Lazarillo

Hmm, just one? Probably Dominate, then. Quick, inflicts Hold, decent enough damage that it fits pretty nicely into an attack chain for ATs that get it, only typed as Psi for accuracy purposes so it has a high hit rate against stuff that doesn't explicitly have Psi defense (Yellow Mitos!). It's nice stuff.

As I recall, this point was actually raised in the old days, and it was, in fact, explained as "yeah, the name is just crazy coincidence, they are unrelated". Chalk it up to one of the original lore devs liking the name and forgetting it'd already been used, or something. Although even if HC wanted to retcon that (heck, "retcon" might even be stretching it since as you noted, it's not like the game says so), I'd imagine someone like Clamor would've been just as eager to bring down Crey if her real sister/cousin/whatever was the one in charge anyway. Clamor's not the sort of person who needs "justifiable" reasons.

Given that Maria's new arc references Statesman being dead, while the Underground trial references him being alive, but the Incarnate Trials take place after Maria's arc, what we're really looking at is someone having fallen through a time warp. I recommend we put Mender Silos on the case.

Cool, so then, let's just reduce the buff and remove the penalty. You never notice doing no damage, so you won't notice doing slightly less, either, right?

Or just play sets that also control and keep their damage, and will therefore also hold aggro even better. And that's not even getting into all the players who don't play with the intent of tanking in the first place and/or solo. Rage does not stand above all other melee self buff powers because it does not buff the set its in to a level that other sets are not penalized for achieving. The buff numbers are irrelevant if the results the produce don't measure up. Yep, and as noted, that's not what I'm calling you on here. It's not the only set I don't have fun on, either, for whatever reason. But I think what gets me is that it was so close to being a better set and the straight-up buff got pulled. So it gets me more riled up, perhaps (clearly, the true Rage was the journey we shared with our friends...wait, what?).

I must have missed the part where "it makes you useless to the point you might as well alt-tab and do something else every two minutes" is somehow "simply much better than any other power in any other melee set". Rage = The only melee power that penalizes the player for using it Should therefore also be Rage = Should make that melee set stand above others to compensate for that penalty. Thanks to the specific penalty invoked, I'd never call SS fun, personally, regardless. But that's a somewhat different argument, and the point remains that as long as it's the only set that has to pay to achieve mediocrity, it's not balanced.

Super Strength is the only set in the game that penalizes you for using it. If other sets are can be stronger and not penalize you, then Super Strength is not balanced when it is weaker and also pays a penalty.

If it's the only set that has to take a penalty, then good balance should indicate it'd be above them. You're all for 0 damage for every TW attack that doesn't have Momentum applied, I suppose? Why does SS, and SS alone, have to pay to be "middle"?

The set would still be bad from a fun-factor perspective (I don't care personally if every power could one-shot an AV, frankly, a power that encourages alt-tabbing is abysmal), but in that case, "balance" could probably be achieved, yeah. But then Rage would have to be nerfed even harder. So you'd be okay with that, right? Granted, I would. Personally. Just buff the rest of the set and let me skip Rage (in theory, anyway...frankly, I don't think any power in any set should just be dismissed as a skip power, but most sets have them). But that's far less reasonable than just making Rage not suck.

You've taken this far from the point. Again, the original response was claiming that SS as a set was an example of good balance because of Rage having a penalty that made the set still not measure up to other sets. SS is weak as a set, and thus should not "require" a power with a penalty to make it good. That's not "balance."

And within the set, Rage isn't balanced.

The power is only relevant to one set. If the set is not balanced, the power is not, and vice-versa.

So in other words, if you had a set where every attack dealt 1 damage, but had one power that added a proc that dealt 20 additional damage when used, it'd need to have a huge penalty, right? Because you're applying a massive 2000% damage buff!

You can't give double Rage to any other set though, so it's irrelevant. If it were making the already-best set even better, then a penalty would make sense. But as it is, it only makes a bad set "okay". So why is it worth a penalty when no other set gets one?

How can it be the best damage buff when you admitted other things do more damage? It doesn't matter how good it is if it can only be used with a set that's weak. And thus, the penalty is unjustified.

It's not the best, though, if simply playing another set gives you even buff-er damage.

It's not a matter of whether the damage is "crap" or not. It's a matter of whether it's worthy of being the only melee set in the game that penalizes you with downtime. If not dealing damage is acceptable for the amount of buff Rage gives, then, say, long-animation TW attacks should also do zero damage. No other set has to "pay" to achieve, not even the sets that are (per the previous posts) more damaging than SS.

His comment was literally stating that "game balance" was SS using Rage, and being penalized for doing so, being a couple tiers down from the top despite that penalty was "balance".

It's balance to penalize SS for being weaker?

The whole "perma" thing for me comes from a different direction. Having a non-perma buff means, effectively, that I don't need the buff. A power that won't be on all the time is one that I might as well not take, because I'll have to be able to approach any content in the game without it anyway.

It's not a SF, but TV does have an arc that invokes that specific reference already.

This gets things into a bit of tangent, but this sort of thing hits me hard. Like, for example, I have a hard time playing Street Justice because I hate the animation for Shin Breaker, and so I don't take it, but I still end up with this little voice in my head reminding me that I'd be "better" if I did and so I kinda beat myself up over it any time I don't do quite as well as I'd like, and conversely, Martial Arts, where I really like the animation for Thunder Kick, but it's "objectively" the worst attack in the set. And actually that ends up applying to SS, too, because Jab, like Thunder Kick, is an attack where I really prefer the animation over Punch, especially, but I know I'm handicapping myself by using it, which just brings the set down even more on top of the Rage crash being so annoying.

In Tyrant's defense, Praetorian Hamidon is an entirely different problem. Bear in mind, he was fully willing to invade Primal Earth despite it having a Hamidon too, and was completely unconcerned with that. Honestly, IMO, the biggest error in judgement he made had more to do with his hubris and his keeping people like Mother Mayhem, Chimera, and Neuron in charge. Calvin Scott, on the other hand, yeah, that was just disastrously bad writing. They set up a "twist" in which the only people who believed the lie to be true were the players. Not the player characters, not any of the NPCs, but just us, the players, and then thought it was so clever to "reveal" something that nobody in-universe had ever believed to be true in the first place.

This is likely why they won't bother trying again. People slammed a straight-up buff.

Expanding the level ranges would, with just that alone, be a huge help. It's too easy to out-level the story, and the story's basically the main reason to start there. There's presently no reason to make it more "team friendly" or add TFs, or the like, because if you were to team, you'd miss the entire reason to play there in the first place! Keeping the minimum levels as they are while expanding the caps would allow for more options, and unlike a lot of blue/red content, IMO, you wouldn't necessarily even need to worry about enemies getting too easy because, well, let's face it, most goldside enemies are punishing as-is. Beyond that, I guess, just make it possible to transition more naturally to First Ward? An actual contact path for Loyalist/Resistance (I could swear there was one in the old days), and stuff like Katie Douglas not going from "you saved my life and all I hold dear and I will never forget you" to "I have no idea who the hell you are but I will never stop telling you how much I hate you" to the Wardens (and similar with Ghouls and Crusaders?).