Trickshooter

TA has very few advantages over Traps. The two biggest are EMP Arrow and range. Everything else TA can do is outdone pretty easily by Traps. The fact just 1 Seeker Drone is the equivalent of Flash Arrow and and just short of Poison Gas Arrow's debuff value is pretty sad, and then you throw in a second Seeker Drone and it's even worse.

Then there's Acid Mortar, which completely outshines Acid Arrow in every aspect except recharge time... and you can have two out. At its best, TA can cause -60% resistance to 10 enemies at once, while Traps can do -53.34% to 16, and for way less endurance at that.

Oil Slick Arrow and Trip Mine are about on equal footing, as OSA is streaky and Trip Mines are interruptible, but Trip Mine wins with its incredibly short (by comparison) recharge.

I mean, the only thing TA can do that Traps absolutely cannot do is... drain endurance with EMP Arrow, and the only debuff values TA puts out that are higher are -Res (by about -6%) and -Speed.

And then Traps gets defense, mez protection, and some regen.

TA isn't a poor set, it just looks meager next to Traps.

Glue Arrow & Disruption Arrow stack. Other than that, only the controls in Trick Arrows stack, with the exception of Poison Gas Arrow, which no aspect of can stack.

For the most part, no debuffs usually stack with themselves, at least not from the same caster. The only kinds of debuffs that stack are those that summon pet entities to do the actual debuff, such as Glue and Disruption Arrow.

Defender Traps is a pretty awesome set, and quite a few of the powers that were bumped up for the Defender mods are actually more powerful than they should be. It puts a lot of the other sets to shame with what it offers Defenders. Poor, poor Trick Arrows is kind of sad looking next to Traps.

I don't see what will make it a terrible set for teams. It will offer a large radius of 20ish defense to all once slotted, over 50% -Resistance with the easily stackable Acid Mortar, over 50% -Damage if both Seeker Drones hit, along with 12.5% -ToHit, and Poison Trap, which despite the complaining about what it can't do anymore, is still a powerful control.

Also, procs were not the problem with Poison Trap, they were just the most obvious effect of the problem they wanted to get rid of: the multiple clouds. The devs don't care that your power on a 90 second timer could instantly wipe out a group of minions at once, they cared that it could nearly perma hold AND damage large groups of bosses and even EBs and AVs. So asking them to remove proccing and buff some other aspect probably won't get you very far. If you want to see Poison Trap buffed, you need to prove it's underperforming. And honestly, eventhough it's nothing like how it used to be, it probably still outperforms a lot of similar powers

Deploy Seeker Drones from far away to soak up the alpha, then fly in and toebomb Poison Trap and Acid Mortar. Traps is only a poor team set if you want to play it with poor set-and-pull tactics.

I really want to make one, but I'm waiting for Pistols.

To the best of my knowledge, Assault Rifle does exactly the amount of damage it's supposed to in the hands of Defenders, considering their 0.65 ranged damage modifier. The only exception is Ignite, because no new pet with Defender level damage was made.

How 'bout that, it worked! Thanks so much!

I don't really like the second mission being 10 levels higher than the other missions, but I prefer it having enemies in it.

Well, I was in test more on a Hero when it worked, and on a villain after publishing it. But I will try and see if that helps.

At some point, the second mission of my MArc just stopped spawning Carnies when you play it.

They're selected as the enemy group. The mission is within their level ranges. They show up when I test the arc, but not when I publish it.

Anyone had this issue and know how to fix it (if there even is a fix)?

Well first, Dimension Shift is a Foe Intangibility, while Sonic Cage/Detention Field are Captures. They're similar, but with two differences:

Dimension Shift can be enhanced with Intangibility enhancements, while Sonic Cage/Detention Field cannot.

Dimension Shift applies Intangibility, Sonic Cage/Detention Field doesn't.

You can't really expect to get the higher Mag values of Sonic Cage/Detention Field along with with the ability to enhance them.

Sonic Cage/Detention Field can only enhance their effects with HOs, I think.

Also, Dimension Shift's duration is not enhanceable because attempting to "stack" it just ends up with you wasting the second application as your foe is still intangible. That is the whole reason why enhancements buff it's Mag and not it's duration. It gets a long (for most mezzes), static duration mezz effect and the ability to slot it to affect more powerful foes instead of a static Magnitude and shorter, but enhanceable duration. You're telling players that this aspect needs to change, even though it's there for their benefit.

A Galaxy!

The Defender version uses a base value of 2.5, while the other three ATs with Trick Arrows use a base value of 2.0

Defender's 2.5 * -0.125 (Melee Debuff_Dam modifier) = -0.3125 or 31.25%

Controller's 2.0 * -0.100 (Melee Debuff_Dam modifier) = -0.2 or 20%

Mastermind's 2.0 * -0.075 (Ranged Debuff_Dam modifier) = -0.15 or 15%

Corruptor's 2.0 * -0.075 (Melee Debuff_Dam modifier) = -0.15 or 15%

Now, there are some... issues with the powers' modifier. Corruptor's version is a copy of the Controller version, but that's kind of what's making it a little bugged. Had the Devs copied the MM version, it would actually be working correctly.

History lesson!

Back in the day of Trick Arrows Alpha testing, Poison Gas Arrow's debuff was created by a pseudopet. Because a pet was using the debuff, it used the pet's Melee Debuff_Dam modifier.

It may or may not have worked similar to the way it does now, but we don't know. What we do know is that the Devs didn't like something about it working this way, and so it was changed so that the debuff actually came from the caster (though the pet is still summoned, but it doesn't actually do anything except keep the gas cloud on the ground visible for twenty-some seconds).

When they did this, they never changed the modifier the power used from the Melee Debuff_Dam one to the Ranged Debuff_Dam one, BUT at that time there were only Defenders and Controllers, and for both of these ATs, their respective Debuff_Dam modifiers were the same whether using the Melee tables or the Ranged tables.

What I mean by that is:

Defender's Melee_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.125
Defender's Ranged_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.125

Controller's Melee_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.100
Controller's Ranged_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.100

So, for them, it didn't really matter which modifier it used. The problem comes up when given to the villain ATs.

Mastermind's Melee_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.100
Mastermind's Ranged_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.075

Corruptor's Melee_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.075
Corruptor's Ranged_Debuff_Dam modifier is -0.100

Why the difference between Ranged and Melee for these two, I don't really know, but let's move on.

So when Masterminds got Trick Arrows, someone probably noticed "Hey, PGA is higher than it's supposed to be, it must be using the wrong modifier" and so was swapped to the correct Ranged modifier, bringing it down from -20% to -15%.

But now Corruptors have it, and since there version was copied from the Controller version, their PGA still uses the Melee Debuff_Dam modifier, which like I said, doesn't affect Controllers, but on a Corruptor, it makes their debuff value -15% instead of -20%.

Nope, does not affect Damage Resistance buffs or debuffs.

Edit: Curses!

It also doesn't affect Damage buffs or debuffs, Regeneration buffs or debuffs, Recovery buffs or debuffs, Recharge buffs or debuffs, Mez magnitude, and a smattering of random powers throughout the game.

I was talking about just PGA and now that I think about it, I may have been mistaken. Modifiers might have confused me if I was looking at the Corruptor version and changed the drop down to MMs. MMs have a melee damage debuff modifier of 0.1 and a ranged damage debuff modifier of 0.075, and then Corruptors have the reverse, so if I was looking at the Corruptor version, then it would make the MM version look better.

But either way, Corrs PGA sits at 15% currently, and it should actually be 20%.

Corruptors' RoA does do more damage, its just 2 points more. When I said defenders had a higher base samage, I meant the damage scale is higher.

Anyway, Corruptors' Trick Arrows isn't that bugged (although I'm finding a lot of little things), it's just suffering a bit from the nature of Trick Arrows; shared "pets" and shared modifiers for slows, recharge, and mezzes means that the difference between Corruptor and MM TA will be:

1.25% higher -tohit on flash arrow
5% higher defense debuff on acid arrow
Lower endurance costs

MM PGA was buffed (in I16 I guess, but I haven't checked on Live yet) and so now, fixing the Corruptor version will only make them equal.

Basically, its not being ignored. Once the bugs are worked out, it will work exactly as its supposed to, but that'l just be pretty meh compared to the other secondaries.

Once again, I don't have anyone high enough with the Dark Mastery pool, so before I respec to try this out, can anyone confirm these?

Thanks StarGeek! I'll be going through this once I check some of them on Test, and see if there's anything borked with Traps and Assault Rifle.

Edit:

The Traps thing isn't as big of a deal as most people make it out to be.

If we assume that the Defender values are mostly where they're supposed to be, that means that the Corruptor values are as well, and that it's some of the Mastermind values that are too high, rather than the Corruptor values being too low.

So, looking over the effects and their numbers, the only differences that should be made to the Mastermind version of Traps are:

Acid Mortar's -Defense should be brought down to -15% from -20%

Seeker Drones' -ToHit should be brought down to -3.75% from -5%

Seeker Drones' -Damage should be brought down to -15% each from -20% each

Trip Mine's damage should be brought down about 35%.

New pets would have to be made for these powers, but the difference is pretty small (minus the Trip Mine one), which is probably why the devs have never done it.

For the other powers... Corruptors and MMs share the modifiers for Slows, Recharge Slows, Defense buffs, and Mezzes, and there is no modifier for Regeneration buffs/debuffs, so there's no reason to have to make new MM versions of those pets; they work as they should.

At most, I could see the Devs maybe swapping the Mastermind version of Trip Mine to use the lower damage Defender version.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying that it should or shouldn't be done! My point was that changing anything wouldn't necessarily make Traps a better set as people believe it would.

Currently, Trick Arrows is almost a duplicate of the MM version's values, including the 25% higher endurance costs (and Poison Gas Arrow is currently worse for a Corruptor than a MM).

And for Archery, Rain of Arrows' base damage is less than that of the Blaster and Defender versions, but with no reduction is recharge or endurance cost. At level 50, the difference between Corruptor's RoA and Defender's RoA is about 2 points of damage.

So, as much as I like the sets and I'll definitely be making one for that reason, I hope some bugs get worked out and maybe the combo gets a few buffs before Issue 16 goes Live.

I won't be able to make it tonight. I'm going on only 3 hours of sleep, and it wouldn't be a good idea to be up too late finishing this when I have to be up so early for work Monday.