DreadShinobi

RoP is a mid-late 20s, get it by 30 before your t9s open up power pick. Most powersets fill all their power slots up to 20 with primary/secondary choices, a slot for Hasten, a leadership toggle, combat jumping and/or super speed (which is also +stealth). Clarion is perma mez protection. Clarion affects your entire league. RoP only affects yourself. RoP with a very high recharge IO build (which the game is not supposed to be being balanced around IOs) pre adjustment is 60% uptime. Not Perma. A SO build provides ~35% RoP uptime. Clarion does not require precious power slot choices, pool power selections and lockouts from other pools, and can also be swapped out between other destiny choices at will based on the type of content you are running. So yeah I'd say if you compare RoP directly to Clarion it makes sense that RoP would be something available to your character sooner than Clarion.

In bringing up compromise, I am wondering is the parameters specifically: At the current values this power should have 33% uptime, and 40/120 feels like a good balance for 33% uptime. Or... Is 50/120 something that would be considered, reaching a half way point between 33% uptime and 50% uptime. l-> remember that previously an SO build had absolutely horrible RoP uptime and this was just terrible to devote power choices to, and an IO build built for high recharge revolving around RoP uptime could reach 90/150, significantly over 50% uptime. I actually _really_ like, for this power specifically, that it is now unaffected by recharge. The discrepancy between IO and SO builds was too large, HOWEVER can we please punish the people that built their character around this less? I only have 2 characters that have RoP, but they feel very uniquely special compared to everything else I play and have built because of the RoP playstyle. 40/120 = 33% 50/120 = 41.66%, 50/130 = 38.4% 60/140 = 42.8% <pre-adjustment IO build> 90/150 = 60% uptime <pre-adjustment SO build, with 95% recharge enhanced into RoP and 35% global recharge (50% hasten uptime)) 90/260.9 = 34.5% uptime --------> 33% uptime is too harsh Has separating the power into 2 separate functions been considered? IE the power grants 2 buffs, each with separate durations with one click and one set recharge Break Free + 30s mez prot, 60s damage resist, 120 cd Break Free + 60s mez prot, 30s damage resist, 120 cd What about scaling the damage resistance down over time akin to Incarnate-Barrier in favor of higher uptime or shorter cooldown? What about leaving the power at 40/120 33% uptime, but adding a small passive damage resistance buff, like 3-5% that is always active even when the power is on cooldown, helping with the competition the power receives from always beneficial toggle powerhouses such as tough weave combat jumping and leadership. What about reducing the -largely unnecessary- mag 10 mez protection to something that protects against single applications of mez affects but can be overcome when stacked. Similar to acrobatics but more broad, in favor of reducing the downtime. Benefits for the many players who take it to prevent toggle dropping on offensive toggles like Radiation Emission, Dark Miasma, Hot Feet Blasters, etc when hit by a 2 second stun. What about reducing the total damage resistance value from the click by half AND the total magnitude of mez protection by half in favor of better uptime? What about making the recharge adjustable? If used while mezzed, increase the downtime. If used while not affected by mez, reduce the downtime. What about making the ONLY way of reducing the cooldown of RoP from 40/120 by casting Arcane Bolt, Spirit Ward, or Enflame, which reduces the cooldown of RoP by 2-3 seconds per cast.

/nin can pick up the knockback protection sg base buff whenever playing below level 28.

Frenzy is a game changer for doms. All my characters are vigilante except for my doms that i will only play as villain alignment. When you have multiple powers that would benefit from auto status the movement binds can help but I don't use those. I just keep myself aware of when the auto needs to fire and unqueue powers. Sg base buff that provides +recharge is also very nice to have on doms because it gives you some more room to activate domination before a drop. It is approx 128.75% global recharge to perma dom without needing to click hasten which is what i build my dominators up to. It lets you afk or whatever and still keep domination active without hasten. My plant/thorny dom is proc loaded and has less global recharge so i built that one to 108.75% global recharge which hits the aforementioned breakpoint with the sg base buff. Having enough recharge to permadom without hasten also makes it so hasten is effectively recharge debuff resistance without needing to slot for that. I don't use recharge debuff resistance IOs on my dominators and don't feel like I am ever missing out on them. A controlled critter cannot apply recharge debuffs to you so higher natural recharge works better for me than recharge debuff resistance

Hidden gem

A controller/dom using an aoe immobilize before clumping is not plant specific. Any control set sans mind and illusion can make that player error. Sometimes it can reduce dps/clear speed and sometimes it isnt a factor anyways. SoC can actually assist in mob clumping depending on the enemy faction if theyre more or less likely to shoot at each other or opt to try to melee early in their power cycle. Knowing these tendencies can help you determine how long to wait to cast roots after SoC. I also feel like an early aoe immob cast is still far less impactful on effective aoe followup than the disruption that can be caused by improper use of energy blasting, hurricane, force bubble, dimension shift, black hole, sonic cage, detention field, etc can cause. But why be aggravated by it? You can politely mention that it is disruptive, and if the response is *idgaf* then you can either find something else to do or if you're the team leader and it is disruptive to 6 other people's play experience take appropriate action. Anything is fair game when you're solo or if you mention ahead of time that this is how your character operates, but like anything else it speaks volumes to be considerate of those you group with, even if you're that energy blaster with maximum knockback slotting who loves sending hellions flying.

Are you set on them both being brutes? I'd make a spines brute and EM scrapper

Then honestly the change to RoP should have been separated from the rest of the patch notes, had it stated as non negotiable and thread locked. If that is the stance that is fine, but the lack of communication and clarity still stands out.

So is RoP off the table? Are we beating a dead horse here? There has been zero developer response on how they feel about feedback given or any additional insight on why this direction on pool power balance was taken. I think many of us, regardless of our personal stances, were just hoping for more communication between developer and playerbase. Especially for a change that could be setting precedent for future changes and balance decisions. We are stuck making assumptions on developer motives because of a lack of clarity on their thought process with this one. I think most will agree that the strength of this game is the passion that comes from the community and how much we care about this game. Developers keeping open communication and acting as a team with the playerbase would certainly support showing that this matters.

This has never been a "core game design" It may have played out like that, but mez being something that only affects certain ATs while others ignore game mechanics completely is rather silly. Break Frees should not be an inspiration tax for certain ATs. It is incredibly easy to play any melee AT and bring 20 red insps because you don't need anything else. I like RoP because it means I can start a TF with 1-2 break free insps instead of 4-5 and carry more purples or reds. I still have to consider mez protection even with RoP at its current values, it is not a free pass or immunity like melee ATs enjoy. One instance I particularly enjoy is the final AV fight in the ITF because if you kill all the nictus quickly they CAN stun you through melee AT standard protection, and I do feel there should be more of that in the game, where a tanker may need to have a break free on hand to deal with stacked mezzes. Break free insps drop for everyone, no where is it stated as a footnote: defenders/corrs/blasters/pb/ws/etc only. As I stated in a previous post mez should act more like defense debuffs and cascading defense failure and sadly it does not and such an overhaul would be a massive endeavor. Nerfing rune of protection duration points to how mez protection is so geared to all or nothing. "Squishy" archetypes do often have a number of tools to avoid being mezzed, but when that one slips through it can not only be a death sentence but is also 100% dps loss. RoP being an optional tool to avoid that situation is fair, and certainly moreso when you have archetypes that have 100% immunity to such situations. 90s uptime still provides a large downtime where avoiding mez must still be considered. There is also a large balancing point gap where this game is always stated to be balanced around SOs, but this change is clearly not. RoP uptime/downtime is extremely wide without a full endgame IO'd build that focuses heavily on reaching over 100% global recharge from set bonuses, and then you're still left with 60s downtime even reaching upwards of 130% global recharge from set bonuses. If RoP is left untouched, with a 90s duration, I would never ever pick it up for any leveling character using SOs. That says alot. It is only a consideration on a min/maxed endgame build and you still pay a price for devoting your pool power selections towards it. I would rather see the mez magnitude of RoP be reduced to mag 3 or 6 than have the duration reduced and that is something that hasn't been brought up before. It doesn't need to be mag 10 mez protection, but protection against 1 or 2 holds would be plenty for most content.

DP/Ninja is going to be losing out on +262.5% burst damage cycles (that is enough to damage cap yourself with enhancement value+musculature). Don't forget that Aim and BU damage modifier scales off archetype modifiers, they're even more for blasters than other archetypes. Gaussians is also a full +100% dmg buff (less on many other ATs), and a near guaranteed trigger in Aim/BU. The crit in Shinobi doesn't make up for this. It only affects a single attack, once every 30 seconds (at best, if you're not lucky you can spend another 10-15 seconds fishing for your crit to proc). It is not guaranteed to be your hardest hitter either. On my fire/ninja I was only satisfied with getting my snipe to crit, but it can be triggered by flares too, and that can be very disappointing. Shinobi should more or less be treated as a stronger than your average damage proc, but with a crap chance to trigger. Like any damage proc, it is extra damage that is unaffected by your damage cap, and imo, that is where it shines, as extra damage for a blaster that regularly munches super reds, or teams with a kin. Ice Blast is honestly better suited for a defender or corruptor that can get much more mileage by proc loading your ice attacks. Blasters don't really need to turbo proc their attacks, they need more slots to shore up defenses, or other attributes with set bonuses, and don't have a secondary that can magnify proc damage with -res or bolster stats to allow for heavier proc slotting like Defenders and Corrs do. Defenders get larger slows and recharge debuffs than blasters, and greater hold duration than both blasters and corrs. Corrs get scourge on ice storm and blizzard. I am fond of my ice/kin corr that utilizes fulcrum shift to cap damage and transference for recovery to get around not slotting attacks for damage or endredux for some seriously heavy proc slotting. Ice/Fire blasters, if built specifically for it, can make for good AE moon map farmers. Honestly more than anything what separates blasters, other than fire or not fire, is how you build in their defenses that differentiates how you play them (from my expierence playing multiple fire blasting blasters each with a very different feel to them). 45% ranged def with a resistance based shield? 45% S/L/E Def with scorpion shield? 20% or 32.5% M/R Def with a resist shield using as needed purples or team buffs? Utilizes Rune of Protection* -pending nerf. Clarion/Barrier/Rebirth/Incan hero? DGAF about defenses Rise of the Phoenix build? Amplifier muncher? Base buffs?

SoC increases XP/Time, and by a larger factor, drops/time and reward merits/time

My favorite blaster is Fire/Fire, I am biased by performance results. I also like Fire/TA with the new addition of Oil Slick Arrow. Fire/Mental has some niche usage by being a fire blaster that can deal unresisted damage to enemies with godmodes, like the Cimeroran EB Minotaur and Cyclops, Marauder, or Bobcat. Fire/EM, Fire/Elec, and Fire/Dev are fun Blapper combos as well, but I haven't played those since Live. For Blasters that scale with their damage modifier, Fire Blasting becomes excessively hard to pass on compared to say Corrs and Defenders that can leverage secondary effects better. Dark/EM is a nice exception to that rule, though you may feel the damage lacking if you were playing next to a Fire/Fire Blaster, but the utility is solid. Dark/EM would be a very safe pick for a first time blaster. I don't touch Dual Pistols.

I don't see a whole lot of synergy between dark blast and fire manip, and of course I am sure it would be just fine, but Dark Blast's best secondary is Energy Manipulation imo. Energy Manip has Power Boost on a 60 second recharge with 15s uptime, or nearly perma with about 130% global recharge+Hasten. Umbral Torrent also gives access to Forcefeedback +rchg. Power Boost brings Dark Blast -tohit up to Defender modifiers (-9.38% tohit on every blast unslotted for -tohit, -62.5% tohit on blackstar). Power Boost also increases your immoblize duration on Teneb Tentacles, the Hold in Abyssal Gaze, and the Heal in Life Drain. You can also opt in to Boost Range, if wider cones appeals to you, and Teneb Tentacles, Abyssal Gaze, and Life Drain have reduced range base values.

I have never minded the prerequisite boxing to get tough and weave. Most of my builds use boxing for 5 absolute amazement ios. The fighting pool is a powerhouse for passive always active stat bolstering.

My perspective is that rather than nerf powers we have that are honestly fine as is, focus should be on looking at how a player interacts with different factions of enemy groups in the game. RoP isnt 100% mez immunity it is partial coverage and there is no reason that "squishy" archetypes shouldnt be able to dip into options to cover holes if that is something they want to do. Mez powers in enemy groups shouldnt be a tax that only affects certain archetypes while others can ignore those mechanics completely. Imo there should be critters or encounters where you may be faced with strong high mag mez powers that can stun you through RoP or melee archetype standard protection in addition to all the low mag mez encounters we have currently that some archetypes can ignore. IMO every AT should have permanent mez protection of at least mag 3 to avoid a single application of a mez affect and mez as a whole should act more like def debuffs and cascading defense failure where more enemy groups should have access to mez that may stack up on you and overcome your protection if you don't deal with the threats appropriately. There should be more enemy groups that actually make you think before you mindlessly jump into everything like theyre all council. Enemy groups should have more access to buffers and debuffers that need to be eliminated first to not have issues with the encounter, like tsoo sorcs, malta sappers, master illusionists, etc. The reason blasters are so overtuned right now is because the game doesnt present a challenge where it could, so the only thing that really matters is how much damage you can output, and not how you can adapt to different situations that may pose a challenge to overcome (which RoP would be adept at doing) I have posted several times that the current difficulty settings we have is outdated. Higher level enemies and spawn size is no longer relevant. The purple patch is outdated and prevents increasing the difficulty to higher levels than +4 (which is more accurately capped at +3 at endgame). New difficulty settings that add extra challenge critters to every faction would be amazing to see. Like +difficulty that adds poison debuffers that cast envenom, weaken, neuro breath, and alkaloid to groups like snakes or arachnoids. Winter horde that casts sleet, heat loss, or ice shields. Council that cast LRM missiles or surveillance. Circle of thorns with access to rune of Protection. The warriors with leadership buffs and build up or more tier 9s. Hellions and skulls that can cast inferno and blackstar respectively. Malta that summons robot henchmen or the family or tsoo that cast gang war. Enemy groups that have higher base damage resistance would be a big deal too so things cant be just one-two shotted. Until there are enemy groups that arent subject to "damage output is king and death is the ultimate debuff" the game will always be afk easy. @Linea 's contribution to the mission architect is a good example of what this game could be.

As uun mentioned cold does most of what ff does and also offers some stellar debuff powers that accelerate your phantom army damage. Ill/cold is a great combo for soloing content and taking down avs and gms. You may be interested in looking up what @Frosticus has to say about ill/cold.

Discounting time spent waiting for enough players to gather and time spent downing the pylons, it is 30 minutes in the bowl right? That's 50 reward merits/30-40 mins assuming a quick gathering compared to 20-25 minutes doing apex and tin mage for 160 merits + 2 incarnate salvage drops. If you have fun doing the MSRs, then by all means, but the rewards for doing so got gutted.

Didnt they also reduce the vanguard merit > reward merit conversion ratio? As one of the only pieces of content that a force fielder will actually find relevance in, you could also say that the only changes made to force fields has been a nerf. (Lol) Interestingly, and on a personal note, those 3 activities are all at the top of my "least favorite and most boring ways to spend coh game time" list.

It sure does. Long overdue.

I appreciated reading the feedback that @Saikochoro provided. I think most of the valid points about RoP duration change have already been stated ad nauseum. I am still in the boat that RoP was balanced as it was, not even considering the balancing point that the 2 prerequisite power picks offer little in the way of set bonus mules or being worthwhile power pick ups for stand-alone usage. Even if RoP is reduced to 60s, I still feel the similar T5s in Adrenal Booster, Unleash Potential, and Unrelenting have room for duration increases OR reducing the base cooldown from 600s to something more palatable like 480s. I also wonder if this change to RoP is balanced around IOs or SOs. Because with just SOs at 100% enhanced recharge, and hasten active (which it wouldnt be perma hasten), the current uptime/downtime on RoP is 90s up/132s downtime (would be more downtime when hasten falls off). When you add on an additional 100% global recharge from set bonuses (to get you closer to perma hasten, that many builds go for) you get 90s up/73s downtime, which honestly still feels not broken to me. With 130% global recharge you can shave that down to 60s downtime, or 50% uptime with the change to a 60s duration, but that is a heavy build investment where you're likely giving up other things to have that much global recharge. So my question to developers here would be is RoP duration change being balanced around SOs where the uptime/downtime of RoP is approx 60/140 or is RoP being balanced around what you can do with RoP with heavy investment into global recharge. On Live I currently only take RoP on my blasters, mostly because they don't get very good values from tough/weave, and on everything else I prefer to use speed/leaping/leadership/fighting because of the always-on values that they provide (and the 4 lotg slots that you can get with those selections) and it is boring as all heck. I do not have softcapped defenses on my favorite blaster that uses RoP, because I invested more into global recharge and offense to build around making RoP viable even at a 90s duration. The trade off for picking up sorcery on live ALREADY feels like a heavy price to pay for 90s up/60s downtime (with a fully kitted out recharge focused IO build), which is why I only use it on a single archetype. I would never consider picking it up in a leveling build at a 90s duration because without global recharge bonuses the downtime is absolutely killer. If RoP is reduced in duration to 60s thats fine, like others we deal with what is handed to us even if we don't like it or it doesn't make sense to us, but I think this is a very wrong direction for power pool balance. All pool powers, like your choice in epic/patron pick should feel like a decision that has trade-offs, where by choosing one thing you're giving up on something else. Currently most power pools choices fall into one of several categories: set bonus mule, passive defense/recharge pad, passive leadership toggles, or underwhelming flavor choice that you took for character concept and you really wish was better. The flavor picks, even if they have longer cooldowns, really need a boost to feel worthwhile using when you're weighing it against PASSIVE stat buffs that typically do more for your character than a power that you need to click.

Quick question about claws on tankers, is spin the only power that got a radius increase with the inherent changes? Do people use eviscerate at all? I like to backflip, but the dpa isnt all that hot if youre not getting multiple targets, and tanks dont get a crit bonus on eviscerate. Iirc, shockwave was excluded from a radius increase. I've also been thinking about a claws tanker and would definitely go with fiery aura because I believe you can get spin's recharge low enough to come back up during burn animation gapless.

Fire/cold/dark corr was always my favorite character for itf. Cold shields provide team with a defensive buffer against def debuffs, sleet and heat loss shred the avs, benumb is great for cutting healing in the final fight. Dark mastery provides negative damage resists for nictus and an always saturated soul drain damage buff. Fire/kin corr and fire blasters a secondary pick. You didnt mention if your intent was a solo itf purpose or for teaming, so my suggestions would be team oriented. It is rare when building a team for itf that you dont have a melee archetype apply that can provide taunting for the avs so typically the more damage you can provide for a team the faster your run will be. A tanker is generally superfluous levels of mitigation for such a tf, and a scrapper tank can sometimes be more beneficial. As sovera said, a fiery aura tanker/brute is plenty of mitigation for itf, and the increased damage output is often more valuable than any increase in mitigation.

I like the recharge debuff resistance added to fast healing and quick recovery. It doesnt need to be 100% immunity though. You can get more from IOs if you want that. I'd like to see reconstruction be not so one dimensional. I don't think an absorb shield makes sense in this power but maybe a delayed heal at 50% value that goes off 10 seconds after the initial heal or a heal over time ticker. Maybe reduce the cooldown to 40s akin to healing flames. Would like to see resist-all added to integration equal to resilience. Resilience would be a nice place for an absorb over time akin to blaster sustains. Instant healing shouldnt be a toggle imo, but a cooldown reduction would suffice. Revive would be nice to be usable out of combat.

I have a demon/kinetics that does just fine. It is more high risk/high reward playstyle. Demons and the personal whip attacks in the set offer good -res with good proc slotting opportunities (lash can hold 6 dmg procs). Transfusion is an amazing heal for mms. With fulcrum shift capping out your damage, it functions similarly to a kin/sonic defender, but with much more damage. Increase density is also one of few ways to provide knockback protection to your pets. Having team purple insps on hand and keeping open bids on them makes for easy softcapping as needed.