macskull

The Hami-O trick stopped working a while back when those enhancements were specifically adjusted to not boost attributes the power couldn't be slotted for because it let you do things like bypass ED caps in defense powers by using the defense debuff/* Hamis. Set IOs are handled differently and will sometimes allow you to boost attributes that otherwise can't be enhanced (like recharge in Vengeance or Mind Link). I just tested the Blaster version and found that slotting it with an endmod set with damage aspects didn't change the damage dealt. I'll check the Trick Arrow version next but I feel like the results will be identical - and at any rate the best bang for your buck is to load the power up with hold set damage procs since those will deal damage to any target regardless of whether they're "electronic" or not. EDIT: The Trick Arrow version is also unaffected by damage enhancement. Definitely go with some acc/rech and max out on damage procs if your goal is to use the power to deal damage.

There's no way to see a total affecting your character, no. There is specific "endurance drain resistance" which is usually represented as "res(endurance)" ingame. Only a few powers grant it. EDIT: Here's an example screenshot from the power information for Accelerate Metabolism.

Are you talking about the ingame combat attributes display? If so, you can't see end drain resist because end drain resistance isn't debuff resistance.

Ooh yeah, I forgot those have been going for a lot recently. Shows how much I've been ingame the last couple months. I can't figure that one out though, the only power I can think of off the top of my head where end/tohit/def might be a useful enhancement pick is Invincibility. No idea why the level 53s are going for 200-300m.

Yep, an enhancement is an enhancement and will continue to function (subject to enhancement scaling below level 32) as long as you aren't in a flashback/TF challenge setting that specifically disables enhancements. Only set bonuses follow the 3-level rule which means "special" or "proc120" enhancements like Kismet +tohit or Miracle +recovery will continue to function as well provided the power they're slotted in is available for use.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the reason winter packs are 25m vs 10m is primarily due to the attractiveness of the winter-O set bonuses for fire farmers - same reason AE XP got cut in half, and same reason double XP while exemplared was disabled. They're all means of inflation control on a higher-population server, since the other servers which share HC's code base do not have those differences (except maybe the exemplar bit).

Set bonuses, sure, but at least personally I am not too concerned with set bonuses in my travel powers. The enhancements themselves will continue to function no matter what level you exemplar down to.

If you're referring to microfilaments I'm not really sure there. It's really easy to hit the new runspeed cap without excessive slotting - two 50+5 travel/end in Super Speed, a 50+5 runspeed in Swift, and a 50 travel/end in Sprint gets you just over the cap without any outside bonuses - and the speedrun meta has shifted in favor of the teleport pool which gets no benefit from microfilaments. An argument could be made for PvP builds since diminishing returns requires players to seriously overslot speed even get close to the new higher caps. Microfilaments have been the most expensive item in the game since Homecoming's launch and I don't really see that changing anytime soon. Yeah, I'm a cheap bastard and don't see the point in spending 40 million on a single slot when 6 million gets me 99.4% of the enhancement value. If I really want to eke out every bit of performance I can get for a PvP build and I already have one in base storage somewhere I might consider it but probably not even then.

I think the "special" D-syncs (the ones that don't have HO/SHO/Titan-O/Hydra-O equivalent) are all over the place because the only way you're getting them is running the ASF which makes the supply inconsistent. From what I can see there are items listed for sale for each of them but they're probably listed for strange prices because it's anybody's guess what they're actually worth right now. The last 5 sales for every one I've seen go back at least 2 days, some more than 4. I don't understand the market for these either - the last 5 for the level 50 threat/acc/rech one is 45/45/51/100/47.5 which is so confusing to me because I can't think of a single power they'd be worth slotting in.

If the game were balanced around inspiration use, sure - but it isn't. But I suppose while we're at it we could just make players unable to claim any character items while inside missions too. And let's be real here - with the multitude of ways to very quickly get to one's SG base and back to a mission inspirations are functionally infinite anyways. (And before anyone brings it up, I'm aware the new difficulty tiers partially or completely disable inspiration usage - those settings were designed to provide an actual challenge and are entirely optional. A blanket ban on claiming email attachments in-mission is neither a challenge nor optional.) EDIT: In response to OP, though - if you're trying to come up with a character that can solo the MLTF because you think Hami-Os are expensive, you're going to lay out a whole lot more inf building that character than you'd spend on the Hami-O's. For the vast majority of builds a 50+5 dual-aspect IO provides 99% of the enhancement value as a level 50 Hami-O for significantly cheaper. As a current example, a level 50 Microfilament (end/travel) runs 40 million inf and provides a 33.3% enhancement value. A level 50+5 Quickfoot end/run is 1 million at buy-it-now prices or 200k if you're patient, plus another 5 million for the 5 boosters which totals 6 million inf for a 33.1% enhancement value. Sure, if you really want to squeeze every bit out of that slot and you spring for a level 53 Micro it'll run you 150-160 million for 38.3% enhancement value, but is that 16% boost worth paying 2500% more?

The rub here comes from the survivability-to-damage relationship. The four melee ATs sort of have this figured out already though there is some muddying of the waters between Scrappers and Stalkers if you aren't factoring in the ATO procs. The powers guy has gone on record as saying Sentinels will not get increased target caps and a damage scale increase to anything more than 1.0 (maybe 1.05 if someone's feeling lucky) is probably off the table as well. They weren't really intended to compete directly with Blasters but that's how it's shaken out. The question then becomes "what is good enough?" and I'm not sure there's a good answer to that question. The mechanics of the game ensure that you'll always be able to bring a Blaster up to Sentinel survivability levels but you'll never be able to bring a Sentinel up to Blaster damage levels. Clearly, just adding more damage isn't the answer. Sentinels have been intentionally kneecapped in too many different ways to be able to compete on an even footing with other damage-centric ATs, so they need to bring something else to the table. Like you said: they don't need to be a tank, and they don't need to be real support, but if they can offer some support ability they'll at least be more desirable as a "damage dealer/force multiplier" than "damage dealer that deals less damage than the other damage-dealing ATs and doesn't bring anything else." I'm not a fan of click powers for things like this because it's one more thing the player has to time and juggle with the rest of their powers. Domination is an annoyance as a click power and I'm sure Opportunity would end up the same way.

Here's some food for thought: Opportunity now has two distinct components - one which functions similarly to its current form (which we'll call the "current" component), and another which provides a wide-radius non-line-of-sight PBAoE buff to teammates (which we'll call the "new" component). The damage resistance debuff tied to the T1 and T2 powers goes away. Opportunity now works based off two inherent toggles, Offensive Opportunity and Defensive Opportunity. These toggles have no endurance cost and a 30-second recharge time. Opportunity gain/loss is reworked similar to the way Fury builds - attacking and being attacked builds the bar, builds faster on teams, decays over time, etc. The current component no longer relies on activation of T1 or T2 powers to trigger but rather is set to a value which is determined by the amount of Opportunity the Sentinel has. It wouldn't be 1-for-1 but maybe something in the range of 1/4 to 1/2 - call it 1/3 for now. In other words with a full Opportunity bar I'd have a 33% chance that any of my attacks would trigger the Opportunity bonus. Offensive Opportunity debuffs do not stack from multiple attacks, but they do stack from multiple Sentinels. The duration of the debuff is shortened as well since it is easier to maintain. Defensive Opportunity buffs are unchanged. The new component adds in a PBAoE buff that scales with the amount of Opportunity the Sentinel has. Offensive Opportunity provides a small recharge and tohit buff. Defensive Opportunity provides a small defense and resistance buff. These proposed changes ensure the Sentinel can make more consistent use of Offensive Opportunity while providing support in the form of team buffs. Sentinels already get some support abilities in their epic/patron pools so it isn't a stretch in terms of existing AT design. The different team and self buffs allow the Sentinel to adapt their role in the team on the fly depending on the team's performance. Team not doing so great or a tough fight is coming up? Turn on Defensive Opportunity to give you and your teammates a bit of a survival edge. Trying to clear a pesky AV or two? Turn on Offensive Opportunity to speed up the fight a bit. The overhaul to how the enemy-affecting and self-affecting portions of Opportunity work bring the Sentinels more in line with their vision as "ranged Scrappers" - Sentinels now get criticals but instead of being damage criticals they're debuff criticals or self-buff criticals.

Raising the Sentinel damage scale is only part of the solution - they'll still have lower target caps and far worse nukes. A bump from scale 0.95 to 1.0 is cool but it needs to come along with something else that makes having a Sentinel desirable from a teaming standpoint. As it stands Opportunity isn't particularly useful except for short durations on single targets (if you happen to have the right power and use it on the right target at the right time). Opportunity should be divorced from power picks and should be available more often to provide a more consistent benefit.

Converters and changes to the way the market handles certain enhancements and salvage make it way more difficult to sustainably manipulate the market than it was during the game's retail run. You can do it short-term for some items but more often than not you're left holding onto inventory you can't offload.

This take is as bizarre now as it was the first time you posted it and I'm still not sure this isn't just Poe's Law at work. At its peak (issue 5-6 timeframe) the game had 180k subscribers and was down to 125k by issue 13 which is the last time I've been able to find data for. It almost certainly continued falling off over the last four years of the game's retail run. Number Six's post from earlier this month reveals there were 18,588 unique user agents over a one-week period in late November/early December. Keep in mind that's not a direct measurement of unique players since it's only measuring unique pings to an update server but it's probably a fairly accurate estimate. Also keep in mind that it was a weekend immediately following a major update which as we've seen results in a population surge which lasts a couple weeks before waning off again. TL;DR: The scenario you describe wasn't happening with a playerbase ten times what it is now. On the list of things which pose a threat to this game's existence "an influx of players" is probably well below "drone strike takes out every OVH server and a black ops commando team simultaneously infiltrates every location where backups of the game are stored."

In that case, it's a good thing everything in this entire game is only done as someone "intended" and no one ever does things the game designers never thought of. While some characters will still be able to earn the badge solo with the new settings, there now exists a subset of characters who were previously able to but now will not. I think that's because bigger spawn sizes just slow soloists down and the non-AV/monster mobs were never the challenging part. Is your enter key broken? I have to edit your posts to remove all the extra blank lines or it feels like I'm trying to read a CVS receipt. Aside from a very few specific builds which usually rely heavily on inspiration use (including emailing inspirations to themselves to get around the inspiration storage limit) these challenges have not been completed "swiftly and easily." People weren't loading into an MoRSF or whatever going "I want to run this with temp powers disabled and no deaths," they were going "I want the badge." Sure, if all you cared about was being able to run the content with those specific difficulty settings then this change is functionally irrelevant... but I don't think that's what anyone cares about.

Let's try this a third time. The "Master of" badges have been around since Issue 16, which launched more than twelve years ago. For the last twelve years, the requirements to earn those badges have been "complete task X with zero deaths and temporary powers disabled." That's it. I have no issue with new "Master of" badges which have additional requirements since those would have by definition been impossible to obtain on any character prior to their introduction. We now have a situation where character XYZ who was previously capable of earning an existing badge solo is no longer able to due to an arbitrary design decision. This change takes away options from players and that's never a good thing. The no-brainer choice here is to revert the requirements to what they were before the update and add a new series of badges with the new requirements. As for your point about incarnate powers trivializing content: sure, a full team loaded up with incarnate powers will trivialize most things. A solo player loaded up with incarnate powers will trivialize some things. Aside from a few very specific builds, a solo player loaded up with incarnate powers is not trivializing challenges like MoRSF and MoMLTF. EDIT: As a reminder, I do not personally care about these badges. I understand there's no benefit at all to these badges except bragging rights (at least prior to the last update which added additional rewards for Mo* badges). At the same time I'm also capable of feeling empathy toward players whose fun is being hijacked by poor design decisions. As a general rule I'm opposed to things being made more difficult through mandatory means.

Doesn't seem like I'm the one confused here.

Yes, this behavior is intentional. Rooted was changed during the Stone Armor overhaul as part of an effort to make the set not totally suck until you get Granite. At this point you basically have two options - run non-Granite and potentially be a bit squishier but get some cool side bonuses, or run Granite and be tankier but lose those bonuses. The only benefit Rooted gives you that Granite doesn't by itself is a small regeneration bonus, so there's really not much reason at all to run Rooted and Granite at the same time. If you want to stack that extra mez protection and get the regeneration bonus, you get to deal with even slower movement speed. I don't know how long OP has been playing but from a historical standpoint Rooted slowed you to a crawl whenever it was active before the recent updates.

Requoting myself in case you missed it the first time: In addition to this, there is now a subset of characters/builds which would have previously been capable of completing these challenges solo and are now unable. I take specific issue with the disabling of incarnate powers here. The P2W/temp power disabling is kind of whatever, temp powers haven't been allowed on Mo* runs since the beginning of Mo* badges and the temp powers which did still work should not have.

I have no horse in this race because I don't go out of my way to get badges unless they're required for accolades. That being said, if someone is capable of building a character and playing it well enough to do a solo Mo* run, what's the problem? Greater difficulty should come through harder content, not mandatory nerfing of players. It's all well and good to add new badges with increased challenge levels but I've never been a fan of making existing badges harder to get since it goes against the trend that's been established during the game's post-shutdown development.

The bug with Burn was fixed on the beta server at some point in late 2019, I believe, but the fix so drastically reduced Burn's performance the fix got reverted and pushed until a later date. I remember doing the math and seeing it was doing something less than 1/4 of its current damage. CPH has already stated Burn's going to get fixed for real this time when the entire set receives a balance pass. I'll miss it on my Blaster though, that's for sure.

Big /jranger on this one. Sure, the arena interface and swiss draw being horribly broken make some of these a nightmare, but if anything that should be reason to rewrite the arena interface rather than make purchasable badges. I'm cautiously optimistic about this happening in the future, especially given Faultline's comment upthread. IMO the only badges which should be purchasable are badges tied to a specific time-locked event, like the old anniversary badges are now.

Only if it stays off in PvP. On the other hand, I'm not sure why PB needs to boost knockback anyways. Knockback enhancements are already on their own schedule with an ED "cap" that's roughly twice as high as anything else for no reason at all. Knockback is so binary in this game that you're either going to fail to knock a target due to high amounts of KB protection and resistance, or you'll easily KB them regardless of how your powers are slotted. If you reeeeeeeeeeally wanna eke out some extra distance, SG base empowerment stations give 90 minutes of 60% knockback boost.