baron_inferno

Eh, Trapdoor as a +0 EB just require a bit of strategy on some characters is all. I've soloed him on 20 level 50s of every villain side AT/power combo and more often than not he was a pushover. However on certain DPS challenged characters, you just have to make use of the lava to slow down his regen while you take care of the clone. Of course you could always pull him onto one of the catwalks to start the fight (easier to do this with ranged ATs obviously) and sometimes, his clone will pop up next to you.

Having to enjoy western styled comic books is not a pre-requisite for subscribing to a superhero themed MMO. Having money is.

I think some people are getting confused as to what the exact purpose behind this suggestion was. Allow me to clarify once more.

This suggestion has nothing to do with "limiting" temp powers. This suggestion has to do with removing a good bundle of temp recipes from the drop table. It's no secret that temp recipes drop at a far too frequent rate and many, many of us delete them as fast as we can get them.

Now, I also realize that some people do use the temp powers which is the reasoning behind making them purchasable. This way, people who do want temp powers still have a way to get them, even saving some time from having to craft it. In fact, if the temp powers became purchasable, it is conceivable that more people will actually start use them. After all, it will be little more than a just quick pit stop at a vendor, not unlike picking up some SOs in-between missions.

Lastly, if the temp powers became purchasable, it would also become an additional form of inf sink. It may not be a particularly effective one since I can't imagine any temp powers costing millions of inf to buy but it is still one none the less. As for the my original comment regard limiting the amount of temp powers a character can have at any given time, that was really just a side note for balance reasons. I don't know if that's necessary or not given I rarely bother with temp power recipes. In any case, that side note has little to do with the core concept behind my suggestion.

It's been 4 years and I still fall into the damned gutters in Grandville from time to time.

I've seen a lot of people complaining about the absurdly high temp power recipes drop rates. I've also seen a lot of people suggesting that more inf sink is needed for this game. Well, I have a solution to kill two birds with one stone.

1. Remove all of the temp recipes from the drop table entirely (even the costume ones).
2. Make them purchaseable with inf instead.

Costume recipes can be purchased through a new vendor located in every tailor. A new vendor could also be added to each zone that sells temp powers, kind of like the jetpack vendor. The pricing for temp power would also have to be scaled to character level, sort of like how tailor fees are calculated.

Of course, the one problem with this system would be the charge based temp powers. I propose to have those changed to duration based but with long cool-downs between each activation. They would also be flagged as unenhanceable by global recharge modifiers. Lastly, to prevent characters from becoming overpowered by loading themselves up with a dozen temp powers, maybe make it so that each character can only have 3 such temp powers at any given time.

So, do you all think this is a viable idea or just completely insane?

Item decay is not going to work for this game. There are simply way too many items per character when compared to other games. In other MMOs a character may have what, a dozen pieces of items (chest, gloves, boots, sword, earrings, belt, cloak, shield, etc)? Here we could have a dozen pieces of "items" for just 2 powers. Due to the sheer volume of enhancements, if item decay was implemented, a large chunk of our in-game time would be spent on replacing the broken down ones. It wouldn't just an inf sink, it would be a nightmarish time sink as well, especially for those of us that have many characters (I have 18 level 50's on two accounts for example). Given that CoX was promoted to be very alt friendly, I would imagine that the vast majority of CoX player also have many, many characters. That's not how people want to spend their in-game time, at least not me. Maintenance is not fun for a lot of people. It's a job.

Now you could make the decay rate to be extremely slow so that even if a character runs multiple missions per day, the enhancements would only have to be replaced once every few months. Well, the counterpoint to that would be, what's the purpose then? Such a slow rate of replacement is not going to affect the inf supply in any major way. As things are today, people are already sinking tons of inf into the market (auction fees) to upgrade and/or replacing existing IO sets, particularly during a respec. That said, this idea basically boils down to a lot of development time spent and additional player annoyance for what would ultimately turn out to be a very minimal gain.

Between your choices, I'd probably choose SR though it is a close call. The advantage of SR is that TFs these days (villain side at least, don't know about hero side) are stacked with def debuffing mobs. With that in mind, the high DDR of SR is very important. SD's DDR is only average so if you go that route, I'd pair it with a primary that has good AoEs (Elec, SS, FM, WM) and pick up another Targeted AoE attck from APP. Combined with Shield Charge from SD, you'll just be taking the "kill them before they can kill you" route.

In short, take it all if possible. The MM's greatest asset is his pets and every bit of performance improvement helps. It may not make or break your build but it will make life a bit easier for you.

Be patient and wait until later. MM pets are universally squishy at lower levels. As you get higher and start stacking defense and resistance onto them, they do get tougher. Well some do at least. Ninja pets and Mercs are still squishy at higher levels. Anyways, just make sure you get all 4 of the +pet res/def IOs as a starter. After that, it's about using DM to stack as much -tohit as possible. Of course the effective use of IO sets and global recharge is the best way to go about that, which for most people comes after levels 27/32/37/47. Also keep in the mind that you're comparing pre-25 MM pets to post-35 Crab pets. With such a big level gap, it is natural that there will be major performance differences between them.

Looking at your character list, it would seem that you like Kin as your secondary. Fire/Kin Corruptor pumps out a lot of damage though it is somewhat of a populist/FOTM combination. Yes, I'm guilty of having one too though in my defense, it is on my second account, only IOed for cheap sets and barely play him. As for Dom, Fire/Psi is another FOTM combination that can dish out a good deal of AoE damage (though it used to be even more prior to the Psi nerf). I don't have one of those though I do have a Plant/Psi which is still quite powerful.

I also went with spiritual for my ELM/ELA/Mu brute. Thunderstrike, Lightning Rod and Ball Lightning all benefited from that additional boost to recharge. Energize also benefited which helps with survival but since you're WP, I guess that's irrelevant.

Tips missions is the new farm. Just by reconfirming all 18 of my characters to the villain alignment (all solo), I picked up 6/7 purple and bundles of 10-100 mil rare recipe drops. Some of the tips missons can be annoying though if you're running on a higher difficulty. The characters I've had the most success in farming tips are WM/SD brute, SS/SR brute, and my Plant/Psi dom.

Well, not all villain tips missions are created equal for sure. Some are definitely more difficult than others especially if you're soloing. The Freakshow, Rikti and the Council/5th column missions are easy and short while two of the more annoying ones are the Ms Thistle and the Arachnos/Malta ambush blueprint missions. I usually solo the tips at +1/x4-x8, depending on which character I'm using and the all-at-once ambushes in those two missions are pretty crazy. Even at just x4, You can quickly find yourself overwhelmed by 20+ mobs in the blink of an eye.

If you want to play Ninja or Necro then the latest AI change is good. For all the other sets it's bad, even the newish DS. Basically your pets will make the suicidal charges into melee range to engage the enemy more frequently now, even if they don't have any melee attacks. I personally despise this latest change because it basically screws over the majority of MM players (ranged henchmen types) in order to help the few (melee henchmen types).

I'm partial to my WM/SD brute when it comes to being an AoE monster. Run in, Crowd Control, Whirling Mace, Shield Charge, and Crowd Control again make quick work of x8 groups. I didn't even have to pick up another PPP targeted AoE attack to supplement it (chose energy instead). My Plant/Psi/Soul perma-Dom and Crab Spider aren't far behind though.