aethereal

We definitely, absolutely, positively should not add any power pools that give defense levels higher than Combat Jumping. This is the "pray that people change their minds" strategy. How long does it have to fail before people recognize that it's always going to fail? The reason that people get the defensive powers is that it's actually better. A character built to the meta can do more and higher-end content than one not built to the meta, ceteris paribus. And people want that. We can spend all year complaining that people shouldn't want that, but they do. Yes, the game is already easy, no, you don't need to build to the meta if you want to do lower-difficulty content or only team, but so what. People turn out to want to make their superheroes powerful! On some level the right thing to do is to do a drastic rebalancing of defense, global recharge, and PPM. But that then throws thousands of developed characters under the bus. I think it's eminently possible to do those things in a way that leaves a resulting game that's much more diverse and interesting, but the player base doesn't feel their time honored, and that's a valid concern. Nobody wants to have their character who they've invested time and attention into making the Ultimate Superhero suddenly become a weakling. If we don't do a drastic rebalancing of defense, global recharge, and PPM, then we have to try to encourage diversity within the context of "people are going to build to softcap and perma-hasten." That's a pretty awful constraint, but it does seem possible to do. We just have to sacrifice one power in those pools to be a CJ-equivalent defensive power and then we have the other four to build diverse interesting powers with.

I don't think there's a super strong reason to avoid combat-jumping-level defense powers in the following pools: Teleport, Force of Will, Presence, Healing, and *maybe* Sorcery. It won't let people get any really higher defense levels overall (they'll sub out Leaping or Flying for one of those pools), and it could create some diversity in the meta. Pursuant to Sunsette's point, is it the most elegant solution to the monomanic focus of the meta on Fighting/Speed/Leadership and then one of Leaping, Flight, or Stealth? No. But inelegant solutions are better than no solutions, and the current approach of, like, "Maybe pray that for some reason people stop wanting defense powers" isn't a solution.

For fun, count the number of female characters who have Serrated Sugar hair. (Though male characters have it even worse. The male hairstyles are dire.)

And the animation time of the power! The +50% chance to crit proc is 2 PPM if it's non-superior, 3 PPM if it's superior. It's a LOT better if it's superior, I feel like somebody didn't understand that there's a bigger difference between 2 and 3 PPM than between like 6 and 7 PPM as in for example the Brutes' proc? Oh well. Total Focus has a recharge time of 20 seconds, is single-target, obviously, and has an animation time of 2.53 seconds. For the non-superior version, the proc rate if you assume a 20 second recharge time (ie, no recharge slotting, which is impossible, because the proc itself comes with recharge) it has a 75% proc rate in Total Focus. The superior version has an above-90% proc rate at 20 seconds. The ideal recharge time for the power after local slotting, to maximize proc rate while not giving up any recharge advantages, is about 15.5 seconds, so you can get about 33% local recharge in without impacting your proc rate. It's worth noting again how much of a big deal the superior version of the scrapper proc is. It's got 50% better uptime than the non-superior version! And given how important this particular proc is to the performance of the class, at least at optimized ST attack chains, you have a big wall at 50.

I mean, if you want, dump your combat log. It's more likely that you're missing the notification than that the RNG has a special hate-on just for you. Now, not critting against a single spawn, on a scrapper, especially if the spawn has a low number of enemies in it, is not going to be particularly unusual. Stalkers only proc fear on slow AS's. I wouldn't regard stalker and scrapper crits as entirely fungible. Stalkers depend on them more than Scraps, of course, with lower base damage. But also with their ATOs you'll get a trickle of crits reliably for a stalker, whereas a scrapper with the ATO set will get a sort of feast or famine situation where you'll get few-few-few-several-in-a-row-few-few-few. The lockout on stalkers' ATO means that scrappers can abuse PPM mechanics to get a much higher uptime on high-crit-rate stuff than stalkers can.

That will certainly increase the proc rate of your ATO. It seems very unlikely to me that you are "not critting at all in a whole mission," though, regardless of your ATOs. The odds of a scrapper crit against a minion are 5%. Even if you fight only minions, if you attack twice per minion, a spawn of three minions is 6 attacks. If you fight five spawns in a mission, that's 30 attacks. That's a 79% chance of critting sometime in that mission, and honestly it seems like a mega-worst case. With ATOs (even imperfectly slotted) and non-minion opponents and more than x1 difficulty and so forth it feels like crits should not be that rare. Scrappers are quite powerful, and the best scrappers probably do slightly better single-target damage than the best stalkers. I do think that in general low random chances can be pretty frustrating.

Well, I mean, if it were a blast that did 450 base damage (or more? Not sure how many times it actually fires), it'd be pretty overtuned. It's gotta have some downside. I don't mean to disagree that either electric blast is in rough shape or that voltaic sentinel is a pretty obnoxious power. But let's also note that it puts out a lot of damage during its lifespan.

Doesn't the voltaic sentinel fire it's attack more than ten times during it's existence? That's like 450 damage. At 3 seconds of cast time, 150 DPA, like 20 DPE. That's certainly the best deal in electric blast. Is it annoying? It sure is. Does it's damage play out over a minute? Of course. Is the inability to select targets frustrating? Naturally. But it's a really good deal on is cast time and end cost.

Super Jump doesn't injure you. If you jump from the ground to the ground (or anywhere where your landing point is at the same level or higher than your origin point), you won't be injured. If you jump such that you come up to your maximum jump height, then land below your origin point, the difference between them is a fall, and you'll take falling damage.

Sorry, I didn't mean that the Hawaiian NPC shirt is terrible. I meant that the existing male dress shirt is terrible. Though it's more the weirdly shapeless, wrinkled sleeves than the shirt per se.

Freeze Ray has a 60' range, shorter than most blaster blasts, so you are correct, BFR has longer range -- but not longer than is typical for most single-target Blaster powers. It's not that BFR is long-range, it's that FR is short range (the only short-ranged single-target power in Ice Blast). Ice Blast has these ranges: 80 feet: Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, Bitter Ice Blast, Bitter Freeze Ray 60 feet: Freeze Ray, Ice Storm, Blizzard 40 feet: Frost Breath 0 feet: Aim EDIT: That said, it might be reasonable to say, as Tahliah did originally, that BFR has "great" range -- for a blaster hold. There aren't a lot of holds in Blaster primaries -- just FR, BFR, Electric Blast's Tesla Cage (60' range) and Dark Blast's Abyssal gaze (which has a 70' range). But there are several disorients in blaster primaries, Stunning Shot in Archery, Suppressive Fire in Dual Pistols, Beanbag Round in Assault Rifle, Lancer Shot in Beam Rifle, and Screech in Sonic Blast. Of those, Lancer Shot has an 80' range and the rest have 60' ranges. Psi Blast has a ranged sleep, which is 100' range (but Psi generally has long range). So it looks to me like there's a weak norm of 60' range in blaster primary ST mezzes, with FR conforming and BFR having a longer range. I was unaware of this before now, and apologize if I confused people who understood that norm and understood Tahliah to be saying that BFR had an above-60' range. EDIT2: Rad Blast also has Cosmic Burst, an 80' range attack with a 100% chance of ST stun. Still, the majority of ST ranged mezzes in blaster primaries are 60' range, though there are quite a few exceptions.

One, honestly, really terrible option.

It uses one of your power pool slots for a pool that gives you no defense powers.

If anyone wants to use Superspeed, they already are invested in that pool, they can get it. If anyone wants to get Superjump, they are already invested in the pool, they can get it (but they don't, because it's mutually exclusive with Combat Jumping). If anyone wants to get Flight, they can use Hover instead of Combat Jumping (and some do) and they can get it (but they don't , because it's mutually exclusive with Hover and Hover is superior for combat purposes). So the upshot of the proposed change is that if someone wants to get Teleport, they can do so without a problem. It seems deeply unlikely to me that people will find it worth giving up a power choice for Teleport. If they do, then that sounds like it adds to the diversity of play experience without probably moving top end power level and that sounds positive, not negative. All that said, I think the benefits of this change are very low and it's not actually worth doing, so this is going to be my last post on the topic.

If travel powers were actually powerful assets in combat, people with top-performing builds would take them and use them in combat, which they don't (again, except Speed of Sound in PvP).

I don't mind pure buff suggestions in a lot of things, but we shouldn't be buffing top-performing sets in their area of top performance. If someone wants to give Sonic or Electric Blast a better DPA ST attack, that's not crazy. If someone looks at Ice Blast and says, "What this set needs is a buff to its ST damage performance," I mean, come on dude. We should not: a. Make it easier for people to build defense. b. Make it easier for people to build global recharge. c. Buff Fire Blast or War Mace at all. d. Buff ST performance on Ice Blast or Energy Melee (or honestly significantly buff them at all). e. Improve Claws' Spin. d. etc. (this is a very non-exhaustive list) We should strongly consider: a. Major buffs to Electric Blast and, at least on Blasters, Sonic Blast, and quite possibly AR (I don't know much about it) b. Improving Sentinels overall, and maybe Controllers too. c. Making psi damage less feast-or-famine d. etc. (this is a very non-exhaustive list) Basically work against the meta. Bring low-performing sets up to par, not just boost top-end power.

I think that we should stop dicking around with travel power changes -- the latest round of changes were interesting, but also kind of a waste of time in my opinion. That said, it wouldn't be insane to make a "power pool" or something like it that just gave people access to the four classic travel powers without costing them a power pool slot (so literally just flight, teleport, superspeed, super jump). I don't think that can reasonably be abused -- it probably just means that people who really want teleport for concept aren't punished as badly as they are in the game today. You could probably also give people access to Mystic Flight and whatever the Super Jump clone is called (but not Speed of Sound, which at least for PvP is a power that impacts combat balance heavily).

And in fact BFR has better DPA than Ice Bolt and Ice Blast already (albeit way worse than FR/BIB). People are welcome to not like the fact that it has a long animation time, and it suffers badly in comparison to FR/BIB, but it's not like it's bad DPA (and of course it can be heavily procced today). I think it's worthwhile considering changes to BFR, but those changes shouldn't be "Ice gets yet another absurdly high DPA ST attack with a hold baked in." Making it a "snipe" that does high damage/hold on the slow version but very low damage/hold on the fast version might be interesting. So people who use it as an opener now could still do that, and people who want to use it to stack holds on a boss or something in combat can use it, but it's not part of an optimal DPS chain.

As a point of order, BFR has standard accuracy and range. It certainly attracts aggro and had notify mobs set to true. I don't understand aggro calculations in any detail, but I'd be surprised if it attracts "little" aggro compared to any other ST hold/blast.

This doesn't capture the dynamic of defense, in two ways: 1. LotG is crucial to building to permahasten, and if your powersets do not include copious defense powers having defense powers in pools is a major premium as a complement to Hasten, not an alternative to it. 2. Defense offers strongly increasing returns as you approach softcap. If it were easy to hit softcap for most characters without pool powers, the ability to pick up defense pool powers more easily wouldn't be a big deal -- but outside of Time defenders and defense-based armor sets, it's not easy to build to softcap without pool powers. If it were impossible to get near softcap for most characters, it wouldn't be a big deal to give people access to more defense powers. But in fact, we live in a world in which getting S/L/E close to or to softcap is possible with pool powers and set bonuses, but it's tight. So every additional +3% or so you can pick up matters.

There's also a smaller unavoidable shell on the T9. I wish that bio armor was less all or nothing: that there were meaningful shell options that weren't so gigantic and over the top, but also weren't pretty generic particle effects.

Obviously on some level "making sleeps better" is the right answer to Siren Song, but I don't think anyone has come up with a very convincing way to make sleeps better. Certainly not a convincing way that doesn't involve a lot of new coding. In terms on specifically why should Siren Song get looked at over any other sleep, well: 1. It's in a generally underperforming set (on blasters). 2. The set specifically has issues with single target damage, with an underperforming heavy hitter power and no snipe, so it's kind of frustrating that SS doesn't play well with AOE, which is still not great in Sonic, but at least they have some. 3. It's in-theme for it to be a confuse (as the legendary sirens were like mind control through song). Now, could SS just be like "swap a mag3 confuse in for the sleep, of similar duration"? Hahaha no. AoE confuses are ridiculously strong and set defining for actual control sets, you can't just hand them out to blasters. As I'm gaming it out, confuse probably isn't the right mez to add: it doesn't play well with sleep. Maybe add a shorter mag2 stun to it, so that minions at least stay CCed if the sleep is broken? Alternately, a ST or very low target cap (like, 2 or 3) confuse instead of sleep gives you a chance to leverage your -res debuffs while solo.

Confuse instead of sleep would I think be nice for Siren's Song, but it's hard to see how you could balance an AoE confuse on a Blaster. At the very least, it'd need to be a very short confuse.

I really think that there's an obvious place for "Hellfire Assault" or "Hellfire Manipulation" dom or blaster secondaries that simply use the existing whip animations or even the entire powers, mixed with some green fire-themed other powers. People would love it, and it would solve all of that issue of "there aren't enough whip animations for a melee set" and "whip animations are insanely complicated, we can't make more of them." EDIT: Or even an epic powerset for Sentinels, since they get melee powers in their epics.

Nothing else moves in other than a straight line. Like, they're mostly bulbous masses, that's not what I'm objecting to. It's that you lob the neuron bomb in an arc, and it starts over your head and disconnected from your body. The rest of the set doesn't do that.