Chad Gulzow-Man

Indeed. Being a Scrapper is about attacking indiscriminately until everything is down. Being a Stalker is about choosing your targets until the same has happened... with the option of making a hasty retreat if necessary.

It took me over three years to fully slot my main character's build. And it's not because I'm crazy with the altitis--I only have 5 level 50s total--I just don't get to play as much as I'd like to, and when I DO get to play, I'd rather not be farming for recipe drops. Granted, Alignment Merits had JUST been introduced when I finally finished the build, and Astral and Empyrean Merits are brand new tools for the purchase of IOs as of less than two weeks ago... so it will probably go faster for any future characters I decide to kit out.

Maybe I should have added another point: building characters can be really difficult. I remember the first build on my main Kat/SR Scrapper... I took Focused Fighting from SR (and none of the other powers), every available attack from Katana, Flurry, Jump Kick, Hover and Fly, and got stuck at level 16 until around Issue 3 when I finally brute forced my way through uncappable debt to hit level 24 and did a Respec Trial. It's obviously easier once you get some experience, especially now that we have access to "real numbers" and tools like Mids', but it can be easy to make poor choices that sound cool when you're new to the game. And that's just talking about the powers themselves, without even getting into slotting; I know several people who just don't bother with IO sets at all because they're too confusing, and just use common IOs for all their powers.

And again, if you look down at point #4, new free players won't have access to ANY of the stuff you mentioned. No Alignment Merits or IOs at all unless they fork over cash for access to them, and no Empyrean or Astral Merits unless they're VIP subscribers.

But it's okay, because the Energy/Energy Blaster just killed 90% of what was there. The rest of the team can pick up those other two guys.

There are a lot of things wrong with this paragraph.

1) Overload is not worthless. It's like Elude from Super Reflexes, with the bonus of +Max HP. You can say it's unnecessary--once you have a crazy IOed build, it kind of is--but it's not worthless.

2) Not everyone can afford a crazy IOed build, and the extra helping of +Def/+Recovery is a huge help at times. And without IOs or Power Pool powers, Energy Aura currently tops out at around 30% Def to most except Psionic; with the Power Pool +Def powers but no IOs, you're only softcapped to Energy, close at 44.5% on Fire/Cold, at 41% on Smash/Lethal, and still pretty far away at 37.5% on Negative. Overload is the only way to reach the softcap on an SO-only build. (Note: Those are Brute/Scrapper numbers, not Stalker.)

3) Pre-existing sets cannot be balanced against Inventions--they have to be completely effective when slotted solely with SOs.

4) New players that will be joining in City of Heroes Freedom (which will launch at the same time as these proliferations) will NOT have access to IOs (unless they purchase that access with real money)--they'll have to make do completely with SOs. This makes all the above points bolded, underlined, italicized and in a double-sized font.

No, this round of proliferation is stuff that's going to release with Issue 21/CoH Freedom.

I'm guessing neither of these things, but I will headdesk SO HARD if the second one comes to pass. And since it's not a month divisible by 9, I don't think there'll be a respec token this go round either.

I'm thinking bonus Paragon Reward Tokens for CoH Freedom's release, if anything aside from the badge.

FYI, Posi has already said that SG transfers will NOT go live with CoH Freedom, and will come sometime down the line.

(Obviously, I don't know the answer to the cost question.)

I did legitimately forget Maneuvers, but I was under the apparently mistaken impression that Hover and Combat Jumping were mutually exclusive, so I guess I stand corrected.

Not on a Scrapper or Brute it can't. (Not without Elude, anyway, which softcaps you all by itself with zero enhancements.)

With Weave and Combat Jumping added, all defensive powers 6-slotted with Defense SOs and no additional buffs from other powers (such as Parry) or Elude, the maximum defense you can get on a Scrapper/Brute is 41.5% on all positions.

(Of course, 6-slotting all those powers that way is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. A traditional 3 Defense SOs in each power caps Scrappers and Brutes at 39.2% to all positions.)

Stalkers make out a bit better due to Hide, and under the 6-slotted conditions above get a maximum of 46.1% to Melee and Ranged when visible and 50.7% when hidden. Their AoE defense is crazy when hidden, and still something like 49.2% when visible. (With more standard slotting, they also lose over 2% to each position for 43.6% to Melee and Ranged attacks.)

Replying to my own message here... YES, it was discussed in Ustream that Poison's debuffs will now work on a slight AoE scale. (I suppose that makes some thematic sense... a short-range AoE could be described as a "splash" from the main target.)

From the Ustream notes:
"Posion has had a quasi-revamp with improvements to the set. Current design in beta is that Poison has Venom and Weaken having small AoE effects with half the effect of original that is on the base target. The heal has been buffed. Poison Trap has intial hold instead of initial sleep, and has a Recovery debuff."

*headbutt*

That's my favorite part of this proliferation, you... person face.

Understandable. I agree.

But Synapse did specify that anything that went into this round of proliferation had to be done without the art team's help, meaning no "Assassin's Freeze" or whatever they'd call the power. So I can understand where they're coming from, too.

Who said anything about making them AoE? That wasn't in the OP... was it in the Ustream or something?

Meh. I rarely got taken out by AoEs, but the added Defense Debuff Resistance has helped immeasurably.

I still say SR is a poorly-designed powerset. Sure, it shines like gold if you dump IOs in it, but it's still a polished turd at heart.

...

"Noxious Gas (a pet targeted AoE debuff power) was replaced by Venomous Gas. This new power is a PBAoE toggle that significantly weakens enemies in close proximity to the user."

Also, not everything is bad just because it's focused on single targets vs. AoEs. Poison as it stands now on MMs is pretty great against hard targets (EB/AVs), but less so against crowds. And for crowds, you've at least got your Neurotoxic Spray that slows everyone down.

I'm assuming that Fire Blast is actually a SECONDARY for Defenders, no?

Brute SR already had a taunt component added to Evasion. I'm sure the Tanker version will keep the same.

I'm kind of worried at how absolutely easy this will be to soft-cap, too... though it'll be pretty damn funny to watch SR Tankers get one-shotted by an AV the way my SR Scrapper and Stalker always seem to.

Agreed, but I think it probably has to do with the Parry power's defense bonus. It's ridiculous for a Scrapper, and now Brutes are getting access to it as well.

I've long wondered why they didn't just give the Broadsword weapon options to the Axe powerset, and vice versa. They already use the same animations as it is.
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No Energy Melee for Scrappers makes me a saaaaaad Chad. (However, I choose to assume that the lack of Energy Melee proliferation is indicative of its need for some added love instead of just tossing it in any old place. )

But I am so totally effin' stoked for a Plants/Poison Controller!

Disagree. I was just thinking about it yesterday and said to myself, "Man, it would be so much better if the timer were 90 seconds instead of 5 minutes," so I'm pretty happy to hear of this change.

Disagree again. Once I hit the button, I want to be punching things in the face. My play time has been significantly diminished the last few months, and "waiting around" is not how I want to spend the time I do get.

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Definitely agree about being happy that they've got a potential fix for the bug about not being able to invite people to an in-progress trial, though. I can't count how many times I've popped in around 11:30 PM and heard that people just started a trial, and that it was either going to be the last run of the night or I wouldn't have time to hop on the next one before bed. Being able to hop aboard their trial would make me a much happier person.

I'd be happy to do one blue side Respec with you, but I am not farming that crap. Do not like the hero respec trials... too much sitting and waiting.

There's no OFFICIAL word on this either way. And we know for a fact that the new Time Manipulation powerset will be included with your VIP subscription.

Everything else is just speculation at this point. It was insinuated in last week's Massively.com article that one would have to pay to access Titan Weapons, but the writer of that article is in no way affiliated with the development team.

Feel free to weigh in on one side or the other, but there's no point in being infuriated months before the system is set to go live.

You mentioned, multiple times, that they dropped development for everything except the "broken" Incarnate content. Which has been out... for the last 3 months, since Issue 20 launched. I guess if you want to complain about the Tin Mage and Apex content from i19, then it's been less than 8 months total. Prior to that was an entire expansion with tons of new zones and mission content, which came out less than a year ago.

You have perhaps also failed to take into account that the issue currently in beta has completely redone the first few levels of the game and changed a lot over the first 20 levels. Oh, and that this has been in the works for the last year.

FYI, Free accounts can't use Inventions.

-PVPer stabs you in the ribs and calls you a "lolcarebear"-

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He... works for his pay, just like the rest of us? Which means doing the job his boss tells him to do, and not just the stuff he wants to do?