carroto

Not only that, but if the numbers the game shows are accurate, they provide better enhancement value for dmg/rch than anything else you can slot for a good while past when the proc stops working. I tend to keep them around for quite a while. When attuned IOs start to catch up is when I think about finally replacing them. I'm not sure when that is. Somewhere in the 30s maybe? I do tend to try to slot them in longer-recharge powers both to maximize proc chances but also because they provide so much better recharge reduction than anything else available at the level. Give me a much snappier attack chain.

That would be nice but I wonder if a look at the AI might help, too. I seem to see it just hanging around for a while before deciding to even start to move near me. If it did a better job following and didn't expire so quickly that would provide a great QoL increase.

You'll have to pry my hammers from my cold dead hands.

Why is that?

It's a bit odd that there are a number of Defender combos that will out-damage a comparable Corruptor considering they also get better buff/debuff numbers. I know that there are also many Corruptor combos that will outdo Defenders on damage, but it's always seemed to me that Corruptors don't generally get enough damage to offset how much weaker their buffs and debuffs are. For soloing I'd guess that Defenders will almost always be better on all fronts, considering the damage boost they get when solo. On teams their debuffs will often contribute more damage than their attacks, so Defenders get the nod there as well. The one thing that keeps me playing Corruptors is Scourge. Even though I know that it's not actually that much of a damage increase in practice, any time I play a Defender and an attack leaves an enemy with a tiny sliver of health it just bugs me.

Although I think I understand the reasoning behind the original decision to make it a one-time-only opportunity, I don't think it's a good idea given the realities on the ground. Especially given that the arc is at such a high level. Anyone dedicated to getting badges who has a run of bad luck and fails the arc will have no alternative but to re-roll their character and start over. Knowing this, the only logical approach would be to powerlevel to 50 right from the start and do that arc so a failure will mean a minimal loss of investment into the character. Any design decision that incentivizes powerleveling/rushing to 50 in this way is a bad one.

I wonder how much the mez situation is a factor as well. It certainly is for me. It's one of the biggest design flaws of this game in my opinion. It's in the 30s that mez really starts to ramp up and become an issue, which sucks a lot of the fun out of the game. Too binary. The thing that makes me suspect that this is not a big issue for most people is the popularity of Blasters. Then again, although I'm not a big Blaster player, when I do play them the ability to fire the basic attacks through mez actually helps quite a lot, so it may be that the changes to Blasters way back when really did address that issue for enough people. It's been a long time since I looked at the hero epic ATs, but the last time I did my impression was that it was just too tough to put together a build I'd be satisfied with. Too many powers I felt I needed and not enough slots to go around. Maybe I was focused on tri-form and that was my problem. However as I recall human form is vulnerable to the mez issue. It is surprising that Fortunatas and Night Widows are not more popular, but it's more understandable for things like Banes. There was a thread recently asking for thoughts on the villain epic ATs and the most common feedback was that Banes are too slow and clunky. Fortunatas are fun though and in many was come close to a tank-mage. I suspect the issue with all of the epic ATs is that they don't easily fit into a theme or existing comic hero/villain mold. As others have said in this thread, a lot of power set choices seem to be driven by theme. What theme would be served by the epic ATs? They have their own fixed back-stories.

One concern I have with the auto-upgrade option for SOs is that it's likely to be more expensive over time than doing it manually. Maybe that's not a big concern, but it will probably keep me from using it as presented here. If I'm buying SOs I tend to try to keep my costs down by not buying them at max level, but at one level below. That way I can try to combine them with my existing enhancements for that +1, which I get for free. Buying at max level and simply replacing what's there is a more expensive option than buying lower level and combining. If I had the option to one-click buy new SOs at one level below max and auto-combine them, that I would probably use. In addition to saving inf it would also be satisfying to my inner gambler. The only problem with that would be that some would successfully combine, while others would not. Meaning that some would turn red before others. Meaning that I'd have to address the situation manually or use the button earlier than necessary for my other SOs, wasting inf anyway. So unless there were further control, like an option to only upgrade yellow or red SOs, I probably won't be using this feature when it comes out.

I think the balance shifted on Homecoming because IOs are so much easier to get. Because of this it's much more common to get on teams with a bunch of highly optimized characters facerolling everything. Back on live it was much rarer to see someone with a fully kitted out build. It was more common for people to run with generic IOs or frankenslotting for much of their leveling career. So now there's less need for teamwork, people can run off and solo groups on their own, so yeah overall that makes it much easier.

I'm happy with my widow/fortunata for the most part. The Fortunata does seem to be trapped between two worlds to some extent. Control is a bit light compared to a true control character, but the defensive powers are weaker than on a Night Widow. So not really great at anything. Still it's a unique combo and I'm sure giving any more on either side would be too much. I haven't tried crabs because of the backpack issue. I have made a Bane/Huntsman dual build. Huntsmans are fun on teams. The Bane as more of a single-target specialist is the solo build. As many others have said, Banes are slow and clunky to play. Too many long animations and especially the ranged and AoE attacks are just inexcusably weak. Getting only 2/3 crits doesn't help. As I recall back in the day someone did an analysis for Stalkers of Placate + the best attack, and for most power sets using Placate caused a reduction in DPS. That's with full crits. So with Bane 2/3 crits and slow animations, there's no way using Placate is worthwhile. No AS and partial crits, along with slow animations means no real burst damage on a stealthy character. All the squishiness of a Stalker without the burst damage. If I didn't have the option to switch to Huntsman mode for teaming I wouldn't be willing to play one.

Was it? I guess now that you mention it, I did see it more back in the day. Kind of surprising because one complaint about it was that the AoE immobilize countered the KD of Ice Slick. However somewhere along the way that got fixed, didn't it? I seem to remember people asking for that to be changed for a long time but the devs wouldn't give in, but I think it finally did happen. So I'd expect the set to be more popular now, not less.

I've noticed this as well. It seems to afflict newer content. I don't know when the arcs mentioned were added to the game, but maybe the devs back in the day didn't have enough accumulated data to set the merit rewards to their proper value. That's what I thought when I ran that arc from Provost Marchand and got a lowly 6 merits. It took me a while to do and there were a lot of challenging encounters. Six seemed way too low. I figured it had to be a placeholder value because the data didn't exist or hadn't been used to set it to a realistic value. I do seem to remember that happening back in the day. New content would commonly have very conservative rewards until the data-mining had been done. Probably to guard against people finding a shortcut and exploiting it mercilessly until it could be patched. However I have some concern about asking rewards to be looked at now. As best I recall, rewards were set based on average completion time. Back on live those were probably greatly affected by the large contingent of casual players running those arcs. If we have fewer of those now, and proportionally more reward-focused power-gamers, average times will probably be lower and rewards with them.

Just to be clear on what you're saying here: I presume you mean that Brutes were meant to be the villain Scrapper analog, but players tend to see them more akin to Tankers. I see this claim made and I wasn't privy to the devs' discussions on the matter, but I've always found it hard to believe that they meant MMs to fill the tank role given how unsuited they are to it in many ways. On Tankers only, or all ATs? Are you saying you would have nixed the powerset, or at least made significant changes before releasing it? Also just curious on your thoughts on Regen for Tankers. I think I can read between the lines based on what you already said, so would this be accurate?: Regen would be so difficult to balance for Tankers, and would require so many changes, it should never be proliferated to them. There's no reason to bother, because they already have that set: Willpower.

The Tsoo Kama temp power that is a reward option after completing the St. Martial zone event has a noticeably shorter range than other melee powers. I have to be completely touching mobs in order for it to activate, as close as it is possible to get. Sometimes I have to move around a bit to get a proper position that allows me to activate it. I think this may be more of an issue on larger character models. I presume that this is not intended.

I'm behind this suggestion. As it is I don't bother using anti-mez powers, or even taking them most of the time. 90 seconds is just too short to try to keep it up on anyone over an entire mission or series of them. So at that point it becomes reactive only. But that just doesn't work for me. People rarely call out being mezzed but if they do and I see it in chat, and select them, it's probably too late to do much good. Maybe I'm just not good at it, but I don't tend to play as a pure buff-bot. I'm busy doing other things so it takes a little time to react. In the end it's just not worth bothering. It's mostly useful to get someone back in the fight faster after they use an Awaken.

I think Archmage / Demonic is fine. As it is I have to consider carefully if I want to use it in any given situation, because if I do it may not be available if/when I potentially need it even more later. I think that's as it should be. Not that I'd mind if the recharge were reduced of course, but I think there does need to be a balance and I'm not sure that point is not where it already is. I'd probably feel the same about Watchman if it offered bonuses that were actually worthwhile. Not really worth bothering with at it's piddling values. Geas of the Kind Ones / Force of Nature is okay too. The huge +recharge, +recovery, and +tohit means that in (rare) situations where max damage output can make a real difference, you have a button to turn things up to 11. It shouldn't be something you put on auto. The other two are in a different category for me. Not game-changing enough to be called out in rare situations, but on such a long recharge that it's too easy to forget to ever use them. For the immobilize at least I would make some significant changes. Maybe higher mag and longer duration. Give it some purpose. Right now if an AV is running around and I want to stop them, it won't help at all. Even if just the mag were increased, how long does it last? Not enough to make a difference. That one's a real head-scratcher.

Yeah it's a build that really goes up in survivability with +recharge, so I was able to build mostly for offense (with as much +res as I could get though) and end up with a pretty tough Brute. Plus Soul Drain -> Burn is really fun. Doesn't do great in the face of heavy recharge debuffs though.

I often combine a primary and secondary not because of special synergy, but because one makes up for weaknesses in another. The surprise has often been how much fun those combos are to play. Often much more so than synergistic sets that on paper "should" be great together. I like Dark Melee but don't like the lack of AoE in it, so I paired it with Firey Aura on a Brute. Not as squishy as I expected, and more fun than most other combos I've tried. I wanted to play Energy Assault on a Dominator, but again didn't like the weak AoE, so I paired it with Fire Control to pick up the slack. Not an obvious combo at all, but a blast to play.

My only experience with Poison was on a Mastermind. The small AoEs meant that I couldn't hit most mobs when they were spread out. Without being able to debuff the enemies all I was left with to protect my henchmen was the slow heal, which wasn't up to the task. The constant resummoning of henchmen as they kept getting wiped out by non-debuffed alphas was too much. I walked away from Poison and never looked back.

Curse those devs, they anticipated my dastardly plan! I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling devs.

I came here hoping to find an answer to a question on Propel but don't see it. Does the KB damage proc, if slotted into Propel, have a chance to fire against all enemies it affects? I know the damage of the power only affects the main target, but since other mobs nearby can get knocked back, I'd expect the KB damage proc to have an opportunity to fire on them as well. Seems like a way to turn it into a weak AoE damage power, and I'm surprised I don't see this addressed anywhere.

Well you might be right, maybe I just don't notice. I'd expect Regen's clicks and Rad's toggles to be pretty noticeable, but if most people are recoloring them it may be that I'm mistaking them for other things.

Not sure if serious, or only talking about non-farmers.

Yeah I did a Rad super-team back in the day and stacked AM is amazing. With enough on the team you can have it perma even at a very low level. Gobs of recharge and endless endurance at low levels like that is something everyone should experience.

I do occasionally see a Bots/FF Mastermind. Had one on a mid-level team not that long ago and the +def was a huge boon. I'd move around to stay inside the big bubble.