OverkillEngine

Topic. How am I supposed to get my maple powered lumber-jacking on without proper accoutrements? Literally Unplayable.

I just wish the options for speed buffs and group travel powers were added to the client config so I did not have to remember to do it on every dang alt. As far as the Op question: The type of Defender I prefer is "Yes", same as for Controllers and Corrupters and Masterminds. I'll take any kind of support I can get while barrelling towards the enemy like a ferret high on crystal meth. Especially if I don't already have any on the team.

Nuh-Uh!

Huh, neat.

And to add on, what attack powerset they are paired with matters too. If the attack powerset either covers a hole or dovetails with a strength of the armor, you'll have better results. The sets that need time to leverage their recovery mechanic tend to do better with attacks with CC's or debuffs that give them that time.

And god help you if you have a stealth power at all. Some of the escortees can see thru them but it's still cancer tier overall.

Hell they could still roll with one tank and 7 Blasters, it's just they can't have the latter picking their noses and waiting for the tank to herd the entire map for them to nova once anymore.

And my point about them competing via the same selection mechanism is still not refuted. And stamping one's feet and saying "but different *label*" doesn't count as such. It's a simple calculation of "does this power/pool give access to a utility I want or need?" vs the power slot cost. This. So much this. Understandably Boxing and Kick are never going to be allowed to be competitive in terms of DPS with non-pool melee powers. That's not what I am asking for. If I don't want Air Sup or Flurry or Jump Kick, I can just pick Hasten or Hover or Combat Jumping which are completely valid picks in their own right and be done with it. We don't get that option with Fighting. It's Shit power A (with peanuts) or Shit power B (with walnuts). Edits: Ugh, typos.

Literally just one of the two entry tax powers for Fighting needs to not be a melee attack and 90% of the grossness of the design goes away. Because there's very few ways you can make a melee attack power a not wasted power slot if you have a build that does not need or want one. Well, it does depend wildly on the character and powerset there. I have a Dark Dominator that has made at least some good use of the fear stacking and Unrelenting. But yeah I'd much rather have a single target Fear instead of a neutered form of Placate. Because the latter is close to a dead pick too. Hell, I'd even accept the run-terror form so as long as it at least stacked magnitude with other fears. But at least there is a choice of powers with *different* functions, instead of two powers for the same niche. So while it could use some attention/polish, it's not in an as offensive state. Basically the problem with Fighting is not that it has pre-req powers. The problem is *what* the pre-req's are.

I mean, just compare the entry tax powers of the travel Pools to Fighting (and people are going to have to be adults and deal with them getting compared given they use the same opportunity cost mechanics - power selection slots): Speed: A) melee cone attack with limited utility B) Self Buff that is almost universally applicable to all builds C) Travel power! Flight: A) Melee attack with incredible utility thanks to two guaranteed secondary effects B) Self flight toggle that also has great utility on a wide range of builds thanks to the perfect air control and cheap cost C) Travel power! Fighting: A) Melee attack with unreliable utility, can be improved to still be unreliable B) Melee attack with unreliable utility, can be improved to still be unreliable (Note how I didn't even have to bring up their damage at all to show how off kilter the fighting pool attacks are. But since they are not allowed to compete via damage, what's left is competing via utility.) So if there is something later on in these pools that one wants, two of them allow you to bypass selections that may not fit one's build, but with fighting, if you don't want or need a crappy melee attack, you have no choice but to waste a power slot on one. That's just grossly offensive design that should have been dumpstered decades ago.

Yeah I have deliberately picked Air Superiority on a melee AT before because I actually wanted it - its design made it actually useful from the word go for the situation I was picking it in. And this was post pre-req relaxation. So I wasn't forced into it specifically to get powers in the pool I wanted later. I didn't have to pick other powers to make it a still grossly sub-par choice. It stood on its own merits as a valid pick. It had an alternative power that did not have the same exact niche if I didn't need or want a melee attack. I consider it an example of how to set up the "prerequisite" powers in a pool correctly. A lot of them already have access to powers within their own sets that already satisfy that utility more flexibly or obviate it entirely by making the mob dead. They have little reason to burn a power pick on Air Sup.

Holy Frijoles is this one ever true. Joined an instanced MSR earlier today and didn't even have to tweak my settings, it was perfectly playable. I may actually show up to these on a regular basis now.

I'm aware. Still hot flaming garbage.

Part of the issue with Boxing and Kick is that both powers are clearly a sub-par pick no matter what AT you are. Even the ones that have the best modifiers for them. Especially for those AT's. To the point that they are meme tier picks. Which makes using them as a power tax extra offensive. Oh and they occupy the same exact niche, so it's also an illusion of choice between them. If I were allowed to sodomize the Cottage Rule for a day, I'd merge the two attacks into a melee power that has a chance to proc KD or Disorient or both with a kickboxing animation, and the "hole" filled with a more universally applicable but not particularly strong passive. Like maybe a passive that procs a self minor +absorb when you are hit, with some sort of cooldown. Grant it some sort of synergy with the rest of the pool just like before. Then an evaluation pass on the pool as a whole to see if some power needs shaved from elsewhere within it to compensate. Hand out a freespec and call it done.

Agreed. We already arguably have a problem with content balancing and just the IO system alone bleeding into it over time as an assumed baseline even though that wasn't supposed to happen. Granted, different Dev team now, but yeah. People ask for more power and then eventually ask that content requires that power, and then it gets set (consciously or intentionally or not) as the baseline assumption for content balancing and effectively punishes anyone new.

Same bug with Kheldian contact Sunstorm - screenshot below. Level 23 character at -1 notoriety, other enemies in mission were 22 as expected, Archon Swann was level 25. Mission was in Striga, did not have this issue with missions from same contact for same enemy group in Talos.

On that note, being able to customize those as well would be nice. Even if there were a limited subset of bodymeshes and skins to pick from (to reduce need for animation alterations) it would be a vast improvement in player agency over their character theme.

While I am not married to the meta of requiring an AoE Immob (I play Illusion on Controllers and Doms a lot), having the design of a powerset require another player or powerset to unlock its full potential while (more than likely from the behavior we've seen so far), still being dinged in the design budget for that potential even if those conditions aren't consistently fulfill-able by all players using that set, is inherently hostile design. Combo interactions while certainly neat, really need to be strictly internal to each set if possible unless there is an intent to rewrite every set in the game to have similar functions for parity and consistency. Otherwise for fairness you have to make them so weak and ignorable as to be a pointless investment of design budget and time.

Yeah that's why I made one of the suggestions that I did, and pointed out a precedent. A sleep is a crappier unreliable hold, and either needs to be heavily discounted in design budget for any powers using it, or altered to be on parity with hold or stun. (As to why it was never done before now, well, no set has forced the issue like Aresenal Control has either) Though more than a few powers it looks like the "compensation" for unreliability took the form of a fairly long duration....the issue with that approach is you will almost never have a use for that duration in group play since all other mezz options are superior in practice. I mean, FFS, sleep gets outperformed by a knockback/down proc when it comes to mitigation in team play. And KB spam is something that is divisive as hell within the playerbase.

Long term (and somewhat unfocused) feedback related to both Dominators and Controllers and the new Arsenal sets: I'm glad these have been added for natural/tech themed character concepts - and it would be nice if eventually an Epic/APP could be created for these AT's that is also on theme as well. Closest they have right now is the Mace Mastery Pool, but that is less "I CAST GUN!" and more "SPOOKY ARACHNOS POWERS GO!".

Jetpack and origin power changes were very nice to have when testing a new Arse/Traps Controller, made it less painful to level the character for a few levels the old school way by doing solo missions like a new person just starting out and learning the mechanics would/should do. Much appreciated.

Played a Arse/Traps controller for a bit yesterday after the reordering patch, and it does help in that we are not getting stuck with a Faustian choice of two sleeps anymore. And I was able to solo Ok'ish using Cryo and Tranq by chaining them and mostly ignoring the sleep on Tranq. And of course I avoided taking Sleep Grenade since now it's effectively meme tier. But this just somewhat avoids/papers over a fundamental game design problem with the sleep status effect in that it is generally not group friendly and the times where it helps in a group, nearly any other tool would do the the job better while still being group friendly across a far broader range of circumstances. And with other control sets that have multiple sleep powers, they are arranged in such a way so that sleeps can be avoided entirely on power picks, and/or the sleep is paired with another hard control on the same power and as such is not the main point of the power and not a focal point of its balancing (see: Mind/Illusion). But the current arrangement of powers forces the issue in a way that is avoided on other sets, so of course it is going to be inciting complaints. So here is a set of non-inclusive/exclusive suggestions: A) Take a real good look at Mind and Illusion and learn from how they dealt with/avoided the problem with sleeps and use them as a template for a solution. Will likely require a fundamental rework of the set or at least a few of the powers. Not the preferred solution but better than nothing. B) Globally rework Sleep to make it more group friendly or at least not actively antagonistic to the fast paced gameplay the majority of your playerbase prefers. Some of the older grognards here may remember how HORRIBLE Fear was during the early days of Live. It's going to be on that scale of rework. If you want Sleep to stay breakable, then maybe it needs to come with some sort of benefit for breaking it. My suggestion is slept targets grant the attacker, regardless of AT, an autocrit on them similar to a coup-de-grace in other game systems. That would allow it to be helpful in an AoE heavy composition while keeping it on theme as a breakable mezz. C) The Sleeps status if itself unchanged, needs to come paired with another effect that is still highly desired across a wide range of content if taking powers with them is unavoidable.

I mean I can think up ideas that fix the issue with Boxing and Kick being suckass tax powers, And the original design of the Fighting Pool being based on assumptions that are not true in practice, but that requires being given free reign to violate the cottage rule that sometimes gets treated like a sacred cow past all common sense. Swapping the progression for Tough with either Boxing or Kick was just a cheap way of sidestepping both those. My preference would be to actually fix them. But again, that requires being given free reign to do things some grognards are going to be reflexively contrarian about for contrariness's sake.

Granted Air Superiority is more useful than Punch or Kick. I'd never take any of them for their damage, which leaves how reliable the secondary effect is as the determining factor of usefulness. But yeah, imagine if instead of Hover, we had something like Aerial Axe kick, with shit damage, and an unreliable secondary effect, and the only way to get Fly was to pick it or Air Superiority, even if both were effectively useless to your build. That would suck major ass.