Adeon Hawkwood

This would be very nice (as well as the ability to use a power icon for a macro icon) however it's not something I think we'll every see.

They mentioned it in their initial post (hint: their forum handle is a misspelling of on of it's powers).

See, now this is just plain wrong. I play squishy characters and I LOVE receiving buffs of pretty much any type. They make me feel all warm and toasty. Then I go out and make the enemies dead.

For Empathy in particular:
Adrenalin Boost: Ok, I don't need the recovery to much but +100% recharge is beautiful on any character and the strong regen buff helps keep me alive.
Fortitude: The defense boost is wonderful. I build for defense but I don't have enough to soft cap me in Incarnate content and extra is better anyway to combat debuffs.
Clear Mind: What squishy character does not want mez protection? Even on my Trappers Clear Mind is nice to close the sleep hole in my own mez protection.
Recovery Aura: I don't need this most of the time but it is useful against those annoying IDF guys with EMP bullets (hate them so much).
Regeneration Aura: No matter how many buffs I have, sooner or later I take damage. More regen means I recover from it faster.


So yes, as others have said. Use your buffs, they are appreciated by anyone who has any sense. If in doubt, find a nice Blaster buff him up and then laugh maniacally as he tears through everything in his path.

Once you've done that, rejoice in the fact that so few people need healing and focus on blasting your foes. Yes, Defender damage is about half that of a dedicated damage character but so what? Damage is damage, it doesn't matter whether an enemy is defeated with X powerful attacks or 2X weak attacks. The important thing is that they are defeated.

For what it's worth I agree with you in regard to the shield powers and at least some of the other single target power (although I disagree with regard to Speed Boost and the mez portection powers). I think it would be a good way to help even out the solo capability of the different buff/debuff sets without really impacting team balance. However, it's a minority opinion around these parts so I've pretty much given up arguing for it.

For what it's worth it seems to be that anything with a pet that was created in I16 or later is not working (not 100% sure about the issue, it might be earlier).

Proliferations that used an existing Pets got ported fine (for example in Cold Domination for Controllers is fine) but new pets are not getting linked. Here's a list of affected powersets I've spotted:
Electrical Melee for Scrappers
Electrical Melee for Tankers
Traps for Defenders
Archery for Corruptors
Demon Summoning for Masterminds

Scroll down. Caltrops and Triage Beacon are linked (since those are the same as the Corruptor versions), but the other powers use Defender specific Pseudo Pets and those are not linked.

It has been confirmed that the AoE buffs will not affect the caster.

The main reason I find to take Leadership on an MM is for Tactics. I tend to slightly prefer Maneuvers over Assault for the pre-requisite (and will take both if I have room) but at the end of the day Tactics is the critical one.

With the upcoming change to MMs in Incarnate Trials the importance of Tactics decreases a bit but it's still pretty important while working on your level shifts and it's always useful in regular content for ensuring that your lower ranked minions can consistently hit.

Awesome, thank you very much.

I do have a bug report for you, however. For some of the newer pseudo-pet based powers the link to the pseudo-pet is still missing from the main power. In particular Traps for Defenders:
http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...der_Buff.Traps

The Pseudo Pets are in the database, they just aren't getting linked.

That isn't quite true anymore since all of the Epic pools got upgraded to 5 powers. But I agree that was almost certainly the original design intent.

I don't disagree with the assertion that they shouldn't have to. However, I also really, really doubt that the devs are going to do anything about it.

So with that in mind if someone is planning to spend time going through the arc list in a quixotic attempt to down-rate farm arcs wouldn't it make more sense to spend that effort on something that is both constructive and more likely to actually work?

Yes they do, which is why we have buff bars and the character info window and the power attributes monitor. Even when everybody had the same power colors relying on the visual effects to tell what your team mates were doing was very unreliable.

I rarely pay any attention to the graphics of power effects but instead keep an eye on my buff bar and occasionally the buff bars of my teammates to tell how things are going. That is a much more reliable way to tell if teammates are using their powers than trying to spot the visual effects.

This is pretty much my attitude. Caltrops is ok with no extra slotting but I'd rather slot it for some recharge and slow than damage procs. I use Caltrops to keep enemies out of my, the extra damage it contributes through procs is not particularly useful compared to the damage output from my primary.

Agreed. YouTube switched from a 5-star system to a like/dislike system and I, personally feel that this sort of thing works a LOT better.

I agree. The problem is that the best way to do this would require the devs to legitimize AE farming by having a farm/story setting in the creator (and moderate it's use) and unfortunately I doubt they are willing to do that.

Let me ask you a question, is it unethical to one-star a story arc without playing it simply because it's a story arc?

While the design intent of the AE was to allow people to tell stories the fact is that farm arcs are here to stay. The devs seem to have reached a point of grudging acceptance of non-exploitative farm arcs and in all honesty it's not something they can stop unless they are willing to remove rewards from AE missions altogether.

Now you, personally, dislike farm arcs, that's fine it's your right. But going through and down rating them based solely on your dislike serves no purpose whatsoever except to make you feel a bit better. Now the person who wrote the arc is unlikely to care so in that sense you aren't hurting anybody but, still, it's not classy.

Instead of going through and down rating farm arcs what about instead trying to start a grass-roots effort to make story arcs more accessible? There was, at one point, an effort to [url=http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Mission_Architect_Tags]setup a standard set of "tags"[/quote] to help define search criteria. Encourage people to find story arcs, play them, rate them and then send the author a tell encouraging them to add the [SFMA] tag to their description? Yes, it's a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place but unless the devs are willing to implement a "story/non-story" tag as part of the official description and actually enforce it's use this sort of effort is probably the best way to try and make it easier to separate the farms from the stories.

Correct. There are three pet types in Lore: Boss, Lt, and Support. The Boss and Lt. pets are always tagetable however the support pet is untargetable in the Total Radial Improved Ally and Radial Superior Ally. However the untergetable support pets are prue supprot and have no attack powers.

Actually the original design intent for Task Forces was for a group of friends to do them over the course of a few days. The idea of running them in a few hours came once the game was released.

It is open to all at the moment but isn't like that all of the time. Instructions to connect to it:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=261679

I disagree, especially on the Trials. Yes, you can mostly rely on your pets and AoEs in normal content but in the long AV fights for the trials you really want some decent single target attacks. Your pets will go squish pretty quickly (since you can't order them out of AoE range) and cycling your AoEs against an AV is less efficient in terms of DPS (not to mention using more endurance).

I'd also disagree about slotting a taunt set in Omega Maneuver. If you're going to use it you really want it doing damage, the taunt effect is small and fleeting so damage is the way to go.