Naraka

That could be an interesting prospect to explore. Some other things: What if some of the Taunt powers were, instead, passives that imparted extra taunt + secondary effects with your other attacks? For example: Fire Melee's taunt became Pyre Puissance where if you use an attack, it has a slightly boosted TAoE taunt (maybe more targets) + if a taunted target hit the user, they activate a blast pulse around the user? It's basically a secondary melee-set oriented taunt aura. Only problem with that might be, if it does enough damage, players would feel they're forced to take the "taunt power"...maybe make it just add an additional DoT to all your other attacks instead?

Can they make the immobilize, slow and other lesser used procs more advantageous? Part of the problem with the damage procs is that there's just so dang many of them thus you get the stacking problem. Compare that with the buff/debuff/control ones and that starts to show why they aren't as useful.

I actually came here to comment this. You don't lose anything by just clicking it when you need it. If I were suggesting anything, maybe an added bonus *IF* you use it to break from a mez, like bonus accuracy or recovery for a moderate period or maybe a PBAoE knockdown to portray you breaking free of an enemy's grasp.

I forgot about this thread. As for the quoted part, I'd further prune your comment to highlight my point: "...nerfs are a solution in search of a problem." If nerfs have no room in practicality, then neither do buffs? Or maybe some nerfs and some buffs? You can't just blanket-statement something without taking into context that PPM itself was a buff to procs. If balance is desired, at some point, you have to accept negatives and positives.

Must not be a popular idea. Only see 3 threads with scythe in the title.

Stalker? Not sure if this changed since the 2 DA characters I have are a Stalker and a Tanker who doesn't use Cloak of Fear, but since Death Shroud does damage to foes, there is a chance that the targets you fear are momentarily freed from the effects, mitigating the mez so they can try and attack you. How I use the toggles: Stalkers don't get Death Shroud, they have hide instead. Being Spines/DA, I don't have anything to stack with either Cloak of Fear or Oppressive Gloom (and their pulses do not stack either). However, I do have the Presence Pool which does allow me to affect Lt and Bosses with fear. Coupled with using Hidden Assassin's Strike on a boss, there's going to be fewer bosses regardless, more foes are going to be feared by Demoralize and the immobilize and slow helps mitigate the fear breaking when I use AoEs. It's not foolproof or super synergetic, but it is a very high concept build that I played on live as well. On a Tanker, I don't use Cloak of Fear but instead Oppressive Gloom. With his Energy Melee attacks, he has high boss mezzing powers along with the minions being mostly inert. With the old Stun skill, I could easily juggle 3+ bosses with stuns but it's somewhat less reliable now.

This has been suggested before and I'd agree with it. Specifically, giving Antidote an AoE mez protection to allies would be a great utility for the set. Imparting the benefits of Elixir of Life without the drawbacks to allies in range of the dead party member would be a cool addition for the set.

Like I said, I think this would have been a good fit for non-inherent Fitness 2.0, amending these ideas to the fitness pool to make it more attractive. The concept of these additives is basically the same as Fitness, acting like a baseline boon to a particular aspect of the character. At the very least, this would be as fair since, if this were its own pool, inevitably the playerbase would view it as mandatory to have for squishies (even though its not) and thus a power pool tax. I'm still of the opinion, you can get by without Fitness, especially with IOs.

This was a hotly debated arguing point in times of yore. I wasn't around when it was actually being argued but I believe the devs (or *a* dev) was making that point that the game is mostly balanced toward +0/x1 or whatever but I think he lost that argument in the long run. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that people have argued it in the past and likely have created a strict binary on that perspective. I can't really say what or how difficulty should be distributed, whether it should be +1, x2, +0 or x4. I just know what it's *NOT* balanced around and that is the max. If I were forced to give a concrete answer, I'd probably say sets should be balanced depending on what they are designed to tackle. So a set like Dark Armor might be able to deal with lots of enemies (so x3 or x4) but pay for its efficacy by not being well built to handle foes too higher level (so +0) while sets like Super Reflexes might be able to mitigate tough hits from a strong target easily (+2) but not have many tools to deal with many attacks coming in at once (so x2). Probably a cop-out answer but would at least distract long enough for me to come up with a better answer while you have to pick apart each individual set's balance criteria lol

If giving the ATs with zero mez protection another means of getting +3 mag protection is making up the difference between the haves and have-nots, I'm sure welfare would have solved poverty by now, not exacerbated it. If we're actually going to make up that difference, you'd need to help the have-nots while also penalizing the haves because 3 mag protection isn't doing crap that can't already be done. Like giving a $600 check to everybody. Lol who's rent is that paying for? What about their utility bills and food? C'mon... [EDIT]And just to retort to any accusations of inequivalent comparisons or strawman arguments, I do think, +3 mag protection on a passive pool that takes up 3 power picks to be literal scraps here. It's not a grand solution or a novel concept. It's not like we don't have options for stuns and holds for 3 power picks already. I've been gone for a while as they implemented a lot of these changes. I'm curious if the new difficulty setting has changed any of the tactics and power-usage at the upper level. Maybe I'll start diving back into "end game" grouping if it does.

Yes. On the other questions, no. I don't see how people use SOs at all above lvl 25. But if you use only SOs, I guess we all have our odd traits. Like, I don't typically level past lvl 45 and will lock my characters at a lower level or only solo with anything above that. Teaming at lvl45+ is boring. Soloing prior to lvl 35 isn't usually possible at +4/x8 but I hear certain build can. But I'm a proponent of holes and vulnerabilities. If you're a tank and you can get affected by mez at +4/x8, that just means the system works. But are actually affected by mez? Or are you affected by +4/x8 spawns? There is a difference...

One can mess with this since MM attacks are kind of in a weird place being really expensive for their damage and recharge. Barring future changes, I think you could do nearly anything with those attacks and it probably can be balanced around, like making them non-ranged melee attacks but cheaper. Multiple element attacks kind of reminds me of the first MM preset suggestion I made, the Arcanist, which is kind of an Animus Arcanum flavored MM: Yeah, shilling my ideas again. Might as well, it took, like 45min to type and format that shit lol But i played around with the MM attacks in that by turning the 3 attacks into 6 but you are only going to have access to 3 at a time. It also played on the pet upgrade mechanic but that's not relevant to this discussion. There's also a more traditional example of an element's MM using existing powers here:

I'm glad someone else shares my sentiment. I'd say, for multi element sets, if you were going that route would likely have to be the set's gimmick, kind of like Dual Pistols. Otherwise, most sets try to stay within a particular conceptual range because you can already create mixed damage via primary, secondary, epic and pool sets. Only certain sets tend to mix multiple concepts like MM sets and sometimes Blaster secondaries. Overall, I think it'd be a neat set functionally but conceptually, kind of shallow and leaning on the concept of "nature" but not the execution of actually using or manipulating nature.

I figured, if I left breadcrumbs of an idea, maybe someone would follow. Giving other ATs unique attributes like Blaster gets but different, would be more interesting. I'm not even against the OP's idea, I'm mostly just criticizing the prospect as being boring and one-dimensional....not the concept, mind you. If anything, I feel a set of passive powers with these abilities could have been wrapped into an updated version of non-inherent Fitness since it's a similar concept. But the prospect of it is merely "What does my build need? X, Y and Z? Cool, put it in a set." No unique mechanic or function that doesn't already exist, just more stuff to stack. And people say "well it's only Mag 3..." but leave out that there are other additives like Acrobatics, RoP, etc to stack/alternate and it just ends up being why not just add this idea's various debuff resists to existing pool powers and/or add some mez protection to other new pools like Unleash Potential or Unrelenting? All in all, it's just another push to get more stuff to stack to ignore more in-game mechanics without introducing new ones. Boring!

Well, if you're a Blaster, you can be shooting.

Does the damage applied change? For controllers, they do have containment. I think Stalkers have higher crit on mezzed foes in PvP. Why not a pool that greatly increases resistance and Regen while mezzed instead?

So now your argument is the amount of protection is mostly useless in practical situations. Then why put it in?

Earlier, you were talking about mez not being binary by explaining the protection mechanic. The protection mechanic is a part of the binary nature of the mez system. It's not about "mez or not mez" but "effect or not affected". I'm saying mez should do *something* even if your protection is higher than the mag applied similarly that having protection *under* the mag applied doing something as a directive to make mez less of a light switch. And bar that, maybe look for unique ideas to provide a more fluid solution to certain ATs and situations than just "now you don't get affected" or "it's useless for any practical use". I think Blaster's unique ability to use certain attacks while mezzed is an exceptional example with a superb conceptual link.

I'll clarify then: Until your magnitude of protection is exceeded, you are invulnerable to the mez stacked on you *because* it takes no effect. In the game, mez below the protection had no tertiary effect besides a background counter. It doesn't partially suppress a buff, it doesn't lower your AT inherent, it doesn't lower the effectiveness of your enhancements or inspirations, it is literally just a tally for the specific mez effect.

Are you mezzed 100% of the time? Maybe I'm just not mentally syncing with this, but I tend to try and avoid being mezzed and if I get mezzed, I use RoP. If I tried to keep RoP up for max its duration, I'm certain a portion of that time would not actually be doing anything but acting like insurance... literally a waste of resources unless you screw up. Basically, how you view self rez powers. Still, RoP isn't supposed to be full coverage. It's just a pool. Heck, mez protection across all ATs shouldn't always be full coverage like it mostly is now.

Do two wrongs make a right?

Lol you kind of had to revert to the base point of clear times, which in and of itself is useless because solo times are not supposed to be standard. They never were, they shouldn't be and I wouldn't use clear times as a standard for extra-AT balance. Also, why would a Controller or Defender need to have a break free on every second? If you have a luck+debuffs, a mez might never connect.

Now someone's starting to peek outside the box. Why can't all mez protection have some sort of stipulation or function that one has to be weary about? Another idea: rather than protect you up to a threshold but then shut down, how about it aggressively protect you once you're mezzed? Like if you get held out slept, your "mez defense" kicks in and if another hold or stun, ect starts to stack, it takes no effect. So it's assisting the user from being chain mezzed but has no utility for a build that largely ignores mez.

Well we could be talking about the binary nature of mez, but...

I wouldn't "fight against" those changes if the suggested changes were unique and creative lol