Shin Magmus

The smaller number of ticks but for higher damage will not only be less laggy, but make the set feel more impactful. And now that every power contributes to Attune, the option to skip more attacks is back on the menu. This should improve the set's performance, but its issues in terms of playing it will be about the same as before.

I did re-read the most current patch notes, the issue is that they are still wrong. One position the HC staff clearly needs is an Editor, because they leave in blatantly wrong text and/or typos in patch notes or in-game extremely often. Remember how we all thought Sonic Thrust did a Repel cus they forgot to proofread their text and change that? So next time, they need to fix the patch notes to say Attune is boosted by all Sonic Melee attacks if that's how it works.

This was brought up, but quickly refuted by the fact that level 1 lasts approximately 30s and you have Brawl + Origin Power + Vet Powers + Temp Powers, so it's a non-issue.

Sonic Assault's -Res effect scalars and durations are incorrect and do not match the values Doms should have relative to all other ATs, specifically after the Sonic Attack recent changes. I already made the thread on the Suggestions forum. As for buffing the melee attacks... well maybe, but only if they still have parity with Sonic Melee in whatever form it takes.

Well Earsplitter is a shared attack from some other sets so it's just using the same animation as those. If they made an alternate animation for it, I'd like to see that backported to Sonic Manipulation and Sonic Assault as well. Ultimately, I don't think the animations are ever going to please most people because you are in fact just yelling at people with this set. The animation doesn't bother me as much as the more pressing mechanical issues.

Good job compiling that Wravis. I think it's fine to actually just call this out right now: specific ideas become set in stone very early in Homecoming testing/feedback cycles and then all feedback requesting changes to those ideas functionally gets ignored. They don't want us to bring up previous powersets or patches but this is a pattern of behavior. This has happened before, multiple times, and we are justified in bringing it up. Don't let Sonic Melee end up like Cone Devour Psyche on Psy Armor Scrappers. Psy Armor players universally hate dealing with it as a cone AND it has mechanical anti-synergy with the rest of the armorset: you need to hit the enemies in melee range first to utilize the bonus effect of Mask Presence, then jump back out of melee range to try and line up the cone Devour Psyche... that's genuinely bad design and it's because 2 ideas are clashing with each other. It's okay to admit you were wrong.

I'm excited to try it on Live by providing the specific numerical edge needed to swing things back into our favor with my Poison/Fire Defender. Defender scalars on debuffs are going to matter a lot when they get further reduced by the increased effects of The Purple Patch.

Gentle reminder that the game before lv21 is tutorial baby-mode, and worrying too much about specific progression in this artificially ultra-easy "Beginner's Luck" phase of the game (that many people skip) is not important. I'm more interested how people feel about the set from lv22-50.

Just so you know, I did make a Ninja MM to test the changes and I was immediately disappointed but partially because I didn't read thoroughly, and partially because the changes are a nothingburger. I don't want to slot MM ATOs into Smoke Flash, not at all. ATO sets offer superior set bonuses and strong stats, so I don't mind slotting the sets into pet powers and giving up 1 slot in my pets to also drop the ATO Pet Aura IO, which provides another strong set bonus. What I want to do is save the other 4 slots from the other 4 Pet Aura IOs and drop those into Smoke Flash, the same way Necromancy can drop them into their T7. That is the change that would actually benefit the players and truly equalize and standardize MM primaries. It would've been incredible if I could've put things like Edict of the Master and Expedient Reinforcement for example, but I can't. So after testing the changes and finding that they don't actually benefit me in any way, I won't be changing my slotting in any way.

I won't be playing the set in any serious capacity either in further beta testing or on Live, because constantly toggling Attune onto enemies isn't fun to me.

That definitely works too.

What if you try implementing it as another new mechanism? Toggle Attune was very clunky to use, so maybe click Attune can summon an invisible pet or psuedopet that just attacks the last enemy you hit with any of your single target Sonic Melee attacks. That pet could persist and keep switching targets and attacking them, with its damage checking the same flags set by your other attacks that it currently uses: except make it be all single target Sonic Melee attacks and not just the T1/T2. I don't think you'll ever really get the playerbase to like being forced to use their T1.

This basically needs to be a PSA to the playerbase so they know which IOs need to be swapped around. This is a buff of course, since it allows more direct dmg enhancement or procs into Enforcers by freeing up a slot in them, but people who are unaware will get blindsided by the next update and find some of their slotted IOs stop working.

We "let them cook" increasingly convoluted gimmick sets every fucking update. Think about the context in which Sonic Melee is getting this feedback, it comes after 3 or 4 failed gimmick sets that people do not like. Seismic Blast's gimmicks still don't even work correctly.

It's even worse than that. The 12% dmg bonus is added on top of enhancements in the power AND Supremacy's dmg buff AND Assault's dmg buff: any serious MM will have Leadership so you have to count all of this. If you're using Musculature Alpha as most (but not all) MMs are, your frankenslotted proc-slotted pets will probably be somewhere between 90% and 130% dmg. Let's use the high end for this math... 130% (enhancements) + 25% (Supremacy) + 11.25% (Assault) = 166.25% Your set bonus damage (if you chased it) is +12%. So 166.25% + 12% = 178.25% 178.25 / 166.25 = 1.072 So all that effort boosts your pet damage by an effective whopping 7.2% maximum, even less depending on how much comes from procs and how much your secondary set contributes. That's the thing about Shin Math: I lay out all the cards and try to account for (and explain) the full environment. I'm not saying anyone else here leaves details out, I'm just saying that I don't. Damage bonus is a pretty awful set bonus on players for the reasons above, but it's especially terrible on MMs (as of the current beta patch). Also remember that teammates providing you with extra damage buffs will completely erase your efforts (especially Kinetics). One Corruptor or Controller running Assault is +15%, which is more than all of your sets.

Emphasis mine, 50% is not that much stronger than 40% but it's 100% easier for many people to quickly calculate in their head. I know the HC shtick is making things needlessly convoluted, but how about a nice "divide by 2" here. I promise MMs won't be overpowered.

I agree with the tweaks to the patches regarding HP. I have 2 fairly optimized MMs, but I don't play them much and have no desire to make more because MMs face a laundry list of issues that no other AT has to. The various AI shenanigans, clunky movement, slow speed, and inability to understand terrain/pathing means that MMs are categorically slower at moving through a map, and especially at STEALTHILY moving QUICKLY through a map to hit certain objectives while bypassing others, than *every other AT in the game.* This immediately relegates MMs to F-tier below human-only Khelds and Sentinels on something as simple as mission 1 of a MLTF: where the MM is incapable of getting their pets to the web parts quickly and uh... alive. The AT has so many weaknesses: that alone makes it okay (maybe even expected) for them to be strong in direct stationary combat. But MMs have never been generally strong outside of extreme niche situations, and one of the biggest issues has always been how quickly T1 and T2 pets could die (no one-shot protection.) I strongly advise looking at further tweaks to the formulas to not hurt new MM players running +0 content, because that HP change was a gutpunch to these players and I'm glad it was reverted. Their baseline performance really has no justification for being nerfed, please keep this in mind. I was already working on respecs with tons of Max HP set bonuses just to keep my MMs playable. I think the wider community in this game really still doesn't understand just how slow and frustrating MM gameplay actually is. Most people don't play them well, or don't have experience actually moving well and speedrunning content. Human control + combat mobility (Combat Jumping, Hover + EM, or Combat Teleport) allows a non-MM AT to move between targets easily at a speed on average 300% to 400% faster than the MM pets. Even with all the keybinds set up, when you use a "PetCom_All GoTo" keybind and command your army to move onto the spot near that boss, they genuinely sit there and think about it for a bit. Then they try to run over, get stuck on terrain, get stuck on themselves, randomly doubleback on their path intermittently like drunkards, and eventually 4-5 of them get there but 1 is still stuck because who the fuck knows why. Now you issue your attack command via another keybind but your pets are still partially staggered, and the stuck pets are using their weaker ranged attacks instead of their stronger melee attacks. This is just the performance on mostly flat ground: add stairs to the equation and cut your DPS in half at least. MM issues pervade every facet of actually playing the AT in a real mission, and these Pylon tests do not tell the whole story.

Did anybody ask for a melee set with a single-target toggle that you have to put on the enemy repeatedly? Anyone? Does anyone like this idea? Put me down as a hard "No" for Attune as it currently works: not fun.

No. Assassin's Strike has to generate self-stack mechanics integral to the powerset otherwise Stalkers would objectively be at a handicap compared to Scrappers/Brutes/Tankers. Self-affecting buffs need to happen in AS or Stalkers would be behind all of their contemporaries while using their best attack and main equalizer. It's completely different from baking -Res into AS. This is exactly like if Titan Weapons Stalkers existed, lost Rend Armor, but got the -Def and -Res added to AS instead. That would be insane.

Since no one is going to point it out, there is an actual issue with the Stalker version of the set being quite literally THE ONLY STALKER MELEE SET where AS has a "rider" extra effect. That's inconsistent with the rest of the game to a level I'd call design failure. I would highly recommend the first change internally being giving Stalkers back Sandman's Whisper and taking away one of the meme powers like the knockback or Sonic Clap instead: the powers that many players are actually going to skip. Having all AS powers be normalized in damage (they should also be normalized in animation time) is an important fundamental aspect of Stalker design and balance. It is very very very weird to me that the balance/design teams think it's okay for one AS to not only have a rider, but for that rider to be -Res. Seriously, just me huh? I have other issues with the set but that is the biggest thing that needs changing. I have a feeling it was brought up in Closed Beta but ignored.

So... still doing more new powersets ahead of / instead of buffing the existing underperforming powersets I guess. I'll still wait for the significant buffs or reworks to Badsword, Kinetic Melee, Psionic Melee, and Staff Fighting. Someone else can engage with Sonic Melee, not it.

HARD NO. Venomous Gas is one of the best powers in the entire game except on MMs, where it is much worse. The toggle being on you means you're in complete control of where it is and can easily make it affect all enemies in a fight. Similar powers like Sonic Disruption are quite a bit more annoying because you have to hope that you have a fast and cooperative teammate, and you can't reasonably expect another player to move exactly where you want them to. With a pet you can sometimes crudely command them into ideal melee positions, but we all know it's like herding cats and they are flat-out slower than players. You are your most reliable ally.

They also only needed to target 40% Def, not 45%, if they run Defense Amplifier 24/7 like most farmers. I don't know if their MIDs build had it toggled on or not, but a farmer can easily sustain perma-Offense/Defense Amplifiers.

I was just talking about that issue yesterday in the Discord, Ukase. There's a minimum ratio of 50s to lowbies that needs to be maintained for a ToT League or a MSR League to work. Step 1 of fixing the problem involves admitting that you're being selfish while on the nearly useless lowbie. That's something everyone needs to admit and come to terms with before it's even possible to continue the discussion. Everyone wants to level their lowbies, but not everyone can at once, so the fair thing to do is to take turns. This is a fairness concept called "paying your dues." Unfortunately, CoH forums are the wrong place to even attempt to teach a basic course on Sociological "fairness" concepts.

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