Techhead

I often end up using Build Up on Brute as a stopgap for when I haven't built fury yet, so it just straight up granting some fury would certainly cut to the chase for me. I guess my kneejerk suggestion for making Brute better at what it does is up the base damage scales a bit but also make fury drop off a bit faster at levels above 50%. The intent being that your high points are even higher but it's harder to reach that full throttle, you need to keep taking attacks to maintain ~80% level.

See, now I want a custom grenade animation where you wack it with the mace at people. Alas

Temporal Armor is a really fun idea, though with all the existing "X Armor" sets being res-based, "Temporal Aura" might be more suitable name for it. Could definitely come up with neat characters for it.

The best actual comparison to Focused Burst is Hurl (SS) and Boulder Hurl (Stone), two other ranged attacks in melee sets. Focused Burst has the same damage, a slightly faster animation, same 50% KD chance, but half the range and no -Fly. But as all three are somewhat maligned, maybe they all need looked at. Impale (Spines) is similar too, just replace 50% KD with 100% immob. Though funnily, I actually have heard decent things about Hurl Boulder (Stone Assault) and Hurl Boulder (Stone Mastery Epic).

I sorta did something similar with having a "cycle" of characters in different ATs with the same general power theme: Agent Brewer - Martial/Electric scrapper Agent Tanner - Electric/Martial blaster Agent Cooper - Crab spider (odd one out, also villain) Agent Porter - Pistol/Electric sentinal (I really like the pistol animatons) Agent Fowler - Electric/Martial dominator Agent Sawyer - Electric/Reflex brute I think I've covered my bases unless I come up with a defender/corrupter combo that I think fits, but we'll see

The different power siphon stacks are also not equal, they have differing strengths AND durations. Which does help out the slower abilities but it's so complex if trying to optimize an attack chain.

IDK if it works for damage focused sets like melee or assault are, but I can definitely see it for affinity or manipulation, maybe control but I have no ideas for the T9 which is almost always a pet (Mind Control being the exception). Defense... it definitely fits in theme but would need work to keep it mechanically distinct from Super Reflexes

I think minor PBAOE might actually make Power Siphon worse if it keeps you from moving while casting it, and IDK if it'd be kosher to do it otherwise, there's no click attack power I can think of that doesn't root you

I've been playing a bit of a Dark/Kinetic Tanker recently and leveling it up (currently at 42), I honestly think the set is pretty fun, *including* power siphon b/c it gives such a sustained buff. The animation times are long but I don't know if animation tweaks are on the table or not, if not it might be more worth upping the juice of the slower powers. Also the animations are really really cool Personal feel good rating for all the powers on tanker: - Body Blow: Solid baseline strike - Quick Strike: Feels amazingly snappy, esp with the 0.5s effect time - Smashing Blow: Solid heavy strike - Taunt: It's Taunt - Repulsing Torrent: It's actually very fun, it has such a huge area with tanker inherent. W/o KBTKD it's a "shove 80% of a pack into the wall" power, useful but niche, with that enhancement you can use it way more often without feeling guilty - Power Siphon: The sustained damage boost instead of a quick 10s one is a neat niche, yes it's a long animation but you can use it while advancing towards a pack or waiting for pulled mobs to approach, so it's workable. The damage debuff per attack (varies, but Body Blow is -7% per 5s) is a neat perk but not major - Burst: A little slow, otherwise a solid PBAOE melee strike - Focused Burst: Underwhelming damage, coinflip knockdown, and middling range for a single-target button - Concentrated Strike: Cool when it lands, decent but not exceptional damage for the animation time, if in a team I've wasted that time because he's usually dead already Recommendations? FBurst and CStrike could hit a little harder, maybe as a capstone the latter could have guaranteed mez like MA's Eagle Claw does. I wouldn't even object if it went to a higher cooldown in exchange. Power Siphon could maybe get a numbers buff too but I actually dunno if it really needs it

TBH, I'd personal love a stretchy punching set for Blasters, Sentinels, etc, but the issue w/ a lot of power set concepts is that Homecoming doesn't have an animator on the dev team, so it's had to make do with recycling animations. Stretchy arms (and legs?), assuming the engine could handle it, would *absolutely* need new animations.

Darkness Affinity (Con) and Dark Miasma (Def/Cor/MM) are almost the same power set, they share 7 out of 9 powers, that's less variance than the stalker version of melee sets. I think combining the two names it's actually the only place I'm in favor of renaming a set.

Really enjoyed your guides to the different primaries, and the one to TA is especially helpful for me. I was wondering if you had recs of other secondaries you can take with it to take besides Fire Blast, and/or useful pool powers

AIUI fly poses were experimented with during live but they didn't work quite right and were removed. Emotes to activate those poses still exist via slash commands but they're otherwise inaccessible.

Yeah I really dig this design of making the melee modular, possibly also make it melee primary, pet/armor secondary, and instead of MM's spread of 3 ranged, 3 summon, 2 upgrade, and 1 steroid, it loses one of the pet-focused power slots (the steroid at MM's T7?) to have a non-toggle defensive button, like a drain or AOE heal or a placate+stealth.

If full customization is a no-go, I wonder if recolorable presets are an option. Each power can pick between a few models, eg. Mercenaries's Soldier power might have Standard, Camoflage, and Arachnos models and the two color widget affects the color of their uniform. Robots can have a Clockwork set, Ninjas can have recolorable clothing, etc. It's not the full free-form but would at least allow more cohesion and color-coordination with your mastermind's own costume