Felis Noctu

No, it doesn't. It does get rid of Lucky, but it does so (somewhat unfortunately) by rolling the passive AoE into Evasion, so you get absolutely no AoE defense from the set until level 35. Yeah, Modest, you might want to check those powers again. Agile and Dodge are still there, and the DDR and scaling res from Lucky were dropped into Enduring. Alongside Psionic defense for some reason. I guess it covers the positional hole that Psionic can have, but SR wasn't concepted with mental fortitude in mind. I do feel like that demonstrates the "health" of SR though. To adapt it for a different AT style they decided to implement a mutual power choice pair, merge some key aspects onto another power that was created to cover a deficit (though despite my support of the proposed SR changes I'm not sure I like Enduring, it just is what it is), and as you said, it now gets NO AoE defense until 35. Can I get a Roblox "oof!" in here? Again, that doesn't mean the set is terrible, but looking at it from a design perspective it's obtuse, and from a leveling perspective it's awkward.

I wanted to quote that first one again, and add the second because they're absolutely 100% accurate and I agree with them completely. Like I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, I ended up tweaking a concept to fit with Invul instead of SR because I was afraid I'd get frustrated with SR and give up. Every time I've tried it before, that's been the result. This character doesn't WANT anything flashy, so Shield and Ninjitsu are out, as is Energy Aura. The focus is more on the attack abilities, the defense is meant to be as passive and behind the scenes as possible. Willpower, while also subtle, didn't fit due to the healing aspect, and for the same reason Regeneration is eliminated. They aren't healing, they're just fast, combat efficient, and somewhat resilient. That left me with Invul as the only set other than SR that could be justified given the concept. "Avoiding a powerset that fits a concept because you're afraid it'll make you lose interest in playing the character is a bad sign of the powerset's health among its peers." While some people may and do like it, it could be adjusted to appeal to a wider audience without dramatically affecting the current users. Bio Armor is popular and loved among a certain audience as well, but the above statement applies to it as well in a different sense. Some people avoid it because of the ugly visual effects. If everything played nice with MinimalFX then it wouldn't be as much of an issue, but there's still some remainder of it left on at least one power that throws appearances off. Others avoid it due to how complex it can get. That's also fair, but also a part of its personality: Adaptability. No set can be made to appeal to everyone, that's never going to happen. However, some sets could still see some adjustments to make them stand out more to a larger crowd without harming their niche or the diehards that already love them. I believe SR is one of those.

And that's fine if it's one of your favorites. However, the last sentence there is where a major issue lies. Everybody's incredibly powerful late game. What we need is some early game appeal, as well as some more personality. - Yes, the DDR is great, but it's situational (granted, a more common situation, but still). Other sets have their ways of dealing with sudden debuff cascade. Shield has resistances and an enemy -dmg debuff. Ninjitsu, depending on the variation, has smoke bombs, blinding powder, a heal... - SR has the recharge bonus, yes, but it's so small that it really only has impact in some edge cases where you're really trying to minmax your cooldowns. It's a nice benefit, don't get me wrong, but next to enhancements and set bonuses it's a drop in the bucket. - The scaling DR only starts making a significant appearance at low levels of HP. You're running into the danger zone to stack it up, and DR's strength is Effective HP. The lower you are, the less impact that DR has. As a member of the Discord discussion put it: Sorry, when I hear "Look how high my resists are when my HP is at 15%" I am immediately: "Oh no baby what is you doin?!?" - If the +End you're talking about is the +Recovery on Elude, what's painful about that is Elude is generally considered to be skippable. Its main benefits are a massive amount of defense and DDR, but both of those are already very high from everything else. Other than certain specialized builds that revolve around Elude specifically it has no significant benefit to SR. It can help your end recovery during extended fights, sure, but better hope that fight is over before the crash hits.

That's fair, I'll give you that one. It's simple and straightforward, and that might be all someone needs. In the defense of the changes suggested to that end, at least in terms of merging the passives, it would continue to be simple while opening up a little more room for personalization. I'd still dislike Bio for how complex and fiddly it can be, even if it wasn't ugly. While I can see where you're coming from with that, I would argue that it's poor game design to make an aspect of a game boring enough that someone doesn't want to play it. Yes, everyone has different ideals about what is and isn't interesting, and where their preferences lie, but this is also a superhero game. Just from personal experience alone I can't even remember the number of concepts I've had where SR would fit in perfectly, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it because SR feels so meh. My most recent concept was actually in that category. I ended up tweaking the concept a bit so I could justify Invul, since both Shield and Ninjitsu didn't fit thematically, and Willpower was out because the focus on healing wasn't appropriate either. Avoiding a powerset that fits a concept because you're afraid it'll make you lose interest in playing the character is a bad sign of the powerset's health among its peers. You're right that these aren't just minor tweaks, and anyone suggesting as much is definitely off-base. However, doing something like merging the passives, bringing the AoE toggle more in-line with other sets, and proliferating some SR-themed powers like Burst of Speed and Reaction Time (those are by far my preferred changes and additions if it were to happen) would keep the benefits and personality the same, the leveling experience would improve, and it'd add a little more spark to the set. It wouldn't dramatically affect the people who don't want those additions, but it would add to the appeal from people who aren't as into it. This in particular is what I get stuck on. Before enhancement power creep, SR WAS appealing because it could easily hit soft-cap and STAY there due to its DDR. It was the poster child of Defense-based survival. Now the only thing that really sets it apart is how much DDR it gets. That's not a bad thing, but considering the throne it sat on has kind of tarnished and fallen apart, it could use some TLC.

Troo, I'm curious. While obviously you're not that interested in the proposed changes, do you agree at all that, in comparison to other defensive sets, SR is kinda bland and restrictive? Those are my biggest issues with it I think. To bring it up to par with other defensive sets in terms of core survival, you basically need to take 8 of the powers, whereas many sets get away with somewhere between 3-5 or so. Of those, three are nearly identical passives. Super Reflexes contains design decisions that weren't repeated (the nearly identical passives come to mind again: every other set has a unique "style" for each, but SR's just changing a single modifier), as well as a power progression that was "corrected" everywhere else. SR also doesn't really have any tricks that make it a particularly intriguing choice. Sure, what it does, it does fairly well, but its "personality" consists of dodging things and DDR to make sure it can keep dodging things. It feels shallow. And my intent isn't just picking on SR specifically. I feel the same way about Invul. It's a FANTASTIC set from a numbers perspective, but beyond "I'm Superman", it doesn't have much personality either. It just sort of exists. But at least Invul's clicky interactive is a heal with a max health boost. SR's clicky interactive is its mez protection. That's just... eh? To me, SR represents early Issue 0 design where they were just tossing out the staple "hero" concepts but still hadn't gotten into a groove of creative power design. Axe/Broadsword/Mace are another example of that. Other than secondary effects they're practically interchangeable, basically the same set with a different paint job.

Not the way I see it. You call it arguable, and I disagree 😛

You need a balance of concept vs game mechanics. Dodging attacks is a flaky and unreliable defense type regardless of the situation. Powerful when it works, awful when it doesn't. There's also ways of justifying something like scaling DR in the set. Consider that if someone who focuses on dodging attacks can't actually get fully out of the way, they're still going to do what they can to mitigate what does hit them. Grazing strikes are a key part of defense, and the more injured you are, the more you're going to focus on mitigation of anything you can't avoid. Take a punch to the chest, use its momentum to slide backwards so the hit is less severe, etc.

Agree to disagree on the first two. Quality of Life means improving the player's experience., and neither of those dramatically affect the set's functionality. Moving the AoE earlier just means getting it earlier, which doesn't affect anyone towards late game but improves early play. Switching the clicky to a toggle removes unnecessary complexity, as the mez click is kept up in the same situations you'd turn on a mez toggle. I never said new powers were QoL, you're assuming as much. I said balance changes CAN be. If a set functions better by adjusting certain factors (for instance, Elude's crash could be changed to something like Strength of Will, being less severe), then it's both a balance change and a QoL improvement. While I agree that the title of the thread is a bit misleading, the thread content itself is about a rework of the set to modernize it.

Out of curiosity, do you know if Mids is parsing power effect expressions correctly? I've spent the majority today basically just toying with getting proper scale and magnitude values working for the scaling resists of SR passives and Widow Foresight. Looking in the DB files here, the expression looks to be correct when compared to the game files, but Mids doesn't use it as far as I can tell. I had to manually handle the calculations with AttribType Magnitude, then testing on the beta server to make sure it's at least close. I've got the margin of error for rounding down to 0.04% (Stalker Agile, 25% HP & 0% HP ) but the actual expression would still be better. 😛 Even just for display reasons for the slider.

I think Modest just forgot to add them. There wasn't any talk about removing them on Discord, so they'd just be combined on Agility.

Honestly, the possibility of doing the same thing for the other classes that Sentinels got is a possibility, if they wanted to. Allow you to choose between Master or Practiced. Though I can't imagine brutes or tankers would want to go without their mez res. 😛 Scrappers on the fence. Stalkers though, I could see them taking advantage of that in some instances.

Oh nice! I snagged the Burst of Speed attack but I completely forgot about Reaction Time. That's a great idea. Maybe in place of the "Metabolistic Burst" concept I threw in mine. I edited my post above to include that. The HP I don't agree with as much. The damage resistance it has now makes sense, as someone with extremely fast reflexes is going to start focusing even more on reducing collateral damage from hits they can't avoid entirely. That makes logical sense. So does regen/recovery to an extent due to the metabolism side of things. Agile people tend to not be the most durable, just fast and tricky.

Copied (and with minor edits) from the #at-build-general channel in the Homecoming discord: That leveling pattern puts it behind Ninjitsu (main defense by T3), and on par with Energy Aura and Ice Armor (main defense by T5), as well as being roughly equal with the hybrids (Shield, Invul). Willpower's a bit of an outlier, but it has its own thing going on. Ninjitsu is perfectly fair to be that early since its overall weaker than most but has utility to make up for it. Balance changes can still be QOL. SR's an old bag that's barely been touched since the game came out, holding onto a lot of weird design choices and clunky operation. It can easily be refined and brought into the modern age to make it more appealing, without sacrificing concept or functionality. SR's theme: - King of defense, both building and maintaining it - High speed everything, high energy Non-defining Mechanical Clunks: - Three nearly-identical passives each doing its own tiny defense boost to a different value. These are extraneous power choices that could easily be combined to open up build freedom. EA has two and they're more specialized. Same goes for FA and IA (1 specialized), Invul (3 specialized), and Willpower (1 specialized). Shield has 2: one for res and one for def, and the def one is a combination of all 3 positionals. Hell, even Regen has a single all-res passive. SR shouldn't need to suffer arbitrarily splitting its components up just to fill power choice spaces. - Poor dice roll vulnerability. Most sets have some built-in way to recover from a bad run on luck. SR only has its defense, even if the debuff res helps immensely. Collapsing those three passives into one and placing it earlier also means it gets the full benefit of the scaling DR right from the start, making the early game more enjoyable, because remember, not everybody is playing at 50+ incarnate content. A balance change here could be to reduce the overall amount of resistances provided if a 45% res at 15% of max HP is too much for a single power choice. Alternatively, start the scaling at a lower HP value. Missing theme-defining traits: - Displaying the associated speed. Something like Martial Combat's Burst of Speed or something similar to it gives the set a clearly visible representation of how fast you are. Obviously SR doesn't have to be super speed, but giving it something to set itself apart and show off is definitely an improvement. Several armor secondaries have attacks, this isn't out of place. - Side-effects of the ability. Whether you're actually super powered or just extremely agile and at the peak of human condition, something that the common concepts of SR share is a high metabolism. Adding something like a regen/recovery boost to it won't outshine other sets that focus specifically on that, but also synergize with things like Quickness to demonstrate the type of person (or thing) the user is.

I've been picking through it a bit. It's my first time actually bothering to look at the database, so obviously I'm just winging it at the moment, but there's some options in here that almost strike me as it being possible to overhaul the database to allow that sort of thing without having to add new features. Is there info somewhere online that describes what certain options and modifiers are for? For instance, each archetype class has a "modifier column", with it's own unique number, but I'm having trouble figuring out what that's referring to. EDIT: Figured that one out. It's referring to the tables in AttribMod, though without knowing what those tables refer to, it doesn't do much good. It's a wide range of numbers with only vague titles, like "Melee_Damage". Each column refers to a specific AT class, but that doesn't help much with rows.

Oooooh, never thought of that! I mostly stopped playing this char before Overwhelming Force was added, so the build didn't see updates until now. Number One Rule: concept trumps minmaxing. Let's make a slippery mess!

Thank you for the correction! I had to go back and dig a bit deeper. Before I posted that I went and reviewed Supremacy to make sure I was remembering correctly, which only states they need to be in defensive mode to trigger the damage share. Poking around a bit more got me to Mastermind Strategy > Bodyguard, which specifically states the command restrictions as well. Looks like we still have some wiki polishing to do! Though as an aside, that was also intended for non-tankerminds. If you're staying out of the way bodyguard's a little less important. However, I still feel the "focus" concept as a whole it a bit flawed. Most mastermind builds, not just */storm, have better things to do than pewpew. In the early levels sure! It'll totally help fill out your lacking rotation. At later stages of your build however you should have quite a bit more to manage. The only exception to that I believe is */forcefield, and even then you may still find yourself needing to rebubble mid-fight.

I agree with most of BGSacho's post, but there was one part that I wanted to note on. But for those non-tankerminds there's always... /macro [name] petcom_all Attack Defensive Like */storm, there are some setups (such as the lesser-discussed "trollerminds") where the above will suit better for focus targeting than having a primary attack. Back before the shutdown, my namesake was a hybrid of tanker- and troller- (necro/dark/soul just kinda slides its way in there), and I had a hard time grabbing and slotting everything I needed as it was. My aggro draw came from my secondary, popping off Petrifying Gazes, Twilight Grasps, and Soul Tentacles/Storm, and I'd direct my pets with that macro (and others) as necessary. Like anything in CoH though, it's all situational! You gotta play to your strengths, preferences, and character concepts. But back on topic, 100% to the Lich and Knights being your keys to procs on Necro. They're definitely monsters when they're built right. If you do end up going Demons/Dark, Dark Servant is a decent dumping ground for crowd control procs IMHO. Dark Watcher's Despair (because of the -hit on everything), but also Lockdown, Gravitational Anchor, Debilitative Action, etc. And that all reminds me that I still need to see if I can dig up my macro/bind list again. I'd hate to have to rewrite all of them...

Ahh, they'd just end up as a sacrifice for my lich anyway!

Those mastermind changes. OMG those mastermind changes. I want to kiss you all. Is there someone or somewhere I can send my firstborn to?

Here's Frosty Aegis: Unfortunately I'm not finding an example of Frost Bite at the moment, though I would assume if it's an attack of some kind, Cold/Lethal damage, Foe -Recharge, Foe -SPD. That's what most cold attacks do. As an event temporary power it's probably somewhere around a 2nd tier attack power, maybe 3rd tier, with extra recharge time.

I'm seeing a lot of "solo" in there, but we're talking about team content in here. If you're "getting tired of challenge posts", you should at least double-check the topic first! Not to mention not talking down about people asking for such a thing with a comment that's unrelated. Myself for instance, while I can make those builds, I don't enjoy them. I'm a support player, I LIKE to play with other people, especially in a game as social as CoH. Solo bores me. The subject of the thread is that people are running with smaller teams in order to increase the challenge and make things a bit more interesting. There isn't very much in the way of content that challenges a full team of 50s, let alone one that's full of incarnates. The incarnate system was leading up to content that was likely intended for them, or at least options for that level of power, but we never made it there.

Ahh! Well we're in the same boat then, honestly. While we can use EBs and AVs, I don't know what differences there are between the pre-shutdown AE and the current version. With the SG base upgrades I would hope the AE is the same, but I haven't gotten around to checking it out yet. Really I think the biggest thing I'd be interested to see is raid-style AE content. Not sure if that'd be possible though, depending on how the system was designed. Buffing 54s would definitely be nice. Or even just the 50+ mobs in general. Make that curve a little more extreme.

I remember the mention of The Coming Storm, but they'd been talking about that for a while. The way it'd be hinted at, that sounded like it could very well have been the end of CoH's intended storyline. But yeah, while I can hope, I don't really expect there'd be much for a period of the game that's beyond the already incomplete content.

Not quite sure if that's sarcasm or not, but regardless that's really not the point. We were given the incredible power increase, including level shifts, which I would assume meant Paragon was planning on going somewhere in-world with it. I have a hard time believing they'd be so shortsighted as to build us up like that without some sort of forward movement. Paragon didn't even got to finish the Incarnate system. Unfortunately, unless there's something laying around in the resources we have to indicate such a thing, it'd be up to the HC team and the community to follow through. In which case, yeah, I guess we've got the AE system. EDIT You know, I haven't really looked much into it with whatever changes have been made. I wonder if it's possible to create AE content for more than 8 people at a time...

Traps is already a little funky for MMs, but Beast Master has its own combo issues. Higher end play with Traps generally involves setting up ambushes using poison trap, trip mine, pull enemies, then time bomb, for maximum effect. MM Traps doesn't have Time Bomb, so you're missing a third of the combo, and it's a big part. Instead, they have Detonator to blow up their own pets. Plus, with pet controls being what they are, to make it work in a way that's effective you also need to kit yourself out with a number of macros. Without those, control can be a bit awkward in any situation, let alone setting up an ambush. Besides, the Mastermind itself isn't generally meant to be doing the damage, and Traps is reliant on the character's power. A Mastermind's "crazy" damage comes from how reliable and rapid pet attacks are, producing a relatively steady high level of output. Back on Detonator for a second: Beast Mastery primary play revolves around stacking as much Pack Mentality as possible. Blowing up one of your pets results in less gains for a time, probably causing you to drop stacks. A detonation on Beasts can potentially result in lost damage rather than a gain, not to mention Pack Mentality doesn't provide any boosts to Detonator. It's basically just additional Supremacy. Then there's the general Beast playstyle. All of your pets are melee, and your primary support abilities for Traps are Force Field Generator and Triage Beacon, both of which require the pets to stay within range to gain the benefits. That means that you're going to have to jump into the middle of the battle and STAY THERE, risking getting squashed in order to protect your beasts, and in the midst of battle they may run off anyway. MMs aren't exactly the most durable by default, even with Bodyguard going, and traps doesn't have the defensive capabilities that other secondaries generally provide. If you want to save your own skin you need to bail out, thus reducing THEIR survival (and leaving your heal patch), and they aren't the most durable themselves. There's a reason why Fortify Pack exists. The problem there is if you have to pop Fortify, you just lost your damage advantage because it eats the Pack Mentality stacks. TL;DR: Beast/Traps just doesn't really mesh well. Its strengths are a little awkward on MMs who aren't 110% invested in micromanagement, supporting melee minions requires putting yourself in danger and still may not be entirely effective, and playing safely means potentially dramatically reducing your damage output. Also power creep, because there are several secondaries now that can provide much better support while boosting the effectiveness of your pets and the rest of the team. Traps on MMs just doesn't even have the same effectiveness that it would on Defenders. TL;TL;DR: Beast/Traps has considerable conflict of interest problems. ---------- Being an MM enthusiast, what I would really love to see is a variation of Devices on MMs, replacing or even just in addition to Traps. Swap out Taser for Triage Beacon, and probably Time Bomb for FFG. Would need to shuffle the levels of the skills a bit. Targeting Drone could have reduced effect but be a team-wide buff, and Field Operative would be great for lowering the chance of aggro while you're having to sit in the middle of things keeping everyone alive or toe-bombing. Gun Drone also fits the MM theme very well. I feel like that kind of setup is much more workable for MMs in general. It wouldn't solve the conflict of interest with Beasts, but it would feel a little better for the AT as a whole. EDIT 2020-02-17: Updated some wording and details for clarity, and tweaking ideas regarding the MM Devices adaptation.