macskull

This is because the game has plenty of things in weird places that are supposed to be in weird places and Fold Space not requiring LoS would break all sorts of things unless all those things were given teleport protection (so basically it's easier to make Fold Space require LoS).

I think that option got firmly shot down as a "no."

They do work, they just have an abysmal proc rate because they are using the AreaFactor of the aura power for calculating proc chances.

Streakbreaker isn't determined when you miss with a power, it's determined when you activate a power. In your case you missed with a 95% hit roll which would make it seem like the next attack should be a guaranteed hit, but because the attack you activated after missing had less than a 90% chance to hit it moved into the lower bracket where two misses forces a hit. If your followup attack had >90% chance you would have seen streakbreaker force a hit.

You need to treat the ingame numbers with a bit of scrutiny - in the case of these powers they're incorrectly factoring in extra damage. Barrage's DPA for a Scrapper at level 50 is 62.09, even though the ingame numbers say 94.72. Energy Punch's DPA is 87.43 despite ingame numbers showing 93.08.

To clarify: you're asking if the pool versions of the Leadership powers give the same bonuses as the in-set versions on VEATs? If yes, the pool and in-set versions of Tactics and Assault are identical, as is Vengeance on Widows. Maneuvers isn't the same though - the pool version gives 3.5% defense base, the Widow version gives 5% base, and the Soldier version gives a pretty ridiculous 10%. The endurance cost of the pool versions is also slightly higher.

Does it use the fast (2-second) animation, or the slow (12-second with 10 seconds being interruptible) animation?

You are operating under the flawed assumption that popularity = effectiveness. Empathy is by far the most popular Defender primary but it's also arguably the worst. When the first set of Homecoming character statistics were published in August 2019 the most popular Scrapper build was Claws/Regen - not because it's the best combination but because people wanted to be Wolverine. It's the same reason Invuln/SS is the most common Tanker build, or Mind/Psi is the most common Dominator build. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Stalkers are the least-popular non-epic AT but they are arguably the best melee AT if not the best AT behind Blasters. That being said, I'll reiterate it again... Frozen Fists has absolutely abysmal DPA. It's got the worst DPA of any T1 power except Defensive Sweep (which is an AoE and is, like Parry or Divine Avalanche, more of a defensive power with a secondary effect of dealing damage). The truly bizarre thing about Frozen Fists is it's a power with a 3-second cooldown but deals damage consistent with a 4-second cooldown (scale 1 vice scale 0.84). This means realistically the only way to make Frozen Fists an attack you'd actually want to use is to give it an animation trim. Reducing its cast time from 1.33s to 1.07s changes its DPA from 47.04 to 58.47 (Scrapper numbers) which is a little more typical of T1 powers. Likewise, Greater Ice Sword's DPA is pretty bad. It's only marginally better than some AoEs in other sets and even Cross Punch - a pool power AoE - has higher DPA. Raising the recharge time is probably a non-starter so it's back to looking at animation times. It's 2.33s currently which gives a DPA of 52.63 (for reference Cross Punch is 54.71). Reducing animation time to 1.83s results in a DPA of 67.00 which is still low-ish but not as bad, or going for 1.67s gives a DPA of 73.42 which also seems reasonable.

I did say "practically," not "literally," though you can do some really funny things with cones if you jump over/past your targets as you activate the power. That being said... you could delete every power in the set except Frost, Frozen Aura, and Freezing Touch and it would still be one of the best melee sets. PvE damage design formulas generally do not take animation time into account, only recharge time. This is why longer-animation powers are usually worse. Only way to make GIS stick to the design formulas and make it a better power, damage-wise, is to reduce its animation or increase its recharge.

What Ice Melee needs: nothing, it's already one of the best melee sets in the game especially on Tankers where the arc increase on Frost practically lets you hit enemies behind you. What potential improvements Ice Melee could use: The "weak points" in the set are Frozen Fists, Greater Ice Sword, and arguably Ice Patch. FF could potentially pick up another secondary effect but a 10% chance for a stun which only affects minions still doesn't make the power worth using. Probably better to get a recharge increase to raise its damage scale and thus its DPA. GIS suffers the same problem as FF - its DPA is awful. If anything the animation should be reduced, not increased, or its recharge should be increased. Ice Patch could probably use a larger radius but the single biggest issue with the power is its cast time. It's awful and once you have enough mitigation from other sources it's just not worth using.

You're saying when the team leader set a new mission you lost the LRT menu? I'm not quite understanding the situation here.

Yes please... we can lock powers in trays, why can't we lock tray numbers in a tray?

Last year, the price of winter-o's went back up to its pre-winter-event value pretty quickly. I wanna say it was only a few days. Also for those interested, a data point from last year, when I documented 61 packs (enhancements are all lumped together here but my raw data has the specific ones): Brain Storm Idea 1240 Build Snow Beast 30 Candy Cane 210 Character Respec 3 Dual Inspiration 14 Enhancement 65 Enhancement Booster 13 Enhancement Catalyst 11 Enhancement Converter 66 Enhancement Unslotter 38 Experienced 18 Free Tailor Session 5 Frost Bite 5 Reward Merit 600 Team Inspiration 38 Windfall 2 Winter Ward 4

Give an Ice/Fire Blaster a try. Or a Dominator of some kind. Very challenging to build and play but they can be somewhat competitive.

I mean, if your goal was to make a +4x8 farmer Titan Weapons was never a top pick... (unless you were doing it to be different, I suppose, but you commenting on the numbers tells me that isn't the case)

Not necessarily, sometimes I want that few percent of extra defense while in combat. Honestly of the two powers I'd argue Invisibility is probably the less useful, but at the very least it's a good place to mule defense set IOs (LotG, +res, scaling +res, KB protection) in builds that otherwise don't have access to them.

TW is still in the top 3 for what it's worth.

I don't know where you're getting your base numbers from. Here's a comparison of pre-I27 base numbers (left) with the current non-momentum numbers (right), both using Scrapper numbers. Defensive Sweep: 45.61/41.82 (91.69% of previous damage) Crushing Blow: 112.86/102.60 (90.91% of previous damage) Titan Sweep: 89.40/81.97 (91.69% of previous damage) Follow Through: 134.88 (plus 4*6.26 DoT for a total of 159.92)/122.62 (90.91% of previous damage excluding DoT, 76.68% of previous damage including DoT) Rend Armor: 200.95/182.68 (90.91% of previous damage) Whirling Smash: 71.95 (plus 4*6.26 DoT for a total of 96.99)/65.06 (90.42% of previous damage excluding DoT, 67.08% of previous damage including DoT) Arc of Destruction: 162.41/122.11 (75.19% of previous damage) The reason Arc of Destruction's non-momentum base damage is so much lower than the others is because its recharge time was lowered to 16s from 20s and as such got another damage reduction on top of the ~10% that had been taken off the top.

This was changed a few updates back. Invisibility now lets you attack/be attacked but you lose all the defense bonus and stealth if this happens. Basically as of right now the options are this; Stealth gives you partial invisibility and a small defense bonus which remains even if you engage in combat Invisibility gives you full invisibility and a larger defense bonus which does goes away entirely if you engage in combat

Even Devastating Blow's DPA is pretty competitive with other sets' single-target heavy hitters despite its long animation.

Not only is it just five minutes, it's also affected by global recharge (which means it's sometimes more like half that) and if you use it to get to Talos it drops you on the hill right by the train, base portal, and Wentworths. You can also use Ouroboros to quick-travel to zones by starting an arc with a contact in a certain zone and then quitting the TF after teleporting to the contact (granted this only works when solo and not on a task force, but if you're on a team you should have enough people with base TP/mission TP powers where the cooldowns shouldn't be an issue).

Recharge slows are specifically unaffected by enhancements and buffs because they'd be ridiculously OP otherwise, especially considering how few attacks NPCs have and how little slow resistance NPCs tend to have. It's worth pointing out of the six armor sets with damage auras half have secondary effects (Stone, Elec, Bio) and the other half don't (Fire, Ice, Dark) so it's not like there's a precedent one way or the other and with the possible exception of Bio the secondary effects of those damage auras don't necessarily bring a whole lot to the set.

I can't find anything in old patch notes specifically about reducing the -rech, but it looks like -dam was added in Issue 5 and boosted to a higher value in Issue 6.

This is the same sort of argument as the Leadership toggles - until recently their activation time didn't match their animation time so even though the animation was done you were stuck unable to do anything for an extra bit of time. I think Tough and Field Medic are two of the biggest offenders still in the game.

Can you point to any instances of this happening? I am digging through the open beta feedback threads and what I'm seeing is: Constructive criticism in the form of thought-out and well-reasoned posts being listened to and sometimes even getting changes made A few "I don't like this"-type posts, which aren't really constructive but are less disruptive than the category below A handful of posters making the same complaints, who when presented with solutions to their complaints just complained louder and clogged up feedback threads with pointless arguments You've brought this argument up in other places but it's simply not the reality of the situation. It's that third category of people who have ensured if something like /enterbasefrompasscode (i.e. a GM/dev-level command which players accidentally get access to) is discovered again it'll simply be shut down right away instead of being allowed to remain in place while a replacement is developed. Yes, the replacement system for /enterbasefrompasscode is not as convenient as having anytime/anywhere access to the command. It isn't supposed to be because the command was never supposed to be used like it was. Nevertheless, the replacement system is reasonably well-thought-out and accessible and requires at least a little bit of investment in exchange for essentially being able to skip most travel. It was continuously improved throughout the closed beta and open beta periods in response to player feedback and new tech was developed to make it work better. Now that it's live it's still being improved as evidenced by the most recent set of patch notes on the beta/staging servers. EDIT: For what it's worth, I was not happy about the change in its first few iterations but after a bit of playing around ingame it wasn't actually too bad and the improvements made to recharge/activation times and unlock requirements made it way better. Even on a brand-new level 1 character I can get LRT unlocked in less than five minutes. As of right now the only real complaint I have is I have to get used to a different way of doing things, which at the end of the day isn't all that big a deal.