Trickshooter

I don't think so. Since they're still in Praetoria, I think some missions have dialogue options and different mission objectives based on your choices, but I think ultimately the story is the same. I can't say that 100% for sure though, I can't remember if I've actually run a villain through them.

Going to need more details to offer any help. Who gave you the mission? And what's the mission name? There's an early mission teaching you about the Carnies' Shadowed Path areas where you just have to speak to an NPC who is only visible when on the Shadowed Path. Is that the mission you're on? Or are you talking about the mission that teaches you how to get to Night Ward from First Ward? Where you have to enter the Carnies Shadowed Path areas and then a temporary power bar opens above your normal power bars with a teleport to Night Ward?

Yes, they're in the Mender Tesseract Strike Force.

I'm against the idea of allowing slotting of a set category in a power doesn't at least benefit from the attribute the category is named after. It causes confusion about what a power actually does, will likely result in bug reports being sent in from people that don't follow the forums, and will open a can of worms. The doors would be open for people to petition that any power they happen to like also be changed to accept a set that they want bonuses from, whether or not it makes sense. Having said that, I'm all for adding attributes to some powers that currently don't have enhanceable effects. Several suggestions I've made (or plan to make) do include that. The thing is, I only feel it's something to consider if the powerset overall could stand to benefit from the additional effect; I don't suggest it be done to powers just because you want more set bonuses. Fulcrum Shift is such an amazing, game-changing power already that even thinking about adding effects seems like a bad idea. If the goal is just to get more set bonuses, I think the better suggestion, that would benefit more than just these two powers, is a new type of IO Set Category: Universal Efficiency. These would be sets that just offer Recharge, End Redux, Accuracy, and maybe Range. They'd be slottable in just about anything, including powers with effects that can't be enhanced, of which there are, I think, 18 in the Support powersets.

Out of curiousity, had you defeated Chimera yet? Waaay back on live, Chimera's Rain of Arrows could crash an entire league if there were enough players and pets out. I spoke to Arbiter Hawk about it after it happened to a league I was on trying to get the Ready to Rumble badge. He agreed that it was the number of RoAs that likely caused the crash, and that he was going to try to fix it by making Chimera's Surveillance/Marked for Death power only affect players. That was pretty close to the the shutdown announcement though, so I don't know if it ever happened.

Fade is a great power, but its transparency effect is problematic for two reasons: 1) It suggests that it's granting stealth, when it doesn't. I think it may be the only power that grants transparency without stealth or intangibility. 2) It doesn't seem to play nice with many people's systems. It is pretty much 60 seconds of annoyingly rapid flickering on anyone who gets the buff. The glowing eye effect can stay, and maybe some other VFX to let you know it's still going, but please remove the transparency, if possible!

It might. The new devs weren't intentionally excluding Grav and Elec, those sets were just already immune from the problem they were trying to fix.

I think Mass Hypnosis could be useful with a lingering -Speed/-Recharge, kind of like enemies are drowsy. It is the only Controller AoE Sleep that is actual... sleep. Ice and Earth's sleeps are more like enemies are in fragile holds, and even though Elec's Sleep uses the Sleep animation, I think, I feel like it's more like unconscious, rather than asleep. Terrify is pretty comparable to Fearsome Stare, already; shorter range, wider cone and damage compared to longer range, narrower cone and -ToHit. By itself, I think it's okay. What would be neat was if using Terrify on a sleeping enemy did something extra, like some kind of demoralizing effect as you turn their dreams to nightmares.

It was added in Issue 24 beta, so I'm going to assume it just never really got any balance passes. I've done the New Praetorians arc (and the Villain version which I can't remember the name of right now) several times now and some missions are just so frustrating. The Hero-side ones are a little easier, because you frequently have NPCs joining you; Villain-side, though... why did I even rescue all these "allies" if they never join me on any missions? Seems to be the same number of EBs in the Villain arcs as the Hero ones, but a little more difficult since your allies never come along to help, the jerks! Fighting Calvin Scott though, that just... it's the worst. I feel like if this mission had gone to Live the way it is now, we would've already had a patch to lower the difficulty in some way.

I don't think Blasters have any AoE Holds? All the newer sets do (or another lockdown), and they arent done w the older ones, so I expect them to get one too eventually. Tactical arrow has ESD arrow, AE hold, 90 second recharge. Compare to Trick Arrow's EMP arrow, with it's 300 second recharge. Also look at Tac arrow's Ice Arrow, Glue Arrow and Entangling Arrow and weep. Trick arrow needs to be improved to at least be the equal of a blaster secondary... Atomic Manipulation has Radioactive Cloud, AE hold, 90 second recharge. It is at least PBAE. Plant has Vines, AE hold. Martial Combat has an AE stun cone. Ninja Training has an AE confuse cone. Temporal Manipulation has Time Shift, an AE stun. Forgot about those newer sets; not sure what they were thinking. Even after looking at this list, I thought, "well, they're probably all mag2", but nope. Throw Sand was even changed from the 11.92s mag2 Stun it was when the game shut down to a 9.5s mag3 Stun. Not sure I agree with that being a balanced change. Seems too good. The actual Holds though, Vines and ESD Arrow, maybe Radioactive Cloud, those are really problematic. Controller AoE Stuns are also on 90s timers, but last longer and have a chance for extra mag, so Controllers still have the upper hand. But those Holds don't have enough penalties to justify how well they compete with Controller AoE Holds.

I don't think Blasters have any AoE Holds?

Most of this info is on Paragonwiki.com: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_Slot_Abilities Clicking the individual tier's names will take you to a page describing the abilities of the various pets. It's unfortunately not up to date with the four groups that were added in Issue 24, though.

You can do this at the tailor, you just have to speak to whichever employee is the cosmetic surgeon.

I'm all for reducing the recharge time (and reducing the end cost and increasing the accuracy) of Mass Confusion! Let's also review Terrify, which probably doesn't deserve both it's hefty endurance cost and accuracy penalty. Just want to correct a few things from this thread so far, though: AoE Controls were nerfed by reducing their duration and increasing their recharges; Accuracy penalties for the AoEs were already there at launch, I think. The very first patch notes on Paragonwiki, from 5/11/04, actually shows that penalty was removed from the AoE Sleeps. Issue 5 is when the AoE Control nerfs were done, and Ice Slick and Earthquake did get touched; they're specifically called out: What's actually interesting is that Mass Confusion, or even Confuse in general, isn't even mentioned at all with all the other changes. Was it actually nerfed with the others or has it always taken too long to recharge, but nobody thought about it because there was no other power to compare it to until Issue 6?

I'm still playing Trick Arrow, and privately protesting Tactical Arrow because it's pretty good and I'm pretty petty. Trick Arrow is currently unchanged from when the game closed. Honestly, besides some sped up animations, OSA being fixed in I18 and PGA getting a mechanical change in I22, it's practically unchanged since Issue 7. TA and FF were on the list for updates and improvements some time after I24, but then the game was shut down. :( Saying all that, though, it's not as if TA isn't fun! TA combined with an AoE heavy secondary can be a good farmer, for a Defender, anyway. It just takes some heavy investment in recharge and defense to survive alphas outside of EMP Arrow.

Does this also include the stats window that shows the percentages? I'm seeing it there as well. Yes, I was monitoring it in the combat attributes window, and I set the recharge bonus as a stat to monitor, just in case the two were ever different. While the individual 3.5% lines would occasionally double to 7%, and the buff icons would jump from 5 to 9 every 2 seconds, the total bonus stayed static at 22.5%.

Hmm, might just not have been fighting the right ones. You definitely don’t fight them on top of the Zig. There are specific prisoners to get, they’re on the ground by the Zig’s main entrance, surrounded by police cars. Once you clear them, then it’s a wave of Freakshow. Not sure what happens after that, never finished the event.

No you clearly DID NOT. I said, and let me simplify this even more, "Gee the developers could have originally designed this game so controllers were able to resist what they dish out -- but they didn't." Guess where they did apply that logic though? DOMINATORS and their DOMINATION power. There is no logic thread you need to get in front of so you can chill ok? It was just an offhand comment saying it would have been nice to have that perk not that a bunch of stuff should be rebalanced. I didn't know I wasn't being chill? This is the bugs forum, and I'm just trying to explain why this is definitely a bug. Wasn't trying to sound upset. I definitely didn't read your either of your posts like how you just described. It sounded like you were specifically saying maybe the devs wanted Controllers to be better with Dispersion Bubble and this isn't a bug, especially after you said: So many you can tone down the hostility?

Entropic Aura is counting yourself as a target. You can see it on City of Data as this line "Entities affected Caster,Foe". All other taunt toggles that give a bonus for enemies in range all just say Foe. This means at all times while Entropic Aura is on, you should have 8.5% +Recharge, regardless if any enemies are around. I just went on Justin and tested this and that was the case. Surrounded by 4 enemies, I never see my total Recharge Time Bonus change from 22.5%. I see the actual individual 3.5% Recharge lines occasionally double (as well as the Icons in my buff bar) as they as replace themselves, but my monitored recharge bonus never actually changes as if I'm benefiting from them. That makes me pretty sure it's just a display issue.

Are you just fighting nearby Prisoners or are you fighting the event Prisoners at the entrance to the Zig who are in a stand-off with police?

I feel like I frequently rant that the Patron versions of powers are overly penalized compared to APPs, but anytime I post it somewhere, someone always shows up and tells me I don't know what I'm talking about because Brute's Mu Mastery is great and every MM's take the AoE Immobs. :-\ +1! Let's reevaluate many of the PPP penalties.

If I had to guess, I would say it's just a display issue. Like RussHood said, probably because it's a power that accepts both Resist Damage (because of the Ember Demon's shields) and Damage enhancements. Since ED is based on an enhancements schedule, and the pets actual attacks aren't likely programmed to accept Resist Damage*, it is likely still enhancing their damage at Schedule A's diminishing returns, despite the display. *The thing with pet powers is, despite everything you can slot in to the powers that summon them, their individual abilities will only use the specific enhancement types that it's programmed to inherit. So let's pretend Ember Demon's Ember Shield also gave +Defense, and the Summon Demons power accepted Defense enhancements, but Ember Shield wasn't actually set up to accept Defense enhancements, then even though the Display would show like Defense: +56% if you 3-slotted it, it actually wouldn't affect Ember Shield at all. Hopefully that makes sense, cause I'm honestly not sure it does.

I understood your comment. I get that you're only positing that Controllers being better at both causing and protecting from status effects could make sense. I'm trying to get ahead of this thinking, not challenging what you specifically said, but instead where the next logical stance might be from there. If we start to assume that this could be the intent with Dispersion Bubble, then we also assume that Clear Mind, Increase Density, Accelerate Metabolism, Sonic Dispersion, Clarity, O2 Boost, Steamy Mist, Shadow Fall, Thaw, Antidote, Enforced Morale, Assault, Tactics, and Injection might not be working as intended. From there, a problem arises from the shared uses of the Ranged Res Boolean mod, which is also used for debuff resistance. If logic supports that Controllers have aptitude with mez protection, then that same logic suggests that Defenders have aptitude with debuff resistance. To resolve both now requires a lot of work. That was the point I was trying to make. I'm not trying to say your logic is wrong; I'm saying where the logic and the game engine meet, there are going to be issues.

First, do you have your personal player name visible so you can see your own title? Second, are you sure it's not there on the UI, but just displayed in black?

I actually had it in my response, but then took it out, but I did also think Axe would look funny reaching a 10 ft range when it has such limited particle effects. If it's range was extended, I feel like it could benefit from some FX suggesting force.