Magical

I know a couple people on excel that do 4* advanced difficulty challenge runs. all ___ AT, all melee, all ___ powerset etc. anyone who thinks the game is too easy should go join them, I can introduce you. all melee is actually somewhat challenging, it's not that straightforward to get the dps and mit you need when there's no kin around and no debuffs going out. I also once ran into a group doing some super hard ae missions. that was the only fun in ae I've ever had, wish I could find them again

in a vacuum, nothing beats fire/kin. debuff sets get nerfed by purple patch and other buff sets don't put out the same insane combination of damage, recharge, endurance and regen debuff that kin does. however, the irony is that if your team has a kin then the kin themselves will rarely be the highest damage dealer, far from it. in that case you really want a procced out blast like ice or AR with a resistance debuffing support set to take advantage of the kin buffs and they are gonna do way more dps than any kin can.

extremely happy with the name release event. snagged 50+ names and counting, this should keep me busy for the next few yrs. didn't get everything i wished for but the hits and lucky finds vastly outnumber the misses. every time I snag a name I am certain would be long taken, I slap my thighs, lean back, point at the screen and cackle like a supervillain. this is the most fun coh has ever been for me, thanks hc devs ♥️

I run these often on excel, a speed tinpex is 24-27 mins with another 3-7 mins needed for recruitment. You need to include the recruiting time to compare group TF's with solo ones, it's time you can't use productively. Each TF of tinpex should be 12-13 mins with an average pug team, if they're bad it goes up to 15+ mins, if they're really good it can be <10 mins, the fastest I've seen is a 9:08 apex. These are all pugs, I don't do dedicated speed teams with premades, I'm sure those can push it even lower.

I think you do a good job of pointing out how kin/sonic is not as straightforward to make work as it seems. However, I think at least some of your points are general issues faced by all defenders, or at least all kinetics. If enough judgments are being tossed around that you cannot even get a good FS off, no buffs or debuffs matter anyway (and to me that says the team's playing on too low a notoriety setting, not aggroing enough enemies or not splitting up when they should). And if people refuse to get kinetics buffs, that's not something that can be fixed by a different blast set. I don't think the melee vs range issue is that bad. The best aoe of /sonic is dreadful wail, so if you ask me, sonic blasters should be dancing in and out of melee anyway. You can wail once every 40s, which is every other spawn. My experience is something like FS, dreadful wail, everything is dead except 2 bosses that are at -40% from the wail + fury proc, mop up with ST. Next spawn, FS, hop to edge of spawn, spam howl and procced out shockwave. Or, if it's a fast team, by the time I get to the next spawn they have reduced it to 2 half dead bosses as well. Then we can all happily proceed to spawn #3 and I dreadful wail again. I wonder if FS is better than it looks on paper against single targets. When I use FS on a single target in melee, I get +75% damage on the combat monitor: +25% in an area around the enemy and +50% on myself. I don't know if the +50% part affects teammates. But FS is easily double stacked. So if both components of the power affect teammates, then a double stacked single-target FS is +150%. That's still not bad considering most AT's only need 200% to 300% more +dmg to cap (e.g. blaster: cap 500% - base 100% - slotting & musculature core 130% = 270% more required). The question is how much this eats into the sonic -res.

Force fields is fine. The things that it provides, defense and mez protection, are extremely valuable, to the point that people devote entire billion-inf IO builds and incarnate slot choices towards chasing them. FF is very specialized. It shines in the low levels before player defenses and controls have fully matured, and on teams with poorly-geared players, and that's fine. Not every powerset has to be a generalist that buffs, debuffs and heals; it's alright to have some sets that shine in certain kinds of teams, just as some sets and AT's are more suited to team or solo play. The proposed changes to give FF bubbles defense debuff resistance and absorb are poorly-justified: Nobody ever complained that FF bubbles are not protective enough. They are among the best defense shields in the game, and one of the few that can be power boosted, so why further increase their protective value by giving them absorb and debuff resistance? Is taking people to the incarnate softcap not good enough for you? FF's role is to protect the team, not make them invulnerable. Defense is common, easily gained, available in larger amounts than resistance, and is not capped by AT mods. In exchange for these tremendous advantages, it is easily lost (except on specialist defense-focused armors) and countered by tohit. Allowing FF to apply defdebuff resistance risks further unbalancing the softcap meta by making extremely durable softcapped characters even more tough. If they want defdebuff res, make them take ageless radial and give up their precious barrier they depend on to softcap. The stated rationale for these changes is to make FF more attractive to players already decked out in set IOs. But we've already established that not all players are stuffed to the gills in IO sets, so why does it matter what they think? FF's only issue is that it has too many gimmicky powers with extremely niche uses. If you really want to make some changes to FF: Vastly increase the DPA of force bolt - it should be among the best Defender blasts Increase the DPA of repulsion bomb Make Detention Field a toggle so you can detoggle it, to release the affected enemy to be killed when it's safe (no need to wait for it to fall off just to avoid leaving a dangerous enemy at your back, or stragglers in a defeat all) Add pulsing damage to Force Bubble Rework PFF: remove only affects self, reduce resistances or change to absorb instead - make it a defense that's practical for the bubbler to use under heavy fire, that doesn't compromise their ability to defend the team or reduce them to thumb-twiddling These would actually benefit FF by removing mechanics that force them or the team to wait around doing nothing, and add blasting as an alternative gameplay style for when defense shields are less needed.