Chris24601

I think you're taking pie-in-the-sky dreams and assuming they're the most likely result in the real world. There's a truism in terms of projects; You can only have two of; fast, cheap and high-quality. Meaning, if you want high quality fast, it will not be cheap. If you want to be cheap you either have to accept lower quality or longer delays. Homecoming has already chosen "Cheap" (everyone involved is a volunteer and they've indicated that will not change even if legitimized by NCSoft) and "High Quality" (the reason why they don't have all the flashy content of some of the other servers, but do have the only 64-bit client out there). You presume massive numbers of people will just donate their time to write, design art assets, code and review and test for bugs down the line... and accept oversight over their creative endeavors by the HC team; i.e. the majority of said volunteers won't just quit when the team says their particular ideas aren't as good as they think they are and need to be redone. If you're a paid employee, you suck up the criticism and make the changes because its your job... when its your hobby? The percentage will be MUCH much smaller due to basic human nature. That means new content will not arrive quickly nor in large amounts. Even if you get a slew of writers for content who won't quit at the first non-grammatical edit, that content can't just be uploaded the next day. Its got to be coded, reviewed, tested for bugs and all the other things we've seen throughout HCs various betas of their released updates. There's a lot of coordination that will be needed to produce a finished project when people have different interests. For example, you need an artist willing to use their free time to model art assets for a story arc that might not actually interest or inspire them.

When you have a small volunteer staff capable of only limited new content, you want that content to be as useful to as broad a segment of the players as possible. The problem with “just make more incarnate content” is that every bit of incarnate exclusive content is content that’s of no use to non-incarnates and non-incarnates are, depending how you count the statistics, well over 90+% of the active characters. Arcs that can be accessed starting in the level 20-30 range can be enjoyed by the entire player base. An incarnate-balanced arc can only be enjoyed by the tiny percentage of incarnate toons.* In essence, while it gets a lot of talk on the forums among the same couple dozen who regularly post on the matter, the incarnate population is really only on par with the PVP community in terms of numbers and needs to be regarded as such in terms of priorities in creating new content and balancing its effects on other content. I remember the days back on live when powers were constantly being changed around because of their effects on PVP (which was 5% or less of the player base at the time) and how it created problems for the PVE players as a result. Ultimately, the live Devs split the mechanics up so they behaved differently in PVP than PVE and allow PVP to be what it needed to be while not continuing to wreak havoc on the rest of the game. This proposal is presented in a similar vein. Incarnate powers were originally created to enable an endgame grind requiring a paid subscription where those with incarnate powers would need to spend the majority of their time grinding out incarnate content to get the next tier of “gear” or to unlock the newest “gear” slot. Due to its low population, SCoRE altered how incarnate powers could be earned, but, also likely due to its low population, didn’t fully account for the effects that gaining incarnate powers through normal content would have on the 45-50 play environment... just as the live devs rarely considered the impact of how their changes for PVP affected the PVE environment. Ultimately, the only viable fix for the issues the tiny chunk that was PVP was inflicting on PVE was to silo it off so that game used an entirely different set of numbers for PVP than PVE. The suggestion here is that a similar siloing for a similarly small percentage of the content (that is unlikely to get significant attention because the return on time invested is so low relative to a new level 20-30 arc) would be healthier for the game. * Side-bar: Dark Astoria also proves there is an additional layer of difficulty in terms of incarnate balancing... what level of incarnate do you balance it for? Alpha slot only? Full level shifted, but not t4’d? Full t4 slotting in all incarnate powers? There’s a MASSIVE difference in performance between an alpha-only with a t1-2 slotted and having all six incarnate powers slotted with t4s. - The Starting Alpha is still level 50 in Dark Astoria and has 33% buff to one enhancement category where 27.55% of that is still subject to ED (i.e. a scrapper slotting the t1 musculature will only increase their damage by 3% or so). - The fully unlocked with all t4s Incarnate is instead level 50+3 in Dark Astoria, has a +20-30% enhancement buff to multiple categories that ignores ED. They also have an extra nuke, summoned pets, a massive aoe buff, an extra proc effect on virtually every hit, and the hybrid toggle and passive buffs. So where will this new incarnate content be balanced? Of the population of incarnates, I guarantee there are more closer to the alpha only end of the spectrum than the fully t4’d variety. That means the further up the scale you get, the smaller the number of players who can actually use the content to the point we’re probably at fractions of 1% at the top end. This is why devising reasonable siloing of incarnate powers for non-incarnate content coupled with story arcs designed for a wide spread of levels instead of the usual 5 (ex. a post-Praetorian War Council arc could be set to be accessible from level 15-50) is probably the most viable path for future content.

Rule 101 of any development work is "don't keep throwing good time and money after bad." At the end of the day, Incarnate powers were always a bad idea. Knowing what we know now of the situation c. 2011-2012, its clear they were added for the express purpose of adding a grind-focused endgame to City of Heroes, most likely at the specific behest of NCSoft who wanted to monetize that grind. They weren't as concerned about how this would unbalance the earlier parts of the game because those were ultimately just the free teaser to induce as many players as possible to buy a sub and start grinding for incarnate powers. Ultimately, Incarnate power was never designed to be sustainable or healthy for the overall game. It was designed to make the game as profitable as possible to keep the lights on for another day. Hell, even Positron said by the time they'd hit the Omega slot they'd probably have to start over with a City of Heroes 2. Just like we've not had a new PVP zone added since I6(?), Incarnates are a thing that breaks more than it fixes because it was never designed to fix a gameplay issue... it was designed to fix a real world cash flow issue. What the Incarnate system really needs is a hard look at how to balance it out with the rest of the game so that as much of the already completed work as possible can be employed without disrupting the core 1-50 part of the game that makes up 99% of the content. Since those powers are generally needed for the actual eight existing incarnate trials (which had the good fortune to have an obvious conclusion in the Magisterium Trial) I'd NOT want to see them nerfed for that content. That's why I feel a "Alpha + pick one" type check-off option for non-incarnate content would be the least disruptive. - It limits each character to, at-most, one incarnate click power so you're not having full teams cycling through 8 Judgements AND 8 Lores AND 8 Destinies. - Because you can check different incarnate slots between missions, it is still worth pursuing those powers for the added flexibility it gives. - It keeps the full suite of powers available for the Incarnate trials content where it is actually needed.

One thing that bears considering in terms of future development for Homecoming is just what sort of content we're expecting to see. A small volunteer team can't release nearly as much as a full-time paid development team. At the same time, because this is not a for profit venture they also don't have to be beholden to the toxic grind aspects that were working their way into CoH near the end of its life (the ever increasing power of the Incarnate system that took massive amounts of grinding to complete being the primary example). They don't need to keep scaling the power and could easily just declare than on Homecoming Earth incarnate power tops out with Hybrid. Frankly, the best use of their resources for content would be things that are as broadly accessible as possible. Content using enemy groups that span many levels. For example, other than a specific design decision to set the missions mostly in Brickstown, there's no reason the New Praetorians arcs had to be limited to 35-50 (I believe the top end was less than 50 back when it was on the test server in 2012). It could have just as easily been 15-50 since the Council stretches the whole band and Council war walkers go all the way down to level 15 in their use in Boomtown. The point is... writing new content that can be experienced at virtually any time will see more use than content that's gated behind incarnate access. The effort of building a new Incarnate trial could probably also produce a Steel Canyon (10-50) or Talos Island (20-50) story arc or two. They could do their own version of the Coming Storm where the Battalion are just another alien invader and the break point in the original timeline was that half a dozen other threats (each of a scale that the HC team could produce) also broke out at once. Keeping in the usual 1-54 band for content difficulty is where HC will get the most return on its time investment. New incarnate content would be decidedly niche. Also worth noting at this point is that, because of the way the Incarnate grind on live was designed, it was NOT intended that incarnate powered characters would be running roughshod over non-incarnate content as much as they do on Homecoming. Because the only way to improve your incarnate powers was to grind the incarnate content and because the original plan on live was to keep adding new Incarnate slots every six-months so you'd have to keep grinding Incarnate content to earn those... and because you had to pay to access the incarnate content... live incarnates weren't expected to be doing much of the non-incarnate at all. If you wanted the next incarnate tier for your current slot or the new one that had been released you were going to need to grind the next iteration of Incarnate XP, get the next type of Incarnate salvage, etc. and you could only get those grinding the Incarnate content, not running 45-50 radio missions against the Council in PI. As such, I don't think its unreasonable to look at the effect Incarnate powers have on the normal 45-50 content and take steps to reign it in a bit. Perhaps with Emperor Cole's defeat, the power of the Well pulls back a bit to conserve its power for true threats to itself; limiting how much can be drawn from it at once. Because of all of the above, I am surprisingly okay with the idea of more limited access to Incarnate Slots. You still get to be over and above the typical level 50 potency, but in a more signature way; which is I think the main thing that the universal nature of the Incarnate slots took away from characters. None of the existing incarnates (or incarnate adjacent) in the game seem to have more than one signature trick (ex. Statesman calling down the lightning or Ms. Liberty using the Liberty Belt) in normal content. Perhaps though, as with Incarnate shifts (vs. alpha's level shift) this could be a limitation that applies ONLY in non-incarnate areas. Say you add a mutually exclusive checkbox to every incarnate power slot on that tab. You check off one and when not in incarnate content, only the Alpha and the chosen ability would be active. If you gave it the same five minute cool down that slotting an Incarnate ability has; you could still have the flexibility of the multiple slots, just not all at once (soloing an AV on a squishier class? Check the Destiny box for your Barrier before entering the mission. Going up against hordes of weaker foes? Check Judgement before entering the mission. Need semi-independent damage dealers to keep runners in check? Check the Lore box. Just running general missions? Check Interface or Hybrid. Or stay with one because it fits a particular concept. For example, my all-natural archer would probably use Interface (-resistance) all the time as their whole natural shtick is that they're not an incarnate, but they've lined their body armor with incarnate threads and use arrows tipped with pieces of incarnate shards to penetrate tougher incarnate targets). I had to really stretch to say they hooked into a Vanguard Orbital Ion Cannon to explain them even HAVING Judgement. By contrast, the great-granddaughter of Statesman from Elysian Earth (because Rularru, the Rikti and Praetorians never reached their Earth) managed to forge her own Incarnate connection to the power of Zeus and so would always keep Ionic Judgement slotted just because that fits her theme (along with the Mu Mastery powers I snagged playing her "evil twin"). TL;DR Development time for new mission content from the HC team would be most effectively employed in the general population rather than incarnate exclusive content, so limiting the potency of incarnate power in non-incarnate content where it was never intended to be widely employed is something that should at least be considered.

It occurs to me that, just as Martial Combat’s Reaction Time Aura indicates how far it’s debuff aura extends, it might be possible to create a toggle (or set of toggles) that lays down a set of range circles (or, if the aura can be directional, an actual arc indicator). The only issue is that, ideally, it should be visible only to the player and I’m not sure the system can do that. Presuming that can be overcome though, dropping those in as a free utility powers on the P2W vendor, would be a way to provide players with range indicators without needing to completely overhaul the system.

My default re-scaling is to take female legs and hips to minimum, bust down at least 50% and, depending on the outfit, increase the waist up to 25%. This is still a superhero game so I aim for more timeless comic proportions rather than the 90’s Dork Age/Image comics proportions of default or trying to go with entirely realistic proportions.

Back when CoV first went live, I rolled a bots/traps mastermind. Due to the AI’s nature I quickly dropped my plans to give them clinical engineering style names and instead renamed my first drone “Glitchy.” When I got the second drone I named it “Crashy” so it became “The Glitchy & Crashy Show.” When I got my second tier of bots, the Glitchy name moved to that bot and the second bot became Smashy (on account of his continually trying to run into melee). The third small bot became Bashy. When the Assault Bot finally arrived, Glitchy got his final upgrade. The two Protector Bots got renamed to Junk Heap and Scrap Heap. Thus, the final array was; Glitchy, Junkheap, Scrapheap, Bashy, Crashy and Smashy.

If you’re quitting, can I have your stuff? 😎 The answer is there’s not a way to change it, because the restriction didn’t actually come from HC. It’s been all but stated without actually stating it that it’s a condition of the negotiations with NCSoft. Frankly, the fact that the code was leaked at all was probably a loss of face for someone. Touting that with livestreams using the leaked code only adds to the loss. By moving to restrict it as they as are, HC is showing respect to those they are trying to get a favorable result from and that they can ne trusted to not cause any further loss of face. Presumably, if an amicable arrangement can be found and HC becomes legitimate, the restriction on live-streaming could be lifted. The notice of the change itself did include such temporary indicators (I believe the ban was “for now.”).

You know what’s going to be “funny”? When people with your attitude end up getting the C&D hammer dropped on everyone because you have to keep pushing some agenda. The reasons we prefer HC and its requirements are; A) the 64-bit client is the only long term path forward (the current apple OS no longer supports 32-bit and the same is almost assured for the next iteration of Windows). It also massively improves performance, the same system that couldn’t run ultra mode in 2012 using the old 32-bit client was able to run the game at max settings smooth as butter using the 64-bit client. B) A dedication to quality. I don’t know if you saw Positive Gamers recent stream where he decided to try out Rebirth, but in making a character, a glitched option for shields put a full sized green training dummy that duplicated his animations on his arm. That bit right there made that whole outfit (as in the Rebirth servers in addition to the costume) look like amateur-hour. HC would never allow half-assed coding like that to go live. Their improvements aren’t as “flashy” as some of the other servers, but the 64-bit client and massive backend clean-up they’ve been doing will pay dividends for years while the other servers eventually fail as hosting server OS’s start to drop 32-bit support alongside the mainstream desk/laptop OS’s. C) They’re at least trying to make this endeavor legitimate so we need not fear some new management at NCSoft deciding to make their mark by C&Ding all the illegal servers. At this point, having it taken away again would almost be worse than losing it the first time. HC is trying to remove that possibility. The odds are high that policing the streaming is another stage in the NCSoft negotiations and that those negotiations are the reason no ban-hammers have been coming down on any illegal servers so far. Put short, HC is run in a fashion that I can expect in a year or two from now with a new Win11 laptop that I’ll still be able to log in and play my characters. None of the others have any assurance they won’t disappear like a popped soap bubble in the next 24 hours, much less the next 24 months.

One of my favorite things while I away and playing SWTOR as a pale substitute was the “gap closers” that each of the melee classes had. Most had options that would allow it be up as soon as you’d finished the previous fight; some cases instantly resetting as soon as you exited combat. The point is, making Confront into that sort of ability and making exclusive to Scrappers could be as build defining an element for them as assassin’s strike/hide is for stalkers and the level 20 “sustains” are in the blaster secondaries. I’d respec all my scrappers to pick up Confront if that change were made. If you wanted to make it interesting you could give each set a variation on it. Say electric melee version gets a super-fast recharge (but no secondary effects) so they can chain jump from target to target. Energy melee might also knock the target down. Fire melee could do a bit of AoE fire damage (as if you became a living fireball for a moment). Dark could give you a few seconds of +defense because you’re still shrouded in shadow for a moment. Street Justice might set your combo level to 3 as you charge in. Et cetera. * * * * If I were to suggest a change to the scrapper inherent, I’d say leave the critical hits alone, but if it needs it, a stacking buff to regeneration, resist and/or defense (perhaps secondary set related?) to make it almost the inverse of Brutes (i.e. brutes attack to build damage, scrappers attack to build resilience). Another change that might be needed is upping their resistance caps to maybe 80%; particularly if a change like the above were made. * * * * In terms of specific sets, my biggest gripe would be with Kinetic Melee; particularly when compared to say, Claws. I compare the two because both get a 40’ ranged single target and cone attack and a gimmick version of build-up; and all three are better on the claws set. Focus vs. Focused Burst: Focus is gained earlier (18 vs. 26), has better cast time (1.17s vs. 2s), better recharge (6.4s vs. 8s), better endurance cost (6.82 vs. 8.53) and even has better damage per cast time (81.76 vs. 56.45). The only place Focused Burst excels is raw damage (95.66 vs. 112.9). Follow-Up vs. Power Siphon: Follow-Up is an actual attack with damage and cast time comparable to claws t1 attack (55.05 damage w. 0.83s cast time). With minimal slotting you can not only maintain a 100% uptime on it’s buff (10s duration, base 12s recharge), you can perma-double-stack it (total of +20% to-hit, +75% damage). Power Siphon, by contrast, isn’t an attack yet has more than double the cast time (1.93s) and its buff window lasts for 20s with a base 120s recharge. It also takes at least 3 hits in that window to match the performance of Follow-Up until those buffs wear off. Shockwave vs. Repulsing Torrent: Torrent at least has the advantage of much earlier access (32 vs. 8 ) and better range (30 vs 40), but loses on cast time (1s vs. 2s) and arc (90 vs. 45 degrees). Torrent also has much higher knockback (6.23 vs. 1.45) which is actually a downside in the current meta. End cost, recharge and damage are otherwise comparable. In short, Kinetic Melee plays like a slower and weaker version of Claws. Since Claws already has the quick activation/recharge niche filled, Kinetic Melee would benefit a LOT from buffing it’s damage per cast time to make it the freight train to Claws’ jackhammer.

The ultimate in villain fashion... a QRCode emblem for a TVTropes page. TWO HOURS!!! That was two hours of my life lost going down that rabbit hole of links, you fiend!!! 😁

Dress like a hero. It’ll confuse the heck out of actual heroes and you can use that moment of hesitation to DESTROY THEM!!! Mwuhahahahahahaha!!!

I know I certainly didn't need it on my Archery/Tactical Arrow build (101% global recharge without Hasten). My snap shot recharges in 0.64 seconds; fast enough you could almost just chain it with itself. My snipe is up every 4 seconds. I can stack Electrified Net Arrow with itself 8 times for a Mag 24 immobilize (ice arrow I can stack with itself to Mag 12)... and its slotted with a damage set, not immobilize. Once your attacks are recharging faster than other powers' animation times, I feel its utterly counter-productive to make it any faster, because you're having to give up other useful tools. At a certain point you're just chasing bigger (er, smaller) numbers for the sake of better numbers, not because those numbers actually help. Frankly, if it were up to me, I'd change Hasten to be in the vein of Willpower's Strength of Will; drop the base recharge down to 300 seconds, but also ignore all buffs and enhancements to recharge. Then, after all the heads have exploded and been duct taped back together, see what the resulting high-end metagame looks like in re-balancing everything else (including the power pools).

Yeah... if you’re pondering a re-roll just change the name of the current one and re-select it on the new build. If things change later you can just rename the re-roll and put the original name back where it was.

What I wouldn't mind for lore and judgement would be an option to trade in the big long-cooldown powers, for weaker, but more frequent, versions. So, for example, add a "third branch" to the Judgement trees where it does the same damage over time, but recharges in 60 seconds as its tier 2, 45 seconds at tier 3 and 30 seconds at tier 4. Similarly, a "third branch" for the Lore Pets where you get just one pet, but it becomes "permanent" like a MM pet at tier 2, then scales up in power (ex. Longbow Nullifier to Warden) at tiers 3 and 4.

By that theory though, Scrappers ought to be locked out of the fighting pool because Street Justice has very similar moves and Tough and Weave like powers can be found in the armor sets. If you want to argue pure mechanics rather than the graphical effects, then Trick Arrow should already be banned from Controllers for double-stacking a single target immobilize and both single-target and AoE holds with every other control set. If the argument is that they need to look different, then change toxic glue arrow to "Electrified Net Volley" and and ESD arrow for "Ice Arrow Volley."

This one is brought to you by the discussion of poorly performing support sets and the realization that Trick/Tactical Arrow is ALMOST a control set already; Gimmick Arrow Control Electrified Net Arrow (t1): Single Target Immobilize + energy DoT. Stunning Shot (t2): Single Target Stun + knockdown + kinetic damage Ice Arrow (t3): Single Target Hold + cold DoT. Flash Arrow (t4): AoE -Perception Toxic Glue Arrow (t5): AoE Immobilize + toxic DoT Poison Gas Arrow (t6): AoE sleep. ESD Arrow (t7): AoE hold with special vs. robots. Oil Slick Arrow (t8): Knockdown patch you can set on fire with electrified net arrow. Sonic Disruption Arrow (t9): Location-based AoE -RES and repeating smashing damage. The only real issue with the design is how it doubles up some of Trick Arrow’s attacks; but then Trick Arrow already doubles up on a normal control set with its immobilize, hold, AoE hold and sleep so it’s mainly just that in this case the FX would match instead of one immobilize being a ring of fire and the other a net. It also opens up the prospect of pairing it with an actual buff set as well instead of Trick Arrow essentially replacing the buffs from the build like Gimmick Arrow/Time or Rad. The theme would be essentially be for say, a Silver Age Green Arrow type who disables his foes through entirely non-lethal gimmick arrows instead of Archery’s lethal, incendiary and explosive loads.

I did it the old fashioned way for the toon I started red-side to get to Rogue as soon as I hit 20. It was the concept’s natural alignment while in the Isles. I ended up having to run a LOT of Rogue tip missions (and Vanguard) later on as the main content gets significantly more villainous/less rogueish beginning in the mid-30s and especially into the 40s. Ultimately I had to take them blue-side just because I was grinding the same 10 or so tip missions again and again to avoid the stuff that felt truly malicious. Rogue is an interesting alignment; almost the flip-side of the Wardens. They want to achieve their selfish goals, but don’t want to hurt others, particularly bystanders, any more than is absolutely necessary to achieve them. The most interesting variation on this, one that CoH seems to draw upon for its version, was The Flash’s Rogues... who actually had a code against killing people during their crimes in exchange for the Flash going a LOT easier on them than he could have; often even letting them get away once their current plan was foiled. Given the raw destructive power at the hands of many metahumans, that sort of deal; basically turning it into a game of wits instead of one of carnage; seems like a reasonable “unwritten rule” that a world full of supers might come up with amongst themselves just for the sake of civilization (and the survival of anything worth stealing).

It was a very interesting design choice to group the most heroic sub-faction (the heroic ideal of resistance against tyranny without harming innocents) with the most monstrous* while the Loyalists mix “for the greater good” pragmatism with self-aggrandizing glory hounds. The easy writing choice would have been to put the glory hounds and the monsters on the Loyalists side (which would fit with the general post-apocalyptic maps used for Praetoria in the original Hero’s Hero arc) with the Wardens and “do measured bad things for the greater good” as the Resistance. Instead they gave both good and bad elements to both; to the point that my general preferred path to come out feeling moral is Warden right up to the final moral choice to blow the water treatment plant, then go Loyalist, run the Neutropolis Responsibility arc culminating in learning of the planned invasion and going Resistance along with the inspector you’re working with. * for me it wasn’t the neutron bomb; that was just so over the top it was hard to take seriously; it was the mission where you get a guy’s innocent family for leverage in getting info out the guy... then, after getting the info, the leader executes the guy and orders you to murder his innocent family for no reason other than they were the guy’s family (thankfully, you can choose to NOT follow those orders). The shear unnecessary nature of that; neither the guy killed by the leader, nor the family could have done anything to stop the plan; just struck home how big a load of $#%& the Crusader’s ideals are... what they really want is to just “watch the world burn.”

Perhaps, but I think that was actually a significant design mistake that may have doomed Red-side from the start. I often wonder how Red-side would have gone over if; instead of Latvia, complete with its own Doctor Doom analogue, the setting had been more like Gotham. Organized crime and corrupt cops/government officials everywhere while the uber-elite look down from the safey of their penthouse towers and pretend the city hasn’t gone to hell since the Waynes were murdered. The only thing even remotely holding things together is fear of The Bat, but even he and his many sidekicks/imitators can’t be everywhere at once. Basically, a completely overwhelmed corrupt city that your villain with a revolving door prison... a place your villain has chosen to come and try to make a name for themselves; to be the next Catwoman, Penguin, Mr. Freeze... or Joker. Your primary adversaries would be the cops, private security (including super-powered security) and enforcers for competing crime bosses. Your contacts would be snitches and informants with rumors (missions) of various crimes you might be interested in committing (and other informants who might know of other opportunities). Instead of origin-based contacts like Blue-side, they’d specialize in certain crimes; the burglary contact, the confidence scheme contact, the armed-robbery contact, the killer-for-hire contact, the city/world domination contact, etc.; so you could choose the level of villainy you’re comfortable with and, just as importantly, be the one deciding which schemes to pursue. Arachnos was created to provide a pseudo-order to the Red-side setting; a force too powerful for even a supervillain to challenge to explain why the entire isles haven’t been destroyed by all the supervillains. But it also highlighted, I think the rather one-dimensional vision of villainy the Jack had (and the idea that Blue vs. Red as teams in PvP would be a major part of the game going forward) which greatly hamstrung that setting. For contrast, compare the villainous content in 1-20 Praetoria where there’s a massive spectrum ranging from the mostly good guy Wardens to the sometimes have to do bad things for the greater good Responsibility Loyalists to the willing to fake attacks on civilians just to get fame and recognition by stopping them Power Loyalists to the burn it all down (with a Neutron Bomb!*) of the Crusader arcs. *Seriously... name me one Red-side arc that involves setting off a Neutron Bomb in a populated city to make a political statement or; - gassing a police station to murder everyone inside. - reprogramming the Clockwork to attack innocent civilians. - taking over the supply of illegal drugs to force the addicts to work for you. - kidnapping cops to feed to ghouls (then sending said ghouls into a police station with suicide vests). - re-wiring the brains of kidnapped and abused girls into psychic bombs. - kidnapping innocents to make someone talk then shooting all of them in the head. - murdering the city council to throw the government into chaos. - other plots from other faction missions including trying to blow up hospitals and other high traffic civilian areas. The Crusaders make 95+% of Redside look like punch-clock villains.

My suggestion is that Propel needs it’s range buffed to match the rest of the set and have an customization option that either causes the summoned object to despawn on impact (like it does with particle effects turned off) or, that is not possible, an energy pulse (the core of the Singularity pet would work) option that disappears on impact. In a tight space (ex. the blue caves) propel debris can quickly reach the level of not being able to see anything if you’re soloing content. I’d like an option to turn it off via power customization without also turning off all the things like swinging signs and gates in the process. Beyond that, one other significant buff I can think of for the set as a whole would be to take a cue from Kinetic Melee and make its damage type a mix of smashing and energy as this would help a LOT in dealing with many of the things smashing damage alone is weak to. Thanks to Propel, Lift and Impact, Gravity already has something of a reputation as the “damage-focused control set.” The mix of smashing and energy damage (so its not a complete joke to things like ghosts) would cement that as gravity’s particular shtick.

Note for the voting; your poll REQUIRES you to select one set that needs just minor tweaks to be counted. I don't particularly think any of them do; they're either good enough/amazing or nigh useless... so subtract one from pain domination's final results. The one I'll specifically bring attention to at this point is Trick Arrow, a set that is utterly obsoleted compared to the blaster's Tactical Arrow set which does most of the same things with damage and more personal survability too. Comparable powers are (Trick vs. Tactical); Net Arrow (t1) vs. Electrified Net Arrow (t1): The second is Net Arrow, but with t1 energy DoT (which massively helps with dealing damage to things archery is normally weak too). Flash Arrow (t2) vs. Flash Arrow (t5): the exact same power. Debuff scalars give a slight edge to defenders, but blasters tie controllers, corruptors and beat MMs. Glue Arrow (t3) vs. Toxic Glue Arrow (t2): Tactical's is Glue Arrow, but with toxic DoT* Ice Arrow (t4) vs. Ice Arrow (t3): The same, but with cold damage DoT. EMP Arrow (t9) vs. ESD Arrow (t8): About half the duration of EMP (9.54s vs. 22,35s) but less than a third of the recharge (90s vs. 300s). Trick Arrow's uniques are; Poison Gas Arrow (t5): AoE sleep. Acid Arrow (t6): Single Target -DEF and -RES. Disruption Arrow (t7): Location-based AoE -RES. Oil Slick Arrow (t8): Knockdown patch you can set on fire if you have another set that deals fire or energy damage. Tactical Arrow instead gets; Upshot (t4): Build-up with +recharge too. Eagle Eye (t6): +Acc, +Per, +Regen and +Rec. on a 0 endurance toggle. Agility (t7): Auto +Recharge and +Spd. Gymnastics (t9): Toggle +DEF, immobilize and knockdown protection, and 83% status resistance. Throw in a much higher damage scalar and defiance for both stacking damage and using electrified net arrow and toxic glue arrow even when mezzed and there's just no reason to go corruptor or defender if you want an archery themed character (whether your blast set is archery or not). The first that I think would help is to just add the tac arrow versions of the shared powers. This would also give the set its own internal source of fire/energy damage to ignite its oil slick (so also a slight buff to the Oil Slick power). The second thing I'd do is is take a cue from Trap's Poison Trap and give Poison Gas Arrow a -Regen effect to make it a better AV killer and make-up for the fact that the toxic damage now done by the glue arrow makes stacking the two an issue (whereas with lingering -Regen it would still be worth stacking both on the same target).

About the only T9 from an armor set I’ve used regularly is Willpower’s. I don’t run hyper-optimized builds so only my S/L resist is anything close to capped on my scrappers. The T9 therefore adds significantly to all my resists while it’s up and it’s “crash” is effectively non-existant and needs virtually no slotting since it’s unaffected by recharge (two 50+5 resist IOs basically caps it). As a result it’s an easy choice to pop just before you jump into a bigger fight to soak the alpha and other early damage and there’s no danger to you from the crash if the fight stretches past two minutes for some reason. I think it’s worth remembering that of the thousands actually playing, only a much smaller number actually reads/posts to the forums and/or devotes time to building high end def/res capped builds. For the many who don’t, the T9s are what give them enough mitigation to actually take the multitude of tougher EB/AVs who turn up in those level 35+ story arcs (newer content features lower level AVs more often, but the bulk are still found in the old i0/i1 “end game” arcs). That said, I would not be opposed to seeing a NEW power set or two try this concept out. One of the biggest disappointments in SWTOR while I was away was that they ultimately homogenized every class option down to essentially just cosmetic variations applied to the trinity roles. Here we have much greater variation and there’s no reason we couldn’t have some different approaches taken for the express purpose of getting a different experience when running through the content (ex. an early access T9 might make some of the Praetorian content more palatable for example).

Given that echoes and AU versions still use the old models, I will forever see the CoT redesign as a deliberate effort by a bunch of very old fogeys to try and look hip and relevant to the youth and doing about as well as you’d expect (“Thorns! Thorns and spikes EVERYWHERE!!! Mwuhahahaha!!!”). That said, their top, bottom, and non-spikey gloves and boots made a great base for my Archey/Tac Arrow build’s costume (sensible boots that blend with the rest of the costume are so hard to find for the ladies). There’s a good design in there; the CoT just way overdid the flare.

To be fair, it’s not that I don’t like the proc, it’s just that often the only good place to slot the set is in your AoE hold because you are seriously compromising what little damage output you personally have (and need if you intend to do any soloing at all) if you slot them into your single target immobilize or hold. Those sets would be viable in a lot more Controller powers if they, say, added a damage enhancement component to some/all of the IOs in the set and then rescaled the values based on the new number of enhanced elements (i.e. an acc/mez becomes acc/mez/damage with bonuses scaled normally for a triple enhancement IO).