Naraka

Currently, the most complicated attack in City of Heroes is Brawl specifically because, to utilize the various stances some powers put you in, it will change the animation. So popping brawl with a Katana in your hand will give you a unique animation. Same with popping it with an Assault Rifle or a Shield. That being said, I feel the tier 1 (or tier 2 in the case of some powersets) is actually the auto-attack you're talking about.

Not going to nitpick about the durations as a balance pass would likely have to happen with regards to just how useful and defensive phase shifting while fighting might be. Overall, I feel 25sec of usage might still be too high but again, it'd have to be examined fully to decide just what would be the best balance. Having a "buff" pet sounds interesting. However, you didn't respond to the point @Leogunner mentioned about the missing Taunt ability. Every Tanker/Brute melee set has an AoE taunt with a -range debuff and the Scrapper version has a single target taunt. If I were recommending a fix to that, I'd just remove Seized Soul from the Tanker/Brute/Scrapper version and fit the taunt in its place. I think, in Psi Melee, Boggle is a mostly skipped power anyway but having the always up buff pet would likely be more preferred. For Stalkers, maybe tie some of the benefits that the buff pet has to Seized Soul so it at least gets some of the offensive benefits (improves the DoT) but not the defensive ones (extending Permeable durations) when you use it to confuse a target.

Funny, why is no one talking about buffing Battle Axe? Energy Melee just got a huge upgrade but it wasn't even that bad (just ST). Battle Axe is slow, rech and END hungry and is mostly sub-par DPS compared to equivalent sets (Broadsword and War Mace). I hope they do improve battle axe more subtly rather than changing whole powers and adding whole new mechanics. Overall, if they did add a new set based around battle axe's cast times but two handed, it needs a bad-A whirling AoE. I'd also recommend adding some chance of sleep in place of some of the Knockdown (keep KD/KU in some of the attacks). Sets like Electric Melee use it too so it's not unheard of. Also, the 6sec duration/lockout for minions sounds a bit frustrating. I guess it was so you're not chain stacking a bunch of AoE fear. A 4sec duration without a lockout on minions might be better but I guess that depends on the casttimes of this set. If it's only 4sec you might only get in 1 attack during that MFD period...I dunno. Seems a bit clunky.

Seems like Psi melee but with an actually powerful secondary mechanic. Considering the defensive nature of Permeable, I'd ditch the single target confuse for an attack or that "soul extraction" pet but you don't say what the pet actually does. Does it debuff enemies? Does it buff/heal the user? Does it attack or taunt? What might be good is making the Revenant soul pet like a Photon Seeker that kind of explodes on a target when it aggros, doing some moderate damage but somehow improving your own attacks by reducing the foe's resistance to negative energy or maybe enabling your attacks to do more DoT.

Maybe they could modify Rest so it doesn't stop you from moving but instead slows you down to default speed. Would be interesting if there were a "catch your breath" rest mode that slightly boosted your recovery while making you move slower and a "I'm taking a knee" rest mode that requires you to stop moving to recover both Health and Endurance.

It's because you're not paying attention. Assassin's Focus wasn't the only change made over the transformation of that particular AT. As outlined by @siolfir, the crit changes that scale with team was also one fix as well as an often forgotten effect, demoralize. I think, among most criticisms (or woes if you want to be dramatic), the more prominent is the perception. Stalkers always could scrap and with using their tools, would match Scrapper unless the fight stretched on too long where Scraps would surpass them. Now Stalker mostly surpasses Scrap in ST DPS. But it's not that it CAN do that, it's HOW it does that which is basically by being a better scrapper than Scrapper and discarding what was considered the Stalker's signature. Again, you really have to depart from personal preference to ever understand my point. But one symptom that tend to spark my suspicion is overall perception: barely anyone dislikes new Stalker; in fact, most love new Stalker and people tend to do that when it's something with huge power and no drawbacks. As for the point that the normal hidden AS and placate is still there, you can't just end there. What niche or team contribution does that provide? Stating that the novelty still exists is just a throwaway point. Most people don't even take Placate since they replace it with an enhancement (which is another point that affects this line of discussion).

I guess RIP anyone who found Stalker playable so that you could play it instead. Obviously that's an exaggeration but from what I could relate, that might be how some feel when they go out of their way to make some alterations to the game. ... That and the Stalker change is so drastic, it really does invalidate the old style (which you didn't address) since it's probably better DPS to use the hide crit on another attack or AoE while building focus. You see, you have to look past your own preference when philosophically examining arguments.

I guess it only matters if people get upset and make noise. I think apathy is probably worse for this game in the long run. But no, I was never asking for help. That ship sailed when I suggested making Power Crash stun it's primary target and not the rest of the mobs in it's AoE which would keep the powers initial functionality. My build didn't need more chance stun.

It's not as minimal as you think. The more simple the build, the more profound it feels. Just the notion of having the stun in your back pocket for some purposes is something you completely ignore which isn't the case with TF+Barrage since they'll be in your rotation constantly. Look, I'm not even complaining the change is bad or messed up or ruins my game. I'm saying you're pissing on people's legs and telling them it's raining. It's dumb and obvious and I doubt anyone appreciates it. As for it being a minimal change: I somewhat agree (I could adapt, I just have less enthusiasm to try) but when you put these changes in along with all the other buffs, the casualization guised as QoL (Blaster had become a whole different monster than it was live, Tanker is a whole different monster with it's buffs, Stalker became a whole different monster with all it's additions), those little things add up and continuing to let them slide uncontested is a mistake you should recognize. And don't take any of those shout outs as a call for nerfs. They are just examples to prove a point.

Nope. I tried it. If you utilized minimal slotting for stun duration in Stun (basically just an Acc and Stun), relying on juggling TF to enable Barrage to simulate Stun alone ended up getting less stun or just more juggling. Keeping those targets stunned, at best, could be accomplished faster but you're reapplying even more often made more tedious with TF. Can you get better stun and damage with the new EM? Probably. Shaved down animation times does work wonders and an added cop out power to pump up AOE with is a sure fire performance bumper. It still took base performance and locked it being more high-end build slotting because +rech is even more important to that build than it ever was before. I believe I mentioned, if they wanted to keep the same base performance, they could have just kept the new power as a ST sun while the AoE was just damage. All in all, the individuals arguing the numbers pan out and I'm just complaining for nothing usually never took Stun in the first place and don't take into account targets aren't training dummies that stand around for you to parse your damage numbers. It only takes them a portion of a server tic to get their moves off.

I'm assuming you have some reference or example to support your conclusion. Putting "full stop" means jack all here lol

Uh huh. Before the change I could swiftly stun 2 foes using Stun and TF then proceed to stun a 3rd with ET. Depending on the situation, I could juggle multiple bosses nearly guaranteed and still have the other attacks to concentrate damage on some more resilient foes. Even though I'm over it (haven't really touched EM since but that's for other reasons), I do find it interesting how the defenders will go so far to validate their own perspective that they try to shape those that disagree as unreasonable or uncompromising. No if, and, or buts. If you liked your guaranteed stun mags in old EM, now it's locked behind using TF.

You don't have to say the word trolling to encapsulate the term or meaning in an argument. Why wouldn't you want the actions of a few to affect the whole zone? From what I could tell, one argument made was about putting the responsibility of further regulating their own difficulty which just seemed like an excuse. The other argument seemed to be only wanting to opt into things which, either or feels like kicking the ball further down the road because the only way to make players do more difficulty content is to put a reward behind it and you likely won't be able to put a noticable reward behind it because people want the ability to opt into difficulty while still gaining the same reward. You're just kicking the ball down the road so the next sub-group of dissenters get their turn to kick. Which leads to what someone else in the thread said: "this is why we can't have nice things."

You're talking about putting power of change in the hands of a few individuals. The simplest conclusion is someone my abuse that power (Ie, troll).

Imagine playing an MMO and lauding the community but not wanting anything to do with said community or their actions lol. And before you response with "it's because they don't have the tools to troll", I don't see anything here that is putting power in the hands of a few, merely the environment shifting. At worse, is a learning curve which comes with it's own hardships. You're exaggerating the results.

You don't get to pick what mobs show up in a mission arc and sometimes there isn't going to be a uniform single faction you face for every mission.

Isn't that the same as shifting from Devouring Earth to Arachnos or Malta? Some stuff will just be harder to do.

I don't think making Recon an absorb click would be that bad but I bet the first thing people would be asking is "can you put more than one power on auto-cast?"

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No idea why you had to go so hard on this topic. I tend to play devil's advocate but the OP didn't say anything about gender binary or have some sort of agenda to the suggestion. It's merely a grammatical suggestions since you, in fact, can make characters of any AT that are male, female, asexual (ex: robots) or some alien combination or absence of sex and gender. Nothing to do with controlling speech, just outlining an oversight of the character creator feature.

Well I understood what your suggestion was for, I even agree it wouldn't be overpowered. I just feel every expressed change is almost always increasing and pushing higher the power curve. There have been plenty of suggestions to "modernize" power sets, "fixing" tier 9s, covering over sets' weaknesses and buffing Regen's heal to an absorb is no different in my eyes. Some might say that's just a slippery slope fallacy but it's not... It's more like a slippery slope observation. But really, any positive change could possibly fall under such a trend, even the ones I suggest.

Why not suggest nerfs to melees and tanks?

I have other counter arguments to this and some other points made in the thread but I'll only respond again with my main one since others can engage the talking points if they choose: How much of the disparity you're observing is actual necessity and how much is due to the expectations you have of the new and improved ATs and sets and IOs and other conveniences? Because I'm personally not arguing you can't throw a bone to the set, but rather you don't need to throw a whole chicken dinner at it just because of a perceived handicap of that others view as a playstyle. Considering the vast amount of sets one can pick from and the custom colors and animations to set them to, parity is mostly a pipedream that has spiraled the game ever closer to boredom. I think the main tactic to such a change wouldn't be trying to get the absorb mid-combat but rather overclocking while out of combat.

I find it arguable that it's thematic but I don't think anyone is arguing that your suggestion wouldn't improve the set. It's mostly if the armor set is good enough.

I think it is fine. Your expectations have, however, changed.