DR_Mechano

Well whoop-di-do...If you're building for large global recharge and including incarnates that extra 60% recharge (not to mention if you're using agility on Incarnates you're going to smash REAL hard into ED for recharge anyway) isn't really going to factor in to a thing. I still think with the 5% recharge it's still going to end up being convertor fodder because Posi is offering 1.25%.

Yush you can buy ATOs on the auction House.

The problem is, with the 5% recharge bonus as the 5th slot it IS a crappy version of Positron's blast. If you wanted recharge why ever would you slot it over Positron which offers +1.25% recharge?

Remember to slot it in Assassin's strke. This lets your opening combo be Build up>AS>proc goes off and you back into hide>hardest hitting attack you have. On certain combos this lets you take off like half to a third of an Elite bosses health in two hits.

That would be fine by me!

It entirely depends on the power sets. Titan Weapons/Bio simply puts out enough damage to beat AV regeneration rates (in fact this is how most /bio melee builds operate). /Trap Masterminds work by massively reducing regen, debuffing defense and resistance...basically there are tons of AV killer combos on different ATs so we'd need to know what your powerset combo is.

My personal votes would be either E/N resist (since twas my idea and there aren't actually very many sets which offer E/N resist tis a very rare set bonus to see) or S/L/M defense OR @Bopper suggestion of raising the recharge to the 6th slot, making it +7.5% recharge and putting in like +2.5% energy/negative resistance as the new 5th slot (effectively stripping out the AoE defense entirely, unlike his original suggestion). This gives it higher recharge than Positron's blast BUT at the cost of taking up 1 more slot (since most people only 5 slot Positron, leaving out the damage proc) so people have to weigh up whether the extra +1.25% recharge is worth the extra slot. This would give us: Positron's blast: Cheap, cheerful 5 slot option, lowest recharge (out of the sets that give +recharge) but also the cheapest and the best for slotting economy when builds are tight (and you if already have the Purple set slotted). Shrapnel: The Thunderstrike of Targeted AoE sets. If you're build is willing or just needs some ranged defense this would be the set. Bombardment: Offers more recharge than Positron at the cost of requiring a 6 slot and offers E/N resistance for people needed to build that. Ragnarok: Naturally what you go for if you want the highest recharge bonus for the least amount of slots. Superior Frozen Blast: If you REALLY need that AoE defense. The entire set offers +7.5% AoE and Fire/Cold defense or just +5% AoE defense for a 5th slot.

Indeed Hide on Attack proc from the ATOs is a massive game changer on stalkers. tis a sweet forbidden fruit indeed.

What powersets we using because powersets can also inform a character design just as much as anything else. I mean it's no good designing a tiny robo-lady when you're using nature based powers and the like.

I'm fine with the new name BUT I will throw my hat into the Ring for Surge Protector or Voltaic Recovery. Both abbreviate down to SP or VR, none of which are currently used. EA is already used for Electric Armor AND Energy Aura.

As mentioned AoE defense is EVERYWHERE. There are tons of sets that offer ridiculous amounts of AoE defense (5 slotting Aegis gets you like 6-7% AoE defense thanks to its bonuses. Most of the winter IO sets have fire/cold defense as their 6th slot which means they give 2.5% AoE defense, hell there's one set where if it's six slot it gives you 7.5% AoE defense) so chances are Bombardment is going to be relegated to convertor fodder and thus is basically kinda freaking pointless. If I want recharge I'll just slot Positron since it gives MOAR recharge. I do agree that adding perhaps a large +energy/negative (instead of smashing/lethal) resist bonus (which are surprisingly hard to come by) as its sixth slot rather than AoE defense might actually make it be more interesting Currently the Targeted AoE IO options are literally just Positron if you're feeling cheap (or already slotted the purple set in another Targeted AoE), Winter IO if you need more Fire/cold (or AoE) defense and purple if you've got the cash to splash for it.

Yes but that involves going into the files and fiddling about them plus that is only client side so only I would hear it. I'd prefer it if everyone could hear it.

It was basically BOTH being a problem. There were hardware issues at the time AND the engine goes a bit wonky if you take the limiters off. Superspeed already can cause things to go kinda iffy like suddenly phasing through things at full pelt and the engine goes wonky once you get up there in speed.

Some interesting notes from both you of you. I was just very curious and was debating internally with myself if such a thing would be even remotely possible. I'd take even just a 'singing' replacement for Sonic as an alternate (aka just replacing the SFX on the powers) without the music notes projectile animation but I imagine that's something that's probably both A) Kinda niche and B) probably more work than you've got time for now.

Will do. I was asking merely to see how difficult or even feasible it would be to give Sonic replacement sounds projectiles using the Sirens various abilities. I find them much more palatable to the ears and there are a ton of character concepts I could do with actual singing version shrieking at people.

I will say this specifically toward @Jimmy Thank you for putting up with me being kind of an asshat about things. It took someone else being in the exact same position I was to go "huh...so that's what that looks like from the outside...wow...I was kind of a douchebag about it..." unable to see past my own personal wants and desires (I mean who doesn't want more costumes, everyone wants more costume options, we want to be showered in them like some kind of creepy clothes shop based showering session...or something...). So yeah...sorry about all that...

Just a random question here guys but with the whole alternate animations I was curious. Can projectiles and game sounds be changed with these alternate animations or is it just the animation that gets changed and everything else remains the same?

I will point out that of all the travel powers. Leaping is probably the one that needs the least change. Combat Jumping is useful as a LotG mule AND provides +def for a very, very low end cost and you'll often see higher end builds either picking Leaping as their main travel power or dipping in to it for combat jumping. In fact I see more build suggest Leaping vs the new one because +def and the fact that CJ can be a one slot wonder is so highly valued. Meanwhile all the powers in it's origin version apart from Mighty Leap itself DO require slotting to be useful, whether that be accuracy or some other slots.

They do mark some changes as 'experimental'. I think what happened with Dark Melee was they thought it would be a simple change without much far reaching problems so didn't mark it as experimental and the actual ramifications of the changes kind of blindsided them. Thus why it was pulled because, as they said, they don't have the time to invest in actually going in to depth with the Dark Melee changes because they've got 1 completely new powerset that at test release was basically terrible and STILL needs a lot of work on it to bring it up to par. The IO sets they introduced have been through numerous changes. One I didn't agree with (why change Bombardment from +5% recharge and +3.75% ranged...most other sets in the Targeted AoE category are either mediocre (positron's blast), complete garbage (everything not a purple or Winter IO) or stupidly expensive (Purple and Winter IO sets) which has now resulted in TWO new targeted AoE sets. There is one game that I note does things where it has two dedicated testing servers. World of Tanks. It has the PTR or Public Test Region which is your traditional beta testing server. For larger game changes where the devs aren't sure how things will go but they're 'ideas' you have the 'Sandbox' test server and the devs make it VERY clear that not everything on the sandbox test server will ever make it to live. However that is a lot of work for a small dev team compared to World of Tanks which is the 7th highest grossing game on PC (lotta whales in the game and massively popular since apart from Armored Warfare, nobody offers Arcade tank battling action (Warthunder is closer to simulation than Arcade even in its Arcade mode)).

I think the main problem is that AoE defense is MASSIVELY overabundant compared to Ranged Defense. The Winter IOs all have at least some AoE defense due to them having +def to Fire/Cold as their final set bonus. I'd go so far as to say that you're often left grabbing at straws to try to fit ranged defense in some builds. We also have examples like Obliteration that offers 5% recharge AND 3.75% melee (and can also be slotted multiple times) so having Bombardment as the Targeted AoE version of Obliteration with 5% recharge and 3.75% ranged defense would have made it a highly competitive set without the need to split it off into two separate IO sets, one with ranged defense and the other with recharge.

Even with those buffs I STILL wouldn't care about Electrical Affinity, as I said, my priorities aren't powersets, they're costumes (as a major number 1 priority) and buffing up the underperforming sets we already have (as a far second). Again I point out that this is soley a point of Electrical Affinity not fitting your meta, you see it as waste of time because...why bother playing something that isn't 'the best'. Look I get it. Take a look at my topic history and read the thread where I called for the exact same thing. Seriously, go look it up. I get it now that these topics tend to pop up when someone has a pet peeve. Mine was that the dev team were focusing too much on the seemingly never ending back end work, power balancing etc. over the thing I actually cared about that was costumes (and the numerous actually fine NPC only parts that don't seem like they'd take much work to actually port over to live but that's just me). For you the pet peeve is difficulty. Something has been added that doesn't appeal specifically to you and you see it as a waste of time because it's not YOUR personal thing. I honestly get that, like I said, go search for the topic (it was called "A call for transparency...just a touch"). Just face it everyone has different needs and I'm sure there are some people thrilled at the inclusion of Electrical Affinity just because it doesn't appeal to you and the high end game play you do doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be worked on.

Yeah as mentioned above your approaching them from a 'already at max incarnate level' situation. These arcs weren't actually meant to be done in conjuction with iTrials. They were specifically designed as the solo path. This is why once you complete all of them a new NPC turns up that offers 2 emp merits per week to complete the entire arc again. Also you have to remember that these arcs were designed before we had the HC 'incarnate stuff on vet levels'. So for many these were the only way of getting Incarnate stoofs if you didn't do the iTrials.

Aye but you're approaching it from a very high end power gaming stand point. I get YOU'RE not thrilled with Electrical affinity because it doesn't fit you meta. I don't care for Electrical affinity because there are so many other powersets I'd like to see added to the game over it. The game really isn't balanced around your kind of play and as such once you hit that pinnacle...you're going to get bored. We don't have the dev team size in order to support the endless march of content needed to keep up with your style of play and tweaking difficult options willy-nilly just resuls in further problems down the line without HUGE testing periods which could take not only months but maybe even a year to find the right balance with literally no other progress on anything else happening in that time. Plus we have a HUGE thread about the back and forth about difficulty options and nobody can agree on what they want. @Solarverse for example wants a classic Issue 5-8 server which is before the introduction of Incarnates and IOs and thus would be more difficult. I imagine you're not in that boat and want something akin to Mythic difficult in WoW which is meant only for the highest end of raiders and that's something that Homecoming just cannot support at the moment. In the end...it's basically personal bias and wants, you have a very specific set of wants and feel they aren't being met and think everything should focus on those needs being met. I have a very specific set of wants (waaaaayyyy more costume options, like a mertic ass-ton of them) which currently aren't being met...who is in the right here?

You specifically said "only VIABLE sets" and I was pointing out that there are several highly viable end game sets. Just because they're not THE BEST does not make them not viable. If this were the case we'd all might as well just roll Titan Weapons/Bio scrappers and be done with it. The game is at a stage where the PCs are sooo overpowered that you're basically asking for trouble and boredom ingame if you're only goal is to constantly only make set combos which are purely THE BEST. Once you've done that...congrats, you've beaten CoH. Good job...now what?

I will point out that in one of the Lore AMAs that with the Battalion gone (who were essentially the settings uber-bad at the time), we'd see smaller but still substantial Incarnate threats crawl out of the woodwork who had all been in hiding trying to keep their heads down out of sight of the Battalion. So we'd have gone from facing a level 100 threat in the Battalion to facing more nuanced level 70-80 style threats whilst we were level 60. So in fact I imagine we'd have a descaling in power level once the Battalion were gone. I suspect this is where the numerous 'Incarnate buffed villain groups' would come in as well. Though I can't deny I do suspect in the long term we would have seen an overall increase in power which as WoW can prove is very problematic (the level squish that's coming with the new expansion pack AND the numerous Item level squishes that seem to happen every 2 expansion). You just have to keep piling on the threat after threat until it becomes rather silly.