Eldyem

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.

In all fairness, in other MMOs (I believe FFXIV is the one I'm thinking of) a damage increase of a lower scale for a few seconds has largely contributed to classes being "meta". I think we might want to be careful about saying "only" because sometimes those small values are the difference between top tier and unviable (though they clearly aren't in this situation, I think the tar pit nerf is substantially more relevant to the argument than the twillight grasp nerf). For a Controller who isn't using procs (ie a leveling controller), 6% less of a res debuff probably eclipses the actual damage they're providing. That being said - does this actually matter? And I sincerely doubt it does in 99% of gameplay and the other 1% are situations we'd never notice. A BIG question here regarding Fade is "Should Power Boost even work this way?" and on some level I think Power Boost just shouldn't affect defense and that defense powers should never be balanced around the belief that it should, even if we're fine with it doing so. That's more of an opinion-oriented choice, but it's hard for me to see this as a true nerf when we're just "fixing" something that is a mechanically nonsensical choice when we really take a step back and think about what it means. I imagine a very large portion of it is that To-Hit debuffs are now considerably less relevant, solo play feels much less common as a whole, and groups move quickly which makes Tar Patch and Darkest Night much less useful overall because they need to be set up. We also saw the introduction of sets like Time and Nature that really raised the bar on what a support set could do. The game changed around Dark, but I think there's at least three other Support sets in an obviously worse spot and probably more like six or seven if we're being honest. edit: Forgot to clearly state my position; these changes are fine. Supports as a whole in CoH (even the ones I think are underpowered!) are very strong and I don't think that there's any AT modifier fixes that has the potential to throw any set out of whack unless that set is already doing very, very poorly.

Scrappers are in a strange place - I don't actually think there's anything wrong with them exactly, I just struggle to see why I would want to play the majority of powerset combinations on a Scrapper in the current environment. Not because Scrappers are bad, but because Scrappers sort of lack any kind of overarching identity. Brutes absolutely step on their toes quite a bit as a damage AT while also having a built-in taunt that provides a lot of utility even when you're not tanking. Stalkers have the utility of a very strong built-in stealth, and plenty of newer Stalker primaries aren't giving up AoE anymore. Tankers are tanks, and the recent buffs make them very appealing. And that's where the strange place for Scrappers is; they're not in a bad spot, they're not bad at all, but they just have no identity and less utility than other melees and I don't want to play most combinations on a Scrapper because of that. I don't think they need buffed. I don't think there's anything glaringly wrong with the archetype. I think that any given buff would probably either not resolve the identity issue or would send them flying out of control into being the "best" melee AT again. I think the core issue is that we have 4 ATs who do very similar things, not that Scrappers are somehow broken. And that makes them boring. I like Kinetics/Shield largely because I like Kinetic Melee and the Power Siphon mechanic is less impactful on a Brute and doesn't exist on a Stalker. Shield's damage buffs on Scrappers are more impactful than on Brutes, and I like the core mechanic of Against All Odds as being surrounded vs. what I believe Stalkers get.

Flame Orb + Energy Font (even if they suck) for looking cool. Slotting them into the AoE immob can end up with me getting a lot of fireballs following me around, but I'm somewhat unconvinced they actually do anything.

This might be a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I really wish that the pure damage procs (Blaster's Wrath, Will of the Controller, Malice of the Corruptor) were something else. I'd hate if they were changed, but it's really disappointing that some characters get something that really ties into their identity and then these three get this. I hope that any future ATOs skip over pure damage procs and lean into identity building aspects. I think Scrapper's strike is kind of secretly mediocre; any given crit bonus is essentially the same amount of bonus as damage, and I don't think people would slot a 3% damage bonus. The Brute/Scrapper/Stalker balance is super precarious, but I feel like this ATO could afford to get bumped up a little bit. It's just kind of lame when you think about how ATOs make Stalkers into on-demand crit machines and then Scrappers get... this. It's also less interesting than the other three global ATOs (Stalker's Build Up recharge, Kheldian Heal, and Arachnos Toxic Damage proc) and I already think the non-Stalker ones are awkward and kind of boring. Dominator procs are both interesting in my opinion (I LIKE fiery orb even if it's not that great) but there's just nowhere particularly good to put them. I don't know if letting me slot them into damaging attacks is the right choice, though. I like the juxtaposition between the Defender heal and Corruptor +End, which I think provides a little bit of identity to two Archetypes who are very similar. Controller sets provide some interesting bonuses, but they can also conflict with slotting my "attacks" for damage; I kind of wish there was damage built into both of these Archetypes' ATOs, which would make me feel a lot more compelled to actually slot them. I personally think it would be interesting if we could somehow use the code that prevents Regular and Superior ATOs from being on the same build to instead create mutually exclusive procs with interesting effects; something like a Defender providing an unslotted Maneuvers level Defense aura vs a modest Recharge aura (two popular effects). I think it's kind of wishful thinking, but the thing I like about ATOs is that they enhance Archetype identity; any new ones should do that, but so many people have different views of what each AT's identity should be that it becomes muddy without introducing choice.

The lower damage has to do with Stalkers and Scrappers having different damage scales - I actually think that the Stalker Eviscerate does more base damage before scale gets involved, as does Swipe. The problem is that a fairly AoE light primary loses out on two AoEs for single target damage, something that it is hard to claim any given Stalker primary lacks, and its almost impossible for a single target gain to outperform the possibility of hitting two targets in terms of mob-clearing utility, which is a very substantial portion of the game.