Zaion

^This, probably. I've been running low level missions since the patch and I didn't even know there was a new warehouse tileset until I read this thread. AFAIK I've only been getting the same old warehouses. Unless I'm really that out of it while playing.

Grand can mean large in English too. The word actually has like 15 English definitions and I'm not sure everyone posting here is aware of some of the more fitting ones like "highly ambitious or idealistic" or "of great importance, distinction, or pretension."

Also I would be extremely surprised if "Smallville" wasn't thought of during the naming process.

Keep in mind that while there is lore for the isles existing before Recluse claimed them, that lore was probably crafted after the expansion was set into motion. Cryptic (at the time) knew full well what the isles would be as they named them, so I'm sure there is some relevance.

Your window is a flat plane too, doesn't mean everything outside is 2D. Do you need to see branches and birds popping out into your room to tell it's 3D? If you look at a monitor playing a modern game head-on, it's like looking out a window, there are 3 dimensions, and if it's a game with good graphics at a high resolution on a big monitor you could almost swear you could stick your arm through the screen. Objects popping out at you add nothing.

This. Times a thousand.

If you want "3D" then stick your face up against your monitor. If you have no real world reference points then the entire game will look 3D (because it is). It's probable easier on your eyes too. Objects popping out of the screen is a gimmick to entertain children in Disney theater "rides." The technology should have stopped there IMO.

This has been the case the last few times the issue cropped up.

Last I checked a good portion of people playing this game like to make theme characters. They design a character and imagine what types of powers they'd use, then they get the powers that stick to that theme. Skipping good powers because they don't fit the character's theme is not at all uncommon, nor is it particularly frowned upon by other players in most teams. Just because somebody isn't min/maxing with their powers doesn't mean they are "incompetent."

That team anyway would probably be highly effective against melee heavy enemy groups (Freaks probably). The reason I said 5th Column is they stick to (powerful) ranged attacks for a while and will quickly target squishies that get their attention, and at +2 at those levels it means pretty much instant death.

An offender is a Defender that focuses on offense and doing damage. They will use a primary that maximizes their own damage or combat effectiveness with little or no regard to team support abilities. It's only coincidence that some of those powers also effect team mates with either AoE buffs or enemy debuffs.

Wasn't sure if you meant the khelds, since two kin offenders even without heals could be boosting team damage by 100%.

Pugs on Freedom. And yes.

Find another team isn't always an option, especially at 4-7am EST. Plus the exp probably is better even with the wipes, though I'd honestly prefer +0 even if it's easy.

Either way the Stalkers one initial attack is doing more damage than 2 great Blaster attacks by your own words, but then you seem to forget that Stalkers have a whole range of other attacks to use that do more damage than Blaster attacks. What will a Stalker do after assassinating a target and leaving hide? What about Bone Smasher, Energy Transfer and Total Focus? Heck, a Stalker's Barrage does more up front damage than a Blaster's Fire Blast (which overall is 30% DoT damage over 4 seconds) even with the Blaster using Aim. Each Stalker set has several other high damage attacks that do more damage than Blaster attacks. Melee damage is simply superior to ranged damage.

Generally red inspirations are also involved, and most Blasters wait to attack until initial agro has been established by melee characters, then it's very rare for a Blaster to start with single target attacks against a boss when they could instead AoE all the minions down like nobody else.

It's not melee range, it's 30 meters. It's not hard or rare to get most of the team into a 60m area, especially if there's an AoE healer on the team.

They do reign supreme in boss killing, maybe not by miles but they have a clear advantage, it was originally pretty much their entire purpose. I played my stalker back when their melee damage scale was crap and they couldn't scrap out of a wet paper bag, back then their only reason for being on a team was to assassinate bosses.

Not sure what you are doing then. My main is a NB/N Stalker and I have no problem getting off 2-3 Assassin's Blades per fight. Occasionally I get interrupted by some AoE I failed to dodge, but that doesn't reset the CD so I just try again right away. I can even reliably use it multiple times while solo with minions whiffing at me.

Simply not true. Most enemies do indeed have a ranged attack, and many were added to help them fight back against flying players, however the vast majority of these attacks are limited to 80-100m. Using snipe from 150m in the air (against a non-flying target) is completely safe in almost all circumstances. It's a crappy attack and it might take 4 or 5+ shots over a minute long period to kill a boss later in the game, but it works and you get full exp.

KB didn't even cross my mind as I came up with that. I forgot human khelds were basically energy blasters (and I've never seen anyone with repel). That would actually reduce the difficulty a bit from what I was thinking of.

I actually like KB a lot, and don't even mind it while tanking as long as people don't expect me to chase the enemies they just knocked out of my agro aura.

Which are the two nearly useless characters? Most teams in that level range run at +2, or try to. I don't like it, especially when I'm sidekicked and everything is purple to me, but they do it. If we have a good team setup though it's easy anyway, even if fights last a really long time occasionally.

Scrappers and Stalkers do more damage than Blasters even without critting. Not really sure where you are coming from with that statement. Nothing in the game comes close to a Stalker's alpha. How can a Blaster kill a boss faster than a Stalker if a buffed Stalker can kill a boss in one hit?

Stalkers out of hide aren't gimped Scrappers any more. I dunno when it changed but it could be argued their damage output is even higher than Scrappers now. Scrapper attacks do about 15% more base damage, but Stalkers on a full team have 31% chance to crit on every attack out of hide compared to the 5% or 10% Scrappers get. 115x1.1=126.5 vs 100x1.31=131. That's ideal circumstances though, obviously most of the time not everyone will be 30m from the stalker.

Also if you take a defense based secondary on your stalker and slot some recharge you can easily pull off multiple assassinations per fight even if you have agro.

I think the necessary coding is there as it allows Stalkers to remain hidden and agro free if their assassination attack misses. Also current snipe attacks + hover already accomplish that on any enemy group that doesn't have fly (which is a lot of them, especially at lower levels). You get agro sure, but they can't do anything about it and just run around jumping up and down nearby trees or lamp posts.

All that said, I don't really see the reason of making a new AT for this. At most maybe a few new powersets for blasters, like a full Sniper Rifle set (with a stealth power right in there), and maybe a Laser beam set, both simply focusing on slower, longer range attacks that hit really hard.

What was the last one you played? Most of the MMOS of the past few years have had pretty diverse and breathtaking worlds. You can't take 10 steps in Aion without your jaw dropping in awe at the scenery (unless you don't care about scenery of course, or you are in the abyss...). I mean the last MMOs I can think of with boring repetitive environments are like Asheron's Call or Anarchy Online, before any expansions, those came out over a decade ago.

A couple kinetic offenders (no transfusion or increase density), a shield tanker, a regen scrapper, 2 human form only kheldians, an AR blaster, and an illu/sonic troller with no buffs (at level 17 base), set to +2-3 with most of the team sidekicked sitting at 1 below mission level. Lets say mission level 21, so no SOs, and you are fighting 5th Column.

Try it, let me know what happens. If you don't wipe at all I will buy you dinner. I'm sure you could finish the mission, and have fun, but there will be a lot of deaths. I could make it even harder and throw in some petless MMs or blappers if you want. Or try it at +4. I bet I could come up with a team that could run through at +4 with ease.

FF is more crowd control than debuffing. If people didn't hate knockback so much they could have their hands full keeping enemies away from squishies. FF has 3 buffs and 5 control powers, plus PFF which is it's own monster.

That's why my other suggestion was a toggle. If for example it's not possible to make the buffs auto cancel when the buffer leaves the team, then a toggle would prevent buffbotting just as well. Of course a toggle comes with it's own downsides, like the buff dropping when the buffer dies or gets stunned, but that would just be more reason to protect the squishies on the team.

I just like to point out where possible, that although it was an awesome idea to add to CoH, AE is most likely based on or at the very least heavily inspired by the Ryzom Ring from the Saga of Ryzom. I only mention it because Ryzom so rarely gets credit for any of the innovations it brought to the genre.

"I" don't care, at all. I'm a very easy going person, I will team with anyone, anywhere, for anything and have fun with it no matter how much trouble we run into. It's clear there are different ranges of content a team can do easily based on it's composition.

There is no such thing as an incompetent team or player. Everyone is playing the game to have fun and as long as they accomplish that then they are successful at everything they do. To suggest otherwise is jackassery. Yes some people have a better understanding as to how their powers work, but those who don't aren't to be avoided or insulted. I've been getting a very elitist attitude from most of you and it's not at all what I expected from this community.

Any powerset that has a heal can be a healer. I'm not using it as a role defining term, I'm not saying they should do nothing but spam their heals all mission long. I hate the "trinity" role system and always have, so that is not at all what I meant with it. Anyone in a team with a heal that uses it is a healer IMO, even if they are a corrupter and putting out a ton of damage, or a controller throwing out an emergency heal between controls.

They don't need to be unique, and the assets are already there. Play around with AE and you'll find hundreds of maps (over 1000 IIRC), and many of them are maps not used at all by the random mission system. All they need to do is redo the random missions to pull from these additional maps and it will add a lot of variety to the game.

For now what I do is I have an AE mission set up almost like a template with a simplistic story and goals. Whenever I get tired of door missions on the same old maps I go to that AE mission, pick a map I like with standard enemies I like, then play through it. It's essentially identical to a door mission in substance and gameplay, but there are some really cool and fun maps to play on, with some very interesting enemies you normally wont see very often. AE is really what saved this game for me, but I still think it's a band-aid and I'm hoping the game beneath it will be fixed at some point.

I don't know where everyone is getting that idea from. I never said a healer is always needed, I never said I cared about team composition. All I said is some teams don't have good synergy and wont do as well, probably not being able to handle the +2-3 missions so many team leaders try to run without a few wipes.

If you want to tell me a team with great powerset synergy (again I'm not saying specific ATs or tank and healers or anything like that) isn't substantially easier to get through missions with than a team with little synergy, than you are crazy. I'm not saying it will be impossible with a bad team, nor super difficult, but people will probably die a few times, and if you ramp up the difficulty too far you might wipe a few times. That's where I mentioned another difference in this game, wipes don't matter, dying doesn't really slow you down, it's all a part of the fun.

Heck, my entire point was to say this game isn't like other MMORPGs where if you have a tank and healer you are good to go. If you have a tank and healer that aren't very compatible, you might still have problems, but at the same time taking other powersets from other ATs and putting them together can make missions a breeze even without either a tank or healer.

Except traps is more a debuff set. You buff all your pets every time you debuff an enemy.

I don't even know what game you are playing. If I run into a full team spawn on a mid 20s tanker without good buffs, the alpha alone is going to drop me way below half health (depending on which defense set). To hold agro on that whole group on my own and not die in 2 more seconds I need to be healed by at least one person. If it's a +2 or +3 mission, the alpha will kill me and healing probably wont help unless it's timed perfectly. I'd need appropriate buffs to handle that situation smoothly.

I never said healing was required in every group. I just used a particular example. A team with multiple tanks and good controls that work together can do fine without a healer. A team with a single tank and no control is going to need appropriate buffs or awesome heals though.

A low-mid level tank without either buff is fine... solo. In a full team set to +2-3 they are blood stains on the floors and walls unless they have really good slots and enhancements and two good healers spamming the crap out of their single target heal. Late game with IO sets and self buffed to the soft caps it doesn't matter.

I never said useless, I said crap. A 25% damage reduction is barely noticeable alone. You can not deny that a 25% damage resistance buff on a character already at 60% damage resistance is a hell of a lot more effective. A team with good powerset synergy is tremendously more effective than a team with very little synergy.