TotalThunder

Could we get any kind of logic clarification for this change? You might as well rename it if you're going to make it essentially a completely different power.

That doesn't seem to matter to most people, because I'm assuming that when a power set gets proliferated it's considered a new set and "cottage" doesn't apply. Which is why Sentinel Assault Rifle has Aim, and Fire Melee is mid on Scrappers and Brutes, but overpowered on Tankers. See: Combustion.

I don't think a low mag, single target stun is the "basic functionality" of Assault Rifle. It's a bad set. It's always been a bad set. Not that many people actually play it. Replacing the low mag, single target stun, with Aim, makes it actually playable for a larger number of people who wouldn't even look at it normally. Disregarding my personal opinion that mezzes on DPS classes are worthless, every class that can take Assault Rifle has more powerful mez in their secondaries. Beanbag is a worthless, useless power. Aim is a 62.5% damage buff. Damage that Assault Rifle has ALWAYS been lacking.

Making Slug a stun just to make people happy and putting Aim back in is the correct solution, seeing as a single target, low damage stun is functionally useless in all but the most base level of play.

These two lines are... kind of contradictory? Having a level 50 character, even with full incarnates, but no enhancements is just going to get bullied by normal hybrid pve/pvp characters. It removes one barrier, but will just lead to people who are 'curious' just getting ganked and not liking PvP because they don't understand what's going on. This seems like it's mainly just beneficial to people who already PvP. I feel like this could be... slightly mitigated by giving these PvP only characters access to a vendor that gives them SOs, or untradable base IOs.

I'm 100% against this change. What's the point of using Howling Twilight if it doesn't rupture your eardrums?? RIP legend.

The comment wasn't about squishies being useless. The comment was about soloing as them. But you have outlined another problem of this change, as mentioned by another previous post, even if it's not as dramatic as previously preceived. Forcing you to bring specific support by nerfing something else. Nerfing individual survivability just artificially makes support more valueable. It's a bandaid solution (not that I'm blaming the dev team for looking for easy outs) to the bigger problem of game difficulty.

I think there's some disconnect in this discussion between two different types of players. For people who play the game normally at +0/x0, and build characters for RP or theme, always play on teams, etc, this change doesn't seem that bad or seems like it doesn't change much. For people who min/max characters, solo +4/x8, and try to push what they really can and can't get away with, this is a real real bad time. If this goes live, squishy ATs are essentially dead and we enter the Energy Aura/Shield meta. Even resistance based sets will be much, much worse if this goes live. That 90% res cap seems great on paper, but you'll be taking dramatically more damage after this.

It occurred to me that, while this change makes sense and is probably how it should've always worked - this screams as a reactionary change to make support characters more valueable. I don't think nerfing, ballpark 50% of characters is the way to do that. If I wanted to team with support characters, I wouldn't design my builds around solo play. Nerfing every character doesn't make the game harder. It just makes it less fun.

This is a massive nerf to any character that is not a defense based armor set. Like, I'm all for big and interesting changes, but this is meta shifting at a fundamental level. This literally removes the ability for a large spectrum of min/maxed characters to solo at +4/x8. Also, can we get a little info on the reasoning for why this change only effects NPCs attacking Players, and not the reverse? Edit: Aight so maybe these changes weren't as dramatic as they sounded. Maybe I didn't give Power-dad as much credit as he deserves. My concern about slippery slopes is still there.

Then just quit and move on already, and save the rest of us the trouble. Imagine being this entitled over a dead MMO.

Fighting Statesman with empowered enemies and debuffed players sounds dank.

Yeah, and I don't want my taxes to go towards making bombs. Funny how that works. PvP has been part of the game since Issue 4, and one of the main features with Issue 6 and the release of CoV. Pretending that it's some niche side thing that the actual devs didn't care about is just being willfully ignorant. It didn't happen on live because there were already too few players on too many servers, which is a problem that Homecoming already has. Torch, Indom, and Reunion playerbases could easily be merged (once a solution for character names is found), and then one of those other servers could be turned into an open PvP server. Which removes one - actually reducing the overall server cost. Everybody wins. Edit: Also, I have this distinct feeling that you wouldn't need extra talent or devs to make it happen. Something tells me that PvP is just a flag that can be applied to a zone or area.

Crabs (and Banes) definitely need a general damage buff, and Omega Maneuver definitely needs an overhaul. It either needs to do a lot more damage, or have a third the cooldown time. Omega Maneuver's cooldown is more than twice as long as a blaster nuke, and it does half the damage. A few other things about VEATS; Can we please please get No Redraw? Stalkers were updated, but Banes didn't get the same treatment. It would be really cool to see some kind of soft integration of Assassin's Focus (Executioner's Will? 👀) and a base crit chance. Banes don't get a re-Hide ATO proc or base crit, so you basically only get to "crit" whenever Placate is up. As stated by the OP, the VEAT inherent Conditioning is complete trash. Almost anything else would be a dramatic improvement. Conditioning increases your base Regen from 0.42%/s to 0.50%/s, and base Recovery from 1.67%/s to 1.90%/s. That's it. Banes could really use some form of sustain. Soft capping your defense to everything is really cool, until you get defense cascaded and die instantly. Maybe replace Web Cocoon with a self heal of some kind ala Reconstruction, or give Banes DDR (Defense Debuff Resistance) in their armor passive.

That's a real cool change to Ignite, but it doesn't fix the core problem with the power. Ignite is a Mag 50 Terrorize. It's functionally useless, and even detrimental, except in niche situations where a lot of stacked enemies get held together. Also could ya'll also pretty please take a look at Flamethrower? Not only is the animation really long, the damage also happens really really late in the animation, so it just all around feels bad to use. Which is a pretty low bar for Assault Rifle, but still.