UberGuy

I can go either way. I didn't mind the combat threat it could represent (which I mentioned in my previous post), but I did very much mind being stuck in it after a fight is otherwise over. I don't have any characters who would die just from standing in even 15-ish Caltrops patches, so it basically just keeps me from moving on to the next fight. That's just annoying.

It can be dangerous for some characters. If you are able to solo them primarily due to +defense, but have no DDR, one proper response to having a cascade defense breakdown begin is to back away, so the debuffs get a chance to expire. Standing in 15 Caltrops patches makes that impractical.

I wouldn't want it identical to Fiery Embrace.

First of all, there's no reason why wielding a broadsword would make my damage aura or pool attacks or other non-sword attacks should do any extra smashing damage. Any FE-like behavior of the set should be restricted to the sword attacks themselves. But if that's the case, then all our other powers lose the benefit of +damage that Build Up gives today. That's why I propose that a (small) amount of bonus smashing damage be added with Build Up that affects Broadsword attacks only, while leaving the existing +damage in place.

But we want the bonus damage to benefit from damage buffs, otherwise it doesn't scale with slotting or things like AAO or Fulcrum Shift, so that means the bonus damage also benefits from Build Up (unless they play games with timing, which I wouldn't like for such powers due to the potential for latency-augmented race conditions with activating other powers). That means the bonus damage scale needs to be chosen with the knowledge that it will basically always at least start with Build Up's benefit. (The two effects don't have to have the same durations, but the bonus damage probably shouldn't be much longer, if longer at all.)

This would, by the way, make BS/FA hit like a truck. Which I don't see as a problem, I just thought I'd mention it.

The "Fiery Embrace" like behavior I proposed earlier would sidestep this. Everyone would get it, and I proposed it being independent of critical hits on ATs that do get them.

Because, just reading it as you have written it, that doesn't make much sense. Why would someone who has the scope of power to take on cosmic threats (but who is not, presumably, all-seeing and omnipresent) be out hunting down the local drugs gang? If the setting dictated that our characters were one of only a handful of metahuman beings, that might be explainable, barely, but the CoH setting is very much predicated on there being a large number of lower-level heroes coming up in power. There's a pyramid-like structure of power, with a few very powerful metas at the top, and lots of weaker ones at the bottom. That means there are lots of people closer to the power level of drugs gangs whose time is going to be better spent chasing those gangs.

First and foremost, this is a video game, and "massively multiplayer online" game at that. MMOs are generally centered around the idea of their players teaming up. They often allow soloing to varying degrees, and I think the more successful MMOs allow soloing to be a successful way to advance one's character, but I think it's safe to say that they are designed primarily around teaming.

If our characters can run off and solo god-like foes in combat (as opposed to defeating them through superior problem solving, or really anything non-combat, which is about all CoH really supports), there's no good explanation for why anything less than god-like would be able to defeat us. That would naturally lead to us needing missions full of just-less-than-god-like minions with god-like bosses at the end, and at that point, our characters get even harder to explain than supermen and wonder women living in a human city. Looked at another way, if we're off soloing these god-like foes in our missions, why can't we solo them in Task Forces and Trials? Are they constantly finding a MacGuffin that elevates them to trans-god-like stature just for the TF/Trial? If so, how come we can't ever find those?

Now, there's a lot of what I call "Enterprise Syndrome" going on in the Incarnate Trials. It's my name for what used to happen in Star Trek: TNG, where the offensive and defensive might of the USS Enterprise "D" would fluctuate wildly from episode to episode as served the plot. While the fickle Well of Furies serves as a vague hand wave towards explaining why the iTrial opponents are suddenly radically powerful when we were off soloing them last month, I'll agree it's not very gratifying.

I think the new Praetorea could have unfolded in a less annoying manner. Personally, I would have found the existing Praetorean storyline more convincing if Tyrant had found a way to control the Well, rather than it inexplicably blessing him with added power. That the Well chose Tyrant as its champion practically enshrines the deus ex machina in the game lore. If instead Cole had found a way to bend the Well to his will, while still technically the same kind of plot device, it would have simultaneously made Cole seem more powerful/dangerous for being able to achieve it in the first place, and rather literally seemed less like the hand of god making pre-existing foes more powerful.

They did.



They even highlighted it for you.

Right, that makes sense to me, because that's not an example of going to the con for the codes.

Man, that's a load of crap. It's not a cool change period, and it definitely not something that should have had no patch note.

Not recently. Not that we know of.

No reason to be sorry. I think people would be even more annoyed by (temporarily?) exclusive costume parts than they are these days by costume powers. On that basis, I'm glad to have been mistaken.

The depicted character is using normal PC costume pieces in addition to new, Rularuu-themed ones. Unless they've made a new NPC who weards PC costume parts, who we haven't seen yet, and they are giving that NPC's appearance as a costume power, that promo looks to be displaying new costume pieces, not a power.

This sent me down a train of thought than ended in a trainwreck involving "Blackthulu".

But CoH never has fit that analogy. CoH was never themed in its content the way most radio channels are themed in the music they play. Yes, when CoH came out, it tended to be much more limited in the themes its powersets and costume pieces represented, but if you didn't see people making anime, RPG-fantasy, and other-than-western-comics-themed characters from the get-go, you either weren't paying attention, or you were letting your preference bias blind you to what you were looking at.

CoH's core concepts are definitely rooted in "western" comic book themes, but it has never restricted itself to them.

This was definitely fixed previously. I have long been able to go into bases, redside Ouro (usually by accident) and definitely the RWZ. This changed recently, probably since I21.

As Hopeling said, all that does is unlock it. Unlocking the slots by gaining iXP is trivial compared to the average time it takes to get the components to build Rare or Very Rare versions of the powers to put in them.

For example, it's possible to unlock Judgement in about 3 BAFs, Interface in about 3 Lambdas, or you could unlock both in about two Underground trials. Depending on which route you take (or how you combine them), odds aren't good of having any Rare or better drops. Even if you get some, you probably won't have enough Common drops to craft your way to them, though you might get enough Threads to craft those commons outright. (You need seven Commons and one Uncommon to craft a Rare power. Seven commons would require 140 Threads to craft from scratch. A single Uncommon takes 60 threads.)

Since most of my characters have been able to curb stomp Trapdoor, I don't mind running Ramiel's arc.