macskull

No, I haven't listed any of them yet.

Winter event can't start until I finish selling off the winter super packs I bought during last year's event...

I'd be okay with a "level skip" option but only if it was only usable with powersets that had a gimmick/combo system.

This is the reason the fast travel popmenu thing got implemented.

Pretty much the only place I see these is in PvP builds where every little bit of performance matters and you're okay with spending 30+ million for 33.3% enhancement value instead of ~10 million (IO + boosters) for a 50+5 IO that gives 33.1% enhancement. Last spring/summer these could easily clear 100 million and were sitting at 130-150 million for a little while after the zone cap was put back on the Hive.

It is possible for changes to both be better for the majority of PvPers and for new or casual players. Not everyone's going to win here, but the vast majority of the active PvP playerbase will. You also seem to be approaching this from the misguided viewpoint of "well the PvPers are just making all these changes themselves." No, Faultline dropped me a DM out of the blue asking about my thoughts on a new lower-level PvP zone and new arena map so I simply pointed him to the discussions the PvP community has been having for the last year and a half on exactly those sorts of things. Some of the changes being implemented with I27 are asks the PvP community has had since before I13. -Recharge as a mechanic is more or less unchanged from pre-I13. Defenders probably got hit the hardest by the I13 changes in this respect though, since Defender debuffs are no longer unresisted. It is true -rech is probably overall less effective than it was before but that has more to do with the damage output of most characters (and the relative access to slow resist IO bonuses) than it does any mechanics changes affecting -rech. Movement slows, on the other hand... it was definitely not fun to be slowed to a crawl by one or two powers but I don't really think movement slows should have been gutted the way they did. There's probably a good medium between pre-I13 and now out there.

What do you consider to be "unfinished" about them? The changes have been tested quite a bit over the last few weeks and there have been very few complaints.

To be entirely fair, the example in the OP about PvP accolades being temp powers would have been fine to post in the PvP feedback thread if that's what the meat of the posts had been, instead of what they actually were. Also, for what it's worth the temporary powers list also includes things like Ouroboros Portal and alignment powers which are decidedly not temporary powers. The reason the PvP accolades are listed under temporary powers is because it puts them in the same category as the other arena-purchasable powers (raptor pack, jump jet, stun grenade, stealth suit, web grenade) which makes it easier to disable them when not in a PvP environment.

There will probably be some complaints when the changes go live though from what I've seen many of the players who frequent PvP zones are already aware of the impending changes and don't really care. In all fairness, the players who would stop playing once all these changes go live are the players who have been making zone PvP not fun for anybody. The developers have already indicated a willingness to work with the PvP community to make further tweaks and adjustments so if it turns out these changes actually do have a negative impact on zone population they can be rolled back. I don't see that happening though. To be entirely fair, there is virtually no in-game documentation on the powers differences between PvE and PvP and much of what does exist has been outdated since Issue 13 dropped twelve years ago. Players who are legitimately interested in PvP beyond a passing "huh what's this" will ask the questions. Whenever a new patch is released the GMOTD popup contains a link to the patch notes or at the very least informs players of a patch - if people aren't bothering to read those patch notes it's hardly anyone else's fault. The changes are still in flux and there's going to be further tweaking down the line. I don't know what "singular focus" you are referring to but the intent of the changes specifically dealing with incarnate powers and temporary powers is to make zone PvP more accessible and balanced. Story time: a couple years ago, before Homecoming existed, there was a small push on the server that preceded Homecoming to disable incarnate powers in Recluse's Victory. At the time it was decided to leave things alone so players who wanted an "anything goes" PvP experience could have it. Fast forward to now and we've seen how an "anything goes" PvP zone just turns it into a mess. Yeah, it's probably fun for the players whose idea of PvP is "I am never going to die to anything ever" but for everyone else it's kind of a shitshow. These changes aren't going to entirely fix things like a player with a team of buffbots in their base or a player leaving the zone every 30 seconds to get a new tray of T3 green inspirations, but at least they will help. It does seem as though the majority of the negative feedback in this thread and others like it is coming from either PvEers or the very small number of PvPers who think it's okay for a Blaster to be running around with T4 Incan and a tray of T3 greens and base TP the second anyone looks at them funny.

Summing up all this again, from the points I've been making: if all of these changes were actually due solely to PvP and not PvE, I could see an argument for these nerfs in a pre-Issue 13 world. However, given the ability to pretty much completely separate a power's PvE and PvP attributes, the fact none of these changes were reverted after Issue 13 means one of two things. These changes weren't actually made only because of PvP, or The developers lied about not changing things for PvP and then did not care enough to revert the changes once they were able to even though players felt strongly about them. Which one of those do you suppose it is? I'll give you a hint: it's not the answer behind door number two. Especially the travel suppression point - on Homecoming, right now, there is no travel suppression in PvP yet PvE travel suppression still exists. I can practically guarantee you if I tagged in a Homecoming dev right now they'd tell you removing travel suppression from PvE is a non-starter. (Sidebar, re: patch notes - the wiki has the full contents of every patch note from the first post-launch patch on May 5th, 2004 until the last I24 beta patch on August 23rd, 2012, as well as somewhat spotty patch note coverage for post-I24 changes.)

There's a difference between "thing gets nerfed in PvE only because of PvP" and "thing gets nerfed in PvE because of PvE and PvP." My point was the former case has happened only one time ever in the 16-and-a-half-year history of this game, while the vast majority of nerfs that people point to and go "see! PvP ruins everything!" happened because of the latter case. To wit: Travel power suppression absolutely affected PvE and I did not say otherwise. Pretending it was introduced just because of PvP is pretty disingenuous though. Starting with Issue 13, PvP had a different implementation of travel suppression than PvE yet PvE travel suppression was kept in the game. If it was designed to be a PvP-only nerf it would have been reverted. I can't find any references to a placate nerf in the patch notes - what are you referring to? On the other hand, here are some quality-of-life changes that happened as a result of PvP changes and ended up making their way over to PvE: Non-offensive toggles not dropping when mezzed Melee attack range increased from 5ft to 7ft and made unaffected by -range Tanker/Scrapper/Brute taunt powers deal -75% range to affected targets You might interpret my posting as being confrontational, but I'm honestly tired of having to constantly correct misinformation about this game's relationship between powers balance and PvP.

It's clear to me after even a cursory glance over the patch notes you linked that you simply looked for a sentence which would align with your claim while completely disregarding the rest of those patch notes. If you'd read them beyond the one sentence you would have found an extensive list of powers changes (which were buffs) and then a separate section of PvP-only changes which had zero impact on PvE. If you were referring specifically to the Energy Melee changes (which was a reasonable assumption considering the rest of your post): Those changes happened during Issue 12, not with the release of Issue 4. Energy Transfer's animation time was increased because its DPA was far too good which was just as much a PvE concern as a PvP one. Lowering the stun magnitude of Total Focus was a change that had essentially no impact on PvP, If the changes had really been solely due to PvP, they would have been reverted in PvE in Issue 13 when the ability to completely separate PvE and PvP powers was implemented. Another point that I enjoy bringing up: ever since Issue 4's launch there has been exactly one power which was nerfed in PvE solely for PvP reasons - Hurricane.

If you think 10,000,000 inf is too steep, you're not the target market for those powers. You can get LRT, Ouroboros portal, and the day job base TP/base portal powers for 0 inf.

Counterpoints: If a player is participating in a competitive format, they will already have the accolades (at least the +HP passives). No one is showing up to competitive events without these and expecting to be taken seriously. If you bring a character that lacks the extra HP to an event, you will be a liability if it's a team event and you will be at a disadvantage if it's a solo event. They already mean nothing because it's a given every character will have them. The change just lowers that barrier slightly and makes it a bit more accessible since I won't have to grind out 3-5 hours' worth of extra PvE for a character that I don't PvE with. The cost is a one-time 10k inf payment per power (so... less than 100k total) if you choose to buy them from the vendor. That's a few mob defeats at level 50. In all fairness, the naming scheme for the PvE versions aren't at all crystal clear if you aren't already familiar with them, either. Where is this "renting" thing coming from? True but a player from either alignment can just go to Bloody Bay or Warburg if their alignment doesn't happen to have control of Siren's at the moment. I feel like these accolades being added as rewards for mission completion is to appease the very few players who would complain about any inf cost (I'm not saying these being mission rewards is a bad thing, since more ways to unlock them are good) even though it's trivial at worst. Again with the renting thing. I'm still confused. I see your point about "token" amounts of inf - and I'm pretty sure like I said in point #5 the mission reward accolade powers are the solution to this one. Getting the accolades as mission completion rewards requires no inf and is essentially zero-risk since there is little or no PvP activity in the lower-level PvP zones.

What is your concern with the accolades? While it is true that completely removing access to accolade powers is also a level playing field, you have two options: No one gets any accolade powers. This is A Bad Idea because it is essentially nerfing every build by 20% HP and things already die quickly enough as it is. Without the ability to meaningfully increase survivability due to diminishing returns on defense and resistance, HP is about the only thing you can make work for you. Everyone can get the accolade powers for a token amount of inf, or if even 10k is too much they can run missions in the lower-level PvP zones to get them for free. Everyone gets them, the playing field is still level. Yes, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve here as newer players enter PvP zones to discover their accolades don't work, but hopefully they should be smart enough to wonder why and find the PvP-specific versions.

We got I13 because a developer who didn't PvP decided PvP needed to be completely retooled to their own whims despite the PvP community already having a list of things to look at, and then the feedback of the PvP community was more or less ignored. These changes, at the very least, are coming from the PvP community. Making accolade powers purchasable removes at least one of the barriers to entry for PvP. There's literally no such thing as "arena pvp ganking" since all player involved have to intentionally join an arena match.

The reason these are decoupled from alignment for PvP purposes is because right now plenty of people keep a character on one alignment or the other specifically to keep a particular alignment power (usually Call to Justice) which means that if a PvP zone's population is unbalanced on one side or the other many players don't want to switch and lose their alignment power. This change at least makes them able to side-switch for zone balancing purposes. I do like your suggestion, since I feel like Frenzy disproportionately benefits a few ATs while not really offering anything that great to the other ones.

You're talking about zone PvP as if it is arena (Discord, coordinated targeting, etc.) and those things do happen sometimes in zone but they are the exception rather than the norm. Rather what this change is seeking to do is incentivize teaming and making it more difficult for one or two players to dominate the zone with powers that absolutely aren't designed with PvP in mind.

Jump Pack/Steam Jump are getting removed because it is possible to chain the two and therefore never touch the ground, ever.

No, no, "holy" in that context just means it puts lots of holes in the enemy.

You can buy a 2-minute version of the Raptor Pack for 10k inf at any arena vendor (I think they are going to be adding vendors that sell them in the PvP zones as well but not 100% sure).

I've found the best part about General is I can simply remove it from my chat tabs because 99% of the time there's nothing worthwhile being said.

Yeah as far as I know, AS's crit damage (slow cast only) is the only unresisted damage left in the game right now. I don't know that I'd make other Stalker crits entirely unresisted. Maybe 25% or 50% or something. That would definitely need some tweaking, and should only apply to melee attack crits. Can probably make similar arguments for Scrapper crits as well, and make a smaller (10%?) portion of Tanker/Brute damage unresisted. I can't comment too much on individual power tweaks since most of my PvP Stalker experience was either on an Elec/WP in RV on Freedom on live, or a PvE-built Psi/SR on Excelsior here. Exclusive of the table in the OP or my spitballing above, Greater Psi Blade is absolutely the best non-AS/non-snipe Stalker attack because it does about 33% more damage than the damage formula suggests it should (it's about 206 instead of 153) and it can occasionally gain another few hundred damage from Insight and it can take hold procs.

It was my understanding that the WB nukes were still allowed because they were temp powers you could obtain in a PvP zone. Same for Shivans.