ForeverLaxx

No, I didn't miss anything. You just can't read the data for some reason. That's the opposite of what the data shows. It shows that Fly gained ground against Super Speed in a 2 mile distance test. He left Afterburner out to prove the point, and putting it into the equation would just close the smaller gap even further. Remember, we're comparing one power against one power in both versions, not two powers against one power. Fly vs SS is much closer on Beta than it is on Live. Just read the data -- it's right there. If you want to take exception to old Fly "being closer to SS" when you pick up an additional power to get there, but ignore you can do that here too with EvM, that's your prerogative. It's a bad position to take, but it's yours if you want it. This is why no one understands what your complaint is. You take data presented and read it wrong, then tell everyone else we're mistaken.

And comparatively you're still faster. Look at the numbers Bopper just posted: even without Afterburner active, with the same relative difference in capped speeds, Fly arrives to the destination after Super Speed 23 seconds faster than it currently does on Live. Which means, comparatively, you're still moving faster. How this is still a debate I will never understand. At this point, I'm convinced that it's because these powers are no longer capped without some minor slot investment that's getting everyone's goat.

I've already expressed my opinion on the RoP change so I won't repeat it here, but if my involvement in other Focused Feedback threads is any indication, this change is going to go through whether we want it or not. Even the nerfs to Nin (and now Sentinel Bio) mobility, which were taken out of the previous major update, were brought back in conjunction with Travel Power adjustments. The changes to Blaster secondary powers had a similar back-and-forth and the changes were pushed live as-is anyway. I've learned that when the devs want to nerf something, it's getting nerfed, especially if no changes were made between builds. They've already had extensive internal discussions with themselves and select community individuals before we even get to see what hits the beta server. Once on the beta server, they're only interested in seeing if it breaks something or doesn't work the way they intended it to. I don't expect underpowered Pool Powers to get changed in any meaningful way. RoP being the only decent T5 option amongst its peers, and still being extremely niche, isn't going to stop them from nerfing it. Trying to compromise the nerf to get a small boost to the "not good enough" buddy known as Unleash Potential likely isn't going to work either. We're free to express our dislike of this change, but it's changing whether we like it or not.

Like, just the powers Flight and Teleport? So you get Afterburner for free and that's a "problem" for some reason?

Not to harken back to an older post, but this part confused me. If you already have Flight, Afterburner, and some assortment of Teleport powers, how does replacing the Afterburner pick with Evasive Maneuvers change the number of powers you're picking? Were you running Hover, Air Superiority, and Afterburner? Or Some combination with Group Fly that skipped the "real" Fly power altogether? These are the only scenarios I can think of where "being forced into Fly for Afterburner" would constitute an "extra" power pick.

You can be skeptical, but we don't know for sure how things are coded and interwoven throughout the background code. Just like when they tried to implement the ability to change your character's origin after creation, a ton of things irreparably broke for that character and effectively bricked it. So that change was reverted and we're locked to the origin we start with on creation again. I'm reminded of when Blizzard tried to explain that they couldn't increase the size of the base, starter backpack in WoW. Every time they changed it, it shattered tons of other things that apparently (and seemingly randomly) were tied to that bag always being a set size. Most often, it broke items that were auto-added to your bag for quests but it wasn't limited to just that. I'm sure if they dug far enough, long enough, they could find the links that cause things to break when you're allowed to pick from two powers in your secondary, but it's likely not worth all the time, effort, and headache for a change that ultimately does nothing but be a nice QoL update. And, chances are, undoing those links will break other things that relied on the linked code existing to function. It'd be like trying to undo a kink in a hose just to make the hose further down line twisted and knotted once the original kink no longer exists.

Which is going to be great. The only reason I use the "stance" setting right now is to be in Ninja Run Stance while using Superspeed, but being in that stance constantly even with all movement powers turned off makes you look really silly. Like, trying to "Naruto run" through a sea of molasses silly. Being able to have the power that provides the stance on at the same time as the "real" movement power is going to be a big boon. Not just for the stance, but for the jump height bonuses. Probably my favorite travel change coming down the pipeline, if I had to pick only one thing.

I just find the concept that a power that requires 2 previous "wasted" picks to even get to for a situationally useful (and in some builds, a cornerstone) power is somehow "overtuned" because people wanted to use it and slot it strange. Hasten, on the other hand, requires nothing but "giving up" a Pool Powerset for the privilege of supercharging your character and the entire game seems to be pushing towards an assumption that everyone is going to be running at least moderate recharge bonuses. Hell, Dominators are designed around the fact permaDom exists, something you can't even get without significant investment, often including Hasten. How is RoP overtuned when compared to all the other Pool Powers hardly anyone picks up? In all my time back on the live servers, I could count on one hand the number of people I saw with the Presence pool, and I was one of them with my MM. Stealth was more common, but not everywhere, and it's even less common now thanks to the Stealth IO. I saw more use of Medicine from misguided Empathy characters than I ever saw it on anyone else (outside of the early days of PvP). Even Acrobatics, something that used to be "essential" for armor sets that lacked KB protection now get that from an IO, making Acro effectively pointless even in the niche it was meant to fill. Why nerf one of the only few Pool Powers in the game that justified the investment when there's so much work that could be done to the sad, underperforming ones instead? As you stated, the power isn't even "that great" for what you're getting.

Well the toggle does provide -Fly protection, which is pretty nice to have if you fly in combat. It also provides Immob protection, though if you already have CJ that's a bit moot. The bonus speed it provides makes flying around in combat faster than before, which can be helpful if you're one of those "I don't touch the ground if I don't have to" types. The biggest boon you'll probably see is the Knockback Resistance, though. While yes, if you're flying, knockback is already partially mitigated but it does still interrupt power usage. With the Knockback Resist this power will provide, you can lower the magnitude of a knockback effect low enough that even a single KB Protection IO will cover it. Plus, the endurance cost of the power is being cut in half. All of these seem like good reasons to pick up and run the power to me, if you're already flying everywhere.

I and others have said this to that person multiple times, but they want to keep complaining anyway. It keeps getting the thread pruned so it's probably best to just move on.

Nah, I'm good, thanks. Faster is faster and testing has shown that they're all pretty equal for the distances you'd be expected to traverse on a mission-to-mission basis, even unslotted. Worrying about "not hitting the cap" without an additional slot seems silly when no slots at all still makes you faster than you are now. Maybe try not comparing your travel speed to someone else's so you avoid that kind of envy? Nothing is faster than fully slotted Teleport anyway and I don't see people getting mad about that one. As for actual feedback, I think this change is fine. Faster floor, faster ceiling, Flight is finally on parity by not requiring another power selection to feel good compared to SS/SJ, and taking that extra power anyway really only saves you a slot while providing additional in-combat benefits. The one that makes me sad is Double Jump. Yeah, it's a free bonus, but you already get that bonus with the Jetpack temp power you can pick up for free. Super Speed's free perk of getting one decent jump every 4 seconds also seems a bit off to me, too, but both of these travels didn't really need much help anyway. That said, the time you'd appreciate that "momentum" jump from SS is usually in areas where you need to jump a lot, and you can't build momentum effectively in those situations.

This. All this change is doing is reinforcing the tired belief that Pool Powers "have to suck" unless you're named Hasten. Even the much-loved Tough/Weave are weak for the ATs that really want that kind of effect and are propped up by set bonus/global IO mule slotting.

It's just too bad that Powerhouse's vendetta against Nin's speed bonus (and soon to be Sentinel Bio's as well) is probably going to survive the outrage this time. Once he decides to make a change, he makes it his mission to follow through even when it makes zero sense.

I disagree, but even if we take that stance all it really shows is that Ice was initially balanced around the fact it had no real Snipe, and now that other sets get to use their Snipe as a standard attack while in combat, perhaps it's time to revisit Ice for some upward adjustments of its own. Considering it's relative dominance in PvP though compared to other Blast sets, I don't actually see this happening.

No, I didn't. All I did was point out that every "side power option" you want is going to mean additional balance requirements for the team to account for so that Radiation Blast with a "ranged" Irradiate doesn't outperform Radiation Blast with its standard Irradiate. If you wanted to swap any other powers, this just grows for every single pick combination available until you end up with 17 different combinations of Radiation Blast. You don't want to think about that because you don't personally care about the inter-set balance as long as you get your precious "fully ranged" set. As a point of order, the game puts 8 ATs under the "ranged damage" umbrella when you select that option to narrow down AT selection. The blurb in the Blaster selection window only says that they are an "offensive juggernaut" that can deal a bunch of damage at range but can't stay in melee for very long since they're pure offense. The other ATs they list in that category, with the exception of Defenders, Sentinels, and Corruptors, also have melee attacks they can choose (and even some of those blast sets have PBAoE damage powers themselves). This is circling back to your original problem, which is that you're overly restrictive and narrowminded; unwilling to even slightly bend a character's design to accommodate the powersets as they exist in the game. Instead, you want the game to change to suit you, and that's not really a likely scenario.

Probably because I've been talking about the full set's balance, not just the T9 in a vacuum. You seem to continuously miss this point because you just want a ranged T9. As it's only good AoE option. Frost Breath and Ice Storm are just not great options by themselves, especially when you consider how strong Ice's single target game is.

Elec Blast deals less damage overall, Archery has a commonly resisted type on top of a nuke that doesn't always deal its full damage to a spawn due to how it works, AR also is commonly resisted and its nuke is an annoyingly-narrow cone, and all of these sets were built that way seemingly intentionally. A ranged nuke was part of their kit and part of the overall set's balance. So ostensibly, you'd have to do balance tweaks to the entire set and any other "power exchanges" you want to make to prevent one version of Energy Blast (in this example) from being far and above some other version of Energy Blast within the same AT. It's really not a simple case of "add range, add recharge, done and done" like you seem to believe it would be.

At least you recognize that it's your own extremely narrow view and unwillingness to ignore aspects that don't functionally matter and aren't lobbying to change the sets into something you wished they were. That said, it's very unlikely you're going to get "alternative" power choices for certain sets simply because that would double, triple, or maybe even quadruple the workload to balance those sets. Some ATs already have different versions of sets that other ATs get and due to that need their own specific tuning. Letting you choose a ranged nuke over a PBAoE one would have different values for everything and would have to be balanced not only to the original set's powers but to the rest of the potential alternative choices available. If you allowed 3 or 4 "variations" of a power to exist, you've essentially made a new powerset for every branching choice, increasing the number of, say, Energy Blast sets from 2 (Sentinel is different than standard) to 2x+1 , where x = however many side picks get added. That's just nuts. The reason this works for VEATs is because that initial "version" choice completely locks out the other tree and the set becomes its own self-contained and balanceable collection of powers. I'm sure it's not surprising that the "Huntsman" choices that precede it are all very basic, non-offensive and non-complicated damage powers. If they had been anything else, it would throw wrenches into the split tree design that didn't need to exist.

Not to run this even further off-topic, but the concept of "squishies don't exist anymore" is just patently absurd. When you're running basic IOs only with maybe your only procs being a Performance Shifter, Stealth IO, KB IO, or Panacea and you're running that on a Dom, Blaster, Defender (really anything without personal armors), you're going to feel very squishy when things don't go your way. I certainly know I do. There's times when I've had to use Rest multiple times in a single mission just because I get caught by a patrol while fighting another spawn. Being able to patch a set's inherent flimsiness with temp powers doesn't make that set any less flimsy on its own. Justifying nerfs simply because you personally aren't impacted by them is extremely selfish, short-sighted, and frankly a privileged way of thought. If I have to buy a bunch of gadgets just so my character can function, then that's a problem. No amount of claiming otherwise will change my mind. To the topic at hand, I can say I'm not a fan of nerfing the duration of Rune of Protection either. City of Heroes has historically been all over the place regarding Pool Power balance, with a trend downwards in usefulness. The few gems that exist tend to warp builds around them, but the answer isn't to push those diamonds back into lumps of coal -- a real effort should be made to boost the Pool Powers that aren't interesting or useful so that real choices can be made. For instance, why does Boxing and Kick have to hit so weakly and what harm would it do to allow these two powers to be functional replacements of main-set equivalents? Why does Arcane Bolt have to take so long to animate that it's only good for dealing damage during Containment windows? I understand not wanting to give "squishy" ATs higher defense/resist values from pool powers, but why do the ATs that already have defensive armors get better numbers from these by default when the squishies can't stack them with anything but an Epic armor? There's just so much that can be done with the various Pool Powers to turn them into real powers that are just as much a part of a character's identity as their Primary/Secondary. The fact that HC is currently trending on Primary/Secondary set adjustments/redesigns to make skipping powers in a Primary or Secondary next to impossible only exacerbates the problem of Pool Powers being so lacklustre except for the small handful that gets picked in nearly every build. Fix the weak powers. Don't nerf the only decent ones.

Sounds like a personal hangup to me. I don't like how Stone Armor is designed, so I used Dark Armor instead and colored the particles to look like sand floating around. I don't care that the set itself is designed to be good against Dark and Psy damage and not Smash/Lethal (with a side of Psy) like Stone because it's the power animations and colors that fill the concept. Requiring that your "dark magic" must also debuff ToHit is a very stringent requirement, even for me, someone who only builds concept characters. You're just restricting yourself unnecessarily to the point of stubbornness.

It's very simple. Beta Decay is a toggle that affects enemies. All toggles that affect enemies, be that with damage, debuffs, or anything else, will shut off when you're overcome by a mez effect. Toggles that are only buffs for you/allies will not shut down, such as Tactics, Maneuvers, Tough, or Weave. The reason Beta Decay is the only one that shuts off when you're mezzed is because it's your only "offensive" toggle active.

I much prefer PC over WH on my Scrapper solely because it does more damage against a single target and doesn't have the inflated animation time that WH does thanks to that full half second of standing around at the end doing nothing. The reduced cap compared to it is meaningless for me since my job as EM is to nuke the bosses and not the spawns anyway.

Nothing quite says "me me me" more than complaining about a power someone else takes that "gets in the way" of how you think the game should be played.

Considering the concept of "chain your inspirations or you're not playing right" came from you first, and you've been repeating it over and over, I'd say the burden is yours. Personally, I don't like relying on random luck of the draw to shore up my character's holes. If you get around this by filling your email with large inspirations or buying them from the AH to store for later, that's something I don't want to do either. When I build characters, I build them around things I can control. I can't control what inspiration I get or how big that inspiration is if it's even the correct one.

It really seems like people have missed the point behind a push for what can "fix" Regen. I don't think anyone is advocating that the set become less active since that's pretty much core to its identity. The problem people have is that even when you take the time to understand all the levers and when to apply them, you're still reliant on your attack set to provide additional breathing room that other powersets essentially never have to consider and leverage. On top of that, while you're busy juggling which Attack to use or which Heal Button you need since they get in the way of each other, other sets just push through spamming their attacks and nothing else, clearing spawns with comparative ease. Regen just doesn't really reward being good at situational awareness beyond bringing you just to the same performance of a set that is far less demanding of your attention. That's the real problem, from my perspective.