Trickshooter

That's because it is. The basic design behind Trick Arrows is obviously to be more offensive than other sets, and that's great and everything, but what can Trick Arrows do when being defensive is more important?

It can put out the weakest AoE -Recharge debuff in any buff/debuff set.

It can put out the weakest AoE -ToHit debuff in any buff/debuff set.

It can put out a good AoE -Damage debuff that might sleep minions.

It can put out the third worst ST Hold in the game.

It can put out the weakest ST Immobilize in the game.

And then of course there's EMP Arrow, which is fantastic but... why should the rest of TA be so weenie by comparison? EMP Arrow is designed to be situational, not uncommon for tier 9s, but in actual gameplay it's not. It's actually the best option in nearly every situation, because it offers a level of damage mitigation you just can't get in the rest of the set.

I don't disregard the amount of -Recharge TA can potentially offer, I just don't convince myself that -45% total, from 3 separate powers, on maybe 3 enemies is all that big of a deal.

Excess -Speed was never a problem, and still isn't, as Trick Arrows actually puts out the most AoE -Speed of all the sets. Yes, more than Cold. The -Recharge in the set was brought down, as Positron put it, because they were redundant and made the set very powerful. As a result, the recharge debuff from Entangling Arrow was removed (later readded at scale 1.0), the recharge debuff of Ice Arrow was lowered, and the recharge debuff of Poison Gas Arrow was removed. Glue Arrow's debuff value was never lowered, it's the same amount today.

It had a 45 second duration and 20 second recharge, same as Quicksand. The difference between the two that made stacking a problem was that Glue Arrow's debuff was "sticky" (no pun intended).

As far as I can remember, nobody ever thought it was considered "too powerful", just "too Controller-y".

I don't think you understand how -Recharge in this game works. Recharge time is calculated by BaseRechargeTime/(1 + RechargeBuffs - RechargeDebuffs). So let's look at some -Recharge from the sets.

Let's assume you're fighting a level 50 Carnie Illusionist, and she uses her Blind on you. It has a 9 second recharge, and it's hold time is 7.45s, so already not perma, unless... the sleep goes off, which lasts 14.9s, giving her the oppurtunity to perma mez you.

You only have time to use one of your -Recharge debuffs on her, which will increase the recharge time of her Blind...

Glue Arrow will bring the recharge of her Blind to 11.25s. Sucks to be you, I guess.

Lingering Radiation will bring the recharge of her Blind to 36s.

Freezing Rain will bring the recharge of her Blind to 18s.

Infrigidate will be stopped by the -Recharge cap and will bring the recharge of her Blind to 36s.

Web Grenade will bring the recharge of her Blind to 24s.

Darkest Night offers more -Damage, and then later you get Fluffy who has his own which is only 1.25% less than PGA's debuff.

Kinetics, with the easily stackable Fulcrum Shift, can also go higher.

Radiation is lower, but by only 6.25%, and higher if against a player. Radiation also has Fallout, which offers another source, though not much lives after Fallout.

Also, 3 standard SO enhancements do not make PGA perma. Even if you used 4 to get to +100 Recharge, it would still have 2.5s between applications, and PGA doesn't stack at all. Managing to get it up before the previous one ended... will cause the previous one to immediately end.

Freezing Rain self stacks (easily) to -70% resistance and can hit 16 enemies.

Tar Patch self stacks to -60% and can hit 16 enemies.

Sleet self stacks to -60% against 16 targets, and then gets another -30% from Heat Loss on another 10 enemies.

Trick Arrows, at it's best, can get to -60% against 10 enemies.

Also, let's look at endurance costs... If TA wanted to debuff at -40% for 30 seconds, it would cost them 30.16 endurance (1 Disruption Arrow, and two Acid Arrows because they only last 20 seconds). That's 1.005 endurance a second. Not much better than Sonic.

TA is effective as it is right now, never said it wasn't, but it's clearly at the bottom of the totem pole. Yes, someone has to be, but not by such a huge margin.

And yes, Flash Arrow is good against AVs and GMs. But they make up, what? 10% of the game? Why is a tier 2 only good for 10% of the game? And that's like... the last 10% of the game, why are we even getting it at tier 2?

Edit: My mistake, Quicksand is actually 30s recharge.

Yes, putting the Stealth IO in to Sprint and then leaving Sprint on all the time will keep it perma (it will suppress when you attack/are attacked, though, like other forms of Stealth).

Wonderful explanation, sounds so much better than how I would have worded it. I think I'm gonna save this to copy and paste in the future when this question comes up again.

It's not fair that some of us have to dual and triple box just to fill in the needed roles for the Villain raids, either. If more people step up, so will we.

Very well known, it's been broken since fall of 2005 when it was added to the game.

Check out the "Current Defender Issues" thread for any bugs with powers.

I know my damage is. It helps that my Oil Slick Arrow is down to like a 45 second recharge, though.

Trickshooter*

And d'awww *blush*

But to the question, I can't really compare TA/A to A/TA, as my Defender got to 50 a long, long time ago in the dark days of TA at its release. But the trip to 50 on my A/TA Corruptor was very frustrating.

Archery was a fairly solid set, as anyone might expect, but it just didn't make up for the lower debuff values and shorter controls of the Corruptor's version of Trick Arrow. I expect that if you used it with a Primary that added on more debuff or control, like Dark or Ice, it would be better.

Thanks so much!

You're not a fan of the burninating? Madness! We'll have to fix that.