macskull

Anecdotally, I've found it easier to keep targets alive with slightly weaker but longer-ranged heals (though it is pretty much impossible for a solo Emp to heal through anything but the sloppiest of spikes in anything larger than a 5v5). I don't have to get as close to get my heals off and like xhiggy said it's more about the timing than the actual heal values. Additionally you practically have to AP to keep a teammate alive these days so the farther away from someone you can do that, the less likely you are to be seen doing it, and the easier you can evade if you do manage to draw someone's attention. As I'm sure you've noticed as you've started to play more, being an Emp can be really rough in the current meta - even when things are going well your teammates may die a frustrating number of times and the second you hit AP you practically turn into a magnet for the entire enemy team's damage lineup. Positioning is pretty important so at the end of the day you want to stay as far away from the action as possible while still being able to heal people. I've seen some Emp builds start to take Medicine instead of Sorcery and I can certainly see why it's attractive but I'm not entirely convinced it's the better choice.

FWIW prevailing wisdom has changed a bit regarding Emp builds, moving the focus more toward maximizing range (Emp/Ice is popular, I've seen a few builds with 190ft range on the heals), and Grav/Emp is also gaining traction because Dimension Shift is awesome.

I don't get why Spine Burst isn't getting a target cap increase. It's a pretty horrible DPA power in its own right and if the concern is that Spines is too common a farming set and shouldn't get buffed because of that... well, Spine Burst is a gap-filler on those kinds of builds and it isn't used that much anyways.

And it will hit more targets.

At first I was wondering why Powerhouse didn't just raise the AoE radius/cone arc instead of reducing it or leaving it the same, and then tacking on this buff after the fact, but it makes sense to me now - in the case of Footstomp, what used to be 15ft radius becomes 16ft (not a big deal, right?) but because its power-defined radius is now 10ft, any procs slotted into it will perform better right out of the gate (bigger deal, for sure) since proc chances in AoEs are based at least partly on radius and arc.

Oddly enough, it was my thread that pointed this out when I asked that it be disabled in PvP zones. Leandro came into that thread and said it's a GM command that no one is supposed to have access to, and that it was going to be removed because it is not a command players are supposed to have access to, and everyone lost their minds and blamed PvPers for taking away their toy. Of course, everyone also conveniently overlooks that this entire conversation is going to lead to some significant buffs for the click-to-location powers like the existing SG teleport power. But sure, blame the PvPers. EDIT: This wasn't directed at the person I quoted, just more of a general observation.

Congrats to the winners!

You seem to have missed the part where I said Brutes already weren't the best at any of those things.

I think I made my position on this clear earlier in the thread. My opposition to lowering the Brute damage cap comes from the multiple occasions in the past month where the powers developer said Brutes weren't getting nerfed as part of the Tanker changes, and now here we are with Brutes getting nerfed as part of the Tanker changes. I do not care at all about inf/hour because the amount of inf I make from farming is a fraction of the inf I make playing the market and playing converter roulette, but it is a good metric for determining performance in a specific set of conditions. Your entire argument hinges around the assumption that Brutes are the best farmers, or that they make inf the fastest, or that they do the most damage, and none of those things are true. And, really? "Brutes should be grateful they're not getting nerfed more" as if people should be grateful they're getting nerfed at all?

Laziness, mostly. The Brute was cheaper to build and I could basically zone out for a couple hours and I'd have a new level 50. I've been sitting on a few Blaster builds the last couple months, just haven't got around to it.

That's not at all the same. My Brute exists to do one thing and now it is going to be objectively worse at doing that thing. I may end up biting the bullet and switching to a Blaster for farming.

Wondering how much the Brute changes on test are going to affect the numbers here.

Yeah, I'm more miffed that this is coming to pass especially considering as recently as a week ago Powerhouse said that the only way he'd further lower the Tanker cap (it had already been lowered from 600 to 550) was if he also lowered the Brute cap and that wasn't something he was considering, and less than a month ago he also said he was not going to nerf Brutes as part of the Tanker changes. Sure, I understand that this is less than a 10% damage reduction at the damage cap, and that it will have zero effect on most builds and situations, but a change that is essentially nonexistent for 95% of characters and is a reduction in performance for the other 5% is a nerf, plain and simple. In my case, that 5% was the entire reason I even have Brutes.

So much for "not nerfing Brutes" I guess.

A conversation in the Homecoming Discord a night or two ago got me thinking. Someone had said they wished Stone Mastery would get ported to Dominators, to which my initial response was "well, Doms already get 3 of the 5 powers in that pool in Earth Assault, and everything else that'd be thematic is already in Earth Control, so what's the point?" There are a few options, like Rooted, that could make sense but honestly would just be wasted power picks since I highly doubt many players would intentionally take Rooted if they had the choice. I took a look at the existing Dominator epic pool offerings and came up with something that shares a few powers from Stone Mastery but swaps the three duplicates out while keeping with a somewhat thematic pairing and uses existing animations and assets. Nature Mastery: You have mastery over the natural environment around you to blast your foes and add some much needed armor and defense. Level 35 - Corrosive Enzymes (ranged foe -res/-dmg): You spray a target with toxic, corrosive enzymes reducing the damage they deal as well as their damage resistance. Same attributes as the Nature Affinity version but with Dominator debuff values (11.25% -res, 11.25% -dmg) Level 35 - Overgrowth (PBAoE ally +dmg/+tohit/end discount): Becoming a conduit of nature itself, you greatly boost the damage, to hit, and endurance discount of nearby allies for a long period of time. Copy of the Nature Affinity version with Dominator buff values (7.5% +tohit, 49.5% +dmg, 74.5% end discount) and without Bloom applied. Recharge time of 300 seconds vice 255 seconds. Level 41 - Rock Armor (toggle smash/lethal +def): Your skin becomes stone while this power is active. Smashing and Lethal attacks are less likely to land and affect you. Copy of existing Controller version. No changes needed here! Level 41 - Earth's Embrace (self heal/+HP): You are so connected to the earth, you can draw upon its power to add to your own health. Activating this power increases your maximum hit points and grants you resistance to toxic damage. Copy of existing Controller version. Uses same attributes as Ice Mastery's Hoarfrost. Level 44 - Tornado (summon Tornado, minor smashing DoT, foe knockback/fear/disorient): Conjures up a funnel cloud at a targeted location. The tornado will chase down your foes, tossing them into the air and hurling them great distances. The victims are left disoriented and with reduced defense. The tornado is a menacing sight, and can even cause panic among your foes. Copy of version from Storm Summoning with adjustments to endurance cost (26 vice 20.8) and recharge time (120s vice 60s).

The original intention with the origin power pools was that each pool would only be available to a specific origin (only Magic origin characters could take Sorcery, for example) but since the game shut down and development stopped before any of them other than Sorcery were finished, they're being released as origin-agnostic pools that are exclusive to each other (so you can't take both Force of Will and Sorcery, for example). The other three pools are Utility Belt, Experimentation, and Gadgetry, and I wouldn't be surprised if they make an appearance at some point in the future.

I like this idea.

Not a bug, that mission takes place in an alternate future where presumably she is still alive.

I usually agree with Barrier on PvP-related issues but this is one of those times where I think it's not going to be a big deal in the end. The change does disproportionately make Cold Domination weaker than, say, Poison because (I think) those are the only sets with -special ability in the game and Benumb's recharge time is 120 seconds versus Weaken's 16 seconds (both debuffs last 30 seconds), but both sets are already fairly powerful without being able to boost their -special and PB will continue to make them more effective at what they already do. If you're looking at an Ice/Poison Corruptor, most builds go with Psi mastery or Leviathan mastery for the hold and you only really see builds with Power Boost if they're built around dueling or very small team stuff. Storm may still be a workable set, and a few teams ran storm teams post-I13 with some success (here is a playlist with some of dUmb's 8v8 matches, most of which are with storm teams) and Cold is definitely useful in a team situation and I'm pretty sure I saw a few Cold/Dark Defenders in duels post-I13.

@Dan Petro @Captain Powerhouse Ingame testing confirms that mez procs are 4 seconds on Controllers and Dominators and 2 seconds for everything else. I have not been able to 100% confirm they're obeying mez suppression but it looks like they are from what I've been able to test.

PPM works the same way in PvE and PvP. For PvP IO damage procs the amount of damage the proc does is different between players and NPCs though. Defender Paralytic Poison looks like it's been fixed. EDIT: It also looks like all the mez procs have been fixed.

Yeah, that was my thread. I posted it, it didn't get any replies the first day or two, and then I came back after a weekend away to see it had exploded into a "blame PvPers" thread. Another example is the PvP accolades thread where I spent page after page trying to reason with people who either couldn't be or didn't want to be reasoned with.

You are aware of the popup that literally says "You are now entering a PvP area and can be attacked by other players" whenever you enter a PvP zone, right? No one going into PvP zone is ignorant of that unless they can't read.

This is tangential to the thread's topic. The entire enterbasefrompasscode fiasco exploded because there are some very vocal people on here who insist it is now getting removed for PvP reasons when this isn't the case. The very vocal group of posters who keep blaming PvP and PvPers for taking away their toys are getting kind of old.

What if I told you that there is no travel suppression in PvP? Go on, look for yourself, it doesn't exist.