Muon_Neutrino

Actually, I believe a lot of PvPers go into that pool anyway for phase shift and LoTG mules. And due to the way perception and stealth works in PvP, adding almost any form of additional perception would allow a significant number of characters to see through hide better than they can now (sorta).

Stalker PvP stealth cap is 1143 feet. Non-VEAT PvP perception cap is 1153. So, at the perception cap you can see a stealth capped stalker 10 feet away. While this doesn't seem like much, it's enough that you can see one who's trying to melee you. However, you have to *get* to that cap, and a lot of characters can't get there solo. At base, you have 500 feet of perception, so you need at least 653 additional perception. Most primary/secondary/ancillary powers that provide perception give 300 feet of it. The rectified reticle proc gives 100, and tactics gives 242-432.5 depending on AT.

Therefore, a melee type with an armor that gives +per, focused accuracy, and a rectified reticle proc or tactics, will be at the perception cap. However, some squishies can't do that, since they end up lacking either a primary/secondary +per power or focused accuracy (or both), or tactics is not as strong. For example, a /dev blaster with targeting drone, tactics, and the rectified reticle proc sits at 1142 - one foot less than a stalker at the stealth cap. Controllers, defenders, and corruptors can reach the cap thanks to their higher modifiers on tactics and having focused accuracy in the mace epic, but masterminds and doms can't.

Add another perception power (which would probably be of the +300 feet variety, given the name), and suddenly things change. Now *every* squishy AT can cap themselves with tactics, see invisibility, and the rectified reticle proc (and targeting drone, for blasters). Additionally, any melee with a perception power in their primary/secondary can now cap without focused accuracy, freeing them to take whatever epic is the most advantageous. Also, a melee *without* a perception power can now cap with see invisibility, focused accuracy, and the proc, where before they couldn't since for them tactics isn't strong enough.

Basically, adding another form of perception bonus, in a pool that most PvPers already take anyway, would allow every AT (and almost any powerset combo) to see through maxed out stalker stealth. And it's worth noting that hide is only 500 feet of stealth by itself - only enough to hide from people with no perception bonus at all. Stalkers at the cap are also running stealth and a stealth IO to get there, yet all that effort would be wasted.

Hmm, well e-readers aren't too overwhelmingly expensive nowadays...

Best of the EU, in my opinion, are the Zahn trilogy and the x-wing books - or, at least, they're my favorites. I, Jedi is also good, although you do have to deal with the blah-ness of the jedi academy books that overlap with the first half. And yeah, darksaber and crystal star were crap.

And if you liked Basilisk Station, you might want to do yourself a favor and pick up the hardcover of Mission of Honor, the most recent main storyline novel. A *very* nice thing Baen is doing is packing CDs full of ebooks into some of their hardcovers - explicitly marked 'you may copy and share this'. The CD should include every single previous book in the Honor universe, as well as a healthy selection of Weber's other work as well as that of some other Baen authors (who also have some pretty good stuff). It's a ridiculously good deal, especially since it'll fill you in on all 10 main storyline Honor books between Basilisk Station and Mission of Honor, as well as the first 4 short story anthologies and the 4 (so far) books in the two side branches of the story. It's definitely a hefty series by now, but they're very good in my opinion.

I'm certainly not trying to start a flame war, and I do agree that the tohit debuff is worth noting and could occasionally be useful. I simply disagree that it'd ever be worth using slots on.

It is true that 3.75%, as a simple amount of equivalent defense, isn't 'very small' - after all, look at how much effort people go through to chase defense bonuses smaller than that, and to only one type to boot. What I suppose I didn't make clear enough was that I think that 3.75% is 'very small' in light of the other factors reducing its effectiveness.

You're only going to get the full 3.75% against even level minions (I haven't been able to track down the proper numbers, but I definitely recall higher ranks of foes having some resistance to tohit debuffs). The problem is that a WP scrapper with a mature build, especially one that is also concerned with improving survivability through things like tough/weave and set bonuses, isn't going to die to even level minions anyway. By the time you get to opponents who you might actually have to worry about, the amount of debuff you're getting has significantly decreased. When you add to that the fact that it has a target limit significantly less than the aggro cap and doesn't do anything about ranged attackers who aren't going to obligingly come into range, I simply question the assumption that it'd ever be the best use of a pair of slots to enhance it. The two slot bonuses of 2% damage or 1.5% HP that you could get from 2 slots of a debuff set are nothing so earth-shattering that you can't get elsewhere, and the actual enhancement values aren't especially useful either. Obviously you can't say with absolute certainty that it would never be the best use of slots, but I think it'd have to be a *very* unusual build that could do so.

It wasn't a 'staff blast' set, it was very much 'staff melee', lots of thwacky spinny beatdown goodness. Some of the moves looked similar to that dude from the soul calibur games who uses a staff, if you've ever seen him (I'm sure you can find youtube videos of him). There was a leaked video of the attack animations that (briefly) made the rounds, but the mods have been pretty relentless in nuking any links (which is one reason we're pretty sure it's legit).

We can't say for *sure* what any of them do (well, at least those of us who weren't at comiccon can't say), but we can make some educated guesses based on the icons:

1. Time Crawl

The icon has the ST border, and the interior symbol implies a slow of some sort. The devs aren't always consistent with their power icons, but I think rings around both the torso and feet might denote both movement and recharge slow as well as a regen debuff - the only power I could find that used rings around *both* areas is lingering radiation (rings around just feet is usually movement only slow, combined movement and recharge slow seem to mostly use rings around just torso). That doesn't necessarily mean, of course, that the power *only* does slow, just that the devs consider slowing to be the 'main' effect.

2. Temporal Mending

Has the standard icon for a PBAoE heal, such as healing aura, radiant aura, or warmth. There were rumors, however, that it had an additional effect.

3. Time's Juncture

Icon has the unbroken outer ring that indicates a PBAoE, and the inner symbol suggests a tohit debuff.

4. Temporal Selection

Again, single target border, and the inner symbol is a fairly generic 'damage buff' symbol; also used for siphon power, fulcrum shift, and forge, for example. However, since we know it takes healing sets, it must also include either a heal or regen component.

5. Distortion Field

Border is the 'location AoE summon' ring; the inner icon is the 'speeding fist' icon used for hasten. Probably a placeable patch recharge debuff, possibly with other effects as well. Not sure why they didn't use a more standard slow icon, however - only thing I can think of is that it might do *only* recharge slow and not movement slow, and the normal icon might be reserved for things that include movement slows.

6. Time Stop

Standard icon for a single target hold.

7. Farsight

PBAoE border, generic defense and/or resistance buff inner symbol (usually used by powers that provide defense or resistance to all positions/types).

8. Slowed Response

Targeted AoE border, generic defense and/or resistance debuff inner symbol (used by such powers as freezing rain and melt armor).

9. Chrono Shift

PBAoE border, hasten 'speeding fist' inner symbol. PBAoE recharge buff, presumably with other effects since it's the tier 9.

Note that the set's shtick was supposed to be that if a target is under the influence of one of the two single target powers (presumably time crawl and temporal selection), other buffs/debuffs from the set cast on them would gain additional effects.

I'm not arcanaville, but *assuming* I'm understanding it right (I think so, after arcanaville's confirmation), I can put it into a formula for you.

As far as I understand it, the final damage debuff on a target can be calculated as:

Final damage debuff = initial damage debuff * ( 1 - base resistance + [ resist debuff * (1 - base resistance) ] )

and the debuff strength is calculated individually for each damage type. Basically, it's 'figure out total resistance debuff, since resistance resists resistance debuffs, then subtract that from the base resistance to get the current resistance, then use *that* to figure out how much the damage debuff is resisted'.

This is the real sticking point. Back when there wasn't anything to do with the merits, it didn't matter as much. Get unlucky, oh well you'll get it eventually with merits.

Now, though, the person who gets lucky not only gets their VR quickly, but then is free to spend their merits to unlock all those goodies. Meanwhile, the unlucky soul who's on his 60th trial is feverishly saving 30 emps to blow on a VR instead of costume parts.

~60 trials in with this defender, 1 VR. Far as I can tell, at 10% the odds of having less than 2 VRs after 60 trials are about 1.3%. I suppose there always has to be the one really unlucky person, but why does it have to be me?

The 'anti-empathy' pain dom precedent was more or less what I was thinking when I was worrying that they would remake the set into something new. However, I hadn't thought of the possibility that they simply hadn't decided yet what they wanted to do with it. You're certainly right that it's easy to assume that the devs always already know what they want to do. I know what *I* want them to do, but...

Thanks for being so reasonable in your reply; there's so much vitriol in this thread it's nice to see an actual discussion. As to the topic, while I don't think PA is necessarily *overpowered*, it's definitely the biggest potential trouble spot.

The way I see it, completely independent of the PToD EB issue for doms, I don't think PA is overpowered in regular PvE play, without absurd levels of recharge. That is, going spawn-to-spawn in regular missions, or fighting regular task force/story arc AVs with a team, on a non-IO'd character.

Going spawn-to-spawn, PA suffers due to its uptime (only 50% with recharge enhancement) and recharge (60s up, 60s down means it's not an every-spawn power as it might be with a 30s/30s arrangement), as well as the fact that it has no AoEs and isn't very smart and so has trouble holding the attention of a crowd. It's certainly great for taking alphas and can somewhat divert the attention of a spawn in an ongoing fight, but it's certainly no better than many other controller AoE controls against a regular spawn. If PA is enough to make tanks redundant against normal spawns, so is any other controller primary, and these make up the vast majority of the game's content.

In regular play against normal AVs, it again has issues due to the uptime. On a non-uber team an AV might well outlast its 60s duration, at which point aggro-holding melee characters are no longer upstaged. Two or more illusionists working in concert could keep it up permanently, but in my opinion *two* players cooperating being able to duplicate the effects of one other character in a normal team situation is fine given the game's design goal of not having any particular mandatory team composition. It's not an AT being sidelined by one power - it's an AT's usual role being covered by multiple characters using specific powers, something which is *supposed* to be possible in this game. And if the AV has a spawn or there are ambushes/etc, PA will again have trouble due to having no AoEs and being dumb.

Where PA gets problematic is in special situations and non-standard character builds - the old hami raid and perma-PA IO builds being good examples. I just don't think that these are enough to call it overpowered in general.

For special situations, if an encounter can be trivialized by PA I'd be inclined to call it a problem with the encounter, not PA. Like what happened with old hami, I'd rather see them tweak the encounter instead of nerfing PA. For the most part I think the devs have been doing this pretty consistently with newer content - so much of it demands mobility, intelligence, management of dispersed foes, and coordination, all things that PA is bad at. PA isn't replacing a tanker in keyes, for example, because PA isn't smart enough to lure anti-matter to a terminal. PA isn't replacing tankers on the BAF, since it's not smart enough to avoid getting everyone sequestered.

When it comes to making PA vulnerable, one thing I don't generally see in the suggestions is an answer to the question '*How* does this balance PA?' - that is, what is the specific problem that the change is intended to address, and how does it do so? In my opinion, it would actually make PA somewhat underpowered - it's already no better than a standard AoE control against regular spawns, and hard targets would be able to reduce them to jelly in short order. At that point, what exactly is their role - what are they supposed to be able to do? Currently they only outperform a traditional control exactly in situations where their invincibility is actually relevant - if that's no longer the case, why even bother with them instead of just using spectral terror?

Recall, also, that if PA is overpowered, then they're certainly not going to change it just for doms. In the grand scheme of things controllers are almost certainly more powerful overall thanks to the potency of buff/debuff sets, so if it's broken for doms it's definitely broken for controllers. So, any changes to illusion for doms intended to nerf PA would have to also go to controllers, and then you run into the cottage rule when it comes to modifying an existing set. If PA is changed for dominators in the context of a revamped set (which it would *have* to be, in my opinion, given the power's current status as a cornerstone of the set), then what do they do with controller PA since making identical changes would grossly violate the cottage rule?

If they had to make a change to nerf PA, about the only thing I can think of is to (if the tech exists) make the power unaffected by external recharge buffs - so you can reduce the recharge with enhancements (and so also the alpha slot), but not with hasten/set bonuses/buffs/etc. It's not really a problem when it can't tank something indefinitely. Now, I don't really think it's warranted given the degree of power IOs afford *other* ATs and power set combos, but if you had to do something I'd prefer to at least leave their tanking ability intact for the current design duration.

On a completely different tangent, while I agree they might be holding it back to remove an invisibility power for something else, I don't necessarily think it'd just be because dom's aren't allowed ally buffs, since we already get spirit tree's +regen buff and the recovery boost to allies who stand in static field. It'd be more because two invisibility powers are just redundant.