Buff Trick Arrows!

Buff all of them, its not like I see too many Trick Arrow Controllers either.

The best set to compare it to is really Dark, IMO, since like TA, it's basically a debuff set. I'm currently playing a /Dark Corruptor as well as a /TA Corruptor, and it's like night and day - /Dark seems like "easy mode". By the numbers, the Dark powers tend to be about twice as good as equivalent TA powers. Compare Darkest Night with Poison Gas Arrow (I'm looking at those wonderful Corruptor numbers for PGA), or Tar Patch with Disruption Arrow, for instance. TA has a much better second to last power in Oil Slick, but Dark makes up for it ten times over with things TA has no answer for - great mitigation through Fearsome Stare and Shadow Fall, and healing through Twilight Grasp. Basically, in Dark M. every power but Black Hole is at least good, compared to about 2 or 3 of the same quality for TA before Oil Slick.

Don't forget Dark also has Dark Servant to cast most of the debuffs a second time.

Signed! Also, Dispari! <3 you with mouth.

But yes, Trick Arrow's and Archery i've found on my corruptor, sitting at 27 isn't that great in doing what Trick Arrow is meant to do. Be a pain in the rear for the enemy, its a pain, but not this jabbing thorn in the side like most other power sets.

I very much agree with the OP's post some pages ago.

Actually the mobs mumble: "Trick Arrow?!? lol n00b!"

Yes, they have captured the look and feel of Trick Arrow very well - it's just not as good as other sets, playwise. I think it's actually a tribute to the look and feel of the set and what a good idea the set is that so many people are clamoring for it to get some love - if it was an underpowered set that wasn't original and looked bad, no one would play it and no one would care much.

Nothing that Trickshooter has proposed would hurt the feel of a green arrow toon. In fact a buff would help them to be more playable. I never thought Hawkeye or Green Arrow were gimps both always were significant members of the team.

If anything, Green Arrow and Hawkeye have more effects that target more than one target than many of the other Super Superheroes out there.

Batman has nothing really to affect more than one target at a time.

Let me guess: never read Green Arrow's solo book or Green Lantern/Green Arrow?

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

I read long ago, well second hand that the Devs said that the Defenders are the most balanced AT. This just made me think of all the different circumstances in game and what can potentially deal with what best. Does TA stand out in any certain circumstance with any certain tactic? Yeah it definitely does versus half the other defender types but I don't think "its there" so a buff is definitely good and something everyone (last I checked iirc) agrees on.

I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble why council missions were giving you trouble. Ok, maybe warwolves, but that's an exception. And TA has plenty of tools to deal with warwolves. And I've been on many teams where people did in fact notice the -damage.

Actually, I have to disagree with the OP's basic thesis too. He goes by the assumption that Trick Arrows is a set without enough damage mitigation. he also disregards the amount of -recharge the set has, and why -recharge stacking is powerful with the set. Let me explain it by describing what TA was before issue five launched, and why it was changed.

During open beta for issue five Trick Arrow could apply so much -recharge that enemies would just stand there with nothing to do. They would effectively be held because it also had so much -speed that mobs could not move very fast. This was mainly due to Glue Arrow. It originally had a 45 second duration I think, but only 6 second or so recharge. And it self stacked. So that 20% -recharge could be stacked six times AT LEAST by one defender. Everyone knew this was too powerful and would be changed.

About the claims that Trick Arrow has les -recharge in it then anything else:

Entangling Arrow: 12.50% -recharge for 15 seconds (4 second recharge)

Glue Arrow: 20.00% -recharge for 30 seconds

Ice Arrow: 12.50% -recharge for 10 seconds (18 second recharge)

Note the duration of Entangling arrow vs recharge. It is stackable up to 3, almost 4 times.

Vs

Lingering Radiation: 75% -recharge for 30 seconds (1.5 nub recharge)

This one wins out, but it's also not perma without some serious +recharge slotting. with the same amount of +recharge slotting you could begin stacking glue arrow to easily match or beat this

vs

Web Grenade: 62.50% -recharge for 15 seconds

Poison Trap: 30% -recharge for ten seconds (1.5 min recharge)

Note that you either need to have placed multiple poison traps or have some serious +recharge slotting for it to apply more then that 30% -recharge. And web grenade is single target only. You could affect 3 targets with it, maybe 4 with slotting at once. But if you have enough -recharge to use Poison Trap as a perma aoe -recharge, you could at most have 4 stacked at a time. While the trick archerer given the same insane level of recharge could stack 15+ copies of glue arrow easily. Why? Because by that point glue arrow would be recharged almost as fast as it finishes animating.

vs Cold: Ok, HERE is a clear winner. BUt then if you didn't expect a cold based set to have more -recharge I'd laugh.

Storm also can deal a lot more -recharge reliably to a wide area. Except that it's a enemy targeted toggle. So constantly draining endurance, and if the target dies you lose that -recharge. Expect your anchor to die fast in most teams. TA on the other hand is fire and forget.

Trick Arrow also has as much or more -damage in one power then many buff/debuff sets have. Sure kinetics has more if stacked and Cold has a -damage power with twice the effect. But Benumb is on a 2 minute recharge timer. It takes heavy +recharge to make it perma ON ONE TARGET. 3 standard SO enhancements make poison gas arrow perma without additional +recharge set bonuses or quicken.

The -resist debuffs btw are weaker then comparable powers in other sets due to stacking issues too. While sonic gets two -resist powers which stack (at higher values) one is single target (acid arrow is an aoe, even if a small one) and the other has a really high endurance cost to run. How high? 1.04/sec unslotted. Since base recovery rate is 1.67/sec that means it takes almost all your base recovery to run.

Honestly, Trick Arrow is very effective as it is right now. Buffs would be apreciated sure. However it doesn't underpreform as badly as the OP thinks. It does have a serious lack of strong tohit debuffing. However it's one tohit debuff is perma out of the box, and unresistable. Which means vs an AV or GM flash arrow is as effective or more then other sets applying tohit debuffs.

You realize, don't you, that the -recharge, -resistance, and even -defense from individual powers within TA don't stack on themselves? So even if I kick out Entangling Arrow each time it's recharged, it will still only provides -12.5% recharge. So TA can only output -45% recharge on a single target.

Correction: With some recharge, you could maybe put -45% on two to three targets.

It's rather strange really. Lots of powers (say for example an Ice Controllers immob or a Psi users blasts) will stack, and stack well, but Entangling Arrow won't (which I didn't actually know until I went and checked)???

Trick Arrow was Castles first set and I think he made a lot of "play it safe" errors like this which unfairly penalize Trick Arrow. I'd remove the no stacking from most of the powers as part of a full pass of the set, it should be a strength of the set that you can stack effects onto enemies.*

Personally I'd even remove the No Stack from Acid and Poison Gas Arrow, and slap in some -regen into PGA and Disruption Arrow (maybe 100-150 apiece).

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

(edited to include more background, was cut off previously)

-Recharge is capped at -75%. At this value, an enemy's powers take 4 times as long as to recharge. The Ice Control power Shiver can instantly drop a same level enemy to this floor (base -80-ish percent Recharge, I'm on a lunchbreak at work or I'd look up the number.) Snow Storm drops enemies into the 60% range, and Lingering Radiation floors it on same levels but is hard to perma, as you've noted.

In any case, it isn't possible to apply "so much -recharge that enemies...just stand there with nothing to do." For one thing, for -Recharge to have any function, the enemy has to expend its powers. Ice Control gets around this with Arctic Air, which confuses enemies into expending their powers on each other. Trick Arrow has nothing like that.

Secondly, -Recharge increases in worth as it amount increases. When you floor an enemy's -Recharge, you increase the recharge time of its powers by x4. But using numbers you've provided, TAs AoE -Recharge on a same-level group is just 1.25%. Here's how you come up with the number:

The calculation for the recharge multiplier is BaseRechargeTime / ( 1 + Buffs - Debuffs ). In this case, that means 1 / (1 - .2) = 1.25; powers that normally recharge in 5 seconds now recharge in 5 x 1.25 = 6.25 seconds.

Now compare same group hit by Snow Storm. The recharge time is about (1 / (1 - .4)) * 5= 12.5 seconds--almost twice as effective. Next, look at Shiver or Lingering Radiation. The recharge time is (1 / (1 - .25)) * 5 = 20 seconds, or over three times as effective.

I won't bother calculating the value of the two single target -Recharges in TA. I don't know why you'd worry about stacking weak single target -Recharge on an enemy. The only things likely to live long enough for it to matter are AVs and they are so resistant to the effect you have to hammer them with huge values for it to have much effect. The powers might have an impact for a TA/Ice, or Ice Control/TA--but in the latter case, Ice Control can already floor recharge on a standard group, all the way up to +4 enemies, so I doubt the impact even then.

srsly

That's because it is. The basic design behind Trick Arrows is obviously to be more offensive than other sets, and that's great and everything, but what can Trick Arrows do when being defensive is more important?

It can put out the weakest AoE -Recharge debuff in any buff/debuff set.

It can put out the weakest AoE -ToHit debuff in any buff/debuff set.

It can put out a good AoE -Damage debuff that might sleep minions.

It can put out the third worst ST Hold in the game.

It can put out the weakest ST Immobilize in the game.

And then of course there's EMP Arrow, which is fantastic but... why should the rest of TA be so weenie by comparison? EMP Arrow is designed to be situational, not uncommon for tier 9s, but in actual gameplay it's not. It's actually the best option in nearly every situation, because it offers a level of damage mitigation you just can't get in the rest of the set.

I don't disregard the amount of -Recharge TA can potentially offer, I just don't convince myself that -45% total, from 3 separate powers, on maybe 3 enemies is all that big of a deal.

Excess -Speed was never a problem, and still isn't, as Trick Arrows actually puts out the most AoE -Speed of all the sets. Yes, more than Cold. The -Recharge in the set was brought down, as Positron put it, because they were redundant and made the set very powerful. As a result, the recharge debuff from Entangling Arrow was removed (later readded at scale 1.0), the recharge debuff of Ice Arrow was lowered, and the recharge debuff of Poison Gas Arrow was removed. Glue Arrow's debuff value was never lowered, it's the same amount today.

It had a 45 second duration and 20 second recharge, same as Quicksand. The difference between the two that made stacking a problem was that Glue Arrow's debuff was "sticky" (no pun intended).

As far as I can remember, nobody ever thought it was considered "too powerful", just "too Controller-y".

I don't think you understand how -Recharge in this game works. Recharge time is calculated by BaseRechargeTime/(1 + RechargeBuffs - RechargeDebuffs). So let's look at some -Recharge from the sets.

Let's assume you're fighting a level 50 Carnie Illusionist, and she uses her Blind on you. It has a 9 second recharge, and it's hold time is 7.45s, so already not perma, unless... the sleep goes off, which lasts 14.9s, giving her the oppurtunity to perma mez you.

You only have time to use one of your -Recharge debuffs on her, which will increase the recharge time of her Blind...

Glue Arrow will bring the recharge of her Blind to 11.25s. Sucks to be you, I guess.

Lingering Radiation will bring the recharge of her Blind to 36s.

Freezing Rain will bring the recharge of her Blind to 18s.

Infrigidate will be stopped by the -Recharge cap and will bring the recharge of her Blind to 36s.

Web Grenade will bring the recharge of her Blind to 24s.

Darkest Night offers more -Damage, and then later you get Fluffy who has his own which is only 1.25% less than PGA's debuff.

Kinetics, with the easily stackable Fulcrum Shift, can also go higher.

Radiation is lower, but by only 6.25%, and higher if against a player. Radiation also has Fallout, which offers another source, though not much lives after Fallout.

Also, 3 standard SO enhancements do not make PGA perma. Even if you used 4 to get to +100 Recharge, it would still have 2.5s between applications, and PGA doesn't stack at all. Managing to get it up before the previous one ended... will cause the previous one to immediately end.

Freezing Rain self stacks (easily) to -70% resistance and can hit 16 enemies.

Tar Patch self stacks to -60% and can hit 16 enemies.

Sleet self stacks to -60% against 16 targets, and then gets another -30% from Heat Loss on another 10 enemies.

Trick Arrows, at it's best, can get to -60% against 10 enemies.

Also, let's look at endurance costs... If TA wanted to debuff at -40% for 30 seconds, it would cost them 30.16 endurance (1 Disruption Arrow, and two Acid Arrows because they only last 20 seconds). That's 1.005 endurance a second. Not much better than Sonic.

TA is effective as it is right now, never said it wasn't, but it's clearly at the bottom of the totem pole. Yes, someone has to be, but not by such a huge margin.

And yes, Flash Arrow is good against AVs and GMs. But they make up, what? 10% of the game? Why is a tier 2 only good for 10% of the game? And that's like... the last 10% of the game, why are we even getting it at tier 2?

Edit: My mistake, Quicksand is actually 30s recharge.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Seconded.