Leogunner

I was thinking of a mechanic that was as off-the-wall and different from most other sets in how you approach and use it. Beams/arm cannon was the kind of concept I was thinking of but I'm literally thinking of something really unique. Combining different damage types and secondary effects, while pretty much the same direction most new/different sets use to make them unique, I feel it only goes so far. For the example you present, you can kind of just get by with a new set of animations/visual fx to make an existing set. A set I had in mind required some fidgeting around with "interruptible" attacks, similar to sniper attacks (some of the blasts would be regular non-interruptible clicks too) but it's version of Aim would be a kind of toggle that changes your click attacks into self-buff powers that effectively "charge" another power. So you turn on the toggle, use some of your other "attacks" to "charge" your beam powers/arm cannon so when you untoggle the power, you're adding the damage of those attacks you used to the damage of your next power. The positive is, you can gain these buffs a bit quicker if charged and using the attacks individually, you also can do these between encounters and some of your powers that are interruptible are not while using the toggle. The negative is, this toggle has a recharge and only starts recharging after you turn it off.

I like this post. Although it shares a contrary opinion to mine of the Regen set, it still goes over the points well enough to understand why they come to that conclusion and therefore can agree to the assessment overall. Something to be wary of, however, is that solo-ability on that setting isn't necessarily a balancing point...especially if you're not following the meta to maintain this aspect of solo. Overall, the meta has formulated the best method of survivability objectively with numbers and it tends to lean toward a blend of defensive buffs. Not discounting your chosen method, just stating my perspective that doesn't particularly agree with you but it felt more complete replying to all these parts at the end rather than just skipping this one. To me, it's more a system of benefits and disadvantages. What I mean is, soft cap defenses work great and a set like SR can get their easily. It's benefit is the ease to reach that point and surpass it (and technically, how it can stay at that point due to its debuff resistance). The disadvantage is that, there isn't much in the realm of healing SR can take advantage of outside of incarnates and you're likely going to aim to dip into resistances to shore up your survivability. The advantage of regen in this system is, it gets a *huge* benefit by not being hit therefore reaching that point either through IOs or team buffs, is much better than what SR could get from healing/regen through IOs/team buffs. The proportional benefit can be a boon or a disadvantage for the sets themselves. Sets that kind of do a lot of things moderately tend to get the most benefit though, which is why bio and elec armor and dark armor can be so good with a finished build. I don't particularly agree that it needs Shadow Meld, but then I've only taken it on one character that is a /nin scrap. My regens, I could certainly see a use for it, couldn't fit it in for concept reasons. They still function quite well. Or perhaps I'm coming from the perspective opportunities of a Stalker regen. Being able to drop a Lightning Rod to break an alpha and/or an Assassin's Strike to take out a particular foe and leave the rest of the spawn demoralized does assist in the beginning busywork of initiating your own alpha strike. I sort of agree with your premise on Revive, though. Rather than making that another in-battle click, I'd probably rather Instant Healing work as a "reset" button and actually instantly heal with a 30% heal on top of the regen buff. As is, it almost relies on be using Dull Pain first since my HP isn't as good as a scrapper and if I'm using IH, I need *instant* healing pretty often. I think someone in this thread already mentioned the suggestion I made once to help give Regen a bit of "omph": just give it debuff resistance in most of its powers. Put a little bit in Fast healing and Resilience and put a decent stacking chunk in Reconstruction and Dull Pain, and a large chunk in Instant Healing and Moment of Glory. Give it -def, -ToHit, -recovery and -rech resist in those amounts in the mentioned powers stacking to a high amount if you actually have them all active at once (which, if you've activated all your clickies at once, might mean you need it). It also adds value to every point of buff you get if you have the capacity to defend it. It doesn't outright put you on even effective survival as outlier sets but gives you the potential to surpass them. A nice way to end the post. I personally enjoy Regen. I'm not a hardcore enthusiast or anything but I do like my characters to play and feel different. I don't like it when two characters using 2 different sets feel exactly the same and that tends to be what you get with a lot of armor sets. I'm not trying to change though samey sets, but I'd prefer people not make the unique sets the same as those samey sets. A personal story of mine: I played an Elec/Regen stalker on live that I adored to death. He even had some art of him done as well as making a kind of narrative web of other characters he was involved with. On HC, I remade him as an Elec/Bio stalker and, while he was good...it just didn't feel like the original concept at all so I had to scrap all his IOs and send him over to a remade /regen stalker who I put on the back burner because of other reasons but will likely start him back up once I have the time. That feeling of custom survival and razor's edge blastery play is probably why I feel it fits his concept.

I believe that was the old Storm Kick that was the chun-li kick. Crane Kick had a lift-leg *POSE for a sec!* straight-kick animation.

Well I remember suggesting adding a kind of gap-closer into MA by making Eagle's Claw a teleport-to-foe attack that received a lot of support. Shifting some of the secondary effects to be more consistent like @Redlynne suggested would also help increase the performance without increasing the power curve. Would shifting Shock Therapy's old mechanic of increasing your movement speed with stacks of +movement speed be another kind of utility that could differentiate the set?

I call that a weakness. Every set should have its downfalls if they get their advantages. Even better if you can turn those disadvantages into strengths with proper planning... Maybe not in all circumstances but more often than not.

I think the idea is overall easy to balance too since it's not direct survival mitigation but leans more on the side of being utility, the only think which Regen has being a self rez. Ultimately, it could make Regen the strongest when IOed out fully or even when not, benefit from team buffs more since each point of buff becomes more valuable when it can't be so easily removed.

Just putting up my list of gimmies for this particular Blaster secondary since it was a late addition and likely pushed out without shoring up some issues. Some low hanging fruit Sting of the wasp and Golden Dragonfly - could stand to get the blasterdization treatment and be adjusted with longer rech/higher END cost for bigger damage. The Lotus Drop - either adjust its rech to match its damage or adjust its damage to match its rech. The main issue Shinobi is holding the set back a bit. This is supposed to be the replacement for Build Up but instead of a button that you press for 100% and damage and a moderate amount of ToHit for about 10sec, it's a 50% (it's actually less but can't recall exact amount) damage bonus to your first attack and then a small damage/ToHit bonus (almost 7% and 5% respectively). I actually enjoy this dynamic but you have to wait 30sec without attacking anything to get the bigger bonus which is ludicrous. It's like having to wait 15sec without attacking to be able to click Build up. Proposed change: Ninja Training gets a new mechanic called Initiative. Similar to stalker hide, initiative shows up in green text when you toggle on Shinobi and you get the damage buff available. It's not linked to the stealth portion of the power though (it never was, stealth takes 6-8 seconds to unsuppress). It lasts for only the next attack you execute. The new portion is that Shinobi gives all your attacks from your primary to have a small chance to gain initiative back if you defeat a foe with that attack. This should be easy for a blaster. I'd make the change smaller for AoE's and higher for ST (something in the realm of 5% to 10%). On top of that, using any Ninja Training power gives a bigger chance to gain initiative by being used at all. Some powers like blinding powder and smoke flash will always grant initiative while powers like GD or SotW are only high chance (75%). The rest of the defensive powers seem fine. It's just the offense that needs work. What do you guys think?

I'm not a fan of only because Bio already does the "lots of absorb shield" game so having Regen focus on that isn't really unique like you say it is. Not saying it can't have +absorb (toss a max 25% self regenerating at 5%/3sec on Integration) but if I were suggesting unique angles for Regen, I'd make it the "debuff immune" set. Give its passive powers a small amount of res to standard debuffs (-movement, -rech, -Regen, -def and -tohit) and give their click powers a stronger stackable amount of the same debuff resistance so those IOs or team buffs stick harder. Concept wise, it's like building callouses to harm after recovering. Overall keeping the same power layout but adding the debuff resists layers on top.

Hmm, didn't know about that. Just checking though, if you wanted to make more a pun about it (maybe having a stone shield or stone melee frosted with some ice or something), Canadian's Shield is available. Of you can mix the two names (Canadian Shield also going by the name Laurentian Plateau or Bouclier canadien) so Laurentian Shield or Canadian Plateau or something like that.

You didn't answer the first part of the question though. Which explosions are you talking about? This seems like a semantics argument though. Not everything that is "explosive" = fire and even if that were the case, it's easy to just rename powers with terms like "eruption" or "blast". And I wasn't talking about consistence with sonic powers or water powers. Don't know what GMs have to do with anything And I guess you've been duped by the sarcasm woosh. I know the guy was being sarcastic which was why I subsequently replied to the rest of his post the way I did. That could also be why Tactical Arrow doesn't get Oilslick Arrow.

Firstly, what "later explosives" are you talking about? What does "later" mean in that context? And you don't want consistency. If you wanted consistency, we would also need to implement nerfs to keep certain aspects consistent within the game's "logical power dynamics". You don't know what you asking for. And it is a free gimme. Not a god damned one of you asked to CHANGE explosive arrow into a fire/lethal explosion (which, in and of itself is a gimme since that is less resisted but the smashing portion of the power does only half of what the lethal portion does) but rather just to add more functionality on top of it. Or adjusting the damage down for the added functionality...just asked for more stuff on it. As for a remark being snide and snarky, it's because it's the only reaction necessary. You can ask for more and more stuff to your hearts content. So long as it's just extra unnecessary gimmies and acknowledged as such, who am I to tell you you can't suggest it? But I will say what it is. See? He get's it. My Ice/TA controller sees no issue using a pool power for extra damage to ignite his oil slicks. If it were a problem, he'd use an origin power instead. Sonic Resonance has 2 that requires a pet or teammate. Radiation Emission has a non-rez power that requires a dead ally to proc damage off of. But that goes without saying that Trick Arrow has a unique aspect in that it is the only set that has a power that has extra interactivity with other powers (namely fire and energy damage attacks). While I'm of the opinion that TA needs improvements (although this thread isn't about TA, it's about archery), I feel a more intriguing approach to helping the set isn't to just make its one interaction more universal but rather to give the set more and varied interaction with its other powers and for those additions to be "free" when calculating the powers' costs. But I repeat, this isn't about TA, this is about archery.

I've been sniped 😫

Looking at my roster of characters, it's actually comparatively small. But I bet there are players out there with dozens upon dozens of characters....that being said, despite my shallow pool of characters, I haven't had trouble naming any of them and have rarely come across a character that was just incredibly difficult to name...and I'm horrible at thinking up cool names. Stating my perspective clearer, I bet you also have a large roster of characters likely taking up names that someone else would want. It's a 2 way street. Canadian Shield is taken? Well obviously. That's not a very creative name. Just like a lot of [1st world country] + Shield is likely taken. Why not try something more creative like Major Maple, Captain Mountie, Toronto/Quebec/Yukon Shield? It takes literally 0 effort to come up with something MORE catchy and creative than Canadian Shield (Yukon Shield is available on Indomitable). For your Batman-theme, try mixing in a color, an animal or even 2 animals. I was actually intrigued how smooth the name Foxbat sounded from Champion Online's villain roster that I used that naming scheme to make some cool names. It works better when keeping the 2 names less than 2 syllables. Crowbat (Crow-Bat, Crowbat...all available for your crafty bludgeoning caped crusader needs) or some alliteration (Crimson-Crow, Sage Scorpion). Come on, I'm horrible at coming up with names...I even used a name generator for my sith blaster because I couldn't think of a good one myself (Darth Wrax is a nice name too).

Also, some people are at work/traveling/busy and can't actually play. Would you rather people who aren't playing the set to give feedback on that set?

To caveat from that, there is also the opposite effect or -Special in powers like Benumb and Weaken from the Poison set.

Also, in powers description, when it says "Special" it does cover aspects that don't fall under the standard nomenclature of effects but when discussed here, the whole "+special" pretty much equates to the effects of the Power Boost power that buffs enhanceable power effects (with the exception of certain things like damage resistance or damage buffs).

Is called a trade off. Trade a ST damage power > get an AoE damage power. Oh, you wanted more free gimmies? Ah, gotcha.

Improving the range (just the range) of the AoE powers would give it some alternative advantage over Kat without actually changing damage numbers.

I think the main objective is doing something fun but you still are overcoming incentive, which is the hard part. If it's just adding damage, does it overcome DPS loss or does it amount to higher damage ceilings if leveraged than standard tactics? You'll still have players at odds with each other or make the extra damage unpopular due to the extra effort involved. Unless there are circumstances (thinking specific enemies) where you seriously want to capitalize on it, overall enemies are too weak and vulnerable to make a difference.... Like,what if there was a stage /faction/rank of foes that just attacked super fast and upon death cast an AoE immob+only-affecting-self effect that, if not worked around, could leave you twiddling your thumbs for a hand full of seconds at a time? They'd have KB protection too so standard KB-to-KD they would ignore. They could also summon barriers that break Los so plinking at them at range is a bit more complicated. You would want to get close to them but not stay close. You'd want to knock them around to interrupt they fast attack pace but you'd also not want to just hold them off if hold them in place since anything near them on death will slow you down. I was just making up crap as I went along there but overall, just putting up my thoughts.

You're Archery. Just use Blazing Arrow. If I were trying to add functionality, I'd probably add something like "effect splash" to attacks that deal KB. Basically, it'd splash the effect of the slick onto the target so you can light up the target. It'd be the equivalent of splashing the slick up on the targets.

Jrangers never had the gravity to ever accomplish that. This suggestion really only does the opposite and will have people posting old "new" ideas again.

Afterburner has its advantages too. For the non-IOed-to-the-gills characters, it's a great escape tool that gives you a good amount of defense on a toggle that's available pretty often.

Negative rep for not including the link for sacrificing the quarterly 100 souls to the bottomless pit of tropes and browser tabs.

I mean, apparently Stalkers were "done wrong" and initial Domination was "done wrong" and Katana animations were "done wrong", and no enhancement diminishing returns was "done wrong". Just saying, they might have had certain intentions and then meta-gamers flipped them the bird and broke the game like the devs would never imagine. It happens.

FYI, I'm actually surprised a "nerf" thread hasn't erupted into angry personal attacks and accusations. Very different. I don't like it. 🤔