Obitus

This isn't a moral argument. From NCSoft's perspective, people who are using the company's servers and not paying for it are worth less than people who pay. That's just the way the world works.

The trick with F2P is to hit that fine balance whereby non-paying customers get enough mileage out of the game that they want more, and paying customers get enough more that they don't feel like they're being put upon. I don't believe that's an easy balance to strike, though some games appear to have succeeded.*

Certainly, it's a gamble to switch to a F2P model mid-stream, and in fairness, the F2P model's reputation may have suffered unduly because it tends to attract desperate enterprises that would have failed either way.

[* - Obligatory forum-compliant disclaimer: that is, some games would possibly have appeared to succeed with F2P, if we lived in a world where other games could exist, which of course we don't.]

The paragraph you quoted was talking about AA's inherent Confuse effect. The power ticks every two seconds. The purple proc will obey the 10s rule, but for all of the above reasons it will do more than I think most people might immediately realize.

Doesn't seem to.

Arctic Air ticks every 2 seconds (see "Activate Period" for toggle tick intervals). It has a 30% chance to proc the Confuse, but if the Confuse is enhanced fully, then that's basically enough to keep +0 foes perma-confused on average. "On average" is not a guarantee, obviously, and the confuse very quickly scales down against higher level foes.

The hefty slow/recharge debuffs and the avoid effect packaged with Arctic Air mask the shortcomings of the Confuse effect. Arctic Air is very potent, but it needs time to work.

The Coercive Persuasion proc is a huge help, because not only does it have a marginally higher chance to fire, per target, than AA's inherent Confusion; the proc also has a longer duration (IIRC 8 seconds) and the proc is itself an AoE effect, which means that you're getting much more out of the Confuse proc against tightly clumped mobs than a 33% success rate. The Confuse proc by itself can confuse bosses if they're clumped together.

I really can't praise the Confuse proc highly enough. It may be the best single proc in the game. It single-handedly makes even World of Confusion (by almost all accounts, a very crappy power on its own merits) into a very effective anti-melee defense.

By the way, nice vids, Tex.

Are you sure about that? Ageless Destiny should affect Domination, just as Hasten does. Both are buffs. If Ageless isn't affecting Domination, then that sounds like a bug.

Spiritual Alpha doesn't affect Domination because Alpha is equivalent to an enhancement; Domination doesn't accept enhancements.

Granted, I wouldn't build a perma-Dom character that requires Ageless' +recharge, because it's annoying enough to juggle Hasten with Domination; I wouldn't want to feel obligated to refresh a third buff as often as possible.

No. Or again, if they are, they shouldn't be.

LOL, more than one MMO on Earth. Next you'll be talking about some sort of farcical trans-continental flying machine.

You're the man. Er, um, the Scorpion, I mean. Anyway, thanks

This is probably an unrealistic request, but is there any Mind Control's Mesmerize could be disqualified from the Reactive DoT proc? It immediately wakes up targets that Mesmerize puts to sleep.

Thanks!

Yes, actually, it did break the game for me. Reactive Rains turned pretty much all other offensive build considerations into a joke. I like to tune builds. Overnight, my lowest-offense character was suddenly the highest-offense character, and the characters who didn't have access to Rains were irrelevant. Your argument might have a little more weight behind it if Reactive Interface were equally strong on characters who don't have rains, but it wasn't even close. The power divide was entirely arbitrary.

Engaging games require meaningful choices. One overwhelmingly superior choice is no choice at all.

Yeah, cause it takes so much skill to click a rain power. I was making "good use" of Rains too; it was boring. In any case, thanks for the clarification. Apparently, you do think the devs are morons.

Costume pictures, please

Reactive Rains delivered more damage than Judgement does. Rains can have a cycle time three to four times faster than Judgement's unmodifiable 90-second cooldown. Judgement and Reactive were introduced at the same time.

That's obviously broken no matter how you slice it. You're free to believe that your Rain-toting character doesn't break the game, but you can't reasonably argue that the same devs who gave us Judgement would allow Reactive to outperform it so drastically. Unless you think they're total morons, I guess.

As always, it's a joy to debate things with you. I appreciate your level-headedness. This really isn't a very important issue to me; if I've given a different impression, then that's my fault. I like Invulnerability as a set (particularly IO-enhanced Invulnerability) and I tend to agree with your theory that dev attention is unneeded and possibly even unwanted. Sometimes the devs take a look at something and come to unexpected conclusions.

That said, I don't feel like Invulnerability is so powerful (in comparison with its peers, at least among Tanker sets) that dev attention should result in a nerf. Likewise, I don't believe a set's overall effectiveness should necessarily preclude the tuning of poorly designed, constituent powers. The entire concept of tier 9 powers with catastrophic crashes seems to be out-dated, in fact, whether you're talking defensive powers or nukes. The devs have tacitly admitted as much just through recent design decisions, among them the various non-crashing alternatives that have been introduced with post-launch power sets (Dual Pistols, Archery, Willpower, Shield Defense, Arachnos Widows), and the Incarnate analogues (Judgement, and to a lesser extent Barrier).

The fact that mezzes no longer shut off toggles is yet another sign of the devs' recognition that having to retoggle is a chore.

Eh, it's dangerous to get too caught up in power-by-power comparisons. Heck, for a long time, the argument flying around this forum was that High Pain Tolerance (Willpower's 1st level passive) replaces all three of Invulnerability's passives. Granted, Invuln's passives have since been buffed, packaged with debuff resistances of various flavors, but for what it's worth, I still believe Willpower is a more power-efficient set.

(Not necessarily a more effective set; with respect to pure survivability, they're probably around even overall, with Invuln taking the edge on spike survivability against common damage types, and Willpower taking the edge on consistency. Qualitatively, Invuln wins on Taunt aura where Willpower wins on endurance management.)

WP is complete with 7 powers, in other words; 8 if you include SoW. Invuln is complete with 8 powers, 9 if you include Unstoppable. If you wanna get really picky, you can even say that Quick Recovery isn't part of Willpower's survivability, and thus that it shouldn't be counted in a comparison with Invuln's defensive powers. Quick Recovery, by the way, helps WP mitigate what passes for an SoW crash, which is a further complication in any attempted apples-to-apples comparison.

Oh, and this is no more my thread than anyone else's. I'm not even the OP

There's always going to be some amount of powerset favoritism involved with any proc effect. Just on the basis of activation time, that's bound to be true (unless, I suppose, proc damage were normalized by activation, but that's a whole nother kettle of worms). As a general rule and for what little it's worth, I like that you can, if you like, build a character with a view towards maximizing procs.

The rain-as-super-nuke version of Reactive Interface went way way too far there, though. To a lesser extent, having procs fire on every tick of damage auras was unfair too, for the reasons Johnny cites. There are certain non-damage powers that probably should (at least in theory) be able to proc Interface effects, including Reactive's DoT.

And there are probably a handful of powers that probably shouldn't proc Reactive's DoT. I was amused to find, for example, that my Dominator's Mesmerize procs Reactive, which wakes up anything I've just slept. Silly me, I didn't think to check on that before running an LRSF the other day.

All of that said, limiting certain AoE powers to one proc target isn't any more fair than limiting non-damage auras from firing procs. It's arguably less fair in the case of rains -- which were ridiculously overpowered, and did need to be fixed -- because rains are:

• Generally activation-time intensive;
• Often available in power sets that otherwise lack for AoE attacks (Ice Blast, Cold Domination, Storm Summoning; Fire Blast is the outlier).

I know the devs have worked hard on this issue, and I know that it's probably unreasonable to expect the devs to tune Interface's behavior on a power-per-power basis. Hell, I'm not even sure they can do that with their current tech. But it'd be nice.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that Strength of Will and One with the Shield are tuned at least to some extent with their powersets in mind. For instance, One with the Shield gets markedly higher RES across-the-board than SoW, and it gets a large max HP buff, and for all of those extra perks, its crash is only 10 extra Endurance. (Going by Deus' numbers, posted earlier, cuz I'm too lazy to check myself. )

That said, we can reasonably infer that a theoretical Invuln-flavored version of those milder T9s would have higher non-SL RES, potentially much higher if we're allowed to take from the generally less useful category of S/L. If you could add, say, an extra 30% Energy/Negative/Fire/Cold RES with a relatively minor crash, that would be a pretty big deal.

Not as good as +70% RES, you say? That's a given, on paper. In practice, some of Unstoppable's RES is likely to be wasted, even if we ignore the fact that most high-end Invuln Tankers are capped to Smash/Lethal before they even click the button. A 30% RES buff from Unstoppable would put most Invuln Tankers into the ~60% RES range to all, on top of 90% to the most common, and often most devastating, attack types. All of a sudden, that stack of Inspirations you've been sitting on to mitigate the old Unstoppable's crash becomes useful on a proactive basis, potentially capping your non-PSI RES over a two minute period.

All of a sudden, Barrier (if you chose to take it, as many claim to have done specifically to replace Unstoppable or mitigate its crash) by itself is capping your non-PSI RES for the first thirty seconds of its duration, and leaving you one medium orange away from a hair's-breadth of the cap for the remainder of its duration (~87.5% for the second thirty seconds, ~85% for the last sixy). That's without even taking Barrier's extra +DEF into account.

I think something could stand to be done with Unstoppable that would make it more appealing to the general Tanker population. I don't claim to have all the answers, and I know that there's always someone, somewhere, who's attached to this-or-that power, no matter how flawed it is. I also know that Invulnerability as a set is in no dire need of adjustment.

Like I said before, I'd settle for a 1% reduction in the endurance crash, just so Invuln players who pay attention can avoid losing all of their toggles at the same time they lose 90% of their health. That doesn't seem like an unreasonable request for all crashing T9s, including nukes, at this period in the game's lifespan.

I think a lot of people would be happier with that than what Unstoppable currently does. Hell, if the Unstoppable crash were reduced to 99% (rather than 100%), just enough to give players some assurance that they could keep their toggles up, the power would have vastly more appeal.

For a good while, external damage buffs did not modify pseudo-pet powers. By "external," I mean anything other than enhancements -- Build Up, Aim, Assault, Fulcrum Shift, etc. The day when Ice Blasters finally got their Build-Up-buffable Blizzard was a big deal. That was some time ago now, though.

As far as I know, damage enhancements always modified pet powers. So long story short: there's no obvious reason that Musculature wouldn't properly buff pets of all kinds. It's just another damage enhancement.

Eh, the Panacea sets aren't all that important in the grand scheme. You can replace them with Doctored Wounds for more or less the same effect. HP is capped regardless, so basically all you're losing out on is 2.5% recharge and 10% regen (Edit:about 1 HP/sec) per set. I wouldn't sweat the Panaceas if you're looking to play one of the builds in this thread.

Likewise, the +3% RES proc is expensive, but it's pure icing.

Ah, ok. I don't imagine the loss of the Incarnate cap to melee DEF outside of Meld/MoG will help either. As far as clicks go, I'm probably just letting my bias shine through; I figure I'm not gonna want to activate those powers as often as they're strictly available anyway, so my instinct is to build for as much survivability as possible outside of those buffs.

It's also possible that my time playing ranged-soft-capped squishies has colored my view of AoE DEF. Meleers get exposed to probably twice as many AoE attacks on average, and in AV fights, even splash damage can kill a Scrapper -- probably not so much this Scrapper, but that's a judgment call.

In any case, from a practical standpoint, keeping your DEF values closer to even will make Inspiration use (and even teammate buffs, to the extent that you evaluate those on the fly) much more straightforward.

Anyway, fun thread

Ah, well that's pretty screwy.

This had nothing to do with the balance between Reactive and other Interface options, and everything to do with the existing balance among character builds. Now there isn't an arbitrary line in the sand declaring fast-DoT-pseudo-pet characters above all others.

Much as I don't like the one-proc-per-ten-second rule, we now at least have a fairly consistent standard with respect to procs -- a standard the existence of which allows for plausible argument in favor of other Interface options. Did anyone honestly think that the Devs would buy, "Buff all Interface powers up to the level of Reactive's every-spawn nukage?"

Like it or not, the change had to happen. Like it or not, the change would have happened, with or without the so-called whiners' calling attention to the problem. I'm sorry you're no longer enjoying your rain-using characters, but if you were uninterested in them prior to I-20, and the ludicrous power of Reactive rains was all that was holding your interest in them afterwards, then clearly those characters just aren't your cup of tea. Better to learn that now than later.

Yeah, as a rule I'm not a big fan of building a DEF build around Barrier, because if you're going to go to the effort to increase your defenses high enough that Barrier's low-end bonus will cap you, then you might as well (usually) go the extra mile with IO bonuses and benefit from some other Destiny buff.

But Willpower is an anomaly. It already has everything else covered. Even at its lowest value, Barrier really is a boon to WP characters, who can now afford to spend fewer build resources on DEF. As a bonus, if you take Barrier and stack it with ~40% DEF, then you'll be at the Incarnate soft cap 1/4 of the time irrespective of teammate support or Inspiration use.

As far as the original question goes, there's no right answer anymore. Prior to Issue 20, I would have said it's a no-brainer -- go for Smash/Lethal first. Not only are Smash/Lethal attacks more common in generic content, not only do they comprise the vast bulk of the melee (and thus, typically the hardest-hitting) attacks in the game; the bulk of DEF debuffs also tend to be packaged with Smash/Lethal attacks.

But the trials throw all of that out of the window, depending on how focused you are on them.

Could you elaborate? I'm not up on comics (haven't read them since I was about 12 years old), but you piqued my interest so I did some minor poking around on the internet. All I could find were various allusions to a fight in the Batcave where Batman needed Black Lightning's help to defeat a disoriented and amnesiac Val Armorr. Justice League #8 is it?

I'm not saying you're wrong, either about the specific fight in question or your over-arching point; I just find some of this stuff interesting, in a from-the-sidelines kinda way.

For what it's worth, I agree with you in this particular case. There's enough room to argue that the Aesir should have more than one skin tone. Maybe Branagh intentionally shook things up to highlight the differences between his/Marvel's imagining of the Aesir and the traditional Norse myths. Or maybe he just genuinely felt that the physical considerations were outweighed by the actor's general suitability for the role.

Still -- and to be clear, this next bit is not directed at Warp Factor -- casting decisions should at least consider physical appearance, which naturally includes the actor's complexion. It's not racist, in principle, to say that you found a given casting decision jarring based on how the actor looks. As Coach pointed out, noone would cast Malcom X as a white guy. If you did cast Malcom X as a white guy, you'd be doing that white guy no favors; the audience would be predisposed to judge his performance harshly no matter how well he acted.

There is a difference between arguing that someone shouldn't be allowed to work as an actor based on his race or his skin tone, and arguing that someone shouldn't be cast in a particular role on that same basis. Like any smart employer, movie studios are obliged to put their actors in the best position to succeed, if only for the sake of the product. If a director has a reason to reimagine an established character in a non-traditional way, then fine, but s/he has to realize there's a risk involved.

Hey, some people are just constantly on the look out for any opportunity to assert their moral superiority, no matter how silly the reasoning. Good on you for having the guts to express a legitimate opinion that you knew would be lampooned by the thought police.