aethereal

It's under the third option, exchange prismatic aethers for costume rewards.

So, according to chatter from over the years, the issue with anything like "whip melee" is that the animations for the whip powers are a beast. They are apparently like five times the size of other animations, and also the claim was that the fire on the whip covers up some real problems in how the whip actually animates and connects. In order to do an actual whip melee set, you'd need at least 2-3 more whip animations, and that's a very tall cliff to climb for any animators out there. In addition to all the pain of actually creating a new set in general. I've long felt that instead of going full whip melee, they should make "Hellfire manipulation/assault" sets that are blaster/dominator secondaries that use the existing whip animations plus some fire blast or melee animations to fill out the sets. Broaden whips to blasters and doms and you can make do with just the three whip animations that we have already, and a lot of people who don't like Masterminds would get access to them.

DoT has no effect on procs.

+80% damage is good even on a brute, the Guassian's Build Up proc makes it even better. I mean, look, the game's not very hard, you don't need to do anything, but if you care about performance in terms of burst damage at all, I think that getting the power is a no-brainer.

Cool! Well, if damage procs go off at 90% in Spring Attack, that certainly makes it a lot more compelling as an attack.

What procs did you try with? Enemy-affecting ones like damage procs or self-affecting ones like say Force Feedback? I'm pretty sure that there are some cases where different procs look at different powers for their PPM. (Reason number 9,482 why PPM is a terrible system that should be destroyed). By the way, more nattering on copies boosts flag: We were focused on global bonuses like fury, which I continue to think do not need a flag in order to apply to an executed power. But the other kind of boost that does need to be copied to both a pseudopet and an executed power are local powers enhancement: ie, if you put a damage enhancement in the Lightning Rod (using a pseudopet) or the Spring Attack (using execute power) power, you want that damage enhancement to affect the power use that actually damages someone. In the case of a pseudopet, it's all the same: both Fury and damage enhancement need to somehow get moved over to the pet in order to work. In the case of an execute power, you (probably?) don't need any special flagging to get Fury to work, but you still (probably?) do need special flagging to say, "the damage enhancement from this power should affect this other power that actually does the damage."

You're right that Savage Leap never used a pseudopet. I nevertheless think that the "copy boosts to entity" thing is irrelevant on a power that you execute yourself: it was probably copied there somewhat extraneously because people used older pseudopet power effects as a template. It's possible that that's not true! The powers code is complicated, and maybe an "execute power" thing normally cuts you off from your own global effects, but that seems very complicated and unnecessary, so I suspect that it's not what happens. Just because I love nattering about this: The Reason for Pseudopets The basic powers code for City of Heroes contemplates two origination points for area-of-effect powers: the caster (a "point blank AoE" like say Fire Sword Circle), or a target entity (a "targeted AoE" like say Fireball). There is no concept of an AoE emanating from a point on the grid, it has to come from an entity (again, the caster or a target). So when they wanted "location-targeted AoEs," the powers code did not support that. In order to simulate the idea of an AoE emanating from an arbitrary point on the map, what you do is target a point on the map, summon an invisible, untargetable entity on that point, and then that entity executes a point blank AoE power, then destroys itself. Boom, location-targeted AoEs. At the time that pseudopets were created, there was no way to execute another power on demand, so the way that the pseudopet worked was that it had an auto-power that was the PBAoE, so it just fired as soon as the pet was created. This approach worked, but as you might imagine for a fairly complicated scheme, there were a variety of little bits of strangeness about it. For our purposes, the two big ones are: 1. it's a different entity, so if you have some global effect on you, the pseudopet didn't have that global effect on it 2. because what you think of as the "location targeted AoE" is an autopower, it procs like an autopower (also: it has different max values than you, it doesn't do things like break Stalker stealth, etc). So they created the "copy boosts to entity" flag to solve the first problem, where basically when they create the pseudopet, it goes through and copies all global effects that are on you onto the pet as well. Teleport Attack Powers and Power Execution You may be looking at the above and saying, "hang on, there's nothing there that requires teleport attack powers to use pseudopets. They're PBAoEs that emanate from the person using the power." But if you naively make a power with two effects: a PBAoE attack and a teleport, what will happen is that you will do a PBAoE from where you START, not where you LAND, which wasn't the effect they wanted from Lightning Rod, the original teleport attack. A power checks all of its targets at the time that it executes. That means that it finds targets who are X distance from you at the point when you activate the power, ie, from your original location. This is true even if you apply a delay to the PBAoE effect, so that it happens after you land -- it still checks targeting at the time when you activate the power, not when the effect happens. So their solution with Lightning Rod was to code it as a location-targeted AoE (with a pseudopet) and a teleport. But then they invented the power execution effect. When the effect of one power is to execute another power, it is importantly the case that that's a separate power, with a separate activation time, and separate targeting criteria. So this allows the modern implementation of Spring Attack and at least some other teleport attacks: instead of teleporting you to a grid location and creating a pseudopet that attacks at the same location, they teleport you to the location, wait long enough for the teleport to happen, and then execute a PBAoE power on you as well. Since the PBAoE is separately activated, it checks targets from your position at the time it activates, not the place where the first power activates, and thus you get the desired "PBAoE at destination" effect. Part of the reason to get this effect is exactly to remove the pseudopet indirection. You don't need to copy boosts, you use your AT's inherent maxes and scalars and everything, secondary effects like breaking stealth work normally. I generally believe that the "copies boosts to entities" flag does nothing here, though again I could be wrong. But the entire point of coding the power like this is to not need things like "copies boosts to entity."

There is no entity, now. Maybe this power was once implemented as a pseudopet? I believe that Fury should work normally because your character is still the originator of the power, it's not indirected through another entity, so there's no reason that all of your global effects wouldn't work as normal. The "boosts copied to entity" stuff with pseudopets (for other powers that do in fact have a pseudopet) works pretty well, but the big thing about it is that it's a one-time copy, which can sometimes lead to strangeness for pseudopets that have some duration. But Spring Attack is not a pseudopet and you are directly the entity that executes the effect, so I don't see a reason to imagine that it wouldn't work like you'd expect. I have not tested, however.

In general, pseudopet powers proc poorly. Basically, they proc as if their recharge time + cast time were 10 seconds instead of the usually longer recharge time of the "real power." Spring Attack is not actually a pseudopet. It has a redirect instead, which will have different proccing characteristics, and potentially more attractive ones. I'm honestly not sure how procs work through Spring Attack. I suspect but am not sure that they are still much reduced from what they "should" be for a 120s recharge power.

SOs are not budget friendly, and you don't need to farm (or do complex marketing schemes) in order to afford much better than SOs.

Well, I mean, it was two years ago. FWIW, DB/Inv is a good example of a powerset combo that doesn't really make a ton of sense to do as a Brute. You'll almost certainly have a better build as either a Scrapper or a Tanker. That is: It's an armor set that doesn't have a damage aura (damage auras go well with Brute fury). It's an armor set that does have a taunt aura on a Scrapper. It's an armor set that has a heavy defense component so Scrappers don't give up a lot of durability on it. It's an armor set that really can take advantage of high Tanker base values since you want to bid up both defense and resistance on it. It's a melee set that heavily features a damage add, which is better on Tanks than Brutes and MUCH better on Scrappers than both.

In fairness, recharge enhancement, both local and global, are very much a thing. I don't think it's that meaningful to talk about the unenhanced recharge values of bio clicks. But I agree with the overall point that it's not super hard to give a "click heavy" set (even one that's substantially more click-heavy than bio) enough offensive boost that it makes up for the lost cast time.

Let me throw this out there, not that I actually expect to change anyone's mind, but: If you're playing Homecoming at this point, you've probably got like 10 years+++ of City of Heroes under your belt. Homecoming drops like maybe one new piece of content per year if you're lucky What's everyone on, their 50th Scrapper? More? You've done every mission in this game. You've probably done most of them 10+ times. Are you sure that what you need is more simplicity in play? One understands the appeal of a set-and-forget armor when you're on your first, or fifth, armored class But aren't there a lot of you out there who'd like a play experience that is more engaged and thoughtful, not less? Clicky armors add a layer of tactical decision making that, for me, I became more and more appreciative of as I got more play experience

Everyone is of course entitled to their personal opinions. If a player really values a taunt aura, then they really value a taunt aura, and that's fine. But, like, taunt auras aren't that big a deal. I have leveled several Stalkers to 50 and several aura-less Scrappers to 50, and also some Brutes and Tankers and taunt-aura Scrappers, generally at high multipliers on team size, almost entirely solo, and it's just... not that big a deal. Is it nice to have a taunt aura? I guess. There are a few enemies like Warwolves who run away a lot and they're frustrating. For the most part, it's not very noticeable in play. The constant chorus of a few players who come in to say that they absolutely need a taunt aura to consider playing a set sort of strikes me as like if I went to every thread on Stone Armor and Shield to say, "I find the aesthetics of Stone Armor/Shield objectionable and I will not use these armors." Like, it's true. And I'm certainly entitled to that opinion. But it also feels pretty personal and not really worth trying to tell people millions of times about.

I don't worry about recharge on Build Up with Stalkers -- in general, you'll get the power back through the global proc of recharge build up on your attacks before it naturally recharges. As a result, you definitely want Gaussian's Chance to Build Up on it, because Stalkers use Build Up a lot.