Lazarillo

This tends to be how I've always preferred to play, too. "Let's see what my limits really are" has gotten me into trouble a few times over the years (especially playing a Regen Scrapper as my first character, during i5) but it makes for some exciting times (although since I realize some teammates don't have fun the same way, I do try to dial it back if I'm making things uncomfortably rough on teammates). It's also why, even on my most badge-crazed characters, there are some I don't bother with. "Master of Imperious' Task Force?" How can you call yourself a Master if you didn't try to solo the whole Sibyls map and get Roman-ed to death at least once?

Many people may not be able to (or may assume they're unable to) acquire such enhancements reliably. Also, Repel with KB->KD is kind of dangerous to ye olde bluee bare. It's interesting to me because I take the ST-taunts on most of my Scrappers, just to have a good, easy power pick that can be situationally useful without any enhancement slots added. This is especially the case for weapon sets that can't use a ranged attack without forcing redraw. And by a similar token, it's surprising to me to see self-rez powers don't get taken as often, since they are also nice situational powers that aren't slot hungry.

The "Talsorian [x]" weapons were renamed to "Vanguard [x]" for copyright reasons back in the day, but they're all still present (and available at character select by default now).

Yeah, that makes it work better, admittedly. It also makes me think it would be a neat mechanic if the attack could be flagged to auto-crit someone after they were knocked down, or something (prolly not). But it's just really awkward for me because it certainly doesn't look like an attack that could one-shot a guy if you critical with it at the start of a fight (which it can!).

Good point, though I'd argue it's pretty mechanical, too. Traps tends to cause enemies to go into PANICRUNRUNRUNPANICPANICRUN!!!! mode, and that can be painful enough when all the pets don't have to chase everything down into melee range.

Like, do you have something specific in mind (like a super team or something)? I'd be inclined (though I play a lot of redside anyway, so I might not be your target audience) but I think you'd need some sort of draw to hook people rather than just "hey, let's try to play more redside next month".

The way I've sorta envisioned it: T1: Phantom Army. Not invincible anymore, and sorta like demonlings, where each one has the same attacks of different "element". T2: Spectral Wounds. Same effect as in Illusion Control. T3: Blind. Changed to a Stun 'cause a hold is kinda overpowered. T4: First Upgrade power. T5: Flash. Kinda like you suggested, add damage but keep the PBAoE, also reduce this one to a Stun like Blind. T6: Phantasm. It'd be cool if one could be a "Decoy" that's invincible but all its attacks do "spectral" damage...but that might be too OP (maybe it auto-dies if the other does?) T7: Group Invisibility. Pretty much carried over as-is. T8: Spectral Terror. Made mobile. T9: Second upgrade. The big thing would just be balancing two upgrades of pet powers. The actual layout and tiering of the powers would seem pretty straightforward, to me at least.

Oh, yeah, sorry if it sounded like I was contradicting you, I was actually meaning to confirm that this is somewhat long-standing. It's definitely broken.

To my knowledge, it's been this way since the relaunch. No numbers show up for it when you check the tab, either.

Ironically, I seem to recall that the excuse in the olden days was just the opposite: Illusion wouldn't benefit enough from Domination, and thus would be a poor Dominator set. I'd kinda like to have it anyway though, personally. That, or a revised version that got ported to Masterminds.

It's usually not sounds for me as much as visuals. There are a lot of powersets, mostly with regards to Melee set options (though not entirely limited to them), where I feel like there's just one power that's really very important to the set as a whole, but has an animation I really hate (for example, Shin Breaker in Street Justice, Concentrated Strike in Kinetic Melee, Follow Up in Claws), or in some cases, which goes the opposite way with a somewhat weak power compared to the rest of the set but has an animation I really want to have in my repertoire (Thunder Kick in MA, Slash in Broadsword), and I cannot reconcile my ability to play a "strong" character with my dislike of the animation, to the point I can't enjoy playing the set at all, unfortunately for me. This is probably good for my altitis, but bad for my ability to enjoy almost any of my melee characters since the restart (despite being pretty melee-inclined back in the day).

To some degree, inflation is going to be a thing. It's just the nature of the game when Influence is so much easier to earn than anything else. HC has done a pretty good job keeping major upticks nipped in the bud, I feel like, with the various little tweaks they've made to how the market works, but all in all, the longer things go on, the more the cost of certain things is gonna slowly keep creeping upwards.

I feel teased. Does anyone else feel teased?

So since the latest patch changed Snipes, the VFX on Proton Volley has been a little off when the mid-combat version is used. The particle stream uses the customized colors but "balls" in that make up the main visual effect for the attack use the default coloring, even when the power as a whole is re-colored. The out of combat slow version still recolors them properly. See the included picture for what it looks like now (my Proton Volley being customized to red/blue).

As is Penetrating Ray, though not every time. Near as I can tell, every power that has a %Chance to spread Disintegration currently has that %Chance to cause it in the first place.

Much obliged. Couldn't remember if anyone other than Seers were "drafted".

Correct. You still start by using the LFG tab, it's just you already have your league ready to go. I don't know how things go on Reunion, but pre-planning seems to attract lots of people on Everlasting. "Tomorrow at [X] PM, GMT, I'm gonna hold a DD iTrial" gives people time to be ready for it. ...also, if you're not actually interested in Trial-ing just trying to clear Dream Doctor's mission, be aware there's always auto-complete, too (not saying you have to do that, but since you mentioned the mission, just something to keep in mind).

So for any/all lorehounds who still remember, I'm curious if anyone knows (or if it was ever discussed): how does Praetoria treat mutants with noncombat powers? Do they still have to enter Powers Division? Do they still work it, but get "desk jobs" (like the one Primal Contact who's a member of GIFT and his only power is "he sees more colors than normal people")? Or is it just one of those "it never comes up" things?

Well, besides actually Nemesis. Life is good as a tankermind, really. I can handle most sizes of spawns, which is a good thing, because the one constant thorn in my side is "that one enemy who runs two mobs down and then opens fire while I'm still clearing out the group where I'm at". And of course, it tends to chain. Doing RWZ missions and I think I managed to aggro the whole map in Levantera's second real mission, thanks to Sefu and Dietrich also getting in on the "fun". I'm thinking Spectral Interface for the immobilize spam once I hit 50?

Really kind of interesting that if you pull out all the Spines/Fire farmers, that particular secondary on Brutes still ends up being the second most popular, but Spines drops to being the second least popular.

Something to hope for I guess, while in the meantime I figure out if I can work in the rather delightful changes on my Fire/Earth.

Still unsatisfied with "Martial" Assault getting the "Martial" part made even weaker than it already was, but the other stuff remains nice looking.

So, yeah, I want to make a Spines/ stalker and I want to make a Psi/ Stalker, but I can't decide to pair with either one. Other than "I don't want to use the same one twice" and I'm not really "into" the idea of Shield or SR, though, I'm can't really decide. Does either one have any notable synergies with any of the defensive sets (or vice-versa)?

In a word: Hemorrhage. I ran some pylon test-y stuff a couple months back and for reference: Hemorrhage does lots of different things based on how much Blood Frenzy you've got and whether it lands a Hidden/Critical hit, so I tried it a few different ways. The other "interesting" thing about Hemorrhage is that always does the same upfront damage and then appears to always register a Critical hit for the additional Frenzy-based damage (whether you have any to contribute to it or not). It then deals 2 simultaneous DoTs, both of which scale up with additional stacks of Blood Frenzy. If you do land a Critical Hit (or a Hidden one) the actual critical damage on the initial hit is lumped in with the faux-critical damage, but there's secret additional critical damage in the form of a third DoT that, like the other two, scales up. It can get pretty wild! Here's how the numbers came out: Non-Hidden, No Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 33.75 "critical" portion, 244.5 damage over time. Non-Hidden, Max Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 40.62 "critical" portion, 399.1 damage over time. Hidden, No Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 80.11 "critical" portion, 667.56 damage over time. Hidden, Max Blood Frenzy: 80.11 base portion, 80.11 "critical" portion, 996.89 damage over time. And for fun, I added a Build-Up to that last one: 134.21 base portion, 134.21 "critical" portion, 1401.88 damage over time. So, yeah, Hemorrhage is happy time. It actually is better than AS from Hide, which really helps the fast-and-furious approach of the set. That said, avoid Savage Leap on a stalker. From the same playing around, I got up to 174-ish damage at best range, but from too far away, it appears it bugs out and does no damage, so it's a gamble, but on top of that, it breaks Hide, and has a 0% chance to deal Critical damage even when Hidden. And point-blank it only does around 105, so it's not suited to Stalking. If you want to leap in, grab Spring Attack instead.

The one I've heard rumors on the wind of sounds like the opposite. It's for not leaving Praetoria (at least, not when it's first available). But that's the funny thing about rumors and fast-scrolling Help channels. Sometimes wires get crossed.