Mezzosoprano

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Whether or not the former type of pet (psuedo-pet) should inherit Recharge is another argument, but true pets definately shouldn't inherit buffs from their caster, as long as they can be buffed separately.

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That's exactly the problem with this change. Even true pets will no longer have their attack rate boosted by anything, including being directly speed boosted by another character.

Again, the ability for tangible pets to be buffed externally has been in the game forever. Lightning Storm's inheritance of +recharge buffs was manually and deliberately added two years ago in I7. Lastly, LS doesn't accept the RIP sets.

While I can certainly believe that LS is firing far faster than the devs imagined it would, and I can certainly agree this could be unbalanced, it is not an unintended consequence and I cannot believe it was unnoticed.

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1. Recharge from the caster was never intended to be passed to the pets.

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Wrong. Hasten, Speed Boost, Siphon Speed, and AM have passed the caster's recharge to summoned pets since approximately I7. Further, tangible pets (Singy, Imps) have been directly buffable by these same powers forever.

This change enforces an absolute rate of fire on all pets. It -is- a major change. It is not simply correcting something that was "not working as intended".

I can understand Castle's view that +recharge from set IOs boosting the attack rate of singularity or LS was not expected or is not desired.

What bothers me more about this change is that external buffs on the caster or on the buffable pets will also not affect recharge. This isn't something that just affects the much-maligned fire/kin controllers -- anyone who uses any of the affected pets and teams with a kinetics or radiation character, or uses hasten, or who frankenslotted IOs will see lower performance.

My son (6) has watched me play various characters over the years.

His favorite powerset to watch is mind control. I explained Mesmerize as making the enemy fall alseep, and Dominate as giving the bad guy a nasty headache. Now, whenever he sees me use the powers, he yells "Go to sleep!", "Get a headache!", "Attack your friends!"

Actually, no. But I did after years of having 'Sequoia' on the friends list of all my heroes on Virtue, finally see the character in-game.

I sent a politely-worded tell along the lines of "Aha! The name 'Sequoia' is alive. I tried for that name so often. I'm glad to see its actually used. :P" We had a brief chat, and he confirmed he was very attached to the name. I left it at that.

Amusingly, a day or so later, I received almost the same tell when I logged in as my tanker, Redwood -- "Hey, how long have you had that name? I've wanted it forever."

I'd love to take Nymph off of your hands! (I have a host of alts that are wood nymphs, in a supergroup named N.Y.M.P.H.) Alas, I have none of the names you're looking for.

I do have a plethora of tree, flower, herb, shrub names -- Linden, Nettle, Myrtle, Chrystanthamum, Sycamore, Spruce, Chestnut, Mulberry, Althea. (the nine members of Nine Young Magically Powerful Heroines).

I also believe all set bonuses should work at all levels where the power is available. In addition, I think the special (non-level-scaled effect) IOs, should be level-independent.

Why even have the +Stealth IO exist at every level above 15? If I had been designing this part of the game, I'd have made all the stealth IOs exactly level 15. (Perhaps the recipe would need to be level-dependent, to work with the current drop system. But the crafted IOs should all be the same level...)

When theorizing about making major changes to kinetics, I usually focus on two things -- siphon speed and inertial reduction.

If I were elected dictator, I'd move IR with no changes substantially earlier in the power list, probably to where siphon speed is now. I like IR, and moving it early would make it even more useful.

If Siphon Speed got pushed back to IR's slot, it would need some oomph added -- AOE debuff, AOE buff, or both. AOE speed debuff would probably be over the top, especially if it gave self-stacking buffs like FS. But it would be awesome to supercharge your team with a combo of FS and SS!

My sonic/energy blaster is only 10 at the moment, but I've played with the power selections in hero builder quite a bit so far.

One question about your tactics was that you suggested TF->Shout. Wouldn't Shout->TF result in more net damage, since the resistance debuff of Shout would increase the damage of TF? Or are you using TF first for its disorient effect?

If you're using TF first as a disorient, then Screech would be an even better opening move, as it is also a mag 3 disorient, and also debuffs res. So a tough LT might got Screech->Shout->TF. (I have never leveled *any* blaster past 14, by the way, so this is pure conjecture on my part.)

Second question: Wouldn't Stun and Screech together allow you to disorient a boss? (As a Kin/Rad defender quickly popping a boss twice with Cosmic Burst was handy for taking a boss out of a fight.)

I'm enjoying the combo of sonic/energy quite a bit. Thanks for all your insight into the powers!

In the Apple II version of Wizardy, characters of the Bishop class could attempt to identify objects in their inventory. Each character could only hold 8 objects, so "I1", "I2", "I3", etc were the keypresses to ID them. Amazingly, "I9" (identifying a non-existant object) worked one time in many, and granted the character 100k or 100M xp.