Moon Dog

Hi there. I'm Mondo. You might have known me across a few different global names: @Wyvernfire, @Seven-Star, @Cliprage, @Mondo, @MondoCool, @Dubstep, @Moon Dog, etc etc etc. I'm sort of important; you might have heard of me.

No matter what you think of me -- if you consider me a friend, an enemy, or an annoyance, there is something that I can say with absolute veracity (and I very much invite anyone to prove otherwise.) I am the finest and greatest troll to have ever graced Virtue.

Except, you know, this is completely and totally wrong. To begin with, I have never, in my five years of playing City of Heroes, ever actually trolled. The definition of troll, in simplicity, is "a person who deliberately annoys or harasses another person." I do not fit this definition, because I do not -deliberately- annoy or harass other people. I exercise my privilege to express my opinion, and I express my opinion often, attempting to persuade others to my line of thinking. Some people will undoubtedly take offense to this, considering it a personal attack against them (HOW DARE THEY EXPRESS AN OPINION! THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY A TROLL!.) Unfortunately, this mindset is so pervasive on the Internet that the slang definition of troll very may well be "someone who does not agree with me."

In any case, I am just as much a real human being as the rest of you (sorry, robomondo theorists) who paid a subscription for this game and enjoyed playing the game with their friends. I even met my girlfriend of over a year on this game. Fun fact: she originally hated the piss out of me because she thought I was such a gigantic troll, but a few months later I was flying down to her place. I've made many friends, even more enemies, and carved a half-decade-long path of destruction throughout the Virtue community.

What inspired me to play City of Heroes was the massive flexibility in character customization. City of Heroes was, effectively, Second Life, except with only about half of the furries and ERPers, and that was what was fun about it. You could be pretty much everything, and people from all sorts of roleplay styles and genres were all mashed together in a gigantic, sweaty, slightly damp, moldy melting pot.

I found my niche in Moone's group, referred to probably most of the time as Ascension. Think something on the level of Doom, Quake, or Call of Cthulhu -- a few highly skilled paramilitary individuals fighting off hordes of paranormal demons and elder gods. Moone is a fantastic frigging roleplayer and so is everyone else in his group, and I dare you to find anyone who is better. The group's been torn apart and put back together more times than I can count, but the bonds of friendship held between all of us. This group was the primary inspiration for developing my roleplay: when I was 15, back in 2007, I could barely manage a few descriptive sentences. Now I have no trouble churning out multiple paragraphs of high-quality content. I could probably write professionally if I wanted to.

Sure, it sucks that City of Heroes is going down, and while we'd all like to believe that we can resurrect it, it's going down. The game has been steadily losing playerbase and profit despite all the effort put into Paragon Studios to revive it, and even beyond that, it's simply an aging game with aging mechanics that nowadays can barely stand on its own. Shooting horses to put them down doesn't have to be seen as fair or right -- it's only what is. I'll miss CoH as much as the rest of you, but I'm glad it's finally getting the rest it deserves.

For those of you who consider me a friend: cool beans. My AIM is loocodnom. Add me. You know how intelligent I am, you know how good of a roleplayer I am, you're able to look past the overpersuasive exterior to forge a lasting friendship with a person who defends their friends to the death.

For those of you who have never heard of me: what rock have you been living under? Get with the times, man! The world's ending and you've never heard of Mondo?

For those of you who consider me an enemy: You got trolled by someone who wasn't even trying to troll you. My suggestion is develop some thicker skin. You have no reason, whatsoever, to be offended by what anyone says about you or to you on the Internet, and someone who is so easily offended by something that has no physical or emotional substance should not be on the Internet.

For those of you who I have legitimately hurt: I apologize for ruining your pretendy fun time games. But see above.

In any case, this is Mondo, signing out. I'm @Llortamai on Champions Online and @loocodnom on Star Trek Online, loocodnom on AIM, loocodnom on Skype (though I almost never use it). Feel free to leave hatemail or praise as befits your desires.

Yeah, dudes, I'm saying remove Trip Mine. It looks ugly and doesn't fit with the power. Would Batman run around planting giant stacks of landmines everywhere?

Get rid of it, replace it with something useful, like a build up power or a flashbang/concussion grenade effect. I have legitimately never, ever seen anyone use Trip Mine or Time Bomb, and the few Devices blasters I've played have never used it with no ill effect. Primarily because, again, it's ugly-looking, boring, annoying to set up, extremely gimmicky, and doesn't fit with the theme of being a Blaster. No reasonable group is going to wait around five minutes for you to set up Trip Mine for a boss; it's a hell of a lot faster to just straight-up beat the enemy to death.

Replacing it with something that better fits the theme of Devices will make the powerset a lot more tolerable for people who want to play it without sacrificing their character theme and most of their usefulness as a Blaster for some silly gimmick power that's only feasible in a few select situations.

As extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, I would like to see anyone give me video evidence of a person using Trip Mine in an actual combat situation. Just one example, unless it doesn't exist because nobody ever does it.

Or just add a crossbow model/animations to Archery.

/thread

Currently, Devices is pretty bad. It's pretty much the red-headed stepchild of Traps, at this point: it's ugly and hard to synergize thematically with primary powers, and it's very rarely, if ever used, due to the gimmicky, circumstantial powers and the lack of a build-up.

Here are my suggestions to improving the powerset, turning it from the crap heap that it currently is into what it was intended to be: a Blaster secondary that has extra support and utility at the expense of little offensive power.


1. Web Grenade: Add a lethal DoT as the super-thin strings cut into skin and armor to bring it up to speed with other secondaries' immobilizes.

2. Caltrops: Fine as-is. Caltrops is always pretty badass. Maybe change the animation to the one used by the heal in Poison, which looks better than the current "fling your arm out like a tool" animation.

3. Taser: Alternate animation when using a weapon powerset, such as DP, Beam Rifle or Assault Rifle. Fires the taser leads directly from the weapon.

4. Targeting Drone: With blasters getting an instant snipe in i24, maybe make this a toggle that gives you just enough to-hit to facilitate that instant snipe, as well as some +range. Increase endurance consumption to compensate. If not, make it similar to Focused Accuracy with an extra +range component.

5. Smoke Grenade: Turn it into a ground-targeted area of effect that lowers enemy perception and increases ally defense inside the area of effect.

6. Cloaking Device: Cool as-is.

7. Trip Mine: Get rid of this, as it does not fit the thematic image of the powerset and it is not fun at all to spend five minutes planting a giant stack of landmines (which, I'm pretty sure, was never the original intent of this power and was only kept in because everything else in Devices is trash) when you could be doing something useful like using your primary powerset instead. Ignore all the crybabies who want to keep their gimmick power that they only use because all the other powers in the set suck in comparison. Replace with either a concussion grenade (ground-targeted AoE knockback, ideally used to corral enemies into a firing slot) or a flashbang (targeted AoE sleep and -tohit.)

8. Time Bomb: Get rid of this, as I can't recall a point in time when anyone ever took or used this ability in serious gameplay. Replace with a standard build-up power, stick it lower in Devices. Maybe call it "Tactical Focus".

9. Gun Drone: Fine as-is. Maybe lower the damage and add a -def or -res component as the barrage of gunfire eats away at enemy protections.