Steampunkette

Jesus Christ, really? Did you just honestly "I have a black friend who disagrees" with Morgan Goddamned Freeman? Allow me to direct you towards the massive fucking swaths of black people who disagree with him. Everyone from Black Lives Matter through the NAACP. But the fact is I'm not trying to champion black rights as a white woman. I'm trying to draw parallels to how the majority treats the minority by using a Parable from my own life experiences. From when I was an unintentionally racist little shit who didn't know she was racist. That's not to say I was a little 'Junior KKK' Member or some shit. I never ascribed to White Supremacist ideals (Though my brother did and my sister drops N-Bombs to this day). Just that I grew up in a racist fucking society and it's taken me decades to unlearn what I've managed to unlearn. Still got a ways to go, though.

What -are- the actual points you made? Please put them in a numbered chart because if I'm not hitting them I'm not understanding them. Here's what -I- got from your post: 1) Codifying laws and/or rules to protect minorities increases the divide between them and everyone else. -Right Wing Catchphrase meant to shift the onus of the divide onto the people who are trying to protect the marginalized group. 2) Our justice system is adversarial. -Completely irrelevant to the discussion, unless you're trying to say that the Gay/Trans Panic defense SHOULD be allowed in which case this conversation is over. 3) Same as number 1, stated differently. -Tried to explain the difference between Equality and Equity, 'cause you still don't seem to understand that 'treating everyone fairly' only works after the systemic barriers have been removed.

I kind of like the idea of an "Asteroid Test" Just create a mess of minions, lieutenants, and bosses with minimal attack options (Experience and Rewards aren't the point) and no defensive options, equip 5-6 different powerset combos with Titan Weapons being one of them and all of them using /Invuln (No damage or effectiveness buffs to the primary from the secondary) and make sure they're all using nothing more than SOs of even level. Then run the map 5 times on each, average the runs, and see where the standings are?

That's the best explanation I think can exist. Until the basic inequities are addressed we need to treat groups differently when it comes to the inequities those groups face. And it doesn't 'Create Further Divide', Biostem. That's just a right wing catchphrase to vilify any attempt to accommodate the differences that exist in our society. Any attempt to protect people from mistreatment based on the things that make them different. It's just another way to place the onus of responsibility for the mistreatment of minority groups on those minority groups. It's just like saying "Racism wouldn't be a thing, anymore, if black people just stopped talking about it!" Which, by the way, as a white child in Georgia in the 80s I heard soooo often that I even believed it at one point and recited it more than twice. I was taught that racism only existed 'cause Black People didn't want to be treated in a racist manner. Can you imagine being that goddamned stupid? That somehow the world would be without racism if people just stopped talking about it, or protesting about it, or trying to address it with hate speech laws. It would just be gone. After all, the Civil Rights Act had passed 20 years before!

NO SHIT. But until All Cops crack down on each other for harassing trans women it's gonna keep happening. Until every state bans "Trans and Gay Panic" as a legal defense it's gonna keep happening. Until we no longer need special protections, it's gonna keep happening. But holding hands with you and singing "Kumbayah" at the top of our lungs isn't going to stop this shit from happening. Pretending that there's no differences in how society treats us isn't going to protect anyone. Repealing the protections that exist and not instituting further protections won't make the world sunshine and happiness. You don't need to tell me 'Treat everyone equally' you need to tell that to Cisgender people who don't treat people equally and accept that until people -do- treat each other equally, we're gonna need laws to make them treat people equally. As the world stands, right now, Equality is a pipe dream. A Fantasy of a distant future. Until then the best we can hope for is Equity. Making things as equal as possible by fixing the problems that do exist whether we like them or not with whatever means we have on hand. This is not a world where everyone's 'Good at Heart' and it's a 'Few Bad Apples' spoiling the bunch. In this world the vast majority just don't care about problems that aren't their own. They'll walk past cruelty and turn a blind eye to hatred 'cause it doesn't affect them. Martin Luther King Jr. in one of his prison letters in Alabama is famously quoted: We like to imagine it's the KKK or the White Supremacists who screamed bloody murder when the first black students were admitted to white schools. But it was just people. And now, 60 years later, you look around and you'll never find them. I lived in Georgia for the first 17 years of my life and I never met a parent or a grandparent who stood in front of the schools screaming about letting black kids in... Only I did. Because of COURSE I did. They just didn't admit to it, anymore. They learned they were wrong, but it took the Federal Government forcing them to accept black kids in white schools before they realized it, and were too damned ashamed of it, 20 years later, to admit it to a kid asking questions for a Book Report. So maybe 30 years from now we won't need laws to protect people from Trans Panic. Maybe 20 years from now we won't have cops harassing trans women for carrying condoms and arresting them for prostitution. Maybe 15 years from now racial profiling in Stop and Frisk situations won't be a problem, anymore. But until then? We have that problem. And 'good' people trying real hard to treat everyone equally won't fix anything until all the people who don't care have been shown they -need- to care and the 'bad' people have been silenced.

The dangers I face in the day to day as a trans woman aren't all the same as the dangers you face. You're never gonna get arrested for walking in the bad part of town with a condom in your pocket. Trans women get picked up on prostitution charges for that. You're never going to get harassed for using the Bathroom. Trans women get that shit allll the time, to the point where I was -terrified- to use the ladies room after my transition. You're not going to face the danger of being raped, murdered, dismembered, and set on fire for being who you are or advocating for the fair treatment of a group of people. But that shit just keeps happening to trans women activists. And sometimes just trans women who get murdered by a dude who was attracted to her and then found out she was trans and got himself in a tizzy over it. So far the "Gay/Trans Panic" defense has been banned in California in 2014, Illinois in 2017, Rhode Island in 2018, and Nevada, Connecticut, Maine, Hawaii, and New York in 2019. But it's still a valid defense in the state -I- live in. A Man could think I'm hot, murder me, and literally GET AWAY WITH MURDER because he claims he was so distressed about being sexually attracted to a trans woman that killing her was the only logical response. Ahmed Dabarran, for example, was beaten to death in his -sleep- by Roderiqus Reshad Reed in 2001. The jury acquitted him -despite- his full confession. Did I mention that Dabarran was an Assistant DA in Atlanta Georgia? Did I mention that the JURY, a collection of radom people and not some murderous fucknuckle, decided to set the dude free because he was scared of 'The Gay'? So long as you don't face those dangers, and countless others, rules and laws that protect 'all of us' will not always protect me. Rules and laws that protect your rights won't always protect others. Until we get to a society where we don't need special protections, a society I fucking -LONG- for, we're not going to have true equality. But until then I'll take special protections to try and mitigate the damage between now and then.

Are you -seriously- going to play that canard? There were no protections for women, racial minorities, or sexual minorities for the first hundred years this country was around and those groups were treated like absolute shit. And then -SOME- protections were put in place. And though people were still treated like shit at least they had some protections. Go ahead another 60 years and some more protections were put in place. And another 40 years some more. And just recently some more protections, in the form of gay marriage rights. Are you suggesting that if we never had those protections in the first place things would be -better-? That people would be 'Truly Equal' without them? Look at the history of the US to see how "Truly Equal" society treated people before those protections were put into place. It wasn't until the 1980s that Raping your Wife became a crime. Allow me to repeat that: Spousal Rape was not something you could get arrested for. It wasn't even grounds for fucking DIVORCE. If a woman went before a judge and said "I want a divorce because my husband held me down and raped me" the judge would go "So what? You married him. You owe him. Got a better reason?" 'True equality is no one gets protections!' my ass. True equality is no one NEEDS protections. But until we get to that fucking point you can stuff that pig ignorant opinion back where it belongs.

To make a Mastermind Powerset you need to follow the following steps: 1: Workshop the idea. This is the theming/planning stage where you choose what kind of pets it will get. 2: Determine the powers you want the pet to have. Are they gonna be Melee or Ranged? Here's where you pick and build their powers. 3: Develop the NPC AI which prioritizes power use based on their activity. Generally this means they hit the most recently recharged power or the highest damage/power/effect power that is available. IT also needs to include the 'Mastermind Deferences' within the AI. 4: Design the Model for the Mastermind Pet. If there's going to be differences in the same power(Like Thugs have with skin tones and hair colors) you need to design a different model for each one. 5: Combine the powerset, the AI, and the Model into a single NPC. 6: Repeat steps 2 through 5 for every variation. Gonna have 3 Necromancer ghosts? Do it three more times. Gonna have Gang War Thugs? Do it 10 more times. Gonna have a single NPC at the first tier that acts differently and uses a different, unique, model? Do it again. Well. Okay. SOME of it can use the same AI, so if you're gonna use the same weapons/attacks, skip to step 4 and 5. 7: Create Call Pools for each tier and specialty. The Arsonist thugs all exist in the Arsonist Thug 'Villaingroup' so that when you use the baseline Call Thugs power it calls 2 thugs from one group and the third thug from the other. 8: Determine which powers they get when they get Upgraded the first time. Create a 'Block' for those powers in the NPC AI that the upgrade removes. 9: Determine which powers they get when they get Upgraded the second time. Create a 'Block' for those powers in the NPC AI that the upgrade removes. 10: Now that that's finished, select what other powers the Mastermind will get (Dual Pistols, Dark Blast, Etc) 11: Check the balance of the powers against all normal metrics. 12: Begin Alpha Testing. The above is a big part of why Ninja, Robotics, Necromancy, Beast Mastery, and Demon Summoning have 1 model per tier, instead of a wide variety like Thugs. Or even a small variety like Mercenaries. Because it's too much damned work to create a variety! And even with only 1 model per tier you still have to go through this massive pile of effort. Heck, at Steps 2 and 4 I skipped over Animations, Powers Design, number crunching, and a hell of a lot more work... Meanwhile making a separate powerset that doesn't involve pets it's: Step 1: Workshop the idea. Decide what kind of powerset it is, what makes it different, etc. Step 2: Create the powers. Step 3: Create animations for the powers. Step 4: Check the balance of the powers against all metrics. Step 5: Begin Alpha Testing.

That's not a bad idea. Throw together an AV with Katana and Dual Pistols then take away all the attacks you can (AE Enemies are locked into at least 1 attack). Give it maximum Morale and put it in a mission all by itself. Maybe the Asteroid Map or something small. Then just wail on it 'til it's dead or 1 minute is up, and take the damage dealt in that minute (Or however long it takes the thing to die) from the logs and go from there.

Oh, I wouldn't mind seeing them turned into an end-cost-free toggle (Aside from Dimension Shift, obviously). I'm just saying they're not as rarely taken, even at level 50, as a whooole lot of other powers. Most of which come down to 'Confront', granted. But even Black Hole sees 10-15% utilization at 50. The numbers are to refute the specific point exaggeration, not the core idea. I should've been more clear in that.

Oh, no doubt. I even suggested a way to do that which would affect other teleporters -less-. See, the current way the hover works is that you have 0 fly speed when it hits. So if you're 10ft away from a door you can either wait for the hover to fall off or teleport the last ten feet and click the door. It's SO ANNOYING! With my suggestion, it catches you on the back-side of the teleport, gives you a 6 second window to line up your next teleport, and it frees the rest of us from the 'Hover Tar' that keeps us from just walking that 10ft distance to click the door. Elegant solution, no?

And each of those powers have their own pitfalls. For Superspeed it is -literal- pitfalls. Wanna know what should be essentially standard with Teleport? A line in the description of the power when you take it that tells you to use /bind LShift+LButton powxec_name Teleport Then hold shift and left click to go where you wanna go. Fastest Teleport there is and unless you're lagging so hard you're about to Mapserver you'll never fall. So much faster than the 'click in tray, drag to where to go" method. Though I suppose you could just put it on your hotbar in slot 0 and press-click to be about as fast... My way's just less awkward.

Around 36% of Gravity users who can take Dimension Shift do take Dimension Shift at 50. Sonic Resonance shows that 10% (for Defenders and Masterminds) and 20-30% (Controllers and Corruptors) choose Sonic Cage. Though the bottom 10 least chosen powers by players does include one intangibility: Black Hole by Controllers. It's 10 from the bottom. Confront on Widows comes in at a measley 4.18% making it the least taken Power!

Yay! Progress! I think the initial suggestion I made on page 1 is a good step. I don't think it's -enough-, based on the raw numbers that have been provided since then, but I'd prefer to nerf it not enough than too much. Bringing it down a tiny bit (10% DPS during Momentum which covers about 75-85% of it's overall DPS) would at least reign it in as an outlier while still leaving it ahead. Other steps could be more targeted on specific powers. Like removing the DoT from both Follow Through and Whirling Strike. But I -kind- of feel like it should maybe remain on Follow Through? DoTs only 'really' help on hard Targets like Elite Bosses and AVs, enemies with enough hit points to survive to the end of multiple DoTs. There's just not enough AoE Hard Target situations to warrant giving Whirling Strike a DoT on top of all it's other benefits. But I'd rather see these changes in a vacuum rather than all together. A step by step process with one little change, a monitoring of the result, and then another small change. Just so we don't wind up overnerfing.

Then the answer to the current point is: Infinitum's data was severely flawed by his decision to build a Single Target Chain from an AoE chain to compare it to a Single Target Chain used by another set and thus should be disregarded. And now that -that's- cleared up...

Also worth noting: All analogies are imperfect, but this one is just... *chef's kiss* "You're not allowed to perform Brain Surgery until you've performed Brain Surgery! All the books that you've read, the cadavers you've worked with, and training you've undergone is irrelevant. You're not allowed to do brain surgery 'til you've done brain surgery!"

How can you be an Astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse, Tyson, if you've never been to SPACE?! 'Cause the Numbers are there. And he knows the numbers. Math. It's not that hard and it lines up in the game world pretty damned No. The stated problem is that the powerset is a bit OP and should be slapped on the wrist. Then a lot of people trying to figure out how it was OP while a couple people declared, apropos of nothing but their own experiences, that it isn't OP at all and might be slightly underpowered and even if it was OP it's not a big deal blah blah blah LET PEOPLE HAVE THEIR FUN OP SETS! The numbers that were brought forward show the set's OP out of the gate, before Momentum ever comes up. *shrugs* Some people are discussing the ST capabilities of the set 'cause an attempt to "Disprove" the set was OP relied entirely on one person's very flawed ST chain (Made up of AoE) only being 10% more effective than Energy Melee's ST Chain.

It's insincere civility. "You have to be civil with me or else you're wrong. But I can be uncivil and accusatory and if you lose your cool you're wrong!"

It isn't "The big offender". The big offender is Whirling Smash at 44% OP. Though, to be fair, that power -only- works in Momentum. Defensive Sweep, on the other hand, is 18% over the standard for damage calculations -outside- of Momentum. Inside Momentum it gets faster. The only reason people brought up Follow Through is that Infinitum didn't take it into account for his Single Target Attack Chain, instead focusing on crowbaring AoE attacks into the ST chain. He didn't take it, so the whole set feels "Weak" on Single Target compared to the overpowered individual powers. You don't have to use Follow Up Twice inside a Momentum Window to get good single target damage. But it helps.

It doesn't. Remember: Most of the powers in the set are overbalanced -outside- of momentum by between 10 and 44%. INSIDE Momentum those numbers increase, whether you follow through once or twice. By spreading out the Momentum Window and Momentum Times for animations we reduce the DPS without reducing the number of powers that activate during the Momentum Window. Also! https://forums.homecomingservers.com/fotm-powers/ The overwhelming majority of Titan Weapons Users (624/748 on Brutes, for example) take Follow Through. So the "Some of us don't" argument that Infinitum is peddling is accurate, but ultimately irrelevant.

That's why I like my fix. It reduces the DPS of the set during Momentum in general, but not by a ton. Whether you follow up twice for the big spike or not.

Honestly... I feel like Corruption should be the Tier 2, the Ranged Component changed to a Melee component and it's range shrunk to match Lash. Make those three attacks the 'Melee' attacks of the set. Then maybe give them the Flares/Fire Blast/Fire Ball in Hellfire Style with a Sentinel-Style range reduction. Longer Melee range, Shorter Ranged range. That'd cover both 6 powers in the set and the 'Standard' Assault Metric of 2 ST Ranged, 2 ST Melee, 1 AoE Ranged, 1 AoE Melee. Then do Hell on Earth as a Lash-Ranged Melee attack that drops a Mag 12 Hold for 2 seconds on the target, starting with the animation time, use the Hell on Earth Animation complete with the fire imps and an AoE fire effect as their Tier 9. Toss in a "Power Up" instead of a Build Up and we're down to needing one power for the set! Hell Unbound as a Burn would work just fine, but what if we switched it up and did a 'Bonfire' cast for it and made it a ranged-placement Burn to make it different from other Burns?

Also -extremely- easy to pull off if you have a Time Manipulator on your team. Whether Time/ or /Time (But not a /Time Blaster, obviously!). Or Kinetics. Or Radiation Support for that sweet -sweet- Accelerate Metabolism!

Not a lot, it turns out... the power recharges in 10 seconds, base, and you can slot it for Recharge with 2 SOs and grab Hasten to have it every 4.7 seconds during Hasten Windows. Use it at the start of Momentum, use it at the end of Momentum, and use RA and AoD in the middle. Of course, you -could- get into the absolutely silly levels of recharge reduction that IO Sets can produce... and that just opens things up even wider.

... WOW what a Strawman Argument that relies on appealing to ridiculousness, appeal to emotion, an ad hominem attack, and an appeal to the populace without actually addressing the point that it "counters" even -tangentially-! Like, you full on Matrix Dodged the point! Congratulations, you've jumped the shark harder than the Riverdale TV Series!