_Laxx_

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I'm not, but I have some small hope the devs might dump this ridiculous double standard when considering future proliferations. Genie's out of the bottle already. Heroes have powersets that are decidedly un-heroic, so where is the harm? By not proliferating sets that you now see as un-heroic or not villainous, you're not changing anything or preserving anything about the character of each side.

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The thing is, Pain Domination was made specifically to be the anti-thesis of Empathy. My bet is, when it came to the decision of "do we port Empathy over to villains or not?" they decided that they would probably have to rename the powerset and come up with new names for some of the powers. Empathy, as a name, doesn't sound villainous at all. During this, someone probably decided they should just make an entirely new set that's based on Empathy and give it a villainous spin, thus Pain Domination was born.

It's just as likely that Pain and Empathy will be swapped between sides as it is for it not to be, specifically because we really don't know what they have planned regarding Power Proliferation. While I'm not expecting it to happen anytime soon (especially in the light of the announcement when Pain was released where it was called the "anti-thesis to Empathy"), I'm also not convinced it won't ever happen. Anything can happen, so...

Regarding your claim that heroes have "decidedly unheroic sets", I think you're mistaken. A power is not inherently good or evil -- it's what you do with the power that decides your alignment. Move beyond your character's animations and realize that just because your Axe tanker is swinging down on to the skull of a ...Skull, that it doesn't mean he's cleaving him in half. The axe he uses against common thugs could have a flat edge, he could just be trying to intimidate the thug into surrendering (using the foe's HP bar as a meter to determine when he's given up, for instance), or he may realize that the very system that saves him when he's defeated is used to transport the villain to the Zig upon defeat, so any harm he may inflict is merely temporary as far as the game is concerned. It's all in how you RP it out.

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It is nice that my thread has been bumped again, it really offers a good rationale for why Gravity should receive some positive changes. Thanks for all the input everyone.

Nethergoat:

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I like my grav/TA controller quite a bit.

I skipped the phase power because they annoy the heck out of me, but a lot of sets have dumb powers most people skip. It's be nice if it didn't stink, but it's no big deal.

I rate power sets by how fun they are to play, and I think grav is a lot of fun.

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I accept there will be differing views of opinion on this subject.

However I question whether your opinion is based largely as a result of the 'Trick Arrow' secondary, a set which is largely known for its heavy control. This could be influencing your opinion greatly on whether Gravity suffers from a lack of control.

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He didn't mention anything in that quote about Gravity's control or potential lack thereof. He merely said that he rates sets based on how fun they are, and the feels Grav is a lot of fun. I really don't think Trick Arrow came into play anywhere in there. Wormhole is a really fun power, and so is Propel. Singularity is also highly amusing, so I tend to agree with him that Grav is a fun set.

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I want my Ninjitsu Scrapper damnit!

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Since it looks like Stalkers will probably never get Shields, I have a feeling Ninjitsu will end up staying unique to them as some sort of compensation.

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The comedy of Hide with a shield as the tool is something that can't be underestimated.

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No one seems to pay any mind when Solid Snake's cardboard box appears out of nowhere. I'm sure they'd pay no attention to the shield leaning against the wall.

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Yup. I posted earlier about that. Snake has the whole "obvious" method of hiding down to an art.

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I dunno. Shields just don't match sneaky ninja types.

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I think it's a possibility shield proliferation to stalkers might somehow resemble last issue's empathy proliferation to corruptors and masterminds.

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"Shield" Stalker, once proliferated.

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This has always sounded to me like a stealth nerf to aggro to hamper herding. The problem I have with this is, if I've got a group of enemies on me (which I usually do being a scrapper) there are two number that dictacte how many foes I can fight...

...my aggro cap

...and the limit on each of my powers (in this case, it's 10 across the board)

There is and should never be a reason for a Boss to run from me unless it's part of the story. Certainly not while i'm well within my aggro limit. If you want to make weakling LTs and Minions run then so be it, but a Boss is a Boss and should go down fighting.

I also wonder if there isn't a problem with Ranged Attacks and Aggro. I often see enemies run to range to attack, and then flee or often times they stand there doing nothing far longer than the recharges on their attacks should dictate.

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Yes, yes. It's always a stealth nerf. It couldn't possibly be a bug in the system that's hard to track down and replicate reliably. Nooooo, never.

QR

I'm not going to break your post down point by point. Rather, I'm going to point out that I frequently take my characters from 1-27 without using a single enhancement. Granted, my play experience probably lends a great deal to my ability to handle my blue bar for 27 levels without any kind of endurance management tools (outside of Stamina at 20 on some of them). Taking this into account, I'm going to talk specifically about the 1-20 section.

It's as simple as not speeding around as fast as you can to kill as quick as you can. Honest. Knowing that you have few powers, either to keep yourself alive or to defeat your foe, should key you in on a pace you may want to play at if you want to move through missions with minimal breaks. While I personally have no issue stopping every 3-4 spawns to take a knee, I'm aware that some people just don't want to have to stop. In order for them to not stop, though, they need to slow down and most aren't willing to do this (or think they shouldn't have to).

That's my take on it. If the player just slew down in their "pre-Stamina" days, they'd find that their blue bar is much more full than they'd expect. Taking a shift from a fully-enhanced character to a not-enhanced character can have this kind of "I don't have enough Endurance!" backlash.

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oh, cov side but not on coh side!

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They're the same forum with a different background.

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Council Marksmen stay at range too, but they don't scamper off like wounded deer as soon as they're agro'd.

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Because Marksmen aren't programmed to maintain range. The Family Hitmen, however, are.

Annoying or not, this one particular action of the Hitmen is intended. The other NPCs that run off for no particular reason are the problem.

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The Family hitmen are the worst. They usually run the second you draw aggro on them, and they have an insane range on their weapons and will snipe you from two spawns away. Whenever I fight family, I desperately try to knockdown/hold/whatever hitmen so they don't go running off and make me chase them all over the map.

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The Hitmen are actually programmed to do this. They have no melee attack to speak of and have been programmed to stay at range to the player.

What you seem to be forgetting is that even though those attacks are passing your bubbles, it is also passing any resistance that the pets themselves have (for damage dealt through Bodyguard). This hits all MM pets equally regardless of Secondary.

Another thing you seem to be forgetting is that while the MM has less personal defense/resist normally, under full Bodyguard mode, he has a ton of resistance to the damage coming at him. It will take considerably more damage to kill a fully BG MM than one who isn't BG at all. This extra amount of time may be enough to get the person who is attacking you, maybe it won't. We haven't been able to test this yet, so that remains to be seen.

You may have a harder time keeping your pets alive through Bodyguard effects, but you are slightly better off than most MMs because, even if it's small, you have more personal Defense than most other MMs. The fact that they have to use self-buffs just to hit you effectively should be evidence of this. Not all MMs share this perk, just */FF ones. While Dark Miasma does have a self-heal that is AoE, it has to hit something first, and go through a long animation, and, iirc, the pets have to be particularly close to you to get healed at all.

I'm not dismissing your concerns, it just seems to me that from your posts in here are ignoring the bigger MM picture and focusing only one MM Secondary. I personally see you, a */FF MM, getting slightly more use out of this in PvP than others for the sole reason that your enemy has to use ToHit buffs to hit you reliably whereas other MMs don't have this to fall back on.

I was going off of a table that used Temp Invuln and RPD. Of course, Temp Invuln has a much higher base than the SR toggles do, which is probably the reason as to why I have a bit less defense. I'm not one to crunch numbers, and with only a .1 difference I don't think it's necessary to change my slotting unless I find that I still need to edit my slots around for other reasons.

As to why I was taking Focused Accuracy, its mostly a Concept reason--and a way to take slots out of my attacks and put elsewhere (or put something else in there other than Accuracy).

One thing I seem to remember from somewhere (and it's what my SR does) is that 4 slots in the toggle defense and 2 in the passive is more defense than 3 in the toggle and 3 in the passive. Basically what this does is it capitalizes on the higher base of the toggle to overcome the effect of ED slightly. You get more defense for the same slots spent.

If you're able to do this with your slotting, or sacrifice an Endurance Reduction in your toggles to do so, I would recommend doing it. Just for a heads-up, my SR has the 4 defense toggle/2 defense passive strategy with no Endurance Redux at all. He also runs Weave and Tough on top of it and I don't have endurance issues most of the time. The trick I did was I slotted most of my Martial Arts attacks with Endurance reduction. I'll see where I'm at on the Endurance front after I throw Focused Accuracy into the mix though.

That's pretty much all I have to say for getting the most defense for equal slotting. Of course, you can always slot more defense in either as it isn't technically wasted if you have excess slots, just the defense bonus will be pretty minor.