Chad Gulzow-Man

I really liked that they did a costume piece--especially a new costume piece--but I don't want to get into an argument about gender bias again.

Actually I'm pretty sure what the OP is talking about has to do with changing to different tiers of the different Hybrid powers. As such, it's actually NOT because of problems unlocking the Hybrid slot, but because nearly everyone uses the 1 inf Empyrean Merits in beta to immediately jump to T4 without testing the intermediate stages.

The only way to have accurately (that is to say, not through luck) caught this bug before launch would have been to disable the penny merits from the Ouro vendors.

Translation: "This set doesn't have any +Def."

Reply: No U!

... But keep Cyclops dead.

Lots of debuffs (especially -Regen, so ask everyone to at least TRY for a Longbow Cataphract Lore pet, which are T3/T4 Core options), 3-4 Ultimate inspirations each run to combat the effects of "the purple patch," and a bunch of +Damage. Hold onto the Lore pets until he's down to 30% health, and make sure to keep Ultimates active every they drop (IIRC, they last 2 min each).

Also, make sure people actually MOVE when Tyrant is about to fire his lightning AoE. Pets can't get hurt by it, so they're fine mobbing him... but a lightning blast will take down a player in just a few seconds. Ranged fighters and debuffers should be able to continue spamming attacks, but the lightning fields do unfortunately create a window where melee fighters have little they can participate.

Finally, it never hurts to dump a couple Team Insps if it's something you're invested in. Reds or yellow/reds are very helpful, but purples, oranges and purple/oranges can't hurt either.



Oh, another weird trick I almost forgot about... somebody found out tonight that using Poison Trap on Tyrant would occasionally make him vomit (as it's supposed to), but with a little lucky timing, it'll interrupt his lighting field attack.

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MP also ran a standard run for practice right before the Really Hard Way run, just to get everybody warmed up and used to dodging the lightning.

Seconding this. I think this is my favorite Freebie Friday offering so far.

Don't ignore the fact that Jack created the Statesman character prior to working on CoH. If he decided to get spiteful and threaten a copyright lawsuit (which I don't think anyone would put past him), Paragon wouldn't have had much other choice. A cheezy, one-dimensional character isn't worth whatever negative publicity a lawsuit would have generated.

I'm sure they did... since, y'know, that's the day Inventions became a thing in the game.

... except for all the signature characters in Fort Trident.

Ms. Liberty, by the way, now appears in three places at once.

Wouldn't that be +6 with Incarnate shifts? Alpha +1, Omega +1, Destiny/Lore/Mind/Vitae +4 (Incarnate shifts only)?



I'll be honest, I've kinda been wondering if they'll do something weird with Mind and Vitae where they'll each offer "half" an Incarnate shift, requiring both to be T3/T4 slotted to get +1.

You're ignoring the obvious here--it says hypothetical level 60. At no point does it ever say "You will con as level 60 for combat purposes."

I generally consider every Incarnate power I unlock and slot to be an extra "level," because each makes me stronger than I was previously. (That's not to say I call myself a level 56 Scrapper or anything; I con at 50+3.)

You know "Mr. Bruce" is the one who championed Power Customization and actually got it done, right?

Are you forgetting the 1-20 content in Praetoria, which was part of the expansion and worked almost exactly as described? The only difference is that your choices determined your status as a Loyalist or Resistance member, rather than Hero or Villain, and there were good and evil paths to traverse on each.

Interesting... An argument could be made for getting the devs to allow them on iTrials--all powers that are purchased from the store with real money are supposed to be usable in all content.

My best friend is a UI specialist. I tried to get him to apply a couple years back when he was out of a job, but he gave me the "you're talking crazy" look.

(Living on the opposite side of the country didn't do much for his interest in the job, either.)

They initially tried to revamp PVP for two major reasons: because a lot of players just didn't like it and the nerfs made to players in PVE for PVP reasons (since the systems were originally one in the same), and because "City of Hero" (the Korean port of the game) was floundering, and the investors felt that a more active PVP community might save it. Castle, the lead powers developer before Synapse, heard the complaints of what people didn't like about what is now usually called "i12 PVP" and came up with some ideas on how to counteract those problems, as well as a way to divorce the PVE and PVP systems so players would no longer have to worry about being nerfed for balance in one system while participating in the other. (See Energy Melee: once the king of single target damage, now one of the most underperforming attack sets in the game in all areas but burst damage... mostly because it was considered overpowered in PVP.)

After Castle's initial round of changes--which were intended, as I said, to be the first steps in a long-standing project--the members of the PVP community who had been invited to the beta hated it and leaked all the changes outside of the closed beta, all but ruining the developers' ability to get decent data and feedback on the changes. There were harsh words on both sides of the ensuing arguments--one of the former community reps actually lost his job over a comment he made retorting to the already enraged PVPers--and it was decided to put PVP in maintenance mode until things had cooled off enough to try again.

Unfortunately, Castle took another job offer, so PVP hasn't changed a whole lot since. The existing development team is understandably wary of broaching the subject again, though Posi has said on record a few times that they have some ideas they'd like to try when they've got room in the development schedule, but it is unlikely that they'll be anywhere near as sweeping as those changes made in i13.

(In my humble opinion, PVP isn't really any worse off after Issue 13 than before it. Some things that were problems before were fixed, some new problems arose as a result, but mostly, the changes that Castle made were cranked all the way to 11 when they should have been set more in the 2-5 range.)

Hey, a friend of mine has a really friggin' awesome Wicked Witch-themed staff user that uses the broom. That's totally magic-themed.

Have later trials drop more salvage, with a salvage roll after every major confrontation? Allow Common and Uncommon salvage as rare drops from combat in later trials? Have "Advanced Incarnate Shifts" tied to the new slots that only function in the new trials to keep people from "outlevelling" the existing trials?

And to be fair to Ultimus, the only part of his plan I was shooting down was the new currency bit. They can start capping BAF, Lambda and Keyes to give out only Common and Uncommon reward rolls upon completion once you have both Hybrid and whatever its partner is unlocked. As long as A) they still give out at least 1 Empyrean Merit per day and B) they still give a reward roll upon completion, then they still allow players to work towards their goals at a day-by-day pace, though they cease to offer a chance at the big rewards.

Neither the developers or players want this.

The best solution would be to simply increase the amount of salvage necessary to craft later Incarnate powers. A Tier 1 suddenly requires 3 Commons, 3 Uncommons and 2 Astral Merits; a Tier 2 requires 3 Commons, 3 Uncommons, 2 Rares and 4 Astrals and 1 Empyrean Merit... and so on.

I'm honestly really surprised they didn't do this for Hybrid. They were willing to charge Empyreans to unlock the bonus Alpha, Interface, Judgement and Destiny powers before people (rightly) complained that it didn't make any sense to do so... but that's because there was a precedent with the bonus Lore powers and the fact that some of the new powers fit thematically on characters better than others. But there shouldn't be anything stopping them from doing so on powers NEW Incarnate slots.

This.

And though I'd rather he were Street Justice/Willpower, I'm pretty fond of my namesake as a Katana/SR Scrapper.

... Also this.

Nope (just checked). But Water Blast is on the beta server--you just have to buy it from the store.