Megajoule

If I may: The OP doesn't seem to be asking for advice, but whether anyone else out there has felt an urge to compete or seek maximum challenge in this game which other games, for whatever reason, do not tend to evoke?

or for raising the zone cap a bit, so that we don't have to chase every single person who isn't on the raid out of the zone. (which is impossible when some of them are AFK, a problem which making them be level 35 or above does nothing to solve.)

orrrrr, you could just play an Energy Blast/Invulnerability Sentinel, Tech origin, with an appropriate costume. IMO, we don't need unique powersets and/or ATs for every single concept.

One of my concerns is that this hypothetical AT is practically tailor-made for multi-boxers, as a full-support appendage for the damage-dealing main. Lack of soloing ability ceases to be an issue when they're never intended to, just be a pocket ______ dragged around by a brute/blaster/etc.

The difficulty, IMO, is partly the mechanics of making it possible and partly (as I've said before) that both Sturgeon's Law and Dunning-Kruger are in full effect when it comes to player-created content. (tl;dr - most of the submissions, even the non-troll/non-farm ones, would be utter #%$@.)

Yeah, I'll say it again: While I do appreciate the work Leo did on the LFG version, and all the little QoL things like adding a timer and re-enabling the Priests (that apply to both the zone and trial versions), I still feel that a simpler and more practical solution would have been to just raise the player cap in the RWZ (not the Hive) back to some round number greater than 50 (I'd prefer 100 just for consistency and plenty of wiggle room).

Sounds perfect for the hardcore Trinity fans. 😛

I'm not Captain Powerhouse, but from following this and other threads, I'm pretty sure that what you suggest can't be done. Picking T1 and/or T2 from the powerset itself - not a pool - is baked into the code, at the most basic level.

I'm guessing this is a team-only AT that isn't meant to ever solo?

Bricks. (oh, wait.)

With some sympathy, 'cause I've done similar (but only with lower-tier powers... so far...) IMO, no. Consider this one of life's lessons - be more careful and read before you click "create" ("buy", "sell", "combine", etc etc).

No. It's been stated in several other threads that the Cryptic devs had to invoke several awful kludges just to get the Arachnos uniform slot working at all, and nearly broke the rest of the system doing it. That entire section of code is basically a closet full of caltrops, bar-bells, and springs under tension. DO NOT OPEN.

Counterpoint: the Brute doesn't have to deal with a 2xRage crash. (Yes, I'm aware that many don't want the Tanker to have to either.)

IMO, what this really proves - again, as if it needed to be - is that humans are bad at randomness, and discard data that doesn't fit with their expectations and assumptions. Good luck is taken for granted, while bad luck "feels" unfair and biased. A perfectly fair 50-50 coin-flip, or even one rigged 80-20 in our favor, feels unbalanced because we don't like to lose, and so we put more emotional weight on the negative outcomes, remember those more strongly. Game designers can either cheat even more blatantly on behalf of players - who will, again, only notice the times they don't succeed - or the player(s) can recognize their biases and try to get over them.

Only if I get /e yellatcloud .

My Inv/SS tank (currently shelved for other reasons) does not have Rage, for reasons explained earlier in this thread. While I was aware that his damage was generally low, I simply chalked this up to "being a tank." It wasn't until I started reading the forums that I became aware just how badly the set suffers (compared to the performance of others) and is imbalanced around a single power.

I probably miscounted slightly, but the practical upshot is that Granite's exclusivity means you can run the rest of the set, or Granite. The other powers are absolutely worth taking, IMO, but once you hit level 32 (or 38), you're faced with an almost purely binary choice. Many of the other armor sets used to be non-stacking as well, but this was fixed long ago. Only Stone remains. (Fitting, I suppose, but...)

"It's not fun to miss." Well, you're right - that's subjective, a perception, an opinion - and there's no way to argue against that. "It's not fun to be defeated." (Based on the rest of your post, and see above.) Would you find it more fun if the risk of failure and/or defeat was entirely removed? If not, how do you suggest that we retain that risk, that challenge, while doing away with the possibility of missing?

I love my Stone/Stone for his concept, but the power set Granite* has three strikes against it: (1) Slowwwwwwwwwww, tele-tanking only, etc etc. (2) It renders the previous 8 7 powers irrelevant - you can still run Rooted, but that's it. (3) It replaces your character with an utterly generic model. * I typed what I typed, and then I realized that it was really all about Granite, which is the problem. (Stone Armor: It's All About Granite.)

Based on my own recent experience taking a Mind/Psi dom (so, not a controller but very very close) through Praetoria, solo by necessity and/or hard-coding for many missions, that is definitely not the point. I was downed repeatedly by, among other things, stacked-up waves of ambushes that I couldn't keep locked down before the rest of them murdered me. I wish I had been playing a melee character, like my old EM/Willpower brute (Resistance/Warden). He might have been durable enough to survive. If anything, I'd say "the point" of the new content is that it is hard for everyone. I don't believe it's intended as an introduction to the game; it's for people who've already beaten it, probably a couple of times. These are not your classic Hellions and Skulls; Ghouls, Seers, and D.U.S.T. Rangers will hand you your ass if you just charge in.

... what? No, we are creative, and we want to see the product(s) of that creativity. Not a generic DE model, same as every other Granite tanker (and several DE critters). So let's just toss out the much-lauded character creator and represent all characters with simple geometric primitives, like cubes or spheres. They're just going to get lost in all the power FX anyway, right?

Hard disagree.

You left out the most important part, IMO: Let us actually see our character, not completely replace them with a generic DE model, because the devs went for the cheap/fast solution back in 2004. And yes, those other things too.

Orrrr you could wait those few seconds, now and then. It is, as even you admit, not that much time. Enhance your calm.

My squishies (controller and dom) die in the sewers, to the Rikti pylons et al, a lot. A lot. And during the Battle Maiden fight, they can't use their full lock-down abilities, because that has a chance to freeze the Champions inside the blue flames where they're (temporarily) inaccessible to the meleers. I don't complain, I don't ask for the TF to be changed to accommodate the specific weaknesses of those ATs, and I've hardly ever been complained at for, e.g., dying too much. Mostly everyone else is too focused on doing the best they can, not dying themselves, etc. And through hard experience, I've learned some mitigation strategies too. Most of them amount to "be more mobile", break LoS, don't stand in the fire, etc. Dash in, lay down a few melee attacks, and run back out. Thinking, and moving, rather than standing there punching or blasting away. What a novel concept.