EyeLuvBooks

I've long felt that Granite players got a raw deal because except for VEATS and their Spider Backpack thing Granite is the ONLY power in the game that forces an appearance change on you. I can have a 2' tall Pixie with SS/Invul if I want but the minute the same costume is put under Granite...boom...ugly stone person.

I'm sure someone would find a way to exploit that. Not sure how but... Honestly, I just want my pets to be a LITTLE more survivable in the high-end content

I would like to say a few things as the proud owner of a Nature/Plant Controller (my first 50 since the return, btw): Lifegiving Spores is SUPPOSED to give a small Heal because the rest of the set gives great Heals. Where it shines is that it also restores End which many sets do not. Wild Bastion grants a Heal AND Absorb for everyone in the range which is GREAT! The End cost for LS is minuscule and not worth slotting for so you drop in one Heal IO and one End Mod IO and forget it. My biggest complaint is that I forget to turn it off when I leave the spawn point but that's my issue and has nothing to do with the power itself.

That's nice that you feel that way. Other players might not. What makes your opinion carry more weight than theirs? Having powers that ONLY work on a team would be great IF the game required a team. The TFs have even been set so they can be played solo. Given the relatively high number of -Def enemies in the game, I think the set could use a little love.

TBH I was surprised they applied AoE to Speed Boost. Given that Nature is likely going to eclipse Empathy and the primary Healing/Buffing set (if it hasn't already), IMHO Empathy could use a little love. To have AoE SB and NOT AoE Clear Mind is nuts IMHO

The connotation are different because of our culture. I think it's pretty obvious that running from it so far (for DECADES domestic abuse was almost a cottage industry that everyone ignored as long as it stayed in the home) has not worked. We need to teach people that it's unacceptable. We do that by punishing people who do unacceptable things. We don't take the spray paint away from ALL the kids, we simply punish those who use it to do insulting or destructive things. And, again, I don't see anyone advocating the removal of costume pieces available for men AND women when they say that 'female MM pets would be bad.' Really?

Careful...now you sound like you want everyone to play how YOU like to play. That never flies. If you want a challenge for a SG filled with people who feel the same way, level to 35 and lock your xp gain. There...if +4/x8 isn't good enough you can go looking for enemies up to 15 levels above you!

I have one Sonic toon because I hate the sound fx to the point that I have to turn them off.

Obviously, because some people think it's broken.

You beat me to it. What...I build a toon JUST so my Rage won't crash (with selective tuning of IOs or whatever) and now the guy throwing SB around SCREWS me? No thanks! Set it up to be Perma's with no crash rather than this.

I think that the proposed changes are great for a variety of reasons: An instanced raid will prevent other players in the zone from being locked out. I don't currently know of anyone who has attempted a MSR and then had to stop because someone else wanted to run one but this feature allows for it. If we want the game to continue to thrive we need to look to the future. I would make the minimum level 30 instead of 35 because a lvl 30 can still contribute to the effort in a meaningful way. I'm okay with this being a deliberate anti-PLing measure because we already have several OTHER ways to do that and I don't think we need any more.

Might be nice if this power did SOMETHING useful. Something that a few of Epic Pool sets have is a form of defense/Mez Mitigation as a click power that's impossible to make Perma (so you can't use it mindlessly...it's still tactical). I'm okay with this idea rather than having the full protection of the bubbles and shields. Another suggestion: Make the various bubbles/shields self-targeting ONLY when running solo. The minute you hit a team, the value gets cut for the character AND the teammates. After all, you're spreading the same amount of protection around to more teammates, right? With this idea soloists can have the full benefits of the buff they would normally use on others if they want. If they team, everyone understands that the buffs will be diminished because they're being spread around the team. However, they would still stack from different casters so a team of 4 FF toons could STILL enjoy that wonderful softcap goodness...they just need to work together...you know...as a team. I'm pretty sure the players asking us not to make the game EASIER can't object to us actually making it a bit HARDER...

I think you pretty much just outlined why many of us think that MORE powers that can be Perma'd is a bad idea...

I disagree. One of the things I always hated about the Market on Live was that most if not all of the high-end IO recipes required salvage that ONLY dropped from low-end spawns. Rather than just play the game (as intended), the uber-wealthy players who were on the game for 2+ years with very little to buy immediately began buying Alc Silver for 100K or more each. So now that new player with one toon who just wants to get his Stamina slotted so he's not sucking wind all game has to spend MILLIONS for lvl 25 common IOs. Bases also used to cost Prestige so if you wanted storage as a new player you either joined a SG (some of who had downright predatory practices) or you stored stuff in the Vault and went at it alone. Now, common IOs are cheap and everyone can use them and that makes me delirious. The people who manipulate the Market for their own profit STILL make billions so they're happy. New players not interested in the Market and crafting can still sell their stuff for Inf to buy common Enhancers so THEY'RE happy. If you want things to go back to how they were, I STRONGLY suggest that the high-end recipes be changed so they ONLY need salvage dropped by high-end mobs.

Odd that you should say this when I distinctly recall when the game was Live that a significant portion of the character on the servers, and by that I mean a good 3/4ths of them, were BELOW lvl 30. In other words, most of the characters played in the game were 30 or under. Hardly 'frivolous.' If you doubt me, find some numbers to tell us all how many of the CURRENT toons are above 30. I'm thinking a majority of them will also be below 30. The first 32 levels are trivial to YOU, not necessarily to everyone else.

Mercs are below Ninjas as far as popularity...that chart shows nothing about how effectively they play. You got any data that shows how many of each set get to 50?

And THIS right here is why I'm not a game designer. I profess to be a MM expert given all my THOUSANDS of hours playing them and I never even thought of putting it into the Upgrade powers. Well done!

Yeah...perma Unstoppable would be BEYOND broken. TBH I'd rather that is had a lesser effect and a smaller crash. I often don't use it because I know I'll crash halfway through the fight. BTW, not everyone builds with recipe sets for max Rechage, perma-Hasten etc and I really do wish that we'd stop using such builds as the benchmark for everything.

It's good to enjoy what you do lol. I still maintain that if TW is OP then it's a corner case of a few players who actually understand the game and build/play their characters well versus the other 90% of the players. In my self-test that I did earlier today the spawns I fought without using Brawl to keep Fury high took, on average, one additional attack to put down. If you don't have Momentum, that one attack can take a LONG time. I'd also like to see numbers and actual video on a TW in real team play. Maybe one of those crying for a nerf can take a mid-level TW character, join a non-farming, non-raid team and just play for an hour or two. I'd watch every second and COUNT how many time the TW hit an attack and the spawn was dead by the time the hit arrived...or how often that crucial (because of Momentum) first hit landed only to duff the second hit because the EB Blaster knocked the target across the room. Show me numbers on THIS before you go crying for a nerf on something. If TW were THAT OP the S/L farmers would be creating them if droves as we speak. If anything, I think we need to nerf Spines and Fire Armor. I mean, if they're SO popular they MUST be OP...right?

This is one of those 'I agree that something needs to be done but I'm not sure what' threads. MMs are (or were on Live) very popular but many don't get into high-end play because of the per survivability. At lower levels it's fine but north of the mid to upper 30s teams start steamrolling and nobody wants to be THAT GUY who has to either miss out on some of the action to resummon or ask people to wait. I would much rather see the Supremacy buffed slightly so not every MM player felt they HAD to take every Pet buff available. I don't think the original Devs wanted players to feel as though they HAD to build characters a certain way. I'd like to see numbers (because research is fun!) but I'd be willing to be that NOBODY is going to call MMs OP at this time so a slight buff to the Inherent power isn't likely to break anything.

So...based on these numbers, Spines and SS are the two most-played sets for melee toons! OMG they MUST be OP! Why would they be so popular if they weren't! Obviously the number-crunchers call for nerfs NOW! As I said, TW is a great set and only OP in edge cases, not as the norm.

I'd like to chime in on this as a player of MANY MMs now and on Live. 1) If MM pets go stupid (I mean...MORE stupid...) if they don't have a melee attack then this is easily solved: Give them a fast-firing, low-DPS attack that will recharge before Brawl does. As was mentioned above, the Lich almost never goes into melee because it always has a ranged power ready and it prioritizes those. A low-DPS attack will keep the pets from being OP and it dissuades them from entering melee unless the enemy does it first. 2) PLEASE give the pets a melee attack that's worth a fiddler's damn! Once we have the 'Leroy Jenkins' problem fixed then we need to address the fact that the melee attacks for the pets simply suck. Give them a slow-recharge but moderate damage melee attack that will be ready (because they've been at range so far) when the enemy charges in. The pet gets one good attack before launching it its regular attack chain. Not that I encourage this for ALL pets, even the ones like Zombies and Ninjas because it's not like their melee attacks are OP either. 3) As much as I can't refute the OP's suggestions, might I suggest that we fix Ninjas FIRST? IMHO they have more issues and perform worse than just about any Merc combo out there. I'm not saying that Mercs don't need some love but I'd like to see numbers on how many players get to even 40 with Ninjas let alone 50. I'm a triage kinda guy and I feel that the worst performers should be fixed first.

My initial reaction to this was 'why?' and then I logged into my list of (I won't say how many but it's a LOT) of toons and thought about it. "I've got an hour or so to play so I don't want to start anything big like an ITF or MSR. That means I can leave the 40+ alone for now. Say, that 20-something I was playing on 2 weeks ago is REALLY close to making the level where they get that (fill in the blank) power everyone says is REALLY cool. Yeah...let's do this!' So...yeah...if the coding isn't a mind-bender (I got no clues there, sorry) I'd upvote this.

This is why I advocated for a cap of 60 in the RWZ. 60 isn't enough to start a second League for Hami but it sure would make it easier to get 48 in for a MSR

Careful...you're throwing around numbers without knowing that of which you speak. Most players don't Farm for anything so using the rewards from a very small percentage of the population as your metric is useless. If 400 merits/100 million Inf is worth so little let's just give EVERY toon that much right now. Why not? It's just a pittance...right? See where this goes?