Galaxy Brain

You rang? (Jots down next project)

Legit question, if animations can be easily manipulated in terms of timing (sped up as we saw with say, Earth Assault tremor, and conceivably slowed down though I cant think of an example at this second), what is really preventing a bunch of like animations being ported back and forth? Crane kick for fireball Rising uppercut for KO blow Etc

dat helmet

It me!

They can steal him if they want! 🙂

Proliferation of all animations within X activation times for all powers pls

Ok, I lied Player-1 Eng/Time blaster ~~~~ Getting back into a game is always fun, especially one that has been gone for years! Putting his state of the art VR equipment to the test, Player-1 logs back into the alternate dimension of Paragon City, where his in-game powers have real-life effect!

and a couple of cool other ones to end my spam lol: Boneshredder (placeholder name really) Brass Knuckle Kryonis Death Charge Cryosite Konu Oni Thunder Dragoon:

Creator of the Hardlight Interface Varia Energy tech, aka H.I.V.E., Alex Reyes was the target of Arachnos for quite some time after they found him in his old lab in the ruins of Faultline... and subsequently tearing through them using his inventions! After witnessing the heroes of Paragon come to his defense, he decided to put his nanite inventions to good use. Inspired by the distinct "buzz" that the nanites can make when they activate their Hardlight fields, Alex figured: what better way to fight a spider, than with a Wasp? Equipped with energy shields that both protect, and form super thin hard-light "stingers" for offense, Alex takes on the mantle of Metaljacket to defend Paragon from the forces of Arachnos!

Gold Gorgon, Champion of Medusa Stone/Martial Dom ~~~~ A modern day descendant of the mad gorgon herself, she works to right the wrongs of the past

Sun Centurion, Champion of Helios Fire/Rad Tanker ~~~~ Forged by Hephaestus, the magic Armor of Helios grants it's wearer the supreme power of a star! Unbeknownst to the warrior who donned it all those years ago, the transformation into this shining beacon carries with it more responsibility than it may seem...

Noctis Umbra, Champion of Nyx Dark/Dark/Cold controller ~~~~ Before there was day or night, before even Chaos was born there was the Primordial Dark. In this darkness dwelled the goddess Nyx. Oldest of all deities. She had watched the events of this day with curiosity. This Romulus had wielded powers drawn from a well similar to her own, but twisted to sinister ends by these people of other worlds and other times. It pained her to see darkness so turned to pain and suffering. Mortals, of course, suffered. That was their lot, but this was an insult to the darkness that was her very soul and essence to be so twisted and ... USED. Never again. She would create a champion to see it was so. There. That soldier lying near death. His dark hair suited her fancy. "Arise mortal child. I have work for you."

While its AoE is "ok", why not push for top tier? VS needs some love to make it actually help reliably in a ST dps situation, and with that plus the sniper changes it could be in a solid spot there. A Chain Lightning power is thematic, oddly lacking from just 1 electric set (unless you count elec armor or manipulation I guess), and would cement elec blast as an AoE specialist.

I didn't even include the t9s as they are so impossible to perma with so little payoff anyways 😛 Should also mention that not all of those 55 sets / 11 pool powers *require* hasten lvl of recharge, but it certainly helps. If anything, I think it shows that recharge is simply very valuable, and having a source of 70% in a bottle is very tricky to balance.

So, curious on the question of how much does Rech matter to some builds, I went to my Recharge Guide and made a new page to sort out what powersets and ATs are most likely the heaviest impacted: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BFWfOT1ds4J1OJFuAqRX_2B43Cq9rJEF90xFkXyeDsk/edit#gid=1091849895 There are many angles to look at this, so first lets look at exactly how many powers total fit the criteria of "Requires more recharge than you can slot to become 'Perma'" : Omitting Epic and Patron powers for the moment as they are a bit of a mess with some being copies between ATs and some having variations The patron pets, and any potent self buffs (Soul Drain, Shadow Meld, Power Build Up/Boost, etc) of course get better the more Rech you get Also, lumping together "cloned" powers such as Build Up, Aim, Dull Pain, "Rain" powers and so on as that would fudge the numbers a bit with "every" set being listed Essentially every set with a potent self buff like Build Up, or Dull Pain strictly gets better the more you can use it Results: 55 sets out of 139 unique powersets have at least 1 power that requires more than 99% recharge in order to become perma (39.57%) 11/60 Pool Powers (including Hasten) require >99% recharge (18.33%) Out of the powersets surveyed, the amount of sets available to each AT that had at least 1 such power: Controller 21 84.00% Mastermind 14 60.87% Dominator 13 68.42% Defender 11 37.93% Corruptor 11 37.93% Blaster 10 38.46% Scrapper 9 28.13% Brute 8 22.86% Stalker 8 26.67% Tanker 7 21.21% Sentinel 6 24.00% Epic AT's all had at least 1. Soldiers are unique in that all paths have at least 1. A Soldier 3 100.00% PB 1 100.00% WS 1 100.00% A Widow 1 100.00% Powersets that had more than 1 power that needs >99% recharge: Earth Control 4 Fortunata 4 Peacebringer 4 Bio Armor 3 Empathy 3 Pain Domination 3 Radiation Emish 3 Trick Arrow 3 Dark Control 3 Gravity Control 3 Plant Control 3 Rad Armor 2 Cold Domination 2 Nature Affinity 2 Thermal Rad 2 Time Manip 2 Fire Control 2 Ice Control 2 Mind Control 2 Darkness Affin 2 Illusion Control 2 Martial Combat 2 More data can be seen in the link. What struck me here is that about 40% of powersets appear to have at least 1 power that you'd need bonus recharge to use permanently, and on top of the most of that appears to be concentrated in control and support.

How far does it 1-shot? Could set up a brute for low lvl tf's 👀

We have the mobs variety to mess with, its just a matter of allowing them to actually do their thing as player potency even on SO's can far surpass them, even when teamed It'd be cool if certain powers could negate them (Dimension shift, cages?) so its at least interactive. Not so much that they prefer to as much as they simply *can* steamroll them. Unlike the phasing it is all to easy to negate what they want to do.

I just want to touch on this, as the example always seems to dive into raids becoming crazy quick time events that require cat-herding, when it doesn't have to be. The reason those sort of challenges come up is because the content has been mastered by the players in ways that can no longer be tested. If you make a cool new enemy group, without special gimmicks they are still expected to be facing off against players who have a ~5% chance to be hit and then are buffed to the 9's in all directions. That is when you need to start tossing stuff out like un-dodgeable / un-resistible attacks as anything short of that ends up being a joke, same with enemies that have periods of full invincibility / etc (this is also why we have Purple Triangles on key bosses). The content in Praetoria gets around this without needing to resort to as harsh of gimmicks thanks to having enemies alter how the players approach combat (on top of slightly altered stats / attacks). Clockwork have very different AI where they opt not to move much, instead of just dog piling you like every other mob in the game. This spreads them out usually and makes wiping them out quickly a challenge as it lessens the effect AoEs have, both for damage and control/debuff/etc. A simple change like having more enemies opt to space you out and change up player expectation can be a challenge to many builds even if they can mop normal mobs. The Ghouls likewise have a similar mechanic that instead directly punishes players for letting them group up. When Ghouls die, they release a PBAoE heal/buff to other enemies which can completely negate your offense and turn the tide in their favor. This in turn rewards players who snipe them out or separate them as opposed to just spam AoE attacks. Granted, you face off against these enemies when you are lower level yourself, but they at least test you in ways that are different than the standard "gather them up and slap em" style found in the rest of the game. There are a few examples in older content as well, such as with Sky Raiders having Engineers you want to prioritize interrupting, Jump Bots that you dont want to kill in melee range, and porters that well.. port. Though all of these can still be steamrolled with Accuracy, Defenses, and raw damage output respectively. Carnies also drain your end when they die but it's never really been that bad in my experience, and their phasing just delays their demise instead of really changing how you approach them. Off the top of my head the only Praetoria-esque vanilla enemies are Freakshow in that they have the ability to self rez that you cannot just "stats" through and instead have to adapt and keep an eye on their bodies, or in the Super Stunner's case jump away before it drains and rezzes. I guess my point is that even with the existing enemy groups that reward you for changing tactics, the game also allows you to just steamroll them since you can overcome most of their challenges with raw stats. Allowing them to boost their stats in kind in a way that is somewhat anti-meta within reason can help their strategies shine a bit more. For example, if an enemy group had massive +Accuracy to fight against player defense you would have to find other ways to safely combat them such as crowd control or -ToHit to counter the Acc bonus, or so on. A difficulty mode doesn't need to be crazy auto-lose patches in X locations to be more dynamic and difficult, nor does it just need to be a massive wall of stats, but both in reasonable amounts could do a lot to make the players interacting with the encounter to have to think twice and be able to pull off cool things.

I agree that limiting yourself to SO's / Generic IO's only is a viable method of making the game harder, it is also an almost Alien Meta in terms of how many characters are designed today. IO's have been the "main path" for the game for longer than SO's have been and simply stripping that can be either an appropriate challenge, or downright annoying depending on the powerset. Look at the hoops needed to make DA work against Knockback vs what a simple -KB IO can do for example. It is viable sure, but I think that enough people partake in the "IO Meta" to different degrees which makes difficulty changes with that in mind better suited for the game going forward than stripping it away.

@Coyotedancer, I thought that was in response to my last post regarding an optional "super heroic" difficulty. The low end should definitely be maintained, but the current difficulty settings along with what I perceive to be the average level of players in 2020 may need a look.

Then they dont necessarily have to play in hard mode. The high end is why this discussion is even happening tbh. People who figure things out, let alone master the game, can quickly outpace the native difficulty. For those players to be challenged they need to account for different baselines. Getting to 45% is easy to steamroll most of the game. Getting to 55% let's say becomes a tactical decision as you now have to much more carefully plot your set bonuses else you sacrifice other stats.

Just want to put this out there, but just being popular is not the reason its popularity is being brought up. The fact that it is #2 below flight, and ranked above other travel powers in a vacuum seems to say "well the travel powers are popular too so they're op!". The travel powers are a given that most all characters take, flight being probably the most iconic. For a self buff to be in the same league as something like Flight, and above the likes of Super Speed itself by a factor of almost 2 suggests that as many people are taking hasten for its effects as people are taking travel powers for their theme.

Only If bananas are options for dual pistols

@Wavicle, @golstat2003, the stats would be minor increases but overall we've seen that adding actual difficulty like, avoiding patches and so on drive people nuts 😛 The stat increase would be more shifting the baseline a bit to counteract how tough you can build yourself, establishing a new normal to then add new mechanics onto. Such as the new stats being stripped of you hard CC, opening up new avenues of play. IMHO, unless this needle is moved the base mechanics of the game will prevent any sort of new strategies from developing outside of stuff like circles of doom if we can just faceroll content at softcap defense/etc

Hmm, dark regen is too strong I think.... Buff the amount you heal from the 1st target, but then gut the amount you get per additional target. Lower the endurance cost as well. You can heal to pretty much full off of 2 people right now making the target cap for it kind of pointless as you'll never need to actually leech off it's full capacity. Changing that up a bit, we should have room to buff other parts of the set while keeping its lvl relatively the same.