it takes a power choice and everything!
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What gets me is that evidently most of the people who are really upset by this change have figured out a way to play that most players never even think of or can't afford
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, because Hasten is so obscure, and so very expensive.
And Speed Boost, and Accelerate Metabolism, and Adrenaline Boost ...
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we were wrong to believe that pet centric toons benefit from playing in teams.
M = massively?
M = multiplayer?
My earth/kin still is waiting to hear why this nerf is going to hit it.
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What gets me is that evidently most of the people who are really upset by this change have figured out a way to play that most players never even think of or can't afford
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, because Hasten is so obscure, and so very expensive.
And Speed Boost, and Accelerate Metabolism, and Adrenaline Boost ...
[/ QUOTE ]
we were wrong to believe that pet centric toons benefit from playing in teams.
M = massively?
M = multiplayer?
My earth/kin still is waiting to hear why this nerf is going to hit it.
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Powerset Diversification. 
I did some more testing. Animate stone is the same on test as he is on live. No change in game play. Basically throws one rock charges into melee and proceeds to hand out some whoop [censored]. Voltac Sentinal on the other hand is just utterly worthless as an attack. Basically the only reason I can see getting that power now is with doms just so you have an extra spot to slot the resistance pet proc for the recharge intensive pets.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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For example, if Castle says the PvE damage levels on Flares and Blaze are going to be switched because the game bible says Flares is intended to do more damage than Blaze, would you just accept the fact that they're "broken?"
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The argument is illogical. The "Game Bible" as you describe it doesn't exist. If you mean the one I outlined above. Well, that one wouldn't encounter a situation like this. For the most part, the Devs have provided adequate explanation and reasoning behind all of the changes I've questioned. The change you've suggest above doesn't follow any logic.
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Swapping the damage on Flares and Blaze is just as "logical," whatever that means, as making Animate Stone immune to +/- recharge.
Also, the reason I used that as my specific example is because a similar thing was implemented in PvP (Bitter Ice Blast does less damage than Ice Blast, etc.). Not so farfetched after all.
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What gets me is that evidently most of the people who are really upset by this change have figured out a way to play that most players never even think of or can't afford and also allegedly are so smart in how they play that their pets rarely get slowed due to them having parsed every possible battle configuration. No doubt they feel that the game is being hopelessly dumbed down for the great unwashed masses and I can see their point. Then again they are so smart that they will undoubtedly figure out fun new ways to exploit bugs that the clueless Devs don't even realize exist so I don't know what they are worried about.
In any case they do not represent the vast majority of players but are rather a small and very vocal minority that nevertheless probably have the power to make the Devs pull their hair out in frustration with their apparent expectations of perfection or near perfection from a video game.
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This seems to ring true, regarding the "angry" posts I have read so far.
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Or, it could be that VS was "almost a pretty good power" with it taking the recharge from the caster, however, now its another power from electric to NOT take....unless it gets coded to...
1) fly in and explode on targets at the end of its life.
or
2) Stack with itself (ie. have multiple out)
or
3) gets another attack so its constantly firing
or
4) gets its end cost dramatically reduced.
or
5) gets its "life" extended by at least another minute, if not more.
[ QUOTE ]
What gets me is that evidently most of the people who are really upset by this change have figured out a way to play that most players never even think of or can't afford and also allegedly are so smart in how they play that their pets rarely get slowed due to them having parsed every possible battle configuration. No doubt they feel that the game is being hopelessly dumbed down for the great unwashed masses and I can see their point. Then again they are so smart that they will undoubtedly figure out fun new ways to exploit bugs that the clueless Devs don't even realize exist so I don't know what they are worried about.
In any case they do not represent the vast majority of players but are rather a small and very vocal minority that nevertheless probably have the power to make the Devs pull their hair out in frustration with their apparent expectations of perfection or near perfection from a video game.
[/ QUOTE ]
What gets me is that evidently most of the people in disagreement with people upset about the change seem to think said people have been sat around laughing at the devs "exploiting" the game.
This change affects none of my characters, I am not a "pet" player and even my storm corr only uses Thunderstorm as a keep away KB power. However I find the proposed changes insulting, they nerf a great many players but not only that it gives a significant buff to pet using NPCs as -recharge powers are quite prevailent playerside, everything ice, freezing rain, web grenade, lingering rad even psi attacks. Thats not even the worst of it, what really pissed me off was Castle holding up really quite poor powers (in all but the very most extreme and unlikely of situations) of VS and Gun Drone as "needing" to have this change applied to them.
Others have mentioned this may now make the devs look at improving the powers as will have a significant variable removed from its performance but we have had NO suggestion from any devs that this will occur, given their hugely lacklustre response to clearly underperforming powers I dont see a player benefit change coming any time soon. War Mace sucked donkey ding dongs for a VERY long time before it was brought up to par.
This is just a change for changes sake and hurts the weakest of sets once again, fire/kins suffered the least from the controller epic blast nerfs and also from fire imps being nerfed (as imps really counted for very little of fire/kin damage) but a earth/FF troller and fire/energy dom really felt those changes as a kick in the jibblies. A fire/kin doesnt waste their time SBing a imp as its not efficient, a earth/kin does however, no one is claming they are OP and need a nerf are they? (and rockys AI problems has NOTHING to do +recharge being dialed into it, my earth/TA can testify to that)
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One day, while discussing this, another programmer who was looking at AI issues came over and began talking to me about the fact that one of the issues causing aberrant AI behavior was the powers recharging too quickly.
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In an alternate universe:
"One day, while discussing this, another programmer who was looking at AI issues came over and began talking to me about the fact that one of the issues causing aberrant AI behavior was that the code wasn't written well enough to deal with variable power recharge times."
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or
"one day while the AI programmer was looking for a conveiniant scapegoat to avoid work I happened to mentioned the +recharge some pets have been getting. They immediately lept up punching the air with an almighty "YES" usually only reserved for procuring a date with an A list film star, "its all your fault" he proclaimed "if it wasnt for the +recharge obviously they would function fine, go on off and fix it, I gots me some pr0n to surf for in my newly found free time". On my way out he shouted "oh and if that doesnt fix the pet AI behaviour its probably that the attacks do too much damage.... or something....cant you just give them all brawl?" So i went away with much to do....."
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Recharge intensive pet sets. I understood that these were created to increase the firing rate of the pets that they were accepted into. What exactly is their purpose now?
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That was never my understanding of what these sets were created to do. They are to increase the recharge rate of the summon power for the pet.
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A lot of people have varying understandings of these sets and the soulbound allegiance set and how they were intended to affect pets.
Does anyone have the dev info when these were implemented. And if that info does indicate that ONLY the summon recharge time was supposed to benefit and never the pet was there any dev followup done to stem the tide of posts indicating the belief that RIP and SA did improve pet performance?
edit: this is all I could find in the patch notes regarding RIP and I could find no dev comments what so ever
dec 2, 2008
Added new IO Sets and new IO Set Categories:
# Recharge Intensive Pets
* Call to Arms, Level 10-30
* Expedient Reinforcement, Level 30-50
So I guess we were completely left to make up our own minds about what they actually did? (anyone find anything else?)
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First thing is I, personally, never expected recharge to improve a pet's attack rate - not in enhancement slotting, anyway. This comes from me being in CoV Beta however - they removed the ability to slot recharge from Henchmen due to not wanting misunderstandings as to what was buffed (the pet power's recharge rate, not the pet's attacks recharge rate.
Second, If you looked at the title of the IO sets and noticed the only powers that take them were the pet powers with long recharges, and not henchmen, I thought it was easy to figure that it was for the summons' recharge.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
Post deleted by Moderator 08
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Of course the alternative is re-deciding that the "problem" they have known about, wasnt a problem and has been perfectly acceptable for 7 issues still isnt a problem or causing any problems in game except in castles imagination and spreadsheets which are not representative of the game in play
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If you read Castle's posts carefully, you notice that he says that while they were aware of it, when it first came out it was not noticeable in the data mining. Combining the fact that it has become so, with the AI issue some pets have, it has reached the point where the pain of fixing it is not more than the pain of not fixing it.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
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So now you are basically stating that the damage output of Masterminds cannot be increased through recharge, yet all other ATs can.
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Your personal powers still benefit. And for some AT's direct damage has never been their primary stick.
As a /dark MM, DK and Tar Patch are two HUGE parts of your survivability, Tar Patch your damage.
And they have mentioned that, without doing a huge rebuild of various systems, the only other way to have it really work right would increase the CPU usage of ALL powers, pet and player alike, by 50%.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
[ QUOTE ]
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Recharge intensive pet sets. I understood that these were created to increase the firing rate of the pets that they were accepted into. What exactly is their purpose now?
[/ QUOTE ]
That was never my understanding of what these sets were created to do. They are to increase the recharge rate of the summon power for the pet.
[/ QUOTE ]
A lot of people have varying understandings of these sets and the soulbound allegiance set and how they were intended to affect pets.
Does anyone have the dev info when these were implemented. And if that info does indicate that ONLY the summon recharge time was supposed to benefit and never the pet was there any dev followup done to stem the tide of posts indicating the belief that RIP and SA did improve pet performance?
edit: this is all I could find in the patch notes regarding RIP and I could find no dev comments what so ever
dec 2, 2008
Added new IO Sets and new IO Set Categories:
# Recharge Intensive Pets
* Call to Arms, Level 10-30
* Expedient Reinforcement, Level 30-50
So I guess we were completely left to make up our own minds about what they actually did? (anyone find anything else?)
[/ QUOTE ]
First thing is I, personally, never expected recharge to improve a pet's attack rate - not in enhancement slotting, anyway. This comes from me being in CoV Beta however - they removed the ability to slot recharge from Henchmen due to not wanting misunderstandings as to what was buffed (the pet power's recharge rate, not the pet's attacks recharge rate.
Second, If you looked at the title of the IO sets and noticed the only powers that take them were the pet powers with long recharges, and not henchmen, I thought it was easy to figure that it was for the summons' recharge.
[/ QUOTE ]
I didn't have insider beta knowlegdge from 2? years ago 
you mean they DON'T go in MM henchmen? I had no idea until you just said that.
I was on a few month break from this game and when I came back the RIP sets were in, but my network of friends (and the boards) all said they were broken (+1 for adding more loot when it doesn't work, seemed like a good idea at the time I guess).
All I had to go on was the patch note and ZERO dev discussion regarding it. What about those that don't use the forums? maybe they all have insider beta information from years ago too...
tbh I just assumed they were designed to increase pet attack rate considering practically ALL pets are perma out of the box and the psuedo-pets that aren't don't even accept pet IO's or the RIP sets..
Just finding out now that MM hench's don't even take the RIP sets makes me even more confused about everything Castle has said in this thread. Something smells like BS to me.
Finally if RIP sets weren't intended to make pets attack faster how was adding them to the game exasperating the problem?
"but then we introduced the Recharge Intensive Pet IO Sets and suddenly HUGE amounts of Recharge were available to certain pets." Castle
something is not adding up here.
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just my opinion though, which of course only matters to me lol.
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If it only matters to you, why'd you post it?
Castle can only do what the project lead lets him do. If you want to blame someone for your problems, blame Positron. At least get that part right.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
Post deleted by Moderator 08
I'm waiting for this "fix" to go through, then Castle to have to turn around and remove Hurl from the Bruiser, then the Ranged attacks from the Jounin.
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just my opinion though, which of course only matters to me lol.
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If it only matters to you, why'd you post it?
Castle can only do what the project lead lets him do. If you want to blame someone for your problems, blame Positron. At least get that part right.
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I post because I'm pissed that this ill-conceived change was even put on the drawing board, let alone now being jammed into the game.
As to whether this is Castle's doing or Posi's well Castle is the lead powers guy no? I'm under the impression that this company works like most others in that CEO doesn't micro manage the Department Heads and they are free to implement plans provided they align with the budget and the overall company plan/vision. The CEO (posi in this story) has the ability to veto, but would rarely use it as you generally put people into senior positions that you trust to not suck.
Maybe I'm mistaken about how NCsoft operates though. If posi came up with the SoW treatment and then decided to put it into affect on all pet powers then he is the one to blame. He didn't though, it was Castle according to Castle, so I'm pretty sure I'm placing accountability exactly where it should be.
thx though.
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What gets me is that evidently most of the people who are really upset by this change have figured out a way to play that most players never even think of or can't afford and also allegedly are so smart in how they play that their pets rarely get slowed due to them having parsed every possible battle configuration. No doubt they feel that the game is being hopelessly dumbed down for the great unwashed masses and I can see their point. Then again they are so smart that they will undoubtedly figure out fun new ways to exploit bugs that the clueless Devs don't even realize exist so I don't know what they are worried about.
In any case they do not represent the vast majority of players but are rather a small and very vocal minority that nevertheless probably have the power to make the Devs pull their hair out in frustration with their apparent expectations of perfection or near perfection from a video game.
[/ QUOTE ]
What gets me is that evidently most of the people in disagreement with people upset about the change seem to think said people have been sat around laughing at the devs "exploiting" the game.
This change affects none of my characters, I am not a "pet" player and even my storm corr only uses Thunderstorm as a keep away KB power. However I find the proposed changes insulting, they nerf a great many players but not only that it gives a significant buff to pet using NPCs as -recharge powers are quite prevailent playerside, everything ice, freezing rain, web grenade, lingering rad even psi attacks. Thats not even the worst of it, what really pissed me off was Castle holding up really quite poor powers (in all but the very most extreme and unlikely of situations) of VS and Gun Drone as "needing" to have this change applied to them.
Others have mentioned this may now make the devs look at improving the powers as will have a significant variable removed from its performance but we have had NO suggestion from any devs that this will occur, given their hugely lacklustre response to clearly underperforming powers I dont see a player benefit change coming any time soon. War Mace sucked donkey ding dongs for a VERY long time before it was brought up to par.
This is just a change for changes sake and hurts the weakest of sets once again, fire/kins suffered the least from the controller epic blast nerfs and also from fire imps being nerfed (as imps really counted for very little of fire/kin damage) but a earth/FF troller and fire/energy dom really felt those changes as a kick in the jibblies. A fire/kin doesnt waste their time SBing a imp as its not efficient, a earth/kin does however, no one is claming they are OP and need a nerf are they? (and rockys AI problems has NOTHING to do +recharge being dialed into it, my earth/TA can testify to that)
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Post deleted by Moderator_08
[/ QUOTE ]Castle was ok with me on all the previous changes but this change is where I had to disagree with him 100%. To me it wasnt worth making some of the buff sets partially useless, it wasnt worth making some of the debuff sets partially useless. The changes so far only really worked on 1 pet if at all. I dont have any way to test a bruiser but I tested ninjas, poo-man and jack. Still the same behavior as issue 13. Overall I think this change did more to harm are faith in the devs than it actually hurt the pets. We can no longer hold them to their word when they promise stuff on changes. It also makes you question whether they even play their own game because of the 3 pets specifically targeted didnt need any nerf to begin with. I could see if the nerf came with some form of compensation. Like fixing the bug allowed them to buff the sets later or do something else positive with the power but that simply isnt the case. What made this so hard for me is now I will have a really hard time deciding what sets to play because of how this change effects so many different powersets. So many toons that I play will either be deleted or retired until something changes. I would say about almost 1/4 of my alts.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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Of course par for the course is to offer up a sacrificial lamb, which Castle did a swell job of in this thread (and has done in the past as well) by blaming the people in charge of patch notes. That gets old, a manager can only blame an assistant so many times...
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but that's what the assistant is for though Castle hasn't been the only one to mention the Patch Notes guy messing up before and leaving things out.
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What made this so hard for me is now I will have a really hard time deciding what sets to play because of how this change effects so many different powersets. So many toons that I play will either be deleted or retired until something changes. I would say about almost 1/4 of my alts.
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do what you gotta do, though I think it's a bit dramatic to delete characters over this.
THOUGH! I still wish that AoE Hold from Spec Ops would recharge faster.
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Of course par for the course is to offer up a sacrificial lamb, which Castle did a swell job of in this thread (and has done in the past as well) by blaming the people in charge of patch notes. That gets old, a manager can only blame an assistant so many times...
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but that's what the assistant is for though Castle hasn't been the only one to mention the Patch Notes guy messing up before and leaving things out.
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What made this so hard for me is now I will have a really hard time deciding what sets to play because of how this change effects so many different powersets. So many toons that I play will either be deleted or retired until something changes. I would say about almost 1/4 of my alts.
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do what you gotta do, though I think it's a bit dramatic to delete characters over this.
THOUGH! I still wish that AoE Hold from Spec Ops would recharge faster.
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in my case I won't delete any toons affected by this unless I end up needing the space. I will be stripping dry my $bill fire/storm troller, but plan to keep my storm/son/power in the game, though I wish it was a cold/son
the fire/storm makes me very sad as it is the toon I've spent the most time playing and tweaking since I joined. First making it a great pvp toon and then Castle killed that plan, then making it a big game hunter (AV's) in preperation for all the MA arcs loaded with them. The toon can still do that, but nowhere near as well as before. I pictured fire (highest dam primary) and storm (highest dam secondary) creating the highest damage AV toon out of trollers (also with by far the highest endurance cost), now it is outpaced by /rad, /thermal, and /cold (when it comes) and all of them have considerably higher safety. So /storm went from hero to zero for me.
So when you add together i13 pvp and now this ill conceived change, hopefully people can understand why I am no longer part of the Castle sycophant club.
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As for pet ai, from what I'm hearing this change was fail for the problem pets other than bruiser. (heard so far that plant pet and ninjas still either suck, or need excessive micromanaging just like in i13. ime those are the two most complained about other than bruiser).
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I don't believe that the improved behavior for the Bruiser or the Giant Fly Trap is reasonably attributable to this change. On live, both of those pets suffered the same AI problems exhibited at high levels of Recharge even if no Recharge was involved at all.
I find it more probable that the new behavior is due to other changes implemented by the powers team. The alternative is to assume that ignoring non-existent buffs causes the AI to behave better. That's certainly not impossible, but given that Castle has been posting about his trials with the Bruiser for months, and he has explicitly stated that the +Recharge was only one of the AI issues, I think it more likely that the fix comes from something else.
Kosmos
Global: @Calorie
MA Arcs in 4-star purgatory: Four in a Row (#2198) - Hostile Takeover (#69714) - Red Harvest (#268305)
hmm that was my initial thoughts from what I'd heard, but he never mentioned any additional pet ai tweaks. Unless of course he is omitting something for various reasons.
Which brings up my next question:
did this change of preventing pets from being boosted by recharge improve anything? Anyone done any conclusive tests?
ie. If x pet gest stuck cycling power A with speed boost on it does it now properly cycle all attacks on test server w/ sb on it?
if it is/isn't is there a net gain compared to using power A at an increased rate compared to now using power a,b,c...n ? if yes, then by how much. If no, then by how much?
Would love to someone's data (ie boss kill speed) for some of the problem pets this was geared toward fixing.
<QR>
Very disappointed with this change...sometimes i wonder if they are actually trying to annoy their customers.
Shenanigans
LotD - JaL - POWT/SMD - SoCo - AJs
Well, go ahead and add me to the list of folks unhappy with this change. I don't so much have an issue with them doing something about +rech IO's affecting pets, but to make pets immune to outside recharge buffs is an across the board nerf to pretty much all MM's & Controllers.
We're not talking a select few that knew they could slot multi-aspect IO's into their pets, we're talking a huge group of normal, "casual" players. Speed Boost? Accelerate Metabolism? It makes sense to players that these powers work as they do now.
This whole thing makes me very disappointed. I took almost 2 months off away from CoH after Issue 13 went live, and came back because I was excited about Issue 14, only to find more nerfs. 
Oh, and just for posterity:
Castle 2007: Keep in mind, that I do know how valuable Hasten, AM, SB and LotG's are in the game and have no wish to make them useless on many powers.
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What gets me is that evidently most of the people who are really upset by this change have figured out a way to play that most players never even think of or can't afford
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, because Hasten is so obscure, and so very expensive.
And Speed Boost, and Accelerate Metabolism, and Adrenaline Boost ...