Greycat

... what percentage *should* be? I mean, come on - there are some *real* stinkers that show up. Then there's the question of if you're looking at suggestions as a whole (IOW post by post) or general groupings ("Do this to force fields" and "Nerf Regen.") Anyway... I'm slowly working up a remake of my ice tank from live. I'm not a numbers person, but I don't recall it feeling particularly weak. Breezing through the OP - One thought is regarding the "Ice isn't played much" bit. There *can* be reasons besides that - theme, for instance. Lack of comic/movie characters with ice armor that inspire people to make one. And the "But the graphics cover my costume" - which, they do, even on minimal FX. You're still looking frosty. It may not really be based on set performance. Ice, to me, should maintain an ice "Feel." Thermal (hot *and* cold, and associated effects) resistance - and the slowing (and -rch) applied to surrounding foes. Defense and resistance both do make sense for it. But - again for the OP's suggestion - what about ice says "I am mentally resistant to your control/damage attempts?" Smashing or lethal? Sure, gotta make it through the actual ice, after all. And again thermals make sense. But what about ice is psionic-defending or psionic-resistant? "M'friggin 'nads are frozen and it's distracting me from your brain-bombs?" 🙂 About the only way I'd see it getting added on is as an aftereffect from, say, granting/increasing the amount of absorb in the set (to represent attacks having to chip through the ice to get to the chewy center - IE, you - underneath.) (Granted, hibernation's ... eh. But I don't really ahve answers for that, other than "well, it gives me some flexibility in picking something else up." It's one of the few T9s I agree with the "meh" on... and I *like* Rise of the Phoenix, by comparison.) Anyway. That's how I see it from a theme and character standpoint. I'll let the rest of you math at each other.

It's not that there's anything wrong with the set, really. But you'll see a lot of (50/Incarnate focused, generally) attitude that "Everyone can cap their defense, why should anyone play Force Fields?" Ignoring, of course, there's 49 levels of game before that and not everyone builds (or wants to build) to softcap to everything, etc, etc, etc. That said, I think the devs did develop the game in a way that broke FF... specifically because of IOs. (Part of why I said in the "if you could make one radical change" thread that I'd limit bonuses to 3, not 5, of a type.) There was other discussion on force fields... somewhere or other. Anyway, if I were sat down and told "you have the power to remake force field," I wouldn't go particularly radical. Keeping past discussions in mind, I'd probably do something like this: Force bolt: Probably what I'd do most with. Up the damage. Still does ST knockback, does KD to things around the target. Damage is buffed further if you have Repulsion field or force bubble running. Personal FF: Can attack through it, with damage reduced from 1/2 to 1/3 and defense from PFF severely reduced for several seconds. Don't attack? You're still practically untouchable, with current restrictions. Detention field: Since people hate waiting, make it a toggle (with the current timeout, as well - you can just cancel it early.) Force bubble: Reduce the size to the same as DIspersion bubble. Enemies entering (or knocked into, or with the new AOE teleport, drawn into) it take damage over time, similar to the sonic repulsion fields in Praetoria, until they're out of the field. Dispersion bubble - Popular suggestion seems to be adding absorb. Absorb will layer if someone with individual bubbles is in the big bubble. Repulsion field - it's pulsing a knockback. Add damage to it as it "hits" enemies. Or chance to stun. Touch of -def, maybe. Getting smacked around by an energy (or whatever) field should have some effect. Not sure what, if anything, I'd change on the other powers.

Only 3? 🙂

No, no, I mean currently, not as a suggestion.

Well, as long as you can see where your reticle is, you can teleport there - avoiding walls, just popping up (or down) a level, going through (some) windows, etc.

Yes, there's a revamp coming. That said, it was the travel power of my first 50 way back in issue 3. I even used it in Dark Astoria. It's got its quirks, you don't need to have it fully - or even partially - slotted, other than (early on) an END reduction, and even then that's normally if you're going LONG distances (N to S IP, for instance.) I like it, but use depends on character concept, basically. (And yes, I used it through old - now Echo - DA without issues.)

Technically, you can - at least one - as a title. Plus your badge count and the badges themselves are easily able to be seen by anyone, so...

I'd call that perference, not a mark of uselessness. Personally, I like having powers that make you have to weigh their use vs. a crash - as long as the effect is strong enough to be worth it.

No, no. "Let the Lord of Chaos rule." 🙂 And that would be an interesting twist....

There aren't really any "non combat" missions in the game I can think of. (By that I mean missions where you have to avoid combat at all.) The closest one I can think of is the Levantra mission where you can't attack patrols (which can mix in with regular mobs,) the security chief or foreman. (And once you finish the mission, you can go back and fight everything with no penalty.) The Heist in SBB ... sort of is, too, but you're hauled back to fight incoming mobs repeatedly as well. While I'm at it, there also aren't many where you really have to pay much attention to your environment - something like the pawn shop side missions in bank heists redside, with the alarms you can trip. (And which most people do anyway to fight more stuff.) I'd love to see more missions out there where you don't just fight through willy nilly, but have to avoid combat or detection to get something done. (Yes, in those redside pawnshop missions, I *do* try to avoid the alarms.) Just for the sake of variety. I know one of the arguments might be that this favors stealth-based ATs or powersets, to which I'd say "if they're well designed, no, they won't." Probably the biggest losers in any sort of "work through the environment" would be masterminds, as they'd have to not have their pets out - but if they're trying not to be picked up anyway and work around mobs, there shouldn't be a need to have them to begin with. Obviously these wouldn't be frequent, but sprinkled in here or there for a bit of variety they'd be a nice change of pace.

... you saw it, then missed it. I don't think duplicates of the enhancements would work - you're talking about most of the IO sets in the game. I can currently slot various powers with KB in the game for - off the top of my head - - Ranged damage. - Melee damage. - PBAOE. - Targeted AOE. - Defense debuff. - Tohit debuff - Hold (for instance, Incandescent Strike) - KD, of course - AT specific IOs ... and I know I'm missing some. Suggesting duplicates that also have KB mixed in is... not realistic. And as for the rest of what you said? All you're doing is repeating the exact same thing over and over and... ignoring that you're screwing up IOs and set bonuses. You are *not* giving people choice, you're nerfing whole powersets and forcing people to completely change their slotting to get original functionality back.

... which reminds me of something else. You can create macros. You can delete the button. If you do a respec (or a second build,) though... the buttons are back. Being able to have a screen to "find" them again and/or permanently delete them would be nice.

This kind of has to be the starting point. Honestly, I think either we kind of ignore the lore and overwrite relevant parts of what we're doing with our own headcanon, treat it as more rare than we do ("yes, six of the others on the team have run this but we'll pretend they haven't, or haven't in a long time," basically) or just ... shrug it off, like we do when we finish a cave mission and the next mission is in that *exact same* cave, but it's now a lab.

The font should increase in size as you stretch the window to a larger size. But yeah, that can shrink to be pretty tiny.

Then you're not actually looking, if I can be blunt. Currently I can slot a power with knockback however I want, within the confines of that power's accepted abilities - not just "damage," but (quite often for me) "ranged damage." I'm rather fond, for instance, of Thunderstrike, which throws some decent ranged defense in on the sixth piece, for single target blasts - it stacks quite nicely. You remove KB. I am now having to slot it in a *specific* way with *specific* IOs to get that functionality back. Which means, no, I don't get the same benefit. I now have to forego that full set in order to find my KB, which I use both offensively and defensively. If IO sets were not a thing? You'd have more of an argument for this. If the game had never been released and were still in beta? That'd be the time to have this discussion. KnockDOWN, frankly, is not as good in the characters I use it with as knockBACK. I have a Dark blast/Pain corrupter. It has a cone KD power. If I have that able to do knock*back,* I can knock away something that gets too close - not only are they knocked down but it adds travel time both for that enemy to finish getting knocked back, but (since they're often melee enemies) to get back where they can do extra damage. Knocking down? They're back up and in my face almost immediately. (This isn't theoretical, by the way. I've noted the character's much LESS survivable if I have that converted to KD.) You do when you pick the set. *shrug.* It's not like it just suddenly appears all of a sudden (April Fools Day attacks aside.) Frankly, the answer to "people don't like knockback" is "don't be unaware when using knockback." Just like you shouldn't use AOE immobs on top of someone else's (say) Ice Slick, or that people get annoyed with them when someone immobs a group in a strung out line instead of "as a group." You're not arguing for this in this one set, you're arguing for it *globally,* for *all* characters, unless there's some odd dialect of English where nerfing it for everyone, not just this set, isn't what this means: Short form, you're wanting to mess with a lot of characters. No thanks.

It's not "lose a damage slot," it's "losing functionality I have to do something else to get back." On top of dictating slotting.

Yeah. Seeing a team flop out the reactor doors on a failed respec when *your* team was about to go in...

Which I'd give a hard no to, thanks. I should not have to slot to get functionality back I currently use. The only time I'd say "yeah, that KB should be KD by default" is when it's used by pets/summoned things you can't control (including MM pets.)

I'd have to agree with "Leave states dead." I don't, and never did, hate the character. He just did nothing to impress - and honestly, I kind of liked the "OK, you can rest now" during his death. He'd been heroing for decades. That said, some "in the past" arcs where you're fighting alongside him or helping or something via Ouro? I wouldn't argue. He's in the middle of lore moments like the first Rikti invasion, the Nemesis invasion, discovering 'dyne's "see other dimensions" (at least what I gather from boomtown plaques) properties and more. Plenty to work with.

I have to admit, my recollection in the early game was more "Oh, sure, statesman did stuff. Hmm? Yeah, he's ...er... around. Somewhere. I'm sure." Then you get to the 45-50 range and it's "Oh. Er, by the way, he's been captured by his evil double in Praetoria. Could you be a dear and go rescue him? Thanks." Basically a lot of tell and no show.

I still say the all-Kheld Yin should just be referred to as a Kheldyin from this point on. (And it was a lot of fun.)

... which is a strange thing to say after pointing out they're adding content... Regardless, remember. They're a small volunteer team trying to (and managing to) do a lot. We're not going to get 4 issues a year, packed with powersets, tons of arcs, etc.

Well, if you do the arcs (working with Lt. Lovesick With A Tacky Hat,) you do - or work your way towards it, but I don't think there's a contact right after...

Hmm. Not sure where I'd put slow - though it's usually not just slow but -rech as well. I do like it as a secondary effect on my Warshades (with pretty much every attack,) and I certainly don't mind it on my ice or poison using characters. Good for both offense and defense.