PleaseRecycle

The thing that many people have been trying to express is that while it's true that spreading things around with KB is bad if all you care about is reward per time, it's not only bad. It has helpful applications as well. The reason I don't want to see it removed is because I prefer the diversity of gameplay that it offers to the homogeneity that would be left in Null's poop-encrusted wake if it, and everything else anyone could come up with a reason to dislike, were made "optional."

To expand slightly on what Obitus said, look at it this way. Eight cold/sonic defenders wouldn't be able to drop one of the AVs' resistance by one percent. If that team doesn't have a chance, nothing has a chance.

I was being a little hyperbolic. To answer your question, though, dark can do things that other melee sets cannot. Amazing heal, good resistance across the board, very good versus psi, damage aura, fear protection, endurance protection, control auras... I'd say it's pretty much the best armor set by most standards.

With a set like dark armor, I think the way to go is to simply embrace the endurance madness. Know that you will need nuclear-level mitigation and go with it. I'm talking frankenslot at level 20, start your real IOing at level 30, and plan on cardiac if you don't want an expensive build and ageless if you do. Have a plan in place to unlock and slot these things the day you hit 50.

Before you get there, play conservatively. What is my goal on this mission? Grab a glowie and clear the last room? Great, I'll have enough endurance to do that without stopping if I skip right to it. Dark actually works pretty well for this since you get a stealth power. On teams, use ze blues and, I hate to say it, save your attacks for important targets. Let the blaster finish off the minions that only have a sliver of health left. There's a good blaster, you certainly did blast that fellow.

Basically it's silly to pretend that dark armor is going to play exactly like, for instance, willpower or elec, so don't! You never liked your endurance anyway. You won't miss it when it's gone.

Gee Dispari, that's a funny thing to say since the justification for getting rid of KB depended on the apparently-obvious fact that everyone hates it, which was supported by the accounts of players being debased for using KB. Are you saying that it isn't really as bad as its opponents in this thread were arguing?

The difference, rsclark, is that some people are asking for the removal of a big part of the game. By the logic you're using, we can either have vindictive, hateful teams that have more options or self-loathing, appalling teams that have fewer options. Of those two appealing options I choose the former, particularly since it's how the game has always worked and it doesn't require any changes.

Because as it stands in reality, it would be mental to kick people for using KB since there's no way to avoid having it if you've chosen one of a large array of sets. As I've said, I have no personal experience of people shrieking at KB users, much less kicking them, yet people in this thread are saying it happens. Now make it possible to toggle KB off and you validate that attitude. You say, "Yes, crazy person, you've always been right to hate KB and now you're so right that we've added a game system supporting your correctness! Anyone who still uses KB really does have the mental problems and questionable ancestry that you've always suspected they did!" This is the wrong approach to game balance.

The funny part, Dispari, is when not ten minutes after your optimistic rebuttal Deus comes along and affirms what I was saying.

Because as many have admitted in this thread, if the option to disable knockback were there, they'd either refuse to team with people who chose to use knockback or they'd simply kick them straight away. Or, as I theorize, if they saw someone using knockback they'd begin a short speech about its many flaws and the improved utility of knockdown, and how everyone would be so much happier if you'd just visit null the gull quickly, wouldn't they?

Do you think I'm wrong?

Why not just think of a new, more unique name? Is this a weird suggestion to make?

I'm referring to these people that Socorro and others were talking about who, apparently, violently oppose knockback and are willing to berate their teammates for even using it correctly. Are you saying that that's a rational behavior that is beyond reproach? I think they're a collection of ********. I've never actually met one of these people but if you all assure me that they exist I choose to believe you.

Kicking someone who is being antisocial is one of many ways of "dealing with it" that I was encouraging people to take advantage of. I'd rather try talking to them before resorting to that but it's a valid option.

I'm not entirely clear on whether this has been covered in the thread already as some of the references I think went over my head, but my answer to all that is just look at that bat fellow. He's just a strong dude with some technological assistance yet nobody seems to find it implausible for him to kick the head off of a robot because the writer will have made clear that he knew exactly the right angle to kick from because he did some industrial espionage at the robot factory before the fight. Or maybe prior to the fight with a demigod your martial artist would learn some minor ward of vulnerability, or dig up a long forgotten technique from his school that doesn't get a lot of use since you ostensibly don't fight one specific god every day. There's a million ways to explain this stuff in a universe that's full of magic and science and all these crazy things. I'd definitely say you can have a guy who is mainly getting by on his natural skill who makes it through the weirder circumstances by resorting to one form of trickery or another.

Oh yeah, I should also point out that in playing this game we're suspending our belief in a more subtle way as well. In general, in comic books, not every character is exposed to every type of enemy. Matter Eater Lad doesn't tend to go on a lot of pan-galactic crusades, as far as I am aware. He tends to find himself in situations where he's hungry and he's surrounded by matter. So, from that perspective, maybe a natural martial artist simply wouldn't really be going on the shadow shard TFs. The fact that you can easily do so is a testament to the level of freedom the game has always given to players to define their own concepts their own ways. But really, take any character you have. Does it make sense for them to run all of the content in the game as they can, and perhaps have? Should the same woman be thwarting every single plot that the council cooks up while finding time to also work every day job and keep every other villain group under control as well? That seems objectively silly to me, yet it's just the nature of a game that doesn't railroad you very much. I don't really put a ton of thought into the specifics of how my pistol blaster manages to take down robots hundreds of times her size when it's pretty insane in the first place for her to be "arresting" hundreds of guys in a gigantic laboratory to save one kidnapped scientist.

It's all silly, just roll with it.

Most of these suggested improvements are making me pretty glad that balance decisions aren't usually down to a popular vote.

Hmm, we need to improve regen by some amount for tankers. I know, 100% resistance to all debuffs, give integration a damage aura (5 damage scale every two seconds to only three targets in a 15 foot radius, not trying to be greedy), moment of glory should be a toggle (with a long recharge, say 60 seconds, so if it gets detoggled you're vulnerable), and revive should hit the entire map with all three types of warburg nuke. I mean, come on, we need the set to be tanky, people. These improvements are modest but effective.

"Stupid" might be going a little far there. When you say "punching a demigod" it of course sounds silly yet look at any mythological tradition you care to. That's the kind of stuff normal people can do if they exceed the requisite minimum badass threshold, or simply if their place in the parable calls for that to happen. Why shouldn't an Olympic athlete be able to hit a robot so hard that it breaks, or beat up a really giant legless dude in a skirt? It seems like one of the things people take for granted about comic book type stuff these days is that absolutely everything that isn't commonplace in the real world must be made of a special metal that's impervious to all damage, or have skin stronger than diamond. In my opinion that's just a product of the sloppy one-upmanship of crappy '90s comics. Traditionally when a god takes a corporeal form they expose themselves to the weaknesses of living creatures as well. One of those weaknesses tends to be getting kicked in the jaw.

The great thing about weekly content releases is that Doom can now come four times a month.

Plant is a pretty damaging controller set just because of the extent to which you can proc out roots and creepers. A dom can do this too but roots does bonus damage compared to other aoe immobs, which is naturally affected by containment. Also, at the high end you're going to have coercive persuasion slotted in seeds which means that most of the time the controller will also confuse an entire spawn, bosses and all.

I imagine plant/earth is great too, but I think the controller would be no slouch.

Burma-Shave

Well, it could also mean that there really is a technical problem with too-fast flight but they figure a low enough number of players will take and use afterburner that it will keep it from being an issue in practice.