Expeditor

I'm not sure about AV soloing but:

Mind link works fine solo - it's a PBAoE buff, affecting you and any allies who happen to be nearby.

I'm pretty sure I've seen fort builds with melee attacks - there's no reason you can't make a hybrid melee/ranged/control/support/defence build! Also worth noting whereas a Night Widow's Build Up is mutually exclusive with Follow-Up, a Fortunata can take both Aim and Follow-Up. The melee attacks and generally faster animating and harder hitting than the ranged psi attacks, so they would probably be more viable for AV soloing, although a couple of psi attacks would probably be useful for those AVs that are particularly vulnerable to psi.

Foresight's scaling resistance can't be improved with slotting (afaik), it takes resistance enhancements to improve the psi resistance it provides. Combat Training: Defensive (which you have to take anyway) also provides scaling resists and between them I gather it's comparable to the scaling resists Super Reflexes provides - I certainly wouldn't rely on it to stay alive but it's a handy buffer.

As with all VEATs they take a little while to flesh out - I remember having wicked endurance problems with my widow - but with a little love they grow into something special. Have fun

Wet Work, assassin for hire.

Assuming dual blades combos are never going to be revamped, how about at least giving the individual powers secondary effects of their own - every power in street justice and staff fighting has its own secondary effect regardless of combos.

This could be as simple as giving -def to all 4 powers lacking an effect (nimble slash, power slice, sweeping strike and, excepting stalkers, typhoon's edge) - at the lower levels this will make it easier to land each successive hit in a combo and at the higher levels it opens up some io slotting opportunities.

Of course having one of them give the e'er popular +def would also go down well.

But yeah, that's it - simples.

Would be good if crab spiders could choose which leg each power shot from - pretty sure as it is pretty much everything comes out of one leg (maybe 2?), with the others only being used for Suppression!

EDIT: And a faster animation for Serum dagnabbit!

How about Rise of the Phoenix? If I recall it does 3 ticks of damage, each with high mag knockback attached - if all 3 landed it'd be around blaster nuke levels of damage, alongside the stun and knockdown.

Ablating Strike had a neat 'feature' tied to its position as the finisher for the Sweep combo, where any procs in it had a chance to fire on anyone caught in the Sweep AoE (10'?) regardless of whether the combo was in play or not.

For example my lvl 14 dual blades stalker has all of the starter IOs (originally pre-order exclusives for Going Rogue if I recall, but now in the Paragon Rewards tree) in Ablating Strike, so the various procs attached to them (2x10% chance for damage, 2x12% chance for damage, 1x10% chance for knockdown) all had a chance to fire on everyone around me every time I used it, rather than just the main target.

Alas that small perk to an otherwise mediocre set has been taken away - c'est la vie.

EDIT: Ooh, maybe they'll re-jig the combo so it isn't tied to a 90s recharge power any more? Too much to hope for?

I'd love to see more zone events, ideally using the level-less invasion code as has previously been mentioned. Having areas in zones where bosses are more likely to spawn, and maybe have the possibility of elite bosses, would also be good - I know there's a Longbow Ballista in St Martial but it's the only example I can think of of an open world elite boss.

Have random 'rogues gallery' bosses running out of a bank with a sack of loot, have villains smashing up a small area, mayhem mission style, have 2 bosses from different factions having a covert meeting under a bridge - it might not be possible to tell a whole story with a single open world event but you could drop hints of bigger goings on. Hell, if you defeat certain spawns (e.g. a named boss/elite boss), or mobs in a certain area, have the possibility of a specific themed tip mission dropping that continues the story in an instance - kind of like when you broke up a mugging the victim would run back to you to delivery some bonus influence, have something extra for breaking up whatever a group is up to.

Have you tried upping your graphics settings? Perhaps the second colour only shows up at higher settings, like the glow map stuff on some more recent costume pieces..

I think there would be technical issues as there isn't an EB equivalent for many mob types - that said, a lot of stories are a little anti-climatic when they end with a 15 second boss fight. Certainly a lot of the tip missions feel like they should have EBs rather than bosses.

I'd like to see more EBs in the open world, as a (potentially) soloable counterpart to giant monsters, using the same level-less code as GMs, raid critters etc.

If I recall there are several contacts (one for each origin?) that give the same missions at each level range, and a lot of it is just filler. It would probably be neater to just retire them and introduce new contacts to give out revamped story arcs (I think this was done with Atlas/Galaxy, as well as Mercy Island red side, where the contacts are still there for people who have open missions or access them through Ouroboros).

There are some really nice arcs hidden away (and often padded out rather more than necessary), it would be great to see the stories around the likes of Vazhilok given a new lick of paint.

Some hero side arcs to get access to the Patron pools would be pretty cool - always up for new story arcs and it's not like there's much content blue side dealing with Arachnos.

And if they did do that they could then also make Patron pools around hero patrons with arcs both sides to unlock them..

This thread has got me all nostalgic over those old story arcs - a lot of the old content was, frankly, filler, but there were some great story arcs here and there giving insight into the likes of Vazhilok and the Clockwork, as well as the later stuff involving Malta, Crey, Nemesis etc.

It would be great if some of them could get an overhaul to bring them back to the fore.

As for villain-side, there are some mysteries here and there - the Snakes have some backstory to them, as has Dr Aeon. It does suffer a little from being a little too one-track on Arachnos in terms of interesting story though, which is perhaps the same issue Praetoria has. The early Heroes content involved uncovering the secrets and backstory of lots of different groups, where Villains and Going Rogue centre heavily on Recluse/Cole.

A very fair point, and it probably is down to inherent swift and hurdle - pretty much anything that shifted your movement stats would throw them off.

Ever hopeful for a thorough Shadow Shards revamp, and likewise rather enjoying the geysers when they actually work, perhaps they could attach an un-resistable power at launch that baselines your movement stats so that their trajectory is (mostly) reliable..

Going into the Tikki Lounge and back into Pocket D proper seems to get it pointing to the right door again.. I'd imagine zoning would have the same effect if you don't have access to the Tikki Lounge.

I always found it rather odd that repeatable missions were included considering I'm constantly outlevelling content just running story-arcs.. Perhaps the level ranges could be extended, so instead of having to leave at 20 it just opens up the possibility of leaving then.

As it is I think the level ranges are 1-10, 8-15, 15-20.. Maybe they could be opened up (extending the ranges of enemy groups as required) to 1-15, 8-23, 15-30, or thereabouts. Add a Praetorian side to the First Ward content (if you haven't crossed over into Primal Earth yet) and you have a very solid first 30 levels of content to build on..

As for addressing the difficulty, maybe take a leaf from DFB and do away with TOs and DOs in Praetoria - they could have Praetorian Origin enhancements that are basically just SOs without being tied to an origin. Add DFB-esque temporary powers as story-arcs rewards as well and it should go a long way to easing the difficulty without making it too trivial (you're still limited by available slots etc.)

I'd like to see some of the sets regen come earlier in the set and outside of Instant Healing, so that it actually has comparable baseline regen to Willpower..
If IH had 200% regen lopped off (putting it at 600%, 200% of which is enhanceable), this could then be redistributed:
Integration goes back to having all of its regen enhanceable instead of just 50%, that would give an extra 100% regen once fully slotted.
Reconstruction gives 50% regen for 30s - fully slotted that would be 100% regen available roughly permanently. With massive recharge it could be double-stacked.

Some numbers for comparison*:
Willpower (with 1 enemy in range): 200% unslotted, ~400% slotted
Current Regen (without IH): 225% slotted, ~350% slotted

Willpower (with 10 enemies in range): 425% unslotted, ~850% slotted
Current Regen (with IH): 1025% unslotted, ~1350% slotted

If Integration fully benefitted from enhancements: ~450% slotted (Willpower has the same with 2 enemies in range)
If Reconstruction also granted 50% for 30s: ~550% slotted (Willpower has the same with 4 enemies in range)
Regen with IH would be the same, ~1350% slotted.
With sufficient recharge to keep Reconstruction's regen double-stacked (involves interrupting your attack chain every 15s) and IH running: ~1450% slotted.

I'd also like to see Instant Healing grant some extra regen debuff resistance, even if it's just equal to what Fast Healing grants.

I like the sound of some of the ideas already mentioned too, such as adding some regen to Revive, and slow resistance to... something.

* all of these numbers ignore Fitness/Health, which both sets get anyway.

Long overdue, I'm pretty sure the emblems available wasn't even updated with CoV..

It's a good concept, a toggle chance to confuse (deflect your opponent's attack against his allies) would fit pretty nicely, or a chance to knockdown opponents when they attack, effectively granting enemies a proc to knockdown self when they attack?

Thinking about it, Stalker Sweep could be moved to Sweeping Strike, allowing Ablating Strike to be left alone - having Sweep be reduced to a cone with max 5 targets would be a small price to pay to have it available every ~5s rather than every ~45s as it is currently!

More asymmetry would be awesome.