Pre ED vs. IO's/Incarnate

Which time was more powerful?

In absolute terms, definitely IOs and Incarnate powers and all the stuff we have now.

Relative to the environment... probably still what we have now, but not by such a wide margin.

Pre-ED was much more powerful. Blasters were very powerful then, because you could six-slot any power for damage, and use Devices Targeting Drone six-slotted ToHit for high accuracy. You could six-slot Hasten for recharge and it provided Defense as well. Stamina could also be slotted for End Mod, so you never ran out End.

Regen Scrappers were incredible in those days. Paired with Dark Melee they were almost unkillable.

I witnessed a Hydra Trial where our entire team was killed except the Fire/Fire Tank, who proceeded to herd up the entire cavern of +3 Rikti bosses and destroy them using Burn.

We were told when ED was announced that there was a plan to offer more powerful enhancements and that we would be able to reach essentially the same level of power as Pre-ED. I don't think that goal has been reached. Is it possible to have every attack at 198% damage (that is 6 slots of even level SOs)?

I'd say it depends how do you define the question.

Save for the short gap between I5 and I6, pre-ED also meant before the target cap and the GDN. If we're talking about that, I'd definitely have to go with pre-ED, i.e. steamrolling through entire maps or zones with a fast-recharge Burn that could affect an unlimited amount of mobs and didn't cause fear, while having high enough resistances to handle everything with the occasional luck insp (and defense was handled differently too so you could reduce anything to a 5% chance to hit with enough defense, unless I misremember...).

On the other hand, no challenge available required anywhere close to that amount of power, and it was specific builds that were awesome while others were rather poor. Now, everyone can be pretty damn good and although you still have overperformers, the difference isn't as drastic.

The unlimited target cap makes pre-ED more powerful. When one person can herd up an entire map and another person can kill them all in 1 shot....nothing today can match that, obviously.

But if we ignore the target cap, today is definitely more powerful. The level of general survivability today is something you couldn't even imagine in the old days.

Per-ED and the GDN, only a few AT sets were gods, mainly melee. After the nerfs, IO's gave a huge lift to almost every AT. So while ED and the GDN were likely better times for the chosen few, everyone won with IO's.

Overall I think the game is better with IO's/Incarnates. I do think the biggest mistake was the huge gap between ED and the introduction of IO's( not the fault of the current leadership to my knowledge).

ED wasnt for IO's really. I remembr jack posting somthing along the lines of "I never expected players to slot 6 of the same type of enhancment, and even totally ignore secondary effect enhancment" which is of course, totally rediculous for a designer to overlook.

So, in a way, ED was more about forcing players to slot like Jack wanted them to all along. i think the "yeah we have a new system coming to allow you to get some power back!!" was a knee jerk reaction to the massive rage quit exodus from the game at the time. If the devs had some ideas about the IO system, it was not like what we got, and it wasnt seen as important because CoV was on the horizon.

As for which was/is more powerful, its sort of a wash- however as a whole I would say Old school is still more potent. Some sets and combos back then were indeed major gimp, but a lot of them were powerful in ways they can not be now, like broadsword for scrappers, and the whole blaster AT. ED really smacked slower animating sets bad. The trade off back then was slower means you got more frontloaded dmg. but then the dmg got hacked, and there was no compensation for years for it. Blaster snipes are still broken. Some of the weopon sets finnally got mostly balanced out when BaBs reworked the built in redraw times from the animations. Claws got more passes for dmg balance. Energy melee got passes to normalize it, but in the process got a fun-ectomy. I still dont see the logic on the pass they gave stone melee, but it still performs well enough.

Basically, its apples and oranges yet for a lot of things. My main used to be able to fight plus 12 DE creatures in Founders falls, provided they were the rock ones that took more dmg from smashing dmg. Remember when Jose Escalante used to have monsters fall off the cliff above him and start attacking you while you were reading his mission text? I used to stand and fight- it was a lot of fun. Long battle of attrition, but I could win, and the reward was massive because of the level difference. That got "fixed" which was obviously a needed change to get the game balance under control- but it is just something we wont ever see again.

Some things were plain broken, like invincibility had a decimal place error on the def and to hit bonus it applied. Unfortunatly, the devs didnt find it until after they had totally hacked the resist numbers out of invuln. Then they found out invinc was checking and appliying the def/tohit buff 3 times a second instead of 3 times in 10 seconds(and it stacked-yeah, that was a lot of +def in a few seconds time when you were surrounded). Then they fixed that error, and left the rest of the changes in place for YEARS. In I2, without any kind of target caps or def caps in place, you could take an invuln and herd enough foes to the point you actually could not get hit. I got the little clockwork gear bagde by doing the one mission where there are little scrap piles in an office building that spawn them. I just stood there, and after a fistful of gears had spawned, I could not be hit anymore so I just waited until there were so many little clockworks in the room They were stacked up, and then through a few punches on "stacked" mobs and got the badge.

Yes, it was broken. No, we cant do that anymore, nor should we be able to. Yeah, the gap between global def redux/ED and the power creep that started when IO's got released and expanded was too big, but hindsight is 20/20. I think the game is in a much better place then it was in I2. But I also miss a few of those epic battles, one on one with a big rock monster and winning, and getting a truly massive reward for the effort. (warhulks in Creys folly were good fights too) BUT there is little I would change back. IMO the worst thing that we have from back then yet is the terribly unfun movment penalty in rooted in stone armor. But thats a pretty minor quibble in the grand scheme of things. If they fixed that, and got blasters back on track I think a legitimate argument about power levels now vs then could be had. Until then, I say the scales are still tipped to The olden days.

If you really want to compare power levels from the 'old days' max to today, you should really look at the old days max. That would be hami-Oed out with the old +50% boost hami-Os coupled with no GDN or ED. Builds in those days were really, really powerful.

Now granted as mentioned above, some ATs benefited more than others, but heck that's still true with IOs.

However let's take a fire tanker. With full Hami-O treatment, they could be at the resistance cap to everything but cold, toxic and psi. You could easily stack in over 30% defense, and have pema-hasten on top of it all quite easily. Then all your attacks would be at the damage cap (only 400% on tankers after all).

Then there was regen, back when it regened and fast. You had the perma-unstoppable builds running around with really high defense on top of 90% resistance to all but psi, and then you threw in essentially unlimited endurance.

Though heck, even debuffers were pretty stupid powerful. Any defender with a -tohit could floor about anything with one power.

There was a lot of power running around back then (3 sets of fire imps out at once, 2 phantoms, etc). While there were gimp builds, there were plenty of gods possible.

With incarnate powers and high end builds, people do approach that now, and owing to some sets which didn't exist in the day, may even exceed it. However the AOE stacks of those days are only a faded memory. The Aggro cap all by itself put most of that to rest even without AOE caps.

in an absolute enviroment.

Io's are stronger than pre ED.

IN a realistic sense, pre ED was ALOT stronger, unless you are solo or on a team where everyone slotted to the max, your carrying weak people.

They have created a game of have and have nots, haves dont want teams, have nots wants teams but haves dont need or want them

its a really silly system.