Stormwalker

You still twisted my words. The fact that you twisted my words to attack someone else and not me is irrelevant. For the recxord, I'm not angry at them. I disagree with them very strongly, and will defend my opinion fervently. I am angry at you.

Except that your interpretation of what I'm saying is both out of context and invalid. I want the game to remain the same as it has been. Because the decisions to make the game the way it is were not made in a vacuum. I want my existing builds which are already active on characters and were created within the framework of the game as it exists to continue working. Icecomet wants to change the game, to change the way power pools work, and others in this thread have proposed changes that break existing builds. Those are not the same thing. That is a false equivalency. Don't twist my words to make false equivalencies. That makes me very angry.

That's not strictly true. Because when you change what is possible - when you introduce power creep into the game - then the standard changes. The expectation of other players changes. So that's not actually the viable option people like to pretend it is.

I disagree. Especially about it being irritating. Frankly, I enjoy the challenge of finding the right selection of powers that suits both my character concept and my build goals. Was it a bit too restrictive on Live? Yes, probably. Has it been more than sufficiently relaxed on Homecoming to satisfy me? Yes, absolutely. Do I think relaxing it further would be detrimental to my enjoyment of the game? Yes, unquestionably. Also, as @Rudra pointed out, there are advantages to the non-homogenous nature of the Epic pools. They give a player choices for what kind of power order they might prefer to build with. Not every player will have the same preferences for power order that you do, and making sweeping changes assuming that this is what everyone wants would be misguided. I absolutely do not want the Scrapper pools homogenized, for example - it would break many of my existing builds.

That is the trade-off involved in choosing an epic pool which offers a superior defensive power. This is by design. Having to make difficult choices is where the element of skill becomes involved in building a character. If you take away all the difficult choices, then you reduce the depth of the game. On my Energy/Energy/Force blaster, I had to take Personal Force Field to get to Temp Invlunerability. I've used Personal Force Field maybe twice ever - it's not the most useful of powers, to be honest - and this is on one of my most-played characters. This is the price of admission to the Force Mastery pool. I pay it gladly, because it's worth it to get Temp Invulnerability and Force of Nature. I had to make room for it in my build. I had to make a choice. I had to sacrifice some other power I might have taken and take a power I never use. Epic power pools are just like any other power pool - more desirable powers are placed deeper in the pool where a degree of sacrifice is required in order to select them. This is intended. It's how the game works. Also, you aren't any more restricted on how many epic pool powers you can take than you are in any other power pool. Getting the pool at level 35 gives you plenty of space to take every power in the pool if you want to. For each power you take, that's one less power you can take somewhere else. That is the entire challenge of creating a build in this game. It's designed to not let you get everything you want, and to have to be selective. Otherwise, what's the point of having builds at all? Just give everyone every power. Removing these kinds of difficult choices chips away at the complexity of the game. Make enough such changes, and eventually character builds become meaningless.

It is entirely valid to oppose a change on principle. Insulting people because they disagree with you is not helping your argument. Game balance is a thing. The change you suggest - rearranging the power order without changing the powers - would constitute a buff to some pools while having essentially no effect upon others. That's not balanced, and it adds more power creep when this game has plenty of that already. The power pools have already been made substantially more accessible than they were originally. They don't need further modification in that regard! Why do you seem to think that only people who agree with your ideas have valid opinions? The Suggestions forum is a place to make suggestions and then discuss whether those discussions should be implemented. Given that you are never in all the world going to find a change that makes everybody happy, someone is always going to disagree with you, and they also have a right to their opinion. This forum doesn't exist so that only people who think you have a great idea can make comments about it. The reason I'm not suggesting a "better" or "different" change is because I believe the correct answer in this case is not making a change where no change is needed.

No, no, no, no, and hell no. Conserve Power is much, much, much better than Superior Conditioning. It doesn't need to be up all the time; it's up more than enough to do the job. If anything, I feel like Brute Energy Mastery is underpowered because it's stuck with Superior Conditioning instead of Conserve Power. Also, Laser Beam Eyes is kind of terrible compared to the other melee AT pool attacks. If you choose Energy Mastery, you probably aren't choosing it for its attacks. You're choosing it because you want Conserve Power, Physical Perfection, and/or Focused Accuracy. So moving Laser Beam Eyes down would not be doing the set any favors.

The person that I was replying to was asking to have the melee AT pools changed. I quoted them in my reply, so that should have been fairly obvious. That said, on the subject of the blaster pools... as someone who has an Ice/Ice/Ice blaster, I don't really see a need for the change. The powers offered by the pools are substantially different in terms of the capabilities they provide. Frozen Armor is a significantly better power than most of the other Blaster defense/resist powers, this is why it comes later in the set. In order for it to be made available earlier, it would have to be nerfed... and I'd really prefer it not be nerfed because I like it how it is. Note that my Ice/Ice/Ice isn't level 41 yet (she's at 39 currently) and therefore doesn't have Frozen Armor yet and I still feel this way about it. I'd rather wait for a better power than get a weaker one sooner... and getting Frozen Armor sooner without weakening it would not be fair to the other sets. Similarly, I don't want Temp Invulnerability to become available at 35 in Force Mastery, because it would also have to be nerfed for that, and I don't want that, either. I like my EnergyEnergy/Force blaster just like she is, thanks. Once upon a time, you couldn't even take your Epic Pool until 41. I frequently don't start taking my Epic pool until 38 or 41 because there's another power I want sooner. I really don't see this as being a huge deal. As @tidge has already said, the pools are not uniform for a reason - they offer different capabilities. If you normalized their arrangement, you would also have to normalize the powers to maintain balance between the sets, and I don't want the powers changed.

I would rather the melee AT pools NOT all mirror Mu and Soul. Being able to pick up Conserve Power at 35 is very, very, very useful on some melee builds and I would very much rather not lose that. In fact, on my characters that go Energy Mastery, I almost never take an attack at all (I can only think of one exception, who took Energy Torrent... as a mule for a purple set. She never uses it.). But I pretty much always take Conserve Power and Physical Perfection, and frequently take Focused Accuracy. So I have no desire to see Energy Mastery rearranged as it would break many of my builds.

It's not like that anymore. Or, at least, it's not like that on Torchbearer (I can't speak for other shards). Honestly, unless there is an event going on, it's usually empty on Torchbearer, and if there's an event going on there, that's usually all anyone talks about from what I've seen.

Thos is a pretty late response, but I strongly disagree with renaming Integration. I'm very fond of Integration as a power concept, to the point that the "Integration" power actually provided me the concept for my primary Regen scrapper, Bladewhisper, whose mutant power is that she has perfecr Integration of body and mind and accordingly has perfect body control, which manifests in many different ways and is the root of most of her powers (the ones that don't stem from her mutant power stem from ninja training).

Amusingly, one of my characters is basically an old MUD character (Elf Ranger)... not a copy of that MUD character, but the actual same person, who ended up in Paragon City because of, as she puts it, "stupid wizards doing what stupid wizards do, which is meddling with forces they don't understand." Of course, in-game she doesn't have all the abilities she ought to have (she's an Archery/Ice blaster whose pool selections will fill out some of the other types of magic she ought to have on tap). She's one of several characters I have who are from outside context (other worlds or other universes - and some of them aren't sure which) and have gotten pulled into Paragon by its weirdness magnet tendencies; I find the outsider perspective creates an interesting headspace for the character. I do this in other games, too... probably half of my Skyrim characters were not from the Elder Scrolls universe.

I was able to dismiss the villain Valentines I got, so they were merely a mild annoyance. If Praetorians are getting ones they can't dismiss, that's an actual problem.

I tend to keep my homages fairly distinct. Some of this is the roleplayer in me: I want my characters to be their own characters, with their own stories; they just make little nods to the existing character. Kitten America is never going to be mistaken for Steve Rogers, even though her name and certain elements of some of her costumes (one has a blue top with a star on the chest, another mimics his boots and gloves) are clearly intended as references., and there are some minor nods in her backstory as well. But aside from a certain degree of idealism, a belief that her nation is still capable of being a force for good even if it sometimes fails in that calling, and and a desire to inspire that very goodness in its people, she's a very different person.

Yes, but switching alignmants would be wildly out of character (and also can be viewed in your character info, so I can't even "that didn't happen" it.)

I've gotten Valentines that have to go to villain contacts as a hero (not a vigilante), while doing hero missions. When accepting the Valentine mission, the target was in Grandville, so I had to just dismiss it.

He commands a group of enemies in one of Belladonna Vetrano's missions. He doesn't actually fight himself, and when you defeat them, he immediately surrenders. Clearly, he was just afraid that if he actually fought you, he'd cause too much collateral damage.

I suspect you're right, and it's kind of exasperating, because it means we can't prevent them from phasing. On my EM/EA scrapper, if I time my rush just after they come back into phase, I can prevent them from phasing the old-fashioned way - defeat them first (Build Up while charging in -> Long ET -> Total Focus -> Short ET is just fast enough as long as I don't whiff). But on my other characters, I can't down them fast enough, so I'm forced to sit through one phase cycle at least, and by then the Dark Servant is out and hitting them even when they are phased in is a challenge. This is actually the one and only reason I have started taking Focused Accuracy on my Scrappers again - I simply cannot count on defeating the Master Illusionist before Dark Servant comes out, even if there is only one of them. At least on my Blaster I have Aim for that.

I actually like traveling across zones. As Crimson would say, it adds verisimilitude. It makes it feel real. Also, START offers LOTS of transport options for not all that much inf. Sometimes "defeat all" makes sense for narrative reasons, and in that context I have no problem with it. Honestly, there are some missions I've done which I found myself thinking, "How is it that I can complete this mission without taking out all the badguys? Couldn't the ones I left just finish what they started after I'm gone?" Sometimes it makes sense that we don't need to defeat all. Sometimes defeating the boss would be enough to break the villains' morale and they just leave. Sometimes our goal is to retrieve something (or someone) and there's no need to defeat all the enemies - once we've rescued the hostage or retrieved the item, the villains have no reason to hang around anymore. But sometimes, you haven't saved the day until you've arrested every single villain on site. Now, there are examples of excessive "defeat all" - the first half of the Synapse TF is kinda brutal, for example - but those are mostly holdovers from the very early days of the game. Honestly, I actually agree with you on this one. We got stuck with a nerfed MoG, the NPC's should, too. Nerf regen (for NPC's)! Honestly, I hate Paragon Protectors in general, because generally they are not a serious threat, but they waste enormous amounts of time with their T9's. It's not good design. I mean, Carnie Master Illusionists are a much worse time sink than enemies with MoG. The Master Illusionist is a threat, though, so having it take longer to finish off isn't purely a time-waste; it does actually add some difficulty. That said, if you've ever soloed a Carnie outdoor mission on x8, you know it can take AGES to complete just because of all the Master Illusionists, and it can be really miserable. There's one mission from Harvey Maylor where you have the outdoor graveyard map (which is huge!) and you have to rescue three hostages... but the hostages are ghosts, which makes them extremely difficult to find without actually engaging every group of enemies on the map. It took me over an hour to complete that mission on my Claws/SR scrapper on +2/x7, and the vast majority of that time was spent dealing with Illusionists and Master Illusionists, because of their phasing ability. That was not fun. Also, I have on many, many occasions watched a Master Illusionist go out of phase while in the middle of the Hover-KB flip-recovery animation - players cannot execute powers during that animation, why can NPC's? On my Claws Scrapper and my Energy Blaster, fixing that alone would enable defeating them much faster, because it would give me a way to prevent them from phasing out. I do feel like certain enemy designs are not very respectful of the player's time. The only thing that turns it from a major nusiance into a minor one is the ability to say, "Ok, I don't have time for this right now, so I'm just going to abandon/autocomplete this mission"... except, of course, when it's a timer mission and I'd therefore get stuck with a "Mission Failed". Which brings me to my #1 QoL change I'd like to see: Why, why, why do mission timers still count when we are logged out? That's just bad. A game should never, ever penalize a player for choosing real life over the game. At least the vast majority of timer missions now warn us in advance, but it's still pretty easy to stumble into one. And putting the player in a position where a "I need to log out now" event means they're going to get a mission failure definitely penalizes the player. I hated this on live, I still hate it now, and if there was any one thing in the game I could change, that would be the one.

Thank you for confirming that!

Really, this is kind of a question about all of the Big 4 heal uniques (Preventive Medicine, Panacea, Numina's, and Miracle), but it's particularly important with regard to Preventive Medicine in the build I'm currently working on (EM//Invuln brute). I'm trying to decide which heal set to slot in Dull Pain. Ideally, I'd like to slot Preventive Medicine, as it has better set bonuses for this build (in particular, I really need that 8.75% recharge to make my attack chain work). But whether that's a good option depends on how the Absorb proc works, because there's no point in slotting it if the proc won't work right. My current understanding is that Preventive Medicine works independently of the power it's set in - it has a chance to trigger when you drop below a certain health, regardless of the state of the power that it's in (active or not). If this understanding is correct, then I can slot it in Dull Pain and it'll work just fine. If my understanding is NOT correct, then I need to slot it in an auto power (Health or Physical Perfection), and slot something else (probably Numina's) in Dull Pain. In the larger sense... which of these four can be slotted in a click power and be counted on to provide their benefit even when the click is not in use? Preventive Medicine: Absorb Proc (I think this one can, but trying to verify) Panacea: +Hit Points/+Endurance (I think this one needs to be in a power that's active. I nearly always put it in Health) Numina's Convalescence: +Regeneration/+Recovery (I think this is one of those that activates when the power does, but it has a long duration, so it's usually OK in a click as long as the click gets used regularly? But not sure about that, either) Miracle: +Recovery (pretty sure this one works the same way as Numina's) For that matter, how does the Regenerative Tissue: Regeneration proc work? I don't typically use it, but it'd be good to know.

I hadn't even realized I'd done that. I blame posting from my phone, causing me to not notice the dates on the posts, and not being used to a forum being slow enough for something that old to still be on the first page.

In a team environment, you don't need as much survivability, because 1) you won't have all the aggro, and 2) you'll probably have some buffs from your teammates which will augment your survivability. By contrast, in solo play, you only have yourself to depend on, and you will have all the aggro. As for DPS, the build has more recharge than it seems, because the Force Feedback proc in Disembowel should proc pretty often, thus bringing Headsplitter and Disembowel up more often. Also, the Res debuff proc in Disembowel will boost not only your DPS in a team environment, but your entire team's DPS. Also, that thing about the To-Hit Debuff in Rise to the Challenge not being that effective? In a team environment, it's better than it is solo, because in a team environment that debuff protects your entire team, not just yourself.

This is a really good build. I don't think I could play it, personally - having to rely on purples to not get end drained to death by Malta and Arachnos when soloing would drive me a little spare - but in team play it's almost certainly a better build than mine. So if you team more than you solo, I'd seriously consider this build. It also suits the Natural origin better than using Soul Mastery does, I think. My builds tend to be very solo-oriented; I should make a point of noting that when I give build advice.

I have to agree, even if my first reaction to seeing his name was, "There's a Klingon in Praetoria?" and then when I made that joke to a friend of mine, and then showed her a screenshot of him, her response was, "Yep, that's definitely a TOS Klingon."