Dispari

June 18

Working to improve sleep is a step in the right direction. It's long been so niche as to be non-viable in the vast majority of circumstances.

June 6

Is this a good solution though? What does reworking the whole set from the bottom up accomplish aside from breaking the build of everyone who plays Bio and discourage them from continuing with that character? If the damage is the problem why was that the only part that wasn't nerfed? And if the other forms are pointless why did they actually get worse? Even the people in this thread who think Bio needs a balance of some sort seem to agree this isn't the right way to go about it. There doesn't seem to be a coherent goal with the changes. If the issue is Bio is too good at offense, that wasn't addressed at all. In fact since the other forms are so bad now everyone is more funneled into using Offense mode than before. And all these changes certainly don't make the set more fun to play.

June 5

Hmm, our devs should listen to Synapse.

Quote

As far as totally unsolicited advice, I offer the following:

- Trying to balance this mess is a lost cause. Embrace the chaos, fix the very very bottom and very very top performers and always try to make things more fun.

- This one is obvious, but it's amazing how often I have to remind people of this. Approach everything with goals first.

- Ask yourself "how is this serving the playerbase?" "is this the best solution to this problem?"

June 1

Honestly, I don't think Bio Armor needs to be changed at all. True balance is never going to happen in the game and nerfing stuff (especially nerfing it so much it will break every build in the game) is only going to upset players and possibly make some leave. This game is 20 years old now. People play what they want. And the power fantasy is part of the point of the setting. I think dev time would be better served making neat new stuff for people to play with instead of nerfing half a dozen powersets. Or maybe buff some of the sets that are boring and bad instead? The Axe revamp was a great example of a good direction for things.

IF (and this is a REALLY BIG if) the set is the worst outlier ever and absolutely breaking the game and has to be changed, lowering the damage potential on Offensive mode seems like a more reasonable solution. Not something that will invalidate every Bio build on the server.

June 1

And if Offensive mode is the problem, why did its offensive potential not get touched, but absolutely everything else did? Not only is the set worse now in every possible way, but it actually doubles down on Offensive mode being the only form worth running.

May 31

Looks like the -RES debuff in Genetic Contamination with Offensive Mode has a bug where if those are already toggled on when you log in it will not apply to anything.

May 29

On 5/24/2024 at 7:32 PM, Ms Deadly said:

Hi I'm Ms Deadly,

It's a real shame that Bio on Sentinels was completely gutted and lost its entire identity and unique powers. The set has too many melee-centric powers to work well as a Sentinel set, on top of the set just being worse in every possible way on top of that. I can't really see even one positive to these changes and I'm not sure why they're being proposed at all.

May 22

Are crashes even good/fun design anyway? They eventually got removed from nukes because being detoggled and resting just isn't any good for gameplay. t9s are very commonly skipped because they're such a hassle.

May 22

Okay it took me like an hour to replicate my Tank's exact build on the server but here are my results:

Notes:
Build is a Bio/Rad Tank with Portal Jockey, Atlas Medallion, High Pain Threshold (so missing Invader for 5%). Incarnates are Musculature Core Paragon, Assault Radial Embodiment (others don't matter and not factored in). This is also without any targets in range for Evolving Armor, which of course raises resists slightly.

Live:
Offense mode: 2792.36 HP, 30.95 (1.11%) HP/sec, 3.70 (3.25%) end/sec, 88.5% ToHit, 1.60x ACC, +54% DMG, 58.75% RECH. RES: 84.04% S/L, 34.96% F/C, 12.39% E/N, 7.55% P, 49.77% T. DEF: 45.91% S/L, 45.17% F/C/E/N, 33.36% P
Defense mode: 2961.03 HP, 32.82 (1.11%) HP/sec, 3.70 (3.25%) end/sec, 81.0% ToHit, 1.60x ACC, +04% DMG, 58.75% RECH. RES: 90.00% S/L, 39.50% F/C, 18.50% E/N, 14.0% P, 60.77% T. DEF: 50.41% S/L, 49.67% F/C/E/N, 35.61% P
Stamina mode: 2792.36 HP, 32.69 (1.17%) HP/sec, 3.89 (3.42%) end/sec, 81.0% ToHit, 1.60x ACC, +29% DMG, 58.75% RECH. RES: 85.15% S/L, 39.50% F/C, 18.50% E/N, 14.0% P, 53.27% T. DEF: 45.91% S/L, 45.17% F/C/E/N, 33.36% P

First problem I encountered, Parasitic Aura's sets changed, so I can no longer slot what I had in it. This isn't a big problem, it was Touch of the Nictus, so I wasn't relying on it for RES or DEF. Still worth noting, because it accounts for a 1.88% drop in maxHP and 9% drop in accuracy.

Experimental:
Offense mode: 2569.82 HP, 28.48 (1.11%) HP/sec, 3.46 (3.04%) end/sec, 81.0% ToHit, 1.51x ACC, +54% DMG, 58.75% RECH. RES: 61.15% S/L, 39.50% F/C, 18.50% E/N, 14.0% P, 38.27% T. DEF: 39.84% S/L, 30.10% F/C/E/N, 22.78% P
Defense mode: 2569.82 HP, 28.48 (1.11%) HP/sec, 3.46 (3.04%) end/sec, 81.0% ToHit, 1.51x ACC, -46% DMG, 58.75% RECH. RES: 90.00% S/L, 39.50% F/C, 18.50% E/N, 14.0% P, 57.02% T. DEF: 47.43% S/L, 48.94% F/C/E/N, 36.00% P
Stamina mode: 2569.82 HP, 34.26 (1.33%) HP/sec, 4.03 (3.55%) end/sec, 81.0% ToHit, 1.51x ACC, +09% DMG, 58.75% RECH. RES: 77.15% S/L, 39.50% F/C, 18.50% E/N, 14.0% P, 48.27% T. DEF: 43.89% S/L, 40.15% F/C/E/N, 29.83% P

Results:

Offense runs at a deficit of about 220 HP, 2 HP/sec regen, .35 end/sec recov, loses its ToHit bonus, and loses about 23% S/L RES, 11% toxic RES, 6% S/L DEF, 15% F/C/E/N DEF, and 11% psi DEF. The only thing it gains is about 7% F/C/E/N RES.
Defense mode runs a deficit of 400 HP, 4 HP/sec regen, 0.2 end/sec recov, -50% DMG, 3% toxic RES, 3% S/L DEF, and 1% F/C/E/N/P DEF.
Efficient Mode is running a deficit of 220 HP, -20% DMG, 8% S/L RES, 5% toxic RES, 2% S/L DEF, 5% F/C/E/N DEF, 4% psi DEF.
In short, every mode was nerfed across the board.

First observation, Offense mode lost its ToHit bonus, and Efficient now has a 20% damage penalty. Defense mode's penalty actually tripled up to -75%. Inexhaustible no longer gives +maxHP so there's a good 10% HP missing from every build and another 5% from Defensive.

Second, every single mode is worse across the board. Less HP, less regen, less stamina (I will grant Efficient mode is slightly better in that now, which still only amounts to 2 HP/sec and 0.2 end/sec over live), and lower resists and defenses (even Defensive mode). Some are significantly worse, like Offense mode dropping a full 23% S/L RES and losing 6% S/L DEF and 15% F/C/E/N DEF. This is on a Tank, with a pretty high-end build, so I doubt there's any way to make up these numbers with sets. It also already has Tough, Weave, Combat Jumping, and Maneuvers.

Third, I realize some of the functionality got wiggled around and moved to click powers, but that's a lot more complicated to test, and like they like to do the Rikti drones didn't feel like spawning in RWZ. So... it's possible the clickies change things. But I doubt it. The +187 maxHP doesn't make up for the -400 passive HP it's lacking, and it has significant downtime with a 45s duration and 6 minute recharge. And it's lacking Absorb. Not to mention the passive Regen is lower too. But anyway, my point is for numbers this bad I don't really feel like doing additional testing. I also don't think I'll bother to build out my other 3 Bio characters of other ATs for results like this.

My guess for these changes is you're trying to force people to swap modes in combat because none of them are viable on their own? If that wasn't the goal then I'm not sure what it was. Though I don't see that happening anyway. Scrappers and Stalkers are still just going to sit on Offense mode, especially since both other modes now debuff damage, and by a lot. Efficient mode is still super bad (worse now with a damage debuff) and I don't see much use for it, except maybe at low level if you're that desperate for endurance. But Defense mode is actually worse now too, and characters are less durable than live while using it. But Tanks will see their damage drop negative in any other mode with some drastic reductions in durability to boot. All the modes are bad.

This is also going to invalidate every single Bio build in the game. Every build no matter which AT or preferred mode is now going to have less HP, RES, and DEF. All build advice that people have made in threads on the forums are now invalid, everyone's Mids builds are going to be broken, slotting is invalid for at least one power, and every single person who put together a soft capped build is no longer so.

The only positive I can say about this patch: I like the text color of the different modes when reading the power summary description.

My final thoughts on these changes, being as nice as I can? Scrap absolutely everything. At the absolute most, if your goal is to just nerf Bio (which to be clear I don't think it needs to be), start by tweaking a couple things here and there and not reworking the entire set from top to bottom.

May 22

Well that's annoying. They changed half the armor sets, didn't give us numbers, and there's no convenient way to actually test anything.

May 21

7 hours ago, Sovera said:

I should not need to say this since we all play the game and go through the same experiences, but arc (width) is better than radius (depth). Cones suck, they hit for less damage than PbaoEs while also hitting fewer enemies AND ask for constant repositioning. In any other game something that hits fewer enemies and demands constant repositioning would have the numbers 50% higher than a lazy PbAoE who just needs to hit on CD and will hit every enemy. The narrower the cone the higher the damage buff.

A lot of the complaints about cones is about being able to hit mobs and comes from how narrow most cones are with Frost being the gold standard all cones should strive for.

LESS arc is unwelcome when surrounded. And yes, I'm aware that some of the cones were buffed to make up for this so it's a wash, but I'm sure not ALL cones had this (Firebreath just to name one) and if they were unpalatable before they will be worse after.

Kinda wish we could get every set working like Axe, with targeted AoEs which are so much easier to aim and benefit from. Cones are so obnoxious to aim, especially since you have no visual indication of what area one hits, and they all have a different radius. There's no universe in which I can visually ballpark the coverage of a 70 degree arc. I would almost be okay with them if they showed you where you were aiming like in Wildstar but I doubt that's in the cards.

May 21

How do I copy characters from live to Experimental? I only seem to have the option to copy to Beta. I have a Bio build of all 4 melee ATs but don't feel like meticulously recreating them all by hand.

May 21

1 minute ago, Videra said:

Funny enough, a clinical look at it tells one that the Regen changes are actually decidedly nerfs. It's hysterical.

I was saying that earlier on Discord. If anything the set seems worse now? The biggest problem with Regeneration is that incoming damage is just too high for literally any amount of regeneration to overcome. Even if you were just at the cap at all times. The set has no DEF and a very small amount of RES. You can fix some of that with sets, but doing more with maxHP and absorb seems like the right direction if we don't want to change the theme by adding RES/DEF, even though I think RES would still be in theme. But the change to Dull Pain means you actually have less HP to work with now, which is worse. I dunno.

Like Sovera said, what are we even trying to achieve here? The changes to Elec Armor seem good and I understand wanting to revisit Regeneration, but there are some seriously low-performance sets that are getting ignored in favor of... nerfing Energy Aura for some reason? Completely reworking Bio Armor? These aren't sets that are dominating the meta or causing problems. There are sets like Dark Armor, Shield, and Invuln that struggle hard with endurance, or sets like Super Reflexes that are boring as hell. Why not work on buffing sets that suck instead of just changing a bunch of numbers in every set because we can?

May 21

Uhh, hmm. I'm not seeing much value or purpose in just changing all the numbers in every armor set. It's just going to break the builds of tons of players. I have 85 characters and a lot of them are melee. Sweeping number tweaks left and right doesn't feel like a good use of time for anyone.

I mean, the Elec Aura changes look nice, I'm glad Tankers are getting Energy Aura, and I understand the desire to make Regeneration not godawful (though I think the absorb power that Sentinels get would be a better way to go with it). Crash indicators are good, and swapping out Hibernate is probably for the best. But I don't understand the purpose of just coming in and making some numbers slightly smaller and others slightly bigger, unless you just really hate people who make builds and want to mess with them. Bio Armor looks like it was completely redone so I can't even guess at what the numbers look like now.

April 29

Some feedback for the patch:

Shoal Rush: Looks like the -speed on this is 20 seconds like the rest of the effects. That's probably fine

Soothing Wave: I see the -15%. Actually, I'm only just realizing this, this power just autohits? That seems pretty nice actually, even if the effect isn't that strong

Toroidal Bubble: I can see the slight change in direction here, bumping it a little more toward being an end management power while keeping the resists fairly similar. If I can complain about one thing, I see you intentionally raised the smashing resist but not the lethal. It currently does 25% S/F and 12.5% others. I'd say first of all I'm not a big fan of decoupling S/L resists, because it's hard to plan around and hard to keep track of what enemies are actually doing. I know some sets do it already (Kinetics comes to mind) but it's extremely rare, and it would be better if it didn't work that way. Thematically, water is extremely effective at stopping things we consider lethal damage like blades and bullets, so it would make sense to include it. Anyway, if this is for some balance reason and not a thematic one, you could compensate by dropping the psi resist. Otherwise this power is looking better, and if it boosts end and all (or most) resists by a good amount it will be a good contribution to the set

Brine: Hmmmm. I'm not sure, I'd have to do some extensive testing. It now does 20-40% -RES, which are pretty good values, and it has twice the uptime as before, so it should be significantly easier to make permanent with just 100% recharge total. It's single target, but that one target takes a lot of -RES. OTOH, the -DMG was nice (even if I could see some of that being moved to Soothing Wave), so this power is very one note. It just makes a target easier to kill. I kinda liked when it did something else too. But anyway, maybe someone else can elaborate on the math of the -maxHP and how it compares to Degenerative at this point.

Wellspring: This seems like a more tolerable pet now since its duration was doubled, even if recasting it is still a minor inconvenience; it would still be nice to have the cast time lowered since it's over two seconds, and the comparable power Forcefield Generator lasts 4 minutes instead of this power's 2. I'm not sure the value of having it be targetable since there's no real reason to? Giving it buffs won't really do anything since it has no actions, though I realize the Forcefield Generator works this way too. I also seem to be getting 98 absorb (unslotted) when I reported 81 in my last post, so I don't know if that was changed intentionally or not. Actually, doing the math it may be factoring in my +20% from accolades now. Was it changed to be based on max HP when it wasn't before? That would account for it.

Anyway, changes seem... generally good. Toroidal Bubble seems better but I think it should have boosted Lethal too. I still think Wellspring could be less inconvenient, either with a shorter cast time, longer duration, or both. Brine I'm not sure about, hopefully someone does a better analysis of it.

April 22

Hi BABs!

April 12

No I definitely agree I'd rather it be better at endurance than it is. I also liked the older version more. I'm fine with the set having less RES and survival overall compared to other sets if it is heavier on damage and endurance management, more like Kinetics. I don't think the current version is bad, but I think the previous version was better.

April 12

Honestly I don't think the changes to Toroidal Bubble are as bad as people are making them out to be, though I will asterisk that point and come back to it.

Right now the power has a 1 minute duration with a 1 minute recharge. It costs 10 endurance but then gives you 10 endurance back immediately. It grants +15% recovery, +12.5% RES to all damage, except F/C which are 25%. It also grants 65% resistance to -end/-recov, and a +700% jump height buff (which is basically fluff). If you actually slotted it for end it would return end on use and grant you about as much recovery as unslotted Stamina, which is on all the time.

If we compare it to a power like Heat Loss it certainly comes up short in the endurance department, but Heat Loss is also a tier 9 and requires significant investment in recharge to keep up all the time. If you compare it to AM, the recovery bonus is half, and AM too requires significant recharge bonuses. Chrono Shift gives double the bonus to recovery, but again it's a tier 9 and is very hard to have permanently. Transference makes endurance effectively infinite, but that's all it does. Notably, almost none of these powers (except AM) grant any protection to endurance or recovery drain, which Toroidal Bubble does.

If we compare it to powers like Wild Growth or World of Pain, it has lower RES values, except for to F/C. But it also immediately has full uptime and grants useful things like recovery. If you compare it to Fire or Sonic shields, the RES values are lower yes, and those powers have full uptime. But they're also two power picks, and don't do anything else.

I think the main thing this power does is grant some recovery while also granting some resistance, and also requiring no investment in recharge whatsoever. It's basically the only power of its type/tier that doesn't require you to have 300%+ recharge to have it on all the time. In fact it requires 0% recharge. It's just always on, always works, and always gives bonuses to some very common stats that people want to have.

That being said, I think the people in this thread make it clear that people would rather it perform better as an endurance management tool than a RES tool, or as some sort of jack of all trades skill, and preferred the old version of it. I think the fact that it has full uptime out of the gate is not to be undervalued though.

April 11

Hmm Brine definitely feels more skippable now with the numbers basically cut in half across the board. Being single target with poor uptime, I can only see it if you plan to do nothing but fight AVs fulltime.

April 7

I find the main problem with a -DEF debuff is it's a catch 22. If you're in a situation where it would benefit you, it's also a situation where the power might just miss anyway. If you only have one power that's a problem. If your whole set does it and has higher base accuracy like Radiation Blast, it's more doable. Shoal Rush does have boosted accuracy, but if you're in a situation where you're hoping to be saved from oppressive -ToHit or +DEF, I don't think a power with a hit check will save you.

I would lump it in with a lot of support set t1 powers though. Many of them are skippable, but do have their uses. This one being an AoE and also having some proc potential (you could put the -RES proc in it for instance), means it's more useful than most. I think it will come down to individual preference. Having a skippable t1 definitely isn't a bad thing.

April 6

Testing Feedback (Defender Numbers):

1 -Shoal Rush I skipped for now. It's a TAoE -DEF/-stealth, but that doesn't seem very useful in general. A lot of t1 powers in support sets are like this though, and very skippable. This one is at least AoE so it might be nice to have if your build has room.

2 - Soothing Wave is a cone heal, like the one in Nature. So you can cast it whenever but it has to be aimed. It has a dual purpose though. It also debuffs enemies, doing -12.5% DMG to enemies in the radius. It's a bit expensive to spam constantly though if that's your goal.

3 - Toroidal Bubble is a PBAoE buff, hitting everyone near you to grant +recov/+RES. It also immediately grants 20 endurance (more than pays for itself) and 65% resistance to end drain effects. It already has a duration matching its recharge so it really only needs to be slotted for whatever bonuses you want out of it. The RES is somewhat low, 25% F/C but 10% others. But still a very solid power. Oh, it also buffs jump height by quite a bit. It can't currently be slotted for +RES which I assume is an oversight (seems to allow +DEF which the power doesn't do).

4 - Whitecap is a targeted teleport power. It requires a target and will teleport you to them, like the Savage leap. So you can't use it to get out of combat or just teleport freely. It hits all enemies in a radius to do knockdown and -30% RES for 40 seconds (decays to -15% after 20s). It has somewhat shorter range at 60 feet, which I feel should be upped to 80 so you can more quickly get into combat at your normal blast range without having to walk closer first. It should only need slotting for end/recharge (it's pretty expensive end-wise). It does do damage but not very much so I probably wouldn't worry about it.

5 - Tide Pool is a ground-targeted toggle like Lifegiving Spores from Nature. It also doesn't seem to aggro, even though it has a lot of visual FX. It has a 4s recharge so you can quickly pick it up and put it back down. It grants a +30% DMG buff to allies who are in it. When enemies are killed inside it, there's an effect that knocks down other enemies. It also says it does -DMG/-speed/-jump to foes, and that the +DMG buff gets stronger when enemies are killed, but that data isn't reflected on the power so I'm not sure how it works. If I monitor my damage stat though it seems to spike pretty high, to at least +75%. For slotting it really won't need anything but endurance reduction which is nice. You could put some slow procs in it though.

6 - Brine is a single target debuff on a long recharge. 2m with a 30s duration. Designed as an AV-killer power, similar to something like Benumb. For that reason alone I'd say it's skippable in most builds. You're only going to get the most out of it if you fight AVs/GMs regularly, and it needs a lot of recharge to be useful. It's a very powerful debuff though. -50% DMG and -60% RES (all), though that decays over time down to a minimum -20%.

7 - Shifting Tides is an ally-targeted toggle with an AoE debuff, like Disruption Field. It seems to be flagged for enemies to ignore it so it won't generate extra aggro. It's a pretty complicated power with a wide radius, but it looks like what it does is makes enemies inside it take an extra bit of cold damage (7.23 at level 50) every time they're hit. It also says it has a stacking buff that grants a very small amount (+2.5%) of +DMG/+rech/+ToHit that lasts 8 seconds. So it could quickly ramp up extra damage on groups, along with the +30% DMG Tide Pool is giving. I wasn't really able to do much testing for this power without an ally or pet, but I dropped it on Ms Liberty for a bit to check things. It looks like another power that can get by with just slotting for endurance reduction, though you can slot to make the damage it does higher, so that might be a good idea.

8 - Wellspring is a ground-targeted AoE buff. It's not a toggle and it has a long recharge, but it does act like a pet and follow you around for a short duration (it only lasts 1 minute). It doesn't have a hitbox and doesn't appear in the pet window, and should be untargetable. Being near it grants +5% DEF (all) and absorb. It seems to tic absorb periodically (approximately every 5 seconds), and at level 50 I was getting 81, which doesn't stack. So it should be best for shaving off a bit of damage here and there, best to help squishies survive stray damage. It currently isn't slottable for absorb or DEF, which I again assume is an oversight, since you'd probably want to slot both. It's also slottable for accuracy and damage despite not doing that at all. Otherwise you'd just slot it for recharge to improve uptime. Since it follows you the best use is to just recast it every time you can and let it provide the buff to people near you. Having to recast it every minute or so I'd like the cast time to be lowered, since it's currently over 2 seconds.

9 - Power of the Depths is a pretty complicated power. It's a PBAoE buff a lot like Overgrowth. It grants +maxHP (267), +maxEND (10), +regeneration (200%), and +range (37.25%). It then also doubles all those values, but that half of the bonus decays over time. The recharge is very long, so you'd want to bring it down as much as possible, and slot it with a heal set to raise the maxHP and regen buffs. I will also offer the feedback that decaying +range is probably obnoxious. I would suggest all of the range bonus be binary, either on or off. It would probably be annoying for your range to be different from second to second. The rest of the buffs are fine with the decay feature though.

Set Pros: It has a lot of bonus damage through +DMG, extra damage tics, some powers that do damage, and -RES. So it should be among the highest damage contributor support sets, and is a highly offense-oriented set like Kinetics, but easier to use. It also grants some other widely useful effects like +RES, +recovery, and absorb. It has a lot of convenient and dual purpose powers, most of them easy to use being either an AoE, toggle, or a pet that follows you. The visuals are pretty nice and it's easy to just know to want to stand near water and bubbles to get bonuses.

Set Cons: The set has low healing potential, but I hesitate to call that a downside since healing isn't that important in City. It does offer fairly low values in RES, DEF, and absorb though. So it's not the best set to keep people alive. It doesn't offer much for +rech and has no status protection, so if you want those things you'll have to look elsewhere.

Slotting: Bugs/omissions aside (no sets are currently enabled), it seems to be very light on slot demand. Most of the powers don't need much slotting, or any at all. This is a good thing, and frees up more space for procs, uniques, and sets. Toroidal Bubble doesn't need anything beyond +RES, and several powers don't really need anything beyond endurance reduction. Even then the set grants you endurance and recovery so you don't need to go heavy on it. Whitecap should take damage and slow sets, Tide Pool should take slow sets, and Shifting Tides may take damage sets when enabled, I'm not sure... But there should be some good slotting/proc potential. Wellspring might be hard to slot fully, but it's comparable to Wild Growth or Fade which are doable.

Overall: I think the set it probably plays most like would be Nature, though Nature is more healing/protection oriented. But the types of powers it has and how they're used feels most like Nature to me. Nature is a good set so I like that. It offers some protection through healing, absorb, RES, and DEF, but smaller amounts than one might expect. Still better than ones that offer basically none, but I would treat it like an offense-oriented set first and foremost. It should be great for making teams roll faster. Most importantly, it doesn't have any powers I'd consider dumb, annoying, or hard to use. I think I would call this a modern Kinetics. Kinetics fell out of favor because of incarnate stuff like Judgements killing everything. Teams move too fast to stop and siphon off enemies. This just has damage buffs that are always going without any setup. I think it will be a good set.

April 6

I jumped my new Water/Water Defender (It's a Feesh) to level 50 on the server, and have been slowly leveling up while messing with things.

At level 20 I experienced a hiccup, where clicking over to level up to 20 opened a blank screen I couldn't do anything but close. When I reopened it, I was on a slotting level, even though I'd just done one (for 19). I double checked and the slots I assigned were still there. It was like it skipped 20 and was making me train to 21.

I relogged and that seemed to fix it; asking to level up gave me a power selection and not slotting again. But I still seem to be desynced somehow. Right now I'm trained to 27 (confirmed by the Personal Info tab) and the trainer says we'll be training to 28, but she's asking me to assign slots. In fact the NPC is telling me leveling up will give me 2 slots AND a power.

But, if I train up to "level 28" I only get 2 slots and not a power. So now as a level 28 character, I seem to be missing a power pick that I should have. I have 7 powers from my primary, 6 powers from my secondary, and Hover/Fly. Doing a build in Mids to level 28, I should have one more power.

I also don't know if this matters, but I also have Water listed as one of my pools in the powers window (this could be a separate bug though).

April 6

4 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Even then, most AV and Monster fights are over so fast, it's just not that important. Having it is good, but not having it isn't disastrous. Maybe if you're facing ++++ enemies or something, sure.

Not saying you're wrong about any of this, but having -Regen is definitely not the defining factor in whether a buff/debuff set is any good.

This is mostly true. -regen doesn't do a lot outside of AVs/GMs, and usually isn't the only reason a set is good. -RES is a major factor in whether a set is good against AVs/GMs, and it's drastically more useful against regular mobs, so I would say -RES is the most important debuff to have in a set that makes it good in all situations. Which this set does have, in both single target and AoE, so it's likely to be good.

Level 50 AVs usually regenerate 100 HP/second so that has to be overcome in some way. Either sheer damage, -regen, or -RES. Some builds can exceed 100 DPS on their own so get by without debuffs. GMs were just changed across the board so I can't say for certain what they're like now, but they're even more resistant and take more to kill, so debuffs are good to have.

Usually a team of 8 will exceed the damage needed, and debuffs just make it easier or go faster. There are some exceptions though, like when a foe also has high resistances across the board. And for super buff AVs like in iTrials or hardmode TFs I definitely want as many debuffs as I can get.

Anyway, long way of saying -RES is always good no matter what, -regen is good in certain circumstances. But when you need it, it's really good. Current state of the game, -regen is pretty much exclusively an AV/GM killing tool. I'm not sure how you'd fix that even if you wanted to, since even if a set had a reliable way to tag every enemy in a spawn with -regen that floors them to zero, it's just not contributing that much. Maybe if regen was allowed to go negative, but that would probably have other balance implications. So I think -regen is stuck where it is.

April 4

I could see that. Water Blast builds tide pretty quickly on its own, and it does a lot for the set. By comparison Elec Affinity mostly just gets more targets which you can get anyway by just using your powers. It's not as impactful to get a few extra stacks from Elec Blast.

Also, not that I'm completely against the idea in all cases, but I'd say I'm for the most part opposed to built-in synergies between sets because it runs the risk of creating a "best to pair with" option that makes other combinations less viable.

April 4

10 hours ago, Vanden said:

Personally, I feel like the name of a power set is not the place to try to inject flavor. I think the most important thing the name of a set should do is communicate to the player its theme and function. The number one priority for this set's name should be to unambiguously communicate that this is the water-themed buff/debuff set. Even "Marine Affinity" might be a little too flavorful for that, and it would be clearer if the name was just Water Affinity.

Definitely agree it should probably just be Water Affinity. Especially after we changed all the sets in the last patch to have consistent naming schemes across ATs, sets, and pools. Some of the powers are tidal focused, some are marine animal focused, some have fish and some don't, but also you can turn off the fish. The one consistent thing about the set is that it's about water. It conveys the most directly what the set does and is about, which is water powers.

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Posts posted by Dispari