Stormwalker

It should, yes. (I don't have a Mastermind myself, so can't positively confirm, but I've heard others say it does). I can confirm that it fixes PBAoE's and multiple simultaneous attacks being deafening.

I"m just noticing that you still charge for murder that really was an accident. Does this mean you're still charging them if you accidentally kill the target, or are you charging for collateral damage?

I know the sound-stacking issue they fixed has been discussed in several threads on the forums, though not necessarily in that forum.

If I use the VX-99 Event Horizon as my Right Sheathed Blade with Dual Blades, when I draw the blades the right blade is not drawn correctly. The left blade is drawn correctly (remains in the hand throughout the draw animation), but the right blade disappears and then teleports into the character's hand at the end of the animation. I tested this with numerous different blades and only saw this issue with the VX-99 Event Horizon. All the other blades I tested in the Right Sheathed Weapon slot seemed to work correctly. In addition, I tested it with a number of different blades in the left hand, and did not observe any differences in the behavior based on which blade was in the left hand. It's not exactly a major problem, but figured I would report it anyway.

Mostly I was thinking of Super Reflexes and Shield Defense, which are positional-defense sets out of the box. Of course, they still have their own particular kryptonite (Mind Control, which has attacks with no positional component that only target psi defense... of which those two sets have none). But the attack typing adjustments don't affect those sets at all.

Seconded. Skip it. Spin and Shockwave are all the AoE you need.

Actually, I'd argue that this change hurts typed-defense sets like Energy Aura as much as (if not more than) resist sets. What it doesn't hurt is positional-based defense sets like SR. Though given how few attacks are being modified, I don't think it's that big of an issue. I'm much more bothered by the fact that the mechanics defy logic a little bit (as described in my above post).

While I don't think these changes are likely to be a really big deal, I do feel compelled to point out that in quite a few of these cases, changing the defense type to the more exotic type doesn't actually make sense from a "realism" perspective. Take, for example: Arachnos fire tarantula burning claws now prioritize fire defense This isn't a stream of fire, or a burst of flame we are talking about here. This is a claw attack, that happens to be on fire. You don't defend against it the way you defend against a flamethrower. You defend against it the way you defend against a claw, which is to say, a lethal attack. It just additionally deals fire damage if you get hit by it. If you have a forcefield that repels physical attacks, it's going to deflect that claw and you're not going to be hit by it. If you have an energy field that repels a stream of fire like a flamethrower, but doesn't repel physical attacks, it's not going to stop that claw from hitting you. Logically, the type of defense that works against an attack should have more to do with the delivery mechanism of the attack than the actual type of damage it does. Of course, I recognize that the objective of these changes is not "realism", but is rather to make Smash/Lethal defense less dominant, but it's probably going to annoy the part of my mind that expects things to work in logical ways to be mildly grumpy henceforth. Oh, well. Nothing to be done for it, I guess.

I agree, this is also how I would ideally like it to work. If that's not viable, though, teleporting weapons don't really bother me much (especially since at least some of my characters could absolutely justify that trick anyway!)

Sounds like you might be running into something similar to what I ran into with dual blades and the VX-99 Event Horizon in the right hand earlier (where the left blade draws fine, but the right blade teleports, even though the full draw animation is played).

Make sure you don't have a No Redraw power customization (don't know if there is one for Ninja Blade or not off the top of my head). No Redraw will cause the draw animation to be skipped and the weapon will basically teleport to your hand.

I'm neither here nor there on the change, because I don't use AE basically at all. Of my 35 characters, one of them has actually run any AE missions at all. So it doesn't affect me either way. That said, there's no need to grind Incarnate Trials for anything. Everything that you can get in AE, you can get from running regular missions/story arcs. Veteran XP (which is the only thing being taken away from AE anyway), Incarnate XP, Shards, Threads, and Inf can all be gotten from running regular missions through your contacts, or radio missions, or tip missions, or Ouroboros missions. Reward Merits can be gotten from story arcs via contacts and Ouroboros. On Live, Incarnate Trials were recquired to get Incarnate XP and Threads. Not on HC. I haven't done a single Incarnate Trial on HC (because of the sound issue, which makes it difficult for me to team, which is being fixed in Page 4!), and one of my two 50's (who just hit 50 a little over a month ago, I think it was?) has 3 Incarnate slots at T4 and 3 at T3. All from running regular missions. My other 50, who just hit 50 maybe two weeks ago, has all her slots at T3 Grinding Incarnate Trials is not required for advancement. At all.

In my case, it was specifically the devs on Live that shot down the bokken and shinai for the stated reason. Against their design philosophy at the time (though they gave us energy weapons later, so apparently their design philosophy changed and I didn't think to ask again, which I should have).

Definitely. So I see no reason why a bokken or shinai should be off-limits now. And the bokken at least would probably be really easy to model (the shinai is a bit more complex). Also, one minor glitch I have noticed when drawing sheathed Dual Blades, but only when using the VX-99 Event Horizon as the right blade (what you are using in the left slot doesn't seem to affect it, I tried several different ones to be sure). The left blade draws correctly, but the right one just kinda disappears and then reappears in the character's hand at the end of the draw animation. I'm not sure why it only happens with that particular sword (I tested a bunch of others and didn't see the problem with any of them).

Yeah, I see it now, somehow I missed it when I looked over them previously. Thanks for pointing it out to me. This is the greatest fix ever.

Oh, thank heaven. And thank the devs! And thank you for pointing out where I missed it!

You fixed the sound-stacking issue that has been preventing me from teaming since forever! AoE's and multiple-simultaneous actions are no longer deafening! I can play the game at a reasonable volume without getting a headache! That's not in the patch notes (or did I just miss it?). Did you fix it by accident? If so, please don't un-fix it! This is the single greatest change you could possibly have made for me. Please tell me this was intentional and it's staying.

Even if normal content gives better rewards than AE content, AE content will still be a more efficient way to level up simply because you don't have to run all over the city to do it. Note: Don't take this as me advocating for leveling via AE. Far from it. I'm someone who barely ever uses AE at all, because I prefers the immersive experience of traveling around the city, talking to contacts, occasionally having to street hunt, etc. because it helps me build the stories in my head around my characters. I'm just speaking of the above from a purely mathematical perspective. It's very hard to make traditional content more rewarding than farming because farming bypasses all the little timesinks involved in normal content (which are the same things that make normal content feel "real", so you can't really cut them out).

Really? I may have to download the Beta client just to try this out. EDIT: You're right! I only hope they changed this on purpose and it's not an accident, because this would be the best change ever for me. I'll actually be able to join teams again!

He's one of my favorite characters, too. I have in my comics collection the Superboy issue in which they originally gave his origin as a clone of a human infused with powers derived from an aura they observed on Superman's body (hence the tactile telekinesis, rather than the traiditional Kryptonian powers, which he didn't develop until after they retconned his origin later). Him being half-Kryptonian was a retcon they did later. That said, I still say he's a scrapper. Especially early on, he was a lot less invulnerable than Superman (especially to energy damage types), but he was a quicker, more agile fighter and more aggressive, which fits the scrapper mold. Spider-Man is pretty much the definitive scrapper. He's the very first character that comes to mind when I think of the Scrapper AT. (Second is Wolverine, of course). Venom is a Brute, and the differences in their combat styles stand out. EDIT: Just to expound on this a little bit, one of the differences between a Scrapper and a Brute is that a Scrapper uses skill and technique more, where a Brute leans more on his raw power. Spider-Man is a much more skilled fighter than Venom, who tends to use brute force (no pun intended, but it comes back to where the idea of the "Brute" originates) instead.

Another really good way to demonstrate this effect is to take a character with a stealth ability to an x8 Nemesis mission and find a pack with a bunch of Jaegers, then attack something so you drop out of stealth. They will all turn and fire at you in unison. The resulting instance of More Dakka is incredibly loud. I encounter this on my Energy Melee/Energy Aura scrapper anytime I fight Nemesis because of Energy Cloak.

Yeah, as nice as sheaths would be to have (and I would very much like to have them), I'm still thrilled overall with what we are getting. So, no complaints with this decision. Besides, especially when I use an energy sword, it lets me get my PSO2 vibe on (where your weapons always hover in the air like that, and only a very few specific ones (some very ornate katanas, mostly) actually have sheaths. And there are lots of ways to justify your sword hovering in mid-air off your back with either supertech (counter-grav, perhaps, or magnetics like in NieR:Automata) or magic. Not so easy for the Natural types, of course, unless they're borrowing the tech from someone in their SG, say.

Ok, I have to heartily endorse any appearance of El Kabong. +1 for guitar customization for War Mace. There are lots of weapon customizations I want, but my biggest wants are a bokken (wooden practice sword) and shinai (bamboo practice sword) for Katana. These got shot down on Live because it wouldn't match the damage type, but now we have lots of spears in staff that don't match the damage type, so maybe we can revisit this? I mean, my Katana/Willpower is shamelessly derived from Ryouko Mitsurugi of Real Bout High School, who caused all of her carnage with a wooden sword!

First off, you can't go wrong with any of the above. They all have their advantages. /SR and /Nin don't need DA's mitigation (once you get to high level/soft-cap, that is; it's still useful at lower levels), but that means you don't need DA. Might still be useful in Incarnate content, which has a higher soft-cap (though if you run Barrier, as I do on my Claws/SR, that will easily cover you for defense in Incarnate content). Not needing DA means you get a much better attack chain than those who are depending on it. Willpower, you have the option. You can go for smash/lethal soft-cap and not use DA at all, or you can focus on soft-capping energy/negative defense and hard-capping smash/lethal resist, and then get the added bonus of lethal (and melee, which with DA might actually be higher than your smash defense) defense via DA. This is the approach I took on my Staff/WP who has been running on 0x8 since level 40 and doesn't seem to have problems with any enemy group she has faced so far except for Banished Pantheon (who eat her alive for some reason; I haven't bothered to work out why and figure out how to fix it yet; I'll worry about that after she hits 50). So, you've got lots of options. Katana/Dark Armor also happens to work very well; I have a friend with a Kat/DA that is pretty close to unkillable and completely laughs at some enemy factions that cause problems for most builds (notably, Carnies).

Yep. At least the Damage Type changes won't make anything worse for Regen (well, except for those who are using Katana/Broadsword/Staff to shore up their defenses, who will find that Lethal defense is less helpful now), since Regen is largely damage-type agnostic. Probably the big winner in the Damage Type changes is /SR, which doesn't give a damn about damage type (except for those wonderful Mind Control attacks we love so much, but that is nothing new).