macskull

I don't think the "feature or bug" discussion is really relevant as unless someone manages to dig up relevant forum posts from 10-11 years ago we will never know with 100% certainty which is true. Additionally, what might have been originally intended as a "feature" in the context of the game at the time might no longer be true given how much things have changed since then. That being said, the reasoning for the change matters far less than the effects of the change. KM is a middling set with the main appeal of getting a single-target attack chain early (additional bonuses for Stalkers are a faster-than-normal fast-cast AS and the higher crit rate from hide on Burst). Outside of that KM is plagued by slow animations, a T9 that can't crit in exchange for resetting BU/Power Siphon, and (on non-Stalkers) a BU replacement that by most measures is inferior to other sets' BU replacements. Reducing Burst's hidden crit rate nerfs the set for the only AT with an appealing version of the set and doesn't solve the problem of the set being mediocre.

I'm also opposed to the Burst change but wanted to address these: Stalkers are the least-popular non-epic AT (by which you're implying "popularity = effectiveness" but that's not really true because if we used the same logic then Empathy would be the best support set when that's clearly not the case) but that's at least partly due to two factors: The huge QoL buff that turned Stalkers into absolute beasts happened late in the game's pre-shutdown life so many returning players aren't aware of it The description and apparent playstyle doesn't appeal to players who don't know what the individual ATs really do The only ATs that have higher melee damage scales than Stalkers are Scrappers and Dominators. Scrapper melee scale is a little more than 10% higher than Stalkers get and Scrappers don't get reliable crits most of the time, and Dominator melee scale is only 5% higher than Stalkers but they only have access to 2-4 melee attacks depending on their secondary.

The post you quoted had quite a few ridiculous statements, but you could look at this from the opposite point of view - take Fire Blast, which lacks any real secondary effect outside of "free extra damage via DoTs." If that's your starting point, then every other set gives up damage in exchange for an actual secondary effect, and of those secondary effects end drain is arguably the worst because of its binary nature.

This is identical to how other caster-affecting movement buffs operate (Inertial Reduction, Accelerate Metabolism, etc.) so this seems like WAI. I'm going to jump on the "this change is not good" bandwagon here and attempt to appeal to reason - I believe Powerhouse has said Kinetic Melee is going to be looked at in a future update but we have no idea how far away that update is. It could be three months, it could be a year. I don't think it's a good idea to remove one of the few appealing aspects of Kinetic Melee now with the intention of working on the entire set later. HC has already proven they're capable of seriously improving existing sets once they get attention but it's far more palatable for Burst to get adjusted in the context of changes to the entire set than it is to see Burst get "normalized" for the sake of normalization.

It's fixed in the patch that just went to beta.

It is possible to have a set be balanced against other sets while still having something unique about powers within that set. Regardless, this change accomplishes the opposite of bringing the set into balance.

Unrelated but I am curious what you are getting at here as S/L attacks still follow the same standard damage formula as non-S/L attacks.

Larger radius, 8ft is seriously tiny Faster animation Make Concentrated Strike not suck, the animation time is awful and giving up crit damage in exchange for recharging Build Up is 100% not worth it Speed up Focused Burst Keep Burst the way it is, let the set have its "thing"

Well at least the people who were complaining about it in the Page 2 patch notes thread will actually have something to complain about now.

Once again, this change you are talking about did not happen.

Did you even look ingame before posting this? Nothing about Burst changed. Also, PvP is far from a balancing point - it's been explicitly stated by multiple people on the dev team that they are 1) not designing powers around PvP and 2) not going to let PvP stop changes from happening.

Apparently the change to Blaster max HP happened during one of the I24 beta builds, so it wasn't a Resurgence/Homecoming change. I don't think it needed to happen period but I guess it was part of an overall adjustment to Blaster survivability in I24 and those changes had zero consideration for how they affected PvP because 1) they were still in beta and 2) I don't think anyone on the dev team cared about PvP by that point. The PvP community has been trying to find a good way to handle the increased Blaster HP but it's something that will probably take a bit of new code to figure out. There were some changes to Blaster base resistances in an early build of this update but they got rolled back because they didn't actually result in an appreciable change because of how DR works. If HP maxmax (i.e. the AT's HP cap) had separate entries for PvP and PvE this would be simple, but that attribute isn't separate.

Rad Melee Stalker changes need to specify the changes are PvP-only.

The range change for fast snipes is annoying for sure, but I'd argue it's mostly because you're used to a certain behavior that's changed. It bothered me while I was testing it too but at the same time I understand why a power that functions as a standard ranged attack should have the same range as a standard ranged attack. Blaster fast snipes still get the 50% range bonus so odds are good your next snipe will get the range bonus from the first one.

I'm a bit confused why anyone should be apologizing for the Scrapper epic snipes, which are now correctly affected by crit chance modifiers and are no longer stuck at a 5% crit chance. If the complaint is "I can't fast snipe from 150+ feet anymore" then... eh, whatever. Invisibility still functionally exists and I'm not sure why anyone would be using it except for concept purposes (and you can now customize Stealth with an "invisible" theme to cover that one) or for stealthing missions (in which case Stealth + stealth IO in a prestige sprint will exactly replicate its effects while still providing a benefit when in combat). "You should fix this completely unrelated thing before working on something" is a really poor argument. The market bugs, while annoying, are easily worked around. PvP balance issues, not so much. Pretty much everything PvP-related that's been changed in the last two big updates has been things the PvP community's been asking for and was low-hanging fruit for a dev with a bit of free time.

Pretty rare to use any at all since I usually work out my builds ahead of time. I think the most I've used on a single character since HC launch is two.

If you're asking whether you are able to, the answer is no. If you're asking why you aren't able to, that's probably a bit more complicated.

I mean, if that were to happen people would just do what they already do and use the arena vendors in Pocket D.

I'm not seeing a problem here. The changes to PvP zones were made with PvP players in mind. If we're talking Siren's Call specifically, it looks there is one exploration badge/history plaque that might require vertical movement beyond what a player would normally possess.

As far as I'm aware, the temp power vendors in Siren's Call have only been available after your side has control of the zone (and it's been that way since Issue 6), per the wiki: I'm not aware of anything which would have changed this behavior, but if you find the vendor isn't available when your side is controlling the zone it might be worth filing a bug report.

I think there have been several similar changes but they're missing from the patch notes. I'm of the opinion if a power requires a target it should be treated as a single-target attack for PvP damage formula reasons because with very rare exceptions you'll never hit more than one player at a time.

There were Excelsior kickball (pick-up team stuff) nights on Mondays until a couple months ago but they stopped due to lack of interest. In my recent experience the only PvP that happens on Excelsior is the occasional stuff in Recluse's Victory, usually when someone forms a pillbox/AV/badge team and a few people hop on the other side to make things more interesting.

I didn't take the time to count but if I had to estimate it's probably somewhere between 3-4 billion. I don't think I've hit the inf cap yet on any character because I tend to spend it, but there was a point in summer 2019 where I was approaching it on my main and then accidentally lost 1.5 billion thanks to an extra zero.

That's true, on a Defender it's 216.25% mez resistance at level 50 which is roughly equivalent to cutting mez down to 1/3 duration. Granted there are still some NPC mezzes which will still last a long time even with that (looking at you, Malta stun grenades), but most NPC mezzes do not last that long.