i5 just went live. Post your experiences here.
I'm off to make a sonic energy blaster

patch notes here

Guess I'm gonna have to get my ass in gear and get my desk set up. Well, off to Staples to buy that new desk.

Rob

Quote: Cone Enhancements removed from the game. Increased Range Enhancements now have the same effect on Cone powers. * The difference between Cone enhancement and Range enhancement was confusing. Now one Enhancement works to increase the reach of all powers.

ooh this i like. now my dmg/rng HOs can be used in firebreath

Quote: Blaster hit points increased. * Overall increase in the survivability of Blasters.

again awesome

Quote: Banished Pantheon Summoned Husks no longer give experience when defeated. The Death Shaman has been given a slight increase in experience reward to offset this somewhat. * Fix to prevent farming of Summoned Husks.

heh sleeper farm killed

Quote: Enemies may chase players through elevators.

heh no more fleeing to a different level in a mish. though is it possible to set up an ambush like this now? get a tank to agro everything (if still possible) and then run down an elevator to where the rest of the team is waiting . ..

overall i like the changes. lots of good balancing. one of the things that i like about ncsoft is that they actually explain why the change was made. a lot of other games will just have changes listed and not say why and a lot of times, its an idiotic change. guess when i log in after school today there's going to be a ton of outcry about it though.

Great points, Enko!

I really like the points that you've touched on, and i agree with your observations.
On a different note, i spent all of my time today leveling up my Sonic/Energy blaster (Sonic Bulsara), and badge hunting with Khalim (my new badge hound since the deletion of Zebulox). Rob and i had a blast badge hunting in Croatoa (an awesome map), and we even got to fight a fire in Steel Canyon (i had a lot of fun with that as well). The new enemies are great (the kamikaze midgets with the bombs strapped to their backs - utterly warped...i love 'em ), Croatoa and the new zone events are phenomenal (er...haven't found the troll Rave or the Supra Trolls yet), and the new badges are super cool.
Hopefully, tomorrow i'll start getting into the story content in Croatoa. I shelved Khalim to keep his level within range of the new zone, now all i have to do is hook up with a contact there

chaos just got to 26 so he's ready to go in here. i've been badge hunting here for 2 hours so far. all of the badges go quick except for the ghosts since they only spawn at night.
there's a ton of 50s in here just sitting on the spawn points. they've been there the entire time i've been in this map.

Quote: There are now NPCs in the Paragon Dance Party who will sell Inspirations to heroes.

Yeah, that's what I want to see...psuedo drug dealers at a rave party. Besides, who the hell ever goes into the dance club anyway. Everyone has a contact that sells inspirations already. Would have been nice to put the NPC in the lobby of every hospital, that way you could grab them on your way out and back to the battle.

Quote: Heroes will not start receiving experience debt for defeats until level 10.

w00t!

Quote: All heroes will be receiving a free respec due to these balance changes. This will be awarded 24 hours after Issue 5 is released. To use this simply type /respec – you will be able to reselect all your character's Powers and Enhancement slots.

w00t again!

Quote: Free respecs do not ‘stack'. If you already have one that you have not used, you will not receive an additional one. Free respecs are counted separately from the respecs granted for completing the Terra Volta trial.

Hope you folks have used yours....I've already used mine.

Quote: Powers and Inspirations that resurrect will now leave the target protected from XP Debt (duration dependent upon the power).

No more debt for doing a faceplant after using an awaken in the midst of battle.

Quote: Using a power that completely drains your endurance (such as Nova, Thunderous Blast, Inferno, and so on) will now cause all toggle powers to drop.

Uh....no kidding. It did this anyway. However, now when I use Inferno, I'm unable to recoup ANY endurance for a good 15 seconds. Not good if you miss one or two villians.

Quote: Blasters have a new Inherent Ability called Defiance . As a Blaster's health falls, their damage begins to dramatically increase. The lower their health, the greater the damage boost. There is a new ‘Defiance Meter' below the Endurance bar on the User Interface to show this effect.

Yeah, whatever. I suppose this is a "feel good" measure, although it's been proven to be absolutely worthless time and time again.

Quote: Pool/Concealment/Phase Shift: Although still a Toggle power, Phase Shift will deactivate if you leave it on for more than 30 seconds. Increased its Recharge Time.

Good thing we got a free /respec. Time to dump Phase Shift...the greatest friend to a hero in need of a bathroom break.

Quote: Marked Quicksand summonable to not show duplicate icon in the buff tray.

Notice the exact wording. The only difference is not seeing 10 to 20 different Quicksand coins; rather, their is only going to be one even though you may have 20 Quicksands on you.

Quote: Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Flight/Hover

Oh joy, oh yippie! I guess Defiance will make up the difference for all those Blasters out there...

Quote: Higher level Circle of Thorns Minions should no longer repeatedly cast the same debuffs over and over, nor should they stack them on top of already existing Debuffs of that type.

Hopefully, Quicksand is included in this list.

Quote: Banished Pantheon Summoned Husks no longer give experience when defeated. The Death Shaman has been given a slight increase in experience reward to offset this somewhat.

Who the hell is the freakin' idiot that would have done this? They did this to eliminate "farming" but I can think of a hell of a lot of other things I'd rather be doing than screwing around with a Death Shaman.

Quote: Enemies may chase players through elevators.

Great, another Blaster staying alive technique killed off.

Quote: There is now a new option to disable dragging powers around in the power tray.

'bout damned time! Can't tell you how many times I've been in the midst of battle trying to take down a villain only to realize that I've clicked on the next icon tray and I'm on tray 7 or 8. Now, if we could only lock them.....

Quote: Players can now push aside a pet, hostage or friendly NPC that blocks their way in a mission.

This mean we can shove a FireBall up their....er, never mind. Just getting them out of the way is nice.

I'll post more of my thoughts later. Gotta work now.

Rob

EDIT:

Posted by CuppaJo over at CoH forums...

Heroes -

Issue 5 is here! Tomorrow morning (Sept 1) we will be distributing one free respec and one free costume change to all characters. This gives you time to use any current free respec you have since tomorrow's respec will overwrite any unused free (not earned) respec.

Again, that is tomorrow - Sept 1 that these will be distributed.

they took the def buff off of hasten too. that makes hasten and friend teleport the only two travel power required powers that don't have a def buff. combat jump and hover still have them ...

I can live without the Def buff on Hasten (hopefully, that's all that happens to it ). The others, well, this will be interesting
I got a variation on an old mission yesterday (low level): Free the Hostages. In i4 the mission would end when the last Hostage was freed. Not so anymore. In the mission that i got yesterday (lvl 8ish), i also had to escort the hostages back to the entrance. On top of that, enemies will continue to spawn (at least one spawn per attempt to lead hostage to the entrance) and you have to defeat the new enemy spawns or they will take the hostages prisoner once again. I thought that the new variation was pretty cool (after i realized what was happening, that is).

Quote: Originally Posted by droeblek9 I can live without the Def buff on Hasten (hopefully, that's all that happens to it ). The others, well, this will be interesting I got a variation on an old mission yesterday (low level): Free the Hostages. In i4 the mission would end when the last Hostage was freed. Not so anymore. In the mission that i got yesterday (lvl 8ish), i also had to escort the hostages back to the entrance. On top of that, enemies will continue to spawn (at least one spawn per attempt to lead hostage to the entrance) and you have to defeat the new enemy spawns or they will take the hostages prisoner once again. I thought that the new variation was pretty cool (after i realized what was happening, that is).

umm i wonder if anyone will figure out how to make another sleeper farm again if the enemies respawn . .. probably could do it with some autoclickers or something. hopefully the devs thought about that beforehand to minimize farming.
personally, i think they could've gotten rid of most of the PLing and farming by just making PI a lvl 40 minimum lvl req zone or something like that. There's nothing for a lowbie to do in PI anyways except to get PLed.