Zect

Really enjoying the page 5 changes to fire armor and Burn, especially the fix to the bugged proc rate and spawning of multiple burn patches. Delightful change! The rad melee aura fix was pretty nice, too, as well as the sentinel AT revamp. I especially like how it was accomplished without upping the aoe cap or making other changes that would've increased the aoe power of sentinels. Sentinels are now a powerful and effective class with their own niche, without worsening the stale meta of mass-aoeing of hapless enemies in giant clumps. At this rate I can't imagine what a full-fledged issue would look like!

That line in Full Auto stuck me as an oblique reference to the old, old style of nukes, which had 5-8 lines of "X% chance to deal Y damage", resulting in much more variable damage than modern nukes, which are a single application of a flat amount of damage. Saying you might get lucky and get extra damage is the glass-half-full way of saying you'll never really know how much damage this attack does. 😏 Regardless, assault rifle's dps output is just fine (yes, even ST) and not in need of any buffs.

The -res has not been reverted and I'm really curious 1) what problem with FF, exactly, this change is meant to fix, and 2) why the game needs more -res flying around in any form when debuff sets are already overwhelmingly powerful and mobs are already falling over before non-meta builds can get off key powers. Do certain people feel the set lacks offensive power? Well, that would be like criticising a mallet for not being pointy enough; it's a complaint that should be dismissed out of hand without any consideration. This change is comparable to adding healing arrow to TA, except worse, because -res is far stronger than heals ever will be in this game. To compound this, -res is a debuff that jives neither with the set's mechanical nor conceptual identity (as a defensively oriented, force field wielding set). By the way: debuff sets with aoe -res powers have them on recharges of 90s or more. Repulsion bomb's is only 30s. If this disastrous change needs to go through, the recharge of repulsion bomb needs to be lengthened to reflect how it is now sleet-lite (Force Bolt's recharge could use a look-at too).

I have mixed feelings on this change. On one hand, the rationale behind "being able to always pick a power from the primary or secondary" is a good one. It also means that players who do not AE powerlevel are less disadvantaged than those who do, in the sense that certain sets are significantly less enjoyable to play before key powers are obtained - not only do players who enjoy non-AE content level slower, they spend more time in the less-fun part of the leveling sequence. On the other hand, the ability to skip the T1 from the secondary disproportionately benefits some sets over others. Corruptors (which are already an S-tier AT) can now skip weak T1 powers from their secondary eg. infrigidate, time crawl and essentially gain a power slot. Hopefully, the developers will take note of which AT/powerset combos benefit the most from being able to skip T1 powers, and balance them appropriately so that they do not become too powerful.

Do you also think that other aspects of burn (like hitting 4 targets even when the power description clearly says 5) were intended, simply because they were "known and accepted" for many years? If not, then your selective reading of the facts reveals your clear bias. Devs are often reluctant to make beneficial, necessary changes for fear of upsetting the playerbase, especially when that playerbase pays fees and generates negative press that upper management and investors are highly sensitive to. Regardless, a semantics argument seems silly. Bugged or not, one thing we can all agree on is the fact that the proc rate of burn was too high and needed to be lowered to something more reasonable. As for me, there is no spin here - merely a hope for a game that is enjoyable by all, rather than a select few players.

Further playtesting has proven that these changes are both overpowered and unecessary -- to a set that, contrary to what a few players believe, is already powerful, well-balanced, highly effective. The prime offender is the -res on repulsion bolt/bomb. Adding the most valuable offensive debuff to a set with some of the strongest defenses completely upsets its balance. The set now applies aoe -15% res on a 30s cooldown and an extra 20% essentially permanently to single hard targets. There is essentially no more tradeoff in exchange for FF's forbidable defenses. I warn you that the other set with strong +def/-res, Cold Domination, is already the #1 support set in 4-star hard mode ITF speedruns (albeit cold leans more towards the offensive rather than defensive side of the equation). I can support some of the smaller changes - adding special resist to dampening bubble, for example, to give the set something unique that doesn't completely overpower its weaknesses, but the -res is a clear mistake. Remember, buffs, once handed out, are nigh-impossible to revoke, because the playerbase will cry bloody murder. Buffs to offensive power in particular are especially problematic and led to the high-dps speedkill meta now prevalent on homecoming, where many sets are actually disadvantaged due to being unable to fire off all key powers before the engagement is largely over, destroying the fun of many players and disadvantaging their playstyles. These changes should be reverted before the problem is allowed to start anew; or, if you must add them, they should be added very gradually, with an eye to making the set undertuned on release and increasing them later only if necessary (-5%/-7.5% for repulsion bomb/bolt would be more reasonable).

This is a completely unnecessary buff. Force fields is an extremely powerful and effective set, especially in the new hard mode TF's. It's alright that force fields is not widely played; not every set must be popular. Superfluous buffs contribute to the inexorable power creep that makes content unfun. There is no need to homogenize the support sets further, nor pander to the current high-dps meta, by adding -res on sets that do not need it. All of these changes should be reverted.

Extremely pleased with the improvements to Burn. Specifically, fixing the well-known proc activation bug that gave this power far more dps than it should ever have. Bravo!

Interesting suggestion. Personally, I'm extremely thrilled by the "push towards trinity gaming" as OP calls it. I've waited literally 12 years (since 2010) for content worth playing an empath in that's not Hami and content worth playing a tank in that's not Hami or MLTF. Now there are two pieces of content in the entire game where this is the case. It's not much, but it's a start! Hopefully, we'll see much more such content and many similar changes/improvements to game mechanics in future. The metagame is being diversified and advanced for the benefit of all players, regardless of playstyle!

Excellent and highly reasonable suggestion! It's nerf barrier or add more unresistable autohit damage, which would be a less fun mechanic with less space for counterplay. The "burst" portion (initial 30s) in particular needs to be weaker.

I don't post normally, but I was told the forums are where to give feedback, so here it is. I love page 4, and all the changes in it. I don't think paragon studios ever released an issue that made me this excited (maaaaybe power customization came close), so great work. I enjoyed the new customization options, AE improvements, addition of merits to itrials, sonic attack revamp, and advanced difficulty ITF. This last I was really skeptical about at first, however having actually played it, I think it's exceeded all expectations. I like how the mechanics discourage splitting up and soloing, without making it completely impossible in the event it makes tactical sense to do so. There are two changes which are not headline features, but which I think are very positive for the game, and which I'd like to give some extra love: Firstly, the attack typing changes. I think now there's more of a tradeoff between complete invulnerability and offense than there was before, and more ways for critters to hurt PC's. Designing high-def builds that tank a wide variety of damage types is also a refreshing challenge compared to slapping on scorp shield and some kinetic combats for the thousandth time and calling it a day. Secondly, the removal of empyrean <> reward merit conversion. The value of the empyreans is so great that until very late in vet level progression, they far exceed the value of the loot and drops from any content that can be run to get those vet levels, which severely distorts loot acquisition rates between different players. Empyreans from vet levels (as implemented by SCORE) always struck me as an optional path to incarnate progression that doesn't involve grinding out itrials or DA, and I think it's best they remain that, and nothing more. Challenging content, a diverse endgame and metagame, and balanced character power progression are all necessary for the long-term success of every game. Given that I saw excel at 3 red dots for the first time ever yesterday, I think the players agree.

Hi. I have been encountering this problem too. I noticed 2 oddities that have not been mentioned yet. Firstly, when my account is in the state of being able to claim items from Character Items, any AH-related activity (putting items in the AH, claiming inf, listing for sale etc) almost always causes Character Items to stop working for a while. Oddly enough the converse is not true - I can always buy and sell normally on the AH even when I cannot retrieve things from Character Items. Secondly, when I try to open a super pack and it fails, the number of super packs in salvage will not decrease, but "phantom" items will spawn in Character Items, as though the super pack was successfully opened. The more times I try unsuccessfully to open a super pack, the more "phantom" items appear. During this time I am unable to claim anything from Character Items for a while. After several hours to a day, these "phantom" items then disappear and I can open the super packs again. In my support ticket the GM asked to check if Character Items was full. I withdrew over 2200 items from Character Items to try and resolve the issue, to no avail.