Power Proliferation That I'd Like To See

It'll slow those incoming ToHit checks, but nowhere near how many as everything being stunned and on the ground thanks to Fault or cowering in fear due to Cloak of Fear does.


And you can still get and maintain decent Fury even when they are mezzed thanks to your own attacks, my Stone/Fire Brute has no Fury issues whatsoever despite enemies spending a lot of their time staggering around or picking themselves off the ground.

That depends, do you have your damage aura up and running, too?

The difference is, you can turn off Cloak of Fear, or skip it entirely. You can't turn off the slows from Ice Melee or Spines.

Ice Armor would be fine, mechanically--as you mentioned, you get plenty of Fury using your damage aura from /Fire, and Icicles would enable outgoing Fury to build at about the same rate. Even if it didn't, you could still detoggle it and suffer no other penalties (there's nothing else in the set that debuffs enemies, right?).

But they're unlikely to give us that since it would be thematically need to be paired with Ice Melee, which of course causes unavoidable issues with the way Fury is built up.

(Personally, I'd just give Ice Melee attacks a 10% bonus to Fury build up over the standard formula and call it a day.)

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

You can turn quills off. Without quills running you are unlikely to notice a change in the mobs recharge.

That depends, what level am I and what is the server time?

I understand what you are saying, and I say spines will have no difficulties maintaining fury. By the time any amount of -recharge affects the mob, it should be long dead. If you are talking bosses, how much fury are you maintaining off a single mob these days? Never just fight one boss? I'm sure the aggro cap of bosses will be able to keep my fury bar up just fine.

Hide goes w/out saying probably would get something like Cloak of Darkness and give it a fancy ninja name or put the AoE defense in a separate, new toggle w/ a fancy ninja name . Smoke Flash shouldn't be a issue either, just because something doesn't fit someone's narrow view of what is "scrapper-like" doesn't make it so. I'd see Smoke Flash as another mitigation tool.

Some people thought Elec Melee wasn't very "Stalker-like" even though Spines has been available since CoV release, but it's a great AoE set for them.

Tell that to my Shield Defense Stalker.

Sorry, but this is no longer true.

Take any brute with enough attacks in their primary to have a semi-decent chain of any kind and you can achieve the effective "before Frenzy" Fury "cap" on a practice dummy.

On the subject of Spines.

Spine Armor.

Why do we not have this?

No Damage Reflection mechanic, maybe?

If you need taunt, there is a pool that provides it quite well enough, and your scrapper's damage output is significantly higher than a tankers.

To clarify, the powers underneath the proliferations you'll notice are simply new power sets I'd like to see. Demon Summoning didn't get me as excited as an elemental set, or a puppet set or an alien set would have. I wanted this thread to be about what can be proliferated, as well as what new sets we might like to see as players. I too think an Illusion Dominator would be fantastic. I also would like to see energy get a little juice and maybe some animation alternatives as well.

I would be slightly less excited if tankers got spines before brutes.

Provoke is in no way a substitute for a taunt aura.

Damage aura ToHit checks don't add to Fury.

No, but they will wake up the shaking mobs and they will try to Brawl you, correct? Which counts as a ToHit check, I believe.

Ooh, good point. Sorry, I thought you were coming at it from the ToHit Rolls from the aura's point of view rather than from a Fear Breaking damage aura one


(In my case it's a Stone/Fire where the Blazing Aura ToHit checks don't make a difference for me, stuff stays stunned/held/getting up regardless)

Oh. I actually hadn't considered that. A while back I tried figuring out what Spine Armor might look like and had this thought of reactive "modes" as a way of making it unique.

Sort of like Swap Ammo for armor toggles. Then it started to seem excessive and OP. Dmg relfection wasn't something I had considered, but it makes sense. Punching the sharp pointy thing is going to hurt your hand.

In the interest of preventing an OP set though, couldn't something like an Icicles clone serve that purpose thematically?

Considering that it's technically just another "damage aura"? Not really. But then, how many do you really need in one set?

True, not really a "You hit me you're gonna get hurt" feel.

How many in one set? One or None seems to be par for the course with Auras. /FA gets an aura, and attack, and a boost, by way of example, and /SD gets a +dmg and an attack. So some sets get a little more offense, others more defense.

In practice, a Spine Armor set can't have anything resembling Spine Burst or Quills - since those violate the whole "no two of the same thing then." Which might be the problem. How does one give Spines Armor a "dmg Aura" without it being basically Quills under another name. That's why I thought of Icicles as a model - but the more I think about it, the more "just another dmg aura" probably won't work because of the potential conflict with Quills (In scrapper/stalker terms, and running with the idea of proliferating spines).

So, let's say hypothetically that we can bypass the "Standard Code Rant" on something like a Martyr mechanic (Dmg retrun, borrowing from a classic favorite of mine). What would it have to look like in order to retain balance?

First, limited to incoming melee attacks. Doesn't make sense for incoming ranged/AoE. So there's a fairly substanital limit off the bat.

But what about how much damage returned for damage incoming? How does one keep it useful while making sure that anything using KoB/Clobber/etc attacks against you doesn't 2-shot themselves?

Finally, does this exist as a fixed value? Is the dmg component enhanceable or subject to buffs? None of the above?

Silly discussion, but Spine Armor seems like one of those "Hard to do, but really why isn't it there." set possibilites.

You can already get that in real life

Just out of curiosity, because I have wondered this without ever testing it: If a brute gains fury based on attacking and being attacked, if you or your enemy miss, do you still get fury? That being said, if you don't get fury for the enemy missing, why include +defense and -acc sets like Dark Melee and Super Reflexes/Energy Aura?

In the event that fury does build normally on attack "attempts" rather than successes, I do see -recharge being an issue, but the -speed component could still be viable. Plus, with the massive number of AoEs involved in spines, Brutes could be easily overpowered with the set, so I could see the -recharge staying if for no other reason than to balance with all the damage they will be throwing around regardless of their fury. Trust me, having a Spines/Dark scrapper, I know the kind of massive aggro and number of hits you can take as Spines despite the -recharge effect, lol. I think reduced recharge from the venom would prevent the set from overpowering the existing brute attack sets.

As for other people's complaints about the idea of tanks using spines, I still see no issue with it. A PBAoE toggle damage move is nice, but not game-changing in terms of damage. Obviously the devs have no problem with a tank having multiple taunt aura toggles, considering Ice Armor I know for a fact has two by itself, plus a click PBAoE with a taunt effect that's on cooldown. Also, the devs have no issue with allowing two damaging toggle auras on a character, even a damage dealer (Spines/Dark scrapper). That combination is immensely powerful, don't get me wrong, but you forget that damage toggles are more than twice as draining as the average armor toggle. So sure, a Spines/Fiery Aura tank would have lots of AoE damage, but he'd pay for it fast with endurance that could otherwise be spent on actual click attack powers that deal more.

And in terms of the complaint that says tanks shouldn't be allowed to have much damage, they were originally the first and only class with Super Strength, which had the best damage buff click in the game: Rage. Shield Defense came along and now tanks could have their own mini-fulcrum-shift... as a toggle... not to mention Shield Charge. Try playing an electric melee/shield defense tank and tell me he isn't powerful, lol, or SS/Shield for that matter. Those builds' damage outputs are absolutely incredible, and you aren't a damage class. Some scrapper builds would be hard-pressed to keep up with your damage output. Spines isn't overpowered in comparison really.

I hear they are working on a "street fighting" blaster secondary to fill in this role with martial arts/super strength style moves. Hopefully they add a dagger set too for a blaster secondary. I want my medieval archer to draw a short sword when people get too close, lol Single and Dual Blade ports over to blaster secondaries would be great as well. Natural origin isn't represented well enough in blaster power sets (or controller/defender, which is why I recently submitted an "Oration" defender primary set idea to the new powers thread, lol).

Yes, it's being attacked or attacking that matter; not hitting.

I'd think that most of the Dom Earth Assault powers would work better as Earth Manipulation, since Blaster secondaries tend to have melee powers.
I did write up my idea for an Earth Blast set a little bit ago: