MTeague

ooo Doc Quaterfield with No Travel Powers, No Enhancements, No Temporary Powers!

I do not think Force Fields are worthless. I do think there is a persistent PERCEPTION that they are by a vocal group of players who are focused exclusively on "endgame" to mean incarnate content. Frankly, I think that's carp. Incarnate content is fun every so often. I much prefer flashbacks, exemplars, AE storylines (not farms), and I am always glad to see a Bubbler on my team. And when you DO run incarnate content? It's not just the bubbler. probably half the players could be removed from any given iTrial and you'd still succeed because incarnate powers are THAT game-breaking. So I wouldn't overstress about the bubbler alone. For that matter, the real endgame isn't running incarnate content on the same character again and again until you're bored stiff with the same encounters. the real endgame is alts, the real endgame is writing AE storyline content.

You will however, *hemmorage* endurance at first with Dark Armor. Definitely need to be strategic on what toggles to run vs not until you slot up some.

Consider also Hover. While it's not KB protection as such, it seriously reduces the actual effect of an incoming KB. Beyond that, there's always the IO approach. A Blessing of the Zephry, a Karma, and a Fury of the Glad (if you have a PBAE to slot it into....) adds up pretty well. I mean, maybe things with Force Bolt will still send you flying, but shotguns and grenade launchers will stop being an issue.

I do not often see Fire Tanks / Brutes outside of AE. But I'd certainly be willing to roll with 'em, and I'd bet most groups would have zero problems cruising along.

No no no. Portal Corp is on the job. The planes taxi into giant inter-dimensional portals and take off in alternate realities, re-entering our world about 3 miles south of Striga. and there's a Giant Honkin' Portal that incoming planes fly directly into to get to the right runway to land on while bypassing the city, the exact same way. THAT wouldn't end tooooo badly, you think? 😄

Even if they wanted to add a slight reduction in accuracy so that your T1 pets would miss about the same before vs after, just having them not be lower level would help their survability vs incoming damage.

I would gladly have a Hurricane power that had NO repel component whatsoever, just the exact same -ToHit it already has. As it is, I can still apply the -ToHit debuff even when teaming by glancing the mobs at the edge of the effect, barely pushing them at all. But I still get grief and groups asking me not to use it anyway, no matter how responsible I am with it, because the repel effect drives people batty and they're nervous that I won't use it right.

I won't turn down a buff, but I'm quite content with how my Ninja/Cold MM and my Beasts/Empath MM perform. I certainly don't feel like they require a bunch of changes. That said I do tend to ignore the MM personal attacks in my primary tree. The damage / endurance cost simply isn't worth it most of the time. There's better things I can do that that endurance instead. When soloing, both commonly stay in defensive stance, Tankerminding. My Beast/Empath uses Kick and Boxing and Crosspunch, all three, because the endurance cost is vastly less than the MM personal attacks and getting in melee range makes darn sure my pets are all in range of Supremacy and Pet Aura IO's. My Ninja/Cold uses a six slotted Infrigidate with 3 damage procs and 1 -Res proc, and other than that, grabs aggro by using Snow Storm.

Auto-scaling may have issues when the enemies in question only exist in certain level ranges though. There is no such thing as lvl 45 Skulls. Now, we can take a low-level Skull, and we can boost up his HP, make him count as lvl +1 if he's a lieutenant, etc. But that Skull would have no new attack powers beyond what he had at lvl 14. You would have all your powers if you're not auto-exemplared down. So it's a super lopsided fight unless they take time and trouble to add high level powers to all low level enemies and make sure those enemies only have access to those powers if they scale up to a certain level. You would have all of your set bonuses etc if you were not auto-exemplared down, etc. Also it would have a strong effect on who chooses to use what IO sets. Sometimes I use Eradication or Sircocco's Dervish for PBAE sets instead of Obliteration because I can keep the set bonuses all the way down when I'm exemplareed. So suddenly IO sets that only scale down to lvl 30 and no further would become desireable for any flashback level, because you wouldn't exemplar, everthing else would scale up. And sets that only scale up to lvl 30, or get a long hard look and probably converted or tossed. Now, if they can get keep the Auto-Exemplar and STILL allow you to invite people? Then I'm all for it. But I do think the Exemplaring aspect of Ouro has to stay.

I used Staff Fighting / Willpower for my first Praetorian. No regrets. Did well. Was a long time until I got Rise To the Challenge becuase it was my secondary and I turned off XP for long stretches to ensure I didn't outlevel any story arcs I wanted to finish. Invulnerability should also do quite well, but, keep in mind, you'll see a lot more Energy damage coming at you at low levels than you would on Primal earth.

Now I feel an evil desire to make an AE map full of Dark Melee/SR and Dark Blast/SR mobs. "How fast can this mission be voted off the island?" 😄

My take on it is, "slot well, choose your powers well, and SR becomes just as layered". You should be able to build up a fair amount of resistance via set bonuses, certainly to at least the common damage types. and you don't even need to get hardcap resistance via set bonuses if you have 3 passives plus reactive defensive unique all giving you scaling damage resist between Preventative Medicine Absorb Proc, Panacea Proc, Power Transfer Proc, you can get quite a bit of passive healing that just happens for maintence to help maintain you between hits that do sneak in. Physical Perfection and/or Medicine tree are quite doable to add to a build

Sooooo many times this. If some sets need *mild* *small* tweaks, perhaps. A couple % points here or there to an existing power maybe. But I would not want powersets to be completely redone, or to gain whole entire types of functionality that they never had before. Some sets are always going to be "better" than other sets by opinion / word-of-mouth / favored playstyle of more vocal players. Sometimes, that opinion will reflect objective truth. Sometimes, it won't. I enjoy playing "disfavored" sets and finding hidden gems that perform quite well if people would just try them out.

What if that box is actually a ninja hiding inside a cardboard box? It might be harder to hit than you think.

also "This would take a lot of dev time", is very frequently, a Scientific WIld A** Guess (SWAG). Now, when someone goes completely off the rails like um.... *cough* i did *cough* in a thread about Player Created Signature Powers, okay, even a cursory glance of including entirely new interfaces and powers, yea, that's firmly in the "it would be cool if we had infinite time" category. When it takes most of a page to describe it, yea, it ain't small. but "autoreject option for white salvage"? there's already other autoreject options out there. None for salvage, sure. But for small inspirations, etc. So this MIGHT be as simple as copy/paste and tweak a few lines of code documentation. It also MIGHT be something that would take 3 weeks or more of concerted effort on this and nothing but this and make the programmer in question wish they'd never picked up the idea in the first place. And unless any of us have actually looked at the source code and know the language it's written in, we're speculating.

They probably already have to worry about a Pasta and Antipasta reaction 🙂

Would these have set bonuses? (And how does that work?) Or would these be closer a Build-Your-Own-Hami-O, no set bonuses but may have something like Acc/Dmg/Defense to be slotted into a Parry-type power?

But if they're attuned, they get a nice pretty ring outline instead of a hexagonal IO shape. Because if i have other pieces in the same set attuned, but NOT the proc, my OCD will trigger that one of these things is not like the other....

I went Water/Sonic for a Sonar-Themed aquatic-adapted corruptor. It's probably not the greatest choice for soloing... Sonic Resonance has some debuffs mixed in with the buffs, but it's definitely more suited to a good-sized team than for soloing or duoing. On the other hand, if he's sucking up all the aggro with his Rad Debuffs, he may be very glad to have some Sonic Bubbles on him. And +Resistance bubbles would stay useful even after you both slot some good +Defense.

I don't know if the big dude carnies have enough confidence to rock the Master Illusionist's gown. 😄

Praetorian Vanessa DeVore calls Praetor Tillman a leech, and outright says she feeds on the psychic powers of others. She doesn't use the exact phrase, but it sounds to me like a psychic vampire. Now, of course, DeVore could be WRONG... or she could just be trying to convince the player that Tillman is super-duper-uber-evil and you mustn't arrest DeVore to let Tillman take her power.... but I would find it very very plausible that DeVore only wants "daughters" as her seers and just ... consumes... the psychic powers of any male psionic turned over to her, leaving them an empty husk of flesh.

You are not wrong lol. I went on a wild "pretend I had infinite time, what could we do with this?" brainstorming session. I still like my idea better (shocker, 🙂), but I would probably fall out of my chair if anything remotely like it were implemented. It's just... But my favorite power is Confuse.... most people wouldn't even call that an "attack" at all. That's why I'd rather a roll-your-own point-based system. But.... like i said, I would have zero expectations to ever REALLY see that produced and useable. I wasn't kidding on the "nobody will ever get this right on the first try, and how do you handle powers that already exist?" Cause I could see that kind of "we have to change something about the point system, everybody has to redo their powers now" really really would piss a lot of people off. And there's probably something to be said for keeping it more controlled and limited choice menu (if in fact, the devs ever chose to provide any kind of player-created-power to ANY degree... which they might not....). 25 years of gaming has shown me players will always always always ALWAYS find a way to exploit any new lever they are given in ways the developers never planned on. And my idea would give them a bazillion levers to fiddle with 😱

Now I'm curious. Which of these corresponds to Khalisti Wharf?

I agree that I would not expect action on this in the foreseeable future. and I do mean, potentially not for years. That said, this is the kind of idea that would take an awful lot of kicking around to make it work, so I see no harm in a theorectical "how would we make this work"? sense We'd just have to understand this is right up there with sitting around a table drinking beers and brainstorming, but not really getting up expectations for a deliverable. I do think any player-created signature power would need to be slottable. I also like the idea of having X many "Points" to add effects to your power with, and no more. And I think slotting could be reasonably controlled either by having the types of IO's it can take be an extra point cost to your power. Say for example, we start with a custom attack. I choose to name it, "KLONK!". Possibly some naming filters in place so no one goes into offensive territory, but either way, for purposes of this discussion, assume "KLONK!" was an acceptable display name. I spend 1 point to make it a Melee attack. I choose a War Mace animation with an overhead whack. (no points for animation selection) I choose to spend 1 point making it do Smashing damage I choose to spend 1 point making it do KnockDOWN I choose to spend 1 point giving a Stun effect. (whether it was only a chance of stun, and what the exact magnitude would be, would be a balance issue. Guaranteed stuns cost more points, higher magnitude stuns cost more points. Maybe make it not even possible to have too high of a magntitude no matter HOW many points I spend if there's concerns of it trivializing a fight.) Because I made it a melee attack, I could CHOOSE to spend another point to let it take Melee sets. But I'd have to spend a point on it. And that's a point I DON'T get to spend making it hit harder, or being more accurate, or being a cone attack, or having faster recharge, etc. Because I gave it a Knock effect, I could CHOOSE to spend another point to let it take Knockback sets. Because I gave it a Stun effect, I could CHOOSE to spend another point to let it take Stun effects. Now if I want it to hit extra hard, maybe I omit the KnockDown effect, don't let it take Stun sets, and accept a higher recharge and weaker accuracy. And yes, this means an attack that can take lots of sets would have a lower base damage. Given... the way procs work.... developers would need to consider if they'd want to let you make a custom Proc Monster power this way, or if they'd want to give such custom powers a hardcoded extra-low chance for procs to function. I hold no opinion on what that answer should be. But if I was a developer for it, it would be the first thing I'd raise as a potential issue if we let people create tehir own custom 16 second recharging attack that can take six different damage procs. If the designers said that was acceptable, hey cool. But I'd feel obligated to air it and make sure it was discussed and it didn't catch anyone by surprise later. How many points available per power? Would take some trial and error to get a result that most people agree with (gonna say off the bat 100% satisfaction is a pipe dream...) How many points should various selections cost? Same. Should some selections cost more vs less? maybe To-Hit debuffs should cost more points than Knockback? Again, whoooole lots of trial and error. Should selections cost MORE points for an AE power vs a single target power? I'd say yes, but again, design question for how much power do you want to be achievable here. Now another thing they'd have to wrestle with.... how do you rebalance these powers once they're "In the Wild"? Because the odds of getting this right on teh first go is right up tehre with me winning Powerball. Say we magically got this tomorrow, AND, every bit as magically, there were no bugs. But, after seeing it in action the developers decided, jeez, this is really too much. Everyone is using a particular combo effects that's just completely OP. We need to trim it down some. If you decide the points costs need to be adjusted, or if you decide to reduce the total number of points available to create a power with.... what about powers that were already created? Do you take them away in a patch and force players to redesign them, refunding any slotted enhancements to inventory or email? Even if you don't plan on that coming up anytime soon, there should be an agreed upon plan for "This is how we'd have to handle it if it ever comes up." Because there would be all kinds of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Also maybe have your Archtype influence point costs: Holds, etc only available to Controllers and Doms? or serious markup for anyone else? Raw damage cheaper for blasters and scrappers and stalkers? secondary effects cheaper for support classes? might keep it from degenerating into everyone choosing same power and help keep AT based flavors