MajorDecoy

If you look at the build, he's not at the soft-cap. Also, Darkest Night debuffs damage as well.

I do not have that much trouble hitting multiple enemies with Shadow Maul, I think you're exaggerating things.

The music is appropriate to the style of the film. This is a Newsreel style presentation, and the music doesn't sound out of place for that.

Well, you have someone sneaking up on another player and attacking them with a War Mace costume skin. From there, using huge leaps of wishful thinking, War Mace Stalkers become self-evident.

That would be an interesting power on a stalker.

Put it in a set that also gives the stalker bodyguard, so that any damage the stalker takes is distributed around the team. Make the rest of the powers defense and resistance... It would probably make the character the least popular power set to team with.

Um... I don't think that example is as clear cut as you want it to be.

It's a wrench, and I've decided to take this as a hint that War Mace Stalkers are on the way.

From what I understand, it's just the archery power set but you can target allies with it. Well, that and every animation causes you to yell out "I'm helping, I'm helping!"

... Well, given what Baby New Year looks like, every power in the set would cause fear.

Well, actually, that is workable. Stances have been thrown around forever. If you had one that dramatically increased damage and secondary effects while entirely negating recovery and having an endurance cost to boot, it would reduce the amount of time players used it.

Yes it has. It originally provided 7.5% defense to smashing/lethal/energy/negative energy/fire/cold. With the Global Defense Reduction, that dropped to 5%.

Aside from that, it also gained 25% Defense Debuff Resistance.

Even in a more open system, you need to balance a power around what powers a player already has.

Then you take the toggles and don't run them when you don't need them. That's what I do. For a long time, Major Decoy only used his invulnerability toggles when teaming. Using all my powers for running missions set at Unyielding was overkill, and kind of dull. But sometimes I need that extra performance, I need to run Tough even. If you find that you never need the extra survivability offered by the toggles, you can respecify out of them.

I don't agree that there are good and bad powers. I will agree that some powers are more effective than others, that some powers are only rarely useful. But unless a power is actually counter-productive in every instance of it's use, I couldn't say that it's a bad power.

I don't know if Bitter Freeze Ray is poorly balanced. I have never played a character with Ice Blast. I suppose I could compare it to Knock-out Blow pre-Issue 2, which was one of the three powers most likely to be skipped.

That could just be a difference in opinion in set design. I have no problem with powers people want to skip. I think that Armour sets should have three or four core powers that are really hard to tank without and everything else in the set would be optional.

I think it's okay if you decide that you don't want Bitter Freeze Ray; skip it. If someone else wants it because they're happy to use it, I don't see a problem. As long as the power is useful and the power set it's in is not under performing, everything's good.

Now, if Ice Blast was not soloing at roughly the same rate as other sets, then you'd look at the set, see what powers people were skipping, and see what could be done to improve them, if that would help the set.

But there is no Power vs. Power comparison without knowing what other powers a character has.

What's a better power? Tough Hide or Phalanx Fighting? In order to know which one is better, you need to know how much Defense the person has already and if it's positional or typed, how much DDR the person has, etc.

Invincibility or Phalanx Fighting? That's an easier choice. How much defense does the person have already, and is it positional or typed?

But you have to consider what other powers a character has when considering balance. Resilience on a Regeneration scrapper is something you can take or leave. Resilience on an Invulnerability Tanker? If I had that, I could consider skipping Tough (unless it was a very strict concept build, I'd probably still want Weave).

Rage is awesome for a Super Strength tanker, but would you call it a good power for a Master Mind?

In isolation, no power is good or bad.

These are fine suggestions for patching City of Heroes, but not necessarily good suggestions for City of Heroes II.

From what I understand, slotting Performance Shifter: Chance for +End in a power that targets an enemy will give the enemy endurance when it procs.