Shin Magmus

Yes, we could make the SG Base buffs more convenient in a number of ways, but... have you considered my well-reasoned and incredibly useful response to the discussion: "Feels fine to me"

Make the game more obtuse to new players, make badges transform into enemies with stats that scale based on the number of empty slots or SO's in the build. This scaling power is disabled by having all of your slots filled with any other category of Enhancement. Send it. Top Dog has defeated Jimothy Jambles

I just think that it's important to understand that +dmg buffs, without understanding how Kinetics works and what endgame teams often end up like, are simply not as effective as -Res debuffs. If Empathy can't have -Res, then the buff needs to be absurd and do something like give everyone on the team a Fiery Embrace type dmg proc (but Psychic Dmg because of your Empathic mind) that will still matter at the damage cap. If the set remains all buffs, with no debuffs, then it's going to keep getting compared to Nature Affinity and it's going to keep losing. I suggested the powers I did so that Empathy is worth consideration, at all, on 4* Advanced Mode teams. A rework that falls short of making the powerset be good enough to be worth considering, is a failed rework.

Just increase the ToHit Debuff values of Smoke and give it a %chance to inflict Lung Cancer, causing the enemy to die slowly over the next 3 years. Done.

Khelds have hilariously undertuned individual powers, mostly attacks, and currently they require more slots (to spread across all the extra powers they get) but they don't get that resource, so they are spread thin and can't properly enhance and use all of their powers. This statement is accurate in direct comparison to other ATs. Individually, a few PB/WS powers are really good (Inner Light, Light Form, Stygian Circle, etc) but they are attached to a deeply flawed AT, that deals miserably lower damage relative to most of the competition: because of those undertuned attacks.

This forum is hilarious, no wonder we can't get serious inter-AT balance improvements made or fix all of the egregiously underperforming sets. Too many damned contrarians popping in to say "nu uh".

False Equivalence. Wanting Brutes to not be completely outclassed and not worth playing =/= wanting Brutes to solo clear faster than any other AT.

"Feels fine to me"

Everyone: evasive maneuvers. Do not get pulled into the event horizon of the Stupidity Singularity. This game doesn't need *anything* moved towards Sentinel performance.

The most interesting part about this data, to me, isn't any of the inter-AT comparison stuff. It's how slept on Ice Melee still is by the entire playerbase. The good powers in Ice Melee are horrifyingly good, and the bad powers can just be skipped and you can take cross Punch or thematic Ice Epic powers like the new Snipe for Scrappers/Stalkers or old standbys like Gloom. Ice Melee is insanely underplayed relative to its power level.

So do both. Buff Brutes a little bit AND Nerf Tankers a little bit. But not buffing Brutes at all still results in them, at baseline performance, on SO's and walking around alone, getting 50% or less proportionate benefit out of a power like Build Up or Follow Up than the other 3 Melee ATs (not just Tankers, all of them), and that is long-overdue shenanigarglefuckery that really should've been changed and buffed like 10 years ago.

Well if it makes you feel any better, you're far from the only person getting lost. It's so common that it's why I decided to make this thread.

Staggeringly common on Everlasting, as my anecdotal experience. Not every time, but surely around half for me. 25% was an underestimate.

Luminara, try to use perspective-taking and view the map from the perspective of a bad player who did not explore or learn preemptively, and just follows the red waypoint. It's not a problem *for you*, but it only has to be a problem *for 1 person on the team* to hold everyone else up... and it is, and it does.

Please, comment if you've encountered this yourself. I know there are some arrows in the map already, but they aren't everywhere: and people continue to get lost regardless. I can't make random players not get lost, but maybe additional map reworks can.

This time, for real, I speak for many more players than myself. People going into the Vanguard Base in RWZ then getting tricked by the lying Waypoint on Tin Mage Mission 3, and following it to go deeper into the base, then getting hopelessly lost and asking for help to get back out: happens all the time. For the record: I don't personally think that the base layout is too complicated... but I'm not Johny Randumb and Noob Billy. Johny and Billy are wasting several minutes of our time, 25% or more of the time, on TinPex runs. This problem would be even more pronounced if going into and out of the Vanguard Base was required more often. People are confused, people are lost, and the Waypoints now work in a completely different way from how players have been conditioned to understand the distances of waypoints and multiple floors, everywhere else in the game. This happens too frequently and the irritation and slow down are not fun for anyone involved. Just did another Tinpex and on Mission 2 we specifically dropped a Team Teleporter to try and prevent this. Johny and Billy blindly missed the TT somehow, got lost, and we waited for several minutes till someone exited the mission to ATT them to the mission entrance (helicopter) and then we finally finished. This highlights an endemic problem with the RWZ map changes as a whole and player perception. I honestly don't know if there's a solution that will please everyone, but I believe that more texture work needs to be done in the Vanguard Base to try and make obvious one-way arrows pointing towards the Exit Portal or something, because the current situation is really irritating. Is it just a "skill issue" on the part of the lost players? Yes. Does it impact everyone else on the team? Also Yes.

Okay, time to provide correct and honest feedback: Brutes are completely outclassed in the current version of the game and only exist as leftovers from CoV as a standalone game, post-Tanker-Buffs on HC. If the few sets available on Brutes but not Tankers, were proliferated to Tankers: there would be 0 reason to play Brutes. It's not my fault that the game is currently in this state. However, there are at least some low-hanging-fruit easy partial fixes to the problem. Fix 1: Buff Brute self (melee) Defense, Healing, and Resist scalars up from Scrapper values to a midpoint between Scrapper and Tanker values. There is no logical reason that Brutes are inherently as squishy as they are, and arbitrary new bizarre scalar values are an already-opened Pandora's Box if you look at the stupid bullshit going on with Sentinel numbers. Sentinels set the precedent; Brutes should benefit from it. Starting out as tankier than Scrappers and being closer to Tankers will open up a lot more build flexibility in Brutes, and is genuinely long overdue. Fix 2: Re-Tune all damage buff powers on Brutes. This is shamefully overdue and is a natural side-effect of how Fury and dmg scales work, but the proportional benefit from powers like Follow Up, Rage, Power Siphon, and ofc every Build Up, but even stuff like Against All Odds, should be tuned upward to account for the base level of dmg buff from Rage. Brutes will still have a weakness where they benefit less from outside dmg buffs (including Inspirations) going on in the team, but there is no logical or fair reason for a Brute clicking Build Up to get so much less proportional value out of the power than the 3 other Melee ATs. Both of these fixes are just numbers tweaks. Also both of these fixes are MINOR! Neither of these numbers tweaks I am suggesting will make any difference on an Advanced Mode Comp when your defenses are capped by Barrier Spam and your offenses are capped by a Kinetics user. Brutes will still be in a bad spot balance-wise, and in many situations will have all of the same problems. But these buffs are simple numbers tweaks that could be implemented tomorrow: and they would at least make Brute as an AT feel less completely outclassed and useless in 90% of situations (but not fix it at all in the other 10%).

That's how I read it too. Unfortunately, the thing that Smoke Canister does is uniformly less beneficial to the player than the thing that Cages does... which is an issue with the fundamental logic behind why they made the change be this way. It's just a small band-aid so confused Council don't rocket launcher each other out of the group instantly. ...A band-aid that wouldn't even be necessary if-

Did you check if the enemy was also recently damaged and therefore Confused? Remember, many effects in Arse Control are needlessly tied to an "If:Then" condition that may halt them from working at all. For example, Liquid Nitrogen If Knocked : Then Deal Damage, so the power loses 100% of its dmg against enemies that are resistant or immune to KB. Smoke Canister's -KB is tied to enemies being Confused. I'm not saying that it works; I'm just pointing out that it's supposed to be tied to another condition and that condition might not be met. Feel free to test more and let us know, because it would be nice if this got fixed, but post-launch they've added even more "If:Then" conditions to Arse Control so I've completely dropped it.

Imagine when this gets bugfixed and people see Arse Control at its real intended power level, without a glitch/oversight propping it up. It still needs to be fixed, but just imagine the complaints (my damage got cut in half!). The Bonfire thing is especially weird to me.

You took ST Fear on the set with Terrorize: the literal best AoE fear in the game? I mean I guess Fearsome Stare is close but it's more of a tohit debuff power primarily. The ONLY situation I can see a Mind Controller wanting a ST fear is to stack Mag on Bosses, but even that's pretty low value since the effect doesn't even give you Containment. As for every Minion and Lieutenant in the fight: Terrorize should keep them all perma-Fear'd.

Also Concealment's Capstone power is an AoE Placate, so it might not be feasible for there to ever be an AoE Placate in another pool powerset... for balance reasons.

THE FISTS OF VULCAN!

I think giving -Range and better values to the Provocation pool powers, but keeping them at I dunno like 75% of what Tankers and Brutes get in their primary, feels completely fair and fine. This would certainly make it more likely to get taken. I also think that a buff to the final power might be in order, and maybe Unrelenting can give a Taunt Aura while active?

I specifically try to mention that the Lusca hunt will give 22 Reward Merits when I recruit, and I've seen other people start doing this as well in LFG. Though, when I'm online, I'm generally the first person to start the GM hunts in response to the Zone Event messages. I'm just saying that the interest I see in Lusca is far less than the other faster monsters.