aethereal

No, there practically aren't. Most enemies who stealth idle unstealthed. There are a few who idle stealthed, but they also hang out in groups with other unstealthed enemies. The ability to see through stealth, only while not in combat, is practically totally useless.

That's very flavorful and everything, but in practice in City of Heroes there aren't stealthed enemies lurking around outside your vision: stealth is a tactical add in combat. Losing your ability to see actual invisible foes in combat in trade for the ability to see nonexistent enemies that are waiting for a good moment to ambush you is just 100% a nerf.

Sure. But my point is that Bio/SS tankers are already in bad shape. As you say, no way to get substantial FCEN resistance as Bio, so if a current, live, Bio/SS is in Rage Crash, they take a -20% to their FCEN defense and are probably taking quintuple damage from FCEN attacks. I mean, with this version of SS, if your goal in life is to play a viable Bio/SS tank, you can take Unleashed Might and presumably have a viable character, maybe not an optimal one. So the beta version of SS seems to me like it makes SR/SS and SD/SS and probably (haven't looked closely) EA/SS and Ice/SS and Stone/SS viable, and sure, Bio/SS probably doesn't want Rage, but can take Unleashed Might. That all seems like it's a big win if what we're talking about is "what combos with SS are viable." If what we're talking about is "how does a Rad or Elec or whatever tank preserve the option to have a procced out double-stacked Rage build with pretty minimal downside," then okay, cool. But I think at that point why are we talking about Bio?

Okay, I did levels 30, 35, and 40 of my "one mission per five levels" walk up the levels of Kinetic Melee/SR Scrapper. At level 35, I started actually putting basically sensible sets into my powers instead of just taking whatever auto-enhance gave me. So I, for example, removed the Force Feedback (but not the proc) that it decided to put on me. I did, however, put Force Feedback's proc in both Burst and Repelling Torrent. I also put the Overwhelming Force KB>KD enhancement in Repelling Torrent. And I got a bunch of Luck of the Gamblers and stuck 'em in my defense sets. I still didn't do a "build" exactly -- like, I was not gaming out what my exact values were or anything, but I just went into basically good sets. I set diff to +1/x4 and definitely should've increased it by level 40. Level 30: Versus Arachnos, rough mission for me, I think they were debuffing my defense because my SR super-good DDR wasn't in yet due to enhancement values. I died twice. Not otherwise a lot to say. Level 35: Versus Council, no deaths, lots of running away. The Eclipse Nightwolves I think they are? What the bosses turn into? Fuckin' ROUGH man. I think they have high Energy Resist? I just wasn't doing damage to them. Level 40: Versus Thorns, pretty roflstomp. At this point my melee defense was softcapped and Power Siphon was up for every mob. FF proc in both of your AoEs with both of your target caps of 10 is pretty good actually?

As opposed to the present case where they take a -20% defense? If your defense is an important mitigation layer for you and you can't built it to unearthly levels, neither version of Rage is good for you.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I want to note that I'm pretty sure that a Super Reflexes or Shield Defense Tanker can trivially get to 55% in every positional defense. Heck, since I built a Ninjutsu Sentinel in the old 0.7 modifier regime who got about 50% in all of the positionals, I'm pretty sure a Brute in the new 0.85 modifier regime can get to 55%. I don't think Resistance-based Tankers can get to 110% Resistance in all the resistances, but I'm pretty sure I've seen builds where they get to 110% in several important resistances.

Doesn't seem like it should. The pseudopet has -1000% resistance which then hardcaps at -300% resistance in practice. Even if you somehow have +100% energy or dire resist from sets, which the pet inherits, that should.... Change the pet's resistance to -900% which still hardcaps at -300%.

Okay, so first: I misread the patch notes and didn't understand this, that was my bad, thanks for clarifying. Second: So my frame of mind going into this is that the old behavior is the most desirable, and that the efficient and defensive modes are (almost?) always less advantageous. My experience with using the three clickies of Bio (none of them proc-bombed, so all of them used defensively) is that it works like this: You go into a mob, hit an AoE or two, and fire off Parasitic Aura. This gives you enough absorb to stay alive long enough to kill most of the minions, at which point you hit DNA Siphon, which on a mix of alive and dead mobs refuels your health and endurance up to full, and then gives you a buffer of regen/recovery to handle killing everything left besides the bosses, and the bosses alone you probably don't need more than your resists/defenses to survive. You use Ablative Carapace as-needed to cover any gaps where, for example, a more resilient mob survives longer than usual or you pull extra aggro or whatever. So my experience is that using DNA Siphon just as a heal would overfill you and mostly be a waste, while using it purely for regen/recovery might leave you in a somewhat perilous situation where against harder opponents you want that buffer of a full health bar while you clear people down. Indeed, I started using DNA Siphon the way I described above because I realized that as I was previously using it (at the beginning of a spawn), it was much less effective. That said, this is just my guess, I haven't tested the Beta build. I'm wondering at intentions here. Is the thought that there are reasonably common situations where you're supposed to want the Defensive or Efficient versions of the power, or is it supposed to be a downside of the Defensive and Efficient mode?

I know that this is way too late for suggestions, but just thought I'd throw out that Kinetic Melee seems like a natural set to have some of the wacky vectored knocks that are now possible. It is after all a set about controlling motion. Repulsing Torrent is honestly cool as knockback, I liked the visuals and everything, but it's just not synergistic. A pull-style knock might be a fun way to show theme without being frustrating for characters, or some knockup. Honestly, this probably wouldn't work, but what about an attack that knocked people back and then knocked them forward into you (so that they ended up in roughly the same place they started)?

I, uh, literally said I was going to in the text you quoted. I just wanted to try it out without first, give it a try in its natural state in the spirit of experiencing the set.

Okay, so I've been testing a Kin Melee/SR Scrapper with the following methodology: After a short intro to warm myself up, I do one radio mission (whichever is the top one) and then increase my levels by 5, then do another one. At level 20, I increased my notoriety to +0/x3, and at level 25, to +0/x4. I did auto-enhance with SOs until level 20, and then did auto-enhance with Sets at level 25. I've chosen entirely powers from my primary/secondary as of level 25, which is where I am now. I chose Practiced Brawler and am skipping Confront. Otherwise getting everything. Basic impressions: Kin Melee feels pretty powerful when Power Siphon is up, somewhat weak when it's not. I feel like aggressively working on recharge for Power Siphon is the key to this set. I appreciate the tools here: having the knockdowns and the ranged attacks and stuns are all nice. Having the newly large PBAoE and the large cone in Repulsing Torrent makes AoE feel pretty solid. I tried out Repulsing Torrent's knockback, but honestly it still feels bad to have knockback, I think for level 30+ I'll do a KB>KD enhancement there. I want to like knockback, but as one of your two major AoE attacks it's just counter productive -- you don't want to spread out the group by knocking half of them back and so they aren't there to be hit by Burst. My level 20 mission was against Thorns, and it went pretty well, despite things like "drawing aggro from two groups of oops-all-ghosts," which is ordinarily a nightmare. Power Siphon was really helpful against the to-hit debuffs of the ghosts. I did have to run away a few times, but died only once early, which I largely attribute to figuring out the character. My level 25 mission was against Freaks, and it was notably pretty nice. Having Repulsing Torrent and Focused Burst made Super Stunners very mildly less annoying than usual. Having the energy damage against Tanks was nice, they felt less annoyingly tanky than usual (but maybe I just have solo bosses turned off? So that might be that -- it's an oversight, will turn on). The knockdowns and stuns make it less likely that Freaks do their self-heal successfully. No deaths, had to run away once or twice, mostly due to endurance.

Also: has it always been the case that Repulsing Torrent only does an FX on the person targeted, and everyone else hit by it gets ragdolled backwards with no FX? That feels weird.

Trying to make sure that I understand new Power Siphon. Does it work like this? 100 base damage power, let's say 100% base damage enhancement (ED cap + a few minor set bonuses, let's say). So 200 damage materializes normally out of Power Siphon mode. So 1 stack of Power Siphon basically increases the base damage of the power to 110? And then adds 10% to damage enhancement, so you get a total of 110 * 2.1 = 231 damage? And 5 stacks of Power Siphon increases base damage of the power to 150, and then adds 50% to damage enhancement for a total of 150 * 2.5 = 375? In comparison to the old version in which: 1 stack of Power Siphon = 100 * (2.25) = 225 5 stacks of Power Siphon = 100 * (3.25) = 325 Is that correct?

I agree that it's overall a substantial nerf.

Suggestion: You could make AE custom enemies where the minions have a low damage hold power and nothing else, play on a high team size notoriety and their alpha should be to spam you with it.

It's not objectively worse by every metric since (I assume?) sentinel crits work like other crits and are enhanceable. If you have a 100 base damage power + 100% damage slotting, then: Old Shinobi-Iri: 100 damage * (2 + 0.4) = 240 damage New Shinobi-Iri if it crits: (100 damage base +40 damage crit) * 2 = 280 damage So the highs are higher. But of course as you say, only 30% chance, so you have to say 100% chance of 40 damage vs 30% chance of 80 damage, lower damage in expectation. Overall a nerf, just not in every possible way. It would break even in terms of expected value at +50% crit chance. (If you hit Aim + Gaussian Build Up before shooting, so you have 200% total damage bonus, again for simplicity with a 100 base damage power, then a crit looks like: (100 + 40) * 3 = 420 damage You now have done 120 damage with your crit, it's still barely less damage in expectation than the old +40% damage bonus.)

Regardless of overall power level, I think it's a real shame to get rid of the differentiated effects of hitting living and dead targets with DNA Siphon. Using DNA Siphon on the optimal mix of living and dead targets was a somewhat rare feeling of gameplay nuance and finesse in a game that's often very logistical: high level play in CoH is often just about your build, with set-and-forget powers that let you AFK in the middle of a mob, safely. But DNA Siphon was the antithesis of that, not just clicky but rewarding clicking in a way that was reactive not just to your health level but to a particular moment in your attack on a spawn. There's not a lot of that in this game and I think we should preserve what there is.

I think Shield Charge shouldn't "waste" your hide. I assume what will happen if it goes live like this is you'll run into a group, use whatever AoE attack, then Shield Charge from range zero (so you get the crit bonus on your other AoE attack), which is probably fine balance wise, but kinda feels like a flavor fail. It's supposed to be a shield charge! The "teleport in" thing isn't that big a deal mechanically, especially on a Stalker, but does feel like a fun flavor aspect of the set.

A bub-build, as it were.

Psychic Blast gets you there for your primary.

I don't think it is. The energy and psychic damage is a small amount of damage on two powers only. It'd be enormously hard to find an enemy where you could reasonably notice the difference between the performance of a Staff wielder using Form of the Body/Mind/Soul in terms of damage type only. The set overwhelmingly remains smashing damage no matter what Form you're in.

And despite all that, Staff is still a kinda meh set, even on Stalkers.

There are a lot of weird assumptions implicit in these claims.

Sets are a deep topic, but if all you're looking to do is improve on the performance you get from common IOs, then buying attuned cheap sets will do it, as long as the set says its level range goes past 25. The sets you called out there are all good, but they're fairly expensive. Between "getting the generally in-demand sets" and "common IOs" is a big gulf of "buy reasonably priced sets, don't get a ton of amazing synergy out of the set bonuses, but do get higher enhancement values + some modestly useful set bonuses."

I think you might be able to set up a bind or macro to toggle it on and off in one button press? You can't activate two powers in one button press, but you might be able toggle on and off in one press?