UberGuy

Given where this thread has gone, I wouldn't be too worried about taking it further OT. Long-lived threads tend to do this, especially here in this forum. As long as people don't start flame wars I doubt the mods mind much.

You shouldn't assume that because I disagree with you in a thread where I've disagreed with others that I'm "lumping" you in with anyone. I disagreed with some of your points on their own merits... hm, pun not intended but liked.

Your verbiage, as you called it, seems to me to basically restate what we (as in you and I) have been discussing already, but you throw in a twist I tried to address in my edit. You refer to the old "egalitarian" reward method before merits - everyone gets the same reward no matter what they do. We know the devs moved away from that system for a reason, and it didn't just have to do with them taking issue with the rate rewards were pumping into the system.

The problem they have to try to solve is that reward systems have side effects outside just the reward rates they offer players. The "egalitarian" system was only egalitarian among players if they played the same content. Players understood this, and they did play the same content - the shortest content they could find that gave them a reward drop. That was a compelling incentive for everyone who wanted good rewards to play that way, which dragged in everyone who just wanted to play with others, which then sort of left other people out in the cold.

The devs tried to find a way to make TF A as attractive as TF B in terms of reward/time. As soon as they set out to do that, they needed a way to measure time to completion. As soon as they set out to do that, they had to account for wide variation in team performance.

Ultimately, no reward calculation that tries to go down this road is ever going to be able to make outliers not matter. The only way to try to prevent fat cats from getting fatter is to lessen the top-end outliers through balance changes. In this context, I think that would manifest as changes to content that make it less sensitive to build and playstyle, but that's a very tall order. While I can imagine making missions hard to crash through things like non-failable escorts, required ambushes, etc., the game is still basically focused on combat, and combat has a huge span of team performance levels. Flattening that performance gap would take some pretty hefty game changes that would not be popular with a lot of people.

Solving a set of interlinked problems like this is always going to be about trade offs. We have to assume that any alternative solution is going to have to address, if not solve, all the same problems. I can't possibly see the devs returning to the old "egalitarian" system, because it had playstyle side-effects on the game population at large that they didn't like.* That puts us back at trying to determine some sort of equivalence between TFs. What's would be a better measure of equivalence than relative time to completion? How would we measure/determine it in a way that's not subject to variations in team performance? If it's subject to variations, how do we represent it as a single value to calculate the final reward?

* The new system doesn't completely eliminate those side-effects, but it definitely has people playing more, different TFs than before, which is very likely considered a big improvement.

No, I didn't actually assume that. I specifically mentioned that you've got two broad alternatives. "Median-like" (ignore or devalue outliers) or "average-like (give everything the same general weight).

Any variation on "average-like", where you permit outliers to have a strong influence on the outcome for a large number of non-outlier values is going to be unpopular with those large numbers of people who are getting less because the top few percent of them are performing better.

They don't calculate the average. They calculate the median. They do that specifically to make the calculation less sensitive to extreme results at either end of the time scale. For the times you're talking about to end up as the median, enough people have to be executing at that speed to push those times down into the middle of the list of all times people are hitting.

Well, it's likely to get people's butts on deck.

Also, when you consider you're spreading that around over all the winners and various runners up and door prizes, I'm not sure that's overboard these days.

Indeed, this makes a sad UberGuy.

That's how I usually use MoG, so I would agree with that assessment. Note that this can depend somewhat on how durable you are compared to something that's beating on you. If you can see things going south at a dangerous speed, but still have time to get to your "oh crap" power, then popping powers Shadow Meld or MoG becomes a bit more "regular use". Given the relative fragility of Stalker HPs, though, it's hard to fault a proactive, early activation.

A few things.

First, to expand on what Fulmens mentioned, they have made it so that the way mobs calculate attacks always makes 1% of defense amount to a 2% reduction in an NPC's average DPS against you. The implications of that for toHit debuffs are a bit complex, because foes resist toHit debuffs for being both over your level and being ranks above minion. However, every point of effective -toHit you inflict on a foe is just like a point of defense for you (and adds up with any actual defense you have).

Overall, a lot of your slotting looks fine for the things you're using to slot. Since you have the HOs laying around, using them is fine. Bear in mind that removing them later will be annoying if you chose to (taking multiple respecs). For a variety of reasons but IMO heavily around the attractiveness of alternative rewards, a lot of people don't go for HOs these days, making them rare and thus expensive (and thus valuable to sell), so it would be very wasteful to overwrite them. However, it's a lot easier. Selling them for cash now would be viable, but you might want to do some research into what to buy to replace them. Meanwhile, your character would be less efficient - the HOs are definitely better than the SO or common IO alternatives.

Some specific questions or suggestions.

• Why so much recharge in Dark Servant? Is it to resummon him when he dies? Bear in mind, you can only summon one at a time now. If it's so you can sacrifice him a lot and get him back faster, that makes sense. My own slotting for him is two Endos and two Enzymes. However, how to slot him is a lot about personal preference. I don't find his healing very reliable due to his AI, and prefer to slot his mez and toHit debuffs.
• I would have recharge in my attacks. You have them at reasonable values for damage and endurance. The accuracy is high on some, but that's because of the liberal use of Nuclei for damage. 66% Acc is probably plenty, and if it's not hitting things you want to hit, you might consider investing in either Tactics or a Kismet: +toHit unique IO. If you could get a 6th slot in each attack even 1 IO recharge would help.
• I would also go for recharge in Twilight Grasp. I guess it depends on how you use it. I often solo my Dark Miasmists, and when I take on a lot of stuff at once, a fast recharging heal is sometimes very useful.
• It's not really very strong to slot +defense in Combat Jumping these days. It has its place if you're trying to eke out the last couple of percent on a build that's shooting for the magic number of 45% defense (the most that is normally useful under the accuracy/toHit rules we mentioned before). This would be a great place to stick that Kismet if you get one.
• What was the goal of Acrobatics? Is it KB protection? If so, know that the protection from it was reduced and while it's still very good, it's no longer perfect and very strong KB will still get you. Also, you can get relatively inexpensive single IOs that give 4 points of protection (Acro gives 9 now). These various IOs can be slotted in defense or resistance powers, making CJ or Shadow Fall places to put them. These IOs are also cost zero endurance to use, as opposed to Acro.
• I recommend more recharge and some fear duration in Fearsome Stare. IMO, this is a staple power for a Dark Def, and while the -toHit is important and useful, so is leaving a foe feared for a good long time and being able to stack the power on bosses. This is a pretty good power to look into your first IOs for, because toHit debuffing sets are pretty cheap, and you can mix those with Endos to get more rounded-out stats for the fear, toHit and recharge.
• Now, it's possible you really do, but do you really want Blackstar back as fast as possible? Part of my asking this question is that I'm not a huge fan of Defender nukes unless they have significant damage boosts going on, and Dark Miasma's not one of the sets that gets "singnificant" boosts in the way I mean.
• Can you turn the accuracy in Pet. Gaze into another Endo, and then one of the holds into a recharge? I, too, like having PG, but its duration-to-recharge ratio could use all the help it can get.
• The +toHit in PBU really isn't worth slotting for, IMO. It's quite small and only 12.5s long, and PBU's got a long recharge. If you want to take any of my suggestions about adding recharge to attacks or KB IOs, here's a place you can grab two slots for those purposes.
• The +Resistance "armor" toggle in the epics is really nice on a Defender. If you decide to dump Acro, taking Temp Invuln and slapping a Ribo or two in it (if you have them) is a decent plan, IMO. (My DDD is also a user of Power Mastery.)

I like your power choices overall, as they match my own with the exception of Blackstar (which is a very subjective thing).

I hope that helps.

There are different ways you can design any game, and some people will like approach "A" while others will prefer approach "B". The approach the devs here took is that heavy-duty IOing, at least purples specifically, is something you're intended to do as ongoing progression potential for a character that's already 50.

That means that just getting to 50 in a month and then calling it good with whatever money you earn on your way there isn't the approach they envisioned for someone to take to get a baseline 50 to the level of power that lots of IOs can provide. It's very likely it's supposed to be additional "grind" at 50, presumably performed with the 50 in question.

Now, I'll be honest, I get why someone interested in PvP as a primary goal isn't going to like that. I think a lot of serious CoH PvPers consider it annoying enough to have to level to 50 in the first place, and burn through it as fast as they can. For a lot of such folks, PvE play requirements are a barrier to their good times.

Having to play a while for heavy-duty IO access isn't a barrier to me. I'm goal-driven, and with no goals, I'm bored, so having something to work towards is fun for me. I'll play the same character heavily for weeks or even months, at the end of which they are 50, heavily IO'd and ridiculously bad-*** in PvE. Then, I'll play them even longer to enjoy how bad-*** they are. To me, that's a good time, and it's a good time that's very compatible with the goal structure the devs seem to have created.

That said, though, I get the desire of people for something like Guild War's PvP-only builds and loot. If the devs here had gone that way day one, a lot of things might be a lot better. Sadly, day one, I don't think the devs on deck had enough of a clue on what they really wanted PvP to be to come up with something like that. Such a system might work really well here, because we have so many PvErs who don't want to PvP, and I think PvPers who don't want to PvE much are common in many MMOs.

Even if they added in instant level 50s you could only PvP with, that doesn't mean they'd have to go for instant max gear access, and I'd be more than a little surprised if they did. I would expect people to still need to play (and/or play the market) to make progress. The place you have to play might change - I could see PvP-only characters having to PvP to get credit for loot.

Not my call and it would be no skin off my nose if they did, but removing all the progress requirement just doesn't seem our devs' style.

...there's hopefully going to be less reason to avoid click-intensive secondaries.

As someone who plays Regen a lot, I'm excited.