Itikar

Same. Oh, and broadsword does not suffer of the infamous invisible katana bug. 😛 Joking aside, I cannot agree more. Broadsword is one of those sets that really needs some love, and its comparison to katana, especially on the same archetype, really points at a set that needs some attention.

This is false, and I have shown why with several examples and reasoned arguments in the previous post, which included several references to numbers and data as well and pointed out potential biases with it, paradoxically in some cases even in favor of the buffs. The aspect of data interpretation is a pretty crucial one in many fields and belittling it does nothing to show the validity of one's argument and a lot in showing its flaws. More personal attacks, provocations and strawmen, and zero relevant arguments. So much worse for you, I guess. And it's ironical I am not even really against this proposal to begin with.

This is an ad personam argument. This type of arguments is usually seen when the party who argues admits the implicit fault of all their other arguments. Otherwise they would find a more convincing argument instead. Let me state it again: I am not against buffing these powers, I am however skeptical of weak arguments. And to be honest I have not seen really great arguments supporting the proposal in this thread so far. Ultimately I really win nothing from you guys having weak arguments, and I hope my critics can actually stimulate you to find better ones. Keep in mind that the developers are very aware of all the issues I mentioned, and being able to address them will certainly help your cause in their eyes. If you don't like this, then too bad for you.

You forgot Power Push, which seems the real outlier here, its percentage is 40% on Sentinel and 33/31/26 on Blaster/Corruptor/Defender, but I guess this can be blamed on the general hate for Knockback. Oddly enough the much maligned Focused Power Bolt stands at 94.27. Other than that, since they are damaging powers as opposed to mezs, and often damaging powers with a good DPA, it seems really obvious and unsurprising they are more popular on Sentinels than on other archetypes. Firstly your interpretation of that data is highly subjective, I am afraid, since for several of those powers the data might be seen as simply saying that the powers are not that bad, but simply optional. And that pretty much explains a 40 or 30%, less so those below 20% however. Ironically, you have also showed that Screech and Tesla Cage, the ones that according to OP required more urgently a buff are also those that are more popular, and therefore, logically, less requiring of a buff compared to the other ones mentioned. Secondly the comparison to "garbage" is a hyperbole and a clear falsehood, which does not reinforce your points. Thirdly the comparison is not really appropriate numberwise too, at least in some of the cases you mentioned, you got this: - Time Bomb: 25/19/30/18 Blaster/Controller/Corruptor/Defender and 32 for Mastermind's Detonator which is somewhat comparable. This is comparable to Beanbag, Scramble Thoughts and Stunning Shot, but not to the other ones. - Black Hole: 10/9/14/15 on Controller/Corruptor/Defender/Mastermind, the lowest value here is higher than the lowest value you cited above, even if barely. Overall, however, this is not a fair comparison. - The single target immobilizes have a popularity that is variable across powersets, with the lowest values I found ranging around 30% for controllers and 20% for dominators, but with some powersets having higher rates, for various reasons. Crush seems to be the most popular with 53% rate on controllers and 39 on Dominators. This is a faired comparison and the most matching one, in my opinion, however it still confirms the powers are not so bad, compared to Black Hole above, but are simply optional. This to be fair, does not mean they cannot use help or improvement, but describing them as "useless" or "garbage" is not going to help the case of those who believe so. I am aware on videogaming forums such type of teenager speech is commonplace, but it's not really useful or helpful to anybody, first and foremost to the person using it. Then do as you prefer, keep stating clear hyperbolic falsehoods and enjoy them being called for what they are. Maybe on a game with a different age demographic such type of speech fares better, who knows. 😛 To further complete the picture given by the data, however, it seems only fair to compare some of the mentioned attacks to other powers within their power sets. This is useful in fact for evaluating how popular they are compared to the rest and whether they are the powers of those sets that need an intervention first. And what I found was quite curious. I checked Sonic Attack, for which Screech has been so maligned, and it turns out Screech is more popular than both Siren's Song and Shockwave, which is not so surprising, to be honest, but which would suggest that if Sonic Blast should be improved, then those powers are the one that need a popularity improvement the most. Sirens Song: 26/39/21/29 Defender/Blaster/Sentinel/Corruptor Shockwave: 27/44/39/36 idem as above Lastly, perusing the data I noticed a thing that is worth mentioning in making these comparisons, and specifically that some of the values might not be very representative due to the limited number of the pool of characters with such powersets for certain archetypes. Take for example Time Bomb above, it seems almost one in 3 of the Traps corruptors got it, but the number of level 50 Traps corruptors is not very big, compared to, say, Blaster Devices (25%, 147 out of 572), so the popularity of the power on Corruptors might be conditioned by the small sample, and probably conditioned toward a higher value than the real usefulness of the power would yield. In other words, it's possible that if the Traps corruptors had been 572 like the Blasters, the power would have been less popular than 30%, like on Blasters. Additionally, it seems that the level 50 power choices for some archetypes are not really reflective of the most optimal powers or DPA, or whatever. I checked for example Dual Pistols on Sentinel, and I found out a surprising result: Pistols is only taken by 73% of the level 50 DP Sentinels, while Dual Wield by over the 90%, yet it's pretty obvious that Pistols is a better attack than Dual Wield, both for its DPA and its slotting potential (Pistols can take defence debuff enhancements and sets, while Dual Wield slows and knockback). Not to mention the benefits of offensive opportunity triggered by Pistols, over those of defensive opportunity triggered by Dual Wield. In other words, not all level 50 characters have chosen the best powers, so taking the popularity of those powers among those characters as a reliable measure of balance, should really be done with a grain of salt. Incidentally this might also mean powers like Screech or Tesla Cage, which the OP denounced, might in fact not be as good as the data suggest. So, the bottom line is that these data should be interpreted adeguately, and its biases should seriously be considered, both concerning the sample size and the reliability of the power picks as an indicator of balance.

Some types of sets could really use some love. Slow definitely should be on top of the list.

There is not just DPA to attacks, in particular to attacks that are meant to also debuff. In the case of electrical blast a very glaring issue of the powerset is that its endurance drain does not scale across archetypes, and that is noticeable on those abilities the most, although for fairness one should also add zapp to them, since it's affected by the same issue as well, even if by itself it's a good power, and the one attack with the best endurance drain after the nuke and short circuit. Of all things you said I find that this one is the most disagreeable, even if it is just a matter of semantics. This proposal is around balance and power, not quality of life. And there is nothing wrong with that, to be clear, but quality of life, in my book, qualifies a different type of proposals. To make an example concerning electrical sets, finding a a way to turn force of thunder on electricity manipulation into a sustenance toggle could fall under quality of life, buffing the damage of a power like tesla cage is another thing entirely and it has really little to do with quality of life.

Finally some good and reasoned points. I am really glad to read them and I believe this does really help making the proposal seem more reasonable and thoughtful. I will still argue with these points to further try to see whether there are other points that need to be addressed, but I wanted to say in advance that now your argument does look stronger. Now, the main issue I see here is that you are looking at this topic with a min-maxer mentality, and I commend you for your sincerity in admitting that. A min-maxer mentality can be effectively useful in comparing numbers, but at the same time, it cannot be the main concern when analyzing a balanced mechanic in a roleplaying video-game, for the simple reason that unless all abilities, in our cases powersets, differ merely cosmetically from each other, there will always be a better or worse powerset and a better or worse power to take. This does not mean they should not be reviewed and their shortcomings addressed to achieve a better balance, but just focusing on that aspect is not going to work. It may work for powers intended to do the same, like comparing charged bolts to, say, dark blast, but it does not work as well when you compare a crowd control power to a damaging one. They are simply not the same thing. For instance your mention of force fields is pretty telling. That's a powerset that revolves around two things: defence and knockback. Defence can be easily capped at least on some archetypes, and with more difficulty on others, and defence is also the more passive aspect of that powerset to boot. Knockback, well, is a large and complex topic that I believe goes way beyond the aims of this thread, so I will not digress much on it, but I will just say two obvious things: the first is that with a portion of the playerbase it is not very popular, to say the least, and the second is that you can fix a power but not the way people look at things. That's true for you, for me, and for the people who loathe or love knockback. But in the end if you don't like knockback don't play force fields, and maybe also energy blast and peacebringers too. Furthermore what should archetypes that are built around crowd control say in this regard, then? Well, controllers' woes are known, but I sincerely doubt turning the mezs on blast set into damaging powers with a mez will fix the issues with crowd control. Also, to be clear, Repulsion Bomb is a bad example, since first it does knockdown, and second it's generally an opener, comparable to assassin's strike from hiding. You mentioned the single one power from force fields on which KB -> KD enhancements would be wasted. Now to be fair I will give you one thing, even if the comparison of crowd control powersets with blasting sets is wrong, because they are supposed to do different things, it must be made clear the aim of a blasting set is not to mez stuff, but to actually, well, blast stuff. Defenders and corruptors lend themselves to other considerations, to be honest, but as far as blasters are concerned, their blasts are supposed to blast, no point to argue otherwise there. If they also mez, good, but I cannot disagree a power that only mezzes without doing much damage is a little odd on a blasting set of a blaster. I am mentioning this because it ties to one of the examples you made: Dark Blast. You did mention Abyssal Gaze, which replaces Dark Pit on the blast set, but which is actually more similar to Petrifying Gaze from Dark Miasma, but I will also add Torrent to it. Torrent on defender and corruptor does little damage and even among Knockback powers it's by no means a bad one, but not a good one either, and I am saying this as someone who enjoys using knockback to my advantage when I play powersets with that feature. On blasters and sentinels, on the other hand, there is Umbral Torrent that also does (significant) damage, and it makes sense since those archetypes are meant to deal damage, the debuffs and crowd control are icing on the cake. This further ties to the matter of archetype differences that cannot be ignored in a proposal like this. Specifically, going back to Screech and Sonic Blast, the difference between Sentinel's version and the other archetypes' version is not just in the damage. Currently, and I must reprimand you for overlooking this point, Screech is the one attack from the set that offers the longest lasting resistance debuff after the nuke. That means that on a defender, for instance, whose damage would not be great to begin with, if you want to focus on reducing resistance you are likely using screech in your attack chain, even if its damage is negligible. But this is true also for the other archetypes should they want to focus on that aspect, even if it would be less effective than on a defender. Why am I mentioning this? Because on the Sentinel version the damage increase did not come without a price and that price was among other things a lowering of the damage resistance debuff on Screech and other attacks. This is in part made up by the T1 and T2 inherent debuff, but other archetypes do not have this. That said, at the same time, this does not mean one should either go all the way, the damage increase might be a little lower than on Sentinel and still be all right, for instance, and I doubt that would create any imbalance, no question there, but still I do not feel this point in an accurate analysis of Screech should be overlooked. This ties in to a further point, however, which is that it's pointless to watch yourself from the kicks of fleas and not from those of elephants, as a proverb says in my native language. What I mean with that is that it's all nice and dandy to buff an ability of an underperforming powerset, it certainly will not hurt, but in the end, if you have a problem with 5 powers over nine, making one of the other 4 better won't fix the other 5. Take for example Electrical Blast, yeah, I will be honest and say that powerset needs all the help it can get and that making tesla cage a damaging ability, especially on blaster, would not be a bad thing. But the issue here is that tesla cage, in the end, works as intended, it's charged bolts, lightning bolt, ball of lightning, thunderous blast and most of all voltaic sentinel that need to be revised. That would fix the powerset, not improving tesla cage, even if it would certainly not be unwelcome. Going back to Sonic blast, it seems to me its problems, if they are indeed there, lie more in its damaging powers, especially with the DPA of Shout, than with Screech. Furthermore the matter with stuns seems more about the fact they lack good sets and procs than in the mez itself being worse than others. Compare for instance with confuse that has the best purple set or with holds that have Basilisk's Gaze and Lockdown, and many useful procs. Now, to be fair, if those problems you and other mention are there, and I am not unwilling to accept some things might not be right there, I believe a fix across the board, rather than for a single power on a single powerset, would be what is truly needed. Lastly I want to close saying I agree with your closing statements, that there should be multiple significant choices. I think that so far a good job has been made in showing the aspects that are connected with this proposal and of the other gameplay aspects connected to it.

No, screech is the stun of Sonic Blast. The sleep is Siren's Song, and it's not a bad power at all, at least compared to other sleep powers.

Now we are more on the reasonable side. So please, bring on more facts, if you will. Yes, they can be useful, maybe not to many, but they have a niche. And that's not necessarily bad by itself, many powersets have such powers.

Firstly I see people who take them all the time, guess we hang around different folks. And I am sorry but regardless of what you say, I do not see any compelling evidence to assert Screech and similar powers are *useless*. Back to square one. Again, I suggest you find a more compelling argument, and for your own sake. If you don't like the idea, then I am afraid you are the one who stands to lose the most here. Repeating a falsehood, even if it appears true to you, won't make it magically turn into the truth. (And just in case you want to strawman again and point out I am doing the same here: no. I am not trying to convince you Screech is useful. I simply find it useful, and that's enough -for me-. I am not the one making proposals here and trying to convince others.) The positive side at least is that you can skip the powers if you deem them useless, or, well, play sonic blast on a sentinel if this bothers you that much. Secondly I find it quite odd that so far you have omitted to mention dual pistols, which perfectly fits the paradigm, no snipe, nothing else that seems crazily overpowered, and which certainly does not shine as the most popular set at least as far as numbers are concerned. And yet you omitted to mention it not only as a counterexample, where it was certainly more appropriate than sonic blast, but even in your original post.

I have never said that: a) Screech is useless. b) Screech should not be buffed. Hence yes, this is a strawman argument, because you are arguing with me about things I have never actually said. Sometimes it happens that people use strawman arguments without being aware, maybe this is your case. If it is indeed your case, be aware it does not help show the validity of your argument even one bit. Quite the contrary in fact. Now let's have a little more in depth look: - You assert Screech is useless. This is simply false, as it is false for virtually all the other mez blasts that do little to no damage. Maybe they are not necessary powers to take, and that's all right, but there are dozens and dozens of guides out there on those blast sets that beg to differ with you. Not to mention the numerous players who take and use those powers. So, maybe a more convincing argument here would help too, I think. - What I did above was simply pointing out that comparing sonic blast to ice blast, without considering the incredibly powerful -res effect it has, was not, in my opinion, a fair comparison. At least to a certain extent. I do not see why in a reasonable discussion this point should not be mentioned and addressed. Escalating immediately with a hyperbolic strawman toward the party that simply dares to bring up this, and with a patently false strawman at that, is not, again in my opinion, an effective way to address such point. I hope it is clearer now. To be frank, also, I am not particularly hostile to your proposal, just a little skeptical, as it seems a buff for powers that are in general okay. Not that they cannot be improved and rebalanced of course, but I would personally like to read some more compelling and reasoned arguments in this regard.

I am afraid strawmen arguments will not be very helpful to show the validity of your points.

Always in favor of adding alternate animations for powers. Even more in favor when the very same powers have alternate animations in some powersets and not in others.

Sonic does have -resistance all across the board though, which is already one of the most powerful debuffs.

Yes, please.

There is a door to the First ward to Underground Imperial and it still works. Haven't tried it with a Praetorian, but it let me get there with my primal toon, since I had started the First Ward arcs by the contact in Cap au Diable mostly by accident.

Best proposal of the week!

Already now on many builds it is more efficient to take mystic flight instead of regular fly, even if you take hover. Regular fly is basically taken only when you get fly and have maxed your power pool choices. I expect this phenomenon to increase and to extend to more power pools when the new origins pools are released. And I am fine with that, since the limit to 4 pools is what keeps it in check. In light of that I believe this proposal will decrease even further the appeal of traditional travel powers, to the point very few will actually take them. I am against this proposal for this reason. However I believe the proposal is reasonable and I think in the end the powercreep would not be too much, if it were accepted, due to the limited amount of powers one can take in the end. Still I think it's too early for a proposal like this. First we need the old pool powers to be revised so that there are more than 1 or 2 useful powers per pool, creating viable and reasonable options for all characters.

Adding to the number: - Fencing: a single-weapon melee set that is based on more graceful fencing moves. I noticed however Carnival Harlequins do reproduce this to an extent, but I don't recall having access to their same sword, which is available only for dual blades as a rapier. And the rest of the broadsword set really does not convey the idea of graceful fencing. - Chakram: again taking inspiration from the ring used by carnival minions, a set that uses that and other circus performer tricks would be pretty lovely. - Crossbow: it actually would be pretty badass, and it's a shame only npcs can use them. Even if not a full powerset it would be nice to have, maybe in a monster-hunting themed set? - A blast set based around throwing shurikens and knives. - A police mastermind set

100% support this.

Well I had a relatively easy time through Praetoria with a FF/energy blast defender, so... 😛 Joking aside I believe characters who find +4/x8 too easy, especially on team, should probably explore other venues to find increased difficulty, Ouroboros does offer quite a few interesting options in that regard. What I feel is missing, actually, is a real reward for those added difficulties, right now from my understanding you only get a badge the first time you do that.

I like Bombardment very much in all the forms it has been proposed so far. I think the current state of the set is fairly good, and it seems balanced to trade endurance for recharge, the same way Positron's blast traded recharge for endurance. I would personally be very glad to slot the set as is, and I think the way it is it will not create too much variation in current established builds and guides. On the other hand a more performing set as it has been proposed later, at the cost of set bonuses, or even better with alternate set bonuses such as damage instead of accuracy, might offer a less carbon-copy version of such bonuses. Right now Positron's blast already feels like a Ragnarok redux concerning its bonuses, maybe going out of the mold even if just a little is not a bad idea after all. Switching focus over the damage/endurance sets I found a bit disappointing that none of them offers both high damage and high endurance modification values, although one could always use five pieces from the first set and try to achieve the remaining with a piece from the other set. Still, just for the sake of comparison these are the numbers I got for a frankenslotted short circuit on mids: accuracy 47.70% damage 88.07% endmod 91.78% recharge 73.78% Regular endurance remained unaffected though, and the attack has still its hefty 15.6 endurance cost. The pieces I used were: endmod, endmod/recharge and endmod/accuracy from efficacy adaptor and damage, damage/recharge and accuracy/damage/recharge from obliteration. I get that the set bonuses of the new sets are much better than what I got above and that there is also added endurance to the mix, so perhaps, it is fine, you get something, you give something, but I still felt like bringing this up, because after all it's feedback that was asked

Some are still like that, yes, oddly enough the most accessible ones like Dmitri Krylov in Cap. Most of those though can be unlocked through other contacts with decent missions, it just might not be the most intuitive mechanism to use. For instance I often unlocked the aforementioned Krylov via Ashley McKnight. And yeah, you nailed my feeling, blue areas are often seen one, seen all. 😕

With some exceptions, this system is no longer in place on Homecoming. You can now unlock most villain contacts just by talking to them. That said, I find it quite amusing that for many users the redside zones are depressing, whereas I actually feel that way about most blue zones. There are exceptions such as the Hollows or King's Row, and perhaps Croatoa, but in general I find the great majority of blue areas shallow, hypertrophic and downright uninspiring, whereas most red areas feel to me vibrant and overall more incisive. And that's one of the reasons that makes me gravitate more toward redside.

On my new dominator I noticed that if I use the alternate animation for the snipe zapp, if I follow up to it with charged bolts and lightning bolt, those attacks will use as well their alternate animations. The weird part is that as a dominator those alternate animations are not even available in power customization, yet, I clearly recognized them from those available in electrical blast. I encountered a month or so ago a similar phenomenon with moonbeam, dark blast and gloom on my corruptor.