Samuel_Tow

And now you know why I keep rerolling my 50s

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I'll stick to the ATs I play and have some off-hand idea of powersets and design for. I'll also probably be listing everything I want to see, not necessarily everything I want to see AT ONCE.

Scrappers: Axe and Mace, Super Strength, Energy Melee and Energy Aura, Ice Melee and Ice Aura.

Axe and Mace are obvious choices and they seem to go together. They have the potential of challenging Broadsword, but that still has defence buffs on its side, as well as a pretty decent defence debuff, I'm finding.

Super Strength is something I've been waiting for for a long time, but I realise Rage would be a problem with Scrappers' higher self damage buff mod and melee damage mod. Not sure what can be done about it, though I wouldn't be too upset at seeing just a regular Build Up in the Scrapper version.

Energy/Energy is something I've wanted to see for some time, and I'm not sure what the problem is. Sure, Energy Aura is a bit on the weak side, but it should be workable, plus it might be a good time to tighten it up a bit. Energy Melee seems like a fairly average set with some decent but slow Burst damage and no real unusual kinks.

Ice/Ice just seems like a natural choice, even with the bulky ice armour toggles. For Scrappers, I'm really nor sure there's anything which could be problematic.

Brutes: Broadsword, Spines, Regeneration, Ice Melee and Ice Armour.

Broadsword is fairly obvious. It's a slightly lighter set than Axe and Mace, but it has buffs and debuffs and greater recharge speed.

Spines I'm not sure has enough -recharge to really matter for Fury, and it looks like a decent fit for a Brute thematically.

Ice/Ice was problematic enough to be pulled out of Beta (I had an Ice/Ice Brute for a while back then), so clearly that's not a straightforward decision, but I don't know. There has to be SOMETHING that could be done. Maybe replacing -recharge components with -damage with the pretence that your enemies are so cold they can't hit as hard? The theme is too good to pass up.

Stalkers: Ice Melee and Ice Armour, Invulnerability, Axe and Mace, Fiery Melee and Fiery Aura.

Ice/Ice is obvious. Decent melee set with some blades and some blunt force attacks, with the possibility of an Ice Assassin's Blade or some kind of Sub Zero style insta-freeze + shatter, and the defence set is appropriate, potentially allowing the ability to cover yourself with refracting ice and hide that way. The combo also has quite a bit of debilitating support, which is right up a Stalker's alley. Icicles might be a problem, but I could see that being sacrificed for Hide.

Invulnerability may seem like an odd choice, but it's about as odd as Regeneration, in that you can "hide" independent of your actual powers. Beyond that, a Stalker is just hard to kill if and when you can spot him. Not sure if it might not be too weak without Invincibility, however, which might have to be swapped for Hide as it's a taunt aura.

Fiery Melee and Fiery Aura may seem like absurd options (Assassin's INFERNO?) but it's no more or less absurd than covering yourself in flashing, crackling, obvious electricity as an Electric/Electric Stalker, and I don't see anything within the sets themselves that could be a problem.

Axe and Mace are things I really want to see. Having a killer with an axe pop up behind you in a locked room he had no way to get into is the staple of horror movies the world over, and I'm pretty sure a mace hit to the back of the head of an unsuspecting person would be fairly lethal, so why not?

Masterminds... I really don't know enough about Support sets to suggest, and there are no summon sets anywhere else to proliferate to them.

That's not surprising to me. With the developers' continued insistence on "encouraging" people to team more, that's the team-mates you get: People who don't usually team much, don't usually like to team much and don't usually form, or want to form, their own teams. That, in a nutshell, is me. You don't get more team players, you get more soloists looking for a team they could solo on.

What you described is a reflection of myself. I've been playing Scrappers and Brutes mostly, and those are what I happen to take on TFs whenever the call goes out. I don't really have any Stalkers high-level enough to take part in the bigger TFs, and I'm not sure the Satanic Hamster would invite me even if I did.

I honestly don't know if Masterminds truly count as "support," since those of us who picked them to solo with tend to support... Well, ourselves, but I guess I could see the argument. I'll see about what Masterminds I have that I could potentially play some time soon.

Oh, I agree completely. It just feels... Weird to slot Energy Punch when it's so "small" and not Total Focus, which is so "large." It's not rational, I know, that's just how it feels. I will, however, do as you suggest.

Yeah, I'll be doing that, now that I know I should. I'm also not TOO concerned as to which attacks it's best to slot, since I intend to slot them all regardless. I don't foresee needing too many extra slots anywhere. And, yes, prolonged fights will exist, and I managed to drop my toggles again doing not much else beyond going from fight to fight. Steps must be taken as slots permit.

I'd rather not get into that. It always starts an argument that never solves anything.

This was never the case. The paper manual which shipped with the game describes Scrappers as being able to fight alone, Blasters as being able to fight alone if you were REALLY careful, and Defenders, Controllers and Tankers as ATs you should team with. Furthermore, bosses were described as huge threats that should require an entire team, but you could maybe, possibly think about taking on by yourself if you were really awesome.

That's not exactly how things turned out.

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Back in my day, we had City of Blasters because of the bugged value of Smoke Grenade which debuffed enemy to-hit by 50% instead of 5%, and was stackable with itself.

Back in the day, we had no provision for stacking positional and typed defence, such that SR Scrappers had precisely no use for Forcefields bubbles.

True, to a point. It's a problem, but not an actual limitation as such. A few of Praetoria's Power arcs are written in such a way as to mimic player initiative, and done quite well. However, the only reason this was even considered was because the Power arc is assumed to be a megalomaniac out for himself. That's GOOD, but it's also not the only reason a person could be proactive for. A hero concerned with the citizens of Praetoria could be just as proactive, searching for people with information and following his own initiative. This is never pursued. In fact, the Warden path is almost exclusively reactionary - Calvin Scott sends you to specific people and they have problems they need your help with. Why can't you ever call Calvin and say "Dud, I have, like, the best idea ever! I heard Neuron is making these monsters and letting them loose in the sewers, see, and I need your guys to get me a few of them so my bud Aaron here can scan them. Can you do that while I go get his medicine?"

When first introducing himself, Crimson says something that I like: "You are not working for me. You are working with me. There's a difference." I'm paraphrasing off memory, of course, but that's the gist of it. And even though World Wide Red is still a case of "go there, do that," I never feel like I was initiated into an organisation and set to forward its objectives. I don't want the world to be ruled by Malta, Crimson doesn't want the world to be ruled by Malta, and we're just two dudes with a common goal and some sense of justice. This is missing from Praetoria. Even the Warden arc, which mostly consists of working with Resistance sympathisers rather than actual Resistance members, is still marred by "Resistance represent!"

Hell, I made my own Architect arc - The PDA that Knew - which is essentially proactive and essentially without a contact, and the developers have made a fair share of their own. It's not impossible, or indeed even all that hard for a decent writer. And I'm not saying the game's writers CAN'T mage such stories - they clearly can, as such stories exist, if rarely. I'm saying such stories don't seem to enter into the developer's official plans, which is a shame. Praetoria was the perfect environment in which to let players rebel against the system... And yet they can only ever do so by joining another system.

That's actually the precise reason I first wanted to use this for. Inna would really make sense to emphasise using her right arm:



I know Energy Melee with a Shield doesn't exactly swap many things to just the right arm... In fact, I'm fairly certain that it swaps exactly nothing, but I still think the "with shield" animations - where they exist - would constitute a cheap addition to power customization.

The flaw in your suggestion is that while the old Defiance helped you kill one more enemy before you died (in addition of making you put yourself in that situation), "Defiance 2.0" helps you not die in the first place. There is more to the Inherent than just being able to shoot out of a hold, even if that's important.

Defiance 2.0 grants you stacking damage buffs from every power in your primary or secondary, oftentimes in amounts greater than old defiance could maintain with any safety. It also saw Blaster base ranged damage go up 12.5%, which is not insignificant. And, yes, it helps you shoot out of a hold, potentially avoiding being perma-held and slow-killed.

The old defiance was one of the worst ideas the developers have ever had, for the simple fact that there was nothing good about it. The ability to kill one enemy in the very narrow window of health where the buff meant anything, which was generally below about 20% when you could be one-shotted by a defeated Jaeger, did nothing to make up for the fact that Blaster performance was tragic. In fact, Defiance was seen as the only way for Blasters to compete, causing the game's most fragile AT to incite players to deliberately hurt themselves and deliberately not heal, deliberately putting themselves in situations where they would take unreasonable risks and die for their efforts. And datamining showed this without a shadow of a doubt.

You're arguing for a provably inferior system for the sake of one rare and insignificant instance where it could be helpful, suggesting that we scrap a system which, quite frankly, holds an entire AT together and keeps it from being complete and utter garbage. Just like the complete and utter garbage it was before the Defiance changes. This isn't about opinion any more so than you can claim it is your opinion aeroplanes should fly without wings because the view from the windows would be better. The old Defiance is factually inferior to the new Defiance in all aspects which actually matter for AT balance.

I don't bother with the game music anywhere in this game because there's no option to leave it on JUST in Praetoria. There's one setting for music volume, and to listen to some but not all music, I have to fiddle with options, which isn't going to happen. Not on a regular basis.

In order for me to turn music back on, it has to not suck anywhere in the game, so I have no places where I feel I have to turn it off.

My question here is why does it have to be like this? One of the quintessential features of a good villain is being in charge of his own evil organisation. Any villain with aspirations for taking over the world (futile as they may be) needs his own evil organisation and secret lair. Having to try and take over the world from under Recluse's patronage is like having to take over the world while still living in your mother's basement. It may be appropriate for Hector Con Carne, but he's not exactly the height of respectable villainy.

The OOOLD City of Heroes narrative had the right idea. You are a hero, you want to do good, go find people who can give you information on how to do good. You had an ID card, sure, but that was about it. Beyond that you could be a member of a super team, the owner of a corporation, the master of a magical cabal or just a solitary loner and the game never assumed either way. I CANNOT be "just a hero" in Praetoria, even if I were inclined to go for that, because I have to be affiliated with SOMEONE. The Tutorial asks us the question "Do you want to be Resistance or do you want to be a Loyalist?" It never asked us the question "Do you want to be neither?"

I pose the following question to you, in return: If I can be a member of the resistance, taking down PPD troops on sight, repeatedly raiding PPD installations, ministry buildings, Loyalist labs and Praetor installations, and yet still pose as a Loyalist with enough authority and clout to requisition supplies and amenities, why can't I pose as a Loyalist doing the same things WITHOUT doing them for the Resistance? Maybe I agree with Metronome that both the Resistance and the Loyalists need to go down, and the Syndicate with them, and that Praetoria's best interest is for all of them to disappear?

The system claims to give us choices, but the system only ever gives us the same one choice with two different names. The game is forcing me to choose which flavour of ice cream I want the most when I don't even like ice cream. It's putting me in false binary fallacies so designed to harken at a third option, but never actually offer it. It forces us to choose between other people's morality, not pick OUR morality, because we can only pick from morality positions that other people support. If my own personal morality happens to diverge from all presented, I am not given the choice to follow it, because my choices are not between two morality stances, but between two political factions with morality only a secondary effect of that choice.

Not everything can or should break down to "Resistance vs. Loyalists" any more so than anything should break down to "Longbow vs. Arachnos."

I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this. However - and here's the fun part - I may have been mistaken on the original assessment. That was done prior to using SOs, and SOs now seem to have helped significantly, to the point where I just can't seem to keep my endurance down. I mean, sure, a couple of big hits like Total Focus followed by Bone Smasher does take a large chunk of endurance off of me, but I can't seem to attack fast enough to make that stick. It just recovers back up to full. I'll keep an eye on that, and probably will indeed slot everything for endurance reduction... At some point. But it would be interesting to see if this is sustainable on just recovery.

If and when that happens. And, really, there is no narrative mandate that you HAVE to be a lackey. Certainly, allowing players to be if they so chose, that's just fine, but why continually create content that places us in the service of still more people? First it was joining Arachnos, then it was joining the Vanguard, then it was joining Ouroboros, then it was joining the Midnight club, and now it's joining the Resistance or the Loyalists. I'm sick and tired of joining other people's organisations.