Katharos

The merit reward vs work+difficulty ratio on redside is horrible all around, but Barracuda takes the cake. Especially with that x4 escort in the last mission. It definitely deserves a merit reward boost.

Cold's good, and Sorcery's Spirit Ward fills in the healing hole nicely. The next best ST DPS for pets are ninjas and beasts. I'd favour beasts over ninjas because they're more tanky, and the difference there is negligible compared to the time saved that you would otherwise spend resummoning. I recommend going deep into the speed pool to pick up burnout so you can doublestack sleet, benumb, and heat loss. The issue with rad as a (solo) AV killer for MMs is that you don't have anything to really keep your pets alive. The debuff toggles fall off when you're mezzed and you can't use your healing aura when you're mezzed, and you will be mezzed. It's normally not a problem on an MM because the pets are still in play, but if the toggles are your pet's only defence, it becomes a problem. I did test a beast/rad MM on the test server thinking that beast's natural ability to softcap themselves would be enough on its own, and it is, but I put in way more work to achieve half of the effect cold can achieve with very little effort, and it was expensive to boot. Also, it was a huge endurance problem. MMs already have an endurance nightmare, and unfortunately AM's recovery isn't enough to make up for both toggles and all the other things you should be running as an MM.

Can confirm this is true of MM EMP arrow too.

Can confirm. This happens in many missions where you’re made to look like a different character - to me it looks like an animation reset, that the character model’s animation goes back to neutral for an instant.

Avast is also doing this to me on chrome, and the only workaround I found is the same one Flea mentioned.

It wasn't phased out of all AOE immobilise, and intentionally not. I imagine it was left in WAWG because soldiers do a lot of knockback natively, and people dislike having to slot converters in every KB power. If you stick with that character to ancillary pool levels, mace mastery's web envelope doesn't do -kb. That might be a viable alternative for you, if you'd like to retain your KD.

I play sonic, and honestly it's not going to suffer from other sets borrowing from Disruption Field's design. It has bigger problems to be worried about. (Honestly, did someone roll sonic solely on the basis that Disruption Field has interesting targeting options? Was that a reason someone rolled sonic?) This is a good suggestion that would make a variety of support sets more playable in a number of ways. It'd allow relevant support sets to be more useful in casual speedrunning content. It would prop up struggling teams better, say, teams lacking a tank and someone still needs to take the alpha, and they can't wait 10 seconds for you to get your debuff trifecta up every fight. It encourages a lot more critical thinking about what you're throwing out and when you're doing it, because those toggles drink endurance like Dark Armour. I see two issues: one is a matter of aggro generation. Disruption Field doesn't generate aggro on the caster. Darkest Night, Radiation infection, Enervating field, and Spore Cloud do, and a lot. As they should, I think. They're all much more aggressive debuffs than Disruption Field. But there is a clumsiness in execution when casting it on an ally with that still in play. Say you've thrown it on a blapper with no damage aura - they run into melee and lag, preventing them from attacking. Suddenly you're eating the alpha strike. The second is that these powers show up in places outside of support sets. Would blaster plant manipulation's Spore Cloud get that benefit? Would tanker/brute soul mastery's Darkest Night get that benefit? edit: I was unclear - I would only support this change if it worked like enflame and could work on enemies or allies.

It feels like this is another strong argument for giving controllers the MM pet commands.

God yes. Please. This is such a creative set idea and fits into an under-serviced niche so nicely! Finally, a defence set that grants s/l def in its set bonuses... Of course, that would mean the event should be available year round so everyone can access the reward. Which would also be great. God knows the game needs more content tailored to small teams.

Nah, you’re right Zork. I noticed the 150% thing myself on the beta server. But when you’re in a drought, you’ll be grateful for even a trickle. Not sure why city of data says the pseudopets for both last only for 15 seconds. I’ve actually timed it before and both pseudopets last for 30, and mids agrees with me. They’re easily perma-able. (I’m going to double check this in the morning and eat crow, just watch) Only the MM version lasts for 15. Anyway, .33 per tick over 30 seconds is comparable to the AOE immobilises if much slower, and AOE immobilises both generate and benefit from containment. If sleep deprivation hasn’t rotted my mind.

Sleet from Cold Domination and Freezing Rain from Storm Summoning don't appear to benefit from the controller inherent and don't seem to apply double damage when hitting targets that are held, immobilised, stunned, or asleep, according to COD. I thought this might be a technical limitation of AOE pseudopets until I saw that Ice Storm in the Ice Mastery ancillary does do containment damage, doubling the cold damage portion of ice storm, which is visible in combat logs. Power pool AOE attacks that create pseudopets also don't apply containment damage to qualifying targets, either, significantly reducing the AOE capabilities of early to mid game controllers. Bopper thinks that's a real technical limitation that would take serious work to correct rather than a proper bug and that makes sense to me.

Update: mission doesn't complete until all Byrons are dead. Also, the Byrons all have dominate, which means they can all stack holds. Not sure how high the mag got total, but it was at least above 4, which was my protection at the time.

In the Attack Wade Industries mission from Chance McKnight in Imperial City, the final fight with Byron Wade bugged to spawn five times, including five different Byron Wades. Our difficulty setting was at x4, which might have confused it. There was an ambush at the same time but we couldn't see if additional Byrons came with the ambush or were already there. One Byron... Two Byrons... Red Byron... Blue Byron... A Byron for every occasion! I can't attach the last Byron because I've run out of space. But 5 named bosses and several additional non-named bosses on top of around 30ish(?) minions from each of their entourages, then the ambush, is a bit too much even by goldside standards. I know goldside's hard but this is a bit much.

Oops.

Back on live I was the first one to screw up the luck charm market on virtue. Low level salvage was always in a vulnerable place but I'm not sure how many people were engaging with the market to the degree they do on HC. Certainly a greater portion of the player population was market illiterate, if that's not an unkind thing to say, and the devs were apathetic to the in game economy. It wasn't a genius move on my part. More an inevitability because of the state of things. It honestly shouldn't have been something the game allowed to happen, and it would have been easy to fix on Paragon Studios' side of things. As evidenced by the fact it's simply not possible on HC, because of decisions HC has made. I'm a bit afraid people are going to know what I'm talking about and, um, hold a grudge. To which I say: I'm very sorry. I was a teenager and a bit of a dick.

Looks like Jimmy and Bopper are right. https://kapwi.ng/c/QiF6sSCg

When arcane bolt is used and it procs arcane power, arcane bolt will still undergo its full recharge time instead of recharging with a 1s delay as intended. I hadn't experienced this behaviour when I had beta tested sorcery, so it seems like something went haywire between then and live. Video evidence: https://kapwi.ng/c/hTc5HRhx This is my level 12 defender, but I can replicate this on my level 50 controller and provide further video evidence if needed.

I think it'd be a net positive to controller play to allow terrorise to generate containment and do double damage without challenging the current control set balance. It affects three main control sets: *Dark Control *Mind Control *Illusion Dark control wouldn't notice much of a difference because it already has an AOE immobilise for containment generation. The main beneficiaries will be illusion and mind control, an under-performing control set. At 26 illusion gets spectral terror; spectral terror has two abilities, an aura that terrorises enemies around it, and terrify, a copy of a mind control ability. Both abilities are magnitude 3 and can stack to lock down bosses. However, both also have to contend with a magnitude 3 afraid aura, which causes enemies to flee. This would notably reduce the effectiveness of spectral terror as a source of AOE containment damage. I mainly see this change improving the play of non-perma phantom army illusion players. Perma phantom army illusion characters don't need extra damage from containment, and pets don't receive containment benefits. Meanwhile, mind control play would be significantly improved; mind control lacks a source of AOE containment because of its absence of an AOE immobilise. Terrify is available at level 26 on mind controllers, 24 levels after other controllers have a reliable source of AOE containment. Terrify would take significant slotting to become a viable and reliable source of containment damage. Its base accuracy is 67.5%, its duration is 27.84 seconds, and its recharge is 40s. While it does a small amount of psychic damage, its current state incentivises filling it with procs over all else. Procs are agnostic to containment damage, after all. Allowing it to generate containment encourages slotting it like a real control ability, and for some players would convince them to take it when they otherwise wouldn't. There is only one source of terrify outside of the control power sets for controllers, and that would be going three deep into the presence pool to get Invoke Panic. Invoke Panic's stats are significantly worse than other sources of terrorise and aren't worth comparing to standard mezzes available to controllers in their primaries. With a 67.5% base accuracy, a 60 second recharge, a 13.04 duration, and no overpower capability, it's not a likely investment for a controller to make. It's also a pbaoe. Traditionally terrorise abilities, all cones, are used to dull the alpha strike, whereas a pbaoe requires already having gotten through an alpha strike to use. One might worry about dark affinity, because dark miasma has a cone, but dark affinity had that cone removed when it was adapted to controller play. On the surface, it seems like adding terrorise to the list of status effects that can generate containment can only improve controller play without challenging the current balance of control sets.

HELL YEAH!

That's one of the worst lists I've ever seen. How did no one notice this before now? A lot of these are frequently used sets. This is going to be a nerf for me because I slot as soon as I can slot, but it's not going to be a very noticeable one, because I didn't know about these before now myself. There's a double post of adjusted targeting in there I think.

You're so helpful! I swear I use CoD every day.

All attuned PVP sets are supposed to be set to an internal minimum level of ten, which means they should be able to be slotted at level 7. If you look at Panacea or Gladiator's Javelin, this is true. This is not true for Gladiator's Net: Chance for Lethal Damage, which requires level ten to slot. An attuned PVP IO with the correct internal level: Gladiator's Net: Chance for Lethal damage, which is bugged:

I think that was a joke about reaching vet level 4 billion. I’m sure @Veracor will be there next week.

New topic: remove police drones from Atlas Park and make all Kronos Class Titan spawns start under the statue. That’ll show em. It’s really the principle of the thing. It’s in the game’s best interest to facilitate positive engagement and boost its own population. Part of the job of the starting area of any game is to build investment in the game. That means making it as positive an experience as possible, within the bounds of reasonably representing the experience the game will offer. It is a sales pitch. I don’t think quitting over being stomped by level 30 enemies in the starter zone is an overreaction, even if I wouldn’t do it myself. If the most polished part of the game, the new player experience, is dysfunctional enough to put a player in a clear no-win situation, even if the consequences are minimal, that is a signal about the nature of the rest of the game. I don’t believe it’s representative of the game as a whole (honestly, everything about the starter areas currently is misleading, as much as I like them) but it’s reasonable for a new player to have that takeaway. And I’m not convinced it’s a no-sweat situation either. There are only the two Arachnos Drones in the area, and the game doesn’t signal those guys delete enemies from the game unless you see them do it. Almost all of the starter area missions are outdoors. A badly timed, sized, and placed ambush could completely stymie a new player’s progress. It’s very avoidable and entirely unnecessary. The ambush doesn’t even improve the SF because most people aren’t aware of it and skip it.

Icing on the cake, I managed to mostly get my team to follow me to Kalinda during today's Renault for the express purpose of wiping the ambush -- and those jerks just darted in and out of the instanced area right next to spawn so we couldn't kill all of them while they still could destroy new characters! I beg you. There's so many layers of awfulness to this particular ambush. Please consider its removal.