ScarySai

I'm against the placate for the same reason I'm against survival change: It's another consideration that might prevent the drone from getting the offensive buff I think it needs more. Removing the taunt would already boost it's survivability substantially in groups - before the taunt was added, in a group I rarely had problems with it, due to the many different targets that could draw aggro other than me and the drone(s), plus the team buffs that would bolster it's survival just by being there. And I agree - which is why I called it worthless, Red.

Then change Time Bomb into the distraction and make gun drone the damaging one. Trip mine is awesome, time bomb is one of the most worthless powers in the game, gun drone had its uses before the taunt change. Outside of procced caltrops and tripmine, which hits slightly harder than most other blaster pbaoes - the set really isn't packing damage on the level of say, /fire, /mental, /time, /atomic or /elec.

While we're at it, lets add a difficulty that's just makes every enemy a randomly generated AV, would make +4x8 real fun. >_>

@Tath99I don't disagree with the idea of making it more survivable, but trying to think about this from CP's perspective, he would likely want it to either A: Double down on the taunt and make the drone more resilent, or B - my personal preference: Keep it squishy, but lose the taunt and make it much more of a damaging pet. Making it both tankier AND better at it's intended job of shooting things super good, doesn't strike me as something he would do. Furthermore, my /devices blasters thus far have been perfectly capable of surviving most encounters, so I'd rather have the extra damage. I am also of the opinion that the taunt cannot be compromised with, it has to go. Doubling down on that would be an act of stubborn pride rather than intelligent design.

I find BU to be generally more valuable in every situation, perhaps the drone would perform better over a longer fight on a low-recharge/non-IO build, or if the out of combat time was shorter, but as it is, rotating aim and build up off CD just outperforms it in most situations that I've seen. Bugged targeting drone was a pretty fun time though, lol. It's nice for the snipe damage scaling on a really tight build, I'll give it that. I will agree, however. Devices certainly has some budget to go around, I disagree with CP saying it has 'too much damage' already, when the set's only claims to doing damage are trip mine, and proctrops - the latter of which is probably going to get hit hard by a future ppm nerf. /Devices is a great set held back by having way more useless powers than it should. Time bomb still sucks, gun drone is now effectively worthless for anything not involving muling ER, and trip mine/caltrops are effectively so good that they carry the set.

You lost me, bud. As established many times already, this power has not, is not, nor will ever be an effective 'tank'. It should do it's job as a gun drone and shoot things good. I personally like @Sakura Tenshi's ideas, as they fall more lin line with what a DPS pet should be capable of. The set sacrifices build up, I think the drone doing decent damage isn't asking too much. Regardless, at the bare minimum, the taunt is the thing that needs to go. Compromise isn't the call here, the idea is bad.

Checking in after a bit of absence. Everything seems fine so far, but there's one part I want to focus on, as this bugs the hell out of me on the MMs. This is great and I love it, is there a chance this can be extended to call to arms as well? It still shows up in base defense. (Pic in spoiler)

Folds for the fold gods!

Since I see it was fixed with edict, the Call to Arms defense aura also displays weirdly under base defense, rather than all types/positionals.

Oh, I like that, then. I edited the question because I re-read it and wasn't exactly sure if it meant this, or was forcing default redraw with conditions to make it less awful. As you describe it, I'm all for it. Look forward to testing it. Seconding this getting rolled to VEATS.

I won't be able to test until tomorrow, so I just have one question based entirely on what I'm reading here. Is the default setup "no redraw" and the animation plays under these conditions, or is the default setting the regular redraw, but it only triggers under these conditions? Is this No redraw with style, or a slightly more tolerable old redraw? Edit: Re-reading the post, I realize now this was a stupid question. Ignore me!

I'm going to try and be a bit more optimistic despite my doubts and misgivings, though I won't exactly be happy if it ends up being a problem and goes unresolved for months - I'll wait for the what-if to happen before worrying too much about it. P.S: Remove taunt from gun drone, please.

Most people on the old boards weren't running IO builds, much less purple/pvp min/maxed ones. There was also a fair share of frankly clueless people, among which were usually the types to make those threads. Now a maxed build is much more obtainable and information is much easier to get. It doesn't surprise me at all that people aren't the same as back then, mostly.

I personally love jaunt more than ever after this round of changes, and find that a standard teleport keybind of shift+click solves most issues with using it on the go. I also see no reason to nerf it's speed, with the limited selection of power pools already, and the fact that most builds already take hasten, it's already hard enough to grab the experiment pool, much less a somewhat redundant travel power like Jaunt. The dart was overnerfed, though. It should be wanted in some builds, not entirely worthless outside of theme. Remember when the -res in Force of Will was nerfed? It went from good in some builds to downright useless.

I understand that point, and it makes sense to me - I can relate on that front quite a bit, after all. Yet, I'm not entirely sold on it, either. At the end of the day, we're all leaning on assumptions when we discuss 'what was intended' Speaking personally, I prefer it be left alone because I find the change to be not only a pointless indirect nerf that frustrates storm/dark users, but because this is hardly something that really needed to be given attention to begin with.

I think there's more to it, take Defender Sleet for example, I'm pretty sure it wasn't buffed up to 40% intentionally - the set was already insanely powerful with corruptor values, stacking 80% with just double sleet alone would be incredible. For the reverse reason, I suspect this is why Freezing Rain/Tar Patch were left alone, this very well could have been part of the original balancing for those sets. Analyzing these powers on a spreadsheet you can argue they should follow AT scaling like most powers do, but I'm not so sure, I think it was left alone because it worked, didn't break anything and wasn't too over/underpowered.

I would like to imagine that at least some of my and other's critical responses had some value to them, but I disgress, no use dwelling on that now. Thanks for the reply, Jimmy. It wasn't ignored, it was challenged. Nobody is ignoring the justification, we're well aware of the reasoning that's been given to us now, I don't agree with it, and It seems others don't either. You shouldn't be so quick to discredit them for doing so. We'll miss your contributions, truly.

There's a few variables at play here, but for the sake of simplicity I'll answer: no, because Paragon A: Earned a massive amount of trust with it's community interaction over the years, especially after Jack left. B: Can claim something is intended or not with credibility as they actually made the game and the systems behind it, and C - Would likely compensate for that elsewhere if they ended up doing it. I'm only harsh on HC here because their power balancing hasn't been stellar thus far, for every other aspect of the game, I love them. So I hate having to be so negative here.

Balancing CoH is a fool's errand if this is how they intend to do it. Tar patch, again, is one of the oldest powers in the game, and existed during the Jack era. I would hope this is just a shortsighted "correction" and nothing more. If you want to "balance" coh properly, you give oppressively good sets a love tap, slap the odd buff on under performers and otherwise leave it alone. The cat is out of the bag, you're not putting it back in without massive transformative changes, the IO and incarnate systems would also have to severely changed. Nerfing everything serves nobody, and doesn't feel great. CoH's a weird game, it gets away with rampant power creep in a way no other MMO really could.

Anyone else getting Deja Vu? Anyway, if we're discussing impact, this will affect solo players the most, particularly masterminds and illusion controllers, as both rely heavily on debuffs to produce good results, especially Illusion due to PA's nature. I'm against it on principle, more or less. This doesn't affect me at all, but I'm not exactly supportive of changing what doesn't need to be changed, tar patch was fine. I'm far from a purist, too. I rather like quite a bit of the changes made to the game. This isn't a good one, this doesn't improve the game or change 'da meta', it just kicks /dark characters in the balls.

Hard disagree on both counts, though I suppose time will reveal the latter.

I don't necessarily think it's "nefarious", but it is sneaky, and I'm not exactly happy when changes are pushed through and poorly rationalized with this being used as a justification.

Idea off the top of my head: Find a way to have sleep targets go prone, so even if instantly broken, they have to get through a 'get up' animation to get back into the fight. a "Mass levitate" replacing TK would be great.

This is probably my #1 complaint with how they've been handling nerfs. Seems kinda sneaky, I don't like it. If you're going to nerf it, just say how and why, don't try to justify it as a bug fix when it's clearly not what you're doing. Insight on what is considered the baseline is sorely needed, so far rationalizations for 'fixes' have been inconsistent (Dark Consumption) to borderline nonsensical (Taunt on gun drone, Rage, Procs on MM pets being named "Unintentional" when Castle flat out said it was WAI.)

Gotta love it when CP says something was unintended, when the guy who made the proc said it was intended. Soulbound was confirmed as WAI regarding proccing for the player, Gaussian's is also intended, as we have no reason to think otherwise besides CP's word. You can slot Enforcers for +tohit, as they have tactics, Gaussian's procs in aura abilities like Tactics. No brainer, he can disagree with that and justify a nerf with his own reasoning, but it's not a bug, unintentional, or unintended, quite the opposite. No comment on sleep powers and IO interactions with them, none of my characters use them.