Parabola

This. Stone is another fabulous partner for bio and my bio/stone is now my favourite character. No less than 4 ff+rech procs, 2 in almost guaranteed to fire aoes. Bio feeds stone with end management and supplies a supplemental aoe in the form of DNA siphon procced out. Stone feeds bio with recharge and boat loads of control. Most of your mitigation is active which makes for really engaging gameplay.

I have to echo this. The best use of this power as I see it is to break the alpha on your way into melee range where ice control really wants to be. Therefore I would prefer greater range on the fear than the width. It just doesn't seem that useful a power to me once I am in melee range, by that point Arctic Air and Ice Slick are doing their thing. Agreed. Marry the two effects up with whatever arc/range is deemed suitable and have done with it.

Blimy. I don't even remember creating this. It would be nice to have more fine control over the graphics settings for powers in general though. A saturation slider would also go a very long way for example.

The alternative that I'd love to see would be for all contacts to offer you missions regardless of your level but accepting a mission would auto exemp you to the appropriate level. Ouroboros is a great way of running story arcs solo but it's limited as a platform for casual teaming. If you could auto exemp to a contacts level in the outside game it would allow others to freely join and leave as you go along. It would also open up all the non story arc missions that contacts have that aren't available through ouroboros.

Indeed. Also indeed. This is a drum I have banged before but people tended to get quite upset with the concept that the ability to run maximum team settings solo might not be the healthiest thing, in what is supposed to be an mmo. I'm actually not really a fan of the hardmode options, I would have preferred a more general rebalance, but I accept that there are many who see things otherwise!

I think this change makes a lot of sense. It doesn't feel right to me that an attack that does 99% psi but 1% lethal (hypothetical numbers obviously) is blocked entirely by s/l defence. Also the changes to zombie vomit are very welcome from someone who enjoys wading knee deep in sewer water in the early levels. One thing does occur to me, when this change does make it to player attacks psi melee might become the set I had always hoped it would be. Although as psi/tox defence and resistance are being added to tier 9's it won't cut through those in quite the satisfying way I'd like it to.

I dunno, if I were going to buff AM I would love to give it a touch more recharge bonus instead. I never build a rad (or anything really) without hasten and it takes more global recharge to perma that than AM. Therefore the recharge of AM becomes something of an irrelevance as I push towards perma hasten. Reducing it's recharge would bump up its uptime at lower levels though which would be nice. I find it hard to say whether rad needs an overall buff. If it does it seems more likely the devs would look at some of the less utilised powers rather than buffing the ones that are already the meat and potatoes of the set. If fallout was changed so that it could target an enemy body with perhaps a reduced effect for example. Mutation, like all revive powers, could benefit from the ability to buff a living teammate. The only change I really want to the core powers is a reduction in cast time for radiation infection and we're getting that in the next release.

It's probably worth saying that obliteration in particular has the most consistently useful and coherent set bonuses of just about any set in the game. S/l Res, damage, accuracy, recharge and melee defence are all generally useful to any melee character. It is one of my more regularly slotted non-purple sets. Sure, some extra end reduction enhancement would be nice but if I were compiling a list of gimped enhancement sets obliteration would be somewhere near the bottom.

We're through the looking glass here people. https://youtu.be/ut3I6gFmlls

Yeah this is just sad. Of course there is nothing behind it but there is no arguing with this kind of thinking either here or anywhere else, mores the pity.

It's a massive shame the croatoa farm map (the one used for that irritating 'stop 30 fir bolg getting to the portal' mission) isn't used for farming. I mean, come on ... It's actually a farm ...

Rad is a classic with Irradiate providing early (and very good) pbaoe and everything else apart from the underwhelming Electron Haze being blap friendly. I kind of like Dual Pistols for blapping too for style points as much as anything. Letting off powers like Bullet Rain and Executioners Shot at point blank range looks great. You can either drop Empty Clips or just take a few paces back to use it. Water is another good blap set. Steam Spray comes late and isn't entirely necessary and standing in your Whirlpool provides a fair amount of mitigation.

Anything beyond 'big steel box with random kit scattered around one corner' is witchcraft as far as I am concerned.

One shouldn't be as far ahead of the others as it is (in my opinion). Of course farmers are always going to farm whatever it is that offers the greatest return for their time, currently that's AE farming. I do remember the Katie Hannon's and I remember what happened - they reigned in the outlier. AE farming is now that outlier.

I'm surprised you didn't mention RP. Yes, of course, some in game activities aren't directly comparable. Farming and regular play though are. In both you are engaging in the core gameplay loop, you are taking on challenge and defeating mobs for rewards. And I think there is balance to be pursued in that. So yes, I do mean it thanks.

Well this thread is serving predictably little purpose. Other than filling out my ignore list so that's something I suppose. I fail to see what is so threatening or even controversial about the idea that different in game activities should have rough parity in rewards/time but there we go. Apparently by saying that I'm accusing people of badwrongfun and trying to change the way they play. I don't see it myself.

I have to echo the thoughts expressed by others on the different ways offensive and defensive toggles are treated. I am absolutely all about game balance and avoiding powercreep but this is one of those areas of legacy game design that could really use a fresh look. Why do different toggles need to react to mez differently at all? Is it really a significant balance point that must be maintained? One of the more attractive things about this game is the variety of ways it allows you to take the game on. Buffs and debuffs are potentially really powerful compared to what tends to be allowed in other games. However, debuffs are still limited by a couple of factors and any character relying on them for survival is always in for a tougher ride than a conventionally armoured character. The purple patch is a big factor, and in my opinion it is too biased against debuffs, and another is the whole issue of mez. Characters that rely on debuffs for protection are generally those without native mez protection. No other subgroup of characters run such a risk of most of their mitigation being suddenly turned off. Buffs stick around (and aren't cut down by the purple patch) and armoured characters have mez protection built in. I have gripes about the whole implementation of mez in this game but relevant to this discussion in particular is why do we not just suppress 'offensive' toggles just for the duration of the mez? If there has to be a balance point with cast times and damaging toggles then that could make a certain amount of sense. In that case could these not be split into their own category? So damaging toggles require manual retoggle or have the kind of delay being trialled here, but non-damaging debuff toggles just behave exactly like buff toggles currently do?

I've not tested but the way similar powers have been set up in the past is to have the two parts operating as separate powers with respect to procs. Therefore slow procs will only fire from the slow cone and fear procs will only fire from the fear cone.

Yes indeed, you'd have to completely isolate the farmers. It wasn't a serious suggestion - just that it would be interesting to do so we could really see what would happen to the market.

The second question seems to be lacking an appropriate response given that I'm massively against the first idea? I don't often say things like this (or ever before to my knowledge) but if all content was made lv50 I'd leave and never look back. The journey is the game for me - I have much less fun at 50 (mainly due to how terrible I find the incarnate system). Besides, we're not being given instant lv50s? They are only for PvP. And I'd vote against allowing them for PvE even harder and faster than I vote against making the entire game lv50.

My thoughts are really along the lines that the exact details matter less than the idea that no one way of playing the game should result in disproportionate rewards compared to other ways. If people want to ae farm all day every day then all power to them but the rewards for doing so shouldn't be completely out of line with the rewards for playing the more traditional game all day every day (chance would be a fine thing, bloody real life...). I never farm anymore. I built a fire farmer to check it out and pl'ed a few alts but I quickly found that what I enjoy is the levelling process the traditional way. I make enough inf by a bit of very light marketeering as I go along to meet my needs and that's good enough for me. In general I am happy with how I play and happy for others to do their thing too. But, what I don't like is any nagging feeling that my time could be more profitably spent farming than what I'm doing. Of course traditional play is going to be a bit less rewarding, that's fine, but when it feels it's an order of magnitude less rewarding then that's not so good. More importantly if it feels that way to me then any new players are likely to feel the same thing too. As much as I can see the appeal of farming, and I wish its proponents well, I think a farm is a terrible introduction to the game for a new player. There is so much to this game that gets skipped over in the confines of the ae building. The majority of content is sub 50 and while it's fair enough that a jaded veteran might want to avoid it (I love all the old low level stuff but to each their own), I don't think it's a good thing for new player to be given the idea that 'the game' is blasting to 50, racing to incarnate, purpling out and then wondering where the content is. I think this is more or less the angle the devs are coming from too. They have stated several times that they don't have a problem with farming itself, but they are acting to reign in its more disproportionate rewards.

I've actually played both. The corruptor is part of a static duo (it is amazing what a pair of these can do) but the defender is the better soloist by far. In general I want the buffs before the blasts and this is particularly true for time. In terms of epic I've been avoiding the power boost/farsight combo for a while now. It is possible to softcap ranged and aoe without it and everything in melee is debuffed, possibly without end and dying anyway. That leaves the door open to dark mastery and its much better version of soul drain.

Add me to the list of people who never even knew this conversion was a thing. Given that, and given that I don't AE farm I don't stand to lose much by this change or its predecessor. That said, this does feel like the broader impact solution.

Great combo but mines also a tank and I would recommend it. Dark melee is great on tanks with bigger aoes, more freedom to proc and more return from soul drain.

I thought it did but I could be wrong. I'm not sure I follow your second paragraph I'm afraid? It wasn't a seriously thought through suggestion to be honest, it just dropped into my head reading your earlier post. I don't have a problem with the lower -res numbers but some clearly do and I just wondered if this might sweeten the pill.