Rylas

Demon Summoning Radiation Melee Darkness Control Invulnerability Titan Weapons Empathy

If anything, KD ends up providing slightly less mitigation. With KB, the foe can only attack you right away with a ranged power. If a foe is KD'd, they can use melee or ranged powers as soon as they get up without having to run back to you. But again, the better answer is to have a new, nearly identical IO set made that offers a KD proc instead.

Archetype Difference Testing To help see how the changes to PBAoEs and Cones affected the difference between Tankers and Brutes, I rolled up identical builds for a SR/DM Tanker and a DM/SR Brute. Both level 50. Both picked up CJ and Weave. Both had Hasten but for current testing I didn't use it. No Incarnate powers, and no IO sets. Just level 30 Generic IOs. The Tanker sat at 51.5% Def for all positions while the Brute was at 38.6%. For a little extra AoE goodness, they have Cross Punch and Spring Attack. TL;DR The buffs, while great, might be just a tiny bit over the top. But this is just one test so far, and more should be tried with even comparisons like this. The Builds: The Environment: Both ran Council radio missions at +0/x6, running into and fighting one spawn group at a time. Play Summary: The Tanker, not surprisingly, had no issues with his green bar, and his endurance hardly ever dropped below 3/4. Any time Dark Consumption was used, it was purely for additional AoE damage. Running from group to group was hardly an issue. The AoE and cone changes made a huge difference in his speed though. Groups would drop faster, but once most had dropped and the fighting went to single target tactics, I could tell he was slower in taking them down. And whenever the group was +1, there was a noticeably slower pace in kill speed. Not terribly so, but enough to tell. The Brute burned through foes at a faster pace when it came to single targets. He wasn't dropping as many multiple targets at a time, but in single target fights bosses and lieutenants dropped much faster. However, the green and blue bar were all over the place. Sometimes he was barely killing them fast enough to stay alive. And SO level recharge in Dark Consumption almost wasn't fast enough. He could keep moving from group to group, but it required much more attention and planning. Groups that were +1 were the ones that almost took him out, but died faster than they did for the tank. Concerns: I'm loving the changes. And the difference between play styles for the 2 ATs was noticeable with this particular power set combo. But this comparison makes me wonder if Tanker damage has been buffed a little too much. For a melee set not known for its AoE damage, the Tanker did well with groups of minions in quick fashion. Either the cones and AoEs need to come down a smidge, or the damage buff to attacks needs to drop to 10% or 15%, not the 20% that was given. Personally, I'd prefer to keep the AoE and cone buffs as they are and reduce the damage buff. It only makes sense for Brutes to be faster at dropping bodies. As they are, a good AoE Tanker might become the next FotM for farming. Not that that's a bad thing, but Brutes should probably hold at least some edge on kill speeds. At least in most scenarios. I'll try running other flipped build comparisons, but it would be good if others could too.

Stupefy has been around way too long to go changing anything on it. I can see why you'd prefer KD, but too many probably use the KB and want to keep it. Perhaps they just need to make a new set with the same bonuses, but make the proc KD. They can call it... Dupefy?

Radiation Blast Illusion Control Kinetics

All I was saying is that it's *not* crappy to slot for defense. A minor disagreement is all that was. Outside of such a minor point, yes, we're totes in agreement. 🙂

I know I'm late to the feedback party, but this is the soonest I could get to testing the changes. Endurance Testing The Build: I made an Inv/Stone for testing out the boost to endurance, since neither set has an end recovery power. I auto-leveled to 30 and slotted only lvl 30 Basic IOs. Stamina was 2-slotted and didn't use any Endurance Reduction enhancements whatsoever. My goal here was to see how well endurance lasted for the average SO build. The environment: I started with +0/x6 for mission difficulty. I didn't want survival to be an issue to focus on, so I went with Council radio missions at first. I felt their -Rech ended up skewing things since I was recovering end while waiting around to be able to attack, so I switched to doing Warrior radio missions instead. I was able to aggro 2 spawn groups at a time (any beyond the aggro cap would eventually join the fray as foes were defeated). By the end of clearing 2 spawn groups, I was at ~15 endurance left. By the time I ran around to group up 2 more, I was near full again and able to keep going. I didn't use inspirations during these tests. While I have Hasten, I haven't tested the efficiency with it active yet. Summary: For having only SO numbers for performance, I found the additional endurance boost was incredibly helpful. My recovery was 3.08 end/sec. If I was playing normally (using endurance enhancements or blues as needed), I would probably never have to worry about endurance for most content. The change certainly is hitting the mark for making Tankers last longer. BUT, unless there's a way to turn off Accolades that I'm unaware of, my results are probably a bit skewed since I was testing at 130 Endurance rather than 120. I'd love to see how things would look without the additional 10 endurance.

I don't think Ice Armor really needs as much help in the SO game. Where it begins to "under perform" is in the moderate to high end IO department. At least IMO. Plugging it's Fire weakness requires a lot of 6 slotting from expensive sets. Fortunately, my suggestion works on both levels with minimal adjustment.

Bolding the part I disagree with. If Wet Ice was comparable (or even close) to CJ, making it enhanceable makes it a great choice for those who would like to hit soft-cap numbers without having to rely on IOs. As well as affording them the ability to open up pool power options by not using the Leaping or Leadership pool (one, but not likely both). It would allow for a lot more build diversity as well. And, if used as an IO mule (because there's absolutely nothing wrong with that on any level whatsoever other than completely personal reasoning - which we're all allowed to have and practice in our own builds), it would open up at least one slot for builds that aim to plug the fire resistance hole. With the little bit of help that Ice Armor could use, these kind of small adjustments offer the best help without altering the feel of the set. I can't see how this would be so controversial.

I hate to see comments like this. It just doesn't show any willingness to have a discussion in good faith. Why can't someone want consistency just as much as you don't want IO mules?

Why talk about the cottage cheese rule and then suggest adding in mechanic ice never had? It makes more sense to make wet ice give 3-5% defense and allow for it to slot sets. This way it gives players the ability to skip CJ or Maneuvers if they want to. And it gives Ice Armor more IO choices. Both good, small boosts that help the set out.

Please, oh please, let's call the set Firestarter Melee!!

Pretty much. It could even have a bit of control added in. Maybe a "possession punch" that works on minions and requires stacking for lieutenants. Or an AoE like Footstomp animation the creates a small Tar Patch. Another fire one would be tricky. There's no secondary effect for fire other than more damage. But perhaps a mechanic could be built around how it spreads it's damage. Like Contamination, but maybe with slightly different implementation.

Ha! Elemental Melee was my original thought for the name. You're pretty much describing my thoughts on how to execute it. My idea was smashing damage as the base and toggles for ice, fire and negative each. Giving each toggle their own secondary effect as well (-rech, DoT, and -acc respectively). I think there's potential to make it stand out, I just haven't had the time to sit down and really work it out. But honestly, even though it would be more work, it would be more fun to see other melee options for ice, fire and negative damage in their own sets. Like, a negative energy damage set that had more AoE damage (say 1 or 2 more powers than DM) and had less utility powers. So no heal or +end attacks. The -to hit could remain, but it could be played completely different while offering a different form of negative damage. Role playing is always an option, sure. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it wouldn't hurt to spruce up the melee catalog with something other than another smashing, lethal or energy based set. I see good reasoning for them being more prevelant, but it's entirely lop-sided now.

I think going back and reworking entire sets to have a swap-ammo like feature isn't going to be terirbly feasible. But your suggestion touches on an idea I've been thinking about, as well as a porblem I've noticed in sets in general. Being me, this is all melee focused, but it lines up with OP's idea. The problem: it seems as though when it comes to making themed characters, specifically those who would be based on ice/fire/negative damage types, the game has left players one choice per category and left it at that. There's plenty of options for doing S/L and energy damage, so why not the other way around. For example, why not have a ice themed melee set that wasn't as focused on soft control? The idea: make a new melee set that has a swap ammo feature. The swap would allow for ice, fire or negative damage. ThIs way, we don't have to make 3 sets in order to allow players options for their themed characters. They could always stick to just one of the damage types. Or, you could just play it like the melee version of dual pistols. Or, we could just have more ice/fire/negative damage type melee sets made. And do the same for other range and control power sets. It would just be more time investment.

Samesies. Or just give us an option to turn it off completely. It only ever made sense when combining SOs. Everything else is guaranteed to succeed when combined.

I was just being silly, not to worry. I think worrying about what the "standard" player (whatever that is at this point) might do for slotting is just too small an issue to try to worry about considering Ice Armor was second to last place for Tankers and Stalkers and dead last for everyone else that can use it. I don't think the numbers of people slotting WI incorrectly because they're poorly informed will be that much.

How about changing the power description? Wet Ice When you activate this power, you cover yourself in a thick coating of slick, melting ice. This makes you slippery, leaving you nearly immune to Disorient, Immobilization, Hold, Sleep, Slow and Knockback effects. This power also adds miniscule defense to all attacks except Psionics, and is not worth slotting for. Wet Ice also reduces Cold damage and grants you resistance to Defense DeBuffs

Stalker Ice Armor replaces Chilling Embrace with Hide. I include all versions of a set so I can cross it off in one go. 🙂

It's not necessary to appeal to my biases... but I'm way ok with that! I might have said Energy Absorption was the biggest seller of the set, but CE *is* the strongest Taunt aura in the game, so you get your way. 😉 Ice Armor

Good to know. Thanks! So is anyone else interested in group testing? I can test the changes solo, so I'm happy enough to take a different AT for group play. Someone's got to provide the Fulcrum Shift after all.

The proposed changes look very interesting, and I can't wait to try them out. I plan on testing out how this improves SO-build performance as well as IO-build performance. But I think some of the best testing we could do is in team situations. Are there any groups looking to test together to see how the performances play out in group settings? Are there different methods for testing this out that have been considered? If there are concerns over too much Tanker/Brute overlap, what situations can we test with as a community that help us highlight these issues should they actually exist? Do we, say, create a team with 1 Tanker, 1 Brute, 2 of AT X, 2 of AT Y, and 2 of AT Z, have them split into 2 groups inside a large mission map with lots of spawns (eg Tank, X, Y and Z for one team, Bute, X, Y and Z for another team) and see how they move along the map and noting any differnces or lack thereof? That's just a spit ball idea, I'm sure there are better. Seriously, how are we testing this in team play situations? This seems one of the more crucial needs for answering concerns, but I haven't seen any talk of it in this thread of anyone trying it out. I'm willing to coordinate for group testing. Anyone else?

That's highly unlikely to even be considered. For starters, Soul Drain gives a buff per foe hit by the power. With 10 targets, that's having Build Up up to 3x longer than BU itself. I don't see them making that 60% stronger. And sets like TW already have higher damage multipliers than they should. So increasing their target cap would be making an already powerful set, way too powerful. I think most of the powers you've listed were intentionally left untouched for the target cap increase. And most likely for very good balance reasons.

I can understand that to a point. But anyone that unaware of the value/pay-off of their slotting choices, is probably already being wasteful with their slotting already. I've commented on a few endurance-woe threads about how slotting more then one EndRdx is pointless on most toggle armors. I think @Megajoule touched on my thoughts on the power; why does it even bother to grant 1% Defense at all at this point? At least if they opened it up to use sets then it could actually provide some actual bonus outside of mez protection. Ice Armor is a long time favorite of mine, but the set could use a bit of boosting. This is certainly one way to do that and it wouldn't be a change that would raise concerns over balance or performance issues.

Origin Icons Magic Mutant Natural Science Technology @drboston, here's the science icon at 900x900. Sorry, but the wakie inspiration files were done in a way that the largest resolution was the one posted. I'll probably go back to those, along with the other inspirations at a later time. Tackling power icons is my main concern right now.