Dispari

I don't know where you got your numbers from, but Doms do way more damage than Corruptors. In fact, Doms do the most damage of any AT redside, at least in base damage. They're basically the Blasters of redside now. Unless you're comparing to a Corr that has a lot of +DMG and/or -RES, Dominator should easily outdamage a Corruptor.

Corr damage scale: 0.75
Dom damage scale: ~1.00 (0.95 ranged, 1.05 melee)

Ooh, nice, I'll be there.

They are. They're also only mag 2. Long recharge, only capable of working on minions, and random usage is not very reliable.

Besides that, Thugs and Robots both have +DEF which makes them harder to kill and gives them more of a lifespan, and more reaction time for you to support them. Merceneries only have RES, and it's limited. Mercs die very easily and their only response is a medic who heals, but his reaction time is slow. Mercs don't have enough damage or tricks to really fit anything.

If you look at units in how durable they are, it comes down to basically:

1) Robots
2) Thugs
3) Zombies
4) Mercs
5) Ninjas

In terms of damage, they're outdone by Thugs, Robots, and probably Ninjas (assuming they stay alive).

In terms of mezzes/debuffs, they lose to Zombies and Ninjas, and even then don't really have much to offer over what Thugs and Robots do.

It's hard to say what their role is supposed to be. They don't really excel at durability, damage, or mez/debuff. They just sort of exist. Ninjas have a similar issue, as they're very squishy (they have DEF, but not enough of it, and no RES to back it up) and their mez/debuff is fairly limited.

I'm not sure where you came up with that idea, but you're wrong in a lot of ways.

Katana does -DEF and Sonic does -RES.

1) You both only have one set contributing to each. The SR does nothing and the MM does something else. A Defender could have both, such as Sonic/Rad. One Defender has as much potential to debuff DEF AND RES, while for you it takes two characters.

2) Your Scrapper is primarily single target, and requires you to attack. The Blaster has to attack as well. Defenders have several autohit powers that they could employ, and most of their good debuffs are AoE.

3) Your Scrapper is chopping away 7.5% DEF per swipe. The Blaster is cutting away 13% RES. A Rad Blast Defender is doing at least -12.5% DEF per attack, though usually more like 25% with the occasional 37.5%. A Sonic Defender is doing -20% RES per attack.

4) A Radiation Emission Defender could do -30% RES/DEF with two powers, AoE, autohit. Storm and Cold could do -35%/30% RES/DEF in AoE. Trick Arrow could do a total of -40/50% RES/DEF. Even Sonic Resonance could drop DEF by over 35% in AoE along with the AoE -30% RES toggle.

You guys are contributing, but there's no way you're outclassing a Defender for debuffs on a Scrapper and a Blaster.

I don't understand what you're saying. A sidekick is okay as a patron, but their sidekick isn't? What layer of the chain-of-command cake does it stop being okay for them to be a patron? And they're okay to give you really important, really difficult tasks designed for 8 people to do and conquer the world, but not teach you how to use a couple ice powers?

If France lands on me, I would hopefully be killed upon impact.

Otherwise I'd be stuck under all of France (under an undetermined amount of land mass/rubble) without the promise of a rescue team. Although, France is kind of a big place so I suppose I wouldn't be the only one crushed, so they may have a lot of people trying to unearth everything to get to us. Even then there's no promise I'd get rescued before I ran out of air or starved. That's assuming my lungs weren't crushed and fill with blood or something.

Then again, even if I did survive and was saved, it would only be to meet my inevitable end as whatever caused France to rocket across the planet and land on Texas would also probably cause polar shifts in the planet and possibly the melting/incineration of the planet as it's thrown off balance and thrust into the sun.

Black Scorpion, Scirroco, Mako, and Ghost Widow are basically sidekicks of Recluse.

This has happened three more times since I made this post.

The data mining did show that the the "issue" of people broadcasting for fillers and stuff isn't as big a deal as they thought, but that's not the only reason the changes are being made. You're ignoring the bigger picture, because this new system will make teaming exponentially easier for all players involved. No longer do we have to make sure the team is comprised of at least 50% people in the right range, and no longer do we have to only look for people our level and LOWER. It's also the end of pointless level restrictions and sidekick leashes. This is a big boon to teaming and convenience.

There are a lot of reasons AE is popular, among which is the convenience factor of not having to care how many people in the team are what level. Just grab and go. That's a lot of convenience when we're used to having to find people within about 3 levels of ourselves to run teams, and sidekick people. Think about it for a second:

Normal content: At least 50% of the team has to be within about 3 levels to the level of the mission.

AE content: Invite anyone and everyone.

What's not to like about that? Why would we want to artificially create that hindrance and reinstate the annoyances of having to find people within a certain level range? In fact, what's wrong with the way AE does it that makes you want to disable it? And what makes you think it's more "balanced?"

What kind of filter could you possibly add to a broadcast channel? If you filter it like the email, it's no longer broadcast. It may as well be a friend channel. If you filter words, people will just intentionally misspell the words to get around the filter. There's no way to police a global channel to prevent certain topics or proposals from being discussed. It is, however, possible to eliminate the need for those topics to be raised.

I can't think of any possible benefit the old SK system has over the new one. What could you possibly gain from limiting SKing to just two people instead of the whole team? What's "better" about having to only team with people who are very close to your level? What's the advantage to the sidekick leash? What feature does the current SK system have that the new one will not have?

How is this anything like the PvP change? The PvP change took away your apple and gave you a banana. The sidekick change takes away your grape and gives you a box of grapes.

What's flawed or over-corrected about allowing a team of players, regardless of level, do a mission instead of limiting and restricting who can go on a mission with who?

That certainly explains why melees have gotten Dual Blades, Willpower, and Shield Defense. And why in addition to Brutes being the only class that got three new sets last time, half of the melees are getting two sets this time, and one of them is getting a new epic! PLUS some of them got new stuff in i7 as well.

Not only that, but Doms and Controllers, who haven't gotten any new sets since the last proliferation, are only getting one new set each this time.

I don't think there's any relation between new sets/proliferation.

Yup. All the other villain epics have 5, except the ones you said. Specifically, the ones with only 4 include:

Blasters:
Flame
Force

Controllers:
Fire
Psi

Defender:
Dark
Power

Scrapper:
Body
Dark

Tank:
Energy

Brute:
Mu

VEATs:
All 4

This will be a good chance for the Mu epic for Brutes to get a good power on-par with some of the other awesome choices. Also a good chance for the devs to either wow everyone or drop the ball on the 5th power for VEATs, although I suspect they'll be something average like holds (or not do them at all since the post did say "most"). I'm just waiting to see what some of the other ones get, like Force Mastery, and what the new Scrapper epic consists of.

"Additionally, we also conducted a mini-proliferation pass on the Ancillary and Patron Power Pools, adding 5th powers to most Pools and adding Blaze Mastery for Scrappers. This has been something which people have been asking for since Fire primaries and secondary's were given to them."

Awesome news! I'd now officially consider this a "big" issue. There's a lot more in it than just the recoloring of powers, unlike the smaller issues we've had up until now. This one has a lot of new features, and the added powers for epics just tips it over the scale for me personally.

To answer the OP's question, probably nobody knows anything more than what's said in that interview. If they did know, it would probably be breaking the NDA.

Having all those buffs, debuffs, and mezzes are great to a point, and I would never try to devalue the contributions of Dark, Sonic, Earth, or Mind, but if you're steamrolling I think you get to a point where you have too many things to even use before the enemies are dead. You can mez all the enemies and apply large amounts of -RES and +DMG, but they're probably dead long before you finish using all those powers.

I think a real Steamrolling team would be all Elec/Shields, especially Scrappers since their BU and AAO will be higher than Brutes (who can't put Fury into their telefrag powers). Just one of those moves is enough to kill all minions, so if you have 16 of them and alternate them intelligently along with all the other AoEs in Elec, fights should be almost nonexistant.

This, to me, is kind of funny. Scrappers aren't broken or overpowered. They're one of the most balanced ATs there are. Literally. They don't excel at anything more than anyone else. They don't cap out at damage, don't cap out at survival, and can't mez or buff. They're intentionally at least second place in everything.

Controllers, by and large, are more broken than Scrappers. They have the damage, as well as the survival, but also mez and buffs. There are several ATs that do more damage than Scrappers, and at least two (if not more if you count Controllers and such) that are more durable.

Even so, Scrappers are balanced well and have the right mix of durability and damage. In general, though, this is only overly useful while solo. What can a Scrapper offer a team that a Blaster cannot? That a Brute cannot? That a Controller cannot? Yet, each of those things also offer something that the Scrapper cannot, whether it's more damage, aggro control, or mez/buffs.

If Scrappers are so broken, why is it there's no real role for them to fill on a team? True, it's not like they don't get invites. I often invite them anyway just because Blasters die a lot and Scrappers don't. But the fact is this game isn't that hard so it doesn't really matter who I invite because it'll usually work anyway. The "all reward and no risk" really only applies to soloing. Teaming, what real risk is there most of the time? If anything, an AT that excels at soloing and isn't that useful at teaming is balanced.

Scrappers are popular because they're easy to play. They don't usually die, and they do damage that doesn't make fights boring. They're a well-balanced, non-overpowered class. Scrappers are easy, but they are less powerful than some harder to play characters like many well-built Controllers.

Like all tools that have ever existed and ever will exist, tags are useful to those who would use them as they're intended, for the purpose they're designed for. For people who just want to fool around and have fun, they can become useless or even a hindrance.