Riverdusk

Demon/thermal sounds like what you want honestly. It has buffs, it has heals, it has the -regen to take out AV for the TF soloing you said you want, it is thematic and from all reports one of the most effective combos out there.

Have heard of a lot of people having respec fails due to this issue. Or at least it fails, they train up and try again and then works. Could be just a coincidence, but I figure better safe than sorry. I always make sure I'm fully trained up before I do my respecs. Not sure why there'd be any particular reason you wouldn't want to fully train before a respec anyway.

When playing as tank I learned to jump to the opposite side of the mob so enemy cone attacks won't blast the rest of the team. 😉

Hah, had that same exact feeling going to beast/dark after playing my necro/sonic for 50 levels. It felt kind of weird not having to buff, buff, put disruption field toggle on a pet every time I zone into a mission. I zone in and am ready to go. Necro/sonic was a pretty amazing combo, but /dark is kind of a nice change. Definitely appreciate having that stealth field as well so I don't get ganked as I zone in if the door is hot.

Yep, some of these changes seem to be concentrating a lot on certain ideas strictly based on numbers or mechanical theories and "fun" is getting lost. And I don't mean powers have to be OP to be fun. More that taking away a rare fun different way to travel in game or being encouraged to spam the same power over and over again (the new touch of fear) is just mechanically not fun. I'm a little surprised it was even acknowledge it was meant to be "spammy", which speaks to my point. The shinobi change with regard to ninja run is just one of those changes that make the whole set much "less fun" and for no real reason. It isn't like it is really affecting game balance in any significant way. Ninja leaping around combined with shinobi is probably 90% of the reason I ever picked the Ninjitsu set on any of my characters. Now with it not stacking it ends up being about the same as the P2W power anyone can get for free instead of being something better and cooler and more fun? Really disappointing. It isn't like Ninjitsu set was even close to "most powerful" with it, and now it is just much less "fun" without it, so I kind of lose any interest in the whole set with this change. Back to touch of fear, I was originally excited by the change, but more and more I'm agreeing with @summers , no matter how "effective" or not the power is now, it is a spammy power that just isn't fun. Even if less effective I agree with some of the others here that I'd rather just take an epic aoe attack as the extra attack on my dark melee. I'll be sticking with energy torrent instead. I'm also looking at the new energy melee enviously anyway.

If you ever peek at the combat logs it'll actually say it there so you'll see "streakbreaker forced your attack to hit" or some such on occasion.

Willpower I think would be better as it doesn't otherwise have a heal, just regen, so it could come in handy sometimes. It also has some defense to work with.

Ended up going beast/dark on mine and can attest that is also a very good combo. Their personal defenses combined with all the dark tohit debuffs make them tough to hit and shadowfall adds in some resistances they are missing (gets them into the 50-60% res range to all but fire and toxic once you also add in the pet IO's and assuming they don't run off of course). I hardly use fortify (and not sure they are really any safer when I do as then they take longer to kill things). Only bothered slotting it with a LoTG and called it a day. Beasts do work pretty well with almost anything with the natural defense and resistances they have. Considering they are almost always in melee, appropriate that they should naturally be tougher than most sets from the get go. Kind of the same reason I think necro grave knights should get some base s/l resistance.

A hellion spawning inside city hall I've seen many many times even on live build. So, probably something to be posted in the bug forum as it isn't specific to the changes on test. Speculation I've seen is that it has something to do with one of the early contact missions spawning it inside the hall. Not anyone trying to grief.

Nevermind, think I'm done arguing the targetted thing. Spinning strike is 16 second recharge, I could see touch moving closer to that, maybe even 12 seconds so as to not get it too out of whack for those that want to still use it more as a debuff.

I could see that. I'd also vote for a bit longer recharge and appropriate damage scale.

As usual, an amazing update! Don't agree with every single change (that'd be an almost impossibility for anyone I think), but overall love it! Great job. 👏

To me (and I think to Vanden) it is simple and very objective. If it benefits from range enhancements it should be TAoE. If it doesn't it should be PBAoE. By the way I argued the same back when the stalker version of Frost didn't take range enhancements (before it was fixed). I literally posted that if it didn't take range, it should be changed to take PBAoE and not TAoE. Otherwise they needed to fix it to be affected by range enhancement. They fixed it and now it makes sense to be TAoE.

That it can actually use the range enhancements as part of its slotting literally makes it different. I can do the same. No.

Yes, it works great on my dm/sr and has saved me many times. And not a very good single target attack? It has a base 60 dpa, that isn't bad at all. I love siphon life.

Just pointing out that makes it completely different imho, and that one makes sense to be TAoE as it benefits from the range that TAoE sets offer.

Frost has a 10 foot range and benefits from range enhancements. (which then turns it into an amazing power by the way).

With as many alts as I start, all for making the early levels smoother (and be able to more easily skip DFB).

Think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one, think we both made our points. 😄

A taget which is at MELEE range. And it still isn't affected by range enhancements, which makes slotting TAoE sets in (many of which have "range" as part of the enhancement) waste a lot of their affect.

Oh, and maybe you missed " Only the main target will be affected by the Fear and ToHit debuff

So, range enhancements affect it in some way then? That's the only logical reason it should be TAoE. If not, a bunch of IO enhancement sets have wasted range enhancements you end up slotting in a power.

Interesting and kind of amazing for stalkers. In the time it'd take to fear one target I could just as easily just kill the thing on my stalker. From my dm/sr stalker experience anyway.

It was a power that I bet 90% of people skipped (would love to see the actual stats though). Yes, it did need to be fixed. Not sure your point about shadow maul, only the target cap was reduced, not the cone width. If it was almost impossible to hit 5 with it, then what does it matter that the cap was reduced to 5?

Which would leave out stalkers, where it is already a much less popular (and arguably weaker) set.