Replacement

Capstone powers so bad, they tried to hand them out to other ATs as Epics and people still don't take them?! Still waiting for my Tanker Thunderous Blast.

Eh. Blaster Sustains were very successful. Giving Stalkers Assassin's Focus, and quick AS before that, was very successful. The introduction of Inherents at all was successful. These were all "broad strokes" answers to problems. The Blaster Sustain example is actually the most relevant: the broad strokes was "add the ability for Blasters to keep up the pressure (Recovery) and improve their survival in skirmishes without allowing them to just become tanky bricks." Each set has its own manifestation of what this means. +Regeneration and Absorb allow you to get back into the fight faster, but still see you crumpling under sustained fire. While most sets got +recovery, Energy Manipulation instead had its Endurance discount improved. At the end of the day, Paragon Studios started with broad strokes, aka "design guidelines" and made compelling specifics.

I'm thinking, separate from the toggle cost, a reapplying endurance DoT should work. Power entry will then include several entries of "on 30 second delay, apply additional stack." Then it sends a buff cancel on deactivation (which Blaster Reaction Time shows us a power execution can be tied to deactivation) to remove the debuff. Btw, this is yet another situation where a reverse endurance discount could work well. Would add a burden to not just your t9, but all other toggles and actions.

@Nanolathe I like the idea. One bone I want to pick, though (@Galaxy Brain as well, here): I have a strong disagreement with extolling basically any virtue of Granite Armor. Granite Armor is a shining example of what goes wrong when your t9 is a toggle that can totally supplant the rest of your set. GB's numbers for Unstoppable are a good example, here: even without the "mutual exclusive" part, if you can hit your caps with just the t9, you will feel like the rest of your set is skip-able trash. The goal needs to be that t9s are good, but that they will never make it OK to "do a Stone" and try to skip as many of your Armor picks as possible. I guess what I'm really saying here is "the elevated end cost needs to continue to scale up until literally no build in the entire game can keep it running." I think the best way to read the proposal is to understand that no two powers will end up with the same thresholds. If we felt the need to keep Invuln numbers where they were then their increased end cost could come out the gate, or on a 15 second delay instead of 60, etc. Some powers might need tiered cost, where they see a bump every 15 seconds, and so on. For Unstoppable in particular, since it normally has a health crash, I could see it starting to gain self damage/tick after a certain amount of time as you strain yourself apart.

I would argue that if you only had, say, 10% psi resist but 40% to all the others (Tanker numbers, not enhanced), it would still be a "hole." Shield has a similar hole, but hell of a lot more utility and damage.

I feel like I read something like a year ago about Stun "charging" an enemy and then attacking that enemy would detonate it, dealing a one-time aoe. Did I dream this? Anyone know who to credit with that idea? Maybe a random GM idea?

I'd take that exchange.

While we are in disagreement, I appreciate your approach, here. Looking at the end-goal of what an aoe placate means, and how that compares to other abilities. Your fear then, is that setting this to aoe essentially makes you invincible for the duration, since you cannot hit what you cannot target. My counterpoint, then, would be a low target cap. For example, we could start with a target cap of 4 and only creep upwards if it feels warranted. This would, afterall, end up on a Beta server first. This is also why I like my chaining suggestion earlier, which has an associated cost (Assassin's Focus opportunity cost) as well as a target limit instead of just "this whole raid's worth of mobs."

You are saying leave it as it is but your arguments are supporting evidence for an improvement. I don't use it. It's more work than it's worth (AS>Hide>AS) It takes forever. Just because a power is Utility, doesn't mean it should be bad at utility.

Wait, so your argument is "instead of fixing the terrible power that is completely replaced with an ATO, you should play a single build"? Hard pass.

"Hey, we know the iconic power in literally every one of your primaries is already not worth the cost of a single power selection, but hey you should spend 3 powers, one of which is guaranteed to be worthless for you, for a slightly less terrible effect every 4 minutes... With an accuracy check." That doesn't sound like a tone-deaf response to you guys? Does Misdirection even reset your Hidden flag? I see you're trying to tackle a separate issue at the same time (stalker inconsistent aoe), but this makes me think of a different approach I'd like to see: Take a page from Electric Affinity. Placate consumes assassin's focus and adds Chains (bounces to additional targets) based on number of stacks. Ideally with more prominent FX so I can clearly track the chained targets.

But the nudity!

Eeeee, if this works, that sounds like a bug! I often save costumes that I stumble onto that I like, but don't have a character to use it with. Then later on when I'm trying to establish theme, I'll go through saved costumes to see if they work. If this is occurring, it's probably why I keep finding toons with wrong scales once I'm live (hence this thread...). I'd be up for even minor adjustments, but I have a feeling the mapping between scales and the sliders would be a lot of work. Something I recently discovered: If you have a tech-minded character, the "Cybertech" feet (for females) could pass as robotic extensions. There's a big bulk hanging off the ankle that could conceivably be where your actual heels are resting, and pretend the feet past the ankle are robotic extensions.

2 things I've been considering for quite some time, that I'm unsure of the overall impact of: A) Enemy base hit chance is 50% but player base hit chance is 75%. It seems like if enemy base was set to 60% (or some other number)... Survival would go down a linear amount. Can always universally increase HP or something to compensate. Builds at 45% defense would still get the same absolute gain in survival (relative to new-normal), but the soft cap itself would go up. This would incidentally increase viability of a lot of stuff, like having a defense-based tank in a party with a defense-based Support. B) What would happen if Elusivity was introduced to PvE? The "broad strokes" formula is, iirc, (ToHit-Defense)*(Accuracy-Elusivity). Would probably require offsets, which would look like nerfs. Could do stuff like weight defensive armor sets towards Defense and defensive Supports towards Elusivity, for example. I dunno. Just stuff on my brain that I haven't thought hard enough about to post a /jranger thread about.

I restart Tequila 2-3 times/day and watch the "checking" bar in anticipation for totally normal, not neurotic reasons. Just wanted to help amplify this signal. I'm very curious about this as well.

I realize this would require UI work, and that's a pretty big deal. I would absolutely settle for an ugly tiny button to expose ugly, janky number displays. I don't really care. I just would really love to see what numbers my scales are set to. I've had it happen a few times now where I wasn't happy with my height, build, etc and wanted to change it after creation... but then my other costume slots need the adjustments too. And I'm finicky and obsessive, so I can't settle for "looks close enough" on them all. You have two recourses to ensure perfection: 1) Correct scales on one costume. Now load this costume over all your slots and manually recreate your other outfits from there. 2) Save all costumes to files. Correct scales on one costume. Resave costume. Go into costume file and copy Scale data. Open other costume files and paste scales over them one at a time. Go back into game. Reload all outfits one at a time. So not pressing, has workarounds. But boy howdy, I'd love to just be able to see that I'm on Shoulders -5 instead of "that looks right around the middle, but maybe slightly less?"

I made a Fire Farm Tanker for Science™ as a point of comparison to my friend's Brute around the time the Tanker changes hit. I was curious to see how much the increased target caps would help a Tanker keep up. Don't get me wrong; I hate spending my limited playtime playing the market instead of missions, and I was tired of being poor, so it was also a pretty nice stimulus package for some toons I actually care about. Turns out, I also cannot stand farming. Ever since I started just converting Merits to cash (I guess I thought it felt like selling proof of my accomplishments, so I was reluctant - Merits didn't exist when I played on Live yes they were, I just forgot about them), I've found my (slow) farmer just isn't typically worth the effort. Does it make money faster? yes. Does it make it so fast that it's worth the lost time? Not for me. I now mostly use this character to skip some levels with friends' toons, especially when we have a concept group we need to catch someone up to. If anyone is curious about how I feel overall about farming on Tanker: Minions and LTs melt fast enough to be competitive. Bosses go so slow compared to Brutes that I often consider just ignoring them. But I never do.

Absolutely, minus the being pleased about it part, heh. I don't think most people are happy to be constrained, or take joy in constraining others (no one ever says their highlight of the day was /kicking an AR blaster because they didn't see any KD converters). I do also want to stress again that your original definitions and understandings are technically correct. Much like the word "meme", there's a definition fit for the laboratory, and a use that belongs to Internet Culture. It's hard not to write an essay on the topic, but your example is also perfect for showing how the metagame shapes the actual game (This is representative of a concept only. Do not take the specifics seriously) : Say the value of ice/plant is that it makes zero compromises in its role (damage) while casually picking up a secondary role (control). Say everyone starts picking up on this fact, and this casual bit of game knowledge propagates through the culture in the form of expectation. Some players won't even know or care why they invite ice/plants. They just know they're "godly". The culture will begin to magnify this advantage. Given these suppositions, what is a game dev to do? Eventually, no one wants other Blasters**. They can design to the meta and give other builds more hard CC. They can design against the meta by trying to give other builds certain equivalent tactics, though this is often ineffective because it runs afoul of the method the players have already mastered. They can also just "nope" the meta by nerfing ice/plant Holds, and there's often a good argument for doing so (if Controllers end up in the corner playing crap-fenders). The important point is, no matter which direction they go, it was the metagame that "forced" their hand. **This is unlikely to happen in CoH to such a blatant degree, but it still occurs. Elitism (which CoH blessedly lacks) acts as a catalyzing force, but it's not a necessary component. This is the root of every brute vs tanker debate, or the value of Force Fields in end-game. Our "don't give a shit" cultural values are basically in an arms race with the meta.

I always assumed she's basically using recolored Hellfire whip attacks. Not enough to make a whole powerset, which is why I propose Psychic Lash become a new Epic pool for a few ATs. EDIT: I take it back. I just read through her huge list of powers. I have a feeling they were trial-running a new set when they made her. Not sure if Blast or Assault or what, but it sure seems like most of a full player set, here. It's also just weird how all of the powers on the linked page use "you" to describe the user. Pretty sure most unique characters like that use the character's name or similarly make it clear it's Not For You™.

While correct to the idea of "Gaming the game," I don't feel like this really hits the way gaming culture has appropriated this term. "The meta" refers less to what you think of your choices, and more about what you know others will think of your choices. The most idealized anti-meta power we could have would be like... an inconsistently-applied, high mag Knockback that always sends enemies flying in different directions (as opposed to all getting blown in the same direction). You deciding it is/isn't helpful for you is irrelevant; you know at the moment of power selection that using it in a party will get you dirty looks. And your understanding of why everyone else hates this power is your understanding of the metagame.

Ok, I can't stick around threads like this for long. It's full of people being intentionally obtuse and it'll give me hypertension. This is why I spend more and more time communicating in my Rikti form, these days. @OdinTGE this seems like something to bring up in whatever active conglomerated +difficulty threads happen to exist around at the moment. Here's the last one I know about: What I would imagine would be, separate from our current +difficulty settings, adding some additional qualifiers such as "Increased enemy beef (+Resist and HP buffs to all enemies)", "Increased threat (+ToHit and Damage)", etc etc. I think it's pretty obvious from your OP that you would want something like this, and that it wouldn't remove options from anyone.

The text version includes both of these effects as part of Assassination. My whole point was showing that even their short description version is incapable of including everything it does. Bolded the last part just because it's funny and absolutely my point. There's already too much going on, there. No thank you to hiding Add. Shit, Assassination just broke my brian.

Stalker is the #1 reason why, even if we could choose our starting secondary, I would vote no to it. A Stalker relies on Hide to fuel their identity, and it would not make sense for it to be skip-able. Now, why shouldn't it just be inherent? Because it's damn powerful. It's an endurance-free defense toggle for starters. It's also a perfect aggro avoidance tool, is the foundation of an entire playstyle, and oh yeah, it can be slotted too. Stalkers already have like 82 passives combined in "Assassination." It's impossible to remember all the things considered their Inherent even before the very powerful Hide. EDIT: effect text from wiki: Always criticals from Hide 10% chance to critical outside of Hide Chance to critical outside of Hide increases 3% per nearby teammate Primary attacks (except Assassin's Strike) have chance to grant Assassin's Focus 1 stack of Assassin's Focus grants 33.3% chance for Assassin's Strike to critical outside of Hide This also misses the aoe ToHit Debuff and Fear chance. This also misses the (PvP Only) additional crit chance vs held/slept players That's a lot of passive. No thanks to adding Hide shenanigans to all of that.

Channeling a bit of Draven from League of Legends, I always thought it'd be fun for a Throwing set to have a gimmick where landed attacks have a chance of reducing cooldowns of your other Throwing powers, to represent catching and re-tossing them. Even better if they can be set up to visually chain back to caster when it procs. For t9, I'd go for a Targeted AoE version of Trick Shot (so each enemy struck by the targeted AoE is the epicenter of their own bounce storm. Would create a dynamic where it compares differently to other Nukes based on number of initial targets struck).

I've definitely noticed how all-over-the-place the Support sets are, and how there was clearly a double-standard between how far they could vary from baseline and, say, Blasts. Perhaps on a similar wavelength - I've often wondered about "debuff" armor sets for the melee classes, particularly Tanker (since they already ride that weird line of sort-of-Support). Examples would be "Toxic Emission" as a retooled Radiation Emission, with the toggles made self-cast for the tanking melee ATs and retained as enemy-targeted for the other 3. "Nether Miasma" or whatever you'd call it, with about half the Dark Miasma powers and a generous targeted AoE that debuffs Ranged damage or ToHit (to help survival until they're within your debuff auras). I really do like the idea of a blaster set that has multiple snipes. I think a lot of us have had characters that we made AR but grimaced, because we envisioned them more as slow and steady, and definitely not with flamethrowers. Imagine a Snipe attack that has one charge-up but repeats the fire animation several times -- mechanically, a "Chain" attack shooting multiple nearby enemies. Ok so all of my vehement agreement said, I feel like the Live developers hobbled the game by requiring each new set to one-up the previous ones with new gimmicks (and yet still strictly adhering to the structure of their sets, as you've mentioned). I'd really like to see Homecoming prioritize low-hanging fruit above cleverness. Example: I'm sure we'd be happy enough with Crossbows using some Beam Rifle and AR animations, even if mechanically it was basically a copy/paste of Archery. Once some more obvious holes are filled (example: there should be at least one good fit for Natural origin characters per power set category), I'd love to see them push the limits. About the Chain pandering: The original incarnation was basically a declaration that "I cannot party with Masterminds." It would have set a pretty bad precedent. They had to kill their darling to make a set that actually works in the confines of the game as it is actually played, and I applaud them for doing so.