Nanolathe

Unfinished, and I might never finish it. Here's my ideas on this Archetype so far; The Marshal An Archetype that uses Assault as their Primary power set choice and Pet Mastery as their Secondary power set choice. This pet mastery is similar, but not identical to Masterminds Henchmen. Primary sets are largely unchanged from Dominator versions. Any sets that have a generic ‘Power Up’ power should be replaced by Build Up. Replace any ‘Snipe’ power with solid utility power; soft control or good debuff, or similar. If sets need tweaking on a set-by-set basis to bring them more in line with the capacity of this new Archetype then that’s no problem. The intent is to have a suite of both melee and ranged attacks with integrated in-set support like Build Up and in-set utility/soft control. The Secondary sets are heavily tweaked from their Mastermind incarnation, entirely removing the personal attacks and replacing them with limited personal defence powers. This will be described in greater detail, below. One crucial difference is that the ‘Henchmen’ you summon are not permanent summons like the Mastermind, but rather only last for a limited time. They use Pet modifiers for level and damage scale, rather than Mastermind Henchmen versions. Summoning Pets will cause any currently active iterations of your pets to be replaced with new versions. You can’t “stack” pet summons. Inherent: “Strength in Numbers” While active, your T1 pets grant you resistances or defence (based on set theme) at 7.5% RES per Henchman, or 4.25% DEF per henchman. S/L as standard + 1 other (based on set type if possible) While active, your T2 pets grant you protection against sleep, hold, immob, disorient & knockback at Mag2 per henchman. While active, your T3 pet grants you increased regeneration (100%) and recovery (100%), as well as an increase to your maximum HP pool (30%). All these effects are unenhancable. As a Marshal, you do not get the effect of Bodyguard mode (the Mastermind’s ability to share damage taken between his or her Pet). You retain the Mastermind’s Stance commands and Pet movement commands; Aggressive, Defensive, Passive, and Attack my Target, Follow, Stay, Go To. Pet Mastery rework template: Personal Defence (S/L) Level 1 Toggle. Increases your S/L resistance or defence (11.25% -or- 7.5%), and also grants a minor thematic resistance to either Energy, NegEnergy, Fire, Cold or Toxic (3.5%). Additionally it could also minorly increase debuff resistances according to theme. Remember, your total Resistance/Defence values are increased by your T1 Pet’s proximity. Enhanceable Summon Pet [Minion] (up to 3). Minor Resists/Defence Level 2 Summon one to three Pets depending on your level. These Pets are focused on dealing moderate amounts of damage to your enemies, as well as minor debuffs with their attacks (such as minor -DEF). Enhanceable with Pet Damage IO Sets, Universal Damage, Accuracy and any secondary effects that the pets use for their powers. May also be enhanced with Recharge Reduction and Endurance Reduction, though this affects the Summon Pet power, rather than the Pet’s own powers. This is true of all pets the Marshal summons. As standard the recharge of this power is slightly shorter than the total “up time” of the T1 pets. Thus, it has perfect “up time”, minus the summoning animations. At level 2+ you may command one T1 Pet, At level 6+ you may command up to two T1 Pets, At level 18+ you may command up to three T1 Pets. Toggle Personal Defence (Elemental) Level 4 Cold and Fire Resistances/Defences (11.25% -or- 7.5%) Plus secondary resistances to debuffs (such as resisting Defence Debuffs, Slows, etc) And/Or other miscellaneous minor buffs (such as perception, run speed, etc) All effects enhanceable where appropriate. Toggle Personal Defence (Mez Protection) Level 10 Protection against sleep, hold, immob, disorient & knockback at Mag4. Also confers some additional mez protection for one type based on set theme, or other increases to debuff resistances, or other minor miscellaneous buffs as necessary Remember, your total protection values are increased by your T2 Pet’s proximity. One additional increase to one specific damage type Resistance/Defence as appropriate to set theme. Enhanceable Summon Pet [Lieutenant] (up to 2). Moderate Resists/Defence Level 16 Summon one to two Pets, depending on your level. These Pets are slightly tougher and carry more specialised means of dealing with your foes. They focus on support actions that either debuff your opponents or buff You and your other Pets, while dealing some damage. Their secondary effects are the real show here however. If able to mez in some capacity, then when stacked together can affect bosses. Other buffs/debuffs are corruptor-scale. Best to think of these pets as mini-Defenders. Can be enhanced with Pet IO Sets, Damage, Accuracy, and any secondary effects the pet has access to. May also be enhanced with Recharge Reduction and Endurance Reduction, though this affects the Summon Pet power, rather than the Pet’s own powers. This is true of all pets the Marshal summons. As standard the recharge of this power is (approx) 40% longer than the total “up time” of the T2 pets. Thus, it can have perfect “up time” (minus the summoning animations) when it is enhanced for recharge rate. At level 16+ you may summon one T2 Pet, At level 24+ you may summon up to two T2 Pets. Group Survivability / Self Buff Level 20 PBAoE buff that focuses on increasing your team’s survivability while giving an asymmetrical buff to the Marshal. You pets count as allies for this power. As you gather more allies to you, the effects on yourself are magnified. Max 10 stacks of self buff Example: You increase your allies’ Regeneration (125%) and Recovery (75%) around you (25’), while granting yourself a minor endurance discount and increased recharge rate based on the number of allies affected (5% EndDiscount / 5% +RechRate per ally) Example: You increase your allies’ Resistance -or- Defence (11.25% -or- 7.5%) around you (25’), while granting yourself a minor increase in Damage and Accuracy based on the number of allies affected (7.5% +Damage / 5% +To Hit per ally) Summon Pet [Boss] (1). High Resistances Level 28 Summons one mighty Pet! This Pet is very tough. They focus on Tanking actions with taunt and taunt aura, and high resistances/defences to damage. Their damage output is not as impressive as many Mastermind T3s. Can be enhanced with Pet IO Sets, Resistance/Defence, Damage, Accuracy, Taunt, and any secondary effects the pet has access to. May also be enhanced with Recharge Reduction and Endurance Reduction, though this affects the Summon Pet power, rather than the Pet’s own powers. This is true of all pets the Marshal summons. As standard the recharge of this power is (approx) 250% longer than the total “up time” of the T3 pet. Thus, it can have perfect “up time” (minus the summoning animations) when it is enhanced for 3x recharge rate… and a moderate amount of global recharge (or hasten) Unique Set “Theme” Power Level 35 Like Masterminds this power is very tied to your particular style of pet and should have lots of flavour. Nothing micro intensive. Clicky or toggle as needed. No “extra” pets. All-For-One! Level 38 Your T9 should be a trade-off between you and your pets. A darker mirror of your lvl 20 (T6). This in some way, “debuffs” your pets and enhances you and other teammates, personally.

@barrier Maybe that just shows up procs as being a bad thing for PvP? (and maybe a bad thing for the game in general?) Especially since it's SO heavily skewed in favour of offence.

Revert the changes that made PVP and PVE into totally separate systems.

Mission Contacts and Dynamic Mission Generation based on your standing with various "groups". Have story arcs form more organically from gameplay as your character specialises (or not) in taking on specific villain/hero groups. Create a "Nemesis" mechanic that can have certain named bosses, Elites, or AVs, spawn as ambushes in missions (with respect to team sizes and difficulty settings); each player would get different enemies declaring them as their nemesis, and the player is free to decide how to deal with them. Every few levels the nemesis would change to reflect the new power that the player has access to, either by being a stronger version, or a new nemesis emerging if the player can successful defeat their nemesis (with the potential for them to return later in your career). Ways to gain and lose influence and infamy not as currency, but as an actual mechanical result of missions chosen, contacts worked for, enemies defeated and survivors rescued. This all culminates in highly custom missions that are specific to your character because of the choices you made along the way to 50 and beyond. Use the phasing system to remove certain villain/hero groups from the game (think more the bit-players rather than the Phalanx or Arachnos) and boost the prevalence of others, with additional cosmetic changes to mission map decor, and maybe even in public zones too, that your character can actually see the impact they have had on the zone. Have generated missions that bring the "Come Back" of groups you've put down before. Have generated zone events based on randomly chosen heroes/villains currently in a zone that everyone can join in. Have opposed Task Forces on Red/Blue side that can push through into how a zone is presented and what enemies spawn there.

We need more weapon-based Epic Pools with the ability to match current Primary and Secondary weapon options. Not all of us with to suddenly develop magical flame powers that manifest from our hands, when up til then we've been wielding a Beam Rifle, or a Katana (etc)

I think the developers learnt a lesson from the last time they tried to develop "outside" a bubble, and involved the forum community. I fully expect to get nothing but cryptic hints to even major features or gameplay overhauls from now on.

Affecting gameplay could mean a lot of things, from accolades all the way through to a whole new system (like the oft suggested faction "reputation"). Hoping for the latter, but I realise that might be a but optimistic.

More Non-targeted Cones... or Vectored Knockback?

A sidearm pistol set of attacks for the Medic would be great, but I'm not sure we have enough single pistol animations for it to be viable. edit: Without crazy gun-kata

If Granite Armour is changed into a regular "click" T9 armour power I think that no one would ever use it. Those powers have just as many issues as Granite does, just in a different direction.

@Bentley Berkeley, I want change. (obviously) I can only say that I despise Global Recharge, and what it has done to the game in terms of powers that can be made permanent, solo, without any real detriment to overall damage output or survivability (and in some cases it actively boosts those other values). If building enough global recharge actually came at a real cost beyond an in-game monetary one I could begrudgingly accept them. But they don't. So I can't. It just breaks the game. The builds you bring up are solely focused around that concept and I just can't bring myself to stifle my creative suggestions because a few min/maxers would be upset. I see the current implementation of IO set bonuses and Global Enhancements as the erasure of inter-archetype integration in pursuit of solo OMNI-Defences, not as a method to make soloing a bit more viable. The values are far too powerful if that was the original idea. Apologies, but there it is. You may tell me to take a hike because of this, and I accept that as the price of posting literally anything on these forums. Someone is always going to think I'm gunning for their build in particular. And there's always a reason that their build is sacrosanct and needs to be preserved at all costs. I also am very much aware that this will probably not be changed. But again, I'm not going to stop suggesting things because it might make someone's current build less good, especially if it might make more people more interested in taking a previously terrible power, or set of powers as is the case here. Mix/Maxers gonna min/max. I'm sure they'll find a new build that's almost just as broken. As it stands there aren't any T9 Armour powers I think are anything beyond "Ok", and none I find interesting. That's what the OP suggestion was about. @tidge, The changes as presented - without significant additional changes to either the core of the design ethos for defence sets, or a change in how players interact with the IO system - are pointless. I will disagree with one point though, and that is that the changes I proposed would make having a team by your side much more appealing. With a team you could more effectively control your "crash" as they would have the time to provide the support you would need, rather than it all just happening in a split second. The current implementation of "The Crash" doesn't give the team any way to interact with it, other than healing for those that have a health crash. The -100% Endurance, 100% Resistance to Endurance, and -10000% recovery rate on some T9 powers are things that a team can't interact with. You're just out for 10 seconds. No ifs, ands or buts. Others may have slightly more lenient versions of this crash, but it's a much-of-a-muchness, really. They're all awful in their own unique ways. Anyway, as the OP states, it was a thought experiment to really nail down what's ultimately wrong with the Pre-Fight Prep style T9s in the current game environment, and a suggestion that might make some people more interested in taking them for the extra challenge and dynamism it would bring. It has become clear that many people actually would be interested in such a design shift in their implementation, but correctly point out that it wouldn't really "fix" the problem. The problem for the T9s is more complicated than just the powers themselves. It is a broader issue that just affects them more than a lot of other powers. They're pointless as an increase to survivability. The only T9s that are viewed by the community at large as any good (outside of some very niche builds) are the ones that increase something more than just Def/Res numbers. They don't function as a capstone to an Armour Set, because 9/10 Armour Sets don't need more armour. As you say the current T9s are now less appealing than both some Patron/Ancillary Pools, and regular Power Pool picks to you (and no doubt others). This speaks volumes as to how the T9s have become completely obsolete, bar a very few exceptions. Mule, as a term to describe IO Enhancement slotting, is a concept I find very irksome. The powers that earn the dubious honour to have that epithet thrust upon them are deemed to have no intrinsic value, outside of slotting IOs. It is especially embarrassing for a T9 power to be brought so low. Primary and Secondary powers should have some kind of value as a basic expectation beyond a convenient place to put an IO. This deserves to be fixed. It should be fixed, but I just can't bring myself to suggest the "easy way" out and simply rework them into +Damage or some other variant of offensive capability. In my opinion, the Armour sets equally should not be about giving you lots of extra damage. They're a defence set, not a fix-all tool to just give the character everything they need. By giving the T9s over to sustain, it would further add to damage classes' invalidation of a need to be supported by other classes for any reason, and we really don't need more of that to happen. Again, in my opinion.

Unfortunately that's where the different play styles just don't gel. I am on the side that would want a battlefield situation to shift, and where adaptability would be the measurement of success, rather than getting the highest, most stable numbers possible. Not constant changing. There is such a thing as overloading the capability of the player, but something that, every now and then will challenge your accumulated wisdom and reward creative thinking and power use in-game, rather than overly catering for those that think in terms of "builds". I am aware of the Dominator's current capital I, issue when it comes to how the metagame views builds. I may at some point have posted about it, but since I only play 1 Dominator with any kind of regularity I don't feel experienced enough with the AT to have a definitive answer to the problem. I do consider perma-domination as an exploit, if that lets you understand my mindset on the issue. And I'm willing to bet that you and many others, could have figured that out without me even having to say it. The meta-gamers have eight powers they've already stripped down, sucked the lifeblood out of and tuned into soulless, perfectly efficient algorithms that have the least variance possible in terms of clear time and combat optimisations. Can't you* give me, the person that wants to play this game for a bit of escapist nonsense, just one power that is designed with my desires in mind? Something fun and thematic that really speaks to the comic book genre? I don't need another power that's going to keep my damage and health numbers at stable levels at all times to the exclusion of all else. Theme and mechanics coming together to produce something interesting, not predictable. I want to feel like a super hero damnit! I want the secret weapons! I want the sudden mid-fight turn around! I want to win against overwhelming odds because I found the guts and gumption within my character for just long enough to pull the iron out of the fire! (Edit: *Not directed as a complaint to you personally Naraka. I'm talking generally, not specifically) Every time its safe, reliable, repeatable results... ... ... ... I'm not saying that the powers need to be broken and unbalanced and not well thought out. this isn't about "chance" mechanics. It's about pressure and decision making on the knife's edge. I'm rambling. Let's move on. Unfortunately I'm very much aware that the powersets that would receive these new proposed T9 powers are among some of the least deserving of more survivability power. They just don't need it. That doesn't mean I am happy with the position that they're currently in however. The fact that I can say "They just don't need it." is the very crux of the issue. The worst T9s have been essentially erased from consideration when it comes to a sets overall power levels. They're worthless and the original Devs knew it. The writing was on the wall for so long, and the (I feel) unfortunate outcome was that they were essentially ignored. As the game evolved the T9s were not kept "current". I didn't use the word vestigial lightly; it is exactly what they have become. Only Granite Armour truly "survived" this cull, which is why I brought it up in my notes for the OP. I suppose the old T9 Rez powers for Fire and Dark did too, but while the Rez powers are completely functional, and do add something to their sets they are only generally used by those that haven't mastered the game and how to avoid death, which both of those sets are completely capable of doing without all that much more effort, if any. Oh, and the fact that resurection is a 1000Inf Inspiration away... than you can email to yourself so you don't even need to have them "on you" when playing the game. Can you tell that I have problems with the "meta game" yet? 🙃 Maybe the time has come for them to be cut out and replaced by something else? The problem is I have trouble suggesting what could be added to the Armour sets at this point. They are... for better or worse, pretty lean when it comes to design space to explore that would actually, significantly alter any one of their play styles. As you said above, the meta is in agreement and their strengths are in how rock solid most of their defences are. Do not think I don't know why the knockback protection hole keeps being dragged out, again and again, for discussion. People want their defences to be as close as possible to OMNI-defence with absolutely zero trade offs, and they don't want to have to work for it either. It's just what the Armour sets are supposed to do apparently; or at least if you listen to anyone talking about improving Dark Armour it is. Because a few sets started out covering pretty much all bases, and gradually all the rough edges to a lot of sets was shaved off, rounded and polished into a whole pile of functionally identical, interchangeable 9 powers per set. Even the T9s are mostly carbon copies of one another, despite being for completely different Archetype rolls, from Issue 0. And it continued unabated in Issue 6, and on and on... until Bio and Rad. Those two are anomalies I was going to explore in a theoretical follow up to this thread. You have to ask yourself; what did I mean when I used a sub-sub-title simply saying "Godlings"? Thing is, you don't even need to ask that question of me @Naraka. You and everyone else are easily able to extrapolate what I think on IO set bonuses, global recharge, damage procs, and anything else to do with it. Even if I hadn't been vocal about them in the past (which I have), you could probably make at least an educated guess, just from the tonality and apparent goals I have with trying to make T9s something interesting and dynamic. One does not do these things if one is happy with the way things are, no? IO set bonus stacking is out of control. Damage Procs are harmful to build diversity. Global Recharge is a mistake. There's absolutely no reason that the T9s couldn't be imagined as individual bespoke powers that are not only very different, set-to-set, but also very different Archetype-to-Archetype, that played to the individual systems available to each set, and each Archetype... other than it is a lot of work to undertake, and that it would be absolutely savaged on these forums if it were to be suggested. You don't even have to take my word for that. You just have to have eyes and have read a handful of threads in this sub-forum that propose that very topic. As I said, a total rework of the T9s would be lovely, but it wouldn't really change anything to do with set efficiency, since the T9s are part of a sub-set of powersets that don't need any more things to make them work. Anything you add to them is irrelevant anyway, as we've already agreed on, so why not make them a bit of dumb fun?! I'm always willing to spitball ideas however. Hit me up on the Discord, or post a workshop thread here if you feel so inclined. I just thought the idea was fun. If properly tuned, it could probably be made to work, as could be said of lots of different ideas. But this was my stab at trying to add something of worth to the community and of course, something that would be fun for me personally. And it seems there is some support for the idea on its own merit, despite my lack of fine detail on the balance front. It sounds like a fun idea, right? That's all I wanted to achieve with this thread. I like "what ifs". It's a one in a million chance for any idea from this forum to actually gain traction and become a grassroots movement. And even then, that's no guarantee of changes. But maybe my idea made someone smile and have a little "what if" fantasy in their head for just a little bit before it was exposed for the trash idea it so clearly is. Wanna talk about more trash ideas to pass the time though? 😁

@Naraka, While it is often be true that min/max discussion is often hyper-focused on by a specific subset of this forum's members, that is not the intention of the original post. This isn't about making the sets more powerful, or plugging their specific weaknesses, or trying to find a new angle to make the ATs with access to these sets into more min/max-y iterations. It is about taking a set of powers that are mechanically useless and making them usable. While I understand where you're coming from; "The sets themselves aren't broken, so why fix it?" is a valid concern to have, I find that the sets are actually somewhat lacklustre. The old sets for which these problems are most pronounced, can be very dry from a player interaction standpoint. You toggle up... and that's pretty much it. I would like things to be a bit more dynamic. Dynamism is one of the key descriptive words most people would associate with the comic book hero genre, and yet what we mostly have here is pretty flat. The goal of the changes proposed would be in service of giving the late game of these powersets something interesting to interact with - that means you have to engage with the mechanics of the power beyond "set it and forget it" - which is in my opinion a much better situation to be in than what we have currently. Armour sets are very prolific sets, being one of the key pillars of 5 out of 13 Archetypes (or 14/15. Depends how you count). That's at least a third of all ATs having to play with powersets that have weird vestigial powers that don't make sense anymore. While the sets on the whole aren't broken, the capstone power, the thing you unlock last and should be your most powerful asset is an actual, literal punchline. They are pointed at and used as a point of reference for what not to do with a power. If that doesn't warrant their admission into the "This should be fixed" club, I don't know what does. Nor what would convince you to change your stance on them. If they, of all things, shouldn't be changed because it would rock the boat too much... then I'd find it hard to argue that anything deserves to be changed. Edit: If you want to talk about specific changes to specific powers, and rebuild them from the ground up, I'm all for that, since as stated in my OP I think the cottage rule is a bludgeon applied to far too many good ideas. But here I tried to tailor and pitch this idea so as to not "spook" anyone into kneejerk reactions against it based on poor number crunching on my part. I won't even try to hide that I am not capable of number crunching like some others on this forum and I don't want to compete in that arena. I want to have the discussion over the concept's merit, rather than ignoring it in favour of endless "number talk" and min/maxing fixations. Which is generally why I haven't responded to posts that try to suck me into defending the numbers. I won't do it, y'here me!?

@Yoru-hime I agree, and it's entirely possible the the original developers were caught between the exact same rock and hard-place. I think that the current implementation of the T9 powers are absolutely not fit for purpose. They're designed in such a way as to have become "trap" powers, and more recently, mere mules for IO sets or Global enhancements. I don't know what the correct answer is for actually fixing the problems that the entire sets have, with regards to their capstone powers being vestigial. Well, other than re-evaluating them all from the ground up to include the capstone as something viable and valuable. Somehow I don't think that's on the cards even if it did have more widespread support. I just wanted to bring an idea I had been putting off to a place where it's a more well rounded and developed "plan of attack" so to speak for if these powers were deemed interesting enough to be reworked. If it were possible, I would love to have some kind of proof of concept style tests done at least. At some point we have to admit that the place these powers once occupied is no longer a valuable one, nor desirable. Equally, we may have to admit that we live in a flawed universe and that they are unsalvageable without a rather substantial rework to the sets themselves. I would like to believe that changing them would open up more doors than it would ever close, and be something of an evolution of the Archetypes that have access to them. That's the way I look at changes anyhow. But I've never gotten so attached to a character, or a specific build, or a stash of enhancements, within CoX that I would block change if it were change for the better more interesting. To answer your question as an individual; Yes, I would like to see a downward revision of sets, especially those that overperform handily in their current iteration. I see that as balancing out a skewed design though. If I may get on my soap-box for a moment: Every power should have at least some inherent value beyond just IO Set Bonus and Global Enhancement optimisation. Edit: @America's Angel, At no point did I say that more detailed and unique perks for each set was unaccountable within this system. I did mention in the post that individual set ideas would be something I was very open to discussing. However I think some form of base is needed to work from, otherwise you've got a free-for-all without any kind of structure. If you disagree with that, that's fine. But I find that having something basic and universal will be better for much generating more creative results than just saying "whatever you want". We do have to consider some form of inter-set parity of power levels after all. If they all start from a similar position you'll get results that are comparable. If you start from very different points then you're going to get things that really don't line up at all. The majority of the T9s being awful proves this, since they are all of a similar design. It's not the intrinsic similarity between each other that makes them bad, otherwise every T1 and T2 "punch" would be considered bad. It's the fact that they're all starting from the wrong place.

A sliding scale might be more complicated (and perhaps not possible in the engine?) but I do think a slow "step" increase every 5, 10, 15, etc, seconds would produce something very similar and almost indistinguishable for the end user experience. These pseudo-curves can be tweaked, powerset by powerset, based on just how long the desired average length of the power could be active for. Another thought. What if the power became not just more costly, but also more powerful over time? This further incentives players to try to keep it on for as long as possible. It should still start out at a very reasonable level, but over time it gets better and better, but more and more unmanageable. I think there could be some more fun limit-pushing gameplay.