Riverdusk

I see those every once in a while. Not just build but even to the point of powersets or entire AT's. I kind of brace for it every time someone asks "how is <x> powerset", usually on help channel. Just recently someone was asking about how was willpower for scrappers and I said it was pretty good. Someone proceeded to respond strangely somewhat aggressively "stop giving them terrible advice, WP is horrible on scrappers. " I just responded, "worked great on mine" and left it at that. For a while there anytime someone asked about sentinels there would be people on help raging on how horrible they were. That seems to have died down a bit at least.

I wouldn't necessarily be for "remove it entirely" either, but I'd certainly be in the camp of "don't waste anymore time on it" That'd be my "alternative".

Just a slight correction, WP has 17.3% DDR at level 50 for a scrapper (from heightened senses). Close to none, but not none.

Storm I think is actually a good match for them. Adds extra control, extra damage, and since the pets are all ranged hurricane works well to help keep them safe. Regardless if they wanted to do a quick and super easy improvement to mercs they could literally just swap out serum for gun drone. Thematically fitting and at least a place to put the pet IO's. Not that it is the greatest power in the world, but the bar is set pretty low with serum as the alternative. I'm also all for a more in depth rework though of course if they want to commit the resources.

Same. Beasts seem to get a wider variety of opinions about them more than most other primaries, including some saying their dps is terrible because their attack chain is buggy. Nice to see them tested like this. From playing them I also got the sense they were actually pretty good.

Very nice write-up. This isn't quite true. Necro pets don't have to die in combat in order to get a ghost. You can get a dead pet anytime you want to use soul extraction on, you just need to use /release_pets instead of dismiss. Then it leaves a body. Of course that ends up releasing ALL of your pets, so it really is something only to do at the start of a mission or in between battles and then as mentioned you have to resummon and upgrade everything again. I tend to just use it at the beginning of missions (and get a guaranteed lich ghost) as the ghost does hang around for quite a while. Even with that it is definitely clunky and I do agree I wish they'd revamp it.

You can also be just about as lazy with SJ as you can be with fly when you want: /bind J "powexec_toggleon Super Jump$$++autorun$$++up" I always liked SJ, but have to say I liked it even better when I found that bind. It can be fun, but sometimes I don't want to bother with it or want to give some of my fingers a rest.

It'd also allow you to make the dad joke of how you love hot dogs.

Weird, I see it work all the time slotting it in deceive on my illusion controller and it seems to last a decent amount of time. Haven't specifically kept track of it, but I'd say maybe around half the time I see the purple confuse bubbles spread to 2 or 3 other enemies and it seems to last probably 8 seconds or so base (about half that when I go up against +3 or +4's of course). Even if my anecdotal memory is being generous it still sounds a lot better than your experience. Maybe the aoe penalty is hitting it harder than it should. Also doesn't blinding powder only have a chance to confuse? In my experience it doesn't work unless the target actually becomes confused. So for instance if I use it on a boss I've never seen it trigger or spread that I remember until the 2nd cast (when I stack it so that the boss actually gets confused). Flat out misses of course also fail to proc anything. Not sure what mag blinding powder is either, if only mag 2 then now you'd be down to only a chance against some of the minions for it to actually proc. Personally I love the proc in deceive. It is no seeds of confusion, but definitely makes using the power useful enough again that I more regularly do so (kind of like how I used it in the lower levels of my character). Without the proc, in the higher levels I tended to only bother using the power in edge cases.

Or it is actually bad design.

I do think Jack Frost is underrated a bit. He got some nice buffs from where he was originally including chilling embrace and 25% base defense against most things. Heck throw in the 2 +def pet IO's and maneuvers and he'd be close to softcap. Add barrier and he pretty much would be even at minimum. With some investment you can make him one of the most sturdy pets for a dom (along with sing, doggo and stonie), and doms often have trouble keeping pets alive. He also has a lot of nice attacks, does good damage, and also has his own hold attack.

Yep, first one I thought of actually. Having hunt missions often is boring enough, having hunt missions only counting in certain "neighborhoods" isn't challenging or fun, it is just annoying and tedious. Sad thing is this was a zone and mission arcs that were designed and added in issue 5, so I think they really should have known better by then.

I'd definitely say if you don't want AA or want to play more at range, earth control would be your better alternative. You basically get stalagmites (a ranged aoe stun) as a major control method rather than AA (along with both having knockdown patches). A stun that also potentially helps set up /energy's special feature better (as it triggers by hitting stunned enemies).

Yep, I think ice/psi would be a solid combo, at least as solid as anything can be with ice. 😉

Lets get rid of one of the few mobs that give a tiny bit of challenge to a small subset of powerset combos? I'd vote a hard no. I'd suggest the opposite. If anything we need more mobs like sappers in other enemy groups. Anyway, sappers are laughably easy to deal with by the vast majority of powerset combos. Get enough ranged or energy defense and sappers miss 95% of the time like most mobs. Run one of the myriad of armor powersets that have endurance drain resistance and you also laugh at them. Something like a stalker can sneak up to them and take them down in one hit before they can even move. If your melee powerset has any sort of hold, stun, or knockdown they also shouldn't be a problem. Most blasters or even corrupters and defenders can snipe them down from range or at least debuff them. Controllers and doms laugh at them as the sappers are instantly confused/held/stunned. As others have pointed out they were already nerfed to be limited to one per group from people complaining about them in the past. Sappers are seriously overrated. Really the toughest thing about them is just spotting them, so I could maybe see making their costuming more unique. Of course you can also just use an enemy targeting bind for them. Honestly they should be made boss class since they are limited to 1 per group. That'd make them more interesting again imho.

Yes.

Problem is people use it to avoid becoming dead.

Yep, that question could be asked of literally every suggestion made on this board so I did find that objection a bit...odd. That is a cost/benefit analysis that ends up being 100% a matter of opinion as to whether or not any suggestion made is "worth it". Everyone would have a different answer depending on their subjective analysis of the "benefit". Most of the time we also have no idea of the "cost" side of the equation either beyond a vague idea as most of us aren't programmers or familiar with the coding it'd take. For my own personal take on it I'd say it'd be worth it if it is an easy or fairly easy change, but it'd fall way down on the priority list beyond that. But it is an idea I throw out there because I think it'd be nice to see. Personally I'm also confused as to why people keep mixing in difficulty levels to this. Doing something at +4/8 already provides a better reward compared to +0/x1 as in better influence/xp. My issue is the extra "challenges" such as "buffed enemies", "no inspirations", etc. that right now give 0 extra reward (beyond sometimes a one time badge). Just as an off the cuff idea I was thinking something like a 5% merit bonus per "challenge" up to a max of 4 (so max 20%). Round down so that you avoid giving an outsized bonus to the 1-4 merit activities (they just wouldn't get any bonus). That means "master runs" would give a 10% merit bonus if you just went with the minimum requirements as they stand now. Once again I have no idea how that would be to program though, so maybe there are easier ways to do something similar. Honestly you could give a lot more bonus than that and it isn't like it is going to make running TF/Ouro arcs competitive with farming or marketeering for rewards, but I do think it'd be cool to see a bit of extra reward for a bit of extra challenge for these "challenges".

I've been suggesting extra merits for adding the "ouro challenges" for a long time now. So, yes personally I would like to see that. I'd vote for that even more so than for the master challenges. You already see people running master runs all the time so I'm not sure there really is a need for extra incentive there, whereas you almost never hear of people running Ouro challenges.

I haven't really noticed illusion being particularly endurance hungry myself. Definitely not after HC greatly reduced the endurance cost of superior invisibility anyway (which I love that they did). Of course a /dark probably wouldn't even take SI and shadowfall is now actually the bigger drain in comparison. My most recent illusion experience is with illusion/traps, so maybe that has affected my perception, but seemed about middle of the road or even a bit on the light side for endurance use compared to other characters I've played.

I've always wondered whether the global endurance reductions kicked in before the slotted endurance reduction (therefore lowering the base end cost of the power) or if they are just added into the slotted endurance reduction. The former would make them more effective than the later. I'm not sure how I could even test it as it is hard to track endurance.

Intuition is my default alpha for controllers unless I have other specific needs. It improves holds and damage so right there to me it shoots to the top in most cases. In the case of illusion/dark it also improves tohit debuffs, which is a big part of both sets. It even helps the slow of your tar patch as an extra to help keep things in your -res field.

Either should be pretty good when combined with dark. But I'd have to definitely give the edge to illusion for AV/GM fighting. They resist a lot of those debuffs so having invincible pets that taunt (as PA does) makes things a lot easier. You don't have to worry about your pets and a lot of your damage going squish. I'd say illusion does more single target damage, fire probably has the edge in AoE. You do need a ton of recharge to make illusion really shine though. PA is also really great at taking alpha on a team. Personally I like not having to depend on a tank/brute or others to necessarily start things off. If they are shy I just cast PA into the crowd. Follow that up with a spectral terror and you are in good shape at defanging a mob, not even counting what /dark can do for you. Group Invis is more about the LoTG mule, it doesn't offer a whole lot of defense. I do particularly like it on my illusion/traps as it lets me move through things without my FFG and other pets causing aggro. It has been occasionally useful on a team to let other teammates ghost some TF missions with me. Yes, the confuse is also great (especially once you get the contagious confusion proc in it). I regularly confuse several things per cast with mine now. The purple confuse set also has great bonuses.

Kind of the same feeling I have. I don't mind incarnate powers or even more of them if they were for content that was more set up for them. Everyone having them for taking down a bunch of council in a radio mission gets to be just a bit of overkill. ☠️

A controller without a single target hold power? Um, no thanks? Maybe turn flash into that instead would make more sense. Would just need to cut the horrible animation and recharge time as well of course. I don't even take flash most of the time on my illusion controllers it is so bad. Even easier, they could just make confusion and fear count as setting up containment. Same way they count for the incarnate control hybrid power. Would help mind controllers as well.