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So we all know energy control right?

Wait? you don't?!

oh.. right, it doesn't exist.

this is what went through my mind today when I had the bright Idea of making a new toon. I openned up a planner and chose controller then went looking through the different primaries and couldn't understand it. I thought I was just failing to see it. I thought "Energy 'everything' was one of the earlier sets in CoH, you'd think there'd definitely be an energy control."

turns out, no, there isn't an 'energy control'.


I know I suggest a lot of things. but this one seems like it should have been done on Live in like Issue 8 or so. how could we have not created this upto now?!

I got to thinking about the set, based on the hallmarks of energy, we're talking a situation of a Mez(Disorient) show where "would you like some Knockup and repel with your knockback good sir?" is the basis of the control set.


then I got into "what would an Energy Immobilize or Engergy Hold look like?" Immediately I was brought to the thought of the energy rings around the fists of my energy manipulation blaster.

So I imagined an energy immobilize places an energy ring around the enemy's legs. a hold could be anywhere from multiple rings one around the head, one around each hand and foot, to, energy balls around these, then I thought "well they could still move their arms if you just put energy around their hands" then came up with the mental image of "Energy Shackles" simply put a bar of energy connecting each shackle hand to hand, foot to foot and hands to feet, and an energy ball around their head. then I figured it'd restrict airflow so it'd probably cause choke and -recovery.

but as I thought about that I said to myself "where's the trademark knockback?" and so I paused until I thought, "well if the enemy tried to move and touched the energy ring.... BOOM. they'd go flying, and probably be significantly damaged too, add on a nice disorient for good measure if they trigger that Knock Up by trying to move or trying to attack when held."

then I was like "but there's no Anti Fly..." and then I thought "well, that's moving, even just hovering in place has some motion.. so.. that'd trigger High Energy Damage + Knockup+disorient. Ouch. I'd hate to be hit with that while flying.." cast> target is flying BOOM> 1,2,3,4,> target is still flying/trying to move/trying to attack, and attack duration has not expired = BOOM> repeat.

" '-fly' why would I do that? you can fly all you want! here let me help you fly higher! but that cieling looks like it'll hurt.."

*I now imagine a loop animation where someone is being controlled and smacked repeatedly into a cieling.* and the controller saying "stop smacking yourself into the cieling, stop smacking yourself into the cieling, stop smacking yourself into the cieling".

I mean they are "Trollers" what kind of behaviour did you expect? I'm surprised they aren't inventing magnet powered flight and trying to make schemes to bankrupt organizations they don't like and profit.

jokes asside, Energy sets are typically fairly Single-Target Centric. They typically have limited AoE or Cone in each set, and as a troller really needs to address the crowd, not just single targets, I figure after the first 2 single targets there should be alot of swirling energy fields, auras and bubbles. and tons of enemies getting knocked around and repelled and maybe even pulled back in to go all over again via a single attract, top it off with disorient and I think that's a good basis for an energy control set.

Thinking about a swirling energy aura, it could be fairly defensive +Def (all) +res(energy negative) add in Moderate Damage when enemies touch it, and repel and disorient and I think it's a good L8

but then I ran out of ideas for L12, L18, and L26... at that point I kinda thought it was too heavy in AoE, cone and chain already. and most sets do some variant of an AoE here.

I figured, an "energy controller" probably should be able to controll masses of energy and make them do his bidding, so he should get a pet, or 2. probably an energy golem/servant/spectre at L32 similar to dark servant but with a bright color tintable energy aura body-part-basis rather than dark clouds. it'll probably fizzle out on it's own over time, so a limited time summon perhaps. then I got to thinking about attacks for it and thought, "what happens when all that energy making this energy pet gets dispersed when it dies?" and I went looking through Energy sets and saw [Energy Blasting: Nova PBAoE Extreme Damage Energy/Smash foe: knockback] and was like "yep. that's what happens when energy golem or energy specter dies. it's pretty much a bomb with legs and arms.." and figured it should have 1 ranged and one melee attack probably in high damage due to it's limited summon time, so I added in [Power Burst(High Damage Energy/Smash foe Knockback)] for a ranged single target, and [Staggering Burst(Melee(AoE) Smash/Energy foe disorient)] for kinda an energy dispersal attack from the pet, as it's attacks, also it definitely needs a healthbar, that way if something does kill it BOOM.. either it's timer runs out and Nova, or something kills it and Nova, or the player(with enough haste to perma-summon it) replaces it's summon and: Nova on desummon.

and with that I'm semi-fresh out of compiled ideas for this set.

Maybe a ground-pounder, some field/energy-object that comes down on top of enemies and hits them with Energy smashing and Knockdown every time they stand up as it attempts to bash them into the ground repeatedly like an energy troller made a giant energy mallet and decided to play whack-a-mole.


and maybe a single target mega-hold at some rediculous magnitude.

maybe a Range Wide Cone energy smack, like a mass-target(upto 30) mega KB+disorient

maybe another energy aura with -acc -tohit to go with that disorient

another pet? Idk.

this is what I came up with:

Energy Control:
    L1 Energy Ring: Ranged, Moderate DoT Energy/Smashing (6.12x5), Foe: Immobilize. When foe tries to move/or is flying; Foe:  KnockUp (Mag 4.99), High Damage Energy (50.16)
   
    L1 Energy Shackles: Ranged, Moderate DoT Energy/Smashing (6.73x5) Foe: Hold, Choke, -recovery. When foe tries to move/or is flying or tries to attack; Foe: Knockup (Mag 6) High Damage Energy (50.16). "Energy Shackles Cover the Foe's Head, Hands and Feet rendering them unable to move or attack, the head covering restricts breathing, leading to a lack of ability to recover strength for a short time. If the enemy moves or tries to attack, the shackles tighten and release an energy pulse which will severely damage and send the foe flying up."
   
    L2 Energy Wave: Ranged Cone Chain, Minor DoT Energy(4x2), Foe: -fly, Knockup (Mag 10), Foe: GrantPower: ["Energy Conduit", Ranged Cone to player foex1, Minor DoT Energy, -fly, Knockup (mag 10) if time remaining on player cast: grant power ["EnergyConduit" from each target]] "you release a  fast-vibrating wave of energy that loops from target to target repeatedly for 27.94 seconds, violently knocking them into the air and pulling them back down every time it hits disabling their ability to fly. the energy burns as it runs through their nerves causing minor energy damage over time on each hit. This power can effect upto 7 targets at a time, it then arcs off of them to any other nearby target which has not recently been hit on the previous tick"
   
    L6 Energy Torus: Summon: Wide Field, Foe Attract, When the foe touches the center; Foe: High Damage Energy, Knockback Mag 16, Stun, Disorient. "you create a feild in the shape of a large energy bubble in the sha[e of a donut, the center has a gravity anomaly which pulls enemies in rapidly, when enemies touch this anomaly it violently reacts causing high damage and sending foes flying backwards leaving them stunned and disoriented for a short time."
   
    L8 Energy Cyclone Toggle: +Def(All) +Res (Energy Negative), PBAoE Aura Moderate Damage Energy(30.59), Foe: KnockUP (Mag 4), Repel (Mag 3), Disorient. "you create a whirling cyclone of energy around yourself that redirects attacks around you, any foe that touches it will be moderately damaged, then thrown up and away from you causing disorientation for a short time."

    L12 Energy Flash: TAoE Minor Damage Energy(5), Foe: Stun(160s), Blind(320s), Disorient(160s), -ToHit(20%), -Def(20% all), Knockback(Mag 1)

    L18 Weld: Ranged High DoT Energy(10x5), Foe Hold(Mag 36, 360s), -Def(30%), -fly(Mag 10) Knockdown

    L26

    L32 Summon Energy Specter: High Damage Energy, Attacks: Power Burst(High Damage Energy/Smash foe Knockback), Staggering Burst(Melee(AoE) Smash/Energy foe disorient), On Death: Nova (PBAoE Extreme Damage Energy/Smash foe Knockback).


Edit1/21/25:
thinking about this I've come up with another power:

Energy Flash/Flash: TAoE Minor Damage Energy(5), Foe: Stun, Blind, Disorient, -ToHit, -Def, Knockback
"You launch a very bright exploding ball of energy at your foes kocking them back and blinding them for a long period of time, it waves through them stunnign and disorienting them. because of the light burned into their retinas they are unable to see well causing a -20% decreased in ability to hit targets and defend themselves from being hit."

essentially energy has the ability to bind and knockback sure, but it can also blind, probably some of the strongest longest lasting blinds in game, like laser eye surgery gone wrong.


Weld: Ranged High DoT Energy(10x5), Foe Hold(Mag 30, 360s), -Def(30%), -fly(Mag 10) Knockdown
"You use your energy to literally, not figuratively weld your enemy to the ground. they find it very difficult to move so avoiding attacks becomes almost impossible, the welding process damages them over time for the initial application phase." -single target Super Hold

I agree.

tbh the AoE radius is a little issue too. I tank, and sometimes I get surrounded by mobs and cannot jump away towards teammates, they end up being just out of the AoE radius, I've found that most of the time I have used team insps no one but me has been effected, I think one time I effected 2 teammates.

The thing here is the team is typically spread out over a much greater area than 20ft, it's very rare that the team is not spread out by like 40ft to 60ft, and these are not premptive measures, when people need them applied, they are typically arrayed in-battle and it's impossible to say "gather for team insps" and expect them to be able to comply and move 5 ft closer to get in the 20ft AoE range.

I think it should be Ranged Chain(once) based on LoS(Line of sight). and yes effect league members, and any "Allies" too. we'll let the game figure out if a ray from player 1 can hit any player on the team/league or any friendly target. then we'll let the game figure out if illusivity causes that ray to be too far a distance to work.

these team inspirations could be anything from realizing theres some ingenious use for Regenerating Flesh no one ever thought about "hey, it can probably regenerate my flesh" and then realizing " hey because it regenerates I can break it into peices and throw some to a team mate 'here catch put it on that burn!', or it could be a team peptalk or speech shouted down the hallway that gives team members some beneficial thought or strategy which allows them to be buffed in some way. a rez insp of that nature could be "hey heroes on the floor, the rest of the team is going out for doughnuts after this, but only if you get up right now."

so, rather than AoE, it really could even be conveyed through the team communicator, but then everyone on team would get the buff regardless of being near or in line of sight.

so I really think a one time per ally Line of sight distance based ray-chain would be better.

[Familiarity Breeds Contempt]

so, If I'm understanding this correctly, you cannot for example use a name of an already existing power but give it different abilities for this specific set?

There's the issue of name confusion, yes ... but I was talking about a different point.

Every Tanker Secondary powerset has a "Taunt" power.
Most of them are even named "Taunt" explicitly, while some use different more flavorful power names.

The "Taunt" power is somewhat AT defining, so the specifics of the power are simply copied over into every Tanker Secondary. The same thing happens with Placate powers for Stalkers.

When you have multiple powersets that have "the same power" in them (such as Taunt or Placate), the details don't really change for the different powersets of that AT.



So far so good?



Now think about the T1 attack power for say ... Defender Secondaries.
Yes, they all have different names ... but are they all copy/paste repeats of the exact same power?
No they're not.
Would it be a good idea to make them all "same-y same-y" as T1 powers in terms of their game mechanics, attributes, details, etc. ... such that if "you've seen one, you've seen them all" ...?

The point that I'm driving at here is the age old maxim of Familiarity Breeds Contempt when you've got powers that are just copy/paste jobs between 2+ powersets, even if the power names change.



One of the things that makes CoH so "flavorful" and meaningful to play is that the various powersets for ATs are NOT copy/paste jobs. It's actually relatively rare to encounter 2 powers in different powersets that "work" exactly the same (game mechanically as well as user facing stuff like animations and FX).

Martial Arts and Kinetic Melee are broadly similar ... yet they're distinctly different from each other.

Broadsword and Katana, as well as Axe and Mace, might have strong similarities in terms of how their powersets are structured and how they "work" ... but they still have important differences that make them PLAY differently, so they aren't just copy/paste reskins of each other.



It's okay to look at other powersets to find something CLOSE to what you want to do, since that gives you the benefit of precedent to work with and baseline against.

What's NOT okay is to look at other powersets, copy/paste and file off the serial numbers and expect people to not recognize what you've done. EXACT duplication of powers creates perception problems, because it means that those (now) "shared" powers become less UNIQUE and SIGNATURE to the powerset(s) they appear in.

Yes, every Controller Primary gets a single target Hold and an AoE Hold ... but are those powers EXACTLY the same for all Controller Primaries?
After the "normalization" of the AoE Holds @ Level 18 done by Cryptic Studios (when the Containment mechanic got introduced) ... the AoE Holds of Controllers became something they all had in common. But the single target Holds have some interesting and unique differences to them across all of the Controller Primaries.

Likewise, most Controller Primaries have an AoE Immobilize ... but some don't (Illusion and Mind Control come to mind).

Both Illusion and Mind Control have a single target Confuse power, but the details of their respective versions are not an exact copy/paste job, so there are differences between them, which then gives each powerset their own uniquely flavorful spin on the way "their" version of Confuse works in actual gameplay.



This is why I say that you shouldn't just be lifting powers (whole cloth, unmodified) and doing a copy/paste ala carte job with them into a proposed new powerset. Any kind of really obvious duplication like that "cheapens" the original power and the copy of it (even if you change the power names).

Ah. Ok, now I might be an idiot for saying this; but I was not aware of myself actively copying exact powers from other sets functionality wise, as far as I am aware I was modifying powers to give them unique attributes. but as an idiot myself I might need someone who can see my glaring mistake to point it out plainly listing the power next to what I'm copying.

if that was not your point, I am at least more aware of your meaning now, and I agree, cheapenning is not a good thing, and I wish to avoid it.

tomorrow I'll look through this ernestly.

Also, you can't have a direct port of another power in the game (except for a cosmetic name change) without "cheapening" both the original AND the knock-off power. Ideally you want each powerset to have its own "unique spin" on powers, to prevent powersets from becoming interchangeable.

so, If I'm understanding this correctly, you cannot for example use a name of an already existing power but give it different abilities for this specific set?

well, I've been thinking about it, I know Black Hole already exists, not sure if any others currently exist. in this case I'm thinking we need an Adjective in front of black hole desscribing the specific traits of this black hole which differentiate it Crushing Black Hole, or Destructive Black Hole, or Consuming Black Hole or somthing like that. I'm really not sure on the name, just floating a naming convention idea.

your thoughts are appreciated.

I know theres alot more problems with my set suggestion at this point than just names. still have yet to sit down and actually go over it and properly add in mez protection of some amount somewhere (or split between multiple places -mag10 to Stun and Disorient on one power - mag12.98 to sleep on another in example. (Firey Aura does it like that).

Currently I'm working through Guardian, there's alot less copy pasta I can do from primaries here as the sets are unique.

for anyone who wants to help with text input, this is the dictionary system I'm using:

Code Select Expand

secondaryDict['Guardian'] = {};
  secondaryDict['Guardian']['Atmospheric_Composition'] = ["Charged Armor", "Gale Winds", "Grounding Shield", "Static Shield", "Steamy Mist", "Mass Energise", "Snow Storm", "Power Sink", "Freezing Rain"];
  secondaryDict['Guardian']['Atmospheric_CompositionValues'] = ["Charged_Armor", "Gale_Winds", "Grounding_Shield", "Static_Shield", "Steamy_Mist", "Mass_Energise", "Snow_Storm", "Power_Sink", "Freezing_Rain"];
  secondaryDict['Guardian']['Dark_Composition'] = ["Dark Embrace", "Twilight Grasp", "Tar Patch", "Obsidian Shield", "Murky Haze", "Shadow Fall", "Cloak of Fear", "Soul Absorption", "Howling Twilight"];
  secondaryDict['Guardian']['Dark_CompositionValues'] = ["Dark_Embrace", "Twilight_Grasp", "Tar_Patch", "Obsidian_Shield", "Murky_Haze", "Shadow_Fall", "Cloak_of_Fear", "Soul_Absorption", "Howling_Twilight"];
  secondaryDict['Guardian']['Energy_Composition'] = ["Kinetic Shield", "Siphon Power", "Power Shield", "Entropy Shield", "Inertial Siphon", "Mass Energize", "Kinetic Dampening", "Transference", "Fulcrum Flip"];
  secondaryDict['Guardian']['Energy_CompositionValues'] = ["Kinetic Shield", "Siphon Power", "Power Shield", "Entropy Shield", "Inertial Siphon", "Mass Energize", "Kinetic Dampening", "Transference", "Fulcrum Flip"];
to explain it so it's simple:
secondaryDict['Guardian'] = {};

secondaryDict is the name of the dictionary
['Guardian'] is a "key" in that dictionary, Keys are a name that can be searched and that name returns any sub-keys or data, so if I printed out secondaryDict['Guardian'] right now I'd get a list of subkeys: ["Atmospheric_Composition", "Atmospheric_CompositionValues", "Dark_Composition", "Dark_CompositionValues", "Energy_Composition", "Energy_CompositionValues"].

I use ' which is a "single quote" and also called an apostrophe like in "there's" or "it's", I tend to reserve single quotes ' rather than double quotes " for key names, where " double quotes are reserved for "strings of text". it makes reading the code easier.

we wont get into combining the quote types as it will not be necessary for keying or data entry.

"= {};"
this tells it that secondaryDict['Guardian'] is a dictionary data type. = means this variable name = what I put after it, {} means dictionary, ";" means "end argument" it essentially tells it not to continue looking for more information to compute for this line on any further lines. it's like a javascript period meaning end of sentence.

fun lesson for those who don't know: dictionary keys can be written like this {keyname: value} so in example {"HP": 1200}, or {"Guardian": ["Atmospheric_Composition", "Atmospheric_CompositionValues", "Dark_Composition", "Dark_CompositionValues", "Energy_Composition", "Energy_CompositionValues"]}

"secondaryDict['Guardian']['Atmospheric_Composition'] = ["Charged Armor", "Gale Winds", "Grounding Shield", "Static Shield", "Steamy Mist", "Mass Energise", "Snow Storm", "Power Sink", "Freezing Rain"];"

this calls the dictionary named secondaryDict and grabs the value of guardian then from that list of values it specifies further that I only want to grab the value of "Atmospheric_Composition"

the "=" here is telling it that I wish to set the value for the key "Atmospheric_Composition" whatever is following it will be the key it returns when called.

"[];"

this is a "list" or "array", with an ; end sentence telling it "go no further for values of 'Atmospheric_Composition'".

["Charged Armor", "Gale Winds", "Grounding Shield", "Static Shield", "Steamy Mist", "Mass Energise", "Snow Storm", "Power Sink", "Freezing Rain"]

this list contains the power names as strings "" separated by commas , . this is as far as we are going at current, just inputting power names, in level order for the Archetype.


what do these lists do?

below the dictionary in the actual script I have code which checks a drop-down menu value in the webpage and then based on the name of that drop-down menu option it will return the list of powers with that powerset name.
then for each power in the list, in order, it creates a button in the space below the dropdown menu. these buttons will eventually allow users to select their powers.

what about the keys that say the powerset name followed by "Values"?

secondaryDict['Guardian']['Atmospheric_CompositionValues'] = ["Charged_Armor", "Gale_Winds", "Grounding_Shield", "Static_Shield", "Steamy_Mist", "Mass_Energise", "Snow_Storm", "Power_Sink", "Freezing_Rain"];

it's almost the same as the other list, but here there's no spaces, dashes, nor apostrophes in power names. this is important because these texts are used to create object IDs, object IDs are like names which can be used to select an element in the webpage document to then apply some action or code, so giving each button a unique ID is important. however IDs throw errors with things like spaces, -, ', in their name, the errors just cause the code to stop and the button will just be skipped(it wont make the button if you do "Executioner's Strike" or "X-ray Beam" as the ID name, instead we'd do "Executoners_Strike" removing the apostrophe and replacing the space with _ underscore, and "Xray_Beam" for the names of the IDs. this means creating a second list with the power names which I named 'powerset_nameValues'


that's what I'm doing right now. I've completed the entire primary powerset dictionary and the code to create primary power buttons.

for the secondary dictionary I've done blaster, controller, scrapper, defender, tanker, peacebringer and warshade, guardian, brute, stalker, mastermind, dominator, corruptor, arachnos widow, and finally arachnos soldier.

next is pool powers

I had one of my super lucid vivid dreams yesterday,

I asked the year, they told me 697, I asked "AD or BC?" and they said "Inclusional" then when I had no idea what that was they told me about another place down the road that might be able to answer the question better, and so I went and they told me the year was 5697, and that under "inclusional time" they dropped the thousands to make it easier like we did to BC time.

I am now reminded years back of an irl event where the fbi was convinced I was a time traveller, at the time I had not experienced any such dreams. so I assured them I was not a time traveller as far as I knew and it was just a misunderstanding based on me having the exact same name as and being born in the same city as a guy who died in 1920 with a life insurance policy with no listed beneficiary because he was literally a paper-trailess ghost of a man with no known relatives.

but.. do I really believe I travelled to 3994 and 5697? :\ I'm not convinced.

the place downt he road in 5697 was a militia outpost with army types in tan camo gear, they were named by the accronym T.R.U.M.P. but not named after any person called trump but rather referencing a trumpet or the sounding of a trumpet for warning or battle. T stood for Tactical, M Stood for Military, P stood for Personnel I forget what the other letters stood for they told me and showed it written out.

in 3994 people lived in "micro cities" as stated before, but in 5697 people lived in community houses, where 20 people might live in one common house. houses were far from eachother connected by dirt roads and surrounded by nature and canopied by trees for the most part to make them hard to see from the air.

People used laptops, didn't see any phone like devices. I mentioned my own computer which I had brought, they commented on how crazy I was to tote around such a heavy thing (it is kinda a hulking mobile workstation), I said it might turn on, but I likely wouldn't be able to connect to the internet because I have no idea what the internet protocols were like or if any of the data systems were compatible and they seemed to think "internet" was not a good word, it made them taken a back that I'd even suggest using it.

the fact that people essentially didn't congregate and everyone was so widespread from eachother protected by local militias, tells me there was likely a considerably smaller population than now.

if that is the future.. "what a lovely future people have to look forwards to" and the other question I have is "why am I being shown these futures?" I mean they are supposedly well past any normal lifespan from now. oh well.. I guess I'll have to try to remember to ask, lets see them(dream characters) come up with an answer for that. I hope they don;t try to tell me to prevent some terrible event in the present.. lol. I don't want to be that kind of raving lunatic.

I told the militia in 5697 that I came from 2025 and the state of the presidential election. they seemed to think significant events would soon follow, but did not disclose what. are these dreams? or something else entirely.

I hessitate to share these dreams sometimes. I had decided not to share this this morning. but this evening for some reason I decided I should share it if even because I said these kind of dreams were the whole reason for this online log.

I did have one dream that came true the next morning. it had to do with the verdict the jury handed down in a recent case. in the dream it was word for word. but I'm not certain if someone had been watching the news in my house that morning while I slept or not. so I am still conflicted as to whether I had "foreseen" anything or not and whether there is any evidence of my dreams of future events actually having any validity in reality.

I remain skeptical. but. I'm starting to question that skepticism. all it would take is an event I feel the need to write here coming true after the fact. like google failing and everyone being told to get anything they hosted on google drives or any part of the google network like youtube off before the servers shut down. if that happens, then I might take my dreams more seriously, but still with a grain of salt.

autofollow appears to be based on a gradual speed curve rather than based off a linear progression rate, in addition it slows you to the speed of the target you are following. One more issue is the pacing, it seems to stop you just out of melee range.

Even for PvE this is annoying. why can't I zip to a target at my speed? why does it always take forever to get in melee range?

I propose the creation of a setting or 2 to control this:
Auto-Follow Distance: Close Melee, melee, short range, moderate range, long range, sniper
Auto-Follow Speed: Target Speed, Player-Character Speed
Auto-Follow progressing: linear, distance movement-speed curve 


yeah, sometimes you may overshoot an enemy at fast follow speed, but it's better than following a slow moving stone armor Outcasts enemy at Thier speed essentially waiting til they stop and then slowly reducing speed until you enter melee range... that's gruelling.

so yeah, I suspect there shouldn't be any real opposition to this change, other than the amount of work it entails. but really this is a quality of life thing.

Melee is typically like 4 to 7 feet so at current the auto follow tends to stop right at the outer reaches of melee, which means sometimes the angle puts you just out of melee range. having a "close melee" that takes you in to 2 to 3 feet may have you push against an enemy, but also supply a greater cast-rate for melee attacks as it ensures you are closer than the melee attack distance.

I hear that, but the way I consider it is, for any at and build that put in time to design a careful build for their AT and sets, making it able to stand by statistics+basic strategy, then you tell them "nah you need max flight speed or everyone with a half-assed move speed build will just joust you", it crosses a line from a comparison of sportsmanship, to just blatant disregard, everyone will make dozens of cheap move speed builds with a couple cranked-out attacks.

the point is if it relies on move speed to "cheat" having to build yourself solid, then move speed needs looking at. and as proposed the old TS was designed with lower move speed caps in mind, so it needs adjusting. but as stated due to the way it's built at current it's not proportional to total speed, just a multiple of base speed, which wont scale well and allows abuse "all you have to do is get 60mph over the travel suppression reduction and you can bunny hop and joust, even though you're not supposed to be able to do that".

essentially travel suppression now only effects those who don't max out their speed, to a very disproportional amount of effect. it's pretty bad when you have this one guy bunnyhoping all over the place taking cheapshots on anyone with low health stealing kills from the people who wore them down as nothing more than an opportunist. it makes the real fighters want to move to another locale, but if that player follows...then you seek adjustments after figuring out what system he has abused and broken to be able to bunnyhop or joust.

but if the devs aren't willing, even though they acknowledge the problem, then you'll get less and less people involved in pvp. which kinda defeats the purpose of having it at all. essentially, pvp here is a very small group, because of the "speed abuse" that is now possible.

on protector server back on Live, when movement speeds were much harder to achieve whilst keeping any real power in attacks and defenses, and the caps were lower; you had people eyeing the list of online users looking for anyone in PVP zones, it was common on an average day to cross paths with a PVP zone lurker, and then you'd likely die the first time because they caught you off guard, then have a good brawl the second time, evevn if they were ranged, travel suppression would slow them considerably after attacks so you could chase. in those days the paragon devs lauded how balanced it was. it was about your build, not your move speed or some other cheap trick. sure movement was important, over small distances, you know to step out of AoEs, or back out of range to snipe then placate with a good amount of stealth then kite to make it hard to be retargetted. ranged and melee had their strategies, each one could win, and it was based on a good build + mechanics, rather than mechanics + a so-so build.

oh well, if the devs here aren't willing to see that people are finding aways to do things that were supposed to be bmitigated by travel suppression.. or aren't willing to consider revisions to fix it, then people just wont pvp as much. it really is a shame, given how it was balanced on live. I mean thats the whole reason powers have different outputs in pvp, perhaps move speed powers should have pvp alternates which give considerably less speed so that like 65mph is the output of a pve move power that does 102mph before travel suppression, so at lv 30 65-40 = 15mph versus unenhanced 10mph, but I like the proportional multiplier I designed better as it does afford something for effort in move speed whilst mitigating abuse. essentially at lv 30 it mitigates you to 21.3% total uncapped speed.

so, travel suppression especially the actual "travel" parts of it are outdated. I assumme they have not been updated nor reconsidered since Live.

since live there have been alot of changes to travel powers, and recently a change to the movement speed caps.

we could at least adjust the travel suppression proportionally... but actually no we cannot(using the current travel suppression system, I'll explain later). I did a bunch of math, the base fly speed (without fly powers) in example is 21.48mph at lv 50. I went into a pvp zone and attacked an enemy and got the travel suppression info for lv 30, it's - a multiple of 1.87 base fly speed(only dependant on level, one Uniform rate for everyone regardless how many speed boosts you have and regardless the max (uncapped) speed your powers total to) which comes to -40.1676mph. now with jetpack my fly speed is 51.04mph (at 50), these numbers wont be exact as I'm comparing lv50 and lv 30 stats and suppression but it's illustrative.

51.04 - 40.1676 = 10.8724mph remaining, which is like a slow jog in game. meanwhile with default out of the box fly, fly speed totals to 67.76, which is understandable that a power choice would be slightly better than a temp power. "roughly 17.72mph better". which means roughly we're talking 28.2924mph after travel suppression. this is also relatively slow, and quite fair honestly, it's still with-in reason for such an attacker to be attacked back as people can catch up at 28mph, and no one is dropped to a speed of 0mph by suppression alone.

according to mids the old flight speed cap was 58.64mph, however somewhere (mids) I get varying caps now with afterburner, from 67.76mph to 80.11mph as a cap. alot of this is new and was not present when travel suppression was designed. I've been told the cap was raised even further in game now to 4x this (another player as source).

if the old travel suppression for fly speed was 1.87*base fly speed, based on a cap of 51.04, if the true cap is now 80.11, travel suppression should echo this; 80.11 / 0.5104 tells us that the new cap is 156.9553291536% of the old one so increasing the travel suppression multiple by that to compensate for this raise in cap would give us 1.87 * 1.569553291536 which gives us a modified travel suppression multiple of 2.9350646551 or roughly 2.94 which * the base flight speed 21.48 would be -63.0451887931mph which is obviously well above the default fly speed of jetpack and would slow down default out of the box fly to less than 4mph.

this means such an adjustment is unreasonable, meaning the changes to the flight speed cap cannot be reflected in travel suppression the way it's handled now.

this means adjusting travel suppression for flight speed would have to factor a multiple of the individual character's Total flight speed, rather than their base.

wait stop, why is this necessary at all?

alot of changes have happened, major revisions to aerobatics for example, changing afterburner into it's current form, ALOT more +fly speed is now possible than on Live. just flyspeed IOs 6 slotted alone on both fly  and aerobatics with afterburner yeilds 102.4mph (capped at 80.11), and inherent slots on health and stamina have freed up 4 extra slots which could be abused to more easily cap fly speed even to 80.11 easily, giving a stark disadvantage to non-flying players. it is my understanding that travel suppression sutracts from the total mph uncapped then applies the cap if necessary. where 102.4 - 40 is 60mph which is greater than the former cap of 51!! thats cruising

Zip Zoom YEET I attacked and I'm gone seeya! I'll be back to snipe ya just out of range SUPA FAST you wont have to wait long for defeat. essentially you don't even need a good build, just a glass cannon with lotsa flyspeed, recharge and tohit from a couple build-ups. real easy to just destroy anything in pvp without trying. all because of increased fly speeds and travel suppression disproportionally effecting players compared to what it was before all this. make a good build with some def, regen and some good pvp tricks like debuff AND the glass cannon sniper trick? that's a blatant abuse of the pvp system, it'd be hard for much to stand against it.. it's a very one-sided fight.

I'm not naming players, I respect the player that was doing it, but it highlights that changes to the game since live have yet to be balanced in pvp. and speed caps are one of them that is pretty badly needed.

on Live, it was actually pretty difficult to build a speed cannon that had any form of defense or regen or anything at all to help it stand. a few good hits and it'd probably be mezzed, held, stunned, slept or otherwise dropped. and so it was fair. but now, it's MUCH easier to do not just a speedy-glass-cannon but rather a scrappy-speed-glass-cannon.

however for builds that are not all trying to abuse the speed caps, or where picking a travel power means dropping alot of survivability (on an AT and sets where that is what you are is survivability), just so you can catch a speedster kinda says "don't play anything that can't fly", and "wasn;t this the whole purpose of Travel Suppression to begin with? (I remember the arguments from the Live servers which led to it)) and makes me look at those "you must be on the ground to use this power" powers and all those armors on tanks which require so much patching up with extra powers and being forced to take kick or boxing to get them, and no major improvement to the speed of getting def or res and say "this is no longer a pvp where most tanks that were good before can stand., this has become a lop-sided pvp system just down to move speed"

I mean did we learn nothing from the past? I've seen other PVP in the past where people learned the speed'n shoot realy fast, they'd just circle someone at range and fire fire fire., there was no way a non-ranged could ever reach them they were just too fast. that was so very long ago (in a game I can't even remember the name of) that, I thought we learned our lesson collectively, (that probably wasn't even an online game now that I'm remembering it a bit better, still can't exactly remember what it was exactly though).

the old speed tricks where "I'm not over powered you just either need to move as fast as I do, or have a full team to take me down."

So yeah Travel Suppression based on speed need to be proportional/relative to the amount of speed a player has. if the total speed is 102.4mph -40mph from a 1.87 modifier is still going leave sonic the hedgehog quite giddy with his puns about everyone being slow. but if it were not 1.87* base speed, and rather your flyspeed * 0.213, that'd be a different ballgame. that would bring it back down to where move speed is not king where builds can still play without move speed.

lets illustrate this: your flyspeed (102.4)* 0.213 = 21.8112mph after travel suppression.

Why 0.213?!

51.04(total flight speed at 50 with jetpack) - 40.1676(this is 1.87* base speed (21.48mph)) = 10.8724mph (the speed this jetpack user can fly at after travel suppression) keep these numbers in mind.

(10.872/ (51.04/100= 0.5104))/100 = 0.213 using this number gives us the proportional percent(multiplier) of the total fly speed that is fair to leave the character with after they attack for the next 3*attack tier seconds, (where attack tier is 1 to 8?, so for superior damage it's 24 seconds?).

1 to 8 is based on: weak(1), light(2), minor(3), moderate(4), high(5), very high(6), extreme(7), superior(8 ).

the thing here is "21.8112mph" is still comparitively much faster than toons with a jetpack (10.8724mph) and faster than toons with fly alone and one slot with an IO (80.19 * 0.213= 17.08047mph)

Speed still means somethign and gives a slight advantage without it being overpowering like it is at current:

jetpack(10.8724mph) "I can still move at a jogging pace", fly 1-slot (80.19 -40.1676 = 40.0224mph) "I'm almost fast enough for an average plane to take off", fly 6-slot aerobatics 6-slot +afterburner (102.4 - 40.1676= 62.2324mph) "Seeya! Byelo! I'm A YEET OUT after I spank ya."

can you see the difference?


also that's just illustrative for lv 30. but using the same algorithms with different numbers from different level pvp travel suppression can generate such a multiplier for any level.

update, it's not just the lightning rod recticle, nor is it just TP attacks, I noticed there's some invisible overlay box of some sort, or something, which is interfereing with mouse-over sensors in game periodically, I have to reangle to camera and sneak the mouse towards it from inconvenient angles, for example to click-select a player directly in view.

at the time there was nothing behind the camera at all. leading me to believe it's some invisible box on the UI. I tested it and the same area where I could not select a player in view no matter how close I got, was the same area in which the lightning rod recticle was either; not showing up at all, red, or white but not responding to clicks.

this is a difficult thing to narrow down as it only happens "Sometimes", this leads me to believe theres some orphaned explanation window or something that has no graphics, no text and no background (so it's completely invisible) spawning in relation to some event related to the mouse, (likely something like a future feature meant to give a description of objects the mouse is over) but that box has Mouseover collision causing mouseover not to be calculated beyond the box until the box is removed, the removal of the box is triggered by moving the mouse pointer off it and rotating the view which causes a recalc of collected objects in the scene or redraw which then updates the client's understanding that the box is no longer there.

this is all speculation based on experiences encountering this mouse-over-dead-zone-ghost-box.

I had done a similar thing to myself in one of my game projects, the fix was the box could not be a Static object, it had to be a Sensor or Mouse-over would stop at it and ignore everything behind it.

I suspect a window more and more because for example the chat box, contact window, powers window, trays, insp window, enhancement window, navigation, salvage window, recipe window, incarnate powers window, target window, additional tray windows, buff icons, and health end and level bar all cause the same reaction as this ghost.

the thought occurs to me, that as I'm speculating it's an invisible box; what if it IS the visible windows?, what if at some point the mouse, after touching a window, fails to recognise it has left a window bounds(because the mouse was moved too quickly)?

this would potentially be updated when the view is adjusted and might explain the issue.

anyways these are my observations related to this event.

I had a video on discord a long time back showing how objects blocking the player from the recticle placement location trigger a red recticle that wont turn white until the mouse is moved to a visible location in line of sight to the character AND the view is rotated. that's right, without the view being rotated the recticle will not update and will stay red even if it's directly below the character.

wheras window interaction doesn't cause a red recticle, the recticle is white but wont respond when left-click is done, this is why I suspect this is a window bounds bug.

I think I'm finally able to view how this set could have good regen, you have to view the character as the blackhole feeding on everything around it. as it feeds it gains health, so it should likely gain Regen and +HP in battle based on the number of targets around the gravity aura character while specific powers are active. such as [Gravity_Aura.black_hole].

this is really what makes this set difficult to design, there needs to be alot of aspects built in to it. it needs revisions already, if even due to redlynne's suggestions. getting around to doing that is the hard part, I've also thought about the Auto power granted by Whitehole, "Enhanced"= grant power "Auto" is typically a weak effect, like 20% tohit and damage on Resurgence, so 10000% Mez res and Mag 10 mez protection really cannot fit there. that means a major revision, to find out what else needs to giveway to make room for it. likely on the L6(Tier4).

I had another Very long dream which forced me to get up early. well, early for me. I did sleep for like 10 hours this time. but that's a small amount of rest time for me, I usually prefer 12 hours.

I was in this particular dream for 2 full days. I woke up once in the middle for some short period of time then faded back to sleep. at least unless I was dreaming of having woken up.

I can't recount the whole dream in detail, it was just too long to remember all of it. I mean I could make some basic keyframes of it but details of things people said might be sketchy.

I started off in an outdoor place there were a few small buildings, (peoples homes, shops) lining a couple paths paralell to eachother, at the end of the plath was a cliff, next to the cliff on the left side was a small building and a pond to the left of it. behind that building was a kinda dust/sand cyclone, but it wasn't conical, it had taken the shape of a twirling and deforming set of stairs which connected at the top to the top of the cliff.

in the small building I sat down and asked about it, and a lady told me that many had tried to climb it but only the pure of heart (and some other conditions) could, and that otherwise you get stuck in the middle, she advised me that there were actual solid stairs to get up to the top of the cliff, and that it's better to take those rather than chance it, the sand stairs were only for people who wanted to test their character. I followed her advice and took the normal stairs.

at the top was a large building, a sort of shopping mall with a supermarket at the bottom in one section of it, it was a massive building. I spent some time walking around the shopping mall, I was accompanied by people who knew me, but I didn't quite know them. they had me follow them around for a full day, from store to store dressing room to dressing room, then the day was ending and they took me down to the supermarket to grab some snacks, there were a lot of empty shelves near the escalator., but further in there was full shelves, again, we ended up grabbing containers of cake slices, but I thought the price was strangely high, 9.63, but I was told that was cheap, they said it was like roughly equivalent to $1. I followed them to the counter to go pay for it, but before I could approach the counter I had my first wake up, and went straight back to sleep. I picked up on the same dream, but after the cake part, we were all paid and they were checking out a few things, so I was waiting by the window next to the doors that lead outside (though this exit was in a different direction than the original entrance I took).

outside the window was what looked like a pond, but it was not water, it was a small caldera near an ocean or large lake, it was almost at water level, apparently it never really errupted and never would, it was just a lava pool, perhaps a far flung offshoot of the main lava tube. the sea water would occassionally splash into it and cause the surface lava to splatter and pop, I was told this spot was the favourite spot of a fictional character that will remain nameless, I have not watched that series in many years and honestly don't care much for it. anyways we went out the doors toward the caldera, and there was a concrete path that followed the building, there was a thick divider wall between the caldera on the path, it had cement posts and metal panels  there was also a thick glass roof over the path that was closest to the caldera. but you could still see over the wall as you walk by. naturally a few drops of something hit the caldera and the was a small pop on it's surface and a small amount of small fragments of hot pummice spattered everywhere a few times.

now the pummice peices were only like 0.25 inch or smaller but they wre very hot, one got on the toe section of my right shoe, it went straight through to top and I felt a hot searing burn on the top of my foot at the base of my toes, I had to take the shoe off and shake the peice out. other pummice peices had hit my arm and back, but they just bounced off after a slight burn and impact.

we followed the path around the building, [unknown, can't remember, I think we walked home through a park path], it was now the next day, and we went back to the mall again, more shopping. I hadn't really been buying much, I'm not a shopper, I was there as the support team "what do you think of this one?" "oh, it's ok" kinda thing, you know, the role the guy plays when he girlfriend takes him to clothing stores for herself.

the main central part of the mall was circular, and multi level, at least 10 floors, you could see down to the bottom in the middle, it was a wide circle with shops surrounding. each floor had 2 hallways opposite eachother leading to other sections of the mall, as if 10 floors wasn't enough. after the shopping was done for that day, we were about to leave, when one of the girls suddenly realized "oh we forgot to eat something" so she took us back in and we went up several flights of strairs, the strairway was a hallway of stairs, it came to landings on each floor and some parts had windows, it was a beautiful view. anyways we were on an upper floor of the central circle section of the malle, it was all restaurants, I was getting my hopes up. but the prices were kinda steep as I looked over various menu boards. besides that it was the end of the day and they were closing soon. so we left the mall, and went into town, and stopped at a restaurant. but it too was kinda steep priced for what it was. I ended up having one large shrimp and a small peice of tofu we were eating a hotpot., but after eating 2 things, I had been taking it slow because I noticed it was just boiling water, there was no spice nor sauce , I mean yeah we had a little bowl of sauce to dip in after boiling, but I'm used to the hotpot itself having a sauce. eventually I asked "um, when are they going to put the sauce in the hotpot?" and they said "the sauce is in your bowl, the hotpot is already flavoured. and yeah it did have some flavour, it looked like it was just water but I could taste it had something sweet in it, probably mirin. anyways the ladies were full as they had not been taking it slow like me, so they got up and told me to finish up and join them outside.

there wasn't much food left, I had a couple small peices of whatever was left various things, but it wasn't much. there was a small squid cap, and when I boiled it a plastic thing with some writing on it was inside and the hotpot owner noticed it immediately "oh, you're the lucky winner of a beef bowl" and I was quite happy to hear that as honestly in the past 2 days of the dream I hadn't eaten much and was getting kinda hungry., but the free beef bowl, while tastey, was small. it had a small but thick and chewey shitake and a couple peices of beef in broth, it was good, but it wasn't much. my company had already paid, so after I finished Ib walked out to meet them, but man was the hunger growing, because you know how when you're really hungry and you eat some small peice of something and it just makes you feel more hungry? yeah that happenned.

needless to say they were just standing around talking outside the door of the place admiring the scenery, and yeah it was nice. then there was this roll of white cloth that dropped down from the sky in front of me, I joked "oh look toilet paper", but I knew it wasn't, they knew what it was and remarked about it [can't remember exactly what they remarked, but it was a pleasant thing], I grabbed ahold of it gently to feel the texture, it definitely was not toilet paper, it was like embroidered silk, it had a pattern on it. but the hunger started to kick into high gear and before long I woke up.

this is a summary of the events, it does not tell the whole story but the basic key points in it.

when I woke up I tred to go back to sleep as it was 11am and I had stayed up til 1am and didn't plan on getting up before noon. but the hunger wouldn't quit. and this is strange because the day before I went to sleep I ate really well. and even stranger, for the past months I had not experienced any significant hunger. It was like I had barely eaten in several days, I had to get up and have cereal.. I never have cereal. even after one bowl of cereal, I'm still kinda hungry. this just set in suddenly.. not sure why.. but yeah my body wouldn't let me sleep. normally if I'm a little hungry I can just relax myself to sleep, but this was overbearingly hungry like I'd been starving for days "you need to eat or you are going to go into shock and shut down" was the message my body would relay when I tried to relax, ignore it and get back to sleep.

and again, it's strange because I'd been eating well lately. the only thing I can think of is the length of the dream.. I mean it is tuesday, I went to sleep at 1am tuesday, it's the 7th and I was here for the 6th, it's the right month and year.. I just can't imagine getting that critically hungry in 10 hours.. this is perplexing. I mean yeah, in the dream I was aware I had been there quite a while, I honestly became slightly worried about it due to the length of the dream. I honestly thought I'd been in a coma IRL and living in the dream world for like 2 days at least. but it was only 10 hours.

as I said I usually sleep for 12. so this is indeed strange... I might need a second breakfast.. "breakfast" lol, I got up after 11, it's almost 2 now, ok lunch then..

[Resistance to Mez works]

I was thinking of a power called "Heavy Mass", initially it was slated to be (+resistance to: Knockback, Hold, Immobilize, Attract, Repel, Teleport, -speed(fly, run, jump), res debuff(speed, recovery, regen, defense)) but no mez resist!

Since this is intended to be a melee (Tanker) set of powers, I can tell you right now ... if you design a melee powerset with NO Mag Protection in it, no one will play it.

Even with Max Resistance to Mez, the way that Resistance to Mez works is like endurance reduction or recharge reduction.

Base Duration / (1 + Mez Resistance/100) = Mez Duration in gameplay

So a 100% Mez Resistance merely cuts the duration by 1/2 ... it does not cut the duration to zero.
In order to be protected from Mez, you need to have a power that offers -Mag to Mez in its effects.

I'm with you on most of it until we hit the -regen on it.

Spacetime curvature yields time dilation was the idea.
Also, you can't have a direct port of another power in the game (except for a cosmetic name change) without "cheapening" both the original AND the knock-off power. Ideally you want each powerset to have its own "unique spin" on powers, to prevent powersets from becoming interchangeable.

I love the Gravity Whip idea

one thing though:

'If the Foe is "too close" (under 10ft) then it does major damage and a big Knockback (think Force Field: Repulsion Bolt of mag 11+ type knockback).'


not sure if want. as a tank the last thing you want is to knock targets out of melee range

Under most nominal circumstances, no.
This is the basic reason why I have no love for Crane Kick in the Martial Arts powerset, for example. It does significant knockback (randomly), which is counterproductive in a melee range context.

However, on a powerset that can "pull AND push" things get a bit different. If you organize the powers in such a way as to effectively use knock(about) as something of a soft control, things can get interesting.

An alternative to a knockBACK would be to do a knockUP instead, if the $Target(s) are "too close" ... creating a sort of "astrophyical jet out the pole(s)" type of appearance (a bit like Whirlwind, in that respect).

ok, so I had a bad understanding of Mez and the importance of mez protection or -mez. I had included a minor mez res on white hole, but 10/100 = 0.1 so it would have been 1/1.1 duration or nearly the entire duration lol. so perhaps this is where the -Mez magnitude should be inserted. looking at other sets mez protection and res, it's around 10000 res or 1/101 duration, the -Mag 10 to -Mag 12.98, that's hefty.

L18: Click: Whitehole, (Self Rez, Untouchable 30 seconds, with 50% HP, 25% End), Auto: PBAoE Self+Team(+recovery(30%) -rech(15%) +regeneration(50%), -Mez Mag 10(not sure if to all, orwhat specifics yet), mez res 10000%)

what I set-up here might be overpowered, essentially it's a weak self rez, but owning it grants you an Auto ability that's always on. some other self rez powers have this too, for example Willpower's Resurgence in mids used to have a mysterious attribute "Enhanced" which was essentially a bool where if you enhanced the power at all, it granted you an extra to-hit and damage buff set to Auto, meaning it's active even when you have not used the power. so here the same thing, if this self rez is enhanced it generates a team buff for recovery rech and regen + some mag protection and resist. these numbers may be too high though.

I see, so you can't add them, the game isn't built to allow that.

Correct.

When you have multiple status effects of the same type, they "layer" on top of each other (in parallel) rather than "chain" together (sequentially).

The boolean condition of whether the status effect "does anything" is determined by the total mag ... the "thickness" of the layers, if you will. This is why 2x stacking is useful in order to generate sufficient mag "depth" to affect $Targets. Mag 2 will only affect Minions, but Mag 2+2 affects Minions, LTs and Bosses, for example.

Each effect runs for its duration independently.
Some powers have stacking limits (limit 1 or limit 4 or limit 8 being the most common), where reapplying the effect overwrites the previous application, discarding any remaining duration of the first application in favor of a "refresh" from the second application. This is often times annotated in the descriptions of powers as being Does Not Stack From Same Caster (or words to that effect).

In other words, you can't think about this problem in terms of simple addition (like you were doing), instead the proper frame is something more akin to TETRIS (kinda sorta, but the analogy is decidedly imperfect).

what we could do is leave taunt alone, and put in a separate +Attract -speed -rech -fly -jump -range - def power. which really wasn't the goal, but would be more standard.

Taunt is the -Range power. It is pretty unique in that respect, for all Tanker and Brute+Scrapper Taunts ... to "force" Foes to reposition themselves closer to the caster of the Taunt. Taunt in primary/secondary powersets will include -Range, while the Presence Pool: Provoke power for taunting does not.

To be honest with you, I think you would probably be better off (conceptually) starting with Ice Armor as a foundational basis/starting point and then modifying Ice Armor: Chilling Embrace such that all of the Slow effects of Ice into being more of a -Speed (fly, jump, run) and -Range debuff. Add +Attract but lose the -Recharge effect. Exchange the -Damage effect for a -Regeneration effect on all affected Foes. The real challenge though would be working out some way to run the Endurance Cost that doesn't "bankrupt" the blue bar too reliably ... one way would be to impose a Max 10 Targets limit on it, along with a limited PBAoE radius.

That gives you a "pull them in so they can't get out" type of PBAoE Aura.

If you want to get EXTRA fancy, could set up the power such that it has "overlapping bands" of effect that add up as Foes get drawn in closer.

20ft radius = 25% effect
16ft radius = 25% effect
12ft radius = 25% effect
8ft radius = 25% effect
You then let all of those effects stack with each other concurrently. So what you wind up with is:
20ft radius: 25% effect
16ft radius: 25+25 = 50% effect
12ft radius: 25+25+25 = 75% effect
8ft radius: 25+25+25+25 = 100% effect

This would then let you do things like setting up each range band as being "equivalent to mag 1" in status effect terms (for purposes of illustration), such that Minions are affected (mag 1+1=2) at 16ft radius ... Lieutenants are affected (mag 1+1+1=3) at 12 ft radius ... and Bosses are only affected (mag 1+1+1+1=4) at 8ft radius. So you get a sort of "layered wedding cake" type of effect behavior out of the power (at the expense of 4x the server computation overhead, which might be a deal breaker, but this is just Blue Sky™ wishful thinking at this point).



Continuing that idea, you can exchange Ice Armor: Icicles for something more akin to a Warshade's Orbiting Death power ... except that instead of doing a (single) PBAoE damage effect like Orbiting Death does, set it up as a PBAoE that does Grant Power to up to Max 5 Targets which causes affected Foes to generate an 8ft PBAoE of damage around themselves for a single damage pulse. So Gravity Armor: Tidal Disruption toggle turns into a power that does more PBAoE damage the more Foes you have around you (up to 5), since they're each generating their own damage aura around themselves while in your "orbit" and close enough to be affected.

Way the power behaves is that the more Foes cluster around you, the more damage they deal to each other as your gravity power "tears them apart" and sends bits of debris swirling around, which become "impactors" under your control that slam into your Foes. Basically, they start "breaking up" under the tidal effects of your gravity power and even rocks and pebbles from the ground turn into "death by a thousand cuts" type missiles that deal harm to your Foes ... such that the more Foes around you, the more debris being generated, the more damage they take from being "trapped" in orbit around you, getting "shredded" by the gravitic tidal forces.



Other ideas that come to mind for a Gravity Melee powerset would be something akin to a Gravity Whip power.

If the Foe is "distant" (more than 20ft) then it rapidly pulls them towards the caster. This is a "move them" rather than a "move you" type of power.

If the Foe is "close" (10-20ft) then it does minor damage and a Knockdown.

If the Foe is "too close" (under 10ft) then it does major damage and a big Knockback (think Force Field: Repulsion Bolt of mag 11+ type knockback).

This then sets up the opportunity for a "pull/push" type of behavior that can "juggle" the positioning of a Foe. From far away, it pulls them in, and from close up it pushes them away.

A really wild alternative for this kind of a Gravity Whip power would be to not make it a single target, but a 30º 40ft Cone attack. Reason why a Cone would be especially good is because Cones can be enhanced for Range (meaning the 40ft base radius can go up!). Additionally, it's also possible to use the "Hop & Pop" move with Cone attacks by melee oriented ATs, such that you jump up vertically so as to "aim" the Cone DOWN below you at your selected $Target. With enough height on the jump for the "Hop & Pop" you can catch multiple Foes clustered around your position on the ground using a Cone that is cast while up in the air during your jump. That way, if you don't want to make a big Knockback against a single Foe with Gravity Whip, you can just jump UP above 10ft from your $Target and get the minor damage+knockdown effect instead on a larger number of Foes that were herded up around your position on the ground.

I learned the "Hop & Pop" move while playing Ice/Ice on a Tanker so as to turn Frost (a 10ft 90º Cone, Max 10 Targets) into something of a "poor man's PBAoE" attack against all the Foes that clustered up around me. Adding Range enhancement to extend that range to ~16ft 90º Cone did wonders for increasing the number of Foes I could hit with Frost when doing the "Hop & Pop" move (no need for Combat Jumping). Was remarkably effective at dealing damage and stacking Slows onto stuff, keeping them "trapped" in close against my Ice/Ice Tanker (where all the damage and debuffing was happening).

this is the kind of feedback I was hoping for from the start lol. this is going to be a tough one to reply to as I need to incorporate what you are saying in some meaningful way.

I'm going to start with something potentially interesting; I had another power concept Idea for a gravity armor/aura or melee set; Foe Float. we already have this mechanic in game, it's a 2 fanged effect foe +fly and foe hold, this combination raises the character in the air but prevents them from moving. we see this in the key's reactor trial with positron's obliteration beam. I'm thinking some variant of this effect should fit into the melee or aura set. but only if when held the enemy can still be pulled in via attract. I imagine something like Ghost Widow's hold animation, where the enemy doesn't just float, they spin.

the float here would serve a secondary purpose, when attracted while floating enemies will push eachother around into a neat ball around the player, not just a ring, because they can fly, this increases the potential number of enemies in melee AoE range.

not sure exactly where or how to fit this into the sets but, it's an interesting idea.

on the topic of conversion of Chilling Embrace to Gravity Aura;

I'm with you on most of it until we hit the -regen on it. I have struggled to think of gravity based concepts which would effect regeneration either positive or negative, instead I had been forced to branch out into spacial phenomenon that are theoretically propelled by gravity, like white holes, wormholes and solar fusion. so depending on what theoretical concept we target for the power it might be hard to imagine how it could lead to -regeneration, however with certain concepts it'd be fairly easy to imagine, however for the concept of a mere "Gravity Well" it's just something that pulls you in, and maybe slows you down, but probably wont damage you or stop you from regenerating, we are on a gravity well right now, it's called Earth.

For this specific set though, I rather think it's iteration of black hole will have sufficient damage over time so that -regen while nice, wont be necessary. instead the idea behind -rech would be more beneficial to the set as you'd be attacked less frequently.

strong def + infrequently attacked +decent regen = ability to stay standing in mobs for this set, or at least that was the idea behind it. it wont have much resistance like ice armor has, theres no physical structure to gravity which could deflect any percent of the damage. essentially the only concepts I could come up with related to gravity which would theoretically supply resistance were Mass, Space-Time Distortion, and Gravity Lensing

I was thinking of a power called "Heavy Mass", initially it was slated to be (+resistance to: Knockback, Hold, Immobilize, Attract, Repel, Teleport, -speed(fly, run, jump), res debuff(speed, recovery, regen, defense)) but no mez resist!

we could add some +res onto that to Smashing, Lethal, Energy, Negative, Fire, and Cold, no toxic nor psionic. but something tells me that might be too much for one power, likely splitting it into 2 powers. looking at Ice Armor it might be good to split the Res into multiple powers, for example "Gravity Lensing" could be the Tier 1 power, (+def all but psionic (15%), +res Energy, Negative (20%))

then Heavy Mass (auto) would have +res movement inhibitation and +res kb etc, and +res smashing, lethal (22.5%)

not sure if I could find a place for heat and cold res, maybe Solar Fusion +regen, +recovery, +res fire, cold(15%).

this would however mean frankenslotting would be common for gravity Aura and people would have to chose which effect of the power to enhance and how much.

I think with that we'd have 8 powers + one per target(upto 10 to 15) buff/bebuff, so 9 powers like the following (listed by level available to a tanker):
(in no way is this anything other than a very rough draft, so forgive me for any overdone numbers or unreasonable abilities for powers, if you see something overdone or unreasonable, attempt to revise it if you can, or just highlight it, I'd appreciate it. this is just attempting to put it in some kind of order, it's really hard to look at like 4 different armor sets and make a fair amalgamation of them.)

Gravity Aura powers:

L1: Toggle: Gravity Lensing, (+def All but psionic (15%), +res Energy, Negative(12.5%))

L1: Auto: Wormhole, (+def Smashing, lethal, Energy, Negative(10%), +recovery(33%), +regeneration(75%))

L2: Toggle: Gravity Well, PBAoE Foe Attract, +rech, -speed (drops on: Mez)

L6: Auto: Heavy Mass, (+res smashing, lethal(22.5%), +resistance to: Knockback, Hold, Immobilize, Attract, Repel, Teleport, -speed(fly, run, jump), res debuff(speed, recovery, regen, defense))

L8: Toggle: Orbit Control (+def All(+1% for upto 10 targets), Foe -rech(10%) -range(50%) -defense(All, 10%) (drops on: Mez))

L12: Toggle: Solar Fusion (+res fire, cold(15%), +regeneration(100%), +recovery(77%))

L18: Click: Whitehole, (Self Rez, Untouchable 30 seconds, with 50% HP, 25% End), Auto: PBAoE Self+Team(+recovery(30%) -rech(15%) +regeneration(50%), +res mez(10%))

L26: Click: (120 seconds) Black Hole, PBAoE Superior DoT Smashing Negative, foe: Attract, Float, -speed, +rech(50%), -Teleport

L32: Click: (360 seconds) Space-Time Distortion, Self: +def All(20%), +res All(12.5%), +regen(100%), +recovery(100%), -rech, Crash:(180 seconds) self -recovery(-100%), -end(75%), -Regeneration(-100%), +rech(50%)


As for the banding idea, it's a great idea, if allowed, however perhaps 2 bands, 1 band that's just attract on the outside, and a second band that's attract + other effects on the insid for gravity well.

Whereas for black hole, use 2 bands of different effect damage, an Event Horizon around black hole where there's a weaker attract and status debuffs, and a Tidal Effect of grantPBAoE 10?DoT x1 (for upto 5 targets per tick)
But when they get sucked in further into the central band, suddenly wham 100? initial damage + (10 DoT x5 Smashing, 10 DoT x5 Negative) to upto 10 targets per tick but not granting a pbaoe to enemies). "ouch" you either get crushed inside or you get hit with flares of chewed up bits outside.


Gravity Melee considerations

I love the Gravity Whip idea

one thing though:

'If the Foe is "too close" (under 10ft) then it does major damage and a big Knockback (think Force Field: Repulsion Bolt of mag 11+ type knockback).'


not sure if want. as a tank the last thing you want is to knock targets out of melee range, I had put that idea on an initial design for Meteor Strike, because what did I think would happen to foes standing around such an impact? but I'm not too hot on chasing down KBed enemies or having them escape the melee damage zone of AoEs.

I like the fact it's a ranged cone attract. it could be a very useful tool for pulling in stubborn "I default to ranged = always, and -100% range = a range of 12ft" enemies and for scaredy-cat enemies "oh.. wow you're really laying the smackdown on them there, I'm-a go run around the map aimlessly".

I'm not certain I could put together a whole gravity melee rough draft yet.

anyways I've incorporated your ideas and advice as best as my limited understanding can do so at the current time, feel free to counter my suggestions.

I see, so you can't add them, the game isn't built to allow that.

Correct.

When you have multiple status effects of the same type, they "layer" on top of each other (in parallel) rather than "chain" together (sequentially).

The boolean condition of whether the status effect "does anything" is determined by the total mag ... the "thickness" of the layers, if you will. This is why 2x stacking is useful in order to generate sufficient mag "depth" to affect $Targets. Mag 2 will only affect Minions, but Mag 2+2 affects Minions, LTs and Bosses, for example.

Each effect runs for its duration independently.
Some powers have stacking limits (limit 1 or limit 4 or limit 8 being the most common), where reapplying the effect overwrites the previous application, discarding any remaining duration of the first application in favor of a "refresh" from the second application. This is often times annotated in the descriptions of powers as being Does Not Stack From Same Caster (or words to that effect).

In other words, you can't think about this problem in terms of simple addition (like you were doing), instead the proper frame is something more akin to TETRIS (kinda sorta, but the analogy is decidedly imperfect).

what we could do is leave taunt alone, and put in a separate +Attract -speed -rech -fly -jump -range - def power. which really wasn't the goal, but would be more standard.

Taunt is the -Range power. It is pretty unique in that respect, for all Tanker and Brute+Scrapper Taunts ... to "force" Foes to reposition themselves closer to the caster of the Taunt. Taunt in primary/secondary powersets will include -Range, while the Presence Pool: Provoke power for taunting does not.

To be honest with you, I think you would probably be better off (conceptually) starting with Ice Armor as a foundational basis/starting point and then modifying Ice Armor: Chilling Embrace such that all of the Slow effects of Ice into being more of a -Speed (fly, jump, run) and -Range debuff. Add +Attract but lose the -Recharge effect. Exchange the -Damage effect for a -Regeneration effect on all affected Foes. The real challenge though would be working out some way to run the Endurance Cost that doesn't "bankrupt" the blue bar too reliably ... one way would be to impose a Max 10 Targets limit on it, along with a limited PBAoE radius.

That gives you a "pull them in so they can't get out" type of PBAoE Aura.

If you want to get EXTRA fancy, could set up the power such that it has "overlapping bands" of effect that add up as Foes get drawn in closer.

20ft radius = 25% effect
16ft radius = 25% effect
12ft radius = 25% effect
8ft radius = 25% effect
You then let all of those effects stack with each other concurrently. So what you wind up with is:
20ft radius: 25% effect
16ft radius: 25+25 = 50% effect
12ft radius: 25+25+25 = 75% effect
8ft radius: 25+25+25+25 = 100% effect

This would then let you do things like setting up each range band as being "equivalent to mag 1" in status effect terms (for purposes of illustration), such that Minions are affected (mag 1+1=2) at 16ft radius ... Lieutenants are affected (mag 1+1+1=3) at 12 ft radius ... and Bosses are only affected (mag 1+1+1+1=4) at 8ft radius. So you get a sort of "layered wedding cake" type of effect behavior out of the power (at the expense of 4x the server computation overhead, which might be a deal breaker, but this is just Blue Sky™ wishful thinking at this point).



Continuing that idea, you can exchange Ice Armor: Icicles for something more akin to a Warshade's Orbiting Death power ... except that instead of doing a (single) PBAoE damage effect like Orbiting Death does, set it up as a PBAoE that does Grant Power to up to Max 5 Targets which causes affected Foes to generate an 8ft PBAoE of damage around themselves for a single damage pulse. So Gravity Armor: Tidal Disruption toggle turns into a power that does more PBAoE damage the more Foes you have around you (up to 5), since they're each generating their own damage aura around themselves while in your "orbit" and close enough to be affected.

Way the power behaves is that the more Foes cluster around you, the more damage they deal to each other as your gravity power "tears them apart" and sends bits of debris swirling around, which become "impactors" under your control that slam into your Foes. Basically, they start "breaking up" under the tidal effects of your gravity power and even rocks and pebbles from the ground turn into "death by a thousand cuts" type missiles that deal harm to your Foes ... such that the more Foes around you, the more debris being generated, the more damage they take from being "trapped" in orbit around you, getting "shredded" by the gravitic tidal forces.



Other ideas that come to mind for a Gravity Melee powerset would be something akin to a Gravity Whip power.

If the Foe is "distant" (more than 20ft) then it rapidly pulls them towards the caster. This is a "move them" rather than a "move you" type of power.

If the Foe is "close" (10-20ft) then it does minor damage and a Knockdown.

If the Foe is "too close" (under 10ft) then it does major damage and a big Knockback (think Force Field: Repulsion Bolt of mag 11+ type knockback).

This then sets up the opportunity for a "pull/push" type of behavior that can "juggle" the positioning of a Foe. From far away, it pulls them in, and from close up it pushes them away.

A really wild alternative for this kind of a Gravity Whip power would be to not make it a single target, but a 30º 40ft Cone attack. Reason why a Cone would be especially good is because Cones can be enhanced for Range (meaning the 40ft base radius can go up!). Additionally, it's also possible to use the "Hop & Pop" move with Cone attacks by melee oriented ATs, such that you jump up vertically so as to "aim" the Cone DOWN below you at your selected $Target. With enough height on the jump for the "Hop & Pop" you can catch multiple Foes clustered around your position on the ground using a Cone that is cast while up in the air during your jump. That way, if you don't want to make a big Knockback against a single Foe with Gravity Whip, you can just jump UP above 10ft from your $Target and get the minor damage+knockdown effect instead on a larger number of Foes that were herded up around your position on the ground.

I learned the "Hop & Pop" move while playing Ice/Ice on a Tanker so as to turn Frost (a 10ft 90º Cone, Max 10 Targets) into something of a "poor man's PBAoE" attack against all the Foes that clustered up around me. Adding Range enhancement to extend that range to ~16ft 90º Cone did wonders for increasing the number of Foes I could hit with Frost when doing the "Hop & Pop" move (no need for Combat Jumping). Was remarkably effective at dealing damage and stacking Slows onto stuff, keeping them "trapped" in close against my Ice/Ice Tanker (where all the damage and debuffing was happening).

I like these ideas, I think some sort of mix of these ideas could be interesting. I didn't have much time to reply today, though I did attempt to write up a reply, but there's alot to unpack and consider before giving a proper reply. Just in case you were waiting, it'll be another day or so. just to be courteous.