FupDup

If the reward goes too high, then that could get people rejected from teams for playing the "wrong" AT so I'd rather err on the side of being too low.

Sentinels can actually get a damage aura in the Electric Mastery epic pool, as a slight correction here.

The thing to remember is that picking FA comes at the opportunity cost of not having a damage-based epic pool like Mu for Scrapper/Stalker or Soul for Brute/Tanker. And since damage is literally the only thing that matters in this game, I don't see this exchange becoming overpowered anytime soon.

The lore reason for frag exclusion doesn't stand up to scrutiny. My own headcanon reason is that the devs want to push people to take the Bane's beam AOE powers instead of relying only on grenades (which are much more effective). But they also don't want to buff the beam powers "too much" so that's why your grenade launcher can't load frags.

I have a few reasons for having more heroes than villains: 1. Character concepts, I generally like being good or at least an edgy anti-hero a lot more than being entirely selfish or an outright psychopath. 2. The lower population makes it harder to get team content going. 3. Much lower number of contacts/arcs and zones, which makes progression feel very samey between multiple alts. Blueside allows for a lot more different side-paths with stuff like The Hollows and Croatia. This is made worse by many NPCs requiring you to be introduced by a broker first. 4. The story arcs tend to be shorter, which means fewer merits awarded at the end, which means a harder time making inf. And with less team content, that's another source of merits reduced. The first one is hard to solve without messing up the tone/lore of the Isles. The second one is a chicken-or-the-egg kind of thing. The bottom two are more actionable. Just a little nudge up in the merit rewards in most redside arcs would be nice. Not a huge bump, just a few extra to help reduce the income gap a little.

I think the patch notes are referring to the "per tick" endurance cost or something. We can see in City of Data that there are two different end cost values listed: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=epic.body_mastery.focused_accuracy&at=scrapper It's definitely a confusing way to convey the patch notes.

I think what Lauci means is that the ToT rewards are one-time per character, so it naturally encourages multiple characters to get more aethers out of it in the long run.

To be fair, Blasters do get a stacking damage buff from Defiance that widens the gap a bit, and Blasters also have a larger variety of melee attacks to supplement their primaries (the game's design tends to favor melee over range most of the time). But even with those factors, the gap is definitely not as huge as many people like to harp on about.

DP can work fine as a melee-oriented blast set. Assault Rifle tends to favor range because it has so many cones in it. Beam doesn't have much reason to melee but it can if you want I guess. Electric rewards melee due to Short Circuit so that's another viable candidate here. One that you didn't mention is Radiation Blast. It comes with 2 PBAOE attacks, making it the most "blappy" ranged set available.

I know it's fast and easy. My complaint is not time or difficulty, it's immersion. I don't like changing from a paragon of virtue to a genocidal maniac as casually as changing my socks in the morning even though the game allows and encourages it. My complaint could be solved by adding a few snake spawns to Paragon. Since the tip mission mentioned earlier was a Crey experiment, perhaps some of those experiments could have escaped the lab and found their way into Crey's Folly. Alternatively, since villains are now going to be coming to Striga Isle, it makes sense that some snakes from the Rogue Isles could sneak into a boat and start breeding in Striga.

A bigger issue is that as far as I know, Snakes don't really spawn in Paragon City at all except for a single vigilante tip mission in the level 20-29 range. This can make the pieces annoying to get for "pure" heroes since it's so easy to miss that tip (and the tips are given randomly). I know there's the mission computer SG base item for this but that's an annoying hoop to jump through.

Something to be aware of is that most Sentinel primaries and secondaries have some differences that are unique to the AT, which means even "familiar" sets might be different (like Elec blast for example having some good changes on Sents).

For some added clarity on the damage thing, let's do some random samples. Lightning Bolt Blaster: 102.6009 Sentinel: 100.3208 Fire Ball Blaster: 43.7931 + 12.5123 (higher target cap, admittedly) Sentinel: 42.8198 + 12.2342 You can see a similar trend for most attacks, with the main discrepancies being from sniper attacks and nukes. Some Sentinel primaries have very good snipe replacements (like Elec) while some others not so much (like Ice). Direct damage comparisons between them are harder because it depends on whether the snipe is long cast or quick cast, and what the user's to-hit buffs are. For nukes, they are normalize to all share the same base recharge of 90 seconds and have reduced damage compared to Blaster versions. Depending on what the exact damage and recharge were on Blasters, this could either be an arguable gain (Thunderous Blast, Overcharge), a net loss (Rain of Arrows lol), or a wash. The main edge that Blasters get in the damage department is a larger array of melee attacks to choose from, which tend to be more powerful than ranged. Sentinels do get some melee in their epic pools but only one ST attack and one PBAOE at most. But if the Blaster is choosing to play at range, most of the time they're not living up to their full potential unless they're using either Devices or Tac Arrow. If they're using any other secondary at full range, they're really not gaining much over a similar Sentinel. Another wrench in the comparison is the inherents these two get. Blasters get a scaling damage buff when they use attacks, with that amount varying based on the attacks used. Sents can cast a -15% resist debuff on a single target and it ignores the effects of purple patch (normally, debuffs are weaker against enemies above your level, but Vulnerability is immune to this). Also consider that there are several armors available that directly enhance the user's damage output (Bio, Stone, Rad, Fire), which can help shrink the gap between the two ATs. The TL;DR is that your damage will be more than fine. As for survival...you get things like debuff protection (like DDR), mezz protection, burst healing, more comprehensive protection (against "exotic" damage types), and/or absorption depending on the armor you chose. A blaster with 32-45% ranged defense and 0% DDR is not going to facetank more damage than a Sentinel that is built even remotely well.

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Problem: In the mission "Stop Scientist Rescue" from Ghost Widow, an enemy NPC will often spawn in an area outside the walls that is impossible for the player to reach, making the mission impossible to complete. I've reloaded the mission twice and there was a mob in this exact same corner every time (Northeast corner of the prison cell room, bottom floor). Map: Server: Excelsior Zone/Mission: V_Arachnos_45_Layout_02_02p Position: [-552.5 0.3 -757.6] Screenshot: EDIT: It just happened a third time! This time it looks like what happens is that after killing one of the enemies, a copy of him spawned inside the cage area pictured to my left. He then tried to run into the corner where you see the Nullifier pictured above. I was able to hit him in a small area by walking back to trick him into coming forward a bit. However, eventually he ended up running entirely out of bounds into the void. I can't do another auto-complete for 3 more days. 😡 Here is a screenshot of an enemy spawning into the area. I actually managed to kill her before she ran off this time: Location: Server: Excelsior Zone/Mission: V_Arachnos_45_Layout_02_02p Position: [-550.7 0.3 -762.0]

My hot take is that the different origin enhancements probably should not have existed in the first place. They add flavor but they also add bloat and make things muddier. I'd rather TO's (or whatever we want to call it) have the same values as SO's currently have and then have those be the main non-crafted enhancements. So basically it would be a cosmetic/convenience thing but your character wouldn't get any weaker or stronger from it.

Bio has lower defense and DDR than SR, but it offers better resists, HP, regeneration, click heals, and absorb than SR, especially if Defensive Adaptation is active. So basically it can be more durable overall vs SR despite the lower def values. Tough and Weave are strongly recommended for almost all Sentinels, and almost every AT in general really. As for close quarters, I don't think it's that going to be that big of a worry most of the time given the combo you've chosen. You'll be pretty durable. Parasitic Leech is almost a godmode button if it hits 5 targets. If you're really worried about it still, you could try to grab one of the epic pool immobilize powers or Tashibishi from Ninja Tool Mastery (makes enemies want to run out of the area). With enough investment you could also pick up a hold power like Netherworld Grasp, Dominate, etc., which you could combine with Abysmal Gaze from Dark Blast to lock down higher ranked enemies.

Dark is a good Sentinel primary specifically because of having Dark Obliteration baseline. It'll help your AOE a bit. Still won't be as much AOE as something like Assault Rifle, but it helps. If that's not enough, you could try picking up one of the PBAOE attacks from an epic pool (like Engulfing Darkness from Dark Mastery). Bio Armor is very good too. Sents have slightly lower base modifiers than Scrappers and Stalkers do, but Bio is strong enough of an armor set to just chug right through that limitation. It can be pretty tanky with all of the absorbs and regen up, and Dark's to-hit debuffs will augment it further. For power picks you really should grab the full set of 9 in Bio. Maybe you could skip Athletic Regulation, but even that one is still useful for a bit of DDR and mobility. The other 8 powers are mandatory for sure.

Another consideration is that Dark's variant of Darkest Night has slightly stronger values. IMO I would base the decision on if you need/want the extra PBAOE attack. Go Dark for AOE, go Soul to save slots.

One thing I've noticed is that my redside toons seem to have a slightly harder time earning cash than their blueside equivalents, or at least it feels that way. That could be due to shorter story arcs giving fewer merits, or it could be due to less team content like SF's being run, which also translates to fewer merits/inf. Boosting the inf/merits redside wouldn't break progression like an XP boost would, so it's a somewhat more viable option. I haven't kept a spreadsheet log of it or anything so I can't back it up with maths, so "trust me bro." I'll admit though that my choice of blue/red/gold is primarily dependent on concept/theme rather than incentives, so it's not like I would just create a bunch of villains for farming extra merits/inf doing redside stuff. I try to keep a ratio of 1 villain for every 2 heroes to keep blueside from getting too stale and because I find it easier to make hero/vigilante concepts than villains/rogues. I'm overdue for some more goldsiders...

The utility of those would change quite a bit depending on the AT/build in question. The 5% endurance would probably be the most universally valuable of the bunch. Making stuff like this equally good in different ways is gonna be too hard. I could maybe see an upgraded version of the origin attack power but that's about as far as it could go I think. Better to just let it be a badge thing for collecting/fun purposes and having cool badge titles.

Definitely can't go over level 5 for that limit, because some early missions like Twinshot and Dr. Graves require you to visit other zones as part of their tutorials.

For new content, there will gradually be stuff like story arcs and powersets added. For an endgame, probably not, at least as far as we've seen/heard up to this point. As it stands, the true endgame is still just Altitis...and I'm kind of okay with that, seeing what other games like Diablo 4 call an "endgame."

Well, somebody just downloading the game for the first time isn't going to know that certain choices like picking a Peacebringer or Going Rogue are mistakes. It's a lack of guard rails, and I think that the epic ATs should have the option to play tutorials since they can now be created without having a level 50 first.

I think a part of the issue is that when many of us were starting out, the game was a fair bit simpler (didn't have stuff like Going Rogue), and the epic AT's required a level 50 toon to unlock. A lot of the streamlining that helps experienced players with quality of life makes it easier for somebody like that streamer to accidentally step into the shark tank. Some of those guardrails had a purpose.