FupDup

I think we should try nudging down the crash to around 7.5/15 to make it a little more manageable. 10/20 is pretty big, but 5/10 might be a too low?

That's not what the devs are talking about. The patch notes are referencing an internal multiplier that determines how strong your armor powers are, not the max res cap. Currently, Scrappers and Stalkers have 0.75 as their multiplier. Live Sentinels are set to 0.7 (beta buffs them to 0.75). Live Brutes are also 0.75. Tankers are 1.0. The halfway point between 0.75 and 1.0 is 0.875, but that was judged to be stepping a little too close to Tanker territory. 0.85 is also a more normal looking number that feels good to my OCD brain.

Rage is balanced around the drawbacks of the crash and is only allowed to be as strong as it is due to that. Resistance armors being able to ignore that drawback made them a must-pick pairing with SS and made defense pairings pretty bad most of the time. Making it more equitable across the different armor types makes sense. The specific values chosen for the crash, however, can and should definitely be scrutinized. They can probably be softened up a bit.

As somebody who previously asked for Sentinel Shinobi to be crits instead of a % damage buff...I'm sorry. I assumed that Sent crits would also apply to the nuke in some capacity, and was more fixated on the ability to go over the damage cap since % buffs can be capped out by teammates/insps. If nukes aren't gonna crit, I'm gonna have to do a hypocritical 180 and sheepishly ask for a reversion on that power since the potential benefit (crit nukes) doesn't appear to be coming. As it is, you'd have to open up a fight with a filler AOE before the nuke to actually use this.

Sentinels losing the old MB is gonna sting. As Bubba mentioned, there's definitely a chance that the tables will turn and MB will be the inferior one now. Powers with less input should generally be less effective than ones that need you to pay attention and click stuff, but it's not really much of a tradeoff here with how stark the strength difference is. Perhaps MB could get either some basic regen or small continuous absorb (like Sent Regen used to have) so it's a little less one-sided. PB should probably still have the bigger effect in the end due to needing to click it, but it shouldn't be night-and-day.

Confirmed that Obscure is properly allowing endmod slotting, at least on Brute.

Glad to see the Dark Regen slotting bug fixed. Sad to see Obscure Sus getting sledgehammered like this. DR is already better in finished builds, and this will only make that gap wider. At least let us slot endmod for the recovery and/or stack the effects with multiple castings.

You're understanding correctly, you'll cap a lot easier now. For reference Scrappers and Stalkers have 0.75 as their armor modifier, and Tankers are 1.0. Brutes used to be 0.75 but are now 0.85. Sentinels used to be 0.7 but are now 0.75 like the others in the medium armor category.

Another random Attune suggestion: Make it function like a normal damage aura, and enemies hit by it receive the "Attuned" tag or whatever it's gonna be called behind the scenes. Then, various Sonic Melee powers that hit these tagged enemies get the bonus effect.

Sonic Assault was another HC homebrew set, not an oldschool original set. It's pretty clear that HC is gradually retconning the intended niche/utility of sonic-based powersets over time as they add more. My guess is that they're very afraid of -res in general so they want to minimize its existence, even in sets where it makes sense to be. If Sonic Blast was created today by HC, it might not have -res in it at all, or only 1-2 powers with the effect.

I think that the set bonus sharing thing is conceptually a good idea, because a lot of the game's enhancement system was designed around the bonuses. Having one AT that got almost no benefit from them was always kind of odd and forced proctology as the only valid building strat since it was the only thing that had impact. The values just need to be a bit higher. 50% would be a good start because it's a nice round number that is easy to do mental math around. We could probably go higher without causing imbalances because 1). many set bonuses are small/weak even at full power and 2). set bonuses means you need to sacrifice proc slotting (which is a big sacrifice, so sacrifices should be rewarded).

Maybe Attune could work like a self-centered Storm Cell, where using your Sonic Melee attacks would cause the invisible entity to use its attacks on your target?

Henchmen are intentionally immune to +rech buffs because it would mess up their attack chains. It'd be nice if henchmen could get a different buff, like damage, in place of the "wasted" recharge.

On the topic of team insps, it'd be real nice if those could be combined like normal ones (same goes for duals and team duals). They currently cause a lot of inventory bloat.

The recent patch proliferated Dark Regeneration as a power choice for Sentinel Dark Armor. The issue here is that the Sentinel variant of this power is currently unable to accept Accurate Healing enhancement sets, but the other 4 armored ATs can (Tank, Brute, Scrapper, Stalker). Since the power has identical functions across all 5 of these ATs, it logically should share the same enhancement choices. It heals the user, and it requires a to-hit roll to work. Accurate healing. If I had to guess, the powers team might've copy and pasted the enhancement selection from the revamped Obscure Sustenance, which no longer affects enemies and thus doesn't take accuracy enhancements. Dark Regen is, however, a very different power from ObSus.

This is sort of similar to how Sudden Acceleration's proc that converts KB to KD will completely nullify any KB slotting from the rest of the set in the same power, but less extreme since some enemies will at least resist the stun magnitude (but then again they can also resist the debuff at that point too).

The HC team is very very squeamish when it comes to "power creep" so the chances of adding additional tiers on top of what we have now (vertical expansion) are like -420%. The only hope we've got is for a "horizontal expansion" that just adds more powers to the existing tiers, and there's certainly a lot of holes left to plug up in that regard. Like toxic and psi judgements, cold interface, a bunch of extra lore factions, etc. We could maybe even take it a step further and use a substitution system of sorts, like maybe you could replace your judgement power with one of those genesis buff patches so it's a tradeoff instead of a pure power gain. Even that has a pretty low chance, but at least it's not in the negative range like pure vertical scaling.

For the Sentinel Opportunity Strikes ATO, what I would do is rework it to instead give a chance to apply the vulnerability debuff instead of just refilling your "rage" bar slightly quicker. Depending on the squeamishness of our overlords, this could either be full strength or a little reduced compared to the inherent clicky.

The OP is talking about Scrappers and level 2 damage auras specifically. As far as I know, every single Scrapper primary should allow the user to pick something from the primary at level 2 to avoid the aura if they really don't want it. For your Dominator, you could always pick a generic pool power at level 4 (i.e. Hasten or whatever).

I don't understand, doesn't the game already allow you to skip the auras? Like in Dark Armor you can pick Dark Embrace at level 1, then something from your melee primary at level 2 instead of the aura?

No Sentinels? 😞 Anyways, I think the chain/ricochet thing would probably just be on one or two powers rather than every power having it, because that would mess up proc rates and damage formulas (AOEs are weaker than ST).

In regards to defenses, I would rather make Water Armor be a resist-focused set to reduce overlap with Ice Armor (which is already a cold-themed defense set). Maybe try to somehow make it an "absorb set" where multiple layering absorb powers were the main layer of protection, backed up by modest resistances (since there's already multiple resist-focused armors too). I see it more like water being a "cushion" that softens incoming impacts (i.e. try to move through water or throw a projectile through it) and spreads damage around (splashing/waves).

Crey Septic Tank units confirmed, using the new Toxic Blast.

To be fair, those two were intentionally designed to be extended tutorials.

Sents are currently excluded as well, for the same reason as Tankers (didn't previously have it so no backwards-compatible legacy choice).