Montaugh

I want more patterns. Less like arctic and more like alpha. Stuff that is more defined and solid. Solids look better on lower settings, the busy stuff tends to lose its definition as it gets more and more blurry.

More splits.. left/right, front/back, diagonal.. odd shapes (like the unnamed pattern peices.. pattern 1, pattern 2 or whatever they are called)

The ability to possibly rotate patterns.. say I want the fire stripe to run down the front, back, or inside of my leg rather then just the outside of it.

I would love to mix and match 2 patterns over the same piece and then add pattern rotation oh man the possibilities.

If we could get two patterns on the same part.. and then color those two patterns different colors would have even more customization going from 1 color all the way to 5 colors. (1 base color/material type, pattern 1 primary/secondary, pattern 2 primary/secondary).

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Hero side I took my Grav/Kin/primal +3 level shifted character and really enjoyed the overall storyline. The battles were a lot of fun. I liked how he fears me and commented on my alternate past selves.

Villian side.. I ended up giving up on the final boss. The arc was wicked tough for my level 50(non incarnated) Grav/energy dom and couldn't defeat the final EB.. didn't matter if I used every trick in the book I just couldn't take down it down. It surprised me that the final two bosses were both red to me and I was on a 0/0 setting, the first fight was hard as heck and left me nearly drained of resources by the time the second fight began I was hosed. I had a similiar problem with an earlier fight all reds, defeated the helpers I had and killed me. I had to take all three on at the same time, luckily I only died once in that fight. I really didn't care for how the villian side arcs played out.

For the level 40 range min to start this arc.. no clue how someone is going to do them. It will be very difficult solo I think.

Storyline updates:
I forsee the removal/merging of the shadow shard in the future. The shard is the prison that keeps rularuu caged up. Wade becomes rularuu and we get another zone dealing with him in issue 23. This leads SSA storyline's finishing in a world of Wades's own creation, or we trap him there via the dream doctor's ritual to bind the original rularuu into the shadow shard in the last arc. Either way I sense a revamp of the shadow shard coming and rularuu breaking free of the shadow shard.

I lag quite a bit but that's a case of my computer being above min requirements but below recommended requirements. Trials, Atlas Park and Preatoria are the worst offenders for me.

Once in a while I'll crash while loading, it seems to happen only on specific maps but it hasn't happened in a while.

and my connection is fairly unstable these last few months. Sometimes the cable modem resets multiple times an hour, other times it doesn't reset for days or weeks at a time.

I use them randomly depending on the character that I'm playing.

My BS/SR scrapper I'll eat a purple to keep me at around the defense soft cap for most of a mission. I'll typically use the others when I feel like it.

My Grav/kin/primal controller I have a bad habit of not using them.

My Beam/energy blaster I like to use the reds as they drop. Save a few purples and greens for dicey situations.

I do try to keep one breakfree and one awaken on all characters at all times. If I'm on a team then I try to keep 2-3 awakens on my characters at all times.

Concept most of the time comes first.

Though on occasion I have made interesting combinations when I think that they would be cool together but I usually come up with a concept for why the character would have those powers.

Some examples...

Elkinarc started as a character that was going to stack the high resistances of an Elec armor tanker with the -damage debuffing of Kin Melee and the slows of the Arctic epic and then the -damage of the void judgement. Concept came from an Etrigan/jason blood sort of character with a bit of Captain Marvel thrown in there.

Troggle.. Inv/SS tanker that was modeled after a troll. Troggle only used invinciblity and slotted for knockback in her powers originally. Surprisingly worked well, though she was very much disliked by a few of my friends as I slotted Handclap for KB hehe.

Flickerflash.. Elec/Fire blaster. Started the character because of the ball lightning, short circuit, combust, and fire sword circle. Created an concept that was about a being of living plasma which moved around in a suit of power armor. Power Surge and Sparky were basically stepping outside of the suit and interacting as their real selves.

Controller Grav (my longest played character) is a Grav/Kin/Primal that took Kin because it meshed with the idea of a gravity manipulator. Purely a concept character and is the hero that I wanted to play from when I first heard about city of heroes and it having gravity control powers. The name was totally not intended to last as long as it has.. the name was originally chosen because I wanted to disconnect from the character in Beta and sort of remind myself why I was in beta (mainly to test rather then play). Then it sort of stuck in a Hero One sort of way. I've jokingly called her the first gravity controller after the alpha and omega gambit was used and a call for new heroes was issued... and that prob isn't too far from the truth as she's definitely one of the oldest Grav/kin controllers in the game.

and now I'm rambling so I'll stop now...

I'd love to see stuff like this added to the game. It would greatly increase diversity of concepts.

So my account lapsed for a few hours from VIP status to Premium status, I'm now back to VIP status... am I now removed from the Loyalty program because of that slip up?

I suspect that new point and monthly cards are coming soon. I think at this point all of NCsoft's games are free to play... so new hybrid cards should be coming soon.

I went to purchase a new time card a week before christmas and was shocked that they no longer sold time cards at gamestop. So I'll need to pick up one of those debit/credit card things as otherwise I've no way to keeping my vip status and will lose access to that bonus going on right now. Normally I bought a 60 day time card from gamestop... even tried the drug stores that normally had the older timecards (20 bucks for 1 month that includes that rocket pack) and no go there either, so I concluded that at the start of the new year would be new point/timecards coming down the pipe.

What about gravity control as a telekinetic sort of character?

Then if you want a more defensive build go Grav/FF/Psi or a more offensive go Grav/Psi/somethingorother on a dominator.

Super sidekicking.. one of the greatest things in CoH. Level doesn't matter, no more playing around to get enough sidekicks or exemplars for everyone, no more worrying about a sudden net outage removing more then one player from your team. No worries about if a friend tries the game we can both play the game with whichever and at whatever level we decide to play at.

I love the ways to play the game.. I can street sweep, I can do endless missions(shard mission, warzone missions, Cim missions), I can do micro arcs (tips/scanner), I can do story arcs, I can do Task Forces.. I can create missions, make a supergroup base, go badge hunting, jump off the top of builds and splat into the ground for giggles (I do that WAY too often), and spend hours just bouncing around in the shadow shard on the geysers while singing The Gummi Bears theme song.

I enjoy the costume creator and have spent countless hours working on looks and concepts to get things right.

I love that building can easily be an extension of roleplaying or of powergaming and both as well.

I love the binds that we can make.. my first character was a teleporter and the teleport bind changed everything.

Even after all these years I am really looking forward to what is coming in the future.

I think the next season will be like an omen or the bad seed sort of vibe to it.. most everyone will die this season, the baby will be given into the foster care system and we have a whole new storyline that continues following the baby.

Personally I think its a smart move to sell the melee sets.. melee ATs are often just more fun to play and have more diverse powertypes that they can be played with.

Not only that though but more ATs use melee sets. Best sellers will most likely be melee, buff, and ranged. Support, Control, and assault would likely not sell all that well. Mastermind pets would sell well simply because its a unique playstyle and so far each MM primary has played differently.

Personally I don't think I would ever purchase the following sets.. support (blaster secondary), Assault, ect.. because they are used only by a single AT so the value of the set is greatly diminished.. well that's not true...I'd be all over Assault if they added an Armor/Assault AT.

I think they are going to go with the running joke that the doctor is always late. I can see it now.. Amy and Rory go back home on a break while the doctor zips off for a moment.

He returns 60 or so years later. Amy has died of old age, Rory is ever young waiting each day for the doctor to return to tell him that Amy had a good life and to not go mucking it up. Then Rory plays a video of Amy that she records each year on the day that they last said good bye to each other, at first it would be very angry that he's late again, then she tells him about her life of the previous year, then finally as an old women asking when the funny man in the blue box is going to come visiting her again. When its all over Rory tells the doctor that his final duty is over and to depower him so he can join his wife.

Wonder Women's son by far would have the hardest time being her son. No clue if the character has a secret ID or not anymore but could you imagine a kid that has a crush on wonder women looks up all sort of 'images' on the internet.. and then gets told that Wonder Women is his mother when he's like 18ish years old.

I love elec armor on a tanker and it pretty much goes with anything. The only thing that gave me any problems were Vahzilok, and Vanguard.. with the vanguard just pop power surge and you'll have your toxic resistances. Its a good trial/TF set especially in the lower levels do to the huge resistance to elec damage and solid resistances otherwise and no matter what sort of team you add Elec armor will just get better and better.

I want more epic powers in my epic pools. I'd love to see them fleshed out to a full 9 powers and kick in around the late 20's.

A 10th power for the primary sets.

Knockback added to the Alpha slot as a primary boost. ((my FF/Energy defender Mayham Monty must have MORE KB))

Adjustments to Damage resistance, +damage, +HP, +Knockback ect in the IO sets to make them more on par to +defense, +recharge ect.

More enhancers which boost a singluar stat ala Luck of the gamblers (only boost something like range, damage(not damage procs), control effects, HP, resistance)

Control effect set bonuses merged into a singular/paired types and/or found outside of control sets.

I think what they are doing with RWZ and the soon to be released DA are the way to make the hazard zones more appealing. Arcs, repeatable content, and rewards for high level players to play in those zones.

Faultline was awesome when it was put in and it still is awesome as it improves the replay value of early level play. You can do low end content in multiple ways now hero side. DFB, starting contacts.. KR or hollows.. Hollows then Steel/Sky or Hollows/Faultline.. KR/faultline.. and they even get more diverse as you get higher and higher in levels.

The problem with current hazard zones is that they are a hazard for certain ATs and are basically free xp for other ATs which don't require groups to survive inside of them. My controllers can't solo hazard zones but my tanks can easily do so. There is no incentive for my tanker to team and my controller can't find anyone to team with to run around the zone. I do enjoy street sweeping on occasion but its very biased towards melee ATs.

One thing I've often wondered but have not looked into is if rewards are shared across a league outside of a team up teleporter trial.. if it is then it would be interesting to take a league of 48 players into a hazard zone and sweep as the various groups across the entire zone but remain in the league to pile on the rewards. With so many groups and players working towards such a singular goal it may just be faster gains then missions.

Rather then giving up defense or resistance you could always look at the secondaries and increase the damage via slowing down recharge and increasing end costs. This would make tankers more heavy hitters via bursting damage rather then DPSing with faster attacks.

Part of the problem with any defense oriented AT (defenders and tankers pretty much) is that their attack powers are on the same recharge/end cost as the damage ATs when they would be better off doing the same damage as the damage AT's but require more recharge and end costs to do it. In this way they can leverage their improved defenses to take a bit longer per attack ensuring that they hit a little bit harder.

The funny part is that if they did that then Brutes would most likely complain about Tankers doing too much damage because they would need fewer attacks to defeat a mob but wouldn't take into account the recharge and end costs as in higher level play they would become negligible differences on high recharge builds... which is the problem that tankers are talking about verses defenses. So, it may work and it may not but it is something to consider.

Villain side.. Villains capture Statesmen and try to use the artifact on him. That fails to kill him. Statesmen is down but not out and he begs for Recluse to kill him and put an end to his suffering.. to take pity on him. Recluse refuses and is disgusted by how weak States has become. The heroes arrive to drive the villains off before states can be killed.

Hero side.. Heroes arrive just in time to see Wade and Recluse 'defeat' Statesmen. The heroes battle off Wade and Recluse leaving behind an injured but living statesmen.

Ms Liberty kills Statesmen with Excalibur. It wouldn't be because she's turning evil but because she takes pity on Statesmen when Recluse refuses to do so. States has had a long long life and its filled with the death of his loved ones. At some point you either lose your humanity and turn into Recluse or you give into it and want things to end.. but for an immortal that isn't easily done. Excalibur could most likely kill an immortal.

Arc ends with an image of a hero/villian in the shadows gaining the power of statesmen now that they have died. Next arcs will be dealing with how to reverse the effects and depower the now empowered villain and pushes the villain PC's into the role of the empowered demigod that needs to be defeated and deflated.

Controller Grav (grav/kin/primal) and depending on how it happens.. most likely the next who will die arc. Wormhole, dim shift.. recalls.. I'm sure I could get the target out of there, or fight the one behind the plot to an endless battle until one of us gives up.

Gravity's control might only be a 6/10 but its annoyance/grief/plot breaking factors in at a 10/10 when pushed by a creative mind.

... aww why did you go and ruin this so early.

I've got a beam/energy blaster and I absolutely love it. I couldn't be happier with beam rifle and once FF gets ported to corr I'll most likely make a beam/ff corr.

Single target is amazing especially while using just plain IOs or SO's. I put interrupt time reduction into the snipe and its one of the few sets where I actually use the snipe power.

One of the only downsides to the set is the recharge on the nuke. I wish that it had the recharge of Rain of Arrows.

Some tier 9 powers should be looked at and readjuststed as they have not been adjusted much since beta (and if they were adjusted it was to reduce recharge times so they could no longer be made permable)

Unstoppable is a great example of this.. If you take and don't slot all of the resist powers in Invuln an invuln tanker will hit the cap while running unstoppable. If you do nothing else but run unstoppable with 3 resists SO's a tanker will hit the resist caps for everything but psi. All overflow damage resistance is pointless.. ie no (or maybe very few) situations call for having 179ish+% s/l resistance. A side issue is that the differences between a brute and tanker while these tier 9 powers are running vanishes defensively.. both are either resistance capped to similiar amounts or defensively capped to similiar amounts. While the tanker has a slight HP advantage the damage difference more then makes up for that.

Unstoppable and the other tier 9's like them (power surge, elude, and that other one who's name escapes me atm) just does too much. It either needs to do less ala one with the shield, or it needs to be made into an exclusive mode like toggle ala Granite complete with downsides.

Also remove the crashes. Players should not be gun shy about using their powers. Crashes are just not a fun game mechanic.. recharge/click based tier 9's can not be made perma so only allow for bursts of resistance boosting and have a built in crash when the resistance boosting goes away.