DrunkFlux

He's being hyperbolic. But in all seriousness, bio armor kind of depends on destinies to hold itself together at high levels, as I mentioned its always been vulnerable to defense cascades due to effectively being willpower in that it has smash/lethal/toxic(rather than smash/leth/psi) resist and only defense against elemental damage types and energy damage types. Its actually very difficult to plug its holes with IOs, in the same manner as it is to plug willpowers holes with IO's. Arachnos widows have a huge -defense in some of there psionic attacks, so they can "crack" a bio armor easily. Radiation damage types also crack it easy. Many tank veterans also consider bio armor very weak largely due to it not handling late game content that well or custom AE archs with lots of debuff effects. It's strong at low-mid levels and against "brute force" mobs(that is, mobs with zero effective debuff effects such as the pre-patch old council, and cimerorans to a degree ect). It also loses when it needs to make to-hit roles against enemies with high defense(and loses decisively to at that) or lots of -tohit such as circle of thorns ghosts(of which it has no proper defense against, requiring focused accuracy or targetting drone or ageless radial to enable many of its powers to hit). This is all from LIVE, btw, not the upcoming patch changes.

I have a DB/bio stalker I've had and had maxed out for years, and i'm pondering rerolling her to something else with regen myself, just because of how these changes will effect her and her theme. I suspect many people will abandon bio armor 100% until the changes are brought back to something more reasonable. it doesn't even have much in the way of debuff resistances, so anything that has any kind of a counter to its abilities can shut it down, and its even vulnerable to to-hit debuffing and enemy defenses.

This lets brutes be a good alternative to tankers and do the same job, which i was always fine with. I mean on live it used to be brutes were THE desired archtype for veterans looking to play tank roll, I think the idea is the brute and tanker to not overshine one another. Pick your poison sort of thing. May actually get me to play brutes. I'm a defensive player by nature anyways, even on higher damage AT's.

Is not 85% better and easier to manage than 82.5?

I guess as a stalker player i'll weigh in on it, and this'd be kind of "exploity". Shield charge not breaking stealth would mean if you paired it with any set with a good PBAoE such as say, street justice's spinning strikes, you could effectively use shield charge, hit the group of enemies, then immedietly follow up with spinning strikes and have the "hidden" modifier apply to the crits. Or even exploding shurikin. If I'd known it didn't break stealth i'd have used it but even if I had, I'd understand this change as it would definently have been silly that your not losing hidden. All this means is if you shield charge, you could simply use placate prior to activating any AoE that can crit like you would any other set combination.

This'll gimp(yes, gimp) my ninjitsu/energy aura stalker if it were to go live, purely and exclusively because I use that alongside unleash potential. At best, i'd just be activating it but i kind of LIKED the crash version on my stalker as I would use that to not only exceed soft cap but also help my endurance management. This change kind of guts that. It may sound good on paper to make it more practical for a less experienced player, its not so much viable for a veteran who's combining the effect with pools such as unleashed potential. It'll just be back to skipping the t9s for me on defensive toons, because i'd already be at soft-cap defense on a good build to begin without it, freeing a slot for other things. But also freeing up 3 slots for other things on my stalker as there'd be no reason to take unleash potential, it'd just be back to taking regular fighting pool again, killing build diversity.

The change to elude will make using elude + unleash potential no longer viable, but also make it largely pointless to even bother taking elude as your already expected to be soft-cap defense, that its only good for its defense debuff resists which, if your a tanker you'll already be about 5% from hard cap defense debuff resistance to begin with, and still likely about 10-15% above soft-cap in most content. Elude ultimately becomes even more skippable now for non-stalkers with this change. It'd be more valuable if it also provided resistances.

Not sure if its still possible but one could setup a set of binds to use slap AND smack in a row. On live it used to be possible to endlessly rapid chain-slap-smack people 😄

Even without having played on +5 on test I can already as a min/maxer state that my builds I'm always including things like leadership: Maneuvers and tactics 'specifically' to counter-act against things like increased defenses/to hit on mobs in hard mode, even if I almost never actually play hard mode content. If I have time I may have to port over my widow and my newest stalker to test for some 55 runs. My widow is made with making even the crappiest teams excell on 54, and 55 content likely won't see any changes to her build due to the +18 or so tohit she gives everyone with TT: Leadership and mind link. Likewise, my stalker has a +12 or so to-hit from tactics(+7) and targetting drone(+5). And i'm pondering slotting changes to try and get the kismet +6. Both builds always have a lot of accuracy from set bonuses to begin with and i'll be switchin from agility to vigor before long on the stalker. But heres a tip for everyone: Start stacking leadership powers more. Seriously, especially maneuvers and tactics, there isn't really a limit on how high you can crank your to-hit and defense values, while there is a soft-cap for defense having more than the soft-cap simply means it can harder for enemies with -defense to defense cascade you successfully if you've enough over the soft-cap. If you have even 4 people with leadership tactics I guarantee thats going to make the drop in to-hit chances feel like a drop in a bucket. Good min/max builds CAN overcome being on a bad team but a good team composition will overcome 'any' challenge even a min/max build may struggle to solo, even if they aren't 'all' min/maxed its about bringing things to the table. Leadership stacking actually something I frequently see LACKING in teams, often only brought by people playing support toons. You don't HAVE to be a support toon to bring leadership powers. And they always ALWAYS stack. They make take some endurance but seriously thats why we load out toons with so many endurance management tools or even just throw ageless at it. And you don't HAVE to take leadership at lower levels where your not going to be running 55 anyways, you could easly slip maneuvers/tactics or assault/tactics at levels 47 and 49 respectively in fact tactics is one of my most commonly taken powers AT 49.

That kind of works for me, heck maybe the repeatables being soloable will give me incentive to mess around in the Labyrinth, as outside of raids I had no reason to, and in fact only entered it 'once' on one of my new tankers(life had kind of gotten in the way in a bad way when it comes to participating in anything raid related in this game, time zones specifically).

Personal issue I have with costume unlocks is what if the content needed to unlock them gets outdated enough that newer players struggle to get it unlocked because people have moved onto other content in the time? That kind of creates a soft-fomo problem, not to mention some players may be offline when the issue goes live and may be in a life situation where they cannot get online enough while the content is still hot, preventing them from acquiring the outfit they'd otherwise be happy to acquire. I'd be happy if there was also a solo path for unlocking said pieces.

If galaxy city tunnel entrance is being opened back up, does this mean we'll be seeing Galaxy City moving forward in the future? A galaxy city 2.0? Also masterminds being given the ability to apply the set IO bonuses to henchmen means this'd be a huge buff for me, as I tend to go almost all-in on sets as a player in general anyways. Eh, makes sense, thugs generally respect a "MIGHT IS RIGHT!" outlook and so if you were just the type of mastermind who never ever attacks, why should they show you much respect? Be a leader an lead by example, not a narc barking orders :).

It doesn't feel like your really 'dominating' your enemy when your doing so from a distance, and dark/dark absolutely ruins the existence of everything when your up close with them. Seeing this post makes me want to take my dark/dark for a spin again, in fact.

This is a combination I used for one of my mains on live, and i consider this combination, on defenders especially to be the ultimate "Budget build" for newcomers and veterans alike: Maxed defenses using power build up/power boost before farsight and times juncture Flooring enemy recharge so they have even less attacks with distortion field + rain of fire makes them not do anything from trying to veinly escape the field. Can be made sustainable even with just SO's and incarnate powers(Cardiac Alpha + Clarion) with minimal IOs. Some thoughts: Fire breath is also a solid power if you use it right before fireball, as the DoT it applies will hit its final tic often as the fireball lands. This is more burst-fire AoE tactic, not as necessary on homecoming(thanks to inferno being good) as it was on live(where Inferno was trash thanks to end crash), but can easily be a good hold-over until higher amounts of influence and merits are available to flesh the build out on more advanced IOs bring inferno recharge to a more competitive range. If using Clarion and willing to risk a few seconds of downtime with farsight, use Radial Clarion for the huge boost, then power boost/power build up for even HIGHER defense numbers. Not always recommended though, as a few seconds of downtime may be all the mobs need to score some hits or a defense cascade. But it can be a strong opener for a tougher fight, especially if summoning lore pets as they benefit from the increased boost.

Honestly I think people are biting more into the comedy of it rather than the bait itself, it was amusing.