Doomrider

Brutes are like scrappers but without the ATO enabled ego and who can benefit more from team buffs than scrappers can due to their higher base hp and resistance caps. But really, Brutes are fine for the most part. You can generally pick a primary and pick a secondary, without having to be concerned if the primary is going to be really weak because you chose it on a Brute or if your secondary has a taunt aura or not. So there is a nice freedom in that. There also happen to be a couple sets that generally are better on a Brute than other AT's, namely Savage Melee due to how the added dot scales with Fury and Stone Melee, that has the superior power order (compared to tanks). Then there is Fiery Aura, which most people are already very familiar with. I think maybe the Fury ATO proc could get looked at since it feels less impactful now that base Fury generation has been improved.

While many powers are similar with that of their Nova counterpart, some are not wholly identical. Namely Shadow Blast and Nova Blast. Different animation time slightly, different base recharge and base damage values. These powers are similar enough to consider merging: Shadow Bolt / Nova Bolt Dark Detonation / Nova Detonation (Dark has slightly longer animation) The only difference is about a 33% (approx.) increase to base damage for the Nova version. Nova Emanation would be a net gain for Human builds, there would be no Human form power for this to compare to, nor one to merge with. Closest comparison would be Photon Scatter from PB's (again, the human variant has about 33% less the base damage of the Nova variant) I think it would be less invasive just to allow the Nova attacks to be used in Human form, but at 33% less the base damage, if the aim is ease the "slot crunch". Should someone want to only have to slot one set of blasts but have a usable attack chain in Nova or in Human, they could do so, without infringing on how others like to build/currently build, as they would still be able to choose the individual human attacks and slot accordingly for set bonuses or otherwise.

Bane ranged attacks. Why do they even exist? They are so bad, with a slight exception to Poisonous Ray. Them all having a 2 sec animation makes them feel really bad on top of their base damage being undeservedly low. NW and Banes could maybe use a sliding base crit chance. Maybe 5% at base and 1.5% for each team mate after, similar to Stalkers but at a reduced value. (Stalkers get 10% base, 3% per teammate IIRC) The redraw thing sucks but I remember reading that trying to fix that was going to be a huge task specifically for VEATS with how their powers are essentially modified versions of the enemy powers or something like that.

Conversely, this would allow Nova Form to also use Shadow Blast if so desired. With it's higher base recharge and base dmg comparative to Nova Blast, and it's better procability. You could have a stronger attack chain early on that way, cycling Nova Blast, Ebon eye and Shadow Blast. And like I mentioned before, but to illustrate more plainly, for 1 power pick (Nova Form) at 6; a human build will not get Nova Emanation and Detonation, 2 aoes for the price of 1 power pick, rather than just Dark Detonation at level 14. There is a lot of net positives to a change like this, however, execution and tooltips may get confusing.

As long as access to those powers are still tied from Nova form, granting you access to them when you choose Nova form at 6. I'm on board. De-coupling the usage restriction for these powers to the form would actually make it viable for human builds it take Nova for those powers (but use them in human form), increasing their aoe output by having access to Nova Emanation which they currently don't have and still have power picks available to pick up a couple of the shield powers and make them exemp better. You'd still get the higher base damage modifiers granted when using the versions in Nova form (if choose to use Nova) much like how Ebon Eye works currently. +1 Edit: I re-read your OP and had some additional thoughts; the issue with being able to pick either, is there are clearly superior options between the two and being able to make it so you have to pick the power doesn't really do anything for the slot crunch, infact it would actually penalize Tri-forms by forcing them to pick the Nova blasts instead of just picking up the form power and getting access to those 4 powers.

I don't think making offensive toggles suppress is gonna suddenly make the game too easy. The mez would still suppress the effect of the toggle and lock you out until the mez was countered. It's the required re-toggling afterward that I'd like see go away. To use a personal example, back on live I used to play a Human Warshade a lot. Countering the mez using break frees was never a big deal, it was part and parcel of playing the class as far as I was concerned. What annoyed me to the point where I just ended up respeccing into forms and not looking back was the 4+ seconds I'd have to spend (after using a break free and once the spawn was dead) to put my offensive toggles back on. I don't mind being mezzed and having to counter it. I just don't like long drawn out re-toggling. It feels very disruptive to the flow of combat and re-toggling, most of the time, only makes sense to do so in between fights. So if i'm mezzed mid-fight but quickly break out of it and continue, I'm most likely spending the rest of the fight without a couple of my key powers.

Having offensive toggles suppress when mezzed instead of detoggling would be a nice QoL upgrade for squishier classes. Also buffing value of the mez resistance set bonuses that are already in just about every set anyway would be a good way to provide a meaningful way to reduce mez duration, while not completely invalidating it. Rather than re-working mez like some posters are suggesting, why not just make it less annoying? Nobody likes having to re-toggle powers.

There is an awful lot of pearl clutching happening over one persons posts and opinions. Opinions which everyone is of course allowed to have and express but perhaps we should say our piece on the Thread topic at hand and move on, lest this thread just get locked like so many before it.

You're right in a sense. Not necessarily about the entitlement part, that's your observation and that's fine. I don't agree with that but I digress... You are correct in the sense that we are at the mercy of the HC team's decisions for any changes/alterations made to the server. However, the team is asking for feedback. I would like to think that would include feedback of all kinds, be it criticism or praise, rigorous testing or just insight/ opinion. At the end of day, if the team decided to pack it in, that is their decision and we would all lose our ability to play on these servers and that would be the end of it. In the meantime, if feedback is going to be asked for, it is my belief it should be honest and respectful but most importantly, without filter. Otherwise what is the point?

If RoP was over-tuned or overpowered, why isn't the magnitude of the what power provides being looked at? Uptime (duration) is only one consideration, and if it's being brought in line with the other T5's Origin Pool powers, you'd think these powers would be comparably powerful, except they aren't. RoP even with the same 60's as Unleash or Adrenal Booster will still be in a league of it's own as to what it provides. So standardizing the duration does little to reduce it's effectiveness when up compared to other similarly tiered powers, thus, changing the duration seems like pointless standardization, rather than careful balance to me. I know it's somewhat of a separate issue, but is there any intent to improve the lowered tiered powers in the origin pools? Currently, and with few exceptions, these pools are only providing the illusion of choice and this is certainly not exclusive to the origin pools mind you. Is the intent is to keep power pools generally underpowered relative to primary/secondary power choices? I hear this being argued a lot as statement of fact but I've never seen it be formally stated by the HC team.

I made that un-necessarily PG didn't I? 😄 Fire blasters "arrest" them to a crisp?

Semantics. Blasters are pure offense, be it ranged and/or melee. Playstyle is flexible. Identity/role is irrelevant. You have the same role as everyone else. Arrest all.

But seriously... this would be really great for a lot of AT's. Re-toggling auras after being Mez'd is such a PITA, it just feels bad. How difficult (and/or time consuming) was it toggle suppression to implement for AA?

I got into GW2 as a bit of side project about a year and a half ago. It started out as a game for me and my GF to try and play since she doesn't really dig COH (probably because the age of the game). We both found GW2 to be surprisingly fun and still play it about once a week. I've gotten 1 or 2 other CoH buddies into now and we usually play Saturday nights casually, we're kind of still the early nooby stage. The combat is super fun and frantic, so I immediately enjoyed the busy playstyle of the Guardian - Firebrand as well as the flexibility and utility of the class, especially coming from mainly playing Tri-form Khelds. If anyone else has started recently or is thinking of trying the game, feel free to drop me a line in game if you want; Doomrider.6872.

RE: The duration change to RoP. 2 things will likely result from this change. 1). Less people will take and utilize this power now due in part to the already heavy pre-requisite cost(s) comparative to the uptime RoP will have, which was far from perma to begin with. 2). People who wanted mez protection before incarnate level will just lean harder on Defense amplifiers. I can only speak for myself, but I'd prefer people take actual powers instead of just abusing temps. I wish the other Sorcery powers were even a little bit useful, but sadly they are not. The set as a whole is very lack lustre. With RoP taking a hit, I don't see a lot of point this power pool as a whole. If RoP was too OP, the values it granted should have been looked at, not it's duration. If the status quo is to stay the same regarding power pool powers, don't be surprised when many people just continue to stick to the same old speed/fighting/leadership/x as their go-to power pools.

QFT. Unless I'm forming the team and recruiting, whereby I usually try to find a happy medium between everyone. Doing +4x8 just because isn't yielding any additional merits for completion, just takes longer for your reward. Maybe remind the leader of that point, perhaps they are unaware.

I mean I could be wrong about the end portion but I know that's how the health portion works. As a Tri-former I rarely ever run out of endurance so... let me know what you find out.

Yes sir. Even then, I can only speak for myself but my hp is rarely below 50% on mine, and a quick Reform Essence and back to full anyway.

It would depend. If you're going human only and plan to exemp, you'll have the shields anyway (probably) and can get decent resists that way. Since Tri-forms don't really use toggles, LF makes a lot of sense for them. LF is also less slot prohibitive than slotting and using 3 separate power picks to get that res. The other consideration is Light Form also provides you a 30% recovery bonus at base and is enhance-able. So for post LF range play, you utilize Light form to not only cap your res (sans Psi) but are granted a sizeable recovery boost which is permanent versus running the shields instead that come with the constant end drain from presumably, 3 resist toggles, on top of any other defense power pool toggles you choose to run. Food for thought; you could combine it's 3.11 mag mez protection w/ defense amp to get robust mez protection more comparable to melee classes, as opposed to merely using one or the other. Keep in mind the Light form crash (and you may know this already) brings you to 50% HP and End even if you're HP and End were below 50% when the crash occurs. So it operates a bit differently than the T9 crashes, and comes w/ no -recovery debuff. So the Resists and Recovery bonuses persist as long as you can activate the ability again before the crash occurs.

All the RoP change has done is made an otherwise niche, but useful power pick less desirable, putting it on par duration wise with the other less desirable origin t5's . This, despite the fact that the rest of the sorcery pool is nothing but wasted power picks at worst, io mules at best. The uptime for RoP on live is currently reasonable (far from perma) and comes with heavy opportunity cost through those 2 pre-requisite throwaway powers. Those who used it for mez protection, will now just use defense amplifiers instead. Which is sad to think a temp power will be elevated to more useful than an actual power pick. It would have been nice to see the sub t5 powers in these sets improved to a somewhat useful state instead of smacking down the one decent t5 and calling it balance.

The bar for success in this game is so low, fun should be the foremost consideration when choosing powersets. If you don't enjoy what you are playing, it won't matter how decent or powerful it is. That being said, if you feel a thread like would be useful, why not start one and throw up a list of what you consider decent pairings and get others to chime in on those. Maybe they can add to the list with combos they feel excel when paired together. Just because it may or may not be pinned doesn't mean it can't be used as reference later for others.

Because some of us need to push lots of buttons to do the same things other classes pull off with less.😛 Also, training wheels AT setups that do most of the work for you like Claws/SR put me to sleep 😂 *shadow steps out of shockwave range*

<saved for future use>

Fair enough. I'll need to get back to you on binds/macros when I get a bit of time to sit down and do a small write up. I will post here in response when I can. Yeah I don't use that exact build anymore, but it's still a great build. It helps shore up some of the weaknesses of WS by supplementing some additional ST damage into Dwarf Form through procs and additionally lets you utilize Dwarf Form when mezzed (like normal) but without losing too much damage in the process. The added s/l defense isn't totally necessary but it is really nice for exemping below 33 when you don't have eclipse, allowing you can soft cap s/l defense with 1 small purple inspiration.

The builds are still viable as posted. I've gone through a lot of iterations of my own build and do so fairly often so I don't generally post those here as it change too often. I did see your comment about having a tw/bio from your other thread and how you're struggling to find something else that will compare to that performance. If that is the case, I'm going to stop you while you're ahead. While WS has pretty decent aoe damage output, the single target damage will pale in comparison to most scrappers and TW is no exception. Getting similar or better performance out a TW/BIO will be 10x easier there than doing it on a WS, plain and simple. That and you'll have a much easier time soloing AV's on a TW/BIO; soloing them on a WS requires lore pets, daggers and procs out the ying-yang and even then it's a slog. I don't recommend WS or PB to people looking for pure power comparative with other meta combos as it usually ends up in frustration, especially if you are not intimately familiar with the classes already, which is generally what my builds are more catered towards. Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear, but I am just being honest. That being said, if I mistaken in any of this, feel free to correct me and I can provide you with some the more common/useful binds and macros for shades.