Arcanaville

Only in the jurisdiction of your own mind.

Assuming 1.07 critical rate and 1.95 slotting, break even occurs at about +69.5% damage buff. At that level the Scrapper ends up at 1.07 * 1.125 * (1.95 + 0.695) = 3.18 and the Brute ends up at 0.75 * (1.95 + 1.60 + 0.695) = 3.18.

I sometimes roleplay someone with no ability to recognize social conventions, so all behavior is appropriate to me.

Amplifying Claws' post, at the damage cap a Scrapper will be doing 1.125 * 5.0 = 5.625 effective damage, while the Brute will be doing 0.75 * 7.75 = 5.8125 effective damage, which is higher. Specifically, 5.8125/5.625 = 1.033, or 3.3% higher. This means if the Scrapper can achieve a critical rate of 3.3% or higher, the Scrapper will beat the Brute at the damage cap. Since the minimum Scrapper critical chance is 5%, the Scrapper will tend to beat the Brute when both are at their respective damage caps, by a small amount.

At lower numbers, the damage modifiers and damage strength numbers shake out a little differently. At 1.95 slotting, the Scrapper does 1.125 * 1.95 = 2.19 effective damage. The Brute at 1.95 slotting and at an average Fury of about +160% damage (80 fury) deals about 0.75 * (1.95 + 1.6) = 2.66, or about 21% higher. No Scrapper can critical at that rate normally, but at a more reasonable 7% average critical rate the Brute will end up about 13.5% higher damage.

Working backwards, at a 7% critical rate the balance point between Scrappers and Brutes where both deal equivalent effective damage occurs at an average fury of about +120% damage or 60 Fury. With the current Fury decay mechanics, its hard to average lower than that.

I don't want to sidetrack JayboH's thread, so see PM.

A specific example would make it easier to test that claim, and under what set of conditions it could be true.

Incidentally, you're aware that numerically speaking Rage on a Brute has the net effect of increasing damage by about twelve percent, factoring in the crash, right? More is better, and Rage is more, but its not the same kind of jump in damage that it is on Tankers (~ thirty percent more damage, almost the difference between having two and having three comparable AoEs).

Playing with recharge actually.

Its not a trivial question, because powersets are designed to do two things: deliver on a visual or mechanical concept, and deliver on a functional theme. A set that lacks either is going to be set aside in favor of powersets that have both.

What I've heard in the past (not from Arbiter Hawk specifically) is that many powerset suggestions have been perceived as veiled attempts to take some of the most powerful powersets, and eliminate the few limitations they have. They tend to do a little of literally everything. Sets that do everything tend to be seen as not very interesting.

I've actually been thinking about a buff/debuff set myself, and starting from first principles, like what is it supposed to be. I haven't quite got all the powers nailed down yet, but I do have three of the nine locked in that are the set-pieces of the set, and I'm building the set around them.

(The theme is: downtime reduction. Doesn't sound particularly interesting, but I think it will be when I'm finished with it.)

Farsight does provide a similar level of damage mitigation as Shield Orb, but the problem is coupling it to a heal as strong as Healing Aura. Its about 50% stronger on self than Temporal Mending in net healing, and TM is a heal over time.

You can always fiddle with the numbers, but the issue is whether the set can support both high self mitigation and high self healing for a buff/debuff set, and I think that's getting into dangerous territory. It becomes moreso when that's not even the focus of the set, and it has lots of other effects as well, such as Rage Orb.


Farsight has base 12.5% defense buff. It can be slotted to about 19.5% defense, which is about 39% damage mitigation. That means 61% of the gross damage fired at the defender lands. Shield Orb plus Power Orb mitigate a total of 48.5% damage, which means 51.4% lands. That's 16% less damage. On top of that healing aura is a 12.5% heal with a base cycle time of about 10 seconds. Temporal Mending is a 19.4% heal with a base cycle time of about 10 seconds. The sustainable damage line for Shield Orb + Power Orb + Healing Orb is about 2.43%/s. For Farsight + Temporal Mending its about 1.59%/s. So, not counting Chrono Shift (which has a low base uptime) Orbs is about 53% stronger in personal survivability than Time Manipulation.

That's a feeling. I don't think its fair to say that Staff computes lower than Titan Weapons, but even if SS computes lower than Staff that's ok because it feels fine.

Unless you have a full AoE chain, what usually matters for AoE is not DPA, but DPC - damage per cycle second, or average damage per second per AoE. And no one has a full AoE chain composed of only Foot Stomp.

Yes, you can add AoE damage to SS, but you can do that to all sets. You have to be consistent with your comparison, or else you run the very high risk of comparing Staff to every other set with a different set of metrics each one designed to make Staff look bad.

Realistically speaking, its extremely difficult for anything with less than three legitimate AoEs to out-AoE something with three. Titan Weapons has four: its a top AoE performer. Claws also has four, but it also suffers from a Castle miscalculation that makes all of its AoEs do more damage than intended. Staff is probably one of the better 3-AoE sets in AoE damage particularly when its intrinsic recharge buff is factored in.

Another area where imprecise comparisons can be problematic. You compared Claws and SS to Staff, so you're talking about Brutes, and Rage is diluted for Brutes: it can't have the same incremental benefit to AoEs as it can on Tankers. But if we switch our comparison point to Tankers, Claws, Katana, and Broadsword disappear and Ice Melee and Martial Arts enter. For Tankers, the net result of that swap is probably going to make Staff look somewhat better, because while Broadsword has low single target damage, Martial Arts has much lower AoE and Ice Melee has low everything.

By combining all the sets you're ranking Super Strength based on Rage's performance for Tankers, but then also comparing Staff to Claws and Katana which Tankers don't get. That skews the comparison when it comes to rankings.

Without knowing all the numbers, its hard to say one way or another. But I'm going to assume the numbers are similar to analog powers.


You'll want to make sure the projectile velocity for this power is very high: delayed healing could be frustrating for players.


Technical note: the second half is redundant: 25% resistance to damage is 25% resistance to resistance debuffs. The two are synonymous.

If I understand correctly, Shield Orb affects the caster. If that's the case, it sounds problematic to allow a defender to get 39% resistance to all, on top of having a heal as strong as healing aura, even with the mechanical limitation (its also a mechanical limitation that is irrelevant to high level controllers and any level masterminds). That's higher than average scrapper survivability at SOs slotting.


This seems to be a relatively weak power: cutting recovery in half, particularly near the beginning of the fight, won't provide significant damage mitigation until much later in the fight. I would suggest stealing some additional mechanics from Distortion Field. Instead of debuffing recovery in half, I would cut maxend by half, and then instead of chance for hold have a chance for drain. Cutting maxend in half not only cuts recovery effectively in half, it also essentially doubles the cost of attacks. And a proccing random drain would mean that some of the critters will drain out even quicker. This would be more effective and also seems to fit the name of the power better.


The chance for both stun and hold have to be small, because disorient can set up containment for controllers: its not a plug-in replacement for the puking animation by itself.


There's nothing wrong with this power, but something makes me want to suggest there's a lost opportunity here. If you're going to create a stationary buffing pet, perhaps the pet to emulate isn't spirit tree but spectral terror. The spectral terror has a fear aura, but it also has an attack that blasts fear around while foes are in range. I wonder if it would be more interesting to reverse that, and make the recovery orb have a recovery aura and give it a single target buff blast that randomly fired buffs at players. Maybe something like a 15 second +regen/+recovery buff that it just fired at players. That would be something that doesn't exist in the game currently.


Oil Slick Arrow is also a knockdown patch. Are you advocating that effect as well? Taunting *into* a KB patch might be too much for a buff/debuff set.


I don't see an issue with this power if it only affects allies. If it also affected the caster, you'd be stacking 8% defense on top of 39% resistance on top of a rapidly cycling heal. For reference, the combination of 8% defense and 39% resistance is about 49% total damage mitigation. Any higher than this, and you'd be making a slightly above average tanker primary.

Staff's tools make it interesting to make cases for good synergy all over the place. My Staff/SR is capable of running all her defense toggles plus combat jumping simultaneously while being endurance discounted by Staff. And the melee defense buff means I was running around with high melee defense from the start, coupled with pretty high AoE. And just as I begin to solve my own endurance problems with stronger slotting, Sky splitter is going to come along and give me either regeneration and recovery boosts or resistance boosts within the defense (at the very brisk rate I'm leveling even totally solo, that'll probably happen tonight).

I can't imagine what it must be like to have Staff's very strong endurance discount practically from the start with Dark Armor. Probably the most interesting aspect of Staff Fighting is that its combo buffs are *exactly* what most people need while leveling, particularly endurance discount and recharge.

That's a play of wording. If Staff is "close to last" in single target, it is also "close to first" in AoE. Its in fourth place by your reckoning out of sixteen sets (only Brutes have both Claws and SS, so I'm assuming the ordinal comparison is there). That is the top 25% of all sets in AoE, and it presumes sets like SS actually outdo Staff. If you consistently saturate the target cap, that might be true, but in lots of other situations its unlikely something with one AoE can beat something with three.

I think the more direct problem is that when we test the methodology in areas where there is more agreement on the relative offensive strengths of powersets, it doesn't match observation often enough to be reliable. Consider MA: suppose I reverse some of the more recent changes, and restore Cobra Strike to its original version of being primarily a stun, and eliminate Eagle's Claw's crit boost. That doesn't change MA very much given your methodology, but it greatly reduces MA's damage output at all recharge levels. And as I mentioned, it massively underestimates the gap between Katana and Broadsword. Given that margin of error, the gap it implies for Staff Fighting's single target offense is not very high.

Actually, that's not exactly true. My main has done A Hero's Hero but has never actually yet done A Hero's Epic. I was awarded the badge for doing Hero's Hero, and that mission arc isn't being changed as far as I know: it still exists in Ouroboros.

There are badges you can only get in flashback: the exploration badges in the pre-Incarnate Dark Astoria for example. I don't see why Hero's Hero can't continue to award Statesman's Pal and the updated Hero's Epic can't award Positron's Pal separately (as was suggested earlier in the thread). And if that is the case, the devs could retroactively grandfather all players to keep Statesman's Pal and require a rerun of Hero's Epic to get Positron's Pal, so that you actually have to save Positron to get it.

I don't see why either one of those things would be necessary.

Specifically to try to account for that, I created a metric a while back that attempted to guestimate the damage potential of an attack set by attempting to add up the effective DPS of the best attacks as ranked by DPA, with the understanding that the total amount of time that the attacks could take could not exceed 100% of the total cycle time percentage. I called it PeakDR. One thing PeakDR did very well was explain why Broadsword had measurably lower single target damage than Katana. The problem is that while DPA can judge the best attacks to use, DPA alone doesn't tell you how often you can use that attack, and by extension to what degree it influences total DPS. Imagine inserting an attack that does 0.1 scale damage in 0.01 seconds with 20 second recharge to an attack chain. It has 10 DS/sec DPA which is huge, but its net effect will be small because its DPS is low and the amount of time you spend using it - what I call attack efficiency is low (the ratio of cast time to cycle time).

If you take all the attacks in a powerset and list them in descending order by DPA, and then for each attack calculate its cycle time (cast + recharge) its efficiency (cast / cycle time), and its DPS (damage / cycletime) and then tally a running sum of efficiency and DPS, at the point where efficiency becomes greater than 1.0 you take the DPS Sum and divide by the efficiency sum. That's the PeakDR estimated damage rating for that powerset. If you vary recharge times by a specified recharge speed factor, you can calculate this dynamically for different levels of recharge.

I have a spreadsheet which I need to update for new powersets, but PeakDR beautifully shows that Broadsword has two problems. The first is that its attacks have low efficiency. That means you need more of them to make a complete attack chain, or alternatively more recharge. This means you have to go deeper into the set to make a full chain, and that runs into the second problem with Broadsword: after the first three attacks all with decent DPA, DPA fall off a cliff with Broadsword. Going from the third best attack to the fourth for Katana goes from Gambler's Cut at approximately 1.0 DS/sec (assuming 10% criticals) to Sting of the Wasp at about 0.97. Broadsword goes from Disembowel at 1.09 to Slash at 0.69. That, well, disembowels Broadsword's single target DPS.

You need a lot of recharge to eliminate that problem: enough to never need Slash. And that's a lot of recharge. If you can do that, BS can catch up with Katana, but Katana will still likely have a few percentage points of edge (PeakDR's margin for error averages about 5% for most actual powersets).

Incidentally, assuming I've entered the numbers correctly into this old spreadsheet, PeakDR predicts Staff Fighting's single target damage to be roughly comparable to Claws, depending on the amount of recharge, and not counting the effects of Follow Up or Form buffs or debuffs (but counting form bonus damage on sky splitter).


Incidentally, Broadsword's three top DPA attacks do not have better cyclical DPS than Katana's. Golden Dragonfly and Soaring Dragon both edge out Head Splitter and Hack, and Gambler's Cut smokes them all. Also, somehow you omitted Golden Dragonfly as the best DPA attack for Katana.

I don't think that's being silly at all. If I had my way, they would be.

That depends on which virtual environment you're inquiring about.

Do they? cf: Blizzard.

I can't imagine why. Of the three high profile people who have moved to the new project, only two of them would normally be involved in the creation of new systems - Television and Second Measure - and both of them were primarily managers: Television as the development lead and Second Measure as the producer. Virtually everyone who would have actually worked on a new system are mostly still here, including in particular the design lead (Positron) and the powers and systems lead (Black Scorpion).

I assumed one proc per attack because I did not think it was possible to squeeze two per attack and still get enough damage, recharge, and endurance reduction to make the SK-CK-SK-CAK chain practical. You added procs and sacrificed endurance reduction to get high enough recharge, and that means SK-CK-SK-CAK burns 35.21 endurance, or about 6.07 eps. The build has a net recovery of 1.97, which means not counting the endurance burn of PB or the endurance costs of Hasten, that chain is sustainable for only about 24 seconds. Factoring in the average costs of PB (slotted for end reduction since recharge isn't needed there) and Hasten would reduce that to about 23 seconds.

If you are willing to go all out on procs like that, a comparable Staff build should also rise significantly.

Seeing as how Eye of the Storm does more damage than Spine Burst and Dragon's tail without form bonus damage, and with form bonus damage it also outdamages burst and the lotus drops, I find the use of the phrase "very little damage" to be inconsistent with the definitions of all three words.

I honestly haven't done a complete build by hand in years. I used to be the biggest opponent of builders, until Mids came along. I was converted pretty quickly.

Also, I notice that the long form doesn't show enhancement boosting.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.954
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Violet Rumble: Level 50 Natural Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Martial Arts
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Medicine
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Storm Kick

• (A) Hecatomb - Damage: Level 50
• (3) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (3) Hecatomb - Damage/Endurance: Level 50
• (5) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50
• (5) Hecatomb - Chance of Damage(Negative): Level 50
• (40) Hecatomb - Damage/Recharge: Level 50

Level 1: Focused Fighting

• (A) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance: Level 50
• (7) Shield Wall - Defense: Level 50
• (17) Shield Wall - Defense/Recharge: Level 50
• (23) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50
• (25) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +3% Res (All): Level 50

Level 2: Cobra Strike

• (A) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage: Level 50
• (7) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance: Level 50
• (9) Crushing Impact - Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (9) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (11) Crushing Impact - Damage/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50

Level 4: Focused Senses

• (A) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance: Level 50
• (11) Shield Wall - Defense/Recharge: Level 50
• (25) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50
• (27) Shield Wall - Defense: Level 50

Level 6: Focus Chi

• (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff: Level 50
• (13) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge: Level 50
• (13) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance: Level 50
• (15) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance: Level 50
• (15) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance: Level 50
• (17) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up: Level 50

Level 8: Agile

• (A) Shield Wall - Defense: Level 50
• (37) Shield Wall - Defense/Recharge: Level 50
• (39) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance: Level 50
• (39) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed: Level 50

Level 10: Practiced Brawler

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO: Level 50

Level 12: Combat Jumping

• (A) Defense Buff IO: Level 50
• (31) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed: Level 50

Level 14: Boxing

• (A) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure

Level 16: Dodge

• (A) Defense Buff IO: Level 50
• (39) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed: Level 50

Level 18: Crippling Axe Kick

• (A) Superior Scrapper's Strike - Accuracy/Damage: Level 50
• (19) Superior Scrapper's Strike - Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (19) Superior Scrapper's Strike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (21) Superior Scrapper's Strike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50
• (21) Superior Scrapper's Strike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50
• (23) Superior Scrapper's Strike - Recharge/Critical Hit Bonus: Level 50

Level 20: Tough

• (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/Endurance: Level 30
• (43) Gladiator's Armor - Resistance: Level 50
• (43) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%: Level 30
• (43) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All): Level 50

Level 22: Quickness

• (A) Run Speed IO: Level 50

Level 24: Super Jump

• (A) Winter's Gift - Slow Resistance (20%): Level 50

Level 26: Dragon's Tail

• (A) Armageddon - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50
• (27) Armageddon - Chance for Fire Damage: Level 50
• (31) Armageddon - Damage: Level 50
• (31) Armageddon - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (34) Armageddon - Damage/Endurance: Level 50

Level 28: Lucky

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense: Level 50
• (29) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed: Level 50
• (29) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance: Level 50

Level 30: Spring Attack

• (A) Eradication - Damage: Level 30
• (37) Eradication - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge: Level 30
• (37) Eradication - Damage/Recharge: Level 30
• (40) Eradication - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 30

Level 32: Eagles Claw

• (A) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage: Level 50
• (33) Crushing Impact - Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (33) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (33) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance: Level 50
• (34) Crushing Impact - Damage/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50

Level 35: Evasion

• (A) Shield Wall - Defense: Level 50
• (36) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance: Level 50
• (36) Shield Wall - Defense/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50
• (36) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed: Level 50

Level 38: Aid Other

• (A) Numina's Convalescence - Heal: Level 50
• (40) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge: Level 50

Level 41: Aid Self

• (A) Numina's Convalescence - Heal: Level 50
• (45) Interrupt Reduction IO: Level 50
• (45) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50
• (45) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge: Level 50

Level 44: Conserve Power

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO: Level 50

Level 47: Laser Beam Eyes

• (A) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50
• (48) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50
• (48) Apocalypse - Damage/Endurance: Level 50
• (48) Apocalypse - Damage: Level 50
• (50) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative): Level 50

Level 49: Physical Perfection

• (A) Numina's Convalescence - Heal: Level 50
• (50) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge: Level 50
• (50) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Endurance: Level 50

Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve
Level 0: Portal Jockey
Level 0: Task Force Commander
Level 0: The Atlas Medallion
Level 50: Agility Core Paragon
------------
Level 1: Brawl

• (A) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure

Level 1: Sprint

• (A) Run Speed IO: Level 50

Level 2: Rest

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO: Level 50

Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift

• (A) Run Speed IO: Level 50

Level 2: Hurdle

• (A) Jumping IO: Level 50

Level 2: Health

• (A) Miracle - Heal: Level 40
• (42) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge: Level 50
• (42) Numina's Convalescence - Heal: Level 50
• (46) Regenerative Tissue - +Regeneration: Level 30
• (46) Miracle - +Recovery: Level 40
• (46) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery: Level 50

Level 2: Stamina

• (A) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy: Level 50
• (34) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End: Level 50
• (42) Performance Shifter - EndMod: Level 50

------------
Set Bonus Totals:

• 13% DamageBuff(Smashing)
• 13% DamageBuff(Lethal)
• 13% DamageBuff(Fire)
• 13% DamageBuff(Cold)
• 13% DamageBuff(Energy)
• 13% DamageBuff(Negative)
• 13% DamageBuff(Toxic)
• 13% DamageBuff(Psionic)
• 12.25% Defense(Smashing)
• 12.25% Defense(Lethal)
• 7.25% Defense(Fire)
• 7.25% Defense(Cold)
• 10.38% Defense(Energy)
• 10.38% Defense(Negative)
• 6% Defense(Psionic)
• 11% Defense(Melee)
• 10.06% Defense(Ranged)
• 8.5% Defense(AoE)
• 1.8% Max End
• 87.5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
• 44% Enhancement(Accuracy)
• 10% FlySpeed
• 401.6 HP (29.99%) HitPoints
• 10% JumpHeight
• 10% JumpSpeed
• MezResist(Immobilize) 4.4%
• 17% (0.28 End/sec) Recovery
• 114% (6.36 HP/sec) Regeneration
• 20% ResEffect(FlySpeed)
• 20% ResEffect(RechargeTime)
• 20% ResEffect(RunSpeed)
• 5.52% Resistance(Smashing)
• 8.04% Resistance(Fire)
• 8.04% Resistance(Cold)
• 6.78% Resistance(Energy)
• 6.78% Resistance(Negative)
• 8% Resistance(Toxic)
• 3% Resistance(Psionic)
• 5.52% Resistance(Lethal)
• 10% RunSpeed
• 36% ModifyEffect PlayerCrit

Correction: those were not bonus points. Those were just regular points.

Bonus points were awarded for making players quit. There's no way he could have afforded that Alaskan cruise without them.