StratoNexus

You better believe it was worth every single second you and the team had to spend thinking about and working on it. Ninja Run is the single greatest addition the game has seen since the new Katana animations and it may even be better than those (the STF is close, but I can Ninja Run and enjoy all the content, I can only enjoy the STF content when doing a STF).

You want a "real" travel power on Master Runs?

On the STF, there is 1 of 5 doors that involves any sort of travel.
The Kahn TF is the same.
The ITF is in Cimerora, an itty, bitty zone.
I've only run Barracuda and LRSF once, I don't remember what they are like for travel.

NR is fast, you jump plenty high, you can stick to slight inclines to ride up walls as high as you want, and it is a fabulous travel power unto itself. I am glad to see travel is continuously being moved from a power selection to a costume option.

Recall Friend also works for this, but it has 4 more seconds of animation and that interrupt thing to deal with.

Singularity is actually quite adept at taking most alphas, but I was able to stealth past spawns and drag him in as the tank. Of course, when you abuse him this way, he does get killed more often than normal (which is still infrequent).

Aye, if you are relying on your teams endurance to do most of the killing, then its probably better to skip damage enhancers in the early levels. I have even slotted taunt sets in all my attacks in the early-mid levels to see if they made gauntlet a bit better than slotting damage enhancers. I couldn't really tell a difference between maintaining aggro with enhanced damage or enhanced taunt, so I opted to switch back to damage in the late 20s/early 30s.

Are you sure? I thought that damage enhancers and end reduction enhancers were equal in effect on the DPE of a power.

lol. Of course I meant mitigation based on having enemies nearby. Shield scrappers are iffy, but the -damage is probably enough to qualify.

Both of those powers already tend to keep enemies from leaving the area.

The devs do not particularly want the baddies to be quite that stupid all the time. Neither do I. It is deemed acceptable that enemies thwart your offensive punch a bit by positioning, but less acceptable when they neuter your defense with just positioning (and the devs already do have the enemy AI designed in such a way as to make it a bit more smart even with that).

It certainly could be argued to add taunt to these powers (and Evasion). However, I like that the AI has some more control vs. my Claws/Elec scrapper and I also like that some sets have this taunt advantage that other sets do not.

Elec armor can manipulate the AI by draining enemy endurance (and I imigine LR can cause panic as well). Fiery can manipulate the AI very well with Burn. DA of course has OG and CoF as controls, so they don't really need still more enemy manipulation techniques, IMO.

Why "only buffs"? I understand that people are only asking for this treatment for buffs; I am asking you to tell me why you mind using some powers, but not others. Which you proceed to do "just in case", although that is precisely what I wanted to know.

I can understand where you are coming from. I do think time-dictated tasks can be enjoyable, especially if you buff between other actions instead of just doing bubbles for 30 seconds. I do occasionally refresh the 4 minute buffs all at once, but normally I shield between blasts/controls/whatever. The shorter duration buffs like SB, Fort, CM, Clarity, etc. I almost always do between other tasks, its very reare for me to just go down the list of teammates applying CM or SB, unless we are waiting at the mission door for people to arrive (which is rare itself, since teams I am on have a tendency to start once we get barely enough people to hopefully survive).

There are plenty of sets that do not require time-dictated buffing. There is room in the game for sets that do require time-dictated buffing, IMO. I can also argue that there are times where even these single target buffs require some tactical thought, but I admit its rare. I will argue against changing the nature of these buffs, however, because I enjoy the sets as they are and I am pretty sure I would lose a lot of my enjoyment if they were changed as suggested. Minor duration tweaks, maybe. Make bubbles last until you zone, not my cup of tea.

As far as your MM question goes, I didn't mind the old MM buffing method and my pets died frequently enough that I probably was buffing them every 5 minutes or so. That is not to say I was/am against the change to MM buffing, but I did not mind the old way either.

You benefit a great deal from buffs you put on others.

Why do you want to only use your powers at the beginning of a mission? Do you only want to toggle on Fireball, and then walk through a mission without having to press anymore buttons? Do you like activating Freezing Rain? Other people like activating Deflection Shield.

Yes. It also lets you change direction in the air like CJ and SJ. So good, so good.

I choose this one. Mainly because that is probably the defining characteristic of these powers. It is the reason I find them fun, chasing the clock, keeping the buffs going, reapplying them between blasts (or controls).

Since that aspect is so prevalent and often complained about (isn't that the basic complaint in the OP?), it would makes sense that this is why people either like or dislike using these powers.

Nothing in Obliteration is unique. Go to town!

What are day jobs, if not professions? Logging out near water could grant Fishing as a day job. Is fishing often represented in comic books as it is in many fantasy novels?

HeHe. True.

I will never understand why its fun to target a Tsoo ink man and press the "5" key but its unfun to target ally blaster Betty Sizzle and press the "7" key. do you just not like the animations for buffing? I give out Speed Boost sometimes just to enjoy the range gut punch to an ally (and I like the spinny FX too).

Understood. The prevelance of PBAoE powers does not preclude my belief that KB does not interfere with them as much as people fear. Disruption of other peoples powers happens all the time, and KB is not the most common cause, IME. Defeat is the most likely culprit. I bet I have ruined more Fulcrum Shifts and Soul Drains and Footstomps on my Fire/Fire/Flame blaster than the 30 most prolific Energy blasters combined (due to KB, they will have a fair amount of defeats themselves). AoE Immobs are likely more egregious at disrupting other peoples powers than KB. Two tankers (or a tanker and controller) trying to manage aggro are often at odds.

I propose that KBing people out of other peoples AoEs happens less often than people complain and even when it does happen, is almost never problematic, merely ego busting. When you use Breath + Ball, then the tanker Footstomps, his Footstomp doesn't hit much, but you rarely hear complaints. When you use Torrent + EB, then the tanker Footstomps, its a disaster and you have ruined his fun! I take exception to that attitude and I do not believe the solution is to avoid KB so as not to hurt feelings. 19 times out of 20 the Footstomp hits a bunch of people, 1 time out of 20 those people are on their backs 20 feet away and near dead. In a few seconds Energy Torrent will be back and can finish off most of them (in the meantime, the tanker can wasd over to the area and punch stuff while the blaster single targets stuff, all of which assumes no on else on the team is AoEing the baddies while they are down or before they were sent flying (as corpses in that case, most likely)).

People complain. Its what they do. I have indeed had countless complaints that someone can't get FS off because the spawns are dead too fast. Obviously, if the spawns are dying that fast, FS is not needed, but people, rightfully, want to use their powers. It is up to them to find the way, although I will try to encourage them sometimes or guide them to find the way.

There is no implication that one guys powers take precedence every spawn over others on my part, only your argument supposes that someone must be subjugated. No one has the right to complain because occasionally they lose out, but someone else (on the same team with the same goals usually) gains.

You have chosen to totally sacrifice so that others can enjoy. That is, IMO, aberrant behavior, just as egregious as if you asked others to totally sacrifice so that you could enjoy. Just as you can share, others should be able to share with you. Some spawns, your KB will not be useful because your (and your teams) attacks will be killing them. Sometimes a wall will be there to use (or impede, depending on the goal). In some spawns, the KB will send the enemies flying before the rest of the team even gets a chance to engage. Sometimes Torrent will hit just before Fire Sword Circle acquires its targets. Othertimes, it hits just after, the baddies go flying and then burn to death as they land.

The amount of times the timing is bad is minor, but painful, like missing 5 times in a row can be. Skill can minimize those times even further, and, again, I am not just talking about skill on the part of the person using KB powers.

Then why do you get complaints? I can barely understand if we are talking defender level damage, it gets a bit tough to defend rampant KB for little effect (lower or just plain low/no damage KB does require more judicious application on the part of the user, IMO). Blaster level ET and EB are never unwanted, IMO.

Most KB does not scatter much. Occasionally, scatter can be beneficial. It is up to the team to make those statements true, not the KB user alone (although the KB user can often compensate on his own for a teams lack of ability or a situational impediment by taking an extra second of movement).

Not necessarily. The scrapper is almost assuredly in less danger, as most of those guys sent flying are probably thinking about a different target. Also, it is very possible that many of the KBd enemies are dead or will be in mere seconds.

Brutes and especially tankers may very well be in trouble, since they hold aggro. Of course, managing aggro is a big job for those ATs. Managing aggro does not mean holding all hate on oneself at all times. It involves knowing when and how to control who the enemy hates. It involves knowing how to position the enemy on a variety of teams (if you have KB users on the team, stop standing in the middle of open areas, if you are on an outdoor map, be prepared to move a lot, the wasd keys do not bite ). It involves knowing when something bad has happened and you need to pull out and let the rest of those wingnuts on your team deal for a few seconds (believe it or not, they probably can handle it without you for a bit).

It is getting annoyingly repetitious to see this type of example brought up as if its a binary state in missions. "Teams without KB allow me to use SD to full effect all the time. Teams with KB mean I never get SD off except on one or two guys." That is flat out ridiculous and I believe most people know that. Are we really asking for a change because a few times a mission someone else looks cooler than me?

You all should understand that I play melee-centric characters more often than not. My location is what it is for a reason. I sympathize with having FSC or SC or Invincibility or RI "ruined" by KB. My occasional twitch when it happens, does not allow me to fail to realize that whole bunches of baddies likely just got controlled in a way I now have to deal with, but could be beneficial (even though they would all be dead if you just would have let my damn FSC hit them all ).

That is too bad. When Cinders takes precedence over a blaster using their AoEs, I believe priorites are badly off. The Fire controller needs to feel cool, so the blaster can't scatter corpses? The tanker needs to keep Invincibility saturated or else he will be in more danger? Is that because he has to kill all the bad guys, so we have to wait the 20 seconds it takes instead of letting the blaster wipe the enemy in 8 seconds?

The problem is that people feel KB users have to learn how to (or not to) use their powers instead of realizing that people have to learn how to use the KB. Train not the KB user, but yourself. (It certainly helps when the KB user spends some effort as well, but only one of those events is in your control, so I'd concentrate on the events in your control).

Dropping Energy Torrent is certainly an option in your control, but it vastly weakens Energy blast and your team, IME.