FupDup

I'm going to repeat a part of my post because you seemed to miss it. At these levels, people can ALREADY use powerful sets like ATOs, Winters, PVPs, and Overwhelming Force. These sets all can be slotted at level 10, while there are some so-called "early" sets that can't even be slotted until 15-20 while being drastically weaker in power than those aforementioned 10-50 sets. The only way that buffing currently useless sets would make the early game easier is if they somewhere were made to be more powerful than those sets like ATOs. That's a very high bar to clear and thus very unlikely. I just can't see stuff like Bonesnap or Salvo truly posing a threat to stuff to the 10-50 sets.

I don't think the fear of making level 1-19 content too much easier is warranted here because there are already much stronger IO sets available that scale from level 10 to 50. Winters, ATOs, PVPs, Overwhelming Force...Making any of the currently useless sets like Volley Fire anywhere close to that level of power is extremely unlikely. 1-19 is also a range where people are probably not doing +4x8 yet, so there's generally room to just nudge up the difficulty in the absolute worst case scenario here (unlike high levels where +4x8 is considered a "baseline" by some). Heck, even the 5 free prestige enhancements absolutely shit all over these sets and you can pick them up at P2W for free right at level 1.

Bopper is one of the lead power devs. He just doesn't post on the forum much. Discord is probably a better bet for reaching him.

I just slapped together a random example of what an updated crappy set might look like. I chose Volley Fire for some reason. Here is what it looks like now: Here is what a revamp might look like: Nothing terribly impressive since all the bonuses are still Tiny/Small rank. I gave it a def debuff proc instead of a damage proc so that it would be less likely to just amplify the existing damage proc meta (and there aren't any -def procs in the game that I know of). Bear in mind that the baseline we're measuring against here is not SOs or DOs, the baseline is high level sets (especially ones that have a minimum level of 10 and scale all the way up to 50). As it is, even the newly buffed Volley Fire would only be niche in application. But at least it might have something, rather than being completely useless like it is now.

For starters, these sets really should scale all the way up to 50 instead of just 20 or whatever. I can understand a case for certain sets like Reactive Armor or Touch of Death staying at just 40 because of their bonuses, but all these super crappy low-level blast sets will never be an issue at higher levels no matter what we do to them. In addition to this, sets with fewer than 6 pieces could probably get some extra pieces (and bonuses) added to round them out. Another idea in regards to the bonuses could be to give them multiple bonuses per set tier like PVP's get, except you get the bonuses even during PVE. Just increasing the existing bonuses to higher levels is less interesting to me because then they might run into the "rule of 5" limit when used in conjunction with proper high level sets. Keeping the bonuses lower in tier, but more numerous, could be used to creatively get around that limit.

I don't think it makes sense to "compensate" Khelds for not taking the alternate forms. What I do want are: 1. Alternate FX options for the other forms so you can keep your old costume (or maybe swap between multiple costume slots? Might not be possible coding-wise). 2. Better base stats on many existing powers within the kit so that every potential combination would be improved (pure human, bi-form, tri-form, whatever). For human form in particular, maybe a little mezz resistance (not necessarily protection) spread across each of the different basic armor toggles? Maybe even consolidate the fire/cold and energy/neg shields into one because most armor sets on proper armored ATs do that.

Some of the lore pets seem to have a bit of randomization in terms of gender/variants. MM pets might or might not be able to reverse-engineer that technology, depending on just how tangled the spaghetti code of this game is.

Rad is waaaay more durable and probably better at damage thanks to the extra PBAOE it gives you. Fire's lack of immobilize protection outside of Burn is very annoying against certain enemy groups and its resist holes are bigger and more numerous (Rad basically has no holes at all while Meltdown is active). Fire isn't unusable by any means, but if you intend to go up against some stronger enemy groups who have hefty debuffs, you're gonna faceplant a fair bit more than a Rad armor toon would.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_defense.regeneration.second_wind&at=sentinel City of Data says it should be increasing max HP, but there's a chance you might already have hit the HP cap some other way or it's because the amount scales with missing HP (more missing HP = bigger boost). In Mids, even at 1% HP and heavily enhanced into ED territory, the boost isn't a whole ton (goes from 1205 to 1464.96, no other powers or set bonuses active). More HP is still more HP at the end of the day, and still important to a set like Regen, but it's not as strong as something like Dull Pain (especially when used at high health).

It's generally a fair bit faster, and they offer a place to slot the Winter's Gift proc for 20% slow resistance. I guess you could otherwise take the KB protection proc if you're on a toon that needs that (I usually stick to armored toons so that's rarely an issue). Hover/Fly offer survival benefits (stay out of melee range or sometimes even outrange them entirely) and Combat Jumping can be used for "Jousting." The Flight pool in general offers several LOTG mule powers. Super Speed gives some extra stealth that can stack with the Celerity proc and can let you phase through baddies. In general, if you want access to a higher tier power in the pool like Unleash Potential, Rune of Protection, etc. then taking the travel power is probably a better choice of prerequisite than a borderline useless garbo attack that you'll never use.

IMO the issue is less about Blaster damage and more about their survival. Blasters have damage in both their primary and secondary powersets while Scrappers have a damage primary with armor secondary. The one with double damage sets should probably do equal or a bit more damage than the one that gets a survival set. The real problem is that a blaster can get fairly close to the tankiness of a Scrapper/Sentinel (depending on armor set) while also keeping all of that damage. The sustain powers in particular are just gross.

For Fire Breath, my main desire is just a wider cone angle. 30 degrees works fine on ranged sets/ATs because you're gonna spend a lot of time at a distance anyways. But for a melee AT, you're gonna generally be up in peoples' faces. Having to jump out and go far away just to line up one cone attack is pretty awkward and messes up your attack chains. Almost all melee cones are wider than 30 degrees, and the few that aren't tend to be hard-hitters like Golden Dragonfly that are functionally ST attacks.

The NPCs being farmed also have access to the fire attacks, so what would happen is that a person with Fire Armor would get their defense debuffed and cause a cascading failure. But since it's so easy to just give the NPCs different attacks that don't have the -def component, I don't think the "nerfing farms" argument really holds up. I still stand by the "proc pandering" argument (adding -def adds a lot of extra proc slotting options).

Fire Melee was legitimately underpowered, unlike Fire Blast which very much isn't. The -def thing was most likely done for the sake of pandering to the proc bomb meta (more procs to slot). Given that Fire Blast is the king of blasts without any -def, I don't think that Fire Melee needed it and could've/should've been made strong without it.

Energy Blast is a set DESIGNED around KB. That is its identity. For other sets with some KB, those can all be turned off (or in some cases ignored because their knocks aren't that strong). Fire is the outlier here. Fire Blast is supposed to be a pure damage set with zero secondary effects besides damage. That is Fire's identity. As for Sents, the power in question is Blazing Blast: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_ranged.fire_blast.blazing_blast&at=sentinel Mag 3.323 KB, Mag 8 Repel. And it can't be turned off by slotting a KB/KD converter unlike Storm Blast's Jetstream which CAN be turned off using the Overwhelming Force proc (or just using the power inside Storm Cell). Ideally, Blazing Blast simply shouldn't have any effects besides damage because Fire isn't supposed to have any form of secondary effects whatsoever. Failing that, being able to turn it off using the Overwhelming Force proc would be an acceptable compromise.

Sentinels can be pretty lazy. Range means you don't have to worry about repositioning as much as melee. Armor means you don't have to worry about mezz or dying in general as much.

I think his issue is that he doesn't have any open power slots to grab Fly. To that end I think it would be perfectly fine for there to be a temp power equivalent in strength to the temp jetpack but without the jetpack model. There would be no combat/stat advantage to this, just a visual difference.

When it comes to slots, I do think an interesting trade-off could be that maybe at one or two high levels you could choose to sacrifice a power pick in exchange for 2-3 slots instead so that it's not just a direct power increase. Or maybe go the other way and sacrifice some slots for another power pick. I don't think we should just get extra slots without some tradeoff attached to it because the overall power level is fairly high as it is. Something something power creep something something jranger. As for pool prereqs, this is only an issue when the prereqs are kinda poop. Nobody (in their right mind) would complain about having to take Maneuvers to get to Tactics, for example, because Maneuvers is always good to have even as just a mule for a defense global proc of your choice like LOTG. For fighting, this could translate into just buffing box/kick and/or adding some kind of ranged attack like a throwing knife/axe with a -regen debuff on it. Alternatively, we could allow people to take the higher-tier powers right away but make them perform much weaker if you don't take other powers from the pool first.

The first Hami-O only gives about 2-3% as well. The second is giving just slightly under twice the boost as the first (45.4% double vs 23% single, without ED you'd get only 46% enhancement). Mids displays how much you're getting and how badly ED is hitting you. ED isn't taking much away in this example.

Double Cytos barely hit ED even at level 53. To-Hit: 45.4% (46% without ED) Endurance: 75.93% (76.59% without ED)

I like using Cytoskeletons in powers like Tactics and Ribosomes in Tough (unless I need some KB protection, in which case I 3-slot Gladiator's Armor). Enzymes are good for powers like Darkest Night. I stockpiled a bunch of Golgis for healing toggles but never got around to using them. I would also like to use D-Sync Conduits on a lot of different powers (any endurance clicky) but they're usually pretty costly. There's also a huge need for damage/heal and heal/endmod...

The fire proc created by Sentinel's Molten Embrace uses pure white visual FX regardless of power customization choices. Whether original, bright fire, or dark fire, whatever colors you pick, it's always white. If the FX color needs to be color locked I'd expect it to be the usual orange default fire color, not white. It just sticks out like a sore thumb this way. My primary is Assault Rifle, which has no color customization options so that's probably not the cause.

The basic pool powers lack the flag on every AT, even Brutes and Tankers. This power is a case study in bad programming design. If you have to add a manual tag to individual powers each time, that creates more work for the developers for little benefit. All it takes is one little oversight and you get inconsistencies like this. The Sentinel version (Molten Embrace) by contrast is designed to be future-proof because it just gives a flat damage bonus to any attack power and also grants the fire proc to them. It never needs to be updated and you don't need to update the pool powers either. This is what good programming looks like. I think that it would be best in the long run to re-design Fiery Embrace to work more similarly to Molten Embrace, though probably keeping it as a high-impact clicky rather than permanent toggle.

Probably Ribosome Exposure, a type of Hamidon-origin enhancement. They enhance both damage resistance and endurance reduction.