Luminara

Exploration is the first thing I do. New world, time to go walkabout! Must see what there is to be seen, find what there is to be found, aggro EVERYTHING... that last one happens despite my attempts to prevent it.

We'll both die of old age before that happens. I'll own your ass on rep in no time flat, though. STEP IT UP!

I don't know... I suspect just about every player alive would be at risk of head explodey if they encountered nothing but spawns of healers healing each other, making them nearly impossible to defeat. I know I'd have a serious meltdown. They'd probably hear my screams at the most distant point in the universe.

Doing so would imply that changing the names of a few powers is a complex, difficult task which would require an enormous investment of time and effort, rather than the simple and easily executed alteration that it is, thus indicating that they have little regard for or faith in our development team's intellectual capacity.

We have office maps with 17 elevators, floors with nothing but an S-shaped hallway connecting elevators (no rooms, no spawns, nothing but the two elevators on the floor), caves with empty rooms at x8 team size, office buildings opening into caves or sewers from the front door, sliding glass doors closing off empty 10' square rooms... proper map design wasn't one of the strong points of the original development teams.

Here's a short selection of possible names: Garbage For Animation Only Joke's On You Set Mule 1.848 Seconds Of Life You'll Never Get Back Idiot Identifier Tits On A Boar As can be seen in this screenshot, Provoke hit. Twice. The critter was Taunted, kept running, Taunted a second time, and it not only didn't stop, it ran right out of visual and targeting range. Here it is again. Provoke hit, critter just kept running. This one didn't stop running until it reset and moseyed back. These powers don't work any more. People have been complaining about excessive panic flight behavior in critters for a couple of years, and nothing's been done to fix it. It's reached the point of obviating an entire game mechanic. Clearly, there's either no desire to address the problem, or no capability to do so. The solution, then, has to be to change the names of Taunts so players aren't deceived into taking them for combat purposes. Give them names which appropriately reflect their ineffectiveness so it's clear that they're no longer intended to be functional, useful or serve any purpose other than filling a space in a set or pool.

There are 5 prisoners, not 3. You need to go to the south and free the other two.

I just replayed Long Jack's story arc (Striga chapter 2 in Ouroboros) because none of this sounded right. No "Forlorn Tunnel" in Striga, no missions to select one hostage out of three, nothing of the sort that I remembered from the last time I played through this zone's content. This isn't in Striga, it's in First Ward. Anna Palatine's arc. I'm out of time for testing this morning (farm to tend (real farm, not game)), so if someone else wants to step in and try to find the issue and a resolution, it's "Abused and Scorned Tho' We May Be (First Ward, Ch. 2)" in the 25-29 Flashback bracket. If not, I'll try to get to it in an hour or three.

You have a proc in Wormhole. Remove it, problem solved.

Sinister Six/Legion of Doom team-ups. An entire aspect of comic books, enemies working together, was almost entirely ignored. Instead of *Fs being major events in which multiple enemy groups pool their resources to take on the heroes/villains, multiple AVs/Heroes entering coalitions, crossovers between story arcs occurring... they ended up being typical story arcs, sending us to plod through a dozen "Go to this base and beat up the same bad guys" missions, with an AV crammed into the finale to differentiate them from ordinary story arcs. Why didn't Countess Crey and Arakhn conspire to break Doc Vahz out of prison so they could work together to create the ultimate hero killer? Why didn't the Center ever sit down with Nemesis to form an alliance? Because Cryptic and Paragon had tunnel vision when they made *Fs, followed the same stale formula they used for the base content, and just increased the minimum team size to make them "harder". The enemy group and/or AV is forgotten, cast aside, rarely or never seen again... and we spend our twilight days fighting Borachnos and Romans, instead of having our rogues' gallery dogging our steps. The closest we get to a cool Sinister Six/Legion of Doom scenario is the last arc in Faultline. Those bad guys weren't even working together and it was more interesting than any *Fs in the game. I don't care about the Manticore TF, to use one example, because I already have access to a long, tedious series of missions which culminate with me beating up Countess Crey. I don't care about any of the *Fs, because that's all any of them are, more of the same. I would care about a Manticore TF which features Countess Crey, Requiem and Dreck joining forces to put an end to me and my friends for all of the times we've interfered with their plans. That would be engaging, much more comic-booky, and that would provide a perfect, and completely rational, opportunity for the HC team to do what they're doing now, giving existing enemies extra abilities as the Hard Mode ramps up. What they're doing now doesn't capture my attention, or make much sense in the game world (how did those enemies gain those extra abilities? oh, we edited some files). I'd care about Hard Mode if it weren't more of the same with extra buffs/debuffs inexplicably thrown in.

Apparently, the answer to the question of what we're going to do with Empyreans in the future is... hijack threads with pointless, off-topic arguments about farming. 🙄

Hercules and Zeus Titans, and the Council/5th Column large robots, to name a few, have hit boxes which can't be passed through after they're defeated. I've been trapped in rooms by their hit boxes, forced to wait for them to completely despawn, one time too many and I'm here to bitch about it. Bitch bitch, moan, natter, gripe and groan. Now fix them. Please. Or I'll complain more.

Some napkin math: Assault: 0.39 endurance/second One Schedule A EndRdx SO = 0.39/(1+0.33)=0.293 endurance/second Two Schedule A EndRdx SOs = 0.39/(1+0.66)=0.235 endurance/second One Schedule D EndRdx SO = 0.39/(1+0.60)=0.244 endurance/second One Schedule A EndRdx level 50 IO = 0.39/(1+0.425)=0.274 endurance/second Two Schedule A EndRdx level 50 IOs = 0.39/(1+0.8332)=0.213 endurance/second One Schedule D EndRdx level 50 IO = 0.39/(1+0.764)=0.221 endurance/second Bonus: two Schedule D EndRdx level 50 IOs = 0.39/(1+1.4896)=0.157 endurance/second Dragon's Tail (dominator): 15.18 endurance One Schedule A EndRdx SO = 15.18/(1+0.33)=11.414 endurance Two Schedule A EndRdx SO = 15.18/(1+0.66)=9.145 endurance One Schedule D EndRdx SO = 15.18/(1+0.60)=9.488 endurance One Schedule A EndRdx level 50 IO = 15.18/(1+0.425)=10.653 endurance Two Schedule A EndRdx level 50 IOs = 15.18/(1+0.8332)=8.281 endurance One Schedule D EndRdx level 50 IO = 15.18/(1+0.764)=8.605 endurance Bonus: two Schedule D EndRdx level 50 IOs = 15.18/(1+1.4896)=6.097 endurance In a 4-attrib IO which includes EndRdx, changing the EndRdx attrib to Schedule D increases it from 18.6% to 33.4%, roughly equivalent to a current Schedule A SO. 3-attrib IOs with EndRdx would increase from 21.2% to 38.2%. And in a 2-attrib IO, it would go from 26.5% to 47.8%. With single attribute SOs and IOs, one SO or IO on Schedule D is almost as effective as two Schedule A SOs or IOs. Two level 50 IOs on Schedule D would reduce any endurance cost to barely more than a third of the base cost, without going into red for ED. I think gaining the Endurance Reduction of two current SOs or IOs with a single enhancement is too much. The end result would be Endurance becoming an irrelevant stat, something no-one has to pay any attention to, at all, even if the player isn't actively pursuing Endurance Reduction. Endurance cost is part of the balance equation for every power, so the developers would almost certainly be adjusting powers to compensate. It would also free up a lot of slots for a lot of builds, imposing a significant jump in power creep across the board, leading to more revisions. And I think it would skew IO set balance (some sets, like Obliteration, are designed to trade Endurance Reduction for other attributes), requiring a significant balance pass to redress that. I don't see this happening. You might be able to make a case for Schedule C, but not D.

Noob. 😛

I didn't know Depends caused torpor. Huh.

👆

I e-mailed myself once. I sent a nastygram back so I'd stop bothering myself. Seems to have worked.

This much. *holds up fingers*

It's team-oriented content, so I haven't experienced any of it. If/when it comes to solo content, I won't bother with it. I did the "hard mode" thing in I5, when I played a Kin/Elec defender with pool melee attacks instead of blasts, and I6, when I soloed a TA/A to 50. I'm not doing it again.

I didn't. I pointed out the functional difference between powers which allow players to crit or position for optimal attack, with powers which improve their survivability. Had I been comparing "armor" to debuffs, I would've reiterated what I said several pages ago, when I did directly compare the limitations of offensive toggles with the lack of limitations on self-affecting toggles. I can do that now, if you've forgotten, or if you'd like to throw another wild presumption out for me to demolish with facts. And none of what you're saying now is relevant to the post to which I responded. You claimed that it's perfectly fine for offensive toggles to be nerfed because Hide/Stealth have a delayed reactivation. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because critters see through Hide/Stealth when they're aggroed. It doesn't matter if you're out of combat long enough for Hide/Stealth to resume if you still have aggro because the critters which are aggroed on you don't drop aggro. Hide/Stealth aren't "armor", they're pre-combat positioning tools, combat avoidance tools, and Hide is a tool for bonus spike damage. It's not a data point of any pertinence to the topic, that topic being debuff/control toggles which aid the character in staying upright long enough to finish the fight. You simply jumped on the Hide/Stealth delay period as a talking point and made a completely fallacious claim that they were comparable. They aren't, in the same way Darkest Night isn't comparable to Incandescent Strike. Those powers may both have a 3.432s animation time, but they have different purposes and functions. It is a nerf. We previously had control over our offensive toggles, now we don't. We could decide to turn a toggle back on immediately, now we can't. We could choose to activate a different offensive toggle, one which we weren't using, now we can't. We could opt to leave the toggles off, now we have to stop and turn them off ourselves because they'll come back on even if we don't want them. We have reduced survivability and less flexibility, in exchange for... not having to press a key to turn a toggle back on. That's a nerf, and deliberately misrepresenting people as being short-sighted or unwilling to adapt when they point out that it's a nerf doesn't change the fact that it is a nerf.

The functionality of Hide/Stealth is entirely different in this context. Hide allows crits. Stealth gives players the opportunity to optimize the conditions of an imminent combat situation in their favor. They're not improving the player's survivability, they're improving the player's combat effectiveness. Moreover, they're binary. Hiding or Stealthing isn't a "chance to" not be spotted (yes, some critters have higher Perception, many Stealth powers have a lower than melee range Stealth radius, but that doesn't change the fact that they're binary). They don't reduce the enemy hit roll unless there's a +Def value attached to the power (before you jump on that, check the +Def on Stealth IOs). They don't reduce enemy damage output. They don't perform a hit check, they don't give critters a XX% chance to see the character, they don't check versus a "chance to" to determine whether critters are affected. Toggle damage mitigation is not a combat effectiveness tool, it's a survivability tool, and it's not binary in that context. It doesn't guarantee an outcome when used. The enemy affected by a ToHit debuff toggle can still land an attack. The enemy with a Damage debuff toggle affecting it doesn't deal 0 damage. The enemy standing in the control PBAoE toggle radius isn't guaranteed to be mezzed. And toggle damage mitigation doesn't directly improve a player's combat effectiveness. There are no crits granted by Snow Storm. Time's Juncture doesn't give a player the ability to sneak into the center of a spawn for optimal positioning, or waltz to the last room in a mission with zero aggro. Lightning Field doesn't force the AI to break combat momentarily so the player can gain a sudden advantage mid-combat. Comparing functionally different things simply because they happen to be toggles is like comparing a moped to an M1 Abrams.