jack_nomind

I'm 100% with PK on this one. Even something as 'minor' as buffing origin pool powers moves in the direction of stratifying builds in another way; if e.g. Gadgeteering has the best Tanking powers, then you end up with mostly Tech Tankers. Worse, any changes to that pool start to look and feel like changes to the AT as a whole.

They list the Tanker maxhp cap, 3534, which is accurate. The math can be a little confusing. At L50, it's 2.2 * 1.5 * ~1070.9 as indicsted near the bottom of the page.

Axe/Regen with perma Shadow Meld. Out of every five clicks, two are attacks.

No, it's much lower, about in line with other Def sets. I needed another +Def power and for theme consistency went with Stealth over Manuevers. I ended up with some free picks and Misdirection seemed like one of the most interesting choices... I think in practice it actually might improve dps even ST if used after every second cycle.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hit_Points About +89%.

Sort of. I mean repositioning during Momentum can easily cost you an attack in your chain and ~20% of your damage output.

"Worth it" is pretty subjective, but I have an example build for that combo here.

I've seen Kaeladin's tests and agree with his methods and conclusions. TW's drawbacks are its enormous endurance costs and higher-than-usual immobility during its attack chain. With a full blue bar and against targets who don't leave melee, which are both very engineerable situations, it really is highest damage by a comfortable margin.

I don't think that's true at all. Reproducing existing sets isn't going to get any interest -- they have to be maintained and balanced separately from their near-clones, but won't really add much to the game. Designing an "outrageous"(ly different) set might get pared into something a bit different than the initial proposal, but will open new play interactions and be more likely to get interest. Ask yourself, "if my powerset visually looked identical to Energy Blast (or X similar set), would people still want to play it? Or is the concept here running entirely on the idea of a visual theme?" Yes... and no. They're similar like stories are similar; they have a grammar and a fairly predictable overall structure, but there's room for variation there. Four of the powers are almost always two armor toggles, some kind of layered mitigation power (often a passive), and an anti-mez power (often a toggle). But both Dark Armor and Shield Defense clearly follow that general outline and yet have very different play outcomes. You can still do design by mashup to get started -- for example, mashing up Ice Armor and Bio Armor, or Stone Armor and Super Reflexes. Take all eighteen powers and combine the obviously similar ones. Then refine until you get to something roughly coherent, scale the numbers, shape it into the right 'story form,' and go for feedback from there.

Yes -- I think -- but as written they're all very close to existing powersets. Earth Blast: For mechanical reasons, the -dmg component from Cripple would need to have limited (or no) stacking. The lack of power interactions (combos or etc) makes the set feel a little dated. I also feel like the design space for the set is pretty well occupied by Ice Blast. I'd suggest looking at "earth power" characters from media and games for not just visual inspiration, but stylistic inspiration; Earth users tend to trap their foes and manipulate the battlefield. A set that uses several placeable damage fields like Rain of Fire or Whirlpool or targeted AoEs, and traps enemies in those fields with slows and immobilizes (and associated -KB), seems more in-theme. Magnetic Blast: I like that you gave this more power interactions! However, it's worth thinking about what the interaction does a bit more. In this case it seems like the interaction effect is purely bonus single-target damage (since -def doesn't rely on the interaction). What that means is that the powers would be adjusted to do slightly less damage up-front. Without anything else to sell the set, it might feel a little lackluster in comparison to, e.g. Beam Rifle, which has kind of a similar effect but expands the interactions a bit. Magnetic Shielding: This set looks a lot like Energy Aura but doesn't appear to follow the standard positional vs typed defense structure. This would probably result in it being less effective (since one type pair or one position of Defense adds balancing cost) and potentially harder to build, but it doesn't seem to offer any particularly new tools. There are some other minor issues (as written, the set has no debuff resistance), but occupying essentially the same design space as Energy Aura is probably the largest.

Market Crash, yes. It varies. I don't know of any brand-new new visual assets the score or homecoming teams added, but they've upcycled like pros with some of the costume elements and base items. Similarly, nothing they added power-wise has been "brand new" the way e.g. Absorb was a new mechanic, but they significantly exceeded the scope of just minor tweaking in things like Sentinel set proliferation. The main things slowing them are the small team size, the specific skills of the team, and a desire not to rocket vastly away from Live content. Adding powers is significantly less work than adding story arcs or doing some of the other kinds of changes suggested in this forum.

Well, when you've finished planning the organization of the meeting to consider the pre-conference brainstorming process, let us know. In the meantime, if the "the idea" is a set of story arcs, it won't get any more concrete than that until someone starts writing them.

Force of Thunder and Drain Psyche are also by far the weakest of the sustain powers, so I'm actually happy to have something that benefits them unusually well; needing seven different types of enhancement isn't a thin barrier holding them back but one of many significant problems with these two powers. In any case, the overall difference between this set and a frankenslot isn't particularly large (frankenslotting can hit about ~81% to all). Cauterizing Aura bugs the crap out of me. As far as I can tell, even though it lists an accuracy modifier (1.0) and accepts Acc enhancements, it doesn't actually make any hit rolls (only tested in PvE). It also I'm going to put that in the "not broken by Heal/Mod Enhancements" category, but also "probably bugged" and "terribly implemented" categories. Reaction Time is in a similar situation as the Blaster toggles. Five slotting this set is comparable to or worse for total enhancement value (~97% heal, ~97% endmod, ~74% recharge) than creative frankenslotting already allows (~96% each), and 'in the near ballpark' even if those were reversed. I was actually thinking of the melee (Electric Armor) version of Energize when I wrote this set... or more specifically, what I usually slot it with. I don't currently have any /Elec melee I'm levelling or at 50, but whenever I theorycraft a built I slot Energize with Preventative Medicine. This set (deliberately) has the same Heal and Recharge enhancement as PM -- the latter of which is low, but is mitigated by PM's great (8.75%) global haste boost. I wanted a set that I might potentially use instead of PM for Energize, but wasn't a clear win either way. The proc in this set is fantastic but the set bonuses are a little skewed away from what I'd want. I think the best way to balance that is to give the proc an uptime of about one-eighth (say, PPM 0.75 with a 10-second duration), so it ends up with the same overall ghaste as PM (6.25 + 20/8 = 8.75) but relies on the proc to do it, in effect trading the Absorb proc for a slightly weird, low uptime build-up one (+10 tohit/+20 dmg/+20 heal). (The Blaster version, which I'd put in a similarly sub-par category for Blaster sustain, also doesn't benefit from this any more than from Preventative Medicine.) I was thinking more like, I dunno, Kinetics or Radiation Emission as being problems for this. Even for those, though, none of the actual powers seem to benefit more here than they do from just efficient regular slotting -- this (unique, attuned, event-only) set ends up marginally better purely because it preserves set bonuses more easily, but in exchange (like Preventative Medicine) sacrifices some specific power recharge to do it.

Sure, that's fine too, so long as they're all roughly comparable in length.

This is amazing and I can't express how much it helps this really feel like our new "home." But seriously next time y'all need to stream it so we can root for you -- and mock the faceplants -- in real time.

Indeed I did! The "endredux" should all be "recharge reduction." This would provide ~97% Heal and End Mod at 5 slots, which roughly equivalent to (very slightly worse than) than four Positron Particle HydraOs or six conventional IOs. Since most of the Blaster sustain toggles aren't targeted, don't consume endurance, and don't have meaningful recharge times, I think those are the only benefits they'd get. Surely there's something more broken than that?

I was really hoping we'd see some more suggestions. I love mine, obviously, but I'm sure there are more possibilities.

It's impossible to be locked out of any of the current powers or badges. I think there are some single-merit arcs that may be inaccessible for e.g. non-Praetorian starts, but nothing more substantial.

In one early iteration of CoH, significant powers (perhaps all powers; you'd have to find someone who played or at least saw it in alpha or very very early beta. My understanding is that power pools worked much as they do now, and gave all-access powers) were locked to origin. Even though the game shifted to archetype and set locking, origins were deeply embedded into both a certain idea of the game... and the character set-up. Origin Enhancements were the compromised remnant of the original concept. In the Cryptic era, there were still plans to make Origins relevant because -- as many people in the thread have noted -- they feel incomplete or vestigial. (They are.) Every idea that was floated ended up being either infeasible for technical reasons (requiring a lot of continued development and maintenance) or for gameplay reasons (locking characters into or out of things retroactively and arbitrarily was seen as a poor decision). The decision was made to use Origins to market cosmetic and theme items, hence the Super Boosters and the Origin Power Pools. I don't have a problem with mission arcs that are locked to specific origins, for the record -- so long as they don't award powers, badges, or merits. The argument for it would probably be more compelling if someone proposing the idea actually wrote one and prototyped it in MA.

As long as you're hitting at least three dudes, you're definitely dealing more damage with Attack Vitals than the non-combo chain. I Think it's true with even just 2, but I don't remember exactly what % of SS's damage the proc does (IIRC it's something like 50%).

2% damage per point of fury. Not exactly. It just happened to be easier to get good breakpoints that way for this build. If you can only pick one pair or one position, S/L typed is the best; but all three positions is better (and often easier) than the six main types. You don't have to respec them -- you can change your slotted incarnate when you're not in combat or on a TF, with IIRC a 10m cooldown. But you do have to build the other one(s).

Quoted to agree. If someone comes along with something like, "Hey, I had this great idea and it ties into origins," I'd definitely consider it on its own merits. The proposal of, "someone should come up with great ideas, and they should tie those ideas into origins" seems... a little attenuated, to me.

No, you won't hit the damage cap without further buffs. (Brute cap is 775%, with double stacked Rage, full Fury, and the Gaussian's proc you hit at most 540%, so you would need 235% damage from enhancements to cap, which is impossible.) When evaluating Defense, remember that going from 40% to 45% cuts incoming damage by half. Going in the reverse, then, from 45% to 40% doesn't reduce your mitigation by 5% -- it halves it. The difference between 20 and 25%, on the other hand, is about 1/6th. (It can be meaningful to go for 20% or 32.5% rather than 45% Defense anyway, since those are good breakpoints for stacking purple inspirations to hit 45.) The build I did focused on positional (not typed) Defense, and you went from >45% Melee and 20% Ranged/AoE to 33% Melee, ~17% Ranged, ~23% AoE. It could certainly be meaningful to go for S/L resist type rather than melee position, but I'd really recommend pushing it up rather than sacrificing it for a relatively smaller increase in another defense. I'd recommend looking at the actual powers and totals rather than abstractly comparing the alphas this way. As you noticed, you aren't really gaining Defense overall with the changes. Agility doesn't give you endurance reduction, but rather endurance modification -- and if you compare totals, your build has 10% higher endurance costs across the board. The remaining difference is 45% recharge (Spiritual) vs 33% (Agility). You make up the difference by slotting two purple sets, which could definitely impact recharge speeds... but the actual effect due to slotting changes is mostly either non-impactful increases (e.g., 0.06s gain in haymaker) or small losses (1.78s in Energize). If your build is intended for a full team play environment, yes it is splitting hairs; the most important stats there are your recharge, your debuff (esp recharge) resistance, your maxhp, and your damage resistance. If you're building for solo or small-group play, the differences are pretty significant. The build I did assumed a mix of both and was targeted at a moderate budget (most of the expensive items I suggested can be earned with merits within a few days). If you want a full-cost (e.g., heavy use of purple sets), full-solo build, then there's actually room to improve mine significantly. My only 50 /Elec was TW/Elec on Live, and was built for sustained damage and soft control. It looks pretty different.

Hmm. If I were to redesign SS from the ground up... Hasten (T1) : Altering Hasten would change the game significantly beyond the scope of reworking this pool, but see below. Quick-Witted (T1) : A 30s base click power that breaks Immobilize effects. Having this power passively provides ~mag 3 protection against Sleep, Confuse, and Knockback. Choice of power - Super Speed or Marathon (T1) : SS works as-is, but over-cap movespeed reduces the endurance cost of the toggle ("somehow") and adds movespeed reduction resistance ("somehow"). Marathon is a passive minor runspeed power that accepts run sets, lacks SS's stealth, but has a lot of movespeed resist. Whirlwind (T2) : Similar to current but only requires one other Speed power, and does very minor (but enhanceable) Smashing damage. Burnout (T3) : Burnout is exactly the same as now except it has antipathy (anti-synergy) with Hasten. If you take Burnout without having Hasten, it also provides a passive 20% global recharge speed buff and -rech resistance.

I think Frostwork is just over 50% +MaxHP for a Defender, Please read more carefully. Regardless of reading comprehension -- and pardon the sharpness, but you could have easily checked these numbers yourself -- ultimately what you're saying is just that you think the value should be quartered. While that mitigates the problem of giving it a direct heal component, I think the simpler solution is to just not add a direct heal at all. As to the rest, I'm indifferent to a +absorb/+maxhp version vs a pure +absorb version.