Haijinx

Ice is pretty good on tankers, but that's probably due to their high base numbers hiding its flaws a bit. Probably could stand a slight improvement now that its been proliferated.

Should be the top of at least one of them you'd think? That Fire Breath animates way too slowly to be good for AOE really. Least seems that way to me. And Fire Sword Circle isn't exactly some barn burner (pun intended) either.

It should be somewhere near there TBH. Since it gets no knockdowns, stuns being less useful for a Melee class. Still .. why must Fire Melee stay so low?

We knew there were nerfs coming to the control type powers in the newer blast secondaries a year ago. Its not some sneak attack. The reason was clear, many of those powers were more useful than similar Dom/Controller powers due to their recharge. That and their mag was higher than older comparable blaster secondary powers. Finally its been common knowledge forever that Tact Arrow was the best version of Trick Arrow. Of course many of those new blaster secondaries need their lamo melee attacks looked at. They never got the correct Blaster recharge/scale adjustments.

Do the people who PVP actually use this as an escape hatch now? I mean is it actually a thing? And is it people who PVP or merely people in PVP zones doing it?

Does the Master of Badge give you something a Debt Badge doesn't? Or any of the other thousands of non-accolade badges?

Yeah pretty much Bio fills the thematic niche.

I started my completionist run after a the big thread on this topic (the one with actual GM involvement) About a year ago. So I ran solo through all of the Going Rogue content, then all the Redside and Blueside Arcs without the Enterbasecode command. (also with no travel power, because I don't do travel powers) Then after a couple months I realized they weren't actually removing it anytime soon(tm), so I added it. That was sometime around New Years, it was well before the plague. So this probably is not imminent. At least until you see something on the actual Dev posts.

Forum gridlock will prevent any substantive changes to Rage.

The interesting thing about this topic is while it comes up regularly, it only comes up every couple of months. Its gonna have to step up its game if it wants to compete with the likes of undoing the rage nerf and a Support/Melee AT. Also I'd like to take this opportunity to say Nerf Regen. Thank you.

Its already got weaknesses.

Well it sort of does. Its variable after all. Bio gets a constant level. Plus it can be paired with some big hitter sets that shield can't.

So with the Blaster ATO, they can actually get more KB protection than a Fire Tanker ..

Yeah. It should get KB protection too.

I am now! It needs fixed too. Just make the T9 work when you are alive, but remove the untouchable or whatever effect.

Not sure Fire Armor is balanced for today's game. But in the other direction. It makes no sense they don't get KB protection. That should be fixed. Bad enough you have to DIE to use the T9.

Considering some of the damage results, it probably wasn't.

20 hours would be something like 2 hours a night + 5 hours sat and sun. Easy enough to pull off if that was what you wanted to do. Many people watch more TV than that for example.

I wasn't being dismissive of the addiction problems in MMOs. Just mentioning that a lot of working power gamers are in those straits. Its definitely easier to be a power gamer if you don't have a job. Whether during a stretch of unemployment or whatever. I don't know if casual can describe someone spending all (and more) of their free time in a game. Even if they aren't particularly good at said game. And I actually went with the 20 hour definition because of some of those things you described. Just added there are a lot of people (still) who would call that 20 hour weekly player a casual.

In many MMOs people play 40+ hours a week. Including working hours per day on gear. Those that have jobs are recognizable by their zombie like appearance since they are seriously sleep deprived. I was being a bit conservative probably.

Quotes for Emphasis

2:22 seems a great time to me. Well done.

For an MMO - Id define it more like this: Spends at least 20 hours a week playing the game At least some weeks spends at least half their time only doing things to get better gear (Farming Money, Raids, Camping Rare Drops, etc) Within a reasonable/short amount of time will reach max level and be approaching a top tier gear set (feet on the path sort of thing) Have I ever been in that category? Sure in Anarchy Online. In COH Live? Not really On Homecoming? Nah

You think the majority of players stick to SOs? I highly doubt that. The majority of *characters* might be SO or IO equivalent. But thats because a lot of people wait to 50 to figure out their build. Also I think inferring someone who has a level 50 as a "power gamer" is ludacris. It takes almost no effort to get to 50 in this game. No camping is required. No gear searching. Nothing. You can just plug in the SOs you get and keep teaming. If you just played 3 hours a week, you could pug to 50 in a couple of months.

I don't know. The solution to not having a ton of time to play is to focus on less characters though. That's every MMO. My single "Billion Influence" Build Character is just as good as anyone else's billion Influence Character even if they have 10 other billion Influence builds. Generally I'll play 1 character till I have a medium power end game build (roughly 300 mil in IOs) and maybe 5 vet levels. Usually that character becomes boring and I put them into retirement. Boring is usually some combination of tired of the animations, tired of that AT, tired of the sounds my attack powers make, or stuff is just too easy. If someone is both "Casual" and has out of control altitis, they should be fine playing at +0x1 to be honest.