Doomguide2005

To be fair the mechanics certainly weren't well understood on Live ... and I'm pretty sure still not well understood by even the majority of forum regulars (as compared to say the Attack Mechanics). Though with the code laid bare I'm sure more could become known. There is a wiki article copied over from Live to the HCwiki you can view titled "Threat" derived from a Live forum post by Castle.

No, but then again I'm largely in agreement with @Yomo Kimyata. Emergency no, high priority for some of these issues more so.

Nope, not until that DDR gets a whole lot higher. My scrapper nevermind what an SR Tanker can do, can stand among a bunch of Cimerorans bosses and pretty much ignore their defense debuffs. I'll be dead from simply get beat on/the rng long before they significantly change my defense. Ask a Shield (especially without stacking their DDR) or Ninjitsu user to do that without using any other survival tool beyond defense and watch what happens. At 40% ddr they are very likely to off the def cap by a not insignificant amount after 1 blow. And it would probably take only a 2 or 3 for the word cascade to enter the equation. Ignoring 95% is a considerably stronger value than ~40%.

Level 22 would be a bit premature to judge almost any set. Controllers won't yet have their lvl 32 pet(s) and their support side is even more underdeveloped. Empathy as a secondary, for example, has barely had the opportunity to slot Fortitude (lvl 20) yet and neither Aura or Adrenaline Boost are available (levels 28, 35 and 38). Similar story for the other ATs.

Yes it's not nearly a new thought (surprise! right 😜). And this issue is far more an issue for the buffing sets vs those that debuff for what I'd hope are obvious reasons. Not sure how truly overpowered it would make Defenders (support sets in general) as essentially it would make them 'overpowered' one team member sooner. That said I've no doubt the toughest deadliest teams consist of predominantly support characters.

Even if synched they should all fire when they proc. But I agree I'd probably be more interested in heal or absorb procs. Having 3 +recovery powers should mean a plenty healthy end bar already.

Absolutely, I just didn't go into it. For one it doesn't really address either the current state of the game or the OP's question. Whether intended or not some folks play them in melee and 'blap' and some pairings would be, in my opinion, far less effective staying always at range ... the Electric/Fire I mentioned above, for example. Edit: Not to derail the subject entirely but it's shares similarities with the 'Healer' 'Offender' dichotomy often popping up in the Defender forums specifically around Empaths/Empathy. Sets get used all the time in ways the Devs might not have intended or predicted. It's part of the beauty of this game.

It was not my intent to argue what the original designers intended. Clearly Blasters as an AT have many powers giving them the ability to stay at range far more than most 'melee' ATs, equally clearly they were given many powers which must be used at melee and PBAoE distance. I don't think I'm going too far out in speculating they intended all those powers might be used by the player base in their builds. Electric/Fire pairings were possible from issue 0. Exactly 1 power in that secondary can be used at range and it's the tier 1. I think regardless of what was written it's highly unlikely the Devs only intended for just that t1 to be used.

"A power in these sets" Are you thinking a new power replacing one in the set or a rework/additional function of an existing power or still brainstorming this?

I would choose slightly less recharge with capped S/L. As long as most of your foes have to hit past your defense, yes you should need your IH, DP and Recon noticeably less often.

It doesn't sound like an endurance issue but anything being run that has an endurance use/crash when it ends (like Hasten) that might happen at a bad moment. Or a toggle that covers mez perhaps not running for a server tic while it "renews" and some mez hitting randomly on just that server tic causing a detoggling?

Interesting thought, but as a player of many an Empath not sure it would really cut down on my actual reaction time as much as it might allow me to avoid getting fatally stuck in a blast animation or time to move around an obstacle to get to a position to use my healing on my allie(s) ... HA, HO, HA etc. or reversed HO, HA, HO etc.. I could typically spam those heals very quickly when needed (minimum total recharge 250%+ without external buffs or Incarnates). How would the proposed mechanic handle actual DoT attacks?

Perhaps (with emphasis) it was true, but the game has evolved and changed enormously since the manual was written. Neither IOs, sets or Incarnates existed when the manual was written. Much of it is also flavorfully written and blappers certainly existed in the early issues. My first blaster went to 50 on SO's and spent plenty of her time in both melee (energy) and range (fire blast). As she closed with a mob she used her ranged blasts, then finished the bosses and lts with her melee secondary. All while vulnerable to mez.

IKR

Yep I often leave to first spot open to keep some extra room to avoid doing that and as I level that becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible to do. So yes certainly can get behind that option.

I remember loving the first Winter event and the Red River freezing over. It made getting to those deep Hollows missions so much less deadly zooming along the frozen, mob free, ice.

Ouch! Although I think the real take away is more along the lines of unless you know the foes abilities assume it can kill you. In this case most likely right through a gaping hole of minimal psi resist/defense that seems woven into the fabric of nearly every older melee set.

Are you talking about the position of the tray on the window? Or the icons within the tray because the second already exists.

Truth, in my case it was a Lowbie claws/SR scrapper about i4 looking at a bunch of Pumucites. I switched auto run to '[' after that.

Careful placing procs in powers which don't cause aggro (i.e. don't notify the foe.) Such as Smoke. You may end up "notifying the mob". Similar to the OPs don't place the self destruct button next to 'panic' buttons. Careful where you remap your keybinds. I rebound 'r' for autorun to 'p' and did the predictable when in chat I suggested 'pulling a foe'. PS: The proc in question in Smoke wasn't a damage proc either, but it still caused aggro.

You may be right but that's not the impression I'm getting from his last two posts.

I remember being a sidekicked level 6 on a team running deep in the Hollows. Mission ended and the team broke up. Took a ridiculous length of time for me to Hover out to the AP gate, but using the death express just seemed wrong to me. But probably not as long as hovering all the way out to get my first look at the Storm Palace up close. Or how long it took to get good at using the jump geysers in the Shards 🤪

@arcanavilleposted "Arcana's Guide to Defense v1.4 - Updated for i7" in June 2006 which is the first time I heard about it. PS: missed it first time rereading the Attack Mechanics article but it does say how AoE's are handled by Streakbreaker.

Yes, looking back the OP was hoping to do something with Sword and Regen. Going to need to get a lot of defense from some where, sets, buffs, inspires or the long interrupt and cast times will make successful employment of Medicine pool powers problematic on a good day. Is it possible, sure. If you can get capped defenses on a blaster you can do it for basically any AT and sets.

Hmmm, I've done a lot of both Brute and Scrapper and for running around pre 50, pre Incarnate, well unfortunately I'd say it really doesn't matter (from the POV of choosing one AT over the other). Your power sets probably matter more. Haven't tried it since Live but I'd like to try DM/FA again. Self heal, changes to SM, end recovery tools. Mine was a scrapper for what that's worth. The real difference especially for a hobbyist farmer sugar daddy probably aren't that great until tricked out and incarnated post 50.