Failsight

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Fault doesn't do damage and while Footstomp outperforms Whirling Hands on a practical level it still leaves SS with one damaging AOE (same as EM and SM).

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In regard to practical usefulness to their sets, Whirling Hands still ends up at the bottom of the heap. It's not necessarily about damage or the number of AoEs, but how enticing it is as part of the set.

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I consider character markers for escorts and allies to be a huge boon to the core game, myself.

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I consider varying footstep sounds by material a huge boon to the core game, myself.

That song played on my playlist about a minute ago. I didn't even have to go pee.

And again: you'll never get a barter-only system to work with people on a large scale. Never. Bartering takes far too much effort and attention, because the list of possible things is very, very large. Especially compared to auctioneering, which really only trades directly between item and currency, currency and item. With bartering, you'll instead have to go item to some number of items or some number of items to some other number of items.

In a small community, bartering systems work, because values are more or less common and accepted. No such thing exists amongst populations as large or diverse as a player community.

Also, bartering only truly works if buyers are buying things they cannot themselves produce. Given the option of either being only able to barter or to simply produce themselves, people will choose to just produce it themselves. This is, again, due to bartering simply taking more effort or requiring a common concept of value. Currency is easy to understand, as we use it practically daily.

So if people start only producing for themselves, with perhaps the odd barter here or there when the moons align just right, guess what's going to happen? Just to get to the levels where people are at even now, players will have to resort to higher ticket drop rates to get what they want, as they are forced to try to get what they want by going it alone.

This can only lead to a few possible outcomes:

1) people go back to the ol' SO or basic IO routine;

2) people feel even more justified to farm;

3) the devs drop reward costs greatly so that everybody has at least a chance of getting what they want.

None of those sound like ideas that are going to fly well, either with the community or with the devs--generally both. Even option 3 basically leads to higher burn out numbers, as it gives upper-level characters less to strive for.

As for the MA itself, I can only really suggest a small number of things:

1) keep closing those exploits, devs;

2) get rid of auto-SK--it's not really necessary, and having it greatly assists in PLing;

3) make the random arc button visible at the top level instead of two clicks in;

4) give incentive to use that random button, like an extra few percentage chance of ticket drops if the arc was chosen via the random button;

5) penalise repeated running of the same arc over and over in a 24 hr period (not sure if this might already be implemented) via diminishing returns a la TFs/SFs.

These suggestions come from a few things I've noticed about the MA:

1) exploitable enemies are exploitable (duh) and need to be fixed as found regardless;

2) mass PLing does more damage than farming to the in-game economy--farming, to some degree, is actually beneficial to the market, as it creates supply, especially considering particular recipes cannot themselves be bought, just random rolls or salvage;

3) there is a severe lack of playable low-level MA content;

4) most people's arcs are never played because there's no incentive to. It's important to give incentive for players to explore other people's creations;

5) in the event of people using the random button until exploitable content shows up, well...see 1), but it should still slow things down a bit for those who try to do that.

I almost never have issues with my Kat/Regen if I use Dull Pain consistently. I've actually done far better with my Kat/Regen compared to, say, my soft-capped Night Widow.

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But then you could kind of say the samething about Stone and Super Strength too no?

I don't disagree that EM would be more attractive with more AOE btw.

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Say what about Stone or Super Strength? Whirling Hands vs. Fault and Tremor vs. Footstomp? Unless they upped Whirling Hands to Dominator radius, it's not even close to those other powers.

My SD/SS Tanker probably only spent...30-40 million outside of my lucky drop Numina unique. Shield Tankers are pretty cheap to softcap.

I honestly fear cascade failures on my Shields Tanker as little as I fear them on my Inv. Between having moderate full-time resists and HP boost, as well as a meant-to-be-used T9 that isn't a one-trick pony (like for SR, Nin, etc.), I think that Shields has easily become one of the premiere Tanker primaries, in most situations surpassing Invulnerability when considering cheap IO builds (Inv is "slightly better" stock, worse with low-moderate IO expenditure, but again better with "massive" IO expenditure). I'd take it for tanking before a WP, due to Shields having a full-blown taunt aura, despite WP's greater survivability.

For Scrappers and Brutes? I think it's middling.

If EM were a slow but massively AoE-based set, I'd probably feel way different about it, as I personally consider Brutes and Tankers to be "at their best" when handed AoE tools (for differing reasons). I think Scrappers are generally more ST designed, outside of Spines, so EM would actually not be a bad fit there anymore (now that it's technically balanced).

But as is, I don't think I'll ever be interested in EM as either a Brute or Tanker set anymore. It just doesn't capitalise on either AT's strengths, IMO*. It works for both, but I just don't see it as interesting compared to the rest of the available sets, which, other than Dark (which has its excellent bag of tricks, but still really isn't for me when it comes to Tankers), all have superior AoE ability. To be quite honest, even Dark Melee is better in terms of AoE.

*Not entirely true--EM can capitalise on Tankers' increased survivability. But so do the rest of the sets, in that you can be free-wheeling about dropping some AoE down, drawing large amounts of aggro (which Tankers are meant to do), and surviving it. Basically, AoE helps a Tanker do their job, and a Tanker's stats help in being able to feel safe using AoE attacks.

I'm honestly having a hard time understanding why:

a) someone wants to use either TF or ET with low health, and

b) why someone would want to use TF or ET to finish an enemy off.

I have more of a problem with Barrage being a 6 second recharge tier 1 attack than I do with TF or ET taking a long time to animate.

Remember though that Mesmerize is something like 20ft longer distance, so you can always hit them again. Usually twice, since if you queue another attack immediately, it'll still fire while the enemy gets knocked back. Great way to make quick ranged attack chains that end with the enemy still mezzed.

The toughest Granite Tanker would actually be one that makes up as much as possible for its offensive penalties. Defeated enemies do no damage (well...in almost all cases). Pushing the def any further than softcap is mostly a waste considering capped resists.

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Stalkers have a playstyle that often encourages spacing

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Whoa. Uh.. no. Stalker = Scrapper with a badass alpha.

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I forgot to mention that that's more in the low levels, where end is at more of a premium. At higher levels, it honestly generallly doesn't matter--between crits, AS, SOs (or IOs), and Stamina, it's still all good.

TBH, I don't think villains have as much to complain about regarding endurance than heroes do in the first place: all villain ATs have ways of managing endurance that are practically inherent (or literally inherent) built-in (Brutes do more DPE the higher their Fury, Corrs get buff sets and a bit of help from Scourge, Doms get Domination, MMs hardly need to use endurance at all if they so wish, Stalkers have a playstyle that often encourages spacing, plus AS is extremely DPE friendly).

My experience with my new lowbie Mind/Nrg is that I'm doing better than almost all my other characters in the low levels regarding endurance: I have yet to hit rest once. Between the safety of Mind's mezzes and Domination being up any time I need an end refill (which has thankfully so far co-incided well with when I needed the extra control), things have gone extremely easily.

The concept was actually originally Mind/Elec but I shifted it to /Nrg because I wanted a more ranged-oriented character, and Power Push's new damage lets /Nrg fit the bill.

It's random order.

Only the team leader gets the sidekick and yet all sidekicks seem to count as members of the team seems to a) conflict, b) push people to want smaller teams. Just as much of a problem.

Would've been cool if it were introduced early in the game's progression, assuming the AI was better than it is currently. Fun suggestion, doubt it's happening outside of what you make in the MA.

Also need to revamp difficulty for effective teams of 16+

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Yeah, it's definitely not auto-hit. To-hit debuffs or defense work quite nicely. I was never hit by it when our bubbler was bubbling, but since the fight was about 45-60 minutes, he got lazy sometimes. I sure noticed it when he forgot to put them back up, because suddenly that thing was landing and it was not good. Had to use RoTP nice when I got really unlucky and he managed to kill me while I was stunned.

I'm not sure about it being interruptible... my 7-man team was hitting him constantly (and he had two tanks with auras on right next to him), but I don't recall it being interrupted.

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We ended up using the anchor gun temp on him every time he started up his mega stun attack and it seemed to stop it from firing off. Considering there were 8 of us, that meant 80 charges, minus 1 use at the beginning of the fight to take away his phase. 79 charges of that gun is enough to stop him from ever firing that thing off. It seemed to work, but I'd love others to try it to corroborate data.

If it's true though, and I wasn't imagining things, then that makes this TF...really, really easy.

EDIT: BTW. the gun happens to be usable for Kheldians in all forms. Which is both useful and hilarious.

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They should use that animation for whirling hands.

But that stun Reichsman does, I think it's actually autohit. I haven't gotten to do the hero TF yet, but villainside it's autohit and AoE. Luckily it's not too long; my team survived cause we had stacked def buffs and ice slick up. It looks like defense buffs are the best way to handle that particular situation.

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I don't think it's auto-hit. At least not blue-side. Besides, it seems interruptible. It's really not all that threatening, to be quite honest. Once people get to know this TF a bit better, everybody will be able to finish it easily and quickly. Can't say the same for the red-side one though.

Again, you really don't need to worry about the mega stun/damage if you know what to do with your temp power guns....

Blue-side, this TF is cake. Red-side...people are still figuring that one out (may really be down to it being bugged though).

His mega stun hit is countered by the temp power. When the big universe pops up above his head, just go blast him with it and he'll shut up.

After that, it's just one long slog.

EBs are cake to solo. AVs and you start needing to have special Tanker builds.

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Steiner is working on Mids' Hero Designer now. The development hasn't stopped.

Additionally, I've just gotten on board with the Titan Network team, and will be working on cross-os compatibility. (translation: making Mids' work for Mac/Linux)

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Now that's awesome!

I thought someone else was taking up development. Not sure who, though.

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That is true of any MMO... However I don't understand why they are removing Dominate from Dominators. Isn't that the core of the AT?

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Uh...what? They're not doing that. They're shifting the damage portion of Domination to, for all intents and purposes, be on full time. The rest of Domination hasn't changed. They're also rebalancing sets (pretty much only the assault sets).