Vanden

Let's think about this. There's 26 set of ATOs in the game, yet 4 of them are being claimed to be much better than the rest. Does that sound like we should consider those 4 sets to be the "par" level?

Right, it's a Toxic proc, which slows

Could you clarify what you mean by this? If you mean double Rage all the time, that's not that easy. You need 300% recharge for that, which is a lot, and you generally sacrifice a lot of potential defense to get there. A more typical case is 10-20 seconds of double Rage; that's not difficult, but then you're getting similar uptime on your double Rage that other sets get on their Build Up.

That's the beauty of my suggestion. The damage of the powers doesn't change, and in fact taking advantage of the buffs Jab would get results in a big DPS hit, since you have to use it so frequently. Thus, no change to Rage is needed.

I suggested a cold damage proc when I first proposed Bombardment, but it's not ultimately what they went with.

Girls don't have muscles, they move their bodies through a series of low frequency sonic vibrations

Scrappers only land critical hits 5-15% of the time, though.

A permadom is a heavily IOed character. Any character IOed to the nines will outperform any character with only basic enhancing. Anyone who builds for defense softcap is grabbing a lot of the same powers and IOs as anyone else doing the same. You talk about Dominators building for permadom making similar choices to each other like it's something you only see on Dominators, when it's really a phenomenon you see across all builds and ATs. How much of this isn't also true of Controllers? Outside of a handful of Buff sets, they also have no defenses and their controls are exactly the same as Dominators with the exception of an unreliable chance of +1 mez magnitude.

No, no I don't think this is a good idea. Absurd. A permadom outperforms any character with basic enhancing by a wide margin. People don't like that aspect of Dominators, how is maintaining that a pro? How is that different from building for the defense softcap? This section just doesn't make sense. The only click a permadom needs is Domination, and they probably have Hasten, too. That's two clicks. Two is too many?

What do you mean Bruising mechanics are limiting? Bruising is just a resistance debuff with a name. In fact, if Jab was changed as I propose, it wouldn’t really be Bruising, just a 4-second res debuff.

The thing is, Punch is also bad. As you point out, it's a T2 that compares unfavorably to most T1s. Jab gets all the spotlight because Tankers are forced to take it, but you really can't just fix Jab alone. Putting Punch in the T1 spot means you only need to rebalance the numbers for one power instead of two. Really, I don't see a faster animation as helping much. Once you have a complete attack chain you still won't be using Jab.

Swap Jab with Punch, making Jab the T2, then give Jab back Bruising and give it a non-stacking 4-second defense buff on a successful hit. This gives Jab a unique niche, where you willingly lower your own DPS to increase the team's overall DPS and your own survivability. The short-duration defense buff is long enough for you to use any other move in between refreshing the defense buff and resistance debuff, even Knockout Blow. Super Strength is definitely on the devs radar, with changes a matter of when, not if. There's no doubt Jab will get something when that time comes, and I'd prefer this new wrinkle over a simple DPA increase.

I'm guessing Fire/Kin of some type. Fire because he has the Fiery aura, Kin because he's named after a move in chess that lets the King move twice or thrice times as far.

We don't know what Castle's actual powers are, so they couldn't give him the fightin' NPC trainer treatment.

Masterminds have an endurance penalty built into their powers, because the vast majority of their damage output comes with no endurance cost beyond the initial cost of summoning and upgrading their pets.

One Thousand Cuts takes PBAoE damage sets.

Crab Spiders weren't an AT/build when Lord Recluse was added to the game. Lord Recluse and his patrons represent the five initial villain ATs, and Lord Recluse is the Mastermind. Obviously they all have signature powers that would normally be out of place on their base ATs, but that's nothing unusual for signature characters.

Infernal is from another dimension, and Praetorian Infernal is supposed to be from another another dimension, but he's the one signature Praetorian that got virtually no new content with Going Rogue or subsequent expansions, so it's really vague and unclear what his deal is.

I think Lord Recluse is a Legions of Arachnos/Arachnos Support Network Mastermind. Does that sound right?

That's obviously not the reason; by the time Mu Mystics were added to the game there were more than enough existing animations they could've used. It was more work to create an entirely new skeleton, complete with animations, for them to use.

This is true of literally any epic armor, it's not a selling point for Body Armor. Body Armor's only real advantage is that it doesn't cost endurance, and since Blasters don't run out of endurance thanks to their sustain powers now, the advantage is moot.

It's not multiverse theory, at least not with the Pillar of Ice and Flame.

Right down to the time-traveling villains from a group that doesn't exist in Praetoria?

Cimerora is still on Primal Earth, so why would a "pure Praetorian" go there?

I think this might be overthinking things. PPM means it's going to go off 3/4 times per minute, regardless of the slotted enhancement. Yeah, you can manipulate that by underslotting whatever power for recharge, but you don't have to. Put it in a power you use constantly, and you'll get the proc 3/4 times per minute on average. Maybe that means your T2, maybe it doesn't. For my ice blaster, it means Freeze Ray.