Adeon Hawkwood

If Masterminds ever get Cold Domination I can see it being a VERY popular power for them. I think it would also be one of the few cases where an MM would be justified in using a single target buff on his pets rather than teammates.

Well you see, the computer system for the FBSA is really old cannot handle a hero with multiple, significantly different power combinations and similarly cannot handle multiple heroes with the same name (it also can't handle four digit dates and so any heroes who registered in the year 2000 or later have a registration date of 19XX displayed on thier profile). As such heroes who have the ability to drastically alter their powers (for whatever reason) are legally required to register separate identities for each distinct power combination who are then considered different entities from a legal point of view.

This caused a major legal problem when one hero tried to sue his insurance company for damages after his primary suit of power armor was destroyed in a fight while he was using his secondary suit. He argued that since the two suits were separate legal entities the primary suit was technically owned by an innocent bystander and as such his accidental property damage insurance should cover his costs in replacing the primary suit.

In any case they've considered replacing the system but the only output drive on the old system uses 5.25" floppy disks and the entire supply of those in Paragon City (owned by a historic computer museum) was recently stolen in a surprise raid by the Nemesis Army.

I don't even bother with different servers/stories. Story wise it's the same guy, he just has several suits of power armor.

Disturbingly enough I'm almost the same position having three versions of Adeon Hawkwood (AR/Dev, Trpas/AR, Bots/Traps). I've been contemplating adding a Beam Rifle/Force Field Corruptor to his repertoire.

Well if you take Blaster Primaries + Blaster Secondaries and drop the controls what do you get? Ranged attacks + Melee Attacks. It doesn't really matter whether you want to call them Blaster Primary + Blaster Secondary - Controls or Range + Melee the point still stands, assault sets combine ranged attacks and melee attacks.

I didn't characterize them that way, I said I'd use that as the base. My general goal would be four-fold:
1. All characters should have similar capabilities for solo play
2. All characters should have something to offer a team besides "I can deal damage"
3. Team power should be more predictable based on team size
4. Team composition should not be a major consideration

For the most part CoV comes close to this. With each AT you get decent soloing options and have something to offer a team. I tend to feel that this could be improved by adding a bit more personal survivability to the squishier classes and providing more options for tough classes to protect their allies besides taunt (and then ramping up the difficulty to compensate).

I'll point out what I consider a VERY important difference between what I'm saying and what CO has. Specifically you cannot cherry-pick powers from multiple powersets. You choose one powerset to get offensive powers from, one to get defensive powers from and one for team powers. Once you lock those in you can't then opt to switch to a different powerset (I'd also continue the COH tradition of not allowing them to change during a respec).

There are few different ways I can see to accomplish this.

The first (simplest) solution is simply to differentiate the set types by the values and power types they provide. Melee sets get stronger powers than ranged sets to account for the extra risk. Similarly Leadership sets provide less utility in team buffs to compensate for stronger self buffs, mez protection and the ability to draw aggro. I've never really cared for the "range as defense" argument, although I do see the "range as convenience". In either case though I think it is possible to balance melee versus range simply by adjusting the damage and types of powers available to each although I'll admit I can't prove it.

The second option would be cross-set focused inherent. If taking a melee offense set provided an effectiveness buff to all of your survival powers, well suddenly you have a non-damage reason to take a melee offense sets. Similarly the different support power sets could provide differing bonuses. For example if Leadership provided a damage boost and melee provided a defense boost then a Melee/Leadership character is tough, has good damage and has the ability to draw aggro onto himself. Essentially your selection of offense type and support type would give you two different bonuses similar to inherent powers (I leave out survival since everyone would get a survival set).

The third option would be to introduce archetypes. You've got 12 potential AT combos (4 offense set types * 3 support set) pick the ones that make sense, slap an inherent power on them, adjust values as needed and call it a day.

The limitation is similar to what we currently have just with less coupling between "attack style/damage" and "team support style". You trade damage for range in your choice of offense and in your supprot role choose between tough aggro magnet, buff/debuff or control.

Basically Dominator secondaries, power sets that have both Ranged attacks and Melee attacks.

I think it depends on how it's done. What I would like is something more along the lines of the City of Villain core ATs (except the Stalker). If you look at the four ATs each one of them has one powerset that provides damage and one that provides force multiplication (Brutes get taunts which are a form of damage mitigation and therefore count as force multipliers). In many ways what I would do is take that basic divide add a bit more personal defense to everyone and add some more generic team support to the "tank-type" since Taunting alone is somewhat limited as a form of mitigation.

The idea I like is to switch to a Three powerset system. Each character gets three powersets, one Offense, one Survival and one Support (this could work either with or without ATs). I envision the sets as being slightly smaller than the current ones (6 or 7 powers instead of nine).

Offense Powersets are similar to what we already have come in four flavors, Ranged, Melee, Assault and Pet. Roughly corresponding to the four types of damage sets currently available. One change I would make is to give Ranged powersets a greater reliance on Cones for their AoEs in order to discourage Ranged characters from hanging out in melee. I'd also change Pets powersets to be more focused on fewer, stronger pets with a number of the set's powers actually functioning as special attack commands for the pet(s) (similar to Smoke Bomb for Ninjas).

Survival Powersets are roughly equivalent to armor sets with two major changes. First no Auras (taunt or damage) and second no mez protection. Other than that they include things like self heals and defense resistance buffs/debuffs.

Support Powersets are split into three categories: Leadership, Buff/Debuff and Control. Buff/Debuff and Control are largely what you'd expect given the names but Leadership are a bit different. Essentially they are the second half of the armor sets containing taunt powers, auras, a bit more personal survivability and (possibly) mez protection. However in addition to this they get some team support powers along the lines of VEATs. Primarily these would be aura style powers (both toggle and click) as both buffs and debuffs.

Now I'm not sure if ATs would be strictly needed here. I think you could use the set types for inherent powers and modifiers rather than needing specific combos but it's hard to say. Just baking modifiers into the sets will provide significant differentiation (i.e. damage goes Melee > Assault > Ranged). Some combos could be problems such as combining leadership sets focused on aura based debuffs with ranged cone based sets for example so I'd definitely provide "suggestion" ATs even if I ultimately allowed any combo.

That's not damage resistance, that's damage buffing (internally dmaage buffs are implemented as buffs to specific damage types it's just most powers buff them all the same amount).

One of the things that I like about CoH is that soloing is much more practical than in a lot of other MMOs so in general I agree that the slightly overpowered nature of the game works there.

However, the bit I do find annoying is that teams tend to be a bit to overpowered even before you factor in incarnate abilities and IOs. I think that part of the problem is that the nature of the ATs (some are force multiplier some are force adders) make it very hard to estimate the strength of a team so the game errs on the side of making any team combo work. While I do like that attitude I've always been a little annoyed by the restrictions it places on difficulty.

If I were in charge of making CoH2 what I would try to do is make all characters "tank mages" to some degree by giving them all relatively similar damage and defenses plus force multiplication abilities (I think this can be done while avoiding the issue of every character playing the same). The goal would be that the power level for a team is more predictable for a given team size and less dependent on the particular mix of characters. I'd then change the spawn rules for teams to provide more levers for adjusting the difficulty than simply adding more enemies. I'd still scale up the spawn sizes but I'd also increase the difficulty of individual enemies. The current game does that somewhat already (more bosses and Lts as you increase team size) but I'd like to take it a step further by increasing the core stats of enemies as team size increases (damage, to hit, defense, hit points).

The end goal would be to try and avoid the current situation where a solo player can successfully fight at x8. Not because I have any particular objections to them doing so but because it means that a full team of 8 is not really facing a challenge.

I have, in the past, noticed a general trend on these boards to judge enemy difficulty primarily based on the difficulty for melee characters. I agree with you, KoA are pretty easy for ranged characters (especially those with some method of keeping them at range) but the stacked caltrops do make them harder for melee characters and masterminds.

Carnies are another example. They are considered "hard" largely because of their end drain abilities which primarily affect melee characters. Ranged characters have a much easier time (although you do tend to go through a lot of break frees)

The problem is I want 7 electric powers (2 single target blasts, two AoEs, the hold, Voltaic Sentinel and the nuke). Do I absolutely need all 7? Probably not but I wants them I does. As you say it's the set bonuses that are killers. I could easily do the build with HOs and frankenslotting.

The defense is a little worse than Mind Link, the to hit is better though.

That being said:
Mind Link = Power available to a high damage, relatively tough AT with mez protection
Farsight= Power available to lower-damage, no mez protection support ATs

Yes, Farsight is a stronger power than Mindlink but it's a power in a buff/debuff set as opposed to one available to a damage-focused AT. It's like complaining that Dispersion Bubble has a larger radius than Grant Cover or that Freezing Rain has a stronger resistance debuff than Venom Grenade.

I disagree with the server classifications in a number of cases. Yes, VEATs provide some support but they aren't really a support AT, they're a damage AT that happens to provide support. I'll point out that according to the AT classifications Dominators are a "Pet" AT which I think is a hard argument to make.

I wouldn't take both Stunning Shot and Petrifying Gaze (especially if doing so meant dropping Fearsome Stare which is an AWESOME power). Since one is a stun and the other a hold you can't stack which limits the value of having both (they aren't useless just less useful). Now of the two I'd actually recommend taking Stunning Shot over Petrifying Gaze They are both reasonably similar in terms of effectiveness (SS has longer duration but also longer recharge so it balances out) but SS will stack with Howling Twilight or Oppressive Gloom to easily mez a boss if you need to.

Personally I'd prefer S/L Defense to Ranged for a Time Defender but it's really hard to find S/L Defense bonuses in IOs that a Defender can use (of course there is Scorpion Shield but then you're giving up a resistance shield).

EDIT: Hmmm... I forgot about Lockdown. I'll have three single target holds plus Distortion Field. I could stick a Lockdown set in all of them for 15% Ranged Defense and 10% AoE Defense. Slot two Thunderstrikes in my single target attacks and a Blood Mandate in VS for another 11.25% Ranged Def and 3.75% AoE Def. Add the 19.5% defense from Farsight (Membrane Slotting FTW), 2.5% from CJ and 3% from the Steadfast IO.

Add it all together and I'm sitting as 5.12%/38.75%/25% Ranged/AoE/Melee. Ok, there's probably room for improvement but I think positional Defense is the way to go.

EDIT2: Need moar slots! This is looking like a seriously slot heavy build. I normally have a few "one slot wonder" powers I can starve to feed important powers but it seems like everything needs lots of slots and those 6-slotted powers really eat them up.

I can definitely see that. I've been mocking up a Time/Elec/Elec Defender and I think I'm going to have to switch to Time/Elec/Mu to get all of the powers I want (which upsets me because then the colors won't match and Shocking Bolt is, for some reason, a LOT better than Electric Shackles).