macskull

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.

Even on SOs you can ED cap both def and res in Shadow Fall (and similar powers in Cold and Storm), though that comes at the expense of not slotting any end reduction. With IO sets it's pretty easy to get good enhancement values for both while also picking up end reduction, recharge, and set bonuses on the way.

Almost everything in this game is additive. Hasten's recharge is affected by recharge bonuses (which includes Hasten itself) - it has a 450-second base recharge and a 120-second duration. Recharge time follows this formula: RechargeTime = BaseRechargeTime / ( 100% + Buffs - Debuffs ) In order to make Hasten (or any power) recharge as soon as its duration expires we need RechargeTime to be equal to or less than its duration. We know everything in this equation except for what "Buffs" should be. RechargeTime is 120, BaseRechargeTime is 450, and we'll assume Debuffs is 0%, so after doing some algebra to get Buffs by itself you're left with Buffs equaling 2.75, or 275% total recharge enhancement. Obviously ED imposes a practical limit of about 95% recharge enhancement so we have to get the other 180% from somewhere else. Luckily, Hasten itself makes up 70% which means we only need another 110% from any other source - less if you have an alpha ability which reduces recharge since a portion of the alpha bonus ignores ED.

No, I think the only Hasten-specific nerf happened a looooooong time ago when they made it not stack with itself.

Wanted to address a few issues here: These are additive bonuses - they used to be multiplicative but that behavior was adjusted sometime last year. "Power Boost"-type powers basically add extra enhancement to aspects they affect which allows you to effectively bypass ED for slotting. If I had a power that granted 10% defense ED would cap that at about 16% (60% defense slotting). Now let's say I also had Power Boost (another 50%, to throw out a random number) and Clarion (another 50%) - my defense power would now give me (10*(1+0.6+0.5+0.5)) = 26% defense. Accuracy for player powers comes from three places - a power's inherent accuracy, slotting, and accuracy bonuses (from IOs or other powers). In order to get your final accuracy you 'd do the same sort of math I did in my defense example. This is untrue, you need about 110% recharge from non-Hasten sources to make Hasten recharge before its duration expires, assuming you have Hasten slotted with two 50+5 recharge IOs. The recharge cap is 400% - to determine if a power can be made "perma" take its base, unenhanced recharged and divide by 5 and if that number is longer than its duration it is not possible to have it recharge before its effects expire. This is because enhancements are treated as buffs and are functionally identical to damage bonuses. It can be a bit confusing at first but once you realize everything modifies your base damage it's a bit simpler. These are actually 400% for Defenders, Dominators, HEATs/VEATs, 500% for Scrappers, Stalkers, Tankers, Blasters, Corruptors, Sentinels, and 700% for Brutes, but the number in your ingame combat attributes will turn blue at 100 points below that because your ingame numbers are tracking your damage bonus and you always start off at 100% damage (since it is possible for damage to be debuffed below its base value).

Alpha powers act as a build-wide enhancement for the attributes they boost. If a power can't be enhanced for something the alpha ability boosts, it won't be affected. This includes things like IO procs and incarnate abilities. If your attack does accept immobilize enhancements (something like most Blaster T1 immobilizes or Impale) then it'll boost the immobilize duration as well as the damage.

I don't think that's a power BM casts on herself, from what I can find in CoD it's related to a portal of some sort.

In 99% of this game's content melee is functionally immortal and can just roll their face on the keyboard and still be successful. Having 1% where they have to put a bit of thought into it isn't a bad thing.

Making fights take longer isn't the same as making them more difficult. One is an actual challenge and the other is a waste of time. The game already offers plenty of options to make things harder going for crazy-well-built characters (at least on TFs/flashbacks) but the vast majority of players ignore those options. Why? Because they don't offer any incentive for using them aside from bragging rights and possibly some badges. It's the same thing as raising enemy levels - it isn't really any more difficult and you get less reward for the same time spent. Why would anyone who's chasing rewards use any of those options if they get nothing for it?

There are two basic ways to make the game more difficult: Nerf players. This is a very tricky thing to do since any sweeping nerf is A) going to be very unpopular and B) will probably open whole different cans of worms Make enemies harder. This is probably the way to do it but with the combat mechanics of this game it basically requires giving NPCs "cheat" powers like in most of the incarnate trials. Raising enemy level relative to yours won't make things substantially more difficult, just a little slower, due to the way your powers scale against higher-level enemies. Raising enemy spawn sizes won't make things more difficult either because of the aggro cap, and raising the aggro cap/target cap on AoEs just means it makes farmers' jobs easier.

Zapp is flagged with the correct crit attributes for Stalkers.

After digging around in CoD, it's because Zapp (both slow and fast versions) is missing the "MLCrit" and "BossCrit" tags which allow crit rates to be modified by other powers. This means Zapp's crit rate isn't being boosted by either of the +crit rate IOs or the crit rate buffs from the Ninjitsu secondary.

Sort of - a Brute will end up with higher-scale damage in melee when each AT is at its respective cap, but Blasters generally have higher-DPA melee attacks because Blaster melee attacks tend to have longer recharges than the versions in melee sets. Lots of +recharge buffs will end up biasing toward the Blaster.

Numbers looking off damage scale and damage caps: Brute has base scale 0.75 melee and ranged, and a 700% damage cap (+600%). This results in a maximum damage scale of 4.5 to melee and range while at damage cap. Blaster has base scale 1 melee and 1.125 ranged, and a 500% damage cap (+400%). This results in a maximum damage scale of 4 to melee and 4.5 to range while at damage cap. You can look at that and go "oh wow a Brute outdamages a Blaster in melee" and that's true at the cap, but any +dam bonus is going to favor the Blaster because of their higher base damage scales (and Blasters get higher numbers out of Build Up than Brutes to begin with). Blasters also have attacks in both their primary and secondary so they're able to put out more damage more consistently.