Steampunkette

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.

Ice is mostly defense with some resist. Electric is entirely Resist. It sounds like it would have to be -really- focused in order to be survivable, and that it's straight support powers would probably be kind of an awkward shift... Go ahead and throw one together with some values and from there you can scale it and see how it does, y'know?

Then I'd suggest focusing the defensive abilities more narrowly. Aim for all the defensive powers to provide either Defense -or- Resistance if you're going to have 3-5 Defensive Powers. And, honestly, a Stealth Power doesn't -really- cut it for Defensive because most of the bonus is lost as soon as the fighting breaks out. Also if the powerset is going to provide click powers and debuff/control it would be kind of strange to try and shoehorn in the GDefense 'Split Benefit' mechanic. That only -really- works if the whole, or a majority, of the set contributes to it.

Any damage debuffs are going to be subject to both enemy rank and the purple patch, so their scaling will be wonky no matter what and thus they're not a great measure of survivability. An AV, for example, is always going to ignore almost all of any debuff you put on them, rendering that debuff-as-defense essentially useless. No single toggle or click will fix the deficit that we've got on our hands with this set. It needs to be redesigned away from "Click Debuffs on enemies" of which this set has 4. Okay, arguably Thunderstorm is a pet but the principle is the same, it's not providing any defensive benefit directly to the character, so it's leaving the player vulnerable... Freezing Rain and the like, by the way? BIG Aggro Magnet powers. You're going to be drawing a ton of aggro that you just can't take. For this kind of character we'd need to imagine every power, or -nearly- every power, as defense and support with values that are less than either a Scrapper or a Corruptor provides.

So... what I see, here, is a melee character with a bunch of buff/debuff. But their defensive abilities include 2/3rd of a personal resistance power on SLE, the Defense and Resistance from one Stealth Power, some AoE/Ranged Defense from one power... and nothing else. So we're looking at 20ish% resistance to SLE, a further 10-14% resistance to Cold, Fire, and Energy, 3-5% Defense to most stuff and around 12-15% Defense to AoE and Range. This character would not survive getting aggro and would probably get murdered by AoE in Melee unless they also happened to have a Defender/Corruptor on the team explicitly buffing their survivability. This is why "Take a Support Set and add some Defense to it!" doesn't work as a design method. It's a cool powerset, don't get me wrong. Nifty effects. But it's just not enough personal survivability to make it viable for melee, whether from Assault powersets or otherwise. For a character to be reasonably durable we're looking at 60% resistance to S/L at the very least. Or 28% Defense to S/L or some combination of the two. Otherwise they're just gonna get hammered down.

A GDefense/Melee character could be a viable alternative to 'Another Melee/Defense', though. By putting the GDefense first we wind up increasing the overall buffing output by around 30% and create a commensurate DPS drop through secondary attacks. Without aggro gathering abilities (We could swap Confront/Taunt for Placate, even) it shouldn't step on the toes of anyone, really. A Buffer who deals slightly better than tanker damage in melee but has neither the aggro control nor the durability of a Tanker. As to the "Mindlink T1" that's way too powerful an ability for an early game character, to start with, and due to it's intentionally long recharge time (Because recharge rate buffs exist) you'd wind up using it to provide way too much buffing way too infrequently.

The set has now been updated with new icons provided by Rylas! These custom Icons are completely ballin' and Rylas gets a huge +1 from me for doing it! Round of applause for Rylas!

With the proposed Group Defense Sets concept I included upthread placement is a nonstarter. You'd -have- to be so close to the people you're providing buffs to that ranged damage really isn't much of an option. And because it would be a leashed effect rather than a buff applied to target, corner positioning and the like means your buffs drop off your allies. And standing within 20 feet of a mob and attacking means they have the time to close the distance in the time it takes you to make a single attack, so assault sets don't really make a whole lot of sense. You're not getting a real 'defensive benefit' from range because you have to hang near the melees. Now if the SENTINEL were to use these Group Defense sets then they'd be a "Stack Guarder". Hang out with the squishies at longish range providing some dps and increased safety to controllers/defenders/etc to encourage team-movement... But even that I'm iffy on. Group Defense really just strikes me as a D&D Paladin sharing her Auras with nearby party members on the front lines. Small area, small bonuses, but big impact thanks to stacking. I.E. the Tanker/Brute/Scrapper/Stalker has 'decent' defensive abilities at 24, this character makes them all better without sacrificing too much of their own survival in the process. I feel like an Assault character would be best suited as a mitigator. Mitigating damage through movement/range, mitigating damage through defensive abilities, and maybe mitigating damage through control. I'd love that, too... but it's just not what people want. They want 'Paladins' by any other name.

I'd go the other direction. Increase the window for Momentum by 1/2 second, but increase the animation times of all momentum swings by 1/10th of a second without modifying the damage of the attacks. You'd get the same amount of attacks during your momentum window, because it would last longer to help with the increased animation times, spreading out the damage by about 1/2 second. (Since you get 4-5 attacks during a momentum window) For simplicity's sake let's say all 5 attacks in the window do 100 damage and have an activation time of 1 second. 500 damage over 5 seconds is 100dps. And here all 5 attacks in the window do 100 damage and have an activation time of 1.1 seconds. 500 damage over 5.5 seconds is 90dps 1/10th less DPS without reducing the DPA of any of their attacks.

... what -would- a Defense/Control powerset spectrum look like... Firstly it would need to rely on 'Lesser' controls to avoid overstepping onto the toes of a Controller or Dominator. Perhaps smaller areas and lower target counts rather than smaller magnitudes? Sleeps, Fears, Stuns. Stuff that provides absolute mitigation but doesn't create battlefield control... Willpower/Mind Control as a 'Mental Protection' powerset Bio Armor/Plant Control as a 'Wild Protection' powerset Elec/Elec Invuln/Earth Energy/Energy Dark/Dark Fire/Fire Ice/Ice But using clicks from your defensive set to put down controls could also provide direct mitigation... Like instead of a 20 second Mass Hypnosis sleep you get a 10 second sleep on up to 8 targets in a 15ft radius and each target hit grants you a +Regen buff instead of Rise to the Challenge being a toggled Buff that grants regen based on enemies near you..? That is another thing, since you'd need to get rid of taunt auras so these Assault Characters don't perpetually stand in melee. Could have the Defensive Powers in the Protection Sets provide small Control Boosts, too? Like using High Pain Tolerance to get a durational increase on Holds while it's toggled on. Or it increases the Knockback of some Telekinesis style "push 'em around" power that comes later in the set...

That's what people are leaning towards, yeah. Everyone wants a Melee Support. As to making it Assault/GDefense... yeah okay. We could do that... but it'd just be a variation on the Guardian which was worked on and shopped to another server. They used 'Composition' as a secondary which is the 'Armor set but with a few Support powers sprinkled in' that I described, before. Honestly, if we wanted to do Assault with the type of "Group Defense" powerset I've described, it would be better as a GDefense/Assault rather than Assault/GDefense archetype. That way both the self-buffing and group-buffing effects are the primary function and Ranged/Melee attacks are a secondary powerset. If Assault is to be a primary it really needs a pretty solid Mitigation secondary. I could see a Defense/Control hybrid, but it doesn't feel like something we can reasonably expect, while a strictly defensive secondary is more reasonable.

Then why are you still posting in this thread? Why are you presenting yourself as the lone voice of righteous rational improvement in a sea of yes men? Why are you rambling on, irrelevantly, about Business Practices and applying them to the game if you're not trying to convince people to change their minds? Why are you accusing people of making Strawmen Arguments and shit where there are no strawmen standing or being tipped over? Your actions do not line up with your words, here, Stryker. And if you are 'Just looking' at the possibility of reducing the cooldown: Eh. As was previously shown number by number, the power can already be triple-stacked with a pretty massive overlap by the time you get into high end. I guess it kind of sucks that putting one DO into the power doesn't give you 100% Uptime but in just 3 more levels you can slot 2 SOs and not have that problem any longer. Most sets and archetypes in the game have a growth curve. Often their more iconic powers are in the late tiers and don't show up 'til the mid to late 20s. Shield Defense is one of 2 defense sets that gets all three positioned defenses by level 10. To offset that comparative defensive strength, at low levels it has mez protection gaps and relies more heavily on it's positioned defenses to avoid getting hit by mez protection. But once you get to SOs that weakness is largely gone. Growing Pains is probably the best way to think about it. 'Cause you get some big and unusual benefits early on (Especially having Ranged and AoE in -one- Toggle compared to SR which needs 3 toggles for their positioned defenses) and then you get a big change, later on, when you play with speed.

Yeah, 1984 double plus good! That's clearly what I'm saying because I'm a caricature of Big Brother you myopic hack! You don't get to be snidely insulting and claim the high ground. A paradigm shift from you perspective of "Everything should be toggles 'cause it's easier' is what's in order. You clearly believethat it would be a massive improvement to the game but the numbers don't line up. At best it would be a marginal change that weakens Shield Defense to provide slightly more ease of use. And it's already pretty easy to use. You appear to be ignoring all the associated costs and losses your proposed change would cause. Going from a Click to a Toggle expands the dangers the set faces, requires a downgrading of the defensive functions (probably the defense debuff resistance and fear protection), homogenizes the defensive sets more, and removes the utility of recharge investment. The cost to benefit ratio is pretty damned high, here.

The intent of a business is to increase profit margins as much as possible without being arrested. The point of a power in City of Heroes is not that. But since you're big on Business, let me Jargon you a bit with a Paradigm Shift. Literally. I'm saying shift your Paradigm. Not every product will do as well in every market. You need variety to keep the customers coming in, I.E. players playing the sets. If everything is the same, standard, undifferentiated, one dull play is all it's going to take to drop interest. And then your business tanks. Diversify your Portfolio and Diversify your Powerset Design Choices.

High Pain Tolerance > Comfortably Numb: Auto. Grants the Paladin 2% Resistance to all damage types and +9.99% additional Max HP, that is unenhanceable and a further 3.63% Resistance to all damage types and +10% additional Max HP to the Paladin and up to 8 allies within 20ft that can be enhanced. Mind Over Body > Ignore Pain: Toggle. Grants the Paladin 6.88% Resistance to S/L/P that is unenhanceable and a further 10% S/L/P Resistance to the Paladin and up to 8 allies within 20ft that can be enhanced. Fast Healing > Swift Mending: Auto. Grants the Paladin 25% Regeneration Rate that cannot be enhanced and a further 50% Regeneration and 25% resistance to Regen Debuffs to the Paladin and up to 8 allies within 20ft that can be enhanced. Indomitable Will > Mental Fortress: Grants the Paladin Mez Protection, and grants the Paladin and all nearby allies 7.5% defense to Psionic Damage which can be enhanced. Rise to the Challenge > Challenger: Grants the Paladin 75% Regeneration Rate which cannot be enhanced, also grants a further 125% Regeneration Rate to the Paladin and up to 8 allies within 20ft that can be enhanced. Quick Recovery > Enduring: Auto. Grants the Paladin 10% Endurance Recovery that cannot be enhanced, grants a further 20% endurance recovery to the Paladin and up to 8 allies within 20ft that can be enhanced. Heightened Senses > Awareness: Grants the Paladin 2.31% Defense to all types except Psionic that cannot be enhanced, grants a further 7.1% E/N/F/C Defense to the Paladin and up to 8 allies within 20ft that can be enhanced. Resurgence > Down but not Out: Click. Self-Rez and Ally Rez targeting up to 8 allies within 20ft. Once rezzed, all allies gain a 20% ToHit and Damage Bonus for 90 seconds, the Paladin gains the same increase but after 90 seconds takes a 5% ToHit and Damage penalty for 45 seconds. Strength of Will > Conviction. Click. Grants the Paladin 7.5% Resistance to all damage types and 10% Endurance Recovery that cannot be enhanced, grants a further 10% Resistance to all damage types and 20% Endurance Recover to the Paladin and up to 8 allies within 20ft. At the end of 120s the Paladin's maximum Endurance is reduced by 50 for 30 seconds. There y'go. Willpower.