Galaxy Brain

Claws' Spin

Energy is def the baseline blast set, and it is surprisingly fun solo with crowd control

For stalkers, I believe hemorrhage is bugged where if you crit it applies all the bonus DoT at once as a super crit.. but that's one power on one AT.

This gave me an idea... what if you build up stacks, then only at 5 you could use Blood Thirst and enter a "Super Mode" for a time? During which you get the super-moves + other benefits like healing.

With all the new blaster secondaries, alongside sweeping Sustain changes, the meta has been shaken up quite a bit! What are some of the best / most fun secondaries nowadays?

Tbh, the exhaustion mechanic makes me hesitant to take the powers that cause it outside of using them as openers... but then you dont get as much bang for your buck 😕 If savage had way better effects in the exhaustion attacks and/or some sort of constant sustain as you get bloodlust it may not be the best damage but it would offer something very unique with a DoT + HoT.

Consensus seems that it is a bit on the lower end of melee, and the exhaustion mechanic puts it back a bit which seems odd. The text on a few abilities seems to refer to it having some sort of life steal or regen at some point in development.

The bloodlust mechanic, or at least one power in the set, originally had some sort of life steal mechanism. Given the performance of the savage sets, would it be broken to put that back in a small manner?

What might be nice is if Personal Force Field gave you a massive +Absorb, non refreshing, upon use that lasts until it is depleted. When you detoggle the FF, you lose the Def/Res but still have an Absorb shield for safety. I think the ideas above are very cool, but I also think maybe steering away from stance powers would be good, and more working with what we have now?

Myself and @Scrapuloushad been talking about this in discord, but outside of raw damage it would be nice if MM attacks carried more debuffs or control like the demon attacks per set as well.

My energy blasts are cyan so idk what's going on

Not to side rail the discussion, but taking my GF through CoH for the first time now she was confused that DOs were weaker than SOs. Youd think that there would either be a boost to combining origins, or at least something different like DOs give 2 weaker boosts vs ome big boost to a stat that SOs have.

Just want to mention that I have converted the thread to talk more about boosted challenges instead of nerfing IOs/incarnates. As mentioned, we can all play like we want where you dont go into IOs or Incarnates, feel OP with them in normal content... but we dont have a 3rd option where there is tweaked difficulty just for OP characters. Hell, said content could re-balance certain sets like Stone Armor or Force Fields where the extra mitigation is useful again.

It needs something unique over other buffs. Absorb would do it, as could say a smashing damage proc instead of a direct boost. That would push it over other such buffs as it adds additional damage over the caps and stacks with other boosts in a beneficial way.

I think FF should be exclusively a buff / soft control set. That said, the precedent for adding damage is there already. Simply taking say, Invulnerability as a thematic example you can add +ToHit on force fields since your attacks bash through defenses or such.

On the note of difficulty or new enemy types... we could just do what was already established with Kheldians and their unique Quantum spawns. For reference, Kheldian players have a chance for Quantum typed enemies to appear in any given mission which have different powers than the standard enemy they should be. What if we introduced "Enhanced ____"? Or even "Incarnate ______" enemies? Enhanced types could just have various perma buffs as noted earlier where they have say, perma speed boost, perma damage rez unless mezzed, or are mez proof but no other protections, etc. Incarnate enemies could in turn have new powers that would require thinking. For example, an Incarnate enemy that could slap Radiation anchor debuffs on you with great effect that would make that player want to reposition else get their team debuffed, or other such effects that coerce you to approach content differently and with better equipment (IOs and Incarnate abilities) going in. Then you could see "Enhanced Incarnate _____" .....

What could be cool is offering alternate boosts to enemies sort of like Diablo 3 does in their extreme difficulties. What if enemies had perma hasten on their attacks, making streakbreakers more common even on def capped players? What if they had a bunch of damage auras? Mez protections? Etc

BEE BLAST

The original topic here was asking if nerfing IOs would kill the game, but we quickly shifted to providing more challenging content instead! This would be better as it allows players to still build strong characters, but also allow them to take on appropriate challenges for greater reward. One such idea for different content is to take on the "Quantum Enemy" system that we see for Kheldians. The tech seems to be there where special enemy types can be set to appear within existing groups, so a tweak could be done via the difficulty settings and/or just by being an incarnate or IOd character. "Enhanced ______" enemies could have various perma-buffs attached to them such as a perma Speed Boost, perma Resist armors until they are CCd, CC protection of mag 10000, etc to spice up gameplay and make you think about encounters a bit differently or at least provide a struggle for decked out teams. "Incarnate _______" enemies would have additional powers they can use that change up how you approach them. For example, they could have Radiation debuff toggles they put on players that would make you want to change your position else you debuff your team. They could have damage auras that get dangerous in groups that you wade into. Certain ones could have powerful AoE buffs to their groups, or extreme AoE defense that makes you need to take down individuals, and so on! We dont need to get started on "Enhanced Incarnate ______" either 😉 Moreso a discussion than a suggestion, but it seems almost every thread here about balance revolves around how the IO system sort of breaks powersets or even whole ATs. Would making them less potent bring those scenarios in line, or would it do more harm than good?

I could say the same with how vehemently you are defending it. For all intents, it was *not* in the base game as it was trivial to stack rage for many years, even for just 10 seconds to avoid the crash. The dev's knew it, but they never made a move to fix it. For years. That is "essentially" leaving it out as they knew it could be avoided but they let it be avoidable.

Rage comes with an otherwise unavoidable defense crash that puts a bug strain on secondary (or primary as a tanker) powers that rely on +Def to function properly, and even on resist sets you are going to be taking more damage as enemy tohit goes from 50% to 70%. Using inspirations to patch that, or using incarnate powers, or other means to subvert the crash is something no other set *has* to deal with to keep playing. Super Strength even with stacked rage is not the best melee set. Smashing damage is commonly mitigated in the game, and in an IO / Incarnate world (since we are bringing that up for patching the crash) it is outcompeted by other sets that do not have to stop and have better synergies. Even in an SO environment there are sets that likely outperform it on Brutes at the least, but the now un-bugged def crash hurts tankers a bit more in their role. Many people here, on discord, reddit, and facebook all are avoiding Super Strength since the crash just is not fun given other options and the def crash is just pushing that further. So you're right Hyperstrike. I, with many others, do not want to deal with the rage crash. We do not have to, as if we are going for theme we have StJ, Titan Weapon or even MA to mimic "brutal physical fighter" for concept, and even performance with some of those sets over SS. Why should we put up with something that punishes is us + doesnt make a set go from mediocre > consistently the best in the game, in a way that makes you need to stop what you're normally doing? Few if any powers do that besides T9 crashes (which are also usually avoided) or the odd power that makes you only affect self which usually is something you directly control. Tell me, why should we put up with it? In love the dev's left the def crash out even tho they could have fixed it. It's been 7 years since then and they have moved on, you think that their ontent would be to have the def crash implemented after 15 years?

Itd be neat if Rage gave some +Res or something while up. It seems strength always came with being tougher

Consumables are meant to be consumed, but *requiring them to function* is something that no set should need. The farming example is done for efficiency, as most builds can farm without those inspirations but just at a slower pace. The reds are not fixing an issue, but boosting a strength. In the case of rage, saying that you should just patch it up with RNG / pre bought consumables is not cool. At that point, why not replace rage with trays of reds?

Wait, it's an "opinion" that sets shouldn't need to use inspirations to function?

Those are different powers on those ATs, like Brute.MartialArts vs Scrapper.MartialArts. Aggro caps are not per AT.