FupDup

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).

Somebody on the Discord actually had a similar idea, where procs would have a 100% chance to fire off but the damage dealt would scale based on your PPM calculation, so basically slower powers would get a bigger chunk of damage while quick spammy powers would only get a small bit for the same proc. I wouldn't mind it because I don't like RNG in combat (hypocritical opinion to have in a game with tab targeting, I know), but it would certainly detract from the "flavor" of procs being a dice roll thing and there might be people who like the gambling element. And IDK how it would look in terms of coding so I just went with simple stuff.

I'm going to actually make a serious post in this rapidly deteriorating thread, regarding procs and a little bit of general balancing. These are all based on things that we know to be possible coding-wise, since if that were not an issue, I would very much want deeper things done. The wishlist here includes: >Slotted recharge no longer reduces PPM. Perhaps increase the weighting of animation times in the PPM formula to help slow casting powers suck a little less (it's currently only a small factor). Base recharge remains a factor so that we don't reintroduce the old "buzzsaw" meta. >Non-damage procs like Energy Manipulator and Decimation get brought up to at least 3.5 PPM to match damage procs (or a little higher even), because damage is intrinsically more valuable than anything else. Resistance debuff procs are counted as damage procs here, as are Build Up procs, so they are not getting buffed probably. I'm also counting things like Regenerative Tissue in this category of things to buff. >The proc-boosting mechanic from the new Cupid set is proliferated to all procs, with the power of this boost depending on each individual case (i.e. purples like Hecatomb should only get a boost at 6 slots, but crap sets need a giga boost). >Add a lot more enhancement sets, including ones with procs, to categories currently lacking to help level the playing field a bit (i.e. Stuns and Sleeps need procs way more than Holds do). Try to include underutilized set bonuses like range in these where possible/logical. >All existing sets now go up to level 50, and have more set bonuses added if their existing tiers are shit. Note that I'm not asking for the current bonuses to be stronger, just for there to be a second bonus added to each tier (i.e. 2 bonuses at 2 slots instead of just 1 bonus). Sets with good bonuses already like Cloud Senses of course won't need that. >Some specific bonuses like recovery, regen, and damage are kinda weak and might need a bump. >Buff Sentinels, because yes.

That picture isn't the best for this, but the way that pictured unit works is that their gauss rifle weapon is in fact operated two-handed like a giant assault rifle. The shield however is mounted directly to the shoulder rather than being held in the off-hand. Art from a different person: If we were to get two-handed weapon sets with shield, the shield would probably need to be mounted on the side of our glove costume piece or something like that instead of being held in the hand. That, however, could present an issue since the game might not be able to mount an item in different spots based on your attack weapon choice due to spaghetti code shenanigans. For Sentinels that would be less of an issue since we could just give them a slightly altered version that always mounts it to the glove/shoulder no matter what primary you have, but for melee classes it gets more complicated. It would probably be weird to make all the existing melee sets mount it on the side, and I don't think HC would like the idea of a second "dummy" Shield Defense set (with side mounting) existing as a separate armor set choice for the currently excluded sets like TW and such. All of this assumes that side-mounting would even be possible, which it very well might not be.

In an ideal world, I don't think Shield should be prevented from pairing with any set. I very much want to pair it with two-handed sets like Assault Rifle (see the Starcraft Marine fanart posted above). What I meant is that we might have to limit the types of shield models that certain attack sets could use with shield (i.e. small models like what Cap America used in Infinity War), but I think they should all have some sort of option for it. The issue is mostly technical baggage, and we might have to get creative to work around it if it's even possible.

I want Shield Sentinels as much as anybody else (probably more, actually), but if there's no physical shield present then it's just not the same set anymore. If we somehow got around animation/weapon slot issues, we might have to restrict which shield models were usable with certain sets to minimize visual clipping jankiness, but there NEEDS to be something there even if it's small. The vibes just wouldn't be the same without the shield.

The main issue is that Chilling Ray has a 63.9% DPA loss compared to Freeze Ray on Blaster, and for reference most Sent attacks only have a 2.5% loss. It also has an inferior mezz effect with no proc slotting choices.

During open beta testing, Stalker and Sentinel Psi Armors had their damage auras exchanged for damage debuffs instead. COD displays the new name (Aura of Madness instead of Insanity) but they still are listed as doing direct damage and not debuffing enemy damage. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=stalker_defense.psionic_armor.aura_of_insanity&at=stalker https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=sentinel_defense.psionic_armor.aura_of_insanity&at=sentinel Scrapper for comparison: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_defense.psionic_armor.aura_of_insanity&at=scrapper

I'm kind of obsessed with it, actually. Like, I've got 2 different Beam Sentinels already and I've got more variations on my alt backlog. Please send help (or don't).

The devs don’t seem to be in any hurry to fight Battalion, and I don’t really blame them. Sure there’s story build up, but it also feels kinda like story power creep to justify more premium incarnate tiers. The Last Bastion becoming a playable hazard zone could be cool though.

Empathy/Archery Defender

Energy Aura is kind of a late bloomer due to its typed defense setup, which wasn't helped by the recent nerfs to F/C defenses. Once it gets going, though, it's pretty good.

Slower recharge does mean higher proc rates, but I doubt that's the reason for the disparity.

Sentinel with either Energy/Rad (Rad is much better) as the primary and Invuln/Energy as the secondary, and if you want melee you can pick up Elec or Mu Mastery for your epic pool.

The dev reason for Dark's thirstiness is that Dark Regen is basically eating up most of your "power budget" singlehandedly. This is also the reason why Dark has low native KB protection and no debuff resistance against To-Hit debuffs, despite the thematic association with those debuffs. Obscure Sustenance is weaker than Dark Regen (can't instant refill your health bar on demand) and thus IS allowed to have a lower end cost, recovery buff, and debuff resistance on it.

Looking at Scrapper values, they're passively sitting at 45.95% regen resistance before any stacks of RR are added in (which will add a lot more and can potentially hit the 100% cap). The WP Scrapper is sitting at just 25.95%. Maybe one could argue for the extra protection to be added to different powers instead of all stacked into one, similar to how NuRegen does it or how most defense sets work with DDR. But certainly, the total regen resistance is pretty low for how dependent on it that the set is.

The biggest hurdle that we seem to have is with animations and modeling, due to how ancient and unsupported this game's tools for those are. I don't even care if the graphics look the same, a newer engine would just allow us to actually make stuff and offer better performance/stability. But of course it's all a pipe dream.

I think you're really overestimating the size of the proposed buffs, and also really underestimating the power of other competing armor sets like the newly revamped Electric and Dark armors (or even NuRegen).

We recently got several armor set revamps, but Willpower was conspicuously absent. I think that is unfortunate, because the set is pretty ancient numbers-wise with a ton of glaring weaknesses with very few strengths. Even Regen is now pretty much outright better than it now. WP needs some serious buffing action, but of course it should still retain its iconic "toggle and forget" playstyle that people like it for. This is just a straight number increase for the most part, not a gameplay change. Let's look at each power individually, and I'll say what I think should be done (if applicable). The power order is a little messed up on Stalkers so I'll go with the standard structure. T1: High Pain Tolerance >I think this one pretty much does what it ought to do and doesn't need adjustments. Maybe higher resists to the non-S/L damage types would be nice because those are currently pretty minimal. -------------------- T2: Mind Over Body >This one is also mostly fine. Adding other resist types to it would be nice but I might be asking for too much. -------------------- T3: Fast Healing >This is the start of where I'll ask for changes. WP is a highly regeneration-dependent set, so I think it could use some regen debuff resistance on this power. It shouldn't be anywhere near what you get from the proper Regeneration armor set, but it definitely needs some more. >Additionally, for Stalkers only, I'd suggest adding a bit of recovery to it like how Stalker Regen got that too. WP is supposed to be very good at endurance management. -------------------- T4: Indomitable Will >The change I'd like to see here is to add some Toxic defense equal to the Psionic, with the reason being that the set has almost a complete lack of Toxic protection (and Toxic def is also super rare in general). WP is often described as a "jack of all trades" but it's hard to live up to that when there's such a glaring hole. If Invuln can be allowed to have Psi protection, WP has no justification for this crater-sized hole. -------------------- T5: Rise To The Challenge / Up To The Challenge (Sentinel) / Reconstruction (Stalker T3) >RTTC is probably fine, I think. The Stalker and Sentinel versions however are up for debate... >UTTC: This power currently trades the scaling regen effect for a high static effect. I think this trade is pretty fair considering that Sents will generally have fewer enemies within 8ft of themselves than the 3 melee ATs who get RTTC. What isn't so fair is that RTTC also comes with a small To-Hit debuff, but UTTC gets nothing to replace that. I think that UTTC should get some kind of extra effect to bring it up to parity, with the most direct translation being a small defense buff (debuffing enemy To-Hit is functionally equivalent to increasing your defenses). Alternatively, it could give something else like a small continuous absorb shield like what Sentinel Regen used to have but lost in the NuRegen revamp, or something else entirely. I'm not married to any one idea, but it definitely needs a second effect of SOME sort considering how RTTC has 2 effects while UTTC only has 1 effect. Sentinels don't need any further handicaps than they've already got to deal with. >Reconstruction is very weird, being a clicky power in a normally toggle/auto heavy set, and not to mention the totally borked power order. I kind of think that Stalkers would make sense to have UTTC proliferated to them as a branching mutually exclusive choice, and reordering the power tiers to more closely match the other ATs. Stalker Invuln does already do a similar thing with the Invincible power (static effect instead of scaling like the 3 other melee ATs get), so there's a precedent. -------------------- T6: Quick Recovery >I'd just give this power a bit of resistance to end drain and recovery debuff effects, like what NuRegen got. Maybe add a small amount of slow resistance too, going off of the athleticism theme and making it a bit easier to build. -------------------- T7: Heightened Senses >The defense debuff resistance could stand to be a little bit higher. The set isn't supposed to depend on defenses, but the fact remains that the F/C/E/N damage types all currently have extremely low resistance values on this set, which makes the set feel like an S/L specialist like Invuln instead of an all-rounder like it's billed as. A bit higher defense values would help with this, perhaps subtracting a little from S/L because you can easily cap resistance to those two types so they don't rely on defense anyways. -------------------- T8: Resurgence >The main thing that needs to happen here is removing the damage and to-hit crashes from it. I'm pretty sure this is the only self-rez in the game with self crash effects? >There's also a side debate about trying to make self-rez powers useful even when you aren't dead. One option would be to have this power become a click heal that has a popup self-rez option if you die, trying to get the best of both worlds. But that might be seen as adding a clicky to a set that shouldn't have any, so we might have to think up something different or just deal with it. Since it does already come with some self-buffs (before the crash), maybe let people use it while alive for those buffs. -------------------- T9: Strength of Will >The crash on this power is actually pretty fine IMO. It's only 50% instead of the usual 100%, and there's no recovery debuff that most come with. Factoring in Quick Recovery, this is fairly easy to deal with. >The part that sucks about it is the distribution of resistances. It currently gives very high values to S/L, but very low to the other types. The problem here is that WP's native S/L resists are already quite high, but everything else is very low, so you end up overcapped to S/L and wide open to everything else. I would suggest heavily cutting down the S/L in exchange for heavily bumping up everything else, to further iron out any holes in the set. Again, the set is currently designed like an S/L specialist stat-wise instead of the mythical all-rounder. All in all, I think these changes would keep the spirit of a toggle-and-forget easymode set, but with bigger numbers so it sucks less. It just gets better at what it already does, so you can keep playing like you were before.

I'm pretty sure at least one of the other COH servers already did a similar color customization thing? So it should be possible coding-wise.

Realistically you can’t even buff Defender scales because they’re already within spitting distance of Corruptors (0.65 vs 0.75 I think it was), and you sure as hell can’t buff Corrs when they’re already the strongest meta AT.