Steampunkette

I am highly disinclined to agree with that. You'd need to differentiate it on the level of Stalker to Scrapper for it to feel like a different class, and even those two feel -awfully- similar a lot of the time. They're differentiated not just by inherent, which is REALLY SIMILAR, but by core mechanics, AoE vs ST focus, HP values, and the way their powers work. Mainly that Taunt Aura or Area Damage Toggles tend to get either cut or turned into Status Effect Toggles.

Out of 6,300 people playing Titan Weapons Scrappers, 1/12 make it to 50. Out of 8,000 people playing Street Justice Scrappers 1 in 26 make it to 50. Out of 4,000 Scrappers playing Electric Melee, 1 in 10 make it to 50. Out of 8,000 Martial Artists, 1 in 22 makes it to 50. Out of 5,500 Spines Scrappers 1 in 12 makes it to 50. When you break the numbers down by percentage, it looks like people just give up on a lot of powersets much more often than your initial numbers present it. But Titan Weapons, Electric Melee, and Spines are all near 1 in 10 going all the way.

The point was that if you have a Toggle Mez Protection and get end drained and already have controls on you but not -affecting- you, suddenly you're held/stunned/sleep/whatever and completely screwed unless you have a Break Free Handy. But if you have a Click Protection on in the same situation, the mez doesn't shut you down when your toggles die. You can run, pop a blue, toggle up, and get back into the fight. A /Fire or a /Bio or an /Invuln in that situation is pretty well f'd in the A. An SR/Nin/Shield ain't.

So! Every year my husband and I, along with a few friends, usually, create 'Halloweenies'. These characters are Halloween-Themed Heroes and Villains who are monsters or monstrous that are good people. Think Universal Monsters play Hellboy. This year I decided to do a loose homage to Lydia Deetz, the human girl who hangs out with dead friends. For that I went with Necromancy as a primary so she'll have some zombies hanging out, but I colored it all black and this lovely blue-green to kind of evoke unnatural light and darkness mingling. Then I copied that over to the Time Set and I'll just RP it as necromantic powers 'cause I'm a giant dork! The character is currently 22. Her zombies get torn to shreds but her Grave Knight tends to survive thanks to Temporal Selection and Mending. But once I get her fully setted out... she's going to become a beast, I think. I'll have Permahasten with overlap, near-softcap defenses, and provide my hubby's TW/Bio Brute with enough defense and Recharge that he won't -have- to use Sets to make his character a true monster...+30% Damage, +80% Recharge, +27% Defense, plus Regen, and Healing, and having all enemies at -24% defense and -22% Resistance. He's going to be my Tier 4 MM Pet! ❤️ Plus my Lich's Control Powers combined with my own and enough Speed Debuff to make Synapse meander? Holy crap this thing looks crazy fun to play...

They're going to be pretty much exactly the same, Zepp. And the class is going to be pretty much exactly the same. Y'all are approaching it from the same concept: A Support Set with some Defense powers. Unless you wilfully break up the themes or something (Like making it Invuln/Storm and Willpower/Dark) you're going to end up in the exact same place. S'just how it is. It's part of why I disagreed with the idea of trying to do it as Assault/Support/Defense in the first place and offered up the GDefense powerset idea: It would be different from the Rebirth Guardian. Assault/Defense/Control would have -some- uniqueness, as would Melee/GDefense. But if you're gonna make Composition sets by a different name... *shrug*

I've got two Incarnates... One is Tier 4 everything. But I'm not going to be spending inf getting Tier 4 of all the other types for each slot because I don't need them. My PB with Musculature isn't going to be grabbing Cardiac or Intuition 'cause they're not relevant to her. She's only got the one Alpha Slot, after all. So while that's a nice influence sink a few times... it's not significant. It's not going to be a consistent thing where my Incarnated Characters are going to keep spending the influence I'm generating with those incarnates. And I could generate inf with those incarnates for the remainder of the duration of CoH. Even marketing stuff? Only a -fraction- of the endlessly generating wealth gets taken out of the system. We need emotes, costume pieces, costume slots, special Base Items, or even White Elephants if we're going to be serious about having any kind of economy. Maybe even taxes or something. Heh... That could be kind of awesome. Have there be "Vote Vendors" in-game to let you spend inf to vote on new Powersets or Costumes or whatever. Sure the farmers and marketeers would get a bigger vote percentage, but it'd be one hell of an influence sink!

It's been 4 months. And people -already- have Tens of Billions of Inf spread across multiple characters. Any economic system that contains the endless growth of wealth is going to deal with inflation. Any economic system where people can add 100,000,000 of the currency to it in under an hour? Barring some significant inf sinks, and AH prices aren't gonna be enough to do it, or the devs/admins/curators seeding the market, constantly, with low-priced goods to keep the Marketeers from having their unrestrained fun: we're gonna wind up in the same place. Almost feel bad for the Marketeers, now. They're stymied by the admin's actions and decisions while the farmers aren't.

Base building doesn't drive influence inflation to affect the entire game's economy. RPing doesn't let you corner the market. And Teaming instead of Base Building doesn't deprive anyone of an awesome base to look at. Nor does Soloing 'rob' anyone of the chance to play with others. But Marketeering and Farming? Those things have a much wider impact than someone hanging out and deciding which potted plant to put in the corner of their house. Especially when you can exploit the game mechanics to gather wealth -far- more efficiently than doing either of those activities normally. That's why the TFs got Reward Merit Nerfs. That's why the TFs got Reward Merit Limits on how often you can get rewards. That's why the AE was patched to no longer give XP or Item Drops. That's why the Aggro Cap and Target Cap got put into place. Farming isn't bad. Grinding on mobs for a few hours to grab some Inf or just enjoy the feeling of beating up wave after wave of gormless minions isn't bad. Farming in an exploitative manner that skews the risk to reward ratio? It's a lot more hazy.

"My anecdotal experience is more important and valuable than actual real numbers on how much damage the set does! You don't even have the same anecdotal experience!" Also analogy would be 'The sword is the weapon of a warrior, the pen is the weapon of a writer'. Because it creates an Analog between the two. What I've done is point out logical fallacy. That's a different thing. Yeah... I think we're done, here, Infinitum. No matter what evidence is brought forward that shows TW is overperforming you'll deny it, ignore it, or malign it because you don't want TW nerfed no matter how gently. And I can't help you to understand if you're dedicated to not understanding. You've chosen a strange hill to die on. But as long as you die, what's it matter to me?

It's true they were established with DPA in mind, but there was also some changing to older sets to bring them in line with the new damage metrics... or at least -mostly- in-line rather than being a scatter-plot. And nah. He was comparing TWs being overpowered to 'Rad, Psi, or an IOd out controller'. No mention of Pylons and since he was responding to the actual numerical difference being outlying by 10-44% before DoTs were included... But who knows? Maybe you're right. Point is, TW overperforms outside of Momentum but it is pretty slow so there's always a chance your target (or several) dies before the hit lands. But once you're in Momentum holy crap your Arcanatime numbers go way the hell off the DPA Scale!

Normal Average Joe Gameplay or IOd to the 9s doesn't matter when the BASELINE POWERS are between 10% and 44% more damaging -outside- of Momentum than similar powers would be. And momentum makes them attack (but not recharge) roughly twice as fast. ":It's not more powerful than Rad or Psi!" well then fucking nerf them back toward the level of other sets, too. You just keep moving the goalposts and coming up with other excuses or comparisons or whatever. Now you're comparing a Baseline Titan Weapons damage value to 'IOd out' Controllers... Dude... C'mon. Just acknowledge that they dish out more damage than other powersets by 18%. The values are right there. It won't hurt.

Easy answer: Costume Contests! Run 10 costume contests for 200 million inf, each! Or less for more. Or more for less. Whatever! Comparing CoH NPCs to the NPCs of WoW is a false equivalence. WoW wants you to fight 1-2 people solo and then more than that gets you killed. CoH wants you to fight 3-6 solo to start with and work your way up to something more Comic Booky. And no. It's not "A little easier". It's -ridiculously- easier. Like scales of magnitude easier to get soooo much more inf in such a short period of time compared to being out in the regular missions made for the game. You don't earn hundreds of millions of Inf fighting the Council in Peregrine Island every hour. The farm missions are designed, from the ground up, to cram as many NPCs into the maps as possible.

8 players working together to minimize the risk they each face is the game. Like... That's the point of it. One person soloing +4x8 while being in no danger, and doing it fast enough to earn hundreds of millions of influence in an hour, is not. ESPECIALLY when the content created for the activity was -designed- by players to be fast-farmed. Like. Weaknesses explicitly created for maximum NPC slaughter in minimum time. That's not "Hunting Council 'cause they're pretty easy since most of their damage is S/L". That's stacking the damned deck in your favor.

Did you read my post on how the powersets actually work? The Call and pool? There's no way to add clockwork to the robots pool without getting clockwork -sometimes- and robots -sometimes-, and those clockwork would be 'standard' rather than Mastermind Pets. To make it work like you hope, with clockwork pets that follow orders and stuff, you'd have to create a separate 'Clockwork' from the AI to the Model, then create a different 'Clockwork' Mastermind Powerset to summon them from because it works like an Enemy Group spawning in. And nah, Eye. It's not about the emotes or a 'Few bad Eggs' It's about the culture. There's no emote involved in 'McPimpin the Mastermind with catsuit wearing female fighter npcs' that could change the Pimps n' Hoes connotations. There's nothing you or I can do to stop that harm from happening. Only react to harm that -has- happened. Other than, y'know, not including female MM pets. Just think of the 'Threaten' emote, which has your character prepare to backhand someone but not actually do it. Consider how that looks when a man does it to another man. Consider how it looks when a woman does it to a man. And then consider how it looks when a man does it to a woman. It's the same action. The only thing changing is the genders of the people involved, but there's a hell of a lot of different connotations that spring to mind from the three images. The first one, for me, makes me think of Scorsese and such. A Mafioso being angry at some capo who screwed up. The second image makes me think of someone who just got sexually harassed or had a really upsetting comment aimed at them. Like the Jamie Lee Curtis meme. The third? Domestic abuse. The answer isn't "Get rid of the threaten emote". It's "Understand why the connotations are different and realize that this is just one example of a large and pervasive issue that can't be solved by pretending it doesn't exist or locking out a few emotes"

I think my nerf would be more effective... You'd retain the abnormally high DPA and DPE, the weight and impact of the different attacks, but the overall dps during the Momentum would drop by 10%. Leaving the set 8% above most others by the game's balancing mechanics. It would still be an outlier, that way, but one that is a bit less outlying. It would essentially reduce 3 of the powers from 'Too High' damage to on-scale, but leave the set with a couple nice hitters and one big hitter to give it character. Hits harder overall, but not by as much. I have a Kin/Bio who uses Minimal FX on Bio to be a "Wind" brute. Obviously I didn't take Ablative Carapace for her, and though I do use the life-steal powers I don't really acknowledge them in-character. I imagine there are a lot of people who break off the big chunks with minimal FX and RP things like Parasites.

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.