Cheli

TW wasn't nerfed based on evaluation of intangibles about support or usefulness while leveling, it was nerfed because its damage output in high-level builds far outclassed other sets. I'm just applying that criteria to other sets, and by that metric, fire blast, fire manip, claws, DB, etc. significantly outclass "pay-to-win" sets.

You'd have a point if the majority of paid sets were "pay to win". Many of them were decidedly not. Fire significantly outclasses water, dual pistols, beam; with a good build claws or high-rech dual blades beats purchasable melee sets outside TW pre-nerf. Support is a different story because I think the variety in what support sets can do differentiates them more than can be expressed by simply tiering them, but kin and sonic are some of the stronger sets imo, easily comparable in their own ways to time which everyone thinks is busted. (Was time purchasable? I think it was? Memory foggy, lol.) There's always this assumption of nefariousness in these situations, particularly TW, where I think it's far simpler to assume otherwise; TW was only the huge dps outlier on builds that essentially allowed you to ignore its wind-up mechanic, which required serious investment and system mastery, something even developers of games often do not have. If you want to argue there's some objectivity to nerfing ROP I'm all for it, but I haven't seen any of that in several threads worth of discussion beyond "the devs just think it's too strong", which by definition is subjective. Which, like you said, it's their server. But by its use rate it was not meta-defining by any stretch, at least, particularly considering it exists inside of a system where a large number of players have simple ways to completely ignore the effects ROP grants temporary resistance to. This is a "warriors flying breaks the rules of reality! Meanwhile, wizards conjure giant fireballs and rain cats over the plains" situation.

Yes, this is the obvious answer, but I'd prefer if people just said this instead of pretending "what devs say" is always equivalent to "overpowered". The nerf to TW is already a large deviation from the state of the game at shutdown, so anything beyond that is just subjectivity people are pretending is some objective standard of "balanced".

"In line with design visions" =/= "overpowered" Also "power-creep-heavy" using what as a baseline? The game at shutdown, or some imagined point where you think the "power creep" started? If you're talking about the framework of the game at shutdown, then why was TW nerfed? If some earlier point in time, who gets to arbitrarily decide what that point is, and why?

There's no amount of repeating the same line that's going to convince me a power ONLY becomes "broken" when used by a buffer on themselves and not on the other 7 members of a team. Silly argument.

You haven't provided any support for this statement, and others who have done so have more or less not made a very strong argument. A defender being able to cast Fortitude on herself because she's playing alone to still be worse at everything than a damage dealer does not a broken game make. A lot of this just feels like the "it's not how the game is supposed to because it's different from [time when I thought the game was the best]," which is a weak argument. Regardless, I still disagree with ROP change, and with the implication in the rework that damage-dealing pool powers necessarily need to be weaker. All this really means is that taking one will always be a) an aesthetic choice with an acknowledgment it's not a good power and you probably won't use it much or b) a prerequisite pick for later powers in the pool with an acknowledgment it's not a good power and you probably won't use it much. I take the fighting pool on most of my characters for Tough/Weave and aside from it occasionally being a useful defensive set mule, I've never used boxing/kick even on my character who's a literal kickboxer and it makes me sad. Considering pools generally only have at most 2 attack powers, if they have any, and you can only pick 4 of them, I dunno why it seems like the only use devs think you should ever get out of a pool power is as a power tax for later powers, or as something to fill an attack chain while leveling. I know these assumptions are more or less entrenched in the game design for better or worse, but I think if we have a discussion about the prevalence and nature of mez in the game, it's worth taking a look at some of the other built-in assumptions, too.

Speed Boost has a 2s cooldown and 120s duration, meaning it's pitifully easy to maintain 100% uptime on an entire team. 7 people other than the kin having it isn't overpowered, but the kin having it is? Kin corruptors can already fulcrum shift+soul drain too, putting them well over +dmg% cap, something that isn't gonna change unless you now want to start targeting good synergy between power choices. Is that something we should be looking at?

How is a defender or corruptor using these on themselves any more "overpowered" than using them on the team's scrapper or blaster? Is it going to break the game if a controller or defender can use Fortitude on themselves in order to still do less damage than everyone else while playing alone? Why does it seem everyone is religious dedicated to ghettoizing these ATs? I just don't get it.

The change to RoP is still silly, but if it's going to happen regardless, this is better I guess. Gives you better things to use your slots on. I'm still not happy about having to respec all the characters I took it on, though... This along with the reasoning given and the TW changes has me really fearful that the dev team has an axe to grind with high recharge and it has me a little uncomfortable about the future of builds and mechanics in general that benefit greatly from high-recharge builds or strategies. I'd rather not see hasten or permadom, perma-lightform or high-end regeneration builds get tossed to the breeze in future patches.

I'm also incredibly mystified by the logic that squishies "just aren't supposed to have mez protection". Why? Because their primary/secondary powersets don't have +status protection toggles? Do we need to remove +KB protection IOs because they give sets like Fiery Aura that have no native KB protection the ability to protect against knockback, because "those sets just aren't supposed to have knockback protection"? Should we be restricting incarnates or inspirations that provide the same or are those exceptions, and by what logic are they exceptions? Feels like a very silly train of thought overall.

Changing a power to the point that it breaks the builds of the vast majority of players who take the power (which is, according to stats, not that many), is not what I would call a conservative approach.

Completely mystified how pages and threads of comments on ROP led the team to decide the solution was to make it worse than a high-tier breakfree. It seems sorta like spite honestly.

A little surprised at the results, this might be the only online game I've ever played in the history of forever barring maybe the first 3 months of SWTOR where I'm wealthier than the majority of the playerbase xP

I'm a lifelong hardcore RPer and outside of primary and secondary sets, I rarely make build decisions based on RP reasons. And as I mentioned in one of the other threads on this, when I do make very specific build decisions for RP reasons, it's usually with the grudging acknowledgment that I'm purposefully making my character perform suboptimally for the theme. I'd much rather feel like I have more room for builds to breathe for RP reasons, tbh, but the solution to that problem isn't "nerf ROP/hasten/tough/weave to make all choices equally unappealing" imo.

Ultimately the sum total of this context/explanation is "we think it's too strong", which is essentially just the opinion of a very small and specific group of people (devs). It's also a direction that makes me shudder to think of what else they personally think is overpowered and are planning on changing. Is hasten on the chopping block? I personally have a very strong aversion to changing the effectiveness or functionality of a power so drastically in a patch that I feel compelled to completely respec a character I picked it on because now it doesn't do anything for their build. That's the kinda crap you have to do in World of Warcraft; it shouldn't be a thing in COH. I'm also a little confused why, if squishy mez protection is a "system issue," that system issue isn't being discussed and addressed before or in conjunction with how we're .. erm, "addressing" powers that help solve the problem of making these ATs playable in solo or small-group situations.

There isn't some mystical variable that "testing" is going to prove; if your anti-mez rotation as a defender or controller relies on 90s of uptime on RoP, the ability being reduced to 60s means you've lost 30s of mez protection with nothing to make up for it. Builds that previously had no worry of being mezzed, now have 30s of worrying about being mezzed. Break frees also don't stop your defensive toggles from dropping and the 6-8 attacks/more mezzes launched while you reactivate them from hitting you 😞

I'm not as much of a diehard user of RoP as others, but I still generally take it on most of my blasters because it's actually.. well, good. Nerfing it instead of boosting the other pool T5s makes it no longer worth the investment in the pool required to take it outside of very niche flavor uses, and the same goes for most of the pools now. Which, "only for flavor" powers/pools have their place, but... if every pool is like that, you're left with a less mechanically interesting and fun game. I currently feel like when I want to make a character around a specific theme, it's more of a burden than a boon to have to dip into power pools and still have an effective character. A recent character concept of mine had to dip into pools for flavor reasons, and instead of feeling like I was slightly sacrificing attack/defensive flexibility for some useful side things, I felt like I was just grudgingly acknowledging that my character would need to perform poorer than she could because I was picking crappy powers for the sake of RP. It's a sad feeling and I'd rather see these powers made more interesting and powerful. I'll also echo the call to buff armor set T9s, most of which are woefully outdated in their function. Huge crashes feel very weird for sets that are intended to make you harder to kill, and in spite of WP being a great set, I have never taken SOW, ever.

Martial Assault already has a power that functions like Storm Kick with a cone effect, so yeah. Not sure why they added it to Eagle's Claw of all powers. I also don't think the solution is to just give every melee standardized "one PBAOE one cone" as a way of making them perform equally. If one set's better at single-target than at AOE, or vice-versa, I'm not sure why that's considered a design flaw needing fixed.

Concurring 100% with this. Makes no sense, bungs up slotting for pre-existing MA characters, and if you want to buff MA this isn't how to do it.

This isn't even close to true. StJ, staff, kin melee, and beam rifle are mediocre at best, and some of the best sets in the game (claws, fire manip) are "base" sets that have been in the game forever.

Taser is classified as melee. However, for some reason it is classified to take ranged damage IO sets. It appears to have a range component, but it's listed as a melee ability in its description, but at power selection and in the power info window. I thought about posting this somewhere other than 'bugs', considering with the changes lots of people must be aware of this, but I don't see any threads/mentions of it. Is this intended? Accidental? Is there a reason for this if intended? It's a bit strange for a blaster secondary to have no melee attacks whatsoever, though I know devices is 'strange' in a couple ways. Thanks!

I haven't played rad so I wasn't thinking about that one yeah << As for shield... I don't know. The thing that makes bio so good for farming is both its +dmg adaptation and the clicks, which in addition to dealing some AOE damage also help you stay alive. Sure it's easy to defense cap on shield, but defense cap isn't really as durable as it sounds in a +4/x8 setting, and shield has to sacrifice a lot to res cap fire.. and that's still only 75% resistance. With no survival clickies to get you through giant pulls or streak breaker, you're going to be filling your tray with orange and green insps, which means you can't overdose on reds to boost your damage output. Admittedly I prefer to be unkillable baseline while farming, since it lets me use reds and feels more efficient, but shield does deal some good damage. I just don't feel confident in it being as durable as I like, I guess. I don't like having to shore up weaknesses with insps when I could have -no- weaknesses and pump reds instead xP Shield -could- get around by choosing barrier destiny and cycling it with One with the Shield, but that prevents you from taking the heal if you need it, or ageless for the +rech, and still leaves you potentially vulnerable for two minutes or so between the two of them. And the recharge is especially significant, imo... since more of it means more shield charges. As a side note, the max damage boost from Against All Odds is 68.75%, and it decays as you kill enemies in range, whereas the damage boost from Offensive Adaptation is 31.25%. Honestly I'm talking myself into making another Shield scrapper lol << but probably not as a farmer. I might also have to try TW/rad now though. It seems like a really cool combo for a scrapper farmer. I would try rad primary, but... idk. The OCD part of me is driven crazy by scrappers having powers that don't scale with their inherent in their primary sets. It's why I refuse to ever play savage on a scrapper again.

I believe so too, opened about 100 mil worth of these things just to see what the hubbub was about, didn't even break even from it. Since I'm not flush with billions it was a huge disappointment for me. I know my sample size was a bit on the small side, but come on. It's just a bit too unreliable for me personally. I am still boggled at how some folks are sitting on billions in this game. It certainly can't be from this. A farming run with a parked alt generally earns me ~50 million between the two of them, plus empys, salvage and recipes, all of it worth at least that much, usually several times more. The fastest way to make money is always, always, always, always going to be putting together a good farmer that can clear a +4/x8 cave in under an hour. There aren't really any other secrets or 'tricks' or schemes or anything in CoH... just farm, and use your rewards wisely.

Having played lots of different sets, I would say the only optimal route to recommend as a scrapper farmer is TW/Bio. Other secondaries with taunt auras don't contribute anything to your damage output, and other primary sets don't synergize well with the scrapper's bread and butter, critical hits. TW is also loaded with strong AOEs, and combined with the Critical Strikes proc it gives you insane damage output, capable of outpacing a brute slogging through with full fury. In addition, the 75% resistance cap for scrappers really handicaps your survival, but Bio gets around this by having 3 powerful active mitigation abilities and a decent baseline for defense. TW/Bio scrapper is probably my favorite farming setup. I also think elec is a workable secondary as a brute secondary for fire farmers. Res capping fire is pretty trivial, it has some damage output, and the increase to recharge is always welcome. Claws/electric/mu can do a lot of work.

All event IOs, ATOs and purple/PVP recipes are 100 merits from the vendor. Rare sets are 50; uncommon sets are 20. Normally this is an ineffective way to buy these, because 100 merits is generally worth more than the 25-30 million inf you would spend buying these on the AH... buuuut because you can buy them with merits, if the price fluctuated up past the rough inf value of 100 merits, then yeah, people would just buy them with merits. It's a nice control on the price of stuff going too far out of whack honestly. And since this is a private server that we play on for fun, and not a live server where subscriptions and microtransactions incentivize artificially controlling the economy by making things like ATOs, event IOs and useful salvage like converters/boosters impossible to get outside of real-money trade... I think it's a good idea. Though it's getting really close. Converters are worth about 100k a piece on their own, so a merit is worth somewhere around 300k right now. The price of converters drops much more and the high demand winter pieces, purples, and PVPs will be more viable to buy with merits. >.> (Assuming, of course, their price doesn't drop too) There are already some I feel it's viable with. I use the Steadfast Protection +Def IO in almost all of my builds; it's a lower-level common recipe, so it's only 20 merits, but the IO on the AH can go for 9-10 mil sometimes. Most PVP sets, on the other hand, I find are pretty underpriced compared to the 100 merit vendor pricetag... whereas purples and Winters are definitely probably close to even if you buy them with merits instead of inf.