Lady_of_Ysgard

There are a number of reasons for this, all of them related to game balance.

1. Buff and Debuff Values: VEAT's get Brute patron pool powers. Brutes get Tanker Ancilliary/Epic pools. Tanker Ancilliary pools have AoE's and Debuffs in them. VEAT's get better values when using buffs than brutes. For example: Brutes get a 2.28% unenhanced defense from basic Maneuvers. Both VEAT's get 3.5% from the same exact power. Pyre Mastery gives Tankers and Brutes access to Melt Armor and both get -9.75% -resist and -7% defense from this power. VEAT's would get increased numbers from this, though nowhere NEAR Defender level debuffing. VEAT's also have better ranged damage modifiers than Tankers or Brutes, and thus would be able to leverage powers like Fire Ball better, and a VEAT with Energy Mastery could be just plain overpowered. (Conditioning Inherent AT power for higher base regen/recov + Inherent Fitness + Superior Conditioning for extra endurance beyond accolades + Physical Perfection for even MORE regen/recov? {Hyperbole alert!}A Crab would basically be a ranged /Regen with better defenses, better resists, better AoE, and less clicking except to keep Serum running.)

2. Epic Parity: HEAT's do not get ancilliary pools. HEAT's can't even get Patron pools if they switch.

3. Lore/Story: This may or may not be true for your specific character, but the lore of the Soldier and Widow AT's is that you are playing a renegade trooper in the army of Arachnos. You have NOTHING but what they offer for training. You are a completely normal human being with a Natural origin. (Yes, Incarnate stuff kinda messes with and somewhat invalidates this, but that's an act of ascending to a higher level of power rather than training.) So why should this completely normal human being that never exhibited anything spectacular outside of what their training allows suddenly be able to throw fire, or shoot lasers from their eyes, or conjure ice from nothing? You Have No Powers. The patrons GRANT you a measure of their own powers by taking you under their wing.

I'm sure other people can come up with further reasons for the restriction...

Fixed that for you.

One of the major changes to /poison in i21 is that Poison Trap is no longer a 'skip this unless you have no other option for a set mule' power.

On topic: Poison Gas Trap from /Traps is one of the best -regen powers in the game. Take it, slot it, love it.

Not a leak? NOT a leak? ********.

I have 9 gigs of RAM and occasionally I'll peek at what CoH is using up. The most recent high point, just before a client crash, was 3.5 million kilobytes in Steel Canyon.

I run the 11.3 drivers, and ever since Irene I've been getting random freezes and crashes with 11.3 on my HD 6870. It's beginning to actually piss me off.

Rad/Rad, Corr OR Defender are proc monstrosities. They can also be an immense damage contributor to the team for one major reason. Achilles' heel: Chance for res debuff.

The Rad/Rad pairing has 10 powers that can be slotted with that -res proc, eight from the blast set, and two from the emission set...one of which is a toggle and thus has a chance to proc every 10 seconds. This chance for -res will stack with the -res from Enervating Field. Defender modifiers make for the better -res stack when combining procs with effects baked into powers, and thus a better contribution to the team.

Of course, the -res IS only a CHANCE with a proc in Rad Blast, rather than being a constant effect of attacking like with Sonic Blast...and it can limit slotting choices for set bonuses if you build the character around making sure that proc gets as many chances as possible to fire off...but Radiation is a monster for procs when you take into consideration that any power that can slot an achilles' can also slot a ToLG: Chance for negative energy damage.

You misinterpreted the post that you read.

The post stated that long-activation powers would have their effects work properly if the initial target dies during the activation time (or initial hit from the power). Powers like Transfusion and Transference, and Ionic Judgement as well as other chain-type powers.

Toggled anchor-based powers like Radiation Infection and Enervating Field? New target, retoggle.

Saying that anything above or below a certain level of usability needs tweaks is like saying that the sun will rise tomorrow. It's obvious. I was talking more in that it seemed like you were complaining about how it's not one of the best sets yet.

You said yourself it was not a bad set. At that point, why continue comparing it to other sets rather than seeing how well it plays and supports the character in question?

Once it has been established that a powerset Does Not Suck and Is Not Overpowered, the main question becomes the fun factor. The game is STILL balanced around SO's, so the IO factor is null and void.

As for my first 50 having AE boosting? LOOK AT MY JOIN DATE! I'm only a 30-month vet, how am I NOT supposed to have played AE when it was the first major update to the game after I joined? I've never even experienced pre-i13 PvP.

Yes, I was boosted by participating in some AE missions. This was before it became widely known that AE was basically a farming and powerlevelling paradise for the first few months. I gained levels in AE because I accepted ANY team invites when I was still new to the game, and I found it more annoying than satisfying that I was basically unable to do anything in the mission except look at the floor because every time I tried anything I was splattered across the room by custom enemies. I got sick of it after the first three 'dingrezzes' and began asking if the invite was for some crappy AE farm before accepting or declining based on the reply...and occasionally chewing out someone when they turned out to have been lying in their reply and it WAS another crappy AE farm.

So yes, my first 50 was boosted by AE, but I was actually playing normal content in addition to the times I was dragged into some crappy farm disguised as a story in AE. So you can take your 'holier than thou' attitude and cram it sideways up your ***.

I was in the beta when TJ was as good as a tanker's GODMODE on a mastermind, I was one of the ones that expressed relief that it was being adjusted down so that it wasn't a toggle that one could pick before level 10 that guaranteed an instant win.

ON SO's, this set is balanced. THAT is all we need to worry about. THAT is the point of balance on which the game is based, not on how much IO tweaking one can do.

Who cares how it compares to other sets?

Is It Fun? That is the ONLY thing that matters in the end.

/Time is fun, for me. I don't care if it's top-tier, middle-tier, or the worst powerset in the game. I have fun with it.

Yes, I do min/max occasionally, but I don't feel a compulsion to do it all the time. Yes I make builds in mids, and have made some very INSANE builds using that program, but I am in no rush to complete them ASAP.

Am I a master at Masterminds? Hardly, but my first 50 was a mastermind that was levelled through a combination of missions and some occasional AE boosting.

Time Manipulation is fun and brings a lot to the table that can really help a team when used properly. There's going to be a lot of people toying with it once it goes live, and a LOT of people tweaking builds in Mids to see just how much they can potentially get out of it. I can already see many different ways to slot things as there will be some people who will want to leverage the slow aspect of some of the powers more than other aspects. This is a GOOD thing.

Regarding the bolded part:
Unless they changed something in the switch from Closed to Open beta, you can still buy Empyrean Merits for 1 inf in Oroborus and get your Incarnate stuff damn fast by importing a few moneybags characters from Live to bankroll some heavy incarnate unlocking. This is to facilitate testing of the Underground at various levels of Incarnate abilities.

Regarding the second part:
Ageless can work well with builds other than Dark Armor. I have an end-sucking Crab build that runs nine toggles unless traveling. I used to have to stock up on blues constantly unless doing a Keyes, and then watch my end use on Keyes due to having only greens simply because I went Nerve as my Alpha for the ED-bypassing extra +defense to Maneuvers and TT: Maneuvers. Her build isn't even complete yet and she's softcapped to everything but Psi in normal content, and only something like .5% from that.

Regarding the final part:
While I do not have enough experience with the other sets to run a true comparison, I can only speak from what I have seen so far in the beta. You are doing a disservice to the set by focusing only on getting the tier-9 to a permanent status. That is NEVER a balance point for any powerset. Let's look at what else happens with the set when you have 300% recharge.

Temporal Selection becomes easy to keep on all of your pets, boosting damage and survivability by itself AND making the other buffs more potent, as well as making Temporal Mending heal better on them as well as more often.

Chrono Shift can be slotted with Efficacy Adapter rather than doctored wounds, and provide better +recovery while STILL giving a +5% recharge bonus. (Speaking of which, if we are to take 5 LotG +recharge IO's into consideration, then your two Basilisk's Gaze sets with 7.5% values are wasted due to the 'only 5 of one numeric bonus' rule of IO bonus effects, so we can re-slot those powers with other sets to avoid wasting bonuses that will not matter. My personal preference would be for Lockdown with the proc.)

Also, I don't know about you, but I'd rather slot Regenerative Tissue in one power rather than only Doctored Wounds in two or three. You get the same +5% global recharge with the same number of slots, and you get a chance for extra +regen from the proc. This one would go to Temporal Mending so that the set could be slotted earlier, and ALSO helps alleviate the fact that we have replaced the slotting on Chrono Shift for better End recovery instead of being a 'heelor' power. The set already has one decent heal in it, why relegate the Tier-9 to that duty as well when one can more easily rely on an earlier power and allow the set bonuses for +heal to enhance its capabilities?

Time Crawl becomes simplicity itself to stack on a single hard target in a recharge-heavy build as well, and while it doesn't have the raw power of other debuff sets, it IS your primary debuffing tool since TC is what sets Delayed on a foe and makes all of your debuffs more potent on them. Keeping Delayed there for another application of Time Crawl makes even Time Crawl more effective.

You also seem to take no consideration for ally buffs. I don't know about you, but I don't solo all the time. Sure, it's a good idea to build for solo survivability, but the game is NOT balanced around a purely solo experience. It is also most definitely not balanced around farming or soloing at x8, so take those out of consideration entirely as well. On a team, Time Manipulation, even with Mastermind values, will find MANY uses.

Finally, you're ONLY considering Bots in your choice of Primary here, this is a mistake since the set has synergy with another MM primary: Necromancy. All of the Necro-pets have attacks that do -tohit, this will stack with the -tohit from Time's Juncture to add to total survivability. The more -tohit you have, the less +def you need.

Now, admittedly I haven't tried a Necromind at 50 just yet, but I am having a ton of fun with Entropy in First Ward levelling up normally. The only bump I hit was the first mission with Carnival of Light slapping me around since that was also the first mission I hit after the patch that reduced TJ's debuffs to NOT INSANE levels and I had to get used to the reduction in -tohit.

Yes, but we can't SLOT for damage debuff, and NOBODY is going to slot it for Slow. Therefore, we call it what will be the most logical thing to slot for, -tohit.

Slow slotting isn't going to be that useful, but -tohit? Might as well be +def. Plus, if you really want to twink out on the slotting, you'd go with six slots. Five Dampened Spirits and the Dark Watcher's Despair proc unless you REALLY want that Psi resist. It's a toggle, so that chance for -recharge will have a chance to fire off every ten seconds.

Regarding the HoT effect: It scales up well with your level, and CAN work in a pinch to keep even your minions alive when a single burst heal might not have.

Time's Juncture used to have INSANE debuffs, better than Hurricane, UNENHANCED! You could activate it on a level 6 Mastermind and watch everything around you miss, allowing you to solo x8 before hitting double-digit level numbers. It was obviously severely OP and justifiably nerfed to the point where enhancements are going to be needed. That said, it STILL throws out a decent debuff with only minimal slotting.

Temporal Selection on your tier-2 pet before you get a second one is a great way to power through a tough fight, especially since it applied the accelerated property, which makes Temporal Mending more potent.

The set has internal synergy. Time's Juncture is a PBAoE -ToHit (along with other debuffs) to go along with the +defense (along with other buffs).

That's not a unique enhancement.