Luminara

Travel power combat sets. Flight could circle an enemy and swoop down for one attack, pick up a critter and drop it from a height for another, etc. Leaping could perform multiple types of kicks and attacks involving parkour. Combat which actively utilizes travel powers, rather than simply exist in the same game with travel powers. Unfortunately, I suspect most of the attacks would be slow, in terms of animation time, and extremely unpopular.

When I have an epiphany while staring at Mids'. When I wake up at 3:43 a.m. and log into the game before putting the kettle on the stove for my morning coffee. When I level up to the mid-teens and realize I should stop long enough to slot some enhancements. When I don't mind using powers with longer animations. When I try to design a second costume and give up after an hour because the first one is already perfect.

Today is π Day. RESPECT THE π.

I'm one of the most aggressively unconventional players, bending archetype boundaries and making the game play my way. You're defending a pre-packaged, shrink-wrapped archetype and rabidly attacking people who suggest changes simply because you're comfortable. Which of us needs to crawl out of the box? I make it part of my life philosophy not to associate with people who advocate and encourage criminal behavior, say, for instance, trying to convince the HC team to commit fraud. You'll just have to play with yourself.

Take a look at melee archetypes. They have attack sets paired with defensive sets. Their defensive sets, generally speaking, are character-oriented. In other words, clicks or toggles which improve their survivability by increasing the character's Defenses, Resistances, Regeneration and other character attributes, or affect multiple foes simultaneously, such as PBAoE debuff toggles/clicks, to accomplish the same goal via reverse action (debuffing ToHit instead of buffing Defense, or debuffing Damage instead of buffing Resistance). Effectively, they gain the benefit of mitigation on every foe they encounter, which gives them the survivability they need to do what they were designed to do. That's synergy between melee attack sets and melee defensive sets. Dominators lack that. The control sets don't synergize with the assault sets in that way. Single-target controls provide single-target mitigation, which decreases in effectiveness as the size of the spawn increases. A dominator isn't going to be able to Hold or Stun 17 critters with his/her T2 single-target control. That dominator's single-target Immobilization does even less in terms of mitigation, and the same statement can be applied to the AoE Immobilizations. The very low amount of mitigation offered by the first three powers in every control set fails to synergize with the assault sets in the way defensive power sets synergize with attack sets. This means dominators are reliant on their AoE/PBAoE controls for effective mitigation. However, most of those AoE/PBAoE controls are on long recharge timers, which restricts their availability. This is also not synergistic with assault sets in the way defensive power sets synergize with attack sets. A scrapper with a +Res toggle active doesn't have to wait for the toggle to refresh between spawns. A brute with a +Def toggle doesn't have to worry about suddenly losing his/her mitigation halfway through a fight because the +Def "wore off". And even the clicks in defensive sets are designed with short enough recharge times, long enough durations, or balanced recharge:duration times, allowing them to be effectively permanent. AoE/PBAoE Holds have extremely long recharge times and comparatively short durations. They can't be made permanent, by any means, even under the effects of Domination. AoE/PBAoE Stuns can be overlapped for a few seconds, but that introduces the problem of blowing your AoE/PBAoE Stun to finish a fight, then having to wait for it to recharge before starting the next fight. Do scrappers have to wait for their +Res toggles to recharge before jumping into another spawn? Do brutes have to go make a cup of coffee while they wait for their +Def toggles to recharge? Of course not, because their defensive powers were designed to synergize with their offensive powers. But dominators, because their controls don't synergize with their attacks in this way, are forced to either eat the loss of mitigation they experience when their AoE/PBAoE Holds and Stuns expire or aren't available, or park their asses and wait. AoE/PBAoE Sleeps, in terms of mitigation, are very poor. They're only mitigation until you wake the spawn up, and they don't go back to Sleep in most cases. Fears are almost as impoverished, because they allow an enemy to make an attack if you attack it. Both of these do, at the least, prevent entire spawns from dog-piling on the player, briefly and only so long as the player doesn't use any AoEs/PBAoEs... which is also not synergistic with the assault sets in the way defensive sets are synergistic with attack sets. Tanky Tankerbabe doesn't have avoid using The Lotus Drops because it might make Invincibility ineffective. Stalker Steve doesn't have to take Rending Flurry off of his tray because it interferes with Proton Armor. Where they experience synergy between their primaries and secondaries, the dominator does not. Confuses are a source of mitigation which is long enough in duration, short enough in recharge, and effective enough to be considered comparable, up to a point. Single-target Confuses can be partially converted to AoE with the purple Confuse set, and even if one doesn't use it, the durations of single-target Confuses are long enough, and the recharge times short enough, to make them worthwhile as a mitigation tool. A good player can even Confuse an entire spawn with a single-target Confuse and have enough time to jump in and issue a beat down. But even Confuses aren't really synergistic with assault sets in the way defensive sets synergize with attack sets. Every control also has an animation time. My brute with Rise to the Challenge toggled on doesn't have an animation time cost to pay for every foe who comes within range of the PBAoE. My sentinel doesn't have an animation time cost for every attack that her Energy Aura toggles deflect. But your dominator has to pay the animation cost in almost every case. Even those Confuses have animation times. That works against your assault powers, not with them, not synergistically. The set filler powers can provide mitigation, but the animation time cost is still there, the mitigation varies wildly and some of the powers aren't synergistic with the assault sets for the same reasons I explain above. Earthquake, to make one example, is great mitigation, when it's recharged, and when you pay the animation time cost, and when you're fighting something that isn't resistant to KB, and when the KB triggers. Contrast that with Conductive Aura, which is an example of proper synergy with assault sets. CA only has two conditional variables - is it on, and is there at least one foe within the radius? There's no animation time cost to pay for every foe within the radius of that power, no variable which disables the mitigation if foes within the radius have a certain type of status resistance. Most of the control set filler powers don't have that synergy with assault sets, though. The pets are broadly synergistic with assault sets. There's no argument about that. They provide mitigation in the same way that defensive sets provide mitigation for melee, by allowing the player to flip the switch once, then get down to business and not having to worry about that protective aspect of their character needing constant maintenance and attention. But you can't control which targets your Fire Imps are attacking. You can't make Singularity focus on whatever's punching you in the face. Nor do you have any guarantee that your target(s) will turn their attention to the pet. That's not the same as the synergy present in the interaction between melee archetype defensive sets and attack sets. It's not even the same as the synergy present in controller use of control sets in conjunction with their buff/debuff secondaries. It's functional mitigation, but not synergistically reliable in the same way defensive sets are. Additionally, control sets are much more adversely affected by purple patch mechanics than defensive sets. The dominator has hit checks with increased chances of missing (on AoE controls which already have reduced hit chances), reduced control durations, lower debuff values, greater likelihood of soft controls like KB failing to have any meaningful impact on survivability... contrast that with, say, a Resistance toggle. Higher level critters might hit harder, but that toggle is still providing X% mitigation. It doesn't suddenly have 0% mitigation because it can't miss, it can't have a reduced value, it can't suddenly fail due to critters having resistance to a status effect or debuff. It's synergistic with the archetype and the melee attack set with which it's been paired, in that it provides a consistent and reliable mechanism for mitigating damage. That synergy doesn't exist in that way in control sets and their interaction with assault sets. Control sets just don't synergize with assault sets the way defensive sets synergize with attack sets. They don't synergize with assault sets the way every other archetype's primary/secondary options synergize, because they weren't designed to. They were designed to be complemented by and synergize with buff/debuff sets, and to restrict their mitigative potential. That's a key point. Control sets were specifically designed to limit how much mitigation they could provide. Redesigned, in fact, to do impose that limitation. That's what dominators have. Primaries designed to work with ranged buff/debuff sets and provide limited mitigation which encourages players to lean on their buff/debuff sets and/or teams to compensate, and secondaries which weren't designed with those factors in mind. Synergy is when things work cooperatively, in a complementary fashion. Not when things are at odds, but can still be made to work. Anyone can make anything work in this game, given sufficient patience and determination, but that doesn't mean everything is synergistic. There are plenty of ways to work around the lack of synergy between control sets and assault sets. IO set bonuses, perma-Domination, pool powers, relying on debuffs, the same tools we can use to make anything else work when synergy isn't present. But working around the lack of synergy doesn't make that lack disappear. Trick Arrows doesn't synergize with Energy Blast attacks, because TA has multiple AoEs which stay in one location and Energy Blast has multiple KB powers which knock foes out of those AoE locations. Players can slot their Energy Blast attacks to turn the KB into KD, or use Hover and stay directly overhead, and make it work, but that's working around the problem, not addressing the lack of synergy between the two sets. That's where dominators are now. They have primaries which encourage one thing, and secondaries which encourage something else. They're not synergistic, they're schizophrenic.

Unimpressed. Their primaries aren't well suited to their secondaries. There's no consistency within the archetype. Some primaries pair better with some secondaries, but in general, none of them actually work well together in the way that every other archetype's primaries and secondaries do. The primaries, being ports of controller primaries, typically promote ranged play... but the assault sets are a mish-mash of ranged, melee, single-target, AoE and PBAoE with no real focus on anything. Single-target controls aren't complementary to melee play (in the sense that mezzing a single foe still leaves two or more other foes free to curb stomp the character), AoE controls are too limited in availability (due to long recharge times) to complement melee play well, but the archetype has low HP and has to use controls to provide mitigation, so playing a melee dominator is frustrating (either a lot of waiting for AoE controls to recharge, or a lot of frantic Tabbing to mez individual targets). And playing a dominator as an exclusively ranged character... it's really, in all honesty, worse than playing a sentinel. Dominators don't need a buff, they need direction. They need designed and implemented synergy between their primaries and secondaries. Not discovered synergies, like stacking +Regeneration from two powers, or layering -ToHit with Weave and Link Minds, real synergy. I'd swap the primaries and secondaries and redesign the control sets to complement the assault sets more appropriately (some PBAoE control toggles, like Oppressive Gloom, Choking Cloud and World of Confusion, would go a long way toward making dominators more melee-friendly, for instance). But as long as the archetype continues to give the impression that it's confused about its own identity, I don't think it really has any role. It's a niche, at best.

Still waiting on the rest of the test results.

I don't think anyone plays Co* to impress others. People can already solo the hardest content in the game, with sufficient ease that they impose their own challenges just to feel like they're accomplishing something. Look at some of the longer discussions right here on the first page of this sub-forum. Unlimited power doesn't seem to be the thing that most want. Something to do with the power they already have... that might be a better course.

A long, long time ago, right after ragdoll physics were added, I was on a team. Yes, a team. Yes, me. Can I finish this story, please? I'm trying to add context to my suggestion. Stop interrupting me. You're as bad as my cats. ANYWAY, we're cleaning up a spawn in one of the generic office maps and I whack a critter with Air Superiority. Critter does its little flip... and a Martial Arts scrapper kicked it before it landed. The goon went soaring halfway across the room, smacked into a wall and slid down in a boneless heap. It was one of the most glorious moments in my Co* life that it's still as vivid today as it was when it happened. So I'd redesign knockback from the ground up. I'd retool the mechanic to make KB itself deal damage by adding an impact factor. KB a target into a wall and it takes extra damage, the extra being dependent on the force of the KB, the type of surface and the distance traveled (although once the target passes the apex of the KB trajectory and begins to descend, the extra damage would be reduced, perhaps even replaced by falling damage calculated from the apex to the point of impact). I'd turn KB itself into both a more useful tool and a more rewarding effect. Maybe, just maybe, more people would use KB powers, and experience what I did all of those years ago.

Pretty sure they won't add that to the game.

That's called "arousal".

Plant/Earth dominator. Could also use Dark Miasma for dirt powers, so Plant/Dark controller.

- 👍 ➖ 👎

It used to be TA/Dark. TA was the only defender primary that held my interest, and Dark Blast complements TA so well. I even recreated the same character here. TA/Dark with the same costume, every detail. Daughter of Hades and Persephone, out for adventure in the world above Tartarus. I spent years logging in just to play this character, even when I had no interest in playing the game at all. But that's not my main now. I don't love the character any less. She's certainly not less playable after the TA balance pass. But several factors have diminished my interest. There were a few animation time passes done on TA over the years, leading to a watering down of the set as a whole. There wasn't much variation in TA animations before, but at this point, they're visually indistinct. Watching one animation repeat over and over again isn't the most delightful way to spend free time, sadly. The recent balance pass done for TA has also resulted in several powers being changed in how they work. Glue, for instance, being location-targeted instead of critter-targeted. It's usable with a powexec_location bind, but the command isn't entirely smooth. As often as not, it simply refuses to activate the power, or activates the power and creates the effects under the target, often under the map. TA doesn't play or feel like it used to. So I've been moving away from it. Having unrestricted costume options allowed me to create another Greco-Roman character, my Staff/Willpower brute, a character I never would've even considered on the original servers, but have fallen hopelessly in love with. This is my main now. I'm having trouble even logging into my alts, or creating more, because I can't find anything that I enjoy as much as this character. A combination of factors. The name, Legionette, just hits all of the right notes for me. It's heroic, it's suggestive of immense power, and it's feminine without being girly. The Staff Melee animations keep me visually engaged. All of the poses and movements are wonderful to behold (even Toe of the Camel), and suitably varied to prevent boredom. Willpower is both fitting for the character concept and completely self-contained, so I don't have to fiddle with extra clicks, I can just focus on combat and let my secondary do what it does. The costume is exactly what I always wanted for a character like this, especially now that we have asymmetrical shoulders. It's not flashy or immensely creative, it's just so incredibly right for the character. Even her back story is perfectly matched to her appearance and powers. Everything about the character meshes. I can even recall exactly when I knew Legionette was my main. I was in Skyway City, trying to get to a mission door when my ping shot up to 1800+. I stopped fighting it, perched Legionette on a wall and typed /em kata. That was it. That was the moment. That emote fit the concept and appearance so beautifully that I knew, right then, that I'd be playing her until the day HC shuts down. I found my Wonder Woman. I'll never let her go.

Wouldn't that place buffs and buffers at a distinct disadvantage in comparison to debuffs? Seems a bit unbalanced.

Begin by turning off the lights. No city is going to keep a sewer lit up 24/7, and utility companies tend to react poorly to taps. So shut most of the lights down. Make it dark. Not black, not impossible to navigate, just dark. The old DA fog could be applied. Sewage contains biological matter. Biological matter generates heat as it decays. It's going to be steamy down there. This will heighten the sense of confinement and disorientation. Now we organize the spawns better. All of these low level critters standing around are a wasted opportunity. Those Hellions twiddling their thumbs should be point guards. The Lost aren't converting anyone if all they're doing is preaching to themselves. Wouldn't the Vahzilok be moving constantly, looking for... spare parts? Enemies should be doing something more than waiting for a hero to beat them down (or walk past on the way to a badge). And why are there no lairs of any kind? No secret bases? No neat little corners of "Oh, wow, I had no idea this was down here"? Places where tougher Hellions gather, maybe a little party room with some Girlfriends from Hell, or a ritual room with an altar and portal? Labs where Vahzilok take their hauls and work on turning them into Abominations? Chapels where Lost converge for sermons? And maybe... the occasional special GM, or at the very least, EB spawning to add a bit more flavor to these locations? Remove the generic feeling from the sewers. Make them dark, foreboding, with memorable locations, instead of a generic maze with nothing interesting anywhere.

It isn't possible to balance around a completely subjective concept, like fun. Not any aspect. Even attempting to do so only leads to strife. KB is a prime example of this. Within constraints. For example, not having IO sets with Dam/Mez, thus not having set bonuses from that approach to slotting, is a constraint. Not an oversight, not an accidental omission, a limitation. Limitations of this nature are necessary in order to create a baseline for balancing the game. You can't balance around players having Dam/Mez sets without making the content brutal for those who don't have them; and you can't balance around not having Dam/Mez sets without making the content trivial for those who do have them. Cryptic threw away most of the balance mechanisms used in other games when they developed CoH. Skill trees. Limiting powers/skills/spells/attacks to fewer than 10. Gear exclusive to each class, designed with carefully planned stat bonuses and only dropping from specific content. The holy trinity. Team content requiring said trinity. But in doing so, they discovered that some limitations have to exist, or content becomes impossible to balance. Thus ED, GDN, the purple patch, PToD, and the nerf to status effects which ended City of Statues. Yes, you can still slot for both Damage and Mez. But you can't maximize both and receive the top end set bonuses. That constraint is necessary in order to provide at least some passing semblance of parity between those who have Dam/Mez and those who do not. Objectively, I disagree. I don't think they're lacking simply because they don't have more popular procs or unique IOs. The player makes the procs, uniques or set bonuses useful, not the other way around. Subjectively, I can agree that there's often little reason to use some sets when practically anything else is available, and as often as not, the powers into which these IOs can be slotted may not even be worth taking. You just spent the last few posts arguing that Stun sets are bad. You went into detail about how bad the procs, specifically, are, and why. Not bad for your particular style, or bad for some of your builds, just bad. Given the analysis, comparisons and implied conclusion that the horribadness of Stun sets impacts all players, it doesn't read like an opinion. If the question is being asked with the presumption that there's a problem that must be rooted out and squashed, is it the right question? Here's a question: where's the evidence that there is a problem? Where are the performance metrics for what different procs do in regard to survivability and speed of progression? Where are the analyses showing how use of procs creates any kind of problem? If, as was previously posited by someone else, defenders using procs is a problem, why hasn't anyone posted run times and survivability comparisons for defenders with procs versus blasters? If players can take unenhanced characters, team up and use their powers to rampage through the game at max difficulty, then how do procs cause problems for teams? If a solo player's performance in missions is isolated and has no effect on other players, how does proc usage in that situation cause a problem? If procs skew progression and/or survivability so notably and obviously, why hasn't anyone posted any proof? If there's a performance gulf so vast, it should be incredibly easy to provide multiple examples. The lack thereof is noteworthy. Post the builds, run time comparisons, survivability breakdowns and other performance statistics. If you have evidence supporting your assertion, I'd love to see it. That's not a facetious remark, I'd actually love to see them. Not pylon tests, though. Pylons don't wander out of AoE radius at just the wrong moment. Pylons don't spread out and have to be aggroed or snuck around to find an optimal clump for cone usage. Pylons don't move, so they don't show the benefit of using a Slow or Immob. Pylons aren't good test subjects for a lot of powers. I'd like to see the results from your test map, not pylons. An in-depth examination of the benefits of the KB IO sets versus -Def and Accurate -Def sets, and how they pertain specifically to Axe and Broadsword, aid in survivability, improve progression speed, etc., would go much further toward providing impetus for change and provoking thought than a comparison of how many crayons are in each box. You appear to enjoy a vigorous debate, and aren't so thin-skinned as to take umbrage at a blunt tone. Identify whether there is a problem, what and where it is if one exists, and why and how it's a problem. Post comparisons in actual use to quantify and qualify any existing issue. You want more IO sets, but you also want IO sets to be balanced against one another. Have you analyzed the existing sets, compared their performance in the game and in use in different power sets? How do you provide parity or balance without doing that, without knowing at what point parity or balance currently sit? Have you considered any of the potential negative repercussions, such as how it will affect the use of converters, or market changes, or means of addressing them? You say that procs are over-performing. Have you performed tests, analyzed performance results, compared run times, collated incoming damage to determine survivability, examined total damage over time, anything? You've got comparisons and analyses of different power set combinations all over the place, a special AE map for testing... and you don't have a single chart or spreadsheet showing how heavy proc builds perform in comparison to traditional builds? You justify revising IO sets with comments about effectiveness and viability, but doesn't any use of IOs place us above the bar in both? The bar is SOs, after all. To what are you comparing in that determination of effectiveness and viability, then, and more importantly, where's the data to show that some IO set categories fail to offer sufficient improved effectiveness or viability when compared to other IO sets? How do you determine that any IO set fails to be effective or viable without testing and documenting the results? And if IO sets are causing some kind of problem, wouldn't adding more sets exacerbate that problem? If procs are over-powered, does it make sense to add more procs to the game? If set bonuses are straining the balance budget and causing player fatigue by making the game too easy, is it wise to increase the number of sets in each category? Quantitatively, why would 5 or 6 or 10 be better than 4, if 4 does everything that needs to be done and then some? Facts. Information. Tests. Verifiable and repeatable results. I want numbers, not rumors and guesses. Facts, not fantasy. Math, not maybes. If something is over-performing, or under-performing, show that it is, and how it is, so the problem is clear and actionable. I'm objective, I can adapt to anything and I'll support any change for the good of the game, but I want hard data that proves that something is necessary before I add my voice to the choir. This is Co*. That's how we do things. That's how we've always done things. A different forum address and development team doesn't change that. That's my take.

Irrelevant. Nothing is supposed to be equally useful to everyone. The entire point of having varied sets and IOs in sets is to give players choices and options, just like having varied archetypes and power sets does, and you not pursuing an option doesn't make it bad or wrong. The design of the Invention system was structured entirely on and within the existing categorization of enhancements. Entirely. What came before (standard enhancements) was what informed and guided the design process of what followed (IOs). The intent of that system was to create a new avenue of growth and empowerment for players, within the established enhancement system. Not to break new ground in enhancement categorization, nor to supplant that categorization, but to supplement and complement it within the framework already in the game and familiar to players. The implementation of the Invention system revolved around creating and encouraging player choice - did the player want to focus on set bonuses, or on optimizing every aspect of a power? The player could do one or the other with IO sets, but never both. That was intentional. Deliberate. That was how the Invention system was laid out. If making a power the best it could be mattered, you franken-slotted. If you wanted set bonuses, you accepted a trade-off. The original categorization of enhancements was carefully created, exhaustively tested and laboriously gone over until it was as perfectly balanced and fair as possible. The IO system follows that categorization stringently, only diverging in four cases (Accurate Heal, Accurate Defense Debuff, Accurate ToHit Debuff, Recharge Intensive Pets), and in those cases, only because the design of multiple powers made them necessary. Those sets address oversights, nothing more. And your evidence to disprove all of this is a pair of IO sets added by the HC team and designed specifically to support and incite interest in a new EndMod power set that they released in the same update on a private server group. Ignoring, of course, the third EndMod set they added, which offers 0% enhancement to Damage, and that one of the two End/Dam options only enhances Damage by 68.9%, and that the HC team didn't design the Invention system, therefore cannot be attributed any intent in said design. Color me unconvinced. Uh, no, it would be an enormous step backward. We had City of Statues. We were nerfed so hard that controllers and dominators still feel it. Adding Dam/Stun IO set options wouldn't be nice, it'd be an invitation to repeating that festival of shit and tedium. You can slot Dam/Mez HOs like everyone else, or franken-slot, and be grateful that you still have that option. "Effective". "Fun". "Viable". "Fair". Those are such loaded words. I don't object to asking for more IO sets or options. I do object to painting that request as a general public service when it's really just a reflection of your power selections, slotting preferences and play style. You're not speaking as a fairly nominated and elected representative of all of us, you're speaking as a self-appointed authority. Well, I don't recognize your authority to define those terms. You are not the Fun Police. You're no more qualified or entitled to decide what is or isn't fair or fun for all than you are to decide whether anyone's characters are dressed "appropriately". The difference being, those procs still have an additional control mechanism to pass through. Better example: Tenebrous Tentacles. My TA/Dark slotting for this power uses three damage procs. I could slot the power to deal damage normally. I could slot it with Ragnarok or Positron's Blast for set bonuses. Instead, I accept that I'm risking dealing significantly less damage and skipping set bonuses in exchange for the potential to deal significantly more damage by slotting those three damage procs. If the hit check succeeds, I still have to pass three other checks for those three procs to deal damage. That proc damage is not guaranteed, even if the power hits. The base damage is guaranteed if the power hits. The Immob is guaranteed if the power hits. But the proc damage isn't. Yes, a proc bomb can miss, just like any other power. But a proc bomb that hits still has to pass another check (per proc) for the effects of those procs to occur. The minimum 5% chance for the power to miss isn't relevant, nearly every power in the game has to work within that limitation. The minimum 10% chance for procs to fail to trigger, in concert with any additional reduction in probability due to recharge time and PPM, is relevant, because it's a limitation specifically designed to control abuse and overuse of procs. It's a limitation that works. Six damage procs don't improve the hit chance of the power. Or reduce the endurance usage. Or allow it to cycle more frequently. Or have set bonuses. Limiting the comparison to only the damage stat is deliberately skewing it to display the power with six procs as being almost comparable. It's not. Use of a purple set does far more than simply nudge the damage up a bit. If you really can't swing purples or are below 50, franken-slot. The performance is still going to be slightly better than six-slotting with procs, and you won't have to justify spending the inf* on purples. You can sew your inf* into a nice skirt, or use it to flavor your oatmeal, or whatever people do if they aren't spending their gross over-supply of currency. A build not having access to any proc or unique IO, or even any IO set, is a choice, not an inherent limitation. The important choices aren't IOs, they're powers. We make those choices. We devise and abide by our own restrictions when we create our characters. Between primary, secondary, *PP and pool options, there are no IO sets that anyone can't use on any character. We might choose not to take the powers which would allow us to slot some IO sets, but that doesn't mean the game has to be restructured to change that, it means the game is respecting our choices and decisions. The very thing against which you rail is what makes this game rewarding to many of us. Having to make choices like this goads us into digging deeper, broadening our search, scratching away at the layers to find the missing pieces to make our builds as perfect as possible, and encourages us to find even more ways to work around the limitations we set for ourselves, expand our build concepts and discover unexpected things. And redesigning IO sets so no-one has to make any choices of consequence... it destroys the magic and wonder of that discovery process. If you're dissatisfied with your build's IO options, change your build, not the game.

I did. She, her husband @Kalkin and I used to play together. Rose came into this world with a countdown ticking away in her ear. She understood her own mortality in a way very few of us will ever comprehend. A lot of people, if they'd had to live with that, would never have bothered to try to do anything with their lives. A lot of people who don't live with that never try to do anything with their lives, actually. I was one of those people. I wasn't doing anything with my life when I met Rose and Kal. Working, to keep paying rent, so I could keep working. That was my entire existence. Meeting Rose and learning what she lived with, and how she dealt with it... she changed the direction of my life. Rose knew she didn't have forever. She didn't hate the world for that. She didn't give up and lie in bed, waiting for the end. She didn't turn to drugs or alcohol or some other self-destructive solution. She accepted that she had only so long, and decided to use the time she had to be happy. A career. A husband. A family. Friends. Love. An ordinary life. These were the things she wanted, and those were the things she reached out and grasped, held on to and reveled in. And all of that was before I met her and Kal. No-one I've ever known has amazed me more. Rose had more courage, determination and dignity than I thought anyone could have. Just knowing that she could face the kind of adversity she did, achieve everything she did, build the life she had, and still be one of the happiest and most thoughtful people I'd encountered... it affected me more profoundly than I can say. She inspired me to do more, to do better, with my life. Rose was my hero. We tend to use that word a little too frequently, attaching it to people without really meaning it. I mean it in this case. Rose was my hero. My life is infinitely better for having known her, for trying to live up to the example she set for me. I wouldn't have this cabin, the land it's on, the confidence and inner peace I've developed, if it weren't for her. Knowing that she was brave enough to get up off of her ass and do something with the time she had, while I, in my comparatively good health, just sat and waited to die... I was ashamed, and angry at myself, and determined to do better. To be better. To be more like Rose. After her first transplant, we lost contact. Rose and Kal went their way, I went mine. I was actually delighted to see her leave Co*, though, because it meant she was out of that house. It meant she was living, the way she had been before the CF grew really bad. Over the years, I wondered what she'd done, how she and Kal were, and I wanted to let her know what I'd done and what she meant to me. When I found these forums, the first thing I did was look through the reconnection posts to see if she and Kal were around, and when I saw that they were, I was thrilled. I... I intended to play with her and Kal, but I just never got around to it. I thought they'd always be there. I thought she'd always be there. There's a gaping hole inside me right now. I've been crying since I read the announcement. The world feels emptier without her, even though we weren't as close as some of you were with her. I miss her. I wanted to talk to her, to catch up with her, one more time, but I'm not sad because I didn't have a chance for closure. I'm sad because my hero is gone. But I'm looking around, reminding myself of everything I've done since we met, everything I did because she inspired me to do and be more, and I remind myself that Rose... Rose was strong, so I'll be strong, too. And I hope I can do it half as well as she did. @Kalkin, if there's anything I can do, for you or your family...

Oh god... not Rose.

Define "unequal opportunity", in the context of Stun sets, because I don't see a lack of equivalency in the Stun set bonuses versus other mez set bonuses, or bonuses from other sets. Recovery, +HP, Regen, a variety of +Def and +Res, +Recharge, +Accuracy... a +Movement Speed bonus. There's even a purple Stun set. You spend post after post insisting that there's an inequity and cap it off with "lol Stun IO's", after commenting on Power Transfer as an example of a step up in addressing that perceived inequity, but the bonuses in Power Transfer aren't unique or unusual. They aren't even as good or as diverse as the bonuses in Stun sets. So what, exactly, is the inequity you insist exists? Lack of Dam/Stun sets? Hey, shocker, there are no Dam/Hold sets, either. Or Dam/Confuse. Or Dam/Immob. Or Dam/Sleep. Or Dam/Fear. We were never intended to be able to slot every power for every effect and receive every set bonus. The design called for requiring the player to choose what he/she wanted to improve in a power, to provide balance by not allowing every power to be slotted in every way which would permit maximizing every aspect and effect and acquire every set bonus. Is it that Stun sets don't have special IOs like the Panacea/LotG/Numina's uniques, or damage procs? So what. Where was it written that every set had to have the same special IO options that every other set offered? How is it unfair? Because the existing options don't match your preferences, or aren't popular slotting options? Again, so what. Why does every power in the game need to heal, or improve endurance management, or deal damage, or have "equal" options for slotting special IOs or procs? Your claim of a lack of fair slotting opportunities appears to stem from your personal preferences, not from analysis of game balance or design philosophy. There's no documentation stating that every power or power set has to be equally slottable for special IOs or procs, or that all set bonuses have to be available to all powers or power set combinations, or that every power needs an IO set which complements everything the power does. None. Nor does game balance require that level of parity. A person can play with no IOs, or a perfectly optimized FotM build with maximal set bonuses and damage procs/special IOs out the wazoo, or a silly build packed with "lol Stun" sets and still have fun, progress at a reasonable pace and thrive. Going one step further, I'm going to point out that they could've built set bonuses and procs into the powers themselves, if parity between power sets, slotting bonuses and special IOs was the goal. They could've tagged every slot in a power to deliver a set bonus when it was filled, and set the sixth slot as a proc, and skipped making IO sets altogether, if they really wanted to make the system "fair" in the sense of everyone having the same options. But they didn't. They sat us all down at an all you can eat buffet... and you're saying that there's a problem because we don't all have plates the same shape and color. There's no X% probability check for Life Drain to deal damage if the hit check succeeds. There's no variable recharge mechanic built into Torrent, or requirement that Y number of critters be present to assure that it recharges in a set amount of time. Those are limitations which exist within the proc system, not in the powers, and they're applicable even if you don't want to address them. If they're that accessible, there's no reason not to use them in a comparison. Isn't the point of proc-heavy powers... to go above and beyond what a power is supposed to do? Is that not, in fact, the entire purpose of procs? So, what, you're saying that we should be limiting the comparison to what's available while leveling? If so, the proc-heavy performance is still lower than simply franken-slotting uncommon and rare set IOs and using two standard procs instead of six when looking at total cycle time for the damage dealt, based on what I'm seeing when I throw a build together and differentiate only that one power's slotting. The damage per cycle time still comes out lower for the proc-heavy slotting than for the franken-slotted version. So however you want to limit the comparison, six-slotting with procs just doesn't come out ahead, either with best in slot or for a leveling build. Because "good enough" requires a greater investment of effort for a lower return on that investment. IO set bonuses allow us to work smarter, not harder. Maybe the person playing that Fire/Empathy corruptor cares more about playing a Fire/Empathy corruptor than about set bonuses. Maybe... it's just possible that... people who play this game care more about character concepts and having a good time with their characters than they do about being optimal, and recognize that, since the game's challenge is still rooted in SO-level builds, they can do that without the need for 3000 more IO sets or bonus homogenization to make them all "equal". If all you see when you look at the game is set bonuses and procs, maybe it's time to take a step back and remember that there's more to it than that.

This was everything I hoped for when I saw the title. ❤️

Why does every set/set combination need to be identical in terms of slotting, when every set/set combination is going to do different things and perform differently even with identical slotting opportunities? But it is a limitation. A series of limitations. At least one power has to have KB/KU for the proc to be slotted. That power has to be used, even if it's not an ideal power and may result in a loss of DPS. The power has to hit. The proc has to trigger. Only after all of those conditions are satisfied can the +Recharge be applied. The +Recharge buff is not guaranteed. You're advocating a change to procs for everyone based on what a limited few can accomplish once they satisfy all of the requirements, and ignoring that those requirements exist at all in the process. It's not "way better". It's not even a little better. It's worse. The conditional requirements are higher, the damage output isn't better unless you're slotting it with purples and every proc triggers every time, and even if every proc triggers every time, the damage output for total cycle time is still lower than it would be if you slotted 5/6 Hecatomb and the Unbreakable Constraint proc. You've also hampered yourself with higher endurance costs and lower potential survivability (zero set bonuses for individual procs), and you have to work harder than you would with less proc-centric slotting. That's not even "as good as". And as an example of why procs need a nerf, it's accomplished nothing beyond proving that procs are fine right where they are.