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If balance is the goal, this won't achieve it. Debuff toggles are subject to the AoE target limitation of 16. That's a hard number. There's no gaming it, there's no wiggle room, it can't be increased in any way by the player, it's defined and measurable. If anything, the AoE target cap of 16 is functionally lower for debuff toggle users, because the AoE target cap doesn't exclude crap like Rikti Monkeys or Sky Raider FFGs or -XX critters appearing in higher level spawns, things which pose very little or no threat. Yet they're still counted against the number of targets the user is affecting, leaving real threats undebuffed. Additionally, debuff toggles are subject to purple patch reductions on top of enemies having improved stats as level differential increases, an additional layer of loss of efficiency that buff toggle users never have to deal with. Buff toggles, on the other hand, affect an unlimited number of targets inversely, by adjusting the character's stats, thus bypassing all target caps. There is no hard number here, no limitation. Put a character with Maneuvers in a room with 1000 enemies, and all 1000 enemies will have a reduced chance to hit. Put a character with Darkest Night in the same room and 984 of those 1000 enemies are utterly unaffected. For a character with buff toggles, it doesn't matter if there's a FFG or -XX enemy, or ten, or a hundred, because they don't impact the efficiency of the character's mitigation, they aren't tabulated and counted toward a target cap, they don't matter at all in that context. And buff toggles always provide their mitigation at the listed values, since those numbers aren't adjusted by purple patch mechanics. And with all of that, they're also benefitting from the existing suppression system (again, effect cancelation per tick and only for the duration of mez)... and the vast majority of buff toggles are only available to archetypes which also have status protection, so they're rarely suppressed anyway. Now, one could attempt to argue that debuff toggles provide mitigation for everyone, which is why they "need" more restrictions, but... so do toggles like Maneuvers, Shadow Fall, Dispersion Bubble, and they don't stop working when enemies number 17 through 1000 attack, they don't use a suppression with several seconds of wait time attached after mez expires, they aren't subject to purple patch reductions... Jesus, a tanker or brute or Kheldian, or any character capable of holding the aggro cap worth of enemies and surviving, isn't dealing with those restrictions, and they're providing mitigation for everyone. There's never been balance between buff toggles and debuff toggles, and buff toggles are one of the worst balance problems in the overall game because they don't obey the same rules. And now we have an aggro adjustment on the test server in addition to this "fuck you, debuff toggle user" suppression, which is going to further emphasize the problems debuff toggles were already dealing with, while benefiting buff toggle users. "Oh, look, now I have 34 critters pissed off at me, and my toggle is a debuff with a cap of 16, so I'm fucking toast. Guess I should've made a buff toggle character so my damage mitigation would IGNORE THE TARGET AND AGGRO CAPS ENTIRELY." Debuff toggles don't need any further restrictions. Especially not with the aggro adjustments in this update. What they need is equivalency with buff toggles, and this cockamamie idea of locking players out of access to their debuff toggles for a few seconds every time they're mezzed is just going to make the lack of equivalency worse. Just set them to use the same cancel effect as buff toggles, @Captain Powerhouse, @Faultline, @Booper, or whoever's responsible for this, and call it done; or start hammering buff toggles into the same rule set that debuff toggles are forced to comply with and put this on hold until you can apply it to every toggle.

They've invested three years into improving the leveling experience, addressed sub-50 content issues and added sub-50 content. They rebuilt the economy and implemented numerous safeguards against inflation which are reliant on players leveling in order to provide some of the necessary inf* sinks. They revised the movement code and caps, and overhauled the pre-existing travel powers, to make leveling in the standard game easier and more enjoyable. They're not going to obviate 8 years of previous work, and their own 3 years of work, destroy the entire economic base, create an inflationary spiral which dwarfs what we saw on the original servers and throw all of the sub-50 content into the shitter just to placate some impatient people. They're being implemented in PvP because PvP is, and always has been, a separate aspect of the game, one which has proven to be largely incompatible with the PvE aspect, as well as the least popular and populous. Those insta-50 PvP-only characters also heavily restricted in what they can do, probably expected to be as grossly under-utilized as everything else related to PvP and highly unlikely to have any impact on the PvE game. That's why PvPers are getting insta-50 PvP-only characters. But you know that, because you've been participating in the relevant thread, and despite the façade, you're not an idiot. This is just you being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. PvP players had to play two games, essentially, the PvE game and the PvP game, when they only wanted to play one. They also suffered from a low population and general lack of interest in their aspect of the game because of the "level to 50, completely rebuild the entire character from the ground up with all different enhancement sets and counter-intuitive power selections and slotting choices" barrier imposed by the different rule set in PvP. Insta-50 PvP-only characters resolves all of that, with no predicted impact on the PvE game. PvE characters don't require complete redesigns after having been leveled. PvE characters don't require entirely different enhancement loadouts to function at all in their preferred aspect of the game when they reach 50. PvE characters don't require unusual build decisions and slotting choices to compensate for a completely different rule set and power effects. PvE characters don't require instant max level to be viable against their foes. PvE players don't have to jump through all of those flaming shit hoops. PvE players don't need insta-50 characters to access their preferred aspect of the game because they're already there. They may want insta-50 characters, but they don't need them.

No, it doesn't.

A level 50 character exemplared to level 30 isn't just losing a few powers or IO set bonuses, it's also subject to enhancement devaluation. And while the level 15 character sidekicked up to 25 doesn't gain powers or slots, it does gain increased enhancement values. That's an important aspect of the zones' auto-leveling effect. That's the only thing that makes it possible for the level 15 character to participate. Removing that exemplaring effect in addition to letting the level 50 character keep all powers and set bonuses doesn't widen a gap, it creates an insurmountable obstacle. Even sidekicked to 50, the level 15 character is nothing more than a defeat waiting to happen at that point. It's no more a threat to the 50 than the Skulls in Perez Park.

Wouldn't this place low level competitors at an extreme disadvantage? Even if the zone automatically sidekicks them up to 50, they'd still be working with fewer powers, fewer slots in the powers they have, and they wouldn't have the benefits of enhancements like Superior versions of ATOs and Winters, or purples like native 50s. Or will 50 be required to enter the zones at all? That would be fairer, and avoid the potential problem of players taking high level PvP characters into the zones and beating the stuffing out of SKed low level characters... which would be akin to walking into an elementary school and punching every 7 year old in sight.

"Partially" is not complete. "On the way" is not here. "Eventually" is not now. You believe a solution is already complete, or potentially near enough to make no difference, but instead of simply saying that, you actually told me not to ask the HC team to look into it. I don't know if you're deliberately being contentious, a busybody, or just socially inept, but I neither seek nor require your permission or approval to post anything, and I am not the person with whom to try that shit. If your only contribution is to tell someone not to post, take your own advice.

When? Page 97? There's no timeframe for when all KB will be changed to use the new system. This problem exists now, it needed to be brought to the HC team's attention now, not in a few months or years.

KB mag 0.75 or below causes KD, KB mag 0.76 and above causes KB. Or is it 0.74 and 0.75... I forget. @arcanaville was the one who clarified the exact breakpoint, back on the original forums. At the time, we were all throwing around the 0.67 number as gospel, then she dug up the scalar and modifier values and schooled us. The majority of KD powers were set to 0.67 KB specifically to prevent -1 critters from being knocked back (0.67 * 1.1 = 0.737) by powers expected to cause KD, so players would have a sense of continuity. But until the HC team finishes switching over to the new vectored KB system, anything above 0.75 is currently KB. And the powers I listed, which are unlikely to be the ones, suddenly change to KB because they scale up KB mag with character level. The magnitudes should be locked, but for some reason, they aren't. Focus was KB, originally. A lot of melee powers were. Cryptic want bananas with KB when they originally designed the game. Then they increased the KB mag in most of the melee powers months after launch, because they felt it was "more comic booky". It wasn't until after the forums went nuclear, and they did a check on powers taken and realized that damn everyone was skipping the melee KB powers, that they went back in and revised most of the melee KB to KD. The inaccurate description for Focus is a holdover from the earliest days of the game.

"Hold on, team, Betty Blast-butt isn't here. Betty, what's going on?" "I've got some damn dust in my jet pack's carburetor, it's bogging when I throttle up." "Come on, you haven't learned to fly yet?" "Look, last time I 'threw myself at ground and tried to miss', I didn't miss. I'll stick with the jet pack."

Lash, the second attack available to masterminds in the Demon Summoning set, states that it has a chance to knock a target down. However, the KD scales with character level, and at level 27 it crosses the KD threshold and becomes KB (0.76). 25 levels is a long time to become accustomed to how a power functions, and KD switching to KB is a rather marked change in functionality that players are not given any reason to anticipate, or notification which allows them to prepare for it. The effect should be consistent, either always KD or always KB. There are other powers which scale KD to KB in this manner. Dual Wield and Empty Clips in the Thugs set are two examples (Empty Clips is locked at 0.66 for other archetypes). I believe it would be worth spending some development time to sift through KD and KB powers to locate anomalies like these and deal with them.

Is this a mastermind set, or marriage?

Sorry. But they really do want that pizza. Delivered to me.

Nullifies the lecithin from the brains and prevents it from tanning properly.

That's ridiculous. Seat covers, vellum, shower curtains, but not hats. Human skin just isn't stiff enough for hats.

I have no freezer, no refrigerator and no oven. I'm always hungry.

They want real Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Supreme. Dripping with cheese. Some parmesan sprinkled on top. 2" thick garlic-buttered crust. They also want it delivered to me.

Instant 50s for PvP. Restricted to PvP zones. I expect a short term spike in PvP recipe and enhancement prices, but not a long term effect. Because it's PvP. The server with the slash command to auto-fill slots with enhancements? Think about it.

Encourages RMT, not acceptable to this development team. Fails to enforce the requirement. Anyone can get any badge any time without any effort, without even being present while logged in, simply by allowing another character to carry them, the same way they can get XP, inf*, drops. And this adds market stress the same way insta-50 does. The market relies on input, a character instantly leveled to X, regardless of what number you attach to X, generates nothing to input. Increased demand, decreased supply, inflation rises. No.

Have to say, the arguments against 8s of suppression are on point. Locking everyone out of offensive toggles for longer than they're currently lost due to mez, based on an estimated average animation time for edge cases running four toggles, isn't an improvement. That's like... setting every animation in the game to root for 3.3s because edge case powers have 3.3s root times. If you're dead-set on using suppression duration as a proxy for animation time, it needs to be modified by the number of offensive toggles available to the character. Suppression duration 2s * number of offensive toggles taken. Or just use the cancel effect already available and make offensive toggles work the way defensive toggles do. K I S S.

Not thrilled, but I understand that motivation behind the change is the betterment of all players. So I'll live with it.

Not too long ago, there was a relatively new player prancing around the forums, rather proudly boasting of having kicked people off of teams for... not playing defenders the way he/she believed they "should" be played, not playing tanks the way he/she believed they "should" be played, et cetera. This person treated teammates like employees, and was the kind of boss no-one wants to work for. That's why we can't just compromise. There's no argument to be made, no discussion to be had, because there is no way on Earth that micro-managing, anal-retentive dickheads should be given control over other players' decisions, and that is exactly what this entails. No-one can force another player to stop in the middle of a story arc or *F, whip up a build in Mids', perform a respec and slot "appropriate" enhancements... but you can bet your banana split that the instant a KB->KD toggle becomes a reality, everyone with a stick up their ass and a swollen ego will leap at the opportunity to impose their will on others. We are not going to spoon-feed people like the one I'm not naming more opportunities to treat others like shit. Not on my watch.

3 points, 4 points, it wouldn't be worth it at 6 points. Three sets offer -KB for a single slot, which doesn't represent a slot investment if one only uses the default slot. Two sets have it in the 3-slot position, one set at 4 slots and another set with it at 5 slots. Having to spend 5 slots for that little -KB isn't worthwhile. And the other set bonuses are no better than what can be obtained elsewhere. You can spend fewer slots using four Devastations, two Basilisk's Gaze and a single -KB IO (three default slots in three different powers, four added slots), enhance three powers instead of one, gain more +HP and still have one slot to use elsewhere. Four Devastations, three Thunderstrikes and a -KB IO use that extra slot and give you 2% Recovery in addition to everything else. Without the Superior upgrade path, the set is under-tuned, to the point of hornswoggling players into wasting slots. It should be renamed Underwhelming Force.

6 slots for 3 points of -KB is already a bad investment when that bonus can be obtained with a much, much lower slot cost. It doesn't need to be worse.

Already fixed in beta.