Eva Destruction

I'm talking about the FoT currently on live., which doesn't keep the current recharge. The sustain isn't entirely irrelevant to that discussion. In changing FoT to be more in-line with other Blaster AoE CC powers (some would say a clone of other Blaster AoE CC powers) there had to be a change to the sustain, since you can't have a 60-second sustain with a 90-second recharge and remain on par with the other Blaster secondaries. Old FoT could keep Old Sustain, New FoT can't.

It's a minor QoL increase. For players who used FoT for knockdown, it's a major lose.

Agree with everything you said here.

THe problem isn't that it's not doing what it did before, the problem is that it still only takes six slots. Maybe I'm biased because of all the time I spent playing /SR and /SD on Scrappers, but I don't find the current FoT ungainly at all.

The other drawback is that knockdowns stop enemies from running away. Stuns just make them drunk-walk away at max speed. I take them because it's damage that keeps ticking while I'm attacking, and it's a place to put a damage set. The changes here aren't adding damage to a toggle sustain, they are adding sustain to a damage toggle, which removes the option to slot a damage set while slotting for sustain. It also replaces the unique mechanic of FoT with a Cauterizing Aura clone. The only upside is that it would prevent detoggling.

Or Assault Rifle....

I haven't played all the other sets, so I can't say how it performs in comparison. Which is why I'm asking what makes it underpowered, and how these changes are supposed to fix that. The Thunderstrike change is a buff, good. But the change to Force of Thunder is a change to bring all the powersets in line by making them all the same. Elec Manipulation didn't have a reliable AoE hard control power, why give it one? Then of course it has to have the recharge increased to balance it against other sets, and you can't have a 60-second sustain in a 90-second recharge power, so it has to move. Fire manip already has a sustain in its damage aura, so why not make Lightning Field into a clone of that, bam done. Easy, balanced, but cookie-cutter and it doesn't give players any added incentive to choose Elec Manip over any other set, and doesn't really make the set any better as a blap set, unless saving 1.23 seconds in FoT-clicking time every minute really matters that much to you. Some other options would be to a) leave FoT as is, with its unreliable stun and reliable knockback, and sustain intact. (I'd consider it a buff if the knockback were changed to knockdown so I wouldn't have to waste a slot converting it, but I'm not sure I want to start that argument again) b) leave the sustain in FoT, make the stun and recharge changes, increase the sustain duration to 120 seconds, c) move the sustain to Power Sink where I think it makes thematic sense.

Also selfishly, I have Lightning Field 5-slotted with a damage set and a Fury of the Gladiator -res proc. Can't really rejigger it without losing the set bonuses. I don't have Power Sink because I don't need it, so I'd have to ditch Force of Thunder to fit it in, which isn't ideal because the KD on FoT is nice.

I don't need to test to know that if I have Force of Thunder slotted for heal and end mod, and Lightning Field slotted for sustain and Lightning Field slotted for damage, I will either have to give up some of the sustain slotting to keep the damage or give up some of the damage slotting to keep the sustain. Ergo, a nerf. Force of Thunder also gives me a PbAoE knockdown on an 18 second recharge. Increasing the recharge time is also a nerf. If Elec Manipulation is considered an underperforming set (and I'm interested in knowing the reasoning behind this) it should be receiving more buffs than nerfs, and yet the only buff I'm seeing is the one to Thunderstrike.

I always thought the logical power to put it in is Power Sink. It's thematically appropriate, doesn't cause any slotting conflicts, and would make Power Sink worth taking again.

Single target required is a non-issue, the fact that a target is required at all kind of is. Force of Thunder can be activated without a target, and it would be nice if the Dark Manip sustain could be too. But it shouldn't be in Death Shroud.

Remembering to click a power every 2 minutes is not difficult to manage. Again, converting a damage aura means players have to choose between slotting for sustain and slotting for damage. Blasters are about damage, they shouldn't have to sacrifice it for anything, certainly not because some players don't want to keep track of a click sustain. Super Reflexes Scrappers have had to deal with clickies since launch, it's not that hard, and there are plenty of sets with toggle-on-and-forget sustains for players who don't want to deal with clickies.

I'm not sure of the reasoning behind the Electric Manipulation change. It's a perfectly good Blapper set as is. Force of Thunder works nicely as soft crowd control with a KB-KD IO in it, which leaves plenty of slots for the sustain portion, leaving Lightning Field as a damage aura. The stun is meh, but that's fine. Elec Manipulation isn't a controllery secondary, it's a melee-heavy secondary, and buffs should focus on making it better at what it already does, not trying to make it do something else. I'm not a fan of balancing sets by making them more samey. If someone wants a controllery secondary, there are plenty or others to choose from. Thunderstrike did need a buff, no argument there. Long animation times are the death of blappers.

My first was an AR/Fire Blaster, which was my first mistake right there. All attacks slotted with 1 acc, 1 dam, 1 recharge, 1 end red, 1 range or cone range. Then I found the forums, what do you mean I can just slot for more damage? Oh hey, look, things are actually dying when I shoot them!

Most basic Scrapper would be MA/SR or MA/WP. One could also make a case for Street Justice. Claws/Regen is probably the most generic'd Scrapper, but most comic book examples of the archetype are natural origin, no powers, just their training and their fists. Most basic Brute I think SS/WP.

Is this a transparent attempt at reverse psychology?

Unfortunately Ctrl+Z doesn't work on storage items.

That's pretty much how it works now. The entire map is spawned when you load in. The problem is that you don't know which direction the runners will come from so you can at best clear out one or two spawns before going back to the door to wait for the next wave.

Shields can get >70% DDR with Active Defense double-stacked. It does mean it has to be more carefully managed if you've got Hasten on auto-fire, since you need to fire it off more often, but it's just one click, so.

But then as soon as your female character pulls out a weapon she starts running like a dude. That's always bugged me.

The original Crippling Axe Kick animation is so hideous that I refused to take it on my Scrapper until we got the alternate animations, even though it was a sub-optimal choice to do so. It looks like the character's leg is bending in a way that human legs are not meant to bend. Sometimes a Council dude uses it on me and I almost feel sorry for him, because that's gotta hurt, but then I don't because he's a fascist so I beat the crap out of him to distract him from his dislocated kneecap. The way the panicky civilians run will never not be hilarious.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who isn't in love with Halloweentown. It just has absolutely no connection to the rest of the game world, like why is this zone even here? Okay, it's pretty and atmospheric and all that, but it just doesn't fit. And add to this some of the mission design sins already mentioned here, as well as those "find the hostages on the giant outdoor map" missions where at least one is hiding under a bridge or behind a rock, and those animated stones that don't die when the summoner does,, it is not a well-designed zone. I get that they wanted to add a magic-themed zone that wasn't about the freaking CoT, but the execution was just meh.

I'd like to see the rest of the blue side zones get the Kings Row and Brickstown treatment. There are things going on, the NPCs are interacting with each other and the environment, it's not just random groups of bad guys standing on street corners and trying to steal purses and the occasional CoT ritual.

They can be competitive, but they're not inherently so. Meanwhile, competition is the entire point of PvP.

Except with farming the definition of success isn't "am I the fastest farmer in the game," it's "can I generate a bunch of inf fast." If someone generates inf faster than you, it doesn't change the fact that now you're sitting on a pile of inf. With soloing AVs, it doesn't matter that the TW/Bio can take down the AV faster; as long as you can take it down before you die of boredom, you're a successful AV soloer. It's not a competition. PvP is a competition, so the only measure of success is "can you defeat the other player" and if your powersets aren't good for PvP, you can't. And yes, I know it's trivial to level up and trick out a new character, but if the optimal PvP powersets don't interest me, I don't want to play them.