Arcanaville

How ironic. The Lord of the Rings was actually written to be a single novel. The publisher split it up into three books, but that was not the author's original intent. The Lord of the Rings is only a trilogy, instead of a single volume or six volumes, because a publisher decided they could make more money selling it as a three volume set.

I say six because The Lord of the Rings is divided into six "books" by the author: The Ring Sets Out, The Ring Goes South, The Treason of Isengard, The Ring Goes East, The War of the Ring, The Return of the King. So its either one giant novel, or six books of a series. Its only a trilogy because of money.


Tolkien always intended all of his Middle Earth stories to be pieces of one grand story. He even went so far as to change the Hobbit after it had been originally published to synchronize it with the Lord of the Rings as he wrote that. Tolkien constantly made changes to both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings due to his work on the Silmarillion. Its reasonable to suggest that there are lots of non-linear connections between the works that could be explored in a movie based on The Hobbit, particularly appendix content, and including that content actually more closely follows Tolkien's story-telling intent. So much of his work is in appendices or originally unpublished addendums specifically because of perceived practical limitations of publishing page count.


And irony stacked upon irony: we only have a Lord of the Rings because Tolkien's publishers thought his originally intended next work, the Silmarillion, was unmarketable. The Lord of the Rings is actually an attempt by Tolkien's publishers to milk more money from Tolkien's readership's interest in Hobbits.

Burst of speed can be used up to three times in a row before it has to recharge itself. I believe from the moment you make the first jump you have ten seconds to make the remaining two jumps. When you execute jump #3 the power starts recharging. Ten seconds after the first jump regardless of how many jumps you've made the power starts recharging (and you can't make any more jumps until it does).

The intent of the power is to be able to simulate moving blindingly fast and hitting the targets around you. So you can Burst into a spawn (which deals some AoE damage), hit the spawn with Nova, burst jump into melee range of a surviving boss, hit the boss with Eagle's Claw, and then Burst jump completely away leaving any remaining alive targets behind. Then the power starts recharging and you can't do another burst chain until then.

You don't have to use all three jumps. You could jump into a spawn, use Dragon's tail, use Nova, jump out to another spawn, and continue attacking. If you don't use the third jump, ten seconds after the first jump that Burst of Speed will expire, and start recharging.

Reach for the Limit is not a good substitute for Build Up. On the other hand, Build Up is a poor substitute for Reach for the Limit.

It might be worth dressing up as Marauder for that.

So lets decide to not make any natural dominator secondary until there's a natural primary. And not to make any natural primary until there's a natural secondary.

I don't even understand what "get the left overs" even means. They literally share their primary with controllers, so there's no such thing as getting a hand-me-down primary: when the devs make a control set, both archetypes get the same new-car-smell version. They share assaults sets with no one, so every one of them has to be specifically created for Dominators, and Dominators alone. They specifically got a Martial Assault set that no one else can use, work specifically dedicated to them and them alone, and that's being described as "left overs."

Blaster secondaries are a mixed bag of melee attacks, the occasional ranged attack, and self buff support powers. Even for actual melee offensive sets KB is not universally considered inappropriate, but blaster secondaries are not "melee-based" sets in any case. Ki Push is similar to Power Thrust, another KB power in a blaster secondary. And I assure you its appropriate to be there.

I will say that I believe -Range should be moved from Eagle's Claw to Ki Push. It makes more sense for the KB power to get the -range due to the obvious synergy. Delivering -range with EC only synergizes with Burst of Speed.

Why is that sad? And I don't recall anyone saying the effect would be permanently limited to Martial Combat.

While I've suggested improvements to Trip Mine and Time Bomb in the past, addressing your last point specifically is it an intrinsic problem if a power isn't specifically useful on steamroll teams? Because most aren't. Even my Illusion controller's Phantasm is not very useful on such teams, but that's not normally considered a justification for buffing them until they are.

Why would it be an illusion? The notions of conceptual personifications separate, do you even believe that group intelligences can exist that are distinct from, but not separate from, individual intelligences?

Put it another way: sand castles are not grains of sand. No grain of sand has a part of a sand castle within it. So when you knock the sand castle over, where does it go? Is the sand castle just an illusion perpetrated by sand grains?

What will happen when you use Inner Will while standing on a KB patch?

I mean, I suspect I know what will happen by default but is this a situation Inner Will is intended to mitigate? KB protection can't be offered in quite the same "mez state + 1" way.

It actually ended up looking like this:

So how did I do really?

Crane Kick/Cobra Strike/Eagle's Claw vs Ki Push/Storm Kick/Eagle's Claw

I think I did pretty good here. I took three single target MA attacks and spiced them up a bit. Arbiter Hawk did a similar thing. I stuck in a Crane Kick as a Power Thrust variant for power one, and Arbiter Hawk did likewise. However, I have to concede Arbiter Hawk made the cooler power with Ki Push. My version did 1.0 DS, AH's version will probably do similar to Power Thrust, or about 0.8 DS. I added Cobra for the stun, Arbiter Hawk added Storm Kick. And we both set Eagle's Claw as the tier 9. Arbiter Hawk added -range to EC, while I did to Crane Kick. Personally, I still think -range would be better in Ki Push than EC: -range combined with knockback: it seems to be obvious synergy to me. Overall, I consider this an A-.

Dragon's Tail

We both added DT as the primary PBAoE attack. I added it at tier 8, AH added it at tier 5. But I consider this to be a bullseye, albeit an easy one.

BU vs Reach for the Limit

I just added a conventional Build Up. Arbiter Hawk decided to get creative and swap it for a BU-like proc. I like it personally: it makes the set flow more smoothly which is something I think is appropriate to Martial Arts in general. I wish my MA scrapper had it, actually. But this is a clean miss.

Blinding Powder vs Throw Sand

I added BP but with damage. Arbiter Hawk seems to have added BP but with the effect changed from confuse to stun. I find it interesting we were inspired by the same root power, but went in different directions with it. I consider this to be a near-miss, but a decently close one.

Disrupt Chi vs Reaction Time

I think if I knew about Sustain when I formulated this powerset I would have come closer to Arbiter Hawk's version. AH added a PBAoE debuff toggle and I added a click. If I knew about sustain, Disrupt Chi would have been a toggle and the sustain toggle. I was thinking of adding an offensive and a mitigation effect: -res for offense and chance for stun for defense. AH's version is sustain, slow, -recharge, and a +recharge burst on toggle off. I think both have similar root ideas, but the powers then go in very different directions. Overall, I like AH's version better than mine. I would say I got close spiritually, but not in terms of actual power design. C+.

Spring Escape vs Burst of Speed

I really like my idea: I think its one of my best power suggestions. I like Arbiter Hawk's version more. The triple execution thing is an extremely good idea in my opinion, as it opens up a lot of interesting tactical options for blasters. But I will still pat myself on the back for having reached the same basic conclusion as AH regarding this basic option. I think this is remarkably close.

Siphon Chi vs Inner Will

Clean miss. I went for an extra ranged immobilize as a utility power, Arbiter Hawk pulled out the big guns and added a situational break free+heal. I like it, but I would have thought it was outside the devs' comfort zone when I posted my suggestion. I've recalibrated that notion as of now.


Overall, I think I got pretty close to AH's version. At least when it comes to Martial Arts for Blasters, I think we were thinking along similar lines, and in all seriousness that's with completely independent lines of thought. I didn't know AH was working on MA for blasters until after I posted the suggestion, and I don't think AH was aware of any of my ideas regarding MA for Blasters until I PMed him the suggestion soon after posting it in this thread. I don't know if I should be pleased about that, or frightened. But I would say I scored four effective bullseyes (the three melee attacks and dragon's tail), two surprising close misses (spring escape and blinding powder), one in the ballpark but nowhere near the plate understandable miss (Disrupt Chi, which was formulated before Sustain), and two clean misses (Siphon Chi and Focus Chi vs Inner Will and Reach for the Limit). On a scale of one to nine I'd score my effort about a 5.5 out of 9.0

So long as you're willing to judge other people's intentions and work ethic, indignity is ineffectual.

Shamelessly, not only does Arbiter Hawk steal my past ideas, but also my future ideas as well. He's probably currently implementing that thing I'm going to come up with in November, that's going to be awesome.

Somewhere in there is a general conflation between what a set of tools is designed to do and what a set of tools is theoretically capable of doing. But translation beyond that would require information currently unavailable to the universal translator.

What contradicts this concept of the Well:

1. Unless Prometheus is completely confused, his interest in humanity but animosity towards the Well is illogical if he knows the Well is just an emergent personality from collective humanity.

2. This mechanism for the Well is extremely difficult to reconcile with the Well being connected to different Earths (i.e. Primal, Praetorian) without being connected to all of them equally reachable.

3. Under this concept, its extremely difficult to rationalize how the Well could be unknown or legendary to the Menders through deep time.

4. Under this concept, Tyrant would have been a better champion than we are against the Battalion, and Prometheus' assertion about not putting all his eggs in one basket would be nonsensical.

Twitch tv, broadcasting now. Currently covering the Dominator variant, Martial Assault.

Arbiter Hawk totally stole spring escape. He tried to hide it with the triple execution thing, but we all know.

Arbiter Hawk has already stated that the sustain effects will last long enough that lightning clap will not have to be used continuously to maintain the effect, and since the sustain effects do not stack there is no separate advantage to using lightning clap more often than is necessary to keep sustain perma.

As long as you use it once a minute or so (which was the suggested duration of the sustain effect) you'll have the maximum sustain benefit.

I'm better, and I still do it for free here. Also, there's no way to perform a "statistical analysis" of the game design's flaws without a level of sampling data of the game's execution you don't possess. And there's no way to do a thorough one in any event because most of the game's design has no statistical component. Adding the word "statistical" to "analysis" doesn't make it automatically better.

I do analysis of powersets. I do statistical analysis of probabilistic events. Technically speaking, the computational reviews I did of scrapper secondaries back in Issue 7 is a stochastic enhanced analysis, not a statistical one. An analysis of the game's mechanics and data would be primarily a systems analysis, not a statistical one.

I don't think the current canon is actually aligned with my idea.


If you think of the Well as a thing, a cosmic thing that grants all power is a troublesome idea. But if you think of it as just a personification of human potential, its not that humanity is nothing without the Well and the Well grants power to humanity, its that humanity always had a certain potential and the Well is just a representation of that potential. And as humanity evolves, its potential increases and humanity's Well gets stronger.

In the same way that mobs of people can have a psychology that is distinct from all of its separate individuals, the Well has a psychology that is the sum total of all of humanity that is distinct from any of its separate individuals. Or alternatively an emergent property like the psychology of an ant colony.

As to the Well taking over an individual temporarily, that's a cosmic conceptual representation of something that also happens on a mundane level. When it happens to super powered entities influenced by the personification of the sum total of human potential driven by the emergent psychology of humanity we call it "taken over by the Well." When it happens in high school we call it "peer pressure."

The OP asserts that Cloaking Device provides no benefit in combat because its defense buff and stealth buff suppress completely when in combat. The OP is in error. If you totally agree with the OP, you are also equally in error.

That's why even though it violates canon, I much prefer my version of the Well as the incarnation of human potential. It simultaneously explains everything, and yet locks you into nothing. The limits on the Well would be the absolute limits you believe exist for humanity (or whatever species you happen to be), which could obviously be extended to encompass any player character you can create.

I find it fascinating that the most common occurrence when buff/nerf/balance discussions occur on the forums is that the discussion drives itself to irrelevant extremes. Why anyone would want to moot themselves is to me an impenetrable mystery.

The main issue here is that the results it generates aren't desirable, at least not to me. In this situation very high DDR defense sets like SR are mostly protected against defense debuffs, non-defense powerset combinations are absolutely immune to defense debuffs, and defense sets and hybrid sets with limited DDR would be the most vulnerable to defense debuffs. The moderate middle ground becomes the most harshly penalized, which is almost never the right thing to do.

Hover is like 2.5% defense literally, or just under 4% defense slotted. Maneuvers is only 2.275% for tankers (about 3.5% slotted). It does buff allies, but it is lower in strength for the tanker specifically. Although maneuvers is stronger intrinsically, Tanker ranged defense buff modifiers (generally used for ally buffs) are much lower than Tanker melee defense buff modifiers (generally used for self buffs). 0.10 vs 0.065.