kenlon

When I did this (though, admittedly, I didn't do it on live, because I already *knew* how painful it was), I used a Rad/Rad Corruptor. Being able to actually hit things, having damage that wasn't utterly anemic and not running out of endurance all the time was amazing.

It makes people strive towards getting in DFB groups and skipping low levels entirely. Sure, not having SOs makes the low levels 'challenging', but that just means no one plays those levels in normal content. . . .if you think that there's too much skipping of content, then why wouldn't you be in favor of a change that makes it more likely for players to actually do 1-22 missions rather than spamming DFB? Having access to enhancements that actually, y'know, enhance (as opposed to looking pretty) makes low level play much more fun. Seriously, try this: Make a character on live. Play through the Praetorian missions from, say, 1-20. Then remake the character on the beta, and do the same there. The beta version, with SO enhancements, will still be tough (simply because you have so few powers and slots to enhance them with), but it won't feel like you're slamming your head against a brick wall anymore. Especially with a squishy AT. This is a very, very good change.

The two aren't mutually exclusive - balancing sets around "this is the standard" and then picking specific attributes to break away from that standard is far better than just buckshotting out randomly varying powersets. For an example of this, TW was OP as hell because it broke the standard damage formulas in a big way, and this patch changes that. (And does it very well, making it just a very good set with better QoL than before, rather than "worst feeling to level" and "hit 50, slot IOs, become DESTROYER OF WOOOOOOOOOORLDS!" like before.) Hopefully the devs will listen to the feedback in this thread and take Tac Arrow back into the shop for tweaking. EDIT: You know, to expand on that, it might be a good design idea for the devs to look at sets and decide, per each, which normal design rule it should break (if any). Because being explict, at least internally, about what gimmicks a set should have (from a design perspective rather than mechanics) would probably be helpful, given the sheer number of sets in the game.

Hell, I may even exemplar down some of my 50s to do street sweeping with low levels, because, dammit, that shit was *fun* back in the day.

Yeah, I can understand why the devs want, in general, to bring sets in line with each other on things like range, but the extra reach with Tac Arrow is one of it's schticks, and should be balanced around.

Prior to hitting the level where IOs are useful (22), access to SOs make playing normal content *fun* instead of a tedious slog. The fact that almost everyone spams DFB to skip past the low levels and get to where SOs/SO-bonus level common IOs are available is a clear sign that there's a balance problem when it comes to low level play. Given the small number of slots you have at that level, TOs/DOs don't provide enough enhancement to be more than barely noticeable, while SOs do. (I played a bunch on the Page 6 beta where these changes were first put in - it actually made playing Goldside tolerable, something I'd bounced off of every time since way back when it was added on live.) This is a very, very good change, and I look forward to putting together actual low level teams (Hollows street sweeping!) once this goes live.

Hmm. Wonder if we could bribe the Mid's devs to put out an Issue 27 Beta dataset for us to play with. . .

The only thing that would make it a positive change for him is ET goes back to the old animation 100% of the time, regardless of what happens to the rest of the set. Arguing with him is pointless, I'm afraid. Fortunately, one curmudgeon isn't going to be enough to make the devs roll this back.

Have you actually *tried* new energy melee? Also, calling it a nerf that they gave back the short ET animation is certainly an . . .interesting take.

I would like to give feedback on this, but I'm too busy going WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Thank god for early game SOs!

Please, for the love of all that's good and holy in the world, consider breaking out the SO changes from Page Six and bringing them live sooner.

This topic has done a really great job of proving why the devs shouldn't make posts telling us what they are thinking about doing. Sheesh.

Yes it would. It would also be a bad idea, because people would not be able to deal when there were delays/changes, but then again human beings are the reason we can't have nice things. . .

I just hope they can break out the SO changes from whatever else they want to do in page 6 and implement them sooner. They would be gamechanging for low level play.

The funny thing is that the biggest thing that could be done to encourage conventional leveling in the early game has been sitting on test for months now. *sigh*

Sure we do - what motivation they had when creating an AT matters very little compared to how it worked out in practice once it was implemented. MMs are not tanks. They don't have the tools to do what tankers do, regardless of what the devs originally intended. Now, if they'd gone in and added/revised mechanics to make MMs work for tanking, then sure, compare them to tankers, but they didn't. And with Brutes and Tankers both being able to fill the same role in practice (Melee DPS that Does Not Die), then comparing them is valid.

Consume, I assume.

With active development happening on Mid's again outside of database updates, any chance the DPS/attack chain calculator will be looked at? It spits out very weird numbers, depending on if Damage per second/Damage per activation/Damage per animation is selected under View.

That's, uh, certainly an interesting build you have there. Why on earth would you take Injection/Aid Self, especially on a set with self-healing that you will be hitting on cooldown? You're getting 26% healing every 3.5 seconds while doing damage, and Aid Self isn't actually much stronger as a heal at 38.7% with a 4.48 second cast time, and has an interrupt time to boot. You've got eight enhancement slots wasted between those powers!

How are your defenses that low at 40? I don't have a low level version of my SR/Katana build lying around, so I whipped up a quick test build in Mids (with the unofficial updates) and at level 40, using mostly level 25 common IOs, I had 57.7% Melee/Ranged/AoE defense. Three Defense buffs and one EndRx per toggle, Three Defense per auto, using Weave and Combat Jumping in addition to powerset powers. The only set IOs I used were the uniques from Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor, slotted into Tough. And I didn't gimp the rest of the slotting - three attacks six-slotted, two five-slotted, three slots in PB for easy perma, two slots in Build Up. I have to assume that you a) skipped getting any pool defense powers (which is a mistake) and b) didn't actually fully enhance your powers. This isn't a SR issue, this is a build issue.

Because Tankers didn't have access to Claws in the live game - the set was proliferated onto them in i25 and the restriction on combining it with stone armor was not kept.

Personally, I just want the SO changes that have been on beta for the past month. Being able to play through Praetoria on the test server without it being an act of masochism was amazeballs.

It's been an excellent build. I can take on villain groups that used to require eating inspirations by the bucket with no problem, and the damage is passable. (Doubleposting because I can't insert a quote when editing a post because there's no plain text forum editor so I can't copy and paste the quote in. And that's terrible. *cough*)

I think the assumption is that the stuff on beta now will be a part of Page 6, hence the question the OP asked. And yeah, given what's going on in the world, delays are understandable.

Hah. Try Tanker SR sometime - that'll break you of those silly notions right quick. But even for the lesser versions of the set, you still have staggeringly good Defense Debuff resistance. With only a pair of common defense IOs in each power: 93.23% resist for Brutes and Scrappers, 82.87% for Stalkers. Defense cascades are not a problem for SR. And there's a lot less untyped damage around than there used to be.