Naraka

To double-reverse UNO your argument: so one of the things people complain about redside, being a lowly lackey to a big boss that follows orders, yeah, let's proliferate that to blueside and then hypocritically herald it as the greatest form of story telling and inclusion. That being said, I wouldn't be against adding more lvl 36+ pools and unlock them through various content but you'd need to be more creative than just copying villain patron pools. Also, don't just plop then in a neutral piece of content, make it require being a villain or hero or rogue or vigilante.

I have a certain expectation of what dark powers are/look like/function. But the game defines dark powers differently. That's how game rules/limitations work. It's called Homecoming, not Homebrew. You can't just make your own pet power set, you have to work with the tools available. If you don't like how the powers are defined, that's just something you're going to have to live with and pushing forward the argument that "words have meanings" ignores that groups create those meanings and the group that created the meanings here define those terms different from comics. It's not wholly different but it's apparently different enough for someone to have to explain the difference to you.

Then I have no idea why you cling to the moniker "Super" in the name Super Strength. It's literally just words that then have to fit in a game where a person without "super" strength but rather "trained and abnormal" strength (see any other physical set) has to be balanced to function *at least* similarly. That said, I think the suggestion @Vanden pointed to seem like a good idea. A damage proc type effect would, at least, be unique with the only other power that does something like that coming from Plant Manipulation and Fiery Aura. Only thing that miffs me about that is the extra damage isn't affected by damage buffs.

And what is the average buff and uptime of said buff (Soul Drain + Aim)? I tend to not try to be disingenuous when making comparisons but taking into account outside powers will get you a lot of shady areas since having access to AoE powers not balanced around the presence of Rage (or double stacked) has always felt unfair in Rage's favor and Soul Drain requiring many targets to get a high bonus was its balancing factor. As for War Mace and Martial Arts not sucking without damage boosters, that's kind of the fucking point. If those sets did suck without Rage, that would make SS unfairly more powerful. If they made Rage non-perma and just a regular BU, then SS would be unfairly weak. I KNOW you understand this simple logic but you're trying to twist things to make people arguing against you wrong while completely ignoring the fact you're twisting words, definitions, logic and arguments harder than a pro-wrestling league rival plot. Falling back on Rage not working with your concept of SS....I DO NOT CARE! I don't fucking care. Storm Summoning doesn't conform to my concept of summoning storms and THAT'S FUCKING FINE! Learn to separate your dream concepts and *conform* to the tools a game gives you. Then get a 2nd monitor. This game isn't twitch reflex competitive play. It's slow and deliberate. But I believe the point of the argument about turning Rage into a BU clone and rebalancing the whole set is that doing so makes the set just a clone of other powersets. If you want that, go play Martial Arts or Street Justice. Personally speaking, I think missing a TW attack should make you lose momentum as a balancing point for the set but the set has already received some lickings and it's still a high performer. Your contention seems to be tied up in envy that SS isn't above TW? If not, being balanced should be the goal, not being the best....which is the arguing point you don't seem to understand. And no, having a penalty to help make you balanced doesn't give you a free ticket to be the best. Jeeze. So you are the type of RPers that like to godmode and be ultra powerful? I also bet you're the type that would want to skip all the ikky RP talking/conversations and get to rolling the combat die. As for naturally being strong, YOU ARE!! You can hurl boulders, uppercut foes into the sky, clap your hands and break the sound barrier or stomp your foot and upheave a room to the ceiling....you just don't get all the D33ps you're looking for. The fact you can't even see that makes me chuckle. Come on, guys...

To clarify going 3 quotes in: -Someone mentioned the *benefits* of Rage and rebutted with how people fixate on the negatives -You then state, if several other sets had the negatives of Rage, would the benefits still be benefits. -I asked do those sets you mentioned have a damage buff equivalent of Rage. -You say I'm missing the point. The interesting point is, I'm actually in the camp that would consider reworking SS because of how wonky it is built but then I do not play the set. But I'm also in the camp that would consider putting in more drawbacks to work around in various powers OR pullback some effects to make room for improvements across the board. I view a lot of the arguments as requests to get rid of the negatives partly because they're inconvenient and partly because of RP. Said arguments could be compelling to some, but I'm not buying it. Super Strength is merely a powerset name. I've been making characters for years that takes a powerset and ignore the name and name it something else. Just because the set is called Super Strength doesn't give it a pass to be better than every other set lol

There were some at some point. Inferno, Black Star, Blizzard, Thunderous Blast, etc. There are still others like Power Surge, Unstoppable, Elude, Overload, etc.

Does War Mace, Archery, Fire Blast or Martial Arts have Rage or an equivalent damage buff?

Alternatively, you just target the foe with the -ToHit debuff first before they can use it. But I'm talking about circumstances outside of buffs/debuffs and just speaking on the hypothetical of ToHit being as valuable or nearly as valuable as +dmg. To point out how it isn't, ToHit really won't do much outside of countering -ToHit once you can hit 95% of the time which can be common against +3s while +dmg will continue being valuable to counter -dmg as well as up to an AT's damage cap OR until you can one-shot foes with weaker attacks. Imagine a system where everyone could critical hit and not just SoA/Stalkers/Scrappers (those ATs would just get enhanced crits or something) and ToHit affected that rate? That's closer to what I'm talking about having closer to equal weight between +ToHit and +dmg. Not exactly but moreso a hypothetical to make my point.

I could be reaching here since I started playing the game after the release of CoV, but I feel that +ToHit was supposed to be a highly valuable stat for doing damage, just as important as +dmg when they were designing the system. But because defense was tied to it and eventually got reworked a lot over time, the link between ToHit and damage was less important up until the end of live where everyone is running around with 95% Hit chance most of the time. Excluding the current meta and looking at a hypothetical circumstance where the game still has 2 effective variables for damage output (that is, +ToHit and +dmg having similar weight of importance), which offensive sets would look more enticing? And could having such a circumstance (outside of circumstances like support buffs and stacked Tactics) provide more varied ways to balance sets rather than the all or nothing +dmg and low ani-time/rech? tl;dr: if ToHit were more valuable, maybe we'd be looking at Rage differently.

I didn't have to selectively quote. I quoted your whole post and my point was still relevant TO THAT *WHOLE* POST. I'm sorry that my clarification didn't help you.

I'm not defending bad design, I'm dismantling crappy arguments.

You were in the post I quoted. And to clarify, putting a throwaway "and same goes for the other powers" isn't actually comparing anything. In the post I was quoting, you were comparing tier 5 powers and I was commenting on how pointlessly useless that was. Hope that clears things up.

Okay, let's compare their +damage buff powers... You know that straight power comparisons is useless.

If I were trying to make it cool, I'd give it a power that it uses on it's master (you, the player) that changes all your -END/recovery/self+END from your blast set into a +absorb shield stackable buff for 6sec. You'd basically become a highly defensive blast set with decent DPS potential. You can then take more offensive oriented powers if you wanted to try and shore up the offense. So your VS would occasionally grant you a buff (call it Magnetic Barrier or something) that lets all energy drawn to you become a barrier. I don't think it would cause an issue for a player if their blasts no longer grant +END for a time as most don't rely on it, but if that was somehow turned into an HP equivalent ontop of IOs/procs, you could become a pretty defensive option for blasting.

Rage crash has a "gasping for breath" animation? Or do you RP it as gasping for breath? So you have the creativity to play a "gasp for breath" emote when it crashes but not the creativity to form a personalized reason to not attack for a handful of seconds after you just went on an onslaught? Imagine min/maxing Hopscotch. I'm sure a rare few do but even they probably play hopscotch just for fun. And imagine reforming the game for people that are fine with hopscotch just so you can min/max it to be better. Game powers be like that. You're not always going to get a 1-to-1 of a narrative ability when transitioning it to games because no one wants their Brute to have a Bruce Banner mode or give their Supermen a kryptonite weakness. Those are better for stories and comics and it would be easier to conceptualize for players if that hurdle was accepted and understood. 1.) Near the top, with no context, *should* be good enough. Why does it have to be *AT* the top to counter your point? 1b) no one should care about them. They will pick whatever is at the top so they are a shifting variable at best. 2.) & 2b) there are other sets, you just skip the powers with drawbacks now. 3.), 3b) & 3c), most just emotional outbursts. Even if a new set with super strength animations and no need for rage came out but it was called Tai Chi, people would still grasp onto that same argument of changing SS/rage because of name alone and it's a faulty stance, imo. They do it with Regen all the time despite WP sitting right in front of them. If it's unusable now, is worry to see what merely "usable" would be to you guys. And just to be clear, I think introducing something on the mild side and then bumping it up a bit later if needed is a better approach since no one ever wants to consider bringing things down. One Hallmark of a comic is tension and having powers with drawbacks. Of course, you could skip over those if you like but you miss out on the highs you gain that come along with those lows. You're addicted to highs to the point you just gotta use them all the time that the highs don't even register as highs anymore to you. Yes, you've reduced the combat from being a game of tactics and resource conservation (the whole point of END as well as powers economy) to a simple button mash. A game that, at one point, could have been a set of intense chess matches are now just long and fast bouts of Uno. I'm not dogging on Uno, it's a hugely fun game, but it's a bit of a downgrade regardless. But the point is, now you're looking at everyone to be playing Uno. All MMOs do it, really. GW2 has gone through many patches decreasing and limiting boons because people push for Perma boons. I can understand the appeal and I can also understand how destructive a progression it makes. As for not needing the buffs, I challenge you to turn off an essential power on a team. I bet you you will still come out on top because the game is dogshite easy.

I think that's the beauty of the game: you can technically rationalize almost everything into your character's concept and if you choose not to, like the case of Rage, you're probably taking for granted the boon the power does afford you. Because I believe rage is one of the best pound for pound offensive buffs a melee can get. Wanting to get rid of the downside would warrant a weakening of that power. Further still, this "Perma" push has been a thorn as well. Having the biggest buff all the time with no drawbacks is human nature but knowing that should be the rationale for the game to oppose that path to enforce a human to adapt (i.e. play the game).

That's because defense has flavor text of "dodge", "deflected" and "absorbed". I believe "missed" is if the roll was too low for the target's level or due to low ToHit. The "melting projectiles" sounds like a ToHit debuff mechanic since I don't see how that would work on a melee attack (if you melted their fist off, wouldn't that just be a defeat?). Overall, I think the concept of the set (fiery aura) is indeed melting things before they hit you but you're not vaporizing them before they touch you thus "something" is still going to hit you, just a more mushier something. Also, how do you melt an energy blast it a psychic attack, exactly?

This is usually why I end up on the "stop changing all the powers" camp. At the end of the day, if someone wants to power game and solo 4+/x8 TFs or what not, they can do it on the sets broken enough to do it. You don't need to go breaking every set so you can pick any flavor you want while removing the flavors of others (I am still done with Dark Melee because Shadow Maul is just not cutting it with it's out of sync shortened animation and that was the whole reason I even played the set). Beyond my own personal grievances, I can probably pick it a few other flavor redux powers that likely do more harm than good. Domination (or specifically, perma-dom), pretty much every blast nuke, anything that has to do with travel, most sets that highlight endurance management (or defensive support in general). All different flavors of RP but minimized or removed for convenience or power building but not just any power building... They want their [inserts random powersets] on a [inserts random AT] to solo as well and efficiently as the most powerful meta builds in the game, flavor/RP be damned. On the subject of Rage, maybe change it so you can put it to scrapper/Stalker but I leave it for Brute/Tanker? I dunno, I feel if you don't like something and you can't go without it, there are other sets. Go play Martial arts or Street justice instead.

I always thought the actual trope of a power was a combination of damage types and effects so when making sets, you want to aim for something unique so... Energy = energy/smashing w/ stun and/or KB Radiation = energy and sometimes toxic w/ -def (defense penetration) Electric = pure energy w/ END drain/-recovery and sleep Sound = Energy/smashing w/ -res (and does it still have an accuracy penalty?) Overall, having the secondary effect be a hard control like Stun or hold is something to avoid in a blast set. So I'd say, it was mainly coming up with themes of damage types+secondary effects while not overpowering a set in favor of other sets. I like to imagine, when creating new sets, that is part of the process that goes into thinking of themes. Like the "holy light" set having energy and ally healing, could use also some energy paired with lethal for variety.

$35.99 on Amazon.

The G502 was the mouse I swapped to after getting over the Razer brand. I've opened to be more conservative with my mouse button economy rather than try mapping as much to the many side buttons, I use combined inputs as well as more of the buttons around my movement keys (habit I not have from Blade and Soul). I, too, bought an extra just in case of a breakdown but I haven't opened it for, like 2 years and I worry it might be missing firmware by the time I do open it.

MM is another one of those ATs that is heavily benifitty by their ATOs but I think it's a more dire situation with them and their pets.

Not everyone. Plenty of people did make similar compromising statements, myself included. My previous statement was pretty much saying, if they wanted to add to hidden AS somehow to make it more attractive, adding to it's defensive nature like better fear chance, longer duration or higher -ToHit that is resistable on demoralize could be a possible arguing point. Asking to do more damage tho, is unnecessary and just rocking the boat of the meta in your favor. I think it'd be cool to make each AT have variations of their inherent abilities to use to your liking (Blaster with old Desperation, for example) so that Stalkers can have a super killer AS *BUT* you should have to give up Assassin's Focus along with the team scaling crit for it. Just adding more on top of more is just asking for everyone and their dog to get more. Stalkers already have a laundry list of special unique effects granted to their AT, they don't need a super-killy shadow mode too... And the argument that the AT was designed to be that way; that was before they morphed the AT into a mutation of Scrapper and unless you're willing to give that up, don't expect to get more cake unless you go to cake.

Not the point I was even making. As for holding people accountable, that can't be done, at least when we're talking about actual accountability besides what you personally view as such. As for being part of another community, is someone holding a gun or something?