Vanden

Well it's a proc that has a 100% chance to go off, like new Gauntlet. I think Toxins is actually the same. I don't really know the math behind doublehit and Radial Assault Hybrid, are you saying that powers with large recharge penalties like APP AoEs would get disproportionate boosts from global damage procs if they weren't capped?

Ah, I gotcha. The thing I was mainly worried about was that the proc would prove too strong; after all, during the crash you’d be doing 5 times the damage you can with current Rage. Well, 5 times the damage with your Super Strength powers. With other powers of different damage types it would vary depending on the enemy.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm mistaken about? Are you saying that the proposed Rage changes result in more damage over the long term than current Rage the more you double-stack it? It looks like your charts show it being very slightly better at lower stack durations but then falling off and becoming worse the longer you stack it.

Rad Armor didn’t even get proper VFX, so if Bio Armor wasn’t properly playtested there’s no way Rad Armor was. And Shield has to deal with clicky mez protection which is *blows raspberry* so I'm sure that balances out I’m not sure if getting killed if you aggro-cap on enemies with tons of slows and defense Debuffs indicates a set is balanced.

I get it, no worries. There just really isn’t a good way to get more AoE early in the set without affecting Hand Clap. You can either move it like I did while leaving the power itself unchanged, or mess with the recharge and radius so it doesn’t outperform Foot Stomp, which would also necessitate nerfing the stun. Or I guess you could put Foot Stomp earlier and make Hand Clap the t9 with damage, but Foot Stomp is already excellent so adding an even stronger AoE to the set seems like a major overcorrection.

The Radius is 8 feet, not 7, and with the Tanker inherent that goes up to 12 feet. And the need for extra damage mitigation won't be as strong, with the extra AoE damage letting you defeat enemies faster.

Hurl would not just be AoE knockdown, but also AoE damage, helping you actually defeat the enemies that surround you. Not 100% knockdown, true, but 50% knockdown with nearly half the recharge of Hand Clap is roughly equal over time. And the stun in Hand Clap is only 100% on minions and 50% on lieutenants, no chance of affecting bosses, while the defense buff from Jab affects everything equally. I suspect you still come out slightly behind in survivability, but not by that much, and the gains in offense feel worth it to me.

Bio Armor never got released before the shutdown, so I'm not sure it ever got rigorous playtesting. The reason I ask is because I just found out that its T1 armor power gives 25% damage bonus while in Offensive Adaptation (31.25% on Scrappers). That seems insane. You need something like 181% recharge in Build Up for it to match that in extra damage over time. That's in an armor set, a defensive power set that also includes a -Resistance aura that gets stronger in Offensive Adaptation. It feels like there's no way those numbers would've gone live if it had actually been playtested.

I've found I nearly always get this bug if I charge into the fight ASAP upon zoning. No idea why, but if I'm one of the first players in the mission and try to go straight into the battle I get the -4s, but if I just sit near the mission entrance for a little bit, usually waiting for everyone to join, it never seems to happen.

Moved this stuff to OP

The ultimate goal of the Hurl change would be to improve Super Strength's AoE at lower levels. Putting a new AoE attack at tier 8 doesn't really help that, especially for Tankers, who'd be getting an AoE attack all of 3 levels earlier than they do currently. Adding damage to Hand Clap doesn't really work, IMO, because at 30s recharge and 15-foot radius, it'd be stronger than Foot Stomp according to the damage formulas, and just giving it less damage than the math would have it do feels like a letdown. Hurl could really use some kind of buff anyway because of how slow it is, and I think they're up against the limit of how fast they can make that animation without making it look goofy, so just making it faster isn't a promising prospect, either. There's not a lot of room in Super Strength to add earlier AoE without moving Hand Clap, or nerfing its crowd control ability to justify bringing down the recharge. Really the only other option is changing Haymaker, and then the set would only have two viable single-target attacks for a good attack chain (Hurl is too slow, and Jab's damage is garbage).

And another thing about the MM Epics! They gave an electric APP to an AT that already had access to a perfectly good electric-themed epic in Mu Mastery, and didn't have a single primary or secondary that matched the electric theme!

Can anyone verify this? I have the proc in Overgrowth on a Nature Affinity character, and I've used it on entire leagues and not seen multiple procs at once.

Mercs has a lot of problems that go much deeper than letting the pets swap ammo types could possibly solve. And I'm pretty sure Swap Ammo in Dual Pistols isn't actually all that good compared to Aim.

No, Serum sucks because the numbers on it are garbage, not because it's wrong for the set from its very conception like some powers are. If the recharge was like 3 minutes and there was no crash it'd be a fine power. The biggest "flaw" would be that you can't use it to mule pet IOs.

That's a pointlessly semantic view of the rule. Dimension Shift is not a violation, it's still an AoE foe intangibility power. Disrupt and Pacify I'll grant you, but they're also examples of times where it's justified to break the rule. Repulse was a power that worked completely at odds with the player's goals; as an armor set on a melee class, a power that constantly knocks foes out of melee is counterproductive. It wasn't at all what you'd want out of an armor power set. Other existing powers that could qualify for this treatment would be Entangling Arrow in Trick Arrow, or Web Grenade and Time Bomb in Traps. These are supposed to be buff/debuff sets, so a single-target immobilize or a nuke aren't the kinds of powers you want or need from them. For Pacify, Challenge was largely redundant with a power in the exact same set (Provoke). While anyone using Challenge specifically lost access to that functionality, they could still get mostly the same effect by just switching that power to Provoke in their build. Other powers that could qualify for this are Disruption Arrow and Acid Arrow in Trick Arrow (TA has a lot of problems). They're both AoE -Res powers. If you wanted to give Trick Arrow a new trick, you could double the -res in Acid Arrow, then give some new effects to Disruption Arrow while removing the -Res. You've technically broken the rule, but overall the set's functionality hasn't decreased.

Those powers have new functionality that in most cases has eclipsed their old functionality, but they still fill all the same roles they did before they became sustain powers. A player who relied on Touch of Fear for the tohit debuff and Terrorize effect can still do so with Touch of the Beyond. Thus, the cottage rule isn't broken. The same is true for Serum; granting a single pet mez protection, damage resistance, +recovery, +damage, and +toHit is a perfectly valid, potentially useful ability. The problem is the +damage and +tohit are so small as to be almost worthless, the power lasts only 60 seconds, it makes the pet useless for 20s because of the crash, and takes 16 minutes and 40 seconds to recharge. None of the functionality would have to be lost by buffing those downsides. Unless you consider making the pet do nothing for 20 seconds one minute after you use it the core functionality of Serum. In which case, yeah, breaking the cottage rule would be called for.

I'm not seeing it; Touch of the Beyond is still a ranged single-target fear, Frigid Protection is still a PBAoE slow aura, Cauterizing Aura's still a damage aura, etc. No broken cottages there.

What changes were made that would actually have broken the rule?

Like I said the last time this idea came up, I seriously doubt letting Mercs change a portion of their damage type is going to result in any meaningful increase in performance. Serum isn’t so bad or so out of place in the set that breaking the cottage rule for it is called for, anyway. Edit: @summers, what part of my post was confusing to you? I'm happy to elaborate if you need me to.

I could see one of those things happening at most. */Ice is by far the safest Blaster secondary available, so it’s not going to get a bunch of extra high-damage attacks on top of that.

Hurl would be an AoE knockdown when used in melee and Jab would give a defense bonus. Neither are simple single-target attacks.

Jab and Hurl would serve much the same purpose.

You mean the idea you stole from me 😡😡😡 😉

I don’t even want to think about what it would take to proliferate this set. I don’t envy @Captain Powerhouse there. Edit: I thought about it