Black Zot

Oh hey, more changes they're going to ram through without actually taking anyone's feedback into account. At least there's no GLOBAL NERFS in this page.

Stealth only works up until you pull aggro. Once you have a mob's attention, stealth effects do jack shit.

The Fool's debuff is annoying, but you should be building your character to be able to power through a measly -3% to hit; you're going to be dealing with a lot worse from enemies. Overall, it's an assortment of nice (if random) little buffs that don't cost end and last a long time - well worth casting and accepting.

I understand that's a standard ploy on some Dark Armor characters, because their self-rez has a giant aoe stun attached.

1. The corrupt corporation angle exists because by the nature of the entity there's no such thing as a NON-corrupt corporation. 2. Sub-units like Void Sanction can only exist if someone at the top of the food chain signed off on it. In other words, what you see in a VS arc is what Hero Corp actually is when you remove the shiny PR finish. That doesn't preclude ground-level grunts being ordinary joes picking up a paycheck. Even in the worst outfits the lower rungs tend to be mostly punch-clock types. But the people making the decisions absolutely ARE rotten. Neither Longbow's active invasion of the Rogue Isles nor Void Sanction in general would have happened if the people in the boardrooms were clean and upstanding.

If you believe this will go any better than Crey's usual shenanigans, I have a bridge to sell you. Corporate interests NEVER line up well with hero work, even when the corporation claims to be all about heroes. You'll be accountable all right - to a bean counter in a nice safe corporate office in another city who only looks at algorithms and metrics and doesn't care about the actual situation on the ground.

So he's living up (or maybe down) to his namesake. Most of the protagonist's issues during the Odyssey were brought on by him cheesing off the gods, especially Poseidon.

Evasive Maneuvers' defense rating is an illusion; it shuts down in combat. For all practical purposes, it has that number solely so it qualifies as a LOTG mule.

A lot of my characters end up with Maneuvers because the def-all helps get to softcap territory, and defense sets have a ton of desirable bonuses. Beyond that, it depends what I have build space and end for. Positional defenses have a lot more value after the typed-defense nerf, so "6-slot Gaussian in Tactics" often feels worth it now (and as a bonus, Tactics largely stuffs those annoying blind effects some enemy groups like to throw at you). Assault is largely expendable unless I'm playing a Mastermind (pets need all the buffs you can offer, even marginal ones).

That's not hard to pull off when replacing the mercs' guns with feathers would increase their damage output.

The T9s will NEVER be worth taking so long as there's a crash involved. No power in ANY game is strong enough to justify a crash, end of discussion. Ditch the crash, then you can talk about balancing the power so it's worth something.

The odds of Sents overtaking Blasters are zero. As-is, they struggle to keep pace with Defenders because of their gimped target caps and lack of buff/debuff options. Reducing their range on top of that is just rubbing it in.

Well for starters there's no guarantee the game engine can even handle a -res value that big ....

The difference is, debuffs can be (and usually are) partially resisted. Mez is all or nothing; you either have enough magnitude to have an effect or you don't. Duration (ALSO resistable and commonly done so) vs recharge is what determines whether you can stack enough mag to matter against anything above Lt, and removing the ability to enhance duration would basically render most controls worthless. Control-heavy sets and any content (ex - Hamidon) that relied on them would be rendered unplayable.

That's not challenge, that's punishment.

You say that like it's a good thing to have escort missions (already objectively the worst quest type in gaming) require the player to shut down a chunk of their survivability to actually make forward progress.

If you're looking at Fold Space, be aware that you need the Alpha shift and Ultimate inspirations to make it work - most enemies will no-sell it otherwise.

Especially considering you need all 6 of those buffs to make a functional MM build.

... yet. With the currency mechanics for aether implemented, it's only a matter of time before something of value gets locked behind them.

It's a pointless activity that exists for the sole purpose of padding out the TF. That is the very definition of a "time sink". The fact that there are more or less efficient ways to do it is irrelevant. It has no narrative function and no material reward, it's just there to waste people's time.

"Wire-fu" would be more accurate. "Savate" implies the character actually knows how to fight, which MC clearly doesn't.

It also doesn't give any credit towards "Defeat X of Y" badges. If devs want AE to be used for something other than farms, it needs to actually count for something.

That is a really weak excuse for adding a useless time sink and you know it.

Or they could do the REALLY smart thing and eliminate the hunt phase altogether.

Lucky you. I've had exactly ONE drop since the patch.