Crysta Clear

It depends on your build and archetype. For a blaster, Tough is the only resist you're likely to have, since your set bonuses will be covering a lot of your defense softcaps. Lots of Mako's Bites, winter sets, ATO's, etc. Whether a blaster has ~20% smash/lethal, or ~35% including Tough's own effect (if you slot it out to ED's cutoff, it is only 15.75% smash/lethal for a blaster, or 10.5% base. 4 slots is a lot to waste on 5.25% smash/lethal resist), is so very rarely relevant to a blaster's survival. My blaster softcaps all three positionals and gets her resist from Mu Lightning's Charged Armour -- she can't afford the slots to slot out more than one resist power, and Charged Armour is the better place to put them.

They're worth so much of a character's defense softcaps, proportionally. Weave is 3.5% defense even for a blaster, which comes out to 5.25% when slotted up to ED's cutoff point. It's base 5% for a tanker, up to 7.5% at ED's cutoff. Tough is a resist power that is not often worth enough resist to justify its endurance cost, or slotting it for resistance, but dropping a single slot in there lets you slot the +3% flat defense globals from Gladiator's Armour and Steadfast Protection (resist sets) as early as 14th level (can keep it, and thus keep the globals slotted into it, while exemplared as low as 9th level). And for a blaster, it's the only resist power you'll get. And then you just don't toggle it on, because 11% smash/lethal resist isn't going to be worth a blaster's endurance. Both of these are a source of defense for archetypes that may not have any access to defense powers in most of their sets (dominators have none, blasters only have them in two secondaries), and are essential for having defenses on those archetypes. In total, Tough and Weave give a blaster 11.25% all defenses. That is exactly 1/4 of the 45% defense you need to softcap.

Because Tough and Weave put together are as good as three powers. Letting you have them for two power selections is, quite simply, not okay.

I don't think 'stagnation' means 'kick as a prerequisite,' though. That's pretty disingenuous to claim.

The response to any proposed change isn't 'can't have power creep,' that's only the response to proposed changes that are just literally straight upgrades with no accompanying downsides. Especially in an area like this one, where the pool in question is already one of the strongest and most popular power pools, even with the Kick prerequisite. I understand that no~one likes to be told that their idea is a bad one, but when there is an objective balance reason why your idea is a bad one, maybe you should just suck it up and accept the fact that maths are more objective than you are? Maybe next time you'll think through your idea more before you post it.

None of those things are even relevant to this discussion. You are making a choice when you choose Mystic Flight, and that choice is to not be taking the far better Flight pool with a defense power in it, that is also a more maneuverable flight for battle with cheaper endurance cost, because if you're going to take Hover, then why spend another pool selection on Mystic Flight? Translocation is not even a benefit in terms of speed -- its only real use is to spend 11 endurance to stop without drifting so you can use a snipe or assassin strike or something.... which you could do for free with Hover. Fitness being inherent is an old change, and thus, old power creep. Which, again, does not excuse new power creep. If you make a mistake, why does that make future commissions of that mistake suddenly 'okay?' Placing Tough and Weave that deep into the pool was very likely a deliberate balance decision for offering a defensive pool power with such a high scale.

Previous power creep does not excuse additional power creep. Suck up your missing power slot or don't take the fighting pool at all. You're asking to be given something for nothing -- Tough and Weave put together are good enough to be worth three selections instead of two, for a lot of people. Including myself. Being forced to make meaningful choices when building your character is important.

If that is added, make it an option please. I don't want to have to click twice when I've been doing just fine learning my cones without a marker.

You take it because Weave is the best pool power around for softcapping defenses. And Tough is an early (read-- exemplar-friendly) option for slotting your two defense globals that go into resist powers. Kick is a small price to pay for that amazing amount of defense. The fighting pool attacks are situationally useful for archetypes with few attacks in their primary and secondary sets -- especially Controllers and Masterminds, who often lack real damaging options for their own activations -- Controllers tend to have holds and low-damage DoTs, with only one high damaging power like Tornado or something at mid-levels (and only then when slotted with procs), and Masterminds tend not to have much worth spending actions on after they summon and buff their pets, because their in-set attacks are terrible. The synergies between the three fighting pool attacks make them attractive options for those archetypes. Removing the prereqs or even making the prereqs more generally useful, instead of situationally useful, is blatant power creep and needs to be shot down.

Power creep is still bad in this thread too.

No thank you. Power creep is bad, okay?

It already does. Every single one of my electric blasts imposes -100% recovery for around the same duration as its damage buff from my inherent as a blaster.

The size of the pool isn't relevant, because endurance drain is a percentage in PvE. All I know is, I have repeatedly seen AVs' endurance bars run out long before their health bars, within the early stages of a battle, and enemies do have to wait for enough recovery to happen that they have the endurance to attack with. Misinformation such as "enemies attack with no endurance" is not helping anyone. That is not how the rules of the game work. If that were the case, then enemies wouldn't even have endurance bars in the UI.

I dunno. I have drained out an AV before on my Electric Blaster, with a combination of Thunderous Blast, Short-Circuit, and Ion Judgment in quick succession, and then watched them stand there for a good few seconds waiting for the endurance to attack with, all while having to recover through the constantly-reapplied recovery debuffs of all my faster blasts.

There's an open space at 12th, and you could throw Hover and Combat Jumping over to 20th and 22nd, adding three more attacks at 8th, 10th and 12th. I just threw that together in literally two minutes. You don't even need to be softcapped to steamroll low-level content solo, either. You can get away with far less. But it's okay. If literal objective numbers can't show you the issues with your suggestion, then I don't actually think you're discussing in good faith. I think we're done here.

My blaster softcaps all three positionals, but she requires T4 Barrier to do it. That's an entirely different animal. The fact of the matter is that the set pieces featured in that screenshot are bare minimum defense globals, and they have a total cost of less than 30m, well within the inf someone's merits gained through leveling via arcs will net them. Gaussian: 1.5m ~ 2m per piece, times six pieces = 9m ~ 12m GladArm: 9m ~ 12m depending on the day SteadProt: 4m ~ 5m Total cost: at most 27m, at cheapest, 22m.

Read the post with the screenshot. I didn't say that. I just paraphrased in the one after. The point is, that is very minimal effort as far as set IOs are concerned, and Titan Weapon is the single most popular melee set. There's also Staff Fighting, if you want to wait until 2nd level to select your parry.

I think it would be better to have a set with two animations, than to have no set because we don't have a third or fourth animation. Variety can come in the type of thing fired from the wand. I always thought an "Evocation Blast" or "Sorcerous Blast" primary would've been neat, with a wand weapon model and spells of different elements, that gain extra effects based on making elemental combos against the same target.

Just, check my screenshot a few posts up, in Mid's. If you can softcap positionals so easily with plain 25 IO's at 22nd level, you need to be wary of giving that set anything more than Ninjutsu already has. Ninjutsu already completely invalidates and obsoletes Super Reflexes, on archetypes with access to both powersets (Scrapper, Sentinel, Stalker).

There are Vanguard NPCs that have animations for casting spells from a staff. We also have the Blackwand animation that could be used as a base, with a different weapon prop attached.

If you start going all in with powers not being allowed to take enhancements of a category that they mechanically have an aspect of, then you have rules inconsistencies.

The fact is, it doesn't matter whether it's 2 recovery or 50. If it can take a Performance Shifter, that is all that matters about that power. A proc is worth more than a Lv. 50 EndMod IO in Stamina. The five minute 'start time' to reach full resistance is a non-penalty. And with the right primary, there is no longer a melee hole unless you are literally a Sentinel and cannot get a primary with a Parry. By the way? Here is what I can do with just 13.88% Ranged and AoE defense in-secondary, at Lv. 22 with very minimal set IO usage. So like I said, that is very easy to softcap, and softcap early, no less. That is only a single stack of Defensive Sweep, and a total set IO cost of less than 30m. You will easily have that much if you level in the overworld with arcs, from 1 to 22, without XP boost, and spend all your merits selling converters and boosters. Keep in mind, the other set that can softcap positionals at 25th level is Super Reflexes, a set with no resists or recovery at all, and whose only non-defensive benefit is +20% global recharge.

Sure, when you do the conversions! 🙂

But because many of those powers in Bio don't have endurance components by default, none of them can take a Performance Shifter except for Inexhaustible and Parasitic Aura. And if you're running Efficient Adaptation you're not running a different adaptation. My point isn't where your set's recovery sits in relation to Bio, because nothing should be as strong as Bio is. Not even Bio should be. My point is that you've taken a positional defense set, taken the melee portion out of it, and then given it ridiculous resists to common types and also plenty of room to slot procs without slot investment. Hard pass. No thank you.

You can, however, create a character with the existing Huge body type that is recognized with female pronouns by the game engine. Just exit character creation with your first costume slot using the Female body type, and then visit an ICON surgeon or Facemaker to change any slot other than the default first slot to the Huge body type. In fact, when a character is a musclegiant like that, feminine secondary sex characteristics start to be overwritten by the muscle in the first place. It's why female bodybuilders don't often have much in the way of breast projection, or hips significantly/noticeably wider than their waists. Example: https://i.pinimg.com/474x/f7/fe/76/f7fe7611afd7edadf4a9d43d3e3330fd--womens-bodybuilding-bodybuilding-motivation.jpg (note: bikini and giant muscles. possibly slightly NSFW, but not really)