UberGuy

I'm just going to let other people respond to the fact that you based all this off of crafted enhancers.

Remember, you were the one coming into an argument on how much effort was involved on obtaining these. Yeah, those of us regulars in the Market forum do live off of the lagresse of people too disinterested, lazy or uninformed in finding the cheapest thing, but are you really going to try and argue that the higher price for something (crafted vs. not) is representative of the effort people need to expend to obtain it?

Nah, don't answer that. I know you will, because the key part of the question is "are you really going to ... argue".

It'd be nice if there was a CoT-style teleporter that took you out by Technician Naylor. Have it set up near the ferry, walk in the ring, and it zips you up north.

A little like what they have in the Shadow Shard.

Barring that, a helicopter or alternate ferry drop would be fine.

Oh, I think I have some idea of what wrong is...



Edit: OK, I came back after I said I was done. I couldn't resist. Fan finally posted something concrete I could respond to. I guess I can see why he didn't before.

Chain leaping powers work by granting the target a temporary power. I am not certain, but because of this I do not think that the proc effect can be attached to the temp power. I could be incorrect on this however - they may have made specific code changes to support this. Hopefully someone with more experience with chains can comment and either confirm or deny this.


They stack. Achilles Heel's effect has its own effect line. Every distinct effect has its own consideration for stacking with other powers and stacking with itself. Achilles Heel never stacks with itself, even from other casters, but it (and all other known effects) always stack with different effects, even if they "do" the same thing, like damage resistance debuff.

This is quite worth doing, IMO.

They work. I have seen this exact proc combination work. Procs work in all kinds of pets*, including Pseudo pets.

If it's a pseudo pet I would expect it to work. However, it will probably placate with respect to the pesudo pet, which wouldn't be very useful.

* Procs in pets may do unexpected things. They only proc when the pet is using a power with an effect the set the proc came from can enhance. For example, a Dark Servant with a Trap of the Hunter proc can only trigger that proc when using its Tenebrous Tentacles. However, a Cloud Senses proc, which works in toHit debuff powers, will work in every power the Servant has except its hold, because only the hold has no -toHit component.

Which has been shown wrong, and yet you never replied to that.

If you can see that Stealth IO for 555 in the recent history, it's not "going for 100M". The fact that someone is willing to pay 100M for a level 15 is not a statement about Stealth IOs in general.

Seriously, how is this hard for you to understand?

I am. Everything I have said is in defense of the quote you pasted above. Do you understand how people debate things in arguments? They go round and round, trying to say or show the same things in slightly different ways in order to explain or support their assertions. Given that, do you really expect me to have made all these posts and never once tried to re-state my position using different words? Are you honestly hanging your argument on the claim that I'm not standing by what I originally said because now I've tried to explain it by stating it in different ways or using analogies?

Are you on crack?

I'm saying the same thing. I'm pointing back to the original post and saying it was correct and sensible. I no longer even know what you're saying. You're like having a conversation with a cloud of cigarette smoke: indistinct and vaguely unpleasant.

Consider me done here.

Dude. The analogy statement about cars is not the same. It wasn't supposed to be so exact an analogy that it would remain valid if you substitute that word in it there. Sheesh.

Try this instead. "Cars on downtown streets do not drive remotely as fast as cars on the autobahn." True in general. Exceptions do exist. Very few people would argue the exceptions unless relevant in context. And yet, here we are...

Yes, because I stand by what I said. It was not even remotely (ha!) "the wrong word". Seriously, is that what you're making this yellow-brick-road argument about - that you disagree with my use of that word? If that was your gripe, could you not have just said so? I still wouldn't agree, but we sure could have saved a lot of space in the forum DB.

Try telling that to the guys who've soloed four AVs at once using softcapped builds. The one I'm thinking of was an Invuln, and I promise you he didn't pop Unstoppable. Sure, I understand that Invuln != Shields, but we've got evidence of Shielders doing stiff sufficiently ridiculous to believe they can tank most AVs on being softcapped alone.

It's not like I'm trying to convince you OwtS sucks. I'm just saying it's not as important as you think it is, even for the optimization goals you're citing. (Which I don't think are especially common, but that's not really relevant.)

It's definitely not the case that all TFs I'm on go perfectly. I don't pug much, to be sure, so pear-shaped TFs are not the norm for me, but they surely happen. I'm only saying that unless you're up against really hardcore content sans helpful buffs (left alone against Reichsman, or perhaps the ends of the LRSF or STF) Scrapper HP and 45% def will let you to-to-toe with most everything else.

Well, as for the first one we were talking about communication, and the only data I have about who's being successful is the few other posters poking their heads in here. I can't claim much validity in such a small sample set.

As for the builds, I think there's a subtle difference from appeal to majority here. The people I'm talking about (including me) actually play the builds and modify them when we see ways to improve them based on that play. Appeal to authority would be something like "nine out of ten players build this way, so this build must be good." But what I actually am saying is closer to "nine out of ten players have converged on this build through practice and peer review." Of course, I can't claim anything like nine out of ten players - all I have to go on is builds I see and anecdotes or media showing what they achieved. So the way you describe min/maxing is really pretty vague, but broadly, it sure doesn't sound like it would create the builds I usually see.

Sure, some things like +damage would be sought more if they were larger. However, +recharge is dominant not only because high recharge allows for saturated attack chains, but also because it brings back all click powers faster. +Recharge helps everyone with clicks, be they attacks, ally buffs, mezzes, debuffs, whatever. Even if we could get triple the +dam set bonuses we do now, +recharge would be immensely popular because high recharge is inherently valuable to many if not most powersets.

This confuses me. Did you forget a "not" somewhere in there?

I'm not sure I agree with this, except maybe on the situational part. People slot for positional and S/L because that gives the most bang. If you can only afford to approach the soft-cap on one or two things, you avoid the most damage by dodging melee + ranged or L/S typed attacks. You can get quite good typed defense to the other damage types, but most attacks carry L/S types. Likewise, if you plan to get high defense to any three things, you end up blocking more attacks using positional defense, since Psi typing is a 7th, unpaired damage type, and toxic has no defense type. (Psi Blast style attacks can be dodged with Ranged defense.)

Generally speaking, it makes the most sense to slot for what kind of defense you have some of already through your powers, and lacking any defense (or any specialized defense), what you can get the most of based on sets that fit in your powers. If you can only get high defense to one type, L/S gives you the broadest coverage.

People do have options. It's just that the game makes some of them a higher priority than others. Some are trash because they're small. Take resistance for example. But even if resistance got "decent" bonus sizes tomorrow, defense would still be more popular, because the softcap is 90% average damage mitigation regardless of AT, and all ATs can take powers that offer broad-spectrum defense (Combat Jumping, Weave, Maneuvers, various Defender/Corr/Controller powers) that defense set bonuses can stack on.

It would definitely create more options, but I just wanted to be clear that I don't think it would really radically reorder how people view the good sets we have today, except in some specific cases.

No, it's done to try and draw your attention to the words that are suppose to have the emphasis, because you seem to have so much trouble understanding which words are the key ones in what I am saying.

If it sounds so foolish, why is it that the few poor souls still reading this thread are agreeing with me? I don't think it's because I have a fan club.

But lets address your set diagram. Yes, there is overlap in the costs. Simply because there are some Pool A/C/D recipes that are more expensive than some PvPOs doesn't invalidate the categorical statement.

"Cars on highways drive faster than cars on downtown streets." Could that statement be better qualified? Yes. "(Most) cars on (many) highways drive faster than (most) cars on (most) downtown streets" would be a more concise (and less categorical) statement. People who are familiar with downtown roads and highways will know that exceptions are possible, but they also understand and accept the broad truism of the statement, unless there is a context-specific reason to call out the exceptions.

You haven't given any such reason so far.

The fact that you either cannot understand or refuse to accept the relevant implied qualifiers in the statements at hand, and that you would go on to argue them on the basis of one recipe at one level, speaks volumes about how myopic and pedantic your way of interacting with people on the forum is. For someone making claims about my having trouble with English you seem pretty terrible at communication.

For me? No. I wondered if you really understood it since all those things are more easily true for a Tanker than a Scrapper, so the whole "Tank-like" reference is poor to begin with.

But none of that addresses how much extra mitigation you need when you have 90% mitigation from being softcapped.

This is a video game. The cost of "losing" is infinitely less. We can safely build for "most of the time" and know that "some of the time" can be covered by inspirations or whatever. I don't know about you, but I build characters who don't need to use inspirations something like 95% of the time, and then I cover the other 5% with an easily renewable resource that doesn't take a power pick.

Let me be blunt. I am inferring from this discussion that you suck horrifically at min/maxing. I think you do not understand how to do it. You can only see the power's stats, and don't understand how to map that to long-term play. I do. I don't just do this stuff in Mid's; I play the game with these builds too.

I play the game with other players many of whom share my passion for min/maxing characters. I review and discuss builds with them. They don't do things you (horrifically vaguely) talk about with their builds either. If it was just me, you might convince me that it was just me being weird, but it's not just me.

You just don't get it. I told you I know what the power does. I know what it does in practice. The point is that being softcapped without OwtS is better than not being softcapped with it. Is having both best of all? Of course! But if you don't need OwtS except once in a blue moon because being softcapped is so good, then it's axiomatic that adding OwtS cannot change the broad nature of how your character plays. "Transformative" means that your character plays very differently all of or most of the time, not just in edge cases.

You keep trying to aim in your scope for tighter and tighter grouping, and you're shooting at the wrong target.

AS A CATEGORY, Stealth IOs are not remotely as hard to obtain as PvPOs. Level 15 Celerity Stealth IOs are not the entire category. They are an example. One example. They are harder to obtain than some PvPOs. There are easier Celerity Stealth IOs to obtain. There is an entire other set of Stealth IOs that is easier to obtain.

How about you explain a situation where you use OwtS when you are not in trouble or don't think you are about to get in trouble. Stop acting like there's an exception without stating what it is, so it can be examined in the light of day.


I am not the one with language difficulty here.

(a) A Scrapper at the softcap is already at Tanker-like survivability, because, considering their defense only, everyone at the softcap is at 90% average damage mitigation, regardless of AT.
(b) A Scrapper at the softcap rarely ever needs the extra mitigation provided by OwtS. I have stated this repeatedly. You are focusing only on the magnitude of the total mitigation when activated and ignoring how likely one is to need to activate it. Players who have min/maxed their build have looked at how likely they are to need the benefits of OwtS and (prior to I19) decided they could do without it. I know only one such character who has OwtS. Is it nice to have? Yes. Does it increase their survival potential. Probably. But if they need it only rarely once capped, and I am telling you, flat out, that they do, then adding something they will need only rarely is not transformative to the character. It does not, by definition of the fact that it is needed and used only rarely, transform the way that the character plays in general.

Argh! Not this again!

"Random" does not mean equal outcomes.

Let's look at some real-world examples. When people play the lottery, there are usually reward tiers. If you match 5 out of 6 numbers in a power-ball type lottery, you win some (much) smaller part of the pot. You could win either the main pot or one of these smaller ones, and the odds you will win either are random, but you do not have an equal chance of winning the big pot or one of the smaller ones.

At all times you have some chance to be hit by lightning. You're a whole lot less likely to be hit by lightning if there's no storm overhead, but it has happened to people. You're a whole lot more likely to be hit if you stand in an open field in a storm and wave a golf club over your head, but even if you do that, you aren't guaranteed to be hit. There are only two outcomes here - you either are hit by lightning or you are not. If the random nature of this meant it was always equal probability of either outcome, you'd always have a 50/50 chance of being hit by lightning. How much would that suck?

The items in the drop table are weighted because we asked the devs for that. Everyone used to have the same chance of getting a snipe or sleep or confuse recipe as they had of getting a ranged or melee attack or hold recipe. But everyone wants (several) ranged or melee attack recipe, and very few people want snipes or sleeps or confuses. I believe it was in I16, the devs made (for example) attack sets more common and sleeps and confuses less common, because that better matched market supply to demand.

(Edit: those set types are just examples. They weighted all the types against one another based on, from what we were told, how often people slot that kind of set, plus probably other factors since all pieces within a set do not appear to be equally weighted.)

It still lasts 120s when placed in a click power.

Your examples are not representative of the set of enhancements covered by the name "PvPOs". If you think that 1/4 is representative, I really don't know what else to say.

What you provided was an exception to a categorical statement. Given that the categorical statement is true for at least 3/4 of the objects in the category in question (your number) it remains a valid categorization.

My argument has never once moved. Any wandering around the field I have done is to try and pull you back towards the original goal posts. You either did not understand or did not accept the original meaning of the post, and you now refuse to accept that this led you to make invalid assertions.

Level Celerity Stealth Uniques are not all Pool A/B/C/D rares, nor are they representative of them as a category. 25% (your number) of PvPOs is not representative of PvPOs as a category. You presented a single example as though it made the categorical assertion false. What I've repeatedly asked you to do is to factually challenge the assertions made. If you think that you've provided a qualitative answer to the assertions made by claiming that one level (and only that level)of Celerity Stealth IOs is more expensive that one quarter of PvPOs, I don't what to tell you. Moreover You flatly refuse to respond a quantitative defense of the original assertion (you were the one that introduced the example of Stealth IOs) which was not just for Stealth IOs, but for all non-purple/PvPOs as a category.

Let me ask you a question. Is what you are trying to argue the notion that by showing that there's an exception, the original assertion was false?

So you just run around popping it for giggles? I don't think so; you need to have a reason to pop it. You can be proactive about popping it before piling into a dangerous fight, but that still means you're use it because you're either in trouble, or think you're about to be. You don't use a power like this "just because".

For those for whom activating OwtS is as valuable to their performance as you describe, they will have had it already unless they're n00bs (who aren't under discussion). This isn't just a function of the standalone benefits of the power, which are significant in absolute terms. The final benefit to a character has to be looked at in the context of the rest of the build. Remember - my context was for benefit to high-end, optimized builds. People just don't leave transformative things off of those kinds of builds. On a well-built, softcapped Shield Defense build, OwtS is going to be nice to have, but not transformative.

FWIW, I am quite familiar with what the power's stats are and what it does for the user. I actually think it's one of the best "godmodes" out there for a Defense-based powerset exactly because it layers other mitigation under that defense. That doesn't mean I think that a softcapped build is going to find it important to have except in edge cases. I can't understand why you don't see that this is why people skipped it to begin with. They knew they didn't need it most of the time, and that's exactly the kind of power that gets left off in a highly optimized build. That's why picking it up isn't what I'm calling transformative.

Clearly, you do not understand the word "quantitative". "Most" or "many" is not quantitative. You have provided absolutely zero quantitative defense of your position on whether PvPOs and Purples are harder to obtain as categories than pool C/D rares as a category. Instead you have chosen a single set and only at a single level, and then compared that to the cheapest of PvPOs.

As a reminder for you, the actual assertion, which you have not addressed, was not that there were no PvPOs (or purples) that cannot be had cheaper than any Pool C/D rare, but rather that as a category, PvPOs and Purples are harder to obtain, by the market or any other means, than the broad category of Pool C/D rares. Dealing with sets of numbers as a category calls for collapsing those sets of numbers to smaller, usually singular quantities, such as averages or medians.

This is very simple. If you want to prove anything in this argument, you need to provide qualitative data to back up the assertions which you made. You are the one taking a position that no one else posting in this thread so far has agreed with. The onus is on you to provide quantitative evidence. Come on, we're talking about concrete numbers here. Why won't you produce them?

With respect to this argument, all I have done is reiterate and carefully explain what, exactly was being said, since you appear to repeatedly try to redefine the argument to allow it to look like you're correct. Comparing a single Pool C set to only the cheapest of PvPOs, while providing no context for how many other PvPOs might outprice that Pool C rare, is clearly you trying to stack the deck. I am spending all this time typing trying to strip away those layers of misdirection. Other than that, I really can't say I've gone down a path at all. My only goal is to stand my ground and insist that you actually back up what you said.

I really wonder if you have played a softcapped character. I really wonder if you have played with a power with a traditional "godmode's" crash at the end. The way you have posted it here, you make it sound as if you can just, hey, pop that whenever you want some better stats, care free. But you don't use "godmode" clicks like that. You use them when you're in trouble, because you better be out of trouble (or willing to pop a chunk of inspirations) when they wind down, since they're taking your other shields down with them.

If you're sofcapped, you just don't get in the kind of deep crap that calls for a "godmode" click often at all. I know, I have softcapped characters. Even in the face of high-order defense debuffs, like you run into with Cimerorans, Shield Defense is one of the better sets for Defense Debuff Resistance, second only to Super Reflexes, because like SR, SD's DDR is enhanceable (and fairly significant).

The further you are from the soft cap, the more important an "oh crap" button becomes. Someone with 35% defense is getting hit 3x more often on average than someone with 45%. Taking a "godmode" on such a character could indeed transform thir overall performance, because getting in deep is going to happen more often. But what did such a build take that they don't already have OwtS? What else did they build for that they don't have it, but aren't softcapped?

So yes, OwtS's stats are great on paper, but if you don't need them except once in a blue moon, it's not reasonable to define them as transformative. Sure, in the case where you do get your +defense stripped off, the performance of a character with OwtS is going to be insanely better than a character without it for a whole two minutes. But how often do you think that happens?

I have an Invulnerability Scrapper. He's always had Unstoppable. I redid his build to be a whole lot better, including being either softcapped or within 0.5% of the softcap to all damage types with one foe in range of Invincibility. When I worked out that build, I dropped Unstoppable to make room for powers and IO sets that got me to the softcap, because being softcapped is just that good. In I19, I'll take Unstoppable again, and probably only put something in its base slot. It'll be nice to have for those once in a blue moon situations, but it won't be transformative to his overall performance.

I'm off to dinner so I'll try to post something (here or elsewhere) when I get back ... if someone hasn't beaten me to it!

And no worries.

Ah, yes, your favorite arguing tactic: qualitative.

Would you care to make it quantitative and provide either the median or average prices? Use whichever you think best supports your position.

And I reiterated that again above. Swift, Hurdle and Stamina and Health at level 10 with no cost to other power or pool picks? Transformative. Three powers when you're already heavily min/maxed? Not typically transformative, with specific exception made (repeatedly) for builds with high defense who can add even a little more, because of how defense stacking mechanics work.

And as I pointed out, not one build actually produced included only changes relating to the new powers. They all included additional improvements that were already available, then tried to say that the three extra powers made the entire delta possible.

Were they defense capped before? If not, why didn't they already have it? If they are defense capped, how often do they require a big chunk of resistance that they want to be careful to only activate when they can manage the crash? How is obtaining this power transformative?

Well, I'm afraid you're almost certainly mistaken (even just in your own game).

Don't take it as some personal attack that we don't accept declarations like this that don't have data to back them up. Human beings usually suck at perceptions of patterns in statistical processes like this in general; it's been shown in several formal studies, and some claims of things like this around here (accuracy, drop rates, etc.) are local legends. So we're used to these claims, and they have never been backed up by data when people making them actually started logging their real hit rates.

You can check this yourself using Herostats, or, for a simpler (and less CPU-intensive) approach, just enable the in-game display of "Last Hit Chance" in your atrributes monitor.

This makes sense, and fits with what I'm saying above. If this is what's happening, you're projecting the odds of landing a complete combo onto the accuracy of your attacks overall.

Well, what do you consider a "good" amount of accuracy? I go for around 66% slotted accuracy if I can get it, because this is around the accuracy cap for hitting +2 foes with no toHit/Defense in play. If I can't, and a few popular melee sets don't allow for it, I can usually make up the difference with +accuracy set bonuses. I always also slot a kismet +toHit unique. (That's not just on Scrappers, I slot that on nearly everything.) That will normally cap me or nearly cap me on anything up to +3s who have no +defense.

Any attack set lacking a Build Up or Aim equivalent is going to have the same issues DB does when their foe is +2 or higher and starts with +def (or debuffs you before you can get to them).

To defeat those things, you're going to need high-strength -regen. Such entities have so many base HP and sufficiently high regen that you need over 300 damage per second just to break even with their HP regen rate. Your main soloers for such entities are all ATs like Corrs, Defenders, Controllers and MMs, who all have powersets with -Regen debuffs in the 1500% or higher category, some of which can be made permanent and stackable.

Such immense debuff percentages are needed because GMs and AVs have extremely high resistance to the effect, especially for high-level critters. (Even critters with no displayed level actually have a level. For GMs it's usually around the upper end of the zone in which they spawn.)

>.>

Dark/Dark Corruptor, mission set to +2/x4. There's no way to tell, but that pile of dudes is what hadn't already faded away of the entire ground-floor population of the room you can see in the background.

There are builds that would readily take on higher difficulty settings. This character's main limitation there is that she's not built for sufficiently high +defense.

Except that's not what I said. You seem very keen to devolve everything to the edge cases and try to frame the argument as if all references must refer to those edges. Try comparing the average or median prices of purples to the same calculation for non-purple rares. Then try the same for PvPOs to non-purple rares. If all PvPOs were 20M except for the Panacea and Glad Armor uniques, then it wouldn't be common to call PvPOs expensive. There's more to it than that.

Flipping that same thinking around, I don't actually think it's fair to say that Stealth IOs can be represented as costing 100M+. Level 15 Celerity Stealth IOs specifically might cost that much, but anyone looking for a Stealth IO not only can look to other levels, but can look to a completely different set that performs 100% identically for a fraction of that price.

Then, one needs to consider that when a pool A/C/D Rare recipe gets a really high price (let's call that 100M+) a player has the option of avoiding that direct market cost in the form of merits (of one kind of another) to create them outright. You and I very likely consider earning 100M no problem, and would both consider using merits that way inefficient. Yet we both know though that there are players who would either find it easier or perhaps just personally more enjoyable to spend two to four days pumping out some sort of merit to buy a level 15 directly. But if they want to do that with a purple, or heaven help them, a PvPO, they better hunker down.

So including all the optional ways to create a recipe outright, and looking at median or average market prices in order to make statements about whole categories of IO, if I were going to speak about either PvPOs or purples and ask whether they were harder to obtain as a category than Stealth IOs as a category, I would absolutely say yes. And I further extend that to all the pool C/D Rares as a category.

I'm referring to that thread, but that's not what I argued. I argued that the change was a more dramatic change for characters that didn't have Fitness (particularly including the low end of the game where fitness is not presently an option) than gaining three powers (but no extra slots) was for most previously optimized builds at the high end. I frequently stated that I agreed that there was a shift in power at the top end, but I argued that it was not as large as some were suggesting, because they were combining what they could do with three extra powers with room for improvement that was already present in their build, then calling that that whole improvement the change introduced by inherent Fitness.

When people talk about purples and how they are expensive and hard to find, do you think they're talking about Coercive Persuasion? Sure, there are characters for whom players slot that set, and if a character both has a sleep and benefits strongly from high recharge, it can be a very smart thing to slot. But because some people slot it does not mean that it's the exemplar of what people think of when they talk about purples in general, especially in the context of being hard to obtain.

Try putting together a list of recent sale prices for PvPOs by piece. Then feel free to discuss whether any of the pieces that cost anything like 20M are representative of what folks on the forums are referring to when they use a vernacular reference to PvPOs. We don't have to be pathological and restrict the discussion to the +3% defense unique - there are plenty of other PvPOs well over 20M. I'll help you out. The 20M examples are to the collective set of PVPOs what Coercive Persuasion is to purples. In fact, some of them probably aren't even looked on as favorably.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that you're that detached from the vernacular of the game, which leads me to conclude that you're arguing this point for the sake of argument. Then again, you argued some pretty outre angles regarding highly optimized builds in another thread, so maybe you really are badly disconnected from what people are doing and saying.

That does depend. If you are debuffed before your buffs land, you're usually not in a good place. A bit of kiting often helps me here, but it depends on how the debuffs are delivered.