Codewalker

Running that through a dev^H^H^Hcommunity relations translator, that could be technically (brtually?) true in both the cases that said ATs have been shelved, or that they're already finished...

Well so much for that. Today's beta patch stealth nerfed it. OF removes the knockup entirely now, leaving just the 40% chance for knockdown per tick.

Yes, CoD doesn't show it, but the VFX is indeed attached to that Null effect. Flat 0.5% chance, and it's exactly the same as the CCE.

In AoEs that hit a large number of enemies that works out to "every once in a while". So not super rare.

Kin is a lot busier than Emp. Dark and Rad arguably are too if you try to always keep your toggles up.

I'd argue Force Field, since skipping repulsion bomb or even force bolt is doable without gimping the set. And depending on how technical you want to get, Pain Domination doesn't have any foe-targeted powers (though Anguishing Cry does affect foes, it's PBAoE).

On a competent team with a couple of support sets buffing them, people rarely die. If they do it's usually because they ran off on their own ahead of the group.

And when they do die, they pop Return to Battle, or an Awaken, or combine some insps, or get rezzed if somebody has one (even the temp power). It's no big deal and debt is usually gone instantly as the team finishes off the group that killed you, assuming patrol XP didn't eat it.

The game even has a few amazing powers that are only usable when someone is dead. I've been on a couple teams that were built that way, with everybody's trigger fingers itching and waiting for somebody to die. When they do? Excellent! Fallout, Vengeance, Soul Transfer. The enemies are stunned (mag 30!), nuked, and the team is buffed to nigh-invulnerability.

I actually don't see many Empaths these days -- the sets with a mix of buffs and debuffs tend to be preferred as they stack better with each other. Most people, at least on the servers I play on*, have figured out the power of buffs in this game and just how far behind the "healer" really is. A well-played empath, especially one that's a Controller or a Defender who takes advantage of the stacking debuffs in their secondary is always welcome, but is decidedly middle of the road when it comes to support sets.

* (Triumph, Pinnacle, Justice, Protector, Liberty, Victory)

Explosive blast with the Overwhelming Force special would provide a surprising amount of mitigation without annoying everyone.

Admittedly it's a fairly new option for Energy that it didn't have before, but it's still an option.

You need all that to keep alive the one person who was duoing the event with you?

They must have a really bad build. On my emps when I duo, Fort and auras alternating with AB is plenty, only occasionally using Heal Other or Aura. I never have to use Absorb Pain (and frequently skip it, in situations where it's actually needed, pressing it is usually a suicide button).

On a big team, unless the emp is the only support, it's much the same. Either I'm blasting/controlling away or I'm standing there doing nothing. I suppose spamming clear mind on people who don't need it is one way to pass the time but everything else has a fairly long recharge.

If the emp is the only support, well then the heals aren't all overheal and I think the participation mechanic takes that into account. If you just want to get the badge for this one, cycling energy bolt/brawl (non-autopower) while buffing and healing only as necessary should be more than enough to get it.

PS: If your emp is your badge character, I'd highly recommend a second build slotted for damage (with procs) and offensively-oriented incarnate powers. Otherwise you'll have a very hard time getting into a successful league for badges like Ready to Rumble/Hard Way/Really Hard Way, which require the entire league to do as much damage as possible. A few people with Rebirth/Barrier are more than enough to cover the defensive needs on Tyrant for that one, so damage and debuffs are king.

*shrug*. That's what's happening, whether or not it's intended I can't say. If it becomes a big issue, they could possibly reduce the mag of the chance for KD proc.

And yes, slotting Tornado for KB will definitely nullify the KB->KD enhancement.

I'm curious, how long ago was that?

Negative strength to KB has existed at least as long as Benumb and Weaken have, the only difference is it wasn't available from an enhancement.

Personally I think it's much more likely that they didn't *want* players to be able to convert KB to KD, and the technical handwave was just that. Probably the "problems" encountered were things just like what is happening with Bonfire.

Yes, that is correct on both counts.

That's not really a PvP flag. It's just an "is target a player" check. So it won't proc on a mastermind pet. See also Support Core Hybrid -- in-game numbers get confused by it and show the "player" numbers under PvP, and the "pet" numbers under PvE mode.

1% is very low, though. It would take a large number of activations to get it to trigger. Or just one if you're (un)lucky.

More than you would think.

Most of them are KB. Repulsion Field, Force Bubble, Repel, Water Spout, Sonic Repulsion, Arctic Breath, Earthquake, Freezing Rain, Sleet, Blizzard, Bonfire, Liquefy, Vine Smash, and Oil Slick's knockback/knockdown are all immune to the purple patch. Singularity's Repel is similarly immune.

Also many chance for KB procs ignore it. Kinetic Combat, Overwhelming Force (the 20%, but it's broken anyway), and Might of the Empire. Tempest's chance for end drain also ignores it.

Then there's some oddball ones that may or may not be intentional.

• Blaster Chilling Embrace's -DMG debuff
• Entropic Aura's -RECH debuff
• Alpha Wolf's Growl's -DMG debuff
• Dimension Shift. The Intangible and Phase explicitly ignore it, though for Phase (true phase, not Untouchable) the purple patch wouldn't really have an effect on it anyway. Interestingly, its Immobilize ignores it as well.
• Warburg Nukes. The damage ignores it, as well as the -END and -Recovery debuffs.
• Ghost Widow as a Signature Summon has Twilight Grasp, except her version has a very short (0.5 second, mag 100) immobilize on the target that ignores the purple patch.
• The fiery orb summoned by the Dominating Grasp ATO has a chance for a short stun that ignores the purple patch.
• Mastermind Painbringer's 1% chance to knock down an ally player when used on them. lolwut? Why does this even exist? I didn't even know about it until now.

and runners up:

• Enforced Morale's Special damage (but it's ally targeted)
• Power of the Phoenix's Untouchable status (but it's ally targeted)

No, it won't.

The "proc" is not a proc at all, but simply a knockback enhancement with a value of -99%. Nothing special about it at all, and the same thing Benumb and Weaken have done to critters (and I suppose players in PVP) for years.

So if you slot +KB and -KB in the same power... Well that just kind of defeats the purpose of both. On the bright side, it functions perfectly well with the enhancement screen which will give you a preview of the net +/- percentage you'll end up with.

Only the missions are restricted. Free/premium accounts can get in the zone just fine.

I'm not saying it isn't overpowered. But what the devs think is important, because it determines if they feel it necessary to change it or not...

I would call Drain Psyche overpowered, however devs have gone out of their way to avoid touching it, even stating that if they made any changes to they set they would have to nerf it.

Technically, it reduces the magnitude of the KB in any power it's slotted into by 99%. For any player power that's more than enough to get it below the threshold to turn it into KD, unless you're also slotting the power for knockback (but why would you do that?).

There's also a separate 20% chance to knockdown (mag 0.67 KB) that fires completely independent of any KB the power may have. However that may be broken at the moment.

It would be easy -- they could make at least a fixed mag 1 KB (or even say, half) of the KB in Bonfire unenhanceable. The remaining part could still be enhanced, but enough would be unaffected by the KB->KD enhancement to work either way.

Well the switch itself doesn't necessarily mean that, after all a Dead Man's Switch is just a device that's triggered by something like no longer holding on to it -- many of them can be triggered by falling unconscious as well.

However, that said, I seem to recall the text in Magisterium saying "Chimera's death triggers..." It's been a while so I don't remember for sure.

Even if just knocked out there's the question of whether he could have survived Tyrant's temper tantrum mini-nuke.