Dispari

All I know is my friend was on a resub, but the card on file was frozen. She didn't think about it until a few hours later, and switched cards out. She has an email form support saying she wasn't deactivated long enough to be disqualified, so she sent that email as a petition to get her badge.

MA is kind of like a mini-SS. In a way, a lot of the Scrapper primaries have weaker or less frequent secondary effects. It seemed to be one of those common classic themes that are slowly disappearing as we have proliferation and new sets, like how the "Brutes/Tanks are all about high damage, slow attacks," mechanic poofed with Dark Melee, Dual Blades, and more recently Claws. I think if SS is given to Scrappers, MA will have to be reconsidered.

SS has pretty consistent and powerful knockdown effects, with a guaranteed mag 3 hold on one power. MA is split between knockback and stun, and CAK which is just kind of random.

Then there's Rage vs Focus Chi.

Other sets tend to have a niche, like Fire doing high damage, Katana being highly accurate, DB doing combos, and stuff. MA's niche is stun/knockdown, but it only has a couple powers for each, so it can't reliably do either. And when put alongside SS, it would likely fall behind in pretty much every field.

I actually thought this was going to be a troll thread just from the title. Even if it is a quote, taken out of context, it can sound quite offensive. So I can see how it might upset someone.

If this is your second offense as you say, I'd be much more careful choosing words for broadcast.

I was actually doing this in Cap. Starting from Black Line, first jump is from ground level, onto a plane, onto a rooftop. From there, I leave autorun on and try to see how long I can go before I trip and land on the ground.

I got mine.

Friend of mine has to file a petition. She only let her account lapse for a few minutes, and support told her that she'd still be in the running, but hasn't gotten the badge.

I think you mean "here"

Seems like it would be easier to just wait for GR and side-switch for these.

I'm having a new issue and I wonder if it's just me.

New threads created after a certain date are not being marked as read for me, no matter what. Older threads that I'm subscribed to that are older than a couple days will work fine. But all new threads, even if I click the thread, click "go to first unread," click last page, or even POST in the threads will stay "unread" and always always take me to the very first post.

Like I said, older threads work fine, but newer ones just plain don't change off of unread. It's really annoying when there are a bunch of threads in my subscriptions that are marked as totally unread, and clicking "go to first unread" takes me to the OP, even if I've made several posts in the thread.

Not only have I closed my browser to try and fix this, but I completely rebooted. Anyone else having this issue?

I've always found Devices to be a poorly designed set. By comparison, Traps does a lot of the same things, with added benefit of doing it for the whole team. It also does some far more useful things like the Forcefield Generator and Poison Trap.

1) Web Grenade is the only starting tier-1 on the secondary side that Blasters get that does no damage. Its cast time is also slightly longer than all the others except for Subdual. Another issue it has is that it causes redraw. While this is true of all the immobilizes if paired with a weapon set, Devices is the most logical secondary to pair with the weapon sets and thus creates a problem. It would be like if Fire/Fire somehow caused redraw. Recommendation: Damage (Toxic webbing? Electric?), and animations that allow it to shoot from a gun or bow (might open up a world of headache for BABs though).

2) Caltrops is a decent enough power depending on what you use it for. Skippable, but overall not terrible. Recommendation: Nothing really. There's nothing inherently bad about Caltrops.

4) Taser is a pretty lame power. While it does technically enjoy the benefit of range which most secondary powers don't, it's only 20 feet so it's not enough to really mean anything. Like Web Grenade, this causes redraw with weapon sets. In exchange for having a mere 20 foot range, it has absolutely zero secondary effects. Compared to the holds in Elec or Ice, it's very underwhelming. Only Energy has comparably poor effects, but it has other powers in the secondary to stack with and apply higher mag stuns. Recommendation: Hard to say. Maybe make it melee so that you can justify giving it more effects. Maybe more damage, longer duration, or at least bonus accuracy. And fix the redraw if possible, same as Web Grenade. Difficult to imagine what would make this power better while still making sense.

10) Targeting Drone is one of the really good powers in the set. It boosts accuracy by a large amount, and has a cool visual. Unfortunately, this power comes at the cost of Build Up, which all the other sets get. As a result, you have good accuracy, but no damage boosts. Accuracy is something that's rarely a problem for most well-built toons, although TD will allow you to pierce through DEF (being ToHit and all). Recommendation: This power can be left alone, though honestly I'd like to see it given a universal damage boost of a small amount, like maybe 10-15%.

16) Smoke Grenade is another power that just sort of is. It's not inherently a poor power, nor is it really fantastic. It's as skippable as Caltrops, even though it can be used to achieve some nice stealth options. By itself the power is decent. Recommendation: As with Caltrops, this power doesn't necessarily need to change. Unless redraw could somehow come off. But it's less of an in-combat power, so isn't as necessary as the others mentioned.

20) Cloaking Device is one power that has huge room for improvement. The main problem with the power is that it just plain doesn't do anything. It adds a small bit of stealth and a small bit of defense. But neither of these things is that significant for combat. Recommendation: Honestly, make it crit. Only the first attack, but you get a crit from it same as Stalker hide. This would make up for the set's lack of Build Up by allowing one attack when you open to crit. AoEs like nukes would only crit half the time. I can't crank out numbers off the top of my head, but it could be made 75% (like Widows) if a 100% damage boost would be too powerful.

28) Trip Mine is another one of the nice powers in the set. It can be a pain to use however. Being one of the only attacks in the set, it sucks that it's interruptable. The power isn't bad by itself, but on teams it can end up being rarely used. The best use of it is to lay several and lure a badguy into it, which basically never happens on teams. In the thick of a fight, AoEs may prevent you from ever using one. That combined with the long cast time can mean it rarely if ever gets used in actual combat. Recommendation: Hard to say what this power needs. Tentatively, I'd suggest removing the interrupt time and increasing the recharge time, making it into something you can use in combat, but make it less feasible for drop-and-pull strategies.

35) Time Bomb. Ah, where to start? It only does 40% more damage than Trip Mine, yet has a nuke recharge timer, and takes a full 30 seconds before it actually goes off, in addition to having an 8 second interruption time. You could actually easily lay 2 Trip Mines in that time, and do more damage. Any competent team would be able to mow through a group in far less than 30 seconds, and the only other good use of it is to run ahead and lay it in a separate group, which you can only do with full invisibility (which is impossible to obtain with primary/secondary alone -- very poor design). Overall, just a very bad power. Recommendation: Cottage rule. Just throw this power out. Replace it with an Omega Maneuver variant, because it's just that bad. Omega Maneuver has the same recharge and similar stats. The difference being it's actually USABLE.

38) Gun Drone is a power that seems like it's severely hampered based entirely on the AT it's on. While on one hand Blasters don't and shouldn't usually get pets, it's really no fun to wait all the way to 38 to get such an unfriendly power to use. It's nearly 40 endurance for a pet that only lasts a minute and a half, and it has an agonizingly long cast time which is, on top of everything else, interruptable. To top it off, it requires 100% recharge to be out all the time. Recommendation: The drone doesn't really do a lot, and isn't even that powerful. For being a 38 power, it should really be more friendly to use. Take off the interrupt time, and reduce the cast to a friendly 1-2s. Make the recharge match the duration, and extend the duration out to 2-4 minutes. I can't recall off the top of my head if it allows multiple instances, but if it does, that would need to be removed for the duration/recharge change.

The set as a whole is plagued by lack of attacks that aren't interruptable. It hardly even has attacks at all for that matter. Many of the powers have long cast times (which are interruptable). All the powers cause redraw with the sets that they're most likely to be paired with. The set has no Build Up or damage boost of any sort. All the powers are on long recharges and a hassle to keep using. Many of the powers can't actually be used IN combat. And it has a lot of utility powers which are either minimal in benefit, can't stack with anything else to reach any meaningful bonus, or are generally not very helpful.

Getting rid of all the annoying interruptables, making the pet friendlier, making the powers more in-combat ready, and giving some of the powers more of a purpose would go a long way toward making the set good.