ClawsandEffect

I have a vampire themed DM/SR brute.

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Electric blasts should do more damage accross the board for Blasters, corruptors, defenders. They feel really weak.

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The single target blasts already DO deal more damage than most other sets, probably to make up for the fact that Electric doesn't get a third one.

My list:

Psionic Blast for blasters. Played one to 28 and it was just "meh" the whole time. Defender version is fine.

Electric blast for any defender except Kinetics. Kinetics is the only defender set that can make this dog of a powerset worth taking on a defender. Blaster and corruptor version are okay in my book.

Sonic Resonance on a Defender or Corruptor, it's a horrible soloing set if you don't have a pet to put Disruption Field on, And on teams it is outshined by Force Field and Thermal respectively. Controller version is alright.

Fiery Aura for scrappers. The 75% resistance cap really hurts this set on scrappers, since it is pretty much all resistance and damage powers. Tanks and brutes can both get up to 90%, which makes it a little more worthwhile. Not saying it's a bad scrapper set, just underperforming in comparison to the rest.

Electric Armor for stalkers. 75% resist cap, low HP, and zero defense in the entire set make for a bad mix on stalkers. Add in the fact that the hardest hitting attack stalkers have is interruptible and you have a losing combination.

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flying surfboard pool (flight)

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You mean Flying Trademark Infringement pool?

Your other two ideas there are fine. I think Marvel pretty much has this locked down. NCSoft got away with claws/regen because it's a broader set of possibilities, used by many different characters.

Only ONE character I know of has a flying surfboard as a travel power. Pretty sure they'd have an issue with that.

Okay, there's WilyKit and WilyKat from Thundercats, but that's about it.

My wife and I duoed it on an Ill/Storm troller and a BS/DA scrapper. If the two players involved are used to working together it will go pretty smooth most of the time.

I do NOT advise duoing Posi with a complete stranger.

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assuming a competent team

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I've never run a Cavern trial that wasn't a PuG. I never assume a competent team, because I am all too often disappointed then. I always assume a completely retarded team so I'm pleasantly surprised when I get a good one.

For a natural, non-powered human character Martial Arts is even stretching it a bit.

It is feasible to perform a maneuver similar to Eagle's Claw, but the slow motion part of it is impossible. A highly trained, extremely acrobatic martial artist (Tony Jaa comes to mind) could perform a jump kick and push off their target into a backflip, but it would be a very quick motion.

The only power in Martial Arts I could see making its way into a Street Fighting or Brawling set is Crane Kick. I can personally perform a side kick that looks similar to that and I am completely untrained, everything else in MA is beyond me. Even Thunder Kick, you need to train for a while before you can kick that high without losing your balance or pulling a hamstring.

I'd like to see something like this:

Tier 1) 1-2 Punch - Barrage animation without the pompoms.

Tier 2) Gut Shot - Smite animation, small chance of immobilize due to the wind being knocked out of them.

Tier 3) Head Butt - New animation, Good chance of disorient.

Tier 4) Build Up - Do I need to explain this one?

Tier 5) Throw Sand/Dust - A dirty trick used to temporarily blind your opponent. -Perception, To-Hit debuff, small chance to disorient. Backhand throw, like Char and Spectral Wounds.

Tier 6) Confront - Gotta have it in there somewhere. 2 handed "Come get some" animation.

Tier 7) Side Kick - Crane Kick renamed. Functionally identical.

Tier 8) Some kind of AoE - Really, really, really don't want to use the Whirling-Everything-Under-the-Sun animation here, and Dragon's Tail isn't very appropriate to an untrained brawler.

Tier 9) Monster Uppercut - I'd like to have this with the KO Blow animation with the "windup" removed. Just a slow, powerful uppercut with a mag 3 stun. Maybe knockup as well. (Edit: maybe the "baseball pitch" amimation used for Impale instead, described as a powerful overhand punch)

You can fill it out some more with pool powers, Jab, Kick, and Air Superiority would fit nicely and wouldn't recycle any animations. Mostly animations that already exist in the game already, would just need to balance them around other melee sets.

The whole point of it is to not be shoving new players at the AE building first thing when they log in.

If the Atlas and Galaxy buildings were removed and Kings Row was the first one you encountered, brand new players would see more of the game before they're exposed to AE.

The MAJOR gripe I have with the current system is that when the Architect Engineer pops up he replaces your initial contact. If someone wasn't looking at the screen right when they zoned in they may not realize for a while that they have more than one contact they can talk to.

So, my suggestion has been slightly modified.

Remove the AE buildings from Atlas and Galaxy and set it to where the Architect Engineer pops up at level 5 instead.

In NO WAY does it restrict access to AE. You can still go there and use it at level 1. Kings Row is NOT hard to navigate at level 1, I have done it many times without issue. If new players choose to create a new character and do nothing but AE, that is just fine, I'd just like them to see that they have other options before they do.

As I stated in another thread:

Not doing something because you don't want to is one thing. That is a decision based on preference.

Not doing something because you don't know you have the option to is another. You have to know you have a choice before you can make a choice.

With the current setup a lot of new players don't realize that AE is a nice addition to the game....they think it IS the game. I'd like to see that changed.

I don't CARE about the farmers. None of these things will stop them in the slightest. Sure, they will scream bloody murder if AE is removed from Atlas, and it might slow them down when they come to the forums to complain, but they WILL eventually shut up and move somewhere else. They will keep doing exactly what they're doing now, in the exact same building somewhere else. All AE buildings are identical, does it really matter what zone it's in? Really, does it?

This suggestion has nothing to do with stopping farmers, and everything to do with giving new players time to figure stuff out before shoving them into AE.

Sounds like either BS or the set is bugged

I'd go with the Kin/Sonic defender. When you get to the point that you're fighting AVs (a 4 person team will spawn AVs on Tenacious difficulty, if I recall correctly) the Kinetics will boost the damage output of the whole team, and the -res from Sonic will also increase the teams damage, possibly even ABOVE the damage cap, since -res is not counted when the cap is calculated.

Any of the kins will work, but that combo will fill a hole that you will have in the late game.

I advise the second scrapper also take Dark Armor, a pair of Oppressive Glooms both running at once will stun bosses. A kin will help a LOT with their endurance issue in the low levels.

Just because you are on their server friends list does not mean they can tell where you are. If you /gignore them they can send you tells all day, but cannot find you unless they actually see you somewhere.

You won't see their local or broadcast chat either

Wow, I'll have to remember not to invite any of you arachnophobic people to our house.

My wife and I collect tarantulas.

We have 27.

They are in our bedroom.

3 of them have medically significant bites (won't kill you if you're not allergic to them, but you will hate life for a couple days)

Also, the jumping spider that someone posted earlier was cute

Edit: I can't stand centipedes myself. Any centipede that comes near me is a many-legged grease spot waiting to happen.

I figure things out pretty quickly, so I don't think I was ever a complete noob (I spent the entire time the game was loading reading and re-reading the game manual, which at the time was actually relevant)

I did make some mistakes though. On my first character I was still using training enhancements at level 22 because I didn't know there was a difference (I thought that as you leveled they would automatically change, I knew there were different kinds)

I made a Sonic/Ice blaster and deleted him because he couldn't solo at all (later to discover that Sonic/Ice is one of the best soloing blasters in the game)

I had Jump Kick, Combat Jumping and Super Jump on one character, and Flurry, Hasten, and Super Speed on another because I thought you had to start at the top and take them all in order.

I knew about the color of enemies names because I sort of paid attention in the tutorial. I kept running from orange bosses because I didn't realize that they conned higher depending on their rank. Thought he was 2 levels higher than me.

I was a newb, but I don't think I was too much of a n00b. I actually listened to people when they offered advice and a number of people helped me out a lot when I first started. As a result of my gratitude I try to help new players out myself as much as I can.

It is actually very likely there will be some form of CoH 2 eventually. I would not, however, expect to see a sequel any time soon.

Edit: Spellchecker you've failed me again!

Also, consider going with Electric Mastery for another AoE cone. Howl first to debuff the spawn and Static Discharge immediately afterward makes for a nice 1-2 combo.

My preferred use of Siren's Song also includes having Screech (and maybe Stun). Sleep the mob, wake one up with Screech (so it is stunned and still doesn't shoot back) kill it with single target attacks. Keep going through the mob until it's all dead. You'd be surprised at how fast you can get throgh missions once you get good at that. Will also let you use your melee attacks in almost complete safety.

Before Defiance 2.0 Flares blew chunks.

Now it is one of the best tier 1 blaster attacks available (second only to Shriek from Sonic in my book)

Take em both, and love the fact that your damage output hardly even drops when you're mezzed in the early levels.

(I'm one of the weirdos that slots Ring of Fire for damage too)

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Mind, Plant and Illusion can even engage battles with enemies scrappers of the same level wouldnt dare attack

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Methinks the scrappers you have seen are wusses. I have seen nothing in the game a real scrapper wouldn't attack.

Silly domesticated scrappers keep forgetting how to kill things

So, in other words, you get the most people playing?

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Do they? I mean seriously, do they really?

What kind of MMO would be nothing but one zone, where you go through a portal and watch the same guys kill the same thing over and over so you can hit the level cap in a day or two? What kind of game is that?

What kind of MMO would have an entire "class" that was full of useless powers just to 'kill time' before real powers?

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You're assuming that the players in question know enough about MMOs to have an idea what they should expect.

What if they AREN'T familiar with MMOs in general? They can only react to what they see. If they aren't shown that there is more to it, they likely will not expect there to be more to it.

Who looks for something when they don't know that they should be looking for it?

They're identical to their normal mission counterpart. If you can beat them in their mission, you can beat them in AE, and I would presume, vice-versa.

Custom AVs can be chumps or they can be insanely difficult, depending on how they're built.

5xCrushing Impact and a LotG +Recharge.

Edit: I slot Parry the same way.

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5) Burn has low accuracy.

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I question the accuracy of this statement. I'm pretty sure Burn is auto-hit if they are within it's radius. I don't recall even being able to SLOT for accuracy outside of sets.

I actually kind of like the fact that it's slow. I don't plan on speccing mine for too much recharge, because I like the feel the set has of methodically hacking your way through a crowd.

The gaps in my attack chain help me conserve endurance too

I had it on my BS/DA and specced out of it as soon as I could. It just wasn't reliable enough for me since my damage aura has no taunt component.

I could see taking it for any of the 3 sets that have functioning taunt auras (Invuln, WP, SD), but not for anything else.

For anything below AV level, my vote goes to Broadsword/Dark Armor.

When fighting most enemy groups you can basically ignore minions while you focus on LTs and Bosses. The minions stagger around stunned from Oppressive Gloom while taking damage from Death Shroud. By the time you finish with the LTs and Bosses they will all be either dead or close enough to drop with a single attack.

For AVs, anything SD or SR is pretty solid, except Spines.

Nothing particularly wrong with it, but like TheGodofGods said, I would never use that build.

My reasoning: You took a power set with already weak ST damage and made it non-existent. Lunge is completely unslotted and you didn't even TAKE Impale (which I consider one of the best powers in the set)

I would never invite this character to help me kill an AV simply because of the complete lack of single target damage. (For that matter, if I'm fighting an AV, a Spines/Fire will be the LAST scrapper I invite if I have options, and I have one myself, so it's not set-prejudice)

You will mow through minions and maybe LTs with ease, but single hard targets will give you problems. One such problem being that when you only have one target your edurance efficiency goes in the dumper, AoEs have higher endurance usage because they are designed to hit multiple targets, and generally tend to do lower damage than ST attacks as well. If you're using Spine Burst and Throw Spines on an AV with no ST options available to you, you are basically wasting endurance.