fix it so we are not forced to pick the t1 power in our secondary

Replying directly to Zombie Man,

Gale isn't at attack. It doesn't exist in an attack set. The sub-optimal argument doesn't apply. It provides mitigation.

Tanker bruising was added to improve tank performance in much the same way that defenders received their scaling damage buff that maxes while they are solo.

Your request is nothing but a whim. Some widespread hatred toward a single power, an opinion I don't share with regards to gale as I use it regularly on my DP/Storm corruptor, is no more a case for unlocking the tier2 of a secondary at creation than some twit being mad that he can't make superman in game is a case for giving tanks the scrapper damage modifier.

So people always use Web Grenade?

And, note, I'm against this idea. It's generally unnecessary.

umm yeah be more respectful to zombie man bc (s)he is right.

I'd be fine leaving things the way they are if the powers which were forced on you all had roughly the same degree of usefulness.

For example, compare invulnerability and shield defense as secondaries.

Invulnerability forces you to take resist physical damage. It's moderately useful, but nothing special. A decent number of people would probably skip it if they could.

Shield defense on the other hand forces you to take Deflection, which is an extremely important part of the set. Almost no one would skip it regardless of whether it was forced on you or not because it's such a critical component of the power set.

There are quite a few other sets that force you to take powers which are sub-par or situational.

This isn't a game-breaking thing of course, or something would have been done about it already, but it would be a nice QoL improvement if something were done about it.

I could see some standardization among the first power of the secondaries. Every secondary set's first power is something the character can use solo. There's no exception to that. And that's a good thing in my eyes.

If they were to standardize the secondaries of defensive sets (for Brutes / Scrappers) so that the first power is relatively equal in usefulness, I would actually be fairly excited by that. It would help ensure the first power is less "forced" as it would likely be a power they would want to choose anyway. But really, that's about the only alteration I would make, and it's more about the order of powers gained in the secondaries then how many one can choose from.

In one sense it's arbitrary and inconsistent that you have a choice between two powers for the primary, the power pools, the epic pools, and the patron pools, but are forced to take the first power in the secondary. It's the only set/pool that's true for.

Why is this glaring inconsistency there? Does it serve any real purpose? It wouldn't be hard to implement a choice, because you're shown a list of all the powers at character creation, but only one is active and you're forced to take it.

On the other hand, this is no big deal. The first five or 10 levels go by in a flash. And you can take the second power in the secondary at level two, about five minutes after you create your character.

So the only real problem is that you're forced to take the tier 1 if you don't want to.

On the third hand, that's not all that different from other power sets and pools either. How many of us are forced to take Boxing or Kick because we want Toughness and Weave? How many of us slot Boxing or Kick and put extremely expensive IO sets into it, and then never once use the power we're forced to take?

Either way, it's not a big deal. It is in no way a game-breaker if the devs allowed skipping the first power choice. However, in the vast majority of cases it's not even inconvenient to be forced to take that power: these days, very few tankers would consider skipping the Tier 1 secondary because of Bruising, and of course no stalker would skip Hide. Blasters will generally take the Tier 1 Secondary because it's one of the three powers you can use while mezzed.

So, while there's the occasional power like Gale, very few people will actually skip that first power.

The real problem is that this change would cause ripple effects that elicit other changes and unforeseen side effects. For example, blasters would logically want the first secondary power taken to be usable while mezzed. And then tankers would want bruising to be on the first secondary power taken.

At best it would be a slight quality of life improvement, making power selection consistent across all sets.

I wouldn't mind it, but it's nowhere near the top of my wishlist for the devs.

wow when i replied to this i didn't think it would grow to be 3 pages. can we go back to loling at the OP about how ridiculous auto 6 slotting a tier one and boxing/kick is?

As far as "In one sense it's arbitrary and inconsistent that you have a choice between two powers for the primary, the power pools, the epic pools, and the patron pools, but are forced to take the first power in the secondary. It's the only set/pool that's true for." Um...I see where you're trying to go there, but I think the reason for that has long been established that it's because it's SECONDARY to your PRIMARY set. That doesn't seem arbitrary to me at all. Quite the opposite actually. Pool powers and Epics aren't secondary or primary, they are optional completely. You can't opt out of taking a secondary.

Edit: Yes I am aware that even if you only take primary/secondary powers that at lvl 22 you have to pick a pool power.

I have to admit, I understand the frustration behind the OP's post, even if the "solution" is imbecilic.

Blasters, for example, are a particularly egregious example of "mandatory" power picking - sure, the single target immobilize might be useful for a level or two, but in an archetype generally geared toward AoE annihilation, it will frequently be forgotten, but there are plenty of powersets where the first tier secondary is nigh-useless to the player. One way of solving this would be either to allow picking both primary powers, or to unlock the second tier secondary.

Just my two cents.

An open letter to NCsoft

tl;dr

I completely disagree on the OP's suggestion on slotting the first power and Boxing/Kick.

However, taking the second tier power from the secondary set would only really pose a problem for Stalkers, whose inherent power relies on Hide. No other archetype seems to have a power in its secondary set that is so required for the archetype. Even Tankers didn't have bruise until very recently, and their main inherent effect is still Gauntlet.

The only place I can see the argument of it breaking builds otherwise is when you ask the question of whether some powers were meant to be forced or not: Force Bolt, Gale, the first Sonic Resonance power, etc. A lot of people could live without them.

i just feel like that's part of the balance between keeping primary powers "better" than their secondary counterparts right out of the gate. I.E. rad defenders can completely skip their heal, or just take it later on, b/c they plan to solo or just don't like to heal or whatever reason. but part (notice i say part, i'm aware the numbers are usually less in the secondary) of keeping the primary "better" is locking in that first power choice when it's ported as a secondary. Yes there are some sub-optimal choices, but even then that's still subjective. I'm not one of those who say it's been like this 6 years leave it alone. I say it works the way it is, so don't cause tons of other issues messing with something that isn't even remotely broken. Don't like ST immobs? why not, cheap purple on a blaster is all i see.