Mandatory Pool Powers

How about completing the Epic Pool? And, I don't think posing the question would be considered "whining".

Since it has never, ever been possible at any point in this game's history, I guess you could call it "wrong"; although, a better word would be "impossible".

I think circus monkey.

You show me a circus monkey that pulls those moves off (I'll even forgive the "hitting a target" part that the DP set actually manages) and I'll show you a monkey with super-powers.

I am still trying to determine exactly what you feel is evil about this situation? Prior to making the the fitness pool inherent if a player wanted Stamina they had to wait until level 20 and take 2 other pool powers to obtain it. Also prior to powers like Ninja Run becoming available players needed to use 2 more pick below 20 just to obtain a travel power so they could stop running everywhere. That was 5 pick out of the first 12 you get just to have stamina and the ability to go places faster.

What we have now is the ability to get more of our primary and secondary powers early and still have stamina and that travel power. I'm to the point now where I don't need to take a 2nd power from the travel pool to get my travel power so I picked up another slot there as well.

I use those extra picks to further enhance my characters abilities..

I take picks like Manuevers or Tactics from the leadership pool to increase my defenses or accuracy.

I take Combat Jumping from the Leaping Pool to again shore up holes in my defenses

I take Hasten from the Super Speed pool to make my attacks faster when needed

I've taken Recall friend to help team mates or Crant invisibiliy and invisibilty to aid teams I join.

I haven't used them myself but others here have already mentioned the Fighting pool which offers 2 more attacks and 2 powers that increase defenses and of course the medicine pool alllows you to heal team mates and yourself and even rez fallen team mates.

None of what I have described seem like horrible choices to me and they all either help YOUR character be better or assist any team you may join. So like I said exactly where is this EVIL you talk about?

I got something to say that might take those characters back off the shelf, then.

For mundane applications, you'd be right; marksmanship is not nearly as taxing on the human body as archery, martial arts, and swordsmanship are.

However, there are things you can do with guns that take the kind of effort and training you'd need to be an effective swordsman, martial artist, or archer.

Schismatrix said earlier, "all that training that prize winning shooters do before competing is just morale building; it has no actual effect on performance." Take a look at that video I just linked. You can't tell me that an average joe can pick up a gun and do the exact same thing without training at least as much as he has. Or, to quote Bob Munden himself:

"It's like a magician trick. The difference is the magician is giving the illusion that he's doing something that he's really not. We, on the other hand, are doing something that looks like an illusion, but we're honestly doing it!"

It would take a superhero to apply those kind of skills to effective modern-day crime fighting, just as much as it would martial arts, archery, or swordsmanship.

Of course, Bob Munden is already considered a superhuman by Stan Lee. In the episode in which he appears, they monitor his quickdraw and find that he can draw, manually pull back the hammer, and fire his gun faster than the average reaction time of the human brain.

Not the average time to draw and fire a pistol, I must stress, but the average time in which a person's brain reacts.

Keep in mind that he can do this while firing two bullets almost simultaneously from a revolver, like my video link shows. (He also does it in the Superhumans episode I mentioned, to prove he has superhuman accuracy.)

Which, combined with the abilities he shows off in the provided video, I think is reason enough to shoot down the argument that "guns can't be part of a superpower," if you'll forgive the expression.

See, I was like this, myself. I still firmly believe that the game is well playable without Fitness. However, the game is more fun with it, I discovered this VERY fast after it became inherent. Easier to build, easier to play, easier to kill stuff with.

This is also one reason I stopped playing Blasters. Before, my Scrappers and Brutes had to rest a lot because they ran out of endurance and I lost a whole lot of fights because I didn't have the energy to go on, while my Blasters rested a lot because they kept getting killed... Well, Stamina solved the Scrappers' and Brutes' problems but did jack squat for the Blaster, which just made them perform that much worse by comparison.

What inherent Fitness does is let us play more and work less when making a build.

I've never been entirely happy with Epics. For one, the final two power picks are scrunched together at 47 and 49, giving you just six slots between them, when for the previous 20-ish levels you've been getting a power and then a full six slots for it. What this means is that your final power pick, instead of being awesome cool, must be something unimportant, so that you can have the slots necessary to slot up your 47 power, which is the earliest you can take your final Epic power. And if that's something like Long Range Missile Rocket that really really benefits from having six slots, it means you want a 49 power that you don't need to slot almost at all.

Also, when Epics moved to 5 powers, that was a bit irritating since we still only have 4 power picks from when they open up. Opening them up earlier would rectify that, in my eyes, but it's too late in the game, metaphorically speaking, for that kind of change to happen.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think it depends on 'feel' also. There's a tactile feel to the variety of super powers, IMO. Sorcery should feel mysterious and vast, science very calculating and governed. The thing about a lot of super powers is, they aren't as tactile as just a plain old gun or sword. We can go pick up a sword and try swinging it around, or shoot off some arrows and see how easy it is. But we can't really go out and try shooting beams from our eyes or try breathing icy breath on the weekend therefore it's not as simple to wrap your mind around. It's not easy or hard. It's just '?'.

But having trained for a couple of years using melee weapons and martial fighting, I know what it feels like to punch something hard. I know I can't just swing a sword and slice through something metal. By extension, it feels a bit more super when my Kat/SR can easily fend off a hoard of energy pistol toting aliens and come out with but a scratch while standing over a heap of carcases.

Not that it feels less super to do such a thing by using fists of darkness, but I don't really comprehend what it *does* feel like. And I doubt I ever will.

PS: I'm of the school that combines tactile with super, though. That either surpasses the mundane through sheer brilliance/genius or simply combines super with tactile. The idea of a katana wielder slicing through a car because he's 'just that good', I can more easily feel just how super he has become. Or a telekinetic that has an affinity for 'moving' small fast objects so combines their telekinesis with training using a pistol therefore being able to shoot in curves or at impossible angles. This feels more super to me than just being able to fire lasers from a point in the body...

....now if the effective range of said lasers was rather short (melee) so combining strong martial combat training with this ability? Well, I can get a closer feel for that...

Whoa. That's incredible.

That's another thing that people seem to ignore - it's much easier to feel super with something we can envision, imitate and imagine than it is with something as abstract as "fiery melee." I can describe what it is - melee that uses fiery attacks - but I can't "feel" what it is because it's too abstract of a concept.

By contrast, I have a small collection of toy guns that I've been putting together since I was a kid. They're the kinds of toys that shoot those small plastic pellets, and my prized possession is a Nerf Maverick Rev-6 which... Is a Nerf gun But even then, it's far easier to imagine using that in a visceral way than it is to imagine punching people with darkness, say.

That's kind of my problem with a lot of melee sets, especially Dark Melee - they do a lot of damage, but don't "feel" like they hit very hard, leaving me to assume that the element in question is somehow doing a lot of the damage. Midnight Grasp is probably the worst offender - one of the stronger melee attacks, and it's just a cast.

While I try to make weird character concepts, I prefer to stick to more grounded kinds of super powers, at least visually speaking. Guns, swords, fists, that sort of thing. Things that are easier to imagine.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Hahaha! Yeah, that's kind of sort of like what I'd want for a "bare hands" Judgement And, yes, that's pretty muck kicking *** in its pure form, no energies or weapons involved. Just FALCON PUNCH!

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

but you can only get 4 of your epic pool powers regardless, 1 at 41, 1 at 44, 1 at 47 and 1 at 49. so even if you had those power slots available, you couldn't fill them with epic pool powers. again, you are not forced into replacing ANYTHING, only taking more then you want apparently, so, yes, whining about nothing.

And walking out of a room full of Crey corpses with my revolvers still smoking from the barrels makes me friggin' awesome

But it does leave more to the imagination. That's good for some people...

For Dark Melee, I have a couple characters that use it. One is pure and basic 'Void Melee' where the darkness is actually an energy capable of splitting molecules apart without any energy emissions, and basically leaving anything solid as 'dust'. One doesn't need to apply much force in that instance to simply turn things to dust, just a touch will do.

For another, it's 'Moral Melee' where every attack demoralizes the foe, either leaving them in a sadden state without the will to hit you properly or outright shacking in their boots. Sometimes a discouraging hand on the shoulder is enough to dissuade even the strongest of foes from hitting you full on.

One of my more recent of creations (inspired by the Pixy AT thread somewhere around), Kinetic Melee is a great substitute for the PIXIE FORCE!, or magical pixy dust melee. It's fun and bright! And covering someone in pixy dust apparently makes them less of a threat (-dmg)

I won't argue that Inherent Fitness has made the game easier to play. Whether that is good or not is up for debate.
I have played Blasters on teams of 8, where most of the team members used Stamina. My blaster didn't have Stamina, but still kept up with the rest of the team and still contributed to the steamrolling that the team did.
Stamina wasn't necessary for that.

Now, Stamina has made my Dark/Dark scrapper a lot easier to play.
but, I was managing quite well before too.
However, I usually solo'd with her and wasn't concerned with the time it took to complete a mission.
Which, seems to be the main complaint from most of those who clamored for Inherent Stamina.

Mostly because both guns and arrows have been used as volley firing weapons for nearly their entire history as weapons of organized warfare. The primary skill involved for both is "shoot thataway" and the primary lesson you have to teach a rifleman is reloading. Archery requires significant skill just to loft the projectile, much less loft it in the general direction you're aiming in. Archers weren't being taught expert aiming skills for most of their education, they were being taught to actually draw a bowstring without ripping off a finger or ear.

However, just because organized warfare doesn't usually *prize* riflery skill doesn't mean it doesn't exist and wouldn't help in less organized or more specialized circumstances. It might only take weeks to become at least reasonably competent as a normal rifleman, but it might take substantially longer to become an expert in CQB combat tactics with pistols, say. Shooting to hit qualified targets while missing non-combatants in high density situations, for example, is something that a superhero might train years to get good at, even longer than an archer might under certain circumstances.

During the American Revolution the Continental Army did have specialized units of sharpshooters that were experienced hunters and outdoorsmen: their many years of skills proved to be at times highly advantageous relative to standard army training. And in World War I it was discovered that pilot recruits from rural areas performed statistically better than their urban counterparts because so many of them were hunters, and understood the concept of deflection shooting instinctively from years of hunting.

You have to learn one less thing with a gun than a bow and arrow, but that doesn't mean skill isn't a strong differentiator in areas where skill matters.

Indeed. It takes all kinds. That's kind of the good thing about how customizable and versatile City of Heroes is. We can all play whatever it is that works for us without necessarily stepping in each other's toes. This isn't really true in almost any other MMO, specifically Fantasy ones, where the breadth of both your powers and your appearance is limited to the scope of the fictional genre, something which is often quite narrow. This is actually a problem with even our competitors, the other super hero MMOs, which focus so much on delivering a specifically pointedly COMIC BOOK experience that they hamper the option to explore other themes to much of an extent. If I don't like comic books as I don't, you can still explore sci-fi, film noir, anime themes, cartoon styles and more here in City of Heroes. In a comic-book-company-licensed MMO, you're kind of doing it wrong.

Not that I don't have some weird unimaginable concepts, myself, though. I've found I'm not a very "visual" person, so to speak, and most of my characters start as abstract ideas of fairly vague concepts until I sit down at the editor and use that to give physical form to those abstract ideas. I quite enjoy my de facto literal goddess character despite having no clear idea as to what her powers should be, beyond the general description of "energy." Again, it takes all kinds, and that's a good thing.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Ya know, you're really just trying to sell pool powers, but I could make the same arguments for taking group-fly or phase-shift, but that's not gonna make them any more appealing. With the state of the game as it is, is it really nessesary to take pools? This is all I wonder.

Yes it is. You can't get to 50 without taking them.

Which is how it's been since launch.
Although technically it was you couldn't get to 40 without taking pool powers before Issue 1. (Which didn't matter to me since i didn't hit 50 the first time until about Issue 4. Chronic altitus and all that.)
And i still don't know what non EAT ATs would fill those last power picks with after taking all 18 primary and secondary powers anyway.

That's just the difference between Natural and Tech origins. If I lose my gun, can I pick up any other gun and be just as (or close to) as effective? If so, I'm Natural. If I lose my gun, am I kind of out of luck because it was my hardware that did the "super" work? Then I'm tech.

It's not just guns either. Am I super because of my awesome natural skill with a sword or am I super because my sword is magical and allows its wielder to do extraordinary things? It's not really a "big" issue, just one more thing to address in your concept if you're worried about that sort of thing.

Every time I make a new character, pool powers usually come up during inception. And I always try to pick different pools if I can or combos of pools. Not every character of mine takes fighting. Some take Leadership, some take concealment, some take presence. And it's usually *built into* the concept of said characters.

My DA stalker uses presence and plays this as his innate powerful telethapy that allows him to bring out the fear in his opponents. This also explains his high resistance to psionics (which is actually in Dark Armor).

My storm corruptor took concealment for Phase Shift which is the concept of her 'storm' powers giving her the ability to momentarily shift completely into mist.

IMO, if you can't think of a pool to take, you either didn't think the character concept through enough, you're being very strict with the character's concept or we simply need *more* or *bigger* pools to simulate more concepts. With the loss of Fitness as a potential theme pool, I think we should get more power pools.

That's not an issue. Some people want items of power or amazingly advanced tech as a theme. Others want bad-A characters that are 'just that good'. This is only origin. There's room for both. A weapon can be wielded or the weapon can wield you. It's a choice made by the player.