Bill Z Bubba

I'm interested in balance.

No. I want nothing short (and apologies to my SG for this who have stated plainly that they disagree) of the complete removal of all level shifts for players and enemies from the game. +4 should be +4, full stop.

I'm not saying it's a cakewalk. Even standard Carnies can fark me up at +3 (+4 with 1 lvl shift.) And yea, when you get a bad combo of Incarnate BP bosses they can put a world of hurt on ya. Because they SHOULD be able to. They're incarnate level nasties. And if I decide to face them at +4, they should BE +4.

Wish I didn't find it to be true but I do. Removing level shifts completely from the game should be the first step toward an overhaul toward balance. Yes, that includes all the enemies that get lvl shifts while you fight them like Praetor Sinclair in Belladonna's arc. Edit: And, yes, I did solo him at +4 (+7 by the end of it) on a freaking sentinel that was +3ed.

All true. And also points to why level shifts are garbage. I get max diff rewards while only fighting +1s in DA. I get that they were designed to be tougher than normal spawns, but they're not tougher *enough* because the level shift is far greater than the buffs they have as enemies... but only when the level shifts are present. Fight those same spawns without levels shifts and yes, they are noticeably tougher than PI spawns.

I just find it sad that so many think logic is the enemy of chaos. Change is neither good nor bad. Our species, in general, reacts poorly to change but it took change to get us out of the oceans and more change to get us down from the trees and a whole ton of change for us to set foot on another piece of our solar system. Being resistant to change is often far more negative than the change itself.

He carried the terra sky to the groove after toasting it.

If we're all just edge cases then what we can do doesn't matter does it? Might as well spend some cycles bringing about balance within and between archetypes and powersets. It'll bring up the bad performers, bring down the over the top performers and then Joe Average will have an even better time because he'll have to think about even less while playing.

Why *almost* no one? Why hedge your statement? Either we can or we can't. If we can, why can we is the question. If we can't, why can't we is the question. If we shouldn't ... I don't care about that word. Lots of things in the universe *should* be one way or the other and aren't. The only way to get to what you have stated here is a complete and global nerf.

And yet I consider +4/x8 to be the standard difficulty level for maxed out characters while being one of the people calling for a more balanced game. It's almost as if blanket statements about other players are often false.

Fix the tense, fix the flow. The blacksmith, in the back of the mocha, race(d) to the dawn, toast(ed) the terra sky and carried it to the groove. The back of the fire passed on, and you got to it, always proudly winding the word that the wolf's blood was flowing. You knew who to keep and they kept us together while we were in trouble.

How's that ITF goin? 🙂

SR/Claws (and Claws/SR) Musculature - More Damage Degenerative - More Damage Assault - More Damage Barrier - Prevents More Incoming Damage Pyronic - More Damage Carnies - More Damage + Heal + Buff for More Damage + More Sexy

Makes perfect sense to me. Kinda pretty, really.

While I do use barrier for all my crazy solo crap, I absolutely find that I always try to hit the whole team with it when I am teamed. It probably would fix a lot of the game's issues if incarnate powers just turned themselves off in non-incarnate content but should such a thing happen, there will be a LOT of very ticked off players. Just removing the level shifts from (both the +1 from regular and/or all of them completely) is an idea I've asked around about and lots of folks did not like it.

It wasn't just the crappy pylon time. Realized over time that the sound FX were grating on me.

I just started a new purge process. I suspect my base bins will be quite full with good stuff shortly. Yea, there are going to be several 50s nuked from orbit. Mostly tanks. Future plans? Have a fire/plant blaster that I've been enjoying. She does play more like a dominator with better damage. Beyond that? Time to get busy on accolades for my existing T4ed 50s that don't have em yet.

It's apparently great for stalkers. The set's never felt right to me and I was one of the people absolutely ecstatic to get it. Finally, I could play a straight up Fisticuffs set and not have to cobble it together from boxing, kick and air superiority on an intentionally gimped super strength character. But even back before the snap, something never felt right. I've got SJ/Inv and SJ/WP brutes. The WP will probably get deleted as superfluous. I'll keep the Inv just cuz I like her concept, but won't ever expect much from her. I think it's the gimmicks. They just don't work out for me. Dual blades combos. Titan's momentum. StJ's combos. Staff's forms. (Granted, I do have a staff/bio that just lives in Body/Offensive modes, but even there I end up NOT using the attacks that would remove the lvl 3 overall damage buff) Even Beam weapon's disintegration is apparently frelled. I get the flavor thing but when the flavor detracts from the set instead of making it better then it's a bad flavor.

I'll be deleting my beam/bio. On the plus side, my fire/bio sent just soloed Proctor Sinclair at the end of Vertrano's arc as a 54+3 AV.

APP/PPP pools appear to crit, yes. Why those and not regular power pools and brawl would appear to be nothing more than an oversight in coding. Ummm, scratch that. Air Superiority has a crit chance listed. Boxing and Kick are also stating a 5% chance of special damage. Flurry lists it as well. Brawl appears to be the only one that doesn't. I stand very corrected. Now whether the powers ONLY have a 5% chance to crit or go to 10% for LTs, Bosses, etc is unknown. Verified Kick crits. Set it to auto against an AV. I'd need to analyze the logs but it sure seems like it's only 5%. Which is wrong against an AV.

The AT IOs can be slotted very early. (Is it lvl 1?) At 50 you can use enhancement catalyzers on them to make them superior which improves the base states of the set.

Just gimme Wolverine level regen and I'll take over the planet.

I can certainly see the argument for allowing brawl and all power pool attacks to crit for scrappers. Perhaps that's something else @Captain Powerhousecan correct moving forward. EDIT: CPH, ignore except for brawl. But if you could verify that all pool powers crit as per normal crit rules (5% for minions but 10% for everything else) and that the scrapper AT IOs increase those chances, that'd be awesome.

Nah, you can stick in whatever attack. It's a one shot activation that doesn't last very long. No clue how it would act in, say, a damage toggle but I bet someone around here does.

If you're talking about the AT IO crit procs, the Scrapper's Strike Crit Bonus is passive and can be slotted anywhere, doesn't need to be activated. I have it in Swipe as the only slot/enhancement, for example, and swipe is never in my power tray. The Critical Strikes +50% Proc, however, must be activated. I've got that full set in Followup so that when it fires off, I'll have a much higher crit chance on focus and slash.