Kioshi

Even with single-stacked Rage, with SS you're basically in perma build up mode. And in a dedicated (and decent since I've seen horrible ones) farming build you'll have footstomp down to 5-6 seconds (making WSs lower recharge not a big deal) and usually three other AoEs (Ball Lightning, Elec Fences, Burn). Add that Rage benefits all these and your damage aura and that all the attacks are fast activating with no need to use a slower one without momentum, SS is still ahead since in a recharge focused build you'll have your AoEs up more often than you can click them unless you farm paying lots of attention (which is boring for me). So even thoough when farming I only use FS and Rage from SS (no need for KO blow even for 54 bosses), SS also benefits from no redraw and no momentum gimmick so you can use your patron AoEs more effectively.

TW/Fa surely is a great farmer, maybe even second place now since a claws/fire still benefits from using a ST attack (follow up) to boost dmg and tohit but those two are probably very close (despite the need to use FU, it lasts a long time and can be double stacked so it will boost burn and blazing aura way more than Build Momentum).

If you want, go to beta and buy it in the market

OP must be thinking 'My job here is done'.

Eh, Ninja Run and Beast Run aren't 'mostly just for looks' powers. They're good enough that a lot of players have been skipping travel powers and relying only on them (usually Ninja Run). I have plenty of toons I skipped a travel power because of NR. Also, very useful for 'brute stealthing' or navigating long maps when you have to find a glowie or whatever.

So I'm completely against turning it into a completely cosmetic power with no end cost, it's actually useful to me and not an 'emote'.

Why DB? It already has good ST damage, the set's problem is that the combo system is wonky, you need more powers than a scrappers and have to use low dpa attacks to do them - and you can't do AV-Sweep combos back to back (good when facing tons of mobs) like a scrapper or even get advantage of having a permanent to-hit bonus (Blinding Feint) which helps a lot since missing = bye bye combo. On my scrapper the only 'meh' attack I have to use for my combos is Power Slice. And the best DPS chain for DB without combos requires a ton of recharge.

Anyway.... The ST sets will suffer a bit since there's no reason anymore to slot energy punch on my em/nin and nobody's sure Claws, MA and EM will get revamped.

The change makes me wanna play Spines, a set that I could never get into due to the low ST damage.

Now sure what Micro meant with Electric... It has the best AoE damage on Stalkers, not the best ST, unless you count PvP where Thundestrike hits like a truck.

Looking at all the answers, seems like my initial impression on Pain matches other players'. Maybe it caught my attention because when I left the game there were so many pain doms (it was brand new) and I haven't seen one since (someone even posted the powerset seems to have 'vanished' lol).

Sure the experience differs for each of us (for example, it's weird how many peacebringers I see both in te 30s and in iTrials on Freem).

But looking at the answers there are others I haven't seen these last 6 months - sonic blast, ice armor (counting the ones I haven't seen any, not the ones I barely see, and I PuG a lot). Maybe FF too.

Melee sets aren't as easy to notice but I can say I've never seen anyone using Crowd Control (since I started in i9) except Banes - I saw quite a few WM and BA Scrappers when the set was ported but mostly on Posis so I'm guessing most of them weren't leveled much.

One very noticeable melee set (since it's so flashy) that I have the impression 'Im the only one' is Dual Blades, although it may be just me since it gets a lot of build requests and etc in the forums, and tbh I was finding the set kinda meh until level 26 and now I love it. Maybe the melee weapon sets aren't very popular nowadays because of TW.

I see basically every blast set because sometimes I team with the Repeat Offenders and they love corrs and defs, so Ar, Ice Blast, etc, are not uncommon there. But even among them, I don't remember seeing a Sonic Blast toon in like, forever.

I don't think it's just because some set is 'gimp' or not, although it certainly helps if it's clearly an underperformer, I gave up on en elec blast corr because of that. Dual Pistols for example still seem very popular to me (but then again it's one of those sets a lot of people, including me, just ove the animations), while the numerically great Kinetic Melee is not seen often (although it certainly doesn't fall in the 'I never see those' category). Then again with the influx of new melee sets (and ports like WM for scraps, katana for Brutes) I'm not surprised that some are in the 'rare' category and others going down on popularity like Spines and BS.

Haven't seen a psi blast corr yet and having a rad/psi defender, I find the set very good, unlike the blaster port (for pve).

I want it but only if you can use the powers on teammates.

Flambeaux FTW

Happened to me last time I installed the game, stage 2 was downloaded and I couldn't get in the tutorial which I was supposed to. I just closed the game and waited for the launcher to download the whole thing.

Doms get Hoarfrost and Trollers get Earth's Embrace so they obviously should be buffed too, my fire kin hits the cap with only rech slotting >:/

(j/k I don't think Ats should have HP caps raised because of one epic power)

Well I mentioned AR because it would make a great ranged-only blaster with EM.

But why one trick pony? Archery has all the things you'd want from a blast set - tier 3 blast, cone, TAoE, snipe, mez power, and the gem of the set, a fast recharging mini nuke that is better than all the others.

Blasters are a one trick pony anyway. The only one that doesn't feel like this to me is my Dark/MM because of the aoe imob and drain psyche (since it's a debuff), but my other ones.. As much as I enjoy them (Energy/Ice is my fav) are one or two-trick ponies at most. No Blaster will come close to the versatility of your TA, although MM has -regen and TA's -regen is meh because it's on EMP arrow but Ta shouldn't be on this discussion because it's on a debuff set and besides the bow, has nothing to do with archery blast.

DP has long animations and it's the only set out of these three that you'd have to go to melee to use the tier 9.

AR is kinda lacking in the ST department, but good AoE. It makes the best use of Boost Range imo since Full Auto is a narrow cone so it benefits a lot.

Archery has it all after you get RoA.