Redlynne

Ah yes ... the "I've got a sandwich, so why would anyone in the world be hungry?" argument ... that is entirely reliant upon a Somebody Else's Problem (S.E.P.) field in order to "work" ... Good show old chap.

Editing recharge times on powers that do no damage(!!) will not "break other things" ... it will simply make those powers more relevant in the game that is played. The nerfing that occurred on AoE Controls was a double whammy o' nerfage. Durations were cut in HALF ... and Recharge times were DOUBLED. Practical upshot ... one QUARTER of the uptime prior to the unnecessarily excessive beatdown using a nerfbat reinforced with an iron core. Imagine Scrappers, Blasters, Brutes and Stalkers doing half damage on double recharge times for the signature powers for their entire archetypes. No, it's not a pretty picture ... and there's a reason for that. Now, part of the (*cough*) ... EXCUSE ... (*ahem*) for doing the overpowered nerfing of AoE Controls was the fact that Controllers were getting Containment (so something had to be taken away for that!) and, at the time, Cryptic was preparing to release the Invention System (YEARS LATE as it turned out!) and they wanted to open up some "space" in the game meta for set bonuses to do what standard SO slotting (2x Acc, 2x Mez, 2x Rech) had been doing that entire time. An additional complicating factor was that they wanted to nerf AoE Controls into the ground so they couldn't factor into PvP as much as they had in PvE (because Players "work the refs" when they get mezzed in PvP while PvE Foes don't complain ... ever). On top of that, Dominators were in the works and their Domination power would double durations on mez effects, so SOMETHING had to be done to Controllers(!) in order to prevent Dominators from getting way out of hand when using directly ported Controller powersets(!). As it turns out, the set bonuses for increasing mez durations from set bonuses were laughably puny and almost impossible to stack up to useful quantities to be noticed (like, at all) while the ability to stack global recharge was literally game changing. Meanwhile, Controllers took their nerf "face first" just so that Dominators could show up and completely overshadow them later with Perma-Dom. So if I look at a "bog standard" Level 18 Target AoE Hold such as Total Domination from Mind Control ... post-nerf (Issue 5+) it looks like this: Recharge: 240s Hold: 14.9s MAG 3 Overpower Hold: 11.75s MAG 1 PvP Hold: 4s MAG 4 Yes, you're reading that right. By default, before enhancement the uptime (post-nerfing) was set to 6.2% in PvE and 1.67% in PvP. Here's what that would have looked like pre-nerfbattery: Recharge: 120s Hold: 29.8s MAG 3 Overpower Hold: 23.5s MAG 1 PvP Hold: ... there was no PvP until Issue 4 ... and I forget what the Issue 4 PvP numbers were ... Issue 5 patch notes ... So pre-nerf, the default uptime was set to 24.83% in PvE (and I forget what the uptime would be in PvP). With the standard SO slotting of the day, it was possible with 2x Acc, 2x Mez, 2x Rech SOs to achieve 49.66s duration and 72s recharge without Hasten (or 50.7s recharge with Hasten) ... for an enhanced uptime of anywhere from 69% to 97.9% on SOs alone. If switching to HOs however, it would have been possible to achieve with 3x Acc/Mez and 3x Rech a performance of 59.6s duration and a 60s recharge without Hasten (or 44.45s with Hasten) ... for an uptime of ~100% to 134%. So a much more reasonable outcome here would be to keep the "half+double" AoE Control change for Dominators ... because Dominators get Total Domination which increases their duration times ... but PARTIALLY revert the nerf that was done to Controllers. This would be a divergence point for Controllers and Dominators on the powerset proliferation. The basic idea I've got here, again using Total Domination for Mind Control as a benchmark for demonstrating the thinking here would be the following: Issues 0-4 Controllers (pre-nerf, for reference): Recharge: 120s Hold: 29.8s MAG 3 Overpower Hold: 23.5s MAG 1 Issues 5+ Controllers (post-nerf, for reference): Recharge: 240s Hold: 14.9s MAG 3 Controller Overpower Hold: 11.75s MAG 1 PvP Hold: 4s MAG 4 Issue 25+ Controllers (proposed changes): Recharge: 180s Hold: 22.35s MAG 3 Overpower Hold: 17.625s MAG 1 PvP Hold: 6s MAG 4 Issue 25+ Dominators (unchanged by proposal): Recharge: 240s Hold: 11.92s MAG 3 (+17.88s MAG 3 with Domination) PvP Hold: 4s MAG 4 (+4s MAG 1 with Domination) My thinking here is that the AoE Controls for Controllers were "double nerfed" beyond what was needed in order to also copy/paste of their powers into Dominators. The "double nerf" was cutting their durations by 50% and increasing their recharge times by 100% ... so half duration and double recharge ... in effect "ruining" the uptime on Controllers' signature Level 18 AoE Control powers across the board in order to "make room" for Domination on Dominators. My thinking therefore runs towards a "revert the nerf" for Controllers and instead of doing a HALF+DOUBLE nerfing to Controllers ... instead do a QUARTER+HALF MORE instead. Recharge goes from 120 to 180 ... instead of to 240. 120 x 1.5 = 180 120 x 2.0 = 240 Duration goes from 29.8 to 22.35 ... instead of to 14.9. 29.8 x 0.75 = 22.35 29.8 x 0.5 = 14.9 Note that this would still mean that the Level 18 AoE Controls would remain on "long" base recharge times for Controllers (3 minutes instead of 4) but the uptime on those powers would be markedly improved with enhancement. With +100% duration and recharge enhancement (for example) uptimes for Controllers would change like so: 22.35 / 180 = 12.42% 22.35 x 2 = 44.7 ... and ... 180 / 2 = 90 44.7 / 90 = 49.7% Now, obviously, with Hasten and additional global recharge bonuses that kind of uptime could go even higher, but the point is that with mere SO/HO slotting alone it ought to be possible to close in on a near 50% uptime on the Level 18 AoE Controls just from the native slotting in the powers themselves, which would put them in a far better place for Controllers than they are right now, looking at an uptime of around 24.8% when similarly slotted under the HALF+DOUBLE nerfing scheme they were subjected to in Issue 5. I don't know about anyone else ... but that's a change that I'd be perfectly happy to see happen for Controllers on their Level 18 AoE Control powers without porting the same changes to Dominators who don't need the help (especially with Perma-Dom in their back pockets). So, suffice it to say, if I were making the arguments (and if my arguments were being listened to by people in a position to Do Something) ... this would be the argument I'd be making. If you have doubts about why I'm saying what I'm saying ... look at the math ... and decide for yourself if there is merit to be found there. I yield the balance of my remaining duration to the Blasters dealing damage to all of my $Targets.

The only way to make Time Bomb "useful" as a power is to turn it into a Toggle. Casting Time for the Toggle version remains the same as the Click version. Endurance Cost for the Toggle version would be 26/(15+9)=1.083 per second with an activation time of 1.5 seconds ... so 1.625 endurance every 1.5 seconds. Interrupt Time gets dropped entirely. Range is basically "at your own feet in front of you" ... just like with Trip Mines. Basic idea is that every 1.5s a 15s duration damage buff to the Time Bomb of +30% gets added ... meaning the longer you wait to detonate it, the bigger the boom, up to a maximum stack of 10x buff stacks of +30% each (for a max buff of +300%). Toggle OFF Time Bomb to detonate it, so that it can be detonated ON COMMAND when the time is right to do so. That's basically how I'd want to re-create Time Bomb to be ... functional ... today.

As a Player you basically "learn the modules" for each of the rooms. The NPCs in the base don't need such markings, so they won't be there. No. /jranger

This is a serious condition! We shall have to amputate! ... er, I mean ... summon a Dev! Is there a @Captain Powerhouse in the ... house ...?

We make every pretense of competency around here ... 😎

Knockback proc IOs like Force Feedback still proc if you have Cryo, Incendary or Toxic toggles on.

Back in the OLD days, a friend and I had a joke about Dark Armor on a Scrapper that went kind of like this ... Council Lieutenant in Striga to Minions: Alright men, look alive! There's a Dark Armor Scrapper coming. Minions (in unison): What? Lieutenant (louder): I said, there's a Dark Armor Scrapper coming! Minions (also louder): What? Lieutenant (even louder): I SAID, THERE'S A DARK ARMOR SCRAPPER COMING! Minions (even louder): WHAT?? Lieutenant (yelling): I SAID ... THERE'S A DARK ARMOR SCRAPPER COMING! Minions (also yelling): WHAT?!? Lieutenant (gesturing frantically): THERE'S A DARK ARMOR SCRAPPER COMING!! Minions (also gesturing frantically): WE CAN'T HEAR YOU, BECAUSE THERE'S A DARK ARMOR SCRAPPER COMING!!! The joke, of course, being that in those days, Dark Armor was SO FORKING LOUD ALL THE TIME(!!!) and the sound of it never faded away(!!) that it was impossible to imagine EVER not informing everything within a 100 yard PBAoE that you were in the neighborhood. Stealthy ambush? UNpossible! I mean, any time you entered a ZONE, every hostile NPC would be alerted to your presence and your every move, because they could hear you coming from BLOCKS away. Fortunately Cryptic decided to allow the sound FX of Dark Armor to ... fade ... after a while, but in the early days of the game, Dark Armor was just this LOUD HUMMING MONSTROSITY everywhere it went and it never got quiet(er). Needless to say, much hilarity ensued whenever a Dark Armor Scrapper claimed to have toggled on Stealth ...

DPS. Max DEEPS. In order to figure out who does the most the fastest, you have to resort to math. Consequently, Scrappers were more "prone" to making math arguments to support (and refute) their assertions, since the math was essentially a "neutral arbiter" of what was true and what was false (or at least, somewhat misleading in its implications). So when you're trying to squeeze that last +1% performance out of a build that's already screaming for mercy, in order to theorycraft your way to a better Scrapper ... you resort to math to back up what you're saying. After that it was all DPS and DPA and DPE and spreadsheets and ... math.

Tequila != Island Rum They may serve the same purpose and come from the same programmer ... but they're not the same program, nor do they run on the same OS.

Ninjitsu on Scrappers has *some* DDR, but not the heaping helping quantities that Shield and Super Reflexes have. T1 Ninja Reflexes grants 17.3% DDR (unenhanceable). T2 Danger Sense grants 17.3% DDR (unenhanceable). Ninjitsu on Scrappers has a Click power to add endurance called Seishiteki Kyoyo that becomes available at Level 16. Click to add 30% endurance. Arcanatime for casting is 1.98s. Recharge is 60s, which with a recharge empowered build can be brought down into the 20-30s range. Kuji-in Sha is the Click power to heal ... which also adds Toxic Resistance AND takes Resistance sets(!), meaning you won't need to take Tough in order to slot in the pair of +3% Defense procs from Resistance sets. This means that the Click to heal and Click to endurance powers are separate powers, rather than a single combined power. Arcanatime for casting is 1.188s. Recharge is 60s, which with a recharge empowered build can be brought down into the 20-30s range. No need for the Medicine Pool and Aid Self and/or Field Medic. Blinding Powder may look pretty worthless at first glance ... due to it being a 45º angle 25ft Cone with a recharge time of 120s ... MAG 2 Sleep (after 0.25s) for 11.92s -7.5% ToHit for 15s 50% chance of MAG 2 Confuse for 23.84s -90% Perception Radius for 20s ... but that's only at first glance. Take a look at the procs that can be slotted into it ... Cacophany: 3.5 PPM 71.75 Energy Damage Malaise's Illusions: 3.5 PPM 71.75 Psionic Damage Coercive Persuasion: 4.5 PPM Contagious Confusion(!!) of MAG 3 Confuse for 10s(!) Cloud Senses: 3.5 PPM 71.75 Negative Energy Damage Dark Watcher's Despair: 3.5 PPM -20% Recharge for 20s If you follow that up with proc chances for all those procs, at 0% recharge you get the following: 3.5 * ((120 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1.07) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 25 * (11 * 45 + 540) / 30,000))) = 90% (Pre-clamp: 428.84%) Which then begs the question ... how much recharge do you need to enhance with in order to get down to a 90% proc chance on 3.5 PPM procs in Blinding Powder? Well ... 3.5 * ((120 / ( 1 + 393.03 / 100 )) + 1.07) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 25 * (11 * 45 + 540) / 30,000))) = 90% So the answer is you'd have to have 393.03% enhancement slotted into Blinding Powder before the proc chance for 3.5 PPM procs to fall below 90%. The important thing here being that you'll want to frankenslot and load up Blinding Powder with Accuracy/Recharge so as to be able to use Blinding Powder more often and use the procs you've slotted into the power as often as possible. Now I don't know about you, but I look at those 5 procs and think that 4 of them (minus Dark Watcher's Despair) would turn Blinding Powder into a "waste your alpha strikes on each other, boyos" power that's good for neutralizing entire spawn groups while you mop them up. And since you'll have a stealth power (Shinobi-Iri) and can put a Stealth IO into Sprint, you'll be able to maneuver into position to use Blinding Powder "at will" against most spawn groups that can't perceive you through stealth. So while soloing you can use Blinding Powder as you opening attack to give yourself enough breathing room to build Momentum with your Titan Weapon attacks. All you need is lots of recharge ... and you can slot Force Feedback procs into a LOT of the Titan Weapon attacks for that. So yeah ... some tradeoffs versus Shield or Super Reflexes on the DDR front ... but you also get the necessary "bag of tricks" to mitigate those losses in other (more active) ways ...

Use less items. No seriously. What you're running up against is that the game engine is trying to render EVERY OBJECT in your current viewing angle, even if not all of them need to be displayed. I encountered this on bases I'd build on Virtue server, where if I pointed my camera towards a part of the base that was item dense, even if most of the items were in other rooms behind "solid" walls, the frame rate would just nosedive towards the single digits per second ... but if I pointed my camera towards a part of the base with hardly anything in it, the frame rate would recover and start flowing "normally" again. Biggest mistake you can make on this front is doing tiling patterns with a single object LOTS of times to make "floors" out of items that have no business being used as flooring (I liked using Small Bookcase 1 for this because it made for a stunningly beautiful dark and rich wood grain flooring) ... and would wind up with 256 items per single level of "flooring" made within a 1x1 room block. Didn't take a whole lot of that repeated to start making the base lag when all those items were within the camera angle, even from across the base. Eventually, because of the lag problem I wound up substituting the stone blocks (with the beveled edges) out of the Arcane item set instead, simply because I needed fewer items for large raised floor areas. Did the same thing with the green Tech Boxes in the Tech themed rooms (and for much the same reason) as a way to build walkable floors without busting the budget on the amount of items that could be within the base in a way that would cause excessive lag/fps loss when looking in those directions. Best work I ever did along those lines was a fully decorated 8x8 Decorative Great Room with less than 100 objects in it that still had plenty to look at and even an upper level to explore and relax in. I called it the Night & Day Room since it was brightly lit in the center (like daylight) and dark around the perimeter.

Cute. Cuddly. Comes with warp drive ...

Clever Use Of Game Mechanics™ will often win where more ... conventional thinking ... is prone to failure.

Titan/Ninjistu Scrapper Do it ... you know you want to ...

Just use an Alternate Build. You can ask any Trainer to help you switch to an Alternate Build. That way you can "keep" your Tri-Form and enjoy building out a Human only build on the same character and swap them as appropriate (at the Trainer).

Back in the EARLY days of the game (like Issues 2-3 time frame) things were a bit "worse" in one rather unpleasant way. Since you needed to reach the "third bar" of your Contacts, rather than just merely the "second bar" of their reputation progression by doing missions for them, it originally took a long time to get cell phone numbers for your Contacts ... meaning you spent a lot of time traveling to and from your Contacts to drop off and pick up missions. But the nasty thing was, a number of missions would spawn Ambushes on you when they were turned in to your Contact ... and in order to turn them in you HAD TO BE right next to your Contact turning in the mission "by hand" rather than simply over the phone (cell phones were a rarity/luxury item in the mid-2000s back then, not the ubiquitous item they've become since then). The practical upshot was that being near your Contact was often times the most dangerous place to be, because that's where you'd be when the Ambushes tended to come hunting for you ... which made for a rather nasty surprise if you were trying to read all the fluff text for the mission complete (or the new mission that followed) and then right in the middle of doing that you'd get attacked (for no readily apparent reason).

WE'RE NOT WORTHY! WE'RE NOT WORTHY! WE'RE NOT WORTHY!

When it's a Faceplant. /em rimshot

The Ambush spawns out from the Mission Door you just exited ... kind of like a Trick or Treat that resulted in a TRICK! ... that would work since it the location of the PC is "defined" by exit of the Mission Door and you can then arrange the code to have the Ambush spawn out of that specific Mission Door.

Actually, something that could be done along these lines would be to have any passing Civilian say something in Local Chat upon triggering the ambush ... and then run away. Something along the lines of ... Civilian: Hey, that's $Name! The $Ambush_Faction are coming for them! EVERYBODY RUN!! Key point being that if someone NAMES the PC that might trigger a sense of "hey, they're talking about me!" that could draw Player attention without "spoiling the surprise" of the Ambush directly. You get a "heads up" that the ambush is coming, but the ambushers themselves do not betray their position while they're closing in on you.

Superspeed type magnitude of stealth on a Scrapper. The only thing that gives Stalker magnitudes of stealth is Hide ... which you can only get on a Stalker.

I've heard rumors to that effect ... /em whistles not so innocently ...

"Alright chums let's do this ..." LEEEEEEROY JENKINS!

Consistency vs Uncertainty (sometimes yea, sometimes nay) will often "win" when cross-comparing performances. This is where comparing specific timescales helps, rather than resorting to the typical "infinite time span" spreadsheet analysis (that assumes everything will hit by default). And that's before we get into the quirks of playing Kinetic Melee on Scrappers vs Brutes vs Stalkers vs Tankers since the set will behave and synergize slightly differently on each Archetype. Of course, that's what makes it all so interesting!