dukedukes

I thought about the specific -range value that could work well. There's a possibility of using @Super Atoms suggestion of basing it on an AT value but at the low end ~37.5% would be good as this will be reduced by purple patch to around 25% vs +3. This is around the value I expect would prevent an immediate counter-attack after provoking in most cases, and the out-range distance would still require you to extend yourself a good ways away from where you want the mobs, but close enough so you can try to be useful in other ways while waiting for the mobs to kite over. This would make the power more useful but still laborious to use. Auto-hit has value, especially for utility powers. I think a lot of people would give something up for an auto-hit power. Consistency has value. I only consider taunt useful as a grouping tool, the use cases for simply holding aggro as a non-tank are too slim to consider. Preventing runners (inefficiently), helping a teammate who got too much attention, I can't think of much else. I've used provoke on AV's to help squishier players when we lack a tank but that's about it. Yes you can corner pull and sometimes this works out great, other times not so much. I went into detail on this describing my pull process. I have this power often and because of the lengthy and inactive pull process it heavily limits if the power can be used. I see scrapper taunt as not being applicable to the same scenarios, I wouldn't use it more than a couple times a fight. If I see a boss on the outskirts I'll go ahead and taunt them in. A bunch of Lt's and minions? I wouldn't. It's a weaker version of the tankers taunt mainly expressed through its limited use cases. Provoke is also a weaker version of tankers taunt, but looking at Provoke as a weaker version of a power of a weaker version of power (provoke < confront < taunt) isn't necessarily the frame of reference I would use to look at this problem, I would instead look at Provoke as a different and distinct weaker version of taunt. The Provoke I'm proposing in my suggestion would absolutely not be used by a scrapper or any melee because it isn't enough -range. If they tried to use the power the mobs would stop very early, the scrapper would have to run away from all the other enemies for the taunted mob to close in, that's not going to happen. Melee need larger range reductions, they can't compromise so much on every single use of the power. The suggestion still leaves Provoke as a power requiring you to perform several other actions to effectively use it as a grouping tool, it is better than scrapper taunt in some ways and worse in other ways. Both would be separate and distinct weaker versions of the tankers taunt. This is a point I care about quite a bit, which is AT identity. I wouldn't want Provoke to dominate Taunt or get close to its effectiveness, that's why Provokes other three weaknesses are fine, I just think it needs a small range reduction to make it usable in more scenarios than it is now. If the devs value -range highly enough even at lower values then so be it, that's up to their judgement, I can only raise the suggestion and I'm fine with disagreeing on perceived value.

I have pointed out power pools should be weaker, Provoke passing the boolean state of being weaker is too simple of an argument. I listed four weaknesses and pointed out many of them make sense. The question is about scale or how much weaker the power should be. Let's exhaust the steps to complete a taunt pull for two characters: Tanker 1. Maybe move to target but probably not 2. Press Taunt 3. Very rarely some enemy types may have gigantic range, moving 10 ft could do the job in most cases I suspect Provoke 1. Likely move to target as you could be positioned anywhere and have shorter range, not the middle of a pack like a tanker 2. Press Provoke. Because you are closer and with lack of -range the targets may attack you immediately which slows the pull 3a. Move 30-80 ft away from where you want the mob to run to. There is a big cost involved in this movement as you may not be able to use some powers effectively at your new position 3b. Maybe you block line of sight if it's feasible. This position may prevent you from using powers on any enemies til the taunted target reaches its destination but this isn't always the case. The best case is very similar to a tank! It doesn't always work out this way though 4. Wait however many seconds til the enemy reaches the destination. Depending on pathing this could be your entire taunt duration or more in really bad cases. Pathfinding can suck 5. Move back to where you would prefer to be I still use Provoke and may be the only person who does but the dance I do to make it function is a bit much. I'm cool with jumping through hoops to make it work, I'd just like the hoops to be a bit closer together. Please compare this process to the abomination that is Fold Space. The pool looks dated, the ST fear CD seems too big, Unrelenting's stats are nothing special for its uptime though the rez is cool. The AOE fear is fine. If there were a rework I'd like to see a toggle, I don't really care what it does in terms of debuff, damage, etc, but it should have a radius that pulls mob aggro like a taunt aura with or without taunt, much like poisons Venomous Gas pulls aggro on nearby targets.

It could be. I posted a bug for this, hopefully it doesn't nerf a future characters taunt.

Brute taunts apply -range to the main target or all affected targets depending on power set. I guess this could be a differentiator between power sets but it seems like it could be a bug, so I'm making this topic just in case. Examples: Battle Axe, main target only: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=brute_melee.battle_axe.taunt&at=brute Fiery Melee, all affected targets: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=brute_melee.fiery_melee.taunt&at=brute As a taunt enjoyer I don't think applying -range to one target would be a good differentiator between tanker and brute, in case that's the intention.

IMO Brutes should reduce range for all affected targets. It would be unfortunate to select a primary based on the taunt behaviour.

Apparently Brute taunts are all over the place, I never play them so that's news to me. I tested with Fiery Melee and it reduces range for all targets.

Maybe it varies between mobs but tanker -range is 75% when applied to its target, probably due to some -range floor on the mobs attribute sheet. This is what I see using the power analyzer anyway. Brutes taunt does apply the -range to nearby targets but you're right about scrappers taunt being single target. Scrapper taunt is also a 3 second recharge vs 10 seconds for everyone else, so scrappers taunt is situationally more efficient (taunting 2+ stragglers not near each other). Scrappers aren't tanks so the suggestion wouldn't hurt their identity much. Scrappers do also get the lovely auto-hit behaviour. The suggestion asks for a marginal improvement toward the core purpose of why anyone would use taunt in most scenarios. A 25% or 50% reduction would require extra effort to make it work, you'd certainly have to make up the difference in range by moving your character to kite the taunted mob where you want it to be, so the disadvantage implied by Provoke being a power pool power would still apply.

Building defense is an issue of reconciling what you want vs what you need. Some characters need high defense to function, you may prefer to play aggressively potentially taking alphas not as a tank, or the content is more demanding (unless you put on the Barrier kid wheels). For most players and builds you don't need to go nuts on defense. If you really enjoy a particular character you should experiment, respecs are cheap. Try dropping the fighting pool and see how it goes, and other things. On my favourite character I've performed dozens of respecs to fine-tune them. For team play the characters I've seen that may want higher defense investment (to what degree varies) is generally any character hanging out in melee range like blappers, some doms, scrappers, tanks, anyone with an aggro aura (poisons Venomous Gas, etc). My grav characters are played very aggressive so I max ranged defense for those.

The entire Presence pool could probably use a rework or rebalance but for this topic I'll focus on Provoke. My stance is Provoke is drastically weaker than melee taunts, it's still usable but I think it could receive a bump in effectiveness in one way, but first I'll show a comparison: Provoke uniquely (for taunts) requires an accuracy check in pve. The Melee_Taunt AT value (this modifies your taunt duration) on characters you would take this power on (non-melee) is quite low, the taunt duration is only 8.24 seconds compared to 23.1 seconds for a scrapper taunt or 41 seconds for tankers. Even Sentinels get this awful duration. 10ft less range than melee taunts No -range reduction. Melee taunts apply -75% range, so when you taunt most mobs will run straight to your face. The first 3 downsides listed can be improved with slot investment, which is great. I think power pool powers should require more investment to be feasible to use. Let's talk about the -range though: melee basically just get their taunt power for the -range, and Provoke doesn't get a lesser version of this, it doesn't get -range at all. My suggestion is to give this power a lesser version of the -range debuff, somewhere between 25% to 50% -range. I'll address the main argument against this change. A ranged player could Provoke and stay at a far distance from the target to never get attacked, this is a good argument! My counterpoint to this is this is possible anyway with enough +range, Provoke then would only enable this strategy in smaller areas where you can't stand far enough away. This change would improve the usability of Provoke for the general use purpose of why you would taunt in the first place: to get mobs to run to you. Currently with Provoke to get mobs moving you have to move very far away beyond their range or line-of-sight. Having to move away less would make the power much more usable, but still appropriately weaker than melee taunts.

Nice work! It's disappointing grav parses so poorly, you'd hope it would be closer to the top for single target given its "damage" powers and not so hot for 4x8 naturally.

I agree and did recommend changes to make Black Hole better, hopefully it's revisited.

Jaunt is worse than combat TP primarily due to the activation time, the recharge on it could be a problem in some scenarios. The range on Jaunt is nice though. The experimentation power pool doesn't have much that interests me personally though I'm sure there's some merit. I like everything in the TP pool so my perspective is there's minimal cost in building toward Fold Space. Certainly worth the sacrifice of a defense power, for me at least. I laid out several points already so I won't repeat myself much, but I think in the right scenario to use the power you're going to double or triple the amount of targets you're hitting, which translates to double or triple the damage, cc, debuffs, and for tank taunt auras, aggro. You seem to be reacting to the conga line that forms sometimes, an aoe (not cone) can hit a good amount of targets on the conga line, likely not every target but enough to get good value. The things other than damage I listed are important for more difficult encounters, but even on tutorial difficulty (popping Barrier, etc), the damage increase and combat simplification is enough reason for me to pick it up. Your head is in the wrong place, no alpha or other incarnate power will help you, all that matters is relative level and teleport magnitude. I'll tell you about MSR though: There are two ways to group mobs in MSR, the goal is to get the mobs in the bowl where everyone is, keyword here is IN the bowl, not the rim of the bowl. The typical approach and what I would recommend is playing a tanker and getting aggro on the rikti that spawn next to the grates then pulling them to the bowl via out-ranging or line-of-sighting the mobs into the bowl. You might want to group the mobs before the bowl to refresh the timer on the taunt from your aggro aura so the mobs don't get distracted on the way in, use your own judgement but I would not park the mobs on the rim of the bowl as your team could get in the way. Usually you'd taunt a grate to initiate the start of your pull (nearby rikti become aggro'd to you) but you can Fold Space to get aggro too even if you can't TP the bosses. I won't bother mentioning the second way because it's too hard for most, mysteries can be good.

Thematically it makes sense yeah. The knockback that's problematic I'm referring to comes from your teammates. Your team can knock the mobs away from Singularity.

Even if you have no damage focus it's still really good for proccing force feedback to get things like Wormhole back faster when you have downtime. Sure though, it could be optional with a really active secondary like a Dominator, it would benefit them more than Controllers. I think you'd need to argue the case for homogenization of power order as I don't think it's a given. There's odd power tier placements here and there, if anything this adds some flavour. Grav, Mind, and Illusion I consider to be unique control sets so I'm not surprised by their de-prioritization of a strictly ST hold at t2. Regarding the kb res on aoe immob: it would be incredibly strong for grav as knockback is the only thing stopping mobs from getting sucked up into Singularity. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing though as it does give the set a weakness. You at least get KB res with the ST and AOE holds. Powers/sets having non-homogeneity lets them be more distinct from each other, so this may be hard to argue for.

Gravs must take lift... Who doesn't want to flop their enemy on the ground? It's also the best DPA ST attack you'll get and it can proc force feedback. It's like a win win win power.

My pet cannot speak but would like to. Sure it could be unique to masterminds but as an alternative my controller pet could speak, and I like that.

command all pets: petcom_all Action Stance command a specific pet: petcom_pow "default pet name" Action Stance actions: attack, goto, follow, stay stances: passive, defensive, aggressive The order for action and stance doesn't matter and either can be excluded. examples: /macro_image "PetCommand_Action_Stay" STAY petcom_all stay aggressive /macro_image "PetCommand_Stance_Aggressive" ATTK petcom_all attack aggressive /macro_image "PetCommand_Stance_Aggressive" AGGR petcom_all aggressive /macro_image "PetCommand_Action_Bodyguard" BG petcom_all follow defensive /macro_image "PetCommand_Action_Goto" GOTO petcom_all goto

The patch just made it more clear what Gamma Rays does. It will do a stun, lower accuracy bonus, and do a small knockback which should only knockdown, if anything. In practice the accuracy bonus for AV's can't be lowered unless their accuracy is buffed, the knockdown might not happen, but it can stun AV's for a while. You can use the power analyzer temp power to see if the effects aren't applying as you expect, I've noticed the Gamma Ray text missing sometimes but not sure if the effects are applying or not. It's mostly good for applying a stun.

I would play hardcore if there was any amount of population though I don't expect much of the community would have interest. I expect a pre-incarnate or pre-IO server, no p2w, would have more draw than hardcore.

A solution must be found for the betterment of the server, I am terrorizing teams nearly every day with my boss flopping wormhole. I'm guessing the devs would prefer TP protection be readjusted on all entities to avoid these issues as a "pure" fix, but it seems like a conditional on the power would be enough to get around this, albeit a bit of a hack. Like affecting enemies of or below a certain rank. I looked around City of Data and noticed a power checking if the target is a GM for example: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=controller_control.gravity_control.crush&at=controller, there must be data exposed about the targets rank. edit: the class table here seems simple enough to adjust, assuming it's all-encompassing: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/archetype-data.html Looks like StrMax is the value that determines whether they get TP'd you could just bump everything from 6 to 8 except bosses and bump wormhole mag to 6.1

Wormhole should be able to TP +3 bosses. Now!!! Pretty please...

I don't know how those powers interact but I've seen this with repel effects. I posted a bug here about it:

I was playing my grav troller with a few pyro control users and noticed mobs getting launched so far they were hitting walls on the other side of the room. It appears to be an interaction between Blast Off and Singularity. Here's a clip: Singularity was set to passive, no pyro pet, only Incendiary Aura was used to trigger Blast Off. You'll see a Marksman at the front of this pack get launched to the back of the room. This is weak compared to what I was seeing with other players involved.

Updated for i28p2. It's an incredible patch for the character. Summary: +Singularity is much easier, consistent, and less frustrating to use thanks to pet commands +Gravity Distortion Field has become worth taking providing great damage mitigation on big pulls

I do have a controller perspective on this, sorry I can't speak to how doms are affected or how to improve it as I'm not familiar, hopefully your concerns can be addressed. The persistent patch is better for scenarios where you have several packs of enemies grouped up in one place, Wormhole gets you to two packs (minus some bosses, haha...) and with the right approach the team could be pulling additional packs. It will take a while to defeat them all and the patch would overall apply more mez than a single 16 target use, I expect at least double the total mez duration over the course of the power, and the mez in this scenario has very high value even on strong teams because it's impossible for tanks to take the brunt of the aggro, there's too many enemies. If you were to go pack to pack, or just two packs max I see minimal benefit to the patch over the one-off for controllers. I do these multi-pull scenarios often so I personally benefit a lot from the patch. There are also scenarios in TF's where you're fighting a bunch of enemies in one place for a greater length of time, like with ITF or Market Crash. On my controller on live I don't take Gravity Distortion Field, it helps mitigate damage in multi-pull scenarios like I described but the patch will do this much better to the point it's worth taking.