Rakeeb

Cool responses. Think I'll weigh my own choices in here.

FUN:
Killing stuff on teams. Love the teaming in this game because it's so unpredictable what you'll end up with. In WoW I teamed constantly, but classes have been homogenized to the point of being totally irrelevant what everyone was playing, just as long as they could fulfill their role in the trinity. CoH is not like that. There is no standard team build (and as a Peacebringer I'm innately multirole). Fill the team with people and roll out, and you'll get there even tho it might be crazy how you do.

Being able to do stories solo, especially the AE content. I like to read. Not everyone does. I like it when I can do my missions and I don't catch crap from other people because I like to go slow. Good example of this done badly is team content in SWTOR: if you're the guy not hitting spacebar, you're hated.

Costumes. I don't think I have to go into any detail here. There's a real satisfaction in creating an amazing costume that gets called "awesome" by people you've never met.

Trials. They're like big teams, but finally with content that requires the team! Love fighting against Anti-Matter and Tyrant and the rest. Can't wait to see i25 and the new trials with Battalion.

NOT FUN:
Being penalized in effectiveness to a team because you chose the "wrong" powersets. Let's be clear here: this is a development problem, not a community problem. There are sets that are demonstrably weaker than others and that's completely unacceptable. Nobody should be weaker out of the gate because they chose Energy Blast, War Mace, Mercenaries, Gravity Control, Force Field, or HEATs. Nobody should be stronger out of the gate because they chose Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Dark Melee, Fire Blast, Illusion Control, Shield Defense, or VEATs. What a player DOES with the toon should define it, not an artificial restriction due to bad design. Also, design cowardice falls into this list. Do what you have to do to make the game good for everyone.

The wrong kind of development communication. Developers love to tell us the "what"; they all too often don't tell us the "why". If they intend to communicate effectively with the community, what they need to do is give us the measurables and the intentions. Give us the ideal damage end-state for each of the damage toons in comparison with each other, the ideal survivability state goals for the melee toons, and let us judge for ourselves whether those goals are ideal or no.

Exclusionary attitudes from players. Very bad form. Not everyone is going to be a farmer; that's okay. Not everyone is going to subscribe; that's okay. Team and teach and be patient. This includes the community's perception of knockback. Good knockback is your friend... Burn isn't everything.

Quick points, not everything but I think it expresses how I feel well.

I'd just like to say that other than the hyperbole which sneaks in at times I've found this to be an amazing thread.

EDIT: To state an opinion on the matter:

I've played a few other FTP MMO's, and quite a few of those were blatant Pay to Win games. This is, by far, the most tame free-to-play game I've ever worked with. The *only* thing you can do easily with the market that is virtually impossible otherwise is Enhancement Boosters, because doing it through the game system would be incredibly expensive. Even ATOs are doable in-game; they'd take several weeks of dedicated teaming to fully slot out a character but it's completely doable.

That said, they need to be careful about costumes. They're beginning to overdo it a bit in the Market with the new gear... most players love them some costumes.

I was listening to my random mix at the time, I think... hardly remember what was on at the time, was too busy demolishing the baddies and rescuing people.

As topic. What do you guys do in City of Heroes that's fun, like what parts of the game do you really enjoy? Conversely, what parts of the game do you not enjoy?

I dunno, I seem to do okay against most of these mob types with the Peacebringer. If I'm not savage with them, the Pantheon can give me heartache, but other than that it's not too bad.

Fire's really good. If you feel like DOTs are bad, though, it's not the set for you.

Have you considered where you're going to put the next ATO set, Essence Transfer?

Hey folks,

I played around with Essence Transfer on the Beta server for a bit. Peacebringer perspective here.

It's a 69.91 Heal. On the Superior version, it's intended to have an 18% chance to fire; this means that it should fire roughly every 5.5 attacks, or twice after 11 attacks. With the popular Bolt -> Blast -> Radiant Strike attack chain for Peacebringers, it'll mean two heals every 15 seconds, or about 9 health a second. 9 health a second is almost 200% regeneration on a base Peacebringer; on my IO'd / accolade/ Incarnate monstrosity it's effectively another 100% regen, which is quite valuable.

Enhancement is currently BUGGED and is firing off at 1.8% chance to activate versus 18%. Test volume was statistically significant (1200-ish attacks), but if others could test it that would be oustanding.

It was changed from the Footstomp animation so that you could use it in the air.

Hey, just stopping in to say that 1.1 is almost done and should be posted tomorrow. I spent some time crunching Water Blast numbers so that'll be integrated as well. I'm still going to omit Dual Pistols until I see implemented changes on the beta server that outline where Synapse wants to go, because he's definitely working the issue. The other sets are only said to be being worked on "eventually", so there's no guarantee that they'll make it in.

Patch notes will include the new PPM proc setup (most of the time, I'll assume aggressive recharge slotting, as usual), changing how I'm calculating the Fire DOT effect, and little things such as rotation suggestions in here, such as the Archery and Fire Blast suggestions.

Doing the numbers, Water Blast is reasonably competitive now and will be rapidly outdistanced by essentially every blaster set in i24. They'll have to do something like remove the lockout period on Enhanced Water Jet to make it better.

I go back and forth. In all of the trials, there are reasons to use various forms. Let's examine, for instance, the BAF trial (which you'll be doing a lot, believe me):

Human: Single target DPS, you kill the AVs in this form.
Nova: AOE DPS, you burn down the prisoners in this form and you fight off the reinforcements using this form's attacks (if necessary, typically not an issue)
Dwarf: You pull and (if necessary) tank the AVs in this form, not so much for survival as for threat. When doing this, I tend to toggle back to human form to fire heals or long-term buffs, then shift back into Dwarf for threat.

That's just suggestions based on one Trial, and of course your role will depend largely on the needs of your League. I've tanked more often at times (did Avatar of the Hamidon once, that was nuts) and I've also done a lot of Nova doing something like the Magisterium startup. Needs must as the devil drives.

Very true. I think that's why you're seeing experienced, knowledgeable players (to include yourself, of course) suggesting that it be easier to cast, have a better up-front impact, and a much reduced overall throughput.

Hey, version 2 of this is almost done. Given the definition war that went on in this thread, and the variance in output with modified proc IO output, that will significantly change how these sets perform... I did nut up and end up going with Uberman's numbers.

I'll probably create a version 1.1 of these numbers.

I think your idea has merit. It won't be on the list of things to fix, because it functions well in the late game despite the absurdity of the interaction here. The equivalent would be modifying Invulnerability to raise general survivability, and then converting Unstoppable into a short-term (think 15s), long cooldown take-zero-damage buff.