Rigel_Kent

A fire/mental blaster doing well on beta would tend to confirm the problem with blasters, in my mind.

Fortunately, I hear a lot of other blaster power sets do great on beta, too.

NCSoft: We've exhausted all options including the selling of the studio and the rights to the City of Heroes intellectual property.
Kyle: If nobody wants to buy it, then why don't you put it out on the Internet for free?
(pause)
Kyle: Well?
NCSoft: What was the question again?
Kyle: If you really think no company in the world wants to buy your game, then why don't you put it on the Internet for free?
NCSoft: Get out of here, Kyle, I'm trying to go to the bathroom!

At level 50, 3 even level SOs in Afterburner brings the fly speed cap to 86.5 mph. The fly speed cap cannot go above 87.95 even if you manage to enhance Afterburner beyond that point (such as with certain Alpha incarnate abilities or Power Boost type of effects).

That's all I can say without knowing exactly what kind of enhancements you're using in Afterburner and Swift, and whether you have an Alpha power. The Paragonwiki article on travel powers might help.

I never PvP, but weirdly, my best defender memory was PvP.

On a mid-level flying Storm/Dark (not a PvP build, natch), messing around solo in Siren's Call to buy old school discipline insps for nostalgia's sake, pre-I13, during a winter event. Notice my bounty's a stalker, and I have no perception. Ugh. Roll my eyes and start hoping the stalker leaves zone so I can get a less annoying bounty.

Then I notice my bounty marker is shadowing me. Not attacking, just following at a close distance. I thought it must have been that "stalkers aren't good for anything in PvP except AS" type.

So an idea hits me. I fly up to a rooftop with a present, and click on it. Then, halfway through actually opening it, I interrupt myself by dropping Freezing Rain on top of myself.

Surprise, surprise. Not one, but two stalkers get decloaked out of their AS windups. So they were actually the "stalkers aren't good for anything in PvP except ganking" type. One SS+SJ'd for the hills, but I collected my bounty. Both left the zone before I could gloat in broadcast. Probably for the best.

Nice break from the usual Siren's Call stalker dominated TP-into-a-box gankfest. And I still have some of those discipline insps.

Much as I'm a fan of blaster buffs, I don't like making special exceptions for the sake of one archetype. That's archetype balance whack-a-mole.

Instead, I would've looked at general balance rules that, although archetype neutral in theory, disadvantage blasters, and likely other archetypes as well, in practice.

For example, archetype damage caps, which reflect an eyeroll quoted "vision" for the archetypes rather than their actual self-buffing capabilities. Blasters have easy access to both Build Up and Aim in addition to Defiance; their damage cap should have been significantly higher than scrappers' and corruptors'.

Plus, since we're not whacking moles, tying damage caps to the presence or absence of Build Up/Aim/inherents helps other archetypes, namely defenders (Aim+Vigilance) and tankers (Build Up), who should both come in at around scrapper level. Blasters get a minor buff, and there's finally a reason to play defender archetype for Kinetics. Bi-winning.

I don't know who's been updating City of Data, but Wind Control is posted. Controller version, dominator version.

Well, since the forum apparently doesn't have much else to talk about...

I can tolerate tossing the occasional heal when needed, but the typical MMO healer bores me quickly. 8 years of COH has finally got me hooked on support toons, thanks to the universe not revolving around a race between red and green numbers.

So in case NCSoft stuffs COH into the Disney Vault instead of keeping the game going, any ideas on other MMOs where heals are considered completely optional for support toons? Hopefully one that'll run on a computer that got put together in 2005 or so. Feca class in Dofus is an option, though I'd prefer a faster paced game.

I still might flirt with various old F2P and no-commitment MMOs that can run on my crummy computer. High time I reinstall Anarchy Online. I've been neglecting my DDO, Dofus and Ragnarok Online accounts, too.

But for now, I seem to have landed in Minecraft. Didn't see that coming.

Look what you did. Storm/Sonic is sad now.

I've always considered myself a controller type.

But my first character and namesake's a blaster (Elec/Elec). My first level 50 was a different blaster (Sonic/Fire). My second level 50 was a claws scrapper (so may as well be a blaster).

Maybe I don't know my playstyle as well as I think I do.

The toughest part is finding MMOs where mezzes actually do something. From there, just pick a mez/pet/dps hybrid type. For your consideration:

Anarchy Online's Bureaucrat profession
Dofus's Sadida class
Dofus's Xelor class
Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE's Magic Bullet/Curse of the Wretched build
Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE's Demolition Dash/Retaliation/Curse of the Wretched build

And to think support characters in many other MMOs are exercises in drudgery you only force on yourself because your friends bribed you with PBJs to play them.

True, unannounced features are much more subject to cancellation. I don't think the Primalist archetype was going anywhere. And the devs balked on Kinetic Assault shortly after I24 beta began, that plug might've been pulled.

But recently there have been sets creeping into the code that are basically done, save for actually flipping the switch. Perhaps to space the releases apart for market timing. It's these finished sets that were found to be reliable info, thus more interesting to me.

But anyway, cancellation of any specific feature is a point that's been recently mooted.

The defender archetype (and corruptors and controllers too) spoiled me for all other MMOs.

I expect it will be a long time before I find another world I can choose not to specialize in healing, tanking, DPS, or pets that do the same, and still be doing just fine in my own way.

How would PIGG diving make the information unreliable or suspect? What mechanism do you propose for the game behaving differently from what's in the game's own files?

You don't have to like Wikia. I don't either, particularly. But at least be fair in your criticisms. The supposedly PIGG dived information has proven, repeatedly, to be accurate when verified.

Very cool idea, and I do think a Wind Blast set will make its way into the game at some point in the future. Just make sure to build around existing and likely future Wind ******* powers, so as not to cause namespace collisions or too much duplicated functionality. The names of the following two powers, in particular, are problematic.

NA brings nothing but green number spam and mediocre buffs on long cooldowns to a team. Make it a concept toon if you plan on keeping it. Your concept will dictate the archetype.

If you're looking for something that plays like nature without being bad, roll thermal instead. If you're looking for something that solos well, brute.

If you're banking on nature being buffed eventually, I'd lean toward nature/rad defender if you can't do IOs, rad/nature corruptor if you can. Defender's in a better position to shut down enemies with -tohit, +defense, and +resist powers without IOs. Corruptor makes up the difference with IOs plus gets crits and no teaming penalty.

SR will always have a niche among F2P and other non-IO builds. i.e. Good luck softcapping fiery aura without IOs.

And issue 24 set bonus changes make SR a little more palatable for IO builds.

I'd consider 3x Defender's Bastion + 3x Superior Defender's Bastion for 17.5% range and 4.5% maxhp mandatory. Moar tentacles. Vigilant Assault won't help you, so don't worry about that.

Maxhp set bonuses in general are nice low hanging fruit. Fits perfectly in frankenslotting setups; you don't really need that much damage slotting in your blasts, right? Two maxhp set bonuses that definitely catch my eye are:
2xDark Watcher's Despair (tohit debuff) = 1.5%
2xTouch of the Nictus (accurate heal) = 1.875%

And of course there's a ton of 3x set bonuses for maxhp, Numina's, Stupefy, Apocalypse, Devastation, Shield Wall, Gaussian's, Performance Shifter, Soulbound Allegiance, Freebird/Celerity/Unbounded/T&S, Steadfast Protection, Ghost Widow's Embrace, etc. Check Paragon Wiki for the big list: Sets that improve Health

Mixing in some s/l defense could help as well. 4xKinetic Combat gets you 3.75% s/l and 1.5% maxhp to boot. If you don't care about debuff slotting in TT, 6xEnfeebled Operation pretty much has your name written on it. 5xSiphon Insight is almost as crazy. 3xDiscouraging Words if you want more flexibility.

Force Bubble's similar to Hurricane, big repel, slight chance of knockdown.

I'm not sure there's really all that many powers that both do damage (thus accept Overwhelming Force) and do knockback that's random or can't be aimed. And they seem to cluster with each other in the same set most of the time: Assault Rifle has two, Electricity Manipulation and Assault each have two, Energy Assault has three, Energy Blast has six, etc.

So I'm hoping the Overwhelming Force proc is an experiment of sorts, a proof of concept and balance check, for some other way to negative-enhance knockback in multiple powers.

Frozen Aura is redundant and incompatible with Ice Patch. Switching Shiver for Ice Sword Circle would add yet another power for Frozen Aura to be redundant and incompatible with.

Direct port of the tanker Frozen Aura would increase endurance cost from 13 to 18.512, reduce the base sleep duration from 23.84 to 11.92 seconds, and add 88.84 cold damage (1.42 ranged damage scale) if they leave the blaster version flagged ranged. 78.97 (1.42 melee damage scale) if they switch it to melee.

You'll still be able to perma mez minions if for some reason you're not using Ice Patch or, you know, just blasting them to bits. And you'll be doing damage that compares very well to Ice Sword Circle (ISC pros: larger radius, minor slow debuff, ISC cons: 66.18 = 1.19 melee damage scale, slightly longer recharge, longer cast time, half lethal damage type).

Let me put it this way: If you think swapping Shiver for ISC would be an improvement, wouldn't then swapping ISC for a port of tanker Frozen Aura be even more of an improvement?

Dominator, the other melee AT.

Are VEATs an option?

My psychic adviser left a message on my machine. He says patience is a virtue for she who seeks a melee power set with lots of mezzes and perhaps a power pool themed to match. I wonder what that means.

Will Domination's cast time is a little better than the blaster tier 1/2 standard, but that comes with a grossly excessive recharge time that begs for PPMs (damage scalar 1.24
I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about Telekinetic Blast. That's the DPA outlier of the blaster version of Psi Blast.