Adeon Hawkwood

Agreed, I personally think that the majority of buffs that are currently single target but designed to be placed on an entire team (SB and the shields for certain, I'm less sure about the mez protection ones like Clear Mind) should be made an AoE buff (which doesn't boost the caster obviously). The only problem is that from a practical point of view a way to block or cancel these buffs needs to be implemented first otherwise it causes even more problems (griefing during costume contests, crashing for people who's computers can't handle buffs like SB or the thermal shields etc.).

Actually I'd rate DP as a very middle of the road Blast set in terms of AoE. It's got two 0.9 damage scale AoEs (same as quite a few other sets) but they have very long animations on par with the much higher damage scale "breath" AoEs. Similarly Hail of Bullets is ok but it's worse than the other crashless nukes. Personally I see DP more as a single target damage dealer with ok AoE than an AoE set. I'd rate Kin/Arch or Kin/AR quite a bit above Kin/DP in terms of AoE goodness.

While recharge doesn't normally stop enemies from attacking it does slow down the rate at which they can use their most powerful powers. Solo against bosses this is actually pretty handy. It's less useful in a team environment but even there it can be handy against AVs, if you have other people present who also have -recharge powers to stack on it. In any case my main point was that at high levels a powerful debuff (even if it's not a great one) is IMHO more useful than the minor damage done by the other blaster immobilizes. I wouldn't mind seeing Web Grenade get a small boost (my suggestion is actually to give it an endurance discount to make it more useful at lower levels) but overall I'm actually pretty content with the power.

You are correct, the devs get paid because we enjoy playing the game and if they make decisions that anger enough of the player base then it could potentially lead to the game being shut down and them fired due to lack of revenue.

However your assumption that people threatening to quit over this particular issue would sway the devs is misguided. Allowing people to un-slot more enhancements during a respec would cause a major shift in the market prices. Obviously it's impossible to predict exactly what would happen but we can form a generalized set of assumptions. In general at the moment we can assume that people will unslot really valuable IOs (purples, PVPIOs, and probably most IOs over 60million or so) using multiple respecs if required since doing so and selling or reusing them on a different character is profitable even with the cost of a respec recipe. So in general if we could unslot unlimited IOs we would expect to see a large drop in the price of low and medium cost IOs as people would be passing them around their alts (and thus buying fewer) or unslotting them to upgrade (and thus selling more). Overtime this excess supply would build up and the IOs would essentially become vendor trash.

But what happens to the high end ones that people are unslotting now? Well if the price is high enough to make it worth unslotting them then making it easier to do so isn't going to noticeably affect the supply. Instead the price reduction of the lower end stuff will mean that people have more influence to spend on high end stuff driving prices even higher.

So what does this mean long term? It means the economy becomes even more fragmented than it is now. It's easier to obtain the less valuable stuff but becomes a lot harder to acquire the really popular stuff. Since the inf drops from enemies will remain the same the buying power of the average player will actually decrease at least with regards to their ability to buy the top end stuff.

So what does this mean in terms of player population? Yes, allowing us to retain more IOs in a respec might potentially keep some players for whom this is a deal breaker. However conversly it could also end up losing the game players due to the impact on the economy. Some players might get fed up with how long it takes to get high end stuff and burn out, others might leave due to the fact that the change made playing the market less enjoyable, finally some potential new players might be turned away by the feeling that the time required to get the top end stuff is to high. Is the latter group larger than the first group? Apparently the devs believe so but if you really feel that it isn't then prove it to the devs, cancel your account, tell them why and encourage others to do the same.

Actually although Flash Arrow is unresistable it is still affected by the Purple Patch. It ignores the AV resistance but is still reduced when fighting higher con enemies.

Hahahahahaha. Oh wait, you were serious... Let me laugh even harder. Hahahahahaha.

I frequently take the aggro on my Traps/AR Defender, normally with seeker drones although if they're on recharge I'll sometimes just go in and rely on my defense (depending to some extent on the enemy).

So yes, I could move ahead and use time bomb on the next spawn (assuming of course I took leave of my senses and respecced into it) or I could do something useful for my team such as staying with them, filling the enemies full of lead and shielding them with my FFG rather than running off setting up a questionable power and possibly aggroing a group before the team is ready. There are times when it makes sense to charge off and start prepping the next group (heck, I do it a lot on my Tank) but it rarely makes sense for a Traps character, especially not if you're only doing it to use Time Bomb. The damage from Time Bomb is about the same as the T9 nukes in your blast set (excluding AR, Arch and DP of course) so if you want a big boom take that instead, at least you can use it at a time that's convienient for the rest of the team (and if you are AR, Arch or DP what are you wasting time with Time Bombs for? You could be pew-pewing things).

EDIT: Actually, Time Bomb and Nuke damage aren't actually similar for Corruptors now that I think about it. For Blasters and Defenders they are but the Corruptor version of the Time Bomb pseudo-pet is actually the same as the blaster version so it does Blaster level damage but doesn't scourge. So for a corruptor Time Bomb is generally higher damage than your nuke.

You are correct. The primary change to dominators was a huge boost to their damage scalar, however in many specific cases the base damage of specific powers was changed (which carried with it a change in recharge and endurance usage). They didn't actually change any of the formula used for balancing the damage, recharge and end cost of the powers themselves however. If you want a full list of changes you can find it here:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Patch_...-29#Dominators

The one exception to this was Power Push where they basically changed WHICH formula they were using to balance it (from utility control to attack).

There are occasions when the devs break the rules (such as Snap Shot for Blasters) but those are uncommon.

It applies a larger defense bonus to Tankers (and Defenders for that matter) than it does to Blasters.

And what about defenders who don't use one of those sets?

They do cost the same as Blasters, but I think you are slightly misunderstanding how the power balance works. There is a formula the devs use for attacks which gives the attack's base damage and endurance based on the recharge and the number of targets affected (assuming an average number hit for AoEs based on their area). However the damage is then adjusted by the AT's damage modifier while endurance remains constant. So for example Blasters do about 73% more damage than defenders but the endurance costs are the same because the base damage is the same. Non-attack powers are balanced with similar formula but there is more variation there since in most cases it's the set as a whole that needs to be balanced rather than individual powers.

Maybe you should look harder then:

That pretty much matches my experiences. The view we get from the forums is skewed towards IO'd builds (since most people looking for build advice are IO'ing the build) but those people are not the majority.

Oh sure, it's definitely a valid strategy. But a lot of IOs will take a long time to sell the other 9. Often you're better off financing the purchase by selling a different IO from a more popular set.

Or in other words: 90% of everything is crud and the lack of gating on fan fiction publishing (which is essentially what the AE is) makes that 90% very visible.

It's basically reasoning that if you want an IO chances are so does someone else and in many cases the crafted IO can be sold at a profit. Someone (Fulmen's maybe?) used to recommend buying two of any IO, slotting one and selling the other. This is pretty much that taken to the extreme. Personally I'd avoid crafting 10 of any IO unless I knew for sure I could re-sell them at a profit.

I disagree with the IO assessment. I think the majority of people DON'T use IOs (or at least don't slot for set bonuses. Additionally since TD give To Hit and not Accuracy it's useful even with IOs.

I do agree with the assessment compared to Tactics however. You do need to spend slightly more slots with Tactics (due to the slightly higher end cost and the fact that you'll probably want a Kismet IO to help make up the difference in To Hit bonus). So assuming you're ED capped for to hit in both (and have a Kismet IO with tactics but not TD) you're trading about 5% to hit and 0.08 EPS for yourself to give 11% to hit to your team, which seems like a very good trade to me. In fact IMHO the only large advantage TD has over Tactics is the To Hit debuff resistance.

I didn't play CoX back then so this is coming from what I've heard not personal experience. However my understanding is that it's not that Devices was to good but that Targeting Drone was to good (primarily pre-ED). Even back in it's hayday the rest of the set wasn't considered stellar. It was mostly that pre-ED TD allowed you to 6-slot attacks for damage and still hit reliably.

Well they left Trip Mine and Time Bomb in Traps . But other than that I agree, Traps is an example of how a "Gadgeteer" set should have been designed. Obviously most of the Traps specific powers aren't really suitable for Blasters but the general design philosophy of powers that are themselves stationary but can still be used effectively in combat is a lot better.

For 'tis the sport to have the blaster, hoist with his own petard

I think it indicates that the buff was needed. The problem with defenders was that while they rock on teams they were painful to solo (some sets being much more painful than others). The buff means people can play Defenders knowing that when they don't want to team they will still be able to solo reasonably well.