Vanden

And do "people" realize that it takes more than 2 powers worth of FX to make a full power set?

If we're going by precedent, shouldn't the two Echo zones added before Echo: Dark Astoria with no badges have set it?

It looks to me like that says you need 3 SOs in Afterburner and 2 SOs in Fly to get the most flight speed.

Now if I recall correctly, Afterburner can be slotted with Fly enhancements to make it increase the flight speed cap even further. Does anyone know how many slots you then need to put into Fly to reach the new maximum speed?

What if they prefer blintzes? Blintzes are irrelevant, only the preference when given a choice between cookies and donuts.

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way. Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way. You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to." This is completely untrue. Statesman made several comments that ED was necessary to make way for other progression systems. I remember he gave an example that they couldn't, for example, add an enhancement that enhanced for 50% because without ED it would simply be too good.

The screenshots Oneiro posted are broken links for me, can anyone see them?

If you went into Atlas Park you're testing it on -35 enemies at best. Debuffs scale based on relative level, same as damage, you need to use it on even-level enemies to get meaningful numbers.

There's been Minimal FX options for virtually all defensive powers since issue 16.

All the other detective duos are randomly assigned, but Becktrees and Freitag are assigned based on whether the character being played prefers donuts or cookies.

Is it a pet or is it a single AoE attack?

Psychic Shockwave was not nerfed because of farming, it was nerfed because the rest of the Psi Assault set was garbage and it was carrying the whole set. When they buffed the other powers in the set they nerfed Psychic Shockwave a little so the set wasn't too powerful.

The Gladiator's Armor +3% Defense is a mere 100 merits, so I would assume you can indeed afford it.

Yes ... but ... ... Kheldians have an Inherent power that gives them extra damage/resistance/etc. based on who else is in the team. The buffing from the Inherent power is not subject to ED limitations ... therefore Kheldians had a means to sidestep some of the nerfing brought on by ED, so long as the mix of their party was right for that purpose. But he said the "big bug" Kheldians were the ones that could do it better. Dwarf Form Kheldians didn't benefit from their inherents then.

To be fair sets like Traps and Time can already do stuff like this (mmmm power boosted Farsight). And those sets are designed around allowing the caster to benefit from those buffs.

You aren't even eligible for the Summer Blockbuster trial until 20, which is the same level that Praetorians pick a side. So what would be the point of this change?

Not going to happen. It could be done, but apparently connecting a zone to the AH server takes up a lot of resources the first time it's done, so it's limited to public zones and not done in instances since they frequently shut down and restart.

When initially introduced, Arbiter Rein and the villain patrons unlocked as contacts at level 40. This basically gave you a "grace level" to unlock the patron pools before your next chance to take a power at level 41. However, when ancillary and patron pools were changed to become available at 35, that "grace level" went away. Now you have to put off training to level 35 if you want a patron power then until you have a chance to run that arc, which, given that whole teaming thing, could be a while. Would it be difficult to change Arbiter Rein and the patrons' level range to 34-50 in order to get that grace level back? Even if the enemies in the missions can't actually spawn below 35, that'd still be a nice QoL change.

The animations are also just bad. They don't synch well with the hit FX, and your character's speed seems to change at random, rather than feeling like you're wielding a truly massive weapon.

Not anymore, they changed how the market works. For set IOs (both recipes and enhancements) all levels use the same set of bids with the buyer receiving the item at the level they bid for. So if, for example, I list a level 32 Positron's Blast on the AH and someone wants to buy a level 50 version they can potentially buy mine and the game will convert it to a level 50 version. Just curious..how do you know this? was it in patch notes somewhere? Assuming it does work like that..what is stopping people listing stuff at low levels (like your Posi Blast) for HUGE amounts (say 50mil) then having a friend/dual boxed alt bid on the lvl 50 version, and getting it 'upgraded' for free? Obviously you would need to time it right, on an item with no other bids..but it could be done. For instance, back before we could email yourself stuff, I had a lvl 20 Miracle on freedom, that I wanted for an alt on Virtue. I gave it to a friend of Free, had him list it for loads, and timed my bid just right. Then he just gave me back the money after. Well first of all, that wouldn't be free, you'd lose the 10% listing fee. Second, a winning bid will always buy the LOWEST listed item that it could buy, so you'd just end up sending 50 mil to some stranger.

Being a defeat-all mission, and given that TC wants to get a patron pool ASAP, that mission is a good candidate for auto-completion anyway.

Since at this point the Homecoming team can apparently only put together power sets from existing animations and FX, an Arachnos primary for Masterminds would probably be pretty doable. Mace Beam, Mace Blast, and Disruptor Blast for the ranged attacks (which would work well with Mastermind's Mace Mastery already using the Arachnos mace), Wolf Spiders for the T1 pets, Night Widow/Fortunata for the T2, and Bane Spider Executioner for the T3. Then it's just a matter of finding workable FX and costume changes for the upgrades, and coming up with a thematic level 18 power.

No, because starting a TF with fewer than the minimum number of players would require a way to run TFs with zero players.

If this is true you should definitely submit a bug report.