Aett_Thorn

I like it. /signed from me.

I like everything except for the hovering period. Unless you're fighting a flying enemy, that would be a very great hindrance, especially if you wanted to move right after. The only way to follow an enemy would be to combat teleport again, which might not have enough range to get back into melee range well enough.

Well, KB does have a minimal duration. And they can stack. However, you either need to be really (un)lucky, or have a persistent KB effect going on, like Earthquake or Ice PAtch, to really have a chance to see it. This is why, if you were on an Earthquake patch with a mob, and hit them with a KD effect of your own, it can turn into KB. Basically, the two KD effects have stacked their Magnitude, and become KB.

Knockback is a different beast for when it comes to magnitude. Basically, the distance the enemy travels in the air IS the magnitude of the effect. Enhancing for knockback distance is actually increasing the magnitude of the effect. It's one of two 'mez' effects that have enhancements that work this way. The other being Intangibility enhancements. So, if you have a KB-protected foe, but slot for KB in an attack, you can overcome their KB protection.

Still not really a good idea. Not only are these powers based upon being ally-only, single target buffs, the following would all be problems that would need to be addressed if this was done:

1) Right now, the buffs cannot affect the caster. If they were made PBAoE, they would be able to. This would allow, for instance, a FF/ Defender to pretty much soft-cap their own Defense, in addition to the rest of the team, or at least pretty close to it. If this was done for Empathy Defenders, you don't even want to know what it would allow them to do.

2) Endurance. Right now, the bubbles are fairly expensive, but worth it. However, built into that cost is the fact that you're recharging endurance as you cast. If it was made into a PBAoE, capable of hitting all 8 people on the team, the endurance cost should also be multiplied. 7.8 endurance * 8 = 62.4 Endurance. So, basically, after casting Deflection Shield, you wouldn't have enough endurance to then cast Insulation Shield. CAsting both would cost 124.8 Endurance.

3) Some people don't want the buffs. As mentioned above, some people don't like getting certain buffs. Things like Speed Boost can mess with some people, and their ability to maneuver. As a single-target effect, you can easily skip over these people. As a PBAoE, if you're in combat and reapply it, you might not be able to avoid these people.



So yeah, very unlikely to happen, I'd guess.

The reasons for pulling it in Beta had only marginally to do with the -recharge on opponents from the attacks. There was also the fact that Ice Patch was in the set, plus CE, plus the endurance drain. But most importantly, it was because the set SUCKED back in I6. Remember that back then, Frozen Aura still did no damage, so was just a PBAoE sleep (which was either bad for generating fury, or just completely useless), Frost was still a tiny cone, and the rest of the set's damage was pretty weak.

The set all around was horrible for Brutes back then. It wasn't just due to the slow effects.

Agonus:

In the end, there are really only two things that keep this game going:

1) Funds, derived from players paying for access to the game, which pays for the Devs and the servers, plus other expenses.

2) Other players in the game.

Without 1, there really wouldn't be a game, since there would be no Developers, nor would there be the servers to play them on.

Without the second one, people would leave quite quickly, which would cause a loss of #1. Now, is Veteran time a good representation of how much time a player spends in the game? Probably not, but I don't know how you would adjust it to represent that fairly across the board, since a new player coming in might get a lot of hours playing the game, but they don't have the long-term experience and knowledge of a lot of the changes that have taken place that someone playing a few hours a week since release might have.

But what the current veteran reward system does is rewards both #1 and #2, or at least tries to. Because of how it is set up, it is designed to reward us both for paying and playing, not just one or the other.

Changing it so that it rewards only time paid would be a fundamental shift in that policy. Would it change the number of people playing at any given time? I have absolutely no idea. But it would remove the idea that the system is there to encourage both #1 and #2. And personally, I think that's a bad precedent to set.

Wasn't the game demo used at HeroCon run on an ATI card?

Also, keep in mind that there is a difference between the Contaminated in Outbreak, and the ones that you can find around the city sometimes, especially those in Mercy Island villain-side.

For the Isolator badge, only the ones in the Tutorial and the Ouroborus mission the poster above linked to will work.

Costumes are fluff rewards.

Just as an FYI: Ice Melee isn't really the best at mowing through anything. While it's a decent AoE set, the ST attacks are pretty lackluster. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but it might not be the best for what you're looking for.

I call [Shamwow!]

Also, Chilling Embrace.

Never heard it used as shorthand for an exploit, though.

As a general, the servers are listed in order, from lowest population on top, to highest population on the bottom of the server listing. Exception: the one at the very top is the last server you were on, regardless of it's standing in the population ranking at that time.

Generally, Freedom and Virtue have the highest populations. I think that Infinity is third in the list usually, then it kind of floats around after that.