Steampunkette

Improving the enemy's AI -flatly- means more scripting of AI. Handing a robot designed to swing a hammer an axe to change the job it can do does not change it's AI. It's still just mechanically swinging the heavy end toward the target so long as XY and Z parameters are met. This isn't Smarter AI it's just a new tool. As to the Girlfriends from Hell and Chi Masters and stuff: You're not talking about adding some more damaging/summoning powers. You're talking about giving them access to strategy-changing abilities. When you face a Chi Master or two in a pack of the Olympic Whirling Hands Team you're not making a significant tactical restructuring in place of a couple of Ancestor Spirits. It's still just incoming damage from a Lieutenant. Have that Chi-Master teleport the party's support character into the middle of that Whirling Hands Team to get stunlocked to death and you're actually forcing a tactical change. And that tactical change is: Spike the Teleporter first, then clean up the rest. At best you're basically adding a Sapper to a spawn. Not in direct function (Fuck Sappers, obviously) but in targeting priority. And creating a new group based on these powers and tactical changes means pretty much the same thing, unless most if not all of the members of the group can use the new tactic to change how things play out. But that still means players have to specifically seek out missions with -that- villaingroup to get the marginally more interesting but not significantly more difficult fight. Also the Splats thing is another "More interesting not more difficult" thing, though I didn't really express that, before. Because -all- of this still relies on the same base-game system where powers have to hit to have an effect and players who are softcapped or teleport resistant or whatever else can just ignore the new special interesting mechanics you're putting out and smack things around. Seriously. Paragon has fires and if you're 90% Fire Resistant or 45% softcapped you can stand in it and not a single Empath will shout over Ventrilo "-50 DKP For standing in the fire!" 'cause it misses.

None of what you've described requires "Smarter AI". It's just making new NPCs. Access to more player-style powers? I'm down. I like the taunts and the force-taunts the ghouls do. Teleport Foe would be interesting... especially with Fold Space on the board. But then you're just creating new NPCs and most likely NPC groups. If you drop some Teleporters and Taunt-Forcers into the Council as it stands, players will just prioritize -that- target and nothing else will change. You'd also have to mess around with the narratives of those groups to add them in. So making new groups is more immediately engaging for them . But that doesn't really "Increase Difficulty". That just creates another group that you avoid, like Invulns avoiding the Carnies and most everyone avoiding the Circle of Thorns for most of their leveling career. I'm absolutely down for more NPC groups. 100% down for more interesting NPC powerset options. I'm even down for revamping the extant villaingroups to make them more interesting, too... But at the end of the day? A Judgement Fireball and a Blaster Tier 9 don't care who the Blaster is targeting as long as there's other enemies nearby, 'cause those things are addressed "To whomever it may concern". To actually increase the difficulty in the light of the sheer huge numbers players are able to access pretty much requires increasing the numbers the NPCs are working with. Otherwise all the Teleport Foe powers will just miss 'cause Softcap, y'know?

"Mechanics" is super nebulous as a term... and would include increasing enemy levels above player levels to bring the purple patch back into play for 50s. As to "Adjusting the Purple Patch"... no. The idea is to use it to create higher difficulty. Adjusting it to make it easier would be counterproductive. The idea is that if people want to play a -8 relative to the content for bragging rights they'd be able to. But there'd be no Bridgers in this scenario, 'cause super-sidekicking already exists. When it comes to "Smarter AI" there are 3 big problems: 1) Developing smarter AI requires a huge investment of knowledge and effort. 2) The Paragon Studios Devs -created- better AI and the result was massive frustration as the NPCs spread out to avoid AoE, ducked behind walls for LoS fighting, etc. 3) AI is irrelevant once Immobilizes and taunts start flying 'cause then the mob is stuck and unable to attack anyone but the tank, negating any effort creating AI improvements. And one little one: 4) Smarter AI generally means a change in tactics gets you right back to where you started. The new AI scatters under AoE? Hit 'em with an AoE Control first to stop that, then kill as normal. Now by "Mechanics" what are you referring to? If you're talking about increasing numbers the Purple Patch is just a way to do that with relatively lower dev time investment, since it means updating a series of spreadsheets and call tables with NPC levels going up to 60. If you're talking about WoW "Floor Circles of Doom" you're more likely to get pushback from the various players of the game who dislike WoW style Dungeon/Raid Mechanics which are largely a sort of meta-mechanic.

It does not matter how great your build is with soft capping and damage resistance at 90%. Once an enemy is six levels higher than you, or further, it's damages multiplied both by its increased level and by the level difference between you and it. Further its accuracy is magnified while yours is significantly hampered. To get an idea of how this would work in play get yourself to level 40 on some brute, scrapper, or tanker. Use whatever means are required to maximize your defensive abilities. Perhaps by four purple inspirations and several orange ones. Then pop enough of them to get yourself to 45% defense and 90% damage resistance, 85% if you are a scrapper. Then rush into a group of level 50 enemies while you are level 40. You will die. You might be able to take out a few of the minions before you die. Normally your base to hit chance on an equal level enemy is 75%. Against enemies who are 10 levels above your level your base chance to hit is around 5%. If you manage to leverage 300% accuracy out of your build you'll wind up with a 15% chance to hit your target. Similarly they will have a significantly higher chance of hitting you even through your soft cap defenses. Because the requirements for a soft cap against a target much higher level than you are significantly higher thanks to the inherent to hit buffs that they receive based on their increased level relative to you. The reason that I say it might make farming marginally more effective is that if you get a good team together with enough buffs you might be able to clear a map in around the same time you've normally would at no more than plus six to your actual level. The drop rates would likely be higher but the kill time would be much longer under most circumstances. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Purple_Patch Just linking the purple patch here for everyone's edification and to remind them that this purple patch is separate from NPC rank. So an arch villain who is much higher level than you is additional magnitudes more difficult.

You're right about the +3. It's literally been over a year since I did anything with Incarnate Shifts, so my bad! As far as reward capping on this one? I don't really see a reason to do it. The players are actually fighting an uphill battle against significantly stronger foes and should get the reward appropriate to that. That said, it could make Powerleveling -marginally- more effective, since you might be able to squeeze a +5 or +6 in, instead of a +4... but the difference shouldn't be significant enough for it to matter worth a spit. Though another benefit of making the enemies scale to 60? If and when more incarnate stuff comes out, there'll already be a mechanical structure in place to put in more dangerous foes!

A lot of people have made suggestions, recently, about how to increase the difficulty of the game, and I respect that. The game -is- too easy once you've got full set bonuses and get your +4 total Level-Shift rolling and can easily steamroll any +4/x8 content pretty much on your own. And there's invariably counterarguments that largely amount to "Nerf Yourself". I get it. No one wants global nerfs or self-nerfing (Well... a few of you do, but the vast majority don't seem to be). So how can we increase difficulty -without- nerfing everyone? Well. I can think of a few options, actually. 1) Increase the Level Scaling Tables to a maximum of level 60. (+10x8, anyone?) Right now the maximum is 54 with the different NPC ranks involved. Once you've got 4 level shifts under your belt, you're basically fighting even-con enemies. Letting players go to "+5" would be the same as fighting +1s. Not -super- helpful to increasing the overall difficulty. But if the highest powered enemies in the game were level 60 enemies, and the highest level players were essentially 54s, the game's purple patch comes back into play. Enemy Attacks do more damage. At +10 players go from having a base 75% chance to hit to a base 20% chance to hit. They also do only 15% of their normal damage to the enemies. Debuffs take a similar hit to effectiveness, as does control duration. Oh. And Softcap goes from 45% to somewhere around 75% I think? Well out of the range of most characters. +10 would basically become the "Masochist Setting" that no one ever really uses but is there to throw yourself against if you're willing to hang with a bunch of maxed out Support and Control characters. But +7? That'd be like a +3 for non-Incarnates. And +8 would be like a +4 for non-Incarnates. It would use the game's already extant systems to allow players greater difficulty than they can currently find once they hit level 50+. Bonus Points: This specific increase in difficulty -can- apply to literally any character at any level range! You'd be an absolute -fool- to fight +10 AV Vahzilok at the Faultline Dam, but the bragging rights if you ever succeeded would be LEGENDARY. 2) All Boss Spawning. (Disabled in the AE, for Inf's sake!) We have the option to spawn solo fights with 0 bosses, so how about spawning nothing -but- bosses? It'd make Controllers gnash their teeth a bit as most of the enemies would still not be locked down, but at least it would be because they're more resistant and require stacking rather than instantly dead because the Blaster dropped a Nuke and Judgement. Might need to tie an XP Nerf and Droprate Nerf to this difficulty setting, just to keep it from becoming the "New Farm" rather than being a difficulty increase. 3) Literal Self-Nerfing. (Yeah, I know I said no nerfing, sue me!) The option to disable Level Shifts. This goes back to number 1 and bringing back the relevance of the Purple Patch. By allowing people to temporarily disable their Level Shifts they can fight at +4 difficulty and have it actually feel like +4, again. You still have your Incarnate Powers with all the wonderful buffs and neato judgements... but things are harder. Getting everyone on the team to agree to that difficulty setting might be a little difficult (see what I did, there?) but it's way better than any difficulty setting that just excises the entire Incarnate System or IO System with the flick of a switch.

I'm sure you do. I don't. I know that if and when I start playing at "High End" every group is going to melty pretty much instantly to the procced out aim+build up recharge-intensive nuke crew. You folks are going to run in, click 3 buttons, and devastate everything and everyone you can in a single burst of insane damage. I'd rather do more damage at all times and not have to click a couple powers whose only function is "Make your other powers hit hard for a few seconds" It's entirely a playstyle choice in the end.

Alternatively, lower the damage of every single attack by about 10 to 20 points at max level and give each attack power a chance to proc an 8ft AoE on the target's location that does 10 to 20 points, which is affected by damage enhancements. Maybe toss on a tiny knockdown proc effect. Call the proc Impact when it triggers, and allow Hand Clap to trigger Impact. The set's overall damage stays right about where it is, it gets a little bit more AoE, the visual improvement of knocking down a group of people occasionally, and maybe we'll finally stop hearing people suggest new ways to fix super strength. But I doubt it.

Per target. Up to 10 targets. Slot it for End/Recharge and you go from near death to full health in the cast time and for a reasonable end cost and pretty often. Granted, you don't particularly need it 'cause you slotted for maximum durability. But someone who slots for Recharge/Damage/Etc in their set bonuses (increasing their damage output) can use it to cycle back to full health with a quickness! Especially if they use Oppressive Gloom for a low-grade DoT on themselves for a constant massive PBAoE Stun. My hubby, for example, had me do up a Recharge Set for his Dark/Dark Brute. To do that I had to sacrifice a lot of survivability. But the character only has to survive 10 seconds between uses of Dark Regeneration and hit 2 or more targets to max out his HP on a given cast. With Oppressive Gloom and/or Cloak of Fear active enemies can't hit him with any rapidity to drive that health down in the first place. It's just a different way to reach the same sort of survivability, but with a very high recharge rate. (166% without incarnate stuff) https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1351&c=635&a=1270&f=HEX&dc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

Honestly? Just cap your team at five people, set yourself to plus four and eight players, and enjoy. With slightly less players you'll wind up with a lot more room for character or player interaction through chat. When you have eight people the text messages tend to just pile on top of each other assuming people are even interested in talking. The smaller number of players will also mean that the spawns last a little bit longer because there's less overlap of massive damages. Another good option to improve this even further is to take a balanced team rather than whatever randos are available. If you're a support look for one tank, one dps, one controller, and maybe just to mix things up toss in and Mastermind or another Jack type character. Once you get to incarnate stuff on your team just do incarnate content if you're going to have randos on your team. Otherwise it doesn't matter what you're doing everyone's going to split off on their own and just murder everything.

Dual pistol/ninja training for the win. No need to bother with build up or aim, go for the teleport powerset and toss a single stealth IO into Sprint. Between Shinobi and Sprint you'll be running around as if you are a stalker. Grab fold space and you become a monster! Sneak into the enemy group use hail of bullets, immediately click fold space to grab any stragglers or ranged characters that you might have missed hit them with a couple of sword strikes, and make it rain bullets. Congratulations you've just wiped out two spawns back to back with no waiting! And it will be even more powerful with the next patch when they make hail of bullets cast twice as fast!

It certainly a fully viable defense set. And there's really no wrong way to play with it. Set bonuses really changed the way a lot of people play the game. This is one of those power sets that was designed for use with single origin enhancements. And when you play it the other way it doesn't deal nearly as much damage, because it wasn't supposed to. The invention origin enhancements allow us to do way more damage than the original game design allowed for. The question is whether or not we should buckle and build the game around invention origin enhancements or hold to some of the original design intentions. By and large I think the goal is to use both. To leave the old sets more or less single origin while the new stuff is designed around inventions.

Absolutely! Contacts can be flagged to only give quests to certain people. Superman could still tag along on Lex Luthor's team... But he wouldn't get the Story Arc Bonus, souvenier, badges...

I feel like this is a disconnect between Developer Intention and Player Style. Yeah, you lose the benefits of stealth when you deal damage or debuff an enemy. But that's when you no longer need the stealth benefit as a Scrapper/Tanker/Brute. Dark Armor on Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers uses a staggered recovery mechanic for the primary survivability. Yes, they also get the decent resistances scattered across their powers, but their main survival tools are Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Fear, and Oppressive Gloom. The Stealth is there so you can get closer to your enemies before triggering their Alpha strike and smacking you through your comparatively low levels of resistances and essentially nonexistent defense values. Your Cloak of Fear then reduces the incoming attacks to 3 second intervals, and you've got your lovely little self-heal Dark Regen to recover the lost health. Similarly, if you're fighting Fear-Resistant enemies, you've got Oppressive Gloom to provide Stuns instead. And if all else fails, there's Soul Transfer to pick you back up. Energy Aura is built in a similar style, generally speaking, but rather than focus on control effects to reduce incoming damage values, it uses a combination of -Recharge and -Endurance. Energize fills the same role as Dark Regeneration (Though to a lesser degree). Neither one has Stealth to the degree that you can pretend to be a Stalker without using a Stealth IO slotted into Sprint because it's not meant for that purpose. It's meant to let you get close enough to apply some debuffs/controls/effects that reduce the amount of damage you're about to take as part of the set's design.

Flagging? Would be a NIGHTMARE. So right now most zones basically have a super simple time of flagging a group as Hostile, Neutral, or Passive to players, and a handful of groups have a separate flag of hostile toward other NPC groups (Which is why the Ghost of Scrapyard and his pals will wreck Arachnos they run into). To flag out zones so that different characters are only hostile to Heroes or only hostile to Villains would require some different flagging options made available. That said: So far as I'm aware, any zone that allows both Heroes and Villains in it will automatically allow hero/villain teaming in a Co-Op Style. And there's no way to stop that from happening. My suggestion is to not care about that, and write Heroic and Villainous content without regard to whether or not some Superman character will team up with a Lex Luthor. If he wants to do the Villainous content that's on him. Functionally such a zone would be Co-Op. But we don't have to support that narratively, is the general thrust, here.

I'd like to weigh in on the Striga idea just a tiny bit: Change nothing. Add stuff. Instead of "Taking Striga" from the heroes or creating an "Echo: Striga" why not just add all the villain contacts to the island for various missions against the Council and have it be later in the narrative? The vast majority of missions are instanced, so write up a lot of villain missions and a few heroic missions opposing the new villainous actions on the island and go from there. Villains can invade the Council Base to "Defeat 30 Council Soldiers in the Throat" or "Fight 30 War Wolves in Striga" just fine. No need to make it a Co-Op Zone, either. Heroes do the Peebles Missions, Villains do the New Stuff. And never the twain shall join forces against the Council (Unless you create a new TF). Just put a few little Islands full of Villain contacts around, throw some new NPC spawns into the town where whichever baddies you're adding to the zone are fighting the Council or harassing the locals, put in a new base of operations in one of the many less-utilized areas, maybe throw in some Longbow for Flavor™ and have at. We should start thinking of these types of things as -shared-, not -swapped-. Not Co-Op. We're picking the new direction of the game, folks. Let's make it interesting.

Those are really good reasons against making a bunch of new whip powers, for -sure-! Which is why I suggested we make precisely 0 new Whip Attacks and instead make a series of buff-powers that apply to the 4 Whip Powers that exist in the game currently. So instead of a new cool whip animation, we get a build up like click that makes all whip powers do a double-hit. Or add a Bleed/Burn DoT. Or increase target caps or something similar.

On a tangent... Now that Ambrosia and Essence of the Earth apply to a Mastermind and their pets at the same time (Absolutely an incredibly needed upgrade!) is there any chance you folks will make -all- Inspirations affecting Masterminds also affect their Pets? A Mastermind deals and takes damage and control effects as a "Team" all on their own. Their own personal damage is understandably low because their damage is split between at least seven entities (Themself and 6 Pets). So why should it cost 7 times as many inspirations to get the same amount of Damage Buff as anyone else would have to use to benefit from an Enrage? I just feel like it would be a nice solid QoL buff to MMs while also bringing their Inspiration Use Benefit in line with other characters.

They don't have an Assault, Ranged, or Melee primary or secondary. Neither does MM. Every other archetype does. Well... I guess not the Epics like PB/AS. But everyone else. Ranged: Blaster, Sentinel, Corruptor, Defender. Melee: Scrapper, Stalker, Tanker, Brute. Assault: Dominator. 9 of the 11 current "Base ATs" would get access to this Whip Powerset. (And MMs would still have Demon Summoning)

There's always a way where there's a Whip! But yeah. Make it a Ranged Set. Or an Assault Set. Make it all three, honestly, to make it available to literally every archetype except Mastermind and Controller. I'd be 100% down for that.

Sort of. Have you used the Corruption power on Masterminds? It sends out a little fire-ball from the tip of the whip. Just add that to Lash. And then have Crack Whip fire off a bunch of individually targeted little fire-balls like the Peacebringer's Cone.

Totally fair. It would also 100% work as a Blast or Assault set, depending on the amount of range added to the four attacks. And you wouldn't even have to change the other powers. You -would- need to swap out the Provoke/Placate/Taunt for another power which modifies at least two of the four attacks... could make it turn Corruption or Lash into Superior Damage?

Yeah, yeah... We keep coming back to it. Sue me! But this time I have a really interesting mechanical idea, Instead of trying to cram in Fire Blast powers or Psychic Sword Pets or something similar, how about we play with Mechanic Generation? So. Obviously there are only 4 Whip Powers. 3 attacks and 1 Summon/Buff. Taunt/Placate/Provoke and Build Up each take up a slot, giving us 6 powers for a Melee Set. So what if we used 7, 8, and 9 for new mechanics? Tier 1: Corruption. Just take off the Ranged Component and give it the same range as Lash. Moderate Damage Tier 2: Lash. Pretty much as is. High end of Moderate Damage. Tier 3: Crack Whip. The set needs some kind of AoE at a decently low level. High end of Moderate Damage Tier 4: Build Up. No big deal. Tier 5: Thundercrack. Autopower. Generates 1 stack of Thundercrack every 6 Seconds. Maximum of 3. Using Corruption, Lash, or Crack Whip consumes 1 stack of Thundercrack to deal additional Minor Energy Damage and apply a 15% Damres Debuff. Tier 6: Taunt/Provoke/Placate. Pretty standard, really, all things considered. Tier 7: Strangle. Apply the Hell on Earth Animation, Moderate Targeted AoE damage with a short duration high magnitude Hold (Same duration as the Animation), give it the same range as Lash. High Damage (Primary Target) Moderate Damage AoE. Tier 8: Razorwhip: Toggle. While active, all Whip Melee attacks deal a Minor Lethal Damage DoT. Tier 9: Whip Mastery. Clickable power which generates 1 stack of "Whip Mastery". Consuming Whip Mastery causes Strangle to deal additional High Fire Damage and increase it's area by 10ft or Crack Whip to increase it's cone from 30 degrees to 90 degrees and deal additional High Fire Damage. (Recharge Rate: Long. 20-30 seconds) So you walk into a fight with 3 stacks of Thundercrack and have to choose whether to spend all the charges on Crack Whip (To deal that added damage to multiple targets) or burn one target with Corruption and/or Lash. And then during the fight you're either aware of whether you've got a Thundercrack coming so you can alter your positioning or you don't really care and you "waste" charges on low-health enemies. Whip Mastery gives the player a choice between "t9 Attacks" by allowing them to either use a cone or a targeted AoE based on which one might be more valuable at the time. And a Cone with Thundercrack and Whip Mastery deals more damage, but it only hits 5 targets instead of 10 and targeting is a little harder. With less active attacks, the Whip Melee character is more vulnerable to -Recharge Effects than other characters, but through Razorwhip gets a slightly higher base damage by direct power comparison. (Razorwhip's End Cost should be comparatively high. 0.52/sec seems appropriate to me. Maybe 0.36 if 0.52 tests too costly) You wind up with a melee set that has a longer reach, a handful of attacks, and a lot of cooldown management. It becomes far more vulnerable to -Recharge effects from enemies and other players, but it's slotting requirements are -significantly- curtailed... which in turn reduces it's slotting options. For Stalkers, put Assassin's Strangle at Tier 4 and Build Up to Tier 5, then put Thundercrack at Tier 6 and Placate at Tier 7. Assassin's Strangle: Same animation as Strangle but with an Extreme DoT during the hold duration/animation when used from Hidden and no AoE whatsoever. Have Whip Mastery grant Assassin's Strangle it's AoE Damage Component.

Snagged Absynth. Awesome name for a Sonic Hero

So far I've been playing Sonic/SR, yeah. I also have a build set up for it that I'll link, below. I did correct the 25%-20% thing but not before you replied! Looking at all the debuffing levels of the different classes... Sonic are the -worst- at Debuffing. That 9.6% is much lower than Defender 20% or even Stalker/Brute/Blaster's 13%. I sincerely wish they'd give Sentinels higher Buff/Debuff values, since it'd make them better at playing around with Pool Powers and powersets that have debuffing effects. Anywho. Here's the build.