ScarySai

Can't speak for Ninja or Necro, but the changes absolutely do not cause the bolded sets to "suffer."

Are Kheldians mentioned at all in Praetoria? Perhaps they never showed up here, the Hamidon ate them, or Cole super-annihilated them. Considering how the Rikti's Battalion was vastly different than ours is according to the AMA, perhaps events with the Kheldians transpired differently, and they just never showed up on Praetorian-earth.

The sets were made with a small scale private server in mind, I bet. Regard for the standard formula was ignored for this experiment. That being said, they switch up the norm for blasters, and CoH has plenty of imbalances not really worth nerfing. I don't mind them. I prefer buffing up underperformers over nerfing outliers, so I think Trick Arrow should get a significant pass to make it a force to be reckoned with.

I'd like some of these, but doubt it could be implemented without causing a cascade of problems under the hood, especially with such a small team handling it. That, and the blatant murder probably wouldn't fly with the heroes. >_>

I'm in agreement, trick arrow needs a balance pass and a hefty amount of buffs. Those who think TA needs to be nerfed so people can pretend that Trick isn't one of the worst sets in the game are completely off base, though.

I know what you said earlier, I disagree with it. Quoting yourself isn't a convincing argument. 7/9 powers in the set are control-based in some form, I don't want to hear it's "Not a control set." The entire gimmick is debuff+control. There's not a single 'buff' in the entire set. Furthermore, even if it wasn't a control-themed powerset (which it is), EMP arrow is a control power, and should be good at it's job when it's both 1: The capstone, and 2: Not that good at the job it's supposed to do for the recharge tax it has.

You mean the main things that make the dedicated debuff/control powerset's version of the power worse than the blaster variant? Trick arrow is one of the worst powersets in the game, buffing EMP arrow in that way wouldn't magically make the set god tier on it's own. It would, however, make the EMP arrow (Trick arrow's capstone, by the way.) much more appealing/useful.

That would be, IMO, narrow sighted and extremely stupid.

Honestly, a few changes to recharge, hold potency and endurance to match ESD, but with some added potency in EMP would be better than just copying ESD. Trick arrow is probably in the running as one of the worst power sets in the entire game, if not THE worst. It could use some big buffs, and giving them a roided out EMP would work wonders.

Update: I've settled on beam/ta after some testing. Quite happy with the build.

Why not just buff EMP to be better than the blaster version? Realistically, as a debuff/control set, it shouldn't have to beg for a blaster ability.

Dp/martial won't break dps records, but clears +4x8 well enough while being pretty fun and thematic. Water/atomic with procced holds and bonfire is like a roided out controller, lots of damage, lots of CC. Fire/mental is my strongest character overall, probably. It kills GMs, AVs and missions without too much stress. Beam/TA is my most recent character, and I have to say: The hype for the combo earlier in this thread is fully justified. If you want pure range, go with this.

Agreed. Isn't having time bomb in the powerset enough of a dead weight?

After some heavy testing, I'm pretty confident that TA is the best secondary to go for if you want pure range.

I'm making both on test to kinda noodle around with them, I'm not seeing a -res component to End of Time. Are you referring to the fury proc? Or is it a hidden bonus?

I love beam, those changes did wonders for a set I used to hate, but I can't say the same for /devices. Trip mine and field operative are awesome, but Targeting drone is a bit clunky, gun drone is worthless and time bomb is, well, time bomb. I've not played with /temporal or /Trick Arrow, so I was hoping to get some insight on how they should play with a high budget build, and what would likely work for Beam better.

I want to say atomic is the best set to take if you want to stay pure ranged, but I haven't touched temporal or TA. It's control and recharge/regen are pretty amazing.

That's just how I reply to people. >_> But I will say, you did confuse me with the reply, so I made a guess as to where you were going.

The slow stacking was also easy to play around, but could get pretty nutty with certain builds. It's not nearly as crazy as it used to be.

It's something to play around, and you can always run away if you kill too many LTs in a short amount of time. It's not nearly as obnoxious as say, KoA caltrops used to be.

Problem is that it would just die twice as often and accomplish very little. A power shouldn't only be useful on -1x1 with bosses disabled.

I'm aware it had a patch on test, but it was not given the time the prior changes were, and pretty much everyone that did test it thought the taunt aura was a mistake. They should make it into a seeker drone if this is the purpose the ability is to serve. Otherwise, it's unreasonable to persist with keeping it as a taunt ability. It's akin to trying to make a warshade essence heal, a dark servant into a DPS or a genin as immortal. It is trying to make an ability do something it was never intended to do. Making it tankier might help a little, depends how they do it. More health and no defenses wouldn't change anything. No other blaster secondary needs a pocket "tank", with that and reasons given above, I find the idea to be inherently flawed.

Not the first time CP has said something I find to be ridiculous. "It doesn't do enough damage, so we're going to make it die instantly before it can do damage." Either way, clearly - his theory has failed to hold up as the drone doesn't serve the 'meat shield' role at all, unless you consider getting one shot by a boss and having the minions gun you down an effective use of your final power. Having two drones out was decent DPS in practice, especially for AVs. Time to take that crap off the power. If they wanted to make gun drone into a "meat shield", the time for that was during the extended testing window when /devices was being overhauled, not shoehorned in with a half-baked idea two weeks later.

Cold will kill things fastest, Dark will be the hardest to kill, Rad will be the easiest to build. Storm will also kill things pretty fast, but if you have to ask, I'd avoid that secondary 'till ya know illusion better. My personal recommendation would be to go cold, but give /dark a look too. I think they both do better than /rad in missions.

Hard to beat a well placed wormhole+fulcrum shift on teams.