Lazarillo

What bad guys are you fighting? Some (Clockwork are a notable example) have KB weaknesses that will cause enemies to get thrown even when you just do knockdown. Looking at the numbers, it's still all KD only, and I know from my testing of the set, I didn't see any unexpected KB.

Does this count as necroposting?

It's funny you mention M. Reison, because despite his extreme HP values, he actually has much, much lower Regen than any other AV-like entity in the game. This is, ostensibly, why he has his own enemy class, because the old school devs specifically were kind of tired of the whole "bring -Regen to fight AVs" assumption, and thus, his toughness is based around simply having a ridiculous base HP pool and high resistances. -Regen by contrast actually does quite little to him, relatively speaking, by design at least.

It also got the 100% KD chance on Cremate, unless I missed that getting rolled back, too? Assuming I didn't miss something, this is actually pretty big, especially with the speedier GFS, since it makes for a quicker two-hit coup de grace that significantly reduces the chances of bosses firing (no pun intended) godmode powers and such, and honestly, I'll take that. Granted, I agree that more love for Fire Breath in this would've been nice too.

This right here. Poppa needs a new "natural" set.

Interesting. Maybe the issues I previously saw were a bug, or were stealthily "fixed" in some other way. At some point I'll have to try again. ...maybe if level ranges in Praetoria overall get an overhaul? Speaking of the topic itself...😅

Last I checked, Praetorians can talk to the primal contacts if they happen upon them in the underground, but their Praetorian-based transition dialogue and the ability to get to them using the "Find Contact" button is no longer available. Both of which were the case before the game's original closure. Granted, even with that, you still run into issues in First Ward like Katie Douglas hating your Resistance Warden. But it was a little more smooth.

Then congratulations on doing what any other set could probably do without having to pay a penalty to achieve mediocrity, I guess?

I typically ignore Nerve because I have sufficient accuracy built into my own powers in my builds; when I'm doubt (say on a MM), Vigor works better, and if I want defense, Agility is kind of the solid go-to choice. I have a Stone/Will Brute that made really good use of it, though. Without overdoing too much Accuracy, it fills that gap, boosts the stacked defenses, and makes Seismic Smash easy to keep permanent even on bosses, meaning no Paragon Protectors snapping Moment of Glory or Fake Nemesis with Personal Force Field.

I mean, you might as well not even both trying during the crashes. Super Strength, the only power set that gets inherent "alt-tab".

You're...not wrong. I'll note that at least some of that is, at least officially, meant to be content for teams and/or max level content, and most of the places where it appears below about level 25 was to bring said content up to the level Praetoria's already at. I can't think of too much new content, Primalside, that's pre-30 (or even pre-50), and that wouldn't be about equal to anything you see in Neutropolis or First Ward. The most challenging enemies, likewise, tend to appear in TFs, where they're little more than speed bumps, typically, but TFs are also made primarily for...shall we say...efficient progression, which is opposed to the goal of playing the whole Praetorian story in the first place (hence this thread's entire existence), I don't feel like that should have to be a concern on any devs' part. Doesn't mean it's what they'd want to do, for whatever reason, but I don't think the idea is unreasonable in an objective sort of way.

Given the way that Praetorian enemies tend to be a little...overtuned, compared to similarly low-leveled foes on Primal Earth, and the fact that it's all story, and thus solo, focus anyway, it's always felt to me like bumping up the level caps on most of the arcs wouldn't really be harmful, frankly. Same thing for the followups in the wards. Oh, on that note, it'd be nice to rejigger the Ward contacts back to how they were when the game originally closed, too (as in, putting back the contacts that let you stay "true" Praetorians and go straight from Loyalist/Resistance into them, as well as maybe dropping the tendency of the first Night Ward contact to call you up and immediately spoil First Ward to every single character you make, whether you did First Ward or not).

I'm all for reworking SS to not have Rage, honestly. Heck, it's the main reason I want to see Scrappers with the set, at this point.

I feel like...balancing around +4 is kinda janky in the first place? Then again, I don't run anything at +4 unless I'm on a team with a decent amount of support. Personally, I find the combat far too tedious. To that end, it shouldn't surprise me that MMs would be the same. FWIW, I run my MMs at +1/+2, same as all my other characters, and the downshifted minions (who thus are at +4) seem to do just fine. And when I take my MMs onto those teams where I'd also be doing +4 on, say, a Scrapper, they continue to do well. As it is, I'll kinda echo Greycat's sentiment, at least with regard to offense: There's also Supremacy, which exists in part to make up for that shifted difference. Now, granted, pet survivability gets trickier, since one stray hit can ruin a pet's day if you're vastly outleveled. But again, the same can be said for, say, a Controller.

The balance is whether it's so grindy it hurts demand. If nobody wants to bother with the system because nothing's worth the cost in the first place, then also, that means there won't be a bunch of suckers "driven players" keeping the market price for Aethers nice and high. And then they end up no good to the rest of us, either!

I've done some testing with /Dark and /Savage because I'm trying to come up with a good combo as well. /Dark feels right thematically but I haven't been able to put together a build I like for it. /Savage seems a very solid combo, but for me, unfortunately, is /Savage and I really hate the janky frenzy/exhausted mechanics. Other stuff I'm looking at: /Thorns - Looks great on paper. Redraw might get annoying though. Spines and Thorns needs the No Redraw option, stat. /Elec - Might be fun, but has more KB than I'd like. /Psi - Good, thematic, and solid, but I worry a little about pairing two Psi-based sets due to enemy defense/resistance issues.

A Demons/Pain Mastermind that I was planning to start a little while back (even pre-bought the enhancements for it and everything) is gonna be Necro/Pain instead, probably. Also, an Illusion/ Dominator of some flavor. I haven't settled on the flavor, though. Thematically, I like /Dark with it, but I'm having trouble coming up with a build I like.

I feel like Phantom Lore pets should have this option, too, but I'll take it wherever I can get it.

Following up on this previous comment, I did do some testing and...it's fine, I guess. The wraiths are so short term that they don't need much survivability, and in some ways, I guess, trying to time and sync things was a pain anyway. So a small nerf, but not in a way that's going to be a major issue. Also, I notice that the buff icons for the spirits were changed from a stacking thing to separate ones for each of the blasts. I still woulda liked the rings, but I'll settle for that. Overall, the set's looking solid and I'm excited to play it on "live". ...as soon as I figure out what I can do about the build's Endurance woes, anyway.

I'm not sure what to think of the lower duration/recharge on Soul Extraction. The Necro/Pain I was using to test had things set well so Extraction and World of Pain came back up at the same time, and the wraiths got the benefits of it, therefore, too, which was nice, because they could get killed on their own, in addition to disappearing if the pet they're linked to goes down. From memory, they weren't too sturdy when I missed the windows. I'll have to do some more testing and see if this ends up being as much of an indirect nerf as it looks like it might be.

I look forward to selling any Primastics that drop to people dumb enough to want ugly costume replacements, I guess. If it spikes prices in ways I can use to fund more alts, all the better, although I wonder if the market will bottom out just as quickly as people realize that the grind isn't even worth beginning?

What happens with bodyguard damage when you Smoke Bomb? Does it still get moved to the pets? 'cause if so, it's probably manageable. However, BG damage probably shouldn't break their ability to land a crit if they haven't attacked already. If it does, that probably needs some adjustment.

I mean, probably more or less the same as the Primal one. The body she was using prior to getting fridge-d was her original one, which doesn't age while she's at the wheel of someone else's body.

Not a typo (unless they decide to change it back). Cleave is now a ranged attack with a very small AoE (very small) , rather than a melee cone.

I dunno that Dominators a buff per se, but the general way the AT is set up around feast or famine depending on if you build for massive Recharge (and thus, Permadom) or not, and how, relatedly, they're the only AT where alignment actually makes a pretty big difference, means I feel like, as a whole, they deserve...looking at. But a balance pass for their inherent, as it were, needn't straight up be a buff or nerf in purely objective terms. 'trollers seem fine, to me. I see a fair number of people looking down on them, but they're always welcome on my teams; they're excellent support when played even half-decently.