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Your tanks date Hami? Ew...

Isn't that how the housing bubble happened? DID YOU JOIN CORPORATE AMERICA?! I can has interest-free no repayment necessary loan?

Too mundane. As I mentioned previously, Legionette stomps Carnies day in and day out. Nothing slows her down when she's fighting them. Does she deserve more XP/inf* for beating on Carnies? No, because she's not being challenged. Parthenia, on the other hand, is a different story. She doesn't have the piles of extra hit points, the massive amount of +Regeneration, the status protection (the new and improved EMP Arrow helps with that, when it's available), that Legionette sports. She has to work for her XP/inf*/drops, and Carnies are more work. One mezzer too many, or one Strongman not Immobilized (they resist Slows, so we have to open with the first attack, instead of debuffs, which is riskier), or a group a little too spread out (cones have arc limits), or a Master Illusionist phasing or summoning at the wrong moment... it can all go sideways in a hurry. She is challenged by Carnies, and she does deserve better rewards. Legionette would be excessively rewarded by a broad, general increase to the rewards for defeating Carnies. Parthenia might not be rewarded enough for the amount of extra work it takes. A simple reward structure may be superficially appealing, but it's ultimately unfair and far too easy to exploit. It wouldn't have to be terribly complex. Half a dozen to a dozen flags to account for the important variables should be sufficient. The biggest factors would be mitigation flags, which would calculate an average of the character's total damage mitigation potential at the beginning of combat (active or available buffs (including heals), available debuffs (note that "available" would indicate fully recharged and ready to go), max HP, status protection, etc.), and damage flags (primary damage type, number of damage procs slotted, single-target or AoE, currently recharged or not, etc.). A few flags to indicate the enemy spawn's special attributes, like specific damage Resistances, heavy use of mez, summons (things like Warwolf spawns in place of almost defeated foes would count as summons (because they are, technically)) would be necessary. But I'm not suggesting a redesign of the Co* engine with a learning algorithm to tailor the rewards as the player goes, or to let SHODAN out of the bottle. Just flags and comparisons that wouldn't even slow the servers down a jot. It could even be as simple as counting the number of flags of certain variables and adding/subtracting enemy spawn flags to create a reward modifier. With such a system, Legionette could go poke Carnies with her big stick and accumulate the typical rewards, never missing out on anything. Parthenia, since she'd be struggling more, would reap larger gains for her successes, commensurate with the reality of having to do more to accomplish the same result. The two characters would, over time, achieve the same general totals - Legionette through speed and safety, Parthenia through increased rewards for the increased difficulty she faces. Won't ever happen, though. It would be nice if it did, but it's just a thought exercise.

Dead monkey farts hurt.

That's the part I disagree with. Running with the Carnies example, if you bump up the rewards for that group, you're not, in fact, bumping up the rewards for Carnies, you're bumping up the rewards for power sets with status protection, for power sets with high positional Defense, for sets with large ToHit debuffs, and leaving all of the other people playing other sets twisting in the wind. You're encouraging players to avoid anything that doesn't help with Carnies, and only to fight Carnies because they'd be the most rewarding group. Yeah, you're getting people out of the Council maps and fire farms, but only so they can go farm Carnies. Nothing positive has been accomplished by the increase to Carnie rewards, but you will have damaged the diversity currently existing in the game (at least the people farming Council can do so with a lot of different characters, since L/S Defense is comparatively easy to acquire). No one group should be more rewarding than any other in and of itself, because the wide variety available in character creation leaves too many out in the cold. That, in turn, discourages diversity by encouraging players to avoid the sets, and even archetypes, which can't deal with the more rewarding groups as well as other sets or archetypes. Rewards can be increased, I do agree with that, but not arbitrarily or globally. The increases should be individual, tailored to every character, adaptive, as I outlined in the post which sparked this side discussion. A simple reward increase for any given enemy group, though, is just a change to the farm du jour.

I don't disagree that anything we do which is more difficult than we expect or prefer should be more rewarding, but I do disagree that arbitrary reward increases for certain groups is the solution. That's not going to make those groups more attractive to fight, it's going to make power sets which render those groups "easy mode" more attractive. It's an invitation to homogenize far more than letting people farm their Council missions with their soft-capped L/S Defense characters, because at least they're soft-capping a variety of builds, rather than sticking to a select few. The big picture is always at the forefront of my mind when I'm playing or posting. But so is human nature. Making any specific enemy group more rewarding than others is inviting more problems than solutions. An adaptive reward system is a better way to accomplish the goal. Let people fight what they want to fight and be rewarded appropriately for the difficulty they truly encounter.

Yeah, it would feel a lot more relaxed and enjoyable. No pressure to do a job, no stress about having to meet expectations, no anxiety about having to fulfill role requirements, just cruise along and have fun. One would almost suspect that someone in charge remembered that games are supposed to be fun, not 40 hour shifts at a labor camp.

You suggested a global nerf to Defense to reduce solo players' ability to progress by themselves and proselytized about teaming throughout the post. In other words, you posted an idea which would lead to forced teaming and tried to convince everyone that it would be beneficial. I really don't like spin doctoring. If you can't stand by what you say, don't say it.

Neither of those enemy groups are any more difficult than any other group, they're merely perceived as such by people who build in specific and limited ways, those who focus exclusively on what's considered "common" and ignore everything else. There's more to the game than Lethal/Smashing Defense and burst DPS, and the challenge represented by any particular enemy group is not a universal constant, rather a character-dependent variable. That was the purpose of using two different characters facing different enemy groups as an example. Each experiences different challenge levels when facing different groups. Trick Arrows characters struggle with Council, because Marksmen impose -Recharge, Warwolves completely ignore Slows and have Immob protection... and they spawn without the debuffs on their placeholder critters, forcing the TA to reapply his/her click debuffs mid-combat, and since debuffs have an animation time, the TA can take significant damage, or be defeated, before those debuffs are active. This is an example of an enemy group presenting greater than average challenge, despite being considered "easy". It all depends on us. Not the groups, not even specific foes within groups, but us. The choices we make, the characters we play, the builds we design and implement. We create our own challenge level within the game. For every group someone says is "hard", there are plenty of builds available that make them easy. The obverse face of the coin is just as true, some of the "easy" groups are a pain in the ass for many builds.

And your point is moot because, to use your example, Carnies don't represent the same obstacle for everyone. Legionette can run roughshod over Carnies. She can bounce from one spawn to the next, completely unconcerned about mez, incoming damage, endurance drain, ToHit debuffs, anything the enemy group has to throw at her. Parthenia can't do that, she has to approach every spawn cautiously, pre-emptively mez the mezzers, maintain a safe distance from everything, watch out for unexpected situations, and even though she can "win", it still takes her longer. On the other hand, Nemesis are hell for Legionette. She has to limit her PBAoE so she doesn't accidentally drop a lieutenant, she has to wait every time she brings a Fake Nem down to a certain health point... I have fighting Nemesis when I'm playing Legionette. Parthenia, on the other hand, has none of the same troubles. Nemesis Vengeance has a HUGE FREAKING HOLE in AoE Defense, so she doesn't even have to change up her attack chain (TT -> NF -> repeat) when she's kicking their butts. She doesn't have to avoid defeating the lieutenants. She can stack two Holds on Fakes and lock them down permanently before she even gets the party started, so she never has to wait out their PFFs. Should one of those enemy groups have an enhanced reward structure? Which one? Both represent a problem for one of the characters, but not the other. What justifies one of those groups being exceptionally rewarding, but not the other when they both present a significant challenge for different characters? This is the problem with just increasing the rewards for fighting one enemy group and not the other - you're not encouraging players to fight that enemy group, you're encouraging them not to play certain archetypes/builds. The reward increase has to be more granular and adaptive, or it's just a penalty for not playing the "right" character, or having the "right" build. Nor did I take your post to mean that, or respond to such. I'm discussing the potential for increasing rewards, exclusively, but pointing out that your method of doing so would be detrimental in the long term. I believe the idea has merit, but it would have to be something which addresses challenge on a per-character basis to be viable.

Yeah, no. Your goal was clearly stated, to promote teaming by forcing players to use each other to compensate for not being capable of hitting the Defense soft cap with IO sets. Here, I'll refresh your memory. You're not complaining about homogenization or a lack of diversity, you're directly and very clearly stating that you want nerfs which force players to team. That's your defined and stated goal. And no, when I point out how easy it would be to work around the limitations you'd impose, I'm not agreeing with you or providing unintended support. I'm telling you that you're on the wrong track and providing examples which emphasize the problems with your suggestion. Teaming is socialization. Socialization should be something desired, not something imposed. Any attempt made to force players to team will simply drive them away from that content, especially in this game, which has always treated teaming as a bonus, not a requirement. I was tackling GMs solo in 2005, long before the Invention system existed, with a defender using melee attacks. That shows how unnecessary teaming has always been here. Allow people to team up. Reward people for teaming up. Do not shove them into the cattle car and demand that they team up for the sake of your personal enjoyment or vision of what's "good for them".

There's no point moving the goal post if you're only moving it six inches to the left. And the existing reward structure is fine if the goal post isn't going anywhere.

Too easy to game for some archetypes or builds, and too little offered to other archetypes and builds. Any improvement to the reward system should be broadly applicable and uniformly attractive for all. I'd set specific flags on damage types, status effect resistance/protection currently active, buffs/debuffs available, and flag enemy groups to interact with various player flag combinations to create a challenge:reward structure that actively and fairly compensated players for the real difficulty that various foes present to specific characters. That would actually incentivize fighting things which are challenging, instead of simply selecting a "challenging" mission with "hard" critters that one's character can waltz over at +4/x8/Yes Bosses at breakneck speed. My Staff/Willpower brute, Legionette, has no reason not to fight Carnies, or Malta, or anything in the game. She's a juggernaut of OMGSOMUCHFUNI'MGOINGTOPEE against everything, and the more enemies, the better. My TA/Dark defender, Parthenia, on the other hand, has every conceivable reason to avoid certain enemy groups, since she lacks status protection, relies on click debuffs (which makes her an easy kill for ambushes), depends heavily on proper positioning (cone spammer, so maps which constrict spawns to smaller radii are "better"), etc. A fair reward system should be equally compelling for both, not just another bonus for the former and a reason not to play the latter.

A blaster with Diamagnetic Core Flawless Interface isn't even missing the 5% Defense. You're approaching this from the wrong side. Any nerf to Defense can be quickly and easily countered by anyone. One doesn't even need to be a specific archetype, use a specific power set, or even a specific power. -ToHit is available to everyone. If you're going to restrict the effectiveness of Defense, you have to do so from the other end, by buffing critter ToHit, or it's pointless. But buffing critter ToHit unnecessarily and unfairly penalizes entire primaries and secondaries built around the idea of Defense while ignoring primaries and secondaries built around Resistance, Regeneration or combinations of all three. And considering that it wouldn't accomplish the goal you intended, it's probably not a good change. You're not going to promote teaming by nerfing one type of damage mitigation and ignoring everything else that's going on. Take it back to the drawing board.

As entertaining as this thread has been to read, I'm going to rain on it now. We're not talking about balancing the game around IOs, because ED already ensures that IOs, common or set, are within the existing balance framework. That balance work was done almost twenty years ago, and it's still just as effective today. We're talking about rebalancing the game around set bonuses. And it's unnecessary. Yes, certain set bonuses allow some characters to become game-breakingly overpowered. The same set bonuses on far weaker characters only make those characters less frustrating to play. As long as that kind of spread exists, it's not possible to fairly balance the game around IO sets. And having such wildly varying disparities in power between characters is one of the high points of this game. We don't want, or need, the kind of homogenization that would be necessary for the game to be balanced around set bonuses. For every Superman or Hulk in the game, there's a Punisher or Question. That is what the game is balanced around, as it should be.

Kegel exercises might help with that.

-ToHit. Check and mate.

A higher aggro cap for all archetypes could have some potential benefits, but only if it were specifically decoupled from the caps on targeted AoEs, PBAoEs and cones, which includes defensive powers. The Invention system had some unexpected and unintentional effects on the game, which the Incarnate system has magnified. Single-target powers are less valued and valuable than they were in pre-Invention era. Buffers and debuffers are less desired, unless they bring very specific debuffs, and even those debuffs are available now outside of their previously restricted capacities. Certain sets have fallen out of favor simply because they don't offer enough AoE. Everyone can aggro everything, safely and easily, and burn it all down with AoEs. Yes, it's fun, but considering how frequently people ask if they're wasting their time playing X archetype or Y set, it's clearly impacting the game as a whole. Increasing the aggro cap, and only the aggro cap, might change that. If we pull more critters than we can actually handle with our AoEs, if we pull more aggro than our defensive abilities allow us to safely ignore, if the possibility exists for us to bite off more than we can chew, then we have to change how we respond to the game. We have to stop and think. We have to use our buffs/debuffs to mitigate incoming damage, instead of just letting our toggles and set bonuses do the work. We have to target and deal with dangerous foes, instead of lumping them in with the chaff. Those sets we stopped playing because they were too focused on single-target abilities suddenly become worthwhile again. Perhaps removing the aggro cap entirely is the answer, but only in concert with imposing caps on Defense powers and ensuring that all other existing target caps were enforced. Some limitation has to be present in order for the game to provide some semblance of balance and difficulty, but I find myself agreeing that an aggro cap isn't the appropriate place to impose that limitation. We should be allowed to screw ourselves over. We should have some risk of pulling more than we can deal with. Right now, if we've aggroed the spawn in front of us, the spawns to the left and right are completely harmless, as long as we're holding that initial aggro. And that's just... wrong. We should be in a state of panic, or exhilaration, at the thought of aggroing multiple full-sized spawns, but we aren't, because the existing aggro cap plays the nanny cop for us, keeping us safe and secure, shooing those extra critters back to their spawn point until we free up room in our cap. We're adults. We don't need a game mechanic to babysit us. Nor should we feel disproportionately rewarded for pursuing AoE abilities in lieu of single-target abilities, or set bonuses and pool powers instead of teammates. So if it were up for a vote, I'd say yes, remove the aggro cap entirely, implement a cap on all Defense powers and let's see what we're really made of.

When a cat buries its claws in your hand whilst simultaneously nuzzling you. Nuzlock.

Yes. And so are scrappers, defenders, blasters, controllers, Kheldians, Soldiers of Arachnos, brutes, stalkers, dominators, corruptors, masterminds and sentinels. Completely and utterly useless. The game was specifically designed to ensure that no archetype was necessary in teams, and that works inversely, by making all archetypes unnecessary in teams. It doesn't matter what you play. It doesn't matter how you play. What matters is that you play. That's what makes a team succeed, regardless of which archetypes are present. You. So keep playing, and don't worry about whether or not your characters are useful. As long as you're playing them, they are.

The big glowing pillars of purple light that you see right next to you when you zone in after using the LRT.

This morning's test of my theoretical Wall of Force build was edifying. Adding that third cone proved to be very satisfactory. The animation time is a little longer than I expected (seems to be a short pause after the animation ends), but not unduly worrying. The three cones chain perfectly, even without Hasten up, around 95% global +Recharge. I'm neither a fan of, nor antagonistic toward, Hasten, but having the option to redesign the build without it allowed a couple of changes to suit it more toward my preferences. Combat Jumping has replaced Stealth. This gives much better combat mobility, and Immobilize protection, while retaining the minimum 18% Defense necessary to supplement Flash Arrow's -ToHit and keep the character at the soft cap (bear in mind that even though +X characters resist debuffs (Purple Patch), we're stacking additional -ToHit with TT and NF, so before the attack chain has finished cycling for the first time (TT -> NF -> WoF), the character is still well above the soft cap versus +3 foes, and stays there as long as he/she continues attacking). Grant Invisibility was retained, both as a LotG mule and to make my spider buddy a little sneakier and safer. Since dumping Hasten bumped up the recharge time on OSA by ~8.5s, I added Blackstar so anyone using this build will have the option to alternate between the two. A nuke for every spawn, because it's always Christmas in the Lumiverse. I moved the ATOs out of Life Drain and into Blackstar in order to push Blackstar's damage up to par with only three slots. Life Drain is reslotted so it will continue to function as both a heal and an attack. As a bonus, using Touch of the Nictus added enough global +Acc to put every power in the build over 90% hit chance versus +3 foes (94.23% lowest hit chance, in fact, just under the cap). There is a 0.116s gap when using Project Will and Life Drain as a single-target attack chain, but there should be practically no need to use Project Will, with the cone chain complete. It is, nevertheless, there and usable, if you want to use it. Summon Disruptor's recharge is 20s away from permanence without Hasten. A small penalty for the redesign, but tolerable. Endurance consumption is so low in this build that one can toggle on Sprint and leave it running (with the EndRed IO), for extra zoominess. Alternatively, a Stealth IO can be stuffed in Sprint, to compensate for the loss of Stealth (the power). Nope, still no Lemon Arrow.

I had Dark Mastery on my original server build. I wanted to play with the giant spider this time around.

Acid brings nothing to the table for me. Ice and EMP handle -Special as well as Acid does (better, actually. they both use higher scalars for -Special (Ice because it's single-target, EMP because it has a very long recharge time)). OSA's -Def is equivalent to Acid's. I have no use for it, nor would it work well as a third procced attack, due to the recharge time.

Since this has my attention, I'll share an alternative TA/Dark build I've been poking at. This one ticks enough of the boxes for me to consider testing it. I'm not dissatisfied with my existing build, but the animation and recharge times of TT and NF ensure that there's always a small gap when using those two powers as a complete attack chain. Wall of Force has the same recharge time as TT and NF, and the same base range as TT, so it's an ideal addition to the chain. With three cones, I won't have to bother with single-target attacks unless I want to. Concurrently, the changes I made to my original build allowed me to alter Life Drain's slotting, so it can function as a fully-fledged attack in this build, instead of just a heal, and with Project Will, there's a complete single-target chain as well, so single-target damage output isn't completely reliant on Moonbeam. Why isn't TT slotted for damage? Because TT's damage takes too long to deliver. It's a slow DoT. The procs are far more effective. Why is Wall of Force only partially enhanced for damage? Range is of utmost importance. TT and WoF need to match NF's range so there's neither a problem with missing foes due to being outside of NF's arc, nor a need to move back and forth to maximize the efficiency of all of the cones. Pick a spot, park it and spam cones, that's the idea behind using these cones as an attack chain. With some enhancement for +Damage, Vigilance and a few set bonuses, it's still reaching over 100% +Damage when solo, so it's fine. And, realistically, the base damage is barely above a third of a proc's damage, so it's not like it's a powerhouse on its own. The procs do the heavy lifting, the power is the delivery method, same idea behind TT's slotting. If I'm not concerned with the damage output of TT or WoF, why did I enhance the damage in NF? NF's DoT is fast, and the range is 60', so there was no reason not to enhance it like a normal attack. Isn't this going to be expensive? Eh. I already have an almost identical build, so it wouldn't be "expensive" unless I'm using my second build on the character. Respecs aren't even 2 million apiece, so I'd only be spending around 4 million to test it. If I decide to try it as build #2 instead, it's still not going to cost much because the character is only at level 47, so none of the purples will be necessary yet. I've got about 300 million to play with on this character, too, and nothing else to do with it (already have everything for the level 50 build), so I might as well spend it on an experiment. I can always make more inf*.