Galaxy Brain

I don't think it needs to be inherent, but I think the power pick could unlock a passive bonus to DMG / ToHit once you get it regardless of what ammo you use (Elemental or Normal) to make up for the loss of aim.

Not everyone scours these forums as actively as some of us do. Instead of talking down to them, this is more evidence that we should promote the other thread as a focal point and/or ask for GM's to start stickying certain hot topics.

Everything in the immediate pipeline is usually visible in the beta forums

Its an old joke 😛 Also nerfs are necessary depending on the context. For example, lets say a power deals 10x damage randomly if you happen to pick the right powerset combo where it has some odd interaction. This is would be a bug, and removing it would technically be a nerf but healthy since it is fixing something broken. A more nuanced take is that eventually, only buffs lead to power creep and ironically sets being nerfed by proxy. It can often be healthier to nerf things to a status quo than to buff things forever past it.

Well now I have some build ideas 👀

So the next question is, how many active accounts are there with 50s? The big difference between the "pvp crowd" and the number of Incarnates is that all ~80,000 characters at 50 actively get incarnate content by playing (ignoring the fire farmers, who also definitely go Incarnate) via unlocking the slots at the very least. It could be assumed that every single account in HC that has a lvl 50 character, even if they have a bunch of non 50s, has dabbled in Incarnate content via getting XP for it alone. Players can choose to PvP or not, and have to go out of their way in order to engage in PvP. Lvl 50 characters conversely have to go out of their way to ignore Incarnates and when that is the case we need to look at how many accounts have 50s and how many have incarnates and how far. That will show how many players are actively using the abilities.

Am I reading this right, or is power transfer non unique?

Wait, I thought the idea was to remove the Defensive ATO's and put those into the upgrades, not the other auras?

I do not think this is true. We have numbers on the vast amount of lvl 50 character in HC right now, and every single one of them automatically gets Incarnate XP and Loot for everything they do. Are all Lvl 50 characters T4 incarnate in everything? No Do a solid chunk of them probably have all their incarnate slots unlocked and probably slotted with at least t1? I'd say its a fair portion of them. DO a solid chunk also probably not invest in incarnates or shelve the character at 50? Also yes. Given how easy it is, downright passive, to get incarnate unlocks in HC I think it is disingenuous to say they are a small portion of the playerbase. You are correct though in that just because somebody is an Incarnate doesn't mean they are as powerful as can be given you can really push the system. I like the flashback idea a lot! That could actually be really really fun, you go through time and get exemplared, but you still get to keep Incarnate Powers. You could attach it to a Flashback-Incarnate difficulty for bonuses too!

So, you would be in favor of not having Incarnates in missions that arent lvl 50

So, what if they can be used in 45-50 content that isnt for them?

I mean why not? If we are 100% against nerfing or changing them, why have them gated?

If we're cool with it, would we like to instead push Incarnates down even further so you start grabbing them when you get epic pools? We can exemp down with them anyways and this allows for more Incarnate content by proxy by letting you run 4/8 solo even earlier.

That is a bit outside the scope of most balance changes, but that's another can o worms. One thing thatd be interesting is looking at Regen survival with both 1/2 rech and as a toggle vs other sets.

Protector bots get a second shield and AoE mez/debuff with the 2nd upgrade, and the minions get full auto lasers. Itd definitely be something to test at least

This very much depends on the pets... for that gap between 26 and 32, the extra offense or even straight defense (Protector bots, etc) can more than make up for the Boss pet for a few levels.

This is already true though: Martial Arts on Scrappers does not have a +Def power, and Eagles Claw has a hidden +Crit Chance to the immediate attack you queue after it. MA on Tanks and Brutes has a +Def attack and EC has a +DMG boost to the next attack instead. Claws between all 3 of those AT's have seperate recharge and thus damage values per power, making them feel different overall. Tankers, with their AoE buffs, have sets that can be drastically different than their counterparts with that being the only major change (Area and targets hit per AoE) Stalkers arguably have the best version of several sets (Kinetic Melee, Savage Melee, StJ) due to a number of factors.

This highly, highly depends on the context of how the "Delay" works, as well as the incoming damage. The bigger the incoming hit, the better the "Delay" becomes as you will mitigate more and more immediately. The more incoming hits, the longer you have to deal with the damage as well as it gets continuously spread out into smaller hits instead of taking big instant ones. That 1 tick between hits can mean the difference between life and death if it gives you a small window to self heal or even just regenerate. In this hypothetical, we can only assume that +MaxHP follows the same rules we see now where it has a finite limit to how high it can go while anything that directly negates incoming damage in some way can essentially infinitely scale upwards based on what's coming in. So in a vacuum, being able to split up damage over time will have a bit more value if given the choice. Though this would be incredibly reliant on how it works. Split 50/50 with 1 half now and the other in 5 seconds =/= Split 10 ways with 10% per second =/= take 50% right now, then 5 chunks of 10% over the next 10 seconds, etc. You are right that it may not give you immediate reaction benefit in a realistic sense, but over the course of a combat if any such rule applied to all attacks it would. It'd definitely be an interesting tool to stack upon others, and I think this would be a far better tool than (funny enough) Dull Pain in Regeneration specifically. DP as is "works" in Regen for the reasons mentioned prior, but the set as a whole has a real hard time mitigating big hits, even with more HP. A damage delay mechanic in this set will probably be a huge help given how chunking out the damage gives its Regen time to actually kick in and actively fight the damage mid-combat. Granted, this would highly depend on how the damage is delayed, with smaller chunks over a longer period being ideal. Assume you are going to take 4 bigs hits on a /Regen with 3 seconds between each hit. This is a total time frame of 9 seconds, so you get = (HP/S) * 9 [Ignoring time after the last hit taken as we can assume combat ends after that and you have infinite time to rest] Dull Pain when slotted gives you a ~59% HP boost while active, which will boost you to = (HP/S * 1.59) * 9 For a Delay mechanic on /Regen to match this, we simply need to look at it this way = (HP/S) * (9 * 1.59) Instead of boosting the Health returned per interval, you're increasing the intervals where you can return health. Given that the time frame of combat has not changed (9 sec), if you are able to deal with the situation within the combat window and take less damage within it, you're in a great spot. As for the question of if Regen needs something like this instead of a DP-like power? That can be debated depending on how that would work. Something that say, chunks all damage you receive into 10% bites over 10 second durations would be much, much stronger than DP though that is a reach. Ideally, like with how +HP is essentially "+Resist vs all Damage", they would work together and not be an either-or choice in some form. Just because we get +HP in Regen doesn't mean you also don't get +15% res to all with Resilience, which is effectively +15% HP for 99.99% of the encounters in game. Stack those together and it's stronger than sum of their parts! It does... and it doesn't. Like I mentioned above, 15% Resistance to all damage can effectively be seen as 15% more HP, and vice versa. However the bigger the incoming damage numbers, the more work +Resist does comparatively (though there are practical limits here for both and the only time this really comes into play is in a situation where you would have been pretty much one-shot). Likewise, it doesn't make +Absorb not fit the power thematically either. Granted, I think the point of that has long sailed off as +HP in the current CoH meta has far more practical weight than +Absorb does so any Self +HP powers should stay +HP. Frostwork on the other hand may have a case to be +Absorb as it can stack upon other characters regardless of how much +HP they have and provide more potent mitigation. I agree completely. Absorb has a place, as does +HP, and like with +Resist those places are stacked together to become stronger multiplicatively 😄 In theory, they could have done a lot more with +Absorb if given time to flesh it out as a mechanic. If that were the case, I could see it being used more often or even replacing certain +HP powers depending on the whole toolkit and how it'd interact. As it is right now though, it is in a good spot as it stacks with everything else.

I'd prefer this as well but to another degree, we need more variance set to set between AT's! Why do Scrappers, Brutes, and Tanks (well, less so them now) all have essentially the same versions of sets?

Sorry I havent been as available to test. Between possibly getting covid to organizing work to all work remote, just getting back some time now 🙂 Any plans to try it out again soon?

Oh I'm aware. I'm one half of a 2 man development team that recreated Borderlands 2 and revolutionized that entire game's modding community. Borderlands 2.5 has well over 20k unique downloads even during Borderlands 3's current reign and our discord is constantly buzzing with active players. I know what it's like to dive into a game and rework it. I did it for 6 characters each with 3 skill trees loaded with about 60 total (powers) in total per character that had to be balanced against each other. Redid textures of thousands of weapons and items, rebalance them too and reworked their mechanics and even added brand new ones not in the base game. These also had to be balanced against the characters who wielded them with their unique skills. We were able to redo NPCs, add new enemies and content, list goes on. Reworking old code can be tricky to say the least. Most of our time was spent just working backwards and plotting out what could be done, the actual changes took up very little time comparatively. With this in my mind, I know that if the choice was made to make a specific change to an existing variable in the scope of only a (relative) handful of abilities, vs plotting and creating brand new content that was not in the game before, the former takes far less time and effort.

I would bet actual money that it's easier to go in and change the recharge of Incarnate click powers than it would be to create a new Incarnate story arc in terms of actual man hours.

This is a whole lot of semantics. End of the day, Damage is Damage and Health is Health in-game. There are mechanical differences between actually splitting up damage and just having more HP though. Yes, they do accomplish the same thing of "it takes longer / more attacks for me to be defeated", which can also be applied to More HP and More Defense, or more resistance, or even more offensive power / mez effects to stop incoming hits. The difference is in the details of how this is accomplished and how it directly effects incoming damage: Lets say you have 1000 hp base, and are going to take 500 damage at once. We have the option of applying a 50% HP boost, or a 50% "Damage Delay" over X seconds. 50% HP Boost: 1000 hp -> 1500 hp 1500 - 500 = 1000 left, or 33% damage dealt down from 50% damage you would have taken. You have reduced the incoming damage by about 17% by applying 50% more health in this scenario The damage was done instantly, leaving you with 67% of your health left to work with. Further hits will hurt just as much, but you have more hp to soak it than you did before 50% Damage Delay: 500 damage -> 250 damage right now, and 250 damage later at some point, some how 1000 - 250 = 750 left, or 25% damage dealt down from the 50% you would have taken. You have reduced the incoming damage by about 25% There is still more damage incoming in some way, but you have a bigger % of your HP left at the moment right now and have time to react to that. Worst case scenario is that the remaining 250 damage comes in full X seconds later, in the moment you still mitigating the 500 more effectively and you have bought time to deal with the threat or patch the damage via natural regeneration. Depending on the timing of the delay, and how it is parsed this could have huge implications to how you actually mitigate your damage over time More HP is always good, but it doesn't actually mitigate the incoming damage. A Damage Delay mechanic scales with the incoming hits which makes it more variable, but vs big hits it becomes more valuable than just more raw HP in terms of immediate defense and how it can layer with other mechanics or actions. Mind over Matter? The Absorb Layer is the mechanical representation of your boosted willpower to "Ignore damage" until you've hit your limit. Don't underestimate the power of imagination 😉

Oh for sure, but even in the messiest of code: Creating entirely new Assets VS Adjust existing variables of a power... one of those is way less complex than the other on the sheer value that it is already something that is made and can be altered. We have seen that power values can be altered much more simply given the rapid developments in Beta Testing, so we do have precedence for that option being simpler than going through and creating brand new content of the assumed scale of something like an incarnate story arc or trial.

Writing Dialogue Forming a story Creating contacts Creating a string of missions Assigning Maps Making goals for missions Adjusting and choosing enemy groups and bosses Making New NPCs: Modeling Texturing VFX Powers Lore x this per new enemy in the group / mission Possibly creating whole new zones, which is all of the above multiplied by X Testing all of the above extensively I could go on