aethereal

Doesn't seem very generalizable. We have a lot of power slots already. The number of people who really are just looking for one more power slot to take travel powers, compared to the number who would take another useful-in-combat power, seems like it must be pretty small. And I doubt that in general what the game needs is to increase the incentive for every character to take tough and weave.

Maybe my biggest power customizataion request is a version of Neutron Bomb that doesn't involve the radioactive basketball. I feel like it's very out-of-place and goofy looking in a set that's otherwise pretty straightforward blasts. I'd like a variation describes a straight line towards its target and emits from the hands (or eyes), instead of like being formed up and lobbed.

No travel power has any prerequisites.

For better or for worse, it seems like the dev team is trying to encourage people to take travel powers, not discourage them.

My feeling is: Spines is pretty fine as an AoE-focused set. Having a damage aura in the primary is great, Throw Spines is really good, and in fact I think Ripper is pretty solid (at least for characters who can keep enemies close with taunts). But the first and most standard AoE kinda sucks. Having a PBAoE is nice, especially at lower levels. I don't think that Spine Burst should be made into an incredibly amazing power that's best in class. I think it should get maybe a 15% bump in DPA through lowered animation time. Solve redraw, do that, and my sense is: Spines is fine.

Wow!

I think that shaving the animation time of Spine Burst down a little is all it really needs, plus cosmetic stuff and no-redraw (which I assume everything eventually gets the katana treatment).

I don't think there's a ton of daylight between our positions. To some extent, we have to decide how much defense we want to balance around -- it is of course possible to build to softcap for S/L damage quite easily even with no defense in your actual powerset, and fairly possible to softcap at least one or two other damage types as well (though it's not like building tons of defense is costless), and complicating factors are that regeneration of course has a multiplicative mitigation when combined with resistance and defense (as do defense and resistance when combined with each other). But as with everything when we talk about high-end builds, we put a spotlight on late-game level 50 play, and my view is that we should be concerned with Regeneration's ability to stand as a mitigation layer without assuming Superior sets and Incarnate powers and so forth. However, the risk of that position is that if we make Regeneration function well with only mild defense/resist support for level 30 characters, we risk a scenario where Regen is overtuned for decked out tip-top builds.

It is similar to RTTC, but RTTC (and Bio's click heals/absorbs/regens that are dependent on number of targets) exist for a reason: they solve a real problem. And the tech is limited in how many ways we can do similar things. In terms of adding absorb to Regen, if you want a high-performing regen + absorb set, use bio armor. If you want a high-performing passive regen set, use willpower. Regeneration should have its own identity, not just edging closer to either bio or willpower.

I think that the big issue facing Regen is that it doesn't scale well, being too thresholded. Like, say you're a Defense or Resist-based character who mitigates 70% of damage that comes at you. You're facing 100 dps. You take 30 dps. Okay, now you're a Regen character who heals about 70 hp/s (averaging out your click-heals). You're facing 100 dps. You take 30 dps. So far, so good. Now along comes an enemy group who does 120dps (20% more damage). The defense and resist characters take 36 dps, 20% more than they otherwise would. The regen character takes 50 dps, 67% more than they otherwise would. Ooof. Some amount of this is unavoidable and flavorful, but I think it's too extreme right now (especially if we don't just assume that table-stakes for regen is building to soft-cap defense). There should be some amount of scaling to damage taken. Willpower and Bio do this by having heals/regen that scale to number of opponents, so it'd be nice if we could avoid the exact same mechanic for regen, but I'm not sure that any other real technology is available to make it happen functionally. Some ideas: 1. Have regen that scales to your current health (so more regen the lower health you have). This is doable, but I think tends to be a pretty subtle effect and given that regen's current weakness is alpha, it's not going to help a lot with alpha. 2. Maybe if you use Reconstruction when you're below 50% health (or whatever), it instantly comes off cooldown once? Second time, regular cooldown, similar tech to burst of speed or combat teleport? 3. Maybe an aura that gives you healing based on class of enemy near you? Like, less if there are minions, more if there are lts, more if there are bosses, more if there are EBs/AVs/GMs?

I think that something that underlies a lot of disagreements and talking past each other is an implicit disagreement about the appropriate power level of the game. Like, even among people who agree that the top-end power level should be brought down somewhat, or things that are borderline exploits nerfed, the question of how much is rarely explicitly discussed, but I think is really important. So, right now, top-end tanks can solo ITF at +4/x8 with enemies buffed and players debuffed. They can come close to doing it (can do it?) with no incarnates. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we think that's kind of crazy. Should top-end tanks be able to solo ITF at +4/x8 without the enemies buffed/players debuffed, or only with T4 incarnates? Should top-end tanks be able to solo ITF at +2/x4? Should top-end tanks be able to solo ITF at +0/x1? Reasonable people can disagree here! But when it comes to questions of balance, it's really important. Are we trying to cut off exploits (however defined), but keep power level otherwise mostly unchanged, maybe just even things out a bit? Shave off a thin slice of the very most powerful end, but still allow people to operate at difficulty levels that are to some extent "not intended"? Substantially nerf the top end?

Inspirations are powerful! A small purple inspiration is better than almost any defensive power in the game, during its duration. It is negligibly cheap: killing a single minion at level 50 gives you like I don't know, enough to buy 100 or so of them? If your inventory of insps were infinitely large, you could simply cap to-hit-chance, defense, damage, and damage resistance all the time for non-meaningful amounts of money. So the balance point around insps is some combination of it being a little obnoxious to activate a bunch of them, and sharply limited inventory space. The email trick vastly loosens your available inventory space, in a way that it seems very unlikely to have been intended for. I'm not deeply invested in defining whether or not things are exploits, but it wouldn't be at all unreasonable to regard this as one, and, if one felt that it was a sufficiently commonly used exploit, to stop it (perhaps, as @Wavicle suggested, by disabling taking things from inventory while combat-flagged).

Enhancement set names: Cold Snap Boreal Flash Freeze Frostbite Glaciate Chilling Wave Brittle Transition Shattering Freeze Deep Freeze Benumb (slow set) Rapid Condensation Negentropy Polar Express (j/k) Frigiate Icy Tomb (hold set, not that holds need more damage procs I guess) Ithaqua's Breath

Can you stack knockback? I think it's an instantaneous effect, so different sources can't stack it (one power activation can potentially stack, so if you have a knockdown power and then you add a %chance to KD proc, I think that can stack up into knockback). But I've never seen it stack from different sources. As far as I know, once you're in the KB/KD cycle, you're immune to other KB.

This is a persistent myth. Sentinel resistance debuffs are not unresistable.

Sometimes when I get the Arcane Power proc, Arcane Bolt does not recharge. Here's an example in my combat log: You Immobilize Button Man Buckshot with your Ring of Fire. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Ring of Fire for 3 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. Arcane Power bursts through your body! Arcane Bolt is still recharging. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. Arcane Bolt is recharged.

This has now either been resolved or resolved itself.

I get a client/server version mismatch error when trying to log into Brainstorm. I'm on a mac with Island Rum. When I restart Island Rum, it does not appear to detect any new client version.

If you want to aim for a just-north-of-5-seconds attack chain for Ice Melee, you need 200% recharge on Assassin's Ice Sword and Freezing Touch, which does probably mean slotting them both for local recharge -- sort of a bummer. Aiming for a 10.25 second attack chain isn't by any means a bad idea for many Stalkers: you'll proc better by forgoing local recharge, you can use the snipes, and remember that getting a near-guaranteed crit on your biggest power is like adding another big hitter power in your rotation. However, I've never sat down and tried to build an ideal chain for Ice, and with only Freezing Touch with its 1s animation time in the mix as a very attractive ST power from your primary (plus AS of course), maybe it's not a good idea. That said, what I did with my ice/bio was just use Assassin's Ice Sword, Freezing Touch, Moonbeam, and Ice Sword, and the thing was that between Build Up, DNA Siphon, Parasitic Aura, Ablative Carapace, Ageless, Hasten, and... I'm blanking on the name, the big +defense power in Soul Mastery... I just generally filled any hole in my attack chain with my plethora of defensive/utility clickies. Which maybe wasn't ideal, but there are a LOT of clickies in bio. Which I found more fun than the armor-and-forget powersets. Anyway, the point here is you can aim for 5-6 second attack chains, or you can aim for 10.25 second attack chains, but don't end up in the 8-10 second land, when the lockout will really screw you.

I just did a little bit of qualitative lowbie testing on a fire/kin controller with Arcane Bolt and Mystic Flight, levels 1-7. Planning to continue to level the character and grab more Sorcery powers and see what it looks like holistically. I used a Controller on the theory that Arcane Bolt was best for Trollers. Mystic Flight I mean, it's fine. The flight definitely feels faster than it does on live (presumably because it is much faster, especially for a lowbie). Trying to use the teleport to speed travel time still feels like a bit of a wash. Only marginally faster than just flying in the straight line instead? Arcane Bolt It was definitely nice to have a solid damaging power for a lowbie 'troller. One reason why I've tended to bounce off this AT has been that it's just so frustrating to actually kill shit in the early game. Arcane Bolt felt pretty chonky and damaging at least at this very early part of the game. It felt especially chonky and damaging with arcane power, of course, but I did note that if you want to use AB as a mainline power in constant rotation, the random yellow circle business wasn't well-aligned for that. I had to train myself not to wait for Arcane Power and just use it on cooldown because, like... that was the point. I wanted an in-the-rotation blast. So, for this character, in this point in their evolution, I probably would've quite happily traded the arcane power thing for a further reduction to cast time.

The chance to hide proc can only fire once every 10.25 seconds (regardless of its proc chance with the PPM calculations). After each time it hides you, it simply will not proc for 10.25 seconds. So if you have an attack chain that takes, say, 9.5 seconds to completely, what happens is: Attack chain 1: You get presumably around a 90% chance of hiding yourself after your Assassin's strike. Attack chain 2: You're still in the lockout, so 0% chance to hide. Attack chain 3: You're now out of the lockout, so 90% chance to hide again But since nobody has a really, really, really short attack chain of say 5.125 seconds, your 9.5 second attack chain actually means that there's 19 seconds between chances to hide. If you instead had a 10.5 second attack chain, you'll have a chance to hide every 10.5 seconds. This is really important when you're using your guaranteed crit from hide on a monster hit like Frozen Touch (or Energy Transfer, or Crushing Uppercut or whatever other Stalker attack you built to take advantage of your free crit), it can be a big chunk of your overall damage.

I played an Ice/Bio stalker through to the endgame. It's a powerful choice (as in: I soloed TFs and probably 20 or so AVs). Bio lacks in pure mitigation. I disagree with the previous poster about the essentialness of DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura (I mean -- if you want to play at high difficulties. If you want to play at +0/x1, I presume you can do whatever you want). You'll certainly want to invest in power pools and sets to turn the mediocre resistances and defenses that it gives you into something better (especially in offensive mode). But it gives you a damage bonus, good heals/absorbs, and powerful endurance tools. Getting the accolades helps everyone, but it particular helps heal/absorb/regen-based sets, which Bio is properly thought of, so you may want to consider how much you like/dislike getting them. One issue with the damage output of Ice is that it's actually too easy to build too short of an attack chain. I could pretty easily just use Assassin's Ice Sword, Frozen Touch, Moonbeam, and Ice Sword for filler, but if you do that, you run into the invisible 10.25 second lockout of the chance to hide proc (which I hate) and only get your crit-from-hide every other attack chain.

The way it "should" work to my understanding is: On cast of the power, it should proc as a ST-power of its actual recharge time, for any procs that are applicable to the target or caster. With each drop of the patch (which is a pseudopet), it will have a chance to re-activate procs, with an effective 10 second recharge time, and the appropriate area factor, per target. It won't be subject to the "only once every 10 second" rule because each patch is a new pseudopet that doesn't "know" about previous castings.

Inspirations are powerful. Having 33% uptime on two different inspiration effects with no slotting needed is being interpreted by some here as though it were obviously bad, but it's actually not obvious at all.

These are really exciting changes (more exciting, to me, than anything in the first three builds), and I think it should be a big counterexample to people who are concerned that feedback is not being heard. (Er, speaking of in general all the changes in build 4, not just the ones excerpted above).