FupDup

Apparently Bean actually has slightly higher DPA than Burst now, so if people do still use it they're doing so because they want more DPA (aka more killing), not because they adhere to the OP's idea of "shaking up the meta" or whatever. Also I don't know why this thread is in the suggestions section, it probably belongs in general discussion.

To be clear, I'm not asking for the removal of inherent fitness. That is here to stay because the game was nearly unplayable without stamina as a base part of every build. What I'm asking for is for fitness to come back as a pool while still keeping inherent fitness. So that means you can double up your fitness for maximum swoleness. The powers and structure would be the same (Swift, Hurdle, Health, Stamina), except we would just need to make one more power since every other pool gets 5. I'd like to see an auto resistance power because that fits the theme of fitness and because there's an absolutely massive famine of resist powers available in pools (compared to like 800 different choices for defense). We can call it Discipline, Pain Tolerance, or something else to that effect. It would be either a T2 or T3 depending on how strong we want it to be. Why do I want this? 1. I often run out of slots faster than power picks. Fitness is full of one-slot wonder powers for those of us who want to save our slots. 2. There is a lack of recovery powers in pools, or at least ones that are always active (the existing ones have pretty low uptime) 3. There is a lack of resistance powers in pools 4. It's a thematically broad pool that can apply to almost any character concept

Generally the way I do it is that I make a redside toon for every 1-2 bluesiders to keep things from getting too stale. I think the content is generally fine from a quality perspective, but I kinda don't really like being evil most of the time. And I find it easier to make hero/vigilante alt concepts than villains. For changes I think a higher quantity of content would help since certain level brackets tend to feel repetitive due to far fewer zones and contacts redside than blueside. I'd especially like some more Sharkhead contacts that don't have you fight Scrapyarders (almost every Shark contact has you fight them) because I really don't like the union busting overtones.

Sentinels are supposed to have high damage on their stun blast attacks, in fact they're the ones who started the idea before issue 6 started porting it to other ATs. This really reeks of oversight.

Energy Aura and Ice Armor probably have some synergy since both have a sapping power (Storm has some sapping on its own), and can be easily made to fit the same theme.

"When you don't know who to trust, you can always trust the gun at your side."

How about a wizard with a machine gun? Bio: "Wizards may run out of spells, but I'll never run out of bullets."

Ignite at least now targets a specific enemy rather than a location on the ground, making it easier to use. As for theming, it works out okay for "Rambo" style characters who carry an entire arsenal but still not so well for those who only want the machine gun part. This is where I will once again ask for a separate MG/SMG powerset that only uses bullets and also gets Aim or something similar to it (no beans allowed).

The stealth nerf has been temporarily averted. The devs have created a Kheld-specific exemption due to the controversy caused last night. If/when Khelds get a proper balancing pass, this exemption will be revoked in exchange for other buffs and stuff.

To elaborate on incarnates, NEVER* choose the incarnate salvage recipes that require inf. For commons and uncommons use threads. For rares and very rares, use emp merits. Do incarnate trials and story arcs and select incarnate salvage as your end reward most of the time (unless you're really close to a certain rare or very rare, then you can pick emp merits). Also do a daily Hami raid for 4 extra emp merits. Do a daily Dark Astoria repeatable mission for 10 easy threads. Well, okay, there's also the option of using shard-based ingredients for the alpha slot but that takes a lot of time (threads are way easier/quicker). *The one time it's okay to use inf for incarnates is to convert 10 shards to 10 threads but that's it.

Full Auto is not meant to be a precision pulling tool. It's meant to clear away trash mobs like minions in a large area, like other nukes. There are like 800 other AOE abilities in Assault Rifle with smaller radii if you are worried about that.

Adding new power slots is not likely given the lack of details and more importantly the power creep/balancing ramifications. Adding new powers to existing slots like some new alphas or lores is something that I very much want, but it's probably not on the devs' radar either.

PVPs and Purples let you have the benefits of both attuning AND boosting. Never attune a purple. For the rest, it depends. Generic IO's like Invention: Recharge cannot be attuned, only boosted. Some IO sets like Winters are only available in their attuned format. PVP's can actually be very good attuned in a leveling build, then replaced at level 47 with boosted versions. Sets that max out at a level below 50 (i.e. Touch of Death) can be very good boosted since that lets them compete with level 50 sets. Anything else just depends on how often you do lower level content. There's also the budget concern (attuning is way cheaper).

NO ENERGY DAMAGE!

More APPs would be neat, but IMO there are tons of existing ones that should be proliferated to other AT's first. That's probably easier too since some of them can be at least partially copypasted.

Hardmode content. People rely on stacking Barrier's mega defense boost to deal with the massively increased accuracy that enemies get in hardmode stuff.

Lores are always LTs and bosses anyways (at least at the higher tiers) so it's not really an issue.

One solution might be to add "universal enhancement" sets that just offer generic stuff like accuracy, endurance, recharge. These sets would be able to slot into nearly any power in the game and would applicable to both aspects of Storm Cell. Here is an example:

Ice Mistral's Torment is a slow set that also boosts damage...but the accuracy and recharge stats are pretty wimpy. It's basically gonna boil down to Hami-O's as being the only viable way to slot the power at this rate. And that might get a little expensive since you need 3 Nucleolus Exposures and 3 D-Sync Decelerations to max out all of the stats.

As for Tankers, here is the melee damage comparison that I referenced earlier: Here are the two relevant charts from that thread: Tankers are clearing faster than Brutes with most primaries and in some cases faster than Scrappers too. This also proves my point about Brutes vs. Scrappers because many of these times are pretty close between the two. Buffing the Brute could easily make them outright stronger than Scrappers.

VEATs do actually have a fair number of problems. They've got some good options but also a lot of pretty bad ones, like Banes being just worse than Stalkers. There's a reason most of them wind up being either Crabberminds or Huntsmen. Another thing about VEATs is that there's not much reason to make alts of them since they all have the same primaries and secondaries, so you can just make multiple builds on one toon to play them all. For other ATs you can play around with entirely different primaries and secondaries so there's plenty of replayability and building options.

Popularity and power often go hand-in-hand in video games. There are plenty of people who go against the "meta" to build their preferred playstyle/fantasy (I'm a Sentinel main, so I know), but in basically any game you can observe that when something is discovered as being super stronk it tends to rocket up in popularity. I would really be interested in seeing an updated version of those graphs to see how much Tankers went up since their buffs, and how much Brutes went down since Tankers got buffed to replace them.

Once upon a time, people observed/complained that Brutes were the kings of the game and that they made other ATs more or less obsolete in most content. This can be observed by going into the old demographics thread and seeing that Brutes outnumbered almost everyone, even with fire farmers removed from the equation. I have a really, really hard time believing that Brutes are weak in light of this (very old) data. The main thing that happened since then was that Tankers got their damage buffed massively, to the point that they can clear maps faster than any other melee AT while still having the toughest armor. Put these clues together and there's a clear answer as to what happened: Tanker damage output got buffed to the point where they could just straight up replace Brutes in every way. However, walking back the Tanker buffs even a tiny bit would likely cause an extreme meltdown because people don't like their toys being touched, even for good reason. So really, the only kind of buffs I'd humor to Brutes include: A. Better ATO procs B. Slightly higher armor modifiers so that they sit between Tankers and Scrappers (right now they lean much closer to Scrappers for the most part) I will fiercely protest any kind of damage buff because then we could easily repeat history, making both Tankers and Scrappers obsolete to Brutes like they used to be.

Cones generally have lower target caps than targeted AOE or melee AOE attacks. Uniformity is likely the reason why. Even though Full Auto is a T9, it is still burdened by the limits of being a cone. As to why cones have lower targets, I really don't know. If anything I think their cap should be the higher one since they take more effort to line up. IDK why the easiest to use abilities get higher caps than hard to use ones...