MA is NOT so strong

I never insinuated that, at creation, the set was balanced around Rage. I said that is is (as in currently), balanced around Rage. SS is balanced at the moment because, even though it has Rage and KO Blow, the rest of its attacks blow.

That's the beauty of heuristic balancing mechanisms, yes?

I'd be curious to see why you think SS isn't balanced around at least the potential for perma-Rage, considering that the recharge is low enough to be perma at SO levels. Plus, though I admit I haven't done a slew of analysis for Super Strength (the doesn't really have more than a cursory interest for me), I've always found it to be rather well balanced, if only because, though it has some that are incredibly powerful, everything else could easily be considered trash.

*I* have always believed that MA should be the single-target king, given its rather iffy benefits anywhere else *and* given that it had that crown for a time, back when it had "broken" TK.

However, I should point out that long ago when I discussed this with Castle, he told me (and told me back then that I could repeat) that the original design intent of MA was to be a secondary effects king. Dark Melee wasn't supposed to be a high damage set either: it was intended to be a "utility" set: the swiss army knife of scrapper primaries.

(Precisely how you could have one set with the best "secondary effects" and another set with the best "utility" is left as an exercise for the reader: I doubt even Geko could answer that question today.)


Of course, neither powerset is necessarily bound to those objectives anymore, but those are still the design intents on the books of those two sets. And I doubt anyone on the dev team is blind to the fact that neither set really fulfills its design intent today. But any argument based around design intent other than those two would have to justify that new intent from scratch. I'd still *like* MA to be the single target king, but I can't use the set's original or current design intent to justify that preference (I *can* say that its a good target to try to achieve given that the *official* one is possibly an intractible one at the present time.)

That's still my standing suggestion to Castle. I think the last time I mentioned it he called it "interesting." Which coming from Castle can mean anything from "the idea is very interesting" to "I find it interesting that you can come up with an idea that dumb." Usually, though, it means "good idea, but don't hold your breath."

I like this idea as well.

Rage would still be nice. But, that would really help on MA's secondary effects, as long as it didn't double knockback.

I wouldnt mind the addition knockback on Crane Kick, but seeing a mass knockback with Dragon's Tail would make me cry.

If the set were ever reviewed to such an extent, I would probably expect Dragon's Tail to be changed to knockup rather than low mag knockback.

Jesus yes. I have a Spines/Dark that is pimped out with every end proc and bonus known to man and I STILL run dry unless I watch it. That combo is extremely powerful but also pisses away end like a 747