Redlynne

Mesmerize has a very GOOD reason for why it does damage first and then sleep 0.25s later. Because if you reverse that order of operations, Mesmerize breaks its own sleep effect ... because damage will break sleep. So you can't sleep first and then damage 0.25s later. That just means you get a 0.25s sleep duration (regardless of the power description), which will satisfy NO ONE. Fear ... on the other hand ... I'm not sure if the order of operations (damage then fear versus fear then damage) will affect the behavior of $Targets at all who are hit by Terrify.

I know why this happens. It's something I brought up to Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion at dinner during the 2012 Player Summit, who were the Powers Team Devs at Cryptic Studios. I've posted this argument before, but I'll repost it here for clarity. Let's say for the sake of argument and illustration purposes that you've got a $Target that you need to hit 4x with an unenhanced power in order to defeat them (just to keep the math easy and convenient). What happens when you add damage, endurance reduction and recharge reduction (individually) to that power in SO strength enhancement amounts (+33.33%)? Unenhanced = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 4x endurance, 4x recharge 1 Damage SO = 3 attacks = 3x animations, 4x damage, 3x endurance, 3x recharge 1 Endurance SO = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 3x endurance, 4x recharge 1 Recharge SO = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 4x endurance, 3x recharge 1 Endurance SO + 1 Recharge SO = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 3x endurance, 3x recharge If you're paying attention (and I really hope that everyone is who is following this topic) ... you'll notice something wildly asymmetrical about that very simply put layout of factors affecting gameplay. 1 Damage SO >> (1 Endurance SO + 1 Recharge SO) Let me say that again, just to be absolutely clear. One damage enhancement is BETTER than 1 endurance reduction plus 1 recharge reduction enhancement. In other words, damage is better BY DEFAULT by more than what you can get out of the combination of two other enhancements COMBINED. The net result of this is that Damage enhancement winds up being "overtuned" in just the way that @Galaxy Brain is talking about. Damage enhancement is worth more because Damage enhancement is WORTH MORE than other types of enhancement. The ... solution ... that I proposed to Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion at dinner during the 2012 Player Summit would be to have Damage enhancement function on different Schedules (A and B, instead of just A) depending on what type of Damage power the enhancement was being slotted into. The basic idea being that damage slotted into Single Target powers would remain on Schedule A (+33.33%) ... while damage slotted into AoE powers would shift to Schedule B (+20%). What this would do is that it would "widen the gap" between Single Target and AoE damage powers in terms of their throughput efficiency and help combat that enormous power creep that combined AoE attacks were capable of due to their high (on Schedule A) enhancement values. In practice, the difference would be between enhancing up to 2x damage (Single Target) versus 1.6x (AoE) using the same damage enhancement slotting, which while not a whole lot of reduction/nerfing would be enough to change the mental calculus among Players as to the perceived "value" of Single Target attacks relative to AoE. Basically, it would "open a space" in which AoE damage doesn't "win by default" due to excessive value gained from damage enhancement. It was ... kind of fun ... watching Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion basically have a "face fault" moment there at the table as they all collectively recognized the problem I'd put my finger on for them, especially since it was one of those things where once you've seen the problem outlined THAT WAY, it kind of becomes hard to say that it isn't there or have any influence over the perception of relative value among Players who pay attention to these kinds of details. They immediately turned to the point of ... The Players Would NEVER STAND FOR IT ... which I readily agreed would indeed be an issue, since it would functionally mean nerfing every AoE damage power in the game used by Players. However, Black Scorpion then pointed out to Synapse that it MIGHT be technically possible to instruct the game engine to use different Enhancement Schedules for damage enhancements depending on what kind of damage power the enhancements were slotted into. So apparently they recognized that the TECHNICAL hurdle of making the game do what it needed to do in order to implement the idea didn't fall into the utterly impossible category. It would require WORK to implement, of course (because it always does), and they had NO IDEA if they'd ever be able to put the request on the SCHEDULE to actually do it if the approvals ever came through ... but it was very clear that there was NO expectation that the approvals would ever be made, because the anticipated backlash from the community would rival the combination of the Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Dysfunction (that basically melted down the official forums for THREE DAYS!!! under the withering rejection of the forums community to those changes). Cuppa Jo still got a fearful look in her eyes whenever I mentioned that experience to her at the War College event for Tabula Rasa, so I know that she at least was really traumatized by that episode in the history of City of Heroes. However, if you're going to contemplate messing with the meta-game ... you can't just throw more HP at the $Targets. You need to ... change the SHAPE of what the Players can do in order to make the game more complex than just "nuking" everything with AoE as fast as possible. For me at least, the answer to that challenge is to keep the maximum damage throughput for Single Target attacks where they are (and always have been), while "nerfing" the potential maximum damage throughput of AoE attacks ... for what ought to be obvious reasons in the context of this discussion. This then "widens the gap" between what can be done with Single Target versus AoE in a way that makes the relative value of each a bit more complex and potentially dynamic. Because as I explained to Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion at dinner during the 2012 Player Summit ... in City of Heroes ... Damage Is KING ... and AoE wears the crown. It was kind of disappointing to find out that all three of them agreed with me on the points that I had made, but they felt constrained in what they could do about it out of a (very real!) feel for the potential backlash that would occur if anything ... ANYTHING ... was ever done to knock AoE off its throne as the be all, end all, solution to every problem of generating enough DPS. And don't get me wrong, the reasons for not making those kinds of changes (then) were very very VERY real ... but the foundation for them was really a matter of social expectations and preferences than they were upon the basis of technical hurdles. Time resources needed to make the shift would be considerable, but the structure of the game engine code did not foreclose on the possibility due to premature optimization. In the end, the shutdown announcement happened a mere 6 months later, and the whole issue was essentially rendered moot due to the actions of The Battallion NC$oft. And the rest ... is ancient history ...

That doesn't get done in zero time either ...

Except, that the Stun would potentially "detoggle" a variety of $Target types that shouldn't be getting detoggled by Terrify. Same with a Hold effect. I'm thinking Ruin Mages for the Circle of Thorns and Tsoo Sorcerers as the obvious candidates for this kind of thing. Confuse, however, has no "detoggle" potential and thus would be "less intrusive" on this point of continuing powers as used by NPCs.

It's not hard to figure out. I posted the reason why (although I didn't highlight it for this express explanation. Okay ... so what does that mean? It means, that Terrify works like Mesmerize ... damage first/instantly and mez effect 0.25s later (lazy game design FTW!). This is why you can use Mesmerize on a $Target and they will get an attack off before falling asleep on you. I see this happen all the time when I have only a Sleep effect but no Hold on a $Target I hit with Mesmerize. Without something to PREVENT actions against my Controller, when damaged (which breaks Sleep) a $Target will attack ... and so long as they initiate that attack before the Sleep (or in this case, Fear) effect is in effect, they're going to alpha strike counter-attack you for using Terrify on them if you don't have something "stronger" like a Hold (or Lift) preventing them from taking any actions. Now it's possible that this little problem could be finessed by simply reversing the order of operations here. Instead of doing damage then terrorize 0.25s later ... instead terrorize first and then do damage 0.25 seconds later. Doing the terrorize first, instead of second might potentially solve the problem ... but then again it might not. The behavior might still wind up with everything you hit with Terrify still retaliating against you in a combined revenge strike (just like now). That's why I proposed the 1s Confuse effect to redirect that retribution, so it still happens, but it happens against other $Targets rather than against the Mind Controller who used Terrify. It's a stopgap to make Terrify "behave" the way you'd want it to behave as a Controller/Dominator. The basic idea is that Terrify invokes a brief (1 second) temporary "panic attack" that has the affected $Targets attacking anything nearby (that just happen to be their allies) because you're literally messing with their heads by that much (remember, Terrify is a Tier 8 power!). So basically they attack each other (Confuse) for 1 attack, which then consumes their retaliatory alpha strike potential (and burns it on all of them, instead of on all of YOU, the caster). After that, any retaliation fire they might throw your way is going to be more sporadic and spaced out over time, so it won't be a single collective spike of incoming damage for your Mind Controller/Dominator to deal with. Also, that 1s of Confuse duration could cause them to turn and MOVE against each other in an attempt to melee before ranged attacking (although the typical behavior would be to ranged attack when Confused, for what ought to be obvious reasons). So depending on what attack powers the Terrified $Targets have, there could be a variety of possible response behavior patterns that would be fun to learn (and therefore manipulate as a clever Player with this power change that I'm proposing).

Lowering the Max Targets limit of Telekinesis below FIVE(!!!!!) would an unforgivable crime worthy of a perpetual Debt Penalty. Full Stop.

I posted my solution to fixing the Terrify drawing alpha strike over on my thread and I will spare everyone the repost and just provide a link.

There's an even simpler solution to the Terrify draws alpha strike problem ... so simple I'm surprised that no one has offered it yet. Here are the stats for Terrify on a Controller ... Level 26 Type Click PvE damage scale 1.000000 Accuracy 0.9 Modes required Modes disallowed Disable_All Range 60 feet Activate period - Interrupt time - Cast time 2.03 seconds Recharge time 40 seconds Endurance cost 20.8 Attack types Psionic Effect area Cone Radius 60 feet Arc 90 degrees Max targets hit 16 Entities affected Foe Entities autohit Target Foe Target visibility Line of Sight Nofity Mobs Always Target: 27.938s Terrorized (mag 3) (after 0.25 second delay) 30.59 Psionic damage 30.59 Psionic damage If (target.kImmobilized > 0) or (target.kHeld > 0) or (target.kSleep > 0) or (target.kStunned > 0) or target.hasTag?(IncarnateBoss) 38.14 Psionic damage 19.07 Psionic damage If (target.kImmobilized > 0) or (target.kHeld > 0) or (target.kSleep > 0) or (target.kStunned > 0) 18.625s Terrorized (mag 1) (after 0.25 second delay) (20% chance) 4s Terrorized (mag 4) (after 0.25 second delay) Here's how you could change that to prevent retaliatory alpha strikes ... with changes in BOLD TEXT ... Target: 1s Confused (mag 3.5) 27.938s Terrorized (mag 3) (after 0.25 second delay) 30.59 Psionic damage (after 0.5 second delay) 30.59 Psionic damage (after 0.5 second delay) If (target.kImmobilized > 0) or (target.kHeld > 0) or (target.kSleep > 0) or (target.kStunned > 0) or target.hasTag?(IncarnateBoss) 38.14 Psionic damage (after 0.5 second delay) 19.07 Psionic damage (after 0.5 second delay) If (target.kImmobilized > 0) or (target.kHeld > 0) or (target.kSleep > 0) or (target.kStunned > 0) 18.625s Terrorized (mag 1) (after 0.25 second delay) (20% chance) 4s Terrorized (mag 4) (after 0.25 second delay) THAT'S IT. That's all it takes. What the change does it it makes Terrify do a TEMPORARY Confuse effect for ONE SECOND. That then causes affected $Targets to attack each other rather than the caster. The basic idea is to induce a panic attack as the onset of the terror, such that the $Targets cannot tell the difference between friend or foe (so they preferentially attack their friends who are presumably closer to them). This Confuse effect lasts only for one second and purely serves as a means to mitigate an incoming alpha strike on the caster. Note that the Confuse effect carries the (unresistable) and (ignores enhancements and buffs) markers. After a 0.25 second delay the Terrorize effect is applied, while the Confuse is still in effect. After a 0.5 second delay the Psionic damage is applied. So the sequencing of events is Confusion, Fear then Damage. Or to mis-quote a wonderfully memorable moment from S01E05 of Babylon 5, Parliament of Dreams ... You will know Fear. You will know Pain. And then you will Faceplant. THAT is how Terrorize ought to work for Mind Control.

Yes, a Slow set like Tempered Readiness includes 6 different attributes on the enhancements (and is representative of practically all existing Slow sets), but just look at how uselessly diluted those values are! Accuracy / Slow Damage / Slow Accuracy / Endurance Range / Slow Endurance / Recharge / Slow Accuracy / Damage / Slow What that adds up to for all 6 slots is ... Accuracy: 1.75x SO Damage: 1.125x SO Endurance: 1.125x SO Range: x0.625x SO Recharge: x0.5x SO Slow: 2.875x SO = 8x SO equivalents from 6 slots with NO proc(!) and more than half of the enhancement is devoted to Slow and Accuracy, with everything else mopping up the scraps (using too many mops!). And the less said about the set bonuses offered by Tempered Readiness the better. I keep getting the feeling that the existing Slow sets would have been better if they had dropped Damage out of them entirely so they would function more like a Hold, Immobilize, Stun or Terrify set instead ... and then created an entire other line of Slow sets that oriented around combining Damage and Slow like I've tried to do with my Graviton Condenser (proposed) set. I mean, just compare the 1.125x Damage and 2.875x Slow priorities in Tempered Readiness ... to the 2.5625x Damage and the 2.0625x Slow priorities in my Graviton Condenser. Simply put, I'd NEVER put Tempered Readiness into a damaging power that slows $Targets ... while I WOULD put a Graviton Condenser into a damaging power that slows $Targets ... simply due to the balance of enhancement values on the enhancements themselves, never mind the set bonuses. The key thing is that the Slow sets need to be designed for "Slow AND..." rather than being designed with a mentality of "Slow OR..." like the legacy Slow sets were. To be honest, I sincerely think that when it came to making the Slow sets, the devs at Cryptic/Paragon Studios just "phoned it in" without really thinking about how the sets would need to be USED ... as completed sets ... for builds made by Players. It's as if they weren't even trying (or ran out of schedule time and just threw something together and shipped it) rather than doing the kind of thoughtful analysis like we have the luxury of doing now, all these years later.

At least they avoided giving us anime styled Grenadier absurd fan service-y reloading of revolvers ...

Stupidly bad wording choice and grammar for the loss in this case. If you know that it is TRYING to tell you, it makes sense. If you have no idea what it's supposed to mean, you have too many options (and all of the ones you want it to be are wrong). The functionality works as designed, but the tooltip is just really badly written.

Found this ... LINK

Please ... TITAN WEAPONS/WILLPOWER Scrapper

Confirmed? I wish ... I decided that I didn't want to "rush" my playing experience this time around, so I'm doing a lot of level locking so as to complete entire swaths of content (some of which I never played through before) before advancing into the next bracket so as to do everything there. Right now, my Mastermind is Level 21 ... and in this latest build the relevant slot doesn't get invested into until Level 45, so it's going to be a while for me before I can test the theory. Still, even if it the Regenerative Tissue +25% Regeneration IO doesn't buff everyone affected by Temporal Mending, it will still affect your Mastermind for 120s ... and remembering to use Temporal Mending once every two minutes shouldn't be all that difficult in order to sustain uptime on the bonus. However, if anyone wants to test the proposition without investing "real" INF in the question, there's always the Test Server ...

A strange drone. The only winning move is not to summon.

Right. What you're saying is that there are only two authoritative sources of information/opinion that you will listen to ... yourself and the dev team ... and you're already on record as saying you don't believe the dev team has said what they've said. Everyone else is a "rando" whose word you are predisposed to reject (unless if they agree with you, go figure) ... especially if they tell you what the dev team has already said but you don't want to accept (see: reject the word of "randos" by default). In other words, your mind is closed and you want people to stop telling you things you don't want to believe, no matter how true they might be, because you aren't going to believe them when they tell you the truth because it's a truth you don't want to hear/believe/accept. However, you have (generously?) deigned to say/imply that you'll listen to people who don't speak up/post all that much (because they're devs who have better things to do than post on the forums, go figure) ... which is REALLY CONVENIENT for your position ... but when people tell you what the devs have said you don't believe them (because they're "randos"). Yeah ... sorry. Credibility loss is now approaching maximal.

Considering that the Homecoming Devs say next to nothing about anything relevant to this question, you're trying to have it both ways ... and that's obvious. You'll only accept the word of people who don't post publicly ... and will refuse to accept the word of anyone else, who just happen to be the only people who are talking. You'll only accept the word of people who don't and won't speak out. And you'll refuse to accept the work of people who do speak out. HOW CONVENIENT ...

So ... when it's not true, you don't want to hear it. And ... when it is true, you still don't want to hear it. Gotcha. Good luck with that attitude ...

I made a Ninja/Time/Mace Mastermind build that you might want to cannibalize for (good?) ideas on how to slot up your Ninjas ...

That would fall under ... arrested development ...

Zathras never listen to Zathras ...

Except it shouldn't be taunting to draw aggro. Why is this so hard to comprehend? Gun Drone You can summon a Gun Drone. The Drone has an extremely fast firing rate and is equipped with a customized tracking system. Once locked on, the Drone will continue to unload a volley of lead into the target until it is destroyed. The Drone is armored, but can be destroyed. Damage Moderate (Lethal) Recharge Very Long Minimum Level 38 (Blaster) Effects Build Drone: Ranged Enhancements Enhance Accuracy Enhance Damage Reduce Endurance Cost Increase Attack Rate Set Categories Ranged Damage Recharge Intensive Pets Show me the Taunt Enhancements that are supposed to be slotted into the power. I even provided the link above. Go on ... show me. The Taunt on Gun Drone was added by a Homecoming Dev in a fit of HUBRIS. And just like Jack Emmert, no amount of good faith has yet been successful in convincing that same Homecoming Dev that they made a MISTAKE. We've seen this pattern before. It didn't go down well the first time ... and it would have been better to not repeat the failure to heed community feedback now.

You're always welcome to download the server software, alter it to your personal specifications, put it online and invite everyone to come over and play on your perfectly balanced realm. After all, if you're going to accuse people who disagree with you of bowing to "irrational authoritarianism" it would therefore be incumbent upon you to liberate them from the tyranny of the Cryptic Studios/Paragon Studios development legacy ... no? Also, nice job of inserting Whataboutism into your reply in the last paragraph (quoted above). It's very in keeping with the rest of your rhetorical jabs.

Primary Secondary Tertiary (ie. Pools) ... in that order. By design and by explicit intent, Pool powers are NOT intended to "compete" with or otherwise overshadow the effectiveness of primary or secondary powers. It's the same reason why powersets that appear in a primary for one Archetype are "less effective" when that same powerset appears in the secondary for a different Archetype. The exact same thinking, game design and explicitly stated developer intent (from day one!) also creates a gap in effectiveness between secondary and pool powers. The fact that this needs to be pointed out to people and explicitly enumerated just goes to show what I keep needing to say in threads like this. You can lead a man to water, but you cannot make him THINK. Nice strawman you've got there. Uh oh, I see a herd of hungry cows coming for it ...

I would actually prefer to see pools revert from having 5 powers in them back to only having 4 powers in each pool. A lot of the 5th powers added to pools are either unnecessary or do wonky things to the overall game balance. There, I said it.