Ashlocke

How about this:
In order to make it worth the effort for folks that either already have the badges or don't care about badging, whenever a trial is run and a trial badge from that trial is earned by anyone in the League, everyone gets an Astral merit at the end.

Just to be clear, not one Astral merit for each badge earned, just one Astral merit if at least one trial badge is earned.

If this isn't enough incentive, I suppose the Devs could increase the reward with any of the following, more Astral merits, Empyrean merits, influence, reward merits, a temporary minor buff like that from a buff station, etc.

I think if folks were rewarded for helping other folks earn a badge then this issue would sort of correct itself without having to rework the badge requirements etc.

I think it will encourage new blood to join the league because those that already have the badge can't get the league this extra small reward so it can't be "gamed" to milk the system so-to-speak.

Vorpal Judgement should make the sound of sharp feet cutting into people.... No, I dunno what the sound of sharp feet sounds like, but that's what it should sound like... cuz... it's sharp feet... you know... cutting people...yeah...

Since this seems like a nice pie in the sky type of thread I will go ahead and toss out some stuff I would love to see done up as well.

I feel we have plenty of "generic-looking" power sets currently and we really need a few power sets that are visually more specific. Some examples that I would love to get my hands on would be:

Power Armor set - Actual mechanical weapons graphics and animations as well as utility powers, examples could be: Gatling gun strapped to the arm or shoulder, missile packs above both shoulders, wrist or hand beam emitters, a toggle that pops up a small radar dish that perhaps grants ranged/AoE defense as it lets you detect incoming projectiles, A temporary ablative force field that basically gives you extra hit points which is powered by your endurance, each time you get hit, you lose some shield strength and endurance, which slowly recharges, get hit enough and the shield fails. A targeting computer that gives you a to hit buff and perhaps resistance to debuffing, and possibly grants you a small chance to do extra damage, etc.

Arcane magic - Actual magic-looking powers, a few examples already exist like the temp magic blast you get in Croatoa, the Vanguard costume change emote, etc. As well as some off the top of my head, an obviously magical arcane shield that protects the user or allies, eldritch magic bolts that the user can "cast" at foes, using the recent clone tech to create identical duplicates of the caster in order to cause confusion and divert attacks from the user to them. Something like Phantom Army only defensive in nature and not offensive. Tons more examples for magic since it's an easy concept to create ideas for since, well, it's frikkin magic!

I understand the Dev's reasoning for previously making power sets a tad too generic looking because they wanted those powers to be able to fit the largest majority of player concepts possible.

But I think after a point making them follow the same formula becomes redundant in a way, a good example of what I mean is Energy Melee and Kinetic Melee. Take away the power set names and you can really replace either set with either set for a character's concept.

Also I think if you pick the right specific power sets to create then they will be already generic enough, take the case for Beam Rifle, it's kind of specific, yet it's generic enough to be viable for many character concepts.

I hope that Beam Rifle is a sign that the Devs might want to make a few more specific themed sets in the future, like a Power Armor, or Spell Casting set, etc.

Thanks for reading, and watch out for that pie.

I would agree with most of the sentiment regarding "End Game".
But if I were to try and show a visible representation of game content this is what I see slowly happening and it would look something like this:

Currently:
[1--------------------------------------------------------------------------50--------]

Above the majority of content falls between lv 1 and 50, and very little at or above 50

But in the future as the Devs progress with more and more incarnate content I can imagine that the above representation would look something like the following:

[1-------------------------------------------50---------------------------------------]

So while I do agree that currently the amount of content you can play at or above lv 50 is small compared to 1-49, it seems very likely that sooner or later there will be a lot more content past the point of "end game builds".

I imagine at some point the Devs might want to do something about this situation, each day that more end game content is released slowly erodes the argument to leave Kheldians as is.

The above can also apply to any other AT that has powers that become pointless.
I imagine that the Devs might not find it a good thing that more and more powers become pointless and folks stop taking and using them.

I don't really know, it just seems weird to me that the Devs would be OK with that happening more and more. Or perhaps I'm totally off base and this is exactly the plan the Devs have in mind, to have powers that you use early on and then completely dump once you hit lv 50.

Perhaps it might be nice to hear from a Dev about this curious issue. I'm not calling one out, just saying, would settle much debate if we knew one way or the other.

Hamidon Enhancers are part of the original Origin Enhancers they have a different method of combining. You can combine to of the same Hami-Os to make a HO+ and then combine again to make it a HO++.

You cannot however use boosters on any of the original Origin type enhancement and that includes Hami-Os.

Boosters are only for Invention Enhancers, basically the rule of thumb is: if it comes from a recipe it can be boosted up to 5x using enhancement boosters.

I have an SR scrapper, and because I have managed to get my endurance issues under control, and capped all 3 positional defenses I realized that Elude became a pointless power for that character. So alright, one power became moot. The same can be said about probably a few other singular powers in various other AT power sets.

I'm not thrilled with this, but I accept it, since like everyone points out, those powers became useless due to invention enhancements.

Then I come back to my PB, and while it's essentially the same thing, I also have to wonder that with the PB it's not just one power. The Dwarf and Nova forms each come with a slew of other powers. Basically the way I'm looking at it is like I've just made two thirds of my Peacebringer's powers moot.

I guess all of you can probably live with a singular power like Elude becoming pointless, but do you all feel OK with two thirds of your powers becoming moot? I guess that's the crux of my issue with the recent changes. And I suppose I thought there could be some solution to make those two thirds of my powers worth taking without messing up how and why folks like the current PB mechanics.

Perhaps there really isn't a suitable fix...

Warning, this will probably end up being a long post.

I'm really not sure how I'm going to put into words what my current thoughts are on my Peacebringer, so perhaps I should preface this post with a little background of where I'm coming from in regards to Peacebringers. But most of this can with minimal changes be applied to Warshades I would imagine.

Of My over two dozen characters, my Peacebringer is my favorite. I just really enjoy playing him and over the years I have made several adjustments and tweeks to his build, powers, and slotting to make him even more fun.

I play a tri-form type of build so my slotting is fairly evenly split between all three forms, but I would have to say I lean more towards Dwarf form and less so towards Nova Form, mainly because when things get bad I tend to survive more often when in Dwarf Form.

Now the new Peacebringer changes have me feeling like I'm waiting for the second half of the peacebringer changes. I say this because to me it really feels like the Devs in one fell swoop made Dwarf and Nova forms pointless to take anymore. I mean other than for concept.

So let me get this straight: I can now perma-lightform and do something I was never able to do solo in Dwarf Form (The TANK form), which is to cap all of my resistances, (except psi) as well as having the ability to have defense, up to the point that I can cap S/L defense, plus I can make Essense Boost perma to cap out my hit points to match what my Dwarf form gives me, and the new build up power can also be made perma to make the inherent damage bonus of Nova Form moot.

To sum up: I can now remain in human form and have better survivability than my dwarf, have better melee damage than my dwarf, and I would estimate at the very least on par ranged damage as my Nova form without any of it's squishiness to worry about, and to top things off I have access to all of my powers, referring to all of my nice support powers that I don't have to risk dropping out of Dwarf form to fire off while trying not to get killed like before.

Alright, those last few bits I admit are very ranty sounding, and I won't lie, I feel sort of grumpy about it because my character was (currently still is) a Tri-Form PB and I feel like by dumping those two forms I can make my character much more powerful and versatile than his current Tri-Form setup. Wasn't the whole point of forms to make PBs versatile? Currently they do the exact opposite it seems, makes them inferior because each form doesn't do anything "better" anymore and locks them out of too many abilities that they wouldn't be locked out of if they just remained in human form.

So now that I've got that out of my system, I would like to take a stab at how to possibly make Dwarf and Nova forms relevant again.

Now, where to begin: First let's state the obvious, Dwarf and Nova forms as they currently exist break the game in too many horrible ways. I have never heard a Dev comment about this, but I can't imagine that they really like how the forms work.

To give you some examples of what I mean by "breaking the game", When I run the first Signature Arc and I get Synapse's powers, and I am in Dwarf Form, using the Synapse Flurry attack (forget it's name), my Dwarf just takes ONE swing with it's claw, but I see and hear the whooshing and ghost image of human arms punching the foe. There are a few other instances of similar weird power animations and behaviors when in either Dwarf or Nova forms.

Next there are a ton of animation and emote oddities and outright bans put in place because the forms can't animate them properly or even at all, more so for the Nova form, which just goes to make you feel even more generic as you can't even use an emote to somewhat make your Kheldian "different and special" compared to every other Kheldian in the vicinity. When you don't have any access to power color customization or alternate animations for powers, the ability to at least emote can mitigate the feeling of "Gee I am exactly like every other Dwarf/Nova here". Ironically I guess this is now becoming less of a problem because with the new PB changes there are probably less Dwarfs and Novas around anymore.

Alright, now that we understand that the current forms tech does bad things to the Game, I've been pondering how to address that.

Peacebringers are supposed to be beings of energy right, so was thinking along those lines, what if we were to change the forms from a "change into" toggle, to more of an "Aura Envelope" toggle?

To explain what I mean by that, currently whatever costume slot you have active just disappears and is replaced by a SINGULAR looking Dwarf or Nova form, which is identical to every other Dwarf and Nova form, which is the crux of their problem and why they break the game so much when in those forms.

But what if instead when you activated a Form Toggle you just radiate a Dwarf or Nova shaped energy aura that envelopes your human form in whatever costume slot you had active? Basically for game purposes it would act like any other toggle shield power, you turn it on, and you get fancy graphics surrounding you.

To describe it somewhat, picture yourself surrounded by a whispy glowing Dwarf-shaped energy aura while the Dwarf Form toggle was active. The same goes for the Nova, although I think the Nova aura might need more of a revamp to better accommodate a human skeleton more so than the Dwarf form which is already kind of humanoid shaped in terms of it's skeleton.

Now that we have the visual aspect of the forms "fixed" so that they no longer break the game like they do now, how do we go about making them worth taking, because so far we haven't changed how they work mechanically. And that's the other half of this problem. Currently they aren't really worth taking anymore unless we update them somehow.

If we assume that the Dwarf Form is designed as the "tank" form, and by that I mean, lower damage, higher survivability and some agro control, then we have a good start point from where to begin.

When Dwarf form is toggled, you have several self buffs and debuffs active. You have a self damage and movement debuff in effect, to keep it in line with the original dwarf design. You also still get extra powers that belong to having taken the Dwarf form power, those can be slotted just like before.

Now, the buffs that you get while it's active is where I'm finding things trickier to figure out because if I simply say you have better resistance to damage, that doesn't mean too much if you can already cap all of your resistances just using Lightform so why would you even bother activating Dwarf Form and get hit by those self debuffs.

And I know if I tried to suggest that it shouldn't be possible to self cap resistance with lightform alone I would catch hellfire and brimstone from the forums. Although, I think that's probably the best way.

The self debuffs to go along with the form buffs I think are essential to both Dwarf and Nova because they really flesh out the character concept.

Let's try something different, let's give the Dwarf a modest resistance buff, which I would suggest be lower than it's current resistance buff because how you have access to your other resistance toggles to compensate, plus I don't want to make those 3 shields completely worthless while trying to fix forms from that exact problem. Dwarf still has it's endurance mod ability, it's +hit point ability, it's mez protections, and it's inherent jumping ability.

Let's give it some modest across the board debuff resistances to make up for the loss of damage resistance.

Here's where I would like to suggest a unique ability added to PB and WS Dwarf Forms that are polar opposites of each other in keeping with their concepts. Give the PB Dwarf Form a scaling resistance that increases as you are attacked by foes, sort of like fury, but for your ability to withstand damage. And give the WS Dwarf the same thing only instead of increasing it's damage resistance it increases it's damage bonus. Lastly, since the Dwarf form can get you to the PB cap as well as Essence Boost if made perma, the extra hit points provided by the Dwarf Form are rendered moot in a way, so instead, how about a modest +regeneration bonus. Nothing to high, but nice enough to make wanting to use the form worthwhile.

Now, onto the Nova form. I would assume it loses it's innate flight because now that you have access to all of your powers you can activate hover, flight, etc, or not, as you see fit. It retains it's endurance mod, to hit, and damage bonuses, while suffering debuffs to resistance and mez protection and/or resistance.


I just had an interesting thought his me as I was re-reading this to make sure it made sense somewhat. I put above that the forms come with the powers that they currently have on live, but that would be sort of odd since you would also have access to the human form versions of those same powers. Seems like it could be problematic.

Here is what I propose, using the same kind of tech as the Dual Pistol Swap Ammo power utilizes, Each Form Toggle can affect a group of specific powers like swap ammo does.

Dwarf Form affects the following melee powers:
Radiant Strike (Equivalent to White Dwarf Strike)
Incandescent Strike (Equivalent to White Dwarf Smite)
Solar Flare (Equivalent to White Dwarf Flare)

Basically KB is turned into KD, damage is adjusted accordingly, and taunt is applied, as well as any stats as needed.

And when Nova Form is activated, which in keeping with it's squishy ranged attacker theme, the following powers are affected:

Luminous Detonation (equivalent to Bright Nova Detonation)
Proton Scatter (equivalent to Bright Nova Scatter)
Gleaming Blast (equivalent to Bright Nova Blast)
Gleaming Bolt (equivalent to Bright Nova Bolt)
And the oddball power that doesn't have an equivalent is Glinting Eye, but it's still affected by the Nova Form buffs/debuffs.

These ranged attacks are adjusted for effects and stats as needed to keep them comparable to human versus Nova form performance levels.
I.E. To Hit, Range, damage, endurance, recharge, etc.
Nova Form would significantly improve these powers to account for the Nova Form self debuffs.

My first thought I was going to suggest using the VEAT power tree tech to select either human melee or Dwarf Melee trees,and Human ranged or Nova ranged trees. But I figured that was sort of specific to VEATS and what makes them unique, and since Swap Ammo is more of a nice gimmick tech and the Devs have shown they don't seem to mind using gimmick tech for other than those it was invented for, as in the case with Dual Blades Combos and the Street Fighting Combos, I figured it would serve two purposes, one, to handle the "fix" nicely using existing game tech, plus it would serve the Kheldian theme of being versatile since it's not a permanent effect and you can toggle the forms on and off at will adapting to the situation at hand.


And that's about all I got for now, as I guessed, it was a long post, I just hope I got my suggestion out in a somewhat understandable way. Thanks for reading.

While you Devs are there nose deep in GUI fixing, can you please punch the Opacity Bug in the face, and also The bug that keeps redocking my undocked windows back to their parent windows nearly every time I zone, oh and this one odd bug that moves my mission window from undocked top-center of screen to top left of screen nearly every time I zone and once every now and then it goes one step further and just redocks it to it's parent window just to throw me.

The Opacity bug is a real show stopper for me, I go blind trying to see anything in the default 53% opacity setting. I need mine to be at 90% or higher and remain there, otherwise I can't see a darned thing in them. Having to go into options to adjust it every time I zone is a frustrating nightmare of epic proportions! *shakes fist* (added the fist shaking for extra emphasis )

Yes, I'm aware of the upcoming solo incarnate content, this suggestion is a supplemental system, it works whether solo, teamed, etc. Just as Voids/Quantums aren't a solo or teamed system, they just "happen" as you play.

I never mentioned segregating Kheldians behind some weird Quantum Incarnate foe, I just used the example of the Quantum/Void mechanic because it is a system that is already in place and easily pointed to in order to get my idea across as to what this might function like, only I was hoping it could be expanded upon.

Kheldians would continue to see their normal Quantums/Voids, and if you were a Kheldian Incarnate then you would simply have Incarnate foes added to the mix, not special Quantum Incarnate foes.

Believe me, the last thing I want to happen is to make Kheldians less team friendly, my favorite Hero that I have is a Peace Bringer.

Added difficulty is the point. Incarnate powers tend to make conventional fights trivial.

To clarify, having this new system would mean that incarnate powers would be available while exemplared, minus the level shifts as that wouldn't make mechanical sense, not sure how that would pan out though. Food for thought I guess.

Also, I did put in a stipulation in there about hopefully adding in a setting to the Notoriety contacts to toggle this mechanic on/off. Perhaps it should apply per team leader's setting, that way folks that lead teams don't have to constantly tell the revolving door of team mates to turn on/off this system.

Just setting it once for yourself and the team remains set that way until either you, the leader, changes it, or another person becomes leader.

You do bring up a good point though, since the drops only pertain to incarnates, I'm wondering if perhaps something worthwhile for non incarnates can drop from them.

Not sure what that could be though, perhaps a chance to get one of those new super inspirations? Thoughts?

But I want to point out that these foes will be designed to be "anti Incarnates" sort of like how Voids/Quantums are "anti Kheldian". So they will present more of a threat to Incarnates and less of a threat to non incarnates, in a similar way that the Voids/Quantums work on mixed teams.

I have been mulling over the whole Incarnate issue for a while now, not really sure what to make of things, since there are so many varied styles of game play that most of the ideas that I came up with only really seemed appealing to one type of game play and not any other.

So I decided to do a Zen-like, empty the glass, and start over approach.

I went back to the very first Incarnate experience I had, which was the Alpha slot. It was elegant in it's simplicity and mechanics. It blended into existing content beautifully, and then to top things off, was tweaked even further to blend into even more lower than level 50 content.

It was in a word: Perfect.

Now, I should probably pretext my next wall of text by coming clear about how i feel about the rest of the Incarnate system after the Alpha slot.

I loathe League play. Nothing the Developers do with the incarnate system will ever get me to play it or like it as long as it involves League play.

Having said that, I want to shift gears and focus on non League incarnate content.

My suggestion is simply to go back to what worked great so far, the Alpha slot progression scheme. I think why it works so great is because it's blended into already existing and proven content, and that content has such a huge variety that everyone can find *something* that they like doing and still progress on the Alpha slot. Whether that be solo play, small team play, or large 8 man steam roller play. It all works, because it all makes progress.

Now, I would like to take a few already existing and underutilized game mechanics and spruce them up for use in Incarnate progression.

I ask myself, why are incarnate powers limited to lv 50 game play, and unavailable when exemplaring to lower levels, even though we can still earn shards while exemplared, those very powers themselves are unavailable to us.

I would have to answer, because that would make us to powerful and trivialize the content we are being exemplared into.

OK, assuming this premise, wasn't the Kheldian AT under a similar premise? That they would be so powerful that they needed some great equalizer added while they were on a team. Hence the addition of Voids and Quantums.

I propose adding something similar, Incarnates are "flagged" in a similar fashion as Kheldians so that they spawn special foes that challenge them more than conventional content does.

I've run my one alt that I bothered getting some Incarnate powers for through normal lv 50 content, tip missions, contact missions, scanner missions, non Incarnate Trials/TFs, etc. And I would have to say that having that extra power does tend to trivialize much of the fights. So far the solution has been to increase the mission difficulty, either by increasing the level of the foes or the "you are equal to X amount of players" values.

If there were foes designed to fight incarnates suddenly appearing in missions where an incarnate was playing, I think the added challenge would be much welcomed, and be a cool new story-wise element added to the game.

If folks are resistant to this idea, perhaps a setting could be added to the difficulty NPC, a new toggle to activate/deactivate incarnate foes. That way folks could have the experience that they desire rather than have it forced on them. Of course whatever bonuses you get from having them show up you would not get, but I think that's a fair trade.

Some rewards for having to deal with these new foes could be:
Badges
Extra Infl and/or prestige
*The ability to earn incarnate salvage

This last point I want to elaborate upon, since it is the very crux of this entire post's suggestion.

So far I've seen folks pleading for alternate means to progress on the incarnate path without having to deal with iTrials. I don't want to go into iTrials here, that's not really the purpose of this thread, the reasons are many, and other threads have elaborated upon them all much better than can be done here.

I wanted to propose this new way that can SUPPLEMENT existing and future means of incarnate progression.

Since this suggestion isn't a specific path, like grinding one specific solo arc over and over, or grinding iTrials over and over, I have decided to call it "The Undefined Path".

Now here's the part where I will just be guessing at, since I'm not a Developer and am not good with numbers, but I will just toss some out to give you an idea, please feel free to ignore the numbers or alter them to a variable that makes more sense, etc.

For each kind of incarnate foe you defeat, there is a small chance it drops an incarnate salvage item, be it salvage, thread, Astral or Empyrean merit, etc. The Devs can adjust the percentage chances on that reward table as they see fit. Ideally adjusted so that you can make steady progression, but not so little as to not be noticeable and not so much as to glut the system. Perhaps a timer per type of drop so that once you get say, one Empyrean merit, the system wont let another one randomly drop for you until X amount of hours passes.

The following list is an off the cuff suggestion on the drop timers and percentage chance:
Empyrean Merit = 20 hour timer/1% chance to drop
Astral Merit = 10 hours/2% chance to drop
Very Rare Salvage = 5 hours/5%
Rare Salvage = 2 hours/5%
Uncommon Salvage = 1 hour/5%
Common Salvage = no timer/1%
Single Thread = 15 Minutes/5%

Keeping in mind, the above timers are just when the system will ALLOW a drop to happen, you would still be at the mercy of the RNG to get that drop, so those items in actual practice will take longer to drop than the listed time values.

That's it for the mechanics side of this suggestion, now I want to shift gears a moment and flesh this out a bit.

I can picture two kinds of threats being sent at incarnates, I will elaborate on each one.

First, I imagine that Emperor Cole will see the rise of Incarnates on Primal Earth to be his biggest threat, and thus create a Counter Incarnate Squad (C.I.S.). Basically super beings (or robots etc) specifically designed to fight incarnates. These would not have varying abilities so much, just tough to fight.

Now for the second type of Incarnate threat:
The one thing I disliked about the Kheldian foe mechanics is that they were always the same foe, there was no trepidation as to what you were fighting or what it could do to you.

I was hoping that some sort of random foe generator could be created to allow for a more random threat variable with each encounter.

I can imagine the Well of Furies to want to test potential incarnates that he will be granting power to. To this end it would empower foes with random abilities and send them after player Incarnates.

Their powers would be randomly selected from a large list of power sets, and special abilities so that every one sent at you will be a foe worth taking note of and taken with some fear and trepidation and sooner or later you will end up fighting a foe that you are very well equipped to deal with or one that just happens to have the right combination of powers to be your worst nemesis.

This last part might be tricky to implement, but I would like to see this system take into account the number of incarnates that are on the team, so that if there is only one incarnate, then one incarnate foe is present, if four incarnates are on the team then four incarnate foes are present, this way a full team of 8 incarnates doesn't completely murder a lone incarnate foe and again trivializes the encounter. One last point, if possible, these special incarnate foes agro on the actual incarnates in the party before non incarnates, in other words, they home in on incarnates first.

Thanks for reading, I hope this sparks some food for thought for future Incarnate content.

I keep hearing folks comment about being able to get a permanent Halloween costume from the Halloween event.

I just want to get this clarified since from all that I understand, none of the costumes are permanent.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps it might be part of the new haunted house mission reward table, the last reward pick seems so suggest any number of random things can drop. Is one possible drop a permanent Halloween costume?

Gavin, first off, would like to thank you for the elaborate detailed explanation of what would happen exemplared to 25. That being said, I have to warn you, I'm not a huge numbers guy and my head nearly exploded trying to wrap my brain around all of that.

So I "think" the best solution for me in order to keep my concept in tact with creating an exemplar build with little loss in power is to just move my exemplar target level from 25 to 30.

If I slot lv 33 IOs and boost them up, they will actually be better than lv 50 non boosted IOs, and I can keep the set bonuses as low as lv 30. And I wont suffer much enhancement scaling from 31 (where scaling begins) to exemplared 30 it seems.

Oddly enough, most of the quirky set bonus mechanics I knew about, like being able to keep set bonuses even in powers taken in the 40s when exemplared far below that as long as the set IOs were within the 3 level rule. I just phrased things poorly, and mashed together things that technically aren't set bonuses into the same thought, such as procs, etc.

Thanks again.

Oddly enough I seem to be the only one planning to use them for non 50 game play, I intend on using my 2nd build as a super exemplar build.

I really like my build at lv 50, and by duplicating that build using lv 25 and 30 Set IOs (estimating at the moment) instead of lv 50s I can keep all of my set bonuses while exemplared to very low levels while still having Set IOs that perform as if they are lv 50s.

To put this into perspective, my dwarf form at lv 50 because of all of his set bonuses has an S/L defense of 38% or so, I would still have that exemplared into a lv 25 TF once I complete this build, along with his enhanced endurance recovery and recharge bonuses etc.

I just need to figure out how low the IO can be at +5 boosts and still equal a lv 50 IO.
Once I get some free time, that's my plan.

EDIT:
I just glanced at Mids real fast, a lv 28+5 IO (42.63%) is the closest match to an unmodified lv 50 IO (42.4%).
This will let me exemplar down to almost all of the lower level content while retaining most of my set bonuses. In fact, because my slots are gathered on my Peace Bringer's lv 1-35 powers and no slots are used on powers I took past 35 other than their default slots, I'd say I'm keeping around 90%+ of my set bonuses when exemplared to most of the content I generally tend to run.

How about just making every attack that has either hold or stun, do BOTH, hold AND stun.

This will do several things, first, allow PBs a greater variety in choice of what sets to slot, and allow for folks to either go in the hold direction or the stun direction (not likely to be able to go in both directions due to limited slots available and even if they did, it wouldn't be overpowered since there is no noticable difference between a foe that is held and a foe that is held and stunned), and lastly it will synergize with teammates more since it will stack with whatever they are using, be it holds or stuns.