PoptartsNinja

There is one good Escort AI, and that's Manticore from the final Blueside Praetorian story arc (I forget the name: the one where you used to rescue Statesman from Tyrant but now you rescue Positron from a Stormtrooper). We teleport targeted Manticore's follow target from the door to the last room (and vice versa) which would've broken the pathing AI for any other escort; but Manticore unerringly followed the spiral to return to the person he was following and wouldn't drop them and pick another person to follow unless they left the mission. That AI needs to be passed along to every escort, it's black magic.

An all-knockback control set already exists. It's called "Forcefield"

Nope, it's in the novel. Richter thought he'd been dosed with radiation, while Cole was certain they'd found Pandora's Box.

Repulsing Torrent, Burst, Concentrated Burst, and Concentrated Strike all suck and you'll be happier if you skip them. Kinetic Melee's single target DPS is actually quite high, provided you don't take anything beyond the first three single target attacks. With moderate recharge you can Smashing Blow -> Quick Strike -> Body Blow -> Quick Strike pretty much forever and with enough you can Smashing Blow -> Body Blow on cooldown. The Stalker version's even better, since Stalker KM's Assassin's Strike only has a 0.67 second animation--faster than any other AS. Where KM suffers is AoE. It's better to skip everything until you hit an APP/PPP and supplement your AoE from there. Kinda like how Super Strength is better if you skip most of its powers and pick up the fighting pool instead.

The line is wherever you choose to draw it. Statesman and Lord Recluse's powers came from the same source, but Statesman is magic origin and Lord Recluse is science origin because that's what each decided the Well was.

It's something I vaguely remember from talking with Pohsyb back on the live servers. I was in the same Planetside clan as Pohsyb and he was the one who introduced me to CoH (I had no idea it was in development and it would've slid under my radar without him). IIRC, knockback had a built-in soft cap so any magnitude above a certain value got diminishing returns'd extremely hard. IIRC, this was because, at the time (this was pre-CoV, pre-ED) if knockback got too high it could cause mobs to move more quickly than the servers could process them and they'd despawn. I was never sure if there was a crash involved, but I always kinda assumed so. Even in Homecoming you used to be able to still force-despawn enemies like this with Force Bubble. If you toggled it on at level 50 while standing right next to a level 1 Hellion in Atlas Park, they'd accelerate so quickly that they'd instantly teleport about 500 feet and then just despawn. Anyway, I'm not sure if the knockback soft caps are still actually true, so I did some testing on Brainstorm: All testing was done with Force Bolt, on a Level 7 Defender with different levels of knockback slotting. All attacks were made against the same minion, in the middle of an empty street near the King's Row hospital, with no obstructions or NPCs in the way. All tests were made against the same target, from their neutral 'weapon ready' animation pose, with their pistol drawn, from as close as the game would physically permit me to be (2 ft) My sample size was limited to 5 shots at each enhancement value because I really should be in bed. You'd need larger sample size, a dev toolkit able to make the mob AI completely unresponsive, and a way to reset everything to exact x/y/z coordinates and facings to get an actually accurate knockback test. Repulsion Bolt unenhanced knockback magnitude 10.44 vs. Level 7 Gravedigger Brawler minion (+0): 41 ft, 44 ft, 41 ft, 38 ft, 40 ft (avg 40.8 ft knockback) Repulsion Bolt (level 7) enhanced with 1 knockback DO (magnitude 14.04) vs. Level 7 Gravedigger Brawler minion (+0): 37 ft, 43 ft, 43 ft, 39 ft, 51 ft (avg 42.6 ft knockback) - Expected improvement over baseline: 1.3 - Tested improvement: 1.5 Repulsion Bolt (level 7) enhanced with 2 knockback DOs (magnitude 17.65) vs. Level 7 Gravedigger Brawler minion (+0): 40 ft, 53 ft, 56 ft, 61 ft (!), 30 ft (!) (avg 48 ft knockback) - Expected improvement over baseline: 1.6 - Tested improvement: 1.15 Repulsion Bolt (level 7) enhanced with 3 knockback DOs (magnitude 21.25) vs. Level 7 Gravedigger Brawler minion (+0): 45 ft, 51 ft, 46 ft, 54 ft, 50 ft (avg 49.2 ft knockback) - Expected improvement over baseline: 1.9 - Tested improvement: 1.17 Repulsion Bolt (level 7) enhanced with 4 knockback DOs (magnitude 24.66) vs. Level 7 Gravedigger Brawler minion (+0): 49 ft, 43 ft, 53 ft, 65 ft, 42 ft (avg 50.4 ft knockback) - Expected improvement over baseline: 2.2 - Tested improvement: 1.19 Repulsion Bolt (level 7) enhanced with 5 knockback DOs (magnitude 27.43) vs. Level 7 Gravedigger Brawler minion (+0): 63 ft, 59 ft, 53 ft, 59 ft, 65 ft (avg 59.8 ft knockback) - Expected improvement over baseline: 2.47 - Tested improvement: 1.32 Repulsion Bolt (level 7) enhanced with 6 knockback DOs (magnitude 28.40) vs. Level 7 Gravedigger Brawler minion (+0): 51 ft, 61 ft, 51 ft, 63 ft, 63 ft (avg 57.8 ft knockback) - Expected improvement over baseline: 2.68 - Tested improvement: 1.29 I also got 1 outlier launch to 93 feet with only 2 knockback enhancements slotted, I didn't count it because it was weird and I never replicated it again. So either knockback is hugely variable and doesn't really conform to magnitude the way other controls do (likely), however the server simulates air resistance is the densest of spagetti (extremely likely), or there is some sort of diminishing returns soft cap (possible) that makes high knockback magnitudes scale really weirdly. We'd probably need a current powers dev to confirm. And I have a feeling the confirmation would be "yeah, Knockback is just weird."

That's part of the intent too. And it's easy to control in high tier content, since knockback magnitude already scales with enemy level; so you almost have to enhance knockback if you want to knock-proc a +4. Then you can move Sudden Acceleration's KB to KD out of the knockdown set (Sudden Acceleration having a six slot bonus is a cruel joke) and into a non-unique universal damage set, and replace it with a very fun "your knockback magnitude has a low chance to no longer respect the purple patch" proc. If higher knockback magnitude is a higher proc chance, it stops disincentivizing trying to minimize the knockback rating in everything. And if a few powers like meteor become better, well... the spawn still had to survive long enough for the meteor to actually hit them so I think the high knock-proc rate is earned.

Because procs are more fun for the player. Nobody will care if knockback does ~1-15 extra unenhancable damage (the knockback magnitude hard cap is 15 IIRC), but if every knockback has a chance to do 40-ish extra damage it's a big enough pop to be noticable; and because it doesn't happen every time it adds some operant conditioning--I mean, it adds to the fun--and people will gradually start to enjoy Knockback more.

The problem with Knockback isn't that it doesn't contribute to survivability, but that it doesn't contribute significantly more than a knockdown and can be actively detrimental by scattering things out of buff/debuff anchors, away from damage, and all the other arguments everyone already knows that we don't need to rehash. If the perception is that knockback hurts damage, the solution is to add a damage component to knockback. Say, equivalent to a smashing damage proc to all knockback above an arbitrary but achievable magnitude (we'll say, mag 5), with a proc chance determined not by recharge but by the actual knockback magnitude of the attack (so a higher knockback magnitude = a higher chance for knock-proc damage). I feel like this is reasonable middle ground, since hitting a two ton walking rusty forklift hard enough to send them flying should have repricussions beyond "and then they took approximately 0.11 seconds longer to get back up."

Spines is toxic and lethal, two of the most heavily resisted damage types in the endgame. And the toxic damage isn't especially high since it was introduced before 'toxic' was actually a damage type. I also don't really understand the farmer hate. They are the 'supply' side of the AH, and they supply enough to keep AH prices reasonably priced. You can absolutely see what happens to AH prices when farmers stop farming AE when everyone's TOT farming during October. The enhancement supply drops and prices double until mid-November. If you're considering Spines from the perspective of AFK farming, improving the quality-of-life of a single single target attack isn't going to change Spines' farm performance in any significant way because the AFK farmer isn't using any single target attacks. If you're considering from the perspective of active farming... active farmers are playing the game so I don't really see a problem there either. Improving Spines might encourage non-farmers to take Spines more often, too.

I'm afraid I don't see this, specifically, having any legs. Animation time isn't a variable. The devs would have to build 30% faster animations for every power pool and temp power in the game in order for this to function.

Wolpertinger Foxtrot

Can I ask what you mean by "increase the duration or intensity" of your claw attacks? I have a feeling the game is already doing what you want, but in a way you aren't expecting--but I don't want to make any assumptions. If by "intensity" you mean strength, then damage enhancements already have this covered as they boost all damage the power does, both of the claw attack and of the toxic DOT at the end. The other way to enhance your strength would be to either team with someone who does -resistance, allowing you to do more damage accross the board; or to slot a Chance for -Resistance proc enhancment into one or more of your attacks. Achilles Heel Chance for -Resistance can be slotted into any attack that has a -Def component, Fury of the Gladiator Chance for -Resistance can be slotted into any melee AoE, and the weaker Annihilation Chance for -Resistance can be slotted into any ranged AoE. All will boost your damage against non-resistant enemies by 20% (and boost your damage against resistant enemies by a bit less) for a short time. If by "duration" you mean you'd like the animation times extended so you can get more hits in, that's unfortunately impossible. Altering animation time isn't something enhancements can do... but you get the same effect out of recharge reduction enhancements, which increase how often the power can be used, making it available more often. For example: if you have a power that you can use 3 times per minute by default, and a recharge enhancement lets you use it 4 times per minute, you've boosted the "duration" of that power by 25% since it's available more frequently. Some good general slotting for basic SOs/IOs is 1 accuracy, 2 damage, 1-2 endurance reduction, and 1-2 recharge reduction, depending on how much endurance the attack costs to use. If the attack is cheap it can take extra recharge; if it's expensive you may want to reduce the cost with an extra endurance reduction instead.

Fury is the reason I like brutes, they are sustained and steady damage encouraged to spend as little time between fights as possible. But I also feel like Fury is badly designed, and if they do spend too long between fights they can get frustrating.. Fury currently goes from 0 to 90% in ~two seconds with minimal player input; but on a full team that isn't operating like a well-oiled machine (i.e. letting the Brute absorb the alpha) it can feel impossible to build Fury at all. The simplest way to "fix" brutes would be to adjust their base damage a bit and then alter Fury to only build up with the Brute's own attacks. Making fury more directly player-controlled encourages brutes to keep up their onslaught. I could genuinely see a world where Brutes and Tanks shared the same overall stats, but tanks hit the resistance cap more easily and brutes hit the damage cap more easily. Fury also becomes much less useful on a strong team or league with +dmg buffers. The other-other "easy" fix to Fury would be to make it a pop of bonus damage, like the Incarnate Hybrid Assault; perhaps with a proc rate based on current fury level (and expending fury whenever the damage procs to encourage the brute to keep building that fury). That would de-couple Fury from normal damage buffing, so brutes would benefit from Fury no matter how many Kinetics users were around.

I went fishing in the Wayback machine because I was pretty sure there was a big post by Zeb explaining the ATs in the lead-up to CoV's launch. Unfortunately, I couldn't track it down after an hour of searching. So instead, I'll just show the old AT blurbs from the CoH and CoV websites explaining how the Devs view the ATs in question. And back to the OP's question at hand: The Brute was intended to be "the best there is in a straight melee fight," so I could see a fun argument being made for removing their ranged powers entirely in favor of some sort of PBAoE replacement. Them not having the same AoE advantages as tanks doesn't matter if they've got an extra Melee AoE to fire off. I'm not sure that's a change I'd actually make, but it would be interesting.