Frosticus

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dim shift can work while solo. If you expect to take at least 30 seconds to kill those that it didn't hit. Of course it isn't a small aoe (25ft radius). Hitting everything in sight can and will happen. What then?

People that use dim shift in this way generally don't slot it for accuracy and actually want it to miss some of the targets.

You really shouldn't need it while solo though. If an ice blaster can cake walk the solo game with just freezeray there is no dom primary that should ever have issues.

Just get GD slotted up and use lift on targets you haven't hit with GD. Grav really isn't a set that is designed to solo on the even difficulty settings. It does much better against less targets.

Wormhole, I'll give you unbiased information, and yes I've used the power extensively, which from the looks at it most people offering you insight haven't actually played grav before.

You asked what the use of an aoe enemy teleport is.

Pros:
-not many while solo
-moving a spawn and jamming them into a corner. This makes small aoes very effective
-taking extra mobs and tossing them the heck away from the group. On some maps this is amazing when you toss a group off of a cliff.
-taking extra mobs and stacking them on the existing fight. People have already laid down aoe debuffs and the aoe damage dealers are doing their thing, just add more fodder by porting in an extra group. Very fun and actually increases team speed, which is pretty unique.

Cons:
-The aoe is only 15 ft. It is very rare 16 enemies will occupy an area that small without herding, which sort of defeats the purpose of a relocation power.
-The stun is delayed 3 seconds. If you are using this in plain sight and it happens to miss any of them, thus alerting the entire group - you will die.
-The knockback is significant and generally a hinderance to using the power. I've encountered very few situations where the kb in addition to the relocation is more beneficial that just relocating them. One scenario is when porting something that has stun protection, they still get knocked over.


Gravity damage:
There are only two powers in grav that should generally be focused on for damage slotting. Lift and propel. But you shouldn't take propel. So that leaves lift, which is a very good power.

Slotting the hold for damage is unadvised until your build is mature enough to kill quick enough to not need the duration, or has enough IO's to not matter if they are held or otherwise.

Slotting crush for damage can work, but you already have lift to fill attack chains and it is a much better attack than crush. Pretty much every assault power is a better attack than crush for dpa and dpe. Crush doesn't have all that much use on a grav dom for control or damage generation solo or teamed. It is good for AV's though. But if you already have the aoe immob that can work vs an AV almost as well, so is the extra power that is generally not very useful worth taking?

For sure, teaming is where it is at for /psi, more targets for the aoes, better chance of 16 targets for psw and more targets to feed DP.

I'm curious though, your extra aoe output must have been coming from adding Psyscream hey?

I'm just looking at the ingame numbers and PSW does the exact same base damage as it used to (70.8 old vs 70.65 new) and now Psyscream does 75.91 base damage.

With a couple kins and decent slotting you would have had old PSW up before Psyscream could even finish animating. We know the damage cap didn't increase so was the increase in the target cap for PSW that noticeable?

fire/fire, though fire/ment is much more surviable and does very high aoe as well.

Arch offers a lot of burst aoe damage that is up very often with rain of arrows, but considering how it will wipe the whole group (or very close to it) you end up having to wait on it for the next group. Thankfully a solid arch build can have the thing recharging in like 20 seconds.. so bout every 25 seconds with the cast time factored in.

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At a glace it looks like /eng is the new /elec with thumping attacks and elec is fast and zippy. Not sure how I'd feel if I specifically rolled elec for its dpa and wasn't concerned with the longer recharges.

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The thing is Elec will now hit harder than it hit before unless you were perma dom.

Other than that, there is also the thing that Elec has extremely fast animations, and these were the ones that made Elec extreme damage, not the high recharge. Making Energy high recharge didnt turn it into "The New Elec" because it has rather slow animations that perpetually prevent it from being "The New Elec"

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As a long time player of the game I doubt I'd play any build that isn't at least maximized a bit. 72% global recharge+hasten is child's play when it comes to IO'ing for an experienced player.

I'm glad if casuals are enjoying the set more, but ya, elec would definitely do less damage for me. I'm glad I never rolled one though it was next on my list, but I held off awaiting the dom changes. Happy about that decision.

Eng has slow animations?
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>Eng Elec Fire Ice Psi Thorn
1 1 1 1 1.33 1.33
1.5 0.83 1.67 1.33 1.17 1.63
1.1 1.67 2.67 2.67 2.07 1.63
1.67 1.5 1.2 1 1.67 2.43
1.17 1.17 0.73 1.17 2.67 1.17
2.5 snipe 3 2.67 1.33 3
3.3 2.07 2.03 0.73 1.67 1.63
snipe 3.3 snipe 1.83 snipe 2.17
2 3.1 1 1.07 1.97 2
</pre><hr />

That's a slow set? It is almost identical to /elec

The thing that made /elec high damage compared to the other melee centric sets was entirely the high dpa based attacks which are a combination of them being relatively fast and having long recharges and thus higher DS.

If I want a set that has thumping melee I'll take /eng now. /elec needs buildup just to make TS hit as hard as TF.

From what I can see is that thunderstrike has been "adjusted" right into a position where it is entirely skippable. It has such a long animation that you can do more during that time. That was the case before as well, but not nearly by as much and with the longer rech on the old charged+havoc using TS still made a lot of sense.

I'd skip TS on an /elec dom, just like I ended up doing on my ice/elec blaster.

This is NOT the case for new Total Focus.

all well, everyone enjoy.

Before the stealth IO, you needed to have invis to be at stealth cap. You of course have to turn off invis to attack.

The stealth IO made playing a stalker in zone pvp go from being ridiculously easy (I was playing a stalker a fair amount at that time), to being just about the easiest thing imaginable. I was also playing a spines/regen scrap and a fire/ss tank at that time for reference. They were all very easy toons to never feel any threat on and still get kills, but the staker was an order of magnitude easier.

I suppose a stalker could be harder now, but harder relative to how they used to be, or harder relative to other AT's?

Rain of Fire ontop of Oilslick for me. Toss in fireball for extra crispy shish kebob

23% and 14% on the two most used attacks aren't significant? ok

agree to disagree.

remember that the domination buff was effectively put into the base numbers. If it isn't valid to compare domination mode vs new doms then what is valid?

I'd appreciate you demonstrating you are doing more damage now. My dom isn't unless I have FE up. If I jam another ~40% recharge into the already perma dom set up it will, but that seems pretty ridiculous to me. At which point the end consumption baloons to well over 6 eps.

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Dear Frosticus:


Like it matters.

Let me put cool on cruise control for you:

IT'S GREAT THAT YOU CONTRIBUTED, BUT YOUR DISCUSSION WAS STILL OFF TOPIC.

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Thank you for policing the thread. You have not posted on topic yet. Just fyi.

Feel free to reprimand the 10 or so other people posting off topic too.

Keep up the good work.

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Not sure about others but lowbie doms are GREAT! I basically just save my domination for full endurance bar for more killing = less down time.


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Just to play devil's advocate; do we all believe the changes were intended to make domination primarily and endurance management power?

Looking at domination's effects being +mag/+duration on outgoing mez, +mez protection, and endurance refill I can't help but think that endurance refill is intended to be the tertiary effect in terms of purpose and usefulness. Basically, just to ensure that you have ample endurance to take advantage of the main purpose of domination - being more powerful.

From what I've read and experienced now, the end bar refill is the MAIN purpose of domination now. I'd honestly be surprised if it is he intended design for such a dynamic and powerful inherent to be nothing more than a supped up version of vigilance.

Don't get me wrong +mag and mez protection are still awesome, but I find myself primarily using domination as an endurance tool. I would imagine it was originally designed (and still carries this intention) that it is supposed to be a "power up" for tougher encounters, when you need more kapow!

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When reality doesn't match the expected value people start to ask why. Admittedly not always in the nicest way

Silence on the matter then butts heads against society's need for instant gratification and things start ugly and escalate from there.

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Honestly, I think this sums it all up.

Sometimes you have to sit down and think about it, though. Like realizing that Electric Assault had much higher damage and recharge times on its melee attacks than other Assault sets. Then you see that Electric Assault gets lower damage and faster recharge, and everyone else gets it the other way around, and it falls into place.

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this confuses me. I see the direction the melee attacks went for elec assault. Clearly a faster set now and it would have been doing close to blaster damage had it not been adjusted. Aim, bu, defiance says not that close, but perhaps too close for comfort.

Then I look at /eng and saw every attack was turned into a heavy hitter, even the tier 1 (which was later changed). I especially looked at new total focus which does hit harder than the blaster version.

At a glace it looks like /eng is the new /elec with thumping attacks and elec is fast and zippy. Not sure how I'd feel if I specifically rolled elec for its dpa and wasn't concerned with the longer recharges.

I know volt sentinel is a pet, but maybe its blasts should have been buffed up a bit too. Or was it:
a/ too good before and fine now
b/ fine before and is too weak now
c/ doesn't matter to anyone.

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Isn't this off topic?

This thread is about psi assault.

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Seriously. The changes in animation time and graphics are not even related to the Dom changes. They were not added in this issue.

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You're right, the only thing that was changed is that flares used to be removed from my tray and now it is my most used attack. As a result I'm late to the party. It's like the old NBC commercials during rerun season: "if you haven't seen it, it's new to you"


You answered to OP's specific question in the first post and since then this thread has been off topic from the 4th post.

Here, on topic:

Psi assault is full of medium damage attacks that are strapped to moderate cast speeds. As a result it is on the low end of single target performance and would have been in the middle for aoe performance.

To ensure it is near the top for aoe, PSW was bumped up to 16 targets.

Psi does very mediocre at best while solo'ing and still does very well when in teams. It is still the best aoe team set because both aoe attacks are upfront damage, so while /fire can produce more aoe combustion is "teh suck" dealing dot damage over 7 seconds---after a 3 second cast time.

Mental blast and subdue for w/e reason are an identical attack in the same set now...yay.

Psi is the best set for doms to deal with the increased endurance burn due to drain psyche.

Psi assault is not abnormally benefited by the addition of IO's. None of the st attacks take very long to recharge. PSW and Psyscream recharge slowly so you won't be cycling them on the same spawn in most teams. Extra recharge benefits drain psyche, but whether that is of more value than getting bu, fe, aim, or powerboost up more often is debatable.

Psi assault is already the "most survivable" set due to the regen buff of DP. So IO'ing for additional +regen makes less of an impact that it does for normal doms in terms of reducing downtime. Same for +recovery.

The set can benefit quite a bit from +def as you can then layer that with the +regen and the aoe -rech.

Once you have enough recharge so that you have domination and DP up often enough to fuel you I'd slot for defense. I'd go perma dom+ 30% ish s/l def myself. Scorp shield+weave+cj+3% IO = 32% s/l def. You'll be in melee a lot, so s/l makes more sense than ranged def.

Make sure you get your hp accolades, same as for old /psi.

Psi assault is neither awesome or notsome... psi assault IS FINE


I've now contributed more to the thread's topic than you or Testrat.

Have a good one.

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Then again, I've made it clear that dev's shouldn't be posting, they should have community reps that specialize in doing that. There is a reason our CFO doesn't address the public. Speaking to the public is as much a skill as programming code or ensuring the financial viability of a company.

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Noted. As much as I can see where you are coming from, I've worked at companies where the only customer interaction is through mouthpieces and, frankly, the experience is painful and frustrating both from the consumer side and from the developer side. I vastly prefer having the freedom to address folks as myself (keeping in mind that I am a representative of the company and that certain things must, perforce, not be commented upon or certain activities undertaken.) Yes, that leads to headaches sometimes, but it also leads to our fans being able to "see behind the curtain" a lot more than other games allow -- with all that that entails, good and bad.

FWIW, I took courses in business communication and PR while in college. I *could* filter everything I say with marketing doublespeak and spin. I choose not to. Sometimes, that causes me a lot of grief from the fans, other times, I get called to the carpet by my boss. I can live with that, though, since I believe that what I am doing is overall beneficial to everyone concerned.

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I can respect your view. I too go back and forth. I like that you guys appear accessible, but sometimes I would rather you guys are just slaving over your calculators I know just a quick jaunt through the forums can suck up over an hour of my work day.

"interaction is through mouthpieces"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that carries a lot of negative connotation, or am I just unfamiliar with a familiar term?

I'm not keen on the idea that you believe it is either your way or "marketing doublespeak". I think we just learned you have as jaded of a view about somethings as we all do . I don't think the way (for instance) Lighthouse communicated was all doublespeak.

I appreciate your candor, but at the same time, I'm not being a time thief as I'm done work... are you? j/k, but seriously.

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Fire blast is a top contender In st damage and aoe, and people want more?

I get the feeling this is the old case of: give an inch, they try to take a yard.

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I think it's more along the lines of the AT has changed, and people are resisting adapting to those changes. That's the impression I'm getting from a lot of people, anyway.

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I think it is more an issue of the transparency of the internal numbers increasing dramatically over the years. Now people are able to successfully predict how powers should and will be when something is tweaked using the same forumlas the devs have. Pair that with Castle's rock like foundation in standardization and it is all predictable to the letter.

When reality doesn't match the expected value people start to ask why. Admittedly not always in the nicest way

Silence on the matter then butts heads against society's need for instant gratification and things start ugly and escalate from there.

It has always happened, but since we have numbers and can churn out the expected value as quickly as they can internally the turn around time on a mistake is very rapid. In the old days it would take a few months of in game testing and tracking to bring up such errors and you'd need multiple people confirming before it had any weight.

It is an outcome that is as predictable as the sun rising. I'm not sure why people still act surprised by it.

The speed of business is as fast as you let it be, but once you let it go fast it is very difficult to slow down. Basically, when they gave us numbers it came with the knowledge that any joe blow can now call them out on mistakes. If they weren't prepared to respond faster they shouldn't have given them until they were prepared.

You don't put "24hr delivery" as a shipping option if you aren't set up to be able to do it.

Castle: do you think you could release the latest game population numbers for each AT? And do you plan on releasing them in the future so we can see numerically the growth in stalkers, doms, and pvp?

I think it is fair request to see if the qualitative results are close to the projected results. Or is that information only accessible internally?

thx much.

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Posted this earlier as an explanation for my statement. It's ok if you didn't read it, most people only read the last page of a thread anyway.

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I read it, also read how you contradict yourself saying you know the definition, then saying "In the spirit of keeping words having meaning" as if the meaning was NOT that.

Off course, you also try to shield behind "jargon" and how the proper use of the word should only be the one accepted by "popular jargon" despite that being entirely the opposite of "the spirit of keeping words having meaning".

Never-mind that in common jargon computer Bugs have been simply "something is wrong" that encompasses even more than you already are arguing against in the first place.

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We brought your husband in after diagnosing a bilateral hemothorax, during testing we also discovered your husband is afflicted with an astrocytoma.

Will you sign this release form now?

.....

Sometimes jargon is fine, sometimes not. Sometimes it is better to take the extra two minutes and clarify the point so you don't get the "who farted" look.

A "bug" is no where near that degree, but imo the same principle applies.

If someone wanted to pay me for my time I could spend the day and come up with probably a thousand "bugs" in this game.

It would be useless to everyone internally and externally if all it said was:
bug - flares
bug - fossilize
bug - combustion
bug - pvp Io's
bug - arena

To be useful it should be more like:
internal (put on the "bug" list)
flares - powers - not receiving proper bonus damage
fossilize - animation - ~1 sec pause at the end
.
.

External
Known issue - flares is not receiving correct bonus damage
Known issue - dominator damage was not correctly tested and adjusted for pvp during the new revamp


Communication is a powerful tool when used. Word selection is an actual art and a science. Given the polarization of responses the dev's elicit I think it would be asinine to suggest they couldn't use some help in that department.

Then again, I've made it clear that dev's shouldn't be posting, they should have community reps that specialize in doing that. There is a reason our CFO doesn't address the public. Speaking to the public is as much a skill as programming code or ensuring the financial viability of a company.

I don't feel right even bringing up such obvious things, but when you don't have the skills to address the public you end up with 748+369 pages of forum fallout, and a handful of outside sites picking up the story.

A specialized person making that address would have had us thanking them.

*Thankfully Sunstorm did actually explain the issue with dom's pvp damage, but then a bunch of people misunderstood the explanation and created more confusion. Clarity and communication, it's what's for dinner.

Silly conversation to even get involved with. Definitely a case of "old dog, new tricks".

Take care. I'm off to find a dom combo that I feel "buffed" on because my /fire isn't it.

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C'mon Frost, you trying to hard to find something hidden in Castle's words or agenda. Let it go.

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Actually, I'd really appreciate a post on the subject myself. It's hard not to worry that the message never even got through, in all the complaints and incorrect assumptions about the End costs and power adjustments.

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After spending weeks reading various threads (and noting who is posting what and how often in them) I have yet to really see any sort of consensus of there being a problem (except PVP damage, which has already been mentioned in another post.) Hot spots that I am paying close attention to are End Costs, Flares and low level play issues.

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Have a look at ALL of /fire, for w/e reason it does less dot damage than it used to proportionate to the base damage.

Fireblast could also be bumped up to 5 ticks now that it is a long recharge power. imo of course.

Or don't, w/e floats your boat.

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This is really very, very minor. You don't like the fact that they changed the animation time from 3.3 seconds to 1 second? Fine, but most people think the benefit in usefulness outweights whatever it looks like. That battle was lost ages ago, and really, even the devs don't like to fight it.

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Do you purposely miss the point people are making? or is it just a coincidence it happens often?

I LIKE that is is faster, I HATE the current fast animation they chose to use. It DOESN'T fit with FIRE.

Imagine if you pulled out an assault rifle to do mind probe, would you like that, or would it piss you off? That is how new flares is for me.

Don't even get me started on color customization when every attack animation is recycled ad nauseum already.

He still wouldn't be the boogeyman.
Boogeyman
but honestly, who is?

He wouldn't even be Mr.Boogedy
Mr. Boogedy

Admittedly, I'm more afraid of the first one

bah like I said this is entirely pointless, either he will do the work or he won't. It isn't' a matter of whether it should be done.

gl doms

I prefer to use ingame numbers and in-game play experience rather than DS because DS is generally meaningless to most onlookers.

New flares fits into the role that old fireblast filled. It is much worse than that attack.

At any rate, I've already compared new flares to old flares and old fireblast in a previous post and it lost badly.

But here are the numbers for fire LIVE

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre> NEW FIRE
avg dam Rech Cast DPA End DPE
flare 46.37 3.00 1.19 39.00 4.37 10.61
incin 123.79 10.00 1.85 66.91 10.19 12.15
blast 105.36 8.00 1.45 72.66 8.53 12.35
blaze 152.42 12.00 1.19 128.30 11.86 12.85
SlotDPA w/ FE SlotDPE w/FE
flare 76.05 109.20 20.69 29.71
incin 130.47 187.35 23.69 34.01
blast 141.69 203.45 24.09 34.58
blaze 250.19 359.24 25.06 35.98
</pre><hr />
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre> OLD FIRE
avg dam Rech Cast DPA End DPE
flare 36.50 2.18 1.19 30.72 3.69 9.89
incin 75.50 8.00 1.85 40.81 8.53 8.85
blast 53.50 4.00 1.45 36.90 5.20 10.29
blaze 109.20 10.00 1.19 91.92 10.40 10.50
SlotDPA w/ FE w/dom dom+FE SlotDPE w/FE w/dom Dom+FE
flare 59.91 86.03 82.95 109.07 19.29 27.70 26.71 35.12
incin 79.58 114.27 110.19 144.88 17.26 24.78 23.90 31.42
blast 71.95 103.31 99.62 130.98 20.06 28.81 27.78 36.52
blaze 179.24 257.37 248.18 326.31 20.48 29.40 28.35 37.28

</pre><hr />

If you look at a solid build OLD fire has better DPE on everything except Incinerate. That makes sense because incinerate was just adjusted upward so responds better to +dam. Whereas the other attacks forgot to get more dot and it shows. Rather than being worse, they should be BETTER.

ie flares live vs old+dom may be 23% worse DPE, but it should be actually gaining a few points.
Fireblast w/dom looks to be ~14% worse dpe, but if it was fixed it should be a few points higher than old. So more like a 17% disparity.

But as mentioned old fireblast was used in place of new flares so the disparity is closer to 26% for DPE (vs old w/dom) and 24% for DPA.

That's the two most used attacks. Unless we assume everyone just runs around with SO's and never used FE or domination they are a lot more than 5% off. Does ~20 disparity when you avg the two attacks warrant attention? Yes, but my guess is not for a year or two

All well, if people are happy and like the new /fire then good. I hope they play it and Castle gets the population numbers he was aiming for. I don't like the new /fire and I don't think I'll be playing my earth/fire much anymore.

Fireblast was my staple attack and it was a lot better DPA/DPE/DPS than new flares and it actually looks good. When one attack makes up over 50% of attacks used it is important imo.

If your /fire dom feels more powerful then I don't know why because it isn't. Other than possibly because we were told it should be more powerful.

this of course speaks nothing of the overall higher recharge requirements necessary under the new model, which are compounded by requireing more endurance slotting. Where does one get all the slots to slot 1-2 acc, 3dam, 2-3 rech, and 2-3 end??? oh ya IO's ARE required

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The ability to stealth and, for the most part, choose when to start a fight is where the Stalker advantage starts...and stops. There is no advantage past that. It's a decent advantage in the survivability sense, but just about every AT has it's "advantages" so I don't see the problem with a Stalker having that one. It's their "flavor" afterall.

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I certainly never implied it was a problem that they have that advantage, just that they have it.

It is a decent advantage in the survivability sense for sure, because they can always engage when their defensive powers are ready. But imo it is also an advantage to always be attacking at your "best". A stalker never needs to engage until they have bu/reds/buffs w/e ready.

They also have the unique (other than NW's) advantage of being able to disengage whenever they choose. But I don't think that is a problem either.

But I'll just reiterate: I don't think that makes stalkers the bogeyman, or death incarnate, just easy to play.

At any rate, looking over the feedback threads this has all been brought to his attention. Whether he does his job or not remains to be seen.

Further input is pointless.

I'm just going to retire my perma earth/fire until it stops being worse than it was last issue. That's my own prerogative just like if people are enjoying the new weaker /fire set then all the power to them.

Maybe after a year or two of datamining it will get fixed.

It was the DOT that was specifically buffed for all fire blasts across all AT's. Now it is the DOT that is much weaker than it was specifically buffed to be.

The DOT is the problem with the fire attacks right now (or more specifically their bonus damage). Fire is not receiving the bonus damage that it is supposed to as a game wide mechanic. It is a feature of all fire sets. If Castle wants to explain that the dot is actually too strong and is being targeted for a reduction then I can accept that. Right now it just looks like someone isn't doing their job.

I don't really care about the base DS, end costs, or rech, those are standard across attacks and look to be accurate for fire as well.

If you really want to get into the discussion of adjusting secondary effects then YES is the answer to your questions.

ie. If bonesmasher was originally intended to be x recharge with y duration stun then YES, if you adjust x then y should move proportionally. That is just logical.

The fact that numerous powers have been adjusted through the game (ie more than just doms), but their secondary effect goes unchecked seems ridiculous to me.

Either that means the secondary effects are viewed as virtually meaningless by the dev team (easily arguable just by looking at powers like PSW that have massive secondary and tertiary effects that play no part in the balance of the power). But easily countered when looking at powers like screech.

Or they ARE important, but someone can't be bothered to adjust them when playing around with the other numbers in the power.

Interestingly enough, it is largely the secondary effects that MAKE a powerset different from its peers.

Are you honestly telling me that you were ok when psy dart used to be 1.5 sec w/ 5 sec debuff and was changed to be 6 sec w/ 5 sec debuff?

Honestly? or are you just apologizing for someone else not doing a thorough job?

edit: when a "secondary" effect is a significant aspect of the "balance" of said power then yes it needs to be adjusted when the recharge/damage/end costs are tweaked. If the secondary effect is superfluous then it is less important and for the sake of speed could be skipped, though really if you are doing a good job it wouldn't be.

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edit: Castle's "wet noodle" statement seems to agree with the last part. It's no secret that accountability is not something you deal with when working at PS

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You don't manage people, do you?

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Not currently. Things would be different at PS and subsequently this game if I did though.

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C'mon Frost, you trying to hard to find something hidden in Castle's words or agenda. Let it go.

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Maybe. I'll drop it. thanks for the rationality check

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Are you seriously suggesting I don't know that doms don't get the swords, or cremate?

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You made the comment, you were talking about Dominators, I went, "Wait, what, back up I must have missed something."

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"every" was in caps for a reason. I would have explicitly stated doms if that was the case, but that would be a weak case. The case is strong when it is game wide. I think most people know that I have a lot of game knowledge. If I specifically mention something it is for a reason. nbd though.

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Cremate is a haymaker with firefists. So you are actually physically hitting someone with your body (the only fire attack that does that). It should actually be all smash damage with fire dot, rather than 70% fire damage

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snipped for irrelevancy...

I don't suppose you have a problem with Shadow Maul or Total Focus making physical contact with the foe, so I'm guessing that with Incinerate it is a conceptual thing, a sort of "Burning Hands" cast at point blank range. I must admit, I like it for that reason too. But I'm not going to put down Cremate over it.

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In a game of concepts it is entirely a conceptual thing. I'd likely be upset if I pulled out an assault rifle and they called it mind probe

Cremate and flares are no different, they don't fit with the way fire works game wide. People just tolerate crap though, even I admitted I do as well.

As for TF and Shadow Maul, I have no issue with sets full of hand to hand contact making further contact.

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As for Flares, there may not be any throwing involved, but that was never the case, the original animation had the character standing with his hands over his head. And are you sure it's a "recolored Power Bolt" and not flames? Granted, I haven't fired it all that often, but it sure looks like flames to me.

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It's powerbolt's animation, with fire graphics. You get them both at lvl 1 go see for yourself. Unless you are suggesting that powers like: air sup, haymaker, bonesmasher, cremate, seismic smash, havoc punch, etc, actually use a different animation.

They are the exact same, just with set specific effects added. Same as flares and pb. Wait for power colorization and set them to the same color they will be virtually identical at the point of origin.

If laziness was the goal I'd have used the char, or ring of fire animation, at least they make sense for fire attacks. Char in particular would work very well for a "flare" like power.

New flares is an aberration from other ranged fire attacks and for the most part is due entirely to unwillingness to do actual work. Unless the goal is to make everything virtually the same...but that is a worse path to go down than lack of motivation.