je_saist

I can't say I'm that attached to how granite... looks. Yes, I get a kick out of a really tiny character suddenly turning 7 feet tall... but I could get over the costume being changed.

Something creeped into my mind on a previous thread, the one about reworking Defenders Negligence inherent. One of the posters said this:

Part of the problem with defenders is coming up with a consistent way to buff each avatar with a single base AT buff. One of the suggestions I hear often is for Defenders to have some way to buff their heals...

Only, Force Field, Sonic Resonance, and Trick Arrow don't get heals. Cold Dom, Dark Miasma, Kinetics, Radiation Emission, and Storm Summoning do get a single heal each. But it's either a really weak heal to begin with, or it's a stat buff with a heal attached. Basically, in the current defender lineup, only the Empath would really benefit from a base AT boost that powers up heals.

One of the solutions to Negligence that I've seen is for a Dominator styled buff / debuff power. Unlike Dominators, it's not tied to attacking, but tied to using your buffs / debuffs. As you use buff / debuff's, your Power Bar raises. When it fills, you can activate a Defense! power and effectively double the power of your buffs and debuffs for a limited time.

Only... the Defenders already get Power Boost as an epic power... And most defenders take the Power Mastery set just for that reason. Yeah, it's got a 2 minute recharge for a 12 second power if you push the recharge into ED... but so what... it's a killer buff.

Reworking the Defender base AT to do what Power Boost does as an inherent would be great. It would mean Defenders could be a little bit more flexible in what Epic Powers they took.

yet, the devs would have to deal with a metric ton of whining from people who already have built and specced their defenders around Power Build Up for the past 4+ years.

I just made this suggestion over in Jay's costume thread, asking for french maids (yet again) and Chef outfits. While I was typing it... I realized that such costumes might be worth more to Paragon Studios as a booster pack. Not that I've conducted a scientific pole or anything, but french maid outfits have been on wishlists for years... and I think a large percentage of the player base might be willing to pay extra for it.

So, here's the pitch. A new booster pack, titled Home-Ec. The story behind the booster pack is that Icon has started selling battle-ready costume parts to Home-Ec students from Paragon University. Of course, established heroes are able to browse Icon's new catalog of items.

Edit : Okay. Since I obviously didn't make this clear enough for the forums, I'm going to spell it out, in bold, because I'm annoyed.

For the Chef:

• Battle Ready Front Apron: Capable of withstanding bullets, fire, and the occasional wild salmon : GUYS COSTUME PART
• Battle Ready Chefs Cap: never again will the smoke from your grill get in your hair : GUYS COSTUME PART
• Frying Pan : Mace : for that extra moment when you just need to hit something on the head, really, really, really hard
• Kitchen Knives : Blades : Slice and dice with the best of them :
• Salad Shooter : Assault Rifle : THAT IS -NOT- THE PROPER WAY TO USE A SALAD SHOOTER!
• Lighting a Grill : Emote : picnic under Atlas! Picnic in Cap! Picnic Atop Loony the Mad's Place in Shardsville!

For the Maid:

• Battle Ready French Maid Costume : Ooo La La, knock em dead : GIRLS COSTUME PART
• Battle Ready Bonnet : Keeps the Sun, and the Hellions, out of your hair : GIRLS COSTUME PART
• Feather Duster : Mace : it was expensive, but the streets of Paragon are so dirty, you had your feathers lined with impervium
• Extended Feather Duster : Blades : Years of fighting dust have given you an ability to wield your extended duster like a rapier. Good thing it's Impervium Coated
• Sweeping the Floor : Emote : Pull out a broom and sweep the ground. You'll need a pressure washer for the blood stains though

Special Power for Home-Ec Students : Teleport to University Campus Every 30 minutes. Never be late for class again.

I'm well aware that there is a game limitation on the number of like-IO's that can be used to generate a particular buff. E.G. if you have a melee type with the Mako's Bite set, you can only use 5 sets of Mako's bite before no longer getting the IO buffs.

However, such limitations are not defined on the website, nor are they defined in the /help system of the game itself, nor in the introduction to IO's on both the Villain and Hero sides.

So, I'm not sure if I've actually got a genuine bug, or just an undocumented limit.

What I have right now is a grav / therm-rad controller with the Epic Psionic Mastery set. I have 3 5 slot Decimation Sets, two 5 slot Positron's Blast Sets, and one 4 slot Expedient Reinforcement set. The 5 slot IO buffs for Decimation and Posi's blast consists of a 6.25% recharge boost. The 4 slot IO buff for Expedient Reinforcements is also a 6.25% recharge boost.

Theoretically, I should have a 37.5% Large Improved Recharge Time Bonus. However, the game itself only records a 31.25% recharge boost under Conbat Attributes.

What I do not know is if the game is erroneously applying the 5 limit IO Buff to completely different sets, or if the 5 limit IO buff applies to specific buffs, regardless of what generates those buffs, and as indicated, the game and accompanying official documentation neglects to cover subjects like this at all.

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Is there still so many problems with I14 that they need to shut down the servers every morning?

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Unless, or until, Cryptic has changed servers from Windows base to a Unix or Linux base, offline server maintenance is a fact of life you'll have live (and play) with.

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The MA as a store is not good. Anything that nullifies existing content is not good.

The market is almost an entire issue of content that has all but been rendered obsolete. I see that as a waste of dev time.


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I have to disagree, if I had a say I would get rid of the blackmarket/ww in a heartbeat. It was nothing but a headache unless one wanted to play profiteer. Sorry I play games to have fun, if I wanted to flip stuff I would get a job in ws.

My main gripe was it wasn't optional at all like it was supposed to be. Casual players had no way of ever getting enough $$ to buy anything worthwhile, and yet with the way drops work I seem to have such lousy luck, doing even regular tf's would not assure you would ever get your io's filled. (Speaking mainly redside where the population or supply/demand is just plain depressing.)

The MA store is a godsend to players like me and I'm sorry you don't feel that way.

If MA gets "fixed" or taken away as you suggest I might as well leave. I have had enough sleeps, snipes and confuses to last me a lifetime as well as immoblizes and the funny thing is I have 0 characters that can use any of these. Not to mention they sell for less in the market than vendoring them. Rare or not. bah

I really hate that loot *was* added to this game, but its here to stay so we have to make the best of it one way or another.

The only other option is allowing people to choose what drop they want from a TF/arc/whatever. Let people pick a recipe and be done with it. At least with the ma I have a better chance at rolling a lotg, I have 0 and many 50's...ugh

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*blinks*

okay. unless I'm wrong, "loot" has been in the game since day 1 as droppable enhancements. What the heck are you on about?

Doc: you didn't actually read the proposal that I made for a Villain equiv of Posi did you...

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I'm also in agreeance that the rewards for AE are to high. This regards both XP and tickets. People can level to 30 or 40 in less than a day. A higher ticket cap my be nice for people who do want to store tickets.

AE is now more important than major task forces once were because there is more to be gained with less effort. I hate seeing years of work develping the primary stories being replaced by weeks(if that) of work to create a farm mission in AE.

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Actually I think adding "ticket storage" as a SG base option would be a good solution there to the ticket cap.

For me though, I think what really irks me is that one of the killer features] of CoH has rapidly turned the game from a must play into a what's on the PS3 and Wii that I haven't touched lately. And it's not the game itself. I love CoH. I love the gameplay, the costume creation, the interaction with other players.

It's constant stream of join an AE farm? tells... The number of new players who don't realize there's a lot more to the game than player created content accessed in AP... and the fact that most of AE is just simply junk.

The idea is that lessening the rewards for playing AE would lessen the number of people farming it and give a chance for the story creators to shine through is perhaps flawed. There have been multiple changes made to the game to discourage farming in general. Influence, exp, prestige, and salvage drops have been decreased on certain developer missions. Many common farmable missions in PI now require all players to be in the zone to play them. However, such changes haven't stopped the farmers.

I can easily see a reduction in AE rewards not impacting the farming at all. Players will just take longer to get the same effect out of the system.

As I see it, there are two ways to do this... carrot and stick. The developers can either punish players by making AE so un-inviting that nobody wants to use it...

or the developers can make other aspects of the game so appealing, players will find better value in developer created content than in AE content.

Or a combination of the two...

So, here's an extended proposal, and some of these actions I know aren't going to sit well with a large quantity of players.

Step 1: Stick: Remove the Gold recipe rolls from AE.

Currently you can only outright buy recipes with Task Force and Mission Reward merits. Which is great if you specifically want to purchase a single Miracle, Luck of the Gambler, or so on. However, as I've witnessed on multiple global channels, the Gold roles are handing out many of these extremely valuable and rare recipes on a regular basis. Which is great... only the current balance of earning these recipes heavily favors farming tickets in AE over going out and running Positron, Cap'SF, and so on.

By removing the Gold Recipe roll, players will find better value in going out and doing task forces and real missions in the pursuit of the best IO's.

***

Step 2: carrot: Positron Equivelent for Villains

I can't hammer on this topic loud enough or often enough to get the point across. As much as people hate PosiTF, it's great for racking up prestige and influence for high levels, and helps a lot in getting level-pacted avatars up past their travel powers.

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Step 3: Stick: reduce rewards in AE

Already discussed. While in most cases the current reward benefits favor running real missions, select players have figured out how to tweak MA to give better ticket values or better exp values.

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Step 4: Carrot / Stick: Buff TF / SF / Mish merit rewards based on conditional objectives

here's one the developers are going to hate to implement and a large percentage of the player base will hate if it gets implemented. Currently select groups of avatars are speed running ITF like KTF used to be run. Hit only the stuff that needs to be killed, and move on. The devs handled speed-running on KTF by making Mary a requirement to kill ten times in a row. Players complained, but the devs largely held their ground, and KTF was better for it.

What I think the devs should do is add conditional awards to Task Force Completion.

Example: Complete MSTF, get double Merits.

Complete ITF with first two maps cleared of enemies, get 50% extra merits

Complete Eden Trial with final room cleared: get 25% extra merits

Complete Caves Trial with no deaths: get 50% extra merits.

Such conditional merit objectives give players additional reasons to go do developer created events, and to do those events as the developers either largely intended, or to add in additional challenges.

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Step 5: carrot : decrease time between Freedom Phalanx TF and equivalent main Villain SF runs.

Currently players who run task forces have to wait 24 hours between task forces to run them again. I propose turning the clock down on the main set of task forces for each side to 12 hours. This will make it easier for level-pacted players to justify two or three task-forces over a weekend where they probably won't hit the level cap on the first run.

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I could really go on about what can be done to fix the reward sytem so that players find value in doing everything the game has to offer... but I'll cut my list there.

Not sure if this has been talked about yet...

but hair color and hats.

Some versions of hats, like the new [i]witch[/o] hats, combine the color of the hat in order to make the color the of hair.

Would be really nice if hair color was separated from the hat.

Okay... where to start:

Subjective opinion : the prestige and exp rewards are too high in MA.

I say this because it used to be fun and sit around Atlas Park. Host a costume contest, talk with other players, recruit for supergroups, show new players the ropes, etc. etc. For the past week, for every 30 minutes I've spent in an Atlas Park on 3 different servers, roughly 3/4 of the broadcast chat is promotions of AE farms. I don't mean AE Mish. I mean people who explicitly broadcast : Looking For AE farm, or AE farm looking for players

Okay, I know that Freedom's been bad about the farming for years. I've gotten somewhat used to loading into Freedom's PI and seeing a level 5 asking for a farming team. Now that kind of behavior is spreading to other servers, and it's honestly pathetic.

I'm not saying that players shouldn't get some experience, prestige, or influence, from MA, and the difference is pretty dramatic as is. However, I think the average MA rewards need to be cut drastically.

Perhaps a better way to handle this would be for Dev's Choice missions to get half the current rewards, while hall of fame arcs get quarter current benefits, and everything else get one eighth current benefits.

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Subjective Opinion: Ticket drops need to be evened out for buff avatars

I like to play Buff Avatars. I've got a kin, a storm, a therm rad, a rad, a sonic, cold dom... if it's got buffs... or debuffs... I've probably got one.

So it annoys the living daylights out of me that tickets largely seem to be based on how much damage one does, whether or not one buffs. I go into a mish with a scrapper, tank, or brute, and they get a heck of a lot more tickets than my buff players. In one case, a fire tank gained nearly ten times the amount of tickets as the sonic I was playing.

okay... here's my biggest pet peeve with the custom critter creation tools:

THERE IS NO WAY TO SET A BUFF / DEBUFF PATTERN

Specifically speaking, when I place allies into a mission, they always continuously attack any target. The only way I am able to get any kind of buffs out of an ally is by doing this:

set preference attack to melee

take controller power set on easy

take defender buff power set on extreme

By doing this, I managed to get one fortitude and 2 clear minds out of an empath ally. Granted after those buffs wore off I never got any more, and I still haven't gotten buffs from kinetic allies, sonic allies, rad allies, therm rad allies, and so on.

About the only good news to this is that enemy custom critters are just as bad about using buffs / debuffs. Kinda pathetic when I give an Elite Boss opponent rad blast / rad debuff and never get LR'd.

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So here's my suggestion: add in some finer grained tools for controlling enemy critters with buff powersets.

Add an additional three sub options to fighting preference:

attack: custom critter focus's on using their attack powers

buff: custom critter prioritizes powers that offer buffs

debuff: custom critter prioritizes powers that offer debuffs

If possible, actually put these on a sliding or ranking scale, so that you can you can tell an enemy to focus on debuffs and attacks, but not worry about buffing it's lewys; or conversely, tell an ally to focus on buffs, debuffs, and maybe turn attacking off completely. While the buff / debuff changes won't make any difference on a custom critter with only attacks, it could really help when creating storylines that feature or include players that are known for their buffs and debuffs, not attacks... like Rave Kitty, Zeria Sundae, or Fractured Existence.

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I would like to see a snowbeast mission that drops candy canes as salvage.
I love the new ski runs, and wish they were acessable for longer

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The suggestion has been made before to allow Ski-Slope access as a SG / VG unlockable.

Perhaps it is time to re-suggest that idea.

okay. Haven't even bothered to read any of the other posts, so these probably have been up before.

New Ski-Slope : seems heavily developed for avatars that are 30+ in levels. Avatars level 20-30 supposedly can achieve gold rankings if both Jumping and Running speeds are capped, although I've yet to be able to duplicate this myself.

Sub level 20 avatars are just plain out of luck on getting gold times on the ski slopes because of the speed limits due to level.

Suggested Fix: Removing the Level Speed cap in the Pocket D zone.

Advisory : Remove the level speed caps in Shadow Shard zones period, and raise the cap on flying in Shadow Shard zones as well. :: In-game logic to do so? Gravity and physics work differently, hence large rocks hanging literally in the middle of nowhere. Heroes and Villains find the physical limits on their movements have been lifted.

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Bug : Mission rewards not applying on Baby New Years Missions even if avatar is soloing.

Have yet to personally experience this issue. I've only heard about it.

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Bug : Baby New Year is Ugly.

I know of a global chat channel that was threatening to /bug Jay into redesigning Baby New Year. While I realize that this isn't exactly a bug, it does lead into a real bug with the Baby New Year.

Bug : NPC's follow function is effectively broken

Long standing bug that probably requires an update to the actual game engine. Symptoms include minor geography items like rocks and bumps preventing Line of Sight on Baby New Year, even if player has physical line of sight, or is standing within 3 in game feet of Baby New Year; Baby New Year pulling a Fusionette and going whoever knows where on its own; Baby New Year travel doesn't account for player travel, in my specific case a 41 spines / fire scrapper with no travel powers enabled getting outside of Baby New Year's tracking just on swift and movement boosts.

Suggested Fix : The follow-system itself needs to be overhauled. A temp fix would be to assign a similar AI to NPC's that owned pets get, and to match NPC run speeds with player run speeds.

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Bug : Winter's Gift IO Proc doesn't

Basically I can't figure out the behavior of the Winter's Gift IO proc. After making one and slotting it on the aforementioned lvl 41 spines / fire scrapper's super jump, I got a 20% debuff resistance note in the power monitoring system.

Promptly going to Ourobous and exemping down to 14 resulted in the Winter's Gift IO de-activating. My avatar has superjump at level 14, so I immediately filed a /bug in-game stating that the Winter's Gift IO wasn't proccing correctly.

However, when I ran a Positron Task Force last night on the same avatar, Winter's Gift Sporadically activated. No combination of zoning or turning Super Jump on or off would activate the power... but I would be in the middle of a mob, and suddenly I'd have 20% slow resistance, and a graphically glitched Winter's Gift icon under the health bar (which is another bug).

Basically, I'm not sure how Winter's Gift Proc is supposed to Proc. If it's a level based proc, it shouldn't have been active at all during the Positron TF. If it's a power based proc with a time limit, turning SJ on and off should have activated it. If it's a power based constant proc, merely turning SJ on should have activated the power, but the power kept activating when Combat Jumping was turned on. If it's a static proc that always procs regardless of level or power state, it's broken.

Suggested Fix : ... requires coding. I'm not that good.


Bug : Winter's Gift IO icon under health bar is broken.

Sometimes under the health bar where the rest of the buffs are shown on my avatar I'll have a double sized Showflake. Clicking on the snowflake reveals that it's supposed to be the Winter's Gift Proc.

looking through this, it seems like my original assessment on Gamenikki in regards to shields just not being that good on test holding up on Live servers.

I think a similar event has occurred with shields that occurred with one of the villain armors, and Evil Gecko already brought this up on page two referencing castle.

The raw defense numbers for Shield on a Tank can add up to be very good as long as 3 team-mates are in range of Phalanx Fighting and all defensive powers are capped into ED.

However, raw defense is never the whole story. As I understand the accuracy system there is always a 5% change an attack will miss, no matter what, and a 5% change an attack will hit, no matter what.

One of the big issues with my ice tank is that anything that is able to hit through my defense hits for full damage. The fix of course is to add in some resistance to Pointless Permafrost fixing the major glaring weakness.

Shield is in a similar boat. For an aggro gathering power-set, it has no heals and low resistance. The result is that in realistic gameplay, it just doesn't hold up as well as the numbers indicate it should.

My personal take on fixing shields remains the same... let Grant Cover work on the caster. That change alone will make shields more valuable earlier in their levels, and make them credible fighters at high levels.

I'd also not be adverse to the true grit power gaining a regeneration rate boost and loosing the overall health... something along the lines of : Less Attacks hit you with your shield active, and those wounds you take are minor and heal quickly.

Biggest complaint with level pacts : can't track the influence.

Okay, this is a minor fuss, but would it be possible to implement a server message telling you what you received from you level pact companion? While I get that exp and influence are split half-half between players when they are online, and while i get that when one of the level-pacts is offline they still get half the exp, but don't get any influence...

but what's the breakpoint on when both accounts are logged in but not on the same map? If both level pacts are on a different team? Say one level pact is doing story missions and gaining levels while the other one is doing a task force that exemps the level down? Do they still split influence even though they aren't on the same map? Do they have to be loaded into the same zone with a certain distance of each other to gain influence from each kill?

Getting answers to these kinds of questions would be /really/ nice.

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So . . . sure leave in some of the heals, especially early on, but could we get some attack powers to balance things out and make the set seem like something new, rather than just a variation on empathy?

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The point of Pain Domination is that it is a variation on pain empath. It brings similar buffs and heals to the villain side that heroes have had since day one.

Sure, it might not fight the role-play of your specific mastermind, but that's your specific master-mind. There are other powersets you can take that would better fit the role of a healer and buffer for what it sounds like you want to play, such as the thermal radiation set.

The big problem with your suggestion though is that what you describe is better suited in-game playwise for Dominators. What it sounds like you want is a Pain based set for dominators with holds, immobilizes, and status effects based on inflicting mental pain, with one or two low level heals.

That actually sounds like a really good idea.

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Okay. the original bit of feedback I originally had. One of the biggest in-game complaints I see is people fussing that Pain-Dom isn't as strong as empathy... but they compare an empathy defender to a pain-dom corrupter.

Well, when comparing all of the other power sets in use, the Corrupter secondary is just about equal to a controller secondary, while masterminds are a bit weaker than corrupter secondary. Compared to empathy on a controller, Pain-dom stacks up well for the buff numbers.

My biggest problem is also the one Mr_Book mentions. Endurance consumption is a little outrageous. Then again, I'm of the opinion that Endurance as a whole needs to be reworked in the game since it's almost a requirement for all archtypes to needs stamina... and even the willpower sets that include a recovery component, and the regen power set, greatly benefit from taking stamina. From what I've experienced since I5, it really seems like the game is balanced against taking all primary and secondary powers, 2 travel powers, swift or hurdle, health, then stamina, then a single epic / patron power.

Really, endurance as a whole needs to be reworked with percentages and amounts cut across all archtypes to remove Stamina as a requirement.

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Further edit. The more I thought about it after making this post... the more I like the idea of changing the name of pain domination.

One of the little items that has always bugged me about the corrupter power set, and then a defender power set has been the naming of Cold Domination. It sounds like a control power set, something a DOMINATOR would use.

So here's my suggestion.

Rename the Cold Domination and Pain Domination sets to be Cold Corruption and Pain Corruption

This opens up the cold domination and pain domination names to actually be used for Dominator archtypes.

Now, I know the immediate response... there already is an ice control power set for Dominators. Well, ice and cold can be different things... but suggestions for a real cold domination set really belong in a different thread.

While I realize that the naming of Cold Corruption doesn't exactly make a good naming for Defenders (or Controllers when they get the buff set), it's no worse or better than cold domination

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further edit : I threshed out the idea for real Pain and Cold domination sets in this thread : http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post12799425

but a quick check on the replies later seemed to support the one off comment I made while reposting it here : http://zerias.blogspot.com/2008/12/c...omination.html

alright. other bugs.

I saw a request in the initial list about LGTF. Have to second that. Whoever decided to suddenly limit LGTF to 45+ after being 35+ since it's inception needs to be taken out back and made to play Omikron: Nomad Soul.

Okay, my biggest unlisted complaint with I13 so far that isn't already listed involve changes made to various powers both listed and unlisted.

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The first power is focused accuracy. In the original forum section for I13 feedback I ran a thread about why the change to focused accuracy was considered to give similar results in I13 that the power was giving in I12.

I came to the conclusion that the developer responsible for the calculations made the changes based on a level 50 running focused accuracy as a perma-toggle against a wide range of enemies. In truth, against Rikti, Malta, Carnies, Freakshow, most Praetorian classes, and Rularuu, I13 focused accuracy does seem to be identical to I12 focused accuracy.

However, back when I joined the game my first time seeing focused accuracy involved a tank using it to counter a mob of Nemesis that had stacked Vengeance buffs.

Considering that both Scrapper and Tank focused accuracy buffs weigh in at 0.78 end per second, I think I can safely say that brutes have the same drain amount, although I didn't actually go in and check that... mostly because I don't have a level 44+ brute... and I couldn't figure out the correct power string.

Anyways, even if you do max out the endurance consumption, focused accuracy will still yank down at minimum 0.38% end per second. That's a chunk. Speaking for myself, I do have fire and ice tanks that can run focused accuracy as a perma-toggle... they also have a large amount of rare invention sets, and both need to use their own native endurance recovery powers on 3+ enemies to keep focused accuracy running.

So, I think it's safe to say that the majority of the people who take focused accuracy aren't running it as a perma-toggle. Most tank and scrapper builds simply can't support that type of endurance drain on their on without needing BOTH miracle + recovery and numina + regen + recovery.

In realistic play, running focused accuracy as more than a per-mob power required a team-mate with endurance buffs, such as a kinetics or empath.

Also, in realistic play, focused accuracy was almost a requirement against Cimerorans and Nemesis mobs.

Now, after the change to focused accuracy, I see just about as many deflections and misses on vengeance stacked Nemesis and phalanx fighting / grant covered Cimerorans... whether or not focused accuracy is turned on.

What i think happened is that the developer who made the calculations forgot what the point of focused accuracy was. The point was that it as a short use power with a heavy end drain meant for specific mobs that could stack defenses.

When the developers, and this is presumed, made the new calculations, the point of what focused accuracy was to be used for was lost, forgotten, or just not documented.

Fixing focused accuracy however, seems to be a bit of a puzzle from what I can determine in-game. Here are the 4 leading suggestions that I've seen:

1: Immediate revert to the I12 buff numbers :

This is the method that I actually favor. I've never seen a clear explanation on why focused accuracy was changed to begin with. Various players have hinted that the power was changed because of PvP. However, if this was true, why not simply give focused accuracy a different effect in PvP zones? Other powers have completely different effects?

So, the idea that focused accuracy was changed due to PvP play sorta goes right out the window. With no clear direction on why the power was changed, why not change it back?

2: Allow the accuracy portion of focused accuracy to be buffed

With it's minuscule To-Hit buff component, the I13 focused accuracy is rather pathetic against enemies that stack defense... which is what the power is supposed to counter. Allowing the accuracy component to be buffed could be accomplished on current ratios without having to change any multipliers.

The downside? No set bonus's.. and there are no combination accuracy / endurance IO's that would fit... nor any hamidon's that would fit either. so... it's a nice idea, but it causes more problems than it solves.

3: Increase the enhancement multiplier so that to-hit enhancements offer a larger bonus.

With a base tohit of 5%, and a 7% something with max boost, the to-hit buff is just abysmal. Even if the to-hit buff multiplier was increased to 50% or 100%, that would only mean a buff up to 10% on the to-hit.

That ... doesn't sound like it would be worth the trouble.

4: Reduce the endurance consumption of FA in ratio to the amount that the power was debuffed.

This one is actually rather subjective. The intent was that the power be the same with the changes in I13 as it was in I12. That... obviously hasn't happened. Against some mobs focused accuracy is genuinely unchanged and offers no benefits. Against the enemies the power was built to counter though... it's almost 100% ineffective. So where is the line drawn? Is it now a power that's only worth a base 0.50% end drain per second with a cut down to 0.25%? Or is it equal to the end drain on Tactics as used by a blaster at a base 0.39% end drain per second with a cut down to 0.19.5%?

Granted, if focused accuracy were brought down to 0.39% end per second drain it and tactics would fit inside the same overall endurance drain envelope... but now you have two powers that take up just as much endurance, while not offering the same overall buff against the targets focused accuracy was intended to be used against.

So... that's not really a good solution either.

For the game then, an immediate revert to the I12 buff numbers is all the fix focused accuracy needs.

***

And then there are the changes that aren't mentioned in the patch notes...

like speed boost having it's range cut. Now I run a lot... okay, every single time somebody says Katie on one serve I haul out my kin.

So I'm a little upset when I suddenly realize that buffing everybody on the team means having to wade in closer to hurricane, gale, and lightning storm range.

This is just one of those changes that makes me want to strangle whoever was responsible. Kinetics overall has been in need of a rework almost on par with Fire Armor. Increased density is in desperate need of a time-length buff to match up with other shield buffs. I've lost count of the number of kinetics that don't take increased density since the buff is so short.

Now, I understand that the developers hate farming. I understand that the change on speed boost was probably done to force fire / kins to get closer to the mobs their imps are fighting to keep buffs up. Decreasing the range on speed boost was NOT the right way to handle fire / kins and farming.

Want to stop fire / kin farming? Make the fire imps damage unbuffable, but increase their native damage a bit (I'd say by 20% since that's the same amount that a radiation secondary can boost damage). Poof, Fire Controllers aren't punished if they don't have kinetics for a secondary and actually get a buff out of the deal... and controllers with kinetics secondary aren't punished either. While I realize there are some Fire / Kins out there that don't farm... okay, probably a lot... their own personal survivability in battle isn't changed. Yes, some people are going to be uspet. That's going to happen, and the fire / kins who worked on perfecting the ultimate farm build are just going to have get over it.

Anyways. speed boost really needs to be taken back to a longer distance, and increased density really needs to have it's effect time quadrupled to be in line with the 4 minute timer on all other shield buffs.

Dealt with shields somewhat on Gamenikki : http://www.gamenikki.com/g3/features/Jason.php?id=14

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Now, I did try a shield tank on test... and hated it. Powers just didn't work out. However, now that I13 is out, I'm actually running a shield brute.

and after running the raw numbers, there isn't that much to complain about. I'm not really sure that one with the shield lives up to its strong resistance against all damage types.

I do wish that phalanx fighting had a larger range, but after running the numbers on the tank side, a shield tank is looking at a base positional defense value of 37% figuring 22.5% for AOE, Ranged, and Melee from the 15% native battle agility and deflection boosted up by 50%; then 15% from phalanx fighting with it's 5% per 3 targets.

That puts Shield tankers near the same amount of defense as an ice tanker gets against Smashing / Lethal with weave, and over the soft-defense cap if the shield tanker takes weave and combat jumping ... with better damage resistances than Ice to boot.

Right off hand then, I think Shield wound up being implemented in final in a good manner...

now if only Dark, Fire, and Ice will get the reworks that at least one of them has needed since Issue 5.