Siolfir

Why only have four general pools? Are the powers really so unbalanced?

I somewhat agree with your last sentence, but it's pretty obvious that there are some limitations desired and built into the system. And those limitations should definitely extend into APP/PPPs too - although stacking shields would be fun, and I know my Dominator would love to be able to nab Sleet, Fireball, Rain of Fire, and Scorpion Shield.

Fair enough. So a total of two concepts, and even then if you're using animals to attack with how does the concept not involve using pets to do damage?

Meh, just play a Stalker with a good AoE set. AS will make up the ST difference.

Nah, it's a short arc when you set it up redside, it should be at least that long to fix it.

Edit: and I suppose that link answers the question posited in the subject line better than anything else so far. >.>

My solution to KB and how it works with melee characters is simple - if you knock it away from me, that means you want to deal with it. If you knock it towards me, that means you expect me to deal with it.

I also feel the same way when I'm on the character with KB, because at that point it becomes a fun little game of skeet shooting and I try to see if I can have it dead before it hits the ground, or else a "hey, go get that one!" moment. But that's just a combination of A and C.

And besides, what better AT for whips than a Dom?

The issue about "lol petless mm" isn't whether or not a petless MM is capable of doing anything - and at times I wish some of the MMs I teamed with were petless because their pet control was miserable and they tended to bring back multiples of the aggro cap when their pets ran off in separate directions and died horribly in the spawns that they annoyed.

It's that, with the exception of Demon Summoning's whips, anything you would want to do with a petless MM would be done better on either a Defender or Corruptor. You'd have more hit points, more damage, more - and better - attacks, lower endurance costs, and usually higher modifiers (btw, Defenders also share the Tanker mods for self buffing, that's not unique to MMs - MMs have better stun modifiers than Corruptors, though). So unless the concept is to do something half-*****, there's only one viable concept for a petless MM and it involves a flaming whip.

Numina is the one TFC TF that I didn't run over 2xp weekend, specifically due to the hunts. But it's not like it's a long process to split the team across multiple zones and one-shot-complete a hunt against greys. Speed through it, get the merits and badge, move on. I'd rather run multiple Numina TFs in a row than finish a single Synapse - I've actually considered swapping sides and getting Invader on a couple of characters just so I wouldn't have to do a Synapse to get the accolade.

Here. There actually have been a couple of changes since then listed in the i24 beta section (like purple procs not having their rate increased due to overperformance) but that's the gist of it.

I'm pretty sure that it was simply reiterating my earlier point - Fulcrum Shift still, even if it misses, provides a +40% damage buff that can easily be permanent (ie, perma capable).

I liked the original Posi - even before you could keep Stamina - better than Synapse. At least it had enemy groups, plural.

I also prefer the Dr. Q TF to either, and that was before the shorter-recharge team mission teleporter you can pick up in the market. There are a lot of ways to get around now that the people who complained about it taking 6-8 hrs didn't have, and the longest one I've ever been on was under 4 hours prior to O-portals. I'm guessing, but I'd expect that with the right team it's a two hour TF just because you lose a lot of time moving back and forth - split the team for the hunts and teleport to the door missions.

This.

When I was on a team this past weekend that was trying to get the minimum number to start, I suggested sending out "Council farm lfm!" over the various channels.

Test server, no - generally speaking it's a copy of what's on live.
Beta server, yes - but you have to "buy" it off the market (for 0 points) to see it.

Barring a duration that exceeds 3 minutes, thinking that a 16 minute recharge on Fulcrum Shift is balanced is pretty delusional when you look at other powers in the game. I mean what the heck are you balancing against, Time Bomb and Barb Swipe only? Evidence would support no longer than 6 minutes for recharge, and generally in longer duration buffs.

False. Even if you're counting the stacking out of the box (30 sec duration, 20 sec recharge) a 40% +damage is still inferior in damage compared to a 30% resistance debuff unless both you and the people you team with don't bother with slotting damage in their attacks against almost all difficulty levels.

Let's say you have an attack that does 125 damage. You slot it for +100% damage, because I'm lazy and don't want to make the math harder than it has to be. That means you're doing 250 points of damage, or 200 damage to a +2 (80% effect due to purple patch).

Siphon Power (for Controllers/Corruptors, since you're using those numbers in your quotes) provides +20% damage per stack. It has a 1.93 second cast time, which works out to an arcanatime of 2.112 seconds, and costs 10.4 endurance.
1 Siphon Power (2.112 sec cast, 10.4 end): (125 * (1 base damage + 1 slotting + 0.2 siphon power)) * 1 resistance modifier = 275, *.8 for purple patch damage applied = 220.
2 Siphon Powers (4.224 sec cast, 20.8 end): (125 * (1 + 1 + .4)) * 1 = 300, *.8 = 240.

Tar Patch provides a 30% resistance debuff in a wide area. Counting the purple patch (against +2 it has .8 effectiveness) this multiplies the final damage after slotting by 1.24. It has a cast time of 3.1 seconds, which works out to an arcanatime of 3.3 seconds, and costs 7.8 endurance.
(125 * (1 + 1)) * 1.24 = 310, *.8 = 248.

You're spending more animation time and getting less benefit than Tar Patch by keeping Siphon Power stacked, and Tar Patch affects powers that don't take outside buffs (like, say, Judgement) which Siphon Power won't. They aren't equivalent powers.

Now, against +4s - which is the best case scenario for buffs, since there is a 0.48 effectiveness on damage/debuffs making Tar Patch only a 14.4% resistance debuff:
1 Siphon Power: 132
2 Siphon Power: 144
Tar Patch: 137.28

Note that a single Siphon Power still isn't equivalent to a single Tar Patch; you have to keep it stacked to do better, which means at least 14% of your time (2.112 sec / 15 sec) is spent just keeping the buff active. If you're the only one doing damage, then it's probably a net loss even at +4, just because Tar Patch's debuff duration is long enough that it's not likely to interrupt your attacking.

Aaaand, this. For reasons already covered.

That's WAI. Fear is a soft mez, and mobs will attack less often but will still return fire when attacked. Fearsome Stare is still good because it's an AoE -tohit with decent debuff values, so even if things keep attacking at the same rate (and they don't) they're less likely to hit you anyway.

O.o

Hm...

Heck with it, I'm stealing this.

I was entitled before it was cool. Now everybody is doing it. >.>

Not that I feel that it needs nerfed, but with regards to these specific points:
Fulcrum Shift summons a buff pet around the user along with the debuff pet around the target. I think that the debuff pet still fails to summon the damage buff pets if the main target dies - although I haven't specifically checked recently, I don't remember getting a huge buff during a Lambda run where the target died and other mobs were still upright - but regardless it doesn't need to hit to provide you and everyone within 20' of you a buff of either 40% or 50% +damage depending on your AT. It needs a target to start. It doesn't need to hit the target for this to happen (and this part of the power is, in fact, flagged as autohit).

That's still the +damage portion of Forge on everyone around you all at once and is easily permanent and stackable, even if there are no other targets hit. It's not as nice, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "wasted".

Hi! Nice to meet you!

>.<