BellaStrega

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Okay, what I don't get: How is Touch of Fear any worse than Cobra Strike or Stun, or...heck...Total Focus? I mean, when it comes to mezzing attacks?

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ToF is much, much, better than those attacks, if not just for the -ACC.

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Oh, really?

Let me know when you manage to shut off toggles with fear effects, or manage to keep a Tsoo sorcerer from teleporting away, okay?

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I personally am betting that CoD is going out the window and being replaced by hide, just like Energy Cloak was scrapped for hide.

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Actually, hide was scrapped for a passive resist, and the repulsion field was scrapped for energy cloak.

That is to say: You've got EA's evolution backward.

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4. Finally Spines should be all toxic damage.

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Cuz lord knows, there's not enough Spines scrappers/stalkers as it is

This is your FauxPas of the year dude... CLAWS needs help, not Spines.
Why don't you just ask for them to buff Energy Melee while you're at it.

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Well, it does. I mean, TF + ET does more damage combined than the entire rest of the set. Obviously, the other attacks need to be brought up to par with those two.

Also, it kind of surprises me that no one has gone for the obvious and likely true answer: EvilGeko was having some fun.

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Not as much of an inconvenience is an understatement. Must I go to Scrapper and Tank forums and quote the posts of "OMG SS IS TEH 1337", "MA OWNS!", etc? It's fact that their ability to mitigate damage overcomes any resistance mobs may have to their damage type. I'm not unfamiliar with melee ATs with lethal/smash - I'm quite experienced with them and know from personal experience it's a not an issue.

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The sheer quantity of smashing/lethal resistant enemies has been a tanker and scrapper complaint since the game launched. The fact that scrappers and tankers have defenses doesn't necessarily mean that they are immune to defeat ever, especially when fighting something that is very difficult to damage (CoT spectrals, for example, which exist well into the 30s).

This isn't a binary issue, where it's a massive problem for ATs without defenses and not a problem at all for ATs with defenses. I mean, I realize that it's popular to post as if scrappers and tankers are Chuck Norris or Vin Diesel at all times, but I think that's a highly idealized perspective mainly intended to magnify blaster problems.

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Er...I don't see any way -acc can be called soft control. It has absolutely nothing to do with control whatsoever.

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I've seen a few controllers insist that debuffs are soft control that make defenders "too good" at control compared to controllers. One said to me that Tenebrous Tentacles + Darkest Night was just as good as an AoE hold, because the villains aren't actually hitting.

Note: I refer to the above argument as "weaseling," but hey.

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Well, with the time they've had and the recent outcries/suggestions people have been making about EM, all I want to say is don't expect DM to be something on the level of EM. In case you've never seen DM in action or PvP, it hits, hard, REALLY damn hard. So I'm sure it's damage output will be reduced. DA isn't bad except for it's 2 status cloaks being somewhat odd for a Stalker to be sporting around, but otherwise I think it'd be a solid set. And I pray that they add some other kind of lvl 38 power to it instead of Soul Transfer, oy.

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DM doesn't even come close to energy melee when it comes to hitting really hard. It'll simply have its damage scale changed from 112.5 (scrappers) to .9 (stalkers).

If they give stalkers a better 9th tier power than soul transfer, though, they damned well better give it to scrappers and brutes as well.

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He posted that Scrappers and Tanks have the same lethal/smash problems AR and Archery do and anybody whose played AR or Archery and lethal/smash based Scrapper/Tank knows that to be completely false for a number of reasons already stated.

I'm not being negative towards him, I'm telling him that player experience has shown that his train of thought was off.

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I do not think it is "completely false." It is better stated that it is not as much of an inconvenience to melee ATs. Blasters don't need to claim every balance problem as applying uniquely to them to actually have valid problems.

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Really, the only thing that matters is how -speed is considered since we agree on -recharge. My point is that there is no logical reason to put -speed in the domain of controllers. As I stated above, slowing someone down is not "controlling" them any more than speeding someone up is "controlling" them. . Are we going to make Speed Boost be better speed for controllers?


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Please tell me you're kidding. Speed boost is an ally buff; it in no way impairs the target, which means its not a means of control. Movement slow (-speed) as a foe debuff is a form of control because it functions similarly to an immobilize.

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I agree with Mieux - -Speed/-Recharge should be defined as a debuff, not a control. Control removes the ability to act in certain (or in many cases, all) ways, while a debuff limits your ability to do certain things. A to-hit debuff limits your ability to hit, a resistance debuff limits your mitigation, and a speed debuff limits how fast you move.

Also, the majority of slows are in defender primaries.

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Note: im not saying im against all melee types getting all melee sets (altough it may take a lot of tweakage for stalkers to get most sets fit on their modus operandis) im jsut saying i sort of see the reason behind the selection, its not really random at all.

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Why did I read your first post and come away with "Please give tankers new sets, but don't hand anything over to those scrappers - they don't need anything." ?

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No clue, because i been saying they should be geting Ninjitsu.

You dont think i'd roll a Super Strenght or Fire Melee scrapper if i had the chance? I'd delete my tankers and do it tomorow if they did so.

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Well, ideally, I'd like to see a new defense secondary for scrappers that I actually want to play. I'd rather not see a second powerset that demands I take leaping.

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...how do Illusion and Weather powers fit together without coming up with some convluted explanation?

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Ghost Pirates.

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Lol, yes! Now if only heroes could be pirates.

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Issue 7!

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... don't know if the game could support this...

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I'm almost 100% sure gravity powers' secondary effect is -speed, but no -recharge.

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I was thinking of things like lingering radiation, and other slows shared between controllers and defenders, but if gravity's slows are all -speed and no -recharge, that would reinforce the notion that controller slows should (in general) be weighted more towards -speed and less towards -recharge, while defenders should get the reverse, rather than having the full combination of -speed/-rech be stronger for controllers than defenders (which doesn't seem to make sense to me regardless of where the powers are located).

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Tar Patch is -speed, but no -recharge. Prior to the addition of the -res debuff, that's pretty much all it did.

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Note: im not saying im against all melee types getting all melee sets (altough it may take a lot of tweakage for stalkers to get most sets fit on their modus operandis) im jsut saying i sort of see the reason behind the selection, its not really random at all.

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Why did I read your first post and come away with "Please give tankers new sets, but don't hand anything over to those scrappers - they don't need anything." ?

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The fact that you don't like the PvP zones does not relegate them to "not content".


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You can only slightly consider it content though.

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That is like being slightly pregnant.

It doesn't work that way, wither it is content, or it is not.

My definition of conetnt, just so that it is clear, is something added to the game that wasn't there before. Thus, new powersets, new zones, new costume options, hell, even a new button on the UI is new content.

Whether I like/enjoy the content or not is a completely different question.

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It does.

Let's take Striga Island.

Now, let's take Siren's Call.

By your definitions above, both are content, and thus both are equal. However, do you think that Siren's Call really measures up to Striga Island in terms of added content? Heck, does SC measure up to Bloody Bay?

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Thanks to all the posters with the demorecords of the hurricane bug. I just wonder how it was investigated in the first place. The situation invariably occurs with my Ice/radiation controller teammate.

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Occasionally, a description of how to reproduce a bug just isn't sufficient to communicate how to reproduce the bug. I had the same problem getting across how to reproduce the "AoEs automiss moving targets" bug when it first surfaced in issue 3, but a demorecord got the idea across and it was taken care of, at least until something with bases reintroduced it to a limited extent.

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<<I'll celebrate when things get fixed. Been down this road before.

EDIT: Nothing personal Castle. >>

This bears repeating.

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It also bears repeating that _Castle_ gets [censored] done. Some people deserve a certain level of faith given their track record for hard work and results.

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QFT. It is expected that not every answer Castle has will be agreeable. However, it is communication, and some things will get fixed or improved.

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True and true. Also Rain of Fire and I'd assume the Freezing Rain knockoff Cold gets. No idea how Dark Servant works with Scourge. But outside of Blizzard those all do very small increments of damage. A single hit from Rain of Fire is not exactly comparable to a lightning bolt from LS.

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However, the damage over time from Rain of Fire is quite impressive. When all the orange numbers and Scourge! popups finally clear from my screen, most everything is nearly dead.

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I have a going theory that it involves summoned effects and Scourge. Storm has both Tornado and Lightning Storm. Elec Blast, which is also 'missing' has Voltaic Sentinel.

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Ice Blast has both Ice Storm and Blizzard, which are summoned effects that can scourge repeatedly.

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Although working as designed, the current system was (i believe, please correct me if i'm wrong) introduced as a temporary fix for a coding problem that prevented melee ATs from launching melee attacks against someone using hurricane. The band-aid the devs placed on the boo-boo was simply that hurricane would not debuff ANY attacks from melee ATs--melee or ranged. This overkill was introduced as a temporary fix and has lingered like a bad smell, unfairly penalizing hurricane users against melee ATs in pvp by denying them one of the most useful and defensive secondary effects (-range debuff) of their primary defensive power (hurricane). I repeat, this fix was to be temporary, until the devs could recode the melee attack/hurricane interaction. This issue STILL needs to be addressed.

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You might want to tally up just how many ranged attacks are available to melee characters.

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If you haven't played all 4 to lvl 50 then you shouldn't complain.

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I am killing you with my mind right now.

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Don't forget damage ranges. People keep forgetting Blasters have a different melee/range damage scale. Khelds are just goofy all around

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I don't think this is entirely true. That is, the engine doesn't really distinguish between melee and ranged attacks. Melee attacks are just attacks with a range of 5 feet.

Blaster melee attacks were boosted in issue 1 or thereabouts, this is true. However, I don't think they're actually on a different scale.

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I'm a bit puzzled by this apparent swap in defender/controller shared abilities. Initially we were told that Controler Secondaries were 80% as effective as the corresponding defender primaries. There was nothing about differentiating debuffs and controls. Now that whatever system of balance was set up determined that actually controllers have equal effectivness in most areas and even more effectiveness in some.

I share the sentiments on questioning the need for defenders in light of controllers effectiveness. Why not just eliminate all the defender sets save for dark?

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This is something that's become increasingly apparent over time - every AT has multipliers for:

Buffs/debuffs/heals
Control
Damage
Defense

And these multipliers apply whether the power is in the primary or secondary. Primaries and secondaries define, in broad strokes, what the AT does with those powersets, but a controller with a hold in a secondary will do better because all holds the controller has works off the same multiplier.

This doesn't really justify that some defender primary powers are not better than controller secondary counterparts. I mean, if you take Electrical Blast, you can see that defenders drain more end than blasters. However, you can also see that Electrical Blast is more powerful for blasters because they do far more damage. Ideally, while certain traits of defender primary powers may be inferior to the controller counterparts, the defender powers should be overall superior to the controller versions.

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I am absolutely flabbergasted that anybody can say with a straight face that the Defender versions of Repulsion Bomb and Force Bolt doing more damage than the Controller version is any way whatsoever a balancing feature. The damage on both is utterly negligible, and nobody with any experience with the set whatsoever pays the slightest attention to the "damage" of these powers. The *meaningful* effects of both are either identical between Controllers and Defenders or weighted towards Controllers (better mez from RB). This means that we have two powers which are as effective or more effective as secondaries than they are as primaries. Same with Force Bubble and Detention Field. The only powers in the entire FF set for which an FF Defender has any *meaningful* advantage over an FF Controller are the +DEF powers. So what happened to "Primary" &gt; "Secondary"?

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This is the basis of my discontent in issue 5, when defender controls were reduced. In essence, defenders aren't really allowed to be the best at very much, and those things they are the best at aren't that much more powerful than the controller versions.

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I forgot about that as well...

Fine you can keep CoD, but it doesn't stack with Stealth so there.

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I actually think this would be a cool direction to take.

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Indded. Ninigitsu is usually secrecy and stealth, two very stalkerish attributes and not all that scrapperish.

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Kitty Pryde and Wolverine totally had ninja training! I would describe both as scrappers.

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No, like I mentioned in my post after yours, it requires the loss of 3 minute uberness.

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I forgot about that - how DA has no button of uberness (or intended uberness) like all the other secondaries.

That does make a big difference.