William Valence

I did that because I didn't think there was a big enough difference between Partial Core Revamp and Core Paragon. May have been unneeded, but it was intentional to have a power bump from the Revamp to paragon. Yes. Well, no you shouldn't even have the option, but as it happens for KB there is an enhancement type for that. As it also happens there's an incarnate power that does global enhancement slotting, so that presents itself as a good way to introduce a "universal" slotting, because that's what the Alpha slot is for. I'm sure you have a reason to say this, but I can't possibly come up with a way to have this sentence make sense. Can you please try to rephrase? How is it taxing every power in the build? Am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

vvvv This is why it doesn't vvvv Also I haven't see where the HC devs said that universal KB->KD should take one enhancement slot in a build, mind linking it for me? My search-fu seems to be coming up short.

Alpha slot doesn't prevent you from slotting for set bonuses. You can still slot for damage with Musculature alpha, no reason to say you couldn't continue slot the KB->KD with the proposed Restraint Alpha slot.

Damage, even for energy blast, is a function of recharge, endurance, and area of effect. If damage is lackluster it's more due to an unfavorable ratio of those than it is the presence of KB. And my issue is that there seems to be an undue entitlement to control over the KB in powers for no cost. People want to control the effects of their powersets with no cost, and I'm wondering why they get to. The reasoning seems to be that people think that KB is a universally negative effect or a limiter effect, which I don't necessarily agree with. Which is why I'm arguing against a cost free universal solution. However there is a KB to KD slotting option, and Alpha slots are made specifically to apply global slotting to all powers that accept them. Seems like the best compromise between maintaining consistency in there needing to be a slotting cost, and providing a "Universal" option. I'll bite; how does that gimp a build? You lose one enhancement type of a usually secondary/tertiary type to trade for universal KB/KD. When range is one of the enhancements and Control is not, then the enhancement we don't have would have been a soft control like sleep or fear. Seems like a fair trade. Does the lack of one of these enhancement types gimp builds worse than any slot investment ever could? You keep the 45% Sch A and 33% for sch B on Core Paragon. Both damage and range are beneficial to sets that have KB. And according to the claims on the number of slots needed to remove KB in a full build you do gain a good number of slots to fill with other enhancement types.

No that's a bad idea. It enforces the idea that a person gets to decide what effects are bad and remove/change them without cost. How much control should a person have over their powers? Should I be able to remove the Afraid/Avoid in Burn or caltrops? As much as people say it, knockback isn't bad, nor is it the end of the world to have. If people really want to get rid of it it should come with some kind of investment. Alpha slots just happen to be purpose made to accommodate that type of situation.

Fuck it, make it an Alpha slot. People want the reduce their slot investment, well that's one of the primary purposes of the Alpha slot. *Restraint Alpha Boost* Boost Core boost Radial Boost Total core revamp Partial Core Revamp Partial Radial Revamp Total Radial revamp Core Paragon Radial Paragon Primary KB ->KD KB ->KD KB ->KD KB ->KD KB ->KD KB ->KD KB ->KD KB ->KD KB ->KD Secondary x Dam 33% Range 20% Damage 45% Range 10% Range 33% Damage 16.5% Damage 33% Range 10% Range 20% Damage 16.5% Damage 45% Range 33% Damage 33% Range 20% Tertiary x x x x x -Tohit 20% EndMod 33% x -Tohit 20% EndMod 33% Disorient 33% ED Bypass x 1/3 1/3 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 2/3 2/3

Alright, then the question is, how much less damage? If you spawn them in at even level their damage goes up 25%. Against +4 targets their damage goes up 320%. If I remember my parsing correctly the T1 pets, even at a -2, tend to out-damage bosses and support Lts. At +4x8 they should do about half the damage of Boss/combat Lts. With the Lts at .3x for -5 levels compared to .15x at -6. Lts and boss being roughly equal damage output at +4. If you reduce their damage enough to keep them normal at +0, to avoid buffing them in normal content, then the minion henchmen will outpace Boss/Lts at +4. Dramatically increasing their performance. I just can't honestly say that I agree they need it. I personally think they don't need it. Oh, and this would also jack the power of proc builds through the roof. That would be an absurd increase in power from that too.

This is something you have to be really careful of. MMs are not really in a bad spot. There's inter-set imbalance that should really be addressed, but MMs as a whole are a winner archetype. My Necro/Dark, Mercs/Traps, and Ninja/Time were all able to solo Manticore, Penny, and Ms Liberty in RV when they were on test before the shutdown (All +4 with pvp DR). Penny and Ms Liberty without incarnate slotting. With Alpha and Interface I dropped them both at the same time. If you improve MMs in this way, what do you take away to make it balanced? Don't get me wrong, MMs are my primary AT, but if you don't re-balance them then MMs just stronger and that seems gratuitous. And if you re-balance the T1s so that they do less damage while being summoned at your level, aren't you just changing the appearance of the numbers without changing the result? Isn't that a waste of time/resources?

Wait WIP as in something the devs had tucked away? If so that would explain why the changes looked so familiar. It's been bugging me all day.

No Idea what level you are, but once you get wormhole you can be much more forceful. Especially with tanks. Just wormhole a group onto the group the tank is herding and lockdown both.

I'm sad to see a lack of probably the most disgustingly powerful proliferations here. Two /Darkness Affinity Controllers. Make them Grav/Dark and say they're the personification of a Binary Black hole. Grossly OP combo with RP hook to boot.

I missed that then. That is giving me serious deja vu, but I can't put my finger on why.

Doesn't look like that's what they did. The Power up changes, from what it appears, were made to the three sets that have Power Boost instead of build up. It looks to work like a super Power Build Up. The animations I'm not entirely sure on. The only animation change I see is the 2.5s animation for TF and I'm not sure what animation that would actually be. Unless there's a different change to Energy assault I'm missing.

Gotcha, I think I see why. Dark consumption doesn't have an entities autohit tag, so like @Trickshooter said it only cares about the tohit roll. Consume has an entities autohit "Foe" which guarantees the endurance resistance. If the power didn't hit you wouldn't get that, so they make the power autohit, and skim the attack roll to see if the other effects apply.

IIRC "@Forcehit" is streakbreaker. So it's saying the effect is applied if you succeed the roll "If(@TohitRoll < @Tohit)" or if streakbreaker kicks in.

People worry too much about other peoples characters.

To what extent do we get to control the effects of powers we don't like? Should we, or a member of our team be able to remove afraid/avoid magnitudes? Should the team leader be able to give the enemy TP protection because they don't like pulling with TP foe, or Wormhole? Should they be able to turn off intangible powers, and prevent players from being able to use them? To what extent does the team leader have control over me, and where do you say their control goes too far?

I mentioned this earlier in the thread as a similar side thought. There are struggles to this though, the primary being that you have to have a way to avoid taking double damage from AoE attacks.

Even if the attempt at adding a mechanic to EM isn't the method most people want to go, the rest of my previous idea would hold up. Give Energy transfer the animation from Telekinetic blow (with EM Fx) to increase it's DPA 69%. Give Total Focus Energy Transfer's current animation to increase it's DPA about 23%. While the singular DPA of ET would not be the same as it was way back when, spreading the animation time reduction would reduce total time in the two power's animations from 4.62s (If you just reduce ET to it's old animation) to 3.806s. Still doing 8.12 scale damage in that time. Then if you think something still needs to be done, give stun a -regen or something.

I'm curious. What change did they make between the shutdown and now that brought Ninjas past Thugs for damage? They never used to do more damage.

You can't remove the slot so may as well stick something in there.

Unless something changed from live to now that I'm unaware of, between the Bruiser doing more damage than Oni, Enforcers being absurd, and Gang War, Thugs should do more damage in pretty much any situation. ST or otherwise.

Personally I think MMs have farily decent PPPs and APPs. About the only thing I could think of wanting from APPs is Power mastery A La Defenders.

If you're looking for combos Bots/Time -> Hits all the boxes for everything you could want. Sets complement each other well. Thugs/Storm -> Quite possibly the most damage a MM combo can output. DS/Therm -> Do you want henchmen with 90% resistance to everything, because that's how you get henchmen with 90% resistance to everything. Necro/Dark -> Classic combo. Works. Can solo just about everything, but is just less consistent than the above three. Ninja/Time -> Ninjas can live? Who'da thunk it? Mercs/Trap -> About the only way I've been able to play mercs to a high level. If you're looking for a breakdown on the secondaries and comparisons of them, I personally think that they're fairly well balanced. The above are more or less outliers due to combination rather than simply being better support sets.

May as well just cross reference my thoughts from the other poison buff thread.