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Hello everyone, This topic is interesting as it highlights how much overlap Armor powersets have when looking at individual powers. For example, Dark Armor's Murky Cloud is a toggle that grants resistance to Fire, Cold, Energy, and Negative damage types. Electric Armor's Conductive Shield is also a toggle that grants resistance to those same types, but thematically it differs from how Murky Cloud tackles the same task. With this in mind, what really makes Armor powersets stand out are the handful of key powers each have. Dark Armor has crowd control toggles and Dark Regeneration. Electric Armor has Power Sink, Lightning Reflexes, and Grounded to seperate it from the rest. Shield Defense even has a good bit of overlap with Invulnerability if you look at just the toggles and damage types, but it not only thematically differs but also has access to Shield Charge and Against All Odds. Saying a powerset will not work because it is similar to an existing one ignores what specifically new options it could bring to the table. To me personally, "Power Armor" is less about the armor and more about the "Power". A knight in enchanted armor, a mutant with super tough skin, and somebody in a high-tech Power Armor suit are all functionally immune to attacks from normal bladed weapons for example. However, the Power Armor character may uniquely be able to use a "Divert Power" ability to either spend a lot of endurance or increase their endurance costs in order to then deal much more damage. Or have a unique attack similar to Shield Charge where the Power Armor's abilities damage surrounding enemies. Thematically, the three characters mentioned could even all use the same "Power Armor" powerset but with customized FX! In short: to me it is more about "what unique things does a powerset bring to the table?", and less about "we already have a powerset that resists smashing and lethal".

Hello TheMultiVitamin, Thank you for your enthusiasm with the game and wanting to add in a thematic improvement! Unfortunately, this is something that is not feasible to implement due to how the game was set up at its roots. While modern games have the ability to more easily speed up or slow down animations, they are truly baked into the powers system in CoH from how they were created back in the day and even simple Slow/Fast animations need a seperate power to be made just to carry that animation.

Brine's -MaxHP debuff stacks per use. Another way to look at it is that you have a 500 damage attack.

This would be an interesting dynamic for a support power, but as a Blast power first and foremost it should stay as a damage tool that also heals the user as a perk. We have the tech to have powers behave differently depending on your target, but the useage should still make sense for the type of power you cast.

From the other point of view, adding more themes for powersets can acheive the same end goal. An earlier example of a blast powerset that is all about chain attacks with every power is an interesting one for sure. Thematically, that could be easily be electricity. It could also be projectiles ricocheting off targets, a disease/toxin spreading, lasers reflecting, and so on! Given we already have choices that default as electricity, we would likely want to use an unused theme as the core of an also unused playstyle. Adding more themes where applicable over time could allow for more freedom in this regard even if the starting points are a bit different.

Is a great example of the Cottage Rule in action! GM_GooglyMoogly is right in that it is less of a hard rule and more of a design guidline. The original quote used the analogy of a player using Build Up one day to buff their own damage and tohit, then the next day after a patch it now builds a small cottage at your feet instead. It can be a nice cottage, the best around in fact! But it doesn't buff the player as they had expected anymore. Funnily enough, if that example were "additionally" and not "instead of", it would have followed the Cottage Rule. The self buff could be altered up or down, the uptime of the power cycle altered, and the cottage summon be condional in some manner. But as long as the original, core functions and purpose of the power is intact it does not violate the rule. A self buff that additionally builds a structure is still a self buff. For context on the quote, Beanbag in Assault Rifle had actually been tested with a cottage rule breaking swap to Aim. This changes the core function of the power from a crowd control tool and into a self buff. This would not only fundamentally change how a veteran of the powerset plays, but can also be dangerous as it breaks enhancement slotting on live player builds with such drastic changes. Ultimately, the goal was to boost the offense of Assault Rifle and in context of all the other changes we chose to make Beanbag a much better attack in its own right so that it can contribute much more to the overall damage output if used in the current form. To the point of this thread, the logistics of making alternates of existing powersets is more work than simply creating new ones. What is the line at which a powerset would have an alternate version, their 1st appearance and then the next major change? Would every change to a powerset need an alternate, or would one be the legacy and the other keeps being worked on over time? At what point does that just become a new powerset entirely outside of the visual? If we are going to go through the effort of effectively making a brand new powerset, we will have new FX alongside it to allow it to stand on its own instead of being anchored to another powerset in its category.

This is a great way to convey what you see as the powerset's issues. Personally, I agree that Empathy does need a look though as a legacy powerset any changes made need to be carefully done. Drawing direct comparisons to its peers to back up your points gives a clearer picture of your ideas. Hello JasperStone, Yes and no. Powersets should stand on their own merit, but in order to do so they also need to stand on their own compared to their peers. That necessitates comparison to other powersets, especially those similar to itself.

Hello Shin, I appreciate the write up, but suggesting changes like this will get you ignored by us. If you would like to enact change, as said in other threads, it is best to show datapoints compared to other powersets.

Hello @Meknomancer, @Wavicle is correct, Shoal Rush on its own does not do any knockdown/knockback, but can cause Tide Pool to Frenzy which can inflict knockdown. This effect should not stack from a single Tide Pool, though if other knock effects happen at the same time as a knockdown from Frenzy they will stack and potentially throw targets around. If you are able to confirm that only Frenzy, or specifically Shoal Rush's Frenzy trigger are causing knockback without the enemies being weak to knock (like Clockwork) or being lower level than you then that would be a bug!

Hello Tidge, Slotting healing enhancement does boost the -MaxHP.

Hello everyone, There is a bug that made only Defenders able to use the new Brine mechanic that will be addressed in the next patch.

Hello ScarySai, The changes to Marine Affinity that were not documented got caught in the change between Closed and Open Beta, thus the Open Beta version became the "Default" that new changes will be noted upon. I have taken feedback on the current version and am making revisions for the next build where they will be properly highlighted.

Hello Warspite, Brine is a unique new power that is in a sense reverse Dull Pain. While it cannot defeat a target on its own as the minimum MaxHP is 1, it is a potent power multiplier as it reduces the amount of HP that you and allies ultimately need to work through on tough targets. Especially when stacked multiple times, -MaxHP behaves as another layer of -Resistance and -Regen at the same time and makes those effects even more impactful from other players! I am also looking into the slotting bugs, icons, and possibly names at this time.

All missions, unless specifically created spawn to spawn, will have a degree of randomness. The best way to counteract it would be to have multiple results aggregated together as an average. @Ston has done this in their testing where they ran three melee archetypes through the Trapdoor mission multiple times to get averaged results. Not only due to enemy placement, but simple misses and proc activations can cause variance even in static encounters such as a Pylon defeat.

Hello @Shin Magmus, Knockback into geometry is a global issue not specific to Meteor and Seismic Blast. Its something we are investigating based on maps. Have you been able to gather more clear times between Seismic Blast and Psychic Blast?