Grindingsucks

@Luminara Okay... I'm all for making analogies to illustrate a point, but you're really jumping the shark here, my friend. 🤷‍♂️

So, the support characters "minions" are their protection. I like your logic! 😁👍 That really has sort of always been my feeling on the topic, from a personal perspective. Support classes either empower the team, debuff the enemy, or some combination of the two. Then the other team members leverage this advantage to clean house, while the support character looks on, nods to themselves in satisfaction, and murmurs... "Well done, my children..."

Okay, so you don't like the stance animation. I can grok that, actually. Thanks for the clarification. 👍

Okie dokie! 😁👍

Okay, Team- a couple of updates. Firstly, we have a Discord! I'm not entirely sure I have permissions set correctly (I've never set up a Discord before) and you may think of some channels you would like added that didn't occur to me when setting things up. If so, feel free to suggest them in the feedback and suggestions channel. Anyways, here's the link: https://discord.gg/Q6vcHX9A Also, I'm getting "Pretty" close to finishing up the base. Today, I got the living quarters blocked out with 24 different rooms. If you would like to have onsite living quarters, let me know and I can assign a room to your character. The only thing I ask is that we limit it to one room per player, so specify which character you want to be assigned when making the request. These will necessarily be on a first come, first serve basis. I can decorate them at your request or even temporarily change base permissions to do it yourself, if you prefer. Some of you may prefer to have your own, off-site base. That's perfectly fine too. All of my characters will have their own bases (mostly b/c I'm addicted to base building. lol). If any of you are friends online, you could bunk up as roomies too, if you prefer. Just let me know. 👍 P.S. As I said, I'm a total noob at making a Discord, so if any more experienced members see anything that needs changed/fixed/tweaked, please don't hesitate to let me know. Thanks! 🙂

@Taboo Getting hit has always been the way that I knew that my stealth has disengaged. Once I play with a stealth toon for 2 or 3 missions, I have a pretty good idea of how close I can get to a mob without triggering their perception. Not really sure how that particular thing is a big deal. Now, the defense being removed from afterburner- it's incredibly easy to hit defense softcap and beyond. I've done it multiple times and never used Afterburner to get the job done. Maybe, as you suggested, that's a PvP thing, but I don't know why anyone would have afterburner toggled on during combat during a PvE mission. Leadership suppressing defense.... I "think" it's been mentioned that this is a bug that will be addressed and fixed in the near future (if I misunderstood that, feel free to correct me, anyone).

Yeah, the map has some cool features. 👍

Why would you ever power slide + ninja run? Just sprint + ninja run.

The snipes... yeah, okay. I can grok why some people might be a little bit bummed about the changes. But help me understand why invisibility or afterburner are less usable/effective now- because I just don't get it. 🤔

I hear you. And, personally, being support roles- I don't think they need the buff- although I HAVE often wished that there were some way to tag mez effects as being specific to certain power sets (or, vise-versa, actually). Controllers, especially, I feel really ought to be protected from mez effects cause by attacks related to their primary. Some examples: Darkness controllers: Protection from fear and hold effects generated by dark/negative nrgy based powers. Earth controller: Protection from knockdown, hold, etc. from Earth-based powers. Electric controller: Protection from stuns and endurance drains from electricity powers. And so on. It just never made sense to me that a someone who's schtick is controlling gravity should be as vulnerable to being immobilized/slowed/held by increased gravity, since they control gravity themselves. Obviously, the problem may be that it's too complicated/difficult (impossible?) to tweak the code to filter mez effects by power source. It would be a logical buff though, and not one that is too potent, imo. Anyway, I don't main a support AT but, if I did, I can sort of understand why people that do might feel a bit disgruntled that combat ATs have been getting buffs, while they've been passed over. What really NEEDS to happen is across the board nerfs to AT's, enhancement sets, incarnate powers, and so forth. But, as I've pointed out in other topics, this is not realistic, because 1) The player base would riot and 2) It's a huge amount of work for a small development team. It would be more practical to bring all AT's to parity by giving them a few relevant buffs, then boosting the enemies by adding additional difficulty levels to the notoriety dial, creating new (stronger) enemies, and implementing more difficult mission content.

Sign me up for that. 👆 We need it badly for high-lvl team play. The devs have given some indications they're interested in having a go at the Coming Storm arc that was teased before live went down. If they do, I have some hope that we might get a little of what we're asking for here.

Having seen the custom button that @Hopestar posted, I am now obligated to vote "invisibility". 😂

You know... I do loathe power creep, but I have to concede that you've got some valid points here. I don't know that bringing support AT's to parity would shed any light on what is causing the power creep problem, but I suppose some minor tweaks to that end, really can't break anything much more than it's already broken.

True, true. 😁

Well, it's not unusable (I've used it solo, myself), but it is less than desirable. Personal force field is a fantastic defense power, for example, but you can't attack with it on. That's darned inconvenient when you're playing alone. 😛 To some extent, this is true with most Controllers/Defenders, as these were meant to function as support classes on teams, as opposed to lone-rangering it solo. When you use a support class for this, you really are trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. With enough determination, you can do it. But the process and result is not going to be (probably) as satisfying as a dedicated combat AT, unless you're a very patient person. On the other hand, if you are patient and tactical minded, enjoy a challenge, and prefer playing alone, controllers and defenders may be the perfect choice for you.

Well, the thing is, when combat AT's defenses are so high that they almost never get hit and their dps is so high because of dmg bonus from enhancements and high recharge from Hasten +LotG, a team of such characters often melt any opposition before the controllers even get a chance to lock much of anything down. Likewise, buffs are swell but when you're already soft/hard capped on all relevant defenses and resists, what's the real benefit at that point? Becoming even more unbeatable than you already are, I guess. 🤷‍♂️ Now, if you just play solo, there's no problem. Play remains challenging and fun for most any solo character, so long as you keep the notoriety dialed up.

Okay, so having now tested fly and mystic flight, I have to say that this is even better than I expected (and I had high hopes for the movement changes, after the combat teleport update). Being able to hover around at more than a snails pace is awesome. Being able to Translocate without the hangtime is even more awesome. Can't wait to try out superspeed! 👍

Okay- I can grok that. Those ITF's can get pretty exhausting, sometimes. 👍

I know, right? These guys are workhorses. I need to hire them to come clean my house. 😁

Well, granted- such things are subjective. 😁 I was merely speculating on possible reasons folks might abandon either of those two TFs. But, yes- I am sure there are those players that *sigh*... love them.

It could be first timers rage-quitting in frustration over these two abominably designed TFs. If they knew about the "orbital lance" or "blue death" cheese, they probably wouldn't have joined in the first place. Still not cool to skip out in the middle of the TF without so much as a fare-the-well, though. Sorry you had to deal with that.

I have a different view. I would say that power creep that has allowed almost every AT to effectively softcap defense, has ruined much of the utility of the force field set. The same effect can be attributed to the feeling that controllers are essentially superfluous in end-game content.

I've never achieved softcap on any of my blasters and they all perform very well at +4/8. Same with my controllers. I haven't played Defenders or Corrupters enough to be certain if that's true with those ATs, but I suspect that it is. I've never really understood why players are so obsessed with over-tuning characters, in a game that just isn't that difficult. Maybe it's a legacy from live, before they implemented IO sets, incarnates, and what not, and you needed to think that way to get anywhere in the game? 🤷‍♂️ I concentrate on defense when running Super Reflexes toons (one of my favorite armor sets). When I do that, I chase hardcap and often overtune to compensate for defense debuffs. On the other hand, I rarely spend much time investing in resist on my SR characters. This is more in theme with the set (IMO, it's about avoiding the damage- not soaking it up- superman analogues not withstanding) and makes it more exciting to play. You almost never get hit- but if you do- BAM! Keeps me on my toes. 😁👍

Attempted to solo an ITF for the first time, last night. Thought I might be able to do it, set at -1 notoriety. I did not succeed. It turns out, that a lvl 35 fire/regen Sentinel and Requiem are essentially an even match. After blasting each other with flame and dark energy for about about an hour and a half (basically no damage to either one of us), I offered a cease fire if Requiem would take a picture of me in one of their swanky doom mechs. Surprisingly, he agreed! 😁