Lazarillo

The difference is that EM already has 5 other attacks that do the job of "single target hit". It doesn't need another. Stun needs something that only it can do, and is weak because it animates so slowly. Moving it to the fastest hit of the set gives it a reason to be used, particularly if the Magnitude of the stun is upped so that you can even knock a boss out of the fight effectively, without having to rely on stacking many attacks and/or the RNG factor. Giving ET the current "Stun" animation moves its DPA higher than anything Brutes can get except for Freezing Touch (which is a DoT), and the self damage is already negligible as a "cost", so I feel like it's a fair trade off. Reverting it completely makes it more than triple the DPA of any non-Freezing Touch hit. There's no way that's a realistic expectation without some sort of drawback.

I feel like an attack that fast with a high-ish-but-manageable-Recharge is probably a little...excessive if it can be loaded out with procs, which defeats the purpose of trying to make it more useful as a mitigation tool while also (total 😛 )focusing on it as such a tool. Without a damage component it loses access to any damage procs at least, which is my thought in this suggestion. Disorient sets get Knockback, Immobilize, and ToHit Debuff procs, which, at least, maintains the "vision" I'm thinking for the power.

Step 1: Swap the Energy Punch animation. Use, say, the Bitter Ice Blast animation instead (see Vanden's avatar on this forum for how awesome that would look as a melee power). Step 2: Swap Stun's animation for the current Energy Punch animation. Increase to Mag. 4(?). Remove damage component, making it into a quick, heavy disabler that can't be turned into a proc monster. Step 3: Swap Energy Transfer's animation for the current Stun animation. Increase the self-damage component to compensate for its insane DPA. Step 4: Swap Total Focus's animation for the current Energy Transfer animation, so it'll look like an actual "Total Focus". Don't do anything else with it. Step 5 if you're feeling nice: Make Whirling Hands an AoE with hits that are small AoEs, like Beam Rifle's Refractor Beam for Sentinels. Voila, Energy Melee is peachy.

I'd always thought this was a neat idea, but was, like, "yeah, but how would the blasts work", and then you come around with your Vorpal shadows idea, and frick-frack it's perfect. CANIHAZPLZPLZPLZ?

Your version is not all that different from my own ideas. To me, I think the idea of utilizing "phantom" Psychic damage would be thematically appropriate for most of the pets' powers (if not all, even), and I think the sort of chaotic feel of "Illusion" should mean that all the pets should have the ability to Confuse enemies baked into at least one of their attacks. The way I'd break the powers down: t1: Spectral Wounds - Low damage attack. More or less same as the controller version. t2: Phantom Army - They'd have to be changed to take damage. Like the original decoys, they might use random animations but be functionally the same. Mostly melee with a default ranged attack for just in case (a la Ninjas) t3: Blind - Mid damage attack. Swap the Hold to a Sleep or a Stun, lest it be a little too strong, though, I suspect. t4: Typical first upgrade t5: Flash - PBAoE, like with Blind, change the Hold to a Sleep or Stun, add a small amount of damage to give it parity with other MM sets. t6: Phantasm - For bit of a "special" mechanic here, the second Phantasm would still be an invincible decoy, but its "life" would be tied to the first Phantasm. Ranged focus. t7: Group Invisibility - Long duration click power that Hides and grants defense to the MM and all pets. Pets attacking from Hidden status would do no extra damage, but their first hits would be able to apply a low magnitude Confuse. t8: Spectral Terror - Same general look, but is mobile and can fly around now, and has both damage and controlling powers. Ranged focus. t9: Typical second upgrade

Honestly, I'd like to see "No Redraw" be fixed to be less janky before it was added in as an option in more places. Right now "no redraw" just means no animation plays at all when the weapon appears. It gives an awkward, twitchy sort of look to the weapon sets that ruins the feel. Make it work right before expanding the unfinished product.

I have a hard time with this sometimes, myself. Frequently, especially with the melee sets, there's one power that I think looks awful that's really vital to playing the set to its full potential, and, similarly, a power that I really like the look of, but the use of it will make me notably less effective. I can enjoy playing for concept, but having the voice in the back of my head telling me I could be "better" sometimes ruins the fun. I have less trouble when it's something cool but weak than the other way around, as though I'd love to see some sort of balance pass made so various "weak" powers would be at least brought in line as alternatives, so to speak, at least there's, like, hope there that it could happen.

Oh, by any chance, do you mean all the Paragon employees that got the boot?

It's also the one I'd absolutely expect. This sounds like the sort of behavior we should have come to expect from them.

Okay, yeah, this would be nice, too.

Trying to make it optional just feels like it's adding even more rigamarole for a system that already exists, as noted, in the form of "chuck an extra fireball at the next mob over".

It seems like a convoluted suggestion for something that can already be achieved by smacking multiple mobs yourself, though, with the added negative effect of bringing about potential aggro cascades on people who don't want them.

I mean, in practice, would this really work? There's already an aggro cap, and I'd imagine running at x8 is getting you very close to that (and if not, you can just rush multiple groups). As Vanden said, this just seems like it'd result in aggroing the whole map, and not everyone is built to handle that sort of thing. If you want to fight multiple mobs at once, well, just do so.

I just want PBs to be able to Foot-stomp again.

Appreciate the tips. I had figured a more balanced approach to defense would be stronger (hence, for example, the use of Multi-Strike) since this particular Dominator does pretty much everything except for Seeds and the initial Feral Charge at close range anyway. I figured getting everything to 20% (and thus, soft-capping with a medium purple) would be more useful than one aspect to 32.5%, especially when I don't tend to carry small skittles anyway (I prolly woulda Gaussian'd in Spot Prey, yeah, but wasn't sure I had a good path to turn 2 slots into 6, although some of your other ideas lead me towards that possibility...). I also generally never bother trying to Perma-Dom before 50 anyway just because it seems kind of like a waste before it's possible to add an Alpha-boosted Hasten. Still, they're possibilities to evaluate. I had forgotten, though, that Domination protected against Knockback, too, so dropping Acrobatics does seem to be in the cards at max level if I can manage Permadom, and similarly, I hadn't thought of Feral Charge being used as a normal part of the attack chain instead of a pool attack altogether, since its gimmick seems to be, well, the charging aspect and I hadn't thought it would do "competitive" damage right in stuff's faces, too. However, it might...I'll have to re-evaluate when I get to 38.

I've been working on a melee-heavy Plant/Savage Dominator and I'm trying to kinda finishing touch-tweak the build a bit. So far, it's been good, opening with seeds and then dashing into the fray (and, later, presumably, Feral Charge-ing into the fray). The slight hiccup I'm running into is trying to determine if I can effectively perma-Dom without sacrificing some of the concept ideas I have. For reference, the precise build plan is below. What I'm especially trying to figure out is getting a third melee attack from one of the Power pools. Originally, I took Air Superiority, since, well, Air Superiority is pretty rad, but it maxed me out on pools, meaning no Hasten, and thus, no Perma-Domination (I'm not sure I'm hitting it anyway, but I think I am). So since I dipped into fighting anyway, I figured I could take Boxing and Kick, ignore one and slot the other. Currently, I have Kick as my choice because I've come to really enjoy having Knockdown in all my attacks, however, some of the numbers in Mids' Reborn have me wondering about whether it's the best choice. How does Kick compare to AS, or even to Boxing, when both the initial Fighting attacks are taken. Also, is Kick Knock*down* or Knock*back*? I've seen data that goes both ways. For anyone who did look at the build, can you think of any ways I can switch back to AS that would also let me keep the equivalent of Stealth (in terms of defense and slotting options) without having to use Hover?

Not to take away from the achievement of it, because I'm pretty friggin' sure I couldn't have done it, but this does make me wonder: I know the AVs are supposed to scale to team size during iTrials, but do they have a certain minimum? Like did y'all handle a Marauder made for 8? Or for 6? Or for 3? Etc.

I wouldn't mind an approach that looked into this, at least. It kinda solves the problem that you hit in, say, Martial Arts, where there's really just no reason to take, say, Thunder Kick. I recall Castle (or one of the other powers devs) in the old days saying something along the lines of "you should never look at a power in your primary or secondary and view it as the 'skippable' one". I'm not sure that's the perspective of the current team, but it's one that I, personally, rather like.

It's actually up a rank from when I saw this linked from elsewhere, earlier.

So, it's astoundingly easy, I feel like, to out-level the story arcs in Praetoria (using baseline XP, to be clear), and the various stories each build into each other. Hit 16 in Imperial City, for example, and there go any arcs you didn't unlock, as well as the Moral Choice mission (which is, in most cases, the climax of all the previous arcs together). It's unfortunate that the hard caps on doing the missions are so low. Would it be possible to slightly raise the caps? It doesn't have to be by a huge amount, just enough to leave some breathing room? Say, from 10 to 11 in Nova Praetoria, 15 to 17 in Imperial City, and 20 to 24 in Neutropolis?

Sorry if I'm missing something, but is the "Quick Form" passive supposed to be ineffective currently? Snipes showing their base damage depending on whether it's turned on or not, but are showing their extended cast time whether I'm in "quick" or not and DPA is being applied according to long number. I also haven't played with things much but IIRC, damage on Snipes is supposed to scale to To-Hit now, correct? I don't see that applying either, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or misunderstanding the current application of mechanics.

THIS IS THE LAST, BEST, FINAL PROGRAM BY AARON WALKER HIMSELF. EVEN IF PRAETOR BERRY KILLED HIM, HE'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO BE BETTER THAN WALKER. REMEMBER TO TELL THE WORLD. BERRY IS A LOSER. AARON WALKER WAS THE MAN. Damn, after all these years, that still makes me tear up a little.

Honestly, it's the LTs that are the biggest pains to me. Get more than one triggering Vengeance, and congratulations, you're going to be whiffing for the next however many minutes Nemesis Vengeance lasts. And woe be unto ye if you didn't move the mobs apart...

Okay, so since this topic is branching out a bit, I'd love to know folks' takes on fighting Nemesis. I love them as a story faction, but find them soooooooooo tedious to fight on all my characters. You've got LTs stacking Vengeance on each other ad infinitum unless you pull each mob far from every other mob on the map for massive Defense and ToHit, snipers drawing extra groups' worth of aggro while they're out of range of anything you can do to them, and Fakes doing their whole "untouchable" thing unless they're under heavy control (and I mean heavy, since their inherent force fields when active increases their protection too). Is there anything that doesn't make those guys a chore to fight, short of scaling the difficulty back to x1?

Mangle stays full villain all the way up. The point of his character arc seemed to be that while the heroes saw him as a victim of circumstances, ultimately, he just liked his various revenge-on-society plots to the point he wasn't ever interested in being "saved".