ForeverLaxx

You can generally get a single pull with any ranged attack. The problems occur when you're not far enough away before using it, don't break LoS during the animation of said attack, the guy you're pulling is in the "vision cone" of his buddies, the attack is a moderate to fast DoT, or that attack triggers its secondary effect (most often only relevant to those that have control as a secondary effect, think stun or knockback/knockdown). That said, TP Foe (now Teleport Target) and Single Target Taunts usually have the most success over long periods of comparison.

Seems this thread just can't stay dead.

Unfortunately, you're just going to get these people to tell you that you're "doing it wrong" and need to "git gud" simply because you took the set for a different reason, built your playstyle and strategy around that reason, and when that playstyle was taken from you you got annoyed that the character you built no longer feels like your character anymore. I'm not going to go too in depth rehashing all my problems with New EM because its defenders don't care about anything other than their own personal playstyle and the numbers said playstyle produce. My problems with the set amount to the "play it this way or you'll suck" mechanic that is the hand-holdy "combo" system. I will never like sets being changed to suit an entirely different playstyle than their original one as that directly changes character identity and feel. If I wanted a combo system melee set, I had a bunch to choose from already. EM didn't need to be another one. EDIT: Hah, the "git gud" comment happened while I was typing this. Imagine my shock

You're right. It's definitely a "me" problem that teams can nuke spawns faster than Boggle takes to animate and no one cares if that Sky Raider Drone is friendly or not. You caught me.

I tend to just blow up the spawn, or afk in mission so long the buffs time out. There's no middleground when I'm soloing, and when in a team, no one cares if I confuse the "buff bot" because they attack and kill it first anyway.

The disconnect you're potentially having is that just because the melee hits hard, that doesn't mean they're meant to hang out in melee for long. "Being ranged" was touted by the (admittedly misguided) original lead Jack as their primary mode of self defense. Would not high power melee attacks, then, be assumed to be "in reserve" for when things got too close for comfort? Blasters, especially those in the early days, had zero ways to stave off incoming damage without going into the Fighting/Leadership pools. Things being in melee range with a character that had zero defensive abilities is essentially a death sentence if you can't A - lock it down, B - get the hell away quickly, or C - blow it to sky high. The melee attacks certainly helped explode things that got too close. Consider the introductory powers in each secondary. They're either all immobilizes, or they're knockbacks. Powers designed to keep things away from you. Powers that don't synergize well with a "melee them, stupid" mindset. Devices is already mentioned, but Energy Manipulation has Boost Range, a power that only helps your ranged attacks by making them, well, even more ranged than before. Blaster secondaries, while primarily favoring melee attacks overall, are a smattering of ranged control, PBAoE control, and even damage auras (personally I think the damage auras are a bad fit for something that needs things to die ASAP, but I digress). Blasters are designed to "melee hard" because they originally needed to in order to survive tough opponents. They're also designed to "range hard" because they have an entire other set, their Primary, that's almost entirely ranged in focus. Some of those ranged sets have a PBAoE that isn't a nuke, and frankly it deals damage too slowly for my tastes but it does supplement the melee attacks. My point is, Blasters are both focused on range and focused on melee, because they're focused on damage as a defense. It's really not that complicated and arguing about which "range" is the one they're meant to be in seems like a waste of time.

To be a little bit of a devil's advocate, the hard-hitting, non-snipe attacks (Power Burst, Blaze, et al) were originally 40 feet without range enhancements which did encourage players to get closer and could somewhat lead into the idea that Blasters are "meant to be blapping" as they just got more and more dangerous the closer they got to you (ie: their hardest hitting attacks were almost all short-/melee-ranged). That said, the point that nukes would bottom your endurance, excluding Archery (which used to be one of the main reasons to even use the set back then), is a huge point against his dogmatic opinion. The existence of Devices, Boost Range, and newer sets like Tac Arrow, combined with the lifting of the endurance crash and pushing the range of things like Power Burst out to "normal" blast ranges certainly run counter to his opinion as well. Honestly, I think it's just a problem with player perception when combined with the game's own narrow categorization. I've never seen Blasters as "just ranged" or "built for melee"; to me, a Blaster is "just damage, at all ranges". Even the term "blaster", used to describe the AT, feels like a misnomer to me. Blasters just bring damage regardless of the range. Getting into a fight about whether they're "meant to be range" or "meant to be melee" is just silly. They're meant to be damage and that's what they do. They hurt things. A lot. To the thread topic, I'll pick the supposed "element" my first character ever had, which was Energy (Blast and Manipulation, if you were curious). Kinetics - May be a stretch, but Kinetic is the manipulation of kinetic energy, so it fits the theme in my opinion. Obviously the best "energy" set in the game as the quintessential force multiplier. There's not much to dislike about any of the powers, though Inertial Reduction and Siphon Speed are sometimes left out of tighter builds that also pick up different/more permanent travel options. Repel with a KB - KD enhancement can also wreck havoc on your endurance if you're not careful. Energy Aura - What was once one of the weakest armors in the game became one of the best, at least for Stalkers. It's still strong on everyone else, though it's reduced access to DDR hurts it somewhat. Then again, we wouldn't have "Strong and Pretty" without this set. Each version of the set, barring Brute/Tanker (though some powers are swapped around, even there) are unique enough to have their own problems, but none of them prevent the set from performing well. Energy Melee - After the update, this set is much better than where it used to be. That said, I still don't like the "hit the lit up ring!" minigame but that's a story for another time. You'll be hard pressed to find someone telling you that EM is weak these days, outside of the still sort of middling AoE (though I prefer it that way). Energy Manipulation - While not as good today as it used to be, that's due mostly in part to the addition of new sets and changes to Blasters as a whole. It's still one of the hardest-hitting secondaries Blasters have access to and can support a "full range" playstyle due to the entirely unique Boost Range power. It even comes with Power Boost if you're looking to amp "secondary" effects, which is a pretty rare power in its own right, too. Energy Blast - Even though Energy Blast is on the low end of this list, it's certainly not a weak set by any real margin. What holds it back is teammate perception regarding knockback and how heavy you're willing to invest in KB - KD enhancements to appease others. Personally, I'd only put them in the AoEs since AoE knockback scatter is hard to leverage properly, but this set does make up for that by having a bevy of powers that will take the Force Feedback proc. The huge amount of player safety inherent in this set also lends it well to a ranged playstyle and you really can't go wrong with it. It's just hard to compete with Fire in the damage department and Dark Blast is much safer overall. Energy Assault - Personally, I think most Dominator Assault sets are lacking and I find this one isn't really an exception. While it does have some of the better blasts/melee attacks from both Energy Blast and Energy Melee, the change to Whirling Hands made it far less attractive than it used to be. Power Boost does get some added bonus for generally being more useful to a Dominator than a Blaster, though with Domination existing already, Power Boost manages to lose "usefulness points" in a high-recharge build. It can help bridge the gap between leveling and min/maxing, so that's something I suppose. Force Field - Another stretch, like Kinetics, but the game describes Force Field as "shells of energy" so I'm counting it. With that out of the way, it's low on the list because of the nature of the game today. Force Field, while still a great set on paper (and one of the few ways some squishies can get access to mez protection), the +Defense it offers is really great... until it isn't. In the late stages of the game, Force Fielders have a hard time finding a niche to fill on their teams when many of them are rocking the defense softcap themselves without their help, relegating shields to just a fancy defense debuff offset. Of course, FF also has access to some very powerful knockdown/knockback effects so it's not all doom and gloom; you just won't feel like your primary purpose is really being leveraged on a "built" team. While leveling, though, you'll be an asset. Kinetic Melee - If Kinetics counts, and since Energy Melee also obviously counts, then Kinetic Melee can be allowed in the theme party. It's a different kind of "generic energy" after all. That said, it's bottom of the barrel for a bunch of reasons. Only Stalkers can seem to get anything out of this set and that's due almost entirely to an interaction with Burst and Hide Crits. Only this set's initial attacks are worth using, making the whole set underpowered, and with the devs wanting to normalize all Stalker AoE to be 50% crit chance from hide (this change was going to happen to Burst, but due to backlash, got shelved for now), Kinetic Melee will need a set overhaul to be worth picking at all. People like the animations of the early powers, but the rest are too slow and the set's gimmick with Power Siphon is far too weak to be leveraged at all. Stalkers, again, prop the set up due to having a traditional Build Up in addition to the 100% crit chance Burst from Hide... but the whole set needs a rework and hits the bottom for that reason.

I'm sure many people would like to have most, if not all, of the "Old TFs" revamped to better fit both the narratives they're trying to tell and to cut back on a lot of the unnecessary fluff missions that only pad out TF times. All those old TFs were originally designed to be tackled over multiple days, after all, even if no one ever really did it that way (fun story: the first Posi I ever did on live was done over the span of 48 hours, with one other person, when our schedules aligned. You couldn't get booted from the server for being afk at the time, and we weren't aware that logging out wouldn't force us to restart, so we just afk'd in game until we both were around at the same time). That said, it's as much work as building an entirely new TF from scratch, doubly so if you want the Posi treatment where it was split into two different TFs. Right now I think the devs' limited volunteer time hasn't reached a point, or the number of volunteers hasn't reached the point, where they could feasibly tackle something like total TF revamps. It would be nice, though.

The animations are what I don't like, or rather, how stiff and ad hoc they are. It can make the character feel a lot slower and looks unpolished, and considering the set was never really complete before the shutdown, it makes sense that it looks and feels the way it does. That said, I have fun with TK Blow and chaining it with Air Superiority to effectively infinitely juggle anything that I can't outright assassinate on my Stalker. It also helps fill the TWENTY LEVEL gap between 6 and 26 where you get ZERO additional attacks in-set. I'll probably end up removing Air Superiority once he gets high enough. It does make me wish there was a decent, entry-level pool attack for some minor AoE though to make exemplaring feel better, but I'm sure that will never happen in a million years. Some people like Boggle, but I personally can't find a good use for it. It's effectively a pure, non-damage, single target control power in a melee damage set and while that's not unique to this set (though more common in ranged damage sets), it gets pushed aside like all the others in my builds even though the AT I use the set on (Stalker) would probably get the most out of it. It's short range, but doesn't break Hide to use, which can be a boon in the right situation. I just haven't found the "right" situation.

Kinda sad, considering the gold bars are painted all over the place. I guess sometimes, when people are looking for secrets, they're looking too hard into the nooks and crannies while disregarding what's front and center.

The "complete this mission" option is the auto-complete option. Do not use that option unless you're having issues with a particular mission or it's bugged as you only get to do that once per 3 real days. When you've gone through a mission normally and it asks you to return to the contact (or you have the call feature), just speaking to them at all should advance to the mission rewards. If you're getting that prompt, you're not fully completing a mission before speaking to your contacts. This option doesn't work for any mission that awards a badge, is the final mission in an arc, or most missions that contain an AV in them (including AVs that were downgraded to EBs in mission difficulty settings).

It's wording like this that contributes to the sentiment that once the devs intend to nerf/adjust something, it's already a done deal. "Additional Ways" says, to me, that this change to KM is happening no matter what because it "must" change, but that maybe it can be "balanced/softened" if additional changes elsewhere are made to the set to cause the nerf to sting less. Is it any wonder that I, and many others, believe that once something hits Open Beta Testing that it's no longer up for debate that an amputation is being made, but rather, that all we're doing is negotiating how far up the leg we amputate?

I just ignore the mechanic entirely. Many of the contrived mechanics aren't worth tracking when the gain is minimal and you often lose effectiveness comparatively in other areas to equal a net loss if you try to manage stacks.

Part of that is because many games today that would have had dedicated forums are instead opting to run subreddits and other social media accounts since it costs them basically nothing to do it. It's pretty bad for some of the "transitional" games I used to play where they originally had a dedicated forum, changed that forum to function more like reddit, then just deleted the forum entirely and exclusively use reddit. Most of the time, the reddit version of their community is full of boot licking for the developer and it's why they prefer it. You're more likely to get dissent on a dedicated forum that's difficult to "run" from. With reddit, anything people don't like gets downvoted into being invisible so all you see is the constant praise floating to the top. Usually.

I've always felt that Stealth, even before it got all these changes, costs too much endurance. It often doesn't provide any more (and sometimes even less) defense in combat than Combat Jumping. Out-of-combat endurance drains aren't really an issue to worry about since you'll almost never slowly lose endurance unless you're also attacking, so giving it a high cost to run simply because you can "skip" some mobs seems like a balance point in the wrong place. It essentially punishes you for trying to use it as a combat power instead of exclusively as an out-of-combat mobility enhancement. Unfortunately, it seems that when the devs are set on nerfing or buffing something, it's getting nerfed/buffed no matter what we say about it. All we really have a say in, at least as it appears to me, is the severity/form that buff/nerf gets applied (and sometimes, not even that). That said, I happen to agree with the change. Part of the long windup and interruptible period was offset by the enhanced range and damage of what we now call a "slow" snipe. Getting a faster, instant version of that already does reduced damage (but still way above its expected DPA), and not having the time to "line up the shot" should be represented by having reduced range. Personally, I think losing the "slow" Snipe completely when the mob you target wanders 2 pixels to the left and behind a corner is far more annoying than losing range on the instant version. I hate that Snipes check LoS both at the start and end of the attack animation.

I think they're talking about how the "end Hover" for Teleport used to allow very minor movement control, something like 2 feet of distance, before the effect ended. That's been taken away and replaced with a stationary, but longer, Hover that breaks as soon as you move. Personally I prefer the later to the former as that very minuscule amount of movement in the old version had almost no purpose other than to slow you down when you finally got to your end destination. Though they're also saying you used to be able to move around at the start of the Dwarf teleport animation, which I don't recall personally. I don't use Dwarf on my Warshades long-term, and even when I did have it, I almost never teleported with them to know if you could actually move around before the Teleport animation completed.

Kings Row was changed in order to spawn a new instance at relatively low population in order to make the Paladin Event easier to complete, as it's very often bugged. Currently, the event only starts correctly on a fresh instance, so before this adjustment, the event was basically only complete-able on a server reset.

Seems to also have the Logan/Wolverine facial hair, and it is indeed the Cyborg chest detail. The costume also seems to have some sort of rugged/stitched leather design for the pants. I can see the large stitches between the sections, but it can be hard to notice because the whole thing is just colored black with no contrast anywhere.

I don't remember all the options I chose to get this specific look, but the key takeaway is that the primary features are made using the "Alien" face and messing with the sliders in order to get a more appropriate distribution for ape-like bone structure. After that you pick a "full mask" head cover to simulate body/face hair, a hairstyle that fits what you're going for (mine is a puffy, swept back look), and an ear that works well enough (the ears will likely be the real sticking point). You can also use headbands/face options to hide sections you don't think sell the illusion well enough, and up close the design can fail to scrutiny anyway, but from more typical camera ranges during play it works pretty well.

As do I, despite how much I actually like running Redside for the stories and aesthetics. I'm pretty sure this "tedious and repetitive" sentiment is shared by many people and directly contributes to the low population problem. It's basically what I feel the system actually achieves instead of what it intended to achieve.

I think the original devs tried to mimic this sort of thing by locking contacts behind a string of mayhem missions or badges in order to simulate the idea that you're "being your own villain" until someone with power/influence notices and wants your talents for their own purposes. I'm not sure if it feels that way in practice but I always felt this was the intention of that system. As the game progressed and new content was added, though, this system could be mostly bypassed with the new optional content that followed the more traditional contact model as expressed hero-side.

I personally don't have much of a problem with Mez specifically because of how I play. I just don't agree that Defenders/Corruptors are required to team as a design goal to get around it when no one else has to (and even some powersets within those ATs don't have to).

Seems pretty silly that only a small selection of powersets are being forced to team to "deal with mez", and that, for some reason, that's how everyone believes it must be or the game explodes. Nevermind the fact that FF, Sonic Dispersion, Trick Arrow, and Electrical Affinity have ways to "obviate" the entire Mez problem despite being Defender/Corruptor powersets. Masterminds have pets to get around being Mezzed, Controllers slap things with Mez first to avoid it, Dominators can Mez first or use Domination to ignore it, Blasters have their T1/T2 Blasts and T1 Secondary to fight back when mezzed, Sentinels never have to deal with it, Tankers never have to deal with it, Scrappers never have to deal with it, Stalkers never have to deal with, Brutes never have to deal with it... but some Defenders/Corruptors must have allies attached to their hip? Because it's how it "always was"? Seems to me that more ATs have been offered solutions over the years, or outright changes to their design, in order to make Mez less of a death sentence than it used to be. So why are some Defenders/Corruptors left behind?

As much as I disagreed with the reasoning for the Rune of Protection nerf, this is the iteration that if a nerf was unavoidable that I hoped it would go in. The power is now more useful overall for low-investment builds (like mine), and can still be rotated fairly reliably with high-investment builds (like before). Even though it's been nerfed, I'm going to call this one a win. Really great to see the concerns about old use cases of Spirit Ward contributing to this iteration with the "burst" of absorb granted to new targets. That was my biggest concern and it's been completely taken care of, in my opinion. Great job on this. Enflame losing its Terror effect is huge for me. I understand some people use this as pseudo-control, but the power always felt like it was supposed to be a damage power and it completely failed at that aspect due to the terror. Now that things don't run for the hills while it's on (though it's funny to watch one of the Shivan bosses in the DiB trial run off constantly), I might be able to justify keeping it on the one character that uses it, maybe picking it up on others if I can find the spare power openings. Arcane Bolt I'm less enthused with because I don't like the trend I'm seeing of more powers/powersets getting the "hit the glowing circle; play the set the way we want you to" treatment, but it's undeniably a buff and as long as this concept doesn't branch out much further I'll just deal with it. I'm still not likely to pick up this power on anyone other than Controllers, but for my Controllers, it's a very welcome spike of damage many of them desperately need. All in all, I'm calling this update to Sorcery a good one. Excellent work, even if I've been a little... passionate about my feedback up to this point.

I had a whole thing typed up, then realized that it's beyond the scope and off-topic for this thread. That said, why do Pool Powers have to be weaker? What's the design philosophy behind an enforcement of weakness in a power pick that replaces (and counts against the total of) a "real" power?