Samuel_Tow

Here's where we disagree - I DON'T want it. Sure, I wouldn't refuse these things if they were to, say, drop from heaven. But if I have to go out of my way to get them? Nah. Not worth the bother. I'm perfectly happy with enhancements as they are today.

But again, this has to do with Set rarity and messiness. Multi-aspect Commons and/or multi-aspect SOs AVAILABLE FROM THE VENDORS would solve that particular problem, but the chances of this happening are about as high as me being voted King and Queen of Cheese.

That's a pretty cavalier way to look at the process of learning things, though. I've spent a total of, what, a couple of hours on this whole thread? Sure, I could have used the time to read up on Inventions. I could also have used the time to read up on analytical mechanics, and that's not a random "complicated" science I'm pulling out of the air. I actually studied that in university. It's not a question of time, it's a question of effort. I could spend all day learning about Inventions if it were interesting from a scientific point of view. I've spent weeks pouring over equations and numbers just to wrap my head around accuracy and to-hit.

But Inventions just aren't interesting to me. I don't CARE about performance about what I expressly need to solo my own missions on a civilised difficulty settings. I hate working with systems that lack repeatability or uniformity, and Inventions is exactly this. Trying to figure it out IS NOT FUN for me, so I'm not going to bother. Writing these posts is fun. I enjoy writing, and I enjoy arguments. To me, this is not time wasted, it's time well spent. This is fun! Learning about Inventions is like learning about RNA replication - it's boring and I don't care, even if my job requires me to know this stuff. I'll stick to running numbers and doing computer maintenance, and I'll do my best to pick the mathematics and informatics classes, and let the biologists handle everything else.

If I had something I could look forward to, like a uniform, orderly collection of same enhancements of same levels that I could buy up in one sitting, then YOU BET I would dive right into learning about it. But I don't. I've seen people's builds, and they're always a mish-mash of mis-matched sets of various levels scattered around powers with similar function but vastly different slotting. And every time someone mentions Merits or Tickers, I just have to roll my eyes. No, thank you.

Wake me up when they institute multi-aspect Commons. Until then, I'll be in the Commons pen.

I don't really think anyone here expect this will happen, either pro or against people. But it really doesn't hurt to keep suggesting something you want occasionally. The developers DO listen, despite people doing their best to stamp out so many ideas.

Same reason they don't want to be seen wielding flamethrowers. Same reason Vanguard don't want everyone knowing a renegade faction tried to destroy all of reality. In a nutshell: PR ********.

Yeah, that's more a "feel" thing than a factual argument, but before the existence of Longbow, they seemed to be part of some shadowy intelligence organisation that primarily deals with the Malta Group, who seem to lose more and more of their "nobody knows they exist" mystique as the writers more and more forget they were supposed to have any. My only problem with Longbow is that they are being used to represent ALL heroes in the Rogue Isles. The Vindicators use them, the PPD use them, the Freedom Phalanx use them, Crimson and Indigo use them, they're just randomly present everywhere a default presence is not defined...

And I'm SICK of Longbow! We have Wyvern, we have the Legacy Chain, we have the PPD, we have OTHER HEROES to use instead of just Longbow. Associating Crimson and Indigo with them is just the cherry on top. We really need to see more hero groups in addition to Longbow.

Well, the whole point of the argument was that their slights don't really make it OK for heroic villains to slaughter them indiscriminately like they're just high-level skulls. And despite what I may or may not admit is questionable ethics, their morality still lies on the side of good, which makes their omni-presence in the Isles a narrative stumbling block to heroic villains that more or less HAVE to fight them in large numbers. The frikkin' things are everywhere!

*edit*
Note I said PR, not RP.

Well, there's always that, but on my scales, that's still a small price to pay for avoiding the bother of doing research and actual work. Decisions are difficult, I'll be the first to admit them, but worse comes to worst, you just have to make them and live with the consequences. It doesn't take actual work and effort to decide to just not slot Electric Fence for damage because I don't have enough slots to do that. "Oh, well!" is about as hard as it gets. Actually planning on how to eat my cake and have it, too and then actually doing it in the actual game is a whole other different level of bother, because it takes time, work, effort and knowledge.

A decision you make and that's it. A character you build from the ground up, with all the resource gathering and management that entails.

Right, it's a tough job and people get killed. That doesn't seem to have stopped young men enlisting in the US armed forces in the past, or indeed in the US civic police forces, or in the fire department, or in mountain rescue. Heck, people who signed up for the Royal Air Force in WW1 had a life expectancy of no more than a week, and yet the British weren't represented as evil. Not at the time, anyway. I never questioned that their agents suffer heavy casualties. I've played villain-side and I know how many of them I've stabbed and shot. But that doesn't make them evil.

First of all, do we have any evidence that the Geneva convention is still being upheld in our version of the world, what after a war with inter-dimensional aliens, attempted genocide and a basically crippled world military? And again, isn't that stooping to technicalities? Flamethowers are banned by the Geneva convention, yet every other Blaster is toting a flamethrower around and no-one bats an eye. What's more, people made of fire shoot fire and set other people on fire and we praise them as puppy-petting heroes, and no-one bats an eye. But a Longbow agent pulls out a flamethrower and suddenly it's a serious crime? Note that the description says they hide the glamethrowers from the CAMERAS, not from weapons inspectors.

And, really, if the news cameras have no problem with Infernal setting people on fire, why do they have a problem with tight-wearing women setting people on fire? Surely a demon-summoning, people-burning beast of a man would catch a lot more flak than Longbow, and yet no-one ever bothers him.

OK, you didn't link to the guide you mentioned, so I'm going to have to ask for clarification on this one. I may or may not remember one instance of one Longbow benefactor in one missions (namely, the Hit List, which may actually have been a Legacy Chain representative), but beyond that, I more remember Longbow and Wyvern getting into fights, not helping each other. One mission, in particular, has you frame Wyvern in front of Longbow by forging shipping manifests, because "Longbow stick to the letter of the law," as per contact admission.

And what of hiring out people to do their dirty work? Outisde of Indigo and Crimson inexplicably being ret-conned into Longbow agents, despite their being a round much longer than Longbow has actually existed, what are we talking about? Ace McKnight, maybe? I don't think he was Longbow, and did he really do anything questionable? That Longbow guy who's selling Arachnos secrets to the black market? Isn't he the practical equivalent of Lt. Petrovich and Kristof Jaeger? And as far as Mindspider goes (and this is the first I hear of him), what did he actually do for Longbow?

Isn't that kind of a leap, considering I've not actually seen them do anything I'd class as bad? Again, maybe I'm missing something, but every time I've fought them, they're the good guys, saving people and beating back villains.

But again, that's assuming you don't WANT to replace them, which to me kills the entire point of having progression in the first place. The jump from DOs to SOs is, to my mind, one of the most pleasant rises in power in the entire game, but the knowledge that it will never, ever happen again is what used to bug me about the post-20 game. With Inventions, as soon as I max out ++SOs, I can swap over to Commons and get still more of a bonus. And then swap out again and get even more. Not by a lot, mind you, but it's there. If I were going to just stuff a bunch of enhancements in there and never upgrade them, then what's the point of having them in the first place?

But again, it comes down to knowing not only which enhancements you want to slot where, but also which placements you can actually GET, as well as which enhancements are worth the cost of admission. That's significantly more work than just knowing "Well, anything Common." There are no rare commons, no expensive commons, no hard-to-get commons. If I pretend Sets don't exist, then I'm not even IN the rat race, so I don't have to feel like I'm falling behind or just scraping the bottom of the barrel for ANY performance boosts whatsoever.

Again, if Common multi-aspect Inventions enhancements existed, I might be more inclined to deal with them, since I wouldn't have to worry about set bonuses, rarity or which combos exist at what level range, or about losing my enhancements when I exemplar. But they don't exist, so I won't bother. If they ever pop up into the game, I'll think about it. Until then, I'm not touching the things, and I'm afraid I'm immune to convincing.

Well, to be fair, even ignoring the blatantly unrealistic nature of our Martial Arts, that's kind of how it goes. You learn the basic kicks that you're going to be using for the bulk of your career, and then slowly start learning ever more fancy ones. A stupid vertical kick, a fancy sweep kick and the gravity defying jump kick are basically over-the-top versions of what you'd be using the majority of the time. Doesn't it make sense to stick with Storm Kick and Thunder kick while you're still a novice and only move on to the fancier kicks later on?

From what I got out of the original post, it wasn't a question of HAVING the right build. The person in question seemed to have all the powers expected. It's a question of USING the right build, and on this point I too tend to take slight. By all means, build however you like, but if you took the damn powers, then frikkin' use them!

A good, practical self-defence class, perhaps. But an actual long-standing martial art WILL have much more complicated techniques one can get to after enough training.

In my example, I studied Wing Tsun, which you can kind of see in semi-historic movie Yip Man, but not quite as it's been somewhat beefed up for Hollywood. The entire art is focused around not specific moves, of which is has a mere handful even among its elders, but around feel, anticipation and situational awareness. Sure, you have your basic stance, steps, the few basic punches, kicks and grapples, but that's about it. Everything else is honing those skills through repetition.

And when you practice and progress enough, you move on from just punching and kicking into the much more difficult and, to be honest, much more interesting technique of what's called "sticky hands." This sort of technique CANNOT be taught to a novice, because there isn't anything about it to explain. It's all entirely feel, coordination and experience. You don't can't be "told" how to do that. Even when you have the base and skillset to even have an idea of how it works, you still can't just go out and do it with just an explanation. Not to a trainer, and not to some random guy in the street. It's not "a move," it's a technique. It doesn't operate on knowing what to do, it operates purely on feel, specifically since Wing Tsun fighters are trained to not have to look at their hands when they do it.

I'm not talking about enrolling in some Tibetan monastery to study Kung Fu for the next 50 years, but not everything boils down to just pointing a finger to tell people where to punch.

Buying them with merits assumes you have merits to buy them with, which don't exactly grow on trees. True, you can farm them or grind them, but at that point, these are no longer "cheap." As well, just KNOWING what you're doing takes the kind of time, research and planning that not everyone is willing to put forward. I'm not saying everything is purples all the way, but I can't agree that these things are not a lot of work and waiting just the same.

I can't say I agree with you. Being shown a few tricks without the actual ability to use them serves very little better than knowing no tricks at all, and I can easily attest to that. A martial art is not so much about the tricks and techniques in terms of just knowing them, it's down to the skill, coordination and fitness to be able to use them against targets that don't cooperate.

Besides, a lot of the techniques I never got to learning were based on feel and experience much more so than just being told what to do, and I know that for a fact. There's no point in showing first-time losers all the advanced, complicated moves that stifle even seasoned practitioners, because they won't be able to do them anyway, but they'll still try, fail and end up getting themselves hurt.

As with any skill-based activity, the easiest way to ensure a person fails and quits is to overload them with examples on the very first lesson, and this I absolutely know for a fact. What you want is to give people a stable basis, a bit of confidence and the mindset that they know what they're doing so that they can build off that. These things are learned by feel, not by explanation, and just giving people a lot of tricks to remember just doesn't help.

SOs are given to me just one step removed from free of charge. Purple enhancements and Hamidon variants don't tend to be as easy to obtain. It's not a question of merit, it's a question of worth, and I'm not sure it's worth the cost of investment.

Well, if your stance is "Your argument is beneath me." then yeah, end of argument before it even began. If you're of the stance that "I'll do whatever I like no matter what the game says." then you are well free to do so and no-one can really say anything about it. But when you start ignoring everything you may as well just discount setting altogether and do whatever. And as you may have noticed, this isn't an argument to begin with.

You can make a hero villain-side. You can make a villain hero-side. You can make a father of the Statesman, a god of the old world, Neo in the Matrix, the grandfather of time and whatever else you please, and, really, why shouldn't you? But for those of us who DO try to stick to settings at least somewhat, there is an argument to be had as to the extent of what fits and what doesn't. Because trying to experience the stories kind of requires that you acknowledge the setting exists.

1024 on the nose, but with a caveat. Unlike the Architect (which may have been fixed in the meantime), the ID screen doesn't expand new lines into <br> tags, and so doesn't swell the, say, four double line breaks into 32 symbols to put you past the limit. It just keeps them as they are.

I honestly wouldn't mind twice that. As it would let me extend my phrasing a LITTLE bit, and people who don't want to read are very much free to not read. As it has always been.

Which tends to be subjective.

OK, let me rephrase this: Do dual-aspect enhancements not offer less percentage per aspect than single-aspect Commons? As such, would three Damae/Else enhancements not be worse than three damage Commons of the same level? I can't seem to find decent enhancement values on these things, since ParagonWiki seems to list triple-aspect Inventions at 50% enhancement, and I SERIOUSLY doubt that's per aspect, since even Hamidon enhancements don't do that any more.

Basically, how am I getting more from enhancements that do less? I realise I'm getting OTHER things, but suppose for the sake of example that I don't care about other things. How am I getting one particular aspect better enhanced with multi-aspect enhancements than I am with single-aspect ones?

I know I can enhance OTHER aspects of a power, but then that starts sounding suspiciously like giving up a little of one aspect to gain a lot of another, which I'm actually not much of a fan of.

That's not really how I see things, and I'll tell you why. A few years ago, I trained martial arts for some time (before I admitted to myself that I'll always be a sissy wimp), and this is exactly how my training progressed. My teacher would basically show me a move, and I'd spend weeks practicing that one move, then he'd show me another move, and we'd practice that and combine. I wasn't taught "martial arts" as a monolithic unit of skill and given all the abilities to train and improve simultaneously, simply because a lot of the more complicated moves required skills obtained from mastering the simpler moves, as well as strength and awareness built up through training.

I know how comic books treat these things, but I was never a fan of it, myself, because comic books pull powers out of the aether as desired. I'm much more sympathetic to the turn-based combat found in most fighting anime, where people come with specific moves prepared and train new moves up as they invent them. They make such thing as swinging your sword really hard into specific moves and even give them names. That's pretty much what Yoh Asakura's Selestial Slash is in the 4Kids dub of Shaman King. I like this, because I enjoy the ability to use your powers creatively, such as the difference between a concentrated fire blast vs. as spread out fireball, vs, a pinpoint fire sword.

Of course, if your character concept revolved around the character having "just a power" of some element of inclination, then I can certainly see this as problematic, but levels and trainers in general don't really strike me as problematic because of that.

Let me pose this question, then. If Spider-Man were on his way to save Mary Jane from being dropped off a bridge (again), how long do you think he would spend fighting the thousand muggers on the way there? In the comic books, there really aren't any, because criminals don't commit crime on-panel unless it's important to the plot. But suppose they did. Are you telling me that Spider-Man would spend, say, 10 hours landing in every alley and beating up every two-bit thug, fully knowing that his girldfriend could well be dropped to her death if he doesn't hurry? Even if he were given the standard hour and a half time limit, he'd STILL have to skip a few fights along the way.

This isn't a handwave. The setting just has more crime than any one hero could ever handle. Not liking the setting and how it's designed is one thing, and I can respect that. Hand-waving away the parts you don't like is perfectly fine. But the setting still makes sense within context.

There seems to be an unspoken rule in the city that someone else will handle it. This one I'm going to spin a little, because that's how I've always seen it:

A contact isn't going to give you a mission that's far below your level on the assumption that you have missions your level. A mission lower level than you can be handled by another, weaker hero, but that weaker hero can't really handle your missions, because he's just too week for it. As such, it makes sense to keep the strong heroes doing work that requires a strong hero and delegating the easier work to weaker heroes. That way, power is used most efficiently.

Granted, this IS a spin and less an explanation, but it sort of follows from how the setting is built. When you have a city with literally hundreds of thousands of heroes, sooner or later you just HAVE to impose some kind of order regarding who does what, to ensure that threats of all calibres are handled. It makes sense, in that if such a completely realistic situation existed, that situation might not be as rare as you'd think.

Err... I can't agree with that. Pick almost any sci-fi or, yes, even less realistic military movie and you'll instantly run into levels of clearance. Only the captain has clearance to send a distress call. Only the administrator has access to the confidential files. Only the general can get into the experimental generator room. Only the strongest warriors are allowed into the abandoned sacred tomb. This is not a gaming cliché. If anything, it's a fiction cliché that a lot of stories use to either invent a plot point or add some mystique to a place or character. Kind of like how Max Action, leader of the Civic Squad, has a history that's confidential, and presumably only accessible to top-ranking officials.

In City of Heroes, not everyone has (or had) permission to access hazard zones, and that makes sense. They're restricted areas full of serious dangers, and it makes sense to keep weaker heroes out of them. Hell, even Mass Effect employs the same tactic, allowing Shepard entrance to the quarantine zone on Omega while refusing the human woman access at the same time.

A trainer doesn't become a trainer unless he actually knows this stuff, and all of the Surviving Eight are old grizzled bastards who, by this point, have worked with more heroes than you've even seen. And this is not an ad-hoc spin, it's the reality of the game. Everyone from 2004 onwards has been coming to these people asking for advice on how to train their magical gravity-bending or their technological fire blasting. Even if they didn't know, I can guarantee you that they know now.

Ugh... What is this, the Twilight Zone? Why are people suddenly so adamant about misquoting me and then wagging their finger in my face? The reason I was happy was because I found a name for MYSELF, proving to MYSELF that the thing I thought - that is that all good names have been taken up - is wrong. This was meant to illustrate that specific, particular point. That there are still names out there that people could use if they were looking for one.

I should be ashamed of myself? For what? Finding a good name for myself? Suggesting that other people could maybe stop complaining and LOOK for a name for themselves? For shame! Maybe there isn't a name for you, specifically and in particular. Maybe there isn't a name for everybody. I don't know. I didn't think there was one for ME. But I looked, I searched and I found. And that's more than I can say for most people.

This isn't about creativity, originality or imagination. It's about the willingness to try. Can't get the name you want? Too bad. There are OTHER names out there. Did you look? Did you go out, search, try, experiment? If you did and you still can't find one, then I feel for you, I truly do. Most people complaining DO NOT DO THIS. They try one name, don't get it, try one other name, don't get it and then come here to complain. Well, cry me a river.

Either quote me where I said this, with a direct quote in a quote box and a link to the post you took it out from, or quote whoever you took this from, or kindly avoid paining straw men you can just push over. You invent a "high horse" that practically no-one I've seen take in this thread, and that's your basic standpoint? Let's see, how did you put it? "For shame!"

How many? From what I saw back in 2004, a LOT. Anything else?

Yeah, instead of putting in empty examples, why don't you go out and look for a bunch of "inflammatory and brightly burning" names that are taken up on your server and then we'll talk. I'd do it, myself, but I know how these bait-and-switch tactics work, because the moment I quote any names, you'll just turn around and claim they're not heroic enough or brightly burning enough or not exactly what you wanted, so I'm not going to do it. You let me know what good names you CAN'T take, then we'll talk.

[quote]On http://thesaurus.com/browse/Fire there are 48 synonyms to Fire in the first two entries. Sure not all of them make decent names, but let's go with Fourty eight "Good" names using a synonym for flame OR a synonym for flame and a pronoun or title. Mr. Fire, Captain Flame, Fire Girl, etc.

Um... 48 names if you assume people call their characters "The Fire" or "The Flame." Do they? I mean that as an honest question. Do they? Even in the oldest of comic books, even in the time where names were simpler and less invested, I can't ever remember there being characters with names like this. OK, Shard I know of, because the name sounds kind of cool. Raven I know of, because it sounds mystical. But Flame?

On a hunch, I wanted to see how desired that name was, and as of the time of posting this, "Flame" is available on Pinnacle, as is "Fire." "Pyre," however is already in use. Good names running out my ***.

The "former design team" didn't realise their "mistake" because the former design team for City of Heroes is the current design team for City of Heroes minus Jack. So, if you really wanted to be melodramatic, you should have talked about a former design LEAD realising his mistake, but given how much credit Jack has with anything OTHER than mistakes and how little input he actually had in Champions Online, whose actual acting lead was Bill Roper. Really, I don't mean to attack you, but when you resort to these petty and really incorrect arguments, what am I supposed to do?

"Its removal?" You're talking like unique naming is some kind of fad they put in there just to mess with you. Unique naming has a direct, functional purpose, and yes I do realise you said it's probably not possible. That's not the point. The purpose of unique naming goes above and beyond just mere system setup. Its POINT is to allow me to differentiate between different people playing different characters. And I'm never going to support ANY suggestion for a non-unique naming system with takes the cavalier stance "what's the chance of it being a problem?" Is there a chance? Yes! That's too big a chance, then. There's very little chance I'll forget my cell phone at work when I leave at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean I'll make a habit of taking it out of my pocket unless it's ringing.

Err... So?

The unfortunate fate of Blasters is that they can indeed deal significantly and measurably more damage than Scrappers, but they do so in short bursts or on large-scale AoE, and even then not all Blasters are better than all Scrappers. But even caveats aside, even admitting that Blasters do more damage than Scrappers, damage is not the issue when it comes to solo ability. It's a balance between offence and defence, which is where Scrappers really shine, because they're right in the sweet spot. Blasters, on average, do more damage, but tend to have a much, MUCH harder time actually living long enough to deal that damage.

Archery and Fire Blast are considered overpowered not really because they deal more damage. They really don't, not by too much. They are considered overpowered because they deal damage MUCH more quickly and to more people. A Fire/Fire Blaster can spawn-wipe things without much issue, either through mass AoE or through strong single-target damage, and an Archery Blaster can spawn-wipe things via Rain of Arrows. Dual Pistols, but comparison (I'm NOT saying I want DP to be either of those, just providing context!), does even MORE damage than either Fire Blast or Archery, as most DP attacks hurt slightly more than comparable attacks. However, where the set really suffers is in animation times, as it just spends far too long just dicking around. Four out of six attacks have 2.5+ second animations, and that really bites in the long run.

Blaster offence is not a zero-sum game where more offence makes up for less speed. Granted, more offence or less speed may equal the same DPA, but less speed hurts power utility and safety in a way that damage really cannot make up for. Take, for instance, Executioner's Shot. This is probably the strongest T3 blast in terms of pure damage, and most of the time what it shoots, it kills. However, unlike, say, Power Burst, it keeps you rooted in place long enough to take at least one good punch to the face from practically everything you have aggroed. Its animation time may not hurt mathematical average damage output, but it hurts survivability in a not insignificant way. And for an AT that basically HAS no survivability, that's not an easy tradeoff to make.

And Executioner's Shot is not the only one. Empty Clips, Bullet Rain and Piercing Rounds are in the same boat. Look, I hover. All the time. And even then, I still get punched for using this powers a lot, because invariably I'll use one close enough to the ground for enemies to reach me, and I'll tack a LOT of licks while I fart around twirling guns in the air.

Look, something like Thunder Strike I can kind of see. It takes a while to wind up, but it deals a LOT of damage (more than Executioner's Strike, in fact) AND it provides AoE mitigation. Total Focus I can also see, because while it's slow, it hits SO DAMN HARD. But Empty Clips? Bullet Rain? That just ends up being annoying AND ends up killing me, to boot.

I don't want Dual Pistols' numbers to match up to either Fire Blast or Archery. That's not balance or parity, that's duplication. I do, however, want to see the set gain a LITTLE more, and not necessarily in terms of performance. I want to see the set gain more in terms of lessening irritation. DPA is, surprisingly, not bad, so I'm really not asking for it to hit any harder or really do anything additional. Both its effects and its stats are decent. I can't say "good," but decent. What I want is to be rooted for less time with each attack, because this is becoming the one, singular reason for practically ALL of my deaths on this Blaster.

As far as Fire Blast and Archery go, their place in this conversation is as performance benchmarks, not just for Dual Pistols, but for all Blaster combos. I've said it before that I'm unsatisfied with Blasters, but that's a bit of a misleading generalisation. I'm not so much unsatisfied with them, as I'm trapped in a loop of hope and disappointment. The AT is JUST strong enough for me to feel like I can relax and play it with the confidence of a Scrapper, and it works for a majority of the time. But at the same time, it's JUST weak enough to where one wrong move, one wrong step, one wonky enemy group, and my entire experience turns to crap and I start thinking my character is horribly gimped. Fire Blast and Archery are the sets that give me the biggest margin for error because they give me enough front-loaded damage to castrate the biggest actual threats, to where I can outlast the rest of the spawn. And at -1x3, that's no small task.

This problem I have is not restricted to Dual Pistols. It's a factor of most Blast sets, in that I feel that Blasters often trade damage - the one thing they really depend on, for some kind of implied utility that might really be useful on a Defender, but doesn't do much of anything on a Blaster. And in my eyes, that's a bum deal. Yes, Ice Blasters do manage to score by trading some damage for a LOT of utility, but you'll note that Ice Blast is still towards the top of damage-dealing sets. Where I have a problem with Dual Pistols is that they seem to have been designed as a Defender set and balanced around the "massive" utility of their secondary effects when, in actual practice, the different ammo types really don't help all that much. Certainly not enough to look to down-balance the set over. It's not nearly as bad as it was in Closed Beta, but what it was then gives us a clear window into the thinking behind the set's balance point: "The secondary effects are so good, we need to take something away from the set for them." And I just don't happen to think that's the case.