Steampunkette

Bringing all the other sets up means further trivializing all the content for everyone. Unless we're going to also increase the HP of all NPCs across the board by 18%? That's not the Right Choice. It's just the one that feels 'good' because Power Creep.

If your endurance gets knocked out and your defenses detoggle you've got time to run. Ranged Attacks almost always do less damage than melee attacks from NPCs, for starters, and most NPCs have more melee attacks than ranged attacks. Unless of course you've been standing there like a gormless tit letting enemies wail on you without fighting back. I suppose if the entire +4x8 spawn happened to have not been even thinned out and all fired their ranged attacks simultaneously at your backside you might actually -be- in danger. But that's not how it's going to play out 9.9 times out of 10, and I think we both know it. By the time a defense character's defenses are down there's some bodies on the floor and the ones remaining probably won't be combining to instantly take you down before you can run 60ft down a cluttered hallway to break LoS. It is easy to run out of range of most enemies. And corners exist for the others. I've played SR and Shield to 50. Don't pretend like running isn't possible, Zot, I've had to do it more than a few times. Freaking Malta.

This kind of tells me that you're not arguing in good faith, here, Infinitum. You've got the numbers presented to you showing that the set is OP and now you're moving the goalposts to deflect it. "Well no one is complaining!" in a thread where people are discussing appropriate ways to nerf it slightly. But only slightly. "Slap on the Wrist" is the actual phrase used. And now it's a 'challenging mechanic' that if you screw up you're done. And the nerf I offered would help make it slightly -less- challenging by extending the time you can queue powers by 0.1 seconds and the overall duration of Momentum by .5 seconds. "10% more damage" on three powers. Almost 20% on two others. And 44% on a third. And that's not including the two DoT effects tacked on in addition. In fact going over the numbers the average overage is 18%. The set, on the whole, is 18% more damaging before you even add on the free damage from the dots... Eh. Seems pretty cut and dried to me that TW overperforms. My suggestion would narrow the overperforming gap by 10% during Momentum Windows... That's not -so- bad...

Run. Super easy answer to the problem. An SR/Ninja/Shield character can run away to recover endurance and keep fighting. A mezzed Invuln Tank stands there and dies.

What do you consider 'Legitimate Exploits'? What's your minimum Threshhold of something being exploitative?

Hopeling's got it in the Math. If there's a nerf, I hope it'll be the one I suggested: A slight penalty to DPS without lowering the DPA or DPE.

Back on live it used to be possible to make AE NPCs with no ranged attacks, hover your butt into the air, and farm from complete safety. It also used to be possible to make an entire enemy group made up of nothing but Rikti Comm Officers to open portals so you could farm the entire group of Officers after you destroyed their portal for extra XP on every spawn. Paragon Studios made it so the AE did -not- reward XP at all. And then made it so that the AE didn't reward any influence or item drops, but instead gave you tickets you could use to buy items like you were at Chuck E. Cheese's. Thanks to Arcanaville, a separate setup was designed where AE NPCs got different XP Values based on which powersets they had and how many of the powers of those powersets they were given access to. With a blanket "All enemies get 1 ranged power at minimum" to avoid people exploiting the game design setup. Now you can get normal rewards -or- Tickets. Fire Farming is just another gameplay exploit like hoverfarming or Commfarming. You go into a situation you can't get killed in because you've stacked the deck against the NPCs. You've made certain they'll do minimal damage to you and you'll do maximum damage to them.

Also Restaurants. Go to any big city you like and you'll find half a dozen fast food chains within a 5 block radius competing against Mom n' Pop diners and local bars. City of Heroes has, like, 3 restaurants and 1 bar repeated throughout the game world.

Fire Farming is an exploit. You get a massively disproportionate Risk to Reward Ratio. That is to say no risk and huge rewards. You're right, though, that it was a bug... But it was a Bug people exploited for fast Merit Gain. Again, Risk to Reward.

"This exploit isn't as bad as the other exploit so we should just have both exploits" is not a good argument to get the cap raised. It -is- a good argument to get the other exploit dragged into line, kicking and screaming.

Every third spawn or so. Five or six if I have a couple Catch a Breaths. Unlike most people I start slotting for End ASAP. One Accuracy, then enough End Reduction to bring the total under 10, then damage. If the power is under 10 but above 5 it gets 1 End Reduction Enhancement. My defensive toggles (Energy) have no end slotting in them, and instead just 3 straight Defense Enhancements except my Mez Protection which gets 2 End Reducers. Yeah, my TWs character sucks wind. But she WRECKS everything I put her up against. And she looks -amazing- doing it. Particularly with the KB/D in Titan Sweep! My attack chain is nonexistent. My attack priority is Cones-Follow Through-Rend Armor-Crushing Blow. Build up some Fury during that first Momentum barrage, pop Build Momentum, finish killing everyone. And of course if BM is on CD I just keep following my priority. And to be clear: I three man team her with a Grav/Time and a Beasts/TA on +0x7. At 22. We -were- doing x5, but then I got SOs and we increased the diff. (The Grav/Time doesn't have SOs, yet)

Oh, probably. But the Defense to Resistance Disparity is -why- those powers have Active Mez Protections. A Resistance based set 'Needs' mez protections that are constantly active because they don't dodge mez. It almost always hits and thus the toggle or autopower Mez Protection is more needed. In a Defense Based set, like Ninjitsu, Super Reflexes, and Shield Defense you can dodge incoming control effects whether Melee, Ranged, or AoE. Even sets that have split defenses, like Willpower or Bio Armor, use toggled Mez Protection. Because while those sets might have some Fire or Energy Defense most Mez is Psi or Energy or Smashing. So having those sets be more "Vulnerable" to Mez at low levels (When mez is comparatively rare) is a part of making sure a level 15 Scrapper has about the same survivability whether they're SR or Bio.

I take no shame in being wrong. I'd rather be wrong and learn it than be wrong and act like I'm right forever. But in my defense: I was saying what had been impossible, based on the Live Devs explaining it repeatedly. I was wrong out of ignorance of what had been changed, not wrong out of stubbornness to acknowledge truth. And that's something we all have to fight against.

No. It isn't what "usually" happens. What usually happens is a handful of die-hard fans of the power or powerset being nerfed flock to the forums to defend it and 90% of the rest of the population doesn't care enough to wade into the forum and discuss it. Most of the time even the most severe nerf just puts the powerset back in-line with other powersets used by the same archetypes. There have been a handful of situations where it was too extreme. Energy Melee being the most egregious one. And no. I haven't played Titan Weapons to 50. But I also don't have to in order to tell you that it's outperforming at 22. Your maxed out Kin/Rad can destroy even con spawns at 50 but I'm doing it at 22. My other brutes (Superstrength, Kinetic Melee, Katana, Dark Melee, and yeah, even Energy Melee) didn't start wiping out even level spawns at the speed the TW character does until they were in their 30s or early 40s. Sooner if I started slotting them up before that point with attuned Sets. Now tell me how fast an Empath/Energy wipes out spawns. Or FF/Dark. Your example of 'Anyone can wipe out even-con spawns!' relied on a major damage outlier for Defenders through Kin. It's a liiiiiiittle on the telling side! Reducing the amount of DPS that TW does in their Momentum by .5 seconds worth of DPS spread wouldn't "DESTROY" them. That's a logical fallacy appeal to emotion. And Pylons aren't perfect. But they are the single best test we have to determine a powerset's single target DPS because they're tough, they don't fight back hard enough to waste time responding to the damage, and they don't try to run. Yeah, in a mission enemies run away, or reposition, or whatever to cost you maximum possible DPS. That affects -all- attack sets, though, and TW less than most because it has larger AoE to hit things in (Both in range and width).

That was me! I was talking about how the game engine was not designed with optional vectors in Knock and now 'Negative Knock' didn't work! Only I didn't know that Leandro and his team set up vectoring as part of their i25 update because it wasn't part of any patch information. So... it was there, I just had no idea. And then I acknowledged I was wrong and cheered for the team because WOO! That said, while there's very little that is factually impossible to do, there is "Currently Impossible" and "Functionally Impossible" Like how it's functionally impossible to include broken ass trinkets to the raiding scene and get people to not use them without nerfing them when you introduce weaker trinkets, later, BLIZZARD.

No. That's not how it "Usually" ends up. Superstrength got Rage 'Nerfed' with the Crash that only came into effect on this server. Guess what? Still the most popular Tanker Secondary by about 7,000 over it's second place competitor Titan Weapons which is at 5k players. And for Brutes it's edged out from the number 1 spot by about 300 players. Titan Weapons takes Third Place with 4k less players than Superstrength. Most sets get nerfed and most people just roll with it. Even the oft mourned Energy Melee is solidly "Lower Middle" on tankers and brutes for how often it's played. Energy Melee's nerfs were a MASSIVE EXCEPTION because it was a huge outlier on ST damage on Live. It was incredibly unusual and so was the nerfing. And as someone who has only ever rolled one Titan Weapons character who is currently only at 22... Nothing Gamebreaking about it. But it's certainly the most damaging primary powerset I've ever played on a Brute by a significant margin. Specifically the two low-level Cones that just -completely- wreck even con spawns. I love it to pieces! But I wouldn't mind a tiny nerf to DPS by increasing the duration of momentum and slowing the speedy attacks by a tenth of a second. I'd still be doing more than enough damage to feel like I'm a scary beast.

People ignore explanations. Or throw out stuff like "So it would be hard, that's not -impossible-!" and go on about their merry way. In the MM Pets thread I explained why Customized Pets can't be done. I explained why Pre-selected layouts of pets can't be done. I even explained by Clone Pets using Doppleganger Tech can't be done. People are still going on and on about how you should be able to customize your pets or trying to invent new ways to do it like "Model Swapping" which I had to also explain can't be done... Nothing will stop people from wanting their pet ideas. That's why Game Designers have such a hard time balancing game mechanics and making new and engaging content... Producers and Directors have a tendency to get a Pet Idea in their head that they want no matter what, and when the guys who know the code and the game say "We Can't because (Reasons go Here)." the Producers and Directors say motivational bullshit like "Never say Impossible! Never say Can't!" and ram the change through and then everything goes to hell. Shit like shoehorning 'Endgame Raids' into City of Heroes. Or how WoW keeps implementing broken-ass Trinkets that are so good for a specific Class or Spec that they're the Best in Slot item for the rest of the expansion even though they drag the character's item level down by upwards of 80 levels. It's also pretty common in games like ESO where high end new stuff interacts in 'unexpected ways' with high end old stuff. The designers tell the Big Wigs 'We can't do X because it will cause Y problem" and it goes through over their objections and 6 weeks later they're told to fix Y problem. ... sorry. That got a bit ranty.

Take a look at my proposal upthread. It would have the same DPA and DPE but 10% less DPS during Momentum Windows. Would that make TWs Suck? It would still have the best ST and AoE damage availability of any set, and do so with the same increased End costs it's been fighting against, but Momentum would last a teensy bit longer and attacks in Momentum would take a teensy bit longer. Also worth noting: Not every change to try and bring things closer to parity is going to result in an EM style Nerf. I really wish people would stop Slippery Sloping every damned time. Also, saying "the other powersets suck and this one is good" is just a power creep view of "The sets are mostly balanced, but this one's an outlier on the high end". Like an Overton Window of Game Balance.

Personally I'd like to see the 'In Combat Out of Combat" function applied to rest so that players out of combat can rest without an interrupt period. But that's about it.

Super Reflexes, Ninjitsu, and Shield Defense represent 3 of the top 5 Scrapper Secondaries. Super Reflexes and Ninjitsu are the number 1 and number 2 secondary powersets for Stalkers. Shield Defense is the second most popular Tanker Primary. Only Brutes don't favor SR or Shield, pushing them down to 6th place and 10th place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

So long as all three armors focus on the same thing, maaaaaaaaybe... But then you're gonna run the risk of marginalizing Scrappers. For the sake of argument let's use the Electric/Storm combo that was previously presented. Let's give them Charged Armor, Conductive Shield, and Grounded (Just so they don't have 3 toggles). They wind up with 41% S/L/N/F/C and capped Energy if they slot 3 with SOs. Not even IOs or Sets. Just some generic 3-slotted Resistance. So you're losing a PBAoE Damage Aura, a Mez Protection, Faster Recharge, End Recovery, and a Self-Heal. Also a Tier 9 that basically no one uses 'cause of the Crash. But you've still got the three core Survival Powers of an Electric Scrapper. And then you're going to grab an AoE (Also Self) Heal, Debuffs, a Pet, a Sustain power to replace the lost sustain of Power Sink and/or Energize... Now if we do the GDefense Thing, where stuff gets split into enhanceable and unenhanceable components, then you're looking at 33% Resistance to most attacks and still capped resistance to Energy with 77% Energy Res... That's a -bit- less Toe-Squishy for the Scrappers but I'm not sure if it's tough enough to hang in melee. My gut feeling says that it's going to have a lot of trouble unless it's fighting predominantly Energy Opponents... But I -THINK- it might be workable. Especially since they'd also be granting nearby allies 19.92% to most damage types and 58% to Energy. Hmm... In retrospect that might be a -bit- high. But we could tinker with the values to bring that 58% down closer to 30%, I'm certain.

I think the '1% Defense to All" is -why- you can't slot it for defense. It's such a low value that it would be a 'Trap' for anyone who didn't pay close attention to the value they were enhancing. I mean fully slotted for Defense to ED you're getting .5 additional defense. That's pretty terrible.

5% Defense is not enough to keep a character alive who hangs out in melee. Especially one who throws out a ton of click debuffs and buffs and heals instead of killing the things that want them dead. Slotted to ED that' 7.25% Defense. Take a look at the Arachnos Soldiers. They're 'Kind Of' what you want. Melee and Ranged primary, Defensive Secondary with AoE Buffs, and a single Target and an AoE Debuff (Surveillance and Venom Grenade) They get 3 Defensive Powers focused on Defense and wind up with 27.7% Defense to everything but Ranged. Ranged is 39.6% once 3 slotted with defensive IOs at 50, though it should be noted the values are closer to 22% and 34% outside of their Cloaking Device Stealth. They also get a smattering of resist from two powers as well. That's not Set Bonuses. That is the basic defense values of the powers in the set. And that's -without- having to spend a whole bunch of animation cycles every fight dropping Debuffs and heals and stuff. The "Add some Defense to Support Sets" or "Add some Support to Defense Sets" model is untenable. Support Sets aren't designed to survive in or near melee. Also giving every single member of the Archetype a "Mind Link" power at level 1 is -dull-. At least Stalkers get a damage bonus for every one of them using Hide and need it to make thematic sense. "Focused Purpose" doesn't thematically tie into any powerset except MAYBE Empathy if you go with the idea that you're sharing your drive or something like that. The Arachnos Soldier also starts out grabbing their own defensive and supportive abilities (Wolf/Bane Armor, Combat Training Defensive, Combat Training Offensive) and doesn't get access to Tactical Training Maneuvers 'til level 10 at the earliest. And you're suggesting a more powerful (Click v Toggle) ability that allows allies to gather for the buff and then run off on their own afterward for 2 minutes before reapplication.

... I love you.