BuildsAllTheThings

@BrandX Thank you! I appreciate it! ❤️ And ehhh. AS for a thematic weakness. Ehhhh. Maaaaaybe? if we were just writing a book or maybe say designing for a table top game, where we could narrow the breadth and width of what players are expected to deal with, by way of dm expectations and some other structural support--I feel like that would really be a way to go. Or even if this was just like titan weapons, or original/current live dark armor. But this isn't a case of, "Oh the set is endurance hungry." On its own totals, and consumption of endurance it's fine. And even if it wasn't, you could just slot performance shifters and be solved for. The issue is specifically the lack of -recovery debuff resistance. It doesn't have any natural insulation outside of psychokinetic barrier. On anything above +0 difficulty, x8 you can expect to run into Mu sapping your endurance for as many as 2.5 or 3 points a cast. Which, most reasonable people I think would go. "Oh that doesn't sound too bad." Then we zoom out. City of heroes is a heavy mob clearing game. Almost like a horde shooter in some regards. It's not that you're just dealing with one mu sorcerer in a pack of arachnos goons. It's that you'll be running into as many as 6 or 7 of them? 2.5 points of -end, transforms into as 8.5 and 11 -end, a rotation. And it's not like these enemies only have one -end attack. They'll cue these things up pretty instantly, with cast times between .67 and 1.186. And these are the generous estimates, with things like psycho kinetic and devour psyche running. If we go and get the straight up details from COD, the actual -end they're packing is a lot higher. Coming in at base totals of -8 and -12 end on top of the -recovery. The problems are much the same for malta, for this set. It uhhh. It needs the insulation 😅

This feedback taken from gameplay iterations observed on 6/5-6/2025: Real quick; hey there. I'm LFL on Discord. Large Format Lady. This doesn't matter for most folks, this is just for the devs notes, as I'd made some points over on discord about where Psionic Armor was as a set, both on the pve and pvp fronts, with regards to its performance on the closed beta. In the initial and then later impressions of the set, the conclusions I'd arrived at up to those points was that psionic armor had a lot of different points of pros and cons, that ultimately resulted in a set that didn't provide a lot of anything on offense or defense. It was serviceable, but sticky and unremarkable in pve, and borderline unusable in pvp. Since then, there have been an abundance of changes. Namely in: Aura of Insanity Memento mori And Psycho Kinetic Barrier. Now. I want to say out and out, I am blown out of the water by the changes that have been made. They're an entirely on the whole positive, and good step forward. It's part of why I'm making the post now, because it's just as important that when we lay out critiques--if that feedback is received openly, and responded with earnest effort, to make sure that we don't take it for granted. I'm happy! I feel like this is a set I can use. Not only does it feel like a set I can use. I feel like I can take it into high level play in pve and pvp. That said! Positive feedback on its own doesn't tell you anything, so let's focus on the above powers and their changes, and what those changes have resulted in for the player side. At the end we'll sneak in some brief theory crafting too on potential developer pitfalls, and finish out. Starting with-- Aura of Insanity: Aura of Insanity! (AOI) I love this goofy little thing. Fixing the errors with application, and then adding additional offensive profiling depending on what type of crowd control was applied to it? Oh, it's so beautiful. It's elegant. For team play? It's a massive positive, and has a subtle incentive to encourage more crowd control in team building. And why? Because of all the extra stuff it can do! The -to hit, the -regen*, the -resistance, the -damage. It's all gorgeous. But! It's not just that the additional offensive profiling is really valuable. It is! Don't get me wrong, it is. (And there's a clever little fix in the way that its applied being semi-random, meaning it can't super be abused solo. Which has been a concern for HC devs.) But there are other values in it as a power. The enhancement set versatility, is such a boon for a set that has a lot of axis you can play on in order to make it feel, well, "Super" for lack of a better term. Call of the Sandman, Absolute Amazement, the mez, hami's, anything out of the holds-- It is a builder's dream power. I do suspect there might be some slight dev issues with this beast in particular, but we'll come to that in a moment. Psycho Kinetic Barrier: Original assessments of this power was that its place in the set was interesting. A shorter duration absorb with, a set that was very active and clicky, meant that in theory you would be expected to use it as a means of trying to assess and position. However, in practice, its original incarnation next to the likes of consume/devour psyche not having their own instant heal components and needing to be built up meant that essentially, you were always going to have to simply hit it before pulling into a mob, and then try and get your stacks up as high as possible. And on its own, it didn't even necessarily do enough to make up for the sets very real struggles. This is another complaint that's been taken on! The lowered cooldown is just one facet. (A facet I'm grateful for, don't get it twisted.) The max hp however, is a game changer. And one that lets the set take more consistent advantage of its bonus regen. The stacking over the course of long fights too is also INCREDIBLY welcome. Simple and elegant as a change, but now it means the power's more usable. As a player, I do still have to think about when I want to use it, but it's now not so dire as feeling as if I have to slow pulls, or wait, at basic level 50 content to go out and make the most of what's been given to me. Very welcome additions all around. Memento Mori: Memento mori's original implementation had always been a little bit clunky. It was hard to go and make use of it, because it felt like such a necessary button to have? But not one that would always do what you wanted it to. So. Making it give max health, actual healing, and making it autohit. Actually wildly, and beautifully smooths out all the problems the power has. The cooldown's a trifle long? But honestly, I'd want to do more personal testing before I'd level that critique. If someone else wants to, please feel free to do so. Everything else on it's just gravy though. (It's so good that - I don't suppose the playerbase'd be lucky enough to get you to do this with rising of the phoenix lol? A discussion for another time.) ----- MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND FOIBLES: So! On the whole. Lotta good. Not that much bad. Problems worth noting, pretty much begin and end with: INSANELY SUSCEPTIBLE TO END DRAIN. Uhh, psycho kinetic barrier stacks -recovery resist, and that's great, but it takes a good while to actually get any of it going. You need to get three stacks ready, to kind of be okay dealing with end-sapping mobs ala mu, malta, etcetera. It's entirely possibly to build around that, but it elevates the set's building difficulty, when it's already nominally unfriendly to those not deeply familiar with the game's mechanics and interplay. Suggested fix is adding -recovery similar debuff resists to Impenetrable. Yes, you can technically solve this just by slotting in an incarnate in ageless, clarion, or running spiritual and always running hot, but these options all either limit the solutions to the level 50 experience in the case of incarnates, or significantly weaken the set's utility such that playing it on scrappers/stalkers would be an incredibly unappealing option. Which isn't something you want when you put this much time and effort into making a set viable. AOI is fine from the player facing end.(Although given how much extra survivability it offers player, it may need to be made available sooner on the scrapper model.) From the developer facing end. I suspect that the way that it can and does apply, next to the offensive opportunities that also go hand in hand. I suspect that you may need to go back later, and make it semi modular, to force players to pick out what offensive opportunities they want, since they may luck into a lot of it at the moment. Now. Let me make this clear. THIS NOTE IS NOT A SUGGESTION TO ADJUST IT NOW. It just so happens that old game developer experience on my end, likes to sniff out for things that will cause me headaches in the future, and I want it to be on your radar. Regen asterisk*: Let me be clear on this point exactly: On. Its. Own. -Regen is not enough of a debuff for a majority of the game's content and gameplay loops. It is very effective for AV's! And having it in here is nice. On its own, -regen is a nothing burger save for av fights and melee vs. melee pvp. ----------- TL;DR then! Final thoughts: Honestly, the set is in a NICE place. It's got some small stuff that could be smoothed over. That end drain is a real problem. But over all the set's in a very healthy place, that feels good on the player end, and tackles the usual problem HC as a team has with things like aoe proc bombing and omega damage from defensive sets. I've gone from being worried about this set, to being genuinely, ecstatically excited for it. Even if it launched as is with the -recovery problems. Anyways, hope this helps.

I promise you, we on everlasting do not claim this set either lmao.

I don't know if I'd go thaaaaat far? At least in the context of scrappers and the current enhancement sets we have. A few powers might need to be brought into line, and have their cast time's reduced! As, this would pretty handily increase their over all effective dpa, and make them pretty passable. ESPECIALLY with how interesting power siphon is. For brutes, tankers, and stalkers. Errr. Yeah, okay we'd have some discussing to do lol.

Let me start this by saying, I'm not sure if this is intentional - and just miscommunicated. Or, if this is a real bug/mistake. But regardless: The tier nine power "Concentrated Strike", for scrapper Kinetic melee does not function as described. It reads thus: "Concentrated Strike is a slow, but incredibly devastating attack that can knock out most opponents, leaving them Disoriented. Due to the exhausting nature of Concentrated Strike, recharge time is very long. Concentrated Strike Criticals do not result in extra damage, it instead instantly recharges the Power Siphon power." It's this last line, we're interested in. A quick check in City of Data, and a round of play tests on the open beta confirm that the actual mechanic is entirely different. Concentrated Strike does not, on a succesful critical hit, instantly recharge power siphon. Rather, whether or not this recharge effect fires is entirely dependent on a flat 20% chance that is randomly rolled. As an aside: This is slightly problematic, on account of it being a 2.83 second cast, (3.036 with arcana time), in the context of scrappers. Where this power eats effectively, half of your crit strikes window in attempting to use it. 😅 Recommendation for fix: Either A.) A lowered cast time + text correction, so that it better fits the kinetic melee single target chain, Or, B.) Adapting Total Focus' coding structure to ensure functionality of stated original effect. Thank you for time, and have a nice day!😊 (Edited for typo's.)

Spent a decent amount of time thinking about it, so I'll post this and have done with it. TL;DR for those notinclined to watch a stranger ramble about design philosophies, damage values, and set comparisons: The changes presented in this proposal would be a net good, straight up. With some caveats. Namely, that it likely can't be released alone, other sets would need similar buffs. But over all this would be an amazing change. The long version: So, the proposed changes here represent at once all the good that was ever in city of heroes power sets to begin with, and some of the problems that come both with buffing them, and making sure that everything has a place somewhere in the game. What do I mean by that? Well, the changes here actually wouldn't be format warping. I've spent all day going over the math, for - hilariously, unrelated reasons - namely in measuring brute damage performance versus scrapper damage performance. Now, provided both at's are playing KM, brute's maintain a slightly over all higher sustained dps, scrappers higher burst, when appropriate crit windows line up. You'd think then that this would be truly horrendous for other sets in general. How could most sets ever hope to keep up with such a ridiculous damage boost. You would however, be surprised. Most of the top performers would continue to perform well. In single player scenarios, this might be the case, but most of COH's content is community focused. At most you might find that this is the new most effective sets for farmers, but even then. The thing about that is like any game's "meta", the power economy of farming has continued to evolve, itself a more communal affair now more often than not, with needs for people to talk to, buffers to look for, hitters, etcetera. And the set doesn't have a tremendous access to great and consistent aoe's, even with the change, so it's unlikely to beat out radiation for aoe damage parity, or any of the other big hitters like Titan Weapons, Mace, or Battle Axe. This should be a good change! The issue lies in its actual design philosophy, because the proposed changes make it an extremely generically good set. It goes with near any power combination, you have every reason in the world to run it with competitors like bio, fiery aura, radiation armor, etcetera. And Homecoming's developers have expressed through actions, if aught else, that they've a dislike for things that would be overwhelmingly and generically good. The likely effect of this hitting live, would be a fantastic set, and then wanting to hit the reset button. More over, it pushes out sets that already -are- underperforming. Your staff melee's, your scrapper StJ's, etcetera. This wouldn't inherently be awful mind you, it would just mean that more sets would require more changes like this. And that in and of itself I think is a meaningful, and altogether welcome breath of fresh air for players and designers alike, but! If someone wanted to implement and execute on these changes, it couldn't be released standalone. There would need to be another melee set brought up with it, that competes in other categories to really shine, and continue to encourage build diversity. And it would mean COMMITTING to continued changes like this for other sets to carve out a niche, as development continued. Itself not a bad thing, but it is the sort of change you'd want to keep eyes on.