Steampunkette

Totally cool! Thank you for taking the time to understand. Increased knowledge is -great-!

More or less... They're baked into the Archetypes, themselves, and apply a multiplier to the base damage of a given power. With no modifiers, Fire Blast at level 1 does 8.3 damage. For a blaster (1.125 ranged scalar) it becomes 9.33. For a Tanker (0.75 value) it would deal 6.22 damage. But because it's a primary AT Attribute, it cannot be altered by the game's engine on the fly. At least not without some serious redesign.

ATs have always had Ranged and Melee Damage Scalars. They're core to class function. But there's no way to alter those values on the fly through power functions or anything. They're the basic modifiers that ATs use when interacting not only with their own powers, but pool powers and ancillary powers.

The issue, there, is that the game makes no distinction of "Ranged" or "Melee" when it comes to damage bonuses, Tyrannical. And even if it did, you'd be pushing people into a single playstyle, regardless of powersets chosen. Rush in, bounce out, rush in, bounce out. The big problem of Composition as a powerset concept is that you need to continually provide buffs and heals. Which means a significant portion of your damage-dealing time is consumed not dealing damage. Further, most "Composition" powersets were team-oriented, meaning you lost survivability in order to buff your allies. For a "Good" balance, the non-armor benefits of the secondary need to both deal some small measure of damage -and- benefit the Guardian (Or whatever name you give this assault-primary archetype). Which is why I have always, and will always, suggest that the defensive secondary include Armor powers and Control powers. Relative and Absolute Mitigation combined. Toss a hold on the Lieutenant and then rely on your armor to keep the minions and boss from killing you while you tear 'em up with Assault powers. Confuse a minion or two to help you dish out damage before they die. Something that supports you, solo, -and- helps teams. Useless against AVs, though.

Arachnos. All of the Arachnos Bosses have resistance to every control type to some degree or another.

Some of the talk about Illusion Controllers and a "Dream" power made me think of this... This is not a complete set, but just a few random ideas: 1) Sleep-Holds. What if the powerset had a bunch of Sleep powers, but each power had a condition that if the target was already asleep, the new power would add a Mag3 Hold? Call it "Sleep Paralysis" 2) Sleep Damage. Mind Controllers don't break their sleep effects with damage from the Sleep Power. Could we expand on that with "Dream Demon" pets whose attacks only deal damage to Sleeping Targets (With a damage condition), but cannot awaken Sleeping Targets?

I'll be honest... at this point I really want an Ill/Nrg dominator so I can finally use a dominator where /nrg -fits- their powers rather than being a mishmash. An army of self-cloning energy blasters seems awesome to me! I'd avoid taking most of my primary powers, never use the Control Effects, pretend I don't have Domination, and just fight alongside my duplicate selves when I'm not invisible. ('Cause I'd take the invisibility) Play an Assaulter with 3-5 Pets.

I'd like to pull this quote out and say: Illusion without Phantom Army and with "Dream" isn't nothing without Phantom Army. It's just not Illusion. It's more like Dream Control or something similar. Which could be it's own cool thing... So the Tony Stark Quote doesn't apply to this situation. Honestly, though, at this point? Go for it. Make Illusion open to Dominators. If they wanna go that route, let 'em. It'll make the game either harder for them (Before Perma PA) or easier (After Perma PA)

I wouldn't be opposed to altering the Projectile FX or the "On Character" FX... but changing the character animations themselves seems a bit much. I know it's -possible-, MA and SS both get alternate animations and there's various blast options, but I feel like it's a lot more work than needed to get the effect across. Doing the TK Thrust arm-push with the "Psychic Power" headglow and the TK Fist appearing to blast the person through the air instead of the "Glowballhands" would probably be "Enough" And it would avoid the "Speed Up/Slow Down" animation work required to get this option functional. I wonder if there' a "Projectile Scale" function the Devs could mess with? Then just use the Project Will projectile for all kinds of psychic attacks but make it bigger or smaller to show relative power level. Also Psionic Tornado should have the "Psychic Power" headglow as an option... Frankly even Mind Control Powers could use that as an option and it would be scrumptuous!

Slap a 45 second recharge time on them, drop the duration to 8 seconds, and make them immune to Recharge Rate Changes. POW! Now you can control every group (Or every other group) and slotting for mez duration but can only hit around 20 seconds. Normally they last for a base of 15-7 and can be increased to just under 30 to 36 seconds. So it both increases the out of the box usefulness of the power (by letting you use it more often) and reduces that usefulness (By halving the duration). This encourages either an "Alpha Control" function to minimize incoming damage out of the gate, followed by more precise control, -or- a more "Emergency Control" function, where the control power is used mid-fight to give people time to recover Endurance and/or HP. And with no recharge rate interaction, Permahasten becomes less immediately beneficial to Controllers and has slightly less utility for Dominators, since these powers will not recharge any faster.

One thing @Rathulfr: My argument isn't a slippery slope. There are already people who kick people off teams for KB, or send tells to anyone who doesn't have KB IOs slotted. Heck, there's been threads of "Remove KB From PBs Entirely PlsKthxBye!" There's been "No more KB in City" threads in the past. And people who want the ability to have a "No KB Toggle" everyone gets access to. There's even at least a few people who want the Group Leader exclusively to have control over -your- "No KB Toggle" as long as you're on their team. A Slippery Slope is like when Pat Robertson argued that allowing two grown consenting adults of the same (or similar) gender get married means that we have to legalized Bestiality 'cause someone's gonna wanna fuck a duck and to him there's no material difference between the two. A Slippery Slope is "A leads to B, therefore A also leads to Q" where Q is far down the line of possibilities. All the stuff in my post is "Already happened" or "Is happening"

The devs on Homecoming have stated that they have a Pull and Knock To vectoring solution. Now it's just a matter of time until new powersets are released that make use of those functions. Personally I'm hoping for a "Gravity Assault" set to pair with Gravity Control to fling people around the battlefield in wild directions.

Different powers have different functions. Umbral Torrent, for example, deals less damage than Energy Torrent because it's a Control/Debuff power with 100% control efficacy while Energy Torrent is a Damage/Control power with 50% control efficacy. Meanwhile the Dark Blast set has no other KB, while Energy Blast has a ton of chance at it. Resulting in greater KB based control from the Nrg set while Dark doesn't get much at all, comparatively. Same as Radiation Blast. These powers don't exist in a Vacuum.

People don't "Scatter Enemies" for efficiency. The tank rounds them all up and the team drops all the AoE in the world on them to knock 'em out quickly. Typically with Tar Patch or some other Damres/Defense debuffing ability that, again, they have to be stacked close together to get them all debuffed. "The KB Deals more Damage" doesn't change that. A minion with 1/4 HP instead of 1/2 HP still doesn't get hit by the Blaster's Nova because it's too far outside the area to get killed by the team's alpha. It still requires 2 seconds of extra killing that the group could be using murdering some other group. And don't get me started on Anchors being pushed away from groups... people will scream bloody murder if the person they've got Radiant Infection on gets blasted out of the group.

1) It's an OPTION? No. It's an option for people who use KB to KD IOs to free up some measure of build space. And it's a capitulation to the KB to KD crowd. One more step towards "Should we just get rid of KB? Everyone uses the IOs, anyhow" outcome. One more "You should just use the IO! Now you don't even have to mess up your overall slotting strategy!" 2) Buffing it is both useless to the core problem (People will still rant about KD being the right way to play) and power creepy (Increased Survivability/DPS for some powersets, none for most others) Because the underlying problem is there and cannot -be- resolved: Some people hate KB with the fiery passion of a thousand dying stars and that's not going to change any time soon.

It causes division because there are people who like to play the game, and people who like to game the game. The latter group wants everything to be fast, simple, and clean. They're the people who want to maximize their time to reward ratio. They play the game to win the meta. And that's fine there's always going to be those people. There's nothing wrong with wanting to win the game. But the other group just wants to play. How long it takes is not as important as the zany fun that happens during that time. No matter what changes happen to knock back, like increasing its damage or adding stuns or something else, the actual knocking back is still going to be a problem for the second group of players. There is no way to fix it. There is no way to reconcile it. If I'm on a team with a group of people who want to game the game they will be upset with knock-back. Unless I manage to make it perfectly perfect so that it doesn't affect any patches or debuffs or area of effects for anybody else. Because whether it's pushing one person back or three people back someone's going to be pissed when their inferno doesn't hit the whole group.

You've got options. They come at a meager cost. But you've got options. And while you, personally, aren't calling for KB to just get removed from the game it's something that's been floated more than a few times. At least once or twice on -these- boards that I know of, much less the Official Forums. Every "We should have a global KD IO!" and "What about a KD Toggle?" will just result in more basis for people to try and force me to kill my KB for their enjoyment. I like my KB. If you don't like it that's fine, but as soon as a new "Easier" KD option comes along the onus on me for using KB instead of KD becomes bigger. "You don't even have to mess up a set bonus, now! Just throw it in Rest! Why are you being so selfish?!" I hate that. Just let me play the game without helping people demand I play it their way.

Rather than turn every single fight into another cookie cutter "Tank rounds them up, everyone AoEs, next group"? I much prefer the scatter. Even when I'm -playing- the tank or the person with patches and targeted aura debuffs. I'd rather have scatter than a rousing game of chartered accountancy where everyone ticks off their DPS Boxes at the appropriate times to rubber stamp a given group before moving on to the next form. FIGHT. Fight. I meant to say fight. I want fights where the enemies run around and take up different positions to fight. I want fights where enemies aren't trapped in one place in a permanent knockdown loop 'cause someone dropped Bonfire with a KD enhancement. I want fights that aren't "Herd it up, knock it down, move on" Give me danger, excitement, frustration, delight! Give me groups scattered to the four winds! Give me the Rad's anchor bouncing into a distant group and bringing his now angry friends to the fight. Give me the scrapper panic-taunting to keep the Defender from dying before the Blaster throws another AoE on the additional group to send them ass over teakettle before the Dominator locks down the adds. Anything but another 8-man steamrolling team where the only conversation is about how other people don't know how to play the game right. When I'm not playing my Brute (Who uses extensive KM KB for moar fun) I typically run with a 4-man team of a Scrapper, two Widows, and a Sentinel. No taunts. No aggro management. We just brain and water blast enemies while one Scrapper shield-charges and one Widow sneaky-stabs the boss. It's -delightful- chaos! Particularly against Carnies. But when I decide to join a random group, or mix things up and do a TF, I haaaaaaaaaate the "No KB!" calls or the "Why aren't you using the KD IO?" tells. How about "For Options" we add a Universal Damage IO set with a Proc IO that has a 50% chance to proc a mag 10 KB? S'only fair. Then I can complain when the Fire Blaster isn't knocking enemies through the air with ever Fireball. "Why aren't you using the KB IO?" tells would at least be fun turnabout.

The second this gets implemented, people will demand I slot it on any character I use knockback on. As it -stands- there's people who complain 'til they're as blue as these forums when people don't have the KD IOs slotted into all their KB Powers. And 6 months later, people will say "Why not just get rid of Knockback altogether? No one uses it, anyway." I'm not against "Options", here. Y'all have an option. It's an option that comes with a cost, but it's a option. And that option can -really- pay off for powers like Bonfire... But I'm against further maligning of knockback in the game. Every step we take closer to "No Knockback" is a step we'll never be able to take back. Knockback is a part of the genre, of what makes Superheroes -feel- powerful. Take it away? And City of Heroes loses one of the elements that separates it from all other games.

I can't speak to Wind Control... but I made a Wind Brute. Kinetic Melee/Bio Armor. Just skip the "Suck Life/Grow Cancer" powers and you can do a pretty good wind-manipulating brute. Surrounded by air, you even get a "Tornado" in the DoT Aura that picks up leaves, casings, and garbage in a spinning disk of air (If colored right)

I wouldn't mind seeing the speed cap on flight raised, but that would make afterburner either largely useless or ridiculously powerful. The only reasons I know of not to increase it are to have SS people feel superior (People flying at SS speeds would cause a whining cascade) and the slide. If you put flight at SS levels and left the sloppy handling air-slide on a stop, you'd be a block away from where you intended to be when you let go of the W key.

People already do Black on Black. Or White on White. Or Red on Green just to screw over colorblind people for a giggle. That said, I'm not suggesting font size changes. Just font changes. Comic Sans for Clowns and Young characters. Verdana for those who are slightly louder than others. Times New Roman for scientists and people who are precise. Georgia, for those who wish to be marginally fancy. Lucida sans Unicode for those Robots. You get the idea. And yeah. We don't -need- it. But we could have it. Maybe. If it's even possible. Which, y'know, I hope.

The generic font -is- fine. And I don't know of any game that allows you to change fonts. And it might be difficult to read if they're typing in a heated combat. But. The point is that comics use different fonts to present different "Voices" in text. Not just speech bubble color (Which we can already do and makes reading them in combat difficult). Here's an example: Thor tends to speak in a more stylized font to show the difference in his voice compared to Captain America. It's not -needed-, obviously. You could just make him use fancier words or different colors. And it's not needed in City of Heroes, either. I'm not aware of how effort-intensive this would be. I can say that because Windows and Mac both come with a massive selection of fonts, the diversity of customization increase could be pretty massive even if we stick to the shared general list of fonts without letting people download and use special fonts. Plus it'd be great to be able to make an Alien Character who sometimes swaps into Wingdings to communicate. And since CoH allows Click-Drag selection you can copy-paste those Wingdings into Word and translate them into Times New Roman! It'd mostly be something roleplayers use, obviously.

Bonus points if the different fonts show up under different characters in the chat window like individual name colors.

That's it. That's the whole suggestion. Allow us to have a drop-down on a character by character basis that allows us to choose the font for our specific speech bubbles and chat window. Someone wants to be all fancy? Give 'em a Cursive font. Someone wants to show their character is robotic? Let 'em choose a chunky hard-edged font. That's it.