You know they don't like doing ZPAs and we already have alot of them in this set. What would you replace the graphics with? Or would you have the entire set like the invisible buged TK assault?
The light effect for all of the powers is perfectly fine. Plenty of sparkles and glows and stuff already.
the only problem i see with 2SB is that it gives an advantage to melee users over ranged users, so why not make it fair and change the way 2SB works and make it be triggered by all attacks (ranged and melee) instead?
Like that idea, then there would be a reason to play maintain-based ranged characters, because now idf made powers like assault rifle completely useless.
Dump the Two Smoking Barrels advantage. It's already a nice Active Offense with the +crit and power cost reduction. All of the internal cooldown ideas are nice, but in the end they all still result in LnL being available more often than any other Active Offense, which is a huge advantage that is difficult to balance against other Active Offenses.
Originally, 2SB reduced cooldown, but didn't increase the damage of melee attacks, and thus you got the reduced cooldown at the expense of no damage bonus, which seems possibly balanced.
A 2p advantage should be able to reduce the cooldown from 90s to 75s (that's a 20% improvement, the same as +1 rank), making it situational should be like a situational advantage on a power (i.e. 30%) for a 69s cooldown, so something like -2s cooldown with an ICD of 1s (and negatively adjusted by Int, like Nanites) seems plausible -- to get it from 90s to 75s would require making melee attacks for 8s of its duration.
By the way, have you considered making a 0 point advantage to remove the arrow/sword/lance graphics from the new ranged TK powers? Just a thought.
I have to argue against this point. I can understand wanting more customizing options for powers, but since they don't really do that for the basic graphics behind attack powers, they'd be more likely to just drop the blade animations entirely, which wouldn't be a good thing.
TK is a set based around mind blades, that's clearly the goal they're after, and if they changed the new ranged powers into basic beam attacks, well, they'd be better off in TP.
I like Two Smoking Barrels, I don't want to see it vanish completely.
We don't either, and we also don't want it to become the clearly best choice for all melee characters. Two Smoking Barrels was originally designed as an advantage for hybrid melee/ranged builds - you would pop LNL then use your ranged attacks, and when LNL wore off, you'd switch to melee attacks to get LNL back as quickly as possible. We are going to keep this design, by making the Two Smoking Barrels advantage turn off the damage bonus for melee attacks. This means if you have LNL with 2SB, it will behave very similarly to how it behaved before the change to LNL. This means any melee characters using it solely for the Crit/Energy buffs on Live right now will still be able to use it for this purpose, only with reduced efficiency due to the crit/Energy buff reduction.
We also fixed the bug with the CD reduction occurring for every target hit with an AoE attack, it will now only proc once per attack.
As for the comments on the appearance of the new TK powers - we're happy with the visual design of the set, and have no plans to change them at this time. The bug with TK Burst showing up on you instead of your target appears to be fixed internally.
Has anyone been able to take a look at the effectiveness of Mental Discipline over the Martial Forms and Focus/Rush Buffs? While I'm seeing a general improvement overall with all the changes made to the set I'm having a hard time isolating haw big of a difference this power is making.
Celestial Cleansing definitely has issues, and most of them are... very difficult to fix. However, I am completely unable to reproduce this one. I just tested against multiple flying enemies, and was able to remove their travel power with 100% reliability from greater than 50 feet away.
I've had the same issue as Jaybezz with trying to target enemies more than 10 feet away with Celestial cleansing and having it cast on myself instead. We both use the Xbox controller, so it could be related to that. I'll see if I can find a detailed reproduction.
ame, why not just make it so ranged attacks can be used with 2SB as well?
Because that would make it the best Active Offense for every character, and that is not what we want. Having a 50% damage buff for 15s every 45s is better than a 60% damage buff for 18s every 90s, and picking a different Active Offense for theme would just be self-nerfing.
I've had the same issue as Jaybezz with trying to target enemies more than 10 feet away with Celestial cleansing and having it cast on myself instead. We both use the Xbox controller, so it could be related to that. I'll see if I can find a detailed reproduction.
This may be an issue with the default target for a power that can target both friends and foes. If so, a bind might fix it; something like "target_cursor $$ powertrayexec 1 n $$ target_clear"
Has anyone been able to take a look at the effectiveness of Mental Discipline over the Martial Forms and Focus/Rush Buffs? While I'm seeing a general improvement overall with all the changes made to the set I'm having a hard time isolating haw big of a difference this power is making.
The plan is for it to be more comparable to Aspect of the Infernal with it buffing all ego damage.
This may be an issue with the default target for a power that can target both friends and foes. If so, a bind might fix it; something like "target_cursor $$ powertrayexec 1 n $$ target_clear"
Also, there is the Assist setting, so you might be casting it on the target of your target (i.e., you) instead.
This may be an issue with the default target for a power that can target both friends and foes. If so, a bind might fix it; something like "target_cursor $$ powertrayexec 1 n $$ target_clear"
/target_cursor sets the target to whatever the mouse cursor is pointing at, so it's not really useable with the Xbox controller. In any case, I tried this bind and it did not make a difference.
Also, there is the Assist setting, so you might be casting it on the target of your target (i.e., you) instead.
Yeah I'm familiar with that setting, and have it set to off. Powers like rebuke and celestial conduit work fine, if I target an enemy then they attack that enemy, if I target a friend they are healed.
Here is a video of the bug. I start by doing a few rebukes at range > 10 feet, and then without pressing anything related to targetting I simply activate celestial cleansing in slot 2 (either by pressing the Yb on the controller, clicking the icon with the mouse, or pressing the number "2" on the keyboard, all give the same result) and we see that it casts on myself. Then I do some more rebukes and move in to range less than 10 feet and celestial cleansing works fine on my enemy. Back up to range greater than 10 feet, celestial cleansing targets me.
I found the Bug: if "melee can ignore selected target is set to ON", then the bug occurs. If this setting is changed to "Off" the bug vanishes. Everything makes sense now since 10ft is the extent of melee range. Please change this as its very unlikely for anyone to ever want cleansing to ignore their selected target in favor of choosing a target in melee range.
I found the Bug: if "melee can ignore selected target is set to ON", then the bug occurs. If this setting is changed to "Off" the bug vanishes. Everything makes sense now since 10ft is the extent of melee range. Please change this as its very unlikely for anyone to ever want cleansing to ignore their selected target in favor of choosing a target in melee range.
I bet I know what the problem is, then... we've had this happen in several other cases with combo powers, I'll take a look, thanks for the additional info.
/target_cursor sets the target to whatever the mouse cursor is pointing at, so it's not really useable with the Xbox controller. In any case, I tried this bind and it did not make a difference.
I thought you were using one of those configurations that doesn't actually set a target value, it just takes the autoattack value. Obviously not the case from your video, so must be something else.
I bet I know what the problem is, then... we've had this happen in several other cases with combo powers, I'll take a look, thanks for the additional info.
Hey, if you're looking at targeting anyway...
Could you maybe, pretty please with sugar on top, add an option to ignore pets
Could you maybe, pretty please with sugar on top, add an option to ignore pets
As a lesser option, give PCs a threat value, so 'target threatening enemies first' actually has coherent results, instead of being actively detrimental in PvP.
We don't either, and we also don't want it to become the clearly best choice for all melee characters. Two Smoking Barrels was originally designed as an advantage for hybrid melee/ranged builds - you would pop LNL then use your ranged attacks, and when LNL wore off, you'd switch to melee attacks to get LNL back as quickly as possible. We are going to keep this design, by making the Two Smoking Barrels advantage turn off the damage bonus for melee attacks. This means if you have LNL with 2SB, it will behave very similarly to how it behaved before the change to LNL. This means any melee characters using it solely for the Crit/Energy buffs on Live right now will still be able to use it for this purpose, only with reduced efficiency due to the crit/Energy buff reduction.
We also fixed the bug with the CD reduction occurring for every target hit with an AoE attack, it will now only proc once per attack.
As for the comments on the appearance of the new TK powers - we're happy with the visual design of the set, and have no plans to change them at this time. The bug with TK Burst showing up on you instead of your target appears to be fixed internally.
I like the idea of the latest fix on tap for Lock and Load. The idea of the damage boost working with all ranged powers rather than all powers in general keeps to the original idea of the power whilst opening it up as a choice for other sets that take ranged/melee hybrid options. Kinda like Telekinesis, come to think of it. In its current form on Live I was kinda worried about it as well, glad to see you guys were paying attention.
I'll also say that Lock and Load should be the go-to example for any future Active Offense fixes you guys throw out there. Normally I don't much care for/take AO powers - as good as they are, the only thing I tend to use them for is breaking critical holds or as random DPS boosts against bosses. Not so with Lock and Load - that skill's become an integral part of my main character's Live build. It has options - I can pop it in melee range if I'm being heavily pressed and need the cost reduction to start hammering out those defensive options, I can use it like a typical AO and make Assault Rifle painful for a few seconds, I can use it to break any old hold I want - maintains aside >_> - because I can count on it being back up before the next hold hits me. Usually. It's a very flexible, toolboxy power and I would very much like to see other Active Offenses find their own ways to measure up to its versatility and broad scope.
Telekinetic Wave: tooltip indicates a 30% chance to apply a stack of ego leech for each target hit (max 5 targets). After extensive testing vs 5 dummies at a time it only ever applies 1 stack. Often none at all. I think it is only checking the initial target hit
...As for the comments on the appearance of the new TK powers - we're happy with the visual design of the set,
and have no plans to change them at this time...
I think Ame means the blades and such, not the literal pink color. THAT sounds like a bug.
I -do- however hope that something will be done with the root on taps with TK Lance. If there's one thing that my ranged toon had over my melees, its mobility, and this makes me a sad panda.
We don't either, and we also don't want it to become the clearly best choice for all melee characters. Two Smoking Barrels was originally designed as an advantage for hybrid melee/ranged builds - you would pop LNL then use your ranged attacks, and when LNL wore off, you'd switch to melee attacks to get LNL back as quickly as possible. We are going to keep this design, by making the Two Smoking Barrels advantage turn off the damage bonus for melee attacks. This means if you have LNL with 2SB, it will behave very similarly to how it behaved before the change to LNL. This means any melee characters using it solely for the Crit/Energy buffs on Live right now will still be able to use it for this purpose, only with reduced efficiency due to the crit/Energy buff reduction.
We also fixed the bug with the CD reduction occurring for every target hit with an AoE attack, it will now only proc once per attack.
As for the comments on the appearance of the new TK powers - we're happy with the visual design of the set, and have no plans to change them at this time. The bug with TK Burst showing up on you instead of your target appears to be fixed internally.
Too bad you completely destroyed hybrid melee ranged builds.
My testing shows that the damage is being incorrectly buffed by the Brawler role, but that no other melee buffs affect it, and the Knock strength is being buffed by Ego, not Strength. In what other cases are you seeing melee buffs affect the power?
I thought my enrage was boosting it, that was incorrect on my part..
and yes, the knock strength is being buffed by ego, also a mistake on my part when i tested it
( stupid AoPM teambuff )
newho TY TY Ame..
Now look into those items I told you about and I will send you a fruit basket and a cake with a special surprise inside *wink wink*
I bet I know what the problem is, then... we've had this happen in several other cases with combo powers, I'll take a look, thanks for the additional info.
Thank you 10 million times over. This simple change will completely affect the outcome of my character (and yes I still hope the power becomes useful later). I know most people don't use it but from me, I can't thank you enough.
And because i'm never satiated can we look at letting this power be used when held? The advantage only works on snares otherwise. It's VERY useful to combat crowd control (for self and team), and smoke grenade if it can be used when held.
by making lock n load usable by a broader range of hybrid builds?
No, hybrid builds were killed in the melee pass back when VB was first released. Avenger lost its melee damage bonus and gained nothing. Brawler was created and was everything a melee offensive player could want and more... along with many other melee oriented buffs.
I'm still scratching my head wondering why the heck Cryptic decided to split buffs, debuffs and passives into melee and ranged. If melee is supposed to be so much "better", buff the melee powers... don't make new roles, passives, debuffs, and buffs. Personally I think it'd be easier to balance if melee/ranged/hybrid builds could use the same passives, buffs and debuffs. BUT that ship sailed long ago so now we have to deal with the aftermath.
Oh, and LnL is getting nerfed overall now for the melee players who used it for the crit bonus and cost redux unless I missed the bit where the crit chance and cost redux were getting brought back to live levels if the 2 Smoking Barrels adv is taken.
Oh, and LnL is getting nerfed overall now for the melee players who used it for the crit bonus and cost redux unless I missed the bit where the crit chance and cost redux were getting brought back to live levels if the 2 Smoking Barrels adv is taken.
I see.
Well, at least now you don't have to change your avatar to Lock n Load Kitty.
No, hybrid builds were killed in the melee pass back when VB was first released. Avenger lost its melee damage bonus and gained nothing. Brawler was created and was everything a melee offensive player could want and more... along with many other melee oriented buffs.
...
While I agree with the sentiment, only offensive passive hybrid builds were killed. The Defensive and Support passives all work very well for hybrids. Funny though to see Shuriken Throw buffed by Brawler at 100'.
The plan is for it to be more comparable to Aspect of the Infernal with it buffing all ego damage.
Let me rephrase the question. Does it make more sense to take the in framework toggle power or to dip out for 2 powers (A focus and dragon attack) for overall build effectiveness when it comes to damage?
Let me rephrase the question. Does it make more sense to take the in framework toggle power or to dip out for 2 powers (A focus and dragon attack) for overall build effectiveness when it comes to damage?
On a crit build Form of the Tempest will be much better i think, since i even took FoTT on my new Infernal Character
since the boost to Devour Essence is that much better than Aspect of the Infernal
Let me rephrase the question. Does it make more sense to take the in framework toggle power or to dip out for 2 powers (A focus and dragon attack) for overall build effectiveness when it comes to damage?
If you were going to dip for those two powers (focus - dragon attack), not sure why you'd want to be in the ego set to begin with. A few builds ago, my testing made it pretty obvious that Dragon's Wrath and Dragon's Claws were both higher DPS than TK blades. Nothing that's been improved within the TK set has changed that. In fact, with the slight change to Mental Discipline, the gap has likely gotten wider.
In fact, the only thing to happen on improving TK blade attacks is that melee across the board got a little bit better. But, obviously, that improved MA as well. In my opinion, that finally got Dragon's Wrath and Dragon's Claws up to the point where the added difficulty of getting into melee was offset by the increased damage.
That said, I do like that Mental Discipline is going to be an all-ego damage buff, not just a melee one. I think we should have toggles to buff every damage type regardless of the melee/ranged divide. I also think TK blades is now a completely viable theme in both PvE and PvP even though it's obviously going to be slightly lower damage than a comparable MA. (I suspect it's also lower in damage than Might and Heavy Weapons, but since I haven't done any comparisons, I don't know for certain).
Of course, the fix I'd like to see is for Ego Blade Annihilation to get a bit of a damage buff, and then either not consume ego leech stacks, or to trade those stacks for defense penetration. The game just doesn't have enough attack types that scare heavy defense tanks, and I think a power named "Annihilation" would be a good one to do just that.
On the ranged side, TK Assault looks very good. TK Lance looks very bad. This severely limits both ranged TK and hybrid TK builds as there is just no big hitting ranged TK attack.
That limitation is actually a bit disappointing since it seemed like the set was heading towards being another Infernal. Infernal has the very good Defile ranged attack and the very good Devour Essence melee attack and a toggle that buffs them both. Infernal also has a whole variety of possible slotted passives that work since you can build devour tanks, go offensive with either Ice Form or Fiery Form, or go heavy sustained DPS with Pestilence. There are even some powers outside the set (Toxic Nanites and Gas Arrow) that a toxic build could use.
On a crit build Form of the Tempest will be much better i think, since i even took FoTT on my new Infernal Character
since the boost to Devour Essence is that much better than Aspect of the Infernal
I'm assuming you have SS DEX then. That's kinda the key on Tempest for stacks as well as on all MA forms for damage buffing.
I also assume you're happy Ame isn't trying to fix EGO by nerfing DEX anymore
'Course, I'm still a bit skeptical on how fixed EGO actually is, and I'm 100% sure REC isn't fixed which is why I'm fairly sure the new Disciple is going to be one of the weakest premium AT's Cryptic has released.
Criticals seem to be an integral part of the damage equation for the revised Telekinesis considering the bonus to severity from Ego Surge and Critical Chance from Mental Discipline. This makes Dex/Ego really a straight forward choice for the set. The current test build I'm working with stacks Intelligence to offset cost and cool downs.
This is part of what makes gauging the effectiveness of Mental Discipline so difficult for me in that we're more comparing burst damage over escalating base damage and burst damage. Right now my thought is that Mental Discipline should provide a slightly larger boost to critical chance to offset the higher base damage granted from using something like Form of the Tempest instead. However, I don't have a good way of crunching the raw numbers so it becomes very difficult for me to say definitively.
Forms are restricted to melee damage though. I like that the current arrangement of powers in TK allows even a Brawler TK blader to squeeze in a ranged attack and not feel terribly bad about it.
On test my TK blader grabbed TK Wave, and even with the reduced Brawler damage it hits decently and has an immense knockback. It's a bit situational, but I will likely be taking it on live after the pass.
With my current set-up on live using FotT I wouldn't bother with it, the damage would be too low (and of course, the knockback is feeble).
. Right now my thought is that Mental Discipline should provide a slightly larger boost to critical chance to offset the higher base damage granted from using something like Form of the Tempest instead. However, I don't have a good way of crunching the raw numbers so it becomes very difficult for me to say definitively.
You're forgetting something else that Form of the Tempest has over Mental Discipline which is free energy per crit.
I would like it if Telepathic Reverb was an exception of exclusive energy unlock powers, granted a better energy cost reduction or granted twice the energy it does now, but the latter seems rather too unbalanced....
Comments
Like that idea, then there would be a reason to play maintain-based ranged characters, because now idf made powers like assault rifle completely useless.
A 2p advantage should be able to reduce the cooldown from 90s to 75s (that's a 20% improvement, the same as +1 rank), making it situational should be like a situational advantage on a power (i.e. 30%) for a 69s cooldown, so something like -2s cooldown with an ICD of 1s (and negatively adjusted by Int, like Nanites) seems plausible -- to get it from 90s to 75s would require making melee attacks for 8s of its duration.
I have to argue against this point. I can understand wanting more customizing options for powers, but since they don't really do that for the basic graphics behind attack powers, they'd be more likely to just drop the blade animations entirely, which wouldn't be a good thing.
TK is a set based around mind blades, that's clearly the goal they're after, and if they changed the new ranged powers into basic beam attacks, well, they'd be better off in TP.
We don't either, and we also don't want it to become the clearly best choice for all melee characters. Two Smoking Barrels was originally designed as an advantage for hybrid melee/ranged builds - you would pop LNL then use your ranged attacks, and when LNL wore off, you'd switch to melee attacks to get LNL back as quickly as possible. We are going to keep this design, by making the Two Smoking Barrels advantage turn off the damage bonus for melee attacks. This means if you have LNL with 2SB, it will behave very similarly to how it behaved before the change to LNL. This means any melee characters using it solely for the Crit/Energy buffs on Live right now will still be able to use it for this purpose, only with reduced efficiency due to the crit/Energy buff reduction.
We also fixed the bug with the CD reduction occurring for every target hit with an AoE attack, it will now only proc once per attack.
As for the comments on the appearance of the new TK powers - we're happy with the visual design of the set, and have no plans to change them at this time. The bug with TK Burst showing up on you instead of your target appears to be fixed internally.
(or any other non-tech looking shield)
I've had the same issue as Jaybezz with trying to target enemies more than 10 feet away with Celestial cleansing and having it cast on myself instead. We both use the Xbox controller, so it could be related to that. I'll see if I can find a detailed reproduction.
Because that would make it the best Active Offense for every character, and that is not what we want. Having a 50% damage buff for 15s every 45s is better than a 60% damage buff for 18s every 90s, and picking a different Active Offense for theme would just be self-nerfing.
The plan is for it to be more comparable to Aspect of the Infernal with it buffing all ego damage.
Also, there is the Assist setting, so you might be casting it on the target of your target (i.e., you) instead.
/target_cursor sets the target to whatever the mouse cursor is pointing at, so it's not really useable with the Xbox controller. In any case, I tried this bind and it did not make a difference.
Yeah I'm familiar with that setting, and have it set to off. Powers like rebuke and celestial conduit work fine, if I target an enemy then they attack that enemy, if I target a friend they are healed.
Here is a video of the bug. I start by doing a few rebukes at range > 10 feet, and then without pressing anything related to targetting I simply activate celestial cleansing in slot 2 (either by pressing the Yb on the controller, clicking the icon with the mouse, or pressing the number "2" on the keyboard, all give the same result) and we see that it casts on myself. Then I do some more rebukes and move in to range less than 10 feet and celestial cleansing works fine on my enemy. Back up to range greater than 10 feet, celestial cleansing targets me.
I found the Bug: if "melee can ignore selected target is set to ON", then the bug occurs. If this setting is changed to "Off" the bug vanishes. Everything makes sense now since 10ft is the extent of melee range. Please change this as its very unlikely for anyone to ever want cleansing to ignore their selected target in favor of choosing a target in melee range.
I bet I know what the problem is, then... we've had this happen in several other cases with combo powers, I'll take a look, thanks for the additional info.
Hey, if you're looking at targeting anyway...
Could you maybe, pretty please with sugar on top, add an option to ignore pets
I called it!
Not that I'd ever heard it was a bug before.
I'll also say that Lock and Load should be the go-to example for any future Active Offense fixes you guys throw out there. Normally I don't much care for/take AO powers - as good as they are, the only thing I tend to use them for is breaking critical holds or as random DPS boosts against bosses. Not so with Lock and Load - that skill's become an integral part of my main character's Live build. It has options - I can pop it in melee range if I'm being heavily pressed and need the cost reduction to start hammering out those defensive options, I can use it like a typical AO and make Assault Rifle painful for a few seconds, I can use it to break any old hold I want - maintains aside >_> - because I can count on it being back up before the next hold hits me. Usually. It's a very flexible, toolboxy power and I would very much like to see other Active Offenses find their own ways to measure up to its versatility and broad scope.
Now I can start working on a build to go with it.
You mean we still have to deal with PINK!?!?
I think Ame means the blades and such, not the literal pink color. THAT sounds like a bug.
I -do- however hope that something will be done with the root on taps with TK Lance. If there's one thing that my ranged toon had over my melees, its mobility, and this makes me a sad panda.
Too bad you completely destroyed hybrid melee ranged builds.
by making lock n load usable by a broader range of hybrid builds?
I thought my enrage was boosting it, that was incorrect on my part..
and yes, the knock strength is being buffed by ego, also a mistake on my part when i tested it
( stupid AoPM teambuff
newho
Now look into those items I told you about and I will send you a fruit basket and a cake with a special surprise inside *wink wink*
Thank you 10 million times over. This simple change will completely affect the outcome of my character (and yes I still hope the power becomes useful later). I know most people don't use it but from me, I can't thank you enough.
And because i'm never satiated can we look at letting this power be used when held? The advantage only works on snares otherwise. It's VERY useful to combat crowd control (for self and team), and smoke grenade if it can be used when held.
No, hybrid builds were killed in the melee pass back when VB was first released. Avenger lost its melee damage bonus and gained nothing. Brawler was created and was everything a melee offensive player could want and more... along with many other melee oriented buffs.
I'm still scratching my head wondering why the heck Cryptic decided to split buffs, debuffs and passives into melee and ranged. If melee is supposed to be so much "better", buff the melee powers... don't make new roles, passives, debuffs, and buffs. Personally I think it'd be easier to balance if melee/ranged/hybrid builds could use the same passives, buffs and debuffs. BUT that ship sailed long ago so now we have to deal with the aftermath.
Oh, and LnL is getting nerfed overall now for the melee players who used it for the crit bonus and cost redux unless I missed the bit where the crit chance and cost redux were getting brought back to live levels if the 2 Smoking Barrels adv is taken.
Well, at least now you don't have to change your avatar to Lock n Load Kitty.
While I agree with the sentiment, only offensive passive hybrid builds were killed. The Defensive and Support passives all work very well for hybrids. Funny though to see Shuriken Throw buffed by Brawler at 100'.
Let me rephrase the question. Does it make more sense to take the in framework toggle power or to dip out for 2 powers (A focus and dragon attack) for overall build effectiveness when it comes to damage?
On a crit build Form of the Tempest will be much better i think, since i even took FoTT on my new Infernal Character
since the boost to Devour Essence is that much better than Aspect of the Infernal
If you were going to dip for those two powers (focus - dragon attack), not sure why you'd want to be in the ego set to begin with. A few builds ago, my testing made it pretty obvious that Dragon's Wrath and Dragon's Claws were both higher DPS than TK blades. Nothing that's been improved within the TK set has changed that. In fact, with the slight change to Mental Discipline, the gap has likely gotten wider.
In fact, the only thing to happen on improving TK blade attacks is that melee across the board got a little bit better. But, obviously, that improved MA as well. In my opinion, that finally got Dragon's Wrath and Dragon's Claws up to the point where the added difficulty of getting into melee was offset by the increased damage.
That said, I do like that Mental Discipline is going to be an all-ego damage buff, not just a melee one. I think we should have toggles to buff every damage type regardless of the melee/ranged divide. I also think TK blades is now a completely viable theme in both PvE and PvP even though it's obviously going to be slightly lower damage than a comparable MA. (I suspect it's also lower in damage than Might and Heavy Weapons, but since I haven't done any comparisons, I don't know for certain).
Of course, the fix I'd like to see is for Ego Blade Annihilation to get a bit of a damage buff, and then either not consume ego leech stacks, or to trade those stacks for defense penetration. The game just doesn't have enough attack types that scare heavy defense tanks, and I think a power named "Annihilation" would be a good one to do just that.
On the ranged side, TK Assault looks very good. TK Lance looks very bad. This severely limits both ranged TK and hybrid TK builds as there is just no big hitting ranged TK attack.
That limitation is actually a bit disappointing since it seemed like the set was heading towards being another Infernal. Infernal has the very good Defile ranged attack and the very good Devour Essence melee attack and a toggle that buffs them both. Infernal also has a whole variety of possible slotted passives that work since you can build devour tanks, go offensive with either Ice Form or Fiery Form, or go heavy sustained DPS with Pestilence. There are even some powers outside the set (Toxic Nanites and Gas Arrow) that a toxic build could use.
I'm assuming you have SS DEX then. That's kinda the key on Tempest for stacks as well as on all MA forms for damage buffing.
I also assume you're happy Ame isn't trying to fix EGO by nerfing DEX anymore
'Course, I'm still a bit skeptical on how fixed EGO actually is, and I'm 100% sure REC isn't fixed which is why I'm fairly sure the new Disciple is going to be one of the weakest premium AT's Cryptic has released.
Yepp .. thats what i meant with a "crit build"
This is part of what makes gauging the effectiveness of Mental Discipline so difficult for me in that we're more comparing burst damage over escalating base damage and burst damage. Right now my thought is that Mental Discipline should provide a slightly larger boost to critical chance to offset the higher base damage granted from using something like Form of the Tempest instead. However, I don't have a good way of crunching the raw numbers so it becomes very difficult for me to say definitively.
On test my TK blader grabbed TK Wave, and even with the reduced Brawler damage it hits decently and has an immense knockback. It's a bit situational, but I will likely be taking it on live after the pass.
With my current set-up on live using FotT I wouldn't bother with it, the damage would be too low (and of course, the knockback is feeble).
You're forgetting something else that Form of the Tempest has over Mental Discipline which is free energy per crit.
I would like it if Telepathic Reverb was an exception of exclusive energy unlock powers, granted a better energy cost reduction or granted twice the energy it does now, but the latter seems rather too unbalanced....
I hate to say this but can you restate that I'm not following what you're trying to say other than you like real damage.