CrusaderDroid

Hrm. A lot of effort went into this, which makes me feel bad when I say this is probably not a great idea. I imagine the goal here is to fit the whole set into a qualifying power. Reasonable enough on the surface, but since you're picking out sets based on what an archetype doesn't get on average, the powers that qualify are very limited. Let's start with this one, for instance. Blaster primary sets that can slot healing include: Dark Blast Water Blast That's it. Every secondary a Blaster gets has a power that can slot healing/absorb. No problem, right? ...well, no, big problem. Preventative Medicine wants 6 slots for its +recharge bonus, and Panacea wants 5 slots for its +recharge bonus, and both of those have procs that are indispensable to staying alive and fighting. This poor set is trying to complete with global recharge set bonuses and two procs that give a hefty boost to self-sustain. It doesn't have a prayer. The only way to make room for it is to take a pool power that can slot Healing/Absorb. There's a few options (Sorcery, Medicine), but they're still eating a pool choice as well as one of your powers as well as up to 4 of your slots. Realistically, what happens here is that a Blaster five-slotting Panacea just adds an extra slot on Health, slots Healing/Ranged Defense, and calls it a day. Which is still better than what you're dangling for poor Controller over here. Primary powers that can slot Melee AoE Damage: Darkness Control Fire Control Yeesh. Unlike Blaster, Controller has even worse options for secondaries that can slot this: Poison Traps And unlike Healing, Melee AoE Damage is a much harder pick for pool powers. You're limited to Cross Punch and Spring Attack. Ancillary/patron picks that get you a PBAoE would be Leviathan, Soul, Fire, and Psionic. The only good news is there's no competition for other sets there. The bad news is that the most likely pick - Cross Punch - has about a 27% chance of triggering a 2 PPM proc. The worse news is the hilariously degenerate proc rate of Spring Attack - since its base recharge is 120 seconds, it has a 90% chance of triggering a 2 PPM proc. You'd get a new meta, but it would be Spring Attack + Burnout to rapidly fire off 3 copies of the same mez. I'm not sure this is desirable. You also would just two-slot this because what the hell, 2 slots for +global recharge? Who cares about Toxic/Psi defense? Skipping ahead a bit more since these things are surprisingly exhausting to research: Correct me if I'm wrong, but literally none of Mastermind's possible powers can even slot this. You are forced to take Presence to have something to slot, and even then - what are you trying to accomplish here? The set bonuses don't affect your pets, and you're not taking Provoke in Presence just to slot it for a 25% chance to do a little damage. This is a bad deal no matter how you slice it. I could go on with the other sets, but I get the feeling the issues will be the same: You have to really go out of your way to slot these on your character. Most power sets literally can't slot the set that's locked to their AT. The set bonuses aren't so critical that you MUST slot these things. Most of the time you just take the unique enhancement and call it a day. In most cases, having to single out a specific power pick makes your build notably weaker. The overall effect of most of these doesn't offset the opportunity cost in power picks just to be able to slot them. The "unique" enhancements sometimes double up in effect, making them significantly less appealing, e.g. negative energy on taunts, which already has Perfect Zinger, and -res on immobilize, when Achilles' Heel is easier to place. The double Burnout on Controllers is cracked as hell. What really hurts is I don't think there's a way to fix this. A lot of these are fundamental to how you chose to go about this, and I can't really find myself agreeing with the core idea of "let's lock a bunch of power behind enhancement sets that the AT can't actually access in a meaningful way". New enhancements with new effects would be neat. New enhancements that can't even be used without picking some frankly bizarre choices in pool powers or ancillary powers is not quite as neat. I hope you're not discouraged by this, though. I'd suggest looking at builds people use and seeing what they slot and why before revisiting enhancements. It helps a bunch to know the competition for new enhancements and what people may want in a build - especially with the stuff I highlighted.

I wonder if it's better as a pool power set, personally. The theme is fun! Use low-level gadgetry to fight crime! Double points for giving us the single pistol. Mechanically it's weird. Fast recharge times are worse for damage for Defenders because you can't trigger procs as reliably, and your scalars as a Defender are pretty bad all around for damage. There's a grab bag of effects, but the high value picks are either very late (-Res) or absent (no -regen), and while it has four mez powers, two of them are only a chance for that mez, one is a sleep, and one is the much-maligned knockback that demands Overwhelming Force or Force Feedback to convert to knockdown. It wouldn't be bottom tier, since you could stack the -to-hit from Pepper Spray and Bottle Rocket to bottom out enemies' to-hit chances. That isn't particularly exciting though - it's harder to notice enemies missing you than you plowing through enemies. The rest of the powers besides Isotope Dart are tricky since they don't have a really powerful effect to go with them, and as a Defender-locked set there's no hope of getting good base damage out of them. I think the grab bag nature is working against you here - too many powers have only one trick they're doing, so if that trick isn't good, it's dead in the water. Taser, for instance, you skip every time - a chance for (presumably) low-mag, low duration stun isn't worth it when Saturday Night Special can carry Achilles' Heel. Mini-Grenade isn't going to have the damage you want by itself, but it doesn't have any other effects to fit any procs to bring it up, and fast recharge times combined with the penalty to AoE proc rates based on their area of effect means that even if it could proc, it wouldn't do so reliably. IED may not even be worth it at this stage compared to taking Sorcery and running with its offensive powers. My personal recommendation is to be more bold with what effects you're assigning. If this is Defender-locked, you can get away with more utility power than if Blasters could use it. Capitalize on that and add more effects together. As one thing I'd do myself: I'd swap the position of Saturday Night Special and Pepper Spray, then bump up the recharge of Saturday Night Special and give it -DMG as well. -defense by itself isn't super exciting, but this would let SNS proc better and feel better since it's also hitting their damage. Bigger recharge also gives room for higher base damage. (It's -DMG because being shot in the arm really hurts.) I do wish we'd get more power set concepts like this though. They're really fun to read and review. Please keep up the good work.

...yes. That is what I said. My complaint is when it's barely better than a /jranger. You've got all the time in a world for a forum post, and it's much easier to search up posts and digest arguments on forums than on Discord. It's in everyone's best interests to take that time, no matter what your stance is, to go ahead and explain your position in detail either way. Lively discussion and new information being shared is preferable to a thumbs down and a flat no.

If you post on this forum with an idea you think would be a good idea (and of course it would be to you, that's why you post), and the first and most immediate reaction you get is a thumbs down and a brief one-liner half-mocking your idea, how likely are you to try again? What would you think of anyone that did that to you? More relevant to your job: would you want to encourage that kind of forum behavior? Where instead of discussion and learning, you get rejection? It's not a matter of people being contrarians, it's a matter of people not elaborating and rejecting threads outright. That's not something that someone that posts a thread wants to hear, and they're not obliged to put up with that kind of behavior. That means we lose that poster when they quite rightfully decide this isn't worth it. That's not a sustainable cycle - driving off both old and new posters, coupled with plain old attrition over time is how you get closer to a dead forum. I'll live with everyone disagreeing with me. The thread's now got more to work with than "nukes kill everything". That's better than it was before I posted even with me looking like a fool. If people are supposed to be excellent to each other, they should be taking the time to show why an idea isn't good so that the poster can be enlightened and possibly revise their original idea. I don't know what in the world your goal is as a moderator, but I'd start there if you wanted people to be excellent to each other. Disagreeing is fine and healthy - hugboxes are contemptible - but there has to be teaching and discussion in that disagreement.

Short version: Actually yes. Long version: This is a fallacy. The inability to achieve a perfect state does not preclude the ability to work closer to that state. It is entirely possible to work towards learning how other people work and what other players might enjoy and take that into account. It's a skill that takes practice - not the kind of practice you get by saying no to everything, but the practice you get by making stuff of your own, seeing what people like, observing what other people like, and adapting accordingly. This is not the noble pursuit you think it is. You're treating every single thread as an invader at the gates instead of a person to talk to and learn about and maybe even teach. The other players that feel the same way can speak for themselves if they're so inclined - e.g. Greycat. This entire attempt at an argument catastrophically contradicts your earlier argument of "nukes and Judgments clear everything", which was your original impetus for saying no. Sure. All of this can be up for discussion. It's a completely fair point - there's at least one AT that gets screwed by a reckless implementation. But we can't have a discussion over that if the whole thing is dismissed out of hand like what you just attempted to do with your first post. We can't discuss tuning damage numbers or spawn numbers or level differences or to-hit modifiers or whether the 1 HP suggested should literally be 1 HP or literally anything in the face of /jranger. And we know the game can support this because you already mentioned the other Underling-type enemies that do spawn - not even mission-unique ones either. And if you led with something like this, we'd be cool! This is a good place for further discussion! We go from "vague idea" to "more concrete, possible take of said idea" - very logical discussion progression. We can start having a discussion around the idea of swapping out a few minions for twice as many underlings, or whatever else you or anyone else may like. But we can't have a discussion from this. If this is all you are going to bring to a thread, don't post. Nobody wins - no discussion, nobody learns anything, nobody has fun. Lead with "maybe 2:1 for minions but I'm not really sure since it might mess up control ATs", and everyone wins - you voice your concerns, OP gets more to think about. You might be limited to your own experience, but that doesn't stop you from going out and learning how other people play and experience the game and factoring that into your own opinion accordingly. Oh, great. It's not as bad as Rudra was describing then. I'm relieved - more ATs can clear large groups than Blasters and maybe Sentinels. As a DM, my go-to favorite tactic in most D&D battles is swarms of weak enemies. I like seeing the delight in my players when they throw out a big attack or spell that wipes out mobs of enemies. At the same time, swarms can be dangerous enough in their own right that it forces players to course correct if they don't want to be caught out in a bad spot. I don't think "visual spam" is the only end goal here. It can be an opportunity to show off certain powers, it can be a tool to drive tension, it can be a neat way of saying "the enemies are not your goal, hurry and leave the mission". It's just adding another thing to be used in missions - whether that's good or bad is a matter of implementation, and we've already seen that it has been implemented. And hey. That's fine and reasonable. I think that's a valid concern that should be addressed by the OP. It's also a much different concern from "everything dies from nukes and Judgments", which is also important. If you're not supposed to feel super, you're probably playing the wrong game. Mercifully we are spoiled for choice on MMOs where being super is not inherently a design objective. Given that story arcs are probably easier to do solo than with a team, what with people waiting on you to hurry up and read or getting desynced if they're following along, it's possible to end up with that single-player experience in this context.

Heartily recommend you stop posting in this forum if the only lens you can evaluate anything through is your own personal experience when you play the game. The game is for everyone, not just you. Especially when you're this off-base. By definition, due to target caps, a single player can't clear everything in one shot, especially in pre-incarnate content where Judgments are disabled and especially if they're using an AT that doesn't even get any big AoE attack and especially if they're melee and can't even launch their big AoE attacks without first getting into enemy range. That would inherently make a swarm of enemies threatening if they can do normal damage - even if you can one shot them, that's still a bunch of attacks they get in first. The vast majority of missions take place outside of incarnate content. The only ATs with big (PB)AoE nukes that can wipe those spawns are Blasters and Sentinels, leaving the entire rest of the cast in the lurch. This is actually an argument in favor of the OP, not against. There's clearly design space for more Underling-type enemies in missions. An expansion of the idea to include more swarm-y type enemies for verisimilitude in missions without having to set the difficulty to x8 isn't going to hurt anyone by itself.

Maybe instead of saying no to everything, you ask and make sure you know what the suggestion actually is? From my reading, it looks like instead of replacing any type of enemy, it's just adding more enemies to certain missions that are still dangerous but easy to defeat, mostly to ratchet up tension. You keep the few ghouls because there's no reason to remove anything, and you add the swarm so it feels like a horde without having to set the difficulty to x8. I'm not seeing how this is a negative myself, accordingly, especially when they don't even need to grant experience.

Wonder what the logistics would be like if you were to grant a temporary power when you get an escort that lets you teleport the escort to your location. I'm not convinced bypassing the "challenge" of an escort means anything to anyone, so that would let you skip a lot of hassle. If it's granted to the entire team, your doorsitter can grab them for you. It could be disabled on anything where the escort does matter, e.g. incarnate trials.

I like this a lot. It's definitely much better than just settling for Speed's meager options. I like the -end component of Velocity, but is it adding a chance for disorient to all attacks, or boosting what's already there? If it's adding a disorient chance, what's the magnitude and duration you have in mind? I'm a little wary that with the wrong numbers, you can have a really goofy CC lock by spamming T1 and T2 to pile on enough combined magnitude that even EBs get stunned. At the same time, it's kinda pointless if the only things you can reliably stun are minions about to get chumped. I do like that Zip refreshes its own cooldown when used at 5+ stacks. Very cool. It gets weird, though, since Mach Punch is also in the same niche, so you kinda need to choose between the two...buuuuuut since all ST melee powers can carry at least 3 procs, realistically you use Zip for the Achilles Heel -res proc and Mach Punch doesn't get to play unless its numbers are seriously cracked enough that it can put out more damage than 2x Zip with all its procs. Tornado Hand is an odd choice. I guess having a skippable power is okay. You might want -fly on it since it isn't really doing anything unique by itself. There's no PBAoE attack on the set, which seems like a pretty glaring absence when you've got the whole "run fast to create whirlwind" speedster trick. If you wanted to include it, Tornado Hand and Mach Punch look like the easiest ones to swap out. It's a really cool set overall - I'd definitely use it myself if it was added. I would especially like the burst damage from using Zip twice in a row as well as the chain hits from Pinball if I can keep the stacks going between fights. I could live without the stun chance on Velocity - if it got swapped for literally any other bonus beyond CC, I wouldn't mind. Keep up the good work!

Because it technically does. I don't like it either, I think there's a bunch of untapped potential, but I'm getting ahead of the common line other people will throw out. No accounting for taste. If you load it up with KB, as OP had initially floated, then yes, the KB set gets compared to the KB set, which is why I posted an alternative. Because I disagreed with the original premise. So I suggested an alternative. In significantly more detail than you, addressing why something may not work. Change your signature or stop posting. It's embarrassing to see this quality of post with that signature.

I just said it shouldn't be KB and you're...disagreeing it shouldn't be KB? Please read the post before you react and reply.

So realistically you'll just get told "play Gravity Control", and Gravity Control gets you most of the way there already. That said, a Telekinetic Blast T9 power that is dropping half a parking garage worth of cars on top of an area is hilarious, and I think there's a way to make it work that's meaningfully different from the existing psi sets. At the very least, the animations would be flashy, and flashy animations are like half the reason to play a set. Having a bunch of knockback is pretty bad though. You'll just end up being compared to Energy Blast - bad spot to be in, not just because knockback in general is bad for teams with melee but because getting in a direct comparison makes it easier for one to overshadow the other. If we aren't interested in making new gimmick effects, we could have every power apply varying magnitudes of holds or immobilizes - such that eventually you'll trap an enemy under a pile of debris. That seems pretty fun to try out.

Make your own server. Invite the crew. Create the voice channel. Set it to Push-To-Talk Only. Solved forever!

Derp, am bad and forgot this. Disregard me and take the +1 without reservation.

I guess my issue is that even with the proposed changes, this just leaves Seismic Blast in a rather generic spot. Seismic Blast's secondary effects of choice are generally the dull -def and the occasional -fly, neither of which are huge deals. I think a more comprehensive fix would give at least something unique and cool to the set on its effects beyond just damage. That doesn't make these changes bad. They're sorely needed IMO - you can carry the meh-tier rider effects with good numbers, but these powers don't have good numbers. I think this is a great first step to get Seismic Blast out of the bottom. +1.

Look, if for any reason you think keeping players away from the glory of recreating Dr. McNinja is admirable, just quit game design altogether. Look at this. How do you say no to chainsaw nunchuks?

We already have Super Reflexes, it's not like Ninjitsu is crossing the Rubicon here. +1.

The fantasy kinda falls apart when your Phantom Army starts firing their Blaster powers and pulling out ice swords. It's okay to ask for powersets that don't map cleanly to existing sets, but still cover very common themes in superhero fiction.

I mean, sure, that's one way to do it. Clone Melee seems like a more practical mechanical application of the idea though, to get away from MM's weird powerset rules without giving up on the normal clone fantasy of "let's all beat this guy up together". Also means you aren't stuck trying to make 3-6 different pets that are all stuck with the same powerset as you. I might put together something for that later, dunno.

Ooh. I didn't think about the endurance drain angle. That's pretty good too. I think it's very possible to use the existing mechanics to bump up enemies and make more than just raw damage good at all points of the game. If the need arose for new mechanics, it could be that repeated mezzes slowly build up a long-duration increase to mez protection and/or resistance, such that the weaker mezzes non-control sets get start to fall off and become ineffective. That in turn can help keep Controllers and Dominators relevant in fights against tough enemies since they can crank up their magnitude better and keep enemies mezzed where everyone else can't. I guess the problem there is how many fights outside of AVs can realistically require that, and I don't have a good answer.

Given my recent thoughts, I have to express my support for this idea. The one snag here is that this needs to be in tandem with changes to enemy mez protection and resistance. If you can't mez a boss enemy with your current tools, even for a bit, you have no way of interacting with this system and it's just "everyone that matters is universally tougher". For this to flourish, you'd need to reduce mez protection and increase mez resistance such that you can successfully inflict a mez on key targets, even if it's only a short time. I guess you could also do a big retool of all mezzes so they're layered with multiple magnitudes of decreasing duration, but that gets weird and doesn't help the non-control sets that happen to have mezzes.

Not quite the same. The Souls series of games (which are not comparable in difficulty to Armored Core, their other big and very good series) have significantly more decision points and deliberately play up slow animations to make you think more about when and how you attack and defend. You're always able to access all the base controls out of the gate and can theoretically win with just that. City of Heroes can't accommodate that. I'm not sure you can even get that style of play in an MMO. You definitely couldn't in the design philosophies of that year, which were more heavily focused on socialization and the grind to keep players hooked, playing, and paying. With City of Heroes, you don't have the tools that a Souls game gives you to beat anything at any state just by playing properly. Dying over and over with the knowledge that yes, it's possible, you just need to tighten up your timing and learn the pattern? Yeah. That can be fun. Dying over and over because you can only push a few buttons and your hero can't land any attacks because a random number says so, while they get crushed as attacks hit you from seemingly everywhere even while you move? Not fun. There's nothing inherently wrong with the City of Heroes gameplay loop, but it does mean that certain outcomes that are okay in other games are not acceptable here. All this to say: Jack was wrong and it's good that the game moved away from it.

It will, but in a very boring way that pushes things further towards "kill everything right now" - and possibly not even in a way that scales up well. If your team can clear out all the things you can mez without your mez, increased damage against mezzed targets isn't going to move the needle. The fix has to be enemy-side, not player-side. Player tools are good, they're just in the wrong game system to flourish. Once you make it easier to inflict any mez at all, and combine it with reasons to mez (like, say, amped up Tanker auras that significantly slow down kill times or pose scaling damage threats that also get suppressed when mezzed), you'll start seeing control be more popular.

Controllers and Dominators would be more relevant if enemies had less mez protection outright and more mez resistance so at least some CC would get through, coupled with either very big, interruptible attacks or damaging/debuffing auras or armor powers disabled by CC. Currently, neither is true, so with any team that has any semblance of good damage, the only targets you can CC are the ones about to get wrecked by AoE damage flying around, and CC doesn't end the fight faster by itself. Kneecapping tanks is the worst way to address this - you need to change enemy design, not player design.

It doesn't need a tradeoff - that assumes that Medicine currently exists in a perfect state of balance. Medicine is bad. It'll be less bad after this buff, but still bad. I'm honestly baffled why you would suggest it needs a tradeoff when characters are worse off in general for picking it. The very least we can do is bump it up a bit so it feels better to use if we're not going to commit to a full blown rework. If you're still insistent on a tradeoff, I'd love to hear the practical applications of current Medicine in a build that make it powerful enough to merit that tradeoff.