Naraka

Eh, but Regen functions just fine as is. It also plays differently overall. I'm indifferent to your suggestion. I'm not going to go on a crusade to swing people's opinion one way or the other as any changes are at the whims of the HC devs. I think it will make Regen better to give it an absorb shield but it might also make it very one-note, relying on that click shield more so than it's other powers. Giving the Regen set comprehensive debuffs resist to nearly all and stackable using it's clicks would be more unique, flavorful and make it tops on teams. Only takes a bit (around 6-8%) per click with maybe a static 10% to resilience or integration to most effects (-movement, -rech, -regen, -ToHit, -def, -END, -recovery). Make Revive usable while alive that adds a bit of debuffs resistance (60sec if revived from dead and 120sec if used while alive). Every time you heal, everytime you click a Regen power, you're progressively more difficult to affect with powers to degenerate your abilities.

Not too keen on the rech buff but I like the prospect of replacing the dmg buff with a damage proc (100% chance during Rage). If you make the additional damage proc also affected by damage buffs, you're actually buffing the damage since you're own Rage won't count against your damage cap and you'll be doing additional damage on teams when you are capped. Although, to balance out that buff, having the damage proc only affect SS attacks would be an adequate nerf that does make sense.

Doesn't it have, like 0 END cost and recharge relatively fast for the huge heal it provides?

Well you're talking about Trick Arrow, which last time I played it before all these changes pushed through, still had to contend with the massive amount of clicking and targeting to maintain those effects. Also, Hurricane is particularly restrictive in it's application mostly due to range. It's disingenuous to look at specific powers target than the set as a whole. Not really trying to debunk or anything but the less comprehensive you make your argument, the easier it is to pick little counter points here and there and then you end up with a bunch of posts back and forth that eludes prayers actual intentions and no ground is ever made.

Old school Stalker fan, I'm rather resentful how the messed with Stalker. It's cool that is basically a better Scrapper now (with less AoE), it ignores what stalkers were (most probably don't even know what demoralize is) and they defend their perspective by trying to say "the hit and run style was weak" ignoring that that wasn't even the AT's style to begin with.

Don't forget target caps, range, diminishing effect as kill speed increases, invulnerability states and wasted activations (targeting a for that might be in the process of being bursted down) all contribute to an aspect of debuffs that buffs don't have to contend with. There's probably a name for it but I'd probably call it "target confusion". With something like a Stalker utilizing AS and demoralize (uncommon playstyle) it has some aspects of target confusion because you tend to want to prioritize annoying targets that aren't immediately about to be bursted down by your allies, but they really only have to worry about that one attack at the beginning of the flight. With a debuffer that factor is multiplied by every power that has meaningful effects and the number of targets/range and deciding if waiting for the foes to be gathered vs team survival.

I think it's really going to depend on the inherent ability. One thing cited as an issue was low damage and/or too much mitigation. You can alter that with a striking inherent ability. How that would work would depend on what the concept of the AT or the unique playstyle it's trying to accomplish. Like what if the target was a mid-range DPS DoT focused AT and utilize that Jekyll/Hyde concept where the inherent cut the control mag but quadrupled the DoTs by doubling the DoTs and doubling the duration. It would still be low-damage but melt resilient foes rather efficiently for a time.

I could see giving maybe one of those powers a rework or alternate power choice but certainly not all at once. Storm summoning is plenty strong and doesn't need extra incentive for herd and burn parties. Dark miasma is also relatively powerful on teams and solo. Gravity control already has a "herd and burn" power in Wormhole. One might make the argument for FF if only because it has some redundancy with repulsion field and force bubble. You might be able to make force bubble into a temp toggle target area collapsing field if you alter repulsion field with the same functionality as force bubble somehow while keeping it's same functionality... Like maybe give the reworked power the short range repel/kb effect while you have PFF active and the force bubble effect when you don't.

If that's the case, the game has already been pretty hollowed out. With such a system, the limitation would obviously be "who had the mission available" and if you didn't unlock the contact and have slots opened for more missions, it's likely going to be whoever has that mission is the level you do the mission at. On the prospect of exemping to the mission level (as @Haijinx mentioned), doesn't Oro cover that? If not every mission is available, just make more missions available for flashback.

I thought the+def was only on Tanker and Brute MA.

No, "gear" in CoX is your *build* since you can't equip IOs without your powers. If you really need a win them whatever. Exchange the word "gear" with "build". If you can't somehow take the logical step that what is literally equippable armor in other games are toggled on powers on this game then the same statement is true using build. Ugly run-on sentence. If you have to add tangential or non-essential words in the middle of a statement, you can use parentheses or something... Anything but just drowning your sentence with commas. Firstly, your not proving anything with a simple anecdote. Secondly, you're attempting to push a solution for a problem you generated. That hardly addresses the points of the whole discussion. Thirdly, you dodged my question. I'll ask it rephrased: Could you accomplish that mission if your melees did not have self-capped IO builds?

Farmers tend to saturate def and res, so fire farmers and s/l farms are still functional. I think you exaggerate. I often play characters who don't sit at the soft cap but somehow my characters don't become vaporized like you predict. It's simply a matter of blending mitigation methods. You can have 0 def and walk out of some fights with nary a scratch by just utilizing KB. And I find it suspect that "melees are never in a tidal wave of enemies except in farms" but "support are subject to AoEs and PBAoEs". In the 2nd case, simple range can decrease the number you're subjected to. No squishy is helpless just because a melee can only taunt some of a group. Like I said before, a support is in the market of taking fewer dice rolls whether that's by debuffing/controlling or just not getting in the thick of things while the melees have fewer tricks to attempt the same sans a few specialty build. And if your squishies do get vaporized, try playing more blasters. It takes some practice but you can do it without soft cap

And the funny thing here is, if you continue along this path of thinking: if the cap wasn't as tight as it is and instead of being a 5% floor of being hit to maybe an 8% or 10% floor, the individuals likely to feel this more are the ones that sit in an ocean of foes (i.e. not support types). Sure, there are some support types that do sit in an ocean of foes but their form of mitigation often leans on misdirection (things like confuse, slows and damage debuffs, ect) which leans less on rolling dice but rather reducing the amount of dice. Not only would it affect support less, but it will increase the desire for support from those melees... At least until they devise a build that permas their T9 or get rid of its crash or some other method. Overall, I think the reason people really discuss these types of balance factors is because there's really very little space to grow, for individuals and for teams. It's why if a support set doesn't have some kind of offensive effects, the whole set suffers in the eye of the community... If the team isn't dying, the only real thing to add is killing faster.

Would it have been accomplishable without IO def cap melees?

Well duh. No one is claiming only IOs do it as the obvious allusion to "gear" is supposed to mean whatever mitigation the class can achieve on a permanent basis without outside assistance. I know you know what I meant (we all know that "gear" doesn't exist in CoX) so not sure why this needs to be clarified.

Those games often don't have mitigation caps reached by their gear alone, tho. It's how they can add new gear later to further buff them or add more levels to continue to get more effective. Messing with our own systems using level shifts or the purple patch are extremely clunky and affect different builds/ATs disproportionally.

And here i was starting to believe I was the only non-sensationalist here. Changing the To-Hit calc for higher level mobs (compared) could also aid in extending the range of levels. I always thought it would be better to have a 10-level span where the same level mobs should be a bit tougher and the mobs that go to +6 and +7 would be the max and have -2 be the min for xp and drops.

Are you complaining that you are responding to a thread with an idea you don't agree with? As for the discussion at hand, even if the devs start considering reassessing IO bonuses out incarnate powers, it still goes through a phase of testing and I've seen quite a few changes not make it out of the test servers. You can complain all day and threaten to swap servers but that's hardly an interesting conversation, imo.

Read the title then. Like I said before, just stick and tired of being inundated with perpetual pearl clutching and hyperbolic whining. As for your question: who knows? I'm certain you've already polled every player on the forum to come to your comprehensive conclusion but before you go STRAWMANING any further, why not pin down the *actual* hypothetical change so you can more accurately gauge the resulting backlash, hm?

Well there, your either straw manning me or the argument. No one is talking about eliminating people characters. It's closer to a hypothetical about targeting a perceived issue. I understand the will to counter with a moralistic rebuttal but it makes me sick listening to people whine like that but it's literally your go-to response.

I'm actually curious: how many of you are actually playing on multiple CoX servers? From what I've heard, the communities are quite divided. I just feel that appealing to multi-server argument is less benefiting your perspective and moreso dismissing the argument similar to the "well why not make your own server" arguing point.

You're right... ... If all we did was stand there and let our capped defense "arrest" the bad guys.

People have made suggestions for options and content but controversy gets clicks. Things that people don't disagree with get disproportionate attention than more drastic suggestions/nerfs. I could list some examples but then no one would reply or add to/fix them.

The answer: we already do. The only real issue comes when trying to play content with many people. To preface the whole team with "if you have IO bonuses, you need to change build" then further policing this throughout the whole process, while possible, it's not feasible. The additional rebuttal to that is "make a SG around it and blah blah blah". That is a lot of extra work to just want to play the game with some challenge to make things interesting. So then you get players like me who just don't care and, at best, just go with the flow while falling asleep when stuff just doesn't put up a fight.

Well, the obvious response to this argument is it would have the purpose, benefit and advantage of making other forms of mitigation useful and purposeful and diversify building up a character to other apexes besides min/max def, rech etc. Granted, I'm not for nerfing the softcaps but rather the means to reach softcaps. Being in a team should provide a benefit not just be a tag-along +1. To the arguments about wanting to feel super, these are what the difficulty settings are supposed to be for. Anyone can feel super, even on a crap build. The expectation to need to have the settings maxed to have that feeling, while prominent now, should not and should never have been the wagering position for the balance team and if you are deluded into believing it should, it is a very self centered position to hold. That is to say, I'm not suggesting taking anything away from anyone (the game is just how it is)but don't gaslight everyone into thinking WE are the problem when looking at this obviously busted balance and end/meta-game.