FupDup

More like Shit of Heroes amirite?

I’m mostly just trying to pre-empt the power devs who think Sents having an armor secondary is so strong that they can’t allow Vulnerability to be stackable (yes this is their actual reason that I was told). I personally would have zero opposition to the proc applying the full effect but I’m not as squeamish about buffs as they are. And to be fair, Vulnerability does ignore purple patch and does more than just -res (but of course -res is the most important part of it). At this point my expectations are low enough that I’d surprised if Sents got any kind of buff.

The Chance for Vulnerability thing seems to be nearly universally agreed upon. The only detail I'd add is that maybe it wouldn't be full strength, like instead of the normal 15% debuff it might be 5% at orange tier and 7.5% at purple tier, or something like that. Sentinel's Ward is basically a clone of Gauntleted Fist, but inferior in every way. The PPM is much lower (2 PPM vs 3 PPM), AND the absorb is smaller too (GF is 15% of max HP, SW is about 15% of base HP). I see 3 potential choices for this one: A. Increase the PPM to be higher than GF, but keep the low value, which gives it better sustain than GF but lower alpha strike cushioning. B. The opposite of Option A, we keep the inferior PPM but raise the absorb % (and make it scale with HP!) so it's better against alphas but has low sustain. C. Just make it a straight clone of GF, which is kind of boring but gets the job done.

I count lack of end management as a part of “sustain” (both regen/heals and recovery). The psi hole isn’t as big as it used to be, nor is psi a super common damage type. The lack of heal/endurance tools meanwhile applies to all fights.

Invuln is a set more about preventing damage than bouncing back from it. Lack of sustain is meant to be its main weakness (unless you're using the Sentinel version that has sustain, in which case your weakness is being a Sentinel). Maybe the T9 could be remodeled to resemble the new Elec Armor T9 to serve the healing power role, because right now Unstoppable is pretty much a delayed suicide button.

There’s a wide gulf between having no skippables and having almost the entire set be skippable. A happy medium exists somewhere inside that gulf. And of course this is one of those cases where “skippable” is a euphemism for “total dogwater noob traps.”

It’s true that most sets don’t normally want or need all 9 powers, but SS is on the opposite rare extreme end where it’s not truly a power set so much as 3 powers wearing a trench coat.

Entirely new incarnate slots would pose balance problems, but new options within the existing slots would have fairly little chance of disruption. Stuff like a cold damage interface, Malta or Dev Earth lores, a damage boosting destiny, a toxic judgement, etc.

This is actually canon for Captain Marvel's eye beams, funnily enough.

I'm not a fan of the anti-synergy that the def crash has with def armor sets, nor do I like how the damage crash forces proc bombing to do anything at all during that time, but the whole set is balanced around it and a lot of people are attached to it as it is now. I think it would be safer to just work on other punch-based melee sets, like for example giving Street Justice some actual functional AOE, so that people could pick an alternate punchy-themed set while leaving the classic Super Strength as a legacy feature. Any attempt to change Rage on Brutes or Tanks would likely get Beanbagged (Scrapper/Stalker version would 100% never have Rage as it is now).

Rename the set to Beam Blast, problem solved.

Freeze Ray doesn't have a slow effect like the other Ice Blast powers do, which is why it can't slot for slows. It's a very strange inconsistency, likely due to the power dealing obnoxiously high DPA without even being a snipe attack. Still feels weird though. To partially hijack this topic, Sentinel Chilling Ray (Freeze Ray replacement) is the same way in terms of enhancements, but has a 63.8% DPA loss compared to Blaster Freeze Ray, so I think that one could be given the usual slow effect and slow enhancements to make it suck marginally less.

AOE vs ST would definitely need to be separate categories because of their separate applications.

Note that Radiation Blast is a very good substitute for Energy Blast because it doesn't need to pay the knockback tax and can be recolored to look about the same.