DrMike2000

First off, I think you're spreading things a bit thin by making two powersets for each travel type, and making each one a separate archetype.

My own designs, which im still writing up, was to make each travel type a defensive set for melee-ers, because of the wider range of concepts that that invites. Teleporter with sword, leadping martial artist, leaping Dark melee demon, flying guy who fights at close range with fire, etc. What you've laid out here is more like 4 epic archetypes.

Anyway, I'll write up what I've got in my own thread, and we cna compare notes on that then. Having a look at the teleporter. My first thoughts..

I like the primary on the whole. The idea of opening up space holes as a weapon is kind of cool, dropping enemies into the ground, disorientating them etc. Tier 6 Warp is a genius idea. Reminds me of the JLA taking down Terminus in JLA/Avengers using a Green Lantern created U-pipe to get him to blast himself in the face.

But, I feel that in practice the set might be too gimmicky. Its hard to visually describe something like Terminal Velocity or your Tier 9 Dimension Shift in a way thats going to be watchable again and again, and not get bogged down in animation times.
How would Scramble look? Just a Teleport flash around the target and they're stunned?

Terminal Velocity would required flash and vanish on the target, followed by appearance of something like those travel tubes in the Shadow Shard or a mid-air hole that then rag-dolls them into the ground from above. You could fit all this into a couple of seconds I guess.

You've got a good basis for an offensive primary there.


For a Defensive secondary, I'd ditch the idea of trying to make a support set from the concept of teleportation and make it more of a personal protection and misdirection set.

I'm in love with the idea of a click teleport power that provides +Def, you've got that there.
Bamf around to confuse the enemy and stay one step ahead. I also think that confuse could play a large part in this idea, as enemies shoot each other trying to hit you, thats a very Nightcrawler thing to happen. Maybe a low probability Confuse aura, kind of like World of Confusion but with much larger radius.
You would be using confuse in two quite different ways here (Warp and these ones)...

I've got a similar idea for Team Teleport to yours, also with a +Def to allies and a minor confuse PBAoE at the point of impact as the enemy try to react to your sudden presence in their midst.

Remove could be very interesting as a toggle. I guess it could work like Repulsion Field but applies a flash and brief period of invisibility to the targets. That would look pretty cool, but I'm not too sure how popular Repulsion Field is. (I like it)

So that "pet project" thread got you going too?

I've been writing up my own ideas on paper for making travel-based defence secondaries for Stalkers, Brutes and Scrappers. I'd love to see something along these lines in game.

Seconded. The PPD Ghost Flashbang Grenade decimates Defence and To Hit far too viciously.

Add in the SWAT Equalizer glue grenades and its very easy to get stuck defenceless and unable to retaliate in any reliable way by a bunch of minion non-powered police grunts.

Playing an SR Stalker, there's no obvious target of choice to take out here, since either the Ghost or Equalizer can ruin my day quite badly.

Weird. I never realised it worked like that before.

I agree. Kinetics is a much more hectic button-mashing experience than Dark Miasma.

Dark Miasma's probably more powerful overall, but Kinetics is a unique experience in terms of the attention required to play well.

Great idea.

Is there a "only one per spawn" flag exposed in AE, like Malta Sappers use? That could be handy as a les flexible vesion of your suggestion.

The OP was suggesting that each slot has a user-chosen bonus that was separate from the costume pieces used in that costume.
So while you could choose wings and a flight speed bonus for the same slot, you weren't locked into that.

I'm thinking back to soloing my Ice/Kin Controller here, so I can see where you're coming from. Every group of 3 minions would be shut down pretty quickly, leaving me to cycle through them in a rather dull battle between their health bars and my endurance bar, even with Sands of Mu helping out.

There'd come a point where I'd think "come on, these guys are already defeated. Can't we just skip the next 30 seconds?" Lower levels, like 1-10 weren't too bad, since the XP was fast and damage scalars hadn't kicked in. It was the 20s where its started to get painful, fighting +2s without a pet.

But, it was incredibly safe, and I'd chosen that style when I made the character. I could have made a Kin/Ice Defender with the same concept, and traded some safety for damage. I can't really see a way to add defeat-speed to this character without penalising the potential Defender, or even a Gravity Controller who's dropped some of the safety in exchange for some decent damage.

Say we had a separate health bar that drops evenly while the target is mezzed, and recovers instantly when they aren't. So maybe 45 seconds of continuous mez = defeat for a typical minion. And my solo Ice Controller's hold lasts for 30 seconds on a +2. This means I can leave a target once they've been held for 15 seconds - pop a quick hold and them and move on, knowing they wont be able to squirm free. This basically works in my favour against higher level targets, who'd take more than 30 seconds to defeat through damage, right? Without further HUD assistance (eg some kind of watermark on the hold bar) it would also suffer the damage over time problem you already get say soloing a Fire Controller, where you're not always sure if you can run off yet and let the DoT's finish them.

Like you say, we already have access to a continuous spectrum of damage/hold capabilities from Fire Blasters to Ice Controllers. Even with say an Ice/FF Controller, we can choose to slot for damage or hold in Block of Ice, or use Damage procs, or build up global acc to use Sands of Mu. I'd say we don't need to intorduce a mechanism to speed up defeats for those who've chosen slow but safe.

Like I said, i've experienced this myself, but I think the answer for me was to re-roll as a Defender.

So you'd have minor (eg Mystic Fortune/Day Job level) bonuses attached to each costume slot?

Could be kind of cool to have from a RP point of view, eg having a Shapeshifter with a small winged form that gives +Movement, and a Huge form with +Damage attached.

But, the bonuses had better not be too big to create balance issues, in which case why have them at all?

Problems could arise with even a +3% defence bonus - that's enough to drop your incoming damage by 40% or so if you're sitting at 42% defence already. Similarly any resistance bonus can be quite significant for the right Tanker/Brute.
I think this would end up as a minor feature that only really affects the min-maxers. We already have Day Jobs, Mystic Fortune, Self-Mutation and 60 month vet rewards providing little bonuses. While I like your idea more than most of these - I don't think we really need another one.

EDIT: On yeah, and base empowerment buffs. We have them too.

I don't like this at all.
To grossly over-simplify to two archetypes:

A Controller is by design a low damage (ie many actions to arrest) archetype. In exchange for this they get the ability to temporarily neutralise an enemy. One action to stop temporarily, many actions to stop permanently. Solo, this requires juggling a small group - keep number 1 busy for the next 20 seconds, then number 2, then number 3, then back to number one. Quick lockdown, long defeat, multi-tasking concentration requires.

In comparison a Blaster has few actions to stop permanently, but no way of stopping temporarily. This requires serial processing. Focus on number 1 till they fall over, then number 2o, and so on. It's generally faster but riskier because you stop all incoming damage less quickly.

What you're effectively asking for is to have Controllers require fewer actions to defeat outright, which upsets this balance.

Applying damage from multiple holds doesn't have to mean you're actually damaging the target. Its just you need to reinforce the vines or ice or mental block or whatever a few times to make sure they stay put.
What we could have is alternate death animations attached to a Control attack, without changing a single game mechanic. Instead of falling over, the defeated target remains encased in ice/earth/vines whatever before fading away.

Psychic Scream was something of an odd choice to replace Aim with.

Comparing to Energy Blast, one of the most standard blast sets:

Psionic Dart = Energy Bolt, KB chance replaced with -Rech
Mental Blast = Energy Blast, KB chance replaces with -Rech
TK Blast = Power Burst with faster anim, equal KB, and about 90% of the damage.

Both sets have Aim, a nuke, a snipe and a low damage mez (counting Power Push as a mez attack) and a targetted sphere AoE.

Will Domination therefore pairs up with the missing second AoE, which seems like quite a poor trade. A Mag 3 sleep for a second AoE? That seems like a decision designed to limit the set's PvE effectiveness if anything.

When Psi Blast was released, it would have had a potential advantage over other blast sets due to the damage type in PvP, since Psi resist is quite hard to come by for players.
Psi damage is resisted quite heavily by PvE mobs though, moreso than Fire on average.
Most zombies and robots have 50% resistance, which you won't see for many other damage types.

Moving Psi Scream from the primary to the scondary made no sense to me, since the two powersets are independent, tied only by concept. This lead to Psi Blast primary leaving you one AoE short, and taking Mental Manipulation giving you an extra AoE, hence the popularity of Fire/MM and relative scarcity of Psi Blast.

Psi Blast could have been "good single target with lots of controls" to compensate for the lack of AoE. But Will Domination got reduced damage, despite having a lower damage scalar than Tier 3s like Cosmic Burst or Power Burst on Defenders. On Blasters it got lowered to less than standard Tier 2 damage.

In short, I think the set is just poorly designed. I can see a good few disadvantages and no clear advantage to taking the set.

My characters tend to be at least 90% serious, but I have no problem with having a wacky character on the team. Its usually a lot of fun, much more so than someone who doesn't talk in character.

There's plenty of examples in the source material, Tom Strong meeting Warren Strong (his funny animal rabbit counterpart), Superman teaming up with Ambush Bug, Batman and Batmite, and so on. A good superhero with an understanding of the complexities of the parallel-dimensioned multiverse they inhabit should be able to take anything in their stride.

And I tend to put ((RP)) in my bios just so you know that whatever comes out of my mouth is in character. Some characters have speech patterns that make this fairly obvious, others don't.

Ignite is a wonderful single target damage power, I enjoyed it a lot on my AR/Traps Corrupter (who did admittedly have Web Grenade).

Its also worth noting that a lot of AVs don't try to run from the patch, and neither do Rikti Drones. Using it with Force Bubble should work pretty well for damage mitigation as well - the target will probably still try to run, unlike an immobilised target who just gives up and starts attacking again.

Why exactly are you against fixed price items, Decorum? I'm curious to hear your reasons.

The risk of lowering the drop rate is that supply may suddenly drop below demand. At that point, the prices will rocket as players start competing for the items with their inf, and some people who currently enjoy well-stocked utility belts in exchange for periodic refill sessions at the market and crafting tables will be unable to do so.

Kind of like costume drops but in reverse. They were rare and sold for massive amounts, then they became common and worthless.

I'm not sure if access to stun grenades and med packs and the like should become exclusive to the rich. It wouldn't affect me, since I am rich, but the principal doesn't sit well with me, I think because like you pointed out earlier, they're good concept-enablers.

You've got a reasonable point about the new player experience.

If a new player chose to vendor everything they got as drops they could still run out of money for SOs.

A simpler solution to this would be to drop the price of SOs. They're no longer the top item they used to be, I doubt it would hurt to make them half of their current price. Their role as an inf sink is minor compared to the amount of inf thrown around by high end players.

And I'd be quite happy if they dropped the "Alchemy" combine screen altogether. I recently got my Pain Corrupter duo to 18 before reslotting, and had to click for every single enhancement, which got pretty tiresome. The extra 1 or 2% value Ive got ina few enahncmenets for the next level isn't really worth it.

A filter would be OK, even just new options "Dont Drop Temporary Powers" and "Dont Drop Costume Recipes".
It would still have to be turned on per character (along with all the other options like exemp levels and disable stranger email that I do for each new character) but that isn't a huge inconvenience.

The original poster's idea of making these fixed price items would require NO new coding though, which is another point in its favour.

This must be a new thing, possibly with the new Abandon Mission/7 mission limit in the last issue?
I know for a fact I've been offered both missions last year, and only run the auras one, on several different heroes.

Getting to 32.5% Defence is a good goal to aim for, since a small purple insp will then put you at the softcap of 45%.

Being able to hit god-mode with a single insp is pretty valuable.

I'd also recommend looking into the Demonic accolade (+50% Def to all types except Psychic for 1 minute, recharge of 25 min) and the Kinetic Dampener temporary power (+16% S/L Defence for 30 minutes usage)

Neither of these are the same as permanent soft-capping, but definitely help for those emergency moments. And for a Stalker, one minute of complete invulnerability adds up to a lot of damage you can dish out.

I've got plenty of characters who unlocked auras but never unlocked capes.

Have you levelled up before approaching the City Rep? I think they won't give you the Aura Mission until you're "officially" 30

My own Light and darkness controller is a Dark/Rad defender. Rad Blast works very well for light powers.

Energy Blast's blasts looks WAY more disco-y than Rad Blast though. And I agree Sonic Resonance has a more dancey feel than Force Fields does.

Rad Blast has some good animations though - Irradiate could be a dance move. Neutron Bomb looks like you're throwing a beach ball, so its quite Aussie-girly in that way.

In terms of game mechanics I like Sonic/Energy more, since it gives you a way to defend yourself (via knockback) as well as your team.