Kelenar

Ah, for the old days when my Dominator got petitioned for holding a guy and then beating him up. He made sure to broadcast to the entire zone that he was petitioning me for not letting him fight back.

Jump into the group, AoE. Anything that was outside of your radius, smack with Nemesis Staff/Blackwand/origin power or just chase down. They'll generally stick with you for quite a while after you damage them, particularly if you have a taunt aura on. I've done it on several melee characters and never really had a problem with this method, but I can see how it could be problematic for one with very small AoEs and no taunt aura, like MA/Regen.

That could be problematic, though, since a lot of stormies I know cast it in the air 10 or so feet in the air to minimize the knockback on teams. At the very least, it takes a bit of thought to place that a pet using the standard 'walk after you and shoot anything that moves' AI doesn't have. Particularly on maps like Oranbega, where an unintelligently-placed cloud can knock enemies into giant pits. Maybe if the change included making it over directly over the caster's head all the time so that it was still mostly-controllable...

I've been wanting this since about i3 for this very reason. I'm getting tired of taking Stealth on all of my ghosts, water elementals, and slime monsters from space at level 6.

My dom wasn't taking anywhere near 22 minutes, but it was still certainly boring. Beating on a big sack of HP that doesn't do anything in return is about the height of tedium in this game. That mission is pretty much the sole one in the game that I will readily say that I hate.

What was more fun for me was when she spawned a Dark Servant pet... and the pet was hostile to me for some reason. Fighting Vanguard while being chased by an evil Fluffy is different.

Pretty much exactly this. Some characters whose powers I really enjoy will get pulled out for level 50 missions now and then, and some have even managed to hold my attention for a whole month or two after hitting 50, thanks to IOs, but if they're not working toward new powers, they're not sticking around for long.

Similarly, if you use your godmode or Domination on an enemy that gives you a lot of trouble but could possibly be soloed without doing so, the next group will contain that one enemy that can rip your head off through every inspiration in your tray.

Fixed!

I was about to point out this one too. With few exceptions, pretty much every free-to-play MMO I've seen is populated 90% by young teenagers and the 'HOW I MINE FOR FISH' crowd.

The problem I've always had with relying on -rech for your primary mitigation is that it tends to attract a lot of aggro, and a lot of groups do enough damage to kill you in one or two volleys anyway. It's not just taking alphas--in prolonged fights against big groups of enemies, if they only need a handful of attacks to kill you anyway, flooring their recharge won't help a ton. Could help a lot if the recharge floor for enemies was lower than -75%.

As far as Ice/, the additional problem I've found is that AA and Ice Slick, the two primary mitigation tools, don't individually provide enough mitigation to keep me alive versus big groups, but a lot of spawns are too spread out to get everybody in them easily. Smacking Ice Slick and Shiver on most of the spawn then harassing the others in AA tends to work decently, but it still feels significantly weaker than my Earth/ or Mind/ solo.

I like this, but it could lead to aberrant behavior from the badge-obsessed, which seems to be the new gate for badge design.

Would the 'Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB' flag cover that, though? I was under the impression that only official content was rated, and that anything players decided to do with built-in communication tools wasn't covered. Existing games have parallels in sprays, but I can't think of any game with sprays that isn't naturally M anyway, so the only good point of reference I can think of is gone.

Right. I totally agree with that. My Anarchy Online character is supposed to be an elegant sort, and thanks to the whimsy of equipment, she's stuck wearing what appears to be some sort of molding orange chitin stuff. Having character appearance + effectiveness tied together sucks. I'm not debating that. I'm addressing that single sentence from Sigium. Mechanics-wise, we already have gear; it just doesn't show up on your costume. Some of it is expensive/epic/rare and can make characters significantly more powerful than characters without it. That's all I'm saying.

I've had my dom turned down for a perma-dom on a SF. I'll admit that all of these are edge cases. I'm just saying, it's a bit late for
We have epic gear, and it's called high-end IOs. Whether or not it shows up on your costume is a detail.

I'm not saying I support this. I've been in the 'I like not having gear!' camp since I started, and the initial announcement of inventions made me groan. I just don't see what the big dividing line between 'awesome gear' and 'awesome IOs' is if you take out the costume effect part. A character who's spent a zillion years racking up sets of Black Scorpion's Girdle enhancements can be a few times as effective as a normal character if built right, just like a character with phat lewt gear would be. About the only difference I see is in the mindset and difficulty of this game versus WoW, since being super-powerful isn't necessary here for much of anything except self-imposed challenges.

And people can generally see what IOs you have to judge you on it, since your set bonuses and unique IOs are listed in your Powers tab when they inspect you. It's not an exact science, but it doesn't take Arcanaville to know that somebody with a lot of bonus listings of 'Luck of the Gambler: Global Recharge Speed' and 'Ultimate Damage Bonus' listings is probably packing more heat than somebody whose only listed set bonus is 'Tiny Fire Resistance Bonus.'

(I'd also argue that having the wrong IOs can potentially cost you teaming opportunities if something like a Fire/ dom and a Mind/ permadom were competing for a slot on the LRSF, but that's down to differences between powersets, too, and was happening before IOs. Still, between two doms of the same powerset trying for the same spot, the perma'd one would probably win, and a blaster vs. a soft-capped blaster for a MoSTF run might be out of luck too.)