Steampunkette

No one is forced to use their optimal attack chain. In fact, the majority of players don't KNOW their optimal attack chain... They just go through the game fighting and having a blast beating up bad guys (Or good guys) But the Optimal Attack Chain is forever going to be be held to the limits of what can, currently, be done. Because the absolute best Single Target Attack Chain for Super Strength would be Knockout Blow with no Cooldown. Just infinite punches over and over and over again doing 600+ DPS. And the best SS AoE would just be infinite Footstomps one after another 'til everything is dead with no cooldown. Not that I think that's where this is going. Just trying to illustrate that the current "Optimal" is only the best 'til the next big change, regardless of what it is. Optimal is only Optimal in relation to what can currently e done, and every change alters the optimal. Thank God no one Advocates for the removal of ED so there's no way my previous example could ever hap- Oh. Yeah... No. /Jranger to both. Let's start bringing stuff to parity through buffs and nerfs to get 'Ballpark Balance' and then we can revisit this.

900,000 characters. 150,000 hasten users. That's not "Practically Forced" That's not "Deep in Recharge Diminishing Returns" That's 750,000 characters that don't bother. And -significantly- less than 150,000 that are Min-Maxed to the nines trying to get the perfect attack rotation and feel 'forced' to take it. Your experiences are not universal.

*vibrates with the urge to get political* You can't tease me like that, Rath!

Did you Blap the same way before you got your 3 different defensive toggles? Did you stay in Melee at level 10 or 15 just as much as you do at 40+? Did you die more often at those lower levels, or have you spent your whole career almost never dying? I think that's where things might be at issue. You've got a specific experience based on a specific powerset combo -and- dipping into 2 different pools to get 3 defensive powers in order to survive as well as you do. Other Powerset Combos might not be as survivable. Mind/Psi, for example. Or Energy/Nrg. You're running a blapper with 3 defensive powers, 1 major debuff power, and a primary that focuses on wide area cone -ToHit that all augment your survivability. But I'm not talking about Power Pools and Ancillary Pools, here. I'm talking about the -BASELINE ARCHETYPE- and it's survivability. If you expect every player playing this AT to -need- Tough and Weave and other Defensive Powers that you're not giving them to survive... Imagine you're a BRAND NEW player. You've never played City of Heroes, before, but you've heard from friends how amazing it was and what a travesty it was that it got canceled so you decide to download it. Operative sounds like a cool class and you get a lot of flashy attack powers so you grab it. You don't know that you need Tough and Weave to survive. You don't even know how power pools work, yet. The Archetype has a BUNCH of Melee Attacks. Like 3-4 in the Primary and 2-4 in the secondary. So you grab them and run into melee and die. A Lot. Because you don't know that you -have- to do Tough and Weave and maybe Maneuvers and you're not high enough level to dip into the Ancillary Power Pools. You don't know that Scrappers and Stalkers have a separate powerset built on surviving, at this point. You just think you're doing it wrong. So you try jumping to ranged between melee bursts. And that -kind- of works but you still wind up dying a lot 'cause you don't have a lot of ranged attacks, just 3-5, and eventually you have to go into melee. There's no Armor in this game to put on to get higher defenses. What gives? Why are you still dying? How long are you going to keep running back from the hospital before you say "This is stupid" and either give up on the game or reroll to a new AT? If you want the AT to fight in melee, jump to ranged, dive back into melee, you need to give them the tools to survive, there. Yeah Tough and Weave exist in the game and anyone can grab them, but they're meant to be options, not mandatory choices for baseline function.

Ah, yes. The pointless rhetorical framing device meant to avoid acknowledging a point in favor of creating 'Floating Point' Goalposts. Love it. For some people it's too easy, already. For others not so much. But with more than a few people clamoring for more challenging content and increased aggro caps 'cause +4x8 isn't hard enough I think it's safe to say that we're over the hump of ease. If your position is "It ain't ruined, yet, therefore we should keep pressing further and further until we reach the ruined point" then I dunno what to tell you. There's good reasons not to do it (Power Creep being the top one), but the only reasons to do it are 'I want it' and 'It would allow more people to skip Hasten' There's 900,000+ characters. Around 150,000 of them have Hasten. 180k have Fly. It seems like Builds are already pretty damned diverse.

The reason to eschew it is because Power Creep ruins games by making everything too easy. It being present is a reason to Nerf.

@Replacement Can you describe your blapping style for me? How do you survive melee combat against multiple enemies as a blapper? Do you do a lot of Jousting, that is to say jumping or flying past enemies, clicking a melee attack, and landing some distance away when the attack hits? Do you typically fire off one melee attack, then bounce to range, then hit whoever gets near you once or twice, then fall back further? Do you teleport in with Burst of Speed, fling a single melee attack, teleport again, melee, teleport again, melee, flee to range? Do you use your Dark Attacks to spread -ToHit (essentially giving yourself some defense), then teleport into melee to fight, then run out to throw some more darkness?

Having Inherent Stamina was already a "Smidge More" recovery for everyone. You're just walking down the path a "Smidge Further" And yeah. Power Creep exists. That's not a good reason to pile onto it.

If armor is COMPREHENSIVE it will allow you to stand in melee shooting and punching people. If you've got a 22.5% resistance to Smashing/Lethal/Psionic you're still going to get chewed alive by CoT's Fire and Negative because it bypasses your defenses. So does the Freakshow's electric attacks and Crey's Cryo Beams and Energy Blasts. Also allow me to also direct you, here: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hit_Points Blasters get more Hit Points than most of the ATs in the game. Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers beat them out with Stalkers tied for fourth place. They didn't start out with that many HP, though. Originally they had the same number as Defenders. It was people's relentless Blapping that caused an HP increase to the AT overall, putting them on par with Stalkers. CoH has a pack logic. It isn't perfect, but it is present. Sometimes if the damage lands right during a clock-cycle the other members of the group won't register the hit because their ally will already be running toward you rather than being hurt, but if it has KB on it the whole group is coming your way. Also Holds and other mezzes. If you'd care to test the theory just take any regular blaster into the game and attack a group of minions from range with a single target attack. Blaster base range is 80, Hellion Minion perception is 45 and LT is 50. So you'll be outside of their sight-range when Snap Shot or some other single target ranged attack goes off. Sometimes the single minion will be the only thing aggroed. But usually the whole group will come running.

Also, I'm sorry! It was 12 Mag 1 attacks to kill at 8.6 with the 12th attack overcoming natural regeneration over the course of the TTD. My mistake!

You -cannot- give them Defensive Benefits as the core function of their Inherent Power apropos of nothing. NO ARCHETYPE gets anywhere -near- that level of benefit from their Inherent power. Not even Brutes with their Fury or Scrappers with their Crits. It would be akin to granting them the benefits of the entire secondary powerset of Scrappers -IN ADDITION- to their own Manipulation Secondary Powerset. Sorry it's not clear, the above outburst is in relation to trying to cram all of the defensive needs the AT will have into the inherent "Misdirection". As to Stealth: It only applies to Perception which determines initial aggro range. If you're a Stealthed Blaster firing a range-enhanced Sniper Shot from half a county away the entire group you're attacking is still going to aggro on you because you have engaged them. Doesn't matter if they can't "See" you by their perception range. They know where you are. And they're coming.

Time to Kill < Time to Die That's the most basic metric in City of Heroes. Every mechanic in the game is built around shortening one and lengthening the other. Every damage buff or res debuff is meant to make the Time to Kill lower. Ever defense buff or accuracy debuff is meant to make the Time to Die higher. The most basic piece of TTD/TTK for anyone to understand is that the player takes 12 Mag 1 attacks to die at level 1. A Mag 1 attack deals 8.3 damage modified by Archetype or Enemy Type. Some enemies and players throw Mag 2 attacks (16.6) at level 1. Sometimes those magnitudes are broken up, like 4 hits of 4.15 from a machine gun burst. But the total values remain the same. A character with 22.5% resistance to a given Mag 1 attack is going to take 6.5 points of damage from that attack. The number of Mag 1 attacks needed to kill that player goes up to 15. The number of Mag 2 attacks goes from 6 to 7. Mag 3s goes from 4 to 5. You get the idea. So you just take the average level 1 spawn of 3 minions and a Lieutenant, determine the recharge times, animation times, and damage values of their attacks, and create a timeline. These attacks include both ranged and melee attacks, both of which can be fired in melee. That timeline gets adjusted by movement rates and attack ranges. But since we're talking about melee it's fairly safe to say that you'll be within 6 yards which is the unadjusted move speed per second of NPCs and PCs so they'll be on top of you within a second. At which point they're all going to swing on you. Then you have the PC's timeline, which includes both brawl and their available attack power(s) as well as any defensive abilities they get. Blasters have at least 1 control based tier 1 power available to them. Whether it's a knockback attack or an immobilize, these attacks reduce incoming damage by a set amount (Immobs mean only ranged attacks can hit, KB means no attacks hit for a certain duration, then ranged attacks, then a movement period before melee attacks which could be interrupted by additional ranged attacks) Most other ATs don't. Scrappers don't immob or push enemies away, so they rely on a static defensive ability to reduce incoming damage by a relative amount (Defense means some attacks deal no damage, resistance means all attacks deal less) Set up the timelines and go. I used to have spreadsheets for this kind of thing, but that was several years and a hard drive ago...

So. Big thing! The AT is going to need some defensive powers to survive in melee. Blappers on the whole tend to eat floor until they've picked up some defensive capabilities unless they're fighting +0x1 solo. (I don't need someone to pop in and describe how their level 1 blapper soloed the ITF or some such, you are the exception rather than the rule). This is because Blasters aren't designed to Blap, players are just silly and stubborn. And a big part of the reason is AoE. Whether it's AoE control effects aimed at the 'Tank' (regardless of AT) or Fireballs and Whirling Hands. Blasters are designed to stay at range and keep enemies at range for the most part, with a few 'They got close and I can't get them away so I need to MURDER THEM FAST' powers particularly in the upper tiers. Your Total Focuses and whatnot. This archetype is built around having both ranged -and- melee attacks as it's primary. Which means that to do good damage they can't stay at range and plink, falling back as enemies get close. They've got to get into melee to mix things up for their full damage potential. And that means being exposed to more melee attacks and AoE attacks from level 1 onward. There's not a single Assault Set that doesn't have a melee attack available at level 1, so there'd be people who take that and go to to toe with whoever they're fighting. Without -some- defensive powers that player's probably going to feel like a weak scrapper. We'll also be giving them melee attacks in their secondary powersets as you can see in the suggested sets I put up there. Which weights the archetype, overall, -towards- being in melee. So yeah... some defensive capability is basically required, and we can't try to pile it all into the Inherent. Somethings got to give or else the AT will break. We can't leave all the defenses to level 50 on a character designed to hit things in melee. It's just not reasonable. All the positioning in the world won't save you from punching a boss and getting ganked by his 3 friends. Mez protection is something they might need, yeah. I didn't pass it out like candy because of powers like Inner Will. But if you peek over at Electric you'll see Grounded is one of the defensive powers they get. I think any mez protection they get should be fairly small, to start with, or narrowly aimed at hard control abilities like Holds or Stuns. Perhaps giving them an inherent +1 mez protection value (Giving them Mag 2 which would stop the -first- application of almost any control effect, but make stacking super effective on them) could work, with certain powersets getting other bonuses to specific mez protections, like Ki Projection's Inner Will as a form of Break Free or Grounded's increased protection against KB and Immob. You don't need to playtest an Archetype with no defenses and the presumption of jumping into melee to know there's going to be problems. Unless you plan to hand out hard control AoEs with low recharge times in their secondary tier 1 slot, they're going to get their butts kicked by simple math.

Getting the first power in your secondary is literally hard-coded into the game. It was one of the biggest stumbling blocks in developing the Arachnos Soldier/Widow ATs.

I wouldn't give them +recharge... It's gotta be something applicable to the power in question. Like giving all the Jump Powers a stacking increase to the Jump Height of all the other jump powers. Or the range of Spring Attack. Just reduce Spring Attack's range by 20% and have each other power grant a 10% increase to the range of Spring Attack. That way the first two powers required to unlock it don't actually affect it's range, but the other two powers can increase it's range if you take it, kinda like the damage buffs to the Fighting Pool Attacks. 15% recharge tied to Superspeed means people would be foolish enough to try and justify the end cost in combat for the 15% recharge buff. Sure your attacks hit faster, but you run out of End faster! Whirlwind definitely. Maybe make it give a big 'recharge hit' every time you hit someone with it for 1 second each? Like 90% Recharge boost for 1 second when you bounce someone. Since each bounce costs end... Could be interesting.

I'm with Redlynne on this one. That said, adding a smide of Recharge to the other powers in the Superspeed pool would be okay. Like +10% recharge for 20 seconds after using Flurry. Or +15% recharge while you have Superspeed toggled on. Things like that would be nice. Obviously Burnout wouldn't provide a recharge boost.

... you know... every spawn location on the map is in a specific, defined, location. Allowing the Sentinel to highlight spawn areas on the map would make them nearly indispensable on large clear-all or multi-hostage maps. The function already exists for the "Last Spawn", so I -imagine- it could be expanded to show all map spawns, Green and Red.

While I understand and accept your interpretation it still doesn't FEEL like that as a term. Perhaps because so many of it's applications are nouns compared to the single Verb form. Intrigue as an atmosphere, Intrigue as a synonym for Mystery, Political Intrigue being a noun, too. Compared to "Make a secret plan". I'm going to use my big superheroic powerset to Make a Secret Plan! This Secret Plan involves LIGHTING MYSELF ON FIRE Very Sneaky. No one will ever see it coming! Also: Strength is a synonym for Firmness, but I don't expect Superstrength to describe mattress density or Superspeed to be a hilariously potent narcotic. P.S. I hate that Stalkers get Fire Armor. How does Fire help you Stealth around? The human-sized inferno should light up the area and show everyone EXACTLY where you are. The Fire Melee I'm totes cool with, narratively. But fire armor stealth? Bluhhh...

I dislike Intrigue as a set name! We've got Manipulation, Blast, Defense, Control, Assault, and stuff. Intrigue isn't... 'active' enough? Like... It's more like an Atmosphere than an Activity. When you intrigue someone it means they're interested in you, which is not necessarily something you've done, and Intrigue as a concept is like Mystery. Powersets are kind of named after what they do described in an active term. Not a passive one. Which is why I stand by Projection. Particularly since it's Manipulation-Adjacent. And yeah, the Threat Level doesn't 'require' a passive power. It's a character function. But so is the Arachnos Soldier 'Basic Training' that gives them the Recovery increase. You still need a player-focused 'Informative' power to let people know that it's a part of their character to inform their playstyle, that's all I was saying, there. If we make the Threat Level low there's nothing player-facing that they can check to see unless we actively show it to them. As to Biostem's "Distract" and "Misdirection" ideas: Distract would need to spawn a pseudopet to aggro the group and draw them over to the chosen location. But there are a couple of problems with it: 1) The enemies would use Ranged Attacks, first, then close to Melee, attacking the Pseudopet which could kill it. Or at the least would ruin the illusion of going over to check out a thrown rock. 2) As soon as that Pseudopet was gone (Whether killed or despawned by timer) they'd aggro onto the Striker because the pseudo-pet is directly tied to the Striker. They'd start with the ranged and melee on you. Misdirection could work? Putting out a click-based control effect and building Containment into all of their powers... But there's 2 problems with that: 1) It wouldn't feel like one of your powers since it wouldn't be "Fire Misdirect" or "Psionic Misdirect". Just Misdirection. 2) Some powersets have a -whole- lot more control than others (Ki Projection has 0 Control effects) which means they'd benefit more from the Containment effect. (The containment effect has to be baked into the powers, not the inherent, in order to function, though -maybe- with the Doublehit mechanic of Assault Hybrid we could finagle something) Now if we wanted to do a "Replace Build Up" thing with a set-styled Misdirect AoE Placate buff... that -could- work? But it might feel a bit ... weird. How do you Fire-Placate? I never take Placate on any of my characters who aren't supposed to be Psychic 'cause the Jedi Mind Trick Stealth Retreat is just -weird- for anyone else. Except Smoke Bomb. That one's fine. All of -that- said... What did you think of the proposed powersets?

Let's see if he likes any of the suggested alterations, first, Zepp!

I'm suggesting two inherent abilities: Stealthy: A passive 35ft auto-power Stealth. This would not reduce the character's visibility, but would affect NPC Sight Ranges. Compare to Stalker Hide powers at 150ft. They'd be able to get as close to enemy NPCs as someone using the Stealth power from the Stealth Power Pool before being spotted. Overlooked: A function of the character's design, rather than a passive power, their Threat Level would be set to .75 and Threat Multiplier set to .25. This makes them not only terrible at tanking (Gaining only 25% of a Taunt Power's Effectiveness) but excellent at shedding aggro. The "Reverse Fury" would need to replace one or both of these, depending on it's damage level. Maximum Fury on a Brute, for example, is 200% additional damage. Could we reasonably have this character archetype double or triple the damage of their opening salvo? Particularly if we're giving them both Aim and Build Up for increased Burst DPS? Meanwhile setting it at a lower value, say 80%, might sound more reasonable, but with Build Up, Aim, and a Sniper Power (Which several Assault Powersets have) could result in a massively outsized initial attack. Even with a lower damage scale (say .95 instead of 1.125) they could easily equal or beat a Blaster's opening shot. Personally I'd rather leave their Damage Values and Defense Levels as fairly 'static', barring Sets, of course, and instead target their inherent on how they play, rather than how much damage they deal or take.

I feel like the Preparation Bar as sort of a 'Reverse Fury' could work, but it means that your first fight in the average mission will be "At full power" and every fight after that is going to be 10-15 seconds later, which won't be much time to build Preparation in. I don't think we could do a 'Defensive Reversal' mechanic, though, where you get more defenses as the bar drops in combat. If only because any well built Striker is going to be able to cap defense or resistance pretty easily through sets and render the defensive benefits moot. Personally I like the passive stealth. It's present, it's nifty, but it won't be a -huge- change to things. For a Team Benefit I would say give them a lower Threat Level and Multiplier. Masterminds, Blasters, Defenders, Controllers, and Corruptors all have a starting threat level of 1 with a .5 Taunt Multiplier. Tankers have a Threat Level of 4 with a Multiplier of 1. Only Brutes and Stalkers have a Multiplier that high, even Scrappers have a .75 Taunt Multiplier. Well, okay HEATs in Dwarf mode get the Multiplier of 1 but that's it! So how about an AT with a Threat level of .75 and a Multiplier of .25? It would allow Strikers to shed aggro like water off a duck's back (on Teams) because they wouldn't be able to steal the threat off of an active Defender if their life depended on it. The threat formula is: Threat = Damage * Debuff Mod * AT Mod * AI Mod * Range Mod * (TauntDurationRemaining * 1,000) AT Mod is where the .75 would go in, lowering the overall value of Threat generated.

Iiiiiiiiiiiinterstink! So one of my quasi-educated guesses was right, there is an absolute limit of melee and ranged pet AI per set...

I prefer the passive stealth approach, myself. Anytime you have a clickability it feels less like an inherent part of the character and more like just another power. At least it does to me. That said... Maybe a character boost function which increases the duration of controls the quantity of knock-back the power of secondary effects including + defense + resistance + regen + recovery for all powers could be pretty nice... Even fully enhanced you could pop that before I fight to increase the effectiveness of your various defensive controls and defensive powers as well as your sustain.

To express why ki projection has no controls: vectored defenses are powerful on their own. Vector the defenses and control effects would make this particular set more powerful than others.