Replacement

"I can taste everything!" EDIT to be on-topic Spear melee (or thrusting alt-animations for staff) Amorphous melee - character stands still so no animations; their player-defined blob attacks with particle effects instead (e.g. sand from your gourd, your animated shadow, etc). If it's not clear, instead of formalizing a format where we define exactly how a thing should be designed, why not have a thread where we just toss out power set ideas at a high overview level? Go nuts.

This was the police captain's last day. The moment you said this, I became certain this will get nerfed. I always think it's stupid to balance for level 50 and Incarnates, but @Haijinx is right. Even without double XP, DFB, AE, or anything else to speed through the experience, running the starter Origin contacts even, you still won't see level 7 long enough for this to matter. There's no hard line, here, folks. There's a fuzzy region where some builds will do better and others will do worse, and they will all feel "incomplete." If I were to try and draw that line, however, I'd probably put it around level 14.

Ottoman empire MM. https://youtu.be/kxFabMnubzw?list=TLPQMjYwMjIwMjByC7whtz7LQA&t=164

@Obus Form Thanks, that's good stuff. But I still cannot accept the premise of "just disable what you're not using." Not because it's lazy, but because other sets don't need to -- I'll pre-emptively concede Ice Armor does need to early-game, and that Stone Armor is Bad™. My issue, as I brought up in the last thread on the topic, is that Dark Armor, on a toggle-for-toggle basis, isn't getting meaningfully more than other sets. I could forgive all of that if it didn't also have a Click that took 33.3 Endurance. The other issue with Dark Regeneration is that it's... kind of too good. With even just 1 Healing IO, 2 targets yields an 85% heal, which is realistically already later than you would be hitting that button. You could reduce the healing potency and endurance cost by 1/3rd each and have no noticeable drop in healing power during standard play, while being far more forgiving to Endurance Bars the world over. This discussion on Dark Armor Endurance Slurping is old as dirt. If masses of people keeps independently arriving at the conclusion that it feels off or too punishing, at what point do you recognize that making some changes wouldn't be a bad idea?

Dark Armor total end cost before either of the mez auras: 1.41 end/sec Invulnerability end cost for all toggles: 0.73 Fiery Aura, all toggles: 1.04 + end refill Shield Defense, all toggles: 0.63 One of these is simply not like the others. It's probably the one with a Click ability that costs 1/3rd of your Endurance bar. Yeah, I know, theft of essence. But it's really not even enough. I think I'd be fine at this point if we just lowered Dark Regeneration's End cost. EDIT: found a comparable one. Ice Armor: full cost, 1.56 + End refill.

I absolutely agree with the general cut of your jib, here. I also commend you for a well-reasoned response. When damage becomes too important, all other core gameplay loops become obsolete. The separation, then, is that I'm not seeing incremental increases that are affecting top-line sets and builds with these changes. Just increases to bring up lower performing sets in line with the top performers. I make it no secret that I would be nerfing the top performers instead if this were my server, though. But that's not popular, so instead we will get everything up to Titan's level... Anyway, thanks again for being civil and nuanced in your response. I thought I had posted this yesterday but apparently my phone won't let me compliment people.

This is not how development works.

Have you tried restarting Tequila?

Hard disagree. CP made it clear that those sets left behind would get individual treatment. It's not "buffs requiring buffs." It's "incremental improvements, which paves the way for updating sets for other ATs as well."

It could still be flagged for party-only, meaning the 255 limit is just a way to say "no amount of pets could possibly slow you down."

As for the set itself, just to have it in the correct spot: The diminishing returns on each jump is going to feel bad when we can't control the exact bounce order. I strongly suggest having a normalized "secondary target" effect. I am concerned about the usefulness of Energizing Circuit.

I... Don't really want to this to become a big thing, but when I consider that Electroconvulsive therapy is still in use today, it seems to me the term you should be demonizing (AND RIGHTFULLY, because it's terrible) is Conversion Therapy. Same words in a different order: I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with Shock Therapy. But "Shock Therapy as a means of Conversion Therapy" is a different, and much worse story.

They declared on page 5

2 base targets + 5 static = 7 allies. Full team, sans yourself.

30.27% resistance to endurance, recovery rate, and recharge (using in-game "as used by level 50 Defender" function). Good catch, but brings us back to Energizing Circuit ending up over-niched.

There's a really good post around here... somewhere that spells out how this all works. The tl;dr I got from it was that once you get someone out of endurance, -recovery is the debuff you need to make sure you keep running. I'd love to see some reduction in AV resistance and EB/AV max end to make it a bit more viable though.

I think it's pretty clear: Tanker changes highlighted massive differences between the sets vis a vis aoe performance. I'm guessing Dark Melee was buffed first because a) it underperforms in aoe and b) is early in the alphabet. Other sets will get adjustments, I'm sure, but I gather the focus right now is reducing the huge parity gaps for Tankers, specifically.

Shock Therapy T8: (restore Ally Endurance) This would be awesome early on but seems a bit useless/niche in high-level play. Am I missing something with this assessment? An easy fix would be moving it earlier into the set (Tier 6-7 would have it online while your teammates may still actually have End struggles). Suggestion: I think something like +End Drain Resistance would also go a long way, here. Something to make your team a little more robust vs Sappers instead of simply recovering from them after they've all detoggled.

I have not played with Shock Therapy yet but: I like the idea of the "chains to additional targets for each Static stack" but I implore you to level off the benefits for every target 2+. It's worded like "each chain gives successively less benefit" and that will feel crappy when we cannot control the chain order. I suggest a large bonus for primary target and a lesser version for all chained targets.

Confirmed. Just Original, Bright, and Dark. As you're probably aware, the 2nd half of the animation is interruptable.

I think the bigger issue with giving it a Placate effect is the whole... "shouldn't this apply to everyone?" thing. Smoke Bomb and Misdirection are Single Player vs Multiple Enemies. Flash Arrow, to stay in theme and to be considered Supportive, would need to be Multiple players vs Multiple Enemies. Which would probably include a tank, unless you code it to be overridden by active taunts and... this is getting complicated.

I don't think this statement is in opposition to what @Galaxy Brain said. Without removing anything, you could buff the debuff aspects for controllers and the Mez aspects for others. That said, I think some of the debuff numbers should straight up be buffed across the board first. Flash Arrow and Glue Arrow Combined are worse than the early defensive debuffs other Support sets get (Darkest Night, Weaken, etc). I'd do this across the board as a first pass, then revisit and see if we need to get creative between the different ATs.

I'm actually super comfortable with this coming to pass, but man I hope they take the opportunity to remove the accuracy penalty from the controller versions. When folks ask that question of "should we nerf blaster aoe control or buff controller aoe controller?" my answer tends towards yes. I see you, @Captain Powerhouse. Look at Control's stupid-long aoe holds with their accuracy penalties and ask yourself if it would be so terrible for these powers to feel like Control Nukes instead of Self-Regret Buttons.

I'm sure this belongs in a larger discussion about making some asynchronous travel powers (instead of all being level 4/ no prereqs/ no combat benefit), but I would not only like to see Phase Shift lose the 30 seconds limit -- I'd go a step further and give it a move speed and jump buff (more jump height than jump speed, so you get the "low gravity/floaty" effect). Suggestion: If too powerful, also give it a -50 Max Endurance debuff while active. This would halve your Recovery and make you more susceptible to dropping the toggle.

@Black Zot This post was originally inflammatory and I've decided I should change my tone. I'll just say this: Nothing good comes from accusation. Accept that mistakes happen.