TheArtifex

They should probably be an ambush spawn anyway, just to prevent them from hanging out at the doorway if the opener runs off. Have 'em give chase until the opener's ToT timer resets, then despawn.

I'm fairly certain the game is using telepathy to divine which costume I want the most for a character and saving it for last.

Robotics lab items; Hess TF is full of some great equipment pieces. Bots in various states of power-down or mid-upgrade. Us Robotics Masterminds would love to equip our lairs with the labs we must have in order to build our creations.

Honestly, I can understand why some folks get irritated by the introduction of another sword powerset. It's not so much that it's without precedent in comic books or that it's unheroic (plenty of heroes use deadly weapons with such skill that they can be used to subdue instead of kill). The thing I can see being irritating is that it doesn't do much to continue differentiating CoX from other Sword n' Sorcery MMOGs; quite the opposite.

But if that's what people want, then so be it. I have no doubt I'll roll one and have fun with it.

I love the concept of PvP, the idea of competing against other players and having fun. The problem is, way too many people focus on the "competition" bit and forget about the "fun".

When I go to the park with my kids and watch neighborhood soccer games, with the dads on the sidelines screaming at their kids to do better, the refs for "cheating", etc., it becomes all too evident what the problem is.

On one hand, I think Dual Blades is a neat and obviously pretty popular concept.

On the other hand, it would be nice to see some more esoteric powersets (in the Scrapper primary especially) that weren't so Sword n' Sorcerer-y.

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Do they not have sports in school anymore? Something about competition bringing out the best in people ect...

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High school atheletics brings out the WORST in people. Rage, bigotry, cheating, violence. Oh yeah, High school sports is horrible, and I lived in a small town. To the school, the YEARLY riot against their rivals was a good thing.

Competition is good. The problem is to many people in this country seem to think that beating the crap out of the opposition is a good morale booster.

Sit in on the majority of those pre game chats. They are not becoming model citizens. They are becoming violent adolescents with the idea that the high school owes them.

FYI, I like sports, at least some of them. I like martial arts, both in practice and in tournaments. I like soccer. I liked World League Football. I love running and swimming. I greatly admire marathon runners and triathletes. My PoV has nothing to do with sports.

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I think lack of sportsmanship is one of the key problems with PvP in MMOGs (I've been PvP'ing for years, and it really does seem to get more widespread with each new generation of game), and it's not something that's easy or even possible to fix. The ability to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet only makes things more volatile.

It's unfortunate, as I really used to enjoy PvP a lot in MMOGs. Still do from time to time, but I can't really get into it like I used to, because of the increasing prevalence of poor sportsmanship. I enjoy the competition, but I also enjoy getting to know my opponent, building friendly rivalries, etc. This doesn't happen if my opponents are antisocial [censored], and so a large incentive for me to PvP is gone.

Chimera's bow seems to be capped at 95% to-hit, regardless of what sort of defense you have or accuracy/to-hit debuffs he has. The best thing you can do is close to melee range and make him draw his sword, which functions normally.

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1. We're looking into the tweak to Endurance for mobs that's affected Endurance Drain abilities. Sorry about that!

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Thank you for looking into this! It's kinda hard not to take issue with this one, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was disingenuous to have labelled this change as a "tweak" in the first place, as it was a huge increase to the MOBs' endurance. Secondly, the fact that this change would significantly impact endurance drain powers is very obvious, which causes folks to wonder how that could have been overlooked.

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2. We'll be putting in a check that prevents "one shotting"; if anything occurs within a fraction of second that brings a player from 100% Hit Points down to 0, we instead give the player 1% Hit Points.

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1-shotting isn't the problem. The problem is being defeated so quickly there is no chance to react. With that in mind, a huge alpha strike followed by a queued attack that defeats the target is little different in practice than a 1-shot alpha strike.

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Other powers which can Placate (Smoke Flash) only apply the First part. The Hide like stat is not granted at all -- in other words, it is 100% defensive, not a Set Up power.

Perhaps it would help alleviate confusion if Placate (the power) had its name changed to something like Distract.

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Agreed. And the Hidden state should have its name changed as well, as it is easy to assume that it means that one is, well, hidden

I don't buy the arguments that suppression wasn't for PvP either. Many PvE changes were made that dealt with snipes, like giving MOBs huge range boosts on their ranged attacks, increasing aggro duration, etc. Those are the sorts of fixes that make jousting/sniping difficult enough to cease being worthwhile. Suppression in PvE is simply overkill.

I can see why Suppression is needed in PvP. Melee classes wouldn't stand a chance in PvP without some form of reduction in travel power effectiveness. But PvE? I can't see it.

I'd really like to see the base movement speed for Hover get a boost, about 20-25%.

Also, it would be good if movement speed buff powers like Swift affected Fly speed; they already affect Hover speed. That, the boost to Hover base speed and a bump to the Fly speed cap and all would be good for the pool.

Wow. This is awesome!

Fantastic changes! Thanks a ton for the heads-up

For the record, if I could change my MA/Invuln Scrapper's secondary to /SR for PvP, I would in a heartbeat. I5 + I6 + all of the toggle dropping powers out there + crits bypassing resistance has pretty much obliterated Invuln as a PvP powerset. Be thankful that Stalker secondaries are defense-based and not resist-based.

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Who ever said that will break stalkers if the AS dmg was reduced go play as a rogue on WoW and see what kind of dmg can be done by a stealth class out of stealth.

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WoW Rogues (at least when I played one, I don't know what changes have been made since I left WoW to come back to CoH) were one of the best-balanced of this type of character archetype that I've seen in a MMOG, and it was precisely because of this reason. Being able to frontload from stealth was a signature attack, but it was by no means the only thing that they could do, nor was it anything resembling an instant kill. WoW Rogues have a ton of nasty mez effects, poisons to slow, blind, DoT, etc. They were balanced because, like any other class, they were only successful if you drew from all of the tools the class has to offer. That simply isn't true in CoH, as is evidenced by the number of assertions that limiting the effectiveness of AS would ruin the class.

As a Stalker player myself, I sure as hell don't want to be a one-trick pony. I'm perfectly willing to see alpha strikes get reduced in exchange for some extra bit of roguish utility that helps me in situations where not everything is going my way.

Have to agree, this is annoying as hell on my Stalker.

There needs to be a general limit as to how much damage percentage-wise a single attack can do to a target, and Placate shouldn't be autohit. Other than that, the AT is fine.

Hospital camping is not a Hero or Villain-only activity. Both sides do it.

The fix is quite simple: improve drone Perception. They're there for a reason, and it isn't so that yabos with decent Stealth can sneak by for a quick gank of some poor sod that just got mediported.

People need to quit using the ability to see through a Stalker's stealth as justification for their AS damage. It's a bad argument that doesn't do either Stalkers or their targets any good, because the result is an almost purely binary encounter.

I see through Stalker's stealth = I win

I don't see through Stalker's stealth = I get AS'd = I lose

This isn't good for anyone. It's not fair for a Stalker to be at an overwhelming disadvantage if someone sees through his stealth, and it's not fair for anyone else for the Stalker to be at an overwhelming advantage if they don't. It's impossible to balance. The result is an arms race between Stealth and Perception, and whoever's on top gets nerfed. It's already happened with IR Goggles, because they were too effective in seeing through stealth.

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Or does your -valueless- post indicate acceptance with everything aforementioned, excepting of course that most trivial sentence?

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Not really, i just didnt think it was worth commenting on because Castle has already stated that they are changing the coding in game so that any PvP attack that would kill a player in one hit will instead leave them with 1hp. With that in mind almost the entirety of your post was better off ignored.

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Correction here. The 1hp threshhold is only one of the ideas being considered. We've still not determined exactly how we are going to deal with 'One Shot Kills' (and the final decision will almost certainly apply to both PVE and PVP -- so no more AV insta-kills.)

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I do hope that doesn't end up being the solution. Having 1 HP after an alpha is in practice little better than being 1-shot, as a queued followup attack will finish the job, and both players and MOBs with multiple attacks can do this. The real issue at stake is the ability for the attack in question to do that much damage in the first place.

If it came down to the need to balance Assassin Strike, I'd much rather see it become more useful on hard targets, and less useful on soft ones. The best way I could see to do this is to have it ignore a target's DEF and RES, but do less damage, and have a lowered damage cap so that BU and Enrages couldn't be used to guarantee a 1-hit kill.