Trickshooter

I don't think it's too big of a problem, it's all make believe, lots of unbelievable stuff going on in this game. If I just change the names of the toggles to the same song name, but different vocal parts, like soprano, alto, tenor, bass, etc. Then it's not a jumbled mess anymore if all are going, but even then I don't think the name of any power holds that much weight for most players. Here's another example character who can do this, but with no extra mouths or extra vocal chords: https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Joshua_Guthrie_(Earth-616)#Powers Doesn't even need to be a character with a mouth, honestly. Could be a robot who has a speaker in their chest or something. You could tell yourself it's just... musical telepathy or something, I dunno. It's all up to whatever the player wants it to be. And it's all just as plausible as being able to have multiple sonic resonance toggles on. What's important is whether it looks like a fun set or not.

maybe she could https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Irina_Clayton_(Earth-616)

it's magic or its their mutant power or it's technology or they grew 3 mouths from a science accident or their alien species can naturally sing 3 songs at once

very skillfully

Hmmm... not sure many melee players would like their status protection tied to teammates lol but it is an interesting idea. Maybe to simplify, what if Shield Compaction was a small AoE and you could give other players some of the Absorption if you're close enough together, but you get reduced Absorb for each teammate you help out this way, BUT maybe you also get slightly higher damage resistances or even +Regen for each teammate at the same time. So you trade off the protection of Absorb, but get a bonus that still reduces incoming damage.

I think it would just drop Density Field for Hide, as they already offer similar defense values. I don't see an issue with any other power, really. Maybe Force Recoil, but it's fun and I wouldn't want to keep that from Stalkers! My idea was that what made it different was that it covered all damage types and most debuffs for a bit of simplicity and consistency, but at the cost a true heal. I think I might play around with it a bit more, probably do as others suggested and combine 2 of the shields and then add in another team-type power. I think I like the idea of it being another support armor powerset, kinda like Shield. The only debuff resistance I added that other sets don't already get (I think) is ToHit resistance. The next comparable set is Invulnerability, I think? Gets defense debuff, end/recovery debuff, and slow/rech debuff resistance. My only concern is that some of the resistances may be too high for a melee armor set. Might knock a couple down to half. I forgot to use a modifier for those, so that's the base value. 😅 For a Tanker, it would actually be -64% Speed and -40% Recharge (because their Melee Slow mod is 0.8). That puts them just higher than Chilling Embrace on a Tanker, but with +Def instead of -Damage. It might still be too strong, as I decided those values before I decided to add +Def to the effect. I might revert it somewhat to an earlier version where Density Field was only a debuff, and Frictionless had a passive +Def. It's fun though, and that's the real goal! I don't think it's Way Strong, the absorb amount is standard with the other sets that get Absorb (Rad and Bio), I think. They get +Regen instead of +Resistance, though. Overall, I think the set has a little too much damage resistance though, and if I update it I will probably drop it down to scale 1.0 (so 10% for Tanks, 7.5 for everyone else). The uptime for Force Sanctuary and the Empathy auras is pretty close, the benefits for the auras being the larger AoE and longer duration, though. But I have been thinking about this and haven't decided how to change the power. I feel it needs some kind of penalty to be strong enough to be worth using. Maybe either the Force Shield user can't affect enemies while it's on (not ideal cause without attacking you lose threat), or that it also contains a Repel so enemies will sometimes be just out of range for most of your melee attacks, or that the user themselves suffers from decreased speed, recharge and damage, so that the penalty is just that it's not optimal, but you can still attack and taunt and maintain threat.

It also gets toxic and psi defense in energy drain and energy cloak.

This is completely sincere, but we do?? Maybe it's still too early in the morning for me, but I'm blanking on an example.

Alright, I had to do this for Brutes because Tankers don't have Energy Aura, but here is a comparison between Force Shield and the other Typed Defense sets. This is with their foe-based buffing powers maxed (Density Field, Energy Absorption, Energy Drain, Invincibility), level 50, no slotting. Just base values of all their Def/Res powers added up. Looking at it here, I think the Defense values are mostly appropriate, I would probably consider bringing down Psionic and Toxic defenses in the shields down to half their current value, so that would bring their new total for Psi/Toxic Defense down to 8.813%. If I did that, I would at least bump up the Toxic resistance 18.75%. That would give it more parity with the FF support set that only has some Psi/Toxic Defense in Dispersion Bubble, and then Toxic Resistance in one of the shields. The lower defense debuff resistance is intentional, since this set as designed has more consistent damage type coverage.

I'd love for the set to do deflected damage in that sense, but I don't know if the tech is there for it to be possible. If it was possible to reduce incoming damage by making some of it reflect back, I'd probably drop most damage resistance from the set and let that act as it's 'resistance'.

Tankers don't have Energy Aura because if you just copy the Brute version to them, they'd be softcapped to 5 of the 8 damage types on just SOs. Super Reflexes is nearly there itself, but all it has is Defense; Energy has defense, plus an end drain/gain, a heal that also reduces end cost, consistent damage resistance and stealth. It will take some tweaking to bring the defense numbers down without compromising the survivability of the set.

Ice would still probably be easier to soft cap, except to Fire and Cold damage, I believe. If I knew how to add things to Mids, I probably would do it for every suggestion I made lol Overall, it should have a little more defense than Shield (I think less than 1%, but I’d have to double check, and that’s without Density Field and Shield with Phalanx Fighting but with no teammates nearby ), but also a little less resistance. The team wide Hibernate is probably my biggest question of if it would be too good, but I think it fits the theme well and at a 4 minute recharge to 30 seconds max of effect, I think it wouldn’t be that exploitable. I need to look up some of the math tomorrow, I’m in bed right now, but I tried to make sure it was still not better than the Empathy auras. edit: What did you mean by deflection damage? Like reflected damage?

Melt Armor doesn't target a location or place a patch. Are you confusing it with something else?

Y'all are no fun.

Most of the armor sets have 3 armor toggles anyway, it's just typically one is Smash/Lethal, one is Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative, and one is Mez protection. I just decided to divide the defense types and mez protection amongst the 3 toggles. Also, keeps it aligned with the other Defense-based sets which can typically slot 3-4 Defense IO sets (Ice, Shield and Energy; SR can do 6-7, but shhh). I could combine Insulation and Refraction Shield, but I would need to shift things around a few powers in the set so that one toggle isn't doing so much of the heavy lifting. If I did that and added another power, it would have to be one that doesn't benefit the user's survivability as much, kind of like Grant Cover in Shield. Typed defenses can also be a pain because there are plenty of debuffs in the game without a defense type to check against so they can get through your defenses easily, but that's also why I tried to cover most of them in the set, as well. As far as the set using Typed over Positional, even though regular FF provides defense to all types and positions for fairness, I think thematically they're considered a type-based defense, which is why I stuck with that.

Work is slow today, so I finally got around to adding numbers to everything.

Click the little checkbox in the upper left corner that shows the info as code. The range for the reticle is listed under range_secondary.

Have you tried the bridal veil hairstyle?

That... is a fair judgment that I brought on myself. I actually originally had the taunt aura as Force Spikes, but then I realized that was just Icicles lol I do want the taunt aura to be something that affects the enemy in some way and also something that benefits Force Recoil, so the set has synergy with itself. I'm for sure open to trying other things. I'm also hesitant to add more defense as the base defense from the toggles is already the same base value as the SR toggles.

They're not bubbles. They're just glows and the circular aura taken from the Patron shields. Energy Drain does have a bubble effect, but only for 2 seconds.

I do understand the Energy Aura thing, I promise lol Thank you, though! Armor sets tend to check a lot of the same boxes (multiple toggles that cover the damage types, mez protection, some auto powers), so I was trying to find a distinctive playstyle in those utility powers. I know KB is kind of one of the signature features of Force Field, but also that no one would really want that in an armor set, so I tried to find a way to include the effect that was also useful for melee fighters, but also had some benefit to the powerset it was in (in this case, I thought it was a useful way to pull foes in to your taunt aura and get that defense buff from having enemies nearby). The reusing of the Force Field shield names was also kind of a nod to the Thermal set doing something similar. Both its shields are named after the similar shield in Fiery Aura (only internally for Thermal Shield though). It's actually kind of funny if you put Thermal Shield on a Fiery Aura user, the buff icons stack because of it.

I want a bubble! Or if the best I can get is reskinned Energy Aura, some kind of effect that surrounds the body, like the Victoria aura in the costume creator.

Kinetic Melee vs Energy Melee, then? Savage Melee vs Claws? We have several powersets that are distinctive from each other in terms of concept and gameplay. That doesn't mean they're not similar visually and/or functionally. I mean, functionally Ice Armor and Energy Aura are pretty similar themselves. Typed defense sets with some resistance to most damage types, a slow taunt aura, an end drain that also buffs defense, a self heal... (yes, I know Energy Aura was kind of an Ice Armor replacement redside, but still). I understand, I do, and I'm not against adding force field graphics to Energy Aura and calling it a day, but I'd rather it be distinct and not just vague energy themed. I want McDonalds, not a sandwich mom! I'm not taking it personally or anything, but it was disheartening to put a lot of thought in to this suggestion and have the first response be like, "but energy aura" lol

No, it's not, but thank you. To be fair, almost all the defense sets are a combination of defense and resistance, except maybe Ninjitsu. Even SR has passive damage resistance as they take damage!

The kind of thinking that would have prevented Willpower from being made.