Doomguide2005

Sooo many The Hollows for those early memories on my first characters. Storm Palace for its visual glory Those are my favorites but love many of the others as well.

Well you could use both challenge settings (buffed/debuffed and higher level foes). I'm a bit foggy on the exact strengths of the buffs and debuffs involved but I believe fighting +6's vs buffed +4's is probably a bit harder. And +7 and up is almost certainly a rougher fight. Even a +7 minion would be a hell of a tough (long) fight solo.

My bad then.

I think the Chess analogy is off. Playing without set bonuses on a build tuned to having them is more like playing with a piece handicap. A different style is more akin to playing a 'blapper' instead of staying at range on a blaster. Or perhaps someone who plays nothing but Brutes and other melee taking on a defender build or other squishy. Both stretch your capabilities and take you out of your comfort zone but in very different ways. How different play is changed by losing set bonuses is going to vary, potentially a lot, from build to build even on the same power sets and AT.

No we're in complete agreement there. They'll be ineffective at best, dead almost for certain. A 1000 damage attack vs +7's is 80 damage result after patch but before their resists. A +10 is 30 damage. I can easily put together a team that'll reliably hit +10's, hell I've played on such teams. A full Green Machine team running SOs will put out a To Hit buff teamwide over 150% easily. They might even survive the incoming damage if we're talking IO builds as I can see defenses going over 100% via stacked Forts etc. combined with Hardcapped regeneration and the existence of the one shot rule. But that results in a draw at best. They aren't going to even remotely hurt a +7 much less a +10 foe even if every single one is an Emp/Sonic

I don't know. First we'd need to be clear about nomenclature. Is that +6 or +7 the effective level before or after shifts are applied. Because no one is going to be power leveling anyone if that's after level shifts are applied. 1000 damage vs a +7 is 80 damage after the purple patch and that's before any resistance the foe has is applied. And debuffs are going to be truly near meaningless.

Duh, quite right, fingers seem to be moving faster than brain atm

So effectively you could get a +2 shift vs Doc V in Posi 2 Nevermind ... Incarnate foes do get a to hit boost which offsets plus a bit the effect of our level shift

1) Once you got 4 level shifts under your belt. Wait, what? I've been essentially unable to play for quite a while but fas as I know only 3 level shifts are possible, 2 of those being Incarnate content only. Unless you're referring to Ultimate inspires (and no idea if they stack or work outside of Incarnate content). Which afaik last 3 minutes a piece ... knock yourself out burning through those. And with effective +7 foes the purple patch gets really really ugly

It was dead because it's a vague and meandering mix of several thoughts, some contradictory to each other such as altering the purple patch to make it stronger while simultaneously pointing out how buffs and debuffs no longer matter because stuff dies too quick which somehow boils down to everyone is the same boring equalness which is due to the softcap existing. If I even sort of followed the OP's OP. So yes many of us remember the challenge of getting to those far away Hollows mission doors, getting lost at night in Perez Park, getting hammered by stepping out of a mission door to get ambushed by DE or using that lvl 14 travel power choice to arrive at your level 43 PI mission door and find yourself staring at the level 50 Nemesis all turning in your direction. And want some small portion of that overall difficulty to return to when shadow cysts were scary and beating Frostfire was a team challenge and your everyday random PuG could not utterly faceroll +4/×8 most anything including Council. The game has gone from 'never that hard' to 'way too easy" for many vets. At least way too easy when and if we go looking for a team oriented challenge particularly without engaging in what's been called self nerfing. In particular this is true at the Incarnate level. I don't think there are any easy changes there that can be made by the HC volunteer staff (but I'm neither a coder/designer nor in the loop on what the HC staff can do). Nerfs, especially larger, blunt instrument, easy ones are unlikely to work and be unpopular as hell. Ideas that might gain widespread traction are likely aimed at rewards (more for 'harder' foes) and taking advantage of AE designs by the player base to increase diversity in the high end content. And neither of those are likely as easy to do as to say I'm betting.

Moist? Must be a Fire/Ice broot 😜

I knew there was a reason my Elec/Fire resembled a barefoot guy walking on a bed of white hot nails. Never in one spot long And PS "ranged" attacks work perfectly well when the range is 2ft 😜

I'd say it's more along the lines of the "I hate high level, I love high level" debates ... nevermind discussions about Epic vs Mythic vs high level. 🤪

Well if inspirations were treated like IO set bonuses you could only have 5 of them ... of any given name. So 5 luck, 5 good luck, 5 phenomenal luck etc.. Now if it was more like ED and diminishing returns that's a whole other thing. And likely not very popular in the least.

A few thoughts at random A great deal of the fog surrounding the powers numeric values wasn't undone by the transparency of "real numbers" but by players figuring it out. The same post in which she published "Attack Mechanics" Arcanaville mentions that the actual values of the 'Aim and 'Build Up' powers were still being debated. This was post i6, CoX was a thing already. The soft cap is just that ... soft. As pointed out above its 'softness' is exploited by a large number of the more difficult foes already in existence including every single Incarnate foe that exists in the game. From i5 back higher level foes didn't get accuracy bonuses. They got ... To Hit bonuses. And we still did stupid scrapper tricks and stupid controller tricks and well you get the idea. Things change, the game is not and never has been static. Defense isn't nearly as bonkers out of control as our ability to smack our foes with absurd amounts of offense (i.e. damage). The game is loaded with defdebuffs ... even the scoffed at Council have a fair bit of defdebuffs. They just have utterly no time to apply those debuffs before being being obliterated by us. Sure high defense makes that worse but really it starts with the rolling nuke and judgement show making it irrelevant even if all those debuffs actually hit ... no one left to take advantage of the debuffs which wear off relatively quickly (as in often before the next mob gets lined up to be obliterated) As stated several times up thread harder more challenging (more annoying?, one person's harder is anothers annoying) mobs exist. The inf/merit/drops for taking them on don't exist. If the challenge itself isn't your priority ... No doubt something else will pop into my thoughts as soon as I hit submit. Edit: I knew it, thoughts ... I mentioned the soft cap is well soft because "changing" it is largely pointless, it's soft. What you're talking about is changing the foes base hit ala Incarnate foes OR changing the player base to hit value (yeah the under 20 crowd who don't do DFB will love that) OR a ridiculously massive nerf to the hardcap which is up around 200% varying by AT.

And I'm just noticing the lack of Clear Mind in the build from your Mids screenshot (yay for being unable to view in Mids' ☹). Now I personally wouldn't skip CM even in the 45+ Incarnate game but at least it isn't uncommon for Clarion being spammed all over in league play combined with defenses making it harder to mez anyone. But at lower levels while exemp'd you might want it available vs mez. So either swap for Resurrect (I typically skip Resurrect so many ways anymore to rez in place) or consider a second build now or in the future with CM. As for where to maybe grab a slot. Easiest is likely Recovery Aura. Take out the Acc/Rech and boost the other two enhancements (to +5) to bring up the recharge or just go EndMod/Rech and Rech and boost them to +5. Next is perhaps Hasten remove one slot boost the other to +5 but only do this as long a perma status remains. The risk there is once you lose the Alpha effect you may no longer be perma without an outside buff and that is probably to be avoided. Last you have Blind 6 slotted you can probably pull one out of there. But again I can't see the effect in Mids on your build ...

Indeed 8 Tactics at "mere" controller strength and totally unenhanced is already sitting at +80%. Your Base To Hit would need to be under 15% or the foes for that not to be clamped at the 95% ceiling. That's enough to cap hitting +6 mobs. And that's without considering enhanced tactics, accuracy or any other powers. A full GM team on SO's is going to have a To Hit buff of easily in excess of +150 ... Hitting is a total non issue they're right off the charts. The issue for such teams is doing damage. Against +6's damage and debuffs are only 0.15 as strong, for example. +4's on the other hand are sitting at 0.48 and are going to crushed fairly quickly by the incoming damage generated by a superteam.

My thoughts would be focus on recharge first, foremost and always. With perma-PA to keep/take aggro (particularly while solo) and Superior Invisibility with its -threat taking unwanted aggro shouldn't be a huge concern unless things go very sideways. My Empaths almost always go with Spritual, but they are also basically all Defenders going all out on recharge with minimal defense (defense coming from keeping those Auras on minimal cool down, inspires, epic resistance shield and teammates, in no particular order). I had one Earth/Empathy controller and it pretty much had me saying never on a controller again. But I also thought an Illusion controller would be on the short list of potential exceptions (for reasons stated in another thread about an Illusion/Empathy -> "A lack of Empathy for Empaths") Agility has advantages in making the most out of several powers in both primary and secondary sets with fewer slots. Speaking of slot saving. Assuming your Recovery Aura has is around 120, 130 second recharge you can use minimal slots in Stamina. Consider via playing in Mids using just the base slot in Stamina the rest of the time you'll have RA up and any end issues should vanish while its up. And hopefully leaves enough endurance so you can go 30 or so seconds till it recharges without running dry becoming a frequent issue.

Play primarily at 45+ or plan to exemp down frequently? Unfortunately my only internet is this phone as my computer died. Good news is I don't see anything so questionable about the build I can see it without looking at the build in Mids' at least on the Empathy side. I have run Illusion to 50 twice but not paired with Empathy and not since Live. But a few thoughts and comments on things. I'm going to assume it's perma Hasten and perma PA. Adrenaline Boost I would move earlier it's an extremely potent single target buff. I would also move the Miracle unique out of AB. It is a proc 120 and will only work for 120 seconds after you use AB. If you are going to put it in a click put it in HA or HO though you'll need a pet or a teammate to use HO and get the buff. Panacea is the set to use if money is no object. It's a PvP set, effectively attuned, good down to lvl 7 and if I'm not mistaken can be boosted to +5. Use it where ever you're currently using Doctored Wounds. I'd consider switching to using 2 HO Membranes in Fortitude plus drop in the 5th LotG def/increased rech (boost to +5, Agility can help here as well). Saves 3 slots. Use one in Health for the Miracle unique moved out of AB, then move the rest into AB. You're looking for 5 slots for Panacea ideally (looking at the 7.5% recharge at 5 slots) You could trim another slot out of Recovery Aura especially if using Agility. 2 slots --> 1 rech, 1 endmod/rech and let Agility do the rest. Basically emphasize the Recharge aspect over the Endmod aspect. The base value of 200% is already overkill on the majority of builds. I like to keep the recharge on my Auras close to each other. One less thing to track. When one's ready the other either is or will be very momentarily. Find your spot, fire one Aura then the other ... done. No need to add tracking two other Auras on top of PA to keep them all going. Must go for now, hope that helps.

And find Ouroboros, and the Field Analyst, and oh yeah Galaxy City, and, create and edit my chat channels, and what the hell is an an Amplifier and ooOo I can Teleport to contact, and wait did I just use Practiced Brawler while stunned? And a billion other new or new again things ...

Introducing the latest in weaponry Crey Technologies Smartnades Projectiles "They'll follow your foes home"

Can't really comment on Staff (haven't run one yet), but for SR I'm going to take all 3 toggles, all 3 passives, Practiced Brawler and Quickness. Of those 8 only Quickness is even remotely skippable but I wouldn't and 99+% of builds out there don't either. The remaining power in SR, Elude, on the other hand is very skippable and I would use only in off-builds (2nd and 3rd builds). I'm going to build for the soft cap for all 3 positions. If you plan on regularly soloing +4/×8 against strong defdebuffers you may want a small buffer (46 or 47%). I'm going to do so as much as possible without any set bonuses, just using power choices. The only exceptions will be the two +3% defense (all) uniques (Steadfast and Gladiator) in part because they cover all three positions where most set bonuses only cover one of the positions. Next insure you're reaching at or close to the defense debuff resistance cap of 95%. This is what separates SR from pretty much all other armors or defense builds, or why SR can stand in a sea of Cimeroran bosses and not end up in cascade failure. After that it depends a bit on whether you'll build for recharge or mitigation (+max health and +regen). On my main, a Claws/SR, I focused on max health and regen and rarely saw an SR character in game (Scrapper, Brute or Stalker) with more of either until SR tanks came along anyway.

Welcome back, prepare yourself for those first loading screens 😁

Thanks, that's what I thought you intended as globals are treated like set bonuses and the others are not. Seems like an idea worth pursuing, an intermediate difficultly between no enhancements and all things IO in use.

For clarity, Global procs would shut off, procs/proc120's would not?