macskull

Veng bait is still contribution!

There is, but it involves stripping all the item data out to prevent people from duplicating items and/or manually editing the demorecord file to give themselves a bunch of stuff they didn't have before. The import process also isn't automated and from my understanding can cause some stability issues when run on a populated server.

There are a few around.

I think this is the nail in the coffin to that argument, tbh. They had four years while the game was still live to go back and "un-nerf" stuff but they didn't touch a single thing.

Not a powers guy but travel suppression is implemented in movement powers on a per-power basis and it's pretty likely the NPC versions never got it added. There's not really any reason for them to have it either, the AI is pretty dumb.

Fly actually had that 50% tohit debuff at launch and it was simply added to the other travel powers in issue 4. Like you said, it lasted a week before implementing the current version of travel suppression. There's a whole bunch of people in this thread who're still blaming PvP for travel suppression being a thing, but if you'll direct your attention to your nearest PvP zone or arena map you'll find travel suppression is completely nonexistent in PvP. Those who want unsuppressed movement in PvE have plenty of options - click buffs, auto powers, and set bonuses aren't subject to travel suppression, nor are Combat Jumping and Hover.

Didn't read the thread, but: /jranger

I mean, I suppose it's a debate, in the sense that "gravity exists" is a debate.

I mean, you don't have to. Like multiple posters have said up-thread, you can ignore Energy Focus entirely and the set still performs better than it ever did. Basically, the set is a top-tier performer now and Energy Focus is a nice "sometimes" thing you can just ignore, or occasionally take advantage of. Every Scrapper/Stalker power which does not deal extra damage when it crits explicitly states this fact. Example: Concentrated Strike's power description which states "Concentrated Strike Criticals do not result in extra damage, instead they instantly recharge the Power Siphon [Build Up] power." Also, re: Energy Melee - current cycle time is 12.67 seconds for Energy Transfer, down from 22.67 seconds pre-I27 (and 21 seconds pre-I12). If you happen to have a stack of Energy Focus that cycle time becomes 11 seconds. Oh, and those 11- and 12.67-second cycle times can also crit for bonus damage which simply didn't exist before and Energy Transfer didn't have its damage scale lowered despite its recharge time being cut in half. It's true that you can no longer drop an enemy while hidden with a 1-second activation time power, but like... why would you have been doing that in the first place? ET didn't crit from hide and you sure as hell weren't going to use Assassin's Strike on most things - what were you opening with, Bone Smasher? You also said you would probably skip old Total Focus and take Placate and Air Superiority... which really makes me wonder how you were playing a Stalker.

Also Scourge. On higher-end teams at least, the slightly weaker buff/debuff ability a Corruptor brings is more than evened out by the higher damage especially against hard targets.

I'm defining "suppression" as "the power in question is active but provides no benefit" since that's consistent with the way the word was used in the patch notes for Issue 13 (quoted below). After re-reading your post I see we are saying the same thing though.

I'm assuming you're talking about Energy Melee here, but even if you pretend "the gimmick" doesn't exist the set is objectively better than it was even before the infamous ET nerf. The good part here is if you were one of those "people who enjoyed the old set and just wanted number tweaks" you got your tweaks and every single power in the set is better now - again, that's completely ignoring "the gimmick." More on topic: I don't mind the idea of combo mechanics (specifically build/spend-type) but lockout periods are annoying. Water Blast's is handled well enough where it isn't a big deal, but Psi Melee's is just super clunky and like @Luminara said upthread, having to watch an icon in the buff bar to get a consistent experience with Savage Melee is more than a little frustrating. EDIT: I suppose I was incorrect above when I said every power in EM had been tweaked - Barrage is still total poopoodoodoo (but if you do care about Energy Focus it might be worth using in some very specific situations) and Taunt/Placate/Build Up weren't touched. The other 7 powers in the set (6 for Stalkers since AS didn't get changed either) are objectively better than they used to be.

Pretty much every non-offensive toggle power in the game has separate attributes depending on whether you're on a PvP map or not. Powers do not suppress while mezzed in PvP, only in PvE. The same powers which detoggle when mezzed in PvE will detoggle in PvP as well. You've got those backwards, for the first image the game is basically saying "these attributes are in effect if you're not on a PvP map" and "these attributes are suppressed while mezzed" and for the second image the game is basically saying "these attributes are in effect if you're on a PvP map and whether you're mezzed is irrelevant." Some powers with minFX options explicitly disable minFX in PvP environments, which makes it harder for players to hide what powers they're running and makes it easier for an opponent with a keen eye and good situational awareness to see what they're up against.

Your post is pretty much spot-on but a minor nitpick here, that exclamation mark next to "isPVPMap?" acts like a "not" as far as game logic goes. Nothing suppresses in PvP environments - it's either on all the time regardless of mez status, or it turns off when mezzed.

The only non-super pack items seeded on the market are invention salvage and I don't recall a time where those have ever been selling for the prices the seeded items are listed for. If I wanted to have to grind for every enhancement for every build I'd go play on a different server.

The funny thing here is speedrun teams will usually have 2-3 "support" ATs filling slots.

I feel like the PPM system is only counter-intuitive because it isn't explained anywhere ingame and all players have to rely on without using a spreadsheet is some vague text in enhancement descriptions. This can be fixed in two ways: 1) add a section on procs in the ingame help menu, and 2) add tooltips that show actual chance to proc for a given proc in a given power. In a game with thousands of possible powerset combinations it's damn near impossible to create an experience where every character can do everything equally. There's always going to be a powerset or build that's "best" for certain content and the effort should be focused on finding the sets that aren't good for much at all and look at them. I'm not sure if your Peacebringer/Brute statement is meant to be a metaphor or more literal, but... if I'm trying to, say, solo a +4x8 ITF I'm not going to bring an FF/AR Defender.

The zone PvP crowd mostly moved to Excelsior sometime last year but it isn't super active. There's Tuesday pick-up 8v8s on Indom still and they usually get enough people to fill both teams, but outside of that there's like one night of scrims each week between the two SGs that are still active and the occasional 1v1/small team stuff if you can find it. This is pretty typical of PvP in this game though - even before the live shutdown you'd end up in cycles where PvP would be pretty active for several months or maybe a year followed by long stretches of dead time. That Homecoming PvP managed to stay consistently active for nearly two years after it started up is pretty good, but it's not really clear whether the lull right now is dead time or just dead. Even outside of PvP Homecoming's population has dropped off significantly since its peak a few years ago.

Infrigeridoo Infridgidigimon Infrigerator Infrigidate is a good power on its own merits even before introducing procs into the equation but "it's really good with procs" hasn't been used as justification for not buffing a power, as far as I can recall. I mean, Fire Blast almost got a buff to let it slot more procs a few updates back. I mean, at the end of the day I'm not even sure why we're arguing about this. If a proc change is gonna happen it's gonna go through half a dozen variations while it's in beta before some even-more-convoluted-than-we-have-now solution makes it live. This is a troll thread with a clickbait title and we've all been pulled in hook, line, and sinker.

Based on Captain Powerhouse's previous comments and the never-made-it-out-of-beta Scrapper/Stalker snipe changes, epic/patron powers have double recharge compared to their in-set versions as a "penalty." This does make them good proc vehicles but again, I'm not convinced this is a problem when you can only use those powers half as often.

PPM was a buff to procs - sort of. The old-style "buzzsaw" builds that crammed procs into fast-activating/recharging powers a la Dark Melee aren't as effective as they used to be. Procs in rain and toggle powers often aren't as effective as they used to be. In most other cases, procs are better than they were - but in order to really leverage the effectiveness of procs one needs to build their character in such a way that foregoes set bonuses. I will concede there are certain procs that are probably too good but those are being looked at and adjusted on a case basis (Call of the Sandman, for one). There are also certain powers which interact with procs in odd ways that are also being looked at and adjusted on a case basis. At the end of the day, we're all playing a 20-year-old game of dubious legal standing and it doesn't really make much sense to implement a blanket nerf which negatively affects a large portion of the playerbase. I'd be interested to see the statistics on the Aeon SF and how often the increased difficulty levels are utilized. It's clear to me from beta and live feedback that the devs have managed to make challenging content for IO'd-and-incarnated-to-the-gills characters. I've always been okay with more difficult content but the content needs to provide meaningful rewards which will encourage players to participate, and it needs to be optional.

My opinion on this hasn't changed since last year: proc nerfs are a solution in search of a problem. "But the emphasis on damage output devalues crowd control," I hear you say. No, the game's combat mechanics as a whole devalue crowd control. Even before PPM procs and free range organic incarnate powers trash mobs died quickly enough that CC was largely irrelevant save annoying the Tanker who was trying to herd mobs, and the mobs where CC really did matter either took multiple stacked mezzes to nullify so a CC character could not reliably mez them or were functionally immune to mez. Procs, in their current implementation, help narrow the gap between "damage" ATs and "support" ATs so that even if a "support" AT is in a situation where their support abilities (be they CC, buff, or debuff) aren't reliable or useful, they can still contribute to the team on the damage front.

I'm preeeeeeeeetty sure that has more to do with all the psi damage, end drain, frequent mezzes, and annoying phasing bosses.

FWIW Gauntlet's non-AoE portion and Taunt are both autohit.