Dante

Wow. Way to ignore the poll there.

Do us a favour and just withdraw the poll next time and stop pretending that surveys like this make any kind of difference.

What a disappointment.

I like them both just not necessarily when they work together. Sometimes they can be awesome but other times it just feels like the same old thing over and over again.

I don't think it's any co-incidence that I think that Burton's finest film is Big Fish.

I've retired a few of my 50s IC once I felt that their story was told. A lot of the time, rather than death, I prefer to just move them on to other activies. They had lives before becoming heroes and often have lives afterwards too.

The Amber Banshee became the administrator and figurehead for The Militia, using her status to run the group, report to the FSBA and keep an eye on the Academy, the sub-group we created for new starters.

Karnac returned to his love of genetics and works at the Militia's Hyperion Clinic to help civillians (and potentially new heroes) to understand their mutations and incorporate them into their lives. Not all mutations are helpful of course.

Dragonstar only became a hero because of a girl he was after who left to travel around the world. Once he felt he'd paid his dues as a hero, he took his bike and rode off into the sunset, hoping to find her again.

I'm sure there's more but I can remember them all. I dislike killing off characters wholesale as I can never bring them back without turning death into the revolving door that it is in comics. And that always annoys me no end. I'd far rather have the potential to bring them back if I chose to.

Praetoria can burn in a fire as far as I'm concerned. After almost two years, I'm sick to the back teeth of it. So no, Hamidon can consume the rest of the world and be happy.

The only time I want to see him again is if we have to make him an ally in order to take on the Battalion.

Wow, that was tough to do. I had to work out which I hated more, Superpacks or Incarnate content.

This made me laugh, thank you.

Although Hulk's pose reminds me too much of a certain horrific image that used to be circulated before Rickrolling became the new in thing to do. Veterans of the internet may well shudder to recall it.

And a winning save by Dr Aeon!

Thank you, that's just about perfect.

Still my favourite rendition of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAG9q4qFpdo



Happy St George's Day to my fellow Englanders.

My response was:

*looks at signature and raises hand*

Hi, I'm Dante and I'm an altaholic too.

For what it's worth, I try to make little goals along the way that help to keep me interested and invested in playing the character. Or, if I'm on an RP character, I try to involve them with a group or SG so there's some investment in keeping them going. Here's my list of goals that I keep in mind when trying to overcome my affliction:

Level
-----

4) Pool powers and travel options
12) Dual Origin Enhancements open up
18) Tends to be a good power on most sets
20) Costume slot!
22) Single Origin Enhancements open up
26) Again, normally a good power here
28) Ditto for secondaries
30) Normally where I start slotting IO sets plus another costume slot
32) Final Primary power, normally a humdinger
35) Patron and Ancilliary pools open, a chance for more customisation. ITF opens up, always a good acid test for any character that's got this far.
38) Final Secondary power, normally good.
40) Another costume slot
45) Top tier TFs and lots of slots to finalise a build with.
50) Incarnates (if you're into that kind of thing).

So far, it looks great. And if I can get my next Android phone sorted out soon, I may be able to test as well.

Just want to point out something though before you get too far down the design process:

As much as I would love to see higher level and more grotesque Vahzilok (always one of my favourite groups in game), after the Circle of Thorns catastrophe, I don't want them to touch any more groups in game no matter how 'dated' their appearance may be.

They'll do them when it's profitable enough to do so.

I see the business sense, I hear the cost cutting arguments and totally understand but I'm disappointed to see it's once again the EU players who get the shaft.

I wonder how long it will be before all EU accounts get closed because of cuts.

Not a good day for anyone, my sympathies to our loyal French and German companions.

Of course, all of this speculation is dependent on the writers having written the story that far ahead.

The real issue with Kinetics is that it's a very demanding powerset. It gives you and your allies huge amounts of recharge which means most of your Kin powers will be up most of the time so whatever you pair with it can get crowded out in the middle of a fight. My Illusion/Kin Controller is fun but only because I can get Phantom Army and Flash out very regularly.

On a positive note, with the changes to group buffs, you won't have to spend 10 seconds or so targetting and buffing all of your team every two minutes.

If you're going for a Kin Defender, I recommend Ice or Dark. Both sets are quite quick with fast animations (mostly) and benefit from Kinetic's power boosting capabilities. One thing to consider is that to benefit from Kinetics yourself, you will be in melee range a lot so consider sets that have PBAoEs or any kind of melee mitigation if you can. My personal favourite is Oppressive Gloom from the Defender Dark epic.

You may not wish to be a Speed Boost Buffbot but Kin's powers are so potent, the set has the potential to overshadow whatever other powers you take. Of course, how you choose to balance this is entirely up to you. Enjoy, whatever you take, Kin is a lot of fun.