Adeon Hawkwood

And if done right I think the devs could make it better without losing it's unique feel.

You got it.

Good point, I didn't think of that although from a practical point of view most characters with damage auras also have mez protection.

In the case of Defenders and Controllers I view Fortitude as being very useful for the defense for several sets. First off is sets where the Defender/Controller provides high levels of team protection (Force Field, Cold, Sonic, Thermal) in this case Fortiutude brings their toughness up to par with everyone else. The second is for sets that encourage the character to get in close range (such as Kinetics and Storm to a lesser degree) but don't provide significant passive survivability of their own (which is why Traps wasn't listed). For these characters the extra defense can allow them to be more aggressive with their buff/debuffs.

Or slot three each in two different pets.

Or you could take Stealth. From a practical point of view the benefits of Cloaking Device over Stealth are pretty minimal. My complaint with Cloaking Device has nothing to do with Super Speed (since I much prefer Super Jump) it's that it's basically equivalent to a power that any character can get for a single power choice. The main advantage of CD for a Devices blaster is that is doesn't use one of your power pool selections should you happen to already have 4.

It's not unsupressable. Also, you'll note my argument was more that CD is a glorified pool power. Stealth provides the same benefit with just a small movement debuff and for PvE purposes so does SS and it doubles as your travel power. Cloak of Darkness at least provides immobilization protection, +perception and double the defense bonus (after adjusting for AT modifiers).

I think the problem is that I'm being unclear. The ATs are designed around the triad system in the sense that Team support characters get very low damage and no suvivability, damage characters get minimal support and tank characters get low damage and minimal support. Essentially they designed around the triad and then made support a bit to good.

So my issue with the current system is not that it adheres directly to the triad system (because it doesn't) but that it is based on the triad system in a way that causes problems given the fundamental nature of the power system.

1. Team power is highly variable for a given number of players. The game is easy enough that this doesn't matter but if it were normalized somewhat it would make the design of challenging team content easier without requiring a specific team makeup. Look at the Hamidon raid, it's enjoyable and balanced but the devs balanced it by rendering almost every type of buff and debuff useless except for regen, healing, +damage, holds and -resistance (actually, I'm not sure about this last one, I think it works but I can't recall for certain).

2. Most characters are either good solo (can deal damage at a decent rate while surviving the return damage) or good on a team (as in support their teammates rather than just dealing damage), few characters are both. The devs have done a decent job of increasing the solo capability of team oriented characters but without a fundamental change to the system their options are limited and when the best team is one that consists of 8 support characters something is out of whack.

The VEATs are a good example of what I think all characters should be. They have enough damage to solo comfortably but when they join a team they bring several nice buffs/debuffs for their allies to use.

I'm not suggesting that all ATs should be made into clones of the VEATs but what I would like to see in CoX2 is a situation where all characters can solo to similar degree but also all characters have powers to make their teammates better. Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, Dominators and Masterminds already do this to a large degree the problem is that the game is, of necessity, balanced around the higher damage output of the Scrapper, Brute, Stalker and Blaster ATs. So my solution for CoX2 would basically be to lower the power of buffs/debuffs for support classes, increase their damage to compensate and then give the current damage classes team support powers either through stronger debuffs/controls on their attacks or though VEAT style auras (Tankers would get more damage and aura style buffs at the cost of personal survivability). Yes, it would result in an increase in the total power of a team but it would (if done right) be a relatively predictable power increase allowing for the enemies encountered by a team to be increased a similar amount.

It probably won't happen, but I can dream can't I?

They Stack. A Stealth IO combined with one other form of stealth (CD, SS, Steamy Mist, Stealth etc.) is enough to be invisible to most PvE enemies.

Well even if it is faster (and I'm not sure it is) the question becomes is it fun? While laying one mine and watching people go flying is fun having to spend several minutes laying them is several minutes of (to me) anti-fun.

I did exactly the same thing (in fact story wise they are the same guy with two different suits of power armor) and the difference is amazing. I still play my AR/Dev because I like him but the sheer utility of Traps compared to Devices is amazing.

Realistically you have to crank it up to +2 or higher to see any significant difference unless you use powers with low native accuracy, for example a lot of AoE mez powers in control sets have a native accuracy of 0.8 or 0.9 and a bit of -def can help a lot with them.

Force Field works fine but I feel it's to much a one-trick pony. It softcaps defense for a team and provides some knockback based mitigation but to me it also feels out of place in the current game when compared to newer sets that provide more generalized support.

Yes you can assemble a team pretty much however you want but the ATs are still designed around the triad and it shows.

A better way to look at it is how do different ATs add to the team, linearly or multiplicatively? In a traditional triad system all characters add linearly, Tanks and Healers through damage prevention and DPS through damage dealing. This means that the pwoer level of a team is relatively predictable. Conversely the nature of buffs and debuffs in our system means that characters focused on damage dealing or personal damage prevention add linearly but buff/debuff characters add multiplicatively. This means that the power level of teams is highly variable depending on the exact makeup.

Additionally the origin of the ATs reinforces the old tripe that a good team character needs to be weak solo and visa versa (although the devs have rectified this somewhat over the years). I think the VEATs have proven that it is possible to make characters who have good solo power but are still a positive assets to a team beyond what they personally can do (i.e. they stack multiplicatively) and yet are not tank-mages.

Personally I would like to see the devs carry that learning over to CoX2 and make all characters able to solo well while still providing benefits for the team. The side benefit to this is that if all characters stack multiplicatively then team power becomes more predictable and it becomes possible to make challenging team content that doesn't require a specific team composition.

And there are plenty of other people who play it because we love the theme, want gadgeteer characters and enjoy some of the more situation powers but don't like feeling like we have a secondary that can be mostly replaced with a few pool powers and an IO.

The fact that we still play Devices characters and enjoy them despite the weakness of the set says something about it I think.

For a Superspeed character yes it would. If you like a different Travel power then CD is worth keeping for the stealth but the more I look at it the harder I'm finding it to argue that a Devices Blaster has any significant advantages over a non-devices Blaster who uses Super Speed for their Travel power and takes Maneuvers and Tactics from the Leadership pool (see my previous post on trading Targeting Drone for Tactics).

I'm starting to think the only power in Devices which is useful in a general team setting AND not replaceable with a power pool or just taking a different secondary is Caltrops.

Yes and no. The vast majority of enemies with KB powers have a magnitude <4 so 1 KB IO is enough. There are a few with more but most of them have more than 8. Personally I tend to stick with 1KB IO unless I'm slotting for set bonuses and I find that to be sufficient.

Useful tip here, you can slot a stealth IO in sprint (either Celerity or Unbounded Leap) and save needing Flight.

I would definitely second this. I love the Striga arcs. If you can put a team together it's even more fun but even solo it's a good story and it doesn't send you charging all over the city like some other contacts at that level. In fact my only complaint is that you often get several hunt missions in a row (they are less annoying than some hunt missions but still irritating, especially if you do them solo at the lowest possible level).