aethereal

Teleport doesn't really bypass terrain. Actually, in a lot of circumstances, it has a harder time with terrain than either Super Jump or Flight, because it can be hard to make tight turns. Teleport also really struggles with big zones, at least at low-mid levels, because you run out of endurance in a way that you don't with the other three travel powers. There's nothing to make you feel superheroic like taking a break somewhere to catch your breath before resuming your hopping across the level. Teleport is the fastest travel power on a featureless plane or space, but its speed is often compromised by take-off/landing problems, due to the clumsiness of its terrain situation, especially in crowded landing zones, where you may have to make several extra hops to actually get to the door. And of course Teleport requires a ton of active clicking and management by the player. That's a big list of disadvantages. It doesn't have a ton of advantages to make up for that. But let's say that we think that making teleport mildly more powerful will omg-imbalance the game (hah!). Surely we can all agree that Long Range Teleport is just awful? Right now, it's completely obviated by enterbasefrompasscode (and yes, I know, that's supposed to go away at some point, but they sure aren't rushing taking it away), which offers no wind-up, no cool-down, and a much more comprehensive list of zone destinations, and, oh yeah, no power slot. Two load screens instead of one, but the load screen to get into a small base is usually less than the wind-up on LRT. And also by the way it's also obviated about 50% of the time by Ouroborus. And even if LRT weren't strictly worse than a slash command that every player has access to at level 1, it was never a great power. Getting to a tram/ferry was often just as fast or only marginally slower than the wind-up on LRT, and ultimately, end of the day, even when it did save you some time, all it saves is a small amount of time. Your character is no better at fighting, no better at escaping, no better at tactical movement. At least Afterburner gives you a slot for LotG and gets you to the trainer faster. My medium-range teleport idea wouldn't mean you could ignore moving through the zone. It wouldn't take you straight to a mission door. But it would let teleporters have something that they can do that other travel powers can't, that would save them a mild amount of time and give them some cool factor when everyone else is slogging from one end of IP to another. PS: Teleport also lacks a first-tier power that many or most builds want to take somewhere, like Combat Jumping, Hover, or Hasten.

I would like to see an additional bonus power added to either teleport or long range teleport. This power would, when clicked, bring up a pop-up menu of potential teleport targets in the current zone, and allow you to teleport to them after a short or no wind-up. In a standard world zone, those targets could be either the centers of each neighborhood, or else the zone features (tram, ae, arena, etc). In a PvP zone, there could be no features, to prevent the power from being used as an unfair escape mechanism. On most instance/mission maps, there could be no features, or else the zone exit could be a feature (which would trivialize a small number of missions in which there is a challenge in getting yourself, only, to the exit). The goal here would be to allow players who invest in the teleport pool to really feel like they have a unique ability to skip through space and quickly get around in a way that other players don't.

Maybe they don't feel great just beating on an unresisting foe? That was admittedly something that never felt great to me about the "more damage to stunned enemies" thing. But if I were responsible for theming it, I'd probably say something like the person was "charged" while stunned, you'd dumped so much energy into them that literally your fists were repelled by them. If you wanted to, you could only make it for your own stuns (which would perhaps theme better and would also solve concerns that you wouldn't play well with other people who do lots of stuns).

I mean, in the scenario where my idea was developed into an actual full release, you'd just make sure that the math worked out, so that it was overall a bonus. Like, I proposed that Total Focus do 150% of its current damage to an unstunned target! That's a HUGE bonus to an already very high-damage power, and you're guaranteed a chance at least once per enemy if you use it as your initiator. And my experience with Energy Melee is that there are certainly times when your enemies are unstunned. Having it be a little more thinky and be like, "Oh, I can use one of my powers that gives big damage against unstunned enemies" seems like the kind of thing that gives the set some unique character. The goal would be that if someone just did a naive attack chain and ignored stun statuses, you'd get a solid, first-tier single-target damage experience. Something that you can feel basically good about. If you were carefully managing your attacks so that you were maximizing the use of your extra-damage attacks, you'd have unparalleled best-among-melee-sets single-target damage. I think guaranteed stun is a lot better than guaranteed KB, chance to stun, comparing lightning clap and my proposed stun (I mean, presuming at least mag 3 and a decent length to the stun).

You could give stalkers less bonus damage than brutes and tankers get. I think it would be wrong to say, "more damage than their recharge/endurance account for in some circumstances, less in others" is penalizing a powerset. My suggestion is that the mainstay attacks would get no or very mild nerfs to their damage against stunned targets, and bonuses to their damage against unstunned targets. The ones that would get a serious nerf to their damage against stunned targets are already (at least arguably) situational powers: a big bonus to their damage against unstunned targets just gives them an actual situational role rather than being skips. A decently wide-area guaranteed AoE mez is a pretty cool ability, especially for a melee set. I don't know that stun would be a garbage power (though sufficiently high performance builds that don't need a panic button would probably find it skippable). Certainly less of a garbage power than it is now.

I don't think that the HC staff really care a whole lot about these kind of detailed suggestions for how to change a power-set. At most, they may read them to graze for some ideas to pluck out and use out of context, but I don't think that anyone is ever really going to go, "Oh, let's just do exactly what X said!" So I regard them as mostly exercises in freeform game design. That said, I think it's an interesting problem to try to make EM be an interesting, worthwhile set, on-par with other well-regarded sets like Street Justice, Fire Melee, Staff, or War Mace (not necessarily overwhelmingly good like Titan Weapons), without adding an explicit combo-style mechanic. So I like noodling about that even though I think there is roughly a 0% chance that my ideas will be adopted. So one of the things I often see people suggest is bonus damage to stunned opponents. I don't like that for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that hey, if we're dealing with a heavily-single-target set, that set should excel against harder opponents, certainly bosses, and also EBs, AVs, and GMs. All of those have escalating resistance to mezzes, and it kinda sucks to make your bonus damage be more available against targets least worth the time of a single-target-focused set. So what if we turn that around? How about bonus damage to targets that are NOT stunned? That feels kinda cool, and rewards a slightly more interesting play-style than "extra damage if stunned," where you switch targets once your stuns get through. And it naturally makes you better against targets with higher mez resistance, which is as I think it should be. Here's a general idea: Barrage: 90% of present damage to stunned targets, 150% of present damage to unstunned targets Energy Punch: 100% of present damage to stunned targets, 110% of present damage to unstunned targets Bone Crusher: 100% of present damage to stunned targets, 110% of present damage to unstunned targets Energy Transfer: 90% of present damage to stunned targets, 120% of present damage to unstunned targets Total Focus: 75% of present damage to stunned targets, 150% of present damage to unstunned targets (I'm sure the numbers would have to be tweaked and playtested. Think of them as directional rather than The Right Values). The concept there is that players can build an attack chain of EP/BC/ET and, if they choose, ignore this mechanic and just run it against people as normal and it's not wildly different. Mild buff overall. But they can use Barrage and Total Focus, which don't necessarily have a place in a current optimal EM attack chain, as burst damage initiators or whenever targets come out of stun. That leaves Stun. I continue to like a targeted AoE stun as the new version, and in this it self-limits to some extent, since stuns are a bit of a mixed blessing for you, which feels about right for giving a melee class an AoE mezz.

Yes, legal damage is bullets and blades, smashing damage is punches, kicks, clubs, staves, etc.

I wasn't suggesting any mechanics that interrelate to whirling hands, so the fact that the stalker doesn't get whirling hands isn't a response to me. I think that almost all characters get low on health from time to time, if they're willing to turn the challenge up high enough. And, hey, look, if you're on a faceroll all-Council team, no matter what we do with this single-target oriented set, EM is not going to be a great option. If you are somehow making a WP brute that's so very defensively strong that at +4/x8 solo against all enemy types you never dip below half health, man, okay. Maybe cut back on your slotting on your armor set, I don't know. But let me point out that the status quo is that people who are very, very, very interested in extremely high-performance builds are already avoiding EM, and that I'm not convinced that just giving back ET's old animation time would make the set attractive to people who are very, very, very interested in extremely high-performance builds. In other threads, I've seen people say that they don't want special unique mechanics around EM, that if they wanted to manage those kinds of mechanics, they'd play rad or psi or savage or titan or DB or even Kin melee. Which is a position I'm sympathetic to, but it does play into what I see as the core problem of making EM interesting: that it does very few things right now, and you can easily make the set be great at single-target damage with chance to stun and still have a couple powers left over to do... what? Be redundant? Be bad? Bad AND redundant? I already see advice on EM to skip Total Focus because you can build an attack chain out of Energy Punch / Bone Crusher / Energy Transfer. If we make Energy Transfer better than it is today, then that advice presumably gets more relevant.

iTrial Dayjob!

The bind solutions are pretty imperfect, so at least people are giving that up. A core skill of CoH gameplay is splitting your attention. Monitoring your health, your end, your power cooldowns, your status, whether you've been buffed or debuffed, etc. The major way that this game adds challenge to actual play is to ask you to monitor one more thing. You don't have to like that, but that is what the challenge mostly is, and having to notice your power is off cooldown and clicking it before your buff drops in the middle of battle is in fact an additional skill bar, and it is why we don't have more than one autopower.

It has been said that the whip powers are perhaps the most complicated animations in the game, with like four different things going on moving in parallel for them. As far as I know, we are likely to see new/modifier animations for literally every other set prior to seeing them for whips. An assault set on the other hand feels very achievable right now, with fire blast powers combining with whip powers.

Yeah, I also suggested an AoE stun. I think that's a consistent, relatively large-area control like an AoE stun would be a cool feature of the set. I think that ET was obviously supposed to be an interesting part of Energy Melee, but it's hard to make the health cost be interesting -- if it's big enough to be significant, it works hard against the value that ET provides -- like, in a very tough fight where you need to pull out the stops and end it quickly is the place where you're least likely to want to pay a significant health cost. And there are too many degenerate strategies, like "just use it at the very beginning of the fight." I did have an idea for making ET more interesting on the way in to work today: keep the current nominal health cost, speed up the animation, and give it bonus damage when the casting toon is low on health (from "good, solid, worthy-of-inclusion-in-your attack chain DPA" when you're at full health to "outstanding, best-in-the-game DPA" when you're at less than 25% health). Now, I know, this is like old Defiance and everyone hates old Defiance. But, a few things mitigate that: It's not an entire AT's schtick, it's a currently-underused powerset. Modern melee characters have a lot more ability to successfully ride the line of staying at low healthy but alive than old-Defiance blasters did (who had fewer hit points, probably no defense or resistance or healing worth mentioning, and few to no controls). Especially if we combined an AoE stun with this ET option, giving you an ability to panic yourself out of incoming damage for a few moments while you used a self-heal or whatever. I think this would potentially do what I assume ET was supposed to do, cause EM to be a set that involves playing risky and riding a line.

I think you're underselling how focused EM is. It's not just that it has 5 ST attacks, it's that it has fewer distinguishing features than other sets. The closest comparison is Martial Arts, which, yes, has 6 ST attacks, one AoE, a conventional build-up, and then taunt/confront/I forget how stalkers work and don't care. For brutes and tanks, one of those ST attacks gets +def, which is a useful tool, and also I don't think that MA would be considered by most to be a standout set. On a purely fluffy level, I think that the diversity of the animations of MA gives it a little more interest when you're executing your ST attack chain. Super Strength and Kinetic Melee both have four ST melee attacks and one ST ranged attack, which is at least supposed to be a diverse tool in your set (I'm maybe dubious of the ranged attack actually being useful). They also both have variant build ups that give the set more flavor in that power slot. KM's T9 interacts with its build up, too. Street Justice has its ST attacks broken up between combo builders and combo finishers, giving it way more of a role in using all those things, and it also has a variant build up. Fiery Melee has one of its 5 ST attacks as a DoT, which... might be relevant. It also has more diverse animations and okay yeah, it's a pretty boring set and it does have two AoEs in there so at least there's some more utility. I don't know, I haven't played FM in like 10 years, is it still great damage? There are other sets that, more than the ST/AoE balance, rival EM for just not doing all that much. Battle Axe and War Mace both have one more AoE but kind of don't do anything besides pile on more attacks that are pretty similar. War Mace at least is really high damage, right? And Battle Axe is... not great, is my impression. I feel like with a reversion to ET animation and nothing else, EM would go from being "arguably the very worst melee set" to "kind of tied with MA and Battle Axe for low-tier melee sets that don't give you a lot to do."

I'm not saying "stop stunning on every attack," and I'm not saying it shouldn't have a good set of single-target attacks that do stuns. I'm saying do we really need 5 or 6 powers to achieve that? And really it's to some degree 6 or 7, because Stun is another single target damaging attack that does stuns, albeit one that swings way more stun and way less damage. (But some of the proposals I've seen here are "up the damage of Stun," at which point it's YET ANOTHER thing that does exactly the same as all the other powers in EM). In all fairness, there are other power-sets that kind of follow this pattern. Battle Axe and War Mace are basically this except the T9 is a cone. Broadsword is this except the stun-equivalent is parry, which is better than stun (maybe, depending on how easily your armor set soft-caps you), and the T9 is a cone. Martial arts is maybe the closest comparison. Ultimately what I'm saying is that we should be able to (easily) give the player all the "I do high single-target damage via an uncomplicated attack chain that involves punching people with pom-poms" in at most 5 powers, and then use Stun or Energy Transfer to give the player some kind of other tool besides yet more ST damage.

"Just make the big single-target damage plus chance-to-stun attacks good" has the problem that the design space in the set for "good damage single target attacks with chance to stun" is pretty crowded. There are five attacks in the set that are just "let's hit 'em and do some damage and maybe stun," six for Stalkers (so that's barrage, energy punch, bone crusher, energy transfer, total focus, and optionally assassin's strike). Of those, only ET has a slight complicating factor, and it's widely agreed not to be a big deal. The remaining four powers in the set are two generic ones (build up and either taunt or assassin's strike), stun (which is pretty bad), and whirling hands (which is mediocre). If ET were better, that'd obviously be better for the set than the status quo, but it feels like Energy Melee needs something else going on than "five or six attacks that are basically all the same except for DPA."

All I want is for Energy Melee to be good. I love the looks of the set so much. I'm fine with a single-target focus. But it feels like it has so many problems. So, TF is presumably going to get some better animation time per the Dom changes (or at least they're going to try to push in that direction, who knows if they'll make it work). What if we say that all your ST damage needs can be handled by barrage, energy punch, bone crusher, total focus. That is after all four single-target punch-y powers. It feels like five such powers is gilding the lily. Just change their damage and recharge times until you can make a first-tier single-target attack rotation with just those four powers. Now we have space for stun and energy transfer to be things that don't need to be in your main attack rotation. Maybe stun could be a zero-damage AoE stun on a long cooldown that could be an "oh shit" button for a set without much AoE. Get yourself into trouble, bam, you're a fake controller for this mob, take eight seconds to focus down a few more mobs before they resume kicking your ass. Okay hear me out for Energy Transfer: Maybe give it a fast animation, give it low cooldown, and its schtick is it gives your enemy -30% resist energy damage (plus maybe energy-punch levels of damage), and it gives that for a long time, like 30 seconds. And the resist energy damage debuff stacks with self. BUT, it also gives you a tag for the same 30 second timer, and each tag you give yourself multiplies the self-damage. So basically you can up your damage a lot, but if you do you are really badly hurting yourself. Or alternately you can use it every 30 seconds for a mild damage increase and negligible self-damage. Stun and this version of ET have a certain amount of synergy, too: find you're flying too close to the sun in your use of ET? No problem, stun everyone to reduce incoming damage a lot, and breathe out for a few seconds, stop spamming ET.

Warwolves sure as hell have fingers.

As far as you know.

Could someone (CP or other) note the diff between current Pineapple and current Live, in addition to the first message listing of diff between current Pineapple and previous Pineapple? It's getting hard for me as someone who reads these conversations but doesn't follow them obsessively to stack up all the changes.

I don't think he's suggesting that existing stories in the AE would be no XP. Just this new class of AE missions he's suggesting adding.

I mean, sure. But it's still using two powers at times when they sync up when there's a lot else going on. Clicky mez protection is easily made perma, is just one power, can be done auto, and the consequences of having a gap in your mez protection are usually much less than the consequences of suddenly losing essentially all your defense. But people are still constantly complaining about clicky mez protection.

Farsight is a great, set-defining power, certainly, but I think the OP also undersells some of its downsides. Yes, it's easily made perma, but that's easier than making Power Boost perma available in time for the recharge of Farsight, and then you have to not click Farsight when it becomes available, because it will precede Power Boost. So no auto-powers. You need to manually manage it, and if you take your eye off the ball, well, your defense just crashed son. I'm not saying that because it's two powers that require a specific epic set choice and a fairly large amount of manual protection that Farsight doesn't deserve a nerf or an unenhanceable portion or whatever, I'm pretty agnostic, but saying that two Defender powers outperform three Tanker toggles certainly undersells the ease of use of those toggles.

This also has the potential to be a newbie trap. The T1 attacks in most sets are not good. Even if they were zero endurance, they're not good. Encouraging players to heavily use them and slot them just creates another point where you're rewarding play that leads to problems later in the game.

Sonic blast is really low-damage for a blaster, and is a really good blast set for a defender (where the res debuff is much higher than it is for the blaster version). It is of course possible to imagine a melee set with -resistance that wasn't overpowered -- the resistance debuff can be arbitrarily small and short-duration, and/or the damage of the set can be reduced -- but I doubt that that's what you have in mind. For whatever it's worth, I don't think it's particularly in-theme for MA to do -resistance, either. Theme is often a bit arbitrary in CoH, but we don't usually see relatively straightforward unexotic "I hit you" sets getting weird debuffs across the set.

Because -resist is better than -def. Most people most of the time hit most enemies 90%-95% of the time. -def has either no or little effect on your ability to kill most enemies. -resist gives an effective damage buff, to your entire team, in the vast majority of all situations.