MrQuizzles

Well, Geko doesn't accept PMs and I did PM statesman and gave him a link to this thread.

I would very much like to see a response acknowledging that this power is broken/useless. What they do to it and when they do it is up to them, so we'll just have to see.

I'm running out of things to say in order to keep this post's head above water. I mean, seriously, black hole is broken! There's no two ways about it, it's broken. It being useless is another beast entirely and we can deal with that later.

I wish the developers could at least show some interest in the power, which has been broken and useless ever since it was created AFAIK.

Argh! Don't worry, Black Hole, I care about you.

Yeah, that was back before issue #2 was released. It's now issue #3 and we're rather impatiently waiting for issue #4 to hit the test server.

I think the idea of turning it into a toggle is terrible anyway. The last thing dark miasma needs is another endurance-draining toggle.

I think one of the biggest problems is that, with the changes to fear, you can get the same effect with fearsome stare. I've had entire groups of enemies stop attacking us and patiently wait for us to finish with the group we were currently on. The only difference is that your team won't waste any endurance trying to hit phased enemies and FS has an accuracy debuff. So the power really is useless, there's just no point in having it any more.

It has occurred to me that I haven't complained about black hole in a while, so I think I'll bring it up once again in a post dedicated to either getting it fixed or getting it changed completely.

In its current form, Black Hole is a targetted AoE with a short range and an endurance cost of about 30 that phases enemies for a short amount of time.

Here's a list of the ways in which it's just plain broken:

It accepts phase enhancements, but they do nothing. There is no magnitude increase, no duration increase, nothing. As far as I know there is no way to increase the duration of the power and it seems to ignore magnitudes altogether (quite unlike dimension shift from gravity control).

When attempting to phase opponents that are +5 or higher, they merely turn invisible and function as normal (you can hit them and they can hit you). If this was intended, then it's a cruel joke. Wasting 1/3rd of my endurance on absolutely nothing when the power hits and functions as planned just isn't right.

Here's a list of its flaws:
The accuracy is terrible, it must have an accuracy penalty even though it is never mentioned in the power description.
The endurance cost is terrible
The enemies undergo the same animation as petrifying gaze, the hold power from the same set and the two are very easily confused.
No matter what, there is downtime in the phasing which leads to a second alpha strike onto the defender who applied black hole which can be very dangerous. Attempting to reapply black hole while the enemies are phased results in "unaffected".
The whole premise of phasing enemies has a limited use at best, at least make them untargettable or something that will prevent wasted shots and mass confusion throughout your team.

The idea of scrapping the power alltogether and getting a completely new one is quite appealing and has been mentioned many times on these boards. I don't think we've ever come up with something that we've all agreed on. Status resistance, resistance debuff and an endurance regen/heal that works like howling twilight were all popular ideas.

This power was completely ignored during the issue #2 overhaul of Dark Miasma, and it remains ignored until this date (as far as I'm aware). It may have use in PvP, but it's still broken. Please fix this power. Maybe then we can work out whether or not it's remotely useful.

[ QUOTE ]
Just wait, City of Villains will have an AT called "Ravagers" - with a whole new set of scrapper like skills - Whips, Daggers, Streetfighting etc - and the French translation will read "Scrapeur" or something.

[/ QUOTE ]

Or large, frilly hats and fancy tights with rapiers and daggers for parrying.

Don't forget that it's French, though. I wouldn't want to go into battle with any sort of French Archetype. Whatever the Spanish or German name for scrapper is, that AT would beat your ravageur without problem.

Seriously, though, I have nothing against the French.

I used my own methods of calculation to do this, but I got that...

Shadowfall uses .75 end/sec

Not too bad for a group stealth/defense/resistance buff. Although I have yet to test whether this number goes up with the amount of people affected by the power. I haven't noticed it ever before, so I doubt it.

Yes! My ray of cancer works! They said it was useless, that it would "take too much time" but I showed them! Not only that, but my clever scapegoat worke...I mean, uh...Who wants cookies?! heheh...*cough*