macskull

With the current set of changes Fly + Evasive Maneuvers will give you flight speeds about equal to what you used to get with Fly + Afterburner active and now Afterburner will allow you to go even faster than that about half the time. It's a net buff.

Honestly being able to use any powers while shapeshifted like that is probably an oversight.

You... do realize that Afterburner is now automatically granted when you take Fly, right?

This is WAI, Speed Phase puts you into "only affect self" which means you cannot perform any actions that affect other targets (including pets).

The behavior you're describing in Granite is how it's always worked. Granite has -jump/-fly so the hover period from teleport doesn't function. Root time should match the power's cast time, which you can see in the ingame info. Powers that do not affect enemies should not root (Tough and Weave being examples of those). If you find a non-enemy-affecting power rooting, file a bug report. If rooting were to go away entirely you'd just be randomly firing projectiles out of places and it would look really weird. If I remember right in order to completely decouple root and animation they'd need to completely redo the game's animation system which probably won't happen. Travel powers don't put you in OAS - in the case of Super Speed you'd need to activate the click phase power which only lasts a certain duration. OAS powers don't normally detoggle the rest of your powers. Walk isn't OAS but it disables the rest of your powers because it uses a different character movement animation that isn't written to be compatible with other powers (some of the prestige travel powers like Flying Carpet and Void Skiff are the same way).

If you turn off your "actual" travel power the old caps will still apply.

This guide lays it out pretty well.

Doing something like this would undoubtedly cause a much larger loss in players than the current trickle of "I'm bored" players.

That's true for pretty much any character, not just Blasters. There's a reason goldside has a tiny active population, part of which is because the enemy groups are really difficult for that level range.

Unfortunately the wiki is out of date and you can only get Breakfrees from the bounty vendor.

I remember that. I legitimately enjoyed the game during the open beta period and then the launch day nerfbomb ruined any interest I had in it. It's kind of funny that we're now here 10 years later and HC has a larger playerbase than CO.

I think part of the reason we're all still here is precisely because the OG devs didn't know what they were doing. By all accounts they designed a game based on how they thought an MMO should work without really getting it, and then the players broke the game in new and interesting ways at every turn. Part of this game's appeal is how ridiculously overpowered a player is compared to most NPCs, which based on multiple comments from Jack back in the day was absolutely not intentional.

There's a reason these are separated, and in the case of Cold shields it's because they can be enhanced for +res whereas FF shields cannot. As an example of what could happen, look at Fade from Dark Affinity - it was bugged for a long time for the power to not ignore strength boosts. This meant Power Boost-like powers boosted its defense but it also meant any damage bonuses the caster had would boost its resistance, which is obviously not something you want to happen. This is because damage and damage resistance are treated almost identically by the game to the point it's nearly impossible to separate them from each other. The reason you can boost the -def on debuffs like Melt Armor, Sleet, etc, is because you cannot boost -res.

I'd wager it's the same "legacy reason" as some of the other oddities in this game - the OG devs had no idea what they were doing.

No.

One of the counter arguments I’ve seen to this is “seeing other people running around with XYZ thing at level 1 cheapens *my* experience.” Granted, this isn’t a *good* argument, but it is where some of these people are coming from. “I had to do this the hard way so you should too” is a pretty crappy argument.

Market Crash was added during the “secret server” years and the version of the Crimson Prototype that currently exists is a pretty toned-down version of what it originally was.

80% of NPC knockback can be eliminated with just 4 points and 95% with 8 points. At that point enemy knockback has already been functionally removed from the game and it sometimes costs nothing in build investment already, and even with barely-or-unslotted Hurdle/Swift you’re bumping up against the existing travel speed caps when using SS/SJ/Fly.

Bingo.

Even the Blaster sustains are easy to ED cap endmod and heal/absorb with 3 of each, I like 3 Performance Shifter and 3 Preventive Medicine or Numina to get double 1.88% HP bonuses.

LotG +rech, LotG defense, and 4 pieces of Unbreakable Guard gets me to almost ED cap without any of the enhancements boosted while essentially getting 5 set bonuses. My alpha slot boosts defense but even ignoring that you're looking at about 41% defense enhancement, which is about 51% if you +5 both the LotGs. This is on IOs, yes, but an even-level schedule B SO (which is what resistance and defense use) provides 20% boost and the schedule B ED cap is about 57%.

Oh it's definitely not simple, especially when you get into things that aren't single-target attacks. It's way more complicated than the old flat-rate system but I don't think it is bad and needs to be changed.

This is why beginner's luck exists.

...which is balanced around them already having a recharge penalty that is sometimes up to 4x what it'd be on a normal powerset.

Can't use travel sets in auto powers because when the invention system was released people were slotting stealth IOs into them and losing NPCs in escort missions. I think the patch that removed the ability for slotting travel sets into auto powers came about a week after inventions were added. I don't really see a good reason why they (or prestige sprints) don't take universal travel IOs though.