IanTheM1

Is there a Surrounding Mob difficulty setting for boss defeats? Because if so you have to set that to Single as well. I ran into a similar problem with an escort recently, and that was the issue.

And Fly deserves this massive advantage over the other travel powers because...? And what about Super Jumpers who, with some creativity, can hit the zone ceiling as well?

This idea isn't bad, but I think it would be too confusing for newer players, who would otherwise gain no sense of how the city's laid out.

Not really. It is Paragon City, after all.

Okay, that's just bizarre.

How do you go from "Boosters are niche-based" to "Ninjas representing the entire Natural origin"?

It's a Vahzilok Abomination and not a Lost. I take it to be a reference to the Freedom Phalanx novel, where Synapse's friend was effectively turned into one (just not in name) by one of the villains.

Its focus on customized hero characters. It sounds like a lot of micromanagement, and just doesn't interest me like being able to command an Impervium-plated tank would.

That I'm not entirely sure of, since I think it's disruptive about 1% of the time, and how disruptive it actually is heavily depends on what's at stake - Soul Drain isn't nearly as important as Dark Regen, after all.

Well, speaking in strictly terms of "getting to use my powers," a Blaster nuking the group (with Thunderous Blast, let's say, since that has the biggest "out of nowhere" effect) would disrupt Dark Regen. And while it's unlikely to be lethal most of the time, if he didn't actually kill everything, and you still had all the aggro...

Really, my point is that there are still edge cases out there where things done by other players, outside of knockback, can get you killed due to interfering with DR.

A thousand times this, even if I did manage a decent workaround (designing a normal costume for my Soldier that I was happy with).

It's only happened a few times, but I ask them to hold off on it. If they don't, then it depends on my mood and which character I'm on what I do next.

It was a big problem when a Fire Controller spamming Fire Cages completely screwed up my Ice/Ice Tank's survivability, but then I was fighting purples on a team pushing the limits on double XP weekend, so I left.

Other times people simply learned by example that nullifying my Controller's Earthquake was bad for the team.

And that's always going to be the case, for better or for worse. There's really nothing more I can say to that, other than that situational powers exist, and that we'll have to agree to disagree on how disruptive Energy Torrent can be.

Perhaps it was a bad example. My point was that there are plenty of other ways Dark Regen could be disrupted that have nothing to do with knockback, and I run into them far more often.

Because getting more inspirations is rarely an issue, especially at the level range we're talking about, where inspiration space is plentiful and Tier 2s regularly drop. I definitely understand where you're coming from, but it doesn't seem realistic to me that this Tanker or whatever couldn't ask for more greens or convert spares into them if necessary.

On the contrary, I do mind when people disrupt my powers. But I make sure not to get into situations where that happens in the first place.

Pretty much my bottom line with knockback is that using it improperly is no different than using any other kind of power improperly (like my aforementioned "Pulling with Fireball" bit). And getting unlucky with certain positional powers isn't so different either - if the Blaster nukes the mob before I can use Dark Regen, I'm still out of the heal, just less likely to die. *shrug*

If there's really something that bugs me, it's AoE immobilizes causing -KB. Means lots of trouble for all of my characters that take advantage of knockdown.

I didn't say it was. Obviously healing is usually more preferable. But sometimes you have to make the most out of a bad situation.

This doesn't make any sense. 1) How did the DA lose all that health if the bulk of the enemies are stunned/feared/whatever? (If it was from a previous fight, then there was plenty of time to prepare.) 2) What is preventing the DA from chasing the enemies and keeping them in his auras? And 3) Dark Regen doesn't cancel powers either.

If anything, knocking them back actually increased mitigation (excluding the disrupted Dark Regen, anyway) since the DA auras don't affect higher ranked enemies.

The option to retreat isn't limited by inventory space. It's less reliable, but what are you going to do. I also find it laughable that you would count inspiration consumption as a significant negative effect. That's precisely what they're there for.

Dark Consumption has a very fast activation time, which would reduce the chance of it being affected. Admittedly, Soul Drain, and to a lesser extent Dark Regen, are worse off in that regard.

In my experience, well-placed knockback is far more effective than straight knockdown, if slightly more unpredictable. Ragdoll > stock get-up animation.

The strategy that has long served me well on teams with copious amounts of knockback is to save my PBAoEs until I'm absolutely sure nothing will get knocked back...such as when the enemies are already knocked back. But I guess I'm the kind of weirdo who's willing to let their fun be subjugated by those dastardly KBers. *shakes fist*

If you knocked back all of their targets (and it would have to be 100% of them, since even a single target would give plenty of health), then I'm not seeing the issue. While they aren't potentially as safe as if they had gotten Dark Regen off, enemies on their butts means that the DA character gets some breathing room to either retreat or use some inspirations.

And here I thought all I was getting at was that teamwork and communication are useful. How that spins out to "keep track of every variable and power cooldown imaginable" I'm not sure.

It's not that difficult to follow - if you notice that your Soul Drain keeps getting foiled by knockback every single mob, you'll grasp the pattern rather quickly. If the Brute politely asks you to hold off on the knockback until he gets his Soul Drain, you know to look out for that power. If you make a mistake...well, mistakes happen.

Do you honestly think that asking someone to play intelligently by waiting a whole extra second before using Soul Drain is somehow subjugating their fun? Maybe if their idea of fun is just constantly mashing random power icons until enemies die, I guess.

The DM character could also easily reverse the situation and ask the KBer to wait for them to use Soul Drain before AoEing. Either way, nobody's fun is spoiled, unless one of them gets a chip on their shoulder over having to wait one second, during which time they could use any other power at their disposal.

Honestly, implying that a failed Soul Drain impedes the player's enjoyment of the game means we're in serious trouble. After all, Soul Drain can miss, enemies can run out of its range of their own accord, you could be knocked back and waste it, you could be killed before it goes off...I'm amazed anybody plays Dark Melee at all considering how potentially disappointing it could be.

Either way, the KB argument is so passe. I think I'll make a thread to suggest that team leaders can turn off AoEs altogether. I'm tired of the Blaster pulling with Fireball. Maybe there could be an enhancement that turns AoEs into single target attacks?

(Remember folks! IanTheM1 brand snark is part of a carefully balanced forum breakfast!)

Don't we still have the whole "below level something/gone for 90 days means your name is up for grabs" system? Or was that also canceled at some point?

I'm forced to question how often this even happens. While yes, I have had enemies knocked out of my own PBAoE effects in the past, that actually affecting the power's function is relatively uncommon due to how power activation works.

Of course, I'd also probably take the far more pragmatic approach and wait to use Soul Drain because I knew the AoE knockback was coming. Especially since if the knockback is used even half-intelligently, the mobs might very well clump better.

As far as I understood it, one subset of the skill system was "Invention" and it's pretty obvious what happened to that...

Fixed. And, to be fair, it's not like Avilans could really go anywhere now that we have costume wings (and Kheldians undercut the whole inherent travel power bonus).

Yes, because I'm sure they never once thought of scaling back the data-gophers that were slowing the servers down to a crawl. It got canned for a reason, and it's the last nail in the coffin of marketing letting them announce anything before it's mostly done ever again.