Arkterusss

Interesting, although I wonder what the reasoning was behind nerfing some of Ice Assault's damage.

Interesting, shorter cast times on a few powers that share the "total focus" animation. Curiously, Thunderstrike was left out. Any plans on letting Brutes/Scrappers/Stalkers/Tankers get the benefit of faster cast times on these powers later on?

Stalker Invuln is quite nice because the +Def/ToHit toggle gives you the max benefit that Brutes/Scrappers would get if they had 10 targets, without needing anyone next to you. I'm running around as a savage/invuln Stalker in their 40's right now, and my Defenses are at about 36% and almost capped resists, simply using normal IO's and the usual suite of the +def/+resist Uniques. Depending on the mob make-up and levels, I have no issue simply jumping into a mob and starting things off rather than waiting for a main-tank to do it, and generally come out unscathed. Dull-Pain helps a bunch, too.

Why the focus on rotating around Shockwave? Is that for single target? It looks like the other t1/t2's in Claws do more damage. Thanks.

Yeah I did forget about the part of people's current Sentinel's basically being borked if they swapped out primaries, maybe an entirely different AT with Assault Primaries would be interesting, but giving them Defensive type secondaries would make them...a little too similar to Sentinels maybe? They'd need to have a different gimmick/inherent. One idea would be taking something like Defiance but: Inherent: Everytime you use a Melee Power, you get a x% damage increase to your next Ranged attack. This damage bonus is reset when you use a Ranged attack. Everytime you use a Ranged Power, you get a y& damage increase to your next Melee attack. This damage bonus is reset when you use a Melee attack.

I heard Sentinels were getting their Inherent reworked, but I found the class to be incredibly boring and I don't an Inherent is going to change that too much. What would Sentinels play like if their secondary choices remained the same, but their Primaries were Dominator Assault choices?

Oh i know, Ive read the changes. I find things like tweaking numbers in the hopes that something might stick be a little uninspiring.

Here's my version, this kit needs a total rehaul, not a numbers tweak. DEVICES Web Grenade: Change To => Click Location: Small, AoE, Minor Hold, Long Lasting -Recharge Caltrops: No Change Taser: Change To => Stun Gun: Functions similar to Jolt (from Elec Dom). Chained, Minor Damage, Knockdown, cut targets to 3 or so. Targeting Drone: Change To => Utility Drone: The Drone has 3 different Toggles/Stances that come with it (Similiar to Bio and DP’s Ammo). Targeting Drone Mode: Same as now +Snipe power deal Bonus Damage. Shield Drone Mode: Grants Minor +Def to Team, Minor Stealth to Self. Gun Drone Mode: Same as Gun Drone T9 Smoke Grenade: Change to => Toxic Gas Grenade: Targeted AoE, Minor Toxic DoT, -Resist, small chance for Vomit on Humanoids (Poison-like) Cloaking Device: Change to => Bodyslide: Self Teleport; functions like Martial’s Burst of Speed (Only usable once before cooldown, though) Moderate Damage, chance for Knockdown in Small AoE. Trip Mine: Change to => Click Location: Throw Out animation similar to Caltrops animation. Creates a Trip Mine at location after a small (1-2s delay). Explodes for AoE damage like it does now. Time Bomb: Change to => Sticky Bomb: Throw Out animation similiar to Caltrops animation. Single target; on target’s death, explodes in a radius. Gun Drone: Change to => Supply Drop. Similar animation to calling in a crate. Crate can be clicked by the Blaster, or anyone else on the team, to consume for a 10-20 second buff to Hit, Damage, etc.

You seem to be missing the part where it's a tradeoff that clearly wasn't accounted for in the set design, because other than blaster secondaries, all of the sets that are paired with blasts were designed and balanced before the i24 snipe change was introduced. Trade-offs can be good, but they are not inherently good, and this is a trade-off that was not accounted for when the support sets were initially created and balanced. That some support sets are more offensively powerful due to having an easier time doing damage because of how instant snipes work in i24 is not an intended feature, it is a consequence of the snipe change that should be addressed. As for complexity, if a core aspect of a power needs to be explained from one player to another because of poor documentation and numbers not being clearly visible, that's a problem. The game routinely mixing up its terms for accuracy and tohit is only making this worse. The change was made by the developers, who made the sets, so design was taken into account, yes. Had it been so widely different, they would've made changes to those sets to account for them; this wasn't done by a group of random people who didn't work on the game for years, as is the current case. There was a trade-off between choosing devices and other secondaries then, and there still is now. I fail to see how it wasn't intentional when the devs made that change...intentionally. But alrighty man. Easy fix for mix-ups and mislabels is to change them, which can be easily done. Not change up an entire gimmick because someone doesn't feel like spending 20 mins to buy a Kismet and slot Tactics, honestly. That's just being lazy. Regardless of how terrible this design decision is, and the pushback for it, I expect it to be pushed right on through to live, anyways. So, no reason to continue talking about it.

But sitting at 45% defense vs 44% defense doesn't make a very noticeable difference. Armour sets that are built to focus on defense are often possible, if not easy, to softcap with SO enhancements alone. Armour sets that are not built to focus on defense have other benefits to make up for it and bring the survivability in line with defense sets. Meanwhile, sitting at +21% and +22% tohit is night and day for single target damage. Secondaries that are built to provide +tohit reach this incredible increase in damage and usability with ease, while the secondaries not built to buff tohit do not tend to have any other benefits to make up for the loss of the fast snipe. Support sets were simply not built with the +22% cut-off in mind. If you roll a corrupter, the way in which your primary snipe ability functions at a base level will be fundamentally changed by whether the support set you pick gives you +tohit or not. This isn't balanced because the devs simply never balanced the sets for it. That a /traps corrupter needs to pay a steep power/IO tax to reach the same damage levels as a /time corrupter because of this detail feels like nothing other than the unintended side effect of a change that the original devs only had half-finished before the game was shut down. 1 Kismet + Tactics isn't easy? Wow, every set can get those too! Pretty neat, too. Shame I can't get to Defense soft cap in 4 slots. Wouldn't this force Blasters and Dominators to only pick Maneuvers, Tactics, Hide or a Defense armor Epic power? With this change more options are available I would think. After this change Blasters, Corrs, Defenders and Dominators can choose Assault or a Resistance Epic Armor power. Currently on live you have to plan your entire build around making one power work the way it should. No, it depends on their power choices, too. Oh and also if they want a perma-snipe, outside of BU/AIm. If they do, then that's an easy way of getting it, but not required. If they don't want to take it, then...they can certainly pick whatever powers they want. That's the cool thing about the game; having choices on how you want to proceed. It surely will make Devices even less desireable then before though.

It's easy for us players who know about the mechanics, have the inf, understand when 'tohit' is mislabelled as 'accuracy', and so on. It's not as easy for players who don't have that knowledge, and not interacting with that complexity shouldn't lock people out of having a usable snipe. It's also a tax on sets that don't inherently bring some +tohit to the table. It arbitrarily gives those sets more power/enhancement slots because they don't need to spend them on kismet, tactics and slotting tactics. Further, they need to spend endurance running tactics. None of this was accounted for in the design for the sets other than blaster secondaries. These issues should be obvious, and have nothing to do with how easy or difficult it is to build for the defense softcap. Yeah man, it's a crazy idea that people who might not understand things, like, you know. Ask bout it. Or something. And then someone tells them, and so they learn something new. And then they tell someone else who didn't know about it. That's crazy. I guess I just ALWAYS knew to slot a Kismet and take Tactics, just inherently. I was never told about it, or asked about it. I just knew it. At all times. And it's almost like...I dunno. Taking certain powersets that give you something but take away something else is...I dunno. It's like a uh. What do you call it? Oh, like a tradeoff or something! You know, like if I take /Devices. SO, like. I don't get build-up like most other 2ndaries. But oh hey, look, I get this cool thing called Targetting Drone. That's neat. Oh hey, I don't have to do this whole Kismet/Tactics things at all now! I guess that's a pretty good trade-off! Neat! But yeah, that whole tax thing is a real big oof. You're right, I should have just an easy enough time capping my S/L defense on a Regen Scrapper as I should on a SR Scrapper! Without having to pay all this tax! That doesnt make sense!

But sitting at 45% defense vs 44% defense doesn't make a very noticeable difference. Armour sets that are built to focus on defense are often possible, if not easy, to softcap with SO enhancements alone. Armour sets that are not built to focus on defense have other benefits to make up for it and bring the survivability in line with defense sets. Meanwhile, sitting at +21% and +22% tohit is night and day for single target damage. Secondaries that are built to provide +tohit reach this incredible increase in damage and usability with ease, while the secondaries not built to buff tohit do not tend to have any other benefits to make up for the loss of the fast snipe. Support sets were simply not built with the +22% cut-off in mind. If you roll a corrupter, the way in which your primary snipe ability functions at a base level will be fundamentally changed by whether the support set you pick gives you +tohit or not. This isn't balanced because the devs simply never balanced the sets for it. That a /traps corrupter needs to pay a steep power/IO tax to reach the same damage levels as a /time corrupter because of this detail feels like nothing other than the unintended side effect of a change that the original devs only had half-finished before the game was shut down. 1 Kismet + Tactics isn't easy? Wow, every set can get those too! Pretty neat, too. Shame I can't get to Defense soft cap in 4 slots.

Can we just have 3-slotted Defensive powers give 45% defense because players who have ni interest in the deeper numeric mehcanics of the game can't get there? Sounds good to me, let's do it! There's a big difference between the defense softcap, something that people without an interest in the deeper mechanics of the game may not even know about if they reached it because it's not something you'd notice as divergent from the normal functioning of the game, and fast snipes. Fast snipes make an ability act completely differently, and in a way that is actually useful in combat. Fiddling with IOs is, for a lot of sets, a requirement to make these abilities function in a manner that is useful and powerful, and acts very differently to how they do 'out of the box'. Defense is just a number that makes you harder to hit as you get more of it. No one needs 45% defense to make one of their powers usable. It's a totally different situation. Id say sitting at the base values Defense gives you and face tanking mobs versus the soft-cap is a pretty noticeable divergent, yes.

I guess NOT getting to the Defense cap as a SR Tanker isn't required to play that character efficiently end game.

Can we just have 3-slotted Defensive powers give 45% defense because players who have ni interest in the deeper numeric mehcanics of the game can't get there? Sounds good to me, let's do it!

>taking tactics and like, two IO's is "HIGH END" Well, I guess I won't be rolling /devices ever again after this patch. Might as well just scrub it from the set list.

Hit up Leandro and his Blaster fetish, and you probably have your answer. Anyways, this change seems pretty bad. Leave Snipes as is. The new Unique IO could do something like: "Your Snipe powers have a x% chance to crit" Or "Your Snipe powers have a x% chance to Recharge immediately" This is wonky.

No, but I am being forced to level one character at a time to 50 because maintaining the number of alts I usually play is untenable. For me I normally play one character one weekend, next weekend I'm jonesing to play a different powerset (for example, before this announcement I was wanting to start a mastermind this weekend), next weekend I'll play something else. That's how I ended up having 128 characters and I cycled through them for the months out of the year I'd actively play. I'm completely in favor of taking measures for dealing with people just grabbing names while the grabbing is good, but, these rules go further than that and I can't see my playstyle being viable. Given the amount of AE powerleveling going on earlier in the server, I'd put cash money down that I have more time on my level 20 than many 50's have on them. But, its their sandbox, so I'm in the process of deleting all but a handful of alts I've created so far because, thanks to the kindness of those who got the game working again, I have options. I can alt solo on my own personal server and play the handful I can maintain here when I feel like teaming until I get a 50 I can replace with a new alt. That's what makes both this place and the game itself far better than when it was a business is having options. >Cares enough about characters that having to rename a character they deigned not to play for more than a month is inexcusable >Doesn’t care enough to log them in for 3 seconds every so often. Interesting. Anyways, no one’s forcing you to do anything. You don’t have to grind a single person to 50 if you don’t want to. I have about 10 characters right now and none of them have been logged out for more than 3 days, with two or three of them in my bucket of “I couldn’t care less if I have to rename them later due to inactivity”. Your problem would be seriously solved if they didn’t let people even have CLOSE to a 100 slots. 20 max should be sufficient on each shard. You’d see this name problem clear up really quick as people would have to make decisions regarding who they actually care about instead of wantonly making characters than whining when someone does something about not playing them for half a year. I seriously doubt your experience with your 8 billion alts that are all below level 20 is going to change much if you have rename them from “John the Generic Scrapper” to “Bill the Generic Scrapper”

Seems kind of an oddly Grand Finale that doesn't really involve the community, but other than that, seems cool.