Tad Cooper

I'm perfectly aware of what power creep is. I'm also aware that we're talking about two ATs that are at basically the bottom of the balance heap and that whenever anybody talks about doing anything to them the first response is "power creep". So forgive me for not taking you seriously, because there's plenty of power creep in the game already, and one man's power creep is another man's necessary balance adjustment. As for my performance, well, I'm certainly willing to take criticism from a master. I mean, look at you! Listing out logical fallacies like that somehow constitutes an argument. Truly you have a dizzying intellect. Classy. It's almost like different concerns merit different arguments. *sigh* I need an eyeroll reaction so badly, but fine, I'll bite. We don't give them those things because they're different enough to define a niche. Corruptors and defenders are not. Why did we buff tankers? Because there was no point in making one when you could make a brute. Why are people already asking for the bat to go the other way? Because now there's no point in making a brute when you can make a tanker. tho0ghtGun here is saying that there's no point making a corruptor when you can make a defender. See where I'm going with this? Even if you come up with a unique role for both, as the devs tried to do with tankers, the complaints will begin. As far as I see the only solution is to make them equal, and to not take away anything in the process, or you just end up back at step one with "There is no point to making <x> when <y> exists." So yes, my response to "I think it's a stupid idea and I like them separate," was, "Why? This can only make characters better. No one is getting nerfed, or surpassed." For that matter, if someone's toes were to be stepped on we'd catch it before it went live and discussion would happen about what to do. Off the top of my head, the 30% solo bonus would probably cease to be necessary at corruptor damage levels. So that might have to go or be reduced so solo corrupt-fenders don't somehow surpass blasters as the damage kings. Had you responded with an example likes this, I'd have taken your concerns more seriously. Or at least, responded more politely. Which was.... what, exactly? Buffing/blasting, right? What's a defenders clear role? Oh, buffing/blasting. Unless you manage come up with another niche in a game that is already overstuffed, I don't see how any mechanism we could implement doesn't result in some defender six months from now making the same exact complaints you did in the OP. Even if we nerf damage procs (which I believe is already on the table, so you may get what you wished for) you'll just get people complaining that THEIR thing can be supplanted by the existing set bonuses when other people's can't. There have been tons of posts like that already. At any rate, I'm eager to see what, if anything, you all come up with. Expanding scourge is certainly interesting.

Why? It's a straight buff.

Yep, that extra .1 ranged damage scalar is gonna shoot defenders right into OP town. I can't remember how much the difference is on the buff multiplier right now but I'm sure that would be just too much for corruptors to have. After all, they almost do as much damage as a brute with no rage. And at RANGE which we all know is just a magic fucking I win button. But you're right. Gonna completely ruin the game. Way too easy for everyone. Cottage rule and balance formulas or whatever.

I said something similar in the brute/tanker debates, and it wasn't received well so I'm sure it won't be here either, but I'll say it again anyway. If it were up to me, I'd just combine them. Give corruptors the defender buff/debuff numbers and vigilance. Give defenders the corruptor base damage and scourge. Make the only difference be what powers you get earlier and flavor text for the inherents. Obviously that makes things more samey, but at this point there's an insane amount of overlap anyway. It might be worth it to try simplifying things.

If we're going to play the "available at launch" game, you realize that you couldn't keep mez protection going at the same time as other powers at launch, right? Armor toggles were exclusive to each other, and mez protection rooted you on at least earth and invuln. Probably the others too, I can't remember. It's only been 17 years... Anyway, Tankers spent a lot of time complaining that they couldn't do their job because of mez and/or not being able to move so that got changed real quick. Not sure why your so rootin' tootin' opposed to people in the present having the same complaint. There's a have/have-not dichotomy between armor and non-armor sets, and removing one of the few options that let's people mitigate that somewhat (given that the power in question is basically the equivalent of a free break free and resistance inspiration every 10 minutes, 3 if you've got an ungodly amount of recharge. Unimpressive, to my eyes) reinforces the idea that only melee classes should matter. Hell, the Arcana people were still explaining how seriously fucked blasters were until the game died. So it took years and years and years for one set "squishies" to get their shit looked at. Frankly, I think the negative response to this change is at least somewhat based on that sour taste. And then we have the more reasonable response that yes, this implies things are gonna get tighter all around for no reason. Let's do it! Let the nerfing begin! Let all the cosmic cat girls look at three minions and despair!

You know what? I agree with Night and Tyrannical. Break frees and Clarion exist, so if you want to avoid mez you should have to use them. This should apply to everyone, so we should remove all mez protect from armor classes, and we should have all toggles drop if you get mezzed. That was what the game was originally balanced around. Then we should implement Parabola's idea.

Why do squishies need mez protection? Well, why do melees need mez protection? Because back in the day getting mez'd killed your toggles, which meant if you got nailed you were super dead in about two seconds. All the Superman and Wolverine wannabes didn't like that. That's not the case any more, so in fact they DON'T need it. No one is entitled to anything. We should remove mez protection entirely. Maybe switch to the PVP rules where it all becomes resistance. If we're sticking with protection, then I don't think OP's idea goes far enough. There are five mez states in this game. Immobilize, Stun, Fear, Confuse, and Hold. We should proliferate those powers among NPCs at all levels, especially the 5th Column because I want to see some salt from the "PI radios! No caves! No Carnival!" people. We should change armor powers to only cover three mez states. We should make sure that every support set ALSO has mez protection for three states, but their power affects the whole team. The trick here is that every set gets a different three states they protect from. You want to be covered in all situations? Get some friends or some break frees. I guess we could let the armor powers affect the whole team too. Balanced. As a side not that I like to bring up every time I see a conversation like this: Y'all get real whiny whenever buffing "squishies" comes up. It's been like this since live. It's always met with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Don't know what you're all so worried about. The defensive gap between melee and ranged has been gone a LONG time. IOs killed it. Melee is still easy mode. Making support classes lives SLIGHTLY easier isn't gonna make it so people don't want to play with you. Also the fact that some of you are genuinely rattling off a fucking pay to win power as if that makes OPs suggestion irrelevant is mind boggling to me. Those are bonuses, not balance. The "use break frees" people have slightly more of an argument, but you're going to have to explain to me how ranged ATs are SO much more powerful than melees that they need to be dependent on the purple candy and melees don't.

I'd assume it's the 10000% resistance then. That's way past capped, so they just fall down and get back up again. Like Chumbawumba. Cool, let's do that instead and we can drop the idea of adding knockback bonuses to Aim, even though I thought it was a pretty cool idea to be able to do a one off knock back in a series of knock downs. You realize that that would literally not change with what I've described, right? Anything not immob'd by tentacles will get knocked back into the patch by Umbral Torrent and take the damage Night Fall does instantly instead of the whole 10 points at level 50 Torrent does. Neat! Anything that's already immob'd should already be in the tar and will get knocked down instead of back, ruining their next several seconds without losing -res. Also why the hell are you using Dark Pit if you've got Fearsome Stare? It's higher mag, wider area, faster recharge. You'll get the LTs and occasionally the bosses. Dark Pit will never give you either unless you combine it with Howling Twilight. I mean, I can't argue with you and Solarverse's aesthetic preference. Mechanically it's inferior. It's animation time is twice as long as Torrent/Umbral Torrent. The same amount of damage (maybe 4 points less) is applied by Umbral Torrent instantly vs the 2.8 seconds of Night Fall. Those two things mean higher DPA for Umbral Torrent, as well as having more options for procs. Aim would give support characters slightly more damage on a set that's fairly weak in that department and make the set more uniform across ATs. In my experience most people wonder why the other sets get it and Dark doesn't. I have to admit that this conversation did not go how I expected. It's frankly amazing to me that y'all are arguing against a straight buff on multiple planes, and not because you think it's overpowered but because you don't want to give up M&Ms for a Reese's cup. Would I have gotten a better reception just asking for Torrent to be made into Umbral Torrent and walking away, rather than trying to appease game balance and mollify people who would suddenly have to deal with knockback? I feel like then I'd hear, "No no. You already have Night Fall. You don't need ANOTHER damaging cone."

It is. And that's a nerf. They made the blaster version as bad as the defender/corruptor version. So it's a throwaway for everyone now! Woo! Notably I just checked in game and the accuracy was increased to 80% at some point but not updated in Mid's, so that's something.

Ok, I double checked. As far as I can tell every controller immobilize except Chain Fences from Electric Control and the Crushes from Gravity Control have either knockup protection or 10000% resistance to knock. The shots with Ouroboros in the background are from live, the green ones are from Brainstorm. If the 10000% resistance works to avoid your concern let's add that instead. Not quite as neat as I'd envisioned but still let's people who absolutely hate knockback avoid it.

I have a five part plan. 1.) Give Defenders and Corruptors Umbral Torrent and Aim from the Blaster version of the set. Replace Nightfall and Torrent. They're both different flavors of bad, slow and weak respectively, which is presumably why they got taken out of the Blaster version. 2.) Add un-enhanceable Knockback Protection of the same magnitude as Umbral Torrent minus point one (or whatever it takes to convert it to knock down) to Tenebrous Tentacles. Similar to controller immobilizes. 3.) Add 98.5% Enhancement (Knockback) to Aim. I think that's the effect anyway. I'm looking at Power Build Up in Mid's. Maybe enhance -ToHit too. T H E M A T I C. Change the power name if necessary. Spooky Focus! Nebulous Concentration! Goth Flex! 4.) Make both cones the same size. Range 60, 40 degree arc sounds reasonable to me, though I know there are formulas for these things that I'm totally ignoring. 5.) Observe how the two cones now make a logical one-two punch. The change to Aim adds a layer of positioning control. Bonus step 6.) Dark Pit sucks. It needs something. Anything! Increased mag, decreased recharge time, increased duration, add some damage. Increase that stupid 60% base accuracy at the least. Throwaway power. Why yes, the cone sizes have been brought up many times before, and I did come up with this entire scheme to not have to use Sudden Acceleration! Thank you for noticing. I thought it was pretty clever too. I can see you typing /jranger.

Actually, I don't know. I was referring to this green bit from the new patch notes. But now I've gone and tested it. Everything works on normal settings, and Long Range Teleporter still works with temp powers disabled. So you can in fact still pop out during that mission.

I figured the idea with removing the VIP pass and the auction house powers was to appease people like me who were complaining that there were too many powers. There are still enough that the menu is a welcome addition, but the missed clicks argument resonates with me. Three ways to get in to bases from practically anywhere (five with day job charges, which seem to load up pretty quickly, or at least faster than I thought) every 10 minutes seems very usable to me in a small amount of testing. I really appreciate the change to the faster animation. I'm also wicked hyped about the popmenu "PowerReady" addition that was just added and is used in the new menu. That's gonna be super useful. I'm not thrilled that MoMLTF is about to get even more annoying, but I appreciate that saying, "Ha ha, I'm a time traveler. Screw you guys I'm out!" in mission 2 is probably against the spirit of the thing. Guess I'll have to figure out how you're actually supposed to leave that map... I don't think I've ever seen anyone do it.

Menu (next to your health/endurance bars)->Options->Graphics and Audio tab->Enable Advanced Graphics Options->Max Particle Count should now be visible. 50000 is the default. Hope it works out for you.

There are several. "/info" is the same as right clicking and picking Info. You can also use "/info_tab #" where 0-1 is the bio, the powers page is 2, etc etc. If you don't have a target selected it opens yours, or you can use "/info_self" and "/info_self_tab #" to always open your own.