Aett_Thorn

In none of these instances is Hand Clap the best solution to the problem, at least in it's current form.

In the first, to maintain aggro for a lot of sets, KB can be detrimental, so KD is the better choice.

In the other examples, you'd be better off moving yourself, and having the aggro follow you, or using Taunt, if they're not aggro'd on you already. In none of those cases would KB be the best power to use. Could it be useful? Yes. Are there better options out there? Yes. Given that, having KB on these powers isn't necessarily a benefit, and swapping it to KD would be a net gain.

It gets even worse when you look at something like Solar Flare, which is intended to be both a damage power and a mitigation power. If you want to make maximum use of the damage part, you have to suffer through the KB of it, and possibly have to chase your target down. If you want to use it as a positioning tool, you have to "waste" damage potential. In neither case can you make efficient use of both functions.

And on sets where you can use KB to knock a target back into a patch, or something like that, your very next attack could knock it back out of the patch. How is that useful?


I still don't get the resistance to allowing the individual player to choose whether they get KB or KD out of a currently KB power. Any of you who had to deal with jerks who don't like KB wouldn't see any more or less of that, so it stays the same for you. But those of us that don't like the additional KB magnitude on these powers could remove it.

Right now I haven't actually started down the Incarnate path on Aett, but his future Mid's build (if I get there before my altoholism starts back up with I21) has him with the Spiritual Alpha. Extra recharge for Hoarfrost, Energy Absorption, and all of his attacks will be nice.

I probably could, yes. However, you've got several different characters there. I'd advise you to check out the various sub-forums, and look at builds that others have posted.

I've looked over all of your builds, and most of them just seem to have random sets and powers for random reasons. So I'm not sure if you even know what you're trying to go for. Without that kind of information, I'm not going to just hand you a build. Do a little bit of research, and you can probably come up with better builds on your own. If you want, pick ONE of the ones you posted, and I'll work on it and post what I make. But not all of them.

Well, I've looked only at the first two on your list. In short, I think that you should post them in the archetype-specific forums, and break them out into separate posts. Use one of the forum export options, so that people can see them, too.

The first one I looked at had a bunch of expensive PVP IOs, but seemingly no reason for them. On a Dominator, going for Recharge is usually best, but the PVP IOs don't give you a lot of that, especially when you have multiple sets of them. You could probably make a better character with a lot less money.

On the Kin/Energy Stalker, I wasn't sure what direction you were going with that, since it's mostly just basic IOs. It'll work, but isn't all that great. Just noticed that you have no Acc slotting in your attacks. That's going to hurt you a lot. 4 Damage IOs is well past the Enhancement Diversification cutoffs, so you're getting very little return on that fourth damage IO. Replace them with an Acc.

An MM is actually one of the toughest AT's to play, since you need to control all of your pets.

Brutes and Scrappers are very easy to play, that might be better.

No, it won't. It will only be a "requirement" on stupid teams. You know, the ones led by the people who already don't like it. If they dislike it so much now, they usually don't invite these people anyways, or kick them from the team already. So it's already a "requirement" for those teams.

As for the actual solution, I think that MB's taking this a little too far (and I think he knows that). Basically, KB is as good as the person using it. There will be bad players with KB that can cause team wipes. On the other hand, there will be people that are really good with it that will PREVENT team wipes. I don't think that any reasonable person will argue that point. I know that some people have, but I wouldn't consider them reasonable.

Out of all of the powers listed in MB's original post here, I think there's really only a few of those powers that are truly the ones complained about. Some of them have reasonable complaints to them, and I don't think that just dismissing those arguments is the right way to go about this. Let's go through them, shall we?

1) Dark Blast's Torrent: The cone on this is pretty big, and the KB is, too. The complaints that I've seen about this is more that it can actually reach into a second spawn it not done right, or at the very least, knock enemies into other spawns, which can be dangerous, especially when one considers that it's a cone, and can affect multiple enemies.

2) Kinetic's Repel: On a set designed to focus on being in melee range for a decent amount of it's effects, this power makes little sense.

3) Hand Clap, Thunder Clap, Shockwave, and powers like them (including the PB PBAoE power): These are radial PBAoE or Melee cones that cause significant KB. While they do provide a measure of mitigation, they also cause problems, sometimes for the person using them, and other times for the end (and sometimes both). Basically, an Invuln, WP, Ice, or Shield user will find their damage mitigation lessened by using one of these powers. Since the enemies are no longer in range of debuffs or player buffs that rely on these powers, the character in question becomes easier to take down by whatever mobs weren't hit by it, or those that were when they get back up. The mitigation provided is therefore marginal at best. Even other sets taking these powers see marginal effectiveness when using these powers, though that is more from an offensive standpoint. When you look at how they can affect offensive potential in a game where AoE damage is king, the spawn takes longer to wipe out, lowering effectiveness. Changing these to KonckDOWN would be a net benefit for these instances.

4) Energy Blast, Luminous Blast (and Nova forms for both Khelds): These are the big ones that people complain about, because almost every power in the set has some form of KB. Used well, and they can provide some benefits. Used poorly, and every time the poor player uses a power, there's trouble. But I think even on these sets, people don't mind the single target KB. You KB a target, it's yours. You don't significantly alter the survivability of other characters, even Tankers using auras to help their defenses. You may knock someone else's target back, which might annoy them, but it's not that big of a deal.

The problem is the AoE attacks, and how KB works on them. Let's look at Energy Blast for a second. It's got two AoE attacks, a Targeted AoE, and a Cone. When trying to wipe out a spawn, these two attacks would be used back to back. That should kill ost of the minions, and do a decent amount of damage to anyone else in the spawn. At least, they would if it had any other effect. Right now, since these two powers check their chance of KB on each target, using the cone and then the AoE can cause one of two things to happen (let's assume 10 enemies for ease of math):

a) The cone knocks your target back, and 5 of his buddies, your AoE only hits 6 enemies, and 4 enemies are now in melee range trying to hit you.
b) The cone doesn't knock your target back, but does send 6 of his buddies flying. Your AoE only hits 4 enemies, 2-3 of which are knocked back, with one still trying to hit you in melee, and the others in various stages of coming back to hit you.

So, instead of your AoE hitting all 10 of the enemies, and killing all of the minions, you've left more alive to try to hit you.

Let's take the same scenario, but let's make this guy a Defender, like a Rad/Energy Defender. The Defender puts some toggle debuffs on his target, and then blasts away. We get the same scenario, except that depending on which one happens, half the spawn is no longer affected by the debuffs, in addition to the other problems caused. This is both an offensive and defensive problem.


Are there ways to change this? Well, people who like KB say to just learn to use it. You could either hover above them and KB them all into the ground, effectively creating knockdown. This works pretty well, but requires more time to set up, lowering effective task completion rates (and assumes you can always safely get above the spawn). Or, you could KB them into a wall, which assumes that you have a wall handy, which isn't always the case.



Personally, I like KB for the most part. I think that sets like Energy Blast are fine for the most part, they do just take a bit more learning to use effectively. However, I think that there are cases where KB should be turned into KB, and it would be a benefit to the power and to the users. Solar Flare, Handclap, Thunderclap (for melee classes), could be turned into KD. They'd offer no less mitigation value for these classes, and could sometimes improve mitigation over their current forms.

However, I see no reason why allowing the player to adjust their own KB values to turn them into KD if they choose would suddenly make that a requirement for teaming, nor would it affect those who currently like it the way it is.

Probably one, and then you can purchase as many others as you want. I don't think that many people will be transferring characters there, but may make a handful of new characters there.

Yeah, I was a little disappointed with the section on Time Manipulation. It was just the same power that they showed us in the pictures. Does it have any other powers? Or is it just nine powers with the same animation?

I did like the visuals of First Ward and the Underground, though.

The GMs will give you a stock answer of "please post all ideas on the forums." That's because the GMs don't control or develop future game content, they only try to fix problems within the game. They can't do anything with ideas that you send to them.

Basically, all of the Ancillary Pools available to Corruptors must be balanced against each other. Yes, Total Focus causes "superior" damage. However, it's single target. The power that you're describing sounds like an Area of Effect (AoE) attack, which causes it's damage to be vastly out of line with other Corruptor Ancillary attacks. Likewise, the shield has to be around the same value as other Corruptor shields, otherwise there would be no reason to take the other Ancillaries.

This isn't a slam against you. You obviously care about your idea, otherwise you wouldn't be here. I'm just trying to show you that it's unlikely to happen given the powers you've described.

If an Ice Mastery Pool is ever given to Corruptors, it will likely resemble other AT's versions of it. Creating new powers just for a Mastery pool doesn't seem like a good use of resources. It would probably look like this:

Level 41: Chillblain
Level 41: Frozen Armor
Level 44: Chilling Embrace
Level 44: Frozen Aura or Flash Freeze
Level 47: Hibernate

Threads and Astral Merits work fine for me. Astral Merits may actually make more sense.

True, very true. But remember, it would only be for 10% of the time he appears. And if level 50s are around trying to take him down, Super Side-kicking should help out anyone else on the team, at least a bit.

Devs hate villains?

*"spell"

<Air Drops popcorn on LSK's house>

There ya go!

Everything*. It would help us to know when you left, so we can give you a comprehensive list of what you've missed. Also, check out ParagonWiki. They've got a page of all the updates, so you can start from where you left off, and see what's changed.


*A not-so-comprehensive list of things that you might have missed out on:

Global Defense Nerf
Enhancement Diversification
Invention Origin Enhancements
Incarnates!
Various changes to ATs and Powersets
Villains
Side-Switching and Tip Missions
Reward Merits for content
Markets
Architect Entertainment (make your own missions!)