Lazarillo

Only for about a week or so. Once you hit the 20s, certain higher-tiered primary/secondary powers start becoming available, too.

I dig Dominators, but I do agre they feel a little overly reliant on Incarnates and Perma-Hasten and such, to the point that I lose some enthusiasm for them because it feels like they only "work" at 50. There's so very little room in what an "ideal" Dom build looks like, due to the very binary nature of Permadom. There's also the weird way Dominators kinda interplay with alignment more than any other AT, since by being a pure villain, they can instant-charge their bar once every few minutes in case of slip-ups (or before starting off). So to get the "most" out of the AT, you also end up locking yourself redside. Personally, the idea I've had is to make it work a little more like this: 1. The Domination bar builds and empties just the same as it does currently. 2. Rather than a click activation, the benefits of Domination automatically apply whenever the bar is at 90% or higher. 3. The click-Domination instead now auto-fills the bar to 100%, and can be used any time. The thought here is that rather than having to constantly babysit the click powers, Dominators could maintain their empowered state simply by continuing to fight. With the Domination bar emptying more slowly than, say, Fury, this even gives a little time to move between mobs without the ability falling off. The click-on ability from Domination itself would mean Dominators didn't have to work up to the power, but this would likely have to be compensated for in some way, perhaps by making it so that the click power no longer benefited from Recharge buffs? Too strong? Not strong enough? Finicky in ways that would make it unfeasabile?

I have a Bane Spider who I did this with. It's exceptionally good at crunching things. Lotsa fun. For reference, +42% damage from set bonuses, +30% from stacked Assault powers, +10% from Assault Hybrid passive, and an average around +120% from enhancements/Alpha, so everything does triple base damage, and hitting Build Up basically puts it at the damage cap. Is it minmaxed to the (min)max? Eh, probably not. Prochounds could probably do something that's better on paper. But I'll take a reliable crunch every time.

Heat haze creates mirages.

When the solution to every AT imbalance is "buff damage", it stops being a solution.

It presumably can be done, as the Rebirth community did pretty much this very thing with Kheldians in a recent update. Whether HC feels it is an acceptable solution, or even that Kheldians "need" solving is a bit of a different argument. Granted, HC's code base is also a little different, but there's reason enough to assume it could be done, even if should or would is not so easy to assume.

I have an AE mission I did for this theme, wayyyyyyyyy back when AE was brand new. I still have it saved, but it came off in kinda poor taste in retrospect (the enemies were the "babies" in question, and the candy was Doctor Aeon's latest super serum), so I never felt up to republishing it when the game came back.

I tested it a bit and it generally works out as a net buff. The base numbers were set so that they were very slightly lower than before the patch, to the point if you use just the default slot for resistance/healing (depending on the upgrade), it's more than your pets would've had before. Same thing with the personal attacks. If you continue to go without using them, you won't be any worse off than before; in fact, you'll still benefit from the overall pet buffs. But you now have additional motivation to take the other attacks. So basically, builds are not any tighter than before, but you might personally be able to work in different priorities.

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.