Steampunkette

Honestly... the more I think about it, removing Aggro caps -reduces- difficulty. Because the Tank can tank everything. What do you need a second tank for? If the blaster accidentally tags a second group the Tank can aggro them both instead of having the rest of the team try to deal with the second group while the tank holds off the first. Or the third spawn. Or the fifth. Right now the only thing keeping that from happening is the aggro cap, which makes room for multiple tanky types on the same team. 'Cause you can use more than one (unless you're fighting a single enemy like an AV) Right now you have to actually do things with some level of finesse to avoid the tank being fully aggroed and the rest of the team drawing adds or ambushes resulting in wipes... without aggro caps? The tank just tanks them all. It's not increased difficulty. It's lower. Yeah, the tank will take marginally more damage than if they were only tanking a single group, But the Support only has to heal that tank. The Control only needs to worry about the enemies -around- that tank. It's... Easier. The only thing increasing the aggro cap would do is making rounding up enemies for the slaughter faster, and safer.

Soft cap is no longer considered the "high end" of builds. Specifically because people hunt enemies that they are soft capped against. That's why Council farming at most level ranges is so popular. and while increasing the total number of enemies attacking the player will increase the total amount of damage throughput the baseline level of damage from a given enemy will be so low compared to survivability rates as to be inconsequential. Because regeneration exists as a mechanic, respites exist as a mechanic, and damage resistance exists as a mechanic. Outside of super reflexes almost any set which grants defense also grants resistances. A modifier which comes in after defense causing a double dip of damage reduction. Someone with 50% damage resistance and 45% defense takes 5% of incoming damage. Pop an orange or two and the damage is even lower. City of Heroes combat is based on more than probabilities, primarily because it uses blank magnitudes and magnitude modifiers as a core functionality creating certainties. As to how it works: aggro caps are based on NPC AI. It ain't just programming it's programming intelligence. Waving it off like it's nothing is ridiculous. Aggro would have to be restructured in order to set it on a per character basis.

a) Doesn't work that way. b) It wouldn't increase the difficulty at all. Once you hit 45% defense the amount of incoming damage is comically low. 1/10th normal (Same as 90% damage reduction). Removing the aggro cap would mean very little with that huge a constraint on damage throughput. Particularly once you add in Incarnate Level Shifts resulting in Level-Differences to damage output. It would just result in the old "Herd 'em Up" style gameplay where everyone who isn't the tank has to sit by the door twiddling their thumbs for 20 minutes while he rounds up every enemy on the map and brings them to the entrance for mass slaughter.

You know what's even -better- than going group to group? Two tanky-type characters rounding up separate squads of potential murder victims while the support frantically tries to keep them both standing pre-IOs. I freaking -love- the chaotic enjoyment of that. Especially with DPS bouncing between the two groups trying to whittle them down!

Every one of those characters you described would be better described as a "Blaster" than a "Sniper". Especially since the majority of them (Jonah, Dredd, Rocket, Bastion, Cable, arguably Bluebird and Deadpool) don't bother with Stealth 9 times out of 10 and prefer just shooting whoever they're after. MAYBE a "Sentinel" for Dredd and War Machine. The rest all get into melee and punch people. Or stab them. Deadpool could even arguably be called a stalker or a scrapper with the "Guns" Power Pool. I just don't think there's enough narrative support for this archetype. And gameplay differences would be minimal, as well, compared to a Blaster who already gets multiple control powers in their secondary.

Turns out my cell phone just hates me. Took it out instantly with my laptop once I got home.

More lukewarm than anything... I kind of hate myself for making that joke.

For some reason I cannot get rid of this quote... I still stand by the Operative as a very well-designed class overall. I would love to see it implemented.

.... I feel sheepish. Yeah. What Siolfir said. That said, a defense/resistance bonus in melee as an inherent seems a bit -too- strong in my opinion. I get that it could be "A little bit", but this is an AT concept that would thrive in melee, and since damage bonuses have a cap, they'd no longer gain the ranged benefit of their inherent if hanging out with a Kinetics character. So you'd just become another melee character with bonuses to def/res as an inherent and be blasting people at point blank range once you got into the higher levels/had buffers hanging around.

It would require extra lines for each and every power in every Primary. Like a Scrapper having "Additional Fire Damage" coded into every single primary attack just in case they grab the fire build up.

That's an interesting idea... allow me to make a counter suggestion: A pair of passive auras for 2 parts of a 4-part inherent. One pulses to 90ft, one pulses to 20ft. The one which pulses to 90ft grants one stack of "Meleetastic!" per enemy hit. The second inherent at 20ft pulses and removes one stack of "Meleetastic!" and grants one stack of "Shoot 'em!" per enemy hit. Both Meleetastic! and Shoot 'em! have a maximum of 5 stacks. Each melee attack in the Assault Primary gets tagged with a new inherent effect that each stack of "Meleetastic!" grants a bit of extra damage per stack (Let's say 10% per, scaling with enhancements). Each ranged attack in the Assault Primary gets tagged with the new inherent effect that each stack of "Shoot 'em!" grants a bit of extra damage per stack (Let's say 8% per, scaling with enhancements). Having the "Short Range" aura remove 1 stack of Meleetastic means it'll strip away characters in the short range aura who are also tagged by the "Long Range" aura.

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.