Seldom

I'd almost wonder if the devs are setting up their later incarnate stuff with the abilities they are giving. They can all of a sudden assume that any team can kill off masses of foes quickly even if they lack blasters because everybody can have a backup pseudo-nuke. No buffs? Incarnates can have some buffs of their own.

...And so on.

If so, it's a way to make game design easier, but risks making the incarnate slots less optional, more necessary for future content.

I personally hope this isn't the case, but can't help but think it is.

The thematic homogeneousness bothers me far more than the mechanical. The powers are slow, so you'll see people throw them out here and there but that won't change the general, reliable performance differences. Every hero can give a damage buff here and there from their alignment power, that doesn't make them supplant a good kinetics team member.

I've teamed with controllers for years throwing fireballs, I still won't call them a damage AT like a blaster.

Fast/reliable powers define archetypes, not the specialty/add-on ones.

This will sound trivial, but if all incarnate powers could be recolored, the whole personal power thing would be moot.

The pets make little sense even with lore. "I'm an incarnate, I'll reach into the well and pull out a robot!"

...wait, what?

Sometimes I wonder about the devs' perspective on these things, just wanting to know where they are coming from.

Read any critique of this game, and any reviewer will mention the customizability is one of its biggest strengths. Even players who aren't big on character concepts take the time to color their powers to be cooler. Yet the devs were genuinely surprised when the players still wanted pool powers customized, and insisted at times that patron powers belonged to the patron, not the character. (Something they softened on, thankfully.)

I can understand from a development time perspective why they wish to make these powers external. If the player owned the new abilities, they might want a broader range, while making them 'external' (that is, gifted) they are all the same, no supporting conditions to be kept in mind. After all, everybody is borrowing from the same source. No need to make the powers look or feel different for each player.

But they are, gradually, working against their own greatest strength: the ability for players to make their own characters, with their own abilities. Worse yet, if all the progression post 50 is externally based, it emphasizes how the character's own abilities begin to be eclipsed by an external power. Which is cooler, Superhero Man can do a punch for 500 damage, and a 'borrowed' attack for 5000 damage, or Superhero Man can punch for 500 and use his own power to do a super attack for 5000? Hint: one is all about the hero overshadowed by a greater power, the other about the hero becoming a greater power.

Praetoria and the praetorians have pretty art. They have cool designs, cool powers, and some memorable moments. This will sound weird, but the biggest thing for me that makes them not memorable?

Color. Greys, pale blues, a few audacious colors here and there make villains stand on their own. This is based on comic books, use bright colors. If the giant robots were bright red, they'd stand out more. You look at them in some of their maps and it all seems a mite bit greyish. This from a guy who's favorite color is grey. A variety of tones with a few standouts goes a long ways.

But anywise. I enjoy the game, and have since '04. That's a long time to spend on one game. The criticism I'd level at the writers is that they often fall into some flat villains. Cole seemed interesting as a foe of primal earth. It seemed he was the well-meaning dictator who did bad things out of paranoia for preservation. But if the praetorians are just another bland conquering force, that depth is gone. He wants to conquer. Why? Conquering is what villains do, I guess.

Devs, here's a hint: if you make an enemy that you'd like to ask a question before hitting them, you made a good enemy. If you don't care or can't tell who you're hitting, that's a bad sign. Unfortunately, many Praetorian foes fall into the latter.

From a brute standpoint, playing my "SMASHtroller" character that can stun a crowd of minions and up to three bosses at a time, fury is not a problem. If it is, you are not chaining your attacks as well as you could.

As to dark armor: I love the set. I tried to love it back when the sounds didn't suppress nor the toggles stack, but lost interest with time. Once they removed those and put it on brutes, I never looked back. Some call it 'weak,' but you have to take the set where it's at- it's a non-conventional set. This is not invulnerability or stone armor.

The set is at its heart a heal/resistance/mez set. It has enough resistance to slow incoming damage, then mez to slow even that. This can slow damage to a trickle, allowing you to pace your healing. Dark armor offers strengths in areas that are usually achilles' heels. Incidentally, it is weaker against the most common damage types. This makes players used to the common strengths of melee to see it as weak, as they often play around the unconventional way dark armor handles itself, rather than to it.

Mez toggles=oddball melee resistance/defense. You are slowly, and measurably decreasing damage you take by making foes tremble and waddle. While the mez weakens against higher foes, it still has a very distinct advantage- attack prevention. This is similar to the way defense profits against debuffs and nasty secondary effects, but better, as you can prevent yourself from being hit and don't risk bad luck runs on lucky shots. Even if they don't self-stack, preventing hits is far more powerful an ability than many give it credit for.

The weaknesses of dark armor are often easier to plug than the weaknesses of other sets, and the strengths of dark armor are hard if not impossible to replicate elsewhere. Psychic/dark damage is not a problem. The smashing/lethal can be boosted through the pools. The KB by pools/IO's. Common damage types that give troubles can be negated through defense bonuses. Endurance costs via smart slotting and/or IO's. Endurance drains are far less potent against dark armor.

What starts as a strong set that can heal itself to full, reduce damage, shrug of psychic damage, and incapacitate foes can become a beast that can heal itself to full, take even less damage, still incapacitate foes, shrug off psychic damage, and avoid the attacks that might get through all of those layers.

The floating city is pretty cool- I'd think it would have more struts/ramps/beams to connect everything and keep it floating together, but I really shouldn't say given such a small image.

Nice idea, here's hoping it's populated by pirates!

Hm. My definition of 'Iconic' might differ from some others, but for me it's who might come up if you asked a normal person to name a super hero/villain, how likely would they be to bring up the name? A step down from this are 'known' characters, likely would to be recognized if shown to an average person.

Yes, most people when asked to name a super hero/villain will say Superman, batman, Joker, Hulk, etc. Wolverine I'd put in this list easily. Storm/Cyclops, maybe. More recent characters would hit the 'known' litmus, but not be in the first. Venom, Harley Quinn, (ironically more tv than comic based) Bane, and Spawn might work. Deadpool I almost think of, but he's still more limited to the comic reader base.

Rain of arrows. I have mine six slotted, with 3 Damage/range HO's, a javelin A/E/R & A/D/E/R, and a +rech Io. This gives around 40% accuracy/endurance, 80% recharge, Full damage, and full range. Tack on boost range and you have a 200 foot ranged rain of pointy death every thirty seconds or so.

Runner up is LRM,same slotting, which has a two minute recharge but a 330 foot range.

Fixing poison is actually pretty straightforward, in my opinion.

*envenom: make this 50%-75% unresistable in its effect. As it's unstackable, this is fine, but makes the set catch up significantly to be good vs. AV's.

*Poison trap. [renamed to Leeching trap, or something along those lines] Give it range, a pulsing sleep cloud, and a heavy -recovery, and a medium -end. So it can be used for an immediate "Oh no! sleep, stop attacking!" as well as a way to slowly sap mobs into weary ineffectualness. So if you are steamrolling, the soft control gives slight but not complete coverage, if you need to play safe, it will get you there with a bit of time. This covers the group weakness while preserving the single-target nature of most offensive debuffs. Visual: The player prepares a gob, throws it out to a targeted location, which when tread upon explodes releasing the aforementioned cloud. No interupt, but long cast and enemies still need to step on it.

*noxious gas needs to be a toggle, plain and simple. I would suggest masterminds have an ally toggle, Corruptors get an enemy-based toggle.

The problem with poison on a corruptor is this: what was meant seems to have been designed as a "go for broke, sacrifice abilities to make one foe into a joke" set is in practice not actually better within this specialization, but still makes sacrifices.

The set lacks both crowd mitigation and self-preservation methods. The strong point of poison is that it offers all methods of debuffing under one roof. The devil within details is that its single target values on these effects are equivalent at best, and often inferior to the values that other sets provide against a crowd.

The 'mitigation' of the set is a close range/slow trap in a ranged set that has little self-mitigation. The trap offers only initial not reliable control against a crowd.

The power that allows the set to compete with others is noxious gas, but that at present seems to be based around the placement and survival of an ally, and is situational as per its recharge, not continuous.

As it stands, a poisoner could be a valuable supplementary support character, but could use some re-evaluation to become something a team or solo player could rely well upon to keep allies/oneself alive, and enemies dead/pathetic. This becomes even more apparent with an archetype that has no pets to distract/support the poisoner.

I WANT to love this set, but it has several gaps to achieve equivalency at best within limited areas. It needs some love before I'd play it again, now on a corrupter.

The problem with flight is two fold- the debuff, and, ironically, the flight. In fact, the times I've turned it on the team requested I kill it not because they couldn't hit things but because they didn't want to fly. I'm not sure they even knew about the debuff. Many players are simply not comfortable with flight, especially in any sort of combat situation.

That said, combined with the "go to" command it's a true boon to masterminds, as they can keep from dragging trouble making minions, and get pets to places they usually couldn't jump to. Ironically, it penalizes these the worst as minions start with an accuracy handicap.

Remove the accuracy debuff, I will use this all the time with my masterminds solo.

Add it with the ability for team members to refute it, I can use it all the time.

I heartily approve of the no-debuff click with a prompt option. No falling pets/team members, no debuff, waaay fewer complaints.

Bots/ff/medicine/leadership/mace can easily take on AV's. Softcapped defenses, good resists, three sources of external healing at all times. (2 protector bots and the mastermind) This includes repair, a full heal.

Having had experience with both a permanent phantom army illusion controller and a bots mastermind, The phantom army is indeed untouchable, but has its draw backs. Illusion is single target, even if it's capable of dispersed single target. As it becomes more spread out, it also becomes less effective as it heals back should targets not die fast enough. The controller has little control over targets for the phantom army, so there's no way to maximize which targets are eliminated. Likewise, between re-summons a controller is vulnerable to aggro as the new army has to gain enemy attention anew, attention that can be set squarely on the summoner for the past set of PA. (Especially if the phantasm is not cooperating.) A mastermind may have to cope with pet death, but pets can be preserved well enough to keep attention away from their boss at all times.

I play a number of characters, and can say that in most circumstances having controllable, aoe dealing bots are superior to the phantom army. Illusion is by far superior at misdirection and control, but has some issues with pet reliability given AI and pets' timed lifespan.

The obvious issues of server-specific names and villain/super groups aside, this would enhance my game play experience substantially.

Currently I've filled two separate servers, one for heroes and a dedicated supergroup, one with a redside and a personal villain group. I also have friends on other servers, who have used free server transfers to concentrate their favored characters onto their 'main' server, which has limited our ability to play together when we ended up with different 'main' servers.

Cross-server teaming would be wonderful.

That said, a dedicated server that can handle players from any server could, and probably would experience traffic not even seen on freedom. I'd suggest instead a way to do a 'temporary' server transfer approach.

How about this: character slots per server increased by a page, and on the first page is a 'global' character slot that says 'Visit Shard...' Clicking it brings up a server list to select from, then character list, to select a character from another server shard. Any character that has used this function zones into a inter-dimensional hub in pocket D on the new server. Names could have the server extension as noted earlier, and the dimensional tourists could not join any VG/SG on the shard they are visiting, and could not enter VG/SG mode outside of their home shard. When they log back into the local server, the character would be in the pocket D dimensional hub of their original shard.

To decrease any server-side problems of constant transfers, the shard visitor slot would have a cool-down on changing which character could be the visitor. Changing which character was the selected visitor would remove that character from any SF/TF roster in progress. Players could purchase additional shard visitor slots aside from the first free visitor slot.

This way the player can play characters from other servers, but the servers in existence would be handling them just like the 'local' characters, aside from VG/SG limitations. This would avoid the excessive traffic possible in having one 'hub' server.

Just a thought, and every combo listed in this thread would have to me intentionally miss-played, (with the exception of qroup fly, as that is the only ally debuff in-game that rivals an enemy debuff) but how about a tanker? Once in a while there's one that doesn't understand aggro limits, but still tries 'herding the map' with as many targets as possible. Pretty soon, the aggro cap takes effect, and the masses look for secondary targets....hellooooo team members!

Hm...names that surprised me:

"Dr. Scourge"
"Cremator"
"Watchman"
"Captain Nimbus"
"The Red Guard"

I usually don't try the more obvious names, but the above did come up.

What has kept me coming back to play comes from a couple different directions:

First, concepts keep me connected to a character, but they need to have a hint of flexibility. If the beginning concepts starts getting stale, adapt it in a way that brings interest rather than ditching them. If something isn't working, it's fun to work within the starting boundries and evolve it into something altogether new. This way you have the play experience to know how to approach things, what you like and don't, and can purposefully try something different through new costumes/powers/tactics.

Have some good multiplayer- I find that though the character creators and powers are fun, many actual experiences are quite limited. But playing with people adds a brand new element, especially if they don't play along one set tactic. Here having a variety of alts is nice, because different archetypes can change a team even with the same players. Also, meeting new people can be fun as you have to be a lot more flexible and aware of their strategies.

Be flexible, but find a strength you enjoy. This is a bit of a balance, but is totally possible. I love characters that has a broad range of tools. Mind control. Dark armor. Electric blast. Dark miasma. Sonic Attacks. While having many tools is great, it's also important to find your strength, and build around that. Having something you are REALLY good at, but still having other tools when that isn't working seems the key to really enjoying a character. Example: I have an archery/EM/concealment/medicine/munitions blast, built for range. She mainly kills masses of foes from sniper range- but she can help herself and friends recover, and can control/debuff problem targets as well. And go invisible to sneak. The specialty you have lets you do insane things that make you or your team say 'wow!' The others mean you always have something else in you back pocked when you need a diversion, or a plan B.

Ugh, hasten. It's my guilty pleasure power, leaning toward guilt, less pleasure.

The power's effects are skippable in most instances, but it does have times where it becomes highly valuable. It is one of the most visually invasive powers in the game. I have exactly four characters with the powers, and in two cases it absolutely ruins their visual cohesion and concept. Yet it allows them to achieve gameplay performance that caters to their stories, so I took it on them any way.

The other two characters that have it are fire based, one of the only times the golden embers of speed pool seems visually appropriate.

For concept, it works. The character wants to do things faster, and tires after doing so for a bit. For look, well, I covered that. If you are going with superspeed hasten is usually more useful steppingstone pick, even just as a situational power, than flurry. If you live and die (or others do) by powers that are not readily available through recharge, hasten is a boon. The more dependent you are on slow powers, the better it is.

*scratches head*
Yeah. Cool cats,dogs, bulls and birds. Which like bananas the same way monkeys do....right?

....right?

While many complain that /psi is not huge on damage, it should be noted psychic scream's damage was boosted by quite a bit, even over the straight damage boost. As such, /psy has its AoE split between its cone and PbAoE. Use them both early and often if you go /psy.

Also note: the way confusion works, plant/ has one a very favorable use with tight aoe's as confused mobs often clump up to hit each other. This helps drain psyche, but also helps clump stuff for /fire.

Fire has no mitigation outside of kill speed, but to many that is enough. Consume can be handy for an extra bit of endurance now and then. /psi is decent at melee/ranged/aoe, but not phenomenal at one or the other. the /ice will boost this, of course, but will also boost /fire. The big split really does just come down to drain psyche vs. embrace of fire.

/fire gets a bit too much credit at times in my book, but I favor survivability, so /psy fits that style a bit better. Drain psyche on high +recharge means not only can you one-shot hold most foes, anything that slips through is quickly. /fire means you carry more greens, but see more orange.

I tried to purchase the beast booster, at intervals using two different cards over several hours. At all times, I received this notice:

Hehehe. I would be far more interested in a hispanic Superman.