Muon_Neutrino

Ya, fearsome stare has less -tohit - it makes up for it with the mez - but I was mostly using it as an example of what an 'opener' power needs (in this case, a large area covered).

Yup, and as toggles both of those powers can full-on toggle pull as well as try to herd enemies into the ongoing effect in other ways. A one-shot debuff like flash arrow can't do that. Note that lingering radiation, the only one-shot debuff in rad, has a 25 foot radius instead of the 15 foot that the toggles get.

Again, I seriously think that the aggro-less nature of the skill is completely irrelevant when trying to balance it as a debuff. To remain undetected you'd have to not hit them with anything else, at which point the debuff never comes into play at all. Since it's a *defensive* debuff, it only actually does anything if the foes *are* aggroed.

And as to why I feel it'd still be worthless, it's because with a 15 foot radius, you *will* be missing way too much of the foes in a large spawn. It's the same reason why wormhole has problems as a mez - the 15 foot radius means you hit and stun/teleport *half* the spawn, splitting them up and leaving the other half unimpaired. Most big spawns simply start out too spread out for such limited radius tools to mitigate enough damage.

Let's take a look at some other alpha-busting tools. Fearsome stare has an huge 45 degree 70 foot cone. Freezing rain, ice slick, and earthquake can be cast from around a corner. Seeker drones absorb the alpha no matter how spread out the spawn is. Stalagmites and flashfire have 25 foot radii. Terrify has a 90 degree 60 foot cone. EMP arrow, from this very set, has that same 35 foot radius and a huge duration to boot. Even seeds, with its 50 foot 60 degree cone, has no real problems covering a whole spawn. Every single one of these can either hit the entire spawn or has a mechanism to negate the return fire from what they miss.

With a 15 foot inner radius, flash arrow doesn't. It won't hit the whole spawn, and there's no simple way to negate the return fire from the rest. And while other tools like RI have the same problem, at least that ongoing effect lasts long enough to try to group the foes up inside it.

So why do I think it's useless for absorbing an alpha, at least on a team? Let me reiterate. If you fire it off and then immediately follow it up with other debuff arrows to attempt to leverage the short debuff, you get your face shot off by the half of the spawn you missed. If you fire it and then wait for your team to go in, it expires too quickly for them to take advantage of it. In neither case can you really claim to have mitigated the alpha, unless you want to count 'absorbing it all onto your squishy head'.

Solo, it may well work if you aren't turning up the spawn count much (although you'll still miss an annoying percentage of foes). But again, 5 seconds is still an extremely short time in which to significantly pare down your foes, especially since you don't have a team to help with that task. In the heat of combat, 5 seconds is a short time. Really, really short.

Basically, a 15 foot 5 second debuff will mitigate one attack from perhaps half the spawn. That's just not good enough, especially when other sets can do so much better.

I think a wire got crossed somewhere along the way regarding what I was proposing. When I suggested a 25% debuff, I meant that the *total* debuff would be 25% - 6.25% irresistible for 60s as it is now, and 18.75% resistible for 15s. That makes it weaker than RI or hurricane, and only slightly stronger than fearsome stare and darkest night (and without either of those powers' additional effects, or dark's ability to stack them). Considering that dark can completely nullify an entire spawn and keep it that way indefinitely between fearsome stare and darkest night, or how storm can pin a spawn in a corner practically forever, I don't see how this is overpowered (given a recharge increase to 30s).

Probably.

I tend to slot powers like that with 2 heal/end/rech and 3 heal/rech around level 30 and never touch them again. I don't find toxic damage common enough to really devote slots to enhancing the resistance.

Honestly, the -perception and lack of aggro really don't make any difference to the power's use as a combat debuff. Given that both effects break if you touch the enemies and that you're presumably going to be hitting them with something besides flash arrow next, all that the -per and no aggro really buy you is an extra second or so before your next arrow hits. They shouldn't figure into the power's balance as a debuff.

The radius is a fair concern, but consider that it doesn't need to have quite as big a debuff as those other skills, either. If it had, say, a 25% tohit debuff, wouldn't that be a fair trade for covering more area?

I agree about being irresistible, though. The original 60s duration scale 0.5 tohit debuff can stay irresistible, but any shorter duration stronger component should be resistible. *That* would actually make it too strong.

The problem is that a quick recharge, by itself, is meaningless unless the power actually does something that makes it worth using in the first place. If the cost of keeping the recharge at 15 seconds is to make the debuff unusable, that's not worthwhile.

Honestly, I would consider the power to still be completely worthless with these stats. This is a good example of a strong effect so hemmed in with restrictions as to be impossible to leverage.

Flash arrow is obviously meant to be an alpha power - the no aggro nature and the fact that tohit debuffs are most useful if applied first makes it a natural opener. That, I believe, is why it has such a large radius - before they're aggroed, spawns are often fairly spread out.

Of the other major tohit debuffs for defenders, three of them (RI, fearsome stare, and darkest night) could be used as openers. RI and darkest night are toggles, so you can attempt to herd more mobs into the ongoing effect and can also 'toggle pull' to bunch up the foes. Fearsome stare has an absolutely gigantic cone area of effect. All have mechanisms to deal with the initial spread out nature of spawns. A click debuff like flash arrow can't pull the tricks toggles can, so instead it has a huge area like fearsome stare.

If you make the strong component of flash arrow short duration and low radius, it is no longer a viable tool for opening a fight. Imagine you're on a team with no tank to take alphas, and you fire off flash arrow into a spawn. Now you can wait for your teammates to go in, but by the time they realize you've neutralized the enemies, the debuff is gone. Or, you can follow up flash arrow with more arrows of your own, but then you get your face shot off by the alpha strike from the half of the spawn not covered by the strong portion of the debuff.

A similar situation would happen solo. If you turn up the number of foes to take advantage of all the AoEs in TA, you have the same problem of missing too much of the spawn with flash arrow. Additionally, since you don't have a team to keep them off of you, given how many arrows you need to layer for safety 5 seconds might not be enough time.

Generally, I am of the opinion that powers should not be balanced by making them annoying to use, and that's what a small-radius short-duration version of flash arrow would be.

A 2 second debuff would do basically nothing, especially in such a small radius. That's not even long enough to take an alpha. And keep in mind that if you give it a 5 or 10 second debuff and someone makes it perma, they'll still be spending ~2s in animation to fire it off each time - that's 20% to 40% of your total animation time budget just spent refreshing flash arrow.

Flash arrow is interesting. It has a large radius, and the irresistible debuff is certainly nice for AVs. The problem, though, isn't with AVs - TA's contribution to a team's AV fight is already significant through the large amounts of -resist it can stack. The problem is the total mitigation level TA provides just going spawn to spawn - it's here that the set falls down. EMP arrow is nice, but what are you supposed to do when it's down? TA lacks a useful every-spawn mitigation power. And flash arrow is the logical place to fix that - it already carries an appropriate effect, just too small of one to be useful. Basically what I'm saying is that it's probably OK to add a powerful tohit debuff - the set needs a powerful effect. Here's what I would do, personally:

Increase the recharge time on flash arrow to 30 seconds. Add a resistible scale 1.5 tohit debuff that lasts 15 seconds. Thus, you have a total of a 25% tohit debuff (defender numbers) for 15s and the original 6.25% unresistible debuff for the remaining 45s of the original duration.

The power is still usable for anything anyone was using it for previously - you can even still stealth with it if you grab some recharges, since the -perception lasts for 60s. And now it actually provides some mitigation for those crucial first few seconds of a fight. Keep in mind that even a scale 2.0 tohit debuff (the new scale 1.5 plus the scale 0.5 that was already there) is less than other sets can put out - radiation infection is scale 2.5, hurricane is scale 3, and dark miasma can put out scale 3 between fearsome stare and darkest night, all of which can be permanent effects.

I think I'd actually end up somewhere between these. I definitely wouldn't care at all about the established system's rules and codes. In my view the governments of the world are nigh-irredeemably corrupt, and I have no respect for many of their petty and asinine rules. I certainly would not feel compelled to set the model of the 'ideal citizen', *especially* since it would get in the way of actually doing good. So in that respect I imagine I'd be seen as a vigilante.

However, I wouldn't be 'sailing blind without a moral compass' - just because I wouldn't conform to *society's* system of morality doesn't mean I wouldn't have my *own* moral system to follow. For example, I personally believe that it is not permissible to kill unless the target is in the direct physical act of attempting to kill another (and it is the only way to stop them, which if I was a superhero might only rarely be the case). In other words, the only thing worth a life is another life, and only when the danger is so clear and immediate as to be beyond all doubt. So I wouldn't be able to, for example, assassinate a corrupt executive to stop his evil plan (I wouldn't hesitate, though, to trick them into evacuating whatever facility they're using and then destroying it completely and with no recompense given). There are some other, similar sorts of restrictions I would end up placing on myself as well.

So, while I wouldn't be a traditional 'hero', I wouldn't really be an 'at all costs' vigilante either - at least at first, anyway. Knowing human nature and my own mind as I do, I wouldn't be able to keep it up forever. Heck, at this point my basic coping mechanism for all of the world's crazy problems is to say to myself 'there's nothing you can do about it, so stop beating yourself up over it'. If I actually *could* attempt to do something about it, then sooner or later I would get frustrated enough at my inability to actually fix things that I would snap and go vigilante, and eventually even possibly full-on rogue if I just can't seem to make a difference otherwise. At that point I would probably try to take over the world and impose a theoretically-benevolent dictatorship. Which would, of course, end badly as I have no idea how to run a planet (or even, honestly, any belief that it can even be done). Either that or I would say '**** it' and go flying off into space to explore the universe, and to heck with the human race and all its attendant stupidities.

[edit: I starting posting this before the edits to the OP and the posts that sparked them. This was written assuming a 'superman +' type power level where this moral choice actually becomes (imo) really critical. Below that level, at least in my opinion, the moral choice isn't 'pure', as you're partially constrained by what you (at least in your own mind) think you can *get away with*, rather that what you actually want to *do*. To really explore the moral decisions, I personally think you'd have to have the *ability* to actually do whatever your choice prompts you to do. For example, I couldn't really say with a straight face that I would openly attempt to take over the world and impose a personal dictatorship, because that's not really realistic for someone with a 'batman' level of power (even if they can't seem to track you down) - even though it's what I would (eventually) want to do. (Also hence my comment at the end about saying 'to heck with all of you stupid monkeys' and up and leaving - a mere mortal who can't fly or survive unprotected in space would find that a bit difficult. )

You touch my Force Bubble and I KEEL you!

Repulsion Field on the other hand? Have at it.

There's a difference between difficulty and tedium. When two even-level syndicate LTs can kill a nearly full health scrapper in a single volley of attacks, that's not difficulty. The only challenge involved there is avoiding death by boredom as you trek back from the hospital with a fresh tray of insps over and over again.

Most of the praetorian mobs are fine. A bit on the hard side, but not ridiculously so. Syndicate are not. They desperately needed toning down, and I'm very happy to see it done.