Psi-bolt

I agree with you and I think if they did finally address procs in some way that they would have to change the ATs with very lower damage modifiers like Controllers. Probably other changes too but increasing their ranged/melee modifier would be a minimum.

We don’t want people leaving large spawns wandering around Atlas because they forgot to dial down their settings.

I’m not sure what your point is, we appear to agree. We’re saying the same thing, that pylon testing is inadequate. When you say that players who are capable of interpreting these tests know that, they sure as heck don’t act like it from what I have seen. As I said, using this one metric is at worst manipulative. Beating on a single target with a hyper optimized attack chain doesn’t provide much information of value in my opinion. I have a personal benchmark that I use when I compare sets, it has both qualitative and quantitative elements to it. For those who value damage over all, it wouldn’t be helpful. I tend to prefer testing actual content. I don’t claim that my view should guide decisions. But those who spent 20 pages complaining about Rage did.

A perfect encapsulation of why comparing sets via pylon testing is at best inadequate and at worst manipulative. That’s not the game we’re actually playing.

I thought I was clear that the point was exactly that. Rage was being made a worse choice than UM except that Rage provided better offensive buffs with a big downside. The only people who still were expected to take Rage were those that value damage over any other consideration. I hate the crash just like you do, but which was why I was going to respec out of Rage on my SS Tanker and pick up UM. I tank with my Tank and so the Blasters/Scrapper and other damage dealers can do the killing. I think the difference is that I really don’t care where SS with Rage sat via a vis the other sets. So it’s in the middle or worse? Maybe Tanker SS is the absolute worst performing set with UM. It wouldn’t bother me in the least. I’ve been playing this game since 2004. I’m not in a rush to get rewards.

It was always clear that Instant Healing was being effectively deprecated in favor of Reactive Regeneration. IH wasn’t intended to be a valid choice any longer. They just didn’t want to force a respec or take away a tool if people still wanted to use it for whatever reason. So as it would have been with Rage. EXCEPT, there are some folks so incredibly addicted to damage (to be fair the game’s reward system enables them) that they wouldn’t give up Rage AND were annoyed that there was a new toy for others who were willing to trade some optimal damage for consistency.

I really don’t see why they didn’t revert the Rage changes and keep Unleashed Might. It was such a good change.

Please reconsider adding Unleashed Might. This very long thread has mostly been people complaining about Rage (and mostly not the changes on test). Let UM go live and then take your time with Rage.

That would be fine with the daily limit. But again I don’t think that meets the goals that you set. People will absolutely still be broke at 50. They just have a few extra merits.

That was by design since TFs are team content (although the Homecoming devs made them all soloable). On that point.... No there weren't a lot of complaints, because Task Forces were still better and story arcs generally aren't run constantly for merits because that's not anywhere near the most efficient way to earn merits generally. That would be fine but then it doesn't even nearly address your concern. Neither would it if it were 5 merits per day. Think about this. Let's say they did 5 merits with the same lockout that TFs have (i.e. 2 merits if the same mission is done in the next 20 hours.) If we also restrict this so that you can't use the missions you get from the repeatable contacts so people have to do the newspapers/radios, then you're earning less than 10 a day. What's the point? How is that support you goal? Players are still better off running that one Yin and its 4 missions for 20 merits per day. As you said, people are doing Newspaper/Radio missions now. They get drops and influence from that. Frankly if they knew how to leverage the drops they get from missions they wouldn't be broke. Your idea as written in the OP would be too much. If we layer on restrictions to make it reasonable, then it has a problem of not even meeting the goals you announce. If your real goal is to help players learn how to make enough to gear up at level 50 the best thing we can do is create a pop-up that a brand new player sees when logging in that says,

Regen has ~19% resists (16% for Brutes) to all from Resilience. They actually lose all their passive resistance from this change. So you just leave Regen alone! 😡

Newspaper/Radio missions were explicitly added to be filler content for when you didn’t have a lot of time to play or needed some exp to get to the next level range for the story content. They aren’t and never were designed to be the primary way for people to advance in the game. Sure, you can. But that’s not optimal and should absolutely remain so. I’m going to use the same argument that you are. Our innocent newer players should be funneled into the better content. For example, if you just follow the contacts in Atlas, you get a really well done story and an introduction to the zone story for King’s Row which is similarly well done. I think providing more rewards for what is intended to be filler content is bad for the game because it pulls players away from the rich lore and story. Look we can’t make people play the game the way we think they should. I get that. But I sure as heck don’t want to encourage players to confine themselves to procedurally generated missions when books worth of good stories are in the game.

Given how easy Bank/Safeguard missions are to finish, I don't think this is the right way to resolve the OP's concern. I don't even think it would be that helpful. If newer players are so clueless (and I say that in the kindest way possible) that they level from 1-50 doing primarily paper/radios then they will likely not understand how to leverage those merits even if they got them. The folks who level on papers/radios primarily need to learn that there's more to the game. As the OP notes there are many ways to earn merits and influence, we just need new players to not take the path of least resistance and learn about them. Just one small example is the Penny Yin TF. This very quick, easy TF can be run everyday for 20 merits. Pretty low time investment and better than wasting time on radio missions. In one week the player could have enough merits to earn 20+ million influence. There are so many ways to earn money in this game besides this.

I want to focus on just the underlined qualifier. In the general case, a power with a detriment like a crash should provide more benefit than a power that doesn't have that. Clicks in general should be more potent than toggles as well. However, in this specific case, when Rage's benefit is more damage and UM's is ease of use, no crash and the Hand Clap changes, it's not that clear. Damage is the single most valuable attribute to most players. The game incentivizes causing more damage over just about any other activity. Thus in those cases, I think it's perfectly acceptable for the power that provides more damage to also provide less benefit elsewhere. We see this in other parts of the game as well. The Alpha Slot Musculature gives only very minor other benefits other than damage. The Core path, for example, only gives Immobilize and Defense debuff enhancement. These are attributes that few slot for. The goal of going Musculature is that sweet 45% damage enhancement. Compare that to Nerve Core which give Accuracy, Hold and Defense. For many folks that offers a means to improve both your attacks and other powers that benefit much more from further enhancement. Still I see many people choose Musculature because damage is the king. Likewise here, Rage beats UM in To-hit and Damage. By a reasonable amount, especially if double stacked. Which is why we have this 18 page (as of this post) thread with people bargaining to lessen Rage's drawbacks. Despite UM being a good option, they want that extra damage.

It’s a Christmas miracle (probably just a break) it’s gone on this long. We’re way beyond discussing the specific changes on beta.

That’s a really interesting idea. The number on the debuff would have to be big like the -damage number so you can’t just buff through it. But I think that would be a better crash.

It’s irrelevant to the changes on the test server. Rage has a crash now and will if this change goes through. I’m not a fan of Rage’s crash, but I’m also OK with UM. I think it’s telling that folks aren’t really making suggestions around making UM better.

That’s irrelevant, Rage’s offensive effects aren’t being changed.

I’m not sure this thread ever had it. I don’t really think Rage is being changed because it’s overpowered. I think that the devs are trying to address players who really don’t know how to build their characters and so they want to minimize the potential effect of poor choices. For folks that don’t hyper optimize for damage, UM will be fine. For those that do and know how to build their characters they already know how to mitigate the crash. I genuinely believe that the crash serves a valuable purpose of funneling people into UM. As we all know by now, the original devs never expected players to be so focused on min-maxing. The biggest balance change in this game’s history was intended to constrain optimized builds. I really see this patch being a gentler means of doing the same thing. Rage isn’t going away. It isn’t significantly worse than it is pre-change. People can still have their proc monster, super damage builds. There’s just an alternative that is really good. BUT you have to give up your optimized for damage build. I just can’t see this as problematic.

This is a very good point. For most +4 content, my tanks are functionally immortal. Going from that to merely very durable isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Yeah, while I find this thread fascinating, I really don't get all this consternation over this change. Not just the crash changes but the reaction to UM and its benefits being restricted to using it.

Speaking for myself, I would be good with that. Fluid, fast animations are their own reward in how they make a set feel.

I have to say that after playing today on a Spines/Invul, this is the only thing I would really want. Really I would just love Focus's cast time, but that's actually greedy.

So trying this out, the KB is still rather large. Any chance this could get dialed back to .67? I'm guessing not with the name of the power, but as it stands it's still a skip for me. The other changes felt really good.

For my part, I would prefer that you leave Sentinels alone. I think having Master Brawler add mez protection to Focused Fighting (FF) and Senses (FS) was great, I just think that you needed to have that made clear in the description of Master Brawler and FF/FS. This will be a straight nerf to Sentinel SR. I haven't had much feedback because while I have a 50 Beam/SR Sentinel, I don't play them regularly so I'm fine if you think that balance requires this change. But if there's a choice to just not change Sentinel SR, that would be my preference. I also think if you add the following to the description of Master Brawler people would understand what's going on better: Added language in underlined/bold. Off topic for this thread, but I GREATLY recommend that you do provide more explanation for Unleashed Might as well.