Cyber_naut

That's for sure, and it would be easier, and better for the game, if the devs would buff up some of the underperforming sets that players just aren't playing. Simply tweaking the numbers on some sets would be almost like creating all-new powersets for players to enjoy.

Having said that, if there is anything in this game that is clearly overpowered, it's stacking buffs and debuffs, without any doubt whatsoever, and by a longshot over anything else. Whenever anything is nerfed, I have to wonder how this obvious fact is missed by the devs involved.

I love the envenomed dagger. I think I saw -regen in some of the incarnate stuff, I hope I wasn't hallucinating... again...

Not really, every other set will still feel underpowered on teams with well built aoe heavy toons like mm's, fire/kins, etc. There's a reason most melee toons will often get the 'lol melee' when super teams are being built for speed tf's and what not. This game is about buffs/debuffs and aoe when teaming is involved, and it's involved a lot due to the fact this is an mmo.

And while scrappers are still one of the better soloing classes, there are classes that blow them away in terms of teaming that are on a similar level solo, and many stronger team at's have been getting solo buffs, while most scrappers remain pretty underpowered in terms of what they bring to a team.

So while a fire/sd is in fact devastating on teams, that does not justify yet another nerf to SD. Nobody is getting overwhelmed by a ma/sd or dm/sd in a team run. It's the combination of fsc from fm, sc from sd and fireball from a power pool. It's like calling for fire or kin from the controllers powersets to be nerfed because fire/kin is such a potent combo.

Whenever someone calls for nerfs to scrappers, I have to wonder how they are ignoring how powerful the other at's are. I love scrappers because I love melee, but if I was going for pure power on a team, I wouldn't even include scrappers. For example, take a team of well built corruptors and a team of well built scrappers and run them through every tf in this game, and the corruptors will obliterate the scrappers in finish times. Same for just about any at that has access to buffs/debuffs. So to complain about the minor buff scrappers get from aao, relative to what other at's have access to, is absurd to me.

The irony of posts like these never cease to amuse me. An active participant on an internet forum trying to discredit internet forum posters, then complaining about internet forum posters complaints...

For those who are thrilled to be paying eight bucks for a pack of emotes that were probably supposed to originally be in GR, on top of paying a monthly fee for less and less content included in just that price, then feel free to post about how thrilled you are.

At the same time, other supporters of this game who are not happy with this trend will post about their displeasure with a pack like this, in a crazy attempt to stop the people who are running this game from pissing off more and more customers until it gets to the point that this game bleeds out. And these posters, myself included, are not doing it just to complain, it's because we care about this game and want it to succeed. If we didn't care, we simply would not bother to post anything at all.

I'm encouraged to see that even on the dev-friendly boards, that such a vast majority of posters can see that this pack is potentially the start of a very bad trend, and are voicing their displeasure to those responsible. Hopefully someone is listening.

I'm just glad the devs listened to the massive, and almost unanimously negative feedback on this and responded to it.

...oh, they just ignored it and released the pack as is/was? Nevermind...

Seconded, leveling one now and it's been a blast.

Corruptors are a nice mix of blasting and buff/debuffing, like a mix between blasters and defenders. By far my favorite ranged at.

Some do not understand how juicy FSC is. Add fireball for added flavor.

I'm suprised nobody has mentioned spines, which is definitely a top end aoe set, though painfully weak in terms of single target damage.

LOL, I guess you can call it what you want, and I'll call it what I want. Fury is all about doing damage. Old fury allowed brutes to routinely outdamage scrappers, that's why the devs changed/nerfed it, because they didn't want brutes to have both a damage and survivability edge on scrappers. With the change, brutes are not routinely outdamaging scrappers. That's a net nerf, because overall, brutes damage dealing abilities were reduced, even if some aspects of the power were improved.

Well that's the difference between my argument and yours, I present facts and evidence to support my argument while yours is supported by nothing but opinion, and on top of that, you get facts wrong. And you don't really think you're polite, do you, lol? Of course you don't.

Then it's ridiculous for you to comment on my suggestions if you haven't even read them. That's probably why you were wrong to make your contention about my suggestions - because as you've clearly admitted, you didn't even know what they were.

Hmmm, maybe that explains your argument that EM is 'fine', maybe you haven't even actually looked at the set...

Five dollar words 'aint gonna fix your broken arguments, or help you comment on things you admit you haven't investigated.

You act like it's impossible to guage how strong EM is compared to other competing sets for the balance range of play, which is nonsense. You act like the stats for each powerset are shrouded in mystery and nobody has even played the sets in-game yet.

My statements that EM is on par with several competing sets in terms of single target damage are supported by not only game play, but damage studies done by players such as starsman and billz, and I'm not aware of anyone who has even suggested otherwise, much less shown conflicting evidence. And my contention that this damage is delivered more slowly than competing sets is supported by the cast times that are available to anyone who cares to look, which goes on to support the idea that such cast times make delivering the damage more problematic on teams, for obvious reasons, and have been observed by countless corpse-smashing EM users. And my contention that EM is badly outclassed in terms of aoe output is easily proven by simply glancing at the aoe capabilities of EM then comparing them to just about any other set.

What part of that argument do you dispute exactly, and what evidence are you struggling with?

Your argument is that EM is 'fine'. I'm still waiting for you to put together any evidence at all to support that idea. But understand, just because you can't seem to find any (probably due to the fact it's difficult to find evidence to support an incorrect conclusion), don't pretend it's impossible for the opposite side of the argument to support thier contentions with evidence, because we already have.

EM is clearly underperforming in overall gameplay, and it's supported by statistics, gameplay, and common sense. If one can agree that EM is on par with several sets in terms of single target ability, and is getting badly outperformed in aoe ability by the same competing sets, then obviously there is a competitive imbalance and EM is underperforming.

But I'm sure you'll 'politely' respond again by telling me you don't feel my argument is worthy of your time to read, lol (which is odd considering all of your responses to my posts). In reality, it's just a transparent way of saying you don't have any way to support your own argument or refute mine.

LOL, but it sounds more like a desease debuff...

Aw, and here I thought if I used your favorite new word I'd get on your good side...

I keep hearing you say energy melee as a set is fine now, and that it was overpowered before. But you never seem to address the fact that it is only on par with several other sets in terms of single target damage and mitigation (and even in this case, due to its slow delivery, this competitiveness weakens as the size of your team grows), while falling far, far behind the same competing sets in terms of aoe damage and mitigation. It's like claiming two athletes are on par because they both run the same 40 while ignoring one is physically twice as strong as the other (and the weaker one becomes confused during races and runs off into the crowd...).

So I'm not sure how one could make a real argument that a set that was only competitive solo and fighting single targets is competitive with the other available powersets that have similar solo/single target ability, but eat EM's lunch in terms of aoe and team play. I guess that's why you haven't.

Of course you did try to justify your argument with the ridiculous reasoning of 'if it wasn't overpowered the devs wouldn't have nerfed ET and added nothing in return'. I guess you missed where they overnerfed FA, made it an undepowered mess for ages, then recently buffed it when they realized their mistake. The devs aren't infallible, take a look at the pvp revamp.

Then you finish up by complaining that my suggested improvements don't address stalkers, when in fact they do, since my suggested changes include improvements to stun, ET and TF.

I'd use your favorite word again to describe your argument, but it doesn't really fit, because your arguments are just flat out illogical and factually incorrect, but you are consistent in that technique.

I agree. Obviously this move is a buff, but its not the enormous buff some would contend. So some top end builds will do 30 more dps and be more end efficient, I'm sure pylons and solo'd av's are pretty upset that they'll go down a little bit faster. Some super teams will finish tf's a few minutes faster. Thats a miniscule part of the game and not that big a deal to the vast majority of players. Gamebreaker not found.

What it will do for the most part is make the lvl 1-20 game a lot more bearable for 99% of the players, while the 1% who feel its too easy to not have to rest in the middle of fights can up their difficulty. The secondary bonus is giving players 'juicier' powers to select in place of the stale fitness powers, and as you alluded to, its not an overpowered bonus as it does not offer additional slots.

So again, this is a buff, and of course the top end players are going to leverage it more than the average player will, but even looking at the evidence of what has already been presented from envisioned top end builds, it certainly isn't anything earthshattering, even in the hands of those with the ability to get the most from said buff.

Having said that, after experiencing the praetoria content, it seems that the devs plan on upping the difficulty of enemies in future releases, so I expect any new level fifty content, especially that related to incarnates, to present difficulty that will further demonstrate the free fitness buff to be even more miniscule than it seems now...

Well thats a specious argument...

Of course not, the perception would be that the set was pitifully slow, because it's best powers are... pitifully slow.

The set was playable with one, fast, glorious power. Now that said power has been neutered, you're left with a set filled with mediocre to poor powers, which means it vastly underperforms vs the competition, which results in lots of players complaining about it, especially the ones who used to enjoy the set.

And even with a power that was certainly one of the best in the game, and on its OWN arguably 'overpowered', EM as a whole set did not overperform in overall pve performance (it did overperform in the old pvp format, but ironically, would not now with the new format, in fact old ET would do pitiful damage in pvp now...). Why? Because EM was more balanced then than it is now, because all of EM's mediocre to poor powers were balanced by one glorious power. Old ET would be 'too good' if you stuck it in another powerset that had more good to great powers than EM, but it worked in EM because EM as a whole was already underpowered.

That is why nerfing ET without proportionately buffing the rest of the set has left EM an underperforming MESS.

The issue I have is the rare attitude that EM is ok because it is competitive in one area, single target ability, so it's ok that it vastly underperforms in other areas vs. the same competition.

There is no getting around the fact that a set that is on par with other sets in terms of single target ability, while being severely outclassed in aoe ability vs the same competing sets, is badly underpowered vs. this competition, and that is definitely not ok if you want a game with anything close to balance between competing powersets. That's why so many players complain about this powerset.

The reason people complain about ET specifically, is that it WAS a power that made up for the set's disadvantages, and allowed it to be the indisputed single target damage king, which made people ignore the fact that EM was still underperforming in almost every other way, including the more valuable aoe categories. It also gave EM users a power that was actually very effective on teams, due to the fact it was quick hitting, and hit like a truck. Now that the power strikes at the speed of a crippled slug, that effectiveness is severely lessened, as is the hard hitting aspect since, on teams, it's only really effective against bosses, eb's or av's, unless you enjoy mauling the recently deceased (and only hurting yourself, thanks to ET's 'overpowered' self damage...).

To touch on EM's mitigation, primarily single target stuns are decent if you primarily solo, but the more you team, and the bigger the team, the less valuable they become, and the more they are vastly overshadowed by sets with far superior aoe mitigation. I can't see any reasonable argument to support the idea that EM's mitigation is better than any competing powerset outside of fire melee, in fact I'd argue that only fire has worse overall mitigation than EM.

Which brings me to a question you posed in another post - should em do more single target damage than fire melee? Absolutely, due to the fact it is severely outclassed in aoe ability.

I don't care how rich or 'good' you are, lvl 1-20 is a pita on endurance, and would continue to be if not for the fact everyone and their grandmother takes fitness and stamina, usually by level 20. That's why they're making this change and it's a great move, imo. The endurance requirements are ridiculously too high, especially at those levels, where slotting and enhancement is very limited.

I think when people claim this game is 'easy', they need to state what difficulty they are playing at, and if they are solo, because there are vast differences in 'difficulty' depending upon said situations. When the game can be set to +4/x8, people claiming it's easy sound like BS'rs, and I don't mean they like the broadsword powerset. If you can't find something challenging in this game, you're not trying very hard.

Solution: Leave Fitness as a pool power choice, call it 'superhuman fitness', and allow it to stack with the inherents. If the devs have decided the old fitness powers are now 'base level' abilities, then why not continue to offer players the choice to spend power slots for above base level ability? Double stamina is not going to allow players to solo the LRSF.

Nailed it.