Psi-bolt

Just started testing this implementation. All the changes are much appreciated. Only got through 1.5 missions before the server went down again, but Attune felt much smoother to use. I think the cast time reduction is really important to the feel. I am starting to think that the folks who are suggesting that the Damage and Recharge of some of the powers need to increase are correct. Even without Hasten (or a lot of global recharge) the T1 and T2 are recharged before I can even cast the other powers. I'm wondering if this is the reason that the overall DPS seems lower.

Sure; full proliferation please.

The thing about Fire/Ice Blast and other top tier sets is that they get that performance very easily. Personally, I don't have any problem with sets having mechanics or unique features. But those sets should provide a benefit for the additional fiddling. That benefit doesn't necessarily have to be DPS, but it should be something. Otherwise, the only reason to play a set is thematic. Which is not a bad reason, of course, but it does limit its use. So for example, since Attune is intended to juice your ST damage against hard target (hard as in high health), then Attune should in theory provide a slightly better benefit than a set that doesn't require a toggle DoT to improve its damage. That just seems sensible IMO. Now Attune isn't that hard to set up and Captain Powerhouse has made it much better to use while this has been on Open Beta. So while I think there should be benefit to having to use Attune compared to other sets, it doesn't need to be massive.

No, it can proc periodically while Attune is active on an enemy. Considering it's very low recharge, I think you either use three procs and a combination of Acc/Dam/End for the remaining slots or just the Acc/Dam/End. I'm just not sure that most enemies will survive long enough to make the procs worth it. It's worked fine for pylons and stuff like that, but I think it might wind up a waste in live play. I'm not the best at building for extreme DPS, so take that for what you will.

Back in 2004, I started a Storm Defender without carefully reading the descriptions and realized very quickly that some of the powers couldn't be used on my character. Within 20 minutes I was playing a Regen Scrapper and never looked back. I think it's fine to want to see changes, if those changes make sense. Personally, as I discussed earlier in the thread, I think there would be no harm in doing this, but I also don't think there would be anywhere near as much of a benefit as some folks think.

Tested this implementation today. Did it the same way I did all other tests, leveled some low level content and then high level content. Attune is fine at low levels for dispatching Lts and Bosses more quickly. On the Sonic/Regen Brute I made to test this implementation, I found that it was just quicker and easier to avoid using Attune against minions. This is all solo. In groups where large groups of enemies are defeated very quickly, I do wonder what the purpose of using it at all will be. At high levels, I suppose that it does what it's intended to do. Against, EBs, Archvillains, pylons, etc. it seems to me to be a nice booster to your ST damage. I'm not the best at building for very high DPS but I could definitely see a difference from using it. I regret that I won't be able to test it in the way I normally play. I mostly play in Task Forces and I suspect that I will not find much use for Attune there because outside of Archvillains/Monsters, everything else tends to die quickly when the whole team is focused on it. To be honest, it feels bad to play the set. I hate saying that because I enjoy the AoE on the set and I like how it feels otherwise. I suspect like many new sets, I will power one to 50, then it will mostly be abandoned for the legacy sets. As I said earlier in the thread, I understand the idea. I understand that the developers don't want to create the same set over and over again. But an enemy targeted toggle is always only going to be useful in limited circumstances. As we've been testing this set I've been thinking about where else in the game we have enemy targeted toggles. Before Sonic, these are mostly in the buff/debuff sets. Even there I find myself only using those powers when you're dealing with bosses and above. That's more in keeping with those ATs playstyle though. With Defenders/Corruptors these powers aren't part of their basic attack chain. With melees I feel like the set is just having its damage potential held hostage in service of making the set different.

IIRC, Defenders are at .65 ranged damage Scale damage and Sentinels are at .95.

But you know you're still a Defender with the crappy damage to match. AND you have to cast most of these powers to keep them up. And your health is still much lower meaning you could get one-shot (or quickly taken down) through all that pretty easily. My guess is that if this were to happen, that Empathy would be the last set people would start soloing. Now as to Force Field. Really the only thing that would change would be that the Defender would get an extra 23.4% defense to all. They already get the mez protection (ADD SLEEP PROTECTION DEVS) and 15.6% of the defense. If we made the bubbles, which are AoE already affect the caster, I just don't see how that would be so broken. Again, you're still a Defender with the damage and that SR should be doing significantly more damage than you. They also have more health, which matters a lot more than most folks give it credit for. I was just doing an Market Crash and nearly got one-shot multiple times by Tank Smasher even though I'm at the soft-cap for defense on my FF/Elec Defender. Finally, you would still have to cast two powers on a 4 minute cycle, although this would be significantly easier than the Empath. I really don't care at this point whether they devs did this or not. But I don't think it would be unbalanced. The necessity to cast all those powers as an Empath would be annoying as hell, and you wouldn't be anymore of a tank mage than you can create now with IO sets. I know the whole canard about "balance is based on SOs," but that's just not true. There's no way that any competent developer isn't considering the multitude of options that exist outside of SO enhancers.

Probably that it was a much slower game to level in so they wanted to have a progression. But I agree with the OP. It would be nice if the minimum level for all IO sets were 7 to match common IOs. It would also be nice if all set IOs scaled to 50.

Seeing everyone's distribution made me want to see where I stood. I have 54, level 50s. I made it a goal to get one of every AT, but I found that since then I have never even contemplated playing a Dominator, Kheldian or Mastermind. I find myself a bit surprised that Sentinels came out on top even though I like the AT. Archetype 50s Tanker 7 Defender 3 Controller 4 Scrapper 6 Blaster 5 Peacebringer 1 Warshade 1 Brutes 3 Corruptors 3 Masterminds 1 Dominators 1 Stalkers 6 Soldier of Arachnos 5 Sentinels 8

I was much more into Scrappers on live, but the changes to Tankers here on Homecoming pushed me more towards that AT. I still think Scrappers are neat but they feel more like soloist and I mostly play in teams these days.

Captain, I really like this set. But Attune as a targeted toggle is really confusing and just doesn't seem to fit melee types very well. I recognize that you all want to do something different and not have the same set with different fx. But could Attune be a self targeted damage aura/resist debuff that causes damage when you use the other Sonic Melee powers? It could even be stronger based on the power, so that the idea of using the T1 & T2 are maintained. So it would work similarly to Disruption Field in Sonic Resonance. Give a small (10% or so) resist debuff to foes in melee range, a small DoT (say maybe half the damage of Quills) and then cause bonus damage when you use the Thrust and Strident. I really like the power as a click, but I understand that the implementation isn't working.

I have two characters who are logged out in Kallisti Wharf. The game locks up when I try to enter the game with either. Game loads up fine for other characters. I also created a new character and took the tram to Kallisti since I saw a dev post about the zone needing to load up the first time and it working better from using the tram. That character is now stuck with the server saying he's trying to log out and then kicking me.

Scrapper version does appear correct for Attune in the sense of it being a click, but Attune's availability is level 2 as if it were still a Tier 3 power. Strident's is still available at level 1.

In the first mission the boss hero says this line: Oh, yeah? Well, that's good, but I already knew that you guy's [not a possessive] weren't Nemesis fakes. About since you walked in the room actually... I just needed a good enough reason that would get you guys to [add] take me seriously in a fight! There's just a couple of line edits that are flagged above. First that it should say guys, not the possessive guy's. Second that you should add the preposition "to" where stated.