Buff Trick Arrows 2.0! Now with more begging!

So I believe Synapse jokingly called Issue 24, "Issue Fix All The Things", and that made me wonder... what if Trick Arrow is one of the things and hasn't been announced yet?

And that thought made me realize that if it does include Trick Arrow, I'll probably collapse on the ground hyperventilating.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

I would love to see TA (and other sets like FF) get some love!


Here's hoping for you Trickshooter! Maybe my lvl 50 TA/A would come off the shelf if they did buff 'em!

Actually, the more and more I think about it, Sonic should get absorb over FF. It's more thematic in my eyes.

Adding absorb to FF won't make it's skippable powers any better IMO.

I think Absorb is equally thematic for Force Field or Sonic Resonance. Actually, I consider Absorb a lot more thematic for FF than Defense.

I don't think Cold (or for that matter Thermal or Traps) should horn in on that just because they smell a buff. It's partly (but not quite entirely) the nature of these sets that justify a buff to FF and Sonic to begin with.

Trick Arrow needs love for sure. Cold Domination does more mitigation, gives more -res and have better effects over all. Normally, it's not fair to compare sets back to back like this because every set as that 'gem' power that makes it amazing...

Trick Arrow has no real gem. I always wanted the set to be the -res set but it never came to pass. I'd love to see it get something unique attached to it so finally it has something special about it.

FF DOES feel ancient. Sonic is getting there but it's unique effects are holding up albeit barely.

They don't need 'buffs' I don't think that is the correct term. They simply need love and synergy. These sets work well in groups but they play too passively and suck at soloing, making them boring. Some say that means more blasting, but when you pick defender particularly, you're aiming at supporting, not blasting.

I still think the phase powers should be changed to 15 second unchangeable recharge with a 5 second duration, 1 second cast. This would make them like ultra holds, useful for soloing without being too annoying.

Oh and Sonic's Knockback anchor is wwaayy too unwieldy. Needs some love.

I'm coming in kind of late here but I figure I'll give my $0.02.

In general I think the changes that you propose to Entangling Arrow, Acid Arrow and Disruption Arrow make a lot of sense. I think Acid Arrow should be a little bit stronger, either with a 20ft-25ft radius (so you can hit the entire spawn) or a full 30% resistance debuff. Personally I feel that as the only pure debuff set Trick Arrow should have the best resistance debuffs and even with the changes you propose I don't think it has but YMMV.

On other arrows:

Flash Arrow: You mention that Flash Arrow is on a par with other -perception powers in the game and that is largely true. The question I have is why should that be true? -Perception is one of the more questionable debuffs in the game. It does have some value as a utility debuff but for the most part -perception isn't that critical. Now that being said it does have value to a TA character int hat in a set reliant on debuffs for damage mitigation it allows them to apply 2 debuffs at the start of combat rather than one so I certainly wouldn't advocate removing it but I also don't think other -perception powers should be used as a baseline. Personally I'd like to see the -ToHit in Flash Arrow increased to about 10% to put TA closer in performance to sets like Time and Dark which also make extensive use of -ToHit for damage mitigation (it would still be weaker than them but not by as much.

Glue Arrow: I wouldn't object to the changes you propose but I also don't see them as highly critical. Glue Arrow is a pretty good power as it stands so I'd rather see the damage mitigation in the rest of the set buffed as opposed to Glue Arrow. Still changing it to a chance for hold patch would be an interesting change.

Ice Arrow: Personally I feel that the single target holds and stuns in all Buff/Debuff and Blast sets should have their recharge and duration adjusted (as well as normalizing what attribute they use, I'm looking at you Tesla Cage). I would say Scale 10, Recharge 20s for the Blast sets (same as Beanbag and a couple of others) and Scale 10, Recharge 16s for the buff/debuff sets. Also set them all to use Ranged_Sleep or Ranged_Immobilize as the scaling attribute instead of the grab-bag of Ranged_Sleep, Ranged_Immobilize, Ranged_Stun and Ranged_Ones that they have now (I would suggest Ranged_Stun but for some reason Masterminds and Corruptors have somewhat bizarre Ranged_Stun attributes compared to Blasters and Defenders). For comparison purposes Controllers and Dominators get Scale 12 Ranged_immobilize, Recharge 8s for their single target holds.

FF, Sonic and TA seriously need looked at, and I think in that order of importance. They are really out of sync with the rest of the support sets and I certainly hope the devs give them some thought. If it happened and the devs did nothing to change them, I can accept that, but I highly doubt that would happen in light of all the newer sets that do a much better job of everything that these legacy sets do ok at. I get that something has to be worst, but those three set should not be the worst by the margin that they are.


Just note, I have a character of each of these in at least the 40s and I love the sets, but they are definately outperformed in even their core roles by other newer sets while not having the flexibility to cover other buffing or debuffing (TA is a notable exception in that it does a little bit of everything debuff but is behind a lot of other sets in the debuffing it does achieve while taking stacking powers to achieve it).