CrusaderDroid

The only reasonable explanation to deny Stands is because it's actually part of a separate power set and it would diminish the uniqueness of that set. Either way, it's a really cool SFX that I think might be relatively easy to implement - sounds like a good idea to me.

An ad hominem attack substitutes a personal attack in place of logic or reasoning. It's actually really narrow - for the fallacy to be committed, someone has to be targeting a personal characteristic of the other side, then use that as proof that their argument is wrong. It isn't ad hominem if the other side throws insults as long as they use proper logic as a rebuttal instead of the insults. If someone claims "Empathy is the best support set", and someone else replies "You're a complete imbecile, Empathy gives up too much utility compared to other sets for negligible gains in healing", that's not ad hominem. Possibly rude, but not ad hominem. Similarly, if the reply to "Empathy is the best support set" is "You're a complete imbecile"...that's still not ad hominem, because it doesn't look like there's even an attempt to refute the claim. If the reply to "Empathy is the best support set" is "Well, you have to be a complete imbecile to think that, so you're wrong", that would be ad hominem - using an insult as a rebuttal instead of logic or data. You can enjoy this if you want more reading on this particular fallacy.

You only target one player and focus your effects on that player. Usually in a context where you are a support or healer and want to keep exactly one person alive, either because they're critical to staying alive like a tank, or because they're your buddy and everyone else can take a hike. I really think this is probably a higher tier power, but making it the equivalent of the Shield powers that sets like Thermal, Force Fields, and Cold get is a pretty cool take - AoE, hits all your allies but you, lasts for about 4 minutes. I could see it usable like that, although you still won't have the room for huge numbers. Randomly targeting toggle sounds absolutely frustrating to play. Write that idea down on a piece of paper, then burn it to exorcise it from your mind. So, it's independently good IMO even ignoring slotting since you have AoE healing that isn't centered on you, which is meaningfully unique. I actually address some of the enhancement bits at the end of my post, but to recap - you can make certain benefits unenhanceable. In powers that have those effects, they don't take sets that they would normally take if the parts of the power that would be affected are unenhanceable. You can use that if you aren't comfortable with healing powers being used as LotG mules. There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with that, either. By having a heal - and a T2 at that! - able to slot LotG, the player is able to free up one of their power pool picks if they wanted to maximize LotG slotting. That opens up more options. Don't sleep on defense debuffs. On this power, it would be atrocious since it'd probably work by summoning a pseudopet, which have terrible proc rates. On anything else, defense debuffs let you slot Achilles' Heel, which is a chance for -20% Resist on hit. Accurate defense debuffs also give you an extra damage proc option in Shield Breaker, for even more damage. Procs are the primary way that Defenders can deal damage in this game - since procs aren't affected by the Defender's low damage scalars, they do the same damage as when slotted on anyone else, and dramatically increase their DPS. "Endurance markup" would be a debuff to endurance cost. It's a neat trick, and I don't think any power set can do that. The main obstacle there is still that without any external endurance drain, it's not going to mean anything. That doesn't make it weak or useless, but does constrain your sets or your team's sets for maximum effectiveness. If you want to keep that, I'd advise making sure it has some other effect that makes it independently good even if no one can exploit it. Knockdown is always useful, for example. The wording throws me off completely, for one. Seeing "small" to its benefits twice makes me wonder why keep it. Looking at Defender values for Steamy Mist, it offers +20% resist to Fire, Cold, and Energy, +5% defense to everything, and (at 50, anyways) 216% resistance to Confusion (effectively making you immune). Those are really good. The stealth exists too but whatever, Steamy Mist is good because it grants a nice chunk of resist to Fire and Energy as well as +defense. I wouldn't call either of those "small". Looking at Defender values for Arctic Fog gets us similar results. Arctic Fog just swaps out Confusion resist for slow resist. Shadow Fall has similar design, but instead targets Energy, Negative Energy, and Psionic and Terrorize. Restorative Mist doesn't specify what mez it protects from, drops a damage type from its resistances, doesn't boost defense at all (meaning we can't slot LotG in it), and only offers health regeneration as compensation. Maybe in your head, this thing has numbers comparable to those three, but I can't read your mind, only your words - from what you typed, it looks inferior on average. If you want to keep it, those three powers are a pretty good model, honestly - just swap out the mez resist for a different mez protection of your choice. You could also run with the endurance theme and protect allies from endurance drain. This logic is used at least once in the game, so it works. On that power, it's also unenhanceable, so it doesn't slot resist sets. I wouldn't really feel compelled to abide by "real world logic" when doing video game stuff. Video games violate expectations of reality all the time, repeatedly, in numerous creative ways. If you lock yourself into following "real world logic" it's much easier to end up adding extraneous elements or overcomplicating things. I don't think gratuitous Toxic resist is the end of the world, but it's something to keep in mind - you're not bound by reality in a video game. Using Defender values for Increase Density, it has a -12.5% slow to all movement speed and jump height. The tradeoff is effective immunity to three separate types of mezzes that not everyone can replicate on their own sets, on top of a nice 25% boost to Smashing and Energy. That's really good. Even better: this is on the same set as Speed Boost, which grants SO MUCH speed that you can turn it off if it's too much, which completely eats the meager penalty of Increase Density. (Opting out of Speed Boost's movement speed also opts out of Increase Density's movement speed loss, too, making it a wash no matter what.) Meanwhile, Enforced Morale deals just enough to drop the target to about 90%, if I'm reading that right, which only happens if the target was above 90% health. This is a negligible penalty that is more or less there for flavor. In exchange, it also grants a small boost to recharge and movement speed on top of its usual cleanse effect. Flush doesn't grant any offensive bonus and in fact actively hinders your offense by reducing your speed (recharge? movement speed?) and your recovery, making you worse at using your powers or getting range to use them, as well as worse at getting back endurance to use them. This is significantly more frustrating than the downsides of Increase Density and Enforced Morale, both of which are on sets that generally completely eat the drawback with another power. You don't have any power on this set that can offset these penalties so thoroughly. It might not be without precedent, but the precedent is clearly "you only penalize stuff you can give back in abundance". Right here. The main takeaway is that debuffs need to go big because the values they have are not the values that are getting applied on enemies - you're always going to be at least 1 level down on any content that's supposed to challenge you, and just one level cuts 10% off the total effectiveness of everything. Any further, and values start to drop precipitously - a 3 level gap is 35% less effectiveness, and 4 levels is a whopping 52% less effectiveness.

I like what you're going for, and I think there's definitely room for Force Shield and Energy Aura to coexist. I'm not sure this is the play, though. You need three separate toggles for a mix of typed defenses (which I think is worse than positional defenses? Correct me if I'm wrong) and mez resist, which is eating too much room in the set and doesn't leave open enough for the unique stuff like Force Recoil and especially Force Sanctuary, which is incredibly cool and something I'd like to see more of in the set. I think megaericzero has the right of it by moving it towards support tank - that's a pretty unique space that is only possibly contested by Shield Defense, which doesn't get the PBAoE pull of Force Recoil anyways. If you merge Insulation Shield with Refraction Shield, you'll free up a power you can use for extra ally utility.

Hm... As a theme, this is pretty great. Water support goes great with Water Blast and is one of those recurring things you see in many RPGs where water = healing and buffs. Mechanics-wise... This is a nice set of bonuses! It's actually too nice. Tier 1 doesn't give you enough room - you'll end up with either really low values to the point that it's not even noticeable when you use it, a duration so short you need to pocket someone, or a bunch of frantic clicking that makes you wish this was AoE instead. Brief boosts to movement speed and recovery aren't particularly impactful in small numbers, either. This might be better as a team buff later in the set instead of a tier 1 power. So I checked the support sets to make sure I wasn't going crazy, and every AT able to take a set has the same nine powers, with the exception of Mastermind, which sometimes swaps out a power for something that isn't a pet or plays better with pets. As such, divvying up the powers like this just seems like more work for not enough gain. You could make an argument that this would help further differentiate Defenders from Corruptors, and I'd agree and would even be in favor of that, but that's an entirely different topic altogether - right now in this system, they're pretty unified. This is nice for...probably the wrong reasons - area AoE healing is really inconvenient, but this lets you mule LotG + 5x Panacea. Once you get around that and use a macro to cast it immediately on your target, it's probably just flat-out better than the PBAoE heal that the healing sets get. Which, uh, good? That's good. We need more flavor there. In contrast, if you're running around with Water Blast, you already get Whirlpool, which does most of what you're asking for here. Endurance drain is not a useful effect unless you either drain huge chunks of it or have a bunch in the kit, and it takes until Flash Flood for you to pick up another power related to endurance drain - and it's just -recovery instead. I think these two are getting a raw deal here unless they're running Electric Blast or Electric Control, and I don't think you should be forcing one power choice to make this power's other thing relevant. Otherwise, it plops a slow field, which is a proven good thing to have, but it's definitely something I'd cut if needed. Okay, hold up. I cannot actually assess how useful this power is because none of these things map neatly to numbers. Either go big with your claims, or slap some numbers on, but writing out "small" and "small" so many times makes the whole thing look like a write-off. Which this one probably is, to be honest. You did this with the Telluric support too - you really like doing +resist or +defense on one or two types, but that's generally pretty useless to the point where beyond its utility as a mule for enhancements, it's forgettable. The +stealth for allies, I will confess to having no idea how useful this is - it feels to me like it'd be wasted since most everyone ends up in melee for best results anyways. The +mez resist, I can't tell if it's good or not since it really depends on what numbers and what mezzes it covers. The +resist to cold and fire, though, I can tell you is pretty ineffectual - nothing that deals cold damage is actually a threat, and fire damage resist is easy to pick up from multiple other sets and powers. That leaves health regen, which is generically useful, I guess? Without a clear value I'm not sure how good that is, or if you can drag fights out long enough to get enough effective healing from that. I think I skip this power if I was using this set, honestly, unless that mez resist is really good. Oh yeah I'm totally skipping that mez resist aura then. Not much to comment on here, other than the inexplicable Toxic resist. I'm not sure how many damage resist sets you need to mule. I think using this gets you kicked from the team. The other support sets have zero issues sharing their mez heals with all four ATs. You don't really get anything here by splitting it between Cleanse and Flush. You DO lose a ton by having Flush impose any penalty at all to an ally. It's either so small you can cut it easily, or big enough to be noticeable and accordingly upsetting. Even if it's on the small side, if someone notices this affecting them and things go poorly, you're now the top person to blame. Highly recommend you cut this. I missed this when assessing Undertow. For Defenders, this is a dead drop, since they don't get Undertow or Flash Flood in your model, and "mild" implies values low enough that they're going to be drowned (heh) out once the purple patch comes into play. Actually, yeah, let me break really quick - the purple patch is why you need to go big on these debuffs. Level gaps cut the effectiveness of everything you do on that target, which is most noticeable with purple mobs that are 4 levels above you, where you're looking at less than half the original value. If you're leading with "mild debuff", I'm imagining something puny like 5% or 10%, which may as well not exist when halved. Back to Waterlog's own merits - I can't see the value in debuffing recharge speed while simultaneously increasing endurance costs. You want them to bleed out endurance, why are you making it harder for them to attack to do so? I think what hurts the most is that unless you slap on a ton of -recovery, or already have enough Electric shenanigans to drain endurance already, this is likely to fail at doing anything - endurance damage only really matters once the target has bottomed out, and anything else may as well be the same thing as if it was maxed. I don't think you'd feel good using this power for the most part. Wait, so the AT with the best defensive scalars DOESN'T get this? That's backwards. This is actually so good it should have been picked up at tier 2, with Refreshing Rains at tier 1 instead. Okay we are at tier 6 right now. Sonic Resonance can impose -30% resist as an aura on a target ally. Nature has been able to grant +15% resist to everything to allies since level 2. Time can give an ally 30% recharge, 31% damage, and 150% regen. We've got some seriously good stuff here in the world of support sets. So why in the world are you implying some weak-sounding numbers like this? This is a single-target hit to resist, accuracy, and speed, but not only does it sound like it's going to be underwhelming, it doesn't even work on some enemy types at all. I see the weak "splash AoE" thing at the end there, which Poison has too - on its ludicrously potent single-target debuffs that completely screw over the poor bastard that gets hit by them. It's like you're afraid to make things strong. This is City of Heroes - EVERYONE is strong. Go big! If you're going to rust things, make it count! Either pump up the numbers to really doom a guy, or make this properly AoE by default. Probably both tbh. This is a little late for a rez. You're also still using "small amount of damage absorption" for a tier 7 rez. Shoot, man, give the guy half his health bar as absorption. The debuffs look like they synergize with the endurance hits you have elsewhere on the set, but they really don't - if your teammates are dropping, you are in no position to follow up on endurance drain. Still, the power's a rez, so really anything goes here. This is pretty cool. So, before anything else - I'm pretty sure with City of Heroes' janky coding rules, this is impossible. You can't create an area of effect shaped like this, nor can you apply penalties based on where a power's projectile travels. If we pretend instead that this is actually a really elaborate ground-targeted area that grants buffs to allies that simulate these effects, e.g. +defense, +resist, doubly boosted VS Lethal, Fire, Energy? Finally, a powerful buff. At long last, instead of middling around with "small" and "modest" and "brief", we get something big and grand and without any of those words trying to put a damper on expectations. About the only sin is that it's a toggle, except that since you don't really need any more defense or resist mules, you can jam this one full of endurance reduction to bring it down to a reasonable cost. How did we go from "GIANT WALLS OF WATER THAT DUMP EVERY BUFF EVER" to "PBAoE nuke that putters around"? This is such a huge L for these two ATs. Well this sounds promising! --- So, some things to note: You're doing a bunch of combo-platter debuffs where you're picking multiple things to debuff instead of taking one stat and dumpstering it. I think you're psyching yourself out thinking that that's powerful and accordingly dropping the supposed numbers on them to balance it out, except then it's just going to be a write-off all around. Same with buffs. You're throwing out a bunch of things to buff instead of buffing one thing a bunch. Perception changes are nigh-worthless. Only a handful of enemies can even stealth in the first place, and the omnipresent Tactics from Leadership grants more than enough perception to get the job done. Meanwhile, enemy perception hits are usually on powers that won't trigger aggro, since they can still find you after getting aggro no matter how bad their perception is. The split for ATs doesn't work in this current game design. You're making more work for yourself. Even within this split, you still want to match up powers with what the AT is good at. Not giving Countercurrent to Defender is a headscratcher. Past that, I think you might be unaware of a couple of really, really useful tools for creating powers: Powers can have effects that can't be enhanced, which means it won't show up for set bonuses. You can use this to have a power grant +resist, and then declare it unenhanceable so it can't be used to mule resist sets. Powers can also have effects that skip to-hit entirely. This is on the rarer side, but Nature's Spore Cloud has no to-hit roll at all as an example. Powers can have effects that ignore resistance entirely. This blocks the purple patch completely - the number you see is what you get. Trick Arrow's Flash Arrow has half of its to-hit penalty ignore resistance completely. My recommendation as a whole is to find a few mechanics or statistics you want to focus on, and focus on them. Mechanically, this is incredibly scattershot, trying to hit too many stats on buffs and debuffs and kinda flopping around until it can use its T8 and T9 powers. I think it's best when you're playing with the logically large areas of effect - Restoring Rains is very cool as a targeted AoE heal, for instance. +DMG and -RES are always going to be top tier effects to have, but I think you might have more success if you hard focus other stats (except to-hit) to a higher degree. Decreasing enemy resistance - or even protection - to mezzes is an interesting hook, for instance. Even just -1 mez protection opens up a significant number of new mez opportunities for your entire team. If you want to emphasize endurance drain as a theme, you need to have that down by T1 or T2 in a low-cooldown, easy to apply manner. Any later and it's going to feel weak if nobody is running Electric. Undertow doesn't cut it here - you'd need something similar to Nature's Corrosive Enzymes, and you'd want that available to everyone. Please stop kneecapping your pitches with "small" and "mild" and "modest" as descriptors. If you feel like you have to sell something that short, it's a good sign you're doing something wrong. Crank up the power - if you think it's buffing too many things, just buff one thing twice as much instead. Check your competition in other support sets - they've got generally good numbers on everything they want to do. We're superheroes! Let's have fun with power! Keep making power sets though! They're fun themes, which is why it's worth reviewing and critiquing.

Yeah, the Koopa-style throwing hammers is a lot harder. I tried to get close with Hammering Rain as well as Hammer Time and Mjolnir to try and accommodate what you wanted. I'm glad you like it anyways though. I think the challenge with Hammer Bro-esque hammers is just coming up with 8 ways to throw a bunch of hammers. This was hard enough with just the one hammer, I'm not sure how you get to eight by throwing multiple hammers every time. Probably the play there would be low cooldowns or animation times on certain powers. Alternatively... Tier 7: Hammerstorm - Instantly throw a hammer at the target. No animation time - it's just that fast. No recharge - instead gains up to 5 charges over time by using your other Hammer Throwing powers, and each use consumes a charge. This lets you get in the Koopa hammer spam without having to spend your entire kit on it. I have no idea if it's mechanically possible - I think at least a janky version is if it uses Arcane Bolt logic but the non-orange-circle Arcane Bolt does chip damage and isn't worth using.

I was sitting this one out, but this is so unfunny I may as well throw my hammer onto the stage. Getting a whole 9 powers out of one action is a pretty tricky challenge, but I think it's doable. Forgive me for a lack of pretty icons. Tier 1: Quick Throw - Just chuck the hammer straight at the guy and it comes back to you. Your typical T1 attack you use when leveling and then forget about later. 50% chance for knockdown. Tier 2: Hurl Hammer - Your usual T2 slower-but-stronger attack. 80% chance for knockdown. Tier 3: Orbit Throw - Throws the hammer in a rather wide area around you. Low knockdown chance (20%?), inflicts a brief 5 second 30% autohit slow on account of "let's not get near the hammer flying in a circle". Tier 4: Hammering Rain - Hurls a bunch of hammers forward at your target in a very narrow cone. Really really really hurts - should explicitly break normal damage expectations. Tier 5: Hammer Time - Increases to-hit for 10 seconds. Your next three Quick Throws or Hurl Hammers or Orbit Throws have no recharge time. Tier 6: Wrecking Ball - Single target hammer shot hits the target like...well, you get the idea. Mag 2 Disorient for 10 seconds + Mag 1 Disorient for 5 seconds. Tier 7: Sledgehammer - Your usual snipe power. Tier 8: Powderize - Pummel a target with your hammer so hard it crunches their resistances and defense, but especially their smashing resist and defense. The smashing debuffs have a longer duration. Tier 9: Mjolnir - Norse mythology can't be copyrighted! Hurl your hammer up, whereupon it descends back down with a flurry of other hammers, utterly devastating and knocking down everything unfortunate enough to be near you.

About one hour, tops. Programming being time intensive? Sure. I can believe that. The basic design groundwork being time intensive? Only if you're so unpracticed that it takes you days to think of one power. Ideas are not a big deal. I don't know the power team myself, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the coding with a janky system that holds up anything, instead of the frankly insulting implication that they are somehow unable to generate ideas.

Since proc rates are centered around per-minute occurrences, the >60 second base recharge on all of them makes it pretty much impossible to avoid. Empathy's Resurrect, for instance, has a 180 base second recharge. You'd need to have a proc rate of 0.25 per minute or lower to avoid this triggering each time on using Resurrect. Resurrect's also the worst of the lot, too. If we want to get really goofy, Fire Mastery tends to yield Rise of the Phoenix, which starts at a 300 second base recharge. At 0.25 procs per minute - already a ludicrously low number, mind - we still get a guaranteed proc on each use. This one's a little more alarming, since Rise of the Phoenix is a self-rez that also knocks down enemies hit. But this isn't actually the best abuse case! No, for that, we want Homecoming's new addition to Fiery Aura - Phoenix Rising. Same base recharge as Rise of the Phoenix...without the requirement that you be knocked out to use it. Since you get a guaranteed proc every use, it's always available and makes Fiery Aura users practically invulnerable. Since it's on Fiery Aura, it also frees up your ancillary pick. Getting the proc rate down to where this doesn't trigger every time - maybe just 50% of the time? - would require a proc rate of 0.1 per minute. I'm not sure if this is possible from a programming perspective. I do know that you're going to have a hard time selling this to anyone not crunching the numbers - 0.1 procs per minute on an enhancement looks useless, even if it isn't. It also means that for rezzes that are less than 300 seconds - like Resurrect - we're looking at about a 30% chance of triggering. To make this work as intended, you have to violate player expectations of existing systems. I don't think it works no matter what you do, basically. Sorry.

Not sure these are a winner either. Existing resurrection powers can slot healing set enhancements, so all of these enhancements have the unenviable task of competing with Preventative Medicine and Panacea. Once you get past that...you actually don't want to be slotting rez powers anyways. Unless you don't have anything else to mule healing sets, rez powers shouldn't need so many slots to work. The best case is that people don't go down so often your rez is still on cooldown. Any content where your team is dropping like flies is content you aren't going to pass just by throwing out more rezzes. There's also the fact that rezzes have very little to scale off of, besides recharge. Most of them heal so much that extra healing is wasted, the endurance cost is generally tolerable, they usually aren't short range, and damage dealt by any of them is negligible. About the only thing worth noting from this lot? The long cooldowns on rez powers means this always triggers. There's 8 sets of enhancements, but realistically you just slot this one and only this one and then carry on as normal. Resurrection powers aren't really a cornerstone of gameplay that need enhancement sets dedicated to them, unfortunately.

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.