Naraka

Lol why did you add that passive aggressive retort after the fact? I was fine with you just leaving with the question and then pretending to be the bigger man. I guess you have to keep appearances on the forums?

I personally wouldn't mind, but replacing powers should be something done as a last resort. Having both Stun and WH on my Dark Tanker, I wouldn't want either replaced. On the other hand, making Stun faster or having some other kind of synergy with the set (it's already a guaranteed stun) would be better than replacing it for Stalkers. Giving one of the high ST damage attacks a "splash" crit or "splash" when charged is less redundant than having 3 high ST attacks. It'd also have the side effect of making Stun better on my Tanker. But I'm just throwing out ideas here. I don't think giving the set a bit more AoE would marginalize it's ST focus.

Yes it is and yes you are. You even say you're pushing me to continue ranting which is a type of manipulation, the very definition of gaslighting.

Uh, that's another insult there. So you're telling me you're not trying to insult me while insulting me? That's gaslighting. I'm not that dumb lol

No one here accused anyone of having an emotional breakdown but you. I said emotional reaction, which is a natural thing. You're trying really hard to insult people passive aggressively.

I haven't thrown an insult at you beyond telling you to put big boy pants on. You did call me a moron then go on to pretend other stuff mattered here. I don't mind making hypothetical suggestions on the forums because I understand things don't often happen in a vacuum or on a whim. The funny thing is, suggesting changes to the IO bonuses for def was merely a suggestion I thought of in the context of before IOs became as prevalent as they are. If you look at my initial post in this thread, I actually said I think where the set bonuses lie now is fine but there should be incentive to play without them. Had you taken more of my contributions to the thread to mind rather than emotional reactions, maybe we'd be in a less confrontational interaction. But you fired back first lol I guess if you aren't conditioned enough to accept the word "damn" in common language (there's a lot worse in the military) taking offense but I have never claimed to be mature when it comes to arguments. In fact, I'm quite immature in that regards BUT I am containing myself.

Need I remind you, you're the one trying to invalidate my opinion, telling me *I* need to "stow" my opinion because you didn't like it (just because I disregarded your "OCD") and then you went on to try and prop up your opinion by saying you "help" people as if that somehow validates what you're saying or feel. I say maturity because we are having a discussion and you're bringing off topic crap here like it means something. You're not gaining respect by being an ass and putting people down by propping yourself up as some sort of helpful member of society. I suppose if we were electing someone here as a spokesman of the CoH forums, perhaps, but it's meaningless to me. Again, this is all because someone said "Your OCD be damned", and you're taking it as some kind of personal attack. I'm sorry but I don't care about your OCD and no one else should have to to participate in a conversation here. Oh! But it's fine to throw accusations of someone playing "Robin Hood" or some crap. Notice how that individual poster didn't blow up in a tirade for that or become offended and start propping themselves up as if their irrelevant accolades made a difference in the discussion. The funny thing is, I am holding myself back from being an immature dick and dressing you down. I'm doing my best not to [retypes rest of the post]...lol I have no qualms stooping to that level but I just don't want to do that at this time but you're not making that easy lol

Burden of proof and discussions of nerfs not withstanding, I've got no idea how any of that is relevant to holding a mature conversation. For 1: considering how you reply to posts online, let's keep it that way. For 2: I have no idea why you'd think I care. Maybe if you were an EMT or a teacher or even the cashier who checked my groceries last week, I'd care about your contributions to the welfare of others. But this is a *GAME* lol. To be frank, I don't give a fuck about your in-game contributions...unless, I dunno, you worked on the code or server security or some such. Perhaps you're a sufferer of delusions of grandeur? I'm not belittling your in-game community but to think any of what you just posted has any gravity in this discussion is perplexing.

Okay, well soft cap with 3 powers with Sonic/Fire or Grav/Energy or Demons/Pain. Again, like I said, the issue isn't that one can "soft cap" incoming hits, it's the prevalence within IOs. Coupled with other aspects like global recharge etc, it does become an issue with trying to balance various aspects of the game. It's not that you can, it's how easy it is. How fast it is. Aspects of a game that require you to play it become marginalized. But I'll stand corrected if CoX is now moreso supposed to be *Second Life but limited customization "hero" larping rather than a game. From the perspective of the game being a game, balance helps make that game fun in various respects to include progression, learning curve, social aspects and such. As for soft-capping always being possible, those are features tied to certain powers. Basically, that is a feature of a set like SR or Dark Miasma that are now marginalized moreso than other aspects and features. Why is it worthy of attention now? I mean, if you want to pretend people weren't talking about it up until today or even HC... *I actually never played Second Life but I always assumed it wasn't an actual game, moreso a creative online sandbox where the participants create the rules.

It's funny how apparently it's just fine for you to share a strong opinion or criticism about someone's posts and thus is perfectly within reason but the moment someone else shares a strong opinion or criticism about your posts, it's suddenly some aberration of logic or morals that needs to be shoved in a cave and walled up or some crap. Listen, if you can't take other people with strong opinions, maybe you should be the one to take your damned comments and stow them. Or perhaps you can put on your big boy pants and put your personal fee-fees aside for a change and understand no one's individual feelings need to be taken into consideration for the whole here, including my own. Arguments about fun are purely subjective. The obvious argument is to take everyone's fun into consideration rather than to dismiss them. Looking into multiple facets of gameplay and progression, I'm merely looking at means to accommodate aspects of the game mostly marginalized. Even min/maxing in and of itself is somewhat marginalized because there is no content for it and likely there won't ever be.

Considering many dislike the set having no form of AoE at all since the only AoE was removed for AS, you could rectify that by giving one or more of the set's ST attacks conditional AoE damage. This is coming from a perspective of consensus rather than personal taste but even from personal taste, Stalkers already have a fast high power ST attack built in which didn't exist for a good portion of the AT's existence which should play a factor in the direction the set is changed to moving forward. The alternative is to remove a power and put WH back in which seems even less attractive and more disruptive to existing builds or to just leave it with no form of AoE at all. If we're addressing the set's performance, stringent focus on personal preference has its limits with regards to mass appeal. The same will likely happen if Martial Arts ever gets any focus.

You're assuming this isn't the desired goal. That is, shifting things so to get the same current output requires more limited power choices or tactical variance. Getting soft cap, IMO, isn't the problem. It's the ease and prevalence of it that is the issue. Personally speaking, if I were reassessing IO bonuses, I'd have just limited defense bonuse categories to small, moderate and large. On top of that, improve other aspects of the IO system, like the weak/pointless buffs to mez duration and add a moderate amount of mez resistance, give a bit better bonus to +dmg, regen and recovery, and add debuff resistances to other less useful attributes to make the IO system less about maximizing mostly def and rech. Again, reaching soft cap isn't a problem, it's the prevalence of it.

I have and would suggest changes to Axe, Broadsword and Katana primarily Axe and Broadsword because those sets need assistance but while you're assisting them, set them apart as well. As for new armor sets, I'd wager we likely won't ever see a new armor set again. Armor sets are pretty easy to make since they are mainly just visual FX on the player...and yet, we see power pools, manipulation/assault sets and support sets with likely a control set in the pipeline. Armor sets are pretty boring anyway and since we have the means to color them, make them nearly invisible on your character, put on auras instead and just put IOs on a build to duplicate armor, I don't see a need to ever make another armor set again unless it has a very unique theme/gimmick that can't be emulated elsewhere.

Taking the hypothetical that the Charge mechanic *IS* going to be part of the change to Energy Melee, would giving ET the fast animation if charge and the slow animation if not charged be a worthy compromise for those in this thread? The other spender could be Whirling Hands getting some extra damage and BU being upgraded to [some cool name] that is basically just BU + instant charged status. For Stalkers, adding a PBAoE splash energy damage as ET and TF's crit maybe?

The thing is, those casual players that you're assuming to look out for want buffs too. They see their lack of self-protection on their support ATs as lame or they see sets with weaker outputs as wrong. You can buff those up but you just introduce more and more powercreep if you don't counterbalance it. I wouldn't be particularly against just leaving "IO’s and DEFENSE values THE FARK ALONE" but those casuals playing their Cold Dom support thinking their personal defense on teams is crap and don't feel "super" want more juice too. It's safer to just leave everything untouched but once you start moving stuff, leaving things the fark alone is off the table. Do you just throw balance out the window and start creeping up that power scale? Do you introduce new mechanics that are then ignored because they aren't of any purpose? Do you upgrade niche-utility to be more effective to compete? The scales are moving now and those that min/max sign a contract that as they reach for those heights, the heights will change, your OCD be damned.

The pearl clutching goes both ways. You suggest nerfing the high-end min/max portion of the game or make it somewhat tougher to reach said min/max potential so that said support feels meaningful and you get a slew of accusations of ruining the casual game or not understanding the playerbase or some such. I wouldn't be against adding an aspect to the AT's inherent so it's easier to balance across the support ATs. For example, I don't think Controllers need the same self defense buffing as, say, a Corruptor or Defender and Mastermind certainly doesn't. But at the same time, I'd enjoy the IO system more if, for instance, defense bonuses weren't so prevalent to soft-cap a blaster to smashing/lethal and/or bolstering their rech so they can toss out obscene AoEs and nukes but were more reliant on their ST DPS. Having it so other bonuses like recovery, regen and damage weren't garbage in comparison. Therefore we will likely never get anywhere because I don't want buffs without balance. But balance isn't a concern to most.

Mainly saying that changes to Dark Melee that were going through, I didn't want those particular changes (I'd have been fine with *just* a slight widening/lengthening to Shadow Maul but then they went and cut the damage and increased the recharge AND made it a super wide cone). It's not as thrilling to line up anymore, it doesn't sync up with the punching audio, and because I enjoyed the ORA ORA ORA ORA of the animation, shortening it to ORA ORA is a downgrade. But I'm probably in the minority there. Shadow Maul is forever changed. Just saying the Charge mechanic might not be what you want but maybe it will come along with other positive changes like shortening ET and TF animations too. Rather than a bump in damage, I'd take a bump in radius + a moderate -ToHit debuff (like -8%) for 20sec. Overall though, I think the problem is people have different goals when making suggestions and leaving feedback. To me, DM has always been a utility knife set with various effective synergies like -ToHit with your defense or Soul Drain and other powerful AoEs or your armor and its heal. Some want it to be a more premiere DPS set up there with Street Justice or the other newer sets.

I personally didn't want Shadow Maul to be a quick no-thought AoE cone but we can't all get what we want. Furthermore, it's being pushed for more AoE DPS too with very little tactical consideration besides twink out your build like always. I'll continue to argue not to make Dark Consumption a near-nuke PBAoE so long as your build is twinked (having it so you needed to build a bit more modestly for END so you get more damage with lower END would have been a better balancing point than just nerfing the damage) but I have a feeling my voice is in the minority. That being said, I think the "Charged" system would fit great into EM just like Energy Assault. You might not like it but we can't all get what we want. Have you played Energy Assault? It's pretty fun.

And to state my counterpoint to the above post: Elec Armor's weakness to negative and toxic is more a universal aspect of armor sets as toxic is an exotic damage type most sets don't resist toxic outside of a click heal, and negative energy isn't as common as psi or energy is particularly in mid-to-late game. Besides that, having vulnerabilities isn't isolated to just one thing. You can be weak to several things moderately vs being completely exposed to something (like Invulnerability is to Psi dmg) which Elec armor most certainly isn't. It does have resistances to negative energy AND toxic damage. As for regen being the pillar of Elec Armor's mitigation, a corollary look at the set, the only one that has resistance to -regen that I know of is Rad armor and it likely gets that because of theme. Not even Regeneration gets resistance to -regen and it *IS* the set's pillar of mitigation so I'd hardly state Elec's lack of -regen resist a hole. I'll restate that my position isn't that Grounded is okay because we need weaknesses to balance out strengths, it's moreso that Grounded isn't in the ballpark of what could even be considered a weakness. Like, I have no idea why -regen resist was even brought up when I think 2 armor sets have it at all, Rad which is for theme and WP because it has no heal. In the Dark Armor discussion thread, people were going on about how an energy resistance hole isn't a viable weakness for a tank because of how common that typing is...well, Elec caps that without even trying so that's gotta be considered a monumentally effective strength. The weakness to neg energy is there but not common and you can just take the tier 9 if you really want toxic resistance, so what weaknesses are we left with?

What's the point in an RPG system if there are no build pot holes or detours to use to make a build? Why not just give everyone a wad of stats that they can just distribute and some basic attack frameworks that they can just alter to maximize performance? AFAIK, part of playing an RPG is taking strengths AND weaknesses into your character's self and then participating in content that can sometimes target said weaknesses. If players had the choice of not having weaknesses, they would likely never choose to have any. Some would as there have been suggestions for self-imposed weaknesses but often people want strengths as a byproduct but it's just too difficult to balance in this kind of game. But the weaknesses the game *can* impose aren't as difficult to balance.

By isolating ideas you don't like as not good inherently limits creativity. If sets didn't have thematic weaknesses, then thematic strengths would also not really be a particularly "good idea" because then the lack of desirable strengths is then transformed into a weakness. For example, a hypothetical set has good mez protection and mez resistance across the board while every other set has "enough" protection/resistance to not complain about...but this hypothetical set has "enough" survivability to not complain about while other sets get capped smashing/lethal or some other type and some other perks like END management tools and damage. Now that hypothetical set that has "enough" but specialized at something no one needs has a "hole" in END management, doesn't cap any damage types, doesn't have a crazy heal, etc etc. Considering the limitation of Electric Armor's KB protection as a hole really does side-step the other strengths of that protection (it's passive so it's on right when you get rezzed) as well as the set as a whole (capped resists to the most common exotic damage type, above average END management, some slow resistance, a solid damage/debuff aura, a unique tier 9 and a solid heal). Because people would complain. Even if it's far easier to bypass such a limitation compared to sets like Stone Armor, people would complain. I'm not trying to belittle QoL complaints as sets like Stone Armor could certainly be revised to be unique and attractive to players, but this is an example of having a lot of a good thing and complaining about the very minute complications you don't like. The concept for Grounded is stated in the description AND has some logic in physics.

Grounded isn't shut down when in the air, only its KB/immob protection is suppressed. Secondly, how many encounters involved consistent vertical movement while engaged in combat? And of those, how many are strictly team oriented thus the importance of an individual's state of KB protection isn't as pivotal as the state of the team? That's a stretch. No one is actively seeking out anyone's account to pass judgement and punishment on them. They have access to all the tools and features as every other player, to include IOs or the choice to pick powers that give them the effect they want. If Grounded breaks your gameplay and you don't want to use IOs or Acrobatics or deal with a bit of flipping because you're flying in the air with hover/fly, then you can pick any other set of armors with the kind of protection you want and then put on an electric aura on it in your costume. Complaining that Electric Armor needs to be grounded is like complaining that light is bright, water is wet and Australians are hot. That's just the way things are as dictated by nature (or in this case, the game). And that's just your opinion.

Polls rarely have enough options or explanations needed for every answer. My personal response to the question would be, for the given purposes of IO defense/resist bonuses, I don't think they are particularly too high. The problem comes when you're trying to balance content and rewards however those two factors are thrown completely out the window here. The purpose of the set bonuses are for bolstering up a character to near unstoppable magnitudes and that's possible with IO set bonuses and incarnate powers. That's supposed to be the ending point where you're established and powerful in the realm of super heroics/villainy. Tasks for such characters are cake walks and that's the goal. Getting there should take a bit but that's not the focus of my response. As you bolster your characters and make the tasks easier for your build, the return on rewards for the content you complete should be severely stunted. Getting more inf and recipes and incarnate salvage should have been on a sliding scale so that the higher you get on the scale, the harder it is to advance. The more set bonuses you obtain, the less frequent rare recipes/salvage is. One might ask what would be the purpose of advancing a character to that point and that purpose is plain as day: to feel powerful. That's it. To incentivize harder settings and limitations is to improve rewards. To get really rare drops should have required very difficult settings and made easier by teaming but it would still allow players to create an omega-powerful being capable of plowing through stuff solo. So all the farming should have been nipped in the bud. But on the other hand, if they made really tough to get badges that needed top-tier builds and lots of trial and error, that would be the incentive for the opposite spectrum of using said builds to tackle standard challenges that obviously wouldn't be feasible if you're also trying to get good drops by limiting IO bonuses/incarnates/debuffing yourselves/buffing foes, etc. But right now, we have a completely broken system where the reward for challenging yourself is the challenge itself therefore no one ever bothers and setting up their alts with farm bolstered builds to trivialize most content and settings.

What's your max HP at? I always assumed having a higher base HP value means you'd have more HP when your scaling resists kick in. That and outside buffs for +HP aren't as common as other defensive buffs. I also personally never saw Dark Melee as a great pairing for SR. Sure, there's the heal but usually players don't slot that aspect. The -ToHit is more of a help to sets that only have a bit of extra def and the control is ST. I think, if they ever revisit changes to DM, they'll go through with the changes to Dark Consumption but shift it to also have defensive utility, making it a short duration moderate damage DoT with a long duration -ToHit. As for SR, I always felt control was a better assist to the set as just stopping incoming attacks is superior than lowering the already low chance of hitting you. Things like the swords or ice would be far more effective. Whether the set is OP or not really depends on the build, IMO. What the set can accomplish with the slots and power choices and combos you make of it. It can get capped defense easily (particularly for Tankers) which frees up slotting for other stuff or picking powers specifically for certain niches like getting extra control (Wall of Force is a decent AoE KD) or a heal. It may not be up the alley for a Tanker since it was originally designed for other ATs, but I don't think it performs badly.

I'd like a "increase chance" enhancement, like if a power has a chance of inflicting a specific secondary effect like some of the stuns in Kinetic Melee or KB in energy blast. Wouldn't affect inherent powers or proc IOs though...but maybe procs could also have the chance boost as a side bonus to slotting the proc (Obliteration: Chance of Smashing dmg/+15% enhancement I mentioned). Just like regular enhancements, it's not a flat rate added but a % value to be applied to whatever value its enhancing.