Luminara

Since this Praetor Duncan mission is sooooooooooooooooooo tedious, and Duncan has the AI of a turnip (bitch can't follow an un-Stealthed character moving without Sprint, and some genius decided to use the Founder's Falls safeguard map? i'm one ramp away from smacking someone), my brain started strolling down some odd paths. I don't know exactly what I was thinking at that moment, but it occurred to me that mastermind henches which slowly "faded away", needing combat in order to remain "alive", could be an interesting concept for the game. And I realized we can already do this. Crey Geneticists have that Reanimate power which resurrects fallen spawn members, but also slowly ticks away their HP. Sentinels have that lol-heal in Opportunity. Throw those two into a blender and stick a little umbrella on it. Now we have henches which, from the moment they're summoned, begin to "die", but as long as they're attacking enemies, they're healing themselves, omnomnoming on life force or kidneys or sex hormones or however you want to imagine it, keeping themselves alive. We take the Haunts from Darkness Control, give them these two mechanics and slap that down as the first hench summon (with a third hench, obviously, and minus the Self Destruct entry). Either the lieutenant Ghosts from Necromancy or the essences from Warshade Dark Extraction would fit thematically for the second henches (also minus Self Destruct), and a succubus would work for the third. All of them tick down their HP, like Reanimated Crey, but also "steal" HP with the Opportunity mechanic (WITHOUT needing to fill up a bar, just attach the heal to their attacks). I think both of the hench improvement powers should add -ToHit to their attacks, or include some other means of increasing their survivability so they're not in need of constant healing. Nothing extravagant, just a bit to balance out the constant HP depletion in concert with the mini-heals so they aren't one-shot fodder. Now we toss in three crappy attacks for the Mastermind and a thematically appropriate T7 and we have a new mastermind primary with an interesting twist, using nothing that isn't already in the game (mechanics, models, animations, powers). Okay, back to the ramp torture.

This is his part of the leaked sex tape.

Oh... so I probably didn't need to "leak" that sex tape in a vainglorious attempt to garner fame and adulation.

There aren't any Fortunatas in Super Mario, you n00b.

There's also, "I'm not a mod, BUT". I wonder if Modbutt is taken on Everlasting...

The best friend I ever had told me, "If you don't cross the line, you never know where the line is". Embracing that is the most terrifying thing I've ever done, it took me twenty years to take the first step in finding out where the line is. I've cast off the restraints of obedience, broken the cage of compliance. I live by my own rules now, and if I cross a line, then I'll know where it is.

OMG, why aren't any of you people reading?!?!?!?!?!?!? You're just inventing problems that would be solved (for one person) by Teletaunt!!! All you have to do to play the way you play now is waste spend a pool power selection that you would've used on something else pick up Provoke or Teleport Target or something (because forcing everyone else use pool powers is okay, as long as it's not the OP)! YOU'RE NOT READING!

@Snarky in drag, you heard it here! I bet he looks fabulous in a sundress. Someone follow him and take pictures!

Everything you've posted in this thread has been the same. "Condense all melee to a single play style so I don't have to take pool powers". I don't have to read that thirty times to get the gist. And yet, players take one power from a pool and skip the rest every day. Not because they have to, but because they want to. Hasten. IO mules. One more power to finish an attack chain. An extra movement power. A single bonus power to use on a team or pet. The game forces players to take at least one pool power by level 24, another by level 30, and four more pool or *PP powers after that, even if they don't want to. It's utterly impossible to level to 50 without taking some pool powers. Some of that is bound to be "a waste". Amazingly, no-one's died because they had to take a pool power and didn't want to. Yet. You might be the first after you have your heart attack from the stress it's apparently causing you. Also, as someone who builds for unsuppressed movement speed, I'm calling you out on your bullshit claims of Sprint/Swift/Hurdle being too slow (CJ doesn't buff Jump Speed, it's unnecessary unless you want the control mid-leap). I peg 50+ mph unsuppressed Run/Jump Speed on several of my characters, and 63+ mph Jump Speed on a couple. If you want to move faster, build for it. It's not that hard, especially now, with a thriving economy, increased drop rates on high value recipes, PvP recipes dropping from PvE enemies, enhancement catalysts dropping from PvE enemies, free bases and empowerment stations which use standard salvage, day jobs building up much more quickly and even Safeguard/Mayhem missions opened to all levels so you can go back and pick up that 15% +Movement Speed if you missed it. If you're slow, it's because you choose to be, and if you choose to be slow, you have no right to demand that the game change to compensate for that. If you'd like some assistance refining your builds to improve movement speed, ask.

Scrappers have access to 20 primaries and 13 secondaries. That's 260 possible combinations on one archetype, or about 1000 possible combinations across four archetypes. I'm a bit out of the loop, but I don't think there are any other MMORPGs with 1000 possible melee builds (and that's not including SoAs, Kheldians or left field builds which build and use melee attack chains from pool and *PP powers). Do you really expect all 1000 of those possible combos to be homogenized into a single class design just so you can avoid taking a pool power or building a character with better unsuppressed movement speed? Demanding that existing powers be taken away from players using them and shoving your play style down their throats, because you refuse to exercise the options available, isn't going to get you anything but grief. The HC team isn't going to yank Confront and/or Taunt out of the sets, no matter how hard you campaign for it, and the players you're arguing with aren't going to be shouted into agreement. Play a primary or secondary with a "gap closer", or use a pool power (Combat Teleport, Teleport, Mystic Flight, Speed of Sound, Spring Attack), or build better. Those are your options.

Someone's elaboration: All powers which buff Damage are currently flagged with "ignore enhancements and other boosts". That flag is why even if Damage enhancements could be slotted in Assault (simple enough to change that, it's just an entry in the power definition), they wouldn't have any effect. Removing that flag would allow a +Damage power, such as Assault, to be buffed by +Damage, but that would mean all +Damage the character is sporting would buff the +Damage power as well. Let's look at the controller base value for Assault, 15%. That base 15% would instantly jump to 15 * 1.15 = 17.25%, and it would remain there, because as long as Assault was active, it would continue to buff itself. If that controller had accumulated 23% +Damage from set bonuses, Assault's buff would then be 17.25 * 1.38 = 23.81%. If the player then slotted 96% +Damage in Assault, that would roll all the way up to (17.25 * 1.38) * 1.96 = 46.66%. Oh, the controller just popped a large red inspiration, 50% +Damage, so now the final total looks like (17.25 * 1.88) * 1.96 = 63.56%. That's why +Damage powers are flagged to ignore +Damage.

We upgraded his storage capacity. It was necessary. He kept filling up with Bollywood trivia and his load times were becoming cumbersome. Seriously, though, it's all archived on the wikis. Almost every patch note is there, plus individual page histories can be used to assemble a timeline, from inception to current day, for anything in question, and find at least a date for every change, even undocumented ones, via comparison of histories and patch notes. You just have to put a little time into sifting through the data.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=defender_ranged.dark_blast.life_drain&at=defender Look to the bottom right. Note the purple circle with a slash through it in the part of the power which lists the Heal stats. Hover your mouse pointer over that icon. The pop-up text reads, "Does not scale with enemy level". You'll find that flag on every power which affects both enemies and player characters, like Life Drain or Guarded Spin. The actual code used by the power definition files is " "ignore_level_differences": true/false, ". Any power or specific part of a power (each thing a power does has a separate attribute list and section of code within a definition file) without that flag and without it set to true is subject to purple patch level scaling. That flag was added shortly after the purple patch went live, to solve the problem of powers like Follow Up scaling buffs according to enemy level, resulting in lower buffs when attacking +X foes and higher buffs when attacking -X foes, a problem which only occurred because of the powers' interaction with the purple patch. The flag has never been used on any -Res powers, at any time, ever, in the entire history of the game. -Res has always been subject to purple patch mechanics, just like every other debuff. The HC team hasn't changed anything with -Res' functionality. Paragon didn't make any changes either. In fact, the only change to how -Res works, ever, other than the purple patch, was the prevention of Damage enhancements increasing +/-Res, by Cryptic, in July 2004. That's the only way -Res has changed between launch day and now. @macskull knows what he's talking about.

Why can't I pee? This is so unfair! It's not my fault I missed the ground! IT MOVED!

And piling -ToHit on the enemies accomplishes the same result as using Defense to hit the soft cap. The very purpose of adding that diminishing return on Defense would be sidestepped entirely by debuffing powers, create a massive disparity between buffs and debuffs and skew player choice toward debuffs. Not. Balanced.

Power sets aren't designed to be identical copies of one another, or to meet anyone's specified gaming expectations, they're designed around themes. What would be the thematic method for, say, Claws to teleport? What about Staff? How, exactly, does a Broadsword or Axe or having one's body covered in Thorns/Spines cause the wielder to appear in the middle of a spawn 60' away? Outline the powers you'd like to see created, how they should function and how they fit within the sets, then put them on the table as replacements, and have better reasons for replacing powers than "I don't want to use a pool power to do this" or "Other games are doing it, why don't we?", and you'll have a proposal worthy of further discussion.

Then it wouldn't be balanced. Return to square one.

Sit on it, Potsie.

The original Super Stunner.

What about... a static debuff resistance applied to teammates? X% non-scaling resistance to -Regeneration, -Endurance, -Recovery, -Rchg/Spd, -ToHit and -Perception for team members within 35', in concert with scaling Status Resistance applied to the defender him/herself. Thematic, team-oriented, still useful solo, applicable at all levels and not creepy since it's not improving sets or powers.

I can't believe how badly I fucked up the math here. I mean, woooooooow. How did I miss that? Why didn't any of you catch that? Am I the only nerd in the room? I just finished calculating the precise +Def/-ToHit numbers required to floor enemy hit chances for all minions through AVs, +0 through +4, in non-Incarnate, non-hard mode content. These are presuming that AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters, which con as +5, aren't actually receiving 5 ranks of extra Accuracy mods or ToHit bonuses (haven't looked into that yet, will get around to it eventually). And with -ToHit, bear in mind that the purple patch reduces their efficiency, so you'd need more -ToHit to compensate. These are just the target numbers to floor enemy hit chances (5%). +0 minions - 45% +0 lieutenants - 45.65% +0 bosses - 46.15% +0 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 46.67% +1 minions - 45.45% +1 lieutenants - 46.05% +1 bosses - 46.50% +1 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 46.97% +2 minions - 45.83% +2 lieutenants - 46.38% +2 bosses - 46.80% +2 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 47.22% +3 minions - 46.15% +3 lieutenants - 46.66% +3 bosses - 47.04% +3 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 47.44% +4 minions - 46.43% +4 lieutenants - 46.89% +4 bosses - 47.25% +4 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 47.62% When I started doing the math, it was for an entirely different reason, personal curiosity (well, that, and because i just spent three days troubleshooting a problem with my bike, cleaning the carburetor, then replacing the carburetor, then going over all of the fuel and vacuum lines twice, replacing the spark plug, checking compression, adjusting the valves, taking apart and putting the damn thing over and over and over again and getting no results, and finally noticing fuel in the airbox drain and realizing it was misfiring, likely due to a failing CDI... and needed to do something to relax). Everyone talks about 45% like it's a clamped number, but I know it isn't and I was interested in figuring out what the real numbers (plural, because, as can be seen above, it varies by rank and level) were. In the process of calculating those numbers, I realized I'd horribly misrepresented the results I posted here. @PeregrineFalcon, you were right. You were absolutely right. Your FF/Beam defender, presuming Maneuvers is in the mix, is already nearly soft-capping your entire team versus everything. Even a 10% +/-Special would take you right over the hit cap versus +4s. On the one hand, you can already do that if you also use Grant Invisibility, or if we presume that all of your teammates have at least one power granting a small amount of +Def, or a single Steadfast Protection Res/+Def (All) or Gladiator's Armor +Def (All), or even a very few easily acquired set bonuses. Or, hell, a single character using any kind of -ToHit AoE. My Dark/Martial dominator is almost soft-capped against +4 foes with one use of Fearsome Stare. That's the game today, and a defender offering a few percent +Def probably wouldn't even be notable. And on the other hand, it is overpowered. It's power creep. But the power creep/overpowering potential isn't what I see as the worst problem. It's that you're already there anyway with a couple of pool powers and/or teammates with little more than CJ or Hover, so this doesn't improve the experience for you outside of end game content. And it's just a single example with a single primary, a primary coupled with a secondary with no damage mitigation debuffs. If it's like this, overpowered and, oddly, underwhelming at the same time, with FF/Beam, it's going to be just as bad with most, if not all, in one way or another. I was wrong. I didn't take the time to do the math in the first place, and I didn't double-check the math when I got around to doing the equations. I was wrong and I apologize. Having gone back and reviewed the correct numbers, +/-Special would not be an advisable addition to Vigilance.

*/Willpower brute or scrapper, or Willpower/* tank. /Willpower won't overwhelm him with distractions. Select a simple primary or secondary, nothing with combos or anything like Follow Up. He doesn't need three trays of powers to figure out what to do with, just an easy way to survive and deal damage. Once he has a handle on that, he can expand to more complex builds. For a beginner, KISS.

Also... HA HA, YOU DON'T ADD SAGE OR FENNEL SEED TO YOUR SPICE MIX! SAUSAGE NOOB!