Steampunkette

"Hold This Position" Temp Power. Targets Pet-Class Allies Only, TAoE Mag 100 Immobilize, Range 50ft, Area 15ft Radius, Toggle Duration, 0.01 End/Sec. Use the same code to make it affect only the Caster's Pets as the Upgrade Powers. Could work as a kludge.

Superjump doesn't have them floating off the ground at all times. Zombies that permanently fly. Every Thug off the ground by 5 inches. It might fit for a "Drone" or "Robots" powerset, but the rest? Not so much.

Part of the problem is that NPCs with fly are on a binary. Either they're flying or they're not. There's no AI protocol for 'Toggle on Fly now.' and 'Toggle Fly off, now." And creating such an AI routine would be an INTENSE pain in the ass. Group Fly does work on pets, it just takes a few seconds for it to get them. The problem is their Follow AI keeps them on a bungie longer than Group Fly's area of effect so that they don't crowd doorways as bad as they otherwise would. So once you start flying it's only a matter of time before they plummet. There is no solution short of a targeted fly buff power with a longish duration.

There's that... but it's also a matter of using a scalpel to cut your steak. Just because it's designed to cut through cleanly doesn't mean it's the most efficient. TW has high end costs where Spines doesn't. And those damage auras can be loaded up with a -mess- of Procs for more automatic damage without a player even touching the keys.

We're not trying to represent the Defensive Power of these powersets. We're trying to ascertain their primary combat capabilities. DPS, Average time to Kill, things like that. We should use minimally effective custom NPCs because we're not trying to test a player's ability to run away and recover or pop a tray of inspirations or use temp powers or any of that. We're testing the capabilities of the Attack Powersets. It's true that Brute Damage is more variable than a Tanker's, but a Brute's ramp up should be 'about' the same for any given test, since they'll be on SOs it's unlikely to get above the 70-75% degree. Less so with an x4 group sizing. As to the Blaster PC: We can just dual-box a second account, follow, autofire Energy Torrent. Every 12 seconds the placement of enemies will change is the result of that method.

"No Inspirations" seems fair. And it would have to be the same two players testing every powerset. Perhaps put express limits on the Evil PC as to how much scatter they're allowed to do. Like only directional, nothing Radial. Energy Torrents only, but no Recharge Slotting. Hell... Have the Blaster on follow with Energy Torrent on Autocast, targeting the player being tested. Straight lines away from the Brute. I say Brute 'cause I wanna see Superstrength in this test. I have Wednesday and Thursday off this week as well as OBS. I could load up Justin and dual-box my husband's account, set us both up and start the tests?

You wouldn't be able to set it on a different costume slot. It would be a wholly different powerset that you select at character creation and get stuck with the rest of your career. There's no way for the game to remove your current powerset and replace it with another. It's basically 'Baked In' to your specific character the same way powers are baked into specific Powersets. So even if they made 5 Broadsword powersets with just the elemental types and psionic, you'd still be stuck with just one type for your whole career on that character.

I agree with -almost- every point, here. The one I disagree with is the Blaster NPC. I meant a Blaster PC with no slotting but accuracy and maybe endurance. Someone who comes in with the express intent of disrupting spawns to see if the change is significant or if the added damage offsets the loss in the overall time of the encounter, and whether some sets perform better than others in those situations. Things like Titan Weapons' long reach or Kinetic Melee and Claws's Ranged Attacks or Foot Stomp's giant area. By doing it in the baseline with just the tested character we'll get an idea of ST and AoE attacks, but the benefit of longer ranged abilities will be at best obscured. Let's find out how much impact they can actually cause.

The KB to KD enhancement functions by Debuffing your power. It takes what's there and sets it to 0.67. It does this for any power because KD is a singular value: 0.67. 'Half' is a relative value. It depends on the individual power. So a single 'One size fits all' solution won't work. You'd need to go into the powers database and create a buuuuuunch of modifications to the powers themselves to create an 'If this, then this' logic for each and every power and for each and every 'damage changing' enhancement.

Oh! We could call their Build Up 'Fan the Flames' and have it apply or refresh 5 stacks to all enemies within 10ft (Max of 10) in addition to the normal BU effects. Wouldn't let you chain off chains or anything, but it would let you instantly mark your target for AoE devastation.

How aboooout... Oh. -Res for some powers and -End for others? Call it an 'Overheating' mechanic where you basically go for a Melt Armor and Heat Stroke sort of concept? Or we could make the powerset -completely- Single-Target... but then add a growing AoE effect to every power. Call it 'Wildfire'. Every time you hit your target you grant your target a stack of Wildfire. Wildfire stacks up to 5 times, but does not get refreshed with new hits, sort of like Savage Melee's Frenzy. When you hit a target with Wildfire on them, it chains a portion of the damage to another target. With two stacks it chains to 2 targets. 3 stacks to three, and so on. And then have a few powers that double the chain effect. Hit with the 'AoE' attack (still single target) on a target with 5 stacks and it chains to 10 targets. Could call that attack: Spreads like Wildfire.

So we'd still have 'Dark Melee' but we'd create something like a 'Shadowfighting' powerset? I could be down with that. New powersets that use old themes in new ways. Could have some of it's attacks use Savage Melee animations to represent things like Vampires or Shadow Demons but with Dark or Soul Noir VFX tied to them on the impacts? Or a Flaming Fighter powerset that takes powers from Street Justice and Radiation Melee, adds fire effects to them, and such? Could even coat your hands in fire like Fire Blast does when you ready an attack.

We could start with a battery of tests on the Asteroid Map with minimally effective NPCs. How much damage they do is irrelevant. No ambushes or hostages or anything, just the basic map plain as can be. We'll still get runners and such, and an open area to chase them in. After all, titan weapons or broadsword if there's a box in the way you still jump over it or run around it, so it's kind of irrelevant. 5 tests each with each melee type, recorded for duration mapping. Then we send the players in with either an Energy Blaster slotted -exclusively- for Accuracy, Endurance, and Recharge with SOs or a Peacebringer slotted the same. That'll adjust for knockback style mechanics. Do another 5 for that battery, recording it as noted, and compare times.

Sort of a Sorcerous Melee? OH! Or just "Elemental Melee"! Make all the sets use fairly generic particle effects that could be colored different ways and have the first and second powers of the set both be an attack and a 'Grant' power, like Adaptation or Swap Ammo, where you get the additional types. Have the first one be Fire/Ice, the second one be Energy/Negative. Have the attacks normally do Crushing damage and then the admixture powers change them in toggle format. People who are really dedicated could color their attacks differently and use macros to toggle-swap when they attack with a given power? Might be nifty, but it'd also feel very generic in the end... Me? I like the different styles being what they are, and then I just recolor and roleplay.

Easy to stack it, but it's still only 7%. Not enough to seriously increase the dominator's lifespan (Until Sets come into play!) Blazing Arrows would work just fine in place of the snipe, though the snipe would be fine, too, if they can fix the no-redraw-fast-snipe for Archery. And yeah, Rain of Arrows would be cool beans if it were reduced a bit. Drop it to 'High' damage and a target count decrease from 16 to 10 would probably be more than enough, even with the wide area.

So... Powers are baked in whole. Everything from the Damage Type to the Endurance Cost to the Animation time has to be put together so that the engine can check the database for the right power at the right times to make it look like your character is swinging a sword. Like an old fashioned Telephone Board with all the little wires and the overworked women rocking headsets. You tell it to grab "Slash" and it goes and grabs slash and plugs it in. In order to have "Slash, Psionic Damage, 75/25%" you'd need a separate plug for it. And a separate plug for Slash, Toxic Damage, 25/75%" or Psionic 25 or 50. Each one would require it's own separate power for the engine to grab out of the database and play out. You're asking the Devs to make as many powersets as there are damage types and powers in an exponential growth. So let's say you want Broadsword. It has 9 powers. You want it to be Psionic, there's nine more. You want it to also have fire, cold, energy, and negative, well now you've ballooned the Broadsword Powerset to 54 power in 6 different sets... But you want them to be mix and matched to every possible combination ('Cause powersets are their own Plugs in the system, not interchangeable pieces) so you can do Psionic with one swing and Fire with the next. Well... That would require literally thousands of copies of the Broadsword Powerset to cover all the possible combinations. Broadsword Slashing T1: Slash T2: Slash T3: Slash T4: Slash T5: Slash T6: Slash T7: Slash T8: Slash T9: Slash Broadsword Slashing with 1 Psionic. T1: Slash T2: Slash T3: Slash T4: Slash T5: Slash T6: Slash T7: Slash T8: Slash T9: Psionic Broadsword Slashing with 1 Psionic and 1 Energy T1: Slash T2: Slash T3: Slash T4: Slash T5: Energy T6: Slash T7: Slash T8: Slash T9: Psionic The bloat and the effort required just to -catalogue- all the possible combinations for 1 powerset is mindboggling. And then doing it for Warmace, Titan Weapons, Staff, Battle Axe, Street Justice (You know you want fire-uppercuts), Martial Arts, and on and on and on... And then quadruple it if you want to be able to do 100% one type, 50% each type, 75/25% each type, and 25%/75% each type. Multiple that by 6 times if you want to be able to do the other part of the different types something other than Slashing. It's not going to happen unless the Devs have or intend to completely alter how powers are stored and understood by the game.

Visuals and to some degree (Multiple Capes) physics demand.

Might be a little bit too fiddly... I'm pointing at stuff that already exists to try and make it easier. I don't know any power that increases in cost when used, and the only method of incressing cost by buff/debuff I'm aware of is an endurance discount penalty, which would affect the whole character.

Honestly... I feel like Teleportation -should- have a dual-use-power in it... but not Hover/Teleport. I think it needs Teleport and Combat Teleport. Combat Teleport should work like Burst of Speed. You get 2-3 uses within a minute and thirty or whatever but the range is shorter and the animation is -much- shorter. MAYBE add in a short-duration defense buff... but nothing bigger than that. No PBAoE Damage effect. No stun or slow or anything applied to others. Just a nice and simple way to use the power within the confines of combat without hovertar or a long animation leaving you vulnerable.

With no redraw it would look really freaking weird. PARTICULARLY Ranged Shot. When you use Ranged Shot on a blaster with no redraw your character draws, anyway. A bow and arrow. Then goes to the ready stance as the arrow leaps out of your hand and into the target. Maybe swap Explosive arrow with Fistful of arrows? None of the other attacks use special 'Tech' like glue arrows or anything, so it sticks out a bit. But other than that it looks fine. I think putting Parry in it would be a bad choice since Dominators don't get defensive powersets, so you were right on the money with that.

Also: The way Pineapples Grow is soooo absurd. LOOK AT THAT! All that plant for one pineapple sitting on top of it, like it rose out of the ground to wave it at you, right at shopping-cart height!

So there's 2 big things that are blocking this -aside- from clipping. 1: The UI. We'd need to redesign the UI to have multiple back locations, or redesign the costume pieces to double-up. That is to say 1 costume item in the 'Back Detail' list that is the Quiver and Scarf in one item. Or the Spine and the Over the Shoulder Mantle. 2: Connection Points. There's only so many connection points on a CoH Character Model. So some stuff that takes up the same physical placement on the model, the connection point for the additional geoset, can't be overlayed without redoing the player model in total.

1) I suggest modifying your tone. It's not conducive to discussion and it's liable to get you moderated. 2) The "Scrapper Minigame" inherent to the class is 'Hit something that will die if you hit it. Hit it again. Hit it more. Maybe watch it's HP just in case your next attack might crit, but probably don't worry about it." Controllers have to make the choice of stacking controls on the same handful of targets for double damage or spreading their controls out to try and contain more targets. Corruptors have to decide whether to keep flinging AoE or pick a single target and burn him down. Stalkers have to get into position for AS and then monitor their next AS Opportunity. Brutes have to walk the line between getting all the aggro and possibly dying for more DPS or letting the tanker have some of it and risking the loss. Dominators used to have to choose their Domination Windows for maximum impact and now just strive for Permadom and juggle keybinds. Scrappers? Not a ton of minigame specific to them. ATOs add in a sort of one where you try to get up a crit-frenzy to drop on the boss. 3) If you'd actually read the thread you'd have seen some important numbers posted based on the damage metrics for TWs slow-version still being between 10% and 44% overpowered... BEFORE Momentum Kicks in and increases the attack speed of attacks by 35-60% (Depending on the power) which, by all damage metrics, -increases- the degree to which their damage scale is too high.

Sweet Dreams you funky flaming skull!

Again, appeal to ridiculousness, Strawman argument, and both combined with a slippery slope and followed up with an Ad Hominem for the combo. You keep attacking me and my motivations instead of my positions, Bossk. Why is that?