Bossk_Hogg

I don't understand the Thunderkick nerf when you're creating multiple new powers with similar DPA. Doms and other characters with two active sets want powers with high impact to maximize their action economy, They don't benefit as much from fast charging attacks as they also sprinkle in control with their attack chains. Previously Thunderkick had a DPA of 115.4. With the proposed change it moves to 92.8. Contaminated Strike went from a DPA of 97.8 to 115.3 plus contamination Skewer went to DPA of 115.4 plus DOT chance

I don't see it mentioned, but on top of the blaster nukes being fast recharge AE cc, multiple secondary sets have actual AE mag 3 holds on a 90 second timer vs controller's 240 seconds (vines, ESD arrow, radioactive cloud).

Can we get the Alien Skull full helmet (and the variants) ported to the female model? It doesn't seem like it would cause clipping issues, as it looks like it just replaces the head entirely. Thank you for your consideration!

I'll say it.. elec blast just isn't very good in this instance. Elec blast is on the low side of damage, lacking a decent third single target blast (blaze, bitter ice blast, etc) and lowish on AE, with short circuit being pretty terrible from a dps standpoint (further hampered by likely slotting for end drain). Not to mention you'll scatter mobs with hurricane if you jump in the middle to hit them with short circuit. On top of that, it's secondary is largely useless unless you or your team is built to drain endurance entirely, and storm doesnt offer enough end drain to matter. Also irritating, is that unlike other debuffs, blasters have the same end drain as corrupters and defenders rather than the proper scaling. It is playable, but underwhelming. Tesla Cage may receive the damage boost that Freeze Ray did at some point in the future. Sentinel Electric blast already does, and that would go a long way to helping the set. Personally I would go with Ice or Water (and in fact, do have a water/storm corrupter). People knock on dehydrate, but its actually a nice heal that means you don't have to dip into the medicine pool for aid self. Alternately, a go Storm/Sonic defender. All fairly thematic, and IMO more powerful. I like electric blast, and have a blaster and sentinel with it. I just don't think its a very good corrupter/defender set outside of pairing it with Kinetics to capitalize on the end drain from Transference.

Slots are a big cost.

For certain powers, like Bonfire, I feel the IO tax is fair. Previously it was area denial, rather than harder control. Fire Control didnt really need a boost, already having the highest damage, so it shouldnt have been in the running for best control as well. For energy blast, I feel it is an unfair tax. KB is supposed to be a benefit (even though it frequently isn't). Then why do they have to pay to remove a boost? Energy Blast and Peacebringers are already on the low side of damage, and cutting them off from a 6 slot set bonus in powers is an unfair tax on already weaker sets. I still strongly favor a Null the Gull option to allow you to turn all your KB into KD. And if someone wants to have some kb and some kd, then they can use the enhancers for more granularity.

Hey, speaking of the gimp power white knight brigade... The very poster boy for arguing to keep their pet set weak and irrelevant!

We're discussing numbers, you waddle in and basically start yelling "EB is OK because I like my costume! Feel good, me have fun". Try contributing something useful to a discussion. I'm done dealing with your barely literate nonsense. Math matters. it's why the original devs were so poor at balance.

Since I need to break it down to a child's level, if you can't have fun with Energy Blast doing damage on par with other sets (it demonstrably doesnt now), you can use TO's to maintain your current mediocre damage status. You seem to be arguing pretty hard against buffing EB's numbers to where they should be.

What? Power Burst does moderate damage, slightly more than Power Blast. It has the same crap chance for KB. It has a poor DPA, so should get a raise somewhere. Chance for KB is piss poor control and a disorient added would help a fair amount. Try arguing numbers rather than "feels". Energy Blast has no decent DPA attack other than Power Push. You also clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Elec blast on sentinels is actually BETTER than elec blast on blasters/other AT's. Tesla Cage deals good damage now, and zapping bolt hits harder and faster than anything in EB. I would LOVE for energy blast to be as "gimped" as elec.

I don't want to play something else. I want energy blast to actually be on par with other sets. If dealing decent damage offends you so much, use TO's after the set is buffed to bring it in line. Its DPA is poor compared to other sets that have hard control. Moreover, sentinels dont NEED the knockback with their scrapper level defenses.

I still vote to make Power Burst a disorient. The set could use at least one hard control, and the power has basically no reason to exist in it's current state as you can have a full attack chain without it and it is about the same DPA as everything else in the set. Also a null the gull setting. I shouldn't have to sacrifice a slot to remove a supposed "bonus". That just puts an already weak set even lower.

At this point it should simply become a Null the Gull setting rather than forcing an already sub par set to devote a slot in many powers.

YES! The burp/grunt noise. "Bwuurr"! It was delightfully goofy to my ears.

Bossy Hogg...before I forget I really love your forum name. It’s interesting when someone presents an opposing opinion on the forums that is disagreed with, you could either, ignore them, or present a convincing set of information designed to sway them. Instead, many go right for being pedantic, insulting, and assuming the worst about the person they disagree with. This is supposed to an immersive game environment, as opposed to a text game or tabletop version. So some level of realism is to be expected. Obviously not complete realism or the characters wouldn’t even sprint in this game. If you disagree that’s fine. But it’s table stakes for me, so agree to disagree or ignore me. As for slippery slope, I never go there and have called it out on the forums several times. I have no problem on power leveling either and have shown support for it many times. So without bothering to get to know me, you’ve assumed the worst of my character...I will assume that this was just an oversight on your part. Finally, you actually ended with a reasonable suggestion...improve the NPC AI. Realism? Check. Totally a +1. And I really do like the name. You're quite right, I was assuming the worst. My apologies for being a jerk. Take care!

While a neat idea, it doesnt necessarily leave a lot of time for blasting or other powers on an already busy set. IMO, any buffs should ideally be easy to implement for a volunteer team. Just expanding the buff radius. Additionally, the most important time to debuff is the beginning of an encounter. I don't know if people are unaware, but Poison doesnt even hit every target in it's small AE debuffs with the same effect for Envenom and Weaken. The splash is half as effective, and the - res component (arguably most important) doesnt splash. It also requires a to hit roll. I just don't see how anyone could claim this is balanced against other debuffs. It's an endurance hog of a set that doesn't function particularly well with big teams/spawns.

Isn't that the point? "playability"? If the escorting out was as simply as stealthin and go out of the building without facing any encounters, then it may as well be just a "beat the boss, win the mission" and forget playing the escort. I know escorts are annoying, but you may as well just request they be removed from the game at that point. There are plenty of hostages that find their own way out just fine and just run off. Should non-escort rescue missions be kill all? I'd be totally fine w any enemy making the hostage stop and cower, avoiding any unfair advantage of stealthing out. Cold, Dark and Storm all have team buff powers that provide stealth but their real function is defense/damage resistance. I would happily disable the stealth for the needless headache it gives w allied npc/hostages (and costume disruption). I prefer to fight my way to and from the hostage, it's just an incredible PITA to get them to follow.

/jranger your /jranger (can we stop acting like this has any merit or weight?) YOU can just turn off YOUR stealth powers. Moreover, the stupid NPC's get lost and lag behind even without stealth powers due to poor travel speed and pathing. I didn’t just /jranger it. I provided a reason. If I had just said No but provided no reason would that be better? sheesh... I can just turn off this or that, etc, but frankly I would prefer to not have a checklist of all the manual ways I could make this mission harder outside of the game mechanics. If I start stealthed, I am likely to stay stealthed until the game gives me a reason to turn it off. Conversely, you can just autocomplete the mission or lower the difficulty. Challenge works both ways. Beyond that, common sense tells us that average joe NPC wouldn’t have +perception. I am just being consistent here as well which is driving part of my resistance. Why would a NPC have a better chance to see you than an enemy? It’s not logical. I dunno, why is joe average civilian immune to AE damage? Why can my allies see me? Skip this verisimilitude nonsense and focus on playability. Escort missions are about the most universally hated type. YOU have a lot more options to deal with your love of leading some hostage through an empty cave than I have in skipping this time wasting activity. And don't even bother with the slippery slope BS I can already see you champing at the bit to get to. This isnt asking for instant 50's. Additionally, I'm not even talking about using stealth, the dumbasses cant spot you more than about 10 feet away.

Not necessarily. Yes, necessarily. Zero-sum game. Powers are balanced by an intersection of: Recharge Animation Time END cost Buff/Debuff effects Damage Range / Area If you improve any one of those, and the power wasn't especially underperforming? You must in return make one or more of the other points "worse". Furthermore, Powersets are balanced as a whole, by looking at the aggregate balance of all of it's powers, in total. Improve ONE power in a set, and - unless the entire set was underperforming in total - you need to weaken one or more other powers in that set, to compensate. ... No, you don't. Until they nerf the top tiers, you CAN simply buff upwards. Moreover, there have been plenty of straight up buffs, Toggle changes included. Turning trash powers people skip into reasonable picks doesnt require nerfing the rest of the set. Moreover, the original devs absurdly didnt even balance around animation time, which is how energy melee is in its current crap state and you have useless redundant powers like energy blast on sentinels. Citation needed from people who have actually played a top tier set. Is it the essentially 2-3 target debuffs with high end costs, the lack of meaningful -regen, the single target end costly heal, or having to be in melee range with no personal protection that makes it so good?

No, it doesnt. It means some people will defend anything. Conversely, some people will attack anything. Some people, indeed, are not satisfied until their personal-pet-favorite powerset is THE ultimate in overpowered extreme godmode amazingness. So when the argument is SPLIT between people saying "it's fine" and people saying "it's not fine", the consensus is: maintain the status quo. From what I've seen, they're saying it's okay for DPS, and the "soft control" of knockback is good enough to overlook being "merely okay" otherwise. ... and, your bias is revealed: You want your pet set(s) to be OP as possible, and to hell with game balance. ... /JRANGER to the whole idea. Oh please. Poison is not my "pet set". It's a set that isnt worth the drawbacks. Split gut opinions mean jack vs numbers. /jranger is a mindless way to shut down discourse without bothering to offer a counter argument. You didnt even bother addressing the toggle buffs or ANY of my points other than with feeling based nonsense.

Dark lacked a 3rd ST attack and has 2 cone AE's (4 w Soul Mastery). What % is the range boost?

/jranger your /jranger (can we stop acting like this has any merit or weight?) YOU can just turn off YOUR stealth powers. Moreover, the stupid NPC's get lost and lag behind even without stealth powers due to poor travel speed and pathing.

Good ideas! I'd prefer to give reduced Elixer of Life's values to a living target. +30% damage, +15% to hit, 50% recharge. Maybe lower the crash accordingly. I do think the AE radius on alkaloid and envenom need to go up to 15. People incorrectly look at the toggle change as a pure QOL issue, when it dramatically boosted the effectiveness of rad, dark, and other toggle debuffs.

No, it doesnt. It means some people will defend anything. There's energy blast apologists in the "buff sentinel energy blast" thread claiming it's superb single target and AE (?!) damage, even with hard numbers showing it's poor DPS. COH has always had weak set white knights, which for whatever reason, want to keep their pet ugly ducking at the bottom of the pack. Mind Control, Force Fields, Energy Melee... you name it, there's someone thinking it's perfect as is. There were people who fought against TA's buffs back in the day saying the set was fine as is. Is TA overpowered now?

That's operating under the assumption Poison is actually balanced. Poison is, and always was, a low to middling set. Changing how toggle debuffs (persisting after target death) work fundamentally devalued click debuffs, which paid for the privilege of not dropping after the opening salvo. What did rad/dark give up for this boost? Poison's AE radius on it's powers is quite small, and it still has a number of weak/poorly implemented powers. For defenders/corrupters it has a PBAE toggle debuff that forces you into close range, yet offers no self protection/healing the way Time does. Poison could use a buff, but I don't think damage is it. Increasing the radius for Envenom and Weak to 15 (Same as radiation's toggles) and let venomous gas be placed on an ally. All rez powers could use a pass to make them on par with Rebirth in Nature, which allows an effect on a living ally OR a rez. I would say letting Elixer of Life provide half it's buff values to a living target would be fair, as there is a crash involved. Similarly, I'd love to see all ally status resist powers (clear mind, clarity, antidote) get the same treatment that Injection from the Medicine Pool got, where it provides the buff on an ally, and a debuff on an enemy. This would be a good place to put a toxic dot and -regen in Poison. Even with all those changes, Poison wouldnt eclipse titans like Time or Dark. If they arent going to nerf, they need to balance upwards. This means another pass at some of the weaker sets like Poison, Empathy, Force Fields and Pain.