AzureSkyCiel

Eh, to be honest, Z, I'm mostly upset because this is my spring break and I was hoping to play with staff melee during it.

I must admit, I'm actually amused that the liger pet from April Fool's turned out to be real.

Now can we get a purchasable Jarate temp power? I'm sure Valve would LOVE to do a cross promotional with CoH!

So randomly: gathering up some interesting points some folks have made, I'm starting to think that it wasn't a question of "why Kill States and Psyche" but rather "why not?" if we are to assume just about ALL guesses are actually right.

-States and Psyche had become honestly stagnant characters, and while good writing could have saved them it wouldn't have also opened up a lot of development for EVERYONE ELSE if they died.

-Statesman and Psyche were not just among the best of the old vanguard, but were literally some of the oldest known heroes alive. (Dream Doctor, Dark Watcher, and Lady Grey as well) killing them was sort of, since they could not die naturally, probably meant to be like watching your grandfather or mother pass away and show you the old world is rapidly fading (For the times, they are a'changin'~!)

-They likely wanted someone to die who would have impact on the players, going completely opposite of the wishes of the playerbase to achieve maximum shock.

-The heroside signature roster has more than 20, well known, signature heroes who regularly show up in the lore and writing, many have redundant roles, powers, ATs (like the FP being bloated with defenders). Redside is represented by only 9, ten counting Doctor Aeon, each one tends to uniquely represent an AT and an origin. Killing of States and Psyche may have been a way to mildly reduce the overswollen blueside hero signature NPCs.

-Spiting Jack Emmert may have also been A factor, but not the only factor.

So, these four factors, if all are assumed to be correct, basically make a hard case against States and Psyche's continued existences.

I still think we could also see this as just the devs feeling the need to downsize heroside signature characters.

It's like I'm really on 4chan!
My list:

God Tier:
22, 21, 18, 12, and 10

High Tier:
14, 11, 8, 6, and 5

Good tier:
2, 3, 7, 9, 16

Lame Tier:
13, 4

Bad and you should feel bad Tier:
1, 15

1. Devs want us to make a character, or it's implied a de-riktified Honoree will take over. But Positron will probably not allow that since Hero One would obviously outshine and overshadow Positron.

2. Yes

3. Recluse: AndNotASingleF#%$WasGivenThatDay.jpeg

4. Nope.avi

5. M.BisonOFCOURSE.avi

Well, in the defense of Paragon Studios, heroside NPCs did need a bit of downsizing a streamlining to a degree.

I mean in the ranks of heroes we have the entirety of the Freedom Phalanx (including Sister Psyche and Statesman for this) with seven members. Eight if you want to include BAB, but apparently Statesman never did. (Product of his era, I guess) You have NINE Vindicators, the Faultline Trio, two out of four members of WISDOM (Why can't Rose Star be in the game? I mean seriously, her powers can't be too add to replicate).

It all starts to get confusing I suppose, and writing uniquely for all of them must become a strain on the overclocked writers who have already been told to just ignore the established lore by Positron himself just to save that much more time.

Now Villainside you have Nine bigwigs of Arachnos. Lord Recluse at the top, the four Generals, and their lieutenants.
Smooth, streamlined, simple to remember, and Lord Recluse plus the Four Generals easily make up each of the five villain ATs.

Of course, if that was the case, the Devs need to kill off A LOT more NPC heroes. And of course, the Devs kept saying this was about promoting the player character. Well sure, it promotes HERO player characters, but Villains are still stuck beneath their glass ceiling. Regardless of what Lord Recluse might say to you in Time and Again, you still end up kissing his butt for the LRSF, still end up getting downtalked by him in the Mender Tesseract SF (due to circumstances unforeseeable on your part and out of your control, when you were helping him in the past OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF YOUR OWN FREE WILL), and nine out of ten times in Story Arcs or newspapers, it's all about Arachnos.

TL;DR Maybe heroes did need some downsizing, but if we're going for downsizing, we need to kill off a lot more. If we're going for players rising above the NPCs, than we need Lord Recluse to die too.

Here's an alternate animation I'd like for a newer set:
I would like the Tier Nine for Beam Rifle to have the alternate animation of "painting" a target for a Satellite Cannon blast.

The big difference I see is having the animations being that the blast comes from above rather than from the actual rifle, maybe have the rifle still pointed at the target and projecting a Targetting Laser on them.

My theory is that the Well of Furies is actually commonly known as Ishtar of Babylonian myth, The Goddess of Love, Lust, and War.
In truth, this means that no one really WANTS her notice or favor in the long run because Gilgamesh himself cites that only bad things happen to those who have the interests of Ishtar.
Unfortunately for old Gil, rebuking her interests also does not end well.

Though if this were true, I would demand we drop Pappa Smurf and get Gilgamesh to step up as our new Incarnate Lore instructor, desiring revenge against the Well for killing Enkidu.

You know, the three mission format may have been the first thing that shot the devs in the foot with the sig arcs.

Closest I can think of are EAT ideas such as:

Vanguard Heavy Assault Armor (Mecha AT):
Special mechanics would be involve the new pop-up power bar in Beta, a set centered around it's shifted form with something of a very stripped down SoA set as a handful of inherent attacks (plus maybe an armor or two) for being outside of the suit, and power selections going towards the mecha form.

Midnighter Archmagus (Magical Sorcerer AT):
I imagine the powersets for this set would feature a branching AT system like SoAs. Also, while tied in with the lore, this would also basically allow the Devs to, for once, go hogwild and make a purely magically themed powerset and animations, which is something some players have hoped for.

Rikti:
Nuff: Said

Well, my proposal to buff tankers has been a passive sort of self buff aura that grants additional resistance to various Debuffs such as recharge, damage, tohit, and possibly defense, regen, recovery, etc.

This would mean that while one can completely mob a tank, they really have to fight through all those defenses and NPC mobs won't beable to debuff your armors into oblivion.

Okay, so we've got the Praetorian invasion to wrap up like Winter, and then it's the Coming Storm.
But then what? I mean incarnate content, the whole system even, is supposed to be an on going thing like a terrible comic book series, right? Because I'm gonna hold you to that, Devs.

Anyway though, so I say that in this thread, we propose what incarnates should do after The Coming Storm.

Mine is: The Challenges of Valhalla.

Upon defeating what had been feared to be Ragnarok, Odin merrily invites heroes and villains alike to parttake of the riches of Valhalla.
-Repeatable missions are between One on One duels against mythical heroes or recreating their legendary deeds with your own (better) twists on them.
-The iTrial will be a Tournament in which a league of up to 24 players will battle 24 Heroes in mock army battles.
-And an Epic, Incarnate level story arc will have heroes learn Loki may not have been guilty as Odin suspects, and Ragnarok may still be on the horizon, unless you can prevent it.
-Meanwhile though, villains are contacted by the frost giants and given a once-in-a-life time opportunity to learn how to steal the powers of Asgard for themselves. (And this time, you are not backstabbed and you do get temp powers and bonus at the end. Sure heroes will get the same reward, but the point is this is a villain arc where you actually get a pay off)

Now as for why I think this might be good: It let's us delve into the Legendary lore of City of, just what were the Ancient gods of the verse, and what they're up to now? It also is meant to be sort of a breather episode after an Interdimensional War and the Coming Storm. Plus it lets us move OUT of Greek myth for just a little and bring in perhaps the second most popular mythology.

Now here's hoping Marvel isn't a jerk and says "NO! NORSE MYTHOLOGY IN A SUPER HERO SETTING IS COPYRIGHT OF US!"

I agree with the sentiments that some of the new NPC powers are proving ridiculously awesome compared to what PCs get.
I've long wanted Air Cutter sword type attacks for my katana user for a long time now. I'm also jealous of how the female tsoo have the Yakuza tattoos and to date, female PCs can only have forearm tattoos.

Now my personal speculation is starting to become that there won't BE a 22.5, and possibly not even a 23.5, but just straight issues with no in-betweeners.

Well, if you wanna know what might be a good buff for scrappers? (though my scrappers still feel perfectly fine)
Here's an old proposal I had: in addition to the scrapper's present mechanic, maybe for every crit they land or just every attack, they get a small to moderate recharge buff to their primary attack powers.

Though this in of itself could become a drawback since it means scrappers are burning their end faster than ever.

I should note, I don't really see anything wrong with scrappers. I just kind of like the idea of the building recharge stacks.

92. Vanguard's newest anti-Rikti ship munition. Hey, it worked back in the Rikti war with him flying through a ship, just imagine when he can do when flying at them at mach 5!

93. Send him to Vernon Von Grunt!

I had been using the map before with the old BP as a farm, when I discovered the new BP were there with issue 22, I had to smirk, I couldn't help but imagine that the Devs heard my snide remarks about Unai being "Dev Approved Farming" and decided: "you know, that Azure guy's comments are jarate-ing me off! Let's show him how fun his farm is with enemies that aren't power dated by twenty levels!"

Welp, thanks for spicing that up, Devs. It was a nice challenge, but since I only farm to help friends get through boring levels, it means I had to move on, finally.

Scrapper, tanker, and brute-

Voltaic Mastery:
Electric Fence
Shocking Bolt
Voltaic Sentinel
Lightning Bolt
Static Discharge

Stalker-

Tesla Mastery:
Lightning Bolt
Zapp
Thunder Clap
Short Circuit
Gremlins