macskull

Your argument of "more people play these sets so they're better" doesn't really hold up to scrutiny when looking at the rest of the charts. Four of the ten most-common Scrapper builds are Regen and Regen is arguably the worst Scrapper secondary. Broadsword, Ninjitsu, and Ninja Blade all make appearances in the top Stalker builds but again, those are some of the worst sets on that AT. Regen is the most popular Sentinel secondary but it's still the worst secondary that AT gets. Some of the top Blaster powerset combinations are pretty bad too. Popularity does not necessarily mean a set is better than the other options, it just means more people play it. The most popular Tanker combination is Invuln/SS but that definitely isn't the best Tanker - it just thematic so of course more players are going to gravitate toward it. Claws/Regen was one of the most popular Scrapper combinations when the stats were first published last fall because, you guessed it, Wolverine. In the same vein, Empathy is the most popular Defender primary because people see "support AT = heals = Empathy." The very fact that Force Fields is the 5th-most-popular Defender primary should tell you that people aren't necessarily playing sets for their effectiveness.

It's like the players who insist Sentinels are fine because they like playing them.

This is a joke, right? Surely I'm being trolled?

I'd think a percentage-based value would be the best answer.

There's only been one time in the history of this game that a power has been nerfed in PvE solely for PvP reasons and I'd bet a billion inf you don't know what it is.

To be fair Ice is only better than Fire in the AoE department in an environment where you're constantly at or over the aggro/target cap, which is why it's so good for fire farms.

I think the crux of the argument is something like "Controllers (or insert X low-damage AT here) shouldn't be able to do that much damage" while completely disregarding any sacrifices that are made to allow that to happen. Homecoming has been out in the open for almost a year and a half now, and the PPM system existed in its current implementation the entire time Resurgence was hidden from the public view. I'm of the opinion that there's no real reason to go after the PPM/proc system and any efforts to nerf it are a solution to a nonexistent problem. I think the only legitimate argument that can be made against the PPM system is PvP balance, but the simplest solution to that is simply reduce the amount of damage procs do in PvP.

Okay, I'll bite. Cold: Hands-down the best support set in the game. In two clicks you've provided as much defense as Fortitude, but for the entire team, and you get some bonus resistance buffs along with that. You can stack absurd amounts of -res on a target, thereby increasing your entire team's damage. Anyone near you has 60% slow resistance. Heat Loss makes Recovery Aura look downright awful by comparison. You can also shut down a target's regen, effectively increasing your team's damage even further. Dark: Best AoE heal in the game (not super relevant but still a point). Easily stackable -res. Darkest Night has some pretty silly -dam/-tohit numbers. Howling Twilight is an AoE rez/stun, something other sets have to dip into Incarnate powers to get. Fearsome Stare is one of the best CC powers in a non-control set. If you're talking the Controller version, Fade and Soul Absorption are really good. Elec: Okay, maybe not this one. It does bring Fortitude-level +dam/+tohit to pretty much your entire team and Amp Up is pretty nutty if used on the right person but this set overall is pretty "meh." Sorta like Empathy. Kin: Speed Boost, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift. 'Nuff said. Nature: The single-target -res/-dam isn't anything to write home about but it's relatively spammable. It's got -dam, -tohit, -regen, a "drop it and forget it" heal/end patch, absorb, +dam/+tohit/+end discount, +res/+regen, and a little bit of healing thrown in there plus the Bloom mechanic means heals from any source are more effective (again, not super relevant but still a point). Sure, you said something about needing lots of recharge to make some of those buffs last longer but... they're better buffs. Pain: Ehh. World of Pain is a PBAoE +dam/+tohit/+res buff so you can at least keep it up on the entire team. You've also got some -def/-res in there. Not great, but the debuff ability combined with the buff ability edges it out over Empathy. I'd give the nod to AB over Painbringer though. Poison: One of the better debuff sets in the game. You can put out some ridiculous -def/-res/-tohit/-dam regardless of the AT you're on. Rad: I feel like I don't need to talk that much about this one, it's been a staple "Really Good Set" since the beginning. Sonic: Resistance buffs are always welcome and Sonic does well there. Also has that nifty "set it and forget it" -res toggle. Liquefy is pretty bad but that's the biggest downside of that set. Storm: A DPS set disguised as a support set. What's not to like? Therm: More resistance buffs, Forge is better than Fortitude, and it's got hefty -regen. Also -def/-res on a long cooldown but it's still helpful. Time: The very existence of this set pretty much makes Empathy irrelevant. It does almost everything Empathy does, minus the +tohit. Traps: The lack of mobility severely reduces the utility of this set, but it does well in encounters where the user has time to drop a few of the debuff powers, namely Poison Trap and Acid Mortar. Outside of those sorts of encounters, the debuff utility isn't particularly relevant since most teams will be moving fast enough anyways. Trick Arrow: Reasonable ability to stack -res, some decent -dam, and Oil Slick Arrow. Also, good for soft control with powers like PGA and Glue Arrow. If your argument is debuffing sets aren't as useful as buffing sets because the purple patch exists, 1) you're wrong, and 2) Cold, Elec, Kin, Nature, Rad, Storm, Therm, and Time are still better than Empathy. TL;DR: Once again, Empathy isn't a bad set, but almost every other support set is better.

Something something making vet levels harder to attain to keep incarnate powers harder to access (Real answer: XP boosters worked post-50 on Resurgence but got nerfed for the reason I said above.)

That reason is because when a player sees Healing Aura, Heal Other, and Absorb Pain they go "ooh a healer!" and roll Empathy. If I had 5 inf for every time I saw an Empathy Defender who took all the heals but skipped Fortitude and only had one or two attack powers from their secondary I'd be at the inf cap. Don't get me wrong: Empathy is a useful support set, at least in the early/mid levels where characters don't have many powers and the powers they do have are usually un- or underslotted. Healing is valuable at that point because it's the most useful form of mitigation. As you move into the upper 20s and beyond, and especially into the 40-50+ range, direct healing becomes less and less important as mitigation because of the prevalence of defense and resistance buffs. Sure, Empathy has Fortitude, the RAs, and AB - but the RAs are on a stupidly long timer, AB is a really good buff that can only be reliably kept on one teammate at a time (and if your RAs are up half its bonuses are redundant anyways), and Fortitude's nice but... at the end of the day in mid-to-high-level teams Empathy basically brings AB and Fortitude to the table and those two powers alone aren't enough to make the set good. I mean, I won't say no to an Emp, but I know I'm not alone in saying I'd rather have a Cold, Dark, Elec, Kin, Nature, Pain, Poison, Rad, Sonic, Storm, Therm, Time, Traps, or Trick Arrow filling that spot.

I mean, sure, but the option is still there to form your own team to run it the regular way if you're so inclined. The powergaming crowd is going to be looking at merits per time and if doing it with "Master of" rules isn't worth the extra time for the merits, they'll still be running it the regular ol' way too.

I am intentionally not addressing the second part of your post because like you said, that's you, but I'll at least look at this. In short... so what? Unless they're doing it for the first time and really want the badge, they still get the normal merit rewards even if they don't complete the challenge. At this point it's just gambling on getting extra merit rewards for the extra risk. Same with the Ouro flashback limitations - those should be worth more merits as well. It's not like if you failed the challenge you'd get no rewards so you're not really losing anything.

what

MM pets still follow PvE rules because they're considered NPCs by the game.

I think there's a DR calculator in the pinned "PvP resources" thread but I'm not entirely sure. Either way, +/-tohit starts to DR pretty heavily after about 20% - if I have 20% tohit bonus that DRs to around 15% and if I have 40% tohit bonus that DRs to around 23%. 60% bonus DRs to about 27-28%, and these numbers work the same whether it's a buff or debuff. EDIT: I see you also mentioned Touch of Fear. Base fear duration on a Scrapper is 2 seconds in PvP so even enhanced you're looking at a little less than 4 seconds before factoring in any mez resistance your opponent has, and once that fear wears off they're going to be in mez suppression for 15 seconds. Not saying it's bad especially if you don't have any other mezzes, but it's not going to perma-terrorize someone.

@reib posted the link but... -tohit is subject to diminishing returns at the same scale as +tohit (starts getting really difficult to maintain more than +/-20%) and IIRC every melee armor set gets something like 30% tohit debuff resistance for free if they don't get it naturally in-set.

DM is kinda crap since Soul Drain is a piss-poor replacement for Build Up, and SR isn't bad but Energy is a better defense-based secondary in just about every way.

The travel power change happened in Issue 21, over a year before the game shut down. You'd probably have the best luck reading up on patch notes on the Homecoming Wiki, linked at the top of each forum page.

Barrier staaaaaahp

I don't really mean it like that, I mean it more in the "this person is gonna be running T4 Incandescence with a tray of T3 greens that heal for 1500HP each and then when they run out or they're almost dead they base TP, rinse and repeat" sense. That sort of PvP isn't fun for the person it's happening to and I can't imagine it's very fun for the person doing it. It doesn't help that some peoples' first experience with PvP is in Recluse's Victory and the players who spend most of their PvP time there tend to be the type of player I just described.

I'll throw in 500M.

So the PvP you're describing does exist. There is occasional PvP on servers other than Indomitable, or in zones other than RV. You can usually go into RV on Indom and there will be a few people there but like I said that PvP doesn't tend to be very high-quality in most cases. The PvP community is actively making efforts to get new players interested because a more active PvP scene is better for everyone who PvPs, and maybe some of that activity will spill out of organized arena stuff and make zone PvP more active.

Not the person you're asking but I'm probably correct in saying they'd like it if a player could find action in the arena or any of the PvP zones across the servers instead of just in the arena and maybe one of the PvP zones on one of the servers. I outlined a few reasons in my earlier post why this centralization seems to have happened. I think the single biggest contributing factor to the small PvP population even back on live was the I13 changes but the game has changed so much since then that the ship on reverting those has sailed.

I think this is happening for three main reasons: The size of the population as a whole. Even if the HC PvP crowd is 3-5% of the playerbase that's still a small number of people when HC's playerbase is small to begin with. Diluting the population lowers the chances you'll find PvP anywhere. The ease of getting to level 50 and IOing/accolading characters. Even post-I13 there was still some level stratification and at least Siren's Call and RV were active on some servers (mostly Freedom but the PvP population sort of condensed onto that server as time went on). When you can create a new character and have them to 50, IOd, and accoladed all in that same day, there's little motivation or incentive to PvP at lower levels. The state of PvP in Recluse's Victory. RV is pretty much the only active PvP zone (see #2) but some of the changes made to the game since shutdown have made PvP there pretty awful. It was busy and at least somewhat entertaining back on live because emote canceling and enterbasefrompasscode didn't exist and incarnate powers were harder to come by so most people didn't have them. Now most dedicated zone PvPers will have full T4 incarnates (which do not function separately in PvP than in PvE and are pretty imbalanced in PvP to begin with) and if you get close to killing them they'll just macro TP to their SG base. Basically, RV PvP has a tendency to be really dull unless there are multiple teams in there and that doesn't happen often.

If there was a certain part of the game you enjoyed, and every time a thread about that part of the game came up that thread was swamped with people saying the same wrong things about that part of the game, you'd probably get a little annoyed too. It also doesn't help when people frame their issues as complaints rather than asking for help. "I keep getting two-shot by Stalkers, nerf Stalkers" is a lot more likely to get you laughed at than "Hey, I keep dying really quickly to Stalkers, what can I do about that?"