Zeraphia

Well great! Then I think the Poison resistance should be AoE too! It's something.

Increased Density is AoE Faraday Cage is AoE Sonic Dispersion is AoE Pretty sure Clear Mind or whatever it is from Empathy is AoE too.

Alkaloid... The heal is weak, and only is one target, and non-self. Envenom and Weaken... The radius is small, I can see this becoming *possibly* OP if it had its radius turned too large, but as they stands they're just too small, the enemies practically have to be huddled into a melee range get the most out of them. It would also be better if they were possibly targeted AoE so that the location's radius would be easier to engulf enemies in. Paralytic Poison... Cast time could be reduced to around 1.67s or 1.3s or something, as it stands right now it just feels slow and it only really gets taken 1. as a proc mule 2. for controllers to stack holds. Antidote... should be targeted AoE ally buff. ID, Clear Mind, most other equivalents of this power are targeted AoE. Not much reason for this not to be. Neurotoxic Breath... I don't know really, this power is probably the most skippable in the entire set. Long animation, not great cone, not even great with procs. Key issues with the set: -This set is excellent at debuffing, it is sincerely no joke, however it *needs* ways to mitigate incoming damage toward the caster (beyond just the T9), especially how you want to use your T9 in melee range to gain its debuff benefits. -This set lacks a "real" heal. Alkaloid just doesn't cut it. It could really use something like Twilight Grasp, Healing Aura, Nullify Pain, etc. that actually heals the caster since the caster is in melee range so often due to the T9 being a PBAoE. -The two main debuffs' radius is too short, instead of a mere 8' it should probably be somewhere like 10-15' (I'd say 15 feet, same as the aura, is "fair" without being imbalanced... we do have Radiation that gets 15', I don't think this would be "overpowered.") As it stands, a CoT Behemoth, War Walkers, many other "large" enemies can totally engulf the radius of this power and make it practically a ST debuff rather than AoE. -Neurotoxic Breath stands in the way of this set from either getting a good powerful faster-casting debuff of itself, or a really helpful buff that would keep you alive using your T9.

I think this generalizes too much, there are some very specific purposes and builds that rely on these T9s, for example, the T9 from Energy Aura in PvP, this is used to help you in a multitude of ways, and many PvPers would be very upset about this going away. There are also decent T9s (Rad and Bio) that are well-regarded and actually worth taking if you have the room for it in power selection. There are also ways to avoid it just "ruining" you (time when it occurs, hide in a corner when you know it'll "drop") Crashless T9's could be investigated, but I worry if this becomes the case that certain T9's would become flat out overpowered if there wasn't any cost to activating them once they drop off (unstoppable from Invul is the stand-out).

I think in general melee damage has kind of gone out of flavor for general gameplay in groups, where often no Tanker is even "required" to meet extremely fast timeframes ("required" does not mean that I don't highly recommend at least one Tanker/Brute on a team). Defender buffs have just gotten so high now with Nature, Cold, etc. that most teams will hardly faceplant with those on a team, there is also the resurgence of Blasters with their T9 and high DPS output. There are also now several instances which Ranged damage is strictly favored over Melee damage to the point where it is *required* to complete a piece of content. If you're going by what you see in LFG, there is going to be an over-representation of fire farming brutes that will skew the numbers heavily. The Tanker's role hasn't shifted too much from what it has originally except that now it really has moved on to being new a contributing member of DPS and it can solo decently-extremely well. Also, aggro control DOES help even streamrolling teams. Herding mobs together so that your group can aoe nuke a mob is the "new way" to tank and is highly rewarded for doing so. Yes, lots of groups can do without a Tanker now, but getting the bosses to not stray out of DPS' aoes is a highly appreciable time-saver. This is semi-true, there are cases where however there are things *strictly* required by the game to complete a task (holds - LGTF, holds - Hami, holds - MoM Malaise section, Confuse/Holds/Stuns - Telepathists badge in TPN, etc.) though it isn't just one archetype or power that can suite those needs, the principle of the need for those archetypes though is still there. I still think that I actually see a fair few Tankers at level 50 these days, I won't claim that they're a dime-a-dozen, but they are not rare. Most teams usually have one or two Tankers on them, although, I've seen unfortunately Scrappers with party buffs and taking taunt just tanking all the AV's in game at the highest difficulty settings and the group still working this out, some may see that as making Tanks "obsolete" but I do not see it as such. I think every AT besides has a place on the team, some are going to be more rewarded more directly than others, it is what it is. Now, the thing I am finding more, and more, is that Controllers of all ATs seem to be the "rarest" of the "regular" non-HEAT non-VEAT options.

If you're considering SS, always. always. always. go Tanker. You get the +damage that will get you very close to high-fury brute. Brute will suffer because of low damage caps, to where Rage won't improve your DPS too much overall when all is said and done. Wording may be off here, but the numbers indicate that the damage difference is minimal if not favoring Tanker, and survivability is definitely also favoring Tanker.

This is false information. Jetpacks/flight travel powers from P2W ARE allowed during Masteries as well as iTrials. Test this yourself if you must.

And here folks, we have another one of these regularly scheduled nerf-herder threads! [Snake-B-Gone]!

I don't know, I still think just due to how much of an outlier it is, that unless they iron-core nerfbat it, at 50 it will still be mid-tier DPS even if it got Claws (base damage - NOT DPA) numbers just solely off of the procs (specifically the -res) it can run consistently. I highly doubt they can do that with the set in good conscience, otherwise it will suffer horrendously at lower levels and only be worthwhile to play at high levels. I really don't know, I'm not saying it's not going to affect the set, clearly it will. But I don't think people should stop making TW characters until they know the entirety of the changes. You can level a 50 in 3 hours absolute tops with even a terrible farming build, you never really "lose" enhancements, you just resell them/port them over to a new character. Worst case scenario, you reroll a character. Their updates take legitimately months before they really hit live, so this is still really far out in advance. I don't know, there are several things that Dark Melee has to overcome before it becomes extremely viable in my eyes (specifically lack of any PBAoE, only the cone...) and EM is going to be a whole new can of worms I can't comment on obviously because I have *no* idea how they're going to go about buffing the set, but I imagine it's still not going to have even nerfed TW numbers hypothetically just due to it not being able to really run -res in its attack chain.

Where is this [citation needed]? Also, you just assumed straight up it's going to be life-crushing for the set when reality is that it may not be.

1. You don't know if a nerf is coming, you only know the likelihood that it might. 2. You don't know how it will be nerfed when it does. 3. People can pick TW regardless for theme or because they like the "godly" visuals of it. I'm not going to sit around here and tell you "a nerf will never come!" it's likeli-er (probably 60% chance) that it will. However, how hard can they really hit TW as a set at this particular point in time? It's a set that was made by the NCSoft team, it's been well-known as an outlier, so much so TW/Bio Scrapper has replaced Elec/Shield Scrapper as the #1 Scrapper combination. If they nerfed TW too hard, it would clearly upset a lot of the fanbase, something I do not think they're keen on doing. Homecoming has also seen what one of their nerfs have done to other powers (Rage), and the impact of nerfing a power to a powerset as a whole. All that said honestly, I really doubt they're going to nerf it so hard that it loses its top spot for DPS, I also doubt heavily that they're going to nerf it so ridiculously hard that it becomes even mid-tier for DPS with other melee sets. Play what you want to play, you don't know when the next update is happening, and you shouldn't make choices on what sets you want to play based on theories that something may or may not be nerfed.

I get that how you build your characters is the way you build them, but expecting everyone to build your way with your recharges, your defenses, and your slotting to adjust to a massive Hasten nerf and saying that it will have "minimal effects on DPS and Tank classes" is just ignorant. Scrappers/Blasters/Stalkers, they all have major *use* for Hasten. There are DPS improvements, some by MASSIVE degrees by the amount of recharge you possess. Many of the builds for these characters will not have access to those attack chains without Hasten or a massive amount of party buff-stacking. Even further, assuming you can get the attack chain (which you can't in most cases to reach their optimal DPS potential) without Hasten's recharge directly, you must build for high recharge in your build. That always comes at a cost, whether that be defense, resistances, or procs, it always does. Further, T9's are on a long CD as is for Blasters, hitting everyone's T9 with Hasten would be devastating, it would make that T9 recharge much slower and some may be seeing their T9 Inferno up maybe once every 40-50 seconds depending on previous recharge. That is a drastic nerf that has major consequences to DPS/Tank AT's. Right on the money...

I can personally attest to the fact that Rad/TW has enough DPS when built right to actually DPS-down LR without inspirations or lore solo on MLTF. It can take down any 54 AV when you build it. 100%.

I was moreso coming at this from the point of view that the previous mentioned AT's have more capable solo abilities just due to their straight up damage/survivability. I guess my post came off the wrong way /shrug... If we were talking about straight solo, that's what I was referring to no character concepts factored in. For the min/maxer that isn't looking to explore a concept, I don't see why they'd gun for the support AT's over others in solo scenarios. I did NOT say they were bad, I only said that they don't do the same things or excel in the same ways that the previous ATs do to an extent (AS A WHOLE, not ALL cases - one size doesn't fit all.) ---- Also, I'm far from "a lot learn in this game," I really don't understand why having a view opposing to your own is automatically deemed as "you don't know as much as I do." I have never put down Poison. I love the set and what it does and think it is wonderfully unique. That said, you took a small snipet of my post and turned it into "you know very little," "my build does x so, this proves how you're wrong!" Without taking into account the general consensus of the AT's as a whole. You can turn things into proc monsters, absolutely. You can abuse outlier sets and Fire Blast, but at the end of the day, you can do the same exact thing to the ones I listed and make them even better. Keep in mind, that while yes, it is a benefit to bring that to the team for a team, we are talking about solo scenarios. Side note, that was kind of rude and unnecessary. --- I want to say that I have Defender builds made to solo, but I have to admit that as great as you can build them, the made-out-of-the-box solo AT's are better at that job than you are just due to the tools they are given, and we do have reliable means to test that (in most cases, again, not all.) I love them, they introduce a wonderful flavor that I find visually and tastefully appealing, but from the view of "what's best to solo with" I can't say that they are, that's what would lead me to tell someone to roll one of the other AT's if they aren't majorly interested in a theme/design. There are really good Defenders and there are terrible Scrappers, it is what it is, that's true of any AT, but as a whole, that is typically how they play out. I also edited my original post slightly to give better clarification as to what I wanted to say.

This is just so radically inaccurate. You don't play Sonic Blast to "compete with other Blast sets!" you play to to essentially "buff" your teammates' damage. Its advantage in -res is not "minor" it becomes major because it applies to all eight members on a team. That is serious debuffing. You can slot Achilles' Heel in your T9 and you can slot Annihilation in Howl (turns the power into almost -32.5% res), that basically makes it act like a higher debuffing rain power with good damage in AoE to start packs with on a team, that is a substantial contribution when all of the mob has -40% res on it (if you started Howl and proc'd Anni you'd get -72.5%). BR does not provide nearly as much -res, nor does it provide -res in the amount of time that Sonic can. If you can charge into a pack with your T9 or shoot from a distance with Howl, you have substantially contributed to your team's AoE damage output. Further, bosses will always remain, giving them -res makes your team able to kill it more quickly. Sonic does not disappoint by any means on teaming.

Well, realistically... If you want to solo (no character concept in mind) and are looking at what does the job best why would you choose Defender/Corruptor (as a whole, there are exceptions**)? There's very few options that aren't totally outclassed by another AT in a solo scenario. You're really playing these ATs for their ability to contribute to a team, typically.** You have Scrappers/Stalkers/Brutes/(recently improved)Tankers/(also improved)Blasters/Sentinels that are much better known for their solo capabilities. Why choose Sonic? Because honestly Defender damage isn't typically anything amazing by itself. I'm not counting obvious outliers like Storm against a single non-moving target, but think about it like this... if I'm not going to really be dishing out those numbers like the rest of my team will, why should I really try to? Sonic builds -res by itself no matter what, when you give an entire team the ability to deal almost double the damage that it normally would've with high enough recharge, Sonic packs an extreme punch to a team. Sonic is not bad at all, an example is on things like iTrials and RHW runs where Sonic's building of -res makes things like that possible due to how it magnifies everyone's damage potential on the entire league against hard targets. I didn't make my Nature/Sonic Defender to solo, I made it to be able to magnify my league/teams to victory in hard content and be a very helpful contributor. You are right, it wouldn't be my top choice though for soloing, but the game is centered around teaming with others. I genuinely wouldn't play this game as much as I do if I just sat there lonely in missions the entire time.

Rad Armor proves itself to be the meta tank set at the moment. You can legitimately hit every single resistance (including psi) except for Cold. I honestly am glad for the "cold hole" because well, Ice Mistral wasn't scaring me. Not as easy to softcap all the damage types, however, gives you a massive absorb shield that effectively will give you more HP than Stone. This is all without any penalties to damage/recharge/etc. I really have no idea why Rad Armor hasn't been mentioned yet. Also, it makes you "look good" while tanking because your enemies have a massive absorption barrier to attack through before they start denting your actual HP, so you aren't even feeling any of the damage at all. You also get a heal and scaling regeneration. All the healing adds up. Keep in mind, when you're taking spikes that are extremely hard, Granite can even get spiked down in the game. Rad gives you tools to mitigate spikes very well and quickly get back up on your feet, Granite has one heal that caps your HP, and higher regen, that regen isn't going to take you from 1-100 the way that Rad can. I am not going to say Rad is by base tankier, but Rad is a very competitive set all around, it even has proc monsters for damage, and it has no penalties.

I just wish that there were more options that the back hunch-over as well as the weird claw-like things. I think there could also be more costume pieces associated with this set. I think this would lead toward getting the set more popular, it has really struggled to maintain popularity and to many people they just swear off of the set. I really wish that possibly you could use actual claws with it and "stand up" or have different types of "savagery" with it.

Oh dear, you haven't heard about how broken Atomic is... That Hold is not properly formatted in Mids, it is a 19-second base aoe Hold with a 90-second recharge. Both are enhanceable. You can literally perma-hold mobs with it, in the way I currently have it slotted, without a single mob in my Beta Decay, I can have the hold up for 36 seconds and have a recharge of 22 seconds. Utterly ridiculous.

You are right, but that's still a *form* of endurance control/modification. Defenders get higher endurance on their bases (Transference, all Elec powers, etc.), in addition to the Vigilance when gravely needed, Corruptors do not get these novelties. In general, Defenders have a much easier time on Endurance than Corruptors. I'm not against Defenders really getting it, I just think that if you want to give it to them, Corruptors should be getting something pretty cool too in order to make them distinct.

This is an interesting idea, and I don't think it is necessarily totally imbalanced. However... it would probably be extremely difficult to code/implement, it also would probably be very hard on the player both trying to keep their pets alive and use their pets' powers. You have 6 different pets, 6 different sets of powers to have to control, that would be daunting to try to maintain control over all of those pets reasonably.

I agree with you, but many may argue the opposite: that they're overpowered. They should be nerfed and everything else shouldn't be buffed. I don't advocate for that, but many will not reach the same conclusion, but I think if you want changes to happen, you should expect and appease your oppositions. Also, some people may really like how the ATOs are now and don't want the change. I think instead of "replacing" existing ATOs, we should just add more. However, give a stipulation that you may *only choose to slot in two full sets* of ATOs, so that there is a choice between two ATO sets instead of being able to slot in 3 different huge ATO bonus sets. I 100% agree here. The Dominator/Controller Fiery Orb ATOs are almost entirely useless. The proc is nice on the Controllers' side, but IMO, not competitive with what it could/should be. I agree with the global damage proc idea as well to help out the AT with damage, personally I had an idea that you had a Controller ATO and for one particular power you get its magnitude doubled, like Domination, but for only one particular power, making them much more equivalent in terms of lockdown capability. Dominators IMO, are just way better at lockdown because of Domination, giving Controllers this ability on just one serious ability would make them more competitive. This is where I 100% believe they should throw a lot more boons, currently these two ATs are struggling to keep up with teams and are often being overlooked. Defenders get Vigilance which reduces their end costs, giving one more boon to Defenders vs Corruptors is a bit of a "slight." Defenders get so many distinct building advantages now over Corruptors that I can see why Corruptors are given the endurance help here. I'm all for the Scourge idea, love it actually. It would give a huge boon to pick Corruptor over Defender instead of Defenders right now just getting many default advantages in terms of building and performance overall. MM's have very good ATOs! I personally would not want them to change. I don't really feel like they need it, Tankers are just very well off at the moment. What SoA's need are specialized ATO's for their given career paths (4) which would come out to 8, rather than a measely 2. I'd very much settle just for 2 more ATO's to help out, I don't really think Fortunata/Crab really need more help and are already fairly strong. What I think Night Widow/Bane need are replicas of the "re-hide" ATO for Stalkers. This would greatly boost the AT's damage output, make them much more competitive and a much more viable pick than how they currently are. Stalkers get high damage, AS, more variety to choose from, more exotic damage types, high base HP, etc. the only thing Night Widow/Bane have atm is their party buffs which just aren't cutting it when teams already have Maneuvers going around. Even as well off as Fortunata/Crab are, I could see some ATOs to slightly boost their performance overall, but honestly even if there was nothing for them, I think they're still very well off. /shrug I don't know where to begin with Khelds, they just are not competitive at ST damage at all unfortunately, they have a tougher time than most AT's building defense, the forms shut off human form toggles, they're a complicated AT, with very complicated fixes that would be needed. I really don't know what to do for them as ATOs, they really need a multi-step approached buff before an ATO is really a consideration for them. I can definitely agree though, that the ATOs currently given to them are somewhere between "useful sometimes" to "totally worthless" depending a lot on context/setting. Oh this interests me! And... interestingly enough... I don't even know if I think it should be a *low* chance really when talking about this AT's balancing! There is going to be some hot debate on this one, but IMO if you traded both a defense set, support, pets, and control ALL for straight up damage/small utility, you should be GREATLY rewarded as the glass cannon AT, IMO, Stalkers/Scrappers are "overpowered" in that they deal higher ST damage than Blasters, have a harder-hitting more consistent AoE (not talking about Blaster nukes here) and all without trading ANY defenses. Blasters should be the absolute #1 winner for damage period for what they've had to sacrifice. Yes, improvements have lead Blasters to become better and more survivable, so there needs to obviously be some balancing without making Blasters just absurd, but there is no reason that Blasters should be doing less than Scrapper/Stalker. Obviously, T9 "nukes" shouldn't be able to be crit, but everything else is completely fair game IMO. About Defiance... Yeah I'm sorry I'm just not interested. I have other ways to deal with mezzes, I just don't care for others' ideas/solutions about it, it sucks. No, I do not want to waste slotting opportunities or whatever to gain a very small "break free." No Thank you, I have Clarion, Acrobaits, Break Frees, etc. to mitigate this, I'd much rather Blasters get their AT's standout which is extreme damage. It should be there for those who want it, but another much more viable/damaging option should be available to Blaster. I also agree this one is fine. I don't really see Brutes needing a ton right now.

I don't know, I'm not going to say every single change was done in this such way, but I am going to say that certain aspects of a set may no longer be feasible. There were things that were inherently "too good" in the past, and that may be true even today. I think the HC devs have done so far a pretty great job with preservation vs. modification. This is again, a generalized statement, there are many reasons why certain powers were changed, some were very well-reasoned for modification, others were not as well-justified IMO, but that is all a part of game balancing.

Yes, I just tested these ideas as well, and unfortunately, my results yielded the same answer. It's a shame too, that would've been pretty "dope."

This is very interesting indeed, I honestly have no idea, I could test this though on the beta server at some point. You are totally right about this though, IF it does work, that could indeed be life-changing for the mastermind as it would enable them to "stealth" missions without having to resummon pets. It seems very good IF this is the case, my HYPOTHESIS would be that it DOESN'T, but I don't know for a fact one way or the other without testing.