Luminara

This is true. I've been kicked by a quarter horse. She sent me flying almost 15'. Sleep is definitely better than being knocked back.

Find bugs, tweak numbers, consider reverting changes back to original. That cycle you're using is 3 powers, not 7 or 8. And that's what it used to be for TA. Fighting an AV? Well, Flash every 45-50 seconds, Glue for the tiny -Recharge and slight bit of -Movement every 25 seconds, PGA for a little -Damage every 18 seconds, Acid every 18 seconds, Disruption every 25-28 seconds, OSA when it's up so you can feel like you're adding something more than eye candy, EMP when it's up so you can actually say you brought -Regen to the fight... oh, and some attacks when you can, if you're not too busy shooting Entangling so there's a giant freaking net to announce to the team that, despite what it looks like, you actually are using powers and trying to contribute. That's AV fights as a TA now, right now, today. We're shooting everything we have, then looking around to see if there's a kitchen sink to shoot. That's not exaggeration, it's the reality of being a TA on the servers right now. Every single one of us who's been playing TA since 2005 can attest to this. We'd rather bring a petless mastermind to an AV fight than a TA, because at least then, no-one would be disappointed or resentful of how little we're contributing, despite working our asses off. You're not doing more work by adding Entangling to your rotation. Your rotation before these changes is "is it recharged? use it". Several powers have longer durations in these changes, which means you don't have to use them as often. Several powers are significantly stronger, which means you don't have to use every power. And if those three powers are all you need to contribute and be effective as a debuffer in an AV fight, you shouldn't be complaining, you should be shouting in joy. You used 3 powers, instead of 7 or 8. Break out the champagne and caviar, you just made the big league. And the stat improvements and/or additional debuffs added to Flash Arrow, PGA, Disruption, Acid and Ice completely reverse that defeat. You don't have to use every power now. Not on little +0/x1 spawns, not on +2/x4 spawns, not even on AVs. You have more flexibility than you had before. You don't have to use Entangling. It's extra. You don't have to use Flash if you use PGA, or PGA if you use Flash. Either one will provide sufficient mitigation to allow you to get on with the business of kicking ass. You don't have to use Acid on PGA-Slept critters and break the Sleep in order to reach 40% -Res, you can just Disruption. You don't have to use Acid + Disruption when you drop OSA, you can just use Disruption. You say you're going to have to spend more time debuffing to compensate for having different effects in different powers, but I'm seeing less time spent. I'm seeing half as many power usages necessary to stay alive. I'm seeing half as many to increase DPS. I'm seeing half as many to bring the pain to AV fights. I'm seeing more choices in how I use my TA powers, less requirement that I use more of them to do almost as much as other sets do with fewer powers, and a hell of a lot more time I can spend blasting or controlling or monitoring my pets. And I definitely don't see a need to use all of my TA powers as soon as they're recharged, like I see when I'm playing my sub-50 no-set-bonuses TA characters now. I'm sorry, but I can't agree. I've played TA for too long, and know the mechanics too well, to overlook the enormous improvement to quality of life these changes will bring, to feel that "having" to use Entangling to stack 20% -Res on top of the 40% I can apply with one power is a bad thing, to consider it a bad thing if I can throw in with a team going up against an AV and actually contribute, maybe even with only 3 powers instead of 7 or 8 (i'd go 4, maybe bump it up to 5 if people are struggling). You're being saved from having to use every power at every opportunity because the debuffs were too weak, the durations too short and the recharge times too long, and still having your ass handed to you. You're being saved from feeling useless because you brought TA instead of anything else. You're being saved from having to wait for OSA or EMP to recharge because nothing else in your quiver does much to keep you or your team alive. But you can view it at as net loss, that's your prerogative.

Good gynoids go to heaven. Bad ones go everywhere.

-Range was tested in a previous round of TA changes. It's brokenly easy to game. Definitely not happening with TA, or likely any ranged set of any kind.

We're at a point at which it doesn't matter if it would be appropriate. The reason for that is simply that TA has always required players to put more work into playing the set than they would have to invest in playing other sets, and that's kept it at the bottom of the barrel. People don't want to play TA because it's always been too much damn work for too little reward. That's why the -Res was moved to Disruption. There's no loss of AoE debuff, and it does it in one power usage instead of two. That's what @Captain Powerhouse is aiming for with his changes to TA. Cut down on the amount of work the player has to do and increase the reward for what they choose to do. The -ToHit in Flash Arrow was increased so TA players wouldn't have to use two or three powers to provide mitigation comparable to other sets. The -Damage in PGA was increased for the same reason. Disruption being allowed to stack was removed to balance it against other sets after the -Res from Acid was moved and the target cap increased to 16. The -Res in Entangling was added to compensate TA players for losing the option to stack Disruption. Acid had -Special added to give it more utility and versatility in place of having one purpose in the eyes of players, that being little more than a second AoE source of -Res (and a poor one at that, with a pitifully small AoE radius). The radius was also increased so the power would have more impact in-game, rather than being an AoE with such a small radius that it only affected whatever was humping the primary target's leg. The -Recharge from Entangling was moved to Glue and increased, and again, this was done so players wouldn't have to use multiple powers to achieve their goal. Ice was modified to make the power more than a bog standard Hold, which lacked flavor or versatility. The Hold duration was reduced accordingly to maintain balance, and to promote its use as more than just a proc mule or just a Hold that you use until you have enough slots and other powers to remove it from your tray. EMP Arrow was changed in multiple ways because it's never been particularly useful as anything more than a panic button, whereas now it's useful as much more. Every change to TA went through multiple iterations and months of work, all with the goal of making a TA player's life easier and more enjoyable. Less work, more reward. I doubt the -Res is going back to Acid, even in single-target format. I doubt the -Res will be removed from Entangling. There are still some improvements which could be made, such as the -5 Endurance in Disruption being replaced with anything useful, or taking another look at EMP Arrow and possibly doing something other than a copy of Faraday Cage for teammates/pets only. But most of what's here is going to go live, because the changes @Captain Powerhouse made accomplished the goals he set, those being less work for the player and more parity with other debuffing sets. What matters is that the set is vastly improved from what it always had to settle for. It's stronger, more versatile, more capable and easier to use. Good job, CP.

Yeah, I know they're good spiders. As I said, I respect them. I just don't want to sleep with them when they're the size of a turtle. Good housemates don't intrude on one another's personal space. Furry cats in my home - GOOD! Furry spiders large enough to give me the willies - NOPE! No scritches for them. They go outside, where they belong.

I don't use any travel powers, temp or pool, on most of my characters, and there are always areas that are slightly annoying to navigate. I've trained myself to instinctively detour around them or into them from the "right" direction. But I've been liking everything I've seen in regard to Combat Teleport, and I like your feedback about using it without travel powers to bypass speed bumps in places like Steel Canyon. I think I'm going to be doing a lot of respecing, between Combat Teleport and the changes to Trick Arrows. I'd be annoyed, but actually having too many good choices for once, instead of trying to figure out how to squeeze in mules for set bonuses, is a really nice problem to have.

No, those are just the resistances they have to the debuff. The lowest possible value that can be applied with a -resist -ToHit. The real question is, what is their base resistance to -ToHit? Is it the floor, in the case of standard bosses, or do they start with a specific resistance to -ToHit that can be subsequently lowered to 20%? What do they start with and how does -res -ToHit impact that number? At a guess, any boss not specifically coded, meaning generic Bossname bosses encountered in standard mission content, would have just the 20% resistance to -ToHit, and Acid's -res -ToHit would simply have no impact. The same should be true of lieutenants and minions, if it's true for bosses, with minions at 0% and fully capable of being debuffed to -300%. AVs still leave a hell of a lot of room for -res -ToHit to work, though, even with that 30% floor.

It's a leftover from when critter hit chances used ToHit instead of Accuracy, I suspect. It might even be pre-Purple Patch, or part of the Purple Patch.

The recharge time on Blizzard, Blackstar, Thunderous Blast, Nova, Inferno, Psychic Wail, Atomic Blast and Dreadful Wail was 360s when TA went live. And for the rest of the lifetime of the game, until the day it shut down. Those recharge times were adjusted in I24, which was still in beta on the original servers. OSA's recharge time was not, because despite having the capability to deal as much damage as some of those nukes, it was treated as a defender primary power, a debuff and soft control. K.

The world needs more spiders like the Argiope genus (banded garden spiders). Fewer tarantulas and wolf spiders. I could do with an outhouse, if the world is taking requests...

Missions being cleared from the navigation window when changing zones. FIX THAT BUG! FIX IT! I'm 48 years old, I don't need any help forgetting where I was going or why I was going there! Players shouldn't have to go through extra steps to lock the mission into the window, or select it again and again and again. It's UI, not a mini-game. On the rare occasion that I have to open my Team window for some reason, "You are no longer seeking a team" pops up in the chat window. Seeing that is unnerving for people with social anxiety disorder. It implies that we're automatically added to LFG, without our consent or knowledge, and even the implication is detrimental for people with this mental health issue. If that were actually happening, I'd set this laptop on fire. Do something to get rid of that unnecessary and incorrect notification.

Map zoom changes in mission maps. I despise that. The netgraph display can't be moved. Makes it difficult to see what's going on in tray 1 during when latency/ping is bad, unless you relocate the entire power tray window to another location. The navigation window really should be attached to the map window, or built into the map window, or the nav turned into a HUD element and the map into a transparent overlay. More HUD elements, instead of discrete windows, would go far in making the game feel more immersive and saving screen space for more important features. The player health/endurance/buff window isn't eye-catching, it doesn't stand out, it doesn't draw the player's attention to it when health or endurance is going down, and it can't really be placed in an out of the way location where it also remains immediately visible without distracting from the fight. There should be something that notifies the player that kissing the floor is imminent, and looking at the health/endurance/buff window means looking away from the 10 jerks on the screen who are trying to turn you into a meat popsicle. Those are my oldest complaints about the UI. That's not to say that my nostalgia reflex doesn't kick in when I see it (still), but it's never been a good UI and time hasn't improved it.

How are you going to impose Knocked Up on robots and ghosts if you don't get into them?

*steals @Ironblade's exes and peas* *munch munch*

If OSA were balanced around the damage it deals, it would have a minimum recharge time of 6 minutes (360s) and a minimum 33% higher endurance cost, in line with powers which dealt similar damage when it was created. But Castle stretched the balance budget to the limit and granted the power discounts to recharge time and endurance cost to bring it down to expected defender stats for primary powers because it's a debuff and soft control with optional bonus damage.

*moves into all of the other parts of the head* I want a banana hammer skin for maces. That plays clips of Bananarama songs when attacking. A Bananarama banana hammer. *queues up the '80's tunes and grabs the hair brush*

I would've been running through the house, screaming and naked. Okay, I might occasionally do that anyway, but still...

The bonus half. The half we can activate or not, as we choose. The half that isn't accounted for in the balance of the other half, specifically because it's not automatically granted, either within the power or within the set. OSA without OSBurn is a powerful Defense debuffer, Slow and Knockdown patch, with a long duration and reliable effects. It is, in that half alone, appropriate for the set, and for a defender primary, and the set was designed around that. Not around OSBurn's potential damage output, not around the players' ability to defeat OSTarget and summon OSBurn, but around the debuffing and soft control that OSA itself does. Amp Up requires a teammate or pet to use in order to deal damage, both from the perspective of a player dealing damage, and from the perspective of the power itself dealing damage. It's balanced around that limitation. The player can't use it on his/her character, it has to be used on an ally of some kind, a proxy damage dealer. OSA is balanced around its debuffing and soft control effects, and allows players to use it for extra damage if they choose to, without affecting the balance of the debuffing and soft control. Different powers, but the same basic concept for balance - give it something extra, don't take away from the other effects, but impose a limitation. Every power is balanced in multiple ways. Everything a power does is balanced against everything else a power does. Every + comes with a - in some way. OSA's - is having to actively do something to initiate ignition, using the appropriate damage type. This is the balance applied for the + of dealing damage. It exists as a + without applying a - to the other half of the power because that + requires player initiation with a power from another source, regardless of what that source is. And many other sets do have access to those damage types. 10/13 defender secondaries and corruptor primaries, 5/7 mastermind primaries, 3/9 controller primaries have access to Energy/Fire damage in at least one power. Controllers have the fewest options, and they still have the ability to select one of four *PPs, the Sorcery pool, temporary powers, origin powers, procs, teammates or lucky (unlucky) actions by critters. OSA isn't restricted to only being usable by specific primary/secondary combinations. If anything, it's less restrictive than sets with actual combo mechanics, because you can choose to use another power to ignite OSA. I can't choose to use Cross Punch to build Frenzy or the combo builder in Street Justice, I have to use the appropriate power to access the set's mechanic. Should we change all combo sets to allow pool powers, other primary/secondary powers, temporary powers, procs, teammates and pets to build up combo mechanics? Would that be balanced? No and no. They're restricted in the way they are for balance reasons, the powers are balanced around those restrictions and reworking them to remove the restrictions would lead to imbalance. Those sets would have to be rebalanced around the new combo building capability, which would mean lowering damage, increasing endurance costs or recharge times, reducing hit chances or something else. You say there are restrictions. There are, but not the restrictions you envision. OSA not being ignited by a TA power isn't a restrictions, it's a freedom, it means none of TA's powers are balanced around having an in-set ignition mechanism, OSA isn't restricted to only being ignited by an in-set mechanism, and players don't even have to select a specific power or perform a predefined combination in order to access that extra damage. The restrictions are that you have to choose whether or not you want to use the extra damage, and how you do so. Not that you have to select "the right" primary or secondary, or limit your build in any way.

Control is binary. It's limited because of that, which has led to its over-use in critters. If control were the result of stacking lesser controls, or debuffs, though... stacked Slows would become Immobilizes, for example. Sleeps could stack to Stuns, and Stuns stack to Holds. There are a lot of variations which could be explored, reducing the binary effects of control from critters while still allowing them to enhance the difficulty. Controllers and dominators would retain full control options, to differentiate them from defenders and corruptors while also allowing them to be more powerful than critters (because that's the point of a super-power MMORPG, isn't it?). By making control less binary, it becomes more flexible, and the players' approach to dealing with it becomes more flexible as well. Critters could be threatening without being either bullet sponges or insta-mez jerks.

Well, TA received a buff to -Regen, and has -Regen resistance debuffing now. TA is a Regen nerf in I27.

The patch note indicating 15% is incorrect.

Slow is a debuff. KB and KU being controls is debatable (hence the term "soft control"). Are you asking for opinions on how controls rank against one another, or imagining an entirely new control system in which stacking controls doesn't increase magnitude, but turns them into "better" controls (i've been thinking about that for over ten years)?

Redundancy can be redundant sometimes.

I want the sound. I want my characters to say, "Yoink!" every time they use it. Dead serious. I might have to go find a suitable clip to turn into a mod.