Thezanman

I went to check how the level and base ToHit changes would affect Necromancy's Soul Extraction, and got some strange results. First of all, the summoned souls are all still one level lower than the Mastermind, which I feel should be changed to even level as well. Then I looked at their hit rates, and found that the Spirits and Tortured Souls are inheriting the ToHit penalties from the T1 and T2 henchmen they summon from, despite the fact that the souls are all the same level on both live and beta. This means that the Spirits (summoned from T1 Zombie Horde) are not only less accurate due to being one level lower, but also have a lower base hit rate for no reason, so they are getting hit with two separate accuracy penalties. EDIT: Tortured Souls (T2) are also getting a double accuracy penalty after leveling up further. Maybe they could just have their base ToHit reverted to normal, but I would still prefer to have all the souls' levels raised to match the Mastermind's, even if it means giving a ToHit penalty to the lower tier souls. As it is currently, Wraiths have the same lower hit rate as T2 henchmen despite being summoned from the T3 henchman, and all of the souls still experience skewed damage scaling against higher level enemies due to purple patch, which this update is meant to address in order to allow for easier balancing in the future.

Generally yes, but Illusion in particular doesn't do much outside of pets. Of course there is the secondary set for support but MMs have that too. I just don't think it makes sense to say that Illusion controllers are a "better version" of MMs when they have their own weird issues with pets.

Illusion controllers are even more useless than MMs in high difficulty content due to phantom army being unbuffable: it is physically impossible to increase their accuracy (beyond slotting in the power) with e.g. Tactics or set bonuses, so they're limited to like 35% accuracy max in 4 star content.

There is no HP reduction, it was reverted.

Can you use windows key+shift+s to take a screenshot instead?

"Slightly better than live" is totally fine when comparing with existing content, but I think the main problem is in the new difficulty levels. Having to get 286% increased accuracy to softcap your T1 henchmen against +4 enemies is insane, that's over 100% more than you need on live for +3.

They are AoE, and have been for ages. They upgrade all henchmen in a 30 ft. radius.

I'm not sure how I feel about lowering the HP of T1 and T2 henchmen so much. While it is likely that the combination of taking less damage and being hit less results in overall less damage taken proportional to max health, the main issue with these lower tier henchmen is that they are prone to being one-shot. In that situation, having a lower chance of being hit isn't as useful as higher effective HP to allow them to survive a hit. By my calculation, the effective HP of T1 and T2s will actually go down by a small amount against any enemy level, getting worse as the enemy level increases, meaning that one-shots will become even more common. On a more positive note, making the Necromancy attacks guaranteed to summon Specters is a huge improvement that will make the set feel a lot better to play. Using multiple attacks in a row and not getting the summon felt terrible.

I still don't get what the deal is with Catherine Wheel's Rocket Twirl. What is the point of making a pet with otherwise all ranged attacks, then adding a PBAoE which it will just spam at nothing since it isn't in melee range? Controllers can command it into melee range which is still awkward, but for Dominators this attack is literally pointless since the AI will never move into melee by itself. If you're going to increase its recharge to "reduce how often it casts the power without being surrounded", and you don't want to make it a TAoE, I would rather just have Rocket Twirl be removed entirely so that it won't waste animation time and endurance doing nothing.

If some powers have less base damage that is either a bug or was omitted from patch notes for set-specific changes. That chart shows that Foot Stomp has the same damage, and that's the case for most powers.

They're not as bad as they seem, and are pretty fair in my opinion. Only damage buff powers were nerfed, so the base damage of powers is the same and it's just a small nerf to things like Build Up. The change to -res modifiers is also very small and only affects a few sets. Diminishing returns on high target counts are the biggest change, but Tankers will still be objectively better at AoE than any other melee AT even with the nerf. Finally I think that the change to cones gaining +radius instead of +arc is preferable in most cases, especially since many cone powers with high arcs were prevented from gaining the bonus anyway on Live.

When you cast it, you target a location on the ground. The terrify affects enemies around that targeted location, while the stun affects the area around the enemy you have selected as a target. Well, it's not exactly fall damage, but at least your pet shoots rockets at them when they get launched.

I really like this change, but the way it works is a little odd. It only pulls enemies that were in the area when you cast it, and other enemies that walk nearby during the duration won't be pulled. I also feel like it would make sense to have it immobilize the main target at least, I wasn't expecting to see the anchor running around pulling things to it. Or it could just be a GTAoE which pulls things to the center.

Not sure if this is intended, but Catherine Wheel's AoE attack (Rocket Twirl) acts pretty strangely. It's listed as a 100 ft. range 15 ft. radius AoE, but it's not a TAoE, it casts at its own location. The problem is that the pet's AI will just cast the power constantly without any enemies in range, and will not attempt to get close to enemies either. It is technically possible to command it into melee range now, but it's still very awkward. This attack should really be either a TAoE or a normal PBAoE which waits until enemies are in range to cast, not whatever it is currently.

Looks like there is just one Void Hunter Rifle power that is also used to fight Romulus in a Psimon Omega arc, and it is coded to only do bonus damage against enemies named Romulus lol. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=temporary_powers.temporary_powers.void_hunter_rifle&at=none