Parabola

Nail -> Head. I was thinking of posting something very similar to your second part here but agree absolutely that the first part is the underlying cause of much of this angst. With regards to pool powers they seem to walk an odd tightrope balance wise. Making them appealing enough to take without overshadowing primary and secondary powers doesn't seem easy. Particularly given that they are open to everyone and so are being compared with every power in the game, not just other powers in a set or powers available to one AT. If they end up just being flavour powers then they largely sit gathering dust. If they end up being really good people complain about feeling forced to take them and that they should be made inherent (*cough* hasten) or that they are simply overshadowing primary/secondary powers and need nerfing. The mez question is also a really tricky one. It is a fundamental game mechanic and completely appropriate to the genre but boy can it be annoying. Given the binary on/off mechanics it's difficult to see how mez can be changed without making it so it's completely ignored. I was briefly involved in forum discussions about mez for one of the coh successor projects. They were (and as far as I know still are) going to implement a mez system very similar to that in coh. I was trying to suggest that it's not the best system to copy but it's hard to imagine a good alternative and we are where we are as far as coh is concerned...

I know what you mean, of the three pop-up abilities double jump is definitely the one that feels the most artificial. Certainly useful though in that it exactly replaces the jump pack I take on all my jumpers. The only possibly more thematic idea I can think of is for a 'super-dooper jump' where starting from the ground and for a single leap only you get a massive jump speed/height/distance buff, like to the ceiling of the skybox massive. It would be nowhere near as functional but would be fun to use I think. I can imagine it going well with a suitably thunderous take off sound and a superhero landing animation.

Can't check right now but something in my head is saying the ddr is self only? Could well be wrong but that would make stacking shield users really strong. Also, this is some impressive thread necromancy going on here!

Surely the risk of a mod being made obsolete by game changes is inherent in the mod creation process? Particularly when writing mods for a game that is in active development as this one now is again? I sympathise with the feeling of lost work but it seems an odd thing to be thinking of quitting over. In my day job I have had software solutions I've been very proud of rendered obsolete by wider system changes but it doesn't change the fact that it was good work at the time. I can understand why the devs would prefer to go with solutions that in their opinion suit the majority without expecting people to apply mods themselves. It's a shame you are unable to simply substitute the looping sound file back in for your particular enjoyment though. Perhaps raise it with the devs as a request if you haven't already done so?

It's not the brightest ring in the world but I had no trouble seeing it once I knew to look for it.

An idea that has been discussed before is to make contact missions auto exemp you to their highest level if you are beyond it. Then you could get missions from any contact just by talking to them regardless of how overlevelled you are. It would open up a huge amount of content in a more team friendly way than ouroboros, but no idea how technically feasible it would be. If you are looking to run through all the content as it currently stands you need to turn off xp at level 4, 9, 14, 19, etc. I've tried this a few times but haven't been able to stick with one character long enough!

I use the temporary light theme as it seems white writing on a dark background is bad for my eyes. Since the forum upgrade the light theme has lost the notifications bell which is a little annoying. Could this be added back in please? Unless there is a way of doing this myself that I'm totally missing of course? Edit: It looks like this is only missing on mobile. I'm seeing the bell on desktop.

Quite. How anyone can be upset by these changes is utterly beyond me. They are giving us more speed and more utility for free. Clicking afterburner is totally optional, where on earth is the problem?

As @arcane says this is simply the original proc system. The problem was that it created a situation where spammable fast activating powers were proc monsters and all other powers didn't get much out of them. Which is exactly what the ppm system was designed to fix.

The fact that levelling stopped at 50 and the devs were always adamant that wouldn't change was one of the selling points of coh to me. This game encourages alting and having an achievable ceiling is good when you are staring at a roster of 80+ alts all demanding your attention. I can see how it might feel limiting if you are a one character player but how people do that is a bit beyond me. I've created characters in the past that I've logged into atlas with and immediately logged back out to create another character because another idea ocurred to me as it was loading. I forced myself to have a main for a bit and got a load of badges but I realised it just wasn't fun. No matter how much I enjoy the way one character plays I need the variety of other powersets and ATs. Even the incarnate system is to me an unwelcome extra grind on top of the journey to 50 and it took development time away from making the game broader to make it taller. My strong reservations about the design and balance of the incarnate system don't help of course!

Archery, dual pistols, beam rifle and assault rifle always had crashless nukes didn't they? Can't remember which of those preceded incarnate powers though.

There's something about discussions around what's the tankiest set that always sound a bit 'my daddy is stronger than your daddy' to me! For what it's worth I think much of what is best for most of the game doesn't necessarily hold at the sharp end. I'd much rather have solid res backed by debuff res and heals for the really nasty stuff so my ratings for armour sets are almost the inverse of many peoples. In particular invuln is a set I just don't see being as tough as it's made out to be. Great against s/l but although it's common, s/l isn't generally all that dangerous. Also those weightings for damage type feel heavily skewed by all the s/l done at low levels. In the late game exotic damage seems a lot more prevalent than those numbers make it look. You also have to consider the tools that are available to build with. For example the only source of always on resistance in pool powers is tough. So needing a bit more s/l resistance isn't as much of a handicap than needing more e/n which is harder to find. Similarly there's a decent chunk of psi resist available through impervium armour and the aegis unique but you really do need to be building that on top of something (and have res powers to slot it in). However toxic is very difficult to build for so if you start off with nothing much there that's roughly what you'll end up with too. Radiation is my current choice for toughest set against the broadest range of really irritating enemies (built for resists with debuff protection from focused accuracy, much slow res and ageless radial). I'm playing around with bio more now too. I had previously written it off as interesting but too squishy but I think I've worked out how to build and play it now. It does seem squishy when approached from the 'def and res and stand there and if I have to use a heal I've failed at coh' mindset. If you slot the heals up, build for recharge (alongside def and res of course) and actually use the heals appropriately the set becomes way tougher. Also fun to play imo.

Yeah I'd have said so - it's your best aoe. This is what I'm looking at currently for my wm/shield:

Haven't picked through your build but as a general question do you really need fireball? One of the things I love about war mace is how self contained it is. Great single target and great aoe without having to go looking for other powers elsewhere. With shield you get another bonus aoe anyway. This is such an end heavy combo I'd need serious persuasion to not take body mastery. Oh, I've just seen you haven't taken crowd control. Take crowd control. It's seriously good.

But why?

Send yourself an email but with nothing attached to it and leave it forevermore at the top of your inbox. Then hit reply to that email every time you want to send yourself something. All you have to do is attach something and it's good to go, saves a load of time. Now if only you could do multiple attachments per email...

I started levelling an energy/martial for the combination of knockbacks with the slow aura. Figured it would mean the enemy would waste a huge amount of time simply trying to run up to me. Didn't get far due to crippling altitis though so couldn't tell you how it works in practice.

It seems pretty clear to me that we have broadly speaking two camps of players. Those that are happy with the current balance seem to be either more focused on soloing or looking at the game as a superhero power fantasy (or both). Those that are unhappy with it seem to be focused on teaming or looking at the game as a system in mechanical rather than narrative terms (again or both). I am of course generalizing, I'm sure there are dedicated team players who don't see any issues and soloists who do etc. I think both sides have to accept at this stage that the opinions of the other have been raised often and vocally enough that they aren't likely to simply change or go away. Those that are currently happy see any balance changes as nerfs that will take something away from them and that the game will suffer as a result, perhaps by their leaving. Those that are unhappy see balance changes as completely necessary because the teaming game isn't working properly (at high lv's) and the game is suffering as a result, and they also may leave if nothing is done. This is clearly a difficult issue for the devs to address. They have announced that they are at least looking into this kind of stuff which suggests they do see some issues worthy of investigation. Whether they can find solutions that please everyone remains to be seen. One idea that I brought up ages ago was to introduce enemy buffs that scale based on level and the number of people in the team (actual people not slider settings). The idea being that solo the game wouldn't change at all, and also teaming below some threshold level also wouldn't change. But above the threshold enemies would start to get buffed a bit with more people in the team. The rewards could be buffed too if that was needed. The scaling could also take into account level shifts so if there are incarnates in the team the enemies get a bit of extra juice. The difficulty slider would always be available to tone down the +lv if required. This isn't a fully fleshed out idea but I think the important thing is that it tries to acknowledge the problems of the different ways we all see the game. Soloists would be totally unaffected, absolutely nothing would change for them. And teams would find the game gradually pushing back a bit harder at the high end without having to remove things like level shifts or any changes to IO's or procs etc. I'm not saying this is the answer but it might be the kind of direction we should be thinking in to try to keep as many people happy as possible. Currently I play the game a lot. Too much in fact! But I mostly solo, sometimes for the convenience which is fine but much of the time it is because teaming isn't appealing to me at high levels and that isn't fine at all. I highly value being able to solo in this game but my unshakable belief is that the team game should be the foundation of the coh experience. If that isn't working properly then something seems very wrong indeed.

We're clearly not going to agree on this. I just want to clarify though that I'm also talking about the alpha shift affecting all lv50 content. In many respects I see that as being a greater balance problem than the three shifts that can affect actual incarnate content. But as a whole I cannot see how the level shifts benefit the game inside incarnate content or otherwise.

It strikes me that there might be a fundamental 'how we see the world differently' thing at play in these discussions. I find myself just as confused by the arguments given against trying to alter game balance when the desire is only to improve the teaming experience in what is still an mmo.

What would people be robbed of without the level shifts? What would be the difference in running +4×8 with the alpha shift and +3×8 without it? The enemies would all be the same colour. As I say asking us to self balance by removing incarnate powers is asking us to self exclude ourselves from some of what the game has to offer. It's a solution of sorts but not a good one in my opinion. And we are arguing that the level shifts are directly hurting game balance. Clearly that isn't a view shared by everyone but these days what is?!

I understand this argument but I just don't accept the idea that self gimping is the answer to balance problems. The game gives us tools to use and we should be able to do just that and still have satisfying gameplay. If you enjoy the balance as it is and the level shifts were removed you would have the option to adjust downwards on the difficulty slider to compensate. Unfortunately there is no corresponding option to adjust up any further than +4×8. They could even add more negative levels to the slider if really necessary, I imagine it would be easier than adding higher positive levels due to mobs not existing above lv54. But I find it a bit hard to beleive that anyone is running DA missions (or anything else at lv50) at -1×1 and so wouldn't have anywhere to go if the level shifts were removed.

As I've said before, what the original devs designed or intended is of little importance now. The current devs have to work with the game as it currently is where a snowball effect of lots of changes over time have resulted in the gameplay balance issues we see at the high end. Incarnate content is clearly limited and by all accounts adding new content is time consuming and difficult. Therefore it seems to make sense to me to look at the content that already exists to try to make that as playable as possible and I think removing level shifts would be a big step in that direction. The level shifts have never made much sense to me from a design point of view. The incarnate powers themselves give you more power so why do we need this artificial 'world get's easier' mechanism slapped on top? We spend the climb up to 50 slowly building our power and taking on harder challenges as we go, and then when we achieve the ultimate expressions of our power we suddenly find the game can't fight back as effectively as it did before. It doesn't make me feel more powerful, it just makes it seem like the enemies are suddenly fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.

I feel there is a difference between 'no specific AT or role is required' and 'any extra warm body is simply superfluous'. I don't think anyone is asking for the kind of gameplay where certain AT's are required or you can't succeed, that crap belongs in other games. But that isn't what we are talking about here. If the enemies are being defeated so quickly you can't use the majority of your powers that isn't what I'd call satisfying gameplay. There has to be some middle ground between rigid trinity gameplay and basically doorsitting unless you are launching nukes.

Sadly the different components of Howling Twilight have different durations and the -regen only lasts 30s. Therefore at 180s base recharge the best uptime possible for this effect would be 2/3 of the time if you could hit the recharge cap. So dark is outperformed on this front at least by rad, cold, thermal, poison and traps who can all have 100% uptime on their -regen power and a couple of those are -1000% regen as well. Howling Twilight is at least auto hit which not all of those other options are. As others have said dark is hampered by long animation times and the fact that its main focus of debuffing is -tohit which become superfluous when teammates have enough mitigation of their own. It's sad to look at a trayful of powers thinking 'well there's no point in clicking half of these'. Solo the set is absolutely amazing. You can do things like use Darkest Night to toggle pull into Tar Patch and then hit the bunched up mobs with Fearsome Stare and all your aoe's. This just doesn't get old for me but unfortunately you are very unlikely to find a team that needs you to do half of that. Insert obligatory comment about the faceroll high level game here...