Redlynne

Another factor that I would cite for this is ... how EASY it was to team up in City of Heroes (even before Super Sidekicking). Just being able to invite ANYONE ... regardless of what level their character was ... into a team and be able to play together on a somewhat leveled playing field is something that far too many other games have just simply failed to replicate. The ease of being able to form a pick up group, and the joy of playing in one, is something that all too often seems to be either an afterthought or not even thought of at all for other games. Stuff like just being able to join a group to run a dungeon can sometimes turn into a horrendous chore where you can only run it with characters that haven't done it already (or whatever). The original Sidekicking system was a tad cumbersome in that you only had a 1v1 relationship between two characters, so you'd need to have 4 characters in the right level range to allow 4 other characters outside of that level range to participate in the content ... but that eventually got taken care of by the Super Sidekicking system that made it so EVERYONE on the team was automatically sidekicked/exemplared to whatever level was needed for the active mission content, so you didn't need to find matching pairs to fill out your team(s) with. The whole easy teaming and sidekicking system made it SO MUCH EASIER to group up together and play together that the game wasn't a competition with other Players, but was more about PvE in the more classical sense ... Players versus Environment ... particularly when a lot of the pick up groups were either running task forces or later on radio missions, not because they "needed" to but simply because it was FUN TO DO. That also helped reinforce making the game an easy going friendly place in which the random people you meet today might turn up again later on for you to fall in with another time, and everyone was here to have FUN rather than strut their iLvl e-peen to inspire envy in anyone who inspected your character. To put it mildly, there were (and are) a LOT of factors that encouraged the playerbase to be more noble than savage in their relations with other Players ... and that carries on even now ... including the fact that there's no "competition for drops" when in a group, there's no Need Or Greed rolling for loot or other resource acquisition points that can turn a group against each other (aside from envy over what someone else got purely courtesy of RNGesus).

Ninjas are glass jawed melee cannons. You need to use your secondary powerset (and pool powers) to protect them. Ninjas are awesome when they DON'T have aggro. As soon as Ninjas get aggro, they tend to fold like pre-creased cheap origami rice paper. Keep aggro away from Ninjas if you want them to live! The best way to protect Ninjas from incoming damage is tankerminding, healing/absorb and defense/resistance buffing ... plus debuffing/mez if you've got it at your disposal.

Kinetics is "good" for teammates, but "poor" for most Mastermind Pets. That's because a LOT of what Kinetics does for you (and your team) simply doesn't translate all that well (or at all!) into Mastermind Pets.

The intent is to use them for both, not just as an either/or situation. Shining Shield (Smash/Lethal), taken at Level 14, is available down to Exemplar Level 9, but the Impervium Armor IO requires Exemplar Levels 12+ to be functional(?). Thermal Shield (Fire/Cold), taken at Level 16, is available down to Exemplar Level 11, but the Impervium Armor IO requires Exemplar Levels 12+ to be functional(?). Quantum Shield (Energy/Negative), taken at Level 24, is available down to Exemplar Level 19 but is overshadowed by the availability of Dwarf form at Exemplar Levels 15+, but the Aegis IO requires Exemplar Levels 22+ to be functional(?). The shield powers aren't THAT important for Human form, hence why they're slotted as lightly as they are, but when playing in the 9-14 brackets of Flashback content they can become relevant to use before Dwarf form becomes available. Likewise, when playing in the 15-34 brackets of Flashback, while Light Form is not available, they can be used to become more sturdy in Human form, especially in a team context where you're getting additional resistances from being near your teammates, thereby making you less squishy while in the thick of things. It basically comes down to the shields being more useful to HAVE ... even as One Slot Wonder™ powers ... than to NOT HAVE ... simply because having them opens up additional options and possibilities for use that not having them will preclude and exclude. Having them makes your build more flexible and adaptable to situation while Exemplared, and I find the additional protection against Psionic attacks from the IO slotting to be valuable even if the powers themselves aren't active at all times while in Human form.

Wormhole -> Fulcrum Shift. You can lead a man to water, but you cannot make him THINK ...

12 POWERS ... is "too much of an opportunity cost" for your comfort level. TWELVE ... How about 11? 7? 5? 2? 1? Let me guess ... your answer is going to be ZERO. And I can infer that because you've basically said so ... TWICE.

Unbreakable Guard The only reason you'd want to slot below Level 35 is for set bonuses when exemplar (which I care about, but not everyone does) and I'm willing to live with a build in which set bonuses remain functional all the way down to Exemplar Level 24 (the breakpoint for an entire tranche of Flashback content). If you want to be able to get set bonuses when Exemplared even lower than that, you'll simply want to Attune your set(s) in order to do that. Since Unbreakable Guard is a 20-50 set, an Attuned set will give set bonuses all the way down to Exemplar Level 17 ... but not be gimped when you're not Exemplared. I set my default set IO levels to either minimum (procs), 27 or 31 in most cases, with level 31 being for the 30-50 sets so as to be able to Exemplar down to Level 28 for the Moonfire Task Force. Personally, I find the Resistance set bonuses of Unbreakable Guard somewhat superfluous in the context of having Light Form available. However, I can envision scenarios in which you'd want to have the extra set bonus resistances applying to Human/Nova/Dwarf forms when Exemplared at Levels 17-34 when an Attuned Unbreakable Guard slotted into Light Form would add to the protection of all forms while Light Form is not accessible (but still offering set bonuses to your overall build). However, that would essentially mean you aren't frankenslotting 5x Resist/Recharge set IOs into Light Form.

Simple answer ... Current proc chances remain the minimum ... while maximum proc chances are allowed to drift upwards towards 100% depending on slotting (for accuracy, using this proposal's format). Results: Either no change or an improvement on proc chances for secondary effects that are RNG dependent.

You might be interested in having a look at my Keybind Files setup that uses a "fallthrough" system to always work regardless of which form you're in and which doesn't require loading new bind files for each form. Inner Light is the KEY to not being vulnerable to Quantums (etc.) when they show up. My (now) standard opening sequence against Quantums at Levels 6+ is ... Inner Light Nemesis Staff the Quantum (hits for Knockback) Shift to Nova Close range in Nova form and use the Nova Cone attack Use the Nova Target AoE attack Mop up any survivors with Nova single target attacks ... which amounts to "ACHOO!! Done." in terms of vulnerability to Quantum attacks. My Warshade can do something similar, but without the benefit of Inner Light being usable anywhere and everywhere (since Mire requires $Targets to slurp from, spoiling the alpha strike potential versus a Quantum in that grouping). I prefer using this slotting instead ... Level 38: Light Form (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance: Level 27 (39) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance: Level 27 (39) Titanium Coating - Resistance/Recharge: Level 50+5 (39) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Recharge: Level 27 (40) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge: Level 27 Unbreakable Guard (Light Form) 2.5% Enhancement(EnduranceDiscount) Efficacy Adaptor (Light Form) 12.05 HP (1.12%) HitPoints

It would certainly synergize well with a ToHit margin of success check factoring into the RNG system for whether or not a secondary effect will proc ... which Peacebringers tend to do natively with their powers ... 12 POWERS If that's your threshold for time consuming and tedious enough to deny support then it's pretty obvious you'll reject ANY developments of any kind for any reason, no matter how meritorious. Also known as NIMBY-ism in other contexts ... and is related to BANANA-ism and CAVE. Well ... I've explained the benefit ... more than once. You just refuse to lend any credence to the possibility that there might be any benefit at all ... for anyone. Kind of hard to convince someone who is unwilling to be convinced, so let's just leave it there ... since other people don't seem to have the same problem you're having with grasping the concept(s) involved. REQUIRES is vastly overstating the case to a rather wild degree. MAKES POSSIBLE a rebalancing of a number powers ... sure ... but the number of those powers is decidedly in the superminority of available powers. Furthermore, just because the concept can potentially be applied to other groups/types of powers doesn't mean it SHOULD (or even MUST) be proliferated to those other powers (blindly?). Any additional proliferation of the concept to other powers would (and I'd argue, should!) be done on a case by case basis after careful consideration and testing. I mean, the absolute Worst Case Scenario™ (and I'm using that term facetiously here) would be if it gets implemented for Peacebringers ... turns out to be WILDLY SUCCESSUL (gasp! shock! horrors!) ... and then everyone and their little brother starts clamoring for the same concept to be proliferated to THEIR preferred powerset(s)! In other words, the acceptance rate is too high and the community feedback COMPELS the devs to proliferate the idea to other powersets! Yeah ... that would be horrible ... And this is why we can't have Nice Things™ ... 😞

Personally speaking, I attribute this to the fact that the draw to play was ... spoiler alert ... HEROISM (at least until City of Villains came along). That set the "tone" for the community of Players that sprang up around the game, and that tone generally sided with "being heroic" and by extension being altruistic. Heroes (and Heroines) are the "good guys" side of things, rather than any kind of cutthroat "every man for themselves!" kind of vibe for the game. A lot of that no doubt had to do with the fact that PvP wasn't even in the game at first, so the community coalesced and congealed into being a friendly and welcoming place before the "trash talking PvP" culture had an opportunity to take root (let alone try and take over). So City of Heroes called it's community to BE BETTER right from the get go, and I'd like to think that all this time later we're STILL trying to live up to that calling. Why? Because we're Heroes. It's what we do ...

Hasten is most useful on builds with long recharge times on multiple powers ... stuff in the baseline 30s to 240s range. On builds where most of your powers recharge in less than 20s baseline, the "need" for Hasten largely evaporates. You can still have Hasten if you want it, but the benefits of having it start getting pretty marginal when all it's really doing for you is shaving 1-3s off recharge times that you can't make use of anyway simply because of how long animation times take on your attack cycles. Nice to have ... sure. NECESSARY to have ... not so much. The key thing to do is to make up a build WITHOUT Hasten first, and then plot your attack cycle (animation times, recharge times, the works) and see if everything "fits" together neatly enough for you to want to play. Then you add Hasten into the build and do it again ... and see if there's any "real" benefit(s) to putting Hasten into the build, and if so, is it worth the "cost" of adding Hasten to the build. In some cases, you're better off without Hasten if you've got a Click heavy primary/secondary/pools build where nothing takes "too long" to recharge natively in the context of the build.

Hence why I suggested using a Start Small And Build Out methodology of testing the proposition in a controlled way on a single archetype for the necessary Proof Of Concept and to nail down exactly who the parsing ought to work (and so on and so forth). Rather than trying to radically change EVERYTHING AT ONCE ... instead ... simply change TWELVE powers (only 12...) and see how it goes. If it Works As Intended™ then the dev team will have another tool in the toolkit for applying the same principles more broadly to other powers in other powersets that suffer from "locked" RNG chance effects like this. The nice thing about this approach in methodology is that you can build a test case (Peacebringers) that is both controlled in terms of edits to the powers database (a mere 12 powers that can be reverted relatively easily if stuff Goes Wrong™) and which can be tested against a WIDE variety of circumstances through gameplay on the Test Server to search for edge cases. Take the Radiant Strike power ... for example. As matters stand, the legacy form of the power does this: Minimum chance for Knockback: 60% Maximum chance for Knockback: 60% I'm simply proposing a way to get to doing this for Radiant Strike: Minimum chance for Knockback: 60% Maximum chance for Knockback: anywhere from 60-100% depending on accuracy/tohit enhancement to the power That's it. No other parameters or values of the power change. Damage doesn't change. Endurance cost doesn't change. Recharge time doesn't change. Animation doesn't change. Only the proc chance for the secondary effect changes, depending on the entirety of the build, and using data that is automatically generated anyway every time the power is used in order for the power to hit its intended $Target(s) AT ALL in the first place. All of the parts and pieces are there ... waiting to be used. All that is needed is the will to make use of them in a creative way to enhance the variability of the game in ways that Players can control/direct through use of their build choices (and accuracy inspiration consumption). After that, it's just a matter of coming up with a mathematical formula that does the job and implementing it ... for a mere 12 powers to start with ... and test to see if it works out. It's simply taking lemons and making lemonade. So ... the reason NOT to try this is ... it's TOO GOOD of a change(!) ... and therefore it will HAVE TO BE done to more powers ... so therefore ... slippery slope/don't you DARE even try? The benefits of the change are simply too great ... so don't do it. The benefits of the change deemed too marginal to be justified ... so don't do it. I'm having a hard time reconciling having both of those conditions being true at the same time, in the same context, since they're mutually contradictory (also known as "having it both ways"). That's not an argument for creative thinking ... it's an argument for paralysis no matter what (see: All Change Is Bad). Then again, this proposal IS a paradigm shift (albeit a marginal one) that would increase the diversity/complexity of power performances in this regard ... hence why I recommend starting with a test case that can be easily managed/controlled and thoroughly tested for soundness of concept before contemplating the value/validity of rolling out the paradigm shift to other archetypes/powersets more broadly on an ongoing/rolling basis over time as resources for such changes (including the will to make them) become available. Ideally speaking, you'd want to eventually end up in a place where this paradigm shift winds up affecting all powers subject to fixed RNG chances for secondary effects ... but you don't need to change everything all at once all in one go. Instead, it would be better to roll out such changes over time over multiple patch cycles so as to tackle the problem in manageable chunks that don't upset the apple cart (or worse, break stuff!) while edits are being made and rolled out. Keep things simple and small enough that you can do each piece of the paradigm update (with high confidence there are no bugs!) on a rolling basis through multiple patch cycles until you get from HERE to THERE. Every journey begins with a single step (and all that). Establish the pattern. Test the pattern. Prove the pattern. Follow the pattern that has proven itself in the additional cases once it has been tested and proven. It's not THAT hard ...

Relatively simple notion this one. I honestly dislike that there are so many power effects that have a fixed RNG percentage of happening and there is absolutely NOTHING that you can do as a Player to enhance your way to improving those RNG chances. 70% chance is a 70% chance because it is hardcoded to be a 70% chance and there are no ways to modify that 70% chance no matter what because it's a 70% chance for that effect to happen. To put it mildly (or politely, if you prefer) ... I can see that approach making sense in a 2002-2004 coding era, but it certainly seems to be rather deplorably LACKING in a coding era in which it's possible to make auto-hit powers (like Taunts) do an accuracy check against certain types of $Targets (AVs and GMs being the obvious go to here, but also PvP). We can already see the kind of programming logic needed to broaden the applicability of this idea in a number of powers at the City of Data wayback machine repository ... and which I presume @Captain Powerhouse would already have at least a passing familiarity with. Here are a couple of examples stolen from a Tanker Taunt power and the Kinetics Repel power. So here's the basic idea, and for the sake of simplicity I'm thinking of it being potentially applicable to only Knock Effects (up/down/back) and for testing purposes applied only to Peacebringers, giving a relatively "stable" baseline of performance for comparative testing purposes and checking for edge cases. A number of Peacebringer powers feature Knockback of various MAGnitudes (an enumeration of which can be found HERE) which I shall cross-post here now for ease of reference. Note that out of 12 powers ... ONLY ONE ... has a 100% chance of dealing Knock* to the affected $Targets. Everything else is just pure RNGesus prayers that aren't affected by ANYTHING that the Player can do. So here's the basic idea, which I'm keeping simple for the moment but which could potentially have broader application that just this one test case ... but you'd want to test and proof it first to make sure that it works before making any kind of investment in rolling out similar updates to other archetypes and powersets. Start small, make sure it WORKS, and then build out from there as needed/reasonable ... amounts to basically this: See all those % chance modifiers on those powers? Rewrite them ALL as being checks against the @ToHitRoll vs @ToHit stuff that's already happening all the time anyway every time powers get used on $Targets. For a 100% chance, write the IF-THEN logic such that if the power HITS ... the effect happens ... every time. For an 80% chance, write the IF-THEN logic such that if the power HITS ... the effect only happens if the margin of success on the hit check was by 0.2 or greater (basically an extra +20% more on the d100 dice roll than you need to simply hit your $Target). ... and so on. In other words ... allow ACCURACY slotted into a power to INFLUENCE how likely a "random chance" for an effect (such as Kockup/down/back) will happen. Bias the math such that if a power has a(n equivalent to) 100% chance to hit a $Target then the % chance for effects in powers stay EXACTLY WHERE THEY HAVE BEEN this whole time ... but if the accuracy slotting in the power "exceeds what is needed" for a 100% chance to hit a $Target then the % chance for effects in powers INCREASE above the baseline chances we see enumerated in places like City of Data. Or to put it more obviously ... Excess Accuracy (beyond what is "needed" for a 100% chance to hit) will "overflow" into increased chances for RNG limited effects (such as Knockup/down/back shown above) to happen to $Target(s). Want your Knock effects to happen more reliably? Slot "more" accuracy than you "need" in order to hit 100% of the time (prior to softcap bounding). And if you can do THAT ... it then becomes possible to work out a variety of "gearing ratios" so as to figure how much "excess accuracy" results in an increased chance for a RNG driven power effect to actually take effect. That way you can do things like saying that a 50% chance power gets +1% chance for every 2% of accuracy beyond 100% to hit against a $Target ... or an 80% chance power gets +1% chance for every 5% of accuracy beyond 100% chance to hit against a $Target ... that sort of thing. That way you aren't dealing with a One Size Fits All (whether they like it or not!) style of outcome, and the legacy structure of various powers then acts as a "guide" for how efficient/effective this kind of accuracy overflow into the RNG for effects in powers is on a case by case, power by power basis. Rig things such that the MINIMUM chance for effects to happen is the legacy chances and then simply allow the "maximum" chance for effects to happen be variable with excess accuracy. Right now, we've got a system in which both the minimum AND maximum chance for these effects is "locked" at a single value for both minimum and maximum with no opportunity for variance. I'm advocating for keeping the minimums set exactly where they already are, but allowing the maximum to vary depending on how a power is slotted for accuracy. And THAT is how you take something that's already there, pick it up, re-jigger it slightly ... and wind up with a whole new potential game meta without rewriting the ENTIRE game(!) ... which can then potentially lead to a proliferation (if not explosion!) of possible build strategies, all competing for supremacy and loyalty among your Players. Keep in mind that this case of Wishful Thinking™ is just an exercise in broad brushstrokes theorycrafting. Ideally speaking you'd want to have a controlled test case (hence why I suggest Peacebringers) to not only check the math but also test the coding (to make sure something else doesn't BREAK!) which could be written in a relatively short span of time (because Dev Time is a valuable finite resource!) for iterative testing cycles to check solutions and gather Player feedback. If the experiment works out and proves to be sound, the methodology then becomes something that could be rolled out more broadly to other archetypes/powersets in a controlled way following the same development process so as to incrementally update this part of the game over time rather than trying to do it "all at once" for every power simultaneously. Prove that it works the way you want it to before doing a copy/pasta job elsewhere for everyone. Thoughts?

Does anyone else think those stats mean that Seeker Drones need proc damage rather than enhancement damage in order to actually DO DAMAGE ...?

I'm rather partial to my Huntsman builds ...

Now all we need is a way to change the appearances of our Ninjas to look like female Carnival of Shadows NPCs (with the Ring Mistress as the Oni) and we'll be all set ...

You simply learn to know.

Funny how that works ...

Right now I'm still at Level 14 on my Ninja/Time so I haven't got slots (let alone sets) slotted in yet and am still dealing with unenhanced for recharge on Temporal Mending. The calculus obviously changes when you're all slotted up and the recharge time on the power drops.

Not by default they aren't, but it's quite common to slide the Legs slider all the way to the right for the statuesque woman/coltish teenager look in which the female is "legs all the way to the armpits" that seems to be the norm in "heroic" art styles.

It's true. Time Manipulation makes Ninjas survive. In my experience though, I find that the superior use of Temporal Mending is either during or after a fight, rather than before. This is because if you use Temporal Mending to "pre-buff" before a fight you're "wasting" a chunk of healing potential on overhealing and also potentially wasting healing over time (HoT) ticks before your Pets start taking damage. Contrast that performance with waiting for a little damage to be dealt to the Pets and then using Temporal Mending during the fight, so as to counter the damage that they've taken after they've taken it more efficiently/effectively, and/or simply casting Temporal Mending once the fight is over before moving on to the next spawn group (while soloing) so as to top up your Pets before going into the next battle AND giving Temporal Mending time to recharge for use during the next battle such that you can use it more often with larger/more efficient returns on the expense of endurance and timing of recharge uptime. If you use Temporal Mending just BEFORE entering a fight, you need to WAIT for it to recharge before you can use it again DURING the fight. If you use Temporal Mending just AFTER ending a fight, you'll not only heal most if not all of your Pets to full HP while on your way to your next fight but also have the power recharged in time use USE the power again DURING the fight if you need it. This is one of those things that isn't all that obvious when looking at the powers in your favorite build planner, but it is something that I've learned to make use of/exploit in the context of "shaping" my standard operating tactics engagement strategy for how to open and progress through each combat. Using Temporal Mending before a fight often times meant that I'd only be able to use it once ... maybe twice when it mattered most ... when fighting spawn groups, but using Temporal Mending during AND after fights would mean that I was using the power much more often and also much more efficiently, increasing the survivability and viability of my Pets, even at very low levels (think 14 in Praetoria) against a wide variety of threats. That simple switch in terms of timing of when to use Temporal Mending (and why I'd use it when) means that it is now actually remarkably rare for me to need to resummon any of my Ninjas except after logging in. If I'm playing them right and supporting them "correctly" they don't die and I don't need to resummon them ... just heal them with Temporal Mending in as efficient a manner as possible.

Spoken like a true @arcanaville accolyte!

I wonder if you're running afoul of "invisible geometries" involving how the world geo is assembled in those areas ...

And THIS is why it's never too late to go check on things that everyone "KNOWS" is working right, just to make sure it is. After all, it's this kind of work that made @arcanaville mildly famous for a while (still...!) in figuring out how Defense ACTUALLY worked. Good job @Bopper.