Kyriani

Perhaps it's already been mentioned but I think Foreshadow, the trainer in the Hollows, has a pretty nifty and unique costume. it's one of the few male costumes that actually shows some skin that isn't a t-shirt of a tank top. His costume bits are pretty much unique... I tried recreating him in the creator and couldn't come up with anything viable as a copy.

He has unique hair, unique head detail, unique chest, unique pants and unique gloves. WTB $$$ all his goodies for my character pls >_>

Illusion is very potent.. I spoke mainly from my mind/ff/psi point of view.

My Illusion/Radiation controller is probably my most powerful character. I'm sure with some creative coloring you could explain the radiation powers as mental in some way. What makes this combo so amazing is that the various rad powers compliment illusion greatly. Debuffs like enervating field and radiation infection increase your Phantom Army's (unbuffable) effectiveness while buffs like accelerate metabolism help your long recharge powers come up more quickly. Accel metab + hasten is a nice headstart towards perma hasten and perma PA.

Illusion/FF doesn't strike me as particularly potent because much of your effectiveness as illusion comes from your pets and force field just doesn't do much to enhance your performance in that regard. It does however offer you teaming buffs which aren't bad as well as some personal status protection with dispersion bubble.

Illusion/Storm has always been something I felt worked great as a combo for a Magic origin character. It's a diverse bag of tricks... illusions and elemental magic. Ill/Storm has some nice synergies like ill/rad does... it has debuffs that the unbuffable PA can benefit from as well as some nice damage powers like Tornado and Lightning Storm. Toss in the Fire APP (cause what mage can't hurl a fireball every now and then eh?) and you've got a pretty comprehensive mage character in my book.

The other combos I havent really delved into too much so I can't really speak for them.

I find a mind/ff/psi fits the bill for the all around psi character. Thematically it all gels together and from min/maxer perspective you can have softcapped ranged defense with the right build and even have soft capped psi defense as well with Indomitable will. Between IW and Dispersion bubble you're pretty much covered vs most of the common cc effects which leaves you free to use something other than Clarion for your Destiny Incarnate power choice.

What's also nice about mind/ff/psi is you get alot of built in aoe during the leveling process via Terrify and Repulsion Bomb and can add Psionic Tornado once you near the end. In addition you get to provide some nice team buffs with the shields and have personal force field as a panic button if things go south. It's also nice to have on the order of 65% resistance to smashing and lethal damage (stacked tough and mind over body) as well as 30% psi resistance for anything that does manage to get through the soft caped ranged defense.

I recently decided to make my mind/psi dom purely ranged since I too prefer being able to see the whole battlefield from a ranged perspective for tactical reasons. What I did was to simply ignore psionic dart (the weak first attack you have no choice but to take) and use Dominate in it's place as a frankenslotted damage/control power. So my typical attack chain consists of dominate, subdue, levitate (technically speaking I could use mental blast for higher damage instead of levitate but i prefer having the smashing damage and knock up of levitate for the soft control and diversity of damage type.)

I then replaced psychic shockwave with psionic tornado from the APP so all three of my aoes were at range (psychic scream, terrify, psionic tornado). typically I'd open with the psionic tornado then scream/terrify. About the only melee-range power I have left is drain psyche which frankly I have little reason to use unless the mob has high regen. (I have high enough passive endurance recovery that end isn't an issue and my ranged defense is relatively decent so the regen aspect is also not a priority)

For other powerset combos all of the dom assault sets have at least 2 ranged damage powers and with the amount of recharge most doms have trying to get perma dom you only need about 3 ranged damage powers to have a steady attack chain. Using the single target hold from your primary as a damage power using some creative slotting so it can do double duty as a control power would be the easiest way I can think of to go purely range. Mind and Gravity both include direct damage powers that you could use to supplement your attack chain.

For a plant/thorns character you could simply use Thorny Darts, Impale and Thorn Barrage (40 yard range but 2 lvl 50 range IOs make it about 60) as your single target attack chain. Unfortunately two of the three aoe damage powers for thorns are melee but you could supplement your ranged aoe damage with an APP/PPP aoe damage power. The Primal Forces and Fire APP's are a good choice for this since they have 2 ranged aoes you can pick up.

From the comic con reveals we saw the new AT specific enhancement sets. At first glance they seem really nice. Upon closer inspection of the Dom set I noticed that if you want to make the most out of the proc while at the same time get the 6pc bonus you'll need to be somewhat picky about where to slot it.



See the unique proc? Also see what types of powers it can be slotted in? The set is designed to go into a control power. But what powers could really maximize the up time of the proc?

To really benefit from the proc you want to put it in a power you'll use over and over in a short span of time. Realistically that rules out quite a few aoe control powers due to long recharge times.

Ideally the best use of the proc IMO is to not try for the 6pc bonus and simply add it to an attack power (if you have one) that also takes control sets. This would basically let you benefit as often as possible from the proc

Single target holds seem a good bet for the full set as long as you don't plan to use it as part of your damaging attack chain (some players frankenslot using a mix of hami-o's and sets to enhance most aspects of st holds so they can double as a dps power). If you do use your st hold as part of your dps attack chain it's probably a good place for the proc.

Single target root powers are often skipped and if taken rarely slotted up but if you have slots to spare this could be a place to put the full set. If you take the at root as part of your dps attack chain for some reason then it's also another option for just using the proc. Failing that you could simply leave a st root with it's default slot, toss the proc in there and fire it off every now and then to trigger the proc but that seems a bit wasteful.

As mentioned before AOE roots are some of the few aoe control powers you'd be able to (and want to) fire off frequently enough to get the max up time of the proc without having a metric ton of recharge. Most others typically (but not always!) have cooldowns too long to really get the maximum benefit.

If anyone else has insights and ideas on how best to use this set please post! I'd love to see what others have to say!

For presence pool I'd say a nice 5th power would be a passive that simply upped the magnitude of the fear powers and added -range to the taunt powers

DISCLAIMER: This list is a definite flight of fancy. Some of the things I'm suggesting here are overpowered, technically unfeasible or just downright silly. They are here if for no other reason than to maybe inspire the devs with ideas for things to sell us on the Paragon Market or possibly include as Paragon Rewards. Some of my ideas play into whole "pay to win" mentality and I know some folks will not be pleased with these ideas but please do try to be civil.

1. Multiple Auto-fire: I'd pay extra to be able to set 1 or two more powers on auto fire. It's particularly vexing to micromanage several 90 second duration abilities with short cooldowns that you want to keep up as often as possible. Even if it was limited to three total powers on autofire and I had to pay 10 bucks individually for the 2nd and 3rd I'd totally spend the cash in a heartbeat. Some AT's are basically locked out of using the default auto fire for anything but a specific power they need to have up all the time to survive (i'm looking at you practiced brawler and friends...)

2. Bonus slots for powers: I'd pay for extra enhancement slots to add to my powers. Sometimes slots are tight in certain builds and I'd easily pay 10-20 bucks for an additional 5 slots. That said this feature would seem better as a One time only per character voucher type reward for tier 9 VIPs rather than something you could buy repeatedly account wide.

3. Bonus Power Picks: Sometimes there's 1 or 2 extra powers you wish you could fit in. While I'd pay 10 bucks for an extra power choice in some cases, again this seems like it would work better as a one time only per character voucher reward for tier 9 VIPs.

4. Epic & PvP IO's: I know we'll be able to get certain IO's from the market but I'd honestly pay cash to get specific things like the epic and pvp io's that are just so RNG reliant to acquire and excessively expensive on the consignment house.

5. New accolade passive powers: I know that the Paragon Rewards is said to include exclusive powers but we haven't seen any info about what exactly those might be. Some things I'd like to see in this regard are passives much like the accolade passive we can earn in game. Like say one that gives 5% passive recharge, or one that gives 5% more damage. Things like that. These abilities could work as either purchasable things or through Paragon Rewards

6. Semi-Free Form AT: While I know such an idea would be a balance nightmare this topic is just about collecting ideas. I'd easily pay 20-30 bucks just to be able to build my own AT power by power. I'd expect such a system to use a system of mutual exclusivity (i.e. taking one power makes other powers unavailable). Perhaps such a system could work within the existing AT's as it's own AT with it's own Inherent. You'd select a generic role (tanking, ranged, melee, control, support, pets) that would decide what your inherent does and what type of modifiers you get to your abilities and then select the specific powers that make up the primary and secondary for the character from a specific list and uses the mutual exclusivity idea I mentioned before.

7. Personal Bases: It's an idea that's been mentioned numerous times... and hey that OTHER hero game just added something like this (though I think their version falls short even of our current base system). It could be a simple influence sink and give all players an opportunity to play with the base builder. If the idea was popular and profitable it could lead to the overhaul of the base building system that players have been asking about for years!

I noticed the same issue last night

While I know city of heroes would never venture into free form power selection... If in some imaginary reality it were to happen I would expect it to have some limitations such as:

Mutual Exclusivity: Choosing some powers would make others unselectable. This would be to prevent stacking powers that give similar benefits. For example taking something like High Pain Tolerance would make taking the invuln passives or regen's resilience unselectable.

Category Limitations: You'd only be able to have so many powers of a given type. This would prevent people from just choosing all defensive powers or all offensive powers or other weird combinations

I guess then it wouldn't be truly free form then though would it? Though it would probably be more flexible than we have at the moment. I did think the idea of scaling your performance based on the type of powers you chose was an interesting concept though.

I enjoy doing the trials every now and then but grinding them over and over and over to advance just becomes distasteful after awhile. And while I can easily just stop doing the trials I still want to engage in activities that can advance my character. I personally don't find responses that tell me not to play the game or to engage in activities that won't advance my character very helpful.

I would like a solo alternative that is viable. Shards are not viable in my opinion. They drop too infrequently and are reliant on the RNG which can be notoriously unfriendly at times. Currently with shards being the only solo method to advance incarnate stuff, trying to access the endgame in any way other than the trials just becomes really off putting and not really worth engaging in to me. At the same time trials are increasingly becoming more and more off putting to me as well. My server Guardian is not one of the highest population servers and lately trials have been hard to come by or when I manage to find one its such a bare bones group we aren't able to complete the trial. Ideally I'd like to see two things added:

* Shard drop rate increased.

* Random Incarnate Story Arcs: An npc that has a number of random repeatable (or if that is too much has a set limit to how many you can do per day) incarnate story arcs (5-10 missions long) that can be done solo or with a team. The first time in any 18 hour period that you complete one of these arcs you are awarded a small amount of ixp and a small number of threads at the end of each mission and an E-Merit at the conclusion of the story arc. Doing more of these random arcs awards a smaller amount of ixp and threads than the first arc and an A-merit at the conclusion of the arc. To make it more challenging temp powers could be disabled on these arcs much like they are on trials. If this is still too much gain the devs could always go with a "diminishing returns" concept. First arc gets e-merit, 2nd gets astral, any beyond gets 5-10 threads etc.

This type of system time gates the advancement. Those who run trials will get more ixp, threads, E-merits and A-Merits much faster than the soloist but the soloist can still make steady, observable progress that is not tied to RNG. This design also prevents exploitation by tying the relevant rewards (ixp, threads, merits) to the completion of the missions and the overall arc. The devs have full control over how much ixp/threads would be awarded by these missions so can set it to a pace they deem acceptable. People who engage in both these solo arcs AND the trials will obviously advance much quicker and those who enjoy the trials but would like to break them up with other activities without stopping their incarnate advancement would have an alternative. Adding these two things would easily make the incarnate system solo accessible and still keep trials at the top of the food chain for the speed of acquisition.

Thank you for taking the time to read and I look forward to seeing what the future of COH brings!

Ultimately I'd be happy if they simply increased the drop rate of shards. They can keep the time gating conversions etc... but making shards drop more regularly would allow any soloist to eventually unlock their incarnate slots and build components at (in my opinion of course) a reasonable pace. Right now the drop rate is so abysmal just thinking about trying to go that route on my characters makes me flinch.

I was able to get t3 in every slot over the course of 3 days doing trials on my dominator. While I am not saying a solo path should be that fast, I do think increasing the rate at which shards drop would make shards a more viable method of unlocking incarnate abilities as a solo player. The current drop rate just makes it too painful to even consider trying that route.

In general, sets with comprehensive status protection that includes knockback protection tend to give about 10 mag protection. If you absolutely want to meet that level (well actually you'd exceed it) I'd say slot 3 -KB IOs but as others have stated 1 will cover most things. If you want to meet in the middle 2 would give you 8 mag protection which is close to the basic 10 mag most sets that provide status protection have.

If you have slots to spare and have powers to accommodate them, using 4 pieces of the kinetic crash set gets you 3 mag protection. If you can do that in 2 powers and toss in a BotZ 4 mag kb protection IO you'd have exactly 10 mag protection passively even if stunned or held somehow.

From my personal experience I like having at least 4 mag of -KB passively and occasionally supplementing it with more when circumstances of the build allow for it with some additional benefit (such as a favorable set bonus), or as a basic protection when other forms of KB protection might be down. An example would be my mind/psi dom. Domination provides 5 mag KB protection but I still have a BotZ -KB in my fly just to make sure that even if dom isn't up I have some measure of -kb and when dom is up I am almost as difficult to knock around as other characters with status protection vs knockback in their primary or secondary powersets.

If they want to stick with something close to the original and just higher res I came up with this which is pretty true to original.



I chose the face I did cause it kinda keeps that world-weary look the original has on her face. And while i'd never wear red shoes with that outfit... I picked the bridal heels cause they are kinda chunky like her original shoes.