Captain Powerhouse

About the toggle suppression changes: Some players have asked about the 8 second suppression for offensive toggles after mez. First, this suppression does not care if you turn the toggle off and back on, the suppression is active for that period of time. Why is this suppression in place? This change is not meant to automatically make it extremely easy to sustain multiple offensive toggles in the face of being mezzed. There are builds that only have one offensive toggle, then there are others that contain several. With an average of about 2 second and change cast time, 8 seconds is equivalent to re-activating 4 offensive toggles, all while not having to actually spend time turning them back on. We want to see how this plays in as is on game play, and how it interacts with current rate of being mezzed, before making any further adjustments to the timer. The more testing data we get, the better. If you run tests, remember to post your results in the appropriate focused feedback threads.

The Sentinel version of Sonic Attack was breaking the rule of having its cones lowered to melee-set target caps because the set never had access to one big TAoE (that would hit 16 targets on a blaster or 10 targets on a Sentinel.) With this revamp, Siren Song was kept as a cone, but treated as an TAoE, also turned into the most potent AoE in the set. Under that change, sentinel version of the set is being adjusted to follow the AT standards, with the regular cones hitting 6 foes and Siren's Song hitting 10. Given its higher damage and utility, you likely will want that power in your AoE toolkit.

As you note, Sonic Attack has been forever deemed as an under-performing set. Rebalancing it has been always an issue due to the set’s -Res component. Buffing the power set to be actually good, while keeping the old -res stacking scheme, was just not viable. This change is a drastic buff to Sonic Attack’s damage output, both in AoE and single target performance, even with the dialed back -resistance stacking. Cast time reductions that result in DPA increases, damage number bumps, Siren Song’s newfound damage potential, all this adds up to a considerable boost. The target cap increase on Siren Song's also adds a lot of safety into the mix. The set is still not aiming at top performance, but its now above-average performer, with the potential of multiple Sonic Attack users to drastically lower foe’s -Res. A full team can still reach -300% res, and now dish a lot more damage than before. I highly encourage anyone to take this new version of Sonic Attack for a spin on the Brainstorm server and test how it works out now. Existing builds might see desire to respec since some of the least desired powers like Screech and Siren's Song in the set are now some of the best.

Player attacks will get the same treatment eventually. Sonic Attack had the treatment done on this pass [see that set's specific patch notes for more info]. More player sets will follow but not certain to make it into Page 4.

In a future update that wont be visible, but thats part of how the pet's power repetition system works.

The Psi Holes are still there, but they are now more "weakness" than being completely naked to the damage types. These types are still the most likely things to kill any of those sets.

I'm working on what? All I am working on is my Christmas break, and no set is currently being worked on. After the break its just a few more tweaks on the existing stuff before moving on to the next thing, and the usual stuff.

Ran out of time. It's still planned for a future release to get the sets ported for Sentinels.

Granite defense right now is +15 base on a tank. Used to be +20. That is exactly a -5 defense reduction. This might be seen as a bit of a setback or nerf, but for a Granite build to retain the same defense it had before it will now need 3 SO enhancements in both, Granite AND Stone Skin.

Misunderstanding at the time. This simply means that the taunt added to powers via the inherent will actually be enhanced by taunt enhancements added to those powers. Like, adding a Taunt enhancement to Fire Sword will increase the taunt duration that of the taunt is dynamically added to the power.

Wish I could do this, but as far as I know, I cant control what tint is picked by what color geometry. Each geom just has some stuff tied to it that make it inherit both colors in different ways, with crystal ones inheriting one tint in the edges and another in the flat sides. Closest I could ever get to is having one of the pieces, likely the glass layer, not being tintable at all.

That is already happening. There are foes with tactics and I think some other buffs in the ASF, and you will see more similar stuff in the future.

Sorry folks but that idea has been scrapped. After some discussions and considerations it was just not viable. The sleeps still will be extremely effective for killing toggles, though. Both buffs and debuffs.

Geode IS a pet. You can even target it, and enemies can kill it. If it dies, your geode buff is canceled.

I recall that being the live team stance. Earth Manipulation -defense debuffs are half the strength of the controller ones.

That does not sound right... Definitively not intentional. Only power that should not do full crit is Seismic Smash.

I have plans to make Shockwaves not hit sleeping targets. It just missed having that change ready for Brainstorm.

Pacify is a Placate power. The comment you replied to was specific to Sleeps. No.

This is step one in what likely will be a long set of changes that will take a while to implement. The idea being that Sleep will be a reliable way to shut-down enemy buff and debuffs. Someone already mentioned Hurricane as an example. Another example is CoT Chill of the Night toggles that drastically debuff accuracy. Right now, sleep will reliably turn those toggles off. Eventually some NPC buffs like Nemesis Vengeance will also be purgeable via applying a sleep on buffed entities. Most cases where this would be useful, either the player accuracy is heavily debuffed, or enemy defense drastically buffed.

Yes

The Brainstorm build has some bug fixes that were not there. This should had been fixed as part of that.

Notice: this was missing from the patch, and only currently applies to Earth Manipulation's version of Salt Crystals: the Auto Hit aspect also does not apply on Raid Targets (most AVs/GMs/etc) Right now its auto-hit on everything, but that will be corrected on a future patch. No, this only applies to powers players use directly, and only powers they buy (primary/secondary/epic/pool) not temporary powers or pet powers.

Powers like Earth Embrace are very often used primarily for their MaxHP components, and activated as often as possible. Although some hold it back to use it as an emergency heal, that actually lowers survivability making it even more likely that the heal is necessary. An extreme recharge also encourages a user with low recharge build to hold the power beyond when it would had been ideal to use it "because what if I **really** need it later?" If using the power for its MaxHP uptime, more often than not, the the heal magnitude is almost always lost to over-heal. By making the power usable more regularly, for a smaller amount of healing, it is less likely that the user will hold it back in counter-productive ways, and if used regularly, there is more chances of the heal to be beneficial and not just wasted in over-healing. Did you test this today in Brainstorm?

There is precedent for unique power icons that goes all the way to launch

Worded that way mostly because it is possible the targets hit by the damage portion are not the same as the ones hit by the knockdown. For someone that does not know the under-the-hood implementation, given independent target selection and independent tohit checks, it might look as "a chance".