Basilisk

I've gotta agree that simply replacing Havoc punch with Electric whip would be a very, very bad idea if the only justification is "it'd be cool". Not only would it set a bad precedent, but it essentially means overruling X many people's existing concepts in favour of your one. Personally, I rather like that Electric doesn't have any specific weapon association, and as Shadow State said, having only one whip attack is kind of silly, if there's no internal support for it.

As a weapon customization option, sure, but as a wholesale replacement, pass.

Ok, I've got one of my villains here, and I simply can't find a costume that I like for her. She's an ex-member of the FLQ, a terrorist organization dedicated to Quebecois independence, which lead to the declaration of the War Measures Act in Canada in the 70s. She left, feeling the FLQ wasn't "committed" enough to the cause, and now fights on, hoping to lead the province in a dictatorship.

She's a mutant with the ability to create various psionic effects, and recruits people to her cause by brainwashing them (a Mercs/Dark mastermind).

Problem is, I can't find anything that really calls to me for a costume for her. I kind of want to avoid the "soldier" sort of look, partly because I'm more a fan of traditional comic costumes, and partially because of the fact that she's less a soldier than she is a psionic with a mission.

Here's War Measures' costume as it is now:



I'd like to keep the colours in common with the Quebec flag (yes, I realize the blue in the costume I have posted is much lighter than the one in the link), but other than that I don't have any hard ideas as to what I'm looking for with her- which is half of the problem. Even the "no soldier" thing could be forgiven if there were a look I liked.

I do have all of the costume boosters so far, as well as valkyrie. However, I don't have any costume pieces unlocked on this character from in-game triggers, such as the roman or vanguard set. (Though they're not too hard to unlock, so that's not necessarily a restriction.)

I look forward to seeing what the brainpower in this forum can produce, because mine is just not up to the task in this case.

So, yeah...

I'm sorry, that was supposed to be tough?

If the devs were to go through and remove some 98% of mezzes from NPC characters, then I *might* support something like this, but as it is, mezzes are WAAAAAAAYY* too prolific for something like this to even be considered. Virtually every group has some way of taking you out of the fight, every fight, and the only way to keep ahead of it with a non-mez-protected character is to quickly kill or otherwise disable the offending mobs, or to ensure you stay the hell out of their range, and neither option works terribly well for melee characters, hence why they have the mez protection in the first place.

Look at the Metal Smasher, for example. Spawns at level 28+ as a minion. Comes equipped with one attack, Hammer Clap, that does a knockback effect and a Mag 2 disorient (50% chance each, 8.26s duration on the disorient), as well as two melee attacks with a chance to disorient (50% of Mag 1, 8.26s). Assume now that you're tanking for a team and you come across a spawn with 10 of these guys, rare, but not impossible. That's 30 attacks in the first few seconds that have a chance to cause some sort of bad to your tank. The odds of one enemy not landing a single disorient effect in their attack chain, then, is 1 in 8. The odds of this hypothetical mob not landing a disorient during their alpha is (and I assume I did my math right- been a while since I did stats) 1 in 1,073,741,824. That doesn't count the knockback. The only reason we don't get to see those astronomical odds is the fact that we have mez protection which keeps us safe from those paltry mezzes.

Freaks aren't the only ones with liberal use of mez and knockback. Rikti, Lost, Council, virtually all villain groups have some minion or another with at least one mez or knockback effect. Even the ones that don't make any sense, like the CoT crossbows. What, is my hero made of helium?

And yes, mezzes suppressing defensive toggles- even for a second- can easily make things go bad in a mighty fast way, particularly in AV or EB fights. One mez, followed by a hard-hitting attack while your character has no defenses, and it's game over, sucker. Come to think of it, it would probably be even worse in a packed mob. first guy hits you with a mez, and in the next second, you're smacked by his 15 buddies for everything that they've got. A tank *might* survive that, if he was at full health and the enemies aren't particularly hard hitters. Plus, because it's coming in in 15 bursts of damage, the one-shot code won't do you a damn bit of good.

In short, the heroic escape from a bind might work well in comics, but it won't work in this game.

*Shortened for legibility

I would agree that part of the problem is that some of the old content is showing its age, but I don't think that's all. We can level a lot faster now than we ever could have at game launch. Unless you put the brakes on specifically to experience all of the content, you're going to whip past arcs and probably never even know you missed them unless you pick them up later in Ouro. A lot of backstory is tied up in those arcs, and a new player doesn't get the opportunity to see as much of it.

Back to the OP, I would desperately love to see more of these "forgotten groups". I'll agree that having a few here and there that are integral to specific zones does a lot to establishing a distinct identity to the rogue isles, but there's also quite a few who come and go with no real rationale. Banished Pantheon, for example, are built up as these big bads, with the backing of the old gods, but they only show up for a short level range then disappear with no reason given. There's some portal missions at 50 that feature them, but that's about it.

Wyvern is another. I would love to see Wyvern get a lot more variety and grow into a Malta-class group of enemies. There's an awful lot of powers in the Trick Arrow set that could be used in horrible, horrible ways: huge -res, -def, slows, maybe a boss with EMP arrow. But they sort of cap out at the low end of Nerva, and there's not any reason given. At least when groups like Clockwork and Vahz disappear, there's a mission at the top of their range to explain it. It just makes me sad...

I once had an idea that something like this could cue off of powers like Heightened Senses in both SR and WP. Maybe to an "inherent" from psychic sets, too. Or just anything with a +perception component. Maybe it's not the most fair thing you could do, but at least it would make sense.

Also, I would completely /sign a motion that proposes the devs go through and improve a lot of the old hero side missions to make them fun. Huge defeat alls, missions with thousands of glowies... I get bored just thinking of them.

See, I went the other way. I met my fiancée through CoH, through the forums, in fact. There were rough patches at the beginning, but it's been almost three years that we've been together now, and when she came by at the beginning of the month, I proposed.

No, we're not having an in-game wedding. :P

Still, I agree that there's nothing better than to have a significant other to share the game with. (Almost said CoX, there. That probably would have ruined the message) It just enriches the whole experience, as far as I'm concerned.

There's also the Crey facility in Nerva. The building itself counts for Crey Employee, but the research yards behind it could be used.

Rather than a set, I could see something like a single unique IO with a proc or global effect that relates to the powerset it's associated with. For instance, you could get a fire blast IO that boosts the DoT, or an Invulnerability IO that gives a boost to Smashing and Lethal resists. The fact that they're so specific might make them easier to balance, though I can't speak to the ease or even the possibility of coding something such as a DoT damage boost.

Alternately, perhaps procs with related effects- A fire blast IO could slot into any power to give a fire doT, and an Ice one would give a recharge slow, but they can only be used by someone with fire blast or ice blast respectively...

awww... He's adorable! I see a new Avatar coming up!

It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

Happy B-day, SG!

One common thread that I find pops up quite often is the "What's the strongest AT or Build". That always seems to come up with the same half dozen answers time after time.

What I'm asking now is out of your stable of characters which one/ones kick the most butt? Either through sheer destructive ability or through fun-ness of play. (Yes, I did just make up a word.) Alternately, which would you call your weakest?

For me, I'm going to go with Pyrphoros, my Shield/Fire Tank. He's able to take almost anything you dish out at him, plus he can bring the pain in a major way. Honorable mention to Caesura, my Sonic/Traps main villain, who makes the good guys curl up and cry for mommy.

What about you?

I'd buy that.

/sign.

Doom Knight

(Dr. Doom + Moon Knight)

This is just about the only place where I have managed to get just Basilisk as my handle, the other being my SG's forum. Usually, I go around as BasiliskXVIII.

So, why Basilisk? Well, I used to go by a different handle when I first started using it, but then back in my first year of University, all my friends got into playing Starcraft. I'm not sure why, but I was just getting bored of my usual handle so I decided to change. My best friend was using the name "Chimaera", so I decided to switch to something mythological to fit alongside him. I figured things like dragons would be out since they were too common, and I didn't want something too sissy like unicorns. I nearly ended up as Manticore (just as well I didn't- I wouldn't have been able to keep it here!), but then I remembered the Magic: The Gathering deck I had just recently completed and was having a lot of fun with. It featured basilisks a-plenty. Thicket Basilisks, Stone-Tongued Basilisks. All to take out scads of enemies with a few nasty critters. So, I went with Basilisk, appended XVIII, the roman numeral of my age at the time, and went to town.

It's lasted me through 4 e-mail addresses, Diablo 2, WoW, CoH, Starcraft, among many others, and I have no intention of letting it go.

By and large, I can't see a "swinging" power working inside of a lot of our mission maps, such as the blue caves or Oranbega. Now, granted, travel powers aren't generally very heavily used within missions, but how would you get a good swing in? Even the least practical powers for enclosed areas (SJ and TP) are occasionally workable (long corridors, short bunny hops). Would you be swinging from foot long rope, or just swinging a foot then smacking into the ground?

CoH has a heck of a lot more instanced content than CO. If the intent is to have a travel power that can be used anywhere, swinging may not be feasible on these grounds alone, or at least may be so much work as to be impractical. On top of the looking stupid thing. 'Cause that's fairly important too.

No, I'm not talking about adding it to all reward rolls, though it would be nice not having to fart around with WW every time I'm looking for something specific. I agree that recipe rolls would make way too long of a list. However, recipes aren't the problem that we're trying to address here, either.

In this case, common salvage only offers 6 different options, which is a point in its favour. In addition, if the AE is supposed to be one of the options where people drop tickets to get their common salvage needs, why not make it easier? Then, there's the added annoyance of the level system. Arcane/tech, I'll admit is easy enough to find out in-game, but salvage doesn't come with little numbers on it. Why is it necessary to do all of these half-***** workarounds to compensate for information that should be there in the first place?

If changing the text on the salvage rolls is an offence to someone's sensibilities, then how about adding plaques inside the AE (preferably on the vendor level) detailing what the rolls entail? Then you could cover the whole gamut- salvage rolls and recipe rolls- without making any change to the vendor. I just don't see how making it less confusing and frustrating to get what you want is a bad thing.