AgentForest

I think what makes it different is that it leans into support like a normal armor set doesn't. I know Shield Defense gets a single toggle that buffs others, but that's only to encourage them to use their much more selfish passive, Phalanx Fighting. A shield tanker isn't a support, and shouldn't pretend to be. Radiation Armor gets an AoE that heals allies, but that's just fluff. The move is meant to harm enemies. It's a DoT and defense Debuff that just so happens to also heal allies a little. If that's support, then do we call Dark Armor a support set just because it has fear/stun auras? The concept behind this set was magic circles. You create concentric rings of power around yourself, and the closer an ally gets to you, the more they'll benefit from the different effects. A wide ring that hides them from view, a smaller one that helps them heal, and at times they create another smaller one inside that making you really hard to hurt. This could help change the way other players play around their tank in ways we don't currently see. It could make a Sentinel that sort of acts as the safe haven of the back line. A stalker who assassinates anyone who strays from the tank to attack the back line. The Sorcery pool has a lot of great and original ideas, half of which rely on having teammates for maximum effectiveness, as they aren't castable on yourself. So I felt expanding on that with a tank set that, while not having the raw durability of Shield Defense or Invulnerability, creates safe zones extending beyond themselves.

I'm definitely down with renaming the various powers. They were almost all pulled directly from Dungeons and Dragons, with some minor tweaks, lol. Spells in that game are often given very bread-and-butter, simple, conceptual names, and leave the flavor up to the players and DM. Blade Ward literally just wards you against physical weapons for a bit. Technically it's because you drew sigils in the air that deflect incoming weapons, but you could just as easily flavor it as a bunch of spectral blades or kite shield appearing to parry enemy weapons. Absorb Elements is exactly what it sounds like. You can use your reaction to absorb magical damage of the various elemental magic types (fire, cold, acid, thunder, lightning) halving damage from the triggering damage type until the start of your next turn. Your next melee attack adds some of that damage to the hit. This part wasn't something easy to implement here, so I worked that damage boost into Mana Tap instead (a move I borrowed from WoW because DnD doesn't have an endurance/mana system). I had to change Reflective Shield's name because Armor of Agathys would have been an obvious copyright infringement, lol. But it was heavily based on that power. Temp HP (absorb shield) that if struck hurts the attacker. Every so often, DnD tends to name a power something super lore-specific, instead of vaguely left to players to flavor. The only other reflective shield in the game was Fire Shield, and we have a whole set for that sort of thing already.

I'm not entirely sure, but many of the assets already exist, so the hardest part of making this power set is mainly putting the pieces together, and optimizing it so it doesn't lag computers to hell.

My solution is to make an alternate universe version of the same character, lol. On a different server if I want the name still, but otherwise I tend to just explain it as a praetorian double, lol. Edit: This could explain why I have over 125 characters...

You misunderstood my comment. I already am. And that's the problem with the Defender passive. I play FAR more Corruptors than Defenders. Corruptor is one of my all-time favorite classes. The rest of my comment elaborated on why I almost never bother with Defenders. Their entire passive is counter to their entire purpose. A full support class shouldn't be encouraged to solo by the mechanics of one part of their passive, while at the same time only given an endurance discount scaling with how bad a job they're doing. If you're keeping your team alive, you won't see much endurance discount, and if you don't want to team, why are you a Defender? I was advocating for completely revamping the Defender passive so that people take the role for the right reasons, and get rewarded for it, rather than so people can solo, or get endurance discounts for not doing their job. Until Defender Vigilance is fixed, I probably won't play very many because it just clashes with the power fantasy.

Shield Defense often requires special animations for the attack set. Some sets cannot accommodate that, but others can. Titan Weapons, Claws, Katana, Staff, and Dual Blades don't work with shields because they're two-handed, but so were several other sets originally (some of the Kinetic Melee and Stone Melee attacks, for example). Not all of the moves needed to change, but they had to make certain attacks swing use only the right hand. I feel like this could be done with pistols, as they don't "require" two. They'd need to make new animations, but it's perfectly doable. Assault Rifle wouldn't work well with a shield, nor would Beam Rifle, but almost every other ranged attack set would need tweaks to animations. For example, Fire Blast would need a right-hand only set of animations for the shots so your shield could remain in place. This is likely why Shield Defense wasn't ported to Sentinel yet. It requires more than just tweaking that specific move set to work well with a ranged class. It requires changing animations that were never intended to be one-handed from every blast set available to Sentinels. That said, if/when Shield Defense is ported to Sentinels, they'd have to make a pass over the blast set animations to make sure they fit, and I feel like Dual Pistols would just be made "Pistols" and would use one-handed animation if you had Shield Defense, but the two-handed animation as an option if you didn't. I don't see why they wouldn't make pistols work with shields on some level if they already have to go over all the other blast sets too. On a side-note, I feel like Claws, and Dual Blades could have one-handed animations made for them just to work with Shield Defense. Those are also power sets that really have no requirement to be two-handed beyond tradition. A new set of one-handed animations would work wonders for those too.

While Soldiers/Widows are in a good place, I do feel their inherent passive is just... so boring and underwhelming. Conditioning always felt like it was a placeholder meant to either get upgraded or replaced, but they somehow forgot. From what I've experienced, AT passives are meant to convey their purpose and facilitate that role. What's the role of the VEATs? Well, they're something of a jack-of-all-trades who gains some specialization to be more like some other classes, while still being generally useful at most things. While Kheldians are a jack-of-all-trades AT as well, they get to specialize on the fly through transformations. Arachnos ATs are more versatile at all times, but just lean in a direction instead of dramatically shifting roles on a dime. My suggestion? Military Efficiency: You gain the small regen/recovery boost when making the character, as you do now, but the move upgrades upon selection of a "subclass." Soldier: Crab Spider: You gain a reduction to the endurance cost and cooldown of summons, and the endurance cost of the leadership auras. Bane Spider: You gain a reduction to the endurance cost of your damaging melee moves, and your ToHit and Damage leadership auras provide more to you than to allies. Widow: Night Widow: Like the Bane Spider, you gain endurance cost reduction on damaging melee moves, and further self-buffs from leadership ToHit and Damage auras. Fortunata: You gain a reduction to the endurance cost and cast time crowd control moves, with reduced endurance cost on leadership auras. This would let you specialize into your subclass and lean into its strengths without really getting rid of their versatile nature. The leadership buffs you get are amazing, but making the more supportive subclass options more efficient at using them helps. Crab Spiders may not get access to the crowd control of Fortunata, but they get a lot of summon options, so making them a tad more of a Mastermind could be fun. My main issue with VEATs is that they are absolute endurance hogs without Incarnate powers. It pretty much forced my hand with my Crab Spider to pick certain Incarnates, and even then she struggles with endurance, and probably will continue to until I finish upgrading them to max in at least two incarnate categories. Not just because the pets are so expensive, but because staking all the leadership boosts is draining to begin with. Perhaps this would require some changes to scaling on some things, who knows, but it would definitely feel more in-line with what the ATs offer.

Honestly, if possible, I'd like the Beam Rifle set to have alternate animation options that are more condensed, clean, straight lasers, like X-ray Beam. It just looks kinda messy and awkward. I really wanted that set to feel more like the Robot laser blasts and X-ray beam when the set was announced.

Yeah, that's the biggest issue I see here. It would be hard to make some of them work right, and would require whole new animations to be built from the ground up. For example, Irradiate is a PBAoE. We have no animation right now to spin a character firing eye lasers around himself. Don't get me wrong, we SHOULD have this, but as @Solarverse said, it seems like something that should just be a ground-up full power set. With palm, wrist, and eye options for where the beams originate if possible. I want my Iron-Man "one-off" spinny slice laz0rs plz. 🙃

Your idea definitely does improve the existing power, and I support it. I personally feel that Sentinels shouldn't need a bar to begin with. I just wish "offensive opportunity" and "defensive opportunity" were simply toggles that were mutually exclusive. Once activated, they'd make all single-target attacks apply them. We don't have any inherent passives that are toggle-based, so it's unique, but it also would serve the same purpose without making it really clumsy to use. No endurance cost, just make it so you pick one, toggle it on, and now that's what your single-target attacks do. Apply what right now is just automatically used whenever you use a certain attack in your rotation. Just make it so if you apply the effect to a target, all instances of it are removed from past targets.

As for what defensive powers each minion set should provide, I feel like the pets should be made T1, then the following would fit. I drew many of the following moves from Sentinel power sets, as they were made to work better with sets that include ranged attacks. I also feel most of these should provide some level of bonuses to the pets as well if they're near you. Like, a small heal and increase to max HP if you pop Dull Pain, a regen boost if you have Up to the Challeng on, etc. Smoke Flash would be a larger area and stealth your ninjas too. But generally, these are the only survival moves you'd have room for, so they'd have to get their mileage through helping your pets too. Ninjas: Ninjitsu T2: Ninja Reflexes T3: Danger Sense T5: Shinobi-Iri T7: Smoke Flash Necromancy: Dark Armor T2: Dark Embrace T3: Murky Cloud T5: Obscure Sustenance T7: Cloak of Fear Robotics: Energy Aura T2: Kinetic Shield T3: Power Shield T5: Energize T7: Power Armor Demon Summoning: Fiery Aura T2: Fire Shield T3: Plasma Shield T5: Cauterizing Blaze T7: Molten Embrace Mercenaries: Invulnerability T2: Temporary Invulnerability T3: Invincible T5: Environmental Resistance T7: Dull Pain Thugs: Willpower T2: Mind Over Body T3: Up to the Challenge T5: Heightened Senses T7: Resurgent (can self-rez, but also usable as a sort of Dull Pain if not downed, like Second Wind) Beast Mastery: Regeneration/Super Reflexes T2: Focused Fighting T3: Focused Senses (maybe modified to grant some AoE defenses like Danger Sense, or work AoE defense into the pet roar buffs and grant them to you too) T5: Instant Regeneration (providing both Absorb shields and a flat regen bonus at all times since Integration would have granted CC protection) T7: Second Wind (can self-rez, but also usable as a sort of Dull Pain)

I'd been toying with the idea of an AT like this for a while. I also am sold on having the Assault set as a primary and the pets as secondary. My main concern is pet and personal durability. The best way I can see to do this is that, because your pets are secondary sets, they have lower damage scaling, but benefit from any of the "armor" effects you grab from where the attacks used to be in the pet powers. If you have some Dark Armor style toggles on, so should your undead. If you have barriers and armor plating on, so should your robots. Your pets just don't have the damage output a Mastermind's pets would have, and you don't provide the utility and support a Mastermind would. Instead, you're shifting the damage more toward you, and making the pets harder to get rid of. I also feel like a way to differentiate it from the Mastermind would be granting the pets a reduction to the AoE damage they take in exchange for making it so you can't order them around in complex ways. You could get stances like Defensive and Heel, but not direct orders, making the pets focus any targets you've damaged, prioritizing your current target. You wouldn't need the "attack" order if you can just hit an enemy to make the pets start fighting. This would make it a very easy to play pet class than MM without making MM obsolete. I'd imagine it feeling more like a scrapper in that you're able to take a few hits, but don't really have to think much beyond "kill things". You just have average damage, bolstered by your minions.

This is a solid quality of life update I can get behind. Not sure how easy it would be to implement, but I hope they do.

This is actually the real issue with Vigilance. Personally, I don't think it ever should have granted a damage boost when solo that decreases when you add teammates. This encourages people to not want to team with the most team-centric AT. Or makes them feel "weak" if they do team. It sets the bar needlessly high for what to expect of their damage output. As for the endurance discount, this bothered me too. If you are good at preventing damage in the first place, or heal people as soon as damage shows up (smart gameplay), then you rarely benefit from this effect at all. Personally, I think Defenders should gain an endurance discount whenever allies are attacked (hit or miss) sorta like how Fury is calculated for Brutes. It shouldn't be based on where anyone's health currently IS, but rather on enemy aggression. This would keep healing someone from reducing your discount. But even then, it was never an exciting passive. I wouldn't even know how to fix it, but making Defender base damage just higher than Corruptors isn't the solution. Perhaps add in a weak buff to the strength of buffs, debuffs, and heals based on the endurance discount criteria. Defenders already have the strongest buffs, debuffs, and heals in the game, but if as allies took damage, your ability to protect them or hinder foes improved, that would make up for any loss in damage. Radiation Blasts would lower defense more, forcefields would get stronger, heals would get stronger, etc. Just make those factors and the endurance discount all scale with a fury-bar sort of mechanic based on allies getting hurt. Maybe make it drop off faster though so it isn't just permanently maxed out. Like, during the alpha strike, sure, it'll get pretty full, but as the fight wears on, it drops back down to more reasonable levels. This lets you really shine at the times people need a support the most.

I wasn't aware they ever incorporated that. Totally changes my view of the power. I think the best option would be having access to two mutually exclusive moves then. One a toggle, and the other a click buff. Let the player decide which suits their style and build better. I know that if I have Spines/Radiation Melee and have a damaging toggle I don't want to turn off if mezzed, I would much prefer the toggle mez protection. But if none of my toggles will drop if I forgot to turn on Practiced Brawler, then the clicky one seems the better choice. I do still fully agree that we should be allowed more than one auto-click power to be set, so long as it isn't a damaging attack. Hasten is the main culprit causing issues here, not Practiced Brawler. (Hasten, honestly, I feel is a much more problematic power, but that's a topic for another thread.)

Totally fair. I know magic is a complex and vague theme that could go so many ways, so I tried to grab the different concepts I've found that fit the theme, and incorporate them into one overarching set. Most of the spells I could think of fit better with resistance, but I wanted some sort of deflection spell too, and figured why not have a sort of "build up" for physical/melee defense? Sure, there isn't much precedent for that, but it could make for a fun move instead of having heals always be the burst survival mechanic. It would buy time for the Aura of Vitality spell to do its job. But there are so many alternative types of magic that could be used for such a set, and my suggestion may not be how others envisioned it. Blade Ward and Glyph of Invisibility are easily the most up for debate though. Some people don't like stealth in their armor sets unless they're a Stalker, and a temporary defensive boost may not be what people look for in their tanks. Still, it was fun to try to come up with new ways of performing the role with a more wizardly approach. I imagine many fans of spellswords loving the set though. 🙂

THIS! Dimension Shift's rework was beautiful, and makes it far more useful to a team. I was genuinely surprised Black Hole never got the same attention when that rework happened though. Make it an area that phase shifts all inside it, and also immobilizes enemies. Then when allies enter, they can still hit the trapped foes, while becoming immune to outside opponents.

Oh god, I just realized this was my 69th post, fml... 😅

I know, the easiest way to incorporate this into the game would be just an alternate set of animations for the Broadsword power set, and more weapon choices to incorporate more finesse-type weapons like rapiers or daggers. However, I feel like more dexterous weapon types also lend themselves to a different style of combat altogether, not just a different "look." So I went about making a more dedicated and unique power set. I didn't want the brutal power of Broadsword, the two-handed nature of Katana, or the dual-wielding of Dual Blades. Something new was needed. Short Blade (Scrapper/Brute/Stalker Primary, Tanker Secondary) Baseline Mechanic: As a dexterous combat style, all of the attacks in this set grant you Agile Combatant, a small, stacking defense boost against all damage. Not a lot, and this amount scales with the archetype's defensive scaling (best for Tankers, lower for Scrappers/Brutes, and lowest for Stalkers). Your attacks also have inherently slightly better accuracy, like the Archery set for Blasters. While the set lacks solid AoE damage, it makes up for this with dodging and strong single-target damage. So while a Tanker may not get a huge benefit from their enhanced damage areas, they'll benefit from better defense buffs, and easier stack generation for Study Foe's "Analyzed" effect, letting the team focus down primary targets better. Quick Stab: Single-target minor Lethal damage. Thrust: Narrow cone moderate Lethal damage. You stab a target and those in front or immediately behind them for decent damage. Flitting Blade: Single-target high Lethal DoT. You do a series of rapid cuts to your foe's weak points, causing them to bleed out over a long period of time. This attack also lowers enemy defense for the duration of the bleed. Press the Attack: Self +ToHit +Damage. You gain a boost to damage and chance to hit, gaining a larger boost for each stack of Agile Combatant (which are lost upon using Press the Attack). You cash in on all of the insight you acquired during your fight with these enemies as you avoided their strikes and learned their attack patterns, allowing you to temporarily a find their weak points and turn the tables on your foes. Study Foe: Toggle single-target Foe -Acc, Foe -Resist (all). You can pick a target and analyze their combat. You are better at dodging this particular enemy, and each time they attempt to strike a target, their resistance to damage drops, allowing you to riposte their strikes for greater retaliatory damage. The enemy gains 2 stacks of Analyzed (resistance debuff) for attempting to hit you, rather than 1 for attacking your allies. There is a limit to 10 Analyzed stacks, though new applications refresh the old. This move has a 10 second cooldown, but if the target dies, the toggle ends and the cooldown is completely reset. This encourages you to focus one target until its defeat, but doesn't force it. It also encourages you to use it on enemies that are focusing on you rather than others. [For Stalkers, this power is replaced with Assassin's Sting, which is moved to T4, swapped with Press the Attack, which becomes Build-Up at T5.] Challenge/Taunt/Placate: Self-explanatory. Taunting any target affected by Study Foe grants them 3 stacks of Analyzed immediately. Hamstring Slice: Single-target high Lethal DoT, Foe Immobilize, -Speed, -Jump. This causes a strong bleed and slow for a long duration, while also preventing jumping. For a short time, the foe is also immobilized. Stinging Strikes: Melee cone high Lethal DoT. You stab an enemy and those near them repeatedly in a short window of time. These injuries can cause the enemy to wince in pain, effectively causing a Fear condition for a short time. As a set focused more on dueling individual targets, this can help you manage larger groups of enemies by neutralizing a few briefly while focusing the main target down. Heart Strike: Single-target Extreme Lethal DoT, Foe -Endurance, -Recovery. You strike clean into your opponent's vital organs, causing a decent immediate lethal strike, followed by a powerful bleed for an extended period of time. During this time, their recovery is reduced, and they also bleed some of their endurance.

And yeah, to get the jokes out of the way, I know this will lead to hentai themed characters, lol. That's inevitable. However, I've already seen characters like that, like a Pain Domination/Dark Blast Defender who spams Tenebrous Tentacles and is in an anime schoolgirl outfit or dominatrix outfit named Hentacles or whatever other pun you can think of. I know. But that's not a good reason to avoid making a power set like this available, lol. There's something cool about cosmic horror that few games ever embrace, and even more rarely let you personally use. Maybe you want to play a cultist of the Great Cthulhu, seeking to release him upon the Rogue Isles. There's also something exciting about calling on a deep ocean beast to assist you in combat, especially in a setting where there literally IS a giant octopus character. Maybe you're an Aquaman type hero who wants to tame Lusca to protect the city, and don't want to be stuck with a trident or Water Blast to have that ocean theme. Maybe you just are an amoeboid alien species who attacks with pseudopods. Nothing in the game really lets us have that aesthetic quite yet, and this would also provide some unique mechanics we don't currently have in a blast set. I think all of that is worth suffering the handful of short-lived joke characters that will result, lol.

Yeah, almost all of these moves could easily be created by simply reskinning existing powers, and any new models needed could be found from the Lusca tentacles (though a smaller, lower poly version would be needed for the quantity that would potentially exist in a fight), preventing the need for creating entirely new assets. I was tempted to put this in the Eco-Friendly Powerset Recycling thread, but it would require far more work than just copy-pasting moves. There'd be actual artist time investment here, as they'd have to map a model not currently used in most powers to new animations. Even if the mechanical effects are pretty similar to other moves. But I don't see it being much harder than creating Earth Blast was.

Some Dungeons and Dragons fans might recognize a lot of inspiration in this set, but I wanted a more magical armor set for front-line fighters. The Sorcery pool offers a lot of fun utility and supportive effects, but not many of those powers were useful on someone who fights on the front-line. I wanted to bring that aesthetic to the melee role. I picture a lot of these powers having their effects mapped to cylinders around you, a ring of runes and magic words written on the surface of that cylinder, with different spell wards hovering at different distances from you, creating layers of magical defense. Blade Ward, as a temporary effect, would be one of the brighter and more obvious auras, as it's temporary and needs to be well-telegraphed to opponents and teammates. Aura of Vitality could be a ring at a wider distance, and Glyph of Invisibility could show a larger, faint magic circle could denote the max range. Mage Armor could be mapped to the existing Victorian aura's locations, causing glowing armor plates hovering a short distance from your body. Various layers of protection each occupying different physical space to show all the spells you're currently maintaining. Spell Warding (Tanker Primary, Scrapper/Brute/Stalker/Sentinel Secondary) Baseline Mechanics: This set provides moderate defense to all damage types, but mostly resistances. The defense provided comes in small but strong bursts now and then as needed. You also gain several ways to assist nearby allies, much like Shield Defense, but with a more magical flavor. Mez protection would focus more on mental and dimensional effects, so protection against forced teleportation, fear, confuse, taunt, placate, repel, and knockback would take precedent over effects like defense debuff resistance (granted temporarily by Blade Ward) or immobilize (granted temporarily by Mana Tap). This set also has a few ways to gain additional damage, as magic isn't just defensive in nature, and you will after all have an offensive power set too. Draining mana can empower your attacks for a few seconds, while attackers take damage in retaliation. I toyed with the idea of giving Elemental Absorption some damage for each nearby enemy debuffed, but it seemed to just make it a superior version of Against All Odds, and I didn't want to step on that set's toes too much, so I opted to make it purely defensive in nature. This would be the third defensive power set that places a great deal of emphasis on positioning, like Shield Defense and Dark Armor, but with a more supportive aesthetic, even if it may not be nearly as sturdy as some other sets out there, from a purely tanking perspective. This positional and supportive nature allows it to still mesh well enough with the Sorcery power pool. Mage Armor: Toggle +Resistance (Smashing/Lethal). Glowing, translucent armor plates hover a short distance from your form, dampening hits from physical attacks. This armor could be mapped similarly to the Victorian aura. Blade Ward: Click short duration +Defense (Melee/Smashing/Lethal), +Resist (Defense Debuffs). Activating this move gives you brief high deflection chance on physical attacks and any melee strikes. I felt there weren't too many moves like this outside of Parry, so it would be a fun mechanic to have in a defensive set. Elemental Absorption: Toggle +Resistance (Fire/Cold/Energy, Endurance Drain). This also has an area taunt effect like AAO and RttC, as it lowers the damage of nearby foes slightly. Each foe debuffed in this way increases this resistance slightly. You also gain resistance to endurance draining effects while this ward is active. [For Sentinels and Stalkers, this would simply be a flat resistance boost, higher base but without getting stronger for each nearby enemy, nor debuffing them, in order to mesh better with stealthy or ranged gameplay.] Mind Warding: Toggle Resistance(Status Effects, Psionic/Negative Energy). This provides protection and resistance to mez effects while also protecting you against mental assaults from psionic or dark forces. Glyph of Invsibility: Toggle PBAoE Stealth +Def (all). You apply a glowing glyph to your chest, that causes yourself and nearby allies to become difficult to see. Your stealth suppresses in combat, but the stealth of others is only broken if they engage in active combat or if they leave the radius. The defense buff applied to you remains at all times, and this amount is not suppressed by breaking stealth. This non-suppressing bonus is applied to all people in range. Allies receive a greater effect on top of this that IS suppressed in combat. For example, maybe 5% defense is applied at all times to you and allies, but allies still hidden gain an additional 5%. [For Stalkers, this would be replaced by Hide.] Aura of Vitality: Toggle PBAoE +Regeneration, Self +Resist (Toxic). You grant a regeneration aura in an area. This area is small, but nearby allies can benefit from it. This provides a greater regenerative effect to yourself though. The toxic resistance is specifically for yourself though. Mana Tap: PBAoE endurance drain, +Protection/Resist (Immobilize). You draw magic from your surroundings, invigorating you. You break free of immobilizes and gain resistance to them, while healing your endurance and increasing your recovery for each nearby foe drained. Each enemy drained also gives you a damage boost to your next few attacks. The recovery bonus lasts longer than the damage bonus, as the damage is more a perk than the entire point of the ability. Reflective Shield: Toggle +Absorb over time, minor Energy Damage to attackers. If an enemy strikes this shield, they take a small burst of energy damage. This damage is stronger than persistent damage auras like Blazing Aura, but only occurs when struck instead of at regular intervals, and can affect targets at a range (still useful for a Sentinel). If you aren't being attacked, you likely won't get much benefit from this, but that's true of any absorb power, honestly, so it encourages aggressive gameplay and holding aggro. Sigil of Sanctuary: Click small PBAoE Self and Ally +Def (all), +Resist (all), +Healing. You create a small but powerful ring of protection over an area around yourself. Any allies in very close proximity (melee range) can benefit from this effect too, though doing so does lower their damage slightly. This area moves with you, and provides massive defense and resistance buffs while active. It only lasts a short time, about 10-15 seconds, but isn't on as long of a cooldown as other T9 defensive powers. Anyone in this shield receives increased healing and regeneration. Your own damage isn't lowered by this power, only allies, as you can weave the incantation to allow your own attacks to pass through it, but can't micromanage the barrier for others. Basically, this is your defensive panic move, but allies in a pinch can be guarded by it if they're okay with giving up a chunk of their damage for the relative safety of your presence.

Been reading a lot of cosmic horror lately, and saw an unfortunate glaring hole in the CoH power options for such a character. For customization reasons, I feel like the color palette could have the first color chosen for the tentacle, and the second for the portal it comes from. There could be a drop-down option to change between a physical tentacle or a spectral/translucent one. Perhaps you summon Lusca to attack your foes (base color palette), making reddish tentacles jut out of water. Perhaps you worship Cthulhu, and ghostly green tentacles reach out of eldritch portals. Perhaps you are possessed by a demon who uses oily black tentacles from the shadows. Regardless of the source of your powers, you attack at a range using these tentacles, and can even use them to grab your foes. I was at a loss for a solid name for the power set, as not all blast sets need "blast" in the name, but felt that I should include "blast" for clarity purposes as people browse the forum titles. Tentacle Blast (Blaster/Corruptor/Sentinel Primary, Defender Secondary) Baseline Mechanic: All damaging attacks from this set apply a stack of "Impending Doom" to the target. Once someone reaches 3 stacks, they get the Fear condition and have their resistance to all damage reduced for a short time. This fear duration and resistance debuff scale with archetype, so best on Defenders, weaker on Corruptors, and weakest on Blaster/Sentinel. Further applications extend the duration of the effect, rather than stacking magnitude. If this is too strong, it could require more stacks or something. Tentacle Swipe: Weak single-target Smashing/Toxic damage. A tentacle pops out of a hole near the target and smacks them. Tentacle Lash: Moderate single-target Smashing/Toxic damage. A tentacle pops out of a hole near the target, slaps them up into the air, then back down. Similar to Lift/Levitate in that it attempts a knock-up, but if the target resists this effect, the animation would still look sorta like a two-hit smack from the tentacle. Damage is dealt in two strikes over the duration. Abyssal Grasp: Basically Tenebrous Tentacles, but as Smashing/Toxic DoT instead. Shorter immobilize duration. Perhaps more octopus-looking tentacle designs if we want to get fancy. Thrash: PBAoE moderate Smashing/Toxic damage with a chance of knockdown. You could possibly have two versions of this, one with tentacles erupting from your character in all directions, and another where they burst out of the ground around you, lashing out at nearby enemies. Fathomless Pursuit: Toggle +ToHit that causes all attacks a chance to spawn a small tentacle near the target that attacks nearby enemies for minor damage for a short time. This chance is greater for single-target abilities, so that not every target of an area move spawns 10 or so pets each time. That would get out of hand. This wouldn't provide any serious burst like an Aim power would, but provides a more consistent, reliable damage and to-hit bonus instead, while keeping with the power fantasy of summoning an endless onslaught of grasping tentacles. Tentacle Slam: Narrow cone high Smashing/Toxic damage. Like Piercing Beam, this is a very narrow cone with solid damage, as a large tentacle slams down over a straight line toward/through a given target, and anything else in its path. Crushing Tentacle: Single-target Hold, high Smashing/Toxic DoT. A tentacle reaches up and wraps around a target, holding them helplessly in the air until they can break free. Prey Seeker Tentacle: Summons a persistent pet that follows you around until defeated or resummoned. This pet is a single moderately sized tentacle that attacks targets, tending to focus the last one you attacked. This could also be worked in as a toggle pet sorta like the redesigned [Electric Blast] Voltaic Sentinel. Either is fine. If it were a persistent effect like a Controller pet, I wouldn't want it to have the durability, damage, or utility of one. This is a damage set, after all, and it's not a T9 power. Tentacle Eruption: Location AoE severe Smashing/Toxic damage. A mass of enormous tentacles burst out of the ground at an area of your choosing, throwing enemies into the air as they thrash around dealing damage for several seconds. The knock-up and maybe a third of the damage happens when cast, but more damage continues for the duration to any enemies who fail to escape the area.

I don't see why that aspect of the moves even needs to be different, honestly. Make both aggro, or neither. I don't really mind either way. That's not the real issue with the powers themselves. I feel like Mass Hypnosis being the "no aggro" AoE mez is plenty.

I'm more inclined to think Seeds of Confusion and Mass Confusion should have their effects more evened out. Shorten the cooldown on the longer one to raise the cooldown on the shorter one, adjust durations to be more similar, etc. I don't think lowering one down or raising the other up completely fixes the problems both have, but a mix of the two approaches would be good.