If you could cancel the Cottage Rule. . .

for just one power set to get completely reworked, which set would it be?

For those who aren't familiar, the Cottage Rule is a rule the devs try to follow that prevents them from completely altering the function of a power, or its placement in the power set, or the IO sets with which it can be slotted, except as the absolute last resort to solve a critical, must-solve problem which cannot be solved any other way. Thus, Electric Armor's heal still functions as an endurance discount power, as an example. Adding abilities is OK, altering strength of abilities is OK, completely transforming a power is not.

My nomination: Gravity Control leaps out at me as a set that is severely hindered by the Cottage Rule. Just putting Wormhole in an earlier slot would help the set enormously, and changing Dimension Shift to be, well, something other than a foe intangibility power, would really make it much more generally useful.

[Traps.Time Bomb] -> Gun Drone or Omega Maneuver

I've always found Devices to be a poorly designed set. By comparison, Traps does a lot of the same things, with added benefit of doing it for the whole team. It also does some far more useful things like the Forcefield Generator and Poison Trap.

1) Web Grenade is the only starting tier-1 on the secondary side that Blasters get that does no damage. Its cast time is also slightly longer than all the others except for Subdual. Another issue it has is that it causes redraw. While this is true of all the immobilizes if paired with a weapon set, Devices is the most logical secondary to pair with the weapon sets and thus creates a problem. It would be like if Fire/Fire somehow caused redraw. Recommendation: Damage (Toxic webbing? Electric?), and animations that allow it to shoot from a gun or bow (might open up a world of headache for BABs though).

2) Caltrops is a decent enough power depending on what you use it for. Skippable, but overall not terrible. Recommendation: Nothing really. There's nothing inherently bad about Caltrops.

4) Taser is a pretty lame power. While it does technically enjoy the benefit of range which most secondary powers don't, it's only 20 feet so it's not enough to really mean anything. Like Web Grenade, this causes redraw with weapon sets. In exchange for having a mere 20 foot range, it has absolutely zero secondary effects. Compared to the holds in Elec or Ice, it's very underwhelming. Only Energy has comparably poor effects, but it has other powers in the secondary to stack with and apply higher mag stuns. Recommendation: Hard to say. Maybe make it melee so that you can justify giving it more effects. Maybe more damage, longer duration, or at least bonus accuracy. And fix the redraw if possible, same as Web Grenade. Difficult to imagine what would make this power better while still making sense.

10) Targeting Drone is one of the really good powers in the set. It boosts accuracy by a large amount, and has a cool visual. Unfortunately, this power comes at the cost of Build Up, which all the other sets get. As a result, you have good accuracy, but no damage boosts. Accuracy is something that's rarely a problem for most well-built toons, although TD will allow you to pierce through DEF (being ToHit and all). Recommendation: This power can be left alone, though honestly I'd like to see it given a universal damage boost of a small amount, like maybe 10-15%.

16) Smoke Grenade is another power that just sort of is. It's not inherently a poor power, nor is it really fantastic. It's as skippable as Caltrops, even though it can be used to achieve some nice stealth options. By itself the power is decent. Recommendation: As with Caltrops, this power doesn't necessarily need to change. Unless redraw could somehow come off. But it's less of an in-combat power, so isn't as necessary as the others mentioned.

20) Cloaking Device is one power that has huge room for improvement. The main problem with the power is that it just plain doesn't do anything. It adds a small bit of stealth and a small bit of defense. But neither of these things is that significant for combat. Recommendation: Honestly, make it crit. Only the first attack, but you get a crit from it same as Stalker hide. This would make up for the set's lack of Build Up by allowing one attack when you open to crit. AoEs like nukes would only crit half the time. I can't crank out numbers off the top of my head, but it could be made 75% (like Widows) if a 100% damage boost would be too powerful.

28) Trip Mine is another one of the nice powers in the set. It can be a pain to use however. Being one of the only attacks in the set, it sucks that it's interruptable. The power isn't bad by itself, but on teams it can end up being rarely used. The best use of it is to lay several and lure a badguy into it, which basically never happens on teams. In the thick of a fight, AoEs may prevent you from ever using one. That combined with the long cast time can mean it rarely if ever gets used in actual combat. Recommendation: Hard to say what this power needs. Tentatively, I'd suggest removing the interrupt time and increasing the recharge time, making it into something you can use in combat, but make it less feasible for drop-and-pull strategies.

35) Time Bomb. Ah, where to start? It only does 40% more damage than Trip Mine, yet has a nuke recharge timer, and takes a full 30 seconds before it actually goes off, in addition to having an 8 second interruption time. You could actually easily lay 2 Trip Mines in that time, and do more damage. Any competent team would be able to mow through a group in far less than 30 seconds, and the only other good use of it is to run ahead and lay it in a separate group, which you can only do with full invisibility (which is impossible to obtain with primary/secondary alone -- very poor design). Overall, just a very bad power. Recommendation: Cottage rule. Just throw this power out. Replace it with an Omega Maneuver variant, because it's just that bad. Omega Maneuver has the same recharge and similar stats. The difference being it's actually USABLE.

38) Gun Drone is a power that seems like it's severely hampered based entirely on the AT it's on. While on one hand Blasters don't and shouldn't usually get pets, it's really no fun to wait all the way to 38 to get such an unfriendly power to use. It's nearly 40 endurance for a pet that only lasts a minute and a half, and it has an agonizingly long cast time which is, on top of everything else, interruptable. To top it off, it requires 100% recharge to be out all the time. Recommendation: The drone doesn't really do a lot, and isn't even that powerful. For being a 38 power, it should really be more friendly to use. Take off the interrupt time, and reduce the cast to a friendly 1-2s. Make the recharge match the duration, and extend the duration out to 2-4 minutes. I can't recall off the top of my head if it allows multiple instances, but if it does, that would need to be removed for the duration/recharge change.

The set as a whole is plagued by lack of attacks that aren't interruptable. It hardly even has attacks at all for that matter. Many of the powers have long cast times (which are interruptable). All the powers cause redraw with the sets that they're most likely to be paired with. The set has no Build Up or damage boost of any sort. All the powers are on long recharges and a hassle to keep using. Many of the powers can't actually be used IN combat. And it has a lot of utility powers which are either minimal in benefit, can't stack with anything else to reach any meaningful bonus, or are generally not very helpful.

Getting rid of all the annoying interruptables, making the pet friendlier, making the powers more in-combat ready, and giving some of the powers more of a purpose would go a long way toward making the set good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Everything Super Reflexes (actually, a lot of the defense sets have inherent issues which cause them to be incredibly flimsy for the first half of the game).

My nomination:

All weapon sets.

After deleting them all, I'd reconfigure them and combine them into 'Weapon Use'. From that pool, you customize your power use yet you choose whatever weapon you want.

So technically, you could customize a mace set using combos, a set of claws with a +def parry power, an axe with -def in each attack, etc etc.

I'm going to have to second the nod towards Gravity Control ... it's just that messed up from a design standpoint, and the Cottage Rule is standing athwart the most obvious and sensible means of redress.

And I have to strongly agree with the assessment of Devices above. The set really is that bad, and really not much of a gadgeteering set. It almost feels like you're being *penalized* with the Devices powerset, as if its intent was merely to annoy ... rather than defeat/arrest your foes.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I would throw Dimension Shift out the door so fast that it would tear the fabric of all realities. The rest of grav is salvagable, though I would strip it of its mostly useless secondary effect (-runspeed, why?) and maybe buff the damage in exchange. Wormhole would also be moved to 12.

I would invoke the "Reverse Cottage Rule". I have Cottage. It summons a nice little cottage that is completely useless. One day I log in and Cottage now boosts my defense and resistance. I am pleased. Cottages be damned.

Good Question. The introduction of IOs has changed the balance of a good few sets, often in ways that would warrant breaking the cottage rule to compensate.

Anyone can now pick up stealth for free, so Devices loses one of its speciality features. Well, two, since Smoke Bomb and Cloaking Device both provide stealth, which is now available at a price.
I would suggest adding an assasination-style damage bonus to Cloaking Device. It compensates for the lack of build up, lifts the power way above any other stealth power, and is thematically appropriate, making the set a kind of sniper set.

Anyone can now build up a decent defence to some positions, so sets which specialise purely in Defence are now a bit overshadowed by their hybrid cousins.
Super Reflexes is overshadowed by Shield Defence, Force Fields by Cold Domination.

I'm not sure what I'd give to SR. It does have the awesome defence debuff resistance to set it apart.

Force Fields, I'd add some more personal protection to the set - give Repulsion Field some +Melee Def and Force Bubble some +ranged/AoE Def.

I'd also add Sonic Resonance to the list. It seems to have been designed in a way that's unnecessarily team dependent. One of its best debuffs (Disruption Field) requires an ally, and it has one of the greatest WTF powers in the game in Sonic Repulsion, once again made ally dependent for no other reason than just to be different from kinetics and Force Field?
I'm not really sure what I'd replace Sonic Repulsion with, just that I would replace it.

None specifically, but a lot of sets that I'd simply re-organize.

All blast sets, for instance. There's really no reason that more sets aren't organized like Archery where you get all 3 single target attacks early plus both AOE powers relatively early. None of this crap where you wait 18 levels for your tier 3 (fire, ice....) or 26 levels for your targeted AOE (energy....).

I'd also completely do away with all of the sniper attacks in those sets. That's one power that really has no usage considering its balancing metrics in comparison to other ST powers.

Similarly, all blaster tier 9s would become endurance draining nukes, rather than just some of them. Again, like the sniper sets, the balance metrics don't work right with the other tier 9s in blast sets. The tier 9s with low recharge values, in an era of City of Kins and City of IOs, creates far too much redundancy of powers.

With the comment on force fields, I wouldn't add any self defense to the set, because it just doesn't need any. However, the problem with force fields is that it only really does one thing; defense through knockback and passive defense. It isn't a well rounded set because it lacks other forms of buffs and defense the way similar sets do (cold, sonic, thermal in particular). Force fields does do defense better than any other set, but it quickly gets to the point of redundancy, particularly on high level teams with IOs.

I've brought up IOs several times, and I'm not saying to balance the sets around IOs in the sense you need IOs to accomplish certain tasks. However, I am suggesting that the set designs take IOs into account a little more, such as sets like Devices where powers have become very redundant due to the introduction of inventions, or powers whose recharge time is so heavily affected by IOs as to change the intended design of the power radically. One example of the latter is in some of the newer tier 9 defensive powers lacking the ability to accept recharge buffs.

Dimension Shift.

And I strongly agree with Dispari's assessment of Devices, particularly with regards Time Bomb and Gun Drone. I'd also quite like to see Targeting Drone bestow a +critchance rather than a straight +dam, just for flavour.

Gravity, definately, what other set do you know of that cannot do it's ATs primary function for over half its career?
Depending on your secondary Gravity/ is a gimped defender. For example an FF/Ice Defender offers better shields, and even more control then a CONTROLLER for levels 1-26. Stalkers, Dark defenders, Dark corruptors, and countless other combinations are better then Gravity control at controlling. In its current situation I see no reason to take Gravity control over anything else for mitigation.

Gravity Control for dominators is even worse though as Gravity controllers can atleast pick a secondary like rad/, /TA or /Storm to fall back on, Gravity Dominators get stuck with the loss of control for subpar damage attacks from their primary with a secondary devoted to damage.

Not quite, Illusion atleast has the choice of taking Flash at 6 and PA at 18, not to mention its damage for control aspect is decent as Spectral wounds is fast activating while propel is pretty much useless on teams. And once you hit 26 Spooky just rounds it out further into a well designed set.
Mind I do agree with has almost as bad as a progression however it atleast becomes a good controller. Gravity's problems don't alleviate with the addition of wormhole, as even played a good player will result in the splitting of mobs from missing and it's short radius, to it's unneccassarily long activation times. Sure wormhole lets you decide where the fight's going to take place but every other control set can actually handle mobs whereever they lie to begin with.

1.) Gun Drone - Half a bars end drain, a spawns lifespan to activate, a visible aggro drawing pet in a set with 2 stealth powers and 2 stealth reliant powers, and only does AR Burst level damage, and flies too slowly to keep up with travel powers, and has a short lifespan... and a long recharge.

2.) Dimension Shift - I guess gravity has something to do with alternate dimensions? This must be an offshoot of the wormhole ability, maybe that one scifi where they wormhole through a blackhole... you know, instead of getting crushed. and then off of that time travel or string theory? (Also power is annoying since it still gives no visible sign of phase)

To replace, it's been suggested before, but gravity should have a power which draws enemies in, a reverse repel mechanic that is totally unique to gravity.

3.) Gravity holds in general - "Causes a single foe to be trapped in a misshapen gravity field, rendering him unable to take action" huh? Misshapen gravity field? how would... I'm confused.
(Suggestion for 3...) Make Gravity slam an opponent down, and keep them down for its holds, everyone has a knockdown animation, it shouldn't be too hard to make them stay down. It seems gravity to me should be the ultimate in mob positioning, things like area left, repel, an upwards or downwards version of telekinesis, a selectable area 'gravity well' power that draws enemies to it (even if you place it on the ceiling if you really wanted to get interesting.)

Storm Summoning, in my opinion, needs love and a lot of it.

I can't give a lot of detail because I looked at it for about two days (helping a friend) but here's a couple of things I noticed from watching her play:

Tornado takes so long to chase something down that it hits about three things over its entire lifetime.

Lightning Storm does enough knockback that it can't reach an enemy it's already hit. "Never hits the same guy twice" is not really a feature in my opinion.

Storm in general seems to hit a lot of people with a lot of effects, most of which last about a second and a half.

I've figured out what I'd like to do to Force Fields, if there was no cottage rule:
I'd replace Repulsion Field or Force Bubble with a power much like Sonic Dispersion. A big +Resist bubble that does mez protection. The kicker is, you could run EITHER Dispersion Bubble OR pseudo-Sonic Dispersion. Currently Force Fields caps Defense for the team and provides local mez protection, but if you have other sources of Defense it doesn't have much else up its sleeve. "Knockback, or Repel!" This would give you the option of either all the Defense a blaster could need, or a lot less Defense with some Resistance to give a +Defense build some extra pain absorption.

Burn for tanks. It has been altered and adjusted almost from release. The inital concept was for it to be a "Wall of Fire" type power. However the common playstyle of a tank makes this use near impossible. Instead it was used as a pBAoe power that could melt away the mobs around you.


Since then it has been neutered and tweaked to it's currentl state where it is useful only against mobs that do not run or if you/your team have a way to stop/slow the mobs. This is not ideal for a AT that spends it's team time trying to keep mobs as close to them as possible while keeping the attention off of your teammates.

There is also the argument that the damage potential that Fire/ set has was balanced around previous versions of Burn and that with the current state it no longer is balanced for the lack of defensive ability.

Solutions:

- Turn Burn into a Damage shield. It blocks nothing but every Melee hit causes damage to the attacker. This damage can be buffed and is Fire based so it gets the full effect of Fiery Embrace.

- Make it into a pBaoe with a DoT component. Scrap the fear and balance overall damage around what the current expected output of burn is.

- Turn it into something along the lines of Omega Maneuver. Target attack that draws the attention of the mobs before erupting in a blaze that induces choking animation.

- Add a +slow, increase the radius, and double the taunt magnitude. This will allow the mobs to run away yet stay focused on you.

Fiery Aura and Dark Armor: No self rezzes as tier 9s. Give them a real tier 9.

Nerf all tier9 powers to buff the rest of the set's powers.

Not to go with the crowd, but my first thought upon seeing this was 'GRAVITY CONTROL!' I might only touch it on Doms, though... Controllers can bring enough mitigation from their secondaries to do some interesting things, and having two damaging powers is a lot more helpful for them. (I actually kind of like gravity as it is on controllers with some secondaries.) What I'd really like is for them to invent effects that are the opposite of knockback/repel for gravity, but that's kind of out there.

For individual powers, Serum on Mercenaries. It could probably be made useful without running into the cottage rule, but I'd just as soon turn it into something interesting, since I've never found much need to buff an individual pet's survivability if I'm using my secondary well.