Eldyem

The HP ones, sure, but I absolutely notice the Atlas Medallion every time I grab it on every character. Portal Jockey feels really good on specific builds, like Storm Summoning MMs. On the actual topic, Synapse is by far my least favorite thing to do in the game that I actually regularly do. I enjoy the other main TFs and end up doing it just for the badge more than the HP but I always hate the whole hour or so it takes.

I'm going to highlight this - any set that has a mechanic that replaces crits is probably going to feel bad unless that mechanic is just very, very strong. Hitting a crit feels good. This goes double for a "crit" that can potentially do nothing because the associated power isn't recharging to begin with or is very close to being back up. It doesn't help that Power Siphon often feels worse than Build Up in practice because you can't really Power Siphon > Burst the way you might want to. Another issue is that Repulsing Torrent has anti-synergy with the only other form of AoE in the set. There's a lot of interesting pieces that don't really work well together.

Am I missing some context here? Every Control set has multiple forms of AoE lockdown. AoE sleeps aren't even unique to Mind Control. Holds and Stuns completely stop enemies from attacking, Confuses stop them from attacking you, and Fears slow down how often enemies attack considerably. In fact, Sleep is one of the least effective forms of AoE lockdown.

I don't actually have strong feelings about them; I think trying to do content as efficiently as possible with the tools you have (including random PUG members) is an enjoyable experience, but I'm also not particularly invested in completely skipping content such as running to Clamor in the Yin TF. I personally feel more "super" when I'm smashing through hordes of enemies mindlessly. In particular, TFs like Synapse just stop being fun if they're run at anything less than breakneck speed because its essentially the same content over and over for an hour. That being said, I'm more likely to join anything advertised as a "speedy" version just because having one person who decides that 7 other people are "playing wrong" by not fully clearing out an outdoor map, or by starting a mission when they're spending 10 minutes updating their bio, or by using team teleporter (all three things that have happened to groups I'm in) just kills the vibe. I just do not want Synapse to take 3 hours. I would personally love if we had more AVs or GMs (or even just EBs with better stats) that could "slow down" regular missions, but, so long as the strongest thing on 90% of given maps is a regular boss who is functionally identical to that other regular boss standing 10 feet away from him, I just don't see a reason to slow down my personal gameplay. I think this is a strength of Drowning in Blood, Mortimar Kal, and Summer Blockbuster content-design wise.

This might not necessarily be addressing the question as asked, but I think it gets impacted a little when a particular AT gets a "better" version of a formerly AT-exclusive powerset. Scrapper Ninjutsu just feels stronger than Stalker's version (to me), and Mastermind's Poison has the decent, but ultimately sort of unfortunate Noxious Gas that pales in comparison to how good Venomous Gas is. The source getting the worse version of a powerset does feel like it negatively impacts AT identity in a bad way.

Is any role really needed at end game? I'm not turning down anyone in the first place, but why would I care that someone is playing a Time Manipulation/Thermal Radiation/Dark Misama/Radiation Emission/Pain Domination/Trick Arrow/Traps/Cold Domination/Poison character if we're at the level where we're just steam rolling? I feel like I'm missing the correlation here.

I'm actually fine with this nerf for Defenders, as I do I feel this set was massively overperforming within its niche of AV melting within groups. I know nerfs are unpopular but there just really isn't another blast set with debuffs as good as this, nor do I think its physically possible to put sets like Fire Blast or Archery on Defenders on par without a complete re-imagining of the sets, so I'm fine with it. But the T1 and T2 sharing a debuff feels very bad on three out of the four ATs who get this set, and it doesn't feel good on the one that doesn't care as much.

I really don't think either of those groups are the ones negatively impacted by this. Most +4/x8 builds can solo much higher than +4/x8 and I doubt they're going to be impacted at all, because +4/x8 was never the cap for what they can do. It's the players who build character for RP and theme, players who are -ok- at absolute best at building, but who like to push to +2/x5 or whatever who are going to be upset by this, because they're going to have to turn down their difficulty (I would imagine these are the players most resistant to do so, as well) and - and this is the most important part - are the most likely to be impacted by joining a +4/x8 group where they're suddenly doing worse than they did before. These are the people I largely play with, and I am overwhelmingly aware that these players, for the most part, do not use the forums, and I think these players make up a much larger portion of the userbase than many people realize.

But that doesn't really address why Sentinels seem to be coming up short on every metric. If everyone can step on everyone else's toes, why does it feel like Sents still aren't managing to quite cut it?

Plant Control was Issue 6. That was 2005. Seven years before the game got shut down. I don't think that being capable of soloing everything with a secondary that is notably very good at soloing AVs is a fair comparison. I'm sure there are Controller secondaries that can solo the majority of the content Mind/Psi could.

I'm going to agree that there's a huge disparity between Seeds and Mass Confuse, but I honestly don't think making Mass Confuse into Seeds 2 fixes my core issues with Mind Control, which is that it gives up a lot of useful utility and damage by having no immobilizes plus a third-tier hold, and replaces them with powers of questionable utility, but not such questionable utility that anyone is considering throwing them out and starting over (not that we would). Mesmerize is a clunkier way to apply ST containment. Levitate animates slower than Lift, which makes it substantially worse as a damage-dealing power (I know it doesn't have defense tags, but honestly that's another issue if you mess around in AE). Terrify's fear is just less useful (not useless) without an immob. Telekinises is a cool power with a massive learning curve and almost no situation where it's worth the effort to actually learn. How do we fix these issues? I would personally address these issues before I touch Mass Confusion, a power that's not bad but compares unfavorably to a power that is honestly incredibly busted. And a part of that is because Mind Control would still compare unfavorably to a lot of other control sets even if MC was 60 seconds. EDIT because I gave no actual suggestions: A personal pie-in-the-sky approach to fixing Mind Control, in my opinion, might be adding -status resistance to the various powers as a sort of "wearing down" your enemies. One of Mind's niches is having a lot of Holds to throw out to attempt to permahold an AV in specific circumstances; why not lean into that? It would only really help the Holds and solo players, but Mind Control doesn't feel any weaker than any other low-damage control set in 99% of group play anyways.

To be fair, I have one of those shake weight-esque flashlights and this is genuinely what it feels like to use it in real life.

I like this as an idea, I just think there's a more active and less all-or-nothing way to do it. At the risk of making too out there of a reference, the DS RPG series Etrian Odyssey divides "Binds" into Head, Arm, and Leg; attacks are linked to a specific body part, and to stop ALL attacks you have to bind all three body parts (and I believe a small handful of bosses can fight back anyway, but without their best attacks). This is just one way to do it, of course, but I think that the CoH approach ends up creating a situation where big fights have to be relatively uninteractive for a controllers because mezzes are just too strong and too long for big fights; there's more than just "mez" and "no mez" when designing a game. I get what you're saying, but I think there's plenty of ways to make it so that even relatively short mezzes end up providing more value than just shooting something, while also acknowledging that that approach to MMO design literally did not exist when CoH was made. I will also say, I've always felt that a fully mezzed enemy - with mezzes as long as CoH currently has - should, logically, just end up arrested since they can't fight back. Obviously that'd make for an overpowered mez class, but I think the rationale is worthwhile to sort of break down what (I feel, at least) is "wrong" with CoH mez. (I also want to be clear I really enjoy CoH's Control classes - I just think they're not something any modern MMO dev would even implement again because they're a nightmare for game balance).

I'm going to push back against this a little; quite a few modern MMOs have introduced moments where a player *needs* to stun/silence a boss as part of a mechanical interaction. I think the problem is that CoH's take on controls/combat and team building just doesn't mesh well with MMOs finding a "control" role - which, to be fair, took almost a decade after CoH invested hard in its own take on control. It's also common for other MMO bosses to build up immunities to specific forms of mez as they get used repeatedly. I think the biggest issue with CoH's approach to control in terms of balancing is that controls are VERY long relative to any other MMO and that there's not really any sort of "building" resistance to mez that makes it less "permahold or nothing" in terms of approach. The other problem is that this is a very "build into" type of mez which just doesn't mesh with the way the rest of the game is designed. The only enemies that aren't dying quickly are the ones with the resistance to the effect. There's a massive disconnect there that makes it work better versus players than enemies almost always.

My understanding of their original concept was the opposite of this - they were "meant" to add other origins to your existing one (with your existing origin being the source of your primary and secondary).

I think the Vindicators are some really good picks because some of them are very underdeveloped as in-game characters, but have Praetorian counterparts - and also because there's quite a few ways to develop pools for them that don't step on *any* existing pool's toes. I think the best use of Hero Patrons would be to use them to introduce new sets that are both "lore-friendly" in that they develop the associated characters, and are unique enough that people who don't actually consider their character to be "borrowing" patron powers to be able to explore their themes further with them. Swan? - Between Kinetic Melee and Kinetics-inspired moves, I think there's a lot of places to go with this. Could get a Smash/Lethal shield via the Energy Aura connection, or Mind Over Body via her Psychic Blast connection; concept-friendly to "energy" or "psychic" heroes. Woodsman? - I've wanted a nature epic pool very badly for a long time. Not *too* much to say here; there's enough nature-esque powers to form a coherent pool, especially if Spore Cloud was turned directly into a Darkest Night clone. He even has the obvious Tuatha summons. And so on.

Why does it need to be 60 seconds? Being honest, a .5 second or so hold back when mez dropped toggles seems very in-theme with a paralysis/jolt/whatever electricity side effect. Annoying and awful to play against, but that's a different discussion. Random clockwork already sleep my low level characters nonstop.

Would it? The damage is equivalent to the other damage auras, which do more "exotic" damage types.

I'd love if the signature story arcs (Who Will Die? and Pandora's Box) were added to the WST rotation or given their own WST-esque rotation; it's annoyingly hard to get people together to do the villain ones even with the pretty substantial reward-to-time-investment they give right now.

Only if you come in with that as a preconceived notion. There's other characters who contribute, passively, as much as a soldier with double toggles, and even moreso with a move set to autofire. The point is to illustrate how low the bar to "contributing" really is when we're fitting that 8th person in.

I strongly agree with this, but also want to add that I think any sort of buffs to stalkers might want to focus on the early/massively underperforming sets. The sets that are bad on stalkers are bad. Though the Assassin's Focus change sounds like how it really always should've worked.

I disagree with this - it's incredibly common to have powerset combos, on SOs, that have individuals not dying. If no one is ever actually hitting zero then a healing set is redundant, full stop. And I'm saying this as someone who recently introduced several friends to the game and some of them didn't even update their SOs regularly. Players die from mistakes far more than content being too difficult, and honestly Empathy isn't even the best set for saving people from themselves. That's my issue with set. This can not be stressed enough. Empathy, on SOs, is a massive underperformer outside of Hami raids. It's still an underperformer with IOs. I think this is an incredibly unfair metric - an Arachnos Soldier with double leadership toggled and fully slotted, set to auto follow someone, is hugely useful to a team at +0/8 when playing 1-50 on SOs. It's also less useful than said Soldier actually fighting mobs. We want Empathy to be on a similar level as other powersets on SOs, and I don't think that's an unfair ask. It's bad that Emapthy's rez is worse than other sets rezzes, it's bad that Empathy's cooldowns are prohibitively long for powers people can accidentally juke if your timing is off, and it's bad that those powers have situations, on SOs, where they're factually just not changing any outcomes. That last point is the worst thing a support set can be, and an issue also found in Force Fields (but worse with the right/wrong team); (potentially) irrelevant.

Going to chime in and say that I am not a fan, at all, of any sort of combo system being add with Fortitude. It just doesn't feel that into the spirit of the set to me, and I'm increasingly tired of combos being the go-to way to "fix" sets. Personal proposals Absorb Pain - I think it'd be neat if the Caster got an absorb bubble for the amount they healed. In another world I'd say making this a toggle that works similarly-ish to Spirit Ward + Oppressive Gloom would be neat, but I think that ship has sailed. This power is honestly in a terrible place considering just how much Heal Other can heal, though, and it needs a serious adjustment. Clear Mind - Add a lot of status resistance to this, and make it AoE. I think all the Clear Mind clones need to just be AoE at this point. Mez is honestly not an enjoyable mechanic but Clear Minding your team constantly is even less so. The Auras - I really do think these should just be bigger AoEs. Gathering for Auras is incredibly unfun and I'm just going to do without 9/10 times. I don't think Empathy will ever be an "impactful" set without these being reliably applied to most of the team most of the time they're cast, and that's not going to happen with the current radii. Adrenaline Boost - I've always felt like this would've been a good choice for being made immune to recharge, but with a massively reduced recharge (preferably low enough to be made perma). Right now a big issue with Emp is that it scales very well - too well - with recharge reduction, which means the baseline without that reduction has to be in an absolutely atrocious spot to be "balanced". While there are builds/teams out there that probably get the recharge under 90 seconds, I think a change to no-recharge/90 seconds recharge would be a welcome addition to the set on SOs while changing barely anything for IO'd out characters, significantly smoothing out the difference. Since both Auras will still scale with recharge, I don't think this would be problematic. I imagine this isn't the most popular suggestion, though. I really like the backup rez idea - I think it's very in the flavor of Empathy as a set and is uniquely strong since you often only rez when things are going REALLY bad or when the same person keeps getting themselves in trouble.

If anything, Energy Melee without the glowy hands feels way more Super Strength.

I understand where it is timeline wise, I just feel like the plot is incredibly disjointed. If I haven't done Mind of a King, the idea that they're stealing electricity for an evil plot (or even capable of plotting) is borderline nonsensical. At this point, my character should just think they're annoying wind-up toys that steal scrap to make more. I just don't feel compelled by the Synapse TF, so I feel a little bad for the Clockwork King because I can come up with all sorts of hypothetical, non-evil plots, and also because on some level, post-reveal, I have absolutely zero idea what he could possibly want with that electricity. I get that his motivations are supposed to be nonsensical/crazy, because he's nonsensical/crazy, but Synapse expects me to jump to conclusions here and, considering the Clockwork King's actual backstory, that makes me feel a little bad for him (in hindsight). Like, I just find this plotline incredibly uncompelling and bland on top of being a slog. If I'm going to sit through an extremely long task force, I want to feel like it's necessary and urgent, and the current plotline fails there. Nothing about it (content, storyline, length) is enjoyable to me outside of the Babbage fight, and any rework needs to address that it's kind of a failure on every point (in my opinion, at least).