Bill Z Bubba

Huh. If I yank the slots from health on my I-19 build I go from 1912 HP and 27.4 HP/sec regen to 1862 HP 21.1 HP/sec regen.

Think I'll stick with 6slotting health, thanks.

And for whoever asked the insanely dumb question of "if you solo why do you need incarnate stuff," I solo and need IOs to do it. What's the difference?

With IOs I can run at +4/x8 w/ bosses and have soloed a good number of AVs. Without IOs, I couldn't do these things. With incarnate abilities I'll be able to solo some of the things I'm unable to solo now.

Incarnate abilities are character advancement. If you don't see the "need" for that, then don't bother even slotting TOs.

And now you're also seeing what I spent years up against. It's just not worth it.

Mulitplayer means that you CAN team with other people. It does NOT mean you have to.

Thankfully there WILL be solo-centric paths for the incarnate stuff. It will probably be much slower than going the team route, but it will be there. Or at least, the devs have stated as much but with the recent overhaul they may very well have dumped that plan. We won't know until we know, obviously.

The_Britisher,

I must start my reply with the following statement: I spent years requesting the removal of the minimum team size requirement for TFs. It's an arbitrary design decision that has no real meaning behind it considering the fact that we are able to solo these events as long as we can get enough people to start the thing and then keep one teammate on the team but logged off.

However, after many years of fighting this fight and covering every angle I and anyone else could come up with there remained a simple truth: The developers are avoiding idiots.

I'll repeat this statement so that it sinks in: The developers are avoiding idiots.

Explanation: The moment they remove minimum team size requirements, some mindless special snowflake will start the tf/sf without reading the big red letters stating "While you can start this event solo, it is designed for a team and there is a high likelihood that you will fail when attempting it solo" and then this twit will come to the boards whining up a storm that he's unable to complete said task and that this is unacceptable.

Make no mistake here: There is NO other reason to keep TF/SFs min team size locked. It is ONLY in place so that the devs can avoid the crying from those types of players.

It is no different than the reason that kheldians are blocked from the flight and teleport power pools. Some moron would choose tport twice on a warshade and then gripe about it.

So, as much as I back you in spirit, give up now. Save your energy for other things.

lolblaws, while I do see your point, scrappers do tend to place more emphasis on their scrappers than they do their brutes. At least this is true for me and from reading the forums over the years, I've come to expect the same attitude from many of my scrapper brethren. It's even true for me even though I have twice as many brutes as scrappers.

B_C, again, we've no clue how that tank was built nor how the brute was built. If I have a brute with only 500 million inf invested using shield and super strength, meaning AAO and Rage, against an SM/WP brute without nothing but the occasional buildup and fury, yes, the tank could be dishing out more damage. Especially if the one has calculated a tight SS attack chain while the SM brute was just smashing away with whatever was up at the time.

Slash, Swipe, Brawl, Strike, Swipe, Repeat

Real Cast: 1.33, .83, .83, 1.17, .83
Arcanatime: 1.584, 1.056, 1.056, 1.32, 1.056
Recharge: 4.8, 1.7, 2, 3.2, 1.7

For this chain to be pauseless, under the old understanding that recharge starts after a-time ends:
Slash needs to recharge in 4.488 seconds with 6.95% rec-red.
Swipe needs to recharge in 1.584 seconds with 7.32% rec-red.

Strike and brawl need 0% extra rec-red for this chain.

One item that messes this test up a bit is that since Slash is no recharged by the time the second swipe finishes, it adds time for swipe to recharge. However, it's easy to test around this by testing nothing but swipe, slash, swipe.

Here are the findings:

I always get the pause I expect before Slash can fire off after the initial chain.

Testing Swipe, Slash, Swipe always produces a pause on the second swipe.

After placing a lvl 5 To (8.7% rec-red) in Slash, thus covering the 6.95% needed, I now only have a pause before the first Swipe of the second chain as expected.

The problem at this point is that if I place the other lvl 5 To rec-red in swipe, sure, all my pauses will be gone, but it doesn't tell us anything of worth because the value of the TO is too high.

So I left the RWZ base's practice dummies and went back to Atlas Park to hit level 5.

But I went ahead and stuck the lvl 5 rec-red To in Swipe. I should not be hearing the not-ready sound anymore on the swipe after slash, but I am. Consistently. Doublechecking math: With 8.7% rec-red in swipe, it recharges in 1.5639 seconds. It *should* be recharged fully before Slash finishes its cast time unless somehow arcanatime is being ignored completely when dealing with recharge or maybe slash's root time is longer than its cast time and it's keep swipe from firing off even though it's ready to do so?

Now trained up to level 6. The lvl 5 TOs are worth 7.5% rec-red. I'm back at the RWZ test dummies. I only get a pause when attempting to fire off the first swipe of the chain after the initial chain.

If the recharge start time is occuring after cast time and is ignoring arcanatime, then the following is true:

Slash needs 1.223% rec-red in order for it to fire off without a pause.

Swipe needs... well, it doesn't need any at all. 1.056-.83 = .226 1.584+.226 = 1.81 which is greater than the base recharge of swipe. However, we know this is not true. I currently have 7.5% rec-red in swipe, reducing its cast time to 1.5814

Let's completely ignore arcantime for a second...

For swipe to recharge in 1.33 seconds (slash's stated cast time) it would need 27.82% rec-red to work.
Slash would need for the chain listed above, 31.15% rec-red would be needed. But we know that 7.5% rec-red currently slotted is enough.

So why is arcanatime apparently correct for calculating the recharge needed for Slash, but isn't correct for calculating the necessary amount needed for Swipe? I then stuck another lvl 5 rec-red TO in swipe. I know have 15% rec-red in swipe. 9 of 17 attacks with swipe set off the Not Ready sound while using the chain above. Just around half of them. So 15% must be VERY close to the amount of recharge I need in swipe for the swipe/slash/swipe chain to work.

Ok, what does 15% rec-red drop Swipe's 1.7 recharge to? 1.4783 seconds. How is this number relevant?
We have a stated cast time of 1.33 for slash.
We have the arcanatime of slash at 1.584.
Now we have a recharge time of swipe at 1.4783 that seems to be on the money.

I have no idea what it means.

You probably could have posted the link rather than the list. The primary difference between the pylon test and the analysis I did is that we have no idea what the builds look like for the vast majority of those posting where the ST analysis had everyone slotted equally.

What we can do is slap the two together and determine from that where brutes and scrappers are these days.

Example: Take Gaidin's 291 Dark Melee/Shield Defense scrapper build, remove crits, add fury, adjust for the lower buff values for SD and AAO and we should get a very close if not precise DPS value for the brute.

Arcanaville,

As per this post based on what you're stating here, followup/focus/slash should only need 283% recharge in FU to be pauseless rather than the 313% I had been using based on the understanding that recharge also started at the end of arcanatime.

I believe that every bit of testing I've done with claws showed a pause with anything less than the 313%, so my confusion here is wide open. Please explain.

If recharge started its timer at the end of the listed cast time instead of at the end of arcanatime, then we wouldn't need arcanatime to figure out how much recharge we need in a specific power for a pauseless chain.

So... I'm betting recharge starts at the end of the arcanatime.

EDIT: Wait one....

Arcanaville states here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=3244522

What B_C said. But drastically change? Nahh, not really.

The first thread was designed around the concept of massive global recharge and tweaked up builds. In that thread the difference would be noticeable as fury would be dropped from the 90% I used there to the 75% I think to be the new cap for brutes when they aren't surrounded by tons of enemies attacking said brutes. Is the loss of 30% damage buff drastic? At first glance yea, but when you throw in all the other damage buffs it becomes less and less so.

The second thread, however, already used 75% fury as the baseline, so it shouldn't change at all.

Still want my claws/shield scrapper.

Unlike every other species, however, only humans have the technology to remove themselves from the Earth after making it uninhabitable for themselves.

Each of the species you mentioned would eventually find their point of equilibrium within their environment just as every other non-human species does.

I am not in any way stating this to side with the concept that the world would be better off without humans on it. It would be Earth without humans, nothing more and nothing less. Making the statement that one is better than the other is as nonsensical as stating that blue flowers are prettier than purple elephants.

I'll continue to fight on the side of the one being that actually makes sense to me: Me. If it's in my best interest to save you for later use then so be it.

Scrappers don't get Brute PPP. They get stalker PPP. No Gloom. No Darkest Night.

Gloom very well could pull a brute single target DPS chain up past a scrapper chain with a similar build. Gloom is that good. And don't overlook that Darkest Night isn't just a tohit debuff... it's also a damage debuff.

That said, I'm not positive about adding gloom into the mix will make enough of a difference to push the brute past the scrapper. I haven't personally done the number crunching yet on just how awesome the new fiery embrace really is and didn't know until tonight that the extra damage FE adds to other attacks is also affected by damage buffs.

So: Damage output: I'm betting that the scrapper wins on a DM/FA combo.
Mitigation: Brute wins due to higher hitpoints and access to darkest night.

Working as intended.

We forgot to add in another 9.75% DR debuff from Melt Armor.