Steampunkette

Can I please have the Gunslinger Belt in the Jackets and Sleeveless Jackets categories? I'd love to use the belt with the long train in conjunction with the little shoulders-only Victorian/Steampunk jacket because it would be super cute with a nice corset and gloves.

Lemme 'splain. Armor Powersets are by nature Relative Mitigation. X amount of damage comes at you, you take Y percentage of that damage. If it's Defense based you're taking full damage from a smaller % of attacks than normal, if it's Resistance based you're taking a smaller % of damage from the normal quantity of attacks. But generally speaking 5% Defense is equivalent to 10% Resistance. The level of power of this form of mitigation is based on whether it is the Primary or Secondary powerset. Tankers have Defense for their Primary, so their archetype gets more Defense/Resistance from their Defensive Powers than, say, a Scrapper does since a Scrapper's Defensive Powers are their secondary. The Tanker also gains earlier access to those powers because of it being the Primary Powerset. The character archetype you're describing, then, Defense/Support, would have Tanker-Like values for their Defenses. Support is also a form of Relative Mitigation. It can be used to apply defensive buffs, offensive debuffs, and healing to offset damage taken either proactively or reactively. They can also offer Offensive Buffs to reduce the amount of incoming damage by Murder. With Support Powers as the Secondary Powerset, you'd be at Corruptor rather than Defender levels of Support. Less total values, and slower access to the full powerset. Control Powers are a form of -ABSOLUTE- Mitigation. While an enemy is Stunned/Held/Asleep/Fearful they are doing 0 damage. So rather than reducing damage by a Relative Value, you're stopping damage altogether. These powers cannot exist as a Secondary Powerset, in total, because of the requirements of Stacking Values to overcome a target's Mez Protection. Trying to combine a Defense Primary with a Support Secondary would result in a character that just stands in front of enemies brawling them and debuffing them forever until the enemies die. Why? Because between the debuffs, the heals, and the armor, the character would be essentially unkillable. Also unable to kill most Elite Bosses or -any- Archvillains due to a lack of damage output capable of overwhelming their Regeneration. Trying to combine a Control Primary with a Defense Secondary would result in a similar situation, where everything is locked down at almost all times and very little damage is being done to the character... but very little damage is being done to the -enemies-, either. Sure, once you got to 32 your fortunes would change, but outside of PLing it would be a nightmare to grind levels. Both of them would be a nightmare. Not because they're too strong. But because they're too boring. ESPECIALLY once you reach Incarnate Levels and everything is dead before your Defense/Support or Control/Defense character can take the time to put out Debuffs, Buffs, or Stack Controls to any useful degree. Does it make sense now?

You're not talking about Control, here, Leprechaun. You're talking about Support. And given that fact I don't even know what you -actually- mean by "Defense Secondary". Do you mean like a scrapper with defensive powersets as their secondary or do you mean a tanker with melee powersets as their secondary? Anyway. The reason it won't happen is that every archetype needs to be able to solo. Even at, like, the BARE minimum levels, they need to be able to run content on their own and do so in a manner that isn't frustrating enough to cause most players to immediately give up on the whole AT. And with this one? They definitely would. If you wanna create a character that "Only Works on Teams" you're free to do that. Might I suggest making a Mastermind with only the primary Attack Powers, then grab the whole secondary powerset, and then Power Pool Buffs like Sorcery, Leadership, and Concealment. Should be good and frustrating without spending dev-time on it? As to the "The Devs can change the powersets!" angle: That's got to be part of your suggestion. Try putting together a few powersets to see how it would function in your mind as a solo character.

@EmperorSteele I'm not behind a lot of your suggestions, here... but the idea of making alternatives to Hasten -is- fairly attractive, now that you bring it up. Specifically the idea of doing different "Forms" of Hasten with different values and stuff. Like a Power Pool with a 20% Recharge Rate Buff Autopower. And a different Power Pool with a 50% Recharge Rate Buff Toggle. Make them all mutually exclusive... and suddenly you've got some interesting options for different ways to put recharge into a build. Maybe someone who wants Permadom or PermaLightform can use the Autopower version to free up their auto-firing power. Or the Toggle. And then build to deal with end costs. Could increase options going forward.

Accolades. I'm pretty sure Elusive Mind is calculated in there, as well as Eye of the Magus.

Warshades as well!

I seem to have misunderstood... If you're talking about Buff/Debuff/Heals primary and Defense secondary... yeah. Never gonna happen, Bud. Empath/Defense characters could only harm enemies with Brawl and any Damaging Aura Power they happened to get. Same thing with Poison, Pain Dom, Electric, The list goes on.

There are two big problems I see, here... 1) Controls cannot be a "Secondary" set. They always have to be primary. If they were secondary, you'd have to reduce their magnitude and then you wouldn't be able to stun or hold a Lieutenant without stacking and a Boss without 4-stacking. 2) The -glacial- speed of doing anything because you're using double-mitigation. Control is a form of Absolute Mitigation. By stopping an enemy from attacking at all, you mitigate all the damage that enemy would do for the duration of the control, while a Defensive Powerset is a matter of Relative Mitigation. In the sense that you're taking an amount of incoming damage and reducing it by a specific percentage value. You're essentially suggesting an Unkillable Archetype (Outside of possibly AVs)... however it would never be able to meaningfully contribute to AV Fights. And if soloing was possible it would take -forever- to kill enemies, as outside of Gravity and Illusion, most sets have next to no direct damage capability.

Ryu and Ken as Martial Artists Guile as Street Justice Blanka as Savage Melee Zangief as Superstrength M. Bison for Dark Assault It was a joke about Street Fighter. >.>

Happy to help, Omni! I sincerely am trying to be helpful, even if I sometimes come across as pretty negative. I tend to list all the problems out in text and hope someone else solves them while they percolate in the back of my brain and then come back, later, with my own ideas (If I get one). And even this one might be a stinker based on where a particular player keeps their power trays...

The Server Tray Management thing is, ultimately, just a matter of display. What if instead of triggering the traditional pop-up tray, we created a separate "Pop Up Tray" that functioned like the floating tray placed 80 pixels below the center of the screen? Could even have it configured as a 2x2 tray, and only allow a maximum of 4 "Granted Powers" from any source, to open up the mechanic of power-sharing to other sets in the future? Could even make it a "Routine Screen Element" that is hidden by default, and can be moved around the screen while active so players can place it where it best fits their personal tastes?

"Street Fighter" Set. Tier 1 pets: 2 Martial Arts 1 Street Justice Tier 2 pets: 1 Savage Melee, 1 Superstrength Tier 3 Pet: Dark Assault Upgrading your Tier 1 pets gives your Martial Artists the ability to throw Fireballs and your Street Justice character some Kinetic Melee. Upgrading your Tier 2 pets gives your Savage Melee some of the Electric Aura defenses/Damage Aura, and your Superstrength character Footstomp. Upgrading your Tier 3 pet gives your Dark Assault character Teleport Attacks. The Tier 2 Upgrade for Tier 1 pets gives your Martial Artists Crushing Uppercut and your Street Justice Character Dragon's Tail. The Tier 2 Upgrade for Tier 2pets gives your Savage Melee a PBAoE Micro-Nuke and your Superstrength Character the Leap Attack power. The Tier 2 Upgrade for Tier 3 pet gives your Dark Assault character Plot Armor. The whole set. Couple Karate dudes and their Air Force friend, a Beast Man and a Large Russian, and then a guy wearing a military uniform with cape and hat!

As to the "Knockback" or "Repel" options: Both are entirely directional. Knockback is based on where you are in relation to the NPC knocking you away. Repel functions the same way. You'd need to create an NPC that somehow perfectly tracks player movement and stays directly under them for it to function as a "Lift" mechanic. You could "Spawn a pseudopet and have it fire" but thanks to the inherent timing system of the game, it would either fire while inside your body as you fell into the pseudopet, or from a horizontal direction relative to you, as you glided past it. Knockup and Knockback are also not good options because they both have a loss of control effect tied into the design of the effect. If you were knocked up into the air while gliding you would stop moving forward and perform a "Flip" animation ('Cause that's how knockup works on flying characters) and then go back to gliding. If it didn't treat you as flying, you'd do a pratfall in mid air, plummet toward the ground, and then kip up out of the pratfall and start gliding, again, for just long enough for it to happen again. Gravity Alteration is really the only way to do it, and a way the game isn't designed to function.

If it's not too late, then? Why not move the rooms for Security, Generators, and Detention to the other side of the huge room that you've blocked out for different sub-rooms? With it on the opposite side of the Vehicle Garage, you wouldn't need to do the extra teleporters, and the backup generators could be right there next to the hospital in case of power loss. Alternatively, you could nix the "Doorway" between the Parts/Vault hallway, slap on a Teleporter Aleph with a Door over it, and have it narratively connect to a door that you place in the Vehicle Garage and claim is "Downstairs" or "Upstairs" from the garage. Like a Door in the Security room with a portal to Alpeh and a door in the Garage with a portal to whatever the B one is. Like there'd still be room for Mayhem and RP thereof. But it might make more narrative sense for placement.

Oh, no. I understand the premise just fine. And I don't think the "Granted Powerset" is OP or anything. Just worried about how to make it work. I think the Mystic Fortune is an interesting way to go for it? But with so many powers triggering it, you'd have players who pretty much perpetually have a pop up right in the middle of their screen while they're trying to fight since almost every power in the set grants a power. And then having to drag it onto the bar from the power window seems clunky, and reduces it's usefulness in the current fight. That could be a little troubling. As to redirect: It cannot work. It's not just that it lacks the functions to "Properly Enact it". It lacks the functions to enact it in any way, whatsoever. People have gone back and forth in multiple threads with Dev involvement with "Okay but what about X?" "X Won't work because Y" "Oh, well what about Q?" "Q interacts with Y so it can't do it, either." Unless the Devs spend a boatload of time creating a whole call mechanic affecting every character in the game to make this one power function exist... it just... can't. You could make it into a PBAoE Damage/Repel effect so that enemies who get close to you get damaged and pushed away, but then you'd have "Spiritualists" just slotting it with a bunch of damage procs and rushing into a fight. Heck... even if the devs did spend however long it takes to make the retributive damage effect function, people would slot it for Damage Procs and do more damage to those who hurt them which really isn't very Enlightened.

You're at least largely right on the mid-range build thing, yeah. Hadn't really considered the "Mostly SO" Character, in honesty. But even for such players, isn't it still largely useless? You use Unstoppable as your "Oh, Shit!" button and it lasts for a long period of time during which you're unstoppable... and then you get into the next fight and the one after that and the one after that and it crashes without "Crashing" if you catch my drift and you're in the middle of a big fight with a bunch of enemies who are now hitting you -without- Unstoppable on, putting you right back where you were when you hit the button to begin with, only now it's on recharge. I dunno... I feel like they just need to either be redesigned, probably with a shorter duration/cooldown cycle so they maintain similar uptime but don't die right as you're taking Alpha from the fourth pack down the hallway... and become more of a real "Oh Shit!" button? Which would royally suck for PvPers, so we shouldn't -do- that. I feel like especially with the Afterburner, yeah, we need alternate T9s...

1) Nope. I'm accounting for that. If you don't take Temp Invulnerability to instead take Unstoppable you're still slotting Resistance Sets. And according to you, you -need- all the secondary functions of the rest of the powers. Which are Resistance-based. So you still have to slot them for Resistance. Which means the same sets they're already using. And, heck, Temp Invuln also provides Resistance to Resistance Debuffing so why not take and use it, too? Soooo... >.> Still useless. 2) Pointless Insult noted. 3) You say they're Essential in PvP. That's -your- term. Your word choice. If it's already Essential why does it need a buff? If it's already something good enough that you -have- to use it, why give it a buff? That's like saying Hasten is Essential so let's make it an Autopower at it's current level of buff. Why? Because it would be stronger and then people wouldn't have to slot for more recharge so they can slot for other stuff! Except they would still be slotting for more recharge 'cause Permahasten's great but you can still go harder to get Permadom or Permalightform or Permawhateverelse. Or just shave off another 5 seconds of self-heal or nuke cooldown or whatever else to increase your overall DPS/HPS/WhateverPS. 4) Nah. It's not that I don't PvP. It's that you're being intentionally obfuscatory in that statement. You've made this big long post about how much it'll improve gameplay for PvE when it really doesn't and what you actually want is to make a handful of "Essential Powers" even stronger in a Nice Game Mode. That's just stacking the Meta to stack the Meta, at that point. Why bother? Glad you like the Feedback, though! 5) Yup. You would... It just makes the "Essential PvP Powers" flatly stronger, stacking the meta in the way you like it rather than, y'know... making any kind of substantial change. 6) Hey, look, another pointless insult! I get it. You want them buffed for PvP because that's the game you like to play and these are the sets you like to play in that game. Cool Beans. I just don't think it's worth the Dev Time required to further stack your preferred powersets in a niche playstyle. The niche of a niche, if you will.

I mean, granted, you still wouldn't -need- them without the nerfing. What I mean is: You're not actually giving people an alternative in the long run. Unless every one of the T9s can be made Perma through Recharge Slotting and Hasten and such, you're building a Tanker, Brute, Scrapper, Stalker, or Sentinel who loses the ability to defend themself for X amount of time every Y amount of time if they're built around using the T9 power as something they actually -use- for Survivability. Taking these new and crashless Tier 9s would be largely pointless. I mean -maybe- you really need another +Def power to slot that last LotG into, but grab Maneuvers instead and you can also help a team of other players a little bit, at least, rather than just taking Elude to have it. That's the big difference between a Nuke and a T9 Defensive Power. The Nuke only has to be useful once every minute or two to justify taking it because it'll do massive damage to a group. For a Tier 9 to be useful it either needs to replace a bunch of lower tier powers (Freeing up Slots and Power Choices) since it mimics their abilities, or it needs to provide something those other powers do not provide. And a Tier 9 with downtime can do neither of those things, in the end. It's why I love Lightform on my PB. You can make it have no downtime, even if it has a crash, and no longer need all your other toggles to survive.

But you still don't -need- Unstoppable. Even without a crash, you'd still be taking the other powers in your set and using them and set bonuses to essentially become a slab of unstoppable meat before the Unstoppable Power comes into play. You've gotten rid of the penalty for using the power, but haven't made it any more attractive to actually take.

So... let me make sure I understand this... This is a powerset which essentially "Grants" a second powerset to another player (Or group of players) as you use your abilities, and that powerset is: 1 Melee Attack 1 Energy Drain 1 Cone Attack 1 Defense Debuff 1 Perception Debuff 1 Lifesteal (Autofire) 1 Superior Damage Melee Attack 1 Damage Debuff (Autofire) And this is on top of two single target heals, large quantities of Psionic Resistance as well as Debuff and Mez Resistance and Mez Protection? It's definitely -unusual-. And it seems like it would heavily rely on a pop up tray setup for the power-granting effects which it would absolutely need to be a useful support set during the leveling process since there's very little Psionic Damage pre-40 and almost half the archetypes get mez protection to some degree or another. It would be pretty great at high end, with the ability to provide heaping helpings of resistance to something many people have as a "Hole" in their builds, for sure, and all the Debuff Resistance would be great. I am worried that the reliance on pop up tray functionality would put off a large portion of the game's population who already use Null the Gull to turn off their pop ups. Though if it granted them as standard Temp Powers into their bar it could be just as effective without being as bothersome, but likely more confusing as people tend to set up their trays to certain orders and having a temp power pop up in the first empty slot could make it largely ignored and/or annoying should someone fat-finger 5 and hit 4 and suddenly instead of healing themself they're stuck in an animation for Spirit Blade. I would like to note that Redirect as a concept has been brought up, before, many times. Unfortunately CoH doesn't keep track of which enemy made which attack beyond keeping the name for a ToHit Check, so it doesn't have the capability of sending damage back to the target. It also can't "Price Match" damage on the fly to equal out values or anything. There's also no "If I get Hit do X" logic circuit in the engine, so retributive PBAoE damage or hitting the buff-caster while applying an equal-magnitude heal to the person with the effect on them is right out, as well. Redirect will have to be replaced, unfortunately. But I'm eager to see people's ideas on how to avoid the minor issues I've presented on displaying the new powers the targets are granted!

T9s can't be additive but we could increase build variety by getting players to drop other powers in their builds? But you also purport that you NEED all the other powers in your build to survive even with the Unstoppable. MAYBE you could do without a couple of powers, but you'd need the rest... Well except maybe Temporary Invulnerability. Which is a Resistance Power. So Resistance Slotted. Exactly like Unstoppable is. And also only be effective during that 66% Uptime (Unless you used Sets to make the Uptime irrelevant in which case we're back to square one). So no -actual- build variety, you're just choosing which of two powers to slot a Resistance Set into, and one of them stops working for 33% of gameplay... So.. uh... Useless? Thunderspy is That Way, you say? Cool Beans. Don't care. If you're suggesting some kind of "Fix" for Tier 9s that doesn't -actually- fix anything, what the hell is the point? Make it more useful for PvP? It's already useful for PvP and probably doesn't need an extra buff for a Niche Playstyle. If you're not looking for alternative suggestions to fix T9s then there's just no purpose to this discussion, really. 'Cause it just doesn't -do- anything outside of buffing a few sets at high end for PvP only. And if that's your real suggestion with a bunch of "We could make PvE Different, too!" thrown on top of it in the hopes of obfuscating? No thanks.

It seems odd to me that if you were to bring in criminals to put into a Detention cell you'd march them through your portal network (Easy Escape), Reactor Room (Lots of options for Chaos), and Parts Storage (Tools to engineer an escape) Alternatively, Portal, Reactor, Hall of Heroes, Rec Room, Security, Detention. Similarly, in the event you're using Teleporters to put people directly into Detention: When you -release- your prisoners they get to walk through areas where they could cause trouble. ... is that weird or am I just crazy?

I would be hard pressed to disagree... There is, however, another direction we could take them, rather than the Willpower or One With the Shield direction: Team Buffs/Enemy Debuffs. Keep the current T9s for PvP, or even give 'em the 66% uptime change, then do up different options for the rest. Radiation's got Ground Zero, Shield has Grant Cover. We could go for similar mechanics for Energy, Invuln, Electric, SR, and Ninja. Could also sprinkle in some Control effect. Invuln Alt T9: Meat Shield. PBAoE Toggle, nearby allies gain an Absorb shield. Energy Alt T9: Pulsewave. PBAoE Debuff-Nuke that applies -Dam, -Res (All), -End to all enemies in the immediate area. Electric Alt T9: Corruscating Charge. Chain Ally Heal/+Recovery. Ninjitsu Alt T9: Ninja Vanish. Targeted AoE (Ally) Placate. Throw a Smoke Bomb and your target and all allies in the area Placate nearby enemies and gain Stealth. SR Alt T9: No idea, but there could be -something-. Most of these options are largely useless to the person using them (With the exception of Pulsewave) if they're Solo, or not really a 'team player' character. So most players wouldn't feel -pressed- to Respec. But for new characters you'd have some interesting options to pull out at high level that could also play into your Epic Pool Choices for more build variety.

Hardcastle. Level 50 SS/Inv Brute. Didn't bother with Unstoppable, 'cause like you I wound up unkillable without it using IOs. Didn't need it. Would've been an utter waste to bother with it. If I had grabbed it? I could've turned off all my toggles and -still- been unkillable thanks to Unstoppable -and- the Set Bonuses. Saying "It wouldn't be stupidly powerful 'cause I can be stupidly powerful without it using Set Bonuses!" does not make it any less stupidly powerful. And you're right. My PB didn't solo the ITF or otherwise rush headlong into hyperdifficult content without support of friends. Didn't need to do that, either. But standard run of the mill stuff? No problem outside of Carnies, and even then it was only the Psychic ones that really messed me up (The rest do a bunch of Energy/Fire/Lethal/Smashing.). Well. That and Quantums, but that's a whole other story. The Reason I used PB as an example was because with 5% -Less- Damage Resistance and 0 DDR/Slow Resistance/Etc I was -still- a honking badass tearing through all the standard content without getting winded for more than a crash's duration. I.E. Unstoppable with none of the secondary effects you cited as the reason an Invuln character should absolutely run all their other abilities while Unstoppable is up. And, again, I need you to remember that I'm Agreeing with you that these Tier 9s are freaking useless in PvE 99% of the time. I just think your particular brand of fix "Give 'em no crash and 66% Uptime" doesn't actually fix the problem in PvE because they just do what the rest of the damned set does by themselves as regards the primary benefit of the powers in the set. If you've got 90% Resist to everything and 60% Defense to almost everything: Why bother clicking Unstoppable in PvE content? "It can have a 66% Uptime and No Crash" doesn't actually DO anything for you 'cause you're -already- maxed out on everything. The Recovery Buff? So just replace their Tier 9 with a Recovery Buff and toddle on your merry way if that's the only actual benefit PvE Players are getting from the power. Which is -why- I suggested the Absorb Shield as an Alternate Tier 9. @PeregrineFalcon -absolutely- gets it. If your Tier 9 doesn't do anything you can't already do -and- comes with any kind of penalty: Why the hell bother? For PvP this fix makes flawless sense thanks to the different way stuff is calculated for PvP Combat. For PvE? Your suggestion doesn't actually -do- anything.

What you have in mind is "++Hop" where "Hop" is "+up" for 0.1 seconds every 0.5 seconds so the character slowly loses height. I get it. But there is no ++Hop. There's no +Hop. The game engine does not have the capability to understand a ++Hop command as a repeating signal rather than a continuous entry. ... but you -did- make me think of something that -could- work. It would just -royally- suck. Have the player use ++up while gliding, and have the Glider Power put a "Jump Height" Cap of 3ft on with double-jump capability, but pulse Jumpheight caps of 0ft every .5 seconds for .4 seconds. It would suck. But it would work.