Championess

Testing this on a stalker KM was superb. Removing the redundant BU recharge from CS and giving it crittability was a nice change. On live between CS and the stalker ATO I was leaving far too many BUs on the plate where it was distracting from attacking. Now relying only on the ATO it feels just right and pulling a lot more damage from CS is a nice pairing with AS. Burst losing 100% crittability for a little buff here and there is still a net nerf to the power, though I get that it needed to be adapted for better use amongst all the ATs. Then leaning into how good KM's AS is by indirectly buffing it with a long form AS buff is a great idea, it truly feels like you want to assassinate on KM. Its funny they really only directly buffed heavily one power for stalkers and yet it feels like a top tier set now. Testing KM on the other ATs I did find the missing extra extreme ST attack in AS to be heavily noiticeable. Also with having the constant siphon refreshing felt like I was on the old version of stalker spending too much time worrying about maintaining damage buff and less worrying about fighting enemies. Thats why I say having those stacks last a little longer would help and yeah it could be a later down the road adjustment with more data but thats what I'd do. A lot of sets play better on stalkers and KM is no exception it does feel like a true assassin set. I'm fine with it being the hallmark powerset for stalkers and good on other ATs.

Rage is THE backbone of the whole of Super Strength and to a lesser extent Foot Stomp. You should know what you're getting into when you make a SS character. If I wanted a similar physical set that I didn't want to build around Rage I'd just make a Street Justice character, the attacks are cooler looking anyways, the only thing SS has over it is Foot Stomp's large area. Not every set needs to be homogenized. As for an easier port to stalkers and scrappers, do they really even need another set at the expense of changing the iconic Rage? It's good they are taking a pause on SS, the back and forth in that feedback seems to warrant the pause.

I mean okay it doesn't matter. So just slot the -res at the very right for the peace of mind u did ur best to alleviate any wonkiness of miliseconds if anything were to arise. Not to mention that procs slotted in some random order is a trashy look. 😜

Sheesh 20+ pages on Super Strength?! This tells me HC underestimated how many grandpas would get into their feelings whose first character were likely some sort of Super Strength Superman homage. This whole topic comes off like this:

But since if you're going to be slotting a -res proc anyways why not just slot it so it reads first? I'm sure any teammates attacking your same target would appreciate that -resistance reading as early as it can.

I'd do psi armor as well. Aura of Madness's lingering after debuffs have different effects. The after effect from sleeps that Aura causes is -resistance. That pairs real well with Frozen Aura's sleep component.

I do love me Frozen Aura. Though I don't slot any procs into it or mezz beyond the special ATOs for scrappers that up your crit rate on the next attack. With all of those targets that ATO is bound to fire so I know to expect to follow up with a crit Freezing Touch on my main target. The proc formulas kind of dictate where I do and dont slot things. Single Target attacks I'll look to find ideal attacks for like 4 procs based on the powers current recharge (without enhancing recharge) and animation. An attack with that combination equal to 12+ seconds I'll slot procs. For aoes its a much larger equation to factor along with that recharge. You're also accounting for the area of that power plus the max target count. Typically I dont like slotting procs in a faster recharging aoe attack like Frozen Aura, I'd rather slot a set. The aoe -res proc will maybe fire on 1-2 random targets of the bunch, that is too low of a rate for me I'd rather use that slot elsewhere.

As I understand it procs fire from their slotting right to left. Yes you're right to want to place the -res procs so they fire off first. As a common practice I always slot a -res proc at the end to the very right slot.

My Ice/Bio scrappa eats 4star and regular +4 KM ITF for breakfast. It's a very strong animal in hands that can play it well, all the top tricks are there to utilize. The extra aggro you can draw on it in comparison to other armors for scrappers is pretty key too. Support fills its holes nicely if you need it on harder content and its offense for melee is 2nd to none. Yes there's 3 adaptations but offense has become so synonymous with Bio I can't see making the other adaptations better without pissing off other armors and deflating the offense too much would alienate wanting to play it at all. It does deserve to have that offense taken down a peg, how much is sufficient we shall see.

Yeah @Maelwys beat me to it but Cupid's Crush may be some trial for that sorta thing. The devs are awful smart I don't think this is something they aren't thinking of. That first sentence of mine was giving them an out but also confirming it just might be good idea if doable. edit: I also agree Cupid and that proc are a little meh. But most purple sets are already well crafted so just dial up some dual function for them. I'd try to include ATOs in this but I think that'd be too much, those stalker ATOs at 100% fire would be even more silly.

I genuinely do like Adaptive Recharge's utility and by no means do I think it should just be relegated to only control. Though I also don't want it to feel cheapened by getting baked into a power on every powerset in the game. It seems to be liked on Consume which is good. I was more giving background for why some may not like it due to the biggest thing it changes is proc layout. Though it wasn't spelled out exactly in that old topic like you have here, that was my general feel for why procs were getting hit in Adaptive Recharge as you say 90% fire rate on a power recharging so fast with lots of target capability and loading tons of procs into it would be beyond broken. I'm not sure what you've got cookin back there but allowing sets to scale their proc by how many pieces you have of a set would be real cool. You wouldn't want it to screw with current behavior tied to base recharge and redoing the whole of IO sets would be a miserable task. But maybe Purple sets could have a dual aspect where it behaves as it currently is and can also get coded to recognize its in a power with Adaptive then it can scale its procability by pieces of the set slotted as opposed to recharge, target count and area. Like say starting with 3 pieces of Unbreakable Constraint you got a 55% chance for only that sets proc to fire on up to 100% fire for the full set regardless of all the other current factors. I wonder how something like that would be possible and how strong would that be considered hitting all 16 targets for an extra 70ish dmg each. Though this is probably better left for a more focused topic its good to get the word here thanks.

That's not going to happen or they would have tried to massage it more when Adaptive Recharge was introduced to control. They knew that the procs would fire off of only the base recharge value and couldn't recalibrate as it scaled upwards. Control players were forwarned that's what it was going to be but they ultimately felt in development it would be a net benefit for those control powers even with flooring proc rates. Which they were right. They would have tinkered a way for what you're asking long ago if they could have affected procs in a scaling way when the issue was raised on control. Welcome to your proc exploit band-aid.

This is pretty much my feeling on Adaptive Recharge with its introduction to control. I didn't like losing all that proc value on my aoe hold but due to the versatility it added to instantly stopping some aggro around you without feeling you wasted a long recharging power it ultimately came off as a net benefit. The only control proc I hated to lose so much value on was contagious since it was a nice extra layering of more confuse. Adaptive I knew was going to creep into a lot more places to deter proccing. It just made better sense on control and Psi Armor since it was introduced at the same time and it feels like a control armor anyways. I like how it came out for those things but I don't like Adaptive as a cure-all wherever.

On my bio scrapper I never come out of offensive mode and take DNA Siphon and proc the hell out of it. I use it to tank some 4stars and my assault isn't Battle Axe so I have room and want for another good aoe filler even if I do leave the recharge at that 90s and ride my global recharge to ensure procs fire to maximum effect. With all of those targets beyond the damage the dual aspect it acts as a great heal and regen boost which is why it kind of confuzzles me why tryhards skip it but whatever. With adaptive recharge it'll floor the proc rates and having to swap to the various stances to now get at least a good portion heal would be a detriment. I'm sure some of those testing Bio in CB didn't care what happened with DNA as it was already a skip for them. That's as truthful of a synopsis I can give. I'm fine with Bio being taken down a peg so long as its being left a viable top 5 option for people with some skill playing it. Which from the changes I don't see any reason Bio won't still be a great set to play if at least its offensive feel is intact. I guess my only questioning was seeing DNA getting the harshest whack although its contentiously a skipped power for some on high end content.

Honestly I didn't like the change to Shield's t9. Sure it's an emergency use type of thing but it does cap my hp and some more of my resists. I'd take it and mule a set into it, I could manage that hasten-like endurance crash. The minor damage it did with kb was neat but you can't slot it for more damage, maybe it would have felt neater with a Mighty-like animation smashing the shield into the ground. Sporatic more resists was meh to me. The worst was the reduction in hp to get some absorb on it. I slotted some heal sets into it to beef up the absorb/hp and was still getting less hp than before with a minor 500ish absorb. If I really want absorbs I'd find a way to slot the entomb and tanker ATO which I do.

It's too bad that it's going on the backburner but it is probably better to do them in stages rather than one fell swoop as well intentioned as it may be. The worst ones I hope they circle back to like Elude where it really offers you nothing as it is or the ones with harsh hp crashes like Unstoppable.

Careful what you wish for. He might just be the next 4star end boss with the ability to steal your abilities and give you back 4s animating Energy Transfers instead. 🤪 Since you're older than time itself you should have no problem adapting to change...

Or maybe they take a compromised nuanced approach to t9's so they don't go making any other OP crutches for people to rely on? The cat may be out of the bag as far as nukes are concerned but we can sure as hell get a squirt bottle for em.

It's an understandable feeling to have. I have trouble getting my dom into 4stars with my tryhard groups even though I'm a pro on it and ran deathless 22 minute Lady Grey's with the challenge fight with these same tryhards. One problem is yeah there's little incentive to learn them since nuke go boom. It's funny to see a lot of them not understanding about mag, hold duration and powerboosting with the bounty mechanic on the new ZTF. The ones that do will just refigure their hold and bring a defender or corruptor for that task. For HM structure some of the obligation lies in the design and some on the powers team. Control should have gotten a 100% dmg cap increase for starters when those nukes came out like they did.

Concentrated Strike now getting the ability to crit is fantastic. It should be more valuable now than Cross Punch. For stalkers KM feels like a finished product. If you can get good at long form AS'ing and Placating this'll be a top tier set for those that want something more skill rewarding than Energy Melee. On all the other ATs I do think those Siphon stacks could last 5s longer or so. Otherwise yeah KM is looking great.

The thought of adding dual selections of the t9's may sound like a good compromise but I'd rather it get ironed out for eveyone to enjoy with some compromises both ways. We don't need to go adding back full duration and we dont need to standardize them all against one another, some crash can go back into some of these to add a bit of duration. I agree with @Maelwys about the various levels of duration for certain of t9's. Some t9's like Elude give you nothing you aren't getting a lot of already, but if you give it something highly beneficial outside of more defense then sure duration on that could be 30-45s. But for something like Retsu that one should have 60-90s duration since Nin is a bit more dependent on that defense. It's a bit of give and take for all sides. For some powersets the old t9 behavior was relied on. The sticking point is full on crashes for some of them, if we put some crash back into some of them to get some duration back that would be manageable.

Yeah that one got me like noooooo. My Shield Charge into a still crittable Fireball was so delicious. That one and DNA Siphon now having Adaptive Recharge are gonna hurt the worst. Most of this other stuff looks pretty gravy though. Will be interesting to see how KM and Dual Pistols play now. I'd have thought DP woulda had a ST power or two have their dpa increased internally so maybe the different damage type has a large enough effect.

Usually on characters I play up quick to 50 I'll start to kit it with permanent enhancements I may want to keep anyways like ATOs and winter sets. Using merits for winter enhancements is a great way to keep your attacks viable all the way through to 50 then you can pull them out at 50 if they aren't going to be in your intended build and sell for quite good money which you can flip to fund your different build.

If you have 2 extra throw away slots for some other control that would take them I'll rarely slot 3 of that set with the pet for the hp buff. That pet dies nearly as soon as it gets summoned. For holds on control I like to slot 4 Basilisk to pick up that recharge. On doms your slots are much more important to make efficient choices with since you're chasing perma.