Black Zot

Not really. This has been looked at in other threads, and it's been demonstrated that Sentinels compete with Defenders for the dubious honor of "weakest blast output". Corrupters and Blasters leave them in the dust. This while bringing nothing of value to the team in their present state.

Go. Hunt. Kill Skulls.

Synapse - why oh why do we need 6+ of the exact same mission on ANY TF fighting ANY enemy group, much less one with end drain as its gimmick at too low a level to have any end-management options? I'll happily take a reduced merit reward in exchange for cutting the length of this mess in half. Citadel - kinda the same issue as Synapse to a much lesser degree. Just one or two missions too long instead of half a dozen or so. Numina - the street sweeping phase of this needs to go. It's a pointless time sink that adds nothing of value.

Generally speaking, the same things that survive getting hit with a blaster nuke are the things that would effortlessly maul a 0-end blaster. Which is why I've been arguing against crashes since Live. "Press this button to die" is bad game design no matter what excuse you use.

What I'm not ignoring is that the hammers are so brittle they visibly shatter on impact, wasting most of that built-up force. A hammer that breaks when it hits a nail isn't going to drive that nail in very far, if at all. It's like when two super-strong types are slugging it out on the street, and one of them grabs a car - if you're strong enough to swing something that unwieldy around fast enough to hit an actively dodging opponent, your fist is still going to hit harder than a weapon that disintegrates when it hits. Comic book characters do this stuff for the same reason pro wrestlers do - they're showing off, actual efficacy be damned.

Because, again, the guys who designed the set were more interested in gimmicks than what would actually win you a fight.

Far more than it would take to form a simple rock and bash someone with it, and the rock would hit harder.

The energy/elemental weapons really should've been their own powerset(s) to begin with. They smash the theme of their respective sets into pieces the minute they come out. Just because I'm playing some sort of earth-themed character doesn't mean I'm going to be randomly conjuring up a sledgehammer. (Seriously, anyone who gets hit with THAT was probably already out of the fight when the swing started.) It's another example of the OG devs having no clue how actual combat works - the time and energy wasted on crafting that fancy shape mid-battle would get you killed by any semi-competent adversary.

This game already has too many escort missions.

Probably the same people that enjoyed fighting Yiazmat in Final Fantasy 12. All 6+hours of it.

Said ally would either be invulnerable or die to the masses of ambush spawns.

Have you seen their prices? That'll empty your blue bar by itself.

You must really enjoy inflicting migraines on everyone in your house.

... You forgot Sprint.

Cloudflare hosting. Why am I not surprised? 90+ times out of 100, when a website craps out on me Cloudflare is the middleman. They love to pass the blame on to the individual websites they host, but they're the common thread ...

T1s are too fragile by an order of magnitude to even pretend they're effective tanks.

That you're trying to make the game harder AT ALL is what I'm arguing against. Your excuse for doing so is irrelevant. Stop trying to break the game I enjoy!

That's pretty hard to swallow when the last two discussion threads have basically been "how can we make the game harder?"

And again, you're making a distinction without a difference, trying to invent a middle option that's mechanically impossible and tack on excess difficulty for its own sake. Either the mob in question is sturdy enough in its unmezzed state to require mez to beat it in a reasonable time (turning it into yet another screw-you enemy that the game already has too many of and imposing build taxes that are bad design regardless), or it's not and nothing changes. End of discussion. And why does ANYTHING have to be done, other than to placate the "make the game arbitrarily hard" crowd who won't be satisfied until there's a good chunk of the game that ONLY hardcore players can do?

You'd need a lot more (and taller) ambient buildings to not have that blow versimilitude to hell.

Kinda hilarious that you'd pick Super Strength, of all sets, being as its damage is almost entirely wrapped up in a couple of active powers (one of which has a CHANCE to mez) and a crashing buff. SS's dedicated mez button explicitly does very little damage, has the usual accuracy problems associated with AoE mez, and tends to be skipped as it sends targets wandering out of reach when it DOES connect. All you did was prove my point. Are you planning to make this new buffer a minion, or do you expect the devs to put in time to create an entirely new class of mob that doesn't have the built-in protection inherent to Lt-and-up enemies? ... that's the entire point of mez powers - crowd control. You're still creating a paradigm that forces people to bring CC, if you're changing things at all. Either the effect isn't strong enough to make any real difference, or you run into people not IO'ed to the nines simply not being able to kill these guys because they can't shut down that mitigation effect. You're trying to invent a middle ground where there isn't one, and never will be. MMOs, ultimately, are a game of numbers; either the numbers say you need X or they don't. Nobody likes putting up with a Paragon Protector that's popped MoG or an Illusionist that's gone intangible, whether the mob in question is an actual threat to the team or not, and your idea simply amounts to adding more Paragon Protectors and Illusionists. That's not "creative encounters", that's one more faction on the "we're not doing this mission" list.

Most of which hit like wet noodles, IF they hit at all. Mainly at such a low mag your "gimmick mob" would shrug it off. Mez (and the need for it) isn't a slider, no matter how much you try to pretend it is. It's an on-off switch; either it's working or it's not, and either you need it or you don't, and if you run into a situation where you suddenly need a hold or stun but your powerset only has a trash-tier entry in that category (read: most powersets that aren't dedicated control sets, and even some that are), odds are you skipped it and now you're screwed. The game doesn't need more Hamidons, regardless of scale. And it doesn't need more "squeeze this into your build" taxes, either.

That just creates a "bring this AT or fail the mission" scenario. Which invalidates the main selling point/design goal of the game: that you can just grab anyone and roll out.