Eldyem

It's worth noting that Flash Arrow's -tohit is unresistable at the moment for some reason. It's not an issue I'd want fixed - it'd be incredibly bad if it were - but are you suggesting that the 5.25% on defenders be made 20% unresisted or for it to get a ~15% additional, resistable component? (I'm fine with an unresistable -20% myself but...) Also I'm completely sold on the idea of making the animations all 1s. Trick Arrows is supposed to be a fast, reactive debuff set (even though "reactive debuff" is kind of an oxymoron). Make it fast. Personal opinion is that Trick Arrows is trash because it's values are trash and it has no real (playstyle) identity. We know that players are generally willing to put up with a lot if a set does something cool and unique, but the cool and unique aspects of TA come way too late. Archery's identity is that it's the fast activating blast set - why not "port" that to Trick Arrows and fix the debuff values while we're at it?

I actually assumed a Mutant Origin, like Frostfire. The inherent issue with letting us choose the element of all 3 pet tiers is that it gives a level of versatility (and complexity!) that other Masterminds just don't get and it is very vulnerable to getting out of hand. I like the idea of being able to pick and choose what I want, but I'm apprehensive of what the costs could end up being for that versatility - see how Dual Pistols rarely switches ammo types. I also wanted to keep things as close to reusing existing assets as possible because that's just easier.

I've had a similar thought alongside the Elemental Conjuration set, but reusing old assets. I think that it's a set that could be made entirely out of old animations/pets, but with some new mechanics thrown in to spice it up a bit. Fire Imps for T1 Pets Water Blast as the Blast powers (or, perhaps, Water, Electric, and some sort of hybrid third attack?) Animate Stone as the T2 Pets (controller-y nature of Earth Melee makes me think they fit t2 and not t3) The as-of-yet unseen Air Control Pet (Vortex, I believe) as the T3 pet. (Give it some -Fly powers to help out the set's melee focus with my current pet assortment, maybe?) Utilizing a hybrid Beast Mastery/Water Blast Elemental Power stack system that offers no immediate benefit but can be used on either the third blast for some sort of offensive boost OR the utility move (the Serum, Repair, etc slot) for a utility boost - maybe even give each pet it's own elemental power you can "proc" with it by targeting a fire imp for a group fire mastery buff, etc.

For years I felt like Poison Control would be an interesting way to make it easier to build Poison-themed characters (since, let's be real, while /Poison is easy to theme around, it can be hard to theme it around another existing powerset). I thought it would be fun for it to play around with reducing Mez Resistance (not Protection) which I think is a massively underexplored area of the game that I don't really think would be too horribly broken because two controls control most things and AVs have the purple patch. I also thought it would make absolutely no sense for a Poison Control set to have a pet, and thought it would be very cool if it had a Scarecrow-style Fear Gas power as its level 32 that took cues from Phantom Army and Carrion Creepers to create a Fear (or Confusion, both to distance itself from Scarecrow and because it's roughly as easy to theme the set around conceptually) Patch that also summoned a Phantom, mechanically identical to Illusion's Phantoms, per enemy caught in the gas. Otherwise it would have a ST Immob, ST Hold, AoE Immob, AoE Hold, ST Confuse (or Fear), and a POWERFUL Mez Resistance reducing power - ST or AoE depending on what's balanced, and possibly also doing an Exotic damage type for reasons - an AoE sleep because Sleep Gas is obvious, and then some sort of filler mez, probably a Stun, to make sure the set functions pre-32. I'd also personally have the ST Immob and Hold be Lethal/Toxic or Smashing/Toxic or something while the AoE was pure Toxic, just because enemies who resist Toxic resist it by a lot. Unfortunately, the Scarecrow-inspired T9 is a large reason I never really shared it; mechanically cool but incredibly derivative feels like a weird thing to try and put your name on. Poison Assault and Poison Blast would also logically follow, but I think the "splash" aspect of Poison already fits those a lot while making them an absolute nightmare to balance, plus the difficulties of pure Toxic sets, though I think it could take some cues from Fiery sets and add in a Smashing/Lethal component for balance. Requires more thought than I felt comfortable exploring.

With the Blast T9 changes, that's... kind of what the game is now? There's an explosion every 145/Recharge seconds, probably every minute on most builds, per Blaster/Corruptor/Defender. I really do not think it would be unreasonable to become an unkillable god once every 10 minutes or so; all it would really do in the current meta environment is ease up some pre-IO'd gameplay, since IOs already make most of the long recharge T9s (Unstoppable, Elude [which is redundant baseline], Power Surge) completely superfluous to even very casually IO'd out builds.

Going to go against what I see a lot of people are saying and say I prefer Gaussian's in Build Up because Build Up, being the stronger boost, is clicked second in my 1-2 clicks of prepping for the biggest possible nuke, which means that Gaussian's procs also last that extra second or whatever, and also because I don't personally cycle Aim every time it's up the way I do Build Up (much less Upshot). That being said, I think Aim is generally pretty useful solely because Nukes exist. The damage boost seems like its on the cutting edge of "worth it" to click on cooldown, but I don't care to the math. I will say that, at low levels, Aim is super super useful versus the Circle of Thorns. Like absurdly useful. I just don't usually have the power slots to take it that early.

My perspective is that I'm a (high level) hero and there should be a "heroic moment" every 10 minutes. That's why I'm playing a superhero MMO. Let me live up to that. Everyone else gets to do their big hero thing way more often than I'd be clicking a T9 even at the Recharge cap.

Personal perspective is that the cost is the cooldown. Unstoppable is 3 minutes up and almost 17 minutes down baseline (actually 16 minutes and 40 seconds). 17 minutes is honestly an eternity in this game before recharge slotting comes into play. I don't think Unstoppable or Elude or even Power Surge would be broken if the only limitation was the 3 minutes up/13 minutes and 40 seconds down limitation they would have unslotted, though the ones that offer huge amounts of +recovery would likely have to be looked at. Recharge certainly complicates things, though.

Icy Bastion is what I consider the golden standard for what others should aspire to be. It increases a stat (resistance) that the set doesn't really get a lot of, gives boosts to both regeneration and recovery so you get some value out of it even if the defense manages to work, it's long enough to do what it needs to do and it's on a short enough cooldown that it works as a defensive cooldown analogous to other MMOs. If I could change all the other T9s to this, I would. Parasitic Aura is in a similar boat. Moment of Glory floats around there as well, but it just doesn't quite last long enough (and it's too strong to last longer, probably). T9s with a crash are borderline unusable in a meta with IOs. Willpower and Shield Defense's softer crashes are manageable, but they're such extremely minor boosts for what they are. I'm pretty sure that the recovery boosts they give means they're actually a net-positive for END, but they're like an orange insp at best. (1.67*.3*120 = 60ish). Rezzes are rezzes. Granite Armor is both great and absolutely horrible. Hibernate is cool but has limited uses in the grand scheme of things. If any change is made across the board, it's that the need to kick in the moment I click them. Any delay makes them even worse at what they do. I'd go so far as to say that these kind of T9s should have no (character model based) animation, but that might be a step too far for some people.

It's kind of both; the heal (especially fully slotted out) is obscenely massive and outdoes the HP increase. It's just that at high recharge you never want the max HP increase to drop if you can help it. Isn't it only about a second? It's the only emergency T9 where I don't feel like my character is posing for a couple seconds when they're about to die. Now Shadow Meld, on the other hand...

I've seen Gravity's mentioned as being better than the others, and I'm under the impression it got a significant buff at some point to do so, but I have no idea what changed to make it less garbage. Could you enlighten me?

Ice Armor just kind of feels dated as a set; Wet Ice generally sucking, Icicles being Lethal and not Cold or Cold/Lethal, Hoarfrost being a Dull Pain clone but on a defensive set so way less useful than it is for Invuln, unnecessary holes to two damage types, etc. It has some really good aspects - Chilling Embrace is massively underrated for the mitigation it provides (and for the whole team!), Energy Absorption is very good for sustain on a set that doesn't have other avenues of sustain, unlike Energy Aura, and Icy Bastion should be considered the gold standard should T9s ever get reworked. My personal suggestion to push Ice Armor into being closer to other sets is to give Wet Ice some Psionic Defense (doesn't need to be a lot) and let me slot sets into it, and maybe add a little Cold defense to help it really cement a "niche" in... resisting what is probably the rarest damage type? I think the fundamental flaw with Ice Armor is that Fire is so much more common than Cold, which means it has no niche but does have a weakness, which is just unfun. As for the Psi hole, at least Invuln specializes in resisting the two most common damage types and Fiery Aura has a fantastic heal; Ice Armor has nothing to justify leaving that hole in in the present game, at least in my opinion. I'm fine with sets having strengths and weaknesses - I just think those strengths and weaknesses need to be targeted and not "random".

I feel the opposite. I see no issue with one class - notably a very solo friendly, noob friendly class - having a "do nothing" inherent. The Scrapper ATOs are the real problem compared to Stalkers. 3% crit chance is 3% extra damage (equivalent to probably close to what 6% or so global damage, which for a single slot is great) but it's also absurdly boring and will never be directly noticed. 50% chance to crit over 2.5 seconds is roughly 2 attacks, which is similar to Stalker's 1 crit on paper, but Stalkers can prioritize a high damage attack and be sure the crit is coming, so Scrappers mostly end up worse off here, though I wouldn't be surprised if an edge case like Claws or Katanta or something could fit 3 attacks in and have it be "better". Scrappers were never crit machines by design.

Which is why specific ATs giving a bonus that does essentially nothing is awful. I shouldn't think to myself "God, I hope I don't team with x" as a selfish aside - 1 mag mez protection isn't anywhere near the level of usefulness as even the Slow Resistance, which is itself pretty blatantly just filler.

I'd really like if the Kheld inherent got bumped up to 2 or even 3 points of protection per Controller/Dominator. 1 does nothing. There's other thoughts on the Kheld inherent, but that one is huge because it's glaring. I've found Vigilance to be extremely useful in specific kinds of content - Summer Blockbuster being a big one, where I find running low or out of end isn't particularly unusual, especially at low levels. I don't think it needs touched; it's semi-useful when Defenders are probably at their worst and largely unnecessary once they're absurdly good. Controllers already have Overpower, I think? If there was a way to get increased control over it - the Stalker ATO that procs hide comes to mind - I think it would be substantially more useful.

Nin on Stalkers feels like a "what could have been" where Stalkers have way more utility / way less defense than a normal armor set. In an ideal world I'd wish that all Stalker sets were built around this concept to add an extra layer of archetype diversity, but that's not where we are, unfortunately. I'm even a big fan of the "bad" filler powers because it feels so unique.

I think that, if we moved to a stack-based system for electric attacks, I'd either give Voltaic Sentinel the ability to build them up or would make summoning it give full stacks; both would make it feel more impactful, and the current issue with it is that on paper it does pretty decent damage but you obviously barely notice because it's an extra ST attack every 4 seconds. Or make it fully instant cast (or very fast cast) with max stacks, that'd also work for me.

I'm personally a huge fan of the Patron Pools being high concept, and honestly wish there were more Patron Pools that were clearly taken directly from a character; however, I seriously wish the arcs ended with me supplanting the respective Patron (and a piece of their power) at the end rather than ending up their lackey - something I always felt like was vaguely written in with Barracuda's absurd prominence in the villain arcs over every other villain, but dropped in favor of what we have now. I particularly love Leviathan Mastery. Almost all the powers feel so cool, especially because they're absurd, and I don't feel like I need to concept them into my characters, personally - and that's honestly what I really like about the Patrons vs the Ancillary pools, since I'd had to take Body Mastery for the 100th time on every melee just to fit a concept. I will say that I sort of hate that 3/4 are pretty magic-oriented; considering Mako a mutant patron is a little disingenuous when he's clearly giving me access to some kind of magic powers instead of an infusion of his mutant powers. I think that's more of an overall downer in the general design choice of the game, however, since my "would never use magic" characters are kind of drawn into it by incarnate progression being magic except not.

I like a lot about Dark, but I do agree that the final pet is very out of place. I don't love anything the way I love Carrion Creepers, Phantom Army, or Wormhole, but I don't think that's a specific design failure. The truth is that, despite having a Dark controller, I really don't think about the set that much; it's pretty well designed, nothing stands out as particularly overpowered or underpowered. Most of the powers are worth taking, but you can skip plenty of them as well, especially on a high recharge build. It's a very good example of a powerset that's in a good place, at least in my opinion. It's not Illusion, Plant, or Fire, but it's also not Ice. As an aside, I can't think of the last time I saw a Dark Controller that wasn't also /Dark, but I don't think that speaks to any specific deficiencies or overwhelming synergies of either set. Ice and Earth both get their AoE holds at 26 instead of 18; Earth and Dark both, to my understanding, have "stronger" AoE holds in that they're psuedopet effects, so I think it's fine personally. Ice is just an outlier (in a lot of ways).

I would agree that that's absolutely what the original devs were thinking of, but the game, at launch, was also occasionally called "City of Statutes" because of the general overpoweredness of AoE mezzes. I would say that, if this game didn't have other sources of mezzes (how many other MMOs have mezzes even remotely near as widely available and spammable as CoH?) KB could have been a problem, but by launch I think it was already well past that point, and the accuracy penalty feels a little off - but Gale is such a "love it or hate it" power that I don't think anyone has really championed that cause.

The problem is that Gale is not a slight breeze. It's a very visible burst of air, and the knockback sends things hit flying. If this was a knockdown power, I think there'd be a legitimate argument that what's happening is that some individuals are braced for the push, but the knockback in Gale is greater than that of most of Energy Blast, and only a little weaker than Tornado. The accuracy element isn't emulating this post-hoc explanation, it's a balancing measure because the original devs thought knockback was quite a bit more useful than it actually turned out to be. And I think it's time we removed that balancing measure, because Gale just isn't that strong.

My only issue with Gale currently is that it has an accuracy penalty that I really don't think makes any sense on it, both thematically - you're telling me you can dodge a huge gust of wind? Easily? - and mechanically - knockback is not SO strong to warrant missing more and is substantially worsened by misses breaking up packs. I'm not a big fan of it being mandatory, but I think I have a substantially different conceptualization of "Storm Summoning" from many people in this thread and wouldn't find O2 Boost to be an acceptable replacement for concept.

I get the reasoning behind this, but part of my problem with this is that it doesn't really lower the number of "casts" I have to make of AoEs vs trash mobs either way (though, to be fair, neither does current Scourge). If a DPS boosting inherent isn't making me use less attacks, it's not doing anything. Personally, I think Scourge could use bigger values in the early part of the ramp up, but it's a pretty precarious balance - I think the current value might be too low, though, if there's any core problem with Corrs as an archetype. Damage relative to Defenders is also mildly problematic, but I'd fear that a ramp up in damage scale could send Corrs flying from "good but occasionally outclassed" to "ridiculous". I think current Scourge is slightly better in that it's physically possible for it to lower my AoE casts from ~4 to ~3 in niche situations, though. On a sort of tangential topic , my personal biggest issue with Corruptors is that there's really one piece of content where I feel like they should, mechanically, shine - Summer Blockbuster - and they just. don't. There's not really a fix for it, but it's kind of frustrating that the only content I could really describe as a "Boss rush without incarnates" ends up locking Corrs out of 2 powers that would let them differentiate themselves from Defenders. I really like Summer Blockbuster as a piece of content, so it's just disappointing. Edit: Favorite Primary is for sure Water - it's very active, has access to a great "burst window" power in tidal forces, and has several AoEs, which feel like they mostly scale well with Scourge. Ice and Fire are also obvious standouts. Secondaries - Time, Cold, Dark. Proactive sets that let you throw out your debuffs and then get to attacking, hopefully just after the first wave of AoEs hit so you Scourge better.

Part of the purpose of recharge-heavy builds is to let you not have to take or use a "full" attack chain. There's inefficiencies in using powers that aren't your best. It's interesting that you specifically cite Claws because Claws is a huge offender in this regard; Follow Up and Focus are just so much better than the other attacks that, should you be looking to make a single target attack chain, you'd want to get it as close to Follow up > Focus > Follow Up as physically possible - procs notwithstanding. While we know this obviously isn't doable, stacking recharge on a Claws Scrapper, or any other powerset where some attacks are better than others, is hugely beneficial in terms of DPS. One of the appeals of high recharge, perma-hasten builds is to have them only impact 2 - 3 powers because the overall impact of having extremely high recharge lets you fully stop caring about garbage powers you put in your tray to fill up time and space. And if we're not arguing about top-tier, efficient builds, then who cares? This game is playable on SOs. There's no coherent "build" discussion that isn't based on maximizing either efficiency or value, and value has gotten so low as to be meaningless unless your build needs like six sets of Winter IOs or something wild.

I've had some minor thoughts about the sets I personally think underperform but I also want to make it clear I personally believe supports in CoH are, as a whole, very strong; I think parity is difficult to achieve, and the focus on underachieving sets - Sonic, Poison, Trick Arrows, Empathy, Traps, Pain Domination, Force Fields seem to be the ones generally agreed on - should be primarily on fixing bad powers rather than trying to make every set as good as Kin/Time/Rad/Cold feel now. (and Storm is its own beast, of course). Not interested in giving my full thoughts on each set but there's some major points with Sonic I think need touched on. Multiple powers (Sonic Siphon, Disruption Field) are just worse than peer powers. Like, Siphon is -30% res, corrosive enzymes are -25% res and -30ish dmg. Fix that, and then the set still has obscene end costs for what it provides. Fix the numbers on both ends and I think I'd say whatever fix goes to FF should go here - if we're giving absorb, Sonic with absorb could be strong. Also Clarity (and its peer powers) sucks and has no real place in Sonic specifically; I would really like to see it made into a +recovery buff or something (alongside its peer powers honestly). Also, this set is really keyed into providing -res and +res but somehow isn't the best at providing -res, in an AoE or otherwise. It just seems intentionally undertuned as a whole. I'd like numbers adjusted slightly upwards and end costs adjusted way downwards. Also, Liquefy is simultaneously a godsend and wack which I think speaks volumes about everything wrong with Sonic; the power that does something else from the other ones ends up being really solid just because you're doing anything else.