macskull

When players bring up issues like this my reply is always "combat logs or it didn't happen" and one of four situations results: Player is unable to produce said logs, leaving the question up to a matter of confirmation bias since there's no data to back up the claims Player produces said logs and a review of them indicates the game mechanics are functioning as they should, though from a small data set the numbers may seem wrong Player produces said logs and they appear to show a situation that should be impossible but I am unable to replicate Player produces said logs and after review and testing there's something actually wrong Numbers one and two are far and away the most common in these cases, number three happens sometimes, and I can count on one hand the number of times number four has happened. Since this game's combat is basically dice roll-based, there's always a bit of statistics and probability going on at work here. "I am missing all the time with a 95% chance to hit!" is one I hear all the time, but the more attacks you fire, the more likely you are to miss any one of them. As an example, if I fire ten attacks with the aforementioned 95% chance to hit the odds of all ten attacks landing is only about 60%. If I fire one hundred attacks with a 95% chance to hit those odds drop to 0.6%. Yes, you're going to notice the misses because missing with a 95% chance to hit is frustrating and you don't like it but you're forgetting about the 95% of attacks that do hit. The best way to prove something is or isn't working is to test it yourself but you have to ensure you have a large enough sample size. A few months back I had a discussion with a user on the Homecoming Discord server who was pretty sure a proc was not firing as often as it should, so I set out to get some numbers and figure it out one way or the other. After a few hundred test attacks, I was surprised to see that the power was actually firing off substantially more than my math said it would, so... I kept attacking more, and wouldn't you know it, after roughly 3000 casts the number of times the proc fired was almost exactly the number I'd have expected. Another thing I noted over those 3000 attacks was that the total number of attacks that actually hit was 95.02%, almost exactly the expected 95%.

Self-heals are flagged in such a way that they shouldn't be affected by Incandescence (they're flagged as unresistable which means +/-res(heal) from sources like Incandescence doesn't affect them). Healing Flames is working as intended, Warmth shouldn't be flagged as unresistable which means that's probably a bug.

Yeah you have to get the global name of the character in question using /getglobalname local_name_here and then use the /playernote command to either create a new note if none exists, or open one that already does. The player note function works by saving an entry in the playernotes.txt file in the install directory so it doesn't validate whether a global handle actually exists.

/playernote global_name_here

I think it's also likely that recipe storage isn't offered because recipes didn't exist at the time the storage items were added to the game.

The IO doesn't change the way fast snipe works, it just tells the game to always use the fast snipe version, complete with damage bonus from extra tohit.

So I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding here with: When the Experienced Marksman set was added to the game How the current snipe mechanics work How snipe mechanics used to work Snipe attacks pre-change (tohit-based): Always fast snipe if you had >22% tohit bonus, with the fast snipe being a lower, fixed damage Always slow snipe if you didn't, with slow snipe being a higher, fixed damage Experienced Marksman IO made no difference because it literally didn't exist Snipe attacks post-change (combat status-based): Fast snipe if you've been in combat within the last 8 seconds, with the fast snipe being a lower damage attack but its damage scales based on your tohit with the maximum boost provided at >22% Slow snipe if you haven't been in combat within the last 8 seconds, regardless of your tohit bonus, with slow snipe being a higher, fixed damage Always fast snipe if you have the Experienced Marksman IO

Yes, I know the slow snipe version does more damage, my point was that the fast snipe with no interrupt is probably more useful save for problem targets and in that case why slot the fast snipe IO in the first place? The poster I was replying to seems to think the IO should trigger fast snipe but with slow snipe damage which makes zero sense from a balance persepective, hence my "can't have it both ways" comment.

Entering draw distance does the exact same thing but it is useless unless you can either see them or have a power which can drop their stealth down to Hide-only levels.

It's not broken. There are two versions of every snipe power - fast snipe and slow snipe, and the game uses your combat status to determine which to use. The Experienced Marksman proc just tells the game to always redirect to the fast snipe version. I'm not sure I'd consider it a "nerf" since a high-damage fast-animating power that is always usable is better than a higher-damage slow-animating power with an interrupt time that can only be used as an opening attack. You can't get it both ways.

That's always been the case.

So the powerset has some regen debuff resistance in Fast Healing but it has no -heal resistance at all. The reason it seems immune to -heal is because Reconstruction has a toxic resist component that is enhanceable. Because you can't make buffs selectively ignore portions of a power you have two choices: make buffs apply to all aspects of the power (in which case popping a bunch of reds would raise the amount of toxic resist Reconstruction gives you) or make buffs apply to no aspects of the power (the +res is unaffected by damage buffs but the heal can't be changed by +/-heal). Cold Dom shields work the same way - they grant defense and resistance but the resistance is enhanceable so things like Power Boost don't affect the +def granted.

Your third point (regen being immune to -heal): I assume you're talking about the regen mechanic and not the powerset so this one is easy enough. Regeneration debuff resistance is a thing that some powersets get and it's different from heal resistance. Even though absorb, heal, and regen powers accept the same type of enhancements, they're three separate mechanics that don't affect each other. Heal resistance does exist but it's yet another combat attribute you can't see because until Incandescence and Field Medic came along there were three (I think) powers in the game that could affect it. It's how old MoG made you unable to heal at all during its duration. All players and NPCs have a base 0% heal resistance. T1 Incandescence gives you -30% res(heal) - in other words all unresistible heals (Aid Self, heals from allies, and green insps) will be 30% more effective when used on you. Elusivity is only granted for the damage type(s) or position(s) a power gives defense against in PvE. So for your example, Scorpion Shield gives defense against all damage types in PvP but elusivity against smash/lethal/energy only. EDIT: The point about Scrapper or Stalker crit chance - there's an "inherent" attribute in base attributes that you can monitor but unless you're a Brute, Dominator, or Sentinel it doesn't actually do anything because it looks at the value of the "inherent" bar under your HP/end bars. It could probably be retooled to display crit chance but standard code rant applies here. EDIT EDIT: More on heal and regen. As a bit of background, most attributes (healing, regen, resistance, damage, defense) have two ways of being expressed: strength (str), or the actual change in an attribute's value, and resistance (res), or the resistance a character has to things that buff or debuff that attribute. For most attributes str is the only one that matters - damage buffs and debuffs (and even damage enhancements in powers) are +/- str(damage). Damage resistance resists changes in your damage output, both buffs and debuffs, so it's necessary to flag damage buffs as unresisted otherwise you wouldn't get the full effect of the buff if you had any damage resistance at all. Defense works the same way - sort of. Defense buffs and debuffs, including enhancemenst, are +/- str(defense). However, some powers that give defense also give defense debuff resistance, which is +res(defense). Just like damage buffs, defense buffs have to be flagged as unresisted otherwise characters with DDR would get less from those buffs. So finally onto heal and regen. There's +/- str(regen) and +/-res(regen) - regen buffs and debuffs affect str(regen) and are resisted by res(regen). Healing works the same way: +/- str(heal) affects the value of your heals and +/- res(heal) affects the amount you can be healed by a given heal.

Aid Self is the power that's not working correctly here (I'd assume), not the PB heals, since every other self-heal or self-max-HP power is the same way.

That's actually a massive global buff to every single character so if your argument is coming from a place of "Hasten is too good!" your argument makes no sense.

Depends if you're looking for zone, 1v1, or team arena. Poison, Rad, Therm, and Cold can work depending on the situation.

For the most part, the Blaster "sustain" powers aren't that weird. The only oddballs that come to mind are Elec and Dark because they were shoehorned into existing attacks instead of toggles or click powers (and the one from Dark is tied to a power that most people probably skipped - but hey, in that case there's suddenly important utility in an often-skipped power and you can't seriously argue that's a bad thing). The rest of the Blaster "sustain" powers are only weird if you think a damage aura can only deal damage and nothing else. The power got renamed and its new name and description thematically fit the function of the power. There's nothing weird there. If you start going around changing the base characteristics of powers or outright replacing them with new ones you end up with two problems right from the gate: Players that had a use for the old power are now left to find an alternative which may or may not exist Essentially forcing every player with that power to respec their character which might potentially include completely rebuilding them due to the loss of utility, set bonuses, etc. There are plenty of examples of changes that completely overhauled the feel or functionality of a power without changing what the power did at its core. One of the biggest is Moment of Glory - old-style you had a whole bunch of defense and resistance but your HP dropped to a very low value and you couldn't be healed or regenerate, so you had to gamble on whether you'd actually survive its duration. The current version is a short-duration defense and resistance buff that doesn't affect your HP - the functionality and feel of the power changed drastically but its core did not - it still dramatically boosts your defense and resistance. Look at Energize from Elec and Energy Aura - used to be Conserve Power but the lack of a self-heal hurt those sets so a heal and +regen was added to the existing end discount. Core ability remains the same, power does extra things that make it better. Dominator Power Boost (all flavors) got changed to Power Up - it still does +special, albeit a little less than before, but it also provides a meaningful damage boost. My point? It is possible to significantly change an existing power and give it more functionality without replacing it. Your premise is flawed from the start - AR doesn't need Aim, there are several other ranged damage sets that don't have it, and it's entirely within the realm of possibility to add an Aim-like effect to an already-existing power in the set. Look at the Devices secondary - no Build Up but Targeting Drone provides both a constant damage bonus and a larger damage bonus for the first attack when entering combat. Going back to AR, though, let's say we decide it doesn't really need an Aim-like effect added to an existing power. If our concern is really that AR lacks a tier 3 attack, the most obvious candidate is Beanbag. Raise its range to 80, give it tier 3-level damage, and adjust its recharge time and endurance cost accordingly. Boom, you've given AR a tier 3 attack without removing the core functionality of the existing power. I'm not going to argue about Ignite being bad - it really is, but a large portion of why is because its animation time is absolute garbage. Reduce the animation time and boom, you've automatically made Ignite more appealing. I do want to revisit the "Cauterizing Aura levels of weirdness" bit though - this is a superhero game. I can magically grow my arm on a 4-foot-high character to hit a target thirteen feet away with Knockout Blow, I can smack around bad guys with a railroad crossing sign, and I can shoot laser beams out of my eyes. Is it really that far-fetched to think that I could surround myself with flames and deal damage to nearby enemies and also heal myself at the same time?

No, but it would make it less fun.

You picked a particularly bad example because there are already multiple ranged sets with T3 blasts that also mez (Beam, Dark on Blasters, Ice, Rad, and potentially Psi) and the situation you're describing (take a CC power with token damage and turn it into a powerful attack coupled with CC) is exactly what happened to Clobber, Freeze Ray, Taser, Toxic Web Grenade, and probably other powers I can't remember right now. The "cottage rule" doesn't mean things can't be changed, but rather the core functionality of a power shouldn't be removed as part of a change, and in some cases it might be necessary to do even that if it's deemed a big enough deal (the most recent example I can think of is in the Presence pool where Challenge got replaced with Pacify, because why would a power pool need two taunt powers). One common suggestion I've seen recently is "replace melee AT Instant Healing with Sentinel Instant Regeneration!" but... those two powers are not at all alike. One's a click +regen power with a long cooldown and the other is a toggle "absorb over time" power. Is IH objectively worse than IR? Yeah, probably, but you can make IH better without outright changing what it does (make it a toggle again but with reduced +regen value, shorten its cooldown, add secondary effects to it, etc.).

There's a few: Animation time is awful Recharge time makes them of extremely limited utility The command lets you create as many macros as you can fit in your trays, each with a unique passcode - the base TP power requires you to type in the passcode each time so you have to keep a list of passcodes somewhere else Basically there's no reason for any of the location TP powers (base, mission, Pocket D, Wentworths/Black Market) to be such utter trash when something like Ouroboros Portal exists. Seriously, it's non-interruptible, has a quick cast time, can be clicked by anyone, and has a fast recharge. That should be a model for any adjustments to the existing location TP powers.

The "Excelsior" global channel is usually pretty busy and isn't full of the, we'll say... questionable things that show up in /z sometimes. Just type: /chanjoin Excelsior into your chatbox and meet hot singles in your area! ...Wait, maybe not that last part.

For what it's worth, projectile speed is already an individually-defined (and adjustable via code changes) value for every ranged attack in the game that involves projectiles.

Non-Stalkers/Soldiers/Widows have a stealth cap of 571.5 feet at level 50 and all non-Soldiers/Widows have a perception cap of 1153 at level 50, so even at stealth cap someone at the perception cap can see you from 581.5 feet away. If your target had no perception you would be effectively invisible (until you attacked) but almost every PvP build will have at least some perception which means at the stealth cap you'll still likely be seen from a few hundred feet away.

Team level is based on the level of the team leader, not the level of the active mission (unless you're on a task force or flashback in which case you're not inviting people to your team). If you're level 24 and a level 50 joins, just pass the star to the 50.

In fact, AE content doesn't count toward any badges that aren't AE-specific. Damage dealt, damage taken, mez, healing, inf gain, none of it counts.