Steampunkette

I knew that "A Big Part". Not "The Reason." However, I now understand that the hoverboard is a hackjob in the spaghetti code and isn't mounted to any body part due to animation layering issues that CoH isn't great at. Not because of what you said, clearly, as you didn't cover any of that and just made a blanket statement about tripling the animations in the game with no explanation as to -why- three times the animations would be required. Which is why you drop off the board and basically wear it as a hat when you go through doors. Sad. Ah, well! She'll just have to dive-bomb into combat. Or maybe swap to rocket boots. in a fight for better maneuverability. Haven't decided, yet!

I know that a big part of why the Only Affecting Self tag is on these powers is because of animation silliness. Like. I get that. And I know another big part is that they're permanent "Temp Powers" rather than, like, the Jetpack that you can mete out over time. But come on, pleeeease remove the only affecting self tag? They're thematic and interesting and fun to use. I -love- the Rocketboard for my Alienne character who is gonna be a real cutie hot-rodding around on a ridiculously dated looking hoverboard styled like a 1950s Cadillac, but her concept is 100% "Neutrinos" from TMNT's cartoon series so it absolutely fits. Look how great she looks being an absolute dorknugget with a bubblehelm that -clearly- does nothing to protect her in literally any way! Please give her the ability to spend 0.57 end/sec in combat on this hilariously great looking hoverboard so she can pew pew for funsies.

These changes WERE the Middle Ground. This is the second time the HC Devs have tried to make serious improvements to Super Strength and the second time a small, but loud, group of people have screamed and moaned about any perceived negative aspect to the set. Now it'll be another 3-5 months before we get to see just how much further along towards one side of the "Middle Ground" before they throw it back at the HC Dev team AGAIN and demand it be better.

Please please please reconsider cutting Unleashed Might. I was looking forward to it -so hard-...

Yyyyyyup. I wanted Unleashed Might so bad I made SS characters for it, specifically. Thanks for ruining things, folks.

Very accurate... but also because they're not softcapped the defense and resistance debuffs aren't increasing their damage taken by nearly as huge a margin... And also it's a lot more damage. Like it won't be 700% more damage than they're already getting hit with, but the extra damage they will take is going to be impactful. Of course it's also ALREADY that way, so it's not a huge deal.

Is it? Okay. So it's a 700% Increase. My brain is not great right now. It's late (for me) and I took my Progesterone which makes me a sleepy baby.

To clarify: If you have 90% Resistance you're only taking 10% of the damage that has a chance to land. Otherwise you're taking 5% of all incoming damage. Because even with Resistance and 0 Defense buffs, 50% of incoming attacks miss (modified by level differences, ToHit Mods, and Defense Buffs). So with 90% Resistance and 45% Defense you're taking 1% of all incoming damage that rolls above a 50 on the ToHit check. Anything that rolled lower than that wasn't going to hit you, anyway.

You did, yeah. 800% is correct. So instead of taking 1% of all incoming damage that has a chance to hit, they'll take 9% of all incoming damage that has a chance to hit.

I would -love- to know you're math on that.

For the defense or resist they cap, here or there, they'll face the same 260% increased damage for that specific damage type as any Defense character with that type softcapped or Resist character with that type hardcapped. It's only if they cap Resistance -and- Defense to a given damage type that them being "Hybrid" matters. Because then they're taking 260% increase on Defense and 260% increase on Resist. But at that point they're going from taking 1% of incoming damage to taking 6.2% of incoming damage. So. Y'know... lots more damage but still a drop in the bucket.

Hybrid sets kinda sorta don't exist for the purposes of this stuff? Bio Armor and Willpower are the "Hybrid" sets that have Defense and Resistance. But they also specifically don't overlap too much on their defenses and resistances. They're both S/L Resist, Energy/Element Defense. With Bio getting Toxic Resist and Willpower getting Psionic Resist. Unless their enemies are hitting them with every damage type (hint, they won't be), they'll be -less- affected by the debuff than a Defense or Resistance character since they actually rely, mostly, on Regeneration and Self-Healing. Meanwhile Regen, with no defense or resistance to speak of, is in the same boat.

This is the one question you asked me, so it's the one I'll tackle: Yeah, sure. Because it requires a very specific set of circumstances to take that position. Specifically you have to have some Fulcrum Shift stacking or other massive external damage bonuses to make that happen. 'Cause there's no way you're ever going to attain that value, otherwise. And between Fury, Enhancements, and Rage, the guy who didn't take UM is going to be much closer to that damage cap. And also hit way more often thanks to the 40/80 ToHit bonus, which isn't taken account in the napkin math you quoted.

Who can say? Personally I think that'd be an excellent improvement to the AT, which desperately needs a lot of improvements... Sentinels have shown, pretty conclusively, that having ranged attacks and armor doesn't instantly make a character OP.

Make it easier to get decent defensive values for a tanking archetype without delving into IO Set Bonuses, mostly. Particularly with the change to Rage and the rescinded Tier 9 changes it was a pretty solid buff idea. Without the t9 changes it's still a pretty nice positive improvement without being significantly unbalancing.