Adeon Hawkwood

Awesome. If you need any help with testing methodology or data analysis feel free to drop me a line.

Yeah it would definitely need to be a Rogue running it and not a vigilante. Unfortunately my highest level Villain/Rogue is mid-30s so I can't test it.

Unless you make the toon a clone of her (although given the issues with the chest slider this could still be risky).

And now you've discovered the reason why I keep returning to this game. I tried WoW but between the gear elitism and the limited teaming options it just didn't interest me. My general policy for filling teams is to broadcast a message, take the first 7 people who turn up and hope for the best. It normally works out and I like that.

Based on my testing Damage and Accuracy slotting did nothing when used with Robotics. Here's my methodology, in case you're curious. I did a total of 12 tests, 4 with each tier of pet against the same enemy type (the Crey suit wearing security minions who have no resistances). With each pet the four tests were:
1. No damage slotting in Detonator, no damage buffs on pet
2. No damage slotting in Detonator, Assault and Supremacy buffs on pet
3. 1 SO damage slotting in Detonator, no damage buffs on pet
4. 1 SO damage slotting in Detonator, Assault and Supremacy buffs on pet

The result was that for each pet the damage from tests 1 and 3 were the same and tests 2 and 4 were the same. Additionally the differences in damage between the no-buff tests (1 and 3) and the buffed tests (2 and 4) resulted in the same base damage only if the damage slotting in the pet was plugged into the equation.

Based on that I am confident in saying that Damage/Accuracy/Knockback slotting does not work in detonator at least for the non-human pet version (I think that this would also hold true for the human-pet version but can't say for sure).

Also as a side note this testing was based solely on the Non-Human version of Detonator. The Human pet version (used by Thugs, Ninjas and Mercs) is technically a different power and as such may work differently. Going by the redtomax power description it looks like the Human pet version summons a fixed pseudo-pet rather than being an attack launched from the pet itself. This would suggest the following differences to me:
1. Damage buffs may not work on it
2. The damage scaling from lower tier pets will only be due to the purple patch, it will not exhibit the reduced base damage I saw (which is caused by the pet damage scalars being used.
3. The damage is higher (assuming redtomax is correct).

Unfortunately I don't have a MM I can test this on, but if someone else does and wants to test it I'd be fascinated in the results.

Correct, damage buffs on your pet (so inspirations, Supremacy, Assault etc.) get applied to the explosion.

The devs hate villains thing is a joke. In any case, if you can't handle generating fury with your brutes I suggest making a Tanker and switching them to red side, problem solved.

No, Brutes are not as tough as Tankers but they deal quite a bit more damage (once they build Fury anyway). If Brutes were as tough as Tankers but dealt more damage it would be rather unbalanced .

P.S. Devs hate villains

Just to add one clarification to what people mentioned above Tanks get higher vales for defensive powers to make up for the fact that brutes get Fury. While Tankers and Brutes have about the same base damage (Tankers are actually a little higher) Brutes get Fury which gives them a damage buff meaning that Brutes get a higher total damage.

PennyPA gave a pretty good summary. My general finding is that when the market is stable (so not when there's a major exploit going on or right after a patch) a bid in the range of 66% to 75% of the maximum last 5 price will normally fill within 24 hours, often quite a bit less for salvage. Longer than that can sometimes get you better deals but not necessarily. My general rule for pulling a bid is pull salvage after 1 day, most recipes after two or three and purple bids after a week. Any longer than that and you're waiting for a significant market fluctuation which probably means a few months.

To use the example of a diamond with the last 5 being around 3 million, I would probably place a bid of 2.2million and expect it to fill within an hour. I could probably get a lower price by waiting overnight but I'm a horribly disorganized and lazy marketeer so I'd rather pay more and list my goods before logging off.

A few other tricks are to look for "tells" in the last 5 pricing. Most people when making bids only use 2 or 3 non-zero digits (i.e. they'll bid 2,200,000 but not 2,263,746) so if you see a bid with more non-zero digits it's often a marketeer. If the bid is quite a bit lower than the other sales then it almost certainly represents someone flipping the product for profit and as such is probably pretty representative of the "24 hour" low price. This isn't guaranteed but it can be a way to get a feeling.

In any case this is why I always advocate for more price history in such threads. I know why the devs set it up the way they did but I think only showing the last 5 discourages people from learning how the market works. Just showing the 24hour high and low prices as well as the last 5 would make a nice change IMHO.

The other part of the problem is that the ration of goods produced to inf produced is not a constant. Even ignoring the level variations different activities have different inf to goods ratios and different ratios of good types.

Just as a general point the server load levels are almost certainly entirely arbitrary (i.e. more than X players online is yellow, more than Y is red), it's entirely possible that the devs adjusted the breakpoints for different load levels in order to make the indicators actually have some value (since having all the servers green doesn't really help anyone). I have no clue whether that is the case or not but personally I always assume that sever loads indicators (in any game not just this one) are representative of the relative server loads at the time you view them but should be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to considering the total population over a period of time.

An excellent idea!

The same is true of any other form of mitigation, whether defense, resistance or control powers. Healing is the most generic form of mitigation which is useful but it pays for this by being pretty much the weakest form of mitigation (it's questionable whether it's better or worse than -recharge). It can only be used after taking damage which gives it a limited window of usage and in terms of cast time it's less effective than most other types of mitigation.

This isn't to say that healing is bad but in every set with healing the healing is the least important element of the set. If I had to choose between an Empath who didn't use healing powers but was good with the buffs or one who was an excellent healer but awful at buffing I'd take the buffer every time. I can easily use inspirations to heal myself if I take damage but with Fortitude on me I won't be taking much damage anyway. Conversely using inspirations to buff my defense to fortitude levels results in me burning through inspirations pretty quickly.

Yes and no, my experience is that a good Empath can definitely turn a team around (although most of the toher other buff/debuff sets can also do that), but often times it's intelligent use of buffs (particularly Fortitude) that is really making the difference rather than healing.

That makes sense, the main problems I can see are player perception and NPC accuracy with increased pet resistance to debuffs being a minor issue. The power modifiers could take care of de-powering the pet's attacks and an unresistable to hit debuff would take care of their accuracy while a resistable resistance debuff would handle making NPCs deal more damage without hurting sets like Thermal Radiation which provide resistance buffs (at least if I've done my math right it would be the same).

Regarding NPC accuracy buffs against lower level pets the problem is that NPCs are getting an accuracy buff against them but not a to hit buff. Applying an unresistable defense debuff to pets would give NPCs the same to hit chance only in the absence of other buffs/debuff, MM secondaries like Force Field which buff a pet's defense would seem to be unfairly penalized by this change. The mechanical solution would seem to be to apply an Elusivity debuff to the pets which should simulate an accuracy buff on the attacker. The downside is it would be the only use of Elusivity in PvE.

That feeds into the other issue which is player perception. De-leveling the pets is a handy visual clue to players that the pet in question is weaker than it was before. Keeping the pets the same level and applying a debuff might be the same in terms of numbers but it doesn't provide the same visual clue. It's not a big deal for people who understand the numbers but for a more casual player this could be an issue.

While the VEATs do have a lot of similarity to other ATs they do end up having significant differences.

Offensively the VEAT primary sets are closer to Dominator Assault sets than Melee sets since they combine both melee and ranged attacks. Additionally the Tactical Training powers plus Mind Link for Widows and Venom Grenade for Spiders give the VEATs a number of strong team support powers not normally available to other ATs (TT:A and TT:L aren't much better than the Leadership versions admittedly but TT:M is quite a bit stronger).

As you say you can make something similar with other ATs but the exact combination of powers available to the VEATs is not duplicated anywhere else and does have a greater impact on their playstyle than it might appear.

Wow, that's crazy. I have several characters who don't have that badge simply because they never happened to pass over that spot in city hall.

Huh, I hadn't considered the impact on pseudo-pets, it makes sense though, they spawn at your level.

I would guess that the not using enhancements is unintended behavior. Presumably when the power was designed the dev who did it misunderstood how the "Grant" function worked and intended for the power to use the enhancements slotted in Detonator. Why the devs never fixed this I don't know, perhaps they felt that removing it would cause confusion to players or maybe they are hoping to find a technical solution to fix it. When Issue 9 came out I imagine it got tagged to take TAoE and Knockback sets since those are the "correct" types for it to get based on the regular enhancement types it can take.