (And not so much an intractable surface.)

But that's just my assumption from watching the game do its thing.

>edit< but back on topic: jump enhancements are your friend. I've found swift to be rather slow in its bonus, and hurdle far better. For "non-travel" builds, the are also +run speed enhancements in the defense gift of the ancients set, and plenty of +speed bonuses are around.

I have never found any archetype improved as vastly by binds as masterminds. Seriously, without good binds, they are different animal. I tend to play with:

Shift+click as 'go to' (Otherwise known as get back here, I gave you missiles and you want to punch stuff? Heal, boy!)

Alt+W as attack target
Alt+A as follow
Alt+S as 'Stay' (Otherwise known as stand your ground and shoot)
Alt+D as defensive (Alt+A then Alt+D=Bodyguard)
Alt+Q as passive (Otherwise known as: I don't care who started it, BEHAVE!)
Alt+E as aggressive (Otherwise known as "Eh, I gave you powerboosted bubbles, go nuts!)

Since I use WASD and a mouse to move any ways, this means that I simply click shift or alt to control all that the bots do. I highly recommend it. (All this done via CityBinder)

All doms solo well...stuff that can't fight back is not that much of a threat. Though mind/ is on the lower damage scale, it makes up for it by giving the most control. With a good feel,good slotting, and time, the only way anything can attack you is (a) player messups, or (b) triangles of doom. Heck, mind can even counter (b) with mesmerize.