StratoNexus

Thank you for the numbers.
Based on some limited play experience in RV and Warburg on test (about 4 hours, with a Grav/Storm controller, a Fire/Fire blaster, a Kat/Inv scrapper, a Dark/Dark corruptor, and an EM/Regen stalker) I think you may need to reconsider some of those numbers.
Defender toggle dropping chances should almost certainly be raised a bit.
My stalker doesn't need toggle drops, I doubt any stalker needs toggle drops. Personally, I would remove the toggle drop from stalkers entirely.
Toggle drop percentages could be tweaked to help bring some PvP balance to blaster secondaries. While I think my /Fire blaster is fine in PvE (I love the AoE damage and am willing to sacrifice the control and single target damage for it), in PvP there is no counter-balance for lacking good single target damage and/or control effects. I certainly think the bigger percentage for toggle dropping should be in Fire Sword, not FSC.

I look forward to the day when toggle dropping can be completely removed (or reworked to be less annoying, such as toggle suppression), but I do feel that it is still a much needed mechanic currently. I remeber the original Arena days of my scrapper crushing all that stood before me, and while I do feel the balance may have shifted slightly too far to the other side with I5, my I7 test experiences with my scrapper (which was admittedly only about 30 minutes) leave me feeling that we may have shifted too far back the other way.

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I will say that ALL MELEE TYPES NEED A BUILDUP POWER TO HIT DEFENSIVE SETS because the melee sets are meant to fight vs the defensive and resistant sets.

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Blasters (almost) and Stalkers all have Build Up and are generally failry good at taking a good chunk of life from the defense and resistant sets. I would think it would be the job of the highest damage dealers in the game to take on the defense and resistant sets, and they are almost universally equipped to do that job well. Scrappers walk a line in between and many have burst damage virtually on par with blasters, and 2/3 of them have Build Up. Tankers and Brutes (and scrappers to an extent) are much better equipped to harry/kill and absorb the attacks/debuffs of controllers/dominators/defenders/corruptors. I do not believe the job of tankers and brutes is to go toe to toe with the highest damage dealers in the game, although they are quite capable of doing that currently. I certainly do not think they should be spending their precious time beating on resistance/defense sets, when they are generally not equipped to kill them quickly.

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So basically we'vee established, for everyone to plainly see, that the only real difference between Stalkers, whom many blasters - including the ever so vocal Circuit-Boy - claim as being "unfairly over-powered" is that unlike Blasters, Stalkers have to be "Hidden" to be overpowered, whereas Blasters, don't have to even do that much. They fully and unabashedly flex their "over-poweredness" for all to see, and don't even need a situational circumstance like being hidden and undetected in order to pull it off

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I completely missed where anything remotely resembling this nonsense was discussed. Perhaps you should re-evaluate this paragraph?

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Let them come. My BS/Reg scrapper has Focused Accuracy and Tactics.

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It is so funny it makes me cry. Even if you get to the perception cap, a stalker at the stealth cap can only be seen from like 10 feet away. Stalkers in their 40s will be at the stealth cap more often than not. Snipes generally have a range of 150 feet. When you keep pressing the hospital button because you are dying to attacks you never saw coming from an enemy who can do massive critical damage at extreme range, your little dinky metal stick will not look as good.

I could be wrong (and hope I am), but I am thinking Stalkers + Snipes = not the brightest idea I have seen.

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Er... perhaps I misread this but did I just read that once you get SO's a /fire secondary, regardless of primary will, more often than not, kill/jail/maim a +2 boss?.... And which hold would that be exactly?.

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You read that correctly, and it does not require a hold. It may require inspiration use (1-4 inspires) depending on the circumstances.

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No... it was gimped back then too. I keep hearing people go "it's great when you have a tank.... a controller.... a blah blah."

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I disagree. Way back then it gave you status protection. You could use all the PBAoEs and not constantly get mezzed into oblivion. As you note in your post.

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If a set's effectiveness Is predicated on having another PATICULAR AT around...and then one must assume that said archetyoe is slotted well and knows what the [censored] they're doing...(rarer than you think) then it's gimped.

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I disagree with this as well. I think it is fine that some sets are more team/particular AT dependent to get the maximum use out of them. I think it is wrong that you have little to no way to know what those sets are ahead of time, but it is nice to have the variety. /Fire doesn't require any special slotting that /energy doesn't also require in order to be good. I find it hard to believe that /Fire requires some magically gifted, talented gamer in order to play successfully, but any dimwit that can figure out how to screw in a light bulb can easily play an /energy blaster.

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Not paticularly needed on teams..... and relegated to none boss targets untill level 43 or so when you can get a decent hold slotted up.... gimp.

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I do not believe there is any blaster primary you can combine with /fire that will make fighting a +2 boss anything other than almost assured victory once you get SOs.

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I've never seen a PuG go wait.... we gotta get a fire/fire blaster before we start.

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If they have support ATs and the team is looking for damage (a team looking for damage is usually a bit heavy on support, conveniently) an AR/Fire or Fire/Fire should be the first choices. Just because most people are ignorant of the capability is not in anyway proof of Gimpness, otherwise all defenders would be Empathy.

/fire already has hot feet for that. I prefer hot feet to blazing aura, so my preference would be to ditch blazing aura and replace it with something else.

I doubt this is possible, but I wish there was a power which could grant a limited form of mez protection. One where toggles do not drop, but the other effects work. Perhaps it would also allow for the mez to be reduced in duration. It drives me insane retoggling all the time. That way if held, you still couldn't move or attack, but at least you would not have to retoggle all the time. Would be useful for all squishies I think without being true mez protection.

My hurricane user is about 6', maybe a bit taller. But my whirlwind user is short, 4' 6' ish, maybe that is my problem. Hopefully, practice will help. I still wish it had remained knockdown.

This may be one of my favorite topics on the forums. Some history from my perspective:

> See this thread from 1 year ago <
geko's comment was amusing, considering the large number of people who took SS because it was so fast and Hasten was the prereq. geko's comment is as follows, for those who do not feel like clicking the link:

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No matter how you slice it, flying is ultimately safer than super speed, and offer an undeniable vertical advantage over super speed (or in this case, 4 other speed powers). If flyspeed had the same max as runspeed, why would anyone ever take superspeed?

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After the Arena came out, one of my observations > From this post < which was based on geko's comment:
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Do you believe in Superspeed's strengths now? Can Fly please be made faster in PvE at least? Everybody has SS of course, because everyone has Hasten (slight exaggeration, but only slight). Fortunately not everyone is good at using it to its fullest devestating effects.

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Then came suppression (which actually caused me to stop playing for 2 months), where the developers reasoned that fly was unfairly disadvantaged compared to the other travel powers. My comments on that are > located here. <
The most relevant quote from that post is:
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I also must wonder what changed between now and 3 months ago. Then Fly was beloved and you felt the other powers needed advantages in order to make people take them ; Now you think there is an inherent unfairness that makes Fly weaker, and for some baffling reason you think it has to do with Fly's Acc penalty instead of how butt slow it is?

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I used to have my hover 4 slotted on my fire/fire blaster and was planning to six slot it. The loss in speed for hover makes me sad.

Off-topic, I also found this (now) terrifying post I made in the suppresion thread when I was discussing ways one could minimize risk that IMO were better than jousting:
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Is pulling bad and on the chopping block? Are tanks defenses bad and on the chopping block? Is stealth bad and on the chopping block? These are just a few other ways you can defeat mobs with extremely low risk.

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At least we still have pulling.

As I stated in my post, I have used it and begun to change the way I use it. I find it a little harder to use than Hurricane, as the animation does not clearly show the AoE (granted hurricane's AoE extends a tiny bit past the animation, but so far it has been easier to judge hurricane's AoE for me). I often find myself meaning to go around an enemy so I can send them back at the group or into a corner, but I clip them and send them flying back towards the next mob. Maybe with more practice this issue will fade.

Did Whirlwind not have a cap on the number of mobs it affected? Would adding a cap of 10 mobs have solved whatever exploit existed, without punishing the rest of us? If so, is it just too hard to work a cap for whirlwind? In my personal experience I rarely have more than 5 enemies in my whirlwind, so I do not know if it could be used to juggle an obsecenly large herd, but that seems to me to be a likely possibility for an exploit.

Buh? After I took whirlwind, I thought it was fun and it helped keep me alive. Now it sends everyone flying away from my scrapper and is annoying. It still helps keep me alive, but pisses everyone on my team off. Arrrgh. I learned how to use hurricane, and I have already started using corners and such to help with whirlwind. Maybe I can adapt to this change, but it is a sad change that I do not like. It may be easier for me to adapt than others, as I always had some knockback issues. It seems that when I used whirlwind my knockdown attacks (Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly) always did knockback instead (stacking mag maybe?).

So, this is two changes now that have been undocumented. How about we go back and see if there is anything else we should know?

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The issue with Defiance is that it does give a nice value even when the player's in decent shape. It just has the forbidden fruit of a full defiance bar that players just keep obsessing over.

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Just because I have not said it for a few days and quoting myself is easy:
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1. Eliminate the Defiance bar. I already have a bar that tells me when defiance is working. Health bar low, defiance is working.

2. Criticals and Scourge are probably no better than Defiance at adding meaningful damage over the course of an evening of play. Criticals and Scourge are cooler looking and make the team go oooh-aaaah. Why is that? Because when they happen everyone sees the word Scourge or Critical (Domination too) and more numbers. When blasters get Defiance, the target should have the word Defiance fly above his head and the extra damage done should be a seperate number. As goofy as this sounds, I believe this would make Defiance more fun.

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Please. Pretty please with sugar on top. And a cherry?

The defiance bar itself is buggy. I am uncertain whether or not defiance itself is buggy. I have seen the bar go up for no reason. I have seen it not budge from a small speck even after getting a huge hit which drops me to blinky red, almost no life bar at all (Gotta love Devoureds). I agree with Blueeyed that it is unusual when it happens, although I might guestimate it at more like 93% of the time everything is fine, but the other 7% something wonky happens. I want to repeat that as far as I know it is just the viusal meter that is wonky, but that is because I have no real way of knowing whether or not the actual effect is going off.

Although you have probably read this, I would like to say it again since you have posted in this thread.
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1. Eliminate the Defiance bar. I already have a bar that tells me when defiance is working. Health bar low, defiance is working.

2. Criticals and Scourge are probably no better than Defiance at adding meaningful damage over the course of an evening of play. Criticals and Scourge are cooler looking and make the team go oooh-aaaah. Why is that? Because when they happen everyone sees the word Scourge or Critical (Domination too) and more numbers. When blasters get Defiance, the target should have the word Defiance fly above his head and the extra damage done should be a seperate number. As goofy as this sounds, I believe this would make Defiance more fun.

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I like the idea of displaying defiance damage, if only for the reason that it would reveal how lackluster it is.

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That is another benefit I hadn't thought of before.
I truly believe it would help the inherent out if the effect was displayed like criticals and scourge (help make it more fun that is). It would also be nice if the combat logs recorded the extra damage defiance did seperately.

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but you will also be getting XP at an incredable rate as well as finishing missions faster...

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I find that my blasteer can slaughter the mobs fine on a team when the tank and controllers establish agro control around the same time as I start blasting (no need for me to take damage).

I do not like defiance. I do, however, think it probably adds about the same percentage increase in damage over the course of an evening of play that criticals add for scrappers. If we must keep defiance (and at this point I am resigned that we must), then I would like to see the following changes made:

1. Eliminate the Defiance bar. I already have a bar that tells me when defiance is working. Health bar low, defiance is working.

2. Criticals and Scourge are probably no better than Defiance at adding meaningful damage over the course of an evening of play. Criticals and Scourge are cooler looking and make the team go oooh-aaaah. Why is that? Because when they happen everyone sees the word Scourge or Critical (Domination too) and more numbers. When blasters get Defiance, the target should have the word Defiance fly above his head and the extra damage done should be a seperate number. As goofy as this sounds, I believe this would make Defiance more fun. If an inherent is not overly useful, at least it should be fun.

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But look at Arcana's proof where she acknowledges that debuff was having less effect on higher level mobs. Did you address that in your analysis...that the debuff may not have been penalizing properly under the old system?

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Unless I missed something, that is not what Arcanaville said at all.

What was said:
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Part of the problem is that the resistances in UNY are slottable, while the defense debuff is constant, so in effect its actually a penalty on lower level invulns more so than higher level invulns - which in many ways is exactly the opposite of what such a balancing debuff ought to do.

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The level of the mobs is irrelevant ; what is relevant is the extra slots a higher level character has in order to offset the penalty. Thus the power penalizes lower level characters more than higher level characters.

If anyone has the time I would like to know:
Will this change have any impact on to-hit debuffs such as RI and Hurricane? If so, how will it impact them?

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So, it's done by making broad attempts to legitimize the exploiting of obviously broken game mechanics in order to gloss over a lack of coherent PvP ability. Gotcha.

Your lack of common sense and foresight doesn't legitimize anything. You sound like all those that tried to justify the clicky PL method from way back when. Just because Mommy and Daddy didn't spank you when you were bad doesn't give you free reign to beat up on kids in the school yard. That should be a given.

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Huh?
Pinning a character using terrain, powers, or a combination of the two is a broken game mechanic that only bullying, unskilled PvPers use? Using tactics and the environment to limit enemy maneuverability is a sign of promiscuous parents?

The tactic has to be considered griefing only because you can end up leaving a toon stuck somewhere with no way out. If you consider it griefing because it gives the TPer an advantage, I respectfully disagree.

FiatLux said:
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Aren't you overlooking the possibility that the TP-ed person might actually kill you instead of the other way around? Then you'd be in the hospital and s/he would still be stuck there. A tactic which assumes that one party can only leave an area by dying or the intervention of a third party is broken.

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I am sure there are other possibilities we are both overlooking or just not listing, I listed the DCing as an example of what can go wrong. I do agree with your conclusion of course, as I posted originally.

I should report here that the phone booths in Warburg are difficult to get out of as well. I was superspeeding along when I got stuck inside one. It is possible to get out of them, but you must jump at just the right angle. I imagine you could TP someone into the phone booth and they would have a difficult time escaping.

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What baffles me is that some of you actually believed it WAS valid at all.

Was it arrogance? Lack of common sense? No concept of the obvious? Or just plain old ignorance?

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TPing a foe into a tower and killing them, IMO is not griefing. It is using terrain to your advantage.

TPing a foe into a tower and just leaving them there with no way out is griefing, IMO.

Sadly, since the 2nd option exists, the first must be considered invalid as well, because even if you intend to kill your target, somthing could happen where you get DCd and then the other toon is stuck.

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They admitted it was much easier to code this way when it was first implemented over a year ago.

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I was not here when they implemented this change in PvE over a year ago, but I do remember when they implemented it in PvP in I4.
Back on 04/28/05 Circeus said:
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No in fact this is a PvE change that happened about 6 months ago being applied for PvP. And back then a similar discussion was had. After all Blasters have many melee attacks yet are still affected by this.

At the time we were told two things:

1) That they could apply a change per AT easier then they could set a minimum range at the time they were doing it

2) That they would do this right and set a minimum range before applying this change to PvP

I was one of the few people who raised a big stink about this back then, not really buying (1) because I'm a programmer and my gut tells me this is just a conditional statement in a line of code somewhere -- no different than the ACC floor conditional statement that exists in the code somewhere.

And look, they didn't fix it, instead they perpetuated it.

Really bad choice on the part of the developers not to spend the time to do this right and set a min range of 5' for all powers and get rid of stupid AT specific changes like this.

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I would add that they are perpetuating it again.

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No, the "temporary fix" interpretation is wishful thinking.

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Also Statesman said on 04/28/05:
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With Hurricane, a player could debuff Tanker and Scrapper melee attacks down to 0 – meaning that the Scrappers and Tankers could NEVER be in range to use an attack.

Admittedly, Tankers and Scrappers have some Ranged abilities (ex.: Hurl) that it does make sense that Hurricane would affect them. This is something we’ll work on in the future.

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I am not quite cynical enough to think that believing something Statesman said equates to "wishful thinking", although sometimes I am close.

I accept and understand that something like this may be difficult to code, and that over one year ago they needed to implement something quickly to make melee types not cry in a PvE hurricane. I have a much harder time accepting that in over a year they have not been able to implement a better fix to this situation.

Lothart said:
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In short: all generlizations are wrong; including this one.

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BlackStormer replied
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All generalizations are not wrong. That in and of itself makes you wrong because you chose to generalize.

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To which I reply:

Look up BlackStormer.

I too would like to see this. However, I would not be willing to say which powers in Grav were the least popular. For all we know lots of Gravity controllers love DS and I know I see a lot of them with Propel (mostly, of course, because they were hoodwinked into thinking Propel did damage).

I would hope the devs looked at the data and saw that wormhole was the least selected Grav power, and that is why it was chosen for the change, but it may just have been because it already had the disorient on it, which might have made it easier to change?

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o Added 50% ToHit debuff to Super Speed and Super Leap. PvP/PvE

There was an inherent unfairness with the travel powers; only Flight had a -50% ToHit debuff. Yet Super Speed and Super Leap could create situations similar to hover snipe (i.e. flying above a mob and firing away) where they could fight at little to no risk.

Example: click on Super Speed, run up to mob, attack, run away. Rinse and repeat.

Super Leap already has a toggle that was always intended for battle situations (Combat Leaping) and Super Speed has Hasten (which gives not only a defensive buff, but also an incredibly powerful –recharge).


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Huh?
You do realize that Super Speed "jousting" lessened risk, it did not nearly negate it. Fly-Snipe completley negated risk and was fast (as opposed to hover-snipe, which also completley negates risk, but is slow). IMO, it should be ok to use tactics which lower risk. IME (I only have 2 super speed toons, one of which took it at level 14 and is now level 24, the other took it at lvl 35 and is now 41) super speed never dropped the risk dramatically (except when used to pull, but I don't want to believe you are suggesting that pulling is a tactic you will be attempting to eliminate, as most people I run with look at me like I am a loon when I pull this way instead of the more common methods).

Super Speed and Super Jump jousting are so innefficient it is a joke. Might as well remove xp for mobs that are -2 levels to you, because killing a bunch of -2s gives more reward for less risk over the same period of time than jousting challenging mobs.

On January 12th of this year Geko posted this:
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No matter how you slice it, flying is ultimately safer than super speed, and offer an undeniable vertical advantage over super speed (or in this case, 4 other speed powers). If flyspeed had the same max as runspeed, why would anyone ever take superspeed?

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The only inherent unfairness between SS, SJ, TP, and Fly is that 3 of them allow you to travel quickly and one does not. IMO, you should make fly as fast as the other travel powers, but since you guys can only think downwards why wouldn't you make the other travel powers as slow as fly to "balance the inequity". Only Fly completley negates the risk of an encounter (and then only with blasters and defenders), which is why only Fly had the -ACC penalty for so long.

I also must wonder what changed between now and 3 months ago. Then Fly was beloved and you felt the other powers needed advantages in order to make people take them ; Now you think there is an inherent unfairness that makes Fly weaker, and for some baffling reason you think it has to do with Fly's Acc penalty instead of how butt slow it is?

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1. Actually, we've tweaked SS in the past; the issues with SJ have slowly evolved over time.

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What "issues with SJ have slowly evolved over time" ?
What are the PvE problems with Superspeed ?

Your vagueness and amibiguity are remarkable, even for a politician.

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I see you being so desperate, as much so as the rest of us, for another tool, any tool,

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While this is true, my desperation does not validate you assertions (but it does raise eyebrows ).

Do I think Wormhole is ok as a level 26 power? Yes.
Some controllers do not get their AoE Hold until level 26. If I was a Dev reading your post I might conclude you want me to put Wormhole at level 18 and GDF at level 26. Is that what you want?

I belive the port is more useful than you think. I believe it will save time and reduce accidental agro. I believe this because I have seen it do these things. Could we have accomplished the reduced agro effect in others ways? Yes. But it is nice we accomplished it while disorienting the mobs, and that was back when the disorient was a paltry 5-6 seconds (actually it was even less, since we were fighting +2s, but the disorient was long enough for our pets or the tank to grab agro). Choosing your ground is valuable IME, and by level 26 an efficient team doesn't want a single pull anyway. Wormhole is great for this.

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As to testing WH with the default slot,

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Really we can all only test it unenhanced, as I believe it is still bugged so that Disorient Enh still don't do anything. I don't think it is crazy to test it unenhanced, as a matter of fact I believe that is the best way to test it. But to say the power stinks unenhanced is a no brainer. Take all your Hold Enh out of GDF and tell me you still love it.