Cidri

I find the language here confusing. Does this increase minion damage specifically on the target you shot at, or in general?

My wish list for Force Field. I agree with all the people saying -resist feels just like a copy paste. Overall, FF is very knockback-dependent. What foils knockback? Fly does. I want a -Fly on Force Bolt, Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb and and Dampening Bubble. FF Powers that move stuff around are foiled by fast opponent. I want a slow effect in Repulsion Field and and Dampening Bubble. That last one would be amazing, a large slow bubble. Similar to the one in the blaster's /Martial or &cold, but larger and more powerful. I don't think Force Bolt and Repulsion bomb needs to debuff resistance, I think they need something similar to damage. The problem here is that the Defender AT that is supposed to be strongest with this, having it as a primary, doesn't get decent damage out of damage. So how about a -Hp debuff? Targets are woozy and are easier to take out for a little while? Somewhat like Spectral Wounds in that it wears off, only Hp debuff instead of damage. Similar to -Res in effect, but not a copycat. I agree with those thinking the bubbles you put on others could give the grey bar extra life whose name escapes me now at 1 am. This would give FF a pseudo-heal, as you can reapply the bubbles to grant more grey bar when you see people getting hurt. It would also create sort of a theme, you increase hp and you reduce hp. Finally and most important, Dispersion Bubble should protect from sleep. I don't understand why it has this achille's heel now that Faraday Cage exists. Perhaps a -damage debuff on enemies inside the bubble?

No defence at all until upgrade sounds really nasty!

Another thing that can prevent teleport is if the mobs have recently been teleported, if I recall. I did check for that. But I have not done serious testing, only played along with someone with Fold Space.

Things get stunned, but not teleported.

Practical experience shows that Fold Space is much stronger than Wormhole in what it can teleport. With both powers on the same team at +4, Wormhole always failed to teleport anyone and Fold Space always succeeded.

I won't complain about Wormhole's ability to stun. It has a really slow animation for a Controller AoE stun, but it doesn't announce what it is doing and the stun effect is not bad. (Tip - a Stun Grenade will enhance any AoE stun a lot). But I am complaining about the weak teleport in Wormhole, especially compared to Fold Space. Fold Space can be taken at level 14 in a power pool. Wormhole can be taken at level 26 in a main power set. Yes, Wormhole does more than teleport, has range, and a faster recharge. But it is also the signature power of the Gravity Control set - what really marks you as different than other controllers. Where this shows is at higher levels of difficulty. Fold Space has no issues teleporting a +3 boss. Wormhole simply can't do this. The problem with this is that it is easy to not use wormhole to actually teleport. So you give up, make a bind for "power_execute_location target" and basically forget Wormhole teleports at all. And that is a huge loss to the style Gravity Control set - in my opinion Wormhole is the signature power of the set. Yes, it is also distinguished by high damage, and some may consider Propel the signature power of the set, but TBH, Propel is not all that great. So please, either increase the magnitude of Wormhole's teleportation to match or exceed Fold Space, or nerf fold space so that it doesn't outshine Wormhole. And nerfing is to be avoided, so I suggest the buff to Wormhole.

I honestly don't care so much for the S/L defense of blasters getting weaker. What I worry about are the sets that have defense to some types of damage, resistance to others. Such as Ice Armor and Stone Armor. Combined with the massive +ToHit mobs get at the new higher difficulty levels, I feel this is a heavy blow to defense-based toons. But this is all testable. I hope people take their defense toons to Brainstorm and see what they can do.

As a defender I mostly took Sonic Blast because of the -Resistance. And that is now nerfed. Still, I think this is a good change, as it gives Defenders an actual choice of which blast set to take. With the old setup, a Defender that did not pick Sonic Blast was gimping themselves, and if one option is obviously better than all the others, that removes choice rather than adding choice. I was thinking, maybe Fire Blast for a Defender could get some debuff effect. As it is, its additional effect is damage, which does not benefit from a Defender's high debuff multipliers. To add Fire Blast to the list of viable defender secondaries. Perhaps one of the more obscure debuffs we rarely see. AustinSmith wrote: Final conclusion: the changes to Sonic (on a defender at least) make little difference in engaging general mob spawns or clearing through missions, however, the -Res has dropped noticeably enough that the DPA cannot compensate to the degree the -Res was worth before against harder targets such as a pylon, and through inference, an ArchVillain. It is true that a solo Blaster's or Defender's effectiveness is not much changed, a Defender is usually in a team environment. A reduction in the -Res dramatically changes how much the Defender contributes to the team. This should be compared to other Defender secondaries and the effect of their debuff component - for example, Dark Blast gives a significant -ToHit and thus contributes to the entire team's survival.

If the new version of Afterburner didn't exist, the flight modifications would be almost purely beneficial. But because it exists but isn't perma, it seems to be a nerf. I actually think many flight aficionados would have a better gut feeling about the changes if the proposed new Afterburner wasn't there.

English wasn't invented - its made up of the dregs of the languages of the people that invaded Britain. 😄 But this ended almost 1,000 years ago, so it is all prescribed. And then English mugged Latin. Except what little Latin remained from the roman occupation. And then English spread like a germ across the world when Britain invaded other places - and robbed those countries of some of their words. Yes, it is a mess. That's why we love it! 😄

This is how I think I will use flight in the future. This is from reading this thread, not from testing. Please correct me if I have misunderstood. If I have understood things right, these changes are 99% an improvement to me. Hover works much as before. This would still be my default combat mode to save end and also because I don't like to move too fast indoors because collisions. Fly now works as the live version of Fly + Afterburner but with a lower end cost. [Edit: And no affects only self] Instead of using a toggle that switches between Fly and Hover, I now use a toggle that turns Fly on and off, while keeping Hover on constantly. With Hover and Fly together, I get the maneuverability of Hover and the speed of the live version of Fly + Afterburner. I also get Hover's defense bonus. However, the end cost is pretty high. Does not really matter when traveling, as I am not using any other powers at that time. This will be my default travel mode. With Fly, I also get the new version of Afterburner. This ups my fly speed cap This also increases my actual fly speed to that higher cap for a short time. This does not cost me a power choice and requires/allows no slotting. Because it is a toggle, the cooldown only begins once Afterburner shuts down, meaning I cannot make it perma. Does the fly cap of Fly + Afterburner differ from that of Hover + Afterburner? From the patch notes I think it does. On live I have a travel bind that first turns on Fly and then Afterburner with repeated applications. That should still work, but Afterburner will soon wind down. When it does, I still have the speed of the live version of Fly + Afterburner. Evasive Maneuvers is a separate power for extreme combat mobility. Toons on live that have Afterburner will now have Evasive maneuvers and the Luck of the Gambler I pony there will still be there and work. The end cost of Hover + Evasive Maneuvers is lower than that of Hover + Fly. The fly speed of Hover + Evasive Maneuvers is lower than that of Hover + Fly. Hover + Evasive Maneuvers has the flight control of the live Afterburner [Is this different from the flight control of Hover? I never noticed any difference] Protection against that most annoying, -Fly Noncombat defense buff. This power is a bit trickier to make a bind for. I could use a bind that switched between Fly and Evasive Maneuvers (keeping Hover on constantly) More likely I will use Evasive Maneuvers as an emergency power to manually turn on in missions with a lot of -Fly from opponents. I could also simply respec it to something else. But i do not NEED to respec it - my builds will work as they are.

If group fly only ever affected you and your pets/minions, I think that would be an improvement over the proposed version. The option to either affect [me+pets] OR [me+pets+teammates] or even [me+pets+friendlies] would be better still. But if I had to pick one of these, I would go for [me+pets] only.

This is exactly what an afterburner is IRL. The name in its current utility annoyed me quite a bit before i got used to i. The current afterburner ought to be named something like "Tailwind". I am not suggesting these names in the patch, where the patched Afterburner does exactly what an afterburner ought to do. That said, I am very unlikely to ever pick up the new afterburner, especially if it keeps the annoying FX. This change will force me to make respecs on about a hundred different toons. 😮

Personally, I do like the speed buff from Speed boost but not the flight from Group Fly. At the moment, these two are the same option with Null the Gull. As Group Fly is likely to become much more common, could these be made two separate options with the gull?