Umbral

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The bounce mechanic: all that's required for this to work is for the attack power, on hitting, to summon a pet which will execute the same attack a second time. If that summon is automatically -1 to the summoner, then the first jump will be -1, the second will be -2, the third -3 and so on. While technically unlimited, this means that unless you are fighting very weak opponents, as soon as you hit 3 or 4 enemies the to-hit is going to drop off severely, not to mention the damage of each attack. There's no reason bounce can't work in the engine as-is.

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That's an interesting solution to the problem, but I'm not entirely sure it's possible. The only evidence I've seen of pets that aren't the level of their originator are the multiple summon pets though, I'm not sure if a reiterative method similar to the existing level variability is actually possible within the confines of the engine. I'm not going to say it's concrete either way, but I'm doubtful, since the closest similar mechanic to this (Chain Induction) uses a simpler and less variable mechanic.

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I'm not sure why you wouldn't count Rain of Fire or Ice Storm as AoEs. At any rate, I'm aware there's a range: some sets focus more on AoE than others, and this set was designed for more single-target focus than is currently available.

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I wouldn't count Rain of Fire or Ice Storm as AoEs because they don't apply within the same confines as the traditional AoEs. They're more akin to area effects than they are to real AoEs, which is why I was iffy on it. As to your "single target emphasis", you directly contradict that by having the Reflection power. You want a set that is heavily single target focused (like Ice Blast), but also capable of obscene levels of AoE damage thanks to the ability to convert all of the single target attacks into AoE attacks. You're working at cross purposes there.

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All sets are different, and you noted some examples yourself, though looking at it, perhaps Moderate damage would be most appropriate. Ice and Psi both have control powers that deal moderate damage (though hold and sleep are stronger controls than knockback, I'll note.)

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I'm considering Power Push to be a better match for the power than TK Blast or Bitter Freeze Ray. TK Blast and BFR get passes because they're not the control power of the set. Psy Blast has Scramble Thoughts and Ice Blast has Freeze Ray as their basic control power. Without a designated control power, you're entering into the Fire Blast realm of specialization, which I don't believe is a path Castle wants to continue along.

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A few points: Note that I didn't list any numbers at all for this power, leaving it wide open to balance. The range boost would be less than the click available via /Energy. Range debuffs are rare (Tsoo sorcerers being about the only ones that use them that I can think of) as are perception debuffs (certain Arachnos enemies) so neither are huge performance concerns. The to-hit resistance would be useful, but not IMO, game breaking. Keep in mind this set does not have buildup, and has no +to hit, so resiting to hit debuffs seems like a fair trade off.

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The entire problem I have with it being a passive, aside from that it does so much (and it does do a lot for a passive), is that it's a passive within a manipulation set. The Blaster secondaries are not self buff sets. Castle has stated that he finds the self buff mechanics in the Blaster secondaries the hardest to stomach and hardest to balance. Blasters are supposed to be about damage and damage with a little bit of control, not damage and self buffing with a little bit of damage and control.

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It would be balanced around being a toggle, yes, so it would provide less damage than build-up, and no to-hit bonus.

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Consider Targeting Drone, which is a toggle and is balanced against Build Up. The buff you describe, almost exclusive of numbers, is going to be better than Targeting Drone.

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I think powersets should be significantly different from each other. Devices is very different from Energy which is different from Mental. This is a good thing.

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Once again, look at stuff like Power Boost and other non-traditional powers. Castle hates them and has gone out of his way to avoid using them. You're packing the entire set with powers that would require a similar level of attention and difficulty in balance from Castle. Different does not mean good. From a balance perspective, different most often means ridiculously hard to balance because it's even harder to determine equivalence. This is why all of the power sets actually follow a similar design. The significant differences are in the few powers that are supposed to be different thanks to the incorporated variability in the basic design.

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Double Vision is not a 100% confuse, the main focus of the power is the -range.

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Having a ranged AoE with significant -range (it should be significant if it's the focus of the power) along with the ability to pump your own range with a passive is just asking for a broken combination. It will return to the days of hover sniping. The only AT that have substantial -range debuffs are those that want to be in melee. You're giving a ranged AT the ability to cripple the range of their enemies. Bad Idea.

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Sonic blast has an AoE sleep available in teir 7, but point taken, that might be too useful.

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Forgot about that one. Thanks for catching that.

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-regen of of dubious value. You'd need it rarely in a normal encounter (maybe vs arachnoids) and AVs/GMs resist it heavily. Plus, it is a melee attack, requiring you to get close to said AV/GM.

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I'm curious as to why you think everything is going to be "easily balanceable". Balance is never an easy process, especially when you're involving all kinds of weird and off the wall mechanics for doing things. Also, if you're going to consider -regen such a minor debuff, why even have it on there at all? If it's not going to do much, you might as well just put an extra DoT on there. The "it's melee so it's allowed to be stronger" argument doesn't really work. Energy Melee and Electrical Melee don't get disproportionate secondary benefits from their strong melee attacks. In fact, they've been brought in line.

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Devices has no traditional attack powers, I'll note. They aren't a requirement.

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*/Devices also breaks all of the other rules for the design of the blaster secondaries. Claiming an outlier as a reason why your set operates within the traditional confines of the power set isn't really a logical argument.

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It's an attack power: solo the teleport is irrelevant, and in a team your allies can simply refuse it.

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So you think that the teleporting your entire group to you every 20 seconds or so (because it's an attack, like you said, and follows those formulas) isn't going to get annoying? You're pretty much requiring everyone on a team with a person that uses this secondary to turn on the teleport prompt, unless they're okay with having the Blaster bounce them around 3-4 times every group.

It still doesn't address how optic blasts actually teleport his friends around him though. Sure he might make a beacon, but how are his eye blasts, that have, until now, only shown the ability to burn and push, teleporting everyone to him? The teleport doesn't make thematic sense.

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There's no to-hit buff. The confuse is an unreliable side-effect of a debuff with situational use. There's no power-boost, no build-up, just a weaker +damage toggle. It is debuff-heavy compared to other sets, granted, but the self-buffs are weak and it's low on damage. I think it's fairly well balanced, though perhaps the AoE sleep could be moved later in the set or otherwise changed.

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-Range is not a minor debuff, nor would it be situational considering the native range buff, the fact that it's AoE, and that it's being used by a range damage intensive AT. There's a reason Taunt and Confront are much more useful with it. There's also a reason that the Blaster secondaries are very debuff light and the existing debuffs were significantly reduced in effectiveness when they were examined after launch. Debuffs for blasters are crazy strong, especially when combined with the level of control and self buffing you seem to want to give.

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So an idea for balance: Have the toggle increase the end cost of the powers as well.

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Though it still does nothing for the recharge or high levels of damage. AoEs and ST attacks follow completely different balance formulas. AoEs have longer recharge times, lower damage, and greater endurance costs. Plus, there's the fact that you're converting every ST attack from the primary. That's a full attack string of fully Defiancebuffing and Defiance capable attacks. That's not single target focus.

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Again, yes, some additional coding would be needed.

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"It would need to substantially change the game engine" is not an argument for why the power is viable.

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That's actually not a bad idea....

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You're ignoring what I'm actually saying aren't you? I just told you that it's impossible to have an effect that Taunts yourself to a target because you would need to force the target to Taunt you, which the game can't.

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You can still fire your other attacks. I think it's well balanced by the self-root and the "self taunt" effect.

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You're misreading what I was saying. I never meant anything about not being able to attack. I meant being able to click one button and then walk away, which it would allow for. Plus, it's a substantial amount of animationless damage, which, considering the low potency of the damage auras, is powerful effect.

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Again, I feel that existing outside the conventions is a plus. The teir 9 is still highly situational, best used in a team. While most teir 9s focus on an anti-crowd ability, this is more of an anti-boss power. Very different, yes.

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There are reasons that the conventions work. They're there for balance. You can't easily compare a defender primary to a tanker primary. They're not the same. The same applies within power sets. Hell, the numerous rebalancings of Full Auto and Rain of Arrows, which were designed against the convention of the tier 9 demonstrate how much effort is required that those powers at least followed it somewhat. Defying convention is alright, but going way out in left field is substantially less than alright.

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And again, we already have a ton of hand and weapon origin sets. Sonic is mouth-origin, psi is head-origin, but we don't have an eye-origin set, and I'd like one. That's all.

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Sonic and psi at least have reasons for being specifically anatomically focused. Mouth = voice = sonic blasts. Head = brain = psionic blasts (though, the set actually has a number of attacks that don't have any relation to the head). How do lasers thematically apply to eyes outside of the already existing Laser Beam Eyes? It would make more sense to be attached to a weapon of some kind that simply stating "Lasers = eye blasts!".

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I was on a horrible pug over the weekend. Much faceplanting and teamwipes I was irritated (too much stress for too little reward) and couldn't quit the team fast enough when I read the following comment from the level 42 Warshade.

"Wut r enhancements?"

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LOL

I wonder if he was piled

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He was either an AE farm baby or an Ebay Account user. I hate both types, especially when they think that, just because they've got another character on their account that's a 50 that you don't. Makes me laugh to bring up my entire stable and put them in their place.

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lol I am not the best typist when there is no spellcheck obviously.

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Get Firefox. It's free, better than IE, and has an integrated spell checker.

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Anyways, how about this dripping aura? Any comments, praise, or disagreements?

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The dripping thing, while an interesting idea and possible visual effect, would be difficult. One of the reasons why the auras are fuzzy (even rocky crumble is pretty vague and just shows rocks falling out of you), is because they have to work with all models (re: all 3 body types through all of the various costume pieces and body scale manipulations). To make a truly believable and interesting "falling liquid" effect, it would need to cascade off of the outside of the target. Considering the variability in the size of appendages and other body parts (re: large gloves v. no gloves), the aura would either be invisible because it's inside the large glove or would either appear to hover off of the normal sized arm or appear as a large, solid globule.

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Please name one thing that the defender brings to the table that is not better brought by controllers?

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The actual buffs, debuffs, and heals from the Defender primary? Controllers have support scalars of .75 whereas Defenders have a 1.0. A */ff controller with maneuvers will only be able to provide 33.345% +def. A ff/* defender with maneuvers will provide 44.46% +def. The difference between an FF troller and an FF fender is the difference between taking 33.31% of incoming damage and taking 11.08% of incoming damage. Defenders support better than Controllers.

Please try to actually learn the numbers before you make claims.

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And yet both reach the defense cap... what good is the extra 33%?

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The defense cap is 45%. Neither of them will reach it alone. For the love of god, learn the friggin' game mechanics.

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so i'm wondering if it's possible with SD and if not how close?

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You can get pretty close up there. I believe that most IO builds actually manage ~80% or better def debuff resistance.

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also i've noticed that alot of builds seem to be sloting HO's in Active Def (the mez protection click) and i know that Act Def offers some of the def debuff resist, but it's only standard sloting of endred and/or rech, does this improve the def debuff resist values with HO's of a def buff orientation? and also are it's values stackable with itself at all ?

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The HOs will increase the def debuff resistance, which is why they're in there. Stacking Active Defense also stacks the def debuff resist along with the mez protection.

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Please name one thing that the defender brings to the table that is not better brought by controllers?

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The actual buffs, debuffs, and heals from the Defender primary? Controllers have support scalars of .75 whereas Defenders have a 1.0. A */ff controller with maneuvers will only be able to provide 33.345% +def. A ff/* defender with maneuvers will provide 44.46% +def. The difference between an FF troller and an FF fender is the difference between taking 33.31% of incoming damage and taking 11.08% of incoming damage. Defenders support better than Controllers.

Please try to actually learn the numbers before you make claims.

Well, considering what Kin/Ice brings to the party (+end, +recov, +dam, +rech) and what it lacks (AoE damage), I'd suggest Spines/*. You'll get plenty of AoE damage plus the additional recharge and recovery will help alleviate the primary Spines/* problems. As for a secondary, try */Invuln (taunt aura + Spines, decent debuff resists, nice dam resist to stack with huge -dam) or */DA (exotic resists, damage aura, control auras, but has end woes that Kin takes pretty good care of).

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Looking to roll a blaster, however I have some concerns. I have heard that they are great out of the gate till about level 20 or so, then they are stagnant and all other AT's are coming into their own, is this true? Also I heard it is very difficult to solo a blaster in the teens and above, is this also true?

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While it's true that Blasters start out stronger than most of the other ATs (because defiance lets them ignore mez as well as having huge damage and range to protect themselves rather than the anemic defenses of pre-SO everything else), I wouldn't say they stagnate. They don't have the same defensive abilities of the other blueside ATs, but they do have ST and AoE damage in spades. If you manage to find a good team with buffs and aggro well in hand, you'll be exploding stuff faster than anyone else in the game.

As to soloing, it's a completely different playstyle than most Blasters are used to, but it's not impossible. On a team, you can go crazy because you've got buffs, heals, and aggro control to keep you standing while you obliterate anything that moves. While you're solo, you don't have that. You've actually got to think about what you're doing and who to kill. You've got to use your secondary and control powers to reduce incoming damage. The people that complain about Blaster soloing are generally the same people that want to play the same while solo and while on a team or want to be able to solo like a Scrapper (which are the soloing kings).

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Unless I was seeing things, I saw a kat scrapper send out nrg torrent with his sword, thus no redraw.

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You were. Powers (except for Brawl and the origin power) that don't use a weapon in the base animation and don't directly belong to a power set that uses the current weapon drawn will cause redraw.

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But my question is why wouldn't the dmg aura be as often as the mezz aura?

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The devs specifically programmed in a 10 second cooldown period for procs in toggles and passive powers. If it weren't in there, toggles like RttC and Invincibility (which have an activation rate of 1 seconds) would be able to deal damage greater than the actual damage auras (.2*71.8=14.36 damage per target per second; Blazing aura is 13.76 damage every 2 seconds). Damage auras (which have an activation rate of 2 seconds) would be able to increase their damage by more than double, beyond ED and the damage cap, with a single slot (.2*71.8=14.36 damage per activation period; 14.36>13.76). It was to prevent the procs from becoming the only thing worth slotting in toggles.

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I have read this thread Umbral, and I get that you and Sam don't think it's possible. You guys seem to know alot about programming and codes, so maybe your right However your not a redname, so I don't take your opinion as law. I think a toggle is fully capable of putting your character into a mode that does minor fire damage whenever you attack, or has a chance for KB whenever you attack, or do minor toxic damage whenever you attack, ect. We can agree to disagree.

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The problem with saying "You're not a dev, thusly everything you say about having to change the engine isn't law" (please notice the correct spelling of "you're") is that it could be used to explain any problem. There are already powers in game that are supposed to act in the way you want, but they don't. The devs could have done the code work to make it work that way, but they didn't. This shows us that it's either too hard to add it and thusly not worth the coding effort or (as I'm pretty sure) completely impossible (because the powers can only alter global attributes, not power specific attributes is what would be needed to be applied in order to do it like you want). You can't just brush it off and say, "It's still possible unless the devs say 'no'", especially when there is a lot of evidence of in-game attempts at similar systems that were forced to operate exactly as we describe.

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Bad Team Bingo

We could use some better square material

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How about "Pool powers before AT powers".

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Normal to-hit is a base of 75% against an even con minion.
Controller single target mezzes has a 90% base.
Controller AoE Holds have a 60% base. (or so, don't remember the exact number)
In comparison, Cloak of Fear has a 50% base to-hit.

It's accuracy is that bad.

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Just because we're talking about the screwy semantics of attack mechanics, I feel compelled to let people know that the base accuracy of those attacks is still 75%. Those hit chances are final values for those powers against even level minions without any slotting or outside buffs.

The acc mods (which are actually more important because a low acc mod means you're getting even less real benefit from acc slotting) are 1, 1.2, .9, and .67. Slotting a single even level acc SO (33% enhancement) into each of those would make the numbers 1.33, 1.596, 1.197, and .8911. More slotting only exacerbates the difference.

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Being able to choose what ammo to use at anytime is kinda the whole point, so having one botton that clicks thru the different types randomly wouldn't work IMO.

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Good thing that's not what Sam is suggesting. It's cycling through the various ammo types in a distinct pattern. None>Fire>Cold>Other. It's not random at all.

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Just because there is currently no toggle that adds damage/effects to your attacks, doesn't mean it would work. It's not like power customization or something where the way the game is built just won't allow it.

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Actually it is. We went over all of the reasons why it would have to be done this way, unless there is some pretty significant code screwery done to tweak it. Please, actually read the relevant portions earlier on in the thread. Sam and I actually got pretty in depth as to the reasons why it would have to be done the way we describe.

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See, For me, what makes AV soloing worth bragging about is the fact you've achieved enough Damage output, enough Survivability AND enough End Recovery.

Miss any one of those three and it's not possible. (without insps at least)

So coming full circle, I just don't think an SO build could pull off all three, but it could come close, very close.

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I believe DM/Regen could do it. I might try to make an all-SO build in build slot 2 just to try it. I know way back in the day my DM/Regen soloed Maestro as an AV, although it took forever, and that was back in 2006 long before inventions (but also before AVs were made more resistant to tohit debuffs I believe). Not the toughest AV in the world, but I think the most important point is that over a very long fight I managed to not run out of endurance, which is one of the sticking points for scrappers with enough damage in theory.

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Hear that, Umbral? Now you GOTTA solo an AV using only SOs!

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Am I being called out? Wha?

Does it count if I did it years ago before the EB/AV change? I solo'd every single arc on my DM/Regen back in the day, but, then again, that was with toggle IH and pre-ED. The only ones I couldn't take out were the highly neg resistant AVs, but that was generally because they had absurd regen back then. I'll look into setting up a build, but I doubt it would actually work. One of the problems with running */Regen pre-IOs against AVs is that you have a problem keeping up the mitigation to actually make your regeneration and heals keep you up.

DM/WP might be a better contender, especially if facing a psy AV like Malaise or Mother Mayhem.

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Anyone else got any interesting stories to share about bad team mates?

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Dear god, yes. Most of them involve idiot players that think they know the game being complete idiots. The most recent slew I remember have been Scrappers and Tankers.

I got an Invuln Tanker that had slotted Tough but didn't take Temp Invulnerability or Unyielding. When I asked him why he took Tough, he responded by saying that Tough is better than Temp Invuln. I then pointed out that Temp Invuln is actually lower end cost and twice the resist. He told me I was wrong, even after I linked him both powers (because refusing to admit you're wrong, even in the face of absolute evidence is evidence that you're right!). As to his lack of Unyielding, he responded that Invincibility would keep him safe because he wouldn't get hit by mez effects thanks to the +def. When he spent half of a Freakshow mission complaining about being stunned, I told him that that's what Unyielding is for. He still believed that Invincibility was good enough.

Another badTank was an Ice/*. For the first, he had Energy Absorption but pretty much never used it (after 2 missions, I told him it was actually good, he told me it wasn't even on his bar). He didn't have either of his taunt auras, refused to use the only armor toggle he actually took (Frozen Armor), and actually used Hibernate mid AV fight, shedding aggro and killing half the group. A number of times I had to actually remind him to turn Wet Ice back on after it dropped mid fight because he wasn't paying attention to his blue bar.

Another annoyance of mine was a */Regen scrapper that didn't take Quick Recovery but took Stamina and then complained about his endurance consumption. Of course, when I asked why he hadn't taken Quick Recovery, he said that */Regen didn't have it (thinking it was Accelerated Metabolism). When I finally got him to realize it did, he claimed that Stamina was better, which is why everyone took it. When I linked it, he then claimed that it was better because his enhanced Stamina gave 48% +recovery and the linked (and thusly unenhanced) Quick Recovery only gave 30%. I immediately facepalmed.

I am constantly amazed by the number of people that think they know the game, think they've got an awesome build, and think that they performing better than anyone else in the universe (much less, the team) but, constantly show a complete lack of knowledge or skill where the game is actually concerned. They're primarily AE farm babies who are stepping out of AP for the first time upon getting the invite from me ("How do I get to Brickstown/Founder's Falls/Peregrine Island?"), but I've met a few that actually play normally but are complete idiots where actual game knowledge is concerned.

I'm not a fan of it, if not only because it is a pigeonhole powerset (re: Cyclops clones), but also because 2 of the powers in your primary wouldn't work in the game engine as it is now (Reflection and Stare Down), but you're also operating off of some flawed assumptions about the Blaster power sets.

Blaster powersets already have a very heavy emphasis on single target damage. Discounting traditional nukes (which are, by design, not really supposed to be counted because they're all generally special case), Blaster power sets actually tend to have 2 rather than 3 AoEs specifically designed for damage. Electrical Blast, Energy Blast, Ice Blast, Psychic Blast, and Sonic Blast all have only 2 AoEs. Ice only has 1 if you don't count Ice Storm, and Fire only has 2 unless you count Rain of Fire. Archery has 3 because they've got crashless nukes which provide it with a third, hard hitting, real, functional AoE that the sets are actually balanced around elsewhere. Assault Rifle is, by sheer weirdness of design, an exception. It's got either 4 or 5 depending on whether you consider Ignite to be an AoE or not (it's like Burn).

Next, for a Blaster primary powerset, the control power (re: Optic Overload) is supposed to be low damage. You don't get to have 2 high damage (re: tier 3) powers, especially if one of them is the control power of the set. If you purposefully excluded a control power for design reasons, you're getting in on Fire's design, which, I'm sure Castle wants to avoid (Fire is already a disproportionate favorite of the player base). Optic Overload should be a minor damage attack most likely or a moderate damage attack at the highest (though Ice only gets away with it by replacing the second real AoE with a more highly damaging control power).

As to the secondary, you're including too massive non-activation powers. Depth Perception is just brokenly strong (multi-tier debuff resistance and a range buff, all of which can't be taken off?). X-Ray Vision, assuming you're trying to have it work as a replacement for Build Up, isn't going to work very well either. Targeting Drone is the only BU power available to blasters that isn't activated, and it's pretty well nerfed into the ground to account for that. The numbers on both of those (especially Depth Perception) would be brought down so hard that they're only barely noticeable. There's just too many non-traditional powers for the set to be balanced around. Confuse (which only exists in a very minor form in Mental Manipulation), Sleep (which is only in a single set and that set's tier 9), -regen (in the high damage melee no less), sleep, multiple debuffs, several self buffs, a team teleport AoE attack thing, and only 2 traditional damage powers (I'm ignoring beacon because the team teleport would severely hinder its actual functionality, not to mention what it does makes next to no sense in the confines of the power) when the rest of the sets aim for at least 4. You took all of the weird support and funkiness from Devices and fused it with the stronger powers of Energy Manipulation and Mental Manipulation while seeming to cherry pick only the most powerful aspects from all three.

Concerning the stuff that just won't happen for engine reasons, you may want to actually think about how those powers would need to be implemented to have effects like that. To get Reflection to work how you want it (Chain Induction style leaping for all of the single target attacks that are all of different strength and decrease in strength as they continue to leap), you'd need to create an entire suite of individual power leaps that all have different damage. The problem with this is that you want the jumps to be unlimited (which is not gonna happen simply because it would completely avoid the target cap), the summoned pet would need to summon itself and, if that happens, there's no way for the damage and accuracy to diminish per target. All of this completely ignores the fact that you're, functionally, turning all of the single target attacks into AoE, or at least multi-target, attacks, which is completely counter to the intended design, as well as being completely broken because it's not doing anything to the power's actual costs to account for the huge additional utility (AoEs and ST attacks have completely different DPE and DPR equations).

Staredown is impossible because it's impossible to prevent a player from changing targets. The only existing mechanic to do so would be Taunt, but it's impossible to Taunt yourself to a target. It doesn't help that you're pretty much creating a "toggle on and leave your chair" situation because the damage is all done via the toggle rather than via actual player interaction. It doesn't help that you're trying to create a power that exists outside of the standard conventions for Tier 9 powers, which is going to take a significant amount of other working around to account for (look at Assault Rifle and Archery for examples of this).

What really kills the entire power set idea for me, though, is the fact that you don't really have any reason for the set to be Optic Blasts aside from a few power names (which don't really have any bearing on the game really). It could just as easily be Laser Blast and not be such a visual and thematic pigeonhole, especially since there's no real reason I can comprehend why Optic Blasts would need to be fire/energy damage rather than any other kind of damage.

Thoroughly /unsigned.

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Defenders have nothing to complain about until Corruptors are addressed. They have a ranged damage primary and are the lowest damage AT redside.

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They're also the Defender equivalents for redside. Keep in mind that Castle has told the players repeatedly that whether a power set is primary or secondary has no bearing on its power. All that the primary/secondary disparity serves to do is alter acquisition level.

Something else to keep in mind about Corruptors is that, thanks to Scourge, their higher damage cap, and use of Blaster primaries, they're actually capable of better damage than Dominators (which are being brought up to rough equivalence with the I15 Dominator buffs).

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You'd still use the toggle idea to add different affects, but you would get three different toggles from one power called Ammo Diversification.

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The only way to make this workable would be for the powers to be linked to the "real" power (in your case, Ammo Diversification) in the same manner that the Nova and Dwarf attacks are linked to the selection of the choice of the Nova/Dwarf toggle. It still creates the problems posited by Samuel and myself earlier insofar as only being able to slot end redux and possibly recharge (I described all of the problems with this several pages back). The other problem is that, unless the selected power actually had some effect, it would be a pointless placeholder (which I don't think the devs want to have).

The best workaround for the second problem (there isn't really one for the first) would be to just make the power something that actual has a real effect of some kind. I would suggest renaming the power "Reload" and having it be a mid-long self buff of some kind, possibly a small non-stackable, easily perma recharge buff. All it would need would be an additional note on the power description that taking this power also gives the user access to several other special rounds.

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One toggle would add Fire DoT and KB to your attacks, one would add cold damage and a slow effect to your attacks, and one would add toxic damage with a -resistance affect.

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Rather than using those 3 special effects (bonus damage + special effect), which are all a bit overpowered insofar as combined effects go, it would probably be better to actually use some of the suggestions that Samual and I suggested earlier, such as Incendiary (Fire damage), Armor Piercing (5% chance for double damage, or a substantial -def), and Cryogenic (minor cold and -rech/-move).

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What if the mobs run in and out of the damage aura repeatedly during the 10 seconds?

Does the system remember them or does it reset each time they re-enter the aura?

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I simply checks the proc for every target for the first activation after the 10 second waiting period. It doesn't have to bother tracking targets like that. It just checks the individual activation cycles.

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And how do these AoE procs work in a click to activate power? Say I had a PBAOE power with a 4 second cooldown and 1 second activation time.

Would the proc potentially go off every time I click the power vs. every mob in range or would it have a hidden 10 second cooldown before it could attempt to proc again?

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Straight damage procs in click powers check every activation. They have no cool down.

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Theoretically, it would be possible for Taunt to grant its targets an extremely large Knockback Resistance buff, which would reduce any Knockback into Knockdown (since Knockdown is just Knockback with a <1 mag). Not that this would be a good idea, but it might be possible.

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The problem with this is that it's going to be turning high mag KB into KD (KD with mag < .75) and low mag KB into nothing (KD needs to have mag over a certain threshold to have any effect at all, iirc).

The reason for this is that KB resistance actually affects the magnitude of the power. Making it high enough to turn a mag 12 KB into a < .75 mag KD (1600% resistance) would also turn a KD into nothing (.67/16 = .041 mag), which why I stated the need for either mez conversion or mez mag defaulting (neither of which exists atm).

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They deal the most amount of Damage, and have the least amount of Hit Points.

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I'm fairly certain that this statement is completely false.

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On a pure scalar metric, they don't deal as much damage as Stalkers, Scrappers or Brutes because of their inability to push their damage above what their base scalar + damage cap allows for (re: Brutes get around this by having a huge +dam cap). However, on a damage output metric, they're hard to beat. A fire blaster is pretty much guaranteed to outdamage anything in game by a substantial margin. This is mostly due to the combination of substantial AoE capability and significant single target damage ability plus a comparatively high DPA for most of their attacks.

As to hit points, they don't have the lowest hit points (check here if curious). They have the same hit point cap as the low hit point ATs (except for the EATs, which share the "tier 2" hp cap with Scrappers). They actually share the same hit points as Stalkers.

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title says it, looking for someone with Anti Matter mission, need this AV for the accolade

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He's always a hard one, considering the only time you fight him (for actual kill credit) is at the very end of Tina MacIntyre's story arc (there's also a non-arc mish after you finish the first arc, but you've still got to be in the 40-45 level range). You could always run the Ouro arc if you can't find someone who already has it. It might actually be faster.

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Add a "KB to KD/KU" conversion aspect to Taunt/Guantlet so that anything under the influence of a tanker's taunt effect isn't sent flying away.

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I'm curious as the whether mez effect conversion is even possible within the confines of the game engine. AFAIK, there isn't any existing conversion functionality that exists between multiple discrete mez types (KB and KU) nor is there a way to default the magnitude of a mez effect to a specific value (KB to KD). Actually doing something like this would probably involve a significant and largely unneeded amount of code screwery, especially since I'm pretty sure most people are perfectly happy with how Taunt works already. It's already gotten a significant increase to its functionality thanks to the 75% -range debuff.

I got with full Obliteration. 66% acc, 96% dam, 18.55% end, 89.93% rech, plus, you get 3% damage, 9% accuracy, 5% recharge, and 3.75% melee defense. Quite possibly one of the best suites of set bonuses you can get.