carroto

meh. People would just figure out the "best" 6 and you'd mostly see those.

I tend to avoid powers with that kind of penalty. If it's going to take me 15 seconds or more to be able to be active again, any speed-up that I gained from using the power will almost always be more than offset by the enforced downtime. If I remember correctly those powers didn't just drain all your end, they also prevented recovery for a period of time. It's easy to blow through a small blue's worth of end before that. Sure if I have enough blues I can use the power, but that requirement makes it situational enough that I'd probably never think of it. That seemed to be the case for most players, which is why those powers were changed. If it had to go back I'd want to at least retain enough end to avoid having to retoggle everything. That's enough of a QoL hit to be a barrier in itself.

No doubt because of the reasons you gave. But also in part probably because of the maps Council missions are on. I know that I avoid factions that can be in cave maps just because I don't like those maps. Difficult to navigate, and of course there's the infamous layer cake room. I would fight a wider range of enemies if I could count on them not being in caves.

I've got mixed feelings about the new Blaster secondary. I don't think it will be for me, but even so I greatly appreciate all the work that I'm sure must have gone into making it. One thing that appeals about it is that it may be better suited to safe blapping. Seems like the T1 may allow for disabling a mob long enough to stack some holds, making it safer to be in melee range. This was always a problem for me. Maybe I just suck at Blasters, but trying to take advantage of the damage potential of the melee attacks just got me into trouble. The only thing that saved Blasters for me was hover-blasting. Ranged only. For that purpose this new secondary has nothing to offer over others. Unfortunately there are only a few secondaries that (IMO) are worthwhile for hover-blasting and I'd love to get another. Seems unlikely at this point. Nonetheless, it's great that the blappers get a new toy.

I would expect the set with a secondary effect of more damage to do the most damage. If it doesn't then what's the point? If I can get more (or the same) damage with extra effects from another set, why go with FM? You downplay the presence of secondary effects in TW. I can only speak for myself here, but secondary effects often play a significant role in my selection of damage sets. The leveling experience of sets with KD or other effects is vastly different and much safer than those without. For Fire Blast while leveling the lack of any other mitigation is very much felt. You are sacrificing something real to get that extra damage. If I could get the KB of Energy Blast with more damage than Fire Blast, why wouldn't I? Maybe the gap between Fire Blast and other sets is larger than it ideally should be, but it should be there. If you've justified it for TW I must have missed it.

I'm thinking Hurricane. If that's not what he's referring to then there have clearly been more than one.

This is at the core of the difference so many have noticed in the way the game plays relative to retail. It especially stands out if I want to use an opener with a long animation time. If I lag behind other members of the team by even a bit, the mobs will be mostly defeated by the time my animation completes. It was a total waste. I mean, I guess I still hit the bosses, so there's that. This results in various members of the team running ahead or splitting to engage groups of mobs before others get there, just so they can actually do something that has an effect. On those teams I sometimes try at first to apply control/debuffs, and then revert to just damage, because it's not doing any good. Just apply some damage so I can feel like I'm contributing in some way. It can be enjoyable to join lower-level groups. It feels more like what I remember. It kind of sucks to have many of my powers unavailable, and some of my set bonuses shut off, but it tends to be an actual team, working as a team, to some extent at least.

Everything before HC. Sure most of the same IOs were available before, but they weren't nearly so easy to get, and so I didn't see so many fully IO'ed characters. I would occasionally, but it wasn't half the members of the team who could go off and solo on their own. A lot more people were running SOs, with maybe a few IO sets thrown in as they could afford them. When I pooled my resources to IO a character early, the performance difference on teams was noticeable. It was common to be on teams where I could do things no one else could. Things tended to move a bit slower and teams had to work together and support each other more. The difference from retail to HC is quite noticeable. I appreciate not having to grind here to get IOs the way I did then, but it has had some (presumably) unintended consequences.

True for Fire Blast. Want an example of what that would look like? See Fire Melee. All it does is damage, and it doesn't do that well. I can't remember the last time I saw a Fire Melee character.

Staff looks good on paper and I wanted to like it. It just doesn't feel right when playing it. I shelved my Staff Stalker. Not sure if it's the sounds or the animations. Probably both. Just doesn't feel like you're doing much. Dual Blades I haven't tried since retail. From what I recall I didn't like the way the combos were done for Stalkers. I guess you could just ignore them, but then you're giving up one of the things that makes the set unique.

Yeah like others have said, I've limited the range of powersets I'm willing to play on squishies to just those that have some solid way to mitigate mez, which is not many. Really limits my options. I never knew that any of the P2W boosts included mez protection. I'll have to see if they're affordable for me. I would have no compunctions about doing anything and everything to work around the mez situation in this game. Mez is far too binary in this game. Have a break-free? Succeed. Don't? Hospital. I've tried using debuffs and other tactics, but nothing is reliable enough. However any fix would be a major, breaking change to the game. So it is what it is. A design flaw. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing that I or anyone could do to work around that design flaw that would be out of bounds. Recently I've been considering dipping into the Sorcery pool on some squishies to open up the field a bit, but as has been pointed out, there's a heavy build cost to doing so. There are no good solutions, at least not for anyone who doesn't PL to 50. Playing up one really gets to feel how the mez ramps up in the 30s. Personally I never have soft-capped defenses by that point. I usually don't bother trying to put together a heavily IO'ed build until 50. Maybe that's part of my problem. Not sure what I'm trying to say. I've been searching for solutions that would allow me to play squishies that aren't Sonic Resonance. If the P2W buffs offer such a solution that would be wonderful. However based on what some have said it seems that they're not very affordable. I know that the devs want more inf sinks so I don't suppose they could be persuaded to lower the cost of the one in question.

Thanks, that did the trick. Finally got it working. Many thanks for the efforts to make it available to Linux users.

Trying again to get this to run on Linux. Have never managed it before. Downloaded the 32-bit installer, set up a 32-bit wineprefix, installed .net 4.7.2 (I think, it didn't say much when I did). Then I run WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/Mids wine ~/Downloads/MRB_Setup.exe The installer loads up, and then there's a popup that says "Install Failed" "Mids Reborn cannot be installed on 32-bit Windows versions." When I close the popup the installer has a message "The Mids Reborn Setup Wizard ended prematurely" with a "Finish" button, which closes the installer. I'm not sure what's in the .zip files but I thought I'd give them a try but neither of those links work. The first just gives a 404. So I'm stumped again. Any suggestions are welcome.

I've only played it on a Stalker on HC. Tried it on a Tanker way back when but I'm not sure how well I remember it. I like the set and the variety of tools it has. However it has the same problem all the typed defense sets have. A complete lack of protection from psi damage, and minimal protection from toxic. If those were truly exotic damage types that would be one thing, but they are abundant in a fair amount of late-game content. I don't care for being naked to a lot of incoming damage unless significant build compromises are made to plug those holes. Ice Armor compounds this problem other typed defense sets have by adding a fire hole as well. So it ends up being vulnerable to a lot of damage in a lot of situations. I'm not sure if the other tools are supposed to make up for those gaps, but they don't really. I'm sure there's a way to calculate overall mitigation values for each power and sum them up so that the set appears to be well balanced on paper. Hell, maybe it is. Probably some people enjoy sets that run hot and cold in that way. It's just strange to have to rely mostly on inspirations for protection in some situations on a melee character as if I were playing a squishy. Again, if those situations were rare I could appreciate it, but they're not. That said, I like that it slows down enemies, providing some mitigation to the entire team and not just myself. The T9 for Stalkers and Scrappers is amazing and really what makes the set have any survivability when facing its weaknesses (at least there's the regen). If I could get that on Brutes or Tankers I'd probably roll one. Overall I like the set. I think it's well designed. The main problem (for me) is the broader design decision that typed defenses should be completely vulnerable to a common damage type.

Might want to ask in the Dominator section.

This reminded me of my great disappointment in the way Psi was proliferated to Blasters. Losing the cone was too big a hit to the AoE capability of the set. I love the set on other ATs and if I could play that version on a Blaster I'd be all over it. On the other hand Blasters get the best version of Rad Blast, so there's that.

I'm glad I read this thread. I recently rolled an Elec/ Dom for the first time and I wasn't aware that the confuse didn't benefit from Domination. That one's getting shelved. Thanks for saving me the time. I guess it's back to the same old workhorses. I'd like to branch out but some of the sets just really don't work well for Doms (and are arguably not great for Controllers either). Same for Dark Assault. I like dark sets generally, and having a heal on a Dom would be a game-changer. It's so disappointing that the set got Night Fall. The cone is just too narrow to be very useful. I understand that it couldn't get TT, and I guess the only alternative would have been a new power. It just seems like Doms have so much potential but in so many areas it's almost within reach but not quite.

I haven't tried it since live, but back in the day the elemental weapons would show up on cloaked characters. So the fire sword or rock hammers would get swung around by a dark ball of fuzz. It was for this reason alone that I made my Stone/Dark Brute, Fuzzball. Yes endurance was a challenge, but it was amazing to see that dark cloud smash things with a hammer. When I got back here to HC I decided to remake him as Psi Melee instead of Stone. I hadn't played psi, but the descriptions made it seem like it used elemental swords similar to fire or ice sets. I was quite disappointed when I leveled up enough and discovered that the psi attacks don't show anything while cloaked. I also made him on another server back on live with Mace instead of Stone, and was disappointed that the mace didn't show up. I guess it's only the elemental attacks that work that way, not actual weapons.

There were a lot of smaller QoL changes made towards the end as well. Off the top of my head: the endurance cost of Brawl was removed completely, and the cost of the origin attacks were reduced considerably. Along with inherent Fitness (and the temp attacks) the low-level experience became much smoother. I haven't thought about it in a long time, but yeah it was a boring grind before some of those changes.

Just checked it on the beta server. The description does state that it boosts run and jump, same as the Sentinel version.

This is basically the same as the Sentinel power Shinobi-Iri, which does include the +run and +jump, so I don't see why they couldn't be added in to the Blaster version as the description states.

I don't have much to add to what's already been said, but the endurance cost of Web Grenade has always seemed too high to me. It costs the same as immobilizes that do damage. That much endurance has always seemed like too high a cost to pay for what it does. Other ATs that get immobilizes usually get damage and another effect for that end cost. Ideally I'd either reduce the end cost or make it more worthwhile in some way.

Interesting writeup. Makes me wonder why the HC devs decided on a new bin file format. It would be extremely interesting to get some insight from them on some of the internal changes they've made and why.

Finally got my first Bonfire user in HC and I'm starting to remember how much I love this power. I seem to recall seeing mention of people slotting KB to KD IOs in this, supposedly turning it into a pseudo Ice Slick-type power. I guess I'm curious how well that works. Is that your preferred use, or do you use it in its natural state? I like the KB, seeing mobs get rag-dolled. Sometimes mobs run partway through it and get tossed out the other side. Even so it works pretty well as an area denial power and I'd think that removing the KB would mean that mobs would get through it eventually. Even if they just take a couple of steps before being knocked down, they'd make it through before long. I get that it does more damage if mobs stay in it, but it doesn't seem to tick that quickly. Even when I get mobs caught in a corner with it, it doesn't seem to do a whole lot of damage. So please share your experiences and your preferred use. Thanks.

Is this still the case? I don't recall seeing a patch note addressing it, but I may have just glossed over it. I am here looking at Spring Attack as a possible low-level AoE attack for a Controller. I don't like being so limited when I exemplar on my Earth/Sonic Controller. My hope is that with enough procs it might become decent. Then again the long recharge may be prohibitive regardless.