GuyPerfect

He fled to the Rogue Isles from the Midnighter Club. The PPD had no chance of ever apprehending him.

Make a Bane with some Huntsman powers. A Toxic Bane. <3

I get it. It's actually a joke. Makes sense now.

Whoever's behind these Incarnate Trials is actually just toying with us in TPN: with the control they have over us, they can give us whatever cheesy crap they want because we have no choice but to run after it like starving piranhas. First, there's the epic griefability that somehow got under the supervisor's radar (I've heard of sleeping on the job, but someone ended up approving something without even waking up). And then there's the angry housewives killing us with dinner rolls, hilighting the ludicrous hoops they've set up for us to jump through like some kind of condescending Subway advertisement...

And now, apparently, when Maelstrom appears for the final fight he just terminates the whole event, mapserves the entire League and all attempts to rejoin won't work because the instance has crashed. I even got this little gem of nonsense for my troubles:



This lasted for four or five minutes after... well, you know, after we were punished for running TPN. I've never seen that before--logging into an account with an active character immediately logs the character out. It's like the server is trying to reprimand me for having run TPN in the first place.

The only thing left that can make this worse for players than Enhancement Diversification is if the devs come out and laugh at us, saying "we tried to tell you not to but you did it anyway."

Eh, I'll keep my -15% cone over than -20% single target. (-:

Staff Mastery happens to be the name of a power in the set (akin to Swap Ammo), so technically Staff Mastery will in fact be released.

Alright, Codewalker and I worked out a scenario where we could test this.

The first problem is that you can't directly view what your strength attributes are to mezzes, heals, Defense and the like, so we can only gague their existence indirectly. To do so, I created a Force Field Defender (and named it "For SCIENCE") because Personal Force Field is the biggest Defense boost you can get at level 1. This character was entered into the Arena.

I also took a Poison Mastermind I had laying around and spuc up its third build with Weaken and Power Boost (from Mace Mastery). This was entered into the arena as well.

First, I did a control toggle of Personal Force Field:



The power grants 75% Defense in PvE, and in PvP it's... 19.97%. What the hucking fell, Castle? But that's beside the point. Point is, the control sample for Defense is 19.97%

Next, I pelted For SCIENCE with Weaken prior to toggling on PFF:



This is... um... a -24.7% debuff, net, after diminishing returns kicks in. Weaken in PvE is -75%, but PvP math sucks monkey balls because apparently Castle called in sick that day and the only powers designer available was a goldfish that someone pulled from the aquarium and allowed to flop around on the keyboard.

Still, the fact of the matter is, Weaken lessened the amount of Defense granted by PFF.

The logical next step was to launch a Power Boosted Weaken at For SCIENCE and see what happened:



Power Boost is a 65.56% buff to Defense strength mods, which were -75% to start with, which means this should have been a good ol' -124.17% strength to Defense, which against a power that grants 75% from the outset would be a, uh... either a 33.4% boost if I did that right, or a -18.1% Defense *debuff* on self for casting the power? I'm really not sure HOW that works.

Still, what we're left with is a value that's even less than the one without Power Boost, so we're totally certain at this point that Weaken is in fact buffed by Power Boost, at least when it comes to Defense strength mods. It should also work for other strength mods such as healing, ToHit and mez, but NOT the damage strength mod, since Power Boost doesn't affect that.

I've got Codewalker in Skype and it's looking like Weaken's strength debuffs to mez and Defense should be affected by Power Boost. When he gets home, we're gonna try it out.

EDIT:
Forgot I can test on a free account. Please hold.

Speaking of VEAT contacts, they get a free costume slot at level 10, so you're not stuck with that Arachnos uniform forever.

There seems to be a lot of Crab this and Crab that going around, and there has been since Issue 12. But we still have the lovable Banes! C'mon, everyone loves Banes, right!?

I mean, sure, Banes don't get Fortification or Serum... or Spiderlings... or Omega Maneuver... And four of the powers in Mace Mastery are nearly duplicates of powers Banes do get and are also available to Crabs... But that doesn't make Crabs better or anything!

But Banes DO get Build Up! That's good, right? And Placate, and Hide. But they're not as strong as Stalkers, so it's not like they're clones of that class or anything!

And, um... Poisonous Ray and... Huh. I guess I answered my own question.

Here, watch my Bane:

Hey Matt, you seeing this? It's about you.

Last night with 95% hit chances, I had a streak of miss-hit-miss-hit-miss-hit-miss. The likelihood of that happening is 0.000625%

Damage procs--both from Enhancements as well as Interface--will trigger every 10 seconds beginning with the activation of a persistent power like a damage aura. The instant you toggle on, the first proc is rolled, then every 10 seconds after that.

Eh, just put them to sleep with Flash Freeze. That'll do it.

With them standing on the Ice Slick.

Which will wake them up without knocking them over.

For a long time I've wanted to do an "Old Lord Recluse's Strike Force," where everyone unequips their Incarnate stuff and slots up an alternate build with SOs.

Scrappers already do Blaster damage. More, in fact, since they do just as much in melee AND ranged as a Blaster does ranged.