Steampunkette

That's cool and all, but it doesn't change the fact that powersets aren't balanced around IOs. Which is great, 'cause the character you built there gets Defensive Sweep, Kick, and 1 other non-defense power before 22. They'd be super durable but take -forever- to kill anything! Compare this powerset to it's contemporaries. To Willpower and Bio Armor, Invuln and Energy. To Ice and Stone. To SR and Ninjitsu and Shield. It isn't significantly out of line with any of them, and short of IO Slotting it's going to underperform against some of them and overperform against others. But it does have the almost-unique (Radiation and Shield also do some) ability to offer some minor team benefits, like healing or narrow, temporary, defense boosts, with a capstone that can save a team's butt in a pinch.

It's true that with some IO expenditures you can get softcap. And with IO expenditures and the right primary you can get softcap to all positions. That's also true of MOST powersets. Hell, with the right selection of powers most Blasters and Dominators can get at least 1 type if not two vectors softcapped. With the right set bonuses I can make a SS/Shield Brute with softcapped positions, 57% Damage Resistance to SL (and 20% or more to all other types) and a permanent 107% damage buff that routinely bumps up to over 300% solo. This is why set bonuses are bullshit and aren't the core of balance.

... what about Whirling hands with the staff? Do the big Spinnydo and slam the staff against the ground to create a shockwave? Or co-opt things like Shatter from War Mace which already creates a ground-level animation between you and your target?

You're getting 8.5% to all positions from set bonuses, there. 2.5% per position from Gaussian, 6% from the two Uniques in Tough. You can't say "Softcap at 22 with plain 25 IOs" and use a full set and two uniques as your example. It also specifically requires you to use an attack set which provides defense on attack in order to make up the difference and 3 slot that power -for- defense, rather than Damage or Endurance Reduction. So Katana, Titan Weapons, or Broadsword. It's an increasingly narrow set of conditions to get to "Too good"

Sure, but that's two animations. The wave at enemy and the hold above head. You kind of need more than that to have a decent variety for a powerset. Even for something like an Assault Set, where you're using the staff for ranged and melee, you'd probably want at least 2 more "Ranged Wand" animations.

It'd be one power and one aspect of it. I'd still let it take heals, obviously, because it's designed to be a regen power out of the gate that helps keep you alive as you get low. But the Recharge and Recover aspects are kind of meant to be thematic of someone with adrenaline spiking. Though it'd be worth noting that RoboPet and Powerpack would both take no enhancements whatsoever. Sort of like Bio Armor's Adaptive Toggles and Martial Combat's Reach for the Limit. Fairly forgiving in that aspect as regards slotting, fairly unforgiving in that the basic power pretty much needs Recharge/Resistance with little to no room for endurance reduction.

Would require whole new animations unless you want to palm the sword glued to your open hand at enemies and fire the fireball from the hilt.

True. And the easy answer is to just not let it take End Sets. *shrugs!* It's not that hard to do. I've also been thinking of reducing both the bonus and the cooldown on Body Armor to 18.75% and 7 minutes. That way with SOs it caps out at 28% and stacked with SOs it caps out at 56%. It'd be a little squishier, but it'd also take slightly less time to recharge, bringing the opportunity cost down slightly.

I earnestly feel like it is disingenuous to ignore the weaknesses of the powerset and exclusively discuss it's strengths, particularly when one repeatedly conflates the strengths of the set as being bigger than they actually are. (As regards stacking Performance or slotting the Pets or viewing Adrenal Harness as though players will exist exclusively at 20% HP) Yeah. The set has two Positional defenses at 13.88%. With SOs, Weave, and Maneuvers they'll be able to get that up to 31%. A far cry from softcap and well within range of easy Cascade Failure. (Particularly against Warriors and Freaks who do -def with melee attacks, against a 9.4% defense). It's also their only defense against everything but S/L/E. So CoT and Tsoo and Crey are gonna mess 'em up real good. In PvP they'd be -super- vulnerable to Fire/Ice/Psi Melee. Fully kitting the set out with IOs would probably put it essentially on-par with fully slotted Willpower, in the end. Only Willpower doesn't need to wait 3-5 minutes to get it's defenses online and wouldn't need to either juggle Autofire Keybinds across 3 powers or devote attention to 3 separate "Has to fire on cooldown" abilities. Willpower also wouldn't need to protect a pet from AoE attacks in order to retain their end recovery benefits.

Ehhh... I think it'll depend on the team and the character. The healbot on a mid-size or large team that doesn't have much healing seems more useful than a little more damage. And if you've taken the time to grab the Control Hybrid power, the Spider suddenly becomes -really- powerful, stacking control mags of holds and immobs alongside extra damage. Of course, I honestly expect most players to skip the power because having a pet as a melee type character means it's probably going to get destroyed by AoE, regardless of which one you choose. The set does have two recovery powers, though! One in a toggle that provides 10% more than Stamina does as an inherent autopower... and one that provides... 2%. Oh, sure. It scales up as your HP Drops, and eventually gets to be twice as strong as stamina. But it's mostly there for flavor. Honestly, both of them are mostly there for flavor. Bio Armor gets it for flavor, too, mostly... but it has 5 powers that deal with Endurance. FIVE. Hardened Carapace reduces the end cost of all powers, Inexhaustible gives you regen and recovery and then gives you more, Evolving Armor gives you regen and recovery, and then DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura both give you biiiiig recovery and end-refill for DNA Siphon. If you have Efficient Adaptation online. 30% End Discount from Hardened Carapace, 35% Recovery from Inexhaustible, 18% recovery from Evolving Armor, up to 125% Recovery from DNA Siphon, and up to 142% Recovery from Parasitic Aura. Compare to 35% if you're using Shockbot and between 2% and 50% based on current HP from Adrenal Harness. 320% Recovery with a 30% end discount... compared to 37-85%.

"You gain" is not "Your Team Gains". The RoboPet powers provide a buff to you while toggled on. Not your team. Where are you even getting that from? As to "Nobody Uses" I beg to differ. I certainly use SOs for most of my character's career. Only those who hit 32 get generic IOs and only those who hit 50 and I'm deeply invested into playing get IO Sets. Until we get a Datamining Check on what portion of the playerbase uses IOs, and what level ranges they're more common at, that's entirely conjecture on your part.

Performance Serum Ignores Recharge Rate changes. I feel like I need to put that above the powerset in big red letters with the number of people who are like "You can easily double or triple stack it!" And yes. I did put it in Comic Sans to make it uglier and harder to ignore. The answer to Performance Shifter is simply "Don't let it take Endurance Sets". Bam. Problem solved. Though the intention of the Pet Toggles was to not allow them -any- enhancements, similar to Bio Armor's three toggles, rather than re-enact Peacebringer Style Slot Starvation. No end cost. No slotting. Just present, providing some team utility. And, again. Powersets are designed based on SOs, not IOs.

Ostensibly! But faceplant once and you're back down to 0% S/L Resistance until it recharges, then 33% for 5 minutes after that. Of course, in team content there's usually someone buffing survivability, so even 1 stack of Body Armor can be more than enough to keep you going just fine, letting you hold onto the recharged Body Armor for 5 minutes 'til it runs out instead of stacking it, creating 'danger leap-frog' where going down within a 5 minute window is crippling and a different 5 minute window is no big deal. But it's that, a modicum of regen, some absorb, and 13% Ranged and AoE Defense. So even with that power being comparatively strong, the rest of the set is only going to augment it, not protect you from everything.

How about just flat out "Invisible Weapons" in general? Yeah, it might look dumb for someone to swing an invisible Broadsword, sometimes, but Warmace could make a pretty interesting 'Superstrength Alternative" with big uppercuts and a whirling-strike and stuff. Just make, like, an "Inside the fist" weapon model that scales to be smaller than the player's fist based on the player's height.

Making new missions is the cheapest 'cause you've got a ton of people willing to write endless stories just for the sake of seeing their work become a part of the game they love. Taking AE Arcs that the playerbase has reviewed and tying them to in-world contacts and mission doors takes a lot less effort than building a powerset. A powerset needs: Data Entry for Each Power Individually (Which is not copy-paste) UI Changes to accomodate the new powerset in the appropriate archetype lists Icons and Descriptions Animations FX Balance Passes

67% with a 5 minute waiting period for stacking. Before that, it's 33%

Normally a click based power has a lot higher bonus than 22.5% Resistance (Or the 15% to Energy), so I shaved some off, there. And set a high animation time so if it popped in a fight you'd wind up standing stock still for over 2 seconds. But since the game is Balanced around SOs what you'd be looking at is a fairly high end cost click with a long animation time leaving you with a 33.75% Damage resistance for the first 5 minutes before it recharges, again, and brings you up to 67%. And if you die, you better hope it's close to recharged when you drop, otherwise... And if you didn't slot 3 recharges, you're only going to have short duration good defenses. So while it's strong... it has drawbacks to help balance it. An Autopower that is just flatly stronger than other autopowers doesn't -have- drawbacks. Also... Tier 9s tend to do either big bonuses to a few things (like in the 60-80% range) or 30% to almost everything (Generally they leave a psi hole). This is less than that and applies to 3. Performance Serum ignores Recharge Rate Changes. You can get all the IO Sets you want, it won't make it stack more than 1/3rd of the time. And 200% Regen at 50 on a Brute is only 19hp/sec. It -sounds- a lot bigger than it is, but baseline is 6.5hp/sec. Until you get up to about 500-800% it's really not a lot. And yup! Pets. One that deals no damage but throws controls, one that deals no damage but throws heals, and one that deals a little damage and does nothing else. I figured it'd be interesting to see which ones get played in which situation since they're mutually exclusive. I should probably put a recharge rate one those that's fairly high...

It's meant to be! Because between it and Ranged/AoE defense, the set has no real defensive abilities. Until 22, it's a good solid defensive power, basically. Then it becomes powerful. And with enough Recharge Rate Boost from enhancements, it'll become great! But it's still -only- S/L/E. And thanks to it's setup it basically precludes Hasten since you can only autofire one power and you're gonna wanna 2-3 stack the Tier 1 as much as possible and keep the Mez Protection up. It'll be a set that could benefit really well from Hasten... but makes it hard to -use- Hasten. And I think that's a good idea.

I actually waded into the idea and came up with this: Shifting the focus off "Always On Autopowers" and onto "Long Duration Clicks" You still get the benefit of not constantly spending endurance throughout your fights on 2-3 toggles and the odd click. But you wind up with 2 toggles (3 if you count the Pet but it's set up like the Vanity Pets so there's no actual cost to it at all), 2 long time clicks, and some nifty secondary options. But it's -absolutely- going to cost you your Auto-Fire button on one of your two clicks (I'd recommend the Tier 1 armor power) and make it really hard to fit Hasten into the build because of the amount of clicking you'd spend trying to keep it, your armor stacks, and your mez protection active (Which is why the Mez has a 1 minute overlap!) Opportunity and Focus cost rather than Survivability.

Drat!

Could also pick up the new FoW powers to add in some variety and range! The cone is -wide- and applies debuffs and procs nicely.

Second Build. Every character has the option of utilizing a second build for their character, entirely separate from the first in terms of power selections, slotting choices, and enhancements. Set up a "Huntsman" or "Bane" second build. Then swap to it when you don't want to have the backpack. When you want to get back to Crabblasting, swap builds.

I'm talking about putting them into the regular missions and the Open World. No amount of AE Editing will allow me to street sweep Goldbrickers in Steel Canyon.

@Koopak is a good choice! Also @Steampunkette ... Oh wait! Dat's meeee! 😄 Add me to your global list and I'll get you introduced to some people, tonight, when I get off work in 4 hours or so!

Well sure! But I was thinking that I could make an Earth/Stone Brute and take the Earth Mastery Epic Pool to stunlock crowds of enemies by using Control Hybrid to keep adding stacks of Stun after a single Stalagmites use. Or I could make a SS/Shield Brute with Maneuvers, Assault, and Grant Cover and be a Team-Buffer using the Support Hybrid. Or just go Spines/Fire and throw out a ton of extra damage with Assault ticking on all kinds of Toxic Attacks and Flaming Damage. Or use Melee Hybrid to shore up the weaknesses of Willpower while I focus my set bonuses mostly on dishing out more damage or making my character run faster or whatever. The only way for a MM to get AoE control to rack up -some- use out of Control would be Soul Mastery and Trow Fish. And even then it would only be an Immob rather than a Stunlock. Just interesting to realize how SoL Masterminds are because of their specific mechanical design.