InfamousBrad

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My only concern is that such an awesome costume piece is only available for a limited time. ...

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Seconded. In fact, the first thing I thought of when I saw the toga was that it would be a perfect costume for a Thugs mastermind, or for an Electric/Electric brute. Too bad the event will end before Issue 8 begins.

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So... they have computers in the afterlife?

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No, this universe's War Witch isn't dead.

. . .

She's just pining for the fjords.

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I did a pass on all the End Costs of the Archery Powers and reduced the cost of Snap Shot, Aimed Shot, Fistful of Arrows and Blazing Arrow.

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Oh, please, please, please tell me you did this to the blaster primary, too. I only asked for this on day one of the first public beta test of Archery, after all.

So the difference between Longbow and Wyvern (other than color schemes, and guns versus bows) is two-fold, have I got this right? 1) Wyvern also takes on paying private security gigs in addition to fighting super-villains "on spec," and 2) Longbow has a code against killing, and Wyvern doesn't.

In the level 10-15 "Defeat the Wyvern financier and witnesses" mission from Radio Free Opportunity, didn't we find out that Wyvern in the Rogue Isles is specifically being paid by Longbow?

And in the level 25-30 Lt. Demitrovich missions, there's at least one where Demitrovich is specifically trying to get us to plant evidence against Wyvern where Longbow will find it, and dont' I remember from the briefing in that mission that Demitrovich also knows that they're working together?

I guess where I'm going with this is roughly the same place the poster did who asked what's less deadly about a flamethrower when compared with arrows -- given that Wyvern is being paid by Longbow to kill the villains they're trying to kill in the Rogue Isles, how does this make Longbow any less dark?

Hmm.

Which raises the question, if Freedom Corps were going to hire a Paragon City mercenary company to supplement their attack on the Rogue Isles, why didn't they hire Hero Corp?

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Let's see, I can either always have a few break-frees (inspirations that, for my Brute, are a waste of a tray slot against every other mob in the game) in my tray just in case I run into one of these bozos, or I can simply avoid Longbow.

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You can "simply" avoid Longbow? Dear God, man, tell me your secret! I am so (self-censored) (self-censored) tired of those (self-censored) (self-censored) boring red and white uniforms and massively over-powered minions and useless-to-me mutant-only enhancement drops that I'd pay good money to be able to go more than two missions in a row without having to fight Longbow, let alone to be able to avoid them altogether!

As it is, they haunt every other or every third mission, all the PvP zone missions, and are all over the ground in every PvP zone. I've tried every trick I could come up with to fight anything other than them, even just for a while, for a break. (Self-censored)'s Bells, after all the (self-censored) Longbow I got to the point where fighting the Circle of Thorns was almost a relief. (Almost, anyway.)

If Issue 7 gets here and I find out that Longbow makes up more than a tiny percentage of the level 40 to 50 content, I may quit City of Villains altogether. I love this game, but I'm just that sick of them.

I remember they were supposed to meet, that's the arc I was thinking of, but I thought she was a competitor, not a student. Next time I go through that arc, I'll check again.

I actually hadn't planned on moving this here until it got another gloss, so let me stick a disclaimer on it: this is a very rough first draft, done from memory. I've already spotted problems with it, not least of which is that I forgot to mention that the Devouring Earth are also all over northern Nerva.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

First, let me refer you to my favorite guide to the backstory, for those of you who haven't seen it, the Guide to Villain Backstories, a spoiler-rific summary of what we learn about all the CoH villain groups through the various story arcs and task forces, plus scattered NPC monologues and dialogs.

COV Plot Overview

All of the player characters are, defacto, in the same Villain Group, what everybody else calls the Destined Ones or Project Destiny. All of our various villain groups within that are no more distinct from Project Destiny than the various factions of the Freakshow are from each other, as far as the story line is concerned. As you surely known already because the subject has been beaten to death, one of Earth's few Incarnates (human beings with the power of an incarnate god), the evil Lord Recluse, took over the Italian fascist supervillain group Arachnos ages ago, staged a coup d'etat here in the Rogue Isles, and rules the isles as their monarch, through appointed governors of each of the islands. Each island (or in the case of PO/CaD, half of an island) has its own Big Story.

Mercy Island: The Snakes have an underground city and tunnel complex under the whole island, and have been there for at least 400 years, maybe longer. Every so often for that whole time, some superhero (usually religious/magical origin, in the past) has come along, wiped them off of the surface, and forced them down into the tunnels until they can hatch up enough of a population to retake the surface. Southern Mercy Island is in the middle of such an uprising now.

Port Oakes: Family headquarters for the Rogue Isles. The leader of the Family died recently, and two factions, the Marcone (Family) and Verandi (Mook) families, are fighting for control of the city and its port.

Cap au Diable: The city center, Aeon City, is the headquarters for perhaps Earth's wealthiest and most popular supervillain, an unscrupulous mad scientist member of Arachnos with a really, really effective PR department, Dr. Aeon. Dr. Aeon, while experimenting with geothermal power, found out that a late Renaissance priest bound an immense demon into the volcano, and Aeon's Power Transfer System is tapping magical energy out of that bound demon to power the whole Rogue Isles. Virtually everybody else is there to steal tech from Dr. Aeon or magic from the demon. Dr. Aeon has his own personal arch-nemesis, a time traveler named Professor Echo who is from an alternate dimension where the PTS has, in fact, destroyed the world, who has traveled here with his universe's now-repentant Dr. Aeon to prevent our Dr. Aeon from doing the same thing.

Sharkhead Isle: Half to 3/4 of the island is one big open-pit bauxite (aluminum ore) mine and the associated refinery/smelter, all under the control of one big private sector corporation, the Cage Consortium. Longbow has covertly stirred up a miner's strike in an attempt to paralyze the economy of the Isles. The Council, the Sky Raiders, and the Freakshow all have not-especially-hidden local HQs here, and the Circle of Thorns have a scary local research project going (see Circle of Thorns, below).

Nerva Archepelago: Longbow has invaded nearly all of the islands in this chain of islands, though they only thoroughly control two of them. Crey Corporation operates openly in the parts of the isles that are under Longbow control because, as in Paragon City, hardly anybody seems to realize that Crey are supervillains. In the northeast corner are two islands that are almost completely occupied by the Circle of Thorns, one of which controls their primary inter-dimensional portal and the other the mystical tree from which all of their Thorn weapons are harvested.

St. Martial: At least half of this vast island is taken up by various Family casinos, the largest of which is run by this universe's Frank Sinatra, Johnny Sonata. Everybody else is here to rip off or otherwise attack Johnny Sonata or the Family.

SO WHAT IS EVERYBODY DOING HERE?

Arachnos: The elite military forces of the Isles. Apparently at least one unit, in St. Martial, has mutinied and gone independent.

Longbow: The world's largest superhero group. Founded and funded and trained by Freedom Phalanx, and backed by their own huge private army of non-super mercenaries who wear mostly the same uniform that Freedom Phalanx's mercenary sidekicks wear, they've converged on the Rogue Isles en masse. They completely occupy a huge island base in Nerva, which they've renamed Agincourt, but they can be found literally everywhere underfoot in the Isles.

In some missions they hint that it's against US law for at least some super-heroes to be here helping them, but it does happen. In particular, they're backed by Freedom Phalanx member Aurora Borealis, and by their own superheroes Blue Phazer and Golden Sphinx, plus an entire corps of nameless lower-powered mutant superheroes with the rank of Longbow Warden.

Their short-term goal seems to be to prevent and/or respond to Arachnos or Destined One attacks on Paragon City, and to eventually overthrow Lord Recluse's government.

Wyvern: A private security/mercenary company initially funded, trained, and equipped by Manticore of Freedom Phalanx as a side project; they're here to do do work for hire for Longbow, and would like to keep that secret for some reason.

The Legacy Chain: An international alliance of magic-using superheroes, sort of like MAGI on an international level but much older. They're here because of the isles' high concentration of magic-using supervillains. They work with Wyvern and Longbow occasionally, and like Wyvern, seem to want to keep that secret.

Rogue Isles Police: Lightly armed civilian police in the Isles, mostly corrupt.

Private Security and Cage Consortium Security: Lightly armed rent-a-cops.

The Snakes: Taking back their home. If possible, stealing enough magic/tech to oust Lord Recluse as the leader of Arachnos and replace him with their own Incarnate leader and biological ancestor, Stheno.

The Infected Ones: Laboratory waste from top secret Arachnos research on the Arachnoids (see below) contains small amounts of a mutagen that the Infected are trying to take advantage of, by drinking it and bathing in it in hopes of obtaining superpowers of their own.

Hellions: Hired by an Egyptian oil company to come here to disrupt Family operations in the Dockside and Oil Spill neighborhoods of PO. They've discovered on their own the existence of the demon under Mt. Diable, and since it's a fire demon, their local leader wants to free it. (Note that that leader, Duke Mordrigor, seems to outrank every Hellion in Paragon City. Is this where their real world HQ is now, and is that why they're such weenies in Paragon City?)

Marcone Family: Gangsters fighting to retain control of all smuggling, money laundering, and casino operations in the Isles. Verandi/Mooks: Gangsters fighting to overthrow and replace the Marcone Family.

The Council: The Nictus and their human allies are everywhere, apparently, not just here and in Paragon City. Most NPCs suggest that Arachnos is tolerating them for now because he hasn't made up his mind what to do about them, and that the Family lets them run smuggling operations out of Port Oakes as long as they do it quietly. They don't seem to have any grand plan; other than using the Isles as a way-station on the smuggling route into and out of Paragon City, their people mostly just seem to be involved in petty crime.

Spectral Pirates: Trying to defend their home fortress in Port Oakes, because they don't seem to realize that they're dead and that the fort was taken over by living villains long ago.

Skulls and Trolls: Never explained, but since they're partners with the Family in the Superadine Connection, I assume that they're here because the Family runs Superadine through Port Oakes. But that doesn't explain why there are instanced Troll missions in Cap or big public gatherings of Skulls all over Mercy.

Lost/Rikti: During the Rikti war, the Rikti dug in everywhere, including here. The Outbreak drug and Shift (the real name of the previously un-named drug that turns humans into Rikti) are both manufactured in Port Oakes for export to the world. In Nerva, the Rikti are fighting back against Crey tech-thief raids. According to the Guide I referenced above, the Hydra are servants to the Rikti, but you only see them in one mission that I know of, and that one not in this dimension.

Circle of Thorns: Contrary to what we were told in Paragon City, the lost city of Oranbega wasn't that unique; there are underground Mu cities all over the world, including here. The ones in the Nerva Archipelago are especially important, though; see above. As in Paragon City, you start fighting these guys around level 5 or 6 and never stop. Their main goals in the Isles are to free an immense sea monster under Sharkhead as soon as they figure out how to control it; to fight against Crey, Arachnos, and Longbow for control of the Portal in Nerva; and to defend the Thorn Tree.

Coralax Hybrids: Pre-human undersea intelligent living coral beds from just offshore of the Rogue Isles that have taken over the bodies of various human beings. They've started coming ashore to scout the human beings whose pollution is threatening their survival, presumably as part of a plot to exterminate our kind. See also Freakshow, below.

Goldbrickers: A private army of tech-thieves, mostly stealing from Aeon Corporation, secretly working for the CEO of the local candy company. No, really, it's that lame, I'm not making this up.

Luddites: Protesters, including some magic users, who suspect the truth about the Power Transfer System (PTS) and are trying to convince people that Aeon's power grid is too dangerous, and could destroy the whole human race. Considering the fact that most people consider Dr. Aeon to be a brilliant philanthropist, nobody listens. Other than to aggravate low level villains, they're mostly here for comic relief.

Vahzilok: Most of the local Vahzilok are not actually under Dr. V's control, but under the control of one of his competitors, a local mad scientist named Facemaker.

Clockwork: Actually, they're not here, in the sense that the Clockwork King's telekinesis doesn't reach this far. The demon under Mt. Diable is animating various Clockwork and fragments that were brought here for study. In essence, they're the same beings as the Gremlins that you see around PTS transformers in CaD.

Tsoo: Occasionally seen in petty crimes (newspaper missions), with no explanation of why they're here, what they want, or where they're locally headquartered.

Sky Raiders: They're running some independent operations trying to steal tech from Aeon Corporation and Crey, but mostly they're here as mercenaries, hired by the relatively wealthier population of Sharkhead, who live in the one nice neighborhood, to protect them from the Circle and the Scrapyarders. As mercenaries, they also run some operations both for and against Arachnos.

Scrapyarders: Striking employees of the Cage Consortium, but they have no intention of going back to work if their demands are met; they're actually an undercover front for Longbow. It's not clear to me yet if the same thing is going on with the striking Dockworkers in St. Martial.

Crey Corporation: Countess Crey sends her people anywhere they can get away with accumulating more high tech supervillain gear for her, and the Rogue Isles in general and Nerva in particular are very handy to her purposes because the law is so murky here. They're conducting human experiments on every captured supervillain they can get their hands on (and not a few Rikti monkeys) in those sheds behind their office buildings, but mostly what they're here for is because it's even easier to get away with illegally hoarding and studying Rikti tech here than it is back in Paragon City. Note that at least one of your Crey contacts is almost certainly a Rikti double-agent inside the company.

Freakshow: Mostly the Freaks are just here to steal from the various tech supervillains. Their local headquarters is in a junkyard in Sharkhead Isle, but you find them all over Sharkhead, Nerva, and St. Martial. A substantial faction of the Freaks have been taken over psychically by or are voluntarily working with the Coralax.

Nemesis: Prince Nemesis runs a small handful of spy operations in the Isles, mostly to collect information on Crey and Arachnos, but also to interfere with both organizations' attempts to control the inter-dimensional portal in Nerva. He also has at least one front organization here just to "launder" his patents and collect royalties, presumably because it's easier for him to get away with it here.

Wailers: A sub-species of demons here to collect Johnny Sonata's soul, as part of the deal that made him the world's wealthiest and most famous singer. Much of the architecture of the Golden Giza casino in St. Martial is designed to keep them at bay.

Devouring Earth: We are given to understand that Hamidon's creatures have begun to infest every nation on the Earth; the local outbreak is on the beaches of St. Martial.

Carnival of Shadows: I think, at this point, that I've run every Carnival mission there is or very nearly, and spent plenty of time sneaking around their huge encampment in St. Martial, and I'm at a total loss as to why they're here (unless it's just because they're attracted by the casinos), or, even more importantly, how they're here. Surely Vanessa di Vore's telepathic control can't extend this far, can it?

Banished Pantheon and Warriors: Only appear in one mission each, each of which is backstory related to their existing story arcs back in Paragon City.

Malta Group: Is there any surprise that the CIA's own pet superhero/supervillain group is sniffing around Lord Recluse's suspected orbital weapons of mass destruction research facility in Warburg?

Arachnoids: Either an alien species or a species of human mutants, or perhaps some weird cross between the two; nobody knows much about them, but they fascinate Lord Recluse, which is why you see their corpses being studied in almost every Arachnos lab and is presumably why he modeled his Crab Spider troops' armored exoskeletons after them. (Crey is also studying them.)

It starts long before level 40. Somewhere around level 30 they become they only flamethrower NPCs in the entire game who will stack flamethrower cone attack and an AoE ignite. What's more, if that Ignite isn't auto-hit, it's got to have some obscenely high +ACC behind it. I can stack enough force fields to keep most of my minions from getting hit by the cone attack, but I'm not sure I've ever seen the Ignite attack miss.

For my level 34 merc/poison mastermind, Longbow Flamethrowers are the only remaining reason why I keep the difficulty setting at Villainous or at most one above it. At that difficulty, I blow through everything else in my sleep. When I'm doing newspaper missions and can therefore pick which villain group I'm willing to fight, when I'm guaranteed I won't face Longbow, I keep the difficulty at +3 or higher, and not only do I hardly ever lose a minion, I usually make it through a mission without even using a single inspiration.

But even at Villainous difficulty, if I run into a spawn with three Longbow Flamethrowers, I lose every single minion in the first 10 seconds of the fight. With two of them, if I miss with Paralyzing Poison or if I don't see the second flamethrower in time and they both get their attacks off, I still lose every minion in the first 10 seconds of the fight ... even the Commando, who supposedly has damage resistance to fire!

The basic balancing rule is that even if you're a near-total incompetent, you should be able to solo three +0 minions. Three +0 Longbow Flamethrowers = this Mastermind runs away or he dies. Period. I've fought spawns with Elite Bosses in them that were easier than routine Longbow Flamethrower minion spawns. Heck, I can think of at least one signature archvillain who has a lower AoE damage rate than a pair of Longbow Flamethrowers do!

I realize that for every build, there's probably at least one group out there that causes problems for you. I know that most tankers have trouble with mobs that do psi damage. I know that most people with dark energy attacks have a hard time fighting the Banished Pantheon, who are apparently all 50% or more resistant to dark energy. I know that builds that don't have always-on mez protection hate fighting Circle of Thorns and Rikkti because their bosses and even some lieutenants chain-spam sleeps and holds. But having done all of the above, I have to tell you, no single minion in the entire game stands out in my mind as so massively over-powered, relative to minions in general and even with regard to other minions in the same villain group, as the Longbow Flamethrower.

Minimum Suggested Fix: Make sure that Ignite is working as designed, that it isn't auto-hit. It does way too much damage to be an auto-hit area effect attack. And if I'm wrong and it's not auto-hit, it needs an accuracy reduction, so that it doesn't wipe whole teams in the first hit. If that's not feasible or if I can't persuade the developers that I'm right about this, then please modify the Longbow Flamethrower AI so they don't always chain the two attacks in the first couple of seconds of the fight.

Preferred Fix: The combination of Flamethrower and Ignite is too powerful for a minion, period. That's a boss-level combination of powers. At the level where Longbow Flamethrowers get Ignite now, have it replace Flamethrower, not stack with it.

It is nice, but it doesn't answer my biggest, longest-held question: how are they getting away with it?

Not how are they getting away with operating in the Hollows, that's obvious -- law enforcement has practically given up there, too many places to hide. But downtown Steel Canyon is the heart of the city's financial district. It has never made sense to me that the nicer the neighborhood, in Paragon City, the higher powered the villains. Wouldn't it be more realistic that the nicer the neighborhood, the higher priority the city would have made it to get villains off the street? All those banks and insurance companies and jewelers, and a branch headquarters of Freedom Corp nearby, and nobody has hired Freedom Corp to clear the streets of low level mutants? It just doesn't make sense to me, any more than the blatant Rikti and CoT presence in Founder's Falls does.

I was going to make this suggestion for a different reason, but this is another good reason for what I was going to suggest:

Spawn Longbow patrols in Steel Canyon. In City of Villains, there are at least two missions around level 20 that send us to (an instanced-outdoor version of) northeastern Steel Canyon for vandalism. When we villains get there, yes, we find a few Outcasts and Council and Tsoo, and I think I remember even one or two Vahzilok ... despite the fact that (having been tipped off we were coming?) the streets are swarming with Longbow.

Honestly, especially given that they're engaged in all-out war in next-door Siren's Call, and given that there's a Freedom Corps Basic Training center in Steel Canyon, and given the amount of wealth there is to protect (and to use to hire Freedom Corp) in Steel Canyon, having Longbow patrols in Steel Canyon makes sense to me. So why not add them to City of Heroes, too? Make it a random zone event where a certain percentage of the spawned groups are Longbow. Make them allied to the heroes, and have them start at the spawn point and "patrol" from there towards downtown (and if they make it that far, and back). They're all but guaranteed to patrol into high level Council and/or Outcasts and get into fights; they won't last more than two or three fights, probably.

Why bother? Well, for two notes of realism, for one thing. For one, if we villains see them, why do the heroes never see them? And for another, they probably should have been there all along. On top of the realism angle, because players love that kind of thing. Look how popular the gang-vs-gang fights in Striga and Croatoa are, which is presumably why you copied the format of them for all seven sectors in the Rogue Isles. This would be an easy way to add that kind of content to Steel Canyon.

OK, as best as I can tell, US law regarding superpowers in the CoH universe works like this. If you acquire superpowers through birth, accident, skill, or technology, you can use those skills perfectly legally to fight crime, so long as you register with the Federal Bureau of Superpowered Affairs (FBSA) first, because of the Might for Right Act. If you don't register with the FBSA, you're technically a super-villain and subject to being thrown into the superpowers wing of Ziggursky Penetentiary (or other prisons, some of them federal? we're never told) if you use your powers. (I know that in CoH I busted plenty of Outcasts in the Eastgate neighborhood for no crime other than standing around in public wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed them as unregistered mutants and maybe using their powers in public.) At least two chains of pawnshops, two chains of occult shops, and not a few labs and engineering firms in the Paragon City area sell ultra-tech weapons gear, supersoldier serums, do-it-yourself genetic modification kits, and small talismans to the public. We're not told that they require you to show an FBSA license to buy this stuff, but I've been assuming so.

So what's the deal with Longbow (and to a lesser extent, the Legacy Chain)? Even assuming that I'm not successfully killing them, that they're being med-evac teleported, patched up, and sent back into the field, there have to be thousands of these guys in the red and white pajamas! What's more, for all but a few of them, their "super power" is that they're wearing Kevlar and carrying military infantry weapons. Is that all it takes to be considered a "tech hero" now? Does each of these guys have his or her own FBSA license?

If not, can anybody show me anything in any of the game's back story that suggests that the Might for Right Act authorizes Ms. Liberty (Longbow) and Azuria (have I got that right? I know somebody at MAGI runs the Legacy Chain) to raise their own private armies?

Now let's consider their deployment to the Rogue Isles. Does the US have diplomatic relations with the Rogue Isles? Are the US and the Rogue Isles officially at war? I'm assuming that whoever authorized Longbow to militarily occupy half the Nerva Archepelago (I'm sorry, Agincourt Base creeps me out) did so in response to Archnos terrorist attacks on Paragon City, the brief military occupation of the whole city in issue 2 of the comic book and their base in Siren's Call -- but is it a declared war? Did Congress authorize military action against the Rogue Isles? If so, where are the regular military? If not, are the Legacy Chain, Longbow, and their "civilian contractor" employees from Wyvern operating under CIA auspices or under their own Presidential covert-action finding? Or did they occupy the Nerva Archipelago before Lord Recluse attacked Paragon City?

Remind me again what year Recluse staged his coup d'etat -- how long has he been the ruler of the Rogue Isles? Does the US recognize the Recluse regime and/or the Arachnos "Party" as the legal government of these islands? Or is there a government in exile somewhere that the US considers to be the real ruler, who maybe asked for or hired Longbow/Wyvern/Legacy Chain military intervention? Or is it a situation like Afghanistan before 9/11, where the Taliban were in more or less undisputed control all but a few tiny parts of the country but the US didn't recognize any government in Afghanistan? But even then, the CIA and US special forces had to operate a lot more quietly and secretively than Longbow is in the Rogue Isles, or there would have been a huge backlash.

Does the US media know about and report on the war in the Rogue Isles between US "superhero" forces and forces loyal to the Recluse regime? BBC World News? Does the US public support the war? The UN Security Council and/or General Assembly? I know already, from remarks I've overheard from Longbow employees, that real FBSA-licensed superheroes who visit the Rogue Isles in support of Longbow "aren't supposed to" be there (according to who? Congress? the President? the FBSA? the UN?), but if that's true, how is it not true of Longbow itself? Those FBSA-licensed superheroes I've fought, like the Sea Witch and Golden Sphinx and Aurora Borealis, is there some reason why Arachnos isn't publicising their invasion of his islands for propaganda reasons? Or have I just not seen it yet?

And finally, the US is signatory to a treaty prohibiting the use of napalm or other flamethrower like weapons against human beings. The description on Longbow Flamethrower troops admits that they try not to fire those weapons in front of civilians or the media. Where did Longbow get the impression that they were exempt from the Geneva Conventions?

This is not me nit-picking, these are questions about the story that make it hard for me to roleplay.

Build: Level 18 Robotics/Force Field Mastermind. No offensive powers but Force Bolt. Combat Drones 6 slotted, all DOs: 2 ACC, 4 DMG. Protector Bot 4 slotted: 2 ACC, 1 DEF, 1 HEAL. Upgrade, of course, slotted with enough RECRED and ENDRED that I can upgrade and shield all four droids without interruption and without a CAB (but it's a near thing). Both standard force fields 3 slotted, 2 DEF DOs and a TO in both. PFF single slotted, DO DEF, but I didn't use it; too busy shielding everything in sight and using Force Bolt to break up dangerous clumps. Stealth, Hover, Flight, and Recall Friend; the latter used occasionally to quickly solve pathfinding AI screwups, Flight to get around, and the rest not at all in this test.

Live: Almost completely unplayable. I've seen more accurate blaster fire out of original Star Wars stormtroopers. The Protector Bot hardly ever heals, and yes, I know how to use it. As a result, even on Villainous, solo, even being careful with my pulls, I go through an entire tray of Inspirations in the course of a single mission and still I lose at least one robot roughly every 3 or 4 fights, and go through at least 4 of them in the course of a boss fight. I don't even want to talk about what it was like fighting an Elite Boss with that setup, the memory is too unpleasant.

Test: Transferred character to Training Room and ran the last 3 Breakout at the Zig missions. Accuracy returned to normal, that is to say, to what I should expect from having 2 DOs slotted. Oddly enough, the Protector Bot AI seems to have also been biased slightly more towards healing over combat; it was doing a better job of keeping up with the 3 Drones. (Not perfect, but better. I still went through about half a tray of inspirations dealing with ambushes from both directions in the actual breakout. Probably just about right.) Didn't lose a single Combat Drone in 3 missions, but it took fast thinking and careful micro-management to pull off narrow escapes two times.

Analysis: This returns the Robot/FF build to almost exactly the same difficulty it was at, say, around level 12 to 15, which felt about right. If you don't think that MMs were over-powered in the low levels before, you won't think that they're over-powered now, I'm pretty sure. I am strongly tempted to put my MM on hold at level 18 until this patch hits; please let it be soon.

I did not get a chance to test them in PvP.

Was Operation Destiny an act of aggression against a sovereign state? Was it sanctioned by the White House or by Congress? Does Statesman's (or, for that matter, any other hero's) affiliation with the Federal Bureau of Superpowered Affairs make the US government a sponsor to or liable for his (or our) actions in the Rogue Isles?

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Archery has the highest Accuracy in the game. ... So that like getting 1 free ACC DO in all Archery powers.

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Which, in essence, means next to nothing specifically for that reason: you can duplicate the Archery advantage by putting one extra accuracy DO in your attack powers.

Which, I will point out, nobody does, and I've seen the numbers to show why: once you get to where you can use SO's, the optimum damage per minute happens with only one accuracy SO in your attack powers. A second accuracy enhancement is wasted.

But let's assume that, for some reason, somebody really, really wanted that extra accuracy, or that the mostly-non-existant damage boost from using one extra damage SO really mattered. That still leaves Archery as the only Blaster set that has no default status effect. Energy has knockback, Ice has slow, Electricity has endurance drain, Sonic has damage resistance debuff, and most Assault Rifle attacks have either knockback or defense debuff. Even fire, which I think is unplayable these days, has so much damage over time that it ends up doing about 50% more damage than Archery, so I guess in essence the Fire status effect is "more damage." What does Archery get? Bupkiss.

And then, to add insult to injury, Archery has longer combat animations than all of the others, especially if you use any of your secondary powers and have to draw the bow all over again. But worst of all, Archery also sucks down more endurance per fight than the others do, too. Which means that while other blasters are still blasting away, the Archer runs out of endurance halfway through any fight involving anything more than 3 even-con minions.

Sorry, you're in deep denial of reality if you don't think that Archery is under-powered and in even deeper denial of reality if you don't think that Archery's endurance usage is way, way out of whack. (I can't help but point out, by the way, that I pointed both of these things out the first day that issue 5 was on the test server, and was not believed.)

Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention. By your own admission, any other blaster powerset can duplicate Archery's advantage by slotting a single enhancement. So if I'm an Ice blaster, I can get the same accuracy boost that Archery gets with a single enhancement to each of my powers. But if I'm an Archer, what enhancements do I slot to add slow to all of my attacks?

The impression I got from talking to detective Joe Brogan was that the Paragon PD already knew about an existing drug called Dyne, but this Superadine stuff was new. Was I mistaken?

Many thanks for clearing all that up for me. But it left me with one question I'd want to know for roleplaying purposes: how many super-soldier sera are there? I think I know of four so far: Superadine, Rage, Excelsior, and whatever the drug is that the Council are using in the Cor Leonis project. Dyne, the original hallucinogenic steroid, I'm not counting as a super-soldier serum per se, but I guess it could count. Are there more known super-soldier drugs?

OK, that's one of the two things I asked for after my testing, namely that it kick in earlier. But for the love of God, it's worthless without one more thing. Nearly all the time that my blaster is below 40% of his health, what it really means is that we're up against things that nobody in the group can hit reliably. It doesn't need as much of a +ACC buff as it gets in +DMG, but without some kind of associated +ACC buff, it's almost never going to change the outcome of a losing fight.

Add me to the list of people who think that there's nothing seriously wrong with this powerset, but that it's under the wrong archetype. With no heal, no resurrect, and no team buff, this is a controller power, not a defender power.

In fact, when I first jumped on the test server, I started out thinking that you weren't allowing TA/A as a combination. Having read the descriptions of both Trick Arrow and Archery, it was obvious to me that TA/A was a controller. I literally never thought to look under defender until I saw somebody playing one.

Last night, four of us did the FrostFire mission: three arch/dev blasters and a TA/A defender. And yeah, absolutely, the TA/A was doing the work of a controller, not a defender. And that's not a complaint! As a blaster, crowd control is more important to me than healing.

Last night I was discussing this with a room full of blasters while we were resting up, and three of us had all had the same experience with Defiance: by the time it kicks in, it's too late to do any good.

If I have dropped below 40% health, it means that something has already gone horribly wrong. What it probably means is that we've had a pulling failure, and somehow someone has aggro'ed twice as many mobs as we can stand. But almost as often, what it means is that the mission difficulty or the hunting area is much harder than I thought, and I'm up against mobs that I can't hit, period.

In neither case is increasing my DMG by an extra 50%, 100%, or even 500% going to save me. Either there are more mobs than it is physically possible to kill even with one-shot kills, or I'm fighting something that I never hit, so the the damage I would have done if I could have hit it is moot.

I think out of hundreds of fights where I deliberately pushed the envelope, deliberately walked into fights where my chances of survival would be borderline so I could test Defiance, I think it saved me maybe twice. No, the real favor you did us blasters was increasing our hit points. This just complicates the code for no perceptible benefit.

(Now, if it buffed ACC as well as DMG, and if it kicked in at 50% health instead of 40%, it might be useful.)