macskull

OP, perhaps. Deserving of the level of nerf it got, not even a little bit. Traps is a decent solo set but if you're on a team that's moving even a little bit quickly the only real mileage you'll get out of the set is FFG (yay, by the time I've got my Acid Mortar set up the team's on the next spawn!).

The only (commonly taken) Dark Miasma power that might not see use as much on a steamrolling team is Tar Patch, but with some recharge slotting and set bonuses you'll have it up every few spawns anyways. In terms of mobility, Dark brings -tohit and -dam, -regen (lots of it, actually), a hold, a really really good cone terrorize/-tohit, one of the best AoE heals in the game, and a pet that is basically a miniature version of you.

lol

This might be true if NCSoft didn't have a habit of killing off games that aren't doing well financially. Anyways, I posted earlier that this game probably has 80-90k subscribers right now, which is about 2/3 the numbers we knew as of a year ago. Since NCSoft doesn't post subscription breakdowns by game anymore the best we can do is guesstimate based off revenue numbers which isn't entirely accurate but probably gives us a decent picture. Personally, I don't care how many people are playing this game, or how much money this game is making. I do care that the part of the game I spent most of my time playing sucks now, and I do care that except for a small group of people, my globals have been largely empty the last year and a half.

Never before in the history of this game has a group of players had the part of the game they liked ripped out, mangled, and thrown back at them with nothing more than a "here, you'll like this!" I'm not talking about changes to powers or powersets, nor changes to the invention system, or even ED (as that wasn't really a mechanics change so much as it was an attempt to keep power creep in check, and even that can be largely circumvented by the IO system). I am talking about global mechanics changes due to misconceptions and misunderstandings from players who didn't even participate in that part of the game, which failed to achieve the stated goals, drove most of its players away, and was basically left to rot despite all the negative feedback surrounding the changes from those who did know the system. If 10% of the playerbase PvP'd before I13, it's probably 1-5% now. It's sort of like what would happen if you asked people who only played Tankers how they should rebalance Blasters, and then completely ignoring Blaster players who through experience could tell exactly how such changes would be bad.

Standing in the repel field itself will be enough to drop a Stalker's stealth (not Hide, just any other stealth they've got, so you might be able to see them but they'll still be able to crit/AS if you can't interrupt them first). Most Stalkers will be immune to the KB so it's really only useful for dropping stealth, but even that won't stop a good Stalker from getting an AS off on you. Regardless many Stalkers these days prefer to be stupid and sit back throwing sharks so it won't help you much anyways. It also detoggles when you get mezzed so it's not even reliable.

Contrary to its name, Repel doesn't actually repel, it just does KB. Powers that have repel (Force Bubble, Hurricane) are somewhat more useful because only a few Stalker secondaries have built-in repel protection, and getting repelled will interrupt AS.

Repel's radius is 9 feet, melee is 7 feet.

Realistically for a PvP build the best way to leverage Repel is to either skip it or to 3-slot it with Volley of Velocity for a bit extra +HP.

Claws lacks the AoE of Spines (Spines is second to Elec in terms of AoE on Stalkers). So I'd go with Spines/Regen.

There's also a difference between paying for accounts monthly and paying for them on a 6-or-12-month basis, which is what many PvPers did since they had multiple accounts. Therefore it would've been a steady decline as accounts lapsed one, three, six, or even twelve months beyond that time. Seriously, do you even think before you post or does your enormous ego drive you to type this drivel and hit the "submit" button? You should get someone to proofread, really.

I'm reasonably sure a stacked group of 8-12 players will be able to do it.

Also I'm not even sure why this thread was started in the first place, since any reasonable PvPer already knew PvP updates were about a dozen issues away anyways.

Damage type is largely irrelevant these days, with squishies getting resistance to everything and melees getting protection against damage types they previously were weak to.

As your global recharge increases, powersets with long animations become less useful, not more, because you're spending more and more time locked in animations - time which you could otherwise be using to move, heal, phase, or use other attacks. Bone Smasher's really not that good of an attack anymore thanks to DPA balancing, and ET and TF just have too long an activation time to make chaining them worthwhile. In fact, most EM PvP builds I've seen since I13 skip TF entirely and just rely on AS, ET, and Sharks.

Elec is probably the second-worst PvP secondary, behind Dark. Recharge buffs get DR'd, your heal is on a long timer, you have no defenses so you'll always get hit while trying to get back into hide, every melee AT gets free slow resistance as part of the I13 armor normalization, and lack of KB resistance means you'll need to build in KB protection as if you were a squishy, even if you plan on staying on the ground all the time (Grounded gives, what, 15 points, when a build that doesn't have in-set KB prot/resistance should be building for at least 31 points and more often than not 41-45 points).

If what you're talking about is what I think you're talking about, there won't be any significant changes in what sets are played more or less.

On topic: as far as primaries go I'd say MA and DB are least-played and for secondaries I'd say Dark and Elec.