Sailboat

Totally with you on that.

Well, the game may have wandered away from "3 enemies to a spawn," but if you solo at x1, you'll see exactly that quite often. And if you're facing exactly 3 non-boss enemies, 2 ST holds leaves you facing one guy with your damage-dealing set. That's not too bad...probably works better than trying to stack up Dark's to-hit debuff.

But it doesn't scale up well as group size increases, that's for sure.

Not too familiar with the finer points of B&B, could you point out what you're referring to?

The smartest part of Overwhelming Force was making the proc unique. The point wasn't to eliminate knockback from the game.

Particularly in light of the fact that the reason for the necro was to tease someone for wasting effort.

Debunked? Actually it sounds like you agree with me that it's important to consider those factors, have considered them, and rendered your findings. That's what I was saying should be done.

In the meantime, you can take a -- wait for it! -- Bio break.

I don't want to sound like I'm carping, but since Sorcery isn't out yet, I haven't memorized all the acronyms yet. AB=?

Also worthy of note, Energy Torrent has 60% chance to knock, Explosive B. has 50%. So ET tends to move a few more of them in one direction.

Once again, "lots of mitigation" is performing well in some sense. If you mean "lots of mitigation" and "better damage than other sets which have less mitigation" then you're asking a bit much.

If you're asking for "lots of mitigation" and "pretty good damage," you might already be there. I don't know what the Devs think about Ice, but I do know that the Devs consider mitigation desirable (as do many players).

Burn certainly does check to see if it hits.

But are non-snipe having sets currently considered "balanced" against snipe having sets? What if the snipe buff is seen partly as a way to redress longstanding balance concerns?

Speaking strictly for myself, if (before I knew anything about the sets) someone told me "Ice has a less-resisted damage type and has a lot of defensive mitigation (slows and holds)," I'd honestly expect it to be on the lower end of the damage-dealing range, as a tradeoff for those goodies.

I don't mean any disrespect, but this is easily tested. In fact, I just did so.

Explosive Blast might appear to radiate out from the targeted foe, but clearly knocks back everything that it does knock back (it has a 50% chance) away from the user of the power, not from the central guy it's targeted on.

Now, if you're beside or inside the spawn, it will radiate them because they are blown away from you, and you happen to be near the targeted guy/center of the blast. And when fired against already-moving targets, it's hard to accurately track them all. And of course that 50% chance leaves some standing (and moving toward you) and some not, which also might mask what's going on.

But I tested against small and large groups, by targeting the backmost guy. If your understanding is accurate, the ones in front of him should be blown toward me every time they do get knocked, right? radiating away from the blast center?

But they are not. They are uniformly blown away from my position in a straight line. In fact, the times I fail to knock the guy I target, I see all the other ones who did get knocked back sail past him, away from me.

The ones I fail to knock, or miss entirely, however, run toward me, or run away, so the spawn does tend to open up -- but that would be the same with Energy Torrent, it's not a feature of Explosive Blast.

I'll be the first to admit it seems logical that EB should knock back radially. I, too, used to wonder about it. But it doesn't. But in the hectic world of combat, especially on a squishy, it's easy to jump to what sound like logical conclusions, or to incorrectly remember small details. Thus the value of testing.

Will the snipe change move them significantly above Ice? My understanding is Psi Blast and Dark Blast are considered poorer performers now, and a relative boost might be just what the Devs are looking to do.

No, I mean, since "money" (influence I presume) doesn't level you up, what are you talking about? This question is perfectly suited for any thread in which you make such a statement.

How does money get you to 50?

Well that's downright civilized. Good luck with your quest to get your name changed!

BS/Shield has a good synergy in that Parry can really make your defenses solid while AAO boots your offense.

A particularly nice aspect of Broadsword is that, in addition to decent AoE from Slice and Whirling Sword (backed up in this case by Shield Charge), it has three very strong single-target attacks, because Hack is unusally hard-hitting for a low-tier attack. This makes a very nice Hack/Disembowel/Headsplitter chain. It does have a stately pace, but it just destroys a single target.

No problem with skipping movement power and One With The Shield, but you ought to hang on to Grant Cover, as it helps your Defense Debuff resistance.

I do have a Dark/Sonic Defender....

Hrm. Do resistance debuffs therefore make -damage more effective (by lowering any resistance that might be diluting the -dmg debuff)? Does Tar Patch help Darkest Night?