Luminara

If there's only one enemy, the AoE works exactly like a single-target attack. It checks the last hit roll, and if you missed, forces a hit on the only target available. It's not actually the streak breaker breaking, it's the lack of a mechanic to determine "last targeted enemy" and compare it to the current targeted enemy. That's what allows an AoE to miss a specific critter after a single-target attack misses, and a single-target attack to miss after an AoE misses on that specific critter. The streak breaker is limited to recording last hit roll, or last X hit rolls to be precise, so it can reach whatever plateau is set as your maximum misses and force a hit at the appropriate time. There's no record, though, of "tidge missed with X power with Y hit chance on Z critter", so the streak breaker has no comparison, or even code in place, to check that and force a hit on Y critter. Obviously, the record is there, since it shows up in the combat log. It's not passed to anything else, though. As I said, no mechanic exists to compare hit checks on targeted enemies. The game just bases it all on X power and Z roll, skipping Y altogether. AoEs check each target one after another, so that's also possible, but with 95% clamped hit chance, very rare. No idea which target is checked first or in which order the check proceeds, either, but I can say that "that jerk in the middle" is not the first one checked, else I wouldn't be missing 3 times in a row with my sentinel's attack chain (Stunning Shot/Fistful of Arrows/Blazing Arrow).

Unlike Accuracy, which is typically something which is only applied to an individual power via slotting enhancements (typically. there are global Accuracy buffs and IO set bonuses), ToHit applies to everything with a hit check on your character. Your primary or secondary set powers, your pool powers, your temporary powers, everything benefits from any ToHit buffs affecting your character. So your P2W attacks have a 75% base hit chance, plus whatever +ToHit is currently affecting you. If, for example, you slotted a Kismet unique in an appropriate power (anything with +Defense, even as little as Combat Jumping or Hover), you would have a 6% ToHit buff applied to your character for as long as that power was active (toggled on), or permanently if in an auto power (a power which has no toggle cost and cannot be turned off). That would raise the P2W attack's base hit chance to 81%. If you also had Tactics, then the ToHit buff from that power would also be applied (Tactics' buff varies by archetype). That additional ToHit buff might be as low as 7% unslotted, or it might be 12.5% unslotted. Whatever the total is, it's also applied to the base hit chance for all of your powers, even powers you can't slot or alter in the costume editor, like P2W attacks. Let's say you're a stalker with the Kismet unique and Tactics. With no ToHit enhancements in Tactics, you'd still have an 88% hit chance (75% + 6% + 7%)with temporary powers, like P2W powers. If you slotted Tactics to increase the ToHit buff by ~43%, then it would be just over 10% +ToHit, which would raise all of your temp powers to 91% hit chance (75% + 6% + 10%). That's not advice to take Tactics on a stalker, just an example using an archetype with a low Tactics number. The simplest way to look at it is, ToHit = +base_hit_chance. It's directly added. Accuracy works differently, it's a multiplier, but it's weaker than ToHit because of how the multiplier is applied. Sometimes it's better because it's what's easily available, like in IO set bonuses, but ToHit is where the real power lies. Something as seemingly minute as Tactics or the Kismet unique (unique means you can only use one of the IO in your entire build) can, at low levels, dramatically change your experience, because they kick your hit rolls into the next higher streak breaker category. Again, all of this is presuming you're fighting +0 foes. As critter level differential increases, your hit chance goes down. That's a base function to ensure that players aren't beating the snot out of +9 enemies (it used to happen). Cell doors, whether they're in Arachnos bases, PPD or Longbow bases, Circle of Thorns caves, Portal Corps maps, wherever, always con +1 to you. That lowers your hit chance. They're supposed to be difficult to break. If it were easy to escape prison, there'd be no point putting players in cells, they could just be permitted to respawn at a hospital and run back. I'm not saying they're a good challenge, or fun, just that the idea was to add an interesting and unique way to respawn players, and repeated numerous times even if it was one of the more annoying features of those maps. And there are a lot of knowledgeable people here. Some make me seem almost imbecilic. I just happen to have a penchant for words and a passion for the mechanics (or is it the other way around...).

@arcanaville was the real hero. She's the one who laid down most of the math we use. I learned from her work, and her example, and focused on mechanics.

Too much hyperbole going on here. The streak breaker limits how many times you miss based on your total calculated hit chance. That hit chance is a combination of the base power hit chance, the critter's level in comparison to yours, any ToHit bonuses you might have active, any Defense bonuses your target might have active, any -Defense applied to your target, any Accuracy bonuses you might have active, and any ToHit debuffs which might currently be active on you. It's not as complicated as it seems, it's just numbers. Additionally, the Beginner's Luck buff applied to all characters adds a ToHit bonus as a global effect. It affects the character's set attacks. It affects temporary powers. It affects Brawl. It affects anything and everything the player can use from primary, secondary, pool or temporary powers. That ToHit bonus is largest at level 1 and scales downward until level 20, at which point it is removed. Beginner's Luck was added to the game specifically to counter the problems of too few powers, which forced players to rely on temporary or origin powers to fill gaps, and inability to slot sufficient Accuracy or acquire enough ToHit to make attacks reliable. You don't miss 4 times in a row at level 1. Or at level 5. Or at level 20, when the buff is removed, unless you're fighting something which alters your hit chance (critter with +Def or -ToHit, or critters above your level, for example). The base hit chance for most powers is 75%. Some powers have a 67% hit chance, some have base 90% hit chance, but almost nothing available to players has a hit chance lower than 60%, and anything above 59.99% is guaranteed to hit by the fourth attempt, because the streak breaker forces a hit after 3 misses for any series of attacks with at least a 60% chance to hit on each attack. The only exception to the streak breaker rule comes into play when mixing single-target and AoE attacks. Using a single-target attack, followed by a cone, AoE or PBAoE, followed by another single-target attack. In this sequence, a specific critter targeted by the single-target attack can be missed, then the cone, AoE or PBAoE can miss, and the following single-target attack can also miss. This is because the streak breaker doesn't check the target, it simply checks the previous hit roll, and AoEs don't treat any one target with priority. The fact that you may be targeting a specific critter with both the single-target and AoE attacks isn't something the streak breaker is coded to recognize. Due to that, it's possible to miss more than once even when your hit checks are clamped at 95%. Outside of that edge case, there are no miss streaks outside of what's allowed by the streak breaker, and between Beginner's Luck at lower levels and proper slotting for or usage of +Accuracy or +ToHit, players are already extremely well empowered to avoid miss streaks. If you are missing four times in a row, stop trying to fight enemies above your level, or trying to fight enemies with +Def or -ToHit. Or use Tactics from the Leadership pool. Or slot a Kismet unique (it gives a global 6% ToHit buff to your character). Or slot Accuracy in your powers. Or team up with someone who applies -Def or +ToHit. Or use IO set bonuses to increase your global Accuracy (global meaning it applies to all powers you use, including temp and origin powers). Hit rolls are not borked. The streak breaker is not broken. Lowbies are not penalized. The hit check system is not deliberately fucking with anyone (except me, because i make it do that by mixing single-target and AoE). And no, Accuracy was not nerfed (nor was ToHit).

Co* is a game. For most people, that's all it is or will be. Other games come along and they move on. Hobbies become more important and they stop playing games as much. Families are started or grown, and people shift focus away from games. Jobs change, lives change, interests change, things change and people change with them. A population decline in any game is inevitable, and it doesn't matter if the game offers max level on login or demands a heinous grind; if the development team never updates or if they update every few weeks; if the engine is the newest, shiniest available or some kludge of the Doom engine. Nothing can be done to prevent population decline in a game because nothing can change human nature. Most people don't watch the same movie every night, or even every week. They don't listen to one song on repeat for months or years. They take what they can from the entertainment offered, then they move on to find new entertainment. We're the outliers. We can't really expect average people to stick around like we do. All we can do is enjoy their company while they're here, wish them the best when they leave and hope someone else can fill their shoes.

Staff/Rad/Energy Mastery brute. Scads of AoE. SCADS. Status protection on a toggle instead of a click, +Recharge and -ToHt on your taunt toggle (taunggle? TAUNGGLE!), resistance, regeneration, extra Melee/Lethal defense and -Res in Staff (stay in Form of the Body), yada yada yada. Take all of that with a grain of salt, because I don't care to or need to farm, I just adore my Staff/Willpower brute and noted that Rad has extra AoE.

I take back three of the things I said about him typing with his nipples. Okay, four things. He's earned it. 😁

Part of the problem is that it's not properly canceling its own effects. It's not simply a stacking issue, it's always been odd in a way which suggested that it might be buggy. A critter can enter the pseudo-pet's PBAoE 29s after the pseudo-pet is spawned, and when the pet despawns at 30s, it doesn't remove the debuff from that critter. In fact, the debuff lasts until 59s, which implies that each tick applies a 30s Slow. If that is the case, changing the debuff duration to 0.25s (presuming a 0.2s tick rate) would resolve that issue, but would introduce the problem of the debuff no longer being present when critters exit the patch. Having Glue persist after the pet despawned has long been a crutch TAs have had to lean on to get more out of the set. Whether it's warranted with the set's improvements is another conversation entirely. Might be worth testing it with and without the persistence to see how it impacts play.

Point. None of the other defender primaries deal significant damage, nor "modest damage over time", nor are categorized as attacks. They're all buffs, debuffs, or controls (hard or soft), not attacks.

Of course not. If that were my intention, I'd say something like... Some say... that he was forced to cancel the private ceremony where he was going to marry himself, because he was caught cheating on himself and broke up with himself. And... that he keeps a tin of kippers in his left horn, for "emergency purposes". All we know is, he's called The Stank! You're the one with a lit match and a "home ion drive kit" tag hanging from your costume. 😄

Capacitor. Wiki it.

Looks like the bean-powered propulsion system is functioning properly. Angled slightly up so the thrust counters gravity, gaseous exhaust present, it's fine. 😁

None of the other defender primary T1 powers deal damage. Not one. If that rule is changed for TA, it has to, in fairness, be changed for all defender primaries. As a controller primary, it would probably work, but I'd recommend a mutual exclusivity flag like the one in Shield Defense which prevents players from using two-handed weapons with SD. TA/TA would, in all likelihood, be grossly over-powered in several ways, unless one or both were scaled downward (such as to current live TA levels). That would be delightful. Not having a bow in a single *PP has always been a sticking point for me.

As an "I just zoned into Atlas Park/Mercy Island" help pop-up window which can't be dismissed for 10s, like the current one, clearly explaining to players that the command exists, which modifiers can be used and examples provided (such as a default bind/macro the player can copy and use). Or in the GMotD. Somewhere right in the player's face, rather than buried in forum posts. Bottom line, if people don't know a command exists, they can't look for information about it. It needs to be up front and center, so players are aware of it. Or, better, a right-click option on the power itself. Right-click, select Bind or Macro, etc. THAT would be ideal, because it would be easily discovered or explained.

They'll be in beta until they're finished. There's no definitive time frame. They're specifically interested in bugs, exploits and usability feedback. The more people testing, the sooner it can go live. So that might be tomorrow (it won't be tomorrow), or it might be Christmas (probably not that late, but still possible). Typically a package deal. Go. Test. Kill bugs. And that doesn't mean only the things that interest you, test everything. More eyes on more things = faster beta process.

Those changes appear to be limited to powers which duplicate other powers' movement mechanics, powers which are essentially copies of specific movement powers, as opposed to powers which buff movement speeds. If that is the case, unless there's a Hover clone in either Fire/ or /Bio (i can't find one), neither set is likely to be affected. Bill' Stank will be fine.

Jessica and May watching cat TV.

*shrinks in terror at all of the socialization being discussed*

Are you insane? Christmas is coming! Plan something for a date 1-2 weeks before the holiday! Make it a middle of the week kind of thing so the people who go out on the weekend can attend! This is an opportunity. Use it. There won't be another time change for months, so I'll arrive promptly, I promise. 🙂

Except my failure. I logged in this morning at 1:50 a.m., figured I'd be told which server to switch to, what to do, etc. Waited for a few minutes, dug up the base info and went to the Snake Den, waited a few more minutes, no-one was around. I gave up around 2:10, changed to another character and played for a while, watching for a /tell, then logged out at about 3:20 and went back to bed. It was when I got up again at 6 a.m. and saw that the sky was brighter than it should've been that I realized my mistake. Time change was last night. I should've been there at 1 a.m., not 2 a.m. That's on me. I apologize for leaving everyone waiting and not arriving when I was supposed to. I should've checked to see when that was going to occur and prepared accordingly. I know I should've joined the channel you set up, but I couldn't. I tried, but I just couldn't do it. That's also on me, but I'm shifting the responsibility for that to my mental illness. It was in control of that decision, not me.

Possible, certainly. But would it be balanced? We're still talking about a T9 with almost all of the benefits of a unique and desirable T5 tacked on. I suspect that any caster buffs would be necessarily small and not open to enhancing, which would make them of comparatively low value. A +Recovery buff would certainly be useful, even unenhanced, but with the way regeneration works, I suspect that the amount which could be added wouldn't bring anything worthwhile to the power (meaning, it would have to be 100% or higher, or enhanceable, to have any measurable effect). Status resistance would certainly be a reasonable addition, since it doesn't prevent mez, but as with regeneration, it's not really meaningful in small amounts. Shaving 1-2 seconds off of a status effect doesn't help squishies. I think moving the Faraday Cage effect to the cast point, rather than the impact point, would address the issue of applying it to the teammates who need it most without forcing the TA to choose between debuffing AV regeneration or helping struggling squishies. It would still have to exclude the caster, in fairness, but applying a small buff of some kind to the caster wouldn't be too much of a compromise. If the nanite cloud, or magical spell, or mutant pheromones, or whatever, can affect those around the caster, some small effect would be explicable as aiding the caster as well. Recovery would be the most useful in the numerical range I would expect, as even small increases to that are typically helpful and worthwhile, and TA does still have the problem of having to reapply every debuff, rather than use any toggles, which can eat into the Endurance bar quickly. Having the T9 power help when it's most needed, during long fights when the TA might be struggling to keep the blue bar from bottoming out, would be reasonable. I can't envision the small amount +Regen or status resistance that would be likely as being worth the time or effort, though, and I don't imagine CP would add either in an amount which would be significant due to the balance problem. That would be my proposal. Spawn the Faraday Cage around the TA, continue to exclude the TA, but add a small Recovery buff which affects the TA only. That's probably not enough to satisfy everyone here, but I think it addresses the raised issues well enough and doesn't step on Elec Affin's toes. Some extra regen and/or status protection would be nice, but I've played with those numbers often enough to know that they're really only useful when they're big, and big isn't going to happen here, in my estimation.

It was like that in the I5 beta, it was changed because juggling between location- and critter-targeted was counter-productive and problematic. Macros don't show recharge times, which will force players who use macros to set up two trays, one for macros and one for actual powers to display their recharge status. Key binds, the other option, force players to change hand position away from standard positioning (WASD + number keys), which leads to errors in power usage or unintended movement when the wrong keys are pressed. Neither of these are negligible concerns, and were the primary reasoning behind changing to mostly critter-targeted powers. Moving back to a heavier mix of location- and critter-targeted powers reintroduces these unresolved issues in usability, something you should consider before finalizing this change.

Final update to provide closure for anyone who was interested. May is still somewhat skittish around me. She usually dashes under the love seat or scoots away when I try to pet her. I have to let her come to me. And she nearly panics when I pick her up. I've been holding her for a few seconds each day, so she can become accustomed to it, but it's going to take a long time for her to adapt to that. Inexplicably, she doesn't mind if I grasp her tail when she's going past, and she'll lie on the love seat next to me and allow me to pet her when she's ready for a nap. I think she's bonded with Jessica too well. She doesn't hesitate to sit or lay with Jessica, chase her, let herself be chased, etc. Jessica is her best friend, I'm not, and I suspect it will always be that way. And I'm okay with that. A big part of why I took her in was to provide Jessica with a companion, not because I needed more than Jessica was providing for me, so she's doing what I'd hoped. I'm always hopeful that she'll take to me a little more, but Jessica's happiness and well-being are what matter most, and she seems to be happy to have May as her foster sister. Play time with Jessica and May is not gentle. Jessica bites May so hard that May squeals and whines... and as soon as she breaks free, or I intercede, she pounces on Jessica and starts it all over again. Chases can be chaotic with both of them running around and under things, especially with Jessica's size and strength (bull in a china shop). May has some odd fascination with my shoes and boots, scatters them all over the place several times every day. She also, and it's absolutely adorable, vocalizes when she's playing with jingly balls. She won't do it with strings or pieces of paper or anything else, only with jingly balls. Chatters away like she's having a conversation when she's playing with those. When Jessica wants play time with me, May intrudes, which confuses Jessica. She's not sure if she's supposed to keep playing, or let May have fun instead. I'm still trying to find a way to give Jessica some exclusivity, but in a 12'x16' space, there's really no way to separate the two, so we're still working on it. She's definitely settled in and accepted that this is her life, and she seems to be aware that it's better than it would've been under that house. She's a happy kitten with two friends who love her, all of the entertainment she could dream of, warm places to sleep, plenty of food and the freshest water nature can provide. She spends most of her time playing, and she does it with the exuberance and gusto that only kittens can pull off. I'll have to take her to a vet in a few months, for shots and spaying, and I already know that's not going to be a pleasant experience for either of us. We'll get through it, and I'm sure Jessica will be a big comfort for her when she comes home. Other than that, I think there's nothing really notable left to say.

Use it on critters near the squishies. Look, at this point, EMP Arrow is essentially a T9 plus a T5. It's EMP Arrow plus Faraday Cage at the point of impact, with the caveat being that it only affects teammates/pets. It has to have that limitation to balance it in regard to Faraday Cage, the Electrical Affinity power. Balance between sets matters as much as balance within sets, and this version of EMP Arrow is pushing the envelope as it is. It's one step away from shitting on Electrical Affinity, which is what it would be doing if it were a full port of Faraday Cage crowbarred into EMP Arrow. If you don't think this balance measure is acceptable, make a viable proposal for an alternative. Seriously, I'd love to see something improve the solo functionality of EMP Arrow.

That's not the design purpose of the power, or the design purpose behind adding the Faraday Cage effect. The Faraday Cage effect is there to give EMP Arrow utility outside of AV combat, and the decision not to allow it to affect the caster was because the set doesn't inherently support players entering or using it in melee range, as there are no heals or regeneration buffs. Also, with common SOs or common IOs, no Hasten and no Incarnate recharge buffs of any kind, the down time on the buff is only ~30s. If you're using IO sets, Hasten and Incarnate buffs, you can push the recharge time as low as ~70s, which is beyond perma-. As an exclusively and necessarily solo player, I'm fine with it not affecting the caster. It meets the design goals and purposes, it gives me a reason to use it outside of Portal Jockey pursuit or a panic button and it improves the lives of my fellow TAs who can team.