CoeruleumBlue

The Signifier, Titan Weapons/Psionic Armor Brute If I can't have the Lost costume pieces I will make everyone responsible regret it by being even weirder. Just kidding, let's all have a contest to see who has the most bizarre designs, no one will regret it even if we should get all NPC costume pieces sooner or later too.

Yes. You can definitely heal and damage conceptually and the game even explains a lot of the mechanics, but at the same time, it's a perfectly valid build to just use Pain Domination mostly for buffs and debuffs. That's literally what's wrong with Pain Domination, Empathy, and Thermal Radiation that we talked about in another thread. The healing in those sets is not super good because there are no barriers, people like Marine Affinity and Nature Affinity because there is absorb. Healing is actually still the most popular support, just being able to over-heal is better than not being able to over-heal. Thematically it would make sense for these three to have absorb, they just don't because it wasn't in the game yet and people scream at change.

Why wouldn't you be able to do both well? Maybe I make an underwater character and the water drowns the enemies and feeds my fish. If you want a self-healer who can't heal just play a Sentinel, that's what they always feel like to me, except Sentinels actually get stuff from their armor and the one debuff from Pain Domination is basically what Vigilance is anyway. Pain Domination has a lot of stuff where it explicitly explains how you heal and damage too, you take the pain away from your ally and re-inflict it in your enemy, so that's one weird set to do that with.

Yes, on behalf of all Minionators and Crabberminds non-Controller, non-Mastermind characters definitely would like an option for controllable pets. I would just make it an option in character settings. I would even like my Mind/Dark Controller to have a controllable Dark Servant and my Brute with Mace Mastery to have a controllable Arachnos Blaster, and when my Stalker gets the Psionic Nexus of course I'm not going to want that to start fighting next to me and break me out of my stealth. Just make this a per-character and maybe per-power setting, thanks!

Here is my bug M7.ible* using Stone Melee without hammers, albeit in super early missions. How is Super Strength even good for anything besides copying the Hulk and pretending not to? Spider-Man would probably use Martial Arts since Spider-Man doesn't throw anything at anyone, hand clap, etc. Superman and Wonder Woman stoic type characters don't clap their hands and scream and rage but do throw things, so I would say Stone Melee or even Titan Weapons and use the ones where you pick up a street sign or a block of concrete or whatever and use that as your weapon. Super Strength is absolutely terrible as a generic "strength" set in general. Everyone knows the Thing is basically the Hulk without the raging and... the Thing is nearly universally built with Stone Melee without hammers, but Stone Melee without hammers works for characters who aren't made of stone or earth elementals in any way too, they just use stone to fight, because they are strong and pick it up. Super Strength is basically a weird combination of Stone Melee and Sonic Melee even though Sonic Melee didn't used to exist, that randomly has Rage from D&D 5e, and literally only works to copy the Hulk but pretend you're not copying the Hulk because copyright problems. There are other characters who have a "going berserk" mode but they use things like Savage Melee, Battle Axe, Mace Melee, or Radiation Melee, but the Rage power isn't available as an alternative to Build Up etc. in general, it's literally just randomly in a set called "Super Strength" that doesn't represent the idea of super strength well at all. I do think yes, you should be able to make a character that's very closely based on Hulk without getting sued or the game getting sued because there is a such thing as "hysterical strength" and that's basically where Hulk gets his powers that don't involve being green or other really fantastical things. However, why couldn't you have claws, Rage, and a hand clap? So yeah I say just totally rewrite Force of Will to include Hurl, Propel, Unbounded Leap, Clap, and Unleashed Might for all the characters who like doing rage stuff and just move the psionic powers into some kind of psionic-specific set, then all my characters who want to rage will be taken care of and all the characters who don't want to rage can just use normal power sets without Super Strength being co-opted into that. I would probably make Super Strength function like Titan Weapons honestly but then there's the question why we even have a strength punch set when characters who just have super strength pick up stuff all the time. Super Strength, Titan Weapons, and Stone Melee could probably basically be one set and lose nothing since I'm sitting here wondering why Stone Melee doesn't get any -DEF even though every other stone set does like the guy who was wondering why Sonic Melee doesn't get -RES, meanwhile Titan Weapons gets both -DEF and -RES. War Mace and Battle Axe could probably also be the same as just Heavy Weapons or something since I'm wondering why War Mace doesn't get -DEF even though things like Seismic Blast and Earth Control universally include -DEF, while Battle Axe has terrible variety in skin options, and the Fire and Ice Mace option looks like a hammer and not anything like a mace and also won't give you any -DEF. Battle Axe is basically just War Mace but better mechanically but there are worse skin options and you can't match it with Arachnos maces, I say just get rid of War Mace and Battle Axe, make Heavy Weapons, use the mechanics from Battle Axe but mix Smash and Lethal damage (which should be the case for those spiky maces and a lot of the skins anyway,) and have the two animation options the same way as most blast and control sets seem to have for you to choose between where they differ. Heck, I even think the Fire and Ice Sword should have axe mechanics since Broadsword has that light "swoosh" sound and can't knock anyone over until later levels, thought at least Broadsword has -DEF, a +DEF parry for you, and some crowd control at later levels, and even Katana has that and you can make your "Katana" or "Ninja Sword" a giant chainsaw, and then knock people over with it, for some reason. Also proliferate Heavy Weapons to Stalkers, everyone wants an Arachnos mace Stalker option too. Melee in this game still seems like such a mess overall. *Mandible was taken but it's not letting me do M&ible even though that's super Alfred Bester-esque and cool, so M7.ible shall be M&ible because it's the character over 7, just let us use Alfred Bester style character names already...

Can we have options to change to Praetorian and to let characters leave Praetoria without changing alignment to do DFBs or something? I do enjoy the immersive story arcs in Praetoria but right now I'm just ending up with a Praetorian version of a bunch of characters and a separate version that does DFBs and TFs with people, this is getting a little ridiculous. And since there are a bunch of level 50 characters played by people who don't even know what Ouroboros is maybe all levelling up should be locked behind certain missions, not just Praetorian levelling up. But yeah please do that and please let us pick badges so my psychic cop type character on Primal Earth can have the information badges and my Praetorian nuclear mutated monster who smashes stuff can just have villain badges, thanks!

Can exploration accolades change alignment with you? I changed to Rogue and now all my exploration accolades that aren't the same between redside and blueside have changed names and I lost them.

Yeah I think it should just be a per-character toggle. If you want your Crabbermind, Dominator, Stalker, Defender, or whatever with pets to control them you should be able to turn it on, if you want your Controller to just treat them as disposable pawns you should be able to turn it off. Honestly on my Undead Mastermind that I don't play that much I want it turned off. I don't play Masterminds much in general honestly for pretty much the opposite reason OP doesn't play Controllers, I don't like just repeatedly resummoning pets, but out of all the Masterminds I do play I like Undead the best because of the shades, but then I just end up playing a Dark Controller or Dark Dominator instead so I get all the cool utility powers instead of just throwing shades at people and re-summoning and re-arming zombies. Honestly Masterminds are my least favorite class, but if I'm going to control pets I want options to control all of them or just turn them into default mode regardless of class. If there's anything I want to control it's probably Dark Servants and support pets like that to be honest, not random Shades and Carrion Creepers even if they're on controller builds, but I don't want the option totally gone, just give us an option in character options for all pets is what I say.

You can solo on most controller powersets fine if you pick the right combos. You might even be able to solo on something stupidly non-solo-friendly like Mind/Emp if you slot very carefully and pick lots of prestige powers and pools but it wouldn't be fun, however, you can probably still do it if you really want to. Illusion/Rad and most things that have pets are probably even easier to solo on than a tank once you actually get the pets.

While I agree with most of this, I do think it's possible for Super Strength to do a little more moving of things. There's a Propel power in Gravity Control that can throw things around. I've already wanted this proliferated into a power pool with more cosmetic options like a Propel with a tornado, geyser, lava/crystal/slate stones, nuclear blast, flock of birds, school of fish, bugs, etc. particle effects instead of the particle effects around Propel, probably to replace the psionic powers in Force of Will and then move the psionic powers in Force of Will into a different set that can also have psionic melee powers. I want more sets in general to move things and I think it could be done within the engine of the game. Super Strength just already has Hurl but Hurl only hurls boulders, so they should just add a pick up and carry effect. And at the risk of people saying I'm That Person™ Champions Online has the effect, and it also uses basically just Propel as the basis of it. You can pick up items like cars, hit people with them, and also throw them in melee if your strength stat is high enough. Since this engine doesn't have strength stats, I just wanted a reworking of Force of Will to have all of those abilities plus a proliferated and reskinnable Propel so any character that should have a lot of force can use that and also take a Rage-like power and a jump power, and just move the psionic powers somewhere else, preferably somewhere that also has like a mini Mind Probe and Psionic Shockwave type power and/or something like the Clairsentience pool that was proposed in another thread and which I have advocated (but I wanted the Clairsentience pool to have the mini telepathy melee type powers to go with the astral projection power in it and the sense link power I proposed to add to it.) But regardless, yeah, I think there should and could be options to pick up items besides boulders for Super Strength. Other than that, yeah, I don't even see why Super Strength should totally be about throwing things around since just punching/kicking/palming/stomping with the strength is a thing too and I don't want the set to entirely just be throwing things at people. That's too much like Titan Weapons anyway ironically, though that's basically why I think Titan Weapons basically does what Super Strength should. We already have the Fighting Pool, and lots of tanky characters already take it just for extra resistances, so ironically now if you want to be a flying or non-flying brick you should probably just take Titan Weapons and Fighting Pool, and use Fighting Pool when you want to punch or kick someone, and Titan Weapons when you want to pick up a car/rock/whatever. It has a +DEF buff, it has -RES and also -DEF, it has basically everything thematically from Super Strength except unarmed fighting, except part of the point of Super Strength is to run around picking stuff up anyway. I love melee powersets in this game, but the way they are divided conceptually right now is a mess, and I think I would largely blame the fact the Super Strength one is attempting to be not-Hulk even though that's not even the most popular strong character in comics or pulps, science fiction, fantasy, etc. in general.

I mean I still think a +DEF or just +RES buff somewhere would probably be nice in one or two attacks that you don't have to take, basically like Titan Weapons. Honestly, I kind of just would like Super Strength to work a lot like Titan Weapons without the weapon. Besides Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, the Thing, and any kind of flying or non-flying brick type character can probably parry attacks coming at them with their Super Strength as well, but you'd be better off representing that with Martial Arts, except Martial Arts has a bunch of ki stuff and doesn't have any options to throw rocks at people or anything like that. Right now you might as well just take Titan Weapons and pick a street sign or something you picked up off the street and make that your weapon, kind of like the car club Jurassik runs around with, and that would probably be the best option mechanically for a super strength character who doesn't hulk out and doesn't use energy, except you literally couldn't have Captain America use that. Everything about how Super Strength is designed is basically just "we want a powerset specifically to be Hulk, but we also don't want to be sued." This seems doubly silly, because the Rage mechanic is literally just one power and lots of characters who don't use raw strength but also use weapons, energy, claws like Savage Melee, etc. could hypothetically want the Rage mechanic. Super Strength basically just isn't named Raging Strength because otherwise it would just be "it's totally not Hulk guys," even though other than the Rage power it could fit a lot of Super Strength characters, except not characters like Thor who use a weapon, or characters who are using some kind of energy or other power with their Super Strength. Honestly, I think I'd rename Super Strength something like Brute Force or Raw Strength or Sheer Strength since there are a lot of concepts that involve super strength, but I'd still make it so you can pick to have something else besides the Rage, and I'd proliferate Rage into other sets as a mutually-exclusive option, where raging would make thematic sense but they aren't brute force, with the other powerup, like how Dark Regeneration and Obscure Sustenance are mutually-exclusive for Dark Armor. Here is my character Titanosaur playing some of the beginning missions in Praetoria which is a Sonic Melee/Energy Armor character that's clearly supposed to be super strong and tough, and it isn't directly copying any particular character. It's basically a monster that is strong because it is reinforced with an energy field and it clanks around everywhere and makes shockwaves. But yeah if I wanted to do this with Super Strength and not have shockwaves I should still be able to use Energy Armor and be viable since that's also a defense-based set. My one Super Strength character right now is Bio Armor which is at least mostly a regeneration-based set but it's regeneration plus defense, as opposed to Radiation which is regeneration plus resistance, so Super Strength/Bio Armor is not a good combo mechanically either which shows that Super Strength really only works for making Hulk knockoffs and that's super specific in addition to getting them possibly sued. It really shouldn't get them possibly sued since the Hulk is basically Mr. Hyde, except Mr. Hyde would be more like Savage Melee with Rage instead of Blood Thirst, which just shows why I think Rage should be proliferated as an alternate option for any power set that isn't strictly based on finesse and agility.

Lots of offensive powersets have defensive buffs in them, like Titan Weapons, Staff Fighting, Katana/Ninja Sword, Broadsword, and Martial Arts. Having hard muscles generally makes you tougher and more agile. If the game wants Super Strength to be about rage they might as well just rename it Raging Strength, but since I personally don't see why other sets such as Titan Weapons, Battle Axe, Mace, Stone Melee, and maybe even some of the energy sets shouldn't have a Rage option too, I'd rather just make a choice between Rage and Build Up or a similar power in different sets, the same way Dark Armor has an option between Dark Regeneration and Cloak of Sustenance. Then people can choose if they like the rage or not. What about the idea of Super Strength implies someone being clumsy and thoughtless and wearing themselves out, and what about the idea of various other weapons and powers that someone really strong might have implies that they definitely wouldn't do that?

Sentinels get a different version of Stone Armor that doesn't have Mud Pots, would there even be any synergy with these? Rad/Stone would probably be more useful since there's still Brimstone Armor, but it's still annoying that in Sentinels they took many of the PBAoEs out of the armors but left most of them in the blast sets so some set combinations that might have nice synergies on both scrappers and blasters don't necessarily on sentinels. Sentinels do seem to end up working more like some kind of ranged stalker since Rad/Stone and Dark/Stone don't seem good on Stalkers either, while things that are good on Stalkers like Psi/Ninjitsu are also good on Sentinels, and that's fine, but if that's how it is it does highlight they shouldn't give Sentinels buffs that require them to stay in combat, that'll just totally screw them over.

Yeah what I think I would personally do with Rage at this point is make it a mutually exclusive pick with some other kind of power up power like how Dark Regeneration and Cloak of Sustenance are mutually exclusive powers in Dark Armor. Then we can also put the Rage power into other sets like weapon sets and Sonic Melee and maybe even Energy Melee, Psi Melee, and any kind of melee set that isn't thematically centered about being graceful and has a generic power up (so not Dark Melee where the power up is Siphon Life,) and make it mutually exclusive with the other power up option. Then we won't need nonsense like "Super Strength and Superer Strength," we can just have a Rage option in any set where it would be thematically appropriate, and the people who want to Rage with Super Strength, or Titan Weapons, or Sonic Melee, or Battle Axe or whatever can do it, and the people who want those sets and don't want to rage can pick the other one. It almost seems like it should just be an archetype/class feature but it's not Brute Fury since Brutes can be defense-based and basically Dexterity-based in D&D terms. Since we already have basically Rages built into armors but they're optional and you can just not take them, and that's not linked to archetypes, it's probably not bad at all to just make it an option you can pick in many melee sets or skip it.

Yes, but what does that have to do with making Super Strength into a rage-based power? Lots of people above want Super Strength to make a character that's more like Superman, or Spiderman, or various other characters rather than the Hulk. This is why people are asking for a "Raging Strength." Everyone who has been in this game for a while already knows about the stuff like a 5% hit and miss chance. That doesn't explain why Rage is built into Super Strength, and absolutely not built into any of the other powersets such as the ones involving weapons. We already have Unleash Potential from Force of Will that comes with a damage buff and a crash, most armors regardless of what they're based on have an option for a crash, there's basically no reason to equate Super Strength = D&D Barbarian Rage, especially not when most people's idea of a super strength character is probably going to look more like Superman, Spider Man, or even Iron Man than the Hulk. If I hear Super Strength in a superhero game I'm probably thinking of a flying brick like Superman or Homelander to be honest, and while Hulk and Hulk fists are pretty popular, making it so you can play Hulk but not Superman or Spider-Man when those are more popular than Hulk is weird. The Thing is not as popular as the Hulk but is also basically the Hulk without the rage, and you might as well use Stone Melee without the stone hammer for Superman lifting a rock over his head like in comics pictures if you're going to make Super Strength all about the rage. Might as well just call it Raging Strength at that point anyway and drop the idea of having a plain Super Strength set entirely, since Super Strength can be realized through other sets like Stone Melee, Sonic Melee, Martial Arts, Street Justice, or sets like ones where you have a weapon, but also you're obviously really strong.

The Medicine pool is probably ironically what makes Empathy and even Pain Domination and Thermal Radiation seem kind of irrelevant. If you need more healing, status protection, or a resurrect power you can get it from the Medicine pool, but if you're missing certain kinds of buffs or debuffs you can't get them from other pools at all. If you want to increase your allies' recharge time there isn't a power pool that does that, you have to take Time or Radiation. If you want to give someone a barrier you could take Sorcery, but the barrier from Sorcery is not anywhere near as good as the barriers in Nature and Marine since it's a toggle and you can only affect one person at a time. If you take Sorcery you literally can't get the various buffs and debuffs from Experimentation or Force of Will either, but if you take Medicine because your set doesn't have enough healing you can still take one of the three of Experimentation, Sorcery, or Force of Will depending on what you need, so if you're missing healing and one type of buff or debuff you can pick two of those sets, but if you're in Empathy or even Pain or Thermal you can only take one of those. No one really cares that the Resurrection from Empathy is better than Resuscitate from Medicine because the whole point is to try not to die in the first place, and if they do die you can just use Injection or a similar power, or you can use inspirations. Yeah there's basically nothing Empathy does that inspirations don't also do because the buffs are underwhelming compared to other buff sets such as Nature, Marine, Time, Dark, Storm, and even Rad which is mostly a debuff set, and Pain and Thermal kind of largely have the same problems in my opinion to the extent they're just supposed to be a heal set with some other non-healing components, some of which are debuffs. It's basically the same reason whenever I roll a new character I'm picking Secondary Mutation or Mystic Fortune as my Prestige Buff and possibly waiting until they get high level for Inner Inspiration just so I can sell the inspirations. Even if you are doing content with no inspirations or incarnates there's no such thing as doing content with no enhancements or power pools. People are mostly taking Empathy and even Pain and Thermal at low levels to do DFBs and stuff but even at low levels where you are doing DFBs and stuff there's no point because you still have healing in other sets and you can still take enhancements and power pools. A power set that does the same thing as inspirations and just has slightly better numbers than a power pool literally anyone can take, and inspirations have little value in the first place, is not super appealing. So just fix Empathy to be a good psychic buff set with barriers, Pain Domination is a mix of that and a debuff set, and Thermal is a fire theme buff set with barriers is my opinion of how they should be fixed. Like even for super hard content where you need maximum healing and turn off incarnates and inspirations the problem is that almost all the better buffing and/or debuffing sets still have healing and you can just take pools like Medicine, Sorcery, and Experimentation if you need more healing, but if you have maxxed out healing from your main set you literally can't get certain buffs or debuffs at all because the limits on what you can take from pools and things that are totally unavailable. Temporal Mending, Temporal Selection, Aid Other, and Resuscitate can stack healing, Clear Mind can't stack buffs with Experimentation's buffs or status resistance with Injection because the buffs are different types and limited on who you can apply them to, and breaking someone out of a hold, confuse, or taunt is one and done.

Yeah that's why I suggested adding the same changes to Pain Domination because I found that set underperforms too. Thermal is probably similar, I just don't play Thermal at all because I personally usually don't like elemental type powers except on really specific niches like a fire blaster where you're taking it to be as blast-y as possible rather than because you want a fire shield that protects you from cold and gets put out by water or whatever, but the healing on all three sets should probably be buffed equally. The buffs should probably also be improved since healing is not as important as buffs in general, and that's the whole reason I even took Time Manipulation over Pain Domination on my defender who's actually getting played sometimes. I have one of each and I'm not deleting them, just the Pain Domination one isn't getting played because the Time Manipulation one has better buffs, Chrono Shift can be perma'ed easily, and it recharges your powers and endurance as well which means you can use all your other powers more. Clear Mind and Enforced Morale on Empathy and Pain Domination definitely feel fun, like Liberating Command in the Patherfinder TTRPG where you're targeting your friend with like an anti-mind-control power, but when Chrono Shift is up all the time, has bigger bonuses, and you get the bonuses from it yourself too, you might as well just take Medicine Pool for Injection if you just want to break people out of CC effects and Resuscitate if you want to bring someone back up. Temporal Selection and Farsight are also better buffs than anything in Empathy or Pain Domination and even Temporal Mending comes with buffs while also being a big AoE heal, then Temporal Selection and Chrono Shift are also good heals that also buff even if the numbers are lower. And then the debuffs blow Pain Domination out of the park. You literally get pretty much the same feel with the targeted buffs and debuffs and the PBAoE buff and debuffs too so there's not even a reason to pick Pain Domination for the feel, the only advantage is the healing and resuscitation, but if you take Medicine Pool you will get higher healing and a resuscitation so there's literally no reason to take Pain Domination and there's doubly no reason to take Empathy. Thermal you would just take because you're a pyromaniac and you want fire powers that melt ice and stuff but it still underperforms because there's too much healing and the healing isn't very good since it can't turn into a barrier. Nature and Marine Affinity are loved because of the barriers so I think that's the easiest fix, and also make it so the buffs in Empathy and Pain Domination are better and you can apply them to yourself. Thermal Radiation probably needs to be fixed in a similar way, I just can't add specific input because I don't play it, but it needs love too, just give all three of them similar barrier-based healing since it works thematically and that's why people love Nature and Marine so much, and make the buffs better and I think all three of those sets will be up to par.

Yeah sadly you can't actually build a Super Strength scrapper or a mace stalker or lots of other things that it seems like you should be able to. Super Strength is brutes and tankers only right now even though it's a terrible set for anyone who actually wants to tank due to the Rage. Right now you might as well just use Stone Melee without the hammer which seems basically indistinguishable from the proposition that we have "Super Strength and Superer Strength" anyway. But Super Strength is more like "Raging Strength" and Stone Melee is more like regular strength. Then Sonic Melee is basically also like Super Strength without the crash for people who like the hand claps, screaming at enemies, and stuff like that. Sonic Melee is like the Hulk type power now or the power of a machine or monster going beserk, Stone Melee is better for a strong alien or mutant stoically lifting things over their head or slamming the ground for earthquakes, Super Strength is basically just for people who wish tanks did damage even though we already have brutes and scrappers and scrappers were always in the game and it makes them worse at tanking while still being worse at damage. Super Strength - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki Ironically if I were reworking Super Strength I'd probably make it more defense-based even if that's a total 180 from what it is. We have sets like Titan Weapons, Staff Fighting, and most types of swords that have stances that give you more defense. Super Strength I think should be like that conceptually, like the superhero who uses their muscles to bounce bullets off their chest or arms, not exactly the opposite like it is now. Why on Earth did Super Strength ever have a defense and endurance debuff? So that's my opinion, rework it into some kind of stance based set like Titan Weapons or Staff Fighting but for people who want to deflect bullets off their chest instead of off their giant weapon or staff and it'll be what it was always supposed to be in my opinion. The concept seems to have been too hijacked by people wanting a set for Tankers that made them do more than 2 damage back in the early game but that wasn't good design even back then, now it just seems terrible because the concept has been totally overtaken mostly by Stone Melee, Sonic Melee, and even Martial Arts and Street Justice.

The main problem with this forum is people don't like change at all and lots of people just want CoH to be like a time capsule to the early 2000s. I didn't pick my signature because of that, I picked my signature because it's about telepathic mutants and that's my favorite kind of comic and pulp character, but it feels more appropriate each day.

What on Earth is so bad about the idea of making something like Box of 50 Candy Canes in the Merit Reward Vendor? I doubt that would be very difficult.

I personally wouldn't remove the self damage on Absorb Pain since it's Empathy, but I do think the idea of adding absorption aligns well thematically with Empathy, but largely only if the self damage stays. Since you have Empathy, they can get extra absorption, because they are using your hitpoints, not only their own. I do think adding absorption and fixing some of the buffs will bring Empathy above Pain Domination for pure healing again. I even think if absorption were added to Pain Domination as well as Empathy since there are some thematically identical and similar powers in Pain Domination, as long as the overhealing = absorption on Empathy, Empathy would still be a better healing set. Right now Pain Domination kind of also seems lacking compared to other sets like Nature, Marine, and Time which either have actual absorption or better buffs and debuffs. I ended up replacing my Pain defender with Time in practice because the buffs and debuffs seemed better. So yeah I say just give Empathy and Pain Domination absorption so it's like your sharing your hitpoints between each other and I'd also let the buffs from Clear Mind and Enforced Morale be used on yourself, and I like all the changes to Empathy above except for getting rid of the ones that can transfer the pain to yourself and make you lose hitpoints but that's just my personal thematic preference. I still liked the original post despite not liking that particular change. Right now Empathy ends up looking worse than Thermal Radiation and Pain Domination ends up looking worse than Time Manipulation, and while parts of that might be intentional from way back when in the game since I heard Thermal Radiation was explicitly made to replace Empathy and it wouldn't surprise me if Time Manipulation were the same thing for Pain Domination, some people just think empathy and dark empathy is cool. Thermal Radiation and Time Manipulation don't have powers where you can transfer other people's pain to yourself and they don't need to because that's not the theme. People mostly play this game because they like RPing as a superhero/villain/whatever their character is and pretending to save the world/take over the world/save the bank/rob the bank/whatever, no sets should have ever been made to try to replace other sets in some kind of stereotypical MMORPG niche. "Well umm our healing people with your mind set didn't work very well, how would you like to heal people with fire instead?" That's not why people play this game, both sets should work. I do love some of these other sets like Nature Affinity, I used it to make a mushroom zombie like what you see in post-apocalypse films/shows/books/games, it's not a replacement for the idea of having an empath though, just an addition.

You get damage from Soul Drain and whatever other self-buffs and enemy debuffs you have in dark DPS sets, you don't just spam your big attack over and over. I know most players in this game just want to attack over and over and that's why we have all the new sets like Street Justice, Savage Melee, Water Blast, etc. giving you stacks of some type of damage effect but people end up hating Stalkers in general because they just want to button mash without thinking, and also hating other archetypes like Controllers, Dominators, and Defenders, but since those aren't DPS there isn't as much of a need to prove they work. They're even trying to make Sentinels build up stacks for fighting in combat now, even though most of the popular builds that aren't Electric/Electric are based on using things like the stealth procs from Ninjitsu. So yes, I'm going to continue proving dark sets have good DPS by actually playing them so they don't get rid of the DPS on every set that isn't "you consume your 3 stacks of Battle Rage!" or whatever.

I personally wouldn't change Opportunity to not work out of combat or stop nukes from critting. As of now, the only valid use for Sentinel is basically as a nuke AT somewhat similar to a ranged Stalker and even then it seems weak at that, especially since Stalkers can already get ranged attacks in varying ways. Making Sentinels so they constantly have to be firing off attacks and their nukes don't even work is just going to make them way worse based on everything I've heard from Sentinel players about how to play and build Sentinels, not better. The most popular way to play Sentinels seems to be just for the endurance drain on Electric Blast but that role seems better served by Defenders, who can give basically everyone armor already and get extra endurance drain from a lot of the support sets. The only unique niche for Sentinels seems to be as a nuke AT that has armor to help you survive between the nukes and possibly give you procs to make them stronger like with Ninjitsu or Stone Armor, and even that I heard would have worked better if they had control sets instead of blast sets as primaries, but that's only something I heard once. Everything in this change seems like it'll make Sentinels worse, not better. Maybe just up their damage to blaster levels instead of defender levels because they don't get manipulation sets anyway so they can't even fight in melee until they get Epic Pools or unless they take a lot of Fighting Pool but I would also rather just roll a blaster than run around using a bunch of Fighting Pool attacks all day, and they are automatically slower at stacking debuffs as well since they don't get any from manipulation sets or support sets. Honestly I think Vulnerability never worked with them anyway. Since many attack options for Sentinels apply debuffs, but Sentinels don't get any other debuffs, I think I'd just make it so the debuff automatically applies to enemies they attack and stays on them until the enemies die, the Sentinel dies, or both. Then it can apply to way more than five enemies and it would make sense for the Sentinel to have armor in case they get too much aggro doing that.

I was with you until you said we'll never see it. Weapons/shields do need to be tied to the powers in my opinion, just like Arachnos Maces don't give you options for nightsticks. It's good to have more options but those options need to exist in a world that makes sense, not a free-for-all. For example, someone mentioned having wands and weapons as an origin point for powers. Why? If you have a wand or weapon you need to have a story behind that, and there needs to be an explanation for why you can't do various things with it. I still do personally think it's bizarre my Mind Control/Darkness Affinity Controller has an Arachnos Mace, can't hit anyone with it, and did the Captain Mako story arc. Honestly all the Arachnos arcs bug me because Arachnos is literally fascist, and even if I play it as infiltrating them like with the Hellions arc at the beginning of the game, there's no real reason my character should just randomly have a mace she can shoot people with, but can't hit people with, and Focused Accuracy that also has nothing to do with the mace that I just like because it's clearly an ESP type character and I want to max my ToHit and Perception and not care about ToHit debuffs on a character like that, and I already have all the armor. The patron unlocks being bizarre is why we can't just let people do whatever. Doing a Captain Mako patron unlock and getting a mace that doesn't even look like an Arachnos mace because I used a different mace design and different colors just because I want a -DEF debuff somewhere and Darkness Affinity and Mind Control don't have them, and I also get the best toggle for that build, is already bizarre, because patrons were uncoupled from the unlocks already. So like options with or without swords, hammers, etc. for all of them, sure. But the issue is still keeping things in line with what you're representing. The game is already not great at that all of the time, the devs are rightfully careful with the game they inherited (these problems are almost never their faults, they are understaffed on a game which only got a license earlier this year and survives solely on donations.) More of us should consider becoming devs, I have, but first I've been trying to recruit people from different demographic pools since I think that will also fix some of the issues I see like treating literal Nazis as just a campy bad guy the same as all the other campy bad guys you could fight. Honestly superheroes and pulp stuff do not have to be camp, though if someone wants to just make a character with a campy persona and super sparkle powers that's great, but that's different from saying Nazis are just another campy enemy, which also ties into the problem of patron pools really ending up having nothing to do with the Arachnos patron unlocks anyway.

Cupid's Crush already does that so they could probably do it with every other enhancement set in the game pretty easily if they decided it were a good option for balance.