Ston

I want to emphasize that this is my opinion. I don't want to criticize the devs too much because of how much I appreciate any efforts in keeping this game alive. And there are many power changes that I was very happy with. While I wasn't happy with some changes, I know they're just experimental. However, I'm most unhappy with the development direction and philosophy. I never saw data that suggested some powers needed to be nerfed or that some powers couldn't be buffed. And this was something myself and others asked for on several occasions when our concerns weren't addressed. I think this is somewhere the power devs can make a very meaningful improvement. If powerset X needs to be nerfed because power Y is overperforming, show us specifically why that's the case with metrics we can test. Instead, we were asked to justify our concerns with our own data and testing methods. I hope this is something that changes in the future but I won't be there to see it because I'm just exhausted with testing stuff only to end up with many power changes that no one asked for.

This has been, without a doubt, my favorite game of all time. Since 2020, I've had an amazing time with this community in the game, Discord, and these forums. My main focus was always on identifying the balance between powersets and getting as much data as I could to breakdown their strengths and weaknesses. My "rankings" and "tier lists" were by no means perfect, but I hope they were able to help some players make decisions on what characters they wanted to invest in. I'm also very proud of some costume and character concepts I've shown off and still sometimes check the latest submissions, you guys are awesome and never cease to amaze me with them. I am going to be stepping away from the game permanently. I can't thank this community enough for all of fun it has brought me the last few years. However, I haven't played in several months and haven't had any urge to come back. There is one particular thing that drove me away and I don't want to sugarcoat it: power development and balancing. I appreciate all volunteer effort that goes into keeping this game playable and updated. However, I feel there is a growing gap between what most players want from power patches and what we end up with. There are many underperforming sets that, with a few small tweaks to their numbers, would be very fun to use. This was done (arguably to an extreme degree) with Battle Axe and Assault Rifle and now they are some of the most fun and popular sets in the game. I really hope the power dev team pursues those kinds of changes in the future, but it seems like nerfs and complicated mechanics are their preferred direction at the moment. And that brings me to my reason for stepping away: I've been a member of closed beta for some time and lately there have been many frustrating interactions with the power dev team on what changes are acceptable. The most recent round of proposed power changes really cemented by decision to not play anymore. There were insane changes to Bio Armor, Rad Armor, Regeneration, and Dark Armor that were very controversial and will probably never make it into the game. Even though I could respec all my characters that use those sets and build around the changes, I was very unhappy with the direction of the changes. Bio Armor would've been unrecognizable with the proposed changes. Even though the changes probably won't make it to live, it just makes me wonder what data is being used to make those decisions. There have been many, many threads on Discord and these forums on what can be done to address the pain points of those powersets and none of those points were included in these proposed changes. It simply crushed the trust I have in the power development team's process of determining what is healthy for the game. I really hope there is a more transparent process of adding power changes to the game in the future. This game has such an incredible foundation for what can be done in the future and I really hope the power development team seriously thinks about all the changes they add and whether or not they will add fun to the game. Embrace the lack of balance in the game and give the Battle Axe treatment to Broadsword, Kinetic Melee, Energy Blast, Archery, Kheldians, etc. Thank you again to everyone who made all these years of fun possible and I wish nothing but the best for this community going forward. Thank you for all the hours spent killing pylons, running tradpoor missions, PvPing, creating costumes, role playing, theorycrafting in mids, and just joining random teams for missions, task forces, events, etc. It was truly an experience unlike any other game could produce.

I don't think they "can" raise the heal amount because it uses a standard formula. However, maybe another effect could be added to it? Maybe a small amount of +regen?

It’s pretty hard to come up with a good test for that because there are too many factors. Best to just try it out against a variety of enemy groups. A build that is amazing for 4* hardmode TFs might be terrible for solo’ing +4/x8. A build that can solo +4/x8 ITF might be terrible at solo’ing Rularuu. IMO, it’s best to build around stats that help you regardless of enemy groups (max HP, regen, healing, absorb, debuff resistance, movement speed) and then getting any other stats from temp powers, incarnate powers, inspirations, teammate buffs.. (resist, defense, etc). In my experience, this allows you to perform well on most powersets against max difficulty content assuming you’re bringing a good kit of buffs, insps, etc. If you don’t want to use outside buffs like that, your choice of power combos and playstyles will be very limited.

ITF is kind of a niche thing to solo. A majority of your survivability will come down to defense debuff resistance. You’ll want to take Ageless Radial to boost that. And monitor it constantly. Whenever it starts dipping down, you need to disengage, hibernate, etc. Once those mobs get the cascading -def going on you, you’re pretty much out of luck. So it just comes down to avoiding that. As an example, watch how they handle the situation at 24:20 in the video. Once you get hit with a few attacks and your defense and defense debuff resistance are low, you need to run away or kite until your resources are off cooldown (Ageless Radial, Hibernate, etc) IMO, this challenge isn’t the best indicator of how a build performs. It has a very specific set of damage and effects you need to mitigate (lethal damage, negative energy damage, recharge debuffs, defense debuffs). If you’re on a build that handles those natively (like an SR or Shield tanker), you can do this in your sleep.

Here’s someone doing it with wm/bio if you need inspiration. Bio, Rad, EA, Shield, SR are probably your best bets on a Scrapper.

Willpower will probably never be able to solo that difficulty on an ITF. It doesn't have enough HP/Regen to mitigate the incoming damage. Willpower and Regen are, IMO, the weakest of all Scrapper secondaries overall. They don't really have any meaningful debuff resistance and no offensive tools.

Yeah it’s known to be a very underperforming set. Fingers crossed that it is on the devs backlog of sets to revamp.

Scrapper! Would probably work well on any AT besides Brutes.

I've done a bunch of runs and haven't noticed it making any major impact. Might hurt builds that don't build for accuracy/tohit but that's a useful measurement. You can get times where a Crey Protector will combine their AoE Force Field with Nemesis Vengeance and they'll be a little harder to hit.. But you don't need *that* much to get through even all those layers of defense. Think this would be different if there were sources of -tohit, but luckily this group doesn't have those debuffs.

KM/SD was one I quite enjoyed. Tons of +dmg between AAO and Power Siphon.

100% onboard with changes to Seismic Force and Meteor. If nothing else on Meteor can get changed, it really should have some kind of bonus damage/effect for the amount of time it takes to actually land. I don't think it should do the same damage as Thunderous Blast considering the timing involved (or even less damage when considering Shocked procs). When I was doing Pylon testing, I always found it was very hard to keep track of when enhanced Stalagmite would be available. IMO, it's unintuitive to lose your enhanced abilities after clicking Seismic Force.. especially compared to the combo system on Water Blast. Think there's a lot room for improvement there. Honestly I’d never play this set as-is because I’m not a fan of staying on the ground. And even if I were to tolerate that, I still wouldn’t because the nuke just doesn’t feel good to use.

@Spaghetti Betty Awesome run! First time seeing dark mastery in action, looks very strong on that build. Fire/SS has been a favorite combo of mine since live, very cool to see it still competing with other top sets, especially without an epic aoe attack!

Great run! Thank you for giving it a try! And yeah I didn't even realize crit kb was part of this until I got hit by one.. Pretty annoying. I think I'm gonna stick with this enemy group and try to adjust the mission settings to make it closer to trapdoor. Might be able to control how certain groups of enemies get spawned. But love seeing that tw/bio in action, making me want to make another tw character soon!

Thanks for the suggestion! Going to make an alternate version of this using mobs with no resistances. Thinking Battle Maiden warriors.