Siolfir

I actually expected it to at the same time they were changing all of the others. Especially since Embrace of Fire is available fairly early for Dominators and only significantly boosts one primary and one APP, and the changes to FE in Fiery Aura were done to prevent that exact thing from happening.

But the idea that Rage has to be of help to all damage types equally - when it's a permanent buff on SO slotting that also increases to-hit - isn't matched in behavior by every power, and the complaints about SS being overpowered are usually listed in conjunction with non-Smashing damage powers like Burn, Fiery Embrace's bonus damage, Gloom, and whatnot.

So if it doesn't buff Gloom, Burn, and FE damage as much as it does Fossilize, is that crippling? It's still a permanent +20% tohit power for the other damage types, +80% to all damage from your primary, most power pool attacks and some secondary and ancilliary/patron attacks, and I figured that getting rid of the crash would make up for the lower damage on the other types.

Embrace of Fire doesn't assist all Dominator APP/PPP powers equally. Why should Rage?

I'm amused by you blocking blocks of blocks.

Yeah, I've run into that before myself.

I still like the power - it's a nice little cherry on top of the sundae that is the Sorcery pool. A ST attack, ST ally buff, AoE damage, two-in-one travel power, and mini-godmode? Sure, the numbers aren't all that great relative to primary or secondary powers but all of that available on anyone on your account is a very nice option to me. And who said Demonic and Rune of Protection has to be either/or?

Plus it doesn't have the Arcanaville rank. >.<

Many other students are just too lazy and apathetic to do the searches.

You're looking at it strictly from the Blaster perspective. I referred to Defender and Corruptor versions of the set. A Defender or Corruptor can't use a t1/t2 blast while mezzed so that point is irrelevant to the discussion, and you do have higher DPA on Power Burst - which helps when you're also trying to keep up buffs and debuffs.

In addition, and Blizzard and Ice Storm were both (finally) adjusted for AT modifiers, so relative to where they are on live right now it's a huge drop in damage for Defenders and Corruptors on those two powers. That's what I meant by Ice not staying where it was - it loses big on AoE damage relative to live and doesn't gain anything by the changes. Corruptors can also (via Kinetics) self-cap damage, so the lower cap on Blizzard shuffles things around a bit as well. It's still a great power - but less so (I never worried about the crash when I dropped Blizzard anyway).

Corruptor and Defender Ice Blast doesn't stay where it is now since the pseudopets were normalized. Corruptors took a slightly larger hit on that since the pseudopets already have a lower damage cap than the AT, so the other nukes aren't quite as limited.

And while Bitter Ice Blast has great DPA, the sets with snipes get that and another hard hitting attack from their own t3 blast.

The crash on it is going away. Does that change your mind at all?

Demonic isn't all that far out of the way to get, unless you're one of the people who never want to do anything redside. It's one two-part mission, four plaques you need to click to unlock the contact that gives you the mission, a "hunt 100" and 3 exploration badges. Get a little help with the hunt and someone who has the mission and you can have it before you ever pick up a paper (lowest for me was level 2 back when you only had accolade powers down to the level that you unlocked them at - it was the first thing I did after the tutorial).

I like the power for a variety of reasons - the mez protection is the main one for my squishies, though. If you try to carry break frees for every mob that can mez in the late game you'll empty both your tray and email inbox on the first Malta mission you run into, so you're better off with purples and hoping you don't get hit. Throw in some recharge slotting and global recharge, and it's up roughly 25% of the time easily (50% of the time at the recharge cap) and available much earlier than you can even think about Clarion.

Not really, because the resistance stacks better onto existing resistance (ie, going from 80->90% is halving the damage taken, so is much more valuable than going from 0-10% and only decimating the incoming damage), so the better resistance numbers on a Tanker will improve even more from a survival standpoint than the lower ones on a Brute. Tankers will still have more hit points even when both get capped, and Tankers will cap earlier and so can look for a wider band of bonuses. Does this sound familiar?

In general, Brutes will still deal more damage and Tankers will still live through more things. If you couldn't get a Brute to some minimum level of survivability that you wanted before, that may change your decision but really it's not like you couldn't build for that already through defense bonuses and getting softcapped. If you wanted to build for defense because you thought you didn't have enough survivability, you could already do that. All the changes do is allow you to try a different path by going after resistance bonuses.

If you felt that Brutes gave you "enough" survivability already then you're less likely to care about the bonuses. I know in my case I plan on seeing where I end up and probably won't redo a build just for capped resistances, although I may try a build or two on new characters with those bonuses in mind. Bio and Willpower look like great sets to work with for that, Bio especially since the penalties for Offensive Adaptation are entirely resistance based.

More green puppies!

Yeah. I haven't checked to see if the double-value Scourge is still there in Rain of Fire, but the patch notes report that Ignite (it's called Burn in the notes), Ice Storm, Rain of Fire, and Blizzard are all adjusted downward. The good news is that Rain of Arrows was listed as being slightly buffed.

I'm not trying to say that it shouldn't ever have been done. I'm just going to be sad about it... and probably eventually whine a lot for buffs to Ice Blast, since Blizzard was my favorite nuke.

So something along the lines of...
Rage:
+ 5% to-hit for 60 seconds (does not stack)
+30% to S/L/E/N/F/C/T/P damage for 60 seconds (does not stack)
+15% to-hit for 120 seconds (does not stack)
+50% to S/L/E/N/F/C/T/P damage for 120 seconds (does not stack)
-25% to Endurance after 120 seconds (stacks)

The main difference here is that the endurance crashes would stack and happen at whatever stacked delay, exactly how they do now, rather than immediately on activation of the next version.

The next question then becomes, would you consider the frequent endurance crashes to make it balanced when compared to sets which only have Build Up and similar or shorter recharge on their single target powers (ex: Fire Melee, Katana) once you boost Jab and Punch to .84/3s and 1.32/6s? Street Justice has a 3/6/8/25 sec recharge set of single target attacks as well - which is where the changes to Jab and Punch would put SS - and Combat Readiness has the lower damage boost for only 10 seconds while the combo levels go away as soon as you activate the next finisher. It may end up needing more of a penalty than just the endurance, I think, or maybe set it to a 60sec 90sec duration on the split so that it's not perma with SO recharge slotting but can be with IOs and ditch the crash entirely a la Soul Drain.

But then we'd all feel slotty about it.

Quick, get the super glue!

That card is from after I quit playing and as such does not exist.

Much like the newer, completely retarded rules on timing and damage dealing that broke a lot of the fun and silly things I liked to do that I still have yet to hear a real explanation as to why the way things had been done for over a decade was an unsolvable problem.

A pony.

They should replace the debt protection set bonuses with a small vanity pet pony that follows you around. Since it's a set bonus it wouldn't count against your limit of vanity + buff pets.

You'll hit Renowned somewhere along the way, but I hadn't paid any attention to what my title was until you asked.