Thunder Knight

Energy Melee suggestions (from someone who has played the set to 50 and enjoys it, but also sees its weaknesses):

Total Focus: shorten the animation (use say, Knockout Blow or Knockout Blow's alternate animation)
Energy Transfer: shorten the animation (to simply a shorter version of its current animation, like the changes to Dual Pistols, though Sweeping Cross would work, too). I don't think it needs the self-damage messed with.
Stun: The big change. Basically, make it into a second AoE attack. Give it Total Focus's animation, increase its damage, and give it and a splash AoE effect - basically, turn it into a copy of ElM's Thunder Strike (but with 100% Stun as its only secondary effect, rather than TS's 50% Stun / 80% KB / 40% End Drain).

I know Whirling Hands' radius is usually complained about, but it's the same radius and target cap as most other melee sets' PBAoE, at least ones that explicitly hit with the character's body or weapon (except for SJ, which has a smaller radius). SS and SM hit with an explosive shockwave rather than with the character's fists, and Staff Melee and Titan Weapons are using long-reach items, so it makes sense for them to have a larger radius. (In fact, the PBAoEs whose radius should probably be increased are the weapon sets - Claws, Katana, BS, WM, BA, and DB should be increased to match Staff Fighting's 10' radius).

It shouldn't be as much of an issue anyway, with a second AoE in the set to back it up.

Really, what makes the set work for me is that every attack has the same secondary effect - Chance For Disorient (with some attacks having that chance be 100%) - letting you stack it. I think that's the set's greatest strength (moreso than even ST damage), and I don't think they should mess with that synergy, whatever they wind up doing.

Huh. I'm more likely to take Confront on a Scrapper than Taunt on a Brute, just to deal with runners. (And I usually take Taunt on a Brute, with my Staff/Dark Brute being the only exception so far, and even that is only "so far")

I've only seriously played one Tanker so far, my L50 Stone/Stone, and he has Taunt despite also having a ranged attack.

I guess what I'm saying is that, while not a top priority for me, I do take Taunt/Confront on my melee-ers.

Smart quotes are generally "helpfully" added by many programs and system settings, automatically changing the regular quotes into curly quotes. Which is great if you're typing up an essay, but not so great when you're trying to copy/paste macros or other programming commands that have to be typed correctly.

If you can't see the difference, try increasing the font size. They're definitely different.

I haven't seen the Hulk cartoon yet, but from what I've heard, it's already got some strange ideas going on, for example giving She-Hulk Energy Blast and turning Skaar into a Broad Sword Scrapper.

I don't know if this was the most brilliant idea ever, but in my Staff/Dark Brute I slotted a full Overwhelming Force set in Death Shroud (the damage aura). That gave me another 4 points of KB protection from the full set bonus (since I don't have - and can't really afford - all the KB protection IOs that you do), and also added another small bit of damage mitigation (as the proc makes everything fall down around me).

It's fun, if nothing else.

One thing about adding bears - they'd need to create a new skeleton with new animations. It was probably already stretching things to use the same skeleton for the canines and the felines, but bears don't move or even stand anything like a dog or cat. (For one thing, bears are plantigrade, not digitigrade).

I'd love to see it, mind you, but turning the Dire Wolf into a Bear is not just a matter of swapping out a skin.

I play one. Just got her to 50 the other day. And she can stun a lot more than Minions and Lts (since, as said, the stuns stack, so two attacks are usually enough to stun Bosses, and three or four will even stun Elite Bosses, particularly since I slotted some of the weaker attacks with Stun sets rather than Melee sets). She can also take down hard targets much faster than my Electric Melee brute (who does, admittedly, have an easier time with groups, but different powersets specialize in different things, and ElM has some very slow attacks in it as well)

It may be the "worst" melee set, but objectively, it's not a bad set, and doesn't need a major overhaul. Just shorten the cast time of TF and ET, increase the radius (and possibly stun chance) of WH, and there you go.

The frustrating part is that the stuff I'm most interested in hearing about is the stuff that they only gave a passing mention to (Sorcery and new non-trial Incarnate stuff), and I had to sit there and listen for a full hour just to learn that they weren't going to talk about what I actually wanted to hear about.

It's all the more disappointing because last week's Coffee talk heavily implied that they'd go into more detail about Sorcery this week, and.. they didn't. When it was brought up, they bascially said "Yup, Sorcery", and immediately changed the subject. They spent less time on Sorcery and Incarnate stuff combined than they did on, say, German beers or wacky forks.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of text-filled patch notes to read once it gets closer to release, but this trickle of information spread out in an hour-long video is still a little frustrating.

I suspect actual alternate animations will be a later addition. The UI was the big hurdle, as I understand it, and now that that's done, the rest will be just a matter of the animation team having a little free time to work on it.

Hybrid is, as its name suggests, a hybrid - each one gives you both a Toggle power (two minute duration, two minutes cooldown) and an Auto power (always on).

I tend to choose which one I use based on the Auto power (+damage, +regen, +status resist, or +end discount), with the toggle just being a bonus.

To revive this topic a bit...

Ms. Stungun, my Energy/Energy/Energy Brute, just hit 50 the other night, and already has her T2 Alpha slotted (thanks to a generous donation of Threads from one of my other incarnates who already has all his slots T4'd out)

I think it's just the large gap since SSA2.1 (released June 5th) that's making people edgy. Even if they release 2.2 next week that'll be a full seven weeks, just one week shy of two months, since the last one. Even though you can technically say that's "once a month", it's not really such in any practical sense of the phrase.

My NRG/NRG Brute on my current account (during the period when I was Premium) and my SS/WP Brute on an alternate totally-free account both ran content at +1 easily on SOs. What are you doing that you can barely handle -1?

Subscribed vs. Free doesn't matter for Incarnate content, since that's VIP-only and is supposed to be harder than regular missions.

You don't like "Broadway Bullet" as a name?

... how about "Ace-High Straight", then? Or "Ace-High Straight Shooter"?

"Moon Dragon" was my first thought for #2, but because it sounded familiar, I checked first, and Yup. Already a Marvel comics character by that name, so you may have trouble with the Generic Police.

I've never had any issues requiring the numpad, either. (Especially since I don't have a numpad)

There should be no difference between the two.

I usually have fairly good luck with these giveaways (I snagged a Coralax costume and the Origin Pack), but that was with the old "giant image full of dozens of codes" method, not this current "five codes at a time, keep watching for hours" Twitter giveaway.

I'm hoping they'll release the aura via some other (in-game or at least in-Market) method soon, too. I think it'd be perfect for at least one of my characters, who was inspired by a Silver Age Marvel character.

I believe the suggestion is to add those "in-between" Titans, regardless of whether they've existed before or not.

You don't need any special lore justification, since the Titans are just robots that Malta built (unless there's an obscure plot twist buried deep in some forgotten story arc that says otherwise) - and you can always build more robots. (Just ask Dr. Wily and Dr. Robotnik)

The only backstory you need is "This robot is more powerful than Zeus Titans, but less expensive to manufacture than Kronos Titans". They could even say that they redesigned the Kronos to be a combination of these two robots, thus bringing lore in line with the model used, or vice-versa.

Make it an Elite Boss (since the Malta Group doesn't seem to have any EBs currently), and there you go. In-between robot made.

I would get this only if one of the options was this.

I get the feeling that we're not at the right "place" in the issue's timeline for the big announcement and marketing push; all this is a special pre-announcement preview that we - by which I mean those of us who diligently read the forums and watch the coffee talks - are getting.

Soon enough, they'll announce the issue the usual amount of time before the issue is to actually arrive.

I don't think anyone's mentioned it yet in this topic (and if you have, I apologize), but it sounds like you'll only have to take only one other Fighting power to get Weave, instead of two. That is also a fairly big change.

A second thing I haven't seen mentioned is that, from what I could see in the video, Kick is going to be changed from Knockback to Knockdown, which will also make it a lot more useful for melee builds.

I'm still mainly excited about Sorcery (only mentioned in passing in this particular coffee talk), though. I hope they delve into its mysteries sooner rather than later.

Does this change only affect Lore pets, and all other types of pets still get the level shift? (I'm guessing yes, but I don't want to just go and assume)