MalphiteMeIRL

I really dig having more costume and animation options, especially the signature pieces. I've always wanted to make my own Freakshow hero/villain. The costume pieces would also make for great mission arc rewards. Would also really like colorable MM pets if it's feasible.

The sets are meant to be balanced around SO enhancements, on live it was always that way from my understanding.

Well said, I was just about to mention that. It would also be a lot of effort just to make something significantly more generic. Mechanically I'd love to see more powers that were not build up. Rage, Soul Drain and to a lesser extent Build Momentum are very interesting in comparison to BU. But things like that would be a tremendous amount of work to keep balanced since the respective sets are designed around their version of BU or vanilla BU.

It was never "fixed" on live. The only thing they had fixed early on was dodging the damage debuff (which was totally fair) and being able to avoid T9 armor crashes. They left the defense debuff avoidable. It was that way for years right up until the game shut down. They had tested it with the defense drop at one point on the PTR but it never made it live. Seems like a majority of people who debate against rage are comparing it directly to build up without looking at the respective sets they are baked into.

The more I think about it the stronger I feel about just removing the -def crash. Would allow it to effectively mimic exactly how Castle and the other Devs left it on live. Without messing with any of the other bug fixes that came with the change. I'd imagine it to be the easiest solution from a coding perspective as well. Freeing up resources for other issues/projects. (not that I am in any way a coder)

I'm pretty sure just removing it is out of the question, as much as I'd agree with you. Are there any strongly Def reliant sets that don't offer -Def Debuff resistance? I can't think of any off the top of my head. If not, I could get behind this idea. That or turning it into -def and -res. Or a self damage penalty. At least those options affect everyone the same. Off the top of my head bio armor does not get def debuff res. But that's all I can think of.

History time! So after issue 4/5ish, there was much debate on the tank forum as to why take a tank instead of a scrapper. Jack Emmert (Statesman), became heavily involved in the discussion and began to work with us to develop a mechanic to make tanks more comic booky. The mechanic that the entire tank forum and Statesman developed you ask? We called it Fury and it revolved around tanks doing more damage as they got hit because they knew they needed to put the enemy down fast. World of Carboard and all that. And then Jack, bless his heart, promised that the mechanic was going to be implemented and given to tankers. Fast forward to COV beta, and the post from Jack that said, hey, brutes got an awesome new mechanic called Fury, you're gonna love it, go play it. And there was salt for every tanker, forever and ever. edit:ocd and spelling :/ That's really cool! I was not super active on boards way back so this is all new to me. Ty for the history lesson. :D I like that idea, far more elegant than what I proposed.

I'm just one person but I truly believe it was balanced as it was on live. Especially when you look at the overall DPA of other sets. It feels like on live they skipped changing the -def on Rage for years with a purpose. Considering they fixed other stacking bugs and even being able to avoid the damage drop as well. My memory is a bit hazy but at one point you could perma T9 armors and avoid the crash as well right? Which they fixed on live. Removing the -def drop would pretty much revert it to how it was on live.. without reverting the bugfix. If that idea is off the table though, as an interesting alternative mechanics, what about rage only being able to be activated after taking/dealing X amount of unmitigated damage? Or even making it much stronger. EG: 160% damage boost for 2 minutes with just the damage crash. But a 7-8 minute cooldown. EDIT: Also a little off topic, but I wonder if Castle's vision of SS is what inspired the brute's fury mechanic.

If you compare build up like powers without taking the rest of the set into consideration. Build momentum would arguably be just as strong. Imagine if other sets could get 10 seconds of hyper fast animations. With a heavy recharge build it's up roughly 25-33% of the time. Especially since it has 0 seconds of -9999% damage. Dark's soul drain is crazy as well. But they fit well in the respective sets. These examples are without a massive survivability drop on ATs built around taking hits. Base damage is another big thing, compare Radiation Melee's devastating blow to KO blow. Rad melee has 187 base damage and KO Blow has 148. Plus on average most SS attacks have relatively low DPA. EDIT: If they revert it back to live and suddenly it's somehow overtuned (It would not be) they could even lower the damage boost slightly till it's in line. Another option would be to have two versions of rage that you can only pick one of (Sorta like Sentinel super reflexes) with one as a toggle to prevent any kind of stacking.

It’s a Build Up that lasts two minutes. How is a version of Build Up that lasts twelve times as long as normal not something that needs a downside? But hey, if you can convince the Homecoming team to buff Rage, I guess that’s gravy for me. For clarity's sake I'm only asking for it to have the same effect as it was on live. The state that rage was in for years. (Which is avoiding the defense drop and still getting hit with -end plus -dmg drop)

I feel like they should just remove the -def portion entirely. Especially with some of the other sets hitting like buses. (Rad and PSI melee have high modifiers and TW's build momentum is very strong) The moments of -9990% damage/endurance drop is more than enough of a downside.

Back on live for years it was possible to avoid the -def crash on rage via stacking it. Now that we are on i26 things have changed. Many defensive sets are borderline unplayable (Even the iconic Invuln/SS) when they get slapped by a -20% unresistable defense drop. Would it be possible to remove the -def drop entirely? To be very clear I think the damage drop and endurance loss should remain.

Just bumping this one, I had no idea there was even minimal FX until seeing this (Cold MM here)

Oddly enough I've mostly been doing oldschool farms (demons, warriors etc.) and have noticed a pretty big decline. Maybe some of the tweaks to AE or general XP changes unintentionally affected the droprates everywhere.

Yeah it massively increased the rates, seems almost like it's back to live. But as mentioned just myself is a small sample size.

I've noticed in the past 4 or so days the amount of rare, purple and PvP IOs have tanked. It went from i25 drop rates to very much feeling like live. It is a small sample size as it's just me. On average I would get a purple recipe every 4-5 runs of the demon map, and a PvP IO every second. It's been over 30 runs in the past bit without any purples, very few rares and just one PvP IO. Also noticed Purple and PvP IOs ballooning in price recently. Has anyone else noticed this? I'm guessing it was unintentional since there was nothing in the patch notes about it.

Same issue has been happening with me, very strange.