macskull

Stone Mastery for Dominators please

Also, a bit more on topic - at some point late in the game's life defense set bonuses got buffed to their current state. Positional and typed defense haven't always shared set bonuses like they do now, and even the admittedly huge defense bonuses in some of the ATO sets either existed already while the game was live or were going to go live with Issue 24. Additionally, resistance set bonuses got buffed across the board with Issue 24 in an attempt to make them more competitive with defense set bonuses when another option could have been to simply reduce the values of the existing defense bonuses. It's pretty clear where the trend was headed even back on live. If you nerf defense across the board, either through adjusting set bonuses or raising enemy hit chances, congratulations, you've made the game more difficult, but... do most players want that? I'm still sitting over here in the "nope" camp and I know I'm in the majority. As I've said in this thread a few times, the options to make the game more difficult are there but players don't use them because they don't want to. Goldside isn't super popular at least in part because it's substantially more difficult than the older content. Certain enemy groups are avoided because they are harder than others. Seriously, broadcast in LFG that you're running Council at +4x8 and see how many bites you get, and then try the same thing but with Rularuu, Carnies, or Malta.

Ah, that's fair. I wonder what the draw distance is. TP Foe's base range is 200 feet and I'm reasonably sure you can target enemies much further away than that.

What's to stop someone from targeting through a teammate across the zone then?

I'll post one last time before I waste any more time in this thread. @Naraka's argument is that since sets need to have weaknesses to balance out their strengths, Grounded is okay the way it is. Nevermind that Elec is also weak to negative and toxic damage and regeneration debuffs despite resistance and regeneration being its two main mitigation tools. Look, I'm all for sets having thematic weaknesses, but Elec already has them before you even consider its knockback protection. Almost every armor set already has thematic weaknesses, even the ones that have more comprehensive mez protection. There's no reason for Elec's to be different. Yes, it's an auto power, which is why the lack of knockback resistance isn't a huge deal, but the inconsistent knockback protection kind of sucks. The only other armor sets in the game that have knockback holes are Fire, Dark, and Stalker Ninjitsu - Fire and Dark are relics of an era where that was considered an okay tradeoff for the extra potential offensive output of the sets, and while I'm not sure of the original justification for lack of KB protection on Stalkers, Scrapper and Sentinel Ninjitsu gets knockback protection.

Sorry to put a damper in the "combine Recall Friend and TP Foe powers into one power" discussion, but it's not possible to retain the current functionality of both powers after combining them into one. You can't make the range of a power different depending on its target so you either have a Recall Friend with a very short range or a TP Foe with a zone-wide range, neither of which is desirable.

I'm not saying that, but I'm giving a reason why the "you have to be on the ground for the knockback protection to work" doesn't need to be a thing. Like I said earlier, there is nothing lost by fixing this hole. People that didn't care before will continue to not care, but people that did care will find themselves with a more functional character that doesn't need to devote slots or power picks to knockback protection "just in case." Win-win.

You can't patch the knockback hole. As I said upthread, Grounded doesn't get knockback resistance, so even with these "thematic" limitations removed it is still weaker than any other set's knockback protection and you need to devote multiple slots to stacking additional knockback protection on top of what Grounded gets unless you're running Power Surge.

I'm inclined to think it's going to get the Energy Assault treatment in some form, but that doesn't particularly help Stalkers so... yeah, Stun should probably be modified to work more like Whirling Hands on Stalkers.

The idea of keeping weaknesses in a set for "thematic" reasons isn't a good one. If I have to be on or near the ground for this one particular effect of this one particular power to work, why don't the rest of the effects of that power work the same way? For that matter, why don't the rest of the powers in the set work the same way? Removing the "you must be near the ground" restriction patches a hole in the set (and even then only partially since even if you are on the ground Grounded's knockback protection is still weaker than every other armor set's knockback protection) without taking anything away, and the majority of players won't even notice - but the ones who do will be happy. It's a win-win situation. Besides, if we're talking "theme" here, electricity can absolutely jump through air given a high enough voltage, so even that part doesn't make sense.

HitChance = Clamp( AccMods × (1 - TargetElusivity) × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitMods – DefMods ) ) Elusivity is the counter to accuracy but it's not a direct one-for-one counter like defense and tohit are. Giving elusivity to NPCs is probably not helpful since NPC defense buffs are relatively uncommon. Giving elusivity to players would almost certainly have to be implemented in the way you described where only support characters are able to provide elusivity.

This is the crux of the issue right here: there are already plenty of options out there for players to raise their own difficulty. I can use the difficulty options, I can run task forces and flashback arcs with things disabled, enemies buffed, players debuffed, things like that... but most players don't use those options because there are no extra rewards for the greater challenge. The existing options to make the game more difficult are rarely used and maybe, just maybe, it's because most players don't actually want the game to be harder. I'd much rather have the option exist to make the game harder if I want to than be forced to play a more difficult game. Oh, and if there were actual rewards other than lolbadges for running content at higher difficulty I'm sure we'd see those options utilized more often.

The question here should be "are defense and resistance too high in the absence of IOs?" since the game is balanced around SOs, and the answer to that question is likely "no."

My point was if those key distinguishing features make the set weaker, it's bad design, just like Fire and Dark's lack of knockback protection is bad design. Remember how Unyielding from Invuln used to 1) immobilize you while it was on; and 2) turn off any other armor toggle you had? It was established pretty quickly that was bad design and it got changed.

If the only thing giving a set its "flavor" is a power or mechanic that makes the set worse than comparable sets, the power or mechanic needs changed. Grounded, while thematic, already comes with a significant weakness relative to other melee set knockback protection powers that's completely unrelated to having to be on the ground - while other knockback protection powers also offer knockback resistance, Grounded does not. This is all irrelevant anyways, since minus this weakness Elec Armor has plenty of flavor already.

I think I'd be on board with something like this as long as the enhancements obeyed the appropriate schedule values for the number of attributes they were enhancing and you couldn't enhance the same attribute more than once in a single enhancement.

It's 9999, which is absolutely way too small to be account-wide.

Right-click on any of the powers in your buff bar and unselect "hide auto powers."

The issue there is that with the current combat mechanics (other than the PvE/PvP split) it's the power attributes that determine whether a power is autohit, not the target of that power. So the fire extinguisher temp that doesn't do anything except put out those fires? Sure, make it autohit.

You can email merits to your own account. (At least, I'm assuming you're talking about reward merits here.)

No thanks

Hold on a second here - I disagree with the OP about whether Barrier needs a nerf, but PvP wasn't even brought up in this thread until I mentioned it. Most PvP-related issues can be dealt with with either some forethought or some teammates but a response like yours is nothing short of toxic (and people call PvPers toxic).

It will show up in your combat attributes under Range Bonus.

So your point here has nothing to do with Barrier and everything to do with Greater Psi Blade (which yeah its PvP damage is overtuned). Like I said though, the best counterplay is to keep moving to at least give you a window to do something. I don't remember the last time when I was randomly whacked out of nowhere while I was doing something other than 1) standing still or 2) planting in animations and not being conscious of that.

The only thing a Psi/Bio might be able to one-shot with that combination is a squishy with no HP bonuses, and that's a real big might. The Stalker has to be in melee range to use that attack which means as long as you are moving you are making their job much harder. If this is actually an issue (it's not) bring something to counter the Stalker - something with -stealth, something with a higher perception cap, whatever. Again, you can effectively ignore them for the 10-30 seconds where Barrier is most powerful. Are Stalkers annoying? Sure. Are they a threat? Not if you play intelligently. On an SO-only build, Barrier provides excellent survivability... for about 30 seconds. At best you're getting 1/4 uptime on the largest portions of those buffs. It doesn't need to be nerfed.