Koopak

So first blush testing against some awakened PPD. Overall changes are, expectedly, minor. The set was in a good spot to begin so glad to not see drastic changes. main notes: Psychokinetic Barrier: The new Maxhp buff doesn't stack so its minor, about the same as a single target Memento Mori or two large +maxhp set bonuses, little less than an unbreakable guard. Defonitly helps, doesn't hurt, no huge changes in performance on a kitted build. Momento Mori: Sad to see the dynamic recharge go, its pushing me to be much more reserved with when to use it, often preferring to just save it for death since i cant rely on it being up when i need it as much. This may change some if the first target gives more value or something but the risk of using it on anything other than an opener or a still big batch of mobs is to high and makes it arguably terrible in a main boss fight scenario. an aside: Here and a few other places iv seen questions about why some powers get small smatterings of damage that aren't enough to care about much. I feel there's some insight to be gleaned form another common complaint about this and sets like Regeneration, 'clicky' sets. Powers that do SOME damage, ANY damage, inherently mitigate the DPS loss from using them. Even tiny amounts of damage are significantly preferential to 1-1.6 seconds of down time on a rotation. Additionally having damage in the power justifies it accepting damage IO sets, allowing more build options as we seek set bonuses and procs. I'd be amazed if both of these aren't considerations somewhere in the development pipeline.

It holds up about as well as other armors on straight SOs. You aren't gonna be casually smashing +4x8 solo (+3 to the player with incarnates) with an SO only build, and that actually alleviates the slotting challenges of Aura of Insanity. The reason Aura in particular needs such aggressive mez slotting is because of purple patch, once you drop enemy levels down to +2 to the player or less, the required slotting gets pretty easy to do with just a few SOs, you could accomplish most of what you need with it with 1 SO for each mez type and 1 accuracy SO. Below +2 to the player you can just going without enhancements in AoI I only highlight AoI because the rest of the set is pretty normal, and performs, as I said, largely on par with any other armor set provided you are using AoI as well.

Did some testing in an ITF on scrapper. Set definitely struggles, ironically not because of resistance of defense, but because of mez protection. Phalanx Fighting gives mag 3 protection and Shout of command 10. So even layering Support Core, Carion Radial, and Vangaurd Medal isn't able to punch through. If people are mainly testing on ITF thats probably why Aura of Insanity is being see as terrible by some players. Personally i think the Cimeroran mobs being so over tuned vs mez is just an enemy group problem. They can literally tell Controllers and some Dominators to go reroll. edit: at time of writing, the fear portion of Aura of Insanity appears to have incorrect mez strength. I suspect its that the wrong portion is tagged to allow enhancemnts

Worth keeping in mind that the +max hp between Stalker and Scrapper is the same relativistic value. The same is true for Parasitic Aura absorb just due to how they are valued, so any prefrence of one over the other SPECIFIC to an AT is placebo. (Not to say that isn't a valid point, one can argue stalkers feel like they need bigger buffs due to a lower starting point.)

On the topic of theme ill just share my 2 cents like i did during closed. There are already several armor sets that make sense for a pure defense psionic armor. Super Reflexes and Energy Aura being the prime examples, with both being quiet vague in their descriptions, thus able to comfortably fit the usual arguments for why this set needs to be defense. More importantly none of what Psionic Armor does is abnormal for City of Heroes psionics. Sure in other settings psionics are limited to mind reading a precog or at most deflecting attacks, but in the setting of City of Heroes, psionics often do a lot more. A casual perusal of enemy psychics and their capabilities should be more than enough to justify the approaches taken here. Which is all to say, that while a defense based version of this set is thematic, the resistance/regneration based version we have is equally thematic within the setting and helps to fill a gap that only Dark Armor realistically approached before it, and focusing on the unique elements of City of Heroes psychics. On a practical side, the likely hood of a complete top to bottom rework this late in the set's development is pretty unlikely, especially given the set has some very positive feedback.

Alright finally sorted the damn hook issue that was causing my drivers to crash when recording. Here's some footage of what the current build is capable of. Yes i used Ageless Radial but only because carni -tohit is annoying and i didn't wanna respect into focused accuracy. You'll notice I don't even use my beloved Recovery Serum and do manage a little end crash along the way I think. I'll see about doing some mobs in an ITF just to explore how rough -def, is, as that may encourage a different approach to my build. Some other notes not to let slide, while you'll only get one, maybe two bosses held depending on what Alpha you run and RNG on which mob counts are 'first' you have secondary options to temporarily push this even further. Control Hybrid doesn't work well because of how it behaves, but Support Hybrid gives a little bump, Clarion Radial is massive, as is Vanguard Medal/Megalomaniac Accolade. Granted none of that is perma, but thats some massive control for periods of time. Clarion or the Accolades basically just say "mez everything for 1 minute"

I mean sure it is a little and i think the set could do with a note in the description to clarify. I mainly dislike that the enhancement effects readout in the enhancement menu is unable to tell the difference, but that's a spaghetti code limitation. In the end its just gonna be a quirk people have to learn. The alternative is just not bothering with a power like this at all since there is no way to make this kind of power have meaningful value and not be busted OP when the magnitude is unchanging.

If i recall correctly, the same flag that makes a mez's duration ignore purple patch also makes the mez's magnitude now be effected by purple patch and by extension enhancements. That means either you make the mez not be effected by enhancements at all, and have a static mez that is reduced by purple patch, or you make it enhancable. Otherwise its duration is effected by purple patch and you don't get the clean switch over between mezes every 4 seconds. Edit: This is how Cloak of Fear works as well.

I'll be handling it today barring more issues, but in the interest of more eyes on things. You need both accuracy and general mez slotted into the power, its not auto hit, and you really aught to have a T3 alpha for the level shift. But that's all true for most sets. Even if you go musc core, you should be look are around mag 3.4 or so mez, which should stay over mag 3 for at least the first 2 probably first 3 targets, letting it effect bosses. I'd probably go Intuition Radial though for a dps AT, and Vigor Radial for a tank. D-Sync Binding is the easiest way to get your all mez slotting combined with accuracy, so I take 3 of them, and pump them to 53, the remaining 3 potential slots you can get creative with. Damage is a solid option due to the dot applied if the mez fails, in fact slotting the power as a pure damage aura is completely valid if you wont be holding aggro anyways. Damage procs and procs that roll and apply to enemies don't do well since its your usual aura toggle, but subsequently self buff procs do as they check per target, hence me calling outn Entomb and Call of the Sandman earlier. You can leave it 3 slotted with Bindings or go 4-5 slow and franken slot for mez and itll still perform very very well without the procs to be clear. I know some people like taking my explanations out of context.

Ran into tech issues so cant provide footage tonight but ill just highlight, if you enhance the power for what it does rather than what you want it to do, and take a complimenting Alpha it very reliably keeps +4 enemies in check.

I'll follow up when I can but if anyone hasn't, please try slotting general +mez into Aura of Insanity. D-Sync Binding is the optimal way, but there are alternatives, 3x 53s then use the other 3 slots for damage or procs, Sandman and Entomb especially. I also recommend trying the set with a controller or dominator friend.

This has been brought up a few times and really should be clarified. Its fine to call it a "critical strike" potentially if we also clarify that (due to the lack of the requesit tags) it is unaffected by crit boosting effects

Confirmed and replicated, the issue only occurs with the wispy power customization.

I'll DM you the deets, sorry for the month late reply, i didnt get notified despite having this thread followed

Dynama hit several of my points already but ill try to keep everything into loose categories of descending difficulty to overcome. To echo Dynama first, this would be a much better dps AT than tank AT conceptually. I will also be ignoring exact values as those can all be changed easily, and focus on implementation. Fundamental Design Limits: These are issues that are at odds with the core design of the game and how it is played by the modern playerbase. As Dynama said, this playstyle will encourage the tank to move, causing mobs to chase them. Without making the mez provided by the Inherit able to reliably CC the entire pack of mobs, it will cause enemies to move out of AoE patches and complicate targeting. Worse it will split the pack up, making it necessary to now split targets. This has further complications with aggro management listed further down. Mission Maps are also largely not design to accommodate this type of engagement. This playstyle inherently is a 'fighting retreat' or 'kite' playstyle, which is incompatible with modern CoH. Granted in the old days pulling to a corner and fighting there sometimes falling back was normal. Today the normal that people expect is 'push forward' play, in when the team is constantly making progress forward and never backing up. Complications of Implementation: These are issues that added dev time or detract from the experience, they may be addressable, but not easily. As Dynama said, this playstyle almost necessitates movement abilities added to the kit, this combined with the likely correct presumption that the benefits of the inherit may need to be encoded into the powers themselves greatly reduces the advantages of reusing Assault as a category, ultimately creating more work rather than less. While that will be true of every new AT proposal, this particular example is expressed as intending to avoid or minimize that issue. Current the game is incapable of cleanly supporting dynamic movement during combat, necessitating the point above. If the point above is ignored and no inherent mobility is provided the player must accept 'down time' in their rotation to manually move and deal with the strict and often jarring rooting powers currently demand. Most likely outcome will be ignoring the mechanic entirely unless tuned heavily to enforce its need. Resolving this is likely a systems wide change and to do so cleanly, a big one. It may or may not be possible to retrieve the range of multiple targets in an AoE, adding another challenge to sorting the inherent's mechanic. Balancing Concerns: These are issues that make balancing the AT difficult. This will be the largest section and all of them can probably be addressed but not necessarily easily. Punchvoke and Taunt auras as it exists now on Tankers is mostly able to handle general aggro management on a Tanker in most content, on most teams. Note i say most, this is because especially well built DPS ATs can and do on occasion pull aggro from even well built Tankers, let alone Brutes (using Pokevoke) that do not make use of Taunt. Taunt is a mandatory portion of every melee set in the game for this reason, even if the original aggro system was vastly different. This issue would continue to exist on this AT and be unable to be addressed without taking a pool power as submitted. In fact the aggro management issue would be worse in this case, using the example of an enemy aggroing onto a defender, or more likely a blaster, the ranged attacks would need the taunt they apply from the equivalent of punchvoke to be significantly higher than the melee attacks to account for the fact that aggro generation is reduced by the target's range significantly. This already combined with the fact that aggro's starting value is damage to make it near useless to taunt an enemy that does the same thing today. Thus this 'opportunity' to gather stacks for the inherit becomes a liability to the team, one likely to happen often if the pack splits like mentioned above. This being a likely outcome and possibly an expectation of play also means the AT requires more conscious effort on the part of the Tank than other Tank ATs to accomplish the bare minimum of their role. On the topic of aggro management, the example given of using a ranged attack to start the engagement has further complications due to the above mentioned range reduction is aggro generation. For a ranged ST opener to work, it would necessitate both an AoE taunt effect all Tanker Punchvoke rather than Brute Pokevoke, and an increase in value to account for that range, or for the devs to code an exclusion to the range portion of the logic somehow. Otherwise ranged pulling would require, like taunt pulling today, for the team to wait for the tank to get stable aggro through AoE before joining in. Lastly on the topic of aggro management. Tankers and Brutes as it is have an antagonistic relationship with aggro. Even a well built Brute often struggles to pull aggro from a poorly build Tanker on more than a mob or two. This same dynamic will, due to the nature of the threat system, exist for this AT as well, either ensuring it cannot meaningfully protect a new player on a Tanker, or will be unable to be protected by a veteran Tanker. Getting into the Mez side of things, the way control works makes balancing it near impossible as it is. Either enough magnitude of an effect is applied to overcome the target's protection, or it is not, and purple patch reduces duration. This means that the mez effects of this AT would need to either be extremely powerful on anything below +4 enemies or nearly useless on anything at +4 or higher, or they would need to be exempt from the purple patch. This will not prevent the mezes from being effected by mez resistance on some enemies groups and in some harder content like 4 stars. Having this mez be core to the AT means any situation it is ineffective means you aren't getting to play the AT, this is essentially the Controller life in 4 star ITF as it is and its not great. Slotting for powers if the mez is allowed to be enhancable will make for complex and antagonistic slotting. While I would personally enjoy the build challenge, a large portion of this playerbase sticks to relatively simple slotting, using 4-6 of a single set per power. While Id encourage them to improve, it is a sign that the enhancement system is not conducive to complex slotting like this, where one needs to balance multiple set types in a single power to get meaningful value out of it, which is what will be necessary if the mez effects are not exempt from purple patch since there is no way for them to be balanced to be useful at both +0 and +4 without being over powered without relying on the player to fill the power gap with enhancements or other mez duration buffs. Having the type of mez be based on the Assault Set while neat conceptually is problematic mechanically as a proposed advantage is in being able to stack mezes with your Controller and Dominator teammates. However as not all control sets have access to all control types, this doesn't work out in a consistent way, enforcing a team composition requirement beyond simple roles. The various mez types suggested are treated as if they are interchangeable in power, this is not the case. Fear, stun, hold, and confuse each have different value in an engagement. Generally speaking it can be argued to go Fear < Stun < Hold < Confuse in terms of power. This will directly impact the validity of any given set. Even if the above two points are resolved, for instance if they all provide immobilize, a more reasonable ask, the inherent, in order to not be to powerful will need short duration mezes, even assuming these durations are protected from purple patch and even mez resistance, they will make the stacking logic a low value effect as even 10 seconds is a very short time in a game where optimistically you would get 3-4 attacks off in that time especially after factoring in the desired movement. Anything less would quickly become pointless, as even with stacking this AT's effect will ware off and the effect will no longer be strong enough mag to apply. Finally damage. AoEs scaling more damage with more stacks than ST attacks will create many challenges in balancing the damage output of the AT, in many cases it is likely to push AoE attacks ahead of ST attacks for damage, and encourage only using AoE, which could step on the toes of Blasters and Tankers as main AoE sources. Assault Sets generally do not have the attacks to comprise entire rotations of ranged or melee only or ST or AoE only, without excessive recharge. While theoretically thats not an issue your in and out fighting will mean you are rarely in melee or range for more than 5 seconds, creating a very erratic playstyle. This encourages using assault entirely in melee until a full optimal build can be done. That is unless the Assault set is significantly adjusted leading back to the points above. Factual Errors: This is my 'umm awckshuly' section, and is mostly only relevant for further discussion of examples given. Sentinel Armor sets are only 'weaker' due to the lower AT scalars Sentinels have, presumably a Tanking AT would have higher scalars. No mention was given to resist cap in the proposal so ill assume 90%. If this AT was given sentinel defense and resistance scalars, hitting caps would be a chore to say the least.