Laenan

I think those changes proposed by Shin look great, and give the set a unified theme and a niche that I think the current set on the server is lacking.

I think as long as we’re cool with variations of the names “Buttstroke Man” “Buttstroke Boy”, etc it’s all good?

Same thing happened to me today- enemies buffed on a Posi 1. Usually not a problem, IF you tell the players ahead of time. So please do that. But it was quite confusing and I didn’t understand why we were getting wrecked so hard, until we spotted that little yellow icon.

If you have extra slots somewhere else in the build, you could pick up either Ice Bolt or Frost Breath instead of Ring of Fire. Dropping Burn is another option if you need to drop a power that has slots, I’ve never loved the blaster version, but it’s not horrible for melee heavy builds. If you don’t have extra slots I would at least drop ring of fire for aim (you can move a pool power to level 4 if you have to) because aim can get by and be useful even with just one slot. My only other note is that the purple sets (apocalypse, Armageddon, etc) don’t need to be catalyzed, as the purple sets automatically adjust like an attuned IO- it’s usually better to use enhancement boosters to get them to +5. Not build ending/ ruining by any means but you can save yourself some catalysts if you just buy the level 50 versions instead of attuned. I hope that helps.

I haven’t tested it yet but the snipe in PsyBlast gives +range, and so does Boost Range in /NRG. Could be something there for sniping from space?

There are ways to soft-cap ranged and melee defense if you want to be extra tanky, but there are trade-offs obviously. You never have to build a defense this high but you can! I attached a fire/fire/fire build with melee/ranged soft cap, but it has no hasten. Generally if you want to be soft-cap tanky, it's gonna require all of your pool picks, or you need a secondary with a defense boosting power (ninja, tactical arrow). But building just for ranged is very viable, especially if you have hover or are just good at staying at range. Hope that helps. Green Phoenix.mxd

American Ninja should use an assault rifle or dual pistols instead of archery, probably. The ninjitsu and ninja training sets are great and feel good to play.

Another neat thing about claws is that you don’t need many powers for a good attack chain, even at low levels. So you can more easily dip into pools and epics if you want to. Claws/WP should be fun, and as someone else said, allow you to focus on snikting instead of clicking defense powers.

I ran some missions on a storm/storm corruptor at level 10 with basic SOs, level 30 with basic IOs, and level 50 with tons of set bonuses and IO sets to simulate a high end build. The set is fun to play, but storm cell just isn’t consistently. The first two blasts are solid. I could see skipping one or the other on certain builds if power choices are scarce, but it was nice having both of them. Jetstream was horribly unreliable. I don’t care for the repel effect on the power- I wish it was just knockback and then knockdown in the cell. I didn’t slot any of the Kb->Kd enhancements in the power, so I didn’t test if that helps. I dropped it in the 50 build because I had enough aoe and the inconsistency of KD vs repel wasn’t something I enjoyed. Storm Cell was fine at 50 on a build with enough recharge that I could pretty much call a new one with each group I wanted to. At lower levels, or when I didn’t recast the storm cell at higher levels, it made the set frustrating to play because I couldn’t get the storm in on the enemy mobs without putting myself in on the enemy mobs. I don’t know what the answer is here- I almost wish the power just worked more like freezing rain, where it doesn’t move, has the effect it has on that patch, and has a reasonable recharge time so you can have it up every or every other group depending on slotting. I don’t think this power’s recharge should be fixed- people willing to invest the influence and time to build it should have a slightly better performance and that’s probably okay. If this power needs to be left as is, maybe making the cell move faster or be more aggressive about moving itself onto enemies might be good. It would also be cool if other players’ storm cells would trigger your storm blast powers added effects, if they don’t already. (My testing was solo) The other powers were fine- category 9 is a little slow to kick off but I actually like the build up it does, it gives the power something unique. The snipe animation’s really is top notch. I think, as others have suggested, a yellow-white bolt for the lightning powers here might be better to distinguish it from lightning blast a little more visually. Overall, the set is an 7/10 for me. Storm Cell is needlessly complex for what it is (a rain-like aoe slow), and I don’t love Jetstream. I feel like the power is okay solo, but on teams, where you don’t want to scatter the mobs across the map, KB might be better so that you could convert that KB to KD? I wouldn’t mind if one of the other blasts switched places with the aim power just to give another blast power a little sooner, due to getting Jetstream and storm cell back to back as powers that have some issues.

In the builds I tested on the test server, having the powers available sooner felt great. Synapses will be less painful now, and that alone makes this a big win. I like that late bloomer builds get to come online a little earlier and I 100% love the changes. A lack of slots for these powers will remain an issue, so a blaster six slotting their nuke will be lacking elsewhere on level up. Exemplared, well-slotted toons of any AT make TFs easier, so I'm not overly concerned that this is going to be a hugely impactful change. I think that blaster nukes and other great "high level" powers being available sooner will make teams in those mid-levels move a little quicker, but I think maybe now those teams can turn the difficulty sliders up a notch higher than before to compensate. Plus, blasters with nukes in those mid-levels don't get their epic pool resist/defense powers in those levels, so they may have survivability issues. If the team can support them, as teams tend to do, then they were gonna be great anyway. The best change of all? Power choice in the secondary at level 1. Whatever else happens, please keep this change in. (I also wouldn't mind the t3 in the secondary being available at level 2, but that's just greedy 🙂 )

Played with the changes. Only took snap shot and smoke bomb of the "usually skipped" because I figured endurance would be an issue with the heavier attacks. The ninjas felt like they did a much better job and felt more survivable even when outside of my buff radius. Snap shot, mathematically, granting 3% more crits with 6 pets spamming attacks felt "just right" as far as being a worthwhile power pickup. With the t1 in secondary being a choice now, it's much easier power pick-wise to select one of those early single target attacks. Between this and smoke flash, ninjas were flipping out and killing people which felt great. Nice changes.

Tested my Psy/FF Corruptor on high level content. Skipped PFF and Detention field since they're unchanged. I'd really love to see if PFF couldn't be moved to later in the picking order and be a self-buff of some kind. I love the -res on force bolt. Nice and spammable, does what it needs to, and the power just gets this little buff that's nice. One thought I had on this power was to actually give you two click powers, like how dual pistols ammo works. Have the powers use the same cooldown/recharge, so you can't just alternate them. One power is "as is" and the other one is a "pull" or reverse knockback attack that vectors the enemy toward you. Could be nice for positioning and gives the set an extra tool for that purpose. Similarly, Force Bomb's - resist is nice in an aoe. Felt like I was doing enough more damage to make the bomb a solid opener. The power feels like it needs just a little more in some way- a slightly better stun, a little more -resist, or a little more damage. If I could get a slightly more reliable stun, or no stun and a slightly better -resist out of the power, I think it would be even better. The stun chance is so low as is it feels like it's been left in mostly for IO set purposes if someone wanted to slot stun sets. I wouldn't mind the slightly higher damage it used to have. This power is a late pick in the set so some more oomph could be good. Cast time is much better than it was pre-changes as well. Thanks for that! The force bubble/repulsion field power does what I needed it to. Now I don't play bubblers in MSRs so I can't speak to that use, but it kept stuff away without a KB->KD proc, and acted very similarly to repel and similar powers with the proc. It was not a huge endurance hog unlike Repel, so i can see use cases for both slotting the proc and not, which is a good choice to make. I liked the power solo. The T9 was... disappointing? I think the recharge should be more in line with Faraday Cage for what it's doing, because it does seem like the power wants to be up as much as possible. The benefits it's giving were not very noticeable. It's also very difficult to see, mostly due to the other force fields I had up while testing. If this power is going to remain the set capstone it needs something else- an absorb mechanic, some low resistance value (for some stacked mitigation with FF's defenses), -defense to the enemies, or something. It feels very skippable as is. Maybe if the defense debuff resist in the special was doubled, it would be worth the pick for that niche. But even then, I'm not sure that's "good enough." As far as ordering powers goes, The Repulsion power feels like it's better placed at t9, and Damping Field could easily be moved to it's current spot. Last thing: If this could happen in the engine: an awesome t9 would be some kind of temporary terrain creation in the form of a force wall. Big enough to block off a warehouse or cave hallway. On click, it just appears in front of you, in the direction you're facing, lasts 10 seconds, works like any terrain, blocks lines of fire and foes have to reposition around it. Very long or even fixed cooldown. It would be even cooler if your allies could blast through it and foes couldn't. Think of a short duration DND wall of force. If the mechanics of a terrain creation don't work, maybe some force field wall still pops up, but you and nearby allies get some crazy PFF levels of defense for the ten seconds its up. Not perm-able, but just some power that gives the party ten seconds of "no one is dying right now."

Maybe this is a silly question, but what’s the metric on popularity? Use or the power being taken? I ask because it’s a forced choice on Corruptors and Controllers, and it felt like the far better option of first pick (to me) in the blaster epic pool. It’s also the ultimate LOTG mule power because it doesn’t really need any slotting because it’s such an extreme power, and it needs no slots so it’s just well suited for mule-life. I’m guessing the LOTG proc is a good chunk of the reason high end builds or even builds in general love it. I also wonder how many of the FF secondary players still take it if the power availability changes make it to live and makes the t1 skippable? Hard to say I guess. There’s a variety of great options listed above for it. I think a passive +defense power, a low endurance “self-insulation/deflection shield” at some lower than those powers’ strength or the ticking absorb on self with some small defense increase would be very well received, even if we lose some of that low-level escort mission and extreme self-protection. Someone above mentioned old force bubble being great for escorts and if that’s the case, maybe it’s okay for PFF to have its utility changed. (no sass or sarcasm intended with this post, just to be clear 🙂 )

Can we just make detention field a standard single target hold? Effectively it’s already that except it’s annoying in teams. Making it a “standard” hold would let it slot hold sets, allow the held target to be attacked, and just otherwise be a better version that basically does the same thing. Maybe let it have a chance for a mag 4 hold if detaining bosses is something people use it for. As is, I don’t use the power nor do I find it useful in any form, except as a “troll the team” gimmick, which I won’t do.

Hey, I don’t know that it’s a priority but with seismic blasters rocking it out there, an Earth Mastery or Stone Mastery epic pool would be a great option. A few additional options per archetype would be great to match new and proliferated sets. As with the current ones, borrowing thematic powers from various other sets would work well.