Thezanman

They aren't different powersets. That's literally the entire point of VEATs: you get to mix and match both. The devs didn't have some master plan to give Crab Spiders grenades and not Bane Spiders, they added a backpack version ENTIRELY FOR THE VISUAL DIFFERENCE. They wouldn't have put the grenades into the Wolf Spider powers if they didn't want Bane Spiders to use them. And by the way, redraw isn't a mechanical penalty. It's only a visual difference, the total cast time is the same. There's no balance reason not to have mace grenades, it's PURELY VISUAL.

How many times do I have to say it? I don't care whether you think Banes should be penalized for wanting to use some of their best powers (?), I just want to be visually shooting grenades from my mace, not from a gun. It's not even a matter of redraw, or I would have asked for no redraw animation options like other sets already have.

It's not power economy, it's purely a visual issue. And even if it were a mechanical issue, why should Bane be penalized and not Crab?

Completely fair. It's ridiculous that Blasters would have AoE holds with 40% the cooldown of the actual control ATs.

All ATs can easily get +22% ToHit with just Tactics and Kismet, except Dominators, which is a potential concern. The bigger issue in my eyes is that ToHit debuffs will lower the damage of your snipes, but that is still far better than the current behavior of ToHit debuffs completely preventing you from using quick snipes. I don't see this as a significant issue. Yes, snipes cost more endurance than other powers, but it's not by that much. It certainly won't be "murdering" your blue bar. And while it is a little odd for the damage to decrease as your beginner's luck bonus diminishes, it doesn't really matter. The damage bonus from ToHit isn't a massive amount, and AFAIK the earliest level any snipe is available is 12, already over halfway through the beginner's luck period. Maybe, but this change is already a huge improvement over live functionality, to the point you can completely ignore ToHit and still use snipes as a functional power. That was the goal, after all.

The volunteer devs have far more important (and easier) things to do than trying to make VFX from scratch. In the meantime, it won't hurt to just add Wind Control with minimal effort since it's already pretty much done. You don't have to play it if you don't want to, and maybe sometime in the future VFX can be made. No reason to make people wait for that time.

I don't like how it looks to swap between a gun and a mace constantly as a Bane Spider Soldier. Since the Crab Spider already has backpack versions of Venom Grenade and Frag Grenade which are mutually exclusive with the gun versions, I think it makes sense for Bane Spiders to get mace versions. There's already a grenade-launcher animation for the mace on Web Cocoon, so I think that could be repurposed easily enough. Alternatively, just use the animation of Mace Beam Blast.

One of the unique things about this game is the way powers have such varying animation times, and while it isn't implemented or balanced very well in a lot of cases, it has the potential to differentiate the way different powersets feel while playing. I personally enjoy longer animation, hard-hitting attacks compared to faster, weaker ones. It's still a lot better than other cones due to its 90 degree arc and 9 ft. radius, compared to the usual 50 degrees and 7 ft. I think people forget that the way Spinning Kick works is the same way that every single PBAoE works. You just click and hit everyone in the area, without it forcing you to be in range first. Because everyone can use a PBAoE just fine, I don't really get the argument that Spinning Kick is bad because you can misjudge the range. It just takes some getting used to.

Even if the other changes they made were bad, that's no reason not to implement good ideas.

Agreed, that would be really nice.

No, the LETHAL damage was increased from 86.64 to 103.5. It still does extra damage from the toxic DoT. On live the impact lethal damage + the average damage from the toxic DoT sum to about 103.3, now the total is about 119.86.

They are separate.

Trip Mine is working as intended. Now that enhancements actually apply to it and Time Bomb, they both feel pretty good to use. Gun Drone stacking works as well.

I like the idea, but requiring enemies to kill the bomb probably wouldn't work very well. That means that if there's a tanker/brute taunting enemies more strongly, or a controller/dominator stunning or holding the enemies, you wouldn't actually be able to do damage with the power. Making it a relatively short countdown like Omega Maneuver already is or like the 5 second Time Bomb currently in testing should work just fine.

I imagine that if they wanted the set to be melee-themed, they would have given it more than the minimum three melee powers that all assault sets have. A few of the sets have four, so they definitely could have given it one or two more melee powers if that was the intent. Realistically, the target cap change for Spinning Kick doesn't matter, since it is a relatively small AoE that would rarely hit more than 5 targets anyway.

I like this phrase.

It could be changed to Electrified Web Grenade and do energy damage. I don't really see the problem either way though.

The point is you won't be facing multiple minions. Since you don't have taunt auras or as high a base threat as a Scrapper, enemies won't aggro on you, just like a Stalker. As for solo, Blasters can solo just fine without the defensive buffs and debuffs that the Regulator would have, so the Regulator should have no issue. There's already precedent for fully AoE based support sets. Nature Affinity is a great example: all of its abilities are AoE except for Corrosive Enzymes and Rebirth. It could pretty much be used in my idea of a Regulator unchanged, since I don't think revives should generally be AoE anyway (Howling Twilight excluded). Corrosive Enzymes doesn't even necessarily need to be AoE, since it already has a long enough duration to spread it to multiple targets. Just change Corrosive Enzymes to be melee and you have a perfectly fine Regulator set.

I don’t think it’s that hard to stay alive in melee when you don’t have taunt/damage auras like most of the melee ATs, but it is inherently more dangerous. That’s why I thought of the panic button Barrier, like how Stalker has Placate. I think this is a more straightforward solution than trying to merge two sets, and like I said, my main goal is to create a melee AT without having armor secondary. As for the buffing sets, I believe making a lot of the powers into PBAoEs with reduced values so they can affect self would go a long way to making Regulator feel right, like I did with Antidote and Alkaloid in the example Poison set.

I know there have been plenty of ideas for melee/support ATs, but none of them really seemed right to me. The main thing which I feel like I'm missing when playing CoH is a melee AT which doesn't have armor as a secondary, but most of the concepts I see try to combine armor with support, and/or add crazy new mechanics. What I would really like is to just make this new melee/support AT in the same way Sentinels were made: simply take a Corruptor and replace its ranged powerset with melee, making small tweaks to fit the theme where absolutely needed, and changing the inherent power of course. So, I tried to envision the Regulator with that ideal in mind. It would be mostly damage focused with support being secondary, like a Corruptor. As a melee AT without armor, it doesn't make sense to have Confront. At the same time, simply being in melee range inherently poses more danger than attacking from a distance. So, Confront would be replaced with Barrier, a sort of counterpart to Build Up with the same 90 second cooldown and 10 second duration, but instead granting a moderate resistance and defense buff for that time. The idea is to have an active defense mechanic to mitigate alpha strikes and other bursts of damage, without being able to consistently tank like the current melee ATs. The inherent power, Regulation, would function similarly to Domination but instead have two "modes" to pick from, allowing you to regulate (get it?) the situation as required. Defensive Regulation provides an aura for a moderate duration which both grants a small resistance buff to you and nearby allies and applies a small damage debuff to nearby enemies. Offensive Regulation is also an aura, but with a damage buff and resistance debuff instead. In order to use either Regulation you need to build up Power either by attacking or by using your support powers, just like Domination. Your Power builds up quickly, and even builds while you have a Regulation aura in effect, but using either Regulation while the other is in effect will cancel the current aura, preventing you from gaining both benefits at once. This means that while you may be able to make the effects of Regulation permanent, you will always have to decide which one is more important at the time. Beyond those two large changes, the Regulator's support powers should be changed to mostly PBAoEs or short cones to fit the theme better, lowering values when needed to make up for the power becoming AoE. Ideally, personal status protection should be added to one power in each support set, as the Regulator will be right next to the enemies and relies on toggle powers staying active to survive. Here is a rough idea of what the Regulator's support sets should look like: Poison: T1: Alkaloid: Less healing, higher recharge, becomes PBAoE T2: Envenom: Shortened range to melee (7), increased radius (the radius should be higher on other ATs anyway) T3: Weaken: Same as Envenom T4: Neurotoxic Breath: Lower range, wider cone T5: Elixir of Life: Unchanged (it's pretty much melee already, and I don't think it would be a good idea to make it an AoE revive) T6: Antidote: Changed to PBAoE (I think status protection powers are currently limited to only affect one target at a time, but I honestly don't see why that's needed) T7: Paralytic Poison: Shortened range to melee (7) T8: Poison Trap: Unchanged T9: Venomous Gas: Unchanged So, with all this in mind, the Regulator would skirt the edges of a fight, debuffing and then defeating priority targets while staying out of the direct line of fire, making use of Barrier to endure unexpected attention from enemies (sort of like a more support-based Stalker). When the situation calls for it, the Regulator will run to the teammates that need help, applying buffs and auras to anyone nearby. Please feel free to give constructive criticism. I don't really care too much about the details of a theoretical melee/support AT, so long as it is a relatively simple addition like how Sentinel was made. This is only a first draft, so I am definitely open to suggestions about the Inherent power, Confront replacement, and the specific tweaks that would be made to the support powersets.

If epic pool powers can already beat the DPA of Impale, then there is no reason not to buff it. It wouldn't increase the overall power level, but would prevent people from being forced into those specific pools.

That would certainly explain the much lower damage I was seeing. Good to know.

You can ignore the melee attacks if you want, I'll just be here doing more damage in a wider area with the powers that are still incredible even after being nerfed.

It's definitely referring to the defense granted by Invisibility, not global defense.

Weird, Trip Mine seemed to work just fine for me dropping it in a group of stationary enemies. And the tooltips are correct, I was referring to live damage values.