Chaos_String

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lol ok!

Well, it's looking like Sonic/Dark would be very strong to me, stacking those -Resists with Tar Patch. What's your opinion on this?

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Sounds promising. In fact, my new Corruptor (played to level 31) is Sonic/Traps. The idea is the same: dropping multiple Acid Mortars for lots of -res to go with the -res from Sonic Blast.

Plus, in all the time I've been playing CoV I have never run into another Sonic/Traps.

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Mid's is not letting me slot Cloud Senses IOs in Darkest Night and Dark Servant but it WILL let ne slot them on my /Dark MM. Is this a bug? Or is it accurate? If it's a bug how can I fix it please.

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I have NO idea.

Yeah, what'd you have in mind? I'm presently working on one too.

OwtS is a nice power. If I could choose just one power that didn't make it into my build, that'd be it. But ultimately, it's skippable. It's not an ideal endurance booster, as you lose half a bar of endurance when it crashes.

Grant Cover will be pretty important if you want to run lots of ITFs, and against certain AVs whose attacks debuff defense, but ultimately you could live without it. Conserve Power on the other hand will not be optional if you're intending to play the AV soloing game.

Basically, your best chain right now is:

Headsplitter > Hack > Disembowel > Slice

which does 1247.7 damage in 8.316sec, or 150ish dps raw. Buildup uptime is about 25%, which will add another 17dps or so (167dps), and the Achilles Heel proc will add about 5% to that, (175dps), but you'll only hit 95% of the time at most (maybe a little less, depending on the AV), so you're looking at 166dps, roughly. It'll actually be a little less since you'll have to let Active Defense fire, maybe occasionally use Aid Self, etc.

You can solo many AVs (and even pylons, though it will take forever) with this level of damage output, so don't sweat it too much. But definitely pick up CP, because you won't be able to sustain that chain for very long without it. And find an extra slot or two for recharge in CP.

If your heart is set on more damage, BS/SD can break 200dps, but it would involve softcapping without CJ, switching out CJ/SJ for Hasten/SS, and slotting some purples sets. It'd take some pretty significant changes and wouldn't be cheap.

Basically, what you need to do is build a chain without Slice, like Hack > Headsplitter > Hack > Disembowel--even if there's a short, half-second or less gap after Disembowel, it's a very strong chain. It uses only your high-DPA attacks, and checks the Achilles Heel proc much more often.

Getting purple damage procs into Hack and Headsplitter is better, too, and throwing the Fury of the Gladiator -res proc into Headsplitter is ideal also, since the -res from that proc will stack with the -res from Achilles Heel.

It's challenging to softcap all positions without Combat Jumping and with purple sets in two of your attacks, but it can be done.

Still, like I say, you'll be able to solo many AVs with the damage ouput you have; you'll just need Conserve Power to sustain your attack chain.

Not a bad build. You're right, the base value for Phalanx Fighting is 3.75%, so you're right at the softcap.

However, you could bolster your defense debuff resistance by replacing the generic IOs in Active Defense with Membranes (this enhances the DDR the power gives). Taking Grant Cover would also help you resist defense debuffs.

The single-target damage output of this build won't be stellar, but the AoE output should be very good indeed. What are your intended goals for this scrapper? If you're looking to run TFs, farm, raid, etc. it should serve you very well.

If you're looking to solo AVs, you will probably want to improve your single-target damage.

You should be soloing AVs by 32.

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I routinely take out Cimeroran Spawns several times faster than AoE centric Brutes and Scrappers because Shadow Maul is absolutely *awesome* (it may only hit 5 targets, but it will come back up more than twice as fast). Mg+Smite to get them to group up around me. Throw down with Soul Drain. Bounce back to get a 5 person Shadow Maul (which will get me 5 kills thanks to Soul Drain). Siphon+Smite+MG (kills 2-3 more targets) and then another 5 man Shadow Maul (for another 5 kills).

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Pretty much exactly like my DM/EA brute does it, only my brute uses Dark Obliteration, too.

The lack of AoE in Dark Melee is greatly overstated in the forums community. It's really quite solid as long as you're solo, or have enough aggro to herd groups into your Shadow Maul cone.

That said, I'd pick something else if I only wanted to farm. My BS/SD scrapper does it faster than my DM/EA brute.

Build looks good. I think you'll find that HT really helps you; AVs just melt when you nail them with it. Also it's autohit, which is nice when fighting Positron, Mynx and other AVs with a defense tier 9. It keeps them from regenerating a lot of health when your pets can't hit them.

Heck, with AssBot -regen on top of HT and TG (see below) I'd be surprised if you couldn't take down GMs.

Perma Tar Patch would be nice if you could swing it, but a couple seconds of downtime is no biggie.

Ummm, and just to make sure you're aware, Twilight Grasp is also a regen debuff. It's only -50%, but it is stackable from the same caster, and remember your Dark Servant will be using it too. By using Twilight Grasp even though you don't need the heal, you'll be helping your bots take the AV down faster that way, too.

Anyway, grats on your successes thus far with Bots/Dark; here's hoping that the pursuit becomes even more fruitful now that you know about HT.

Hard to believe that as an AV soloist you pushed Howling Twilight all the way to 49 and left it with just the base slot.

I soloed practically every AV I encountered on my Thugs/Dark back in i7-i8, and HT was a crucial power that made it possible.

As I'm sure you know, it's a -500% regen debuff, but frankly I don't know where Mids' is getting the 90 second duration; unless something has changed since last I used it, the duration of the -regen is really only 30 seconds.

Now I realize that your AssBot has -regen in the Incendiary Missile attacks, so you clearly wouldn't need to lean on HT as much as my Thugs/Dark did (to say nothing of all the set bonuses, procs and so on that you get to play with), but it seems to me that if you had the 60-70ish second recharge timer on HT like I did, AV soloing would be even easier for you.

Just a thought.

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I'm almost sure a gapless BF AS SS AS chain isn't possible without external buffs.

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can anyone confirm or disprove this ?

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Ablating strike (6 sec base recharge) must recharge in less than 1.452sec, which can be done with +314% recharge. I haven't the faintest idea how you'd get that much recharge in Ablating Stike. A little more than 100% in the attack is plausible via aggressive slotting. Quickness offers another 20%; Hasten another 70%. Five LotGs is 37.5%. Five 5% recharge bonuses is easy enough to manage, so there's 25% more, and if you took Weapon Mastery, you could get five 10% bonuses from purple sets (Melee, PBAoE, Ranged, Targeted AoE, and Immob). So that's... 302.5%. Still need 11.5% more recharge... if you took Confront and 6-slotted with Mocking Beratement, that would be another 7.5% (which IIRC doesn't break the Rule of Five with LotG 7.5%s). Need 4% more (sorry, thinking out loud). Kismet has 3.75% but that's not -quite- enough... or is it? I think 313.25% is actually enough, and we now have 313.75%

I think it actually CAN be done, but the build would be like clown shoes. Funny, but not very practical.

While I agree 100% with Umbral's comment above--tanking really is more about aggro management than about survival, and tanks are far, far better at it than scrappersl--a Shield Defense scrapper really does make a good "poor man's tank."

For a scrapper, mind you.

Mine has been the sole "tank" on numerous ITFs, Numina's TF, and a couple respec trials. The critical features of Shield Defense in this regard are these: AAO is a good taunt aura, and Shield Charge just generates a gazillion joules of hate.

Nothing in my experience--short of a real tanker--can pull enemies out of my AAO aura and off of me after I've hit them with Shield Charge, and I've been able to leverage this fact to good effect on task forces.

But remember: I can't do things like taunt 5 enemies off a blaster from 60' away, or punchvoke enemies off an Invuln scrapper on whom they've already fixated.

So clearly my scrapper is no tank; nevertheless teams run pretty well with him at point, and if I've got me, I don't consider a tank crucial to team makeup.

Very nice to have, mind you, but not crucial because of my scrapper's personal aggro magnetism.

Edit: I type like a freakin' monkey.

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NOnonononono... My first analysis did show this, but my first analysis was wrong and I openly noted this. Not to mention at the time of the first analysis the Energy Punch nerf was an unintentionally stealth one. I no longer keep the old EM in my charts to compare, but the change was step indeed. The combined impact of those to changes was huge for the set, but the set was already doing huge damage.

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My humble apologies then. Honestly, and I don't mean this in a backhanded way, I stopped listening when the analysis turned out not to be right in the case of my own tanker.

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As for AoE comparisons: I weight radius. I test them in game. I have one of each primary tanker set but Ice Melee and stone at high enough level to test their AoEs. (EM is on a brute but it counts for those comparisons.) I can very easily and realistically fit 10 foes within 8ft Whirling attacks.

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Again, please forgive me if I've made a mistake, but I stopped watching when your analysis was, by design, not weighting for radius.

And I understand your logic: yes, it's quite easy to saturate PBAoEs. Absolutely agreed. But consider: your analysis is of AoE damage output over time. And it takes some moments to herd groups into smaller radii in order to saturate them--moments that aren't (or weren't, when I, with all due respect, stopped listening) accounted for in your analysis of AoE damage output over time.

For instance, you might herd groups to a corner or obstacle to bunch them up for Whirling Hands. Problem solved, right? Whirling Hands is saturated; let her rip. The time spent herding pays dividends through the results: more targets are struck.

But Foot Stomp allows you in many similar cases simply to jump into the middle of a group and hit it. Bam: target cap. By the time tankers with smaller AoEs have herded their identical group to a corner, or let the mobs collapse into their AoE, or whatever, the SS tanker's Foot Stomp has been recharging for some time already.

I hope you're able to see how this does indeed make a difference to AoE output over time?

And then there's Rage. It applies to literally every iteration of Foot Stomp. It stacks with itself. It contains +ToHit that's always going to be there so that the attacks themselves can be slotted with less accuracy than non-SS attacks need, [/i]and still hit targets as accurately or more accurately all cases.[/i]

I shouldn't have to explain what a huge difference this can make in practice: the enhancement slots not needed for accuracy in the attack powers can be designated for more recharge, more procs, more minion-munching power than non-SS tankers can reasonably afford to slot (because they need more accuracy). It's disingenuous to argue that people are just going to slot an IO set and be done with it: because those who truly know how to leverage SS powers don't do that. They slot partial sets and min-max accuracy (not needed) vs. recharge (needed) and procs (the more, the better).

I hope I'm not coming off as a cynic or raving critic of your work, Starsman. I appreciate the work you've done to draw baseline comparisons of the powersets.

But to be fair, they are incomplete comparisons, which by design ignore data crucial to in-game performance, and as such, don't always inform an understanding of the way powersets really compare, especially at the high ends of performance.

There's a reason why single-target DPS tanks are now going with Dark Melee or Stone Melee in preference to Energy Melee, just as there's a reason why farming tanks still prefer SS to powersets which compare more favorably in your charts.

And the reason, to be blunt, is this: results.

They often don't agree with the predictions made by your analysis.

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Problem is, I wasn't able to stop myself from going “look, you don't know what you're doing”. Which means I'll probably be ignored, and will have to leave the thread rather than get stuck in a flame war that I contributed to. I suck.

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The problem is that Kruunch really has no clue what he's talking about, and Stars is completely unwilling to actually admit that most people that care about the numbers use attack strings rather than priority lists. Kruunch really needs to just learn what the hell Arcanatime is. His constant blathering of "add 1.25 seconds" was making me facepalm while reading it (plus his arguments that we're being idiots because we're calculating the numbers using variable inclusive formulas and that anyone that does math professionally is perfectly willing to fudge it pretty damn significantly).

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While I don't want to defame anyone and I appreciate the effort that the folks over on the tanker forum have made to inform the community, there's a reason why people come to the scrapper forum to ask for clarification on issues: the folks here are focused on emperical results.

We don't just postulate that it's possible to solo AVs; we solo them. We don't merely compare attack sets in theoretical analysis; we build scrappers, solo pylons, and measure DPS according to the results.

It's tangible, empirical, and in no way intellecutally dishonest.

While I appreciate the work that Starsman has done, his analysis "showed" that Energy Melee's single-target damage output was only slightly reduced by the changes to ET and EP. Once the changes had been implemented on live, those of us who had truly high-damage EM tankers with lots of recharge, multiple procs in EP, etc., could see that this was nonsense.

(Yet confoundingly, people insist to this day that we're lying; that the nerfs only reduced DPS by a small margin, and so on--citing Starsman's charts as "proof" of their point.)

In his AoE powerset comparisons, he placed SS squarely in the middle of the pack, absolutely refusing to account for stackable Rage and the enormous area of Foot Stomp. Yet farmers interested in actual AoE output continue to favor SS over many of Stars' "better" sets--not because they're blithely ignorant yokels, but because they get their hands dirty observing the sets under actual in-game conditions, and draw conclusions from those observations, not solely from statistical analysis.

Especially not when the analysis ignores obviously crucial data, like optimized, static attack chains for ST DPS, or the area of AoE attacks.

It's sad but true: even the "experts" don't always know what they're talking about.

Actually I think there are quite a few ways to approach min/maxing, and several different approaches work.

Let's say you have 3 cookies and 2 kids: Offense and Defense. You could give 2 cookies to Offense and 1 to Defense; your defense would be barely adequate for the challenges you're taking on, but you'd be a damage powerhouse. Or you could give 2 cookies to Defense and only 1 to Offense, and you'd whittle away at pylons and AVs and take much longer to defeat them, but basically never be defeated yourself.

Or, like many others who approach these forums, you could give 1 cookie to Offense and 1 to Defense, and sell the third one at WW's. This is the "sort of min-maxed build" where cost is an object, where the player doesn't want to shell out for purples, pvp IOs, etc.

I've noticed that some posters in this forum really like giving two cookies to Defense. They may not be doing 200DPS, but they have Parry on top of softcapped defense and 90%DDR for just in case, or slot Siphon Life for more healing at the expense of some DPS, or whatever.

And I look at these builds and think, "My */* scrapper outdamages this build by quite a lot," but at the same time I also realize, "This guy could really hang in there against some foes that would likely put me down." And I respect the other build as being optimized for someone else's playstyle.

And then there's the guys soloing pylons faster and faster all the time, but at the expense of certain defenses or QoL features I'd never want to give up. Yet I still do respect the optimization of a build that can output that kind of damage.

What I'm driving at is, I think there's more than one way to purely min/max a build.

And having said that, I own one MA/SR scrapper, and he has Air Superiority and Boxing, and uses them because all kicking all the time just seems idiotic to me. It would totally ruin my enjoyment of the character if he never punched. But like I said before, I'm aware that I gimped--had to gimp--my damage output to put those attacks into the attack chain.

And that's a shame. I consider it a deep flaw in the design of the Martial Arts powerset, and I won't be rolling any more MA toons, let alone leveling them to 50, unless/until that changes.

You are misunderstanding the way defense is applied.

Defense is subtracted from the base ToHit chance before accuracy modifiers are applied to determine the final chance to hit.

The base ToHit chance for PvE mobs is 50%, and the floor is 5%, so for mobs in PvE, if you have 45% defense, you floor the mobs' base chance to hit. (50-45=5, and it can't go any lower).

The resulting chance to hit is modified by accuracy modifiers according to the rank and relative level of the enemy, and certain types of enemies have accuracy modifiers cooked into their attacks, too. So for anything other than a regular even-level minion, the chance to hit you ends up being higher than 5%.

But the base modified by subtracting defense, not by multiplication as you have assumed.

For a more complete description, I refer you to Arcanaville's Guide to the relationship between ToHit and Defense.

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Now I remember that Boxing could be interchangeable with Thunder Kick, but TK is still slightly better than Boxing (I think TK has better burst while Boxing might have equal or even better DPS at a certain range of recharge, but higher recharge puts TK ahead).

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I can't imagine any attack chain which would be better with Boxing instead of Thunder Kick. Thunder Kick animates faster and does more damage. So, even Thunder Kick with a gap of dead air to bring it in line with Boxing's animation time is better than Boxing. The only advantage Boxing has is a slightly faster recharge time, but frankly, any attack chain that desperately wants to use Boxing as fast as it's recharged needs to be thrown out the window.

The only reason to use Boxing instead of Thunder Kick is if you're going for Tough/Weave and need to save a power selection. And then you're sacrificing DPA relative to what you'd have with Thunder Kick.

Sure, using just the attacks from your primary, you can do fine DPS with MA. That wasn't the question. The question is whether adding punches to your combo by using pool attacks like Boxing or Air Superiority will gimp your damage output.

And the fact is that it does. Those pool attacks don't really belong in most scrapper max-DPS chains. There used to be a buzzsaw DM/* concept that used Boxing, but that's no longer a performer because Shadow Punch got a longer animaton and Siphon Life became a good attack. So Boxing's back in the doghouse with the other dogs.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any serious scrapper DPS chains that would actually want Boxing, let alone Air Superiority (which is worse for DPS), so in that sense if you use it, yes, you are gimping yourself.

OTOH, like I said, at least Air Sup is a good mitigation tool.

I have a MA/SR scrapper who uses an attack chain of AirSup > SK > TK > Boxing, and yeah, the damage is pretty gimp.

But at least he punches. And the chain spams knockdown, too, which is useful against bosses.

Ultimately I don't recommend it, though; I built mine this way a long time ago for conceptual reasons, and I like the toon, but now that I've built a couple 200+ DPS scrappers, going back to 150ish DPS feels really lame.

My fire/storm/stone does extremely well.

With flashfire/thunderclap/fault I'm able to keep most of the bosses stunned most of the time, and there's plenty of damage from freezing rain, fault, hotfeet, cages+bonfire, imps and so on.

In my experience, I do better toe-to-toe with big groups of bosses than any fire/kin can, but of course teams love the SB and FS that kins bring. Freezing Rain is a good damage boost, especially because the -defense helps people hit +4s, but the +damage is nothing like FS, of course.

It's the constantly-stacking stuns that really make me popular on boss farms though. Thunderclap really does make a big difference in this regard even though by itself it's only mag 2. But with Flashfire and Fault also cycling, the stuns make it really easy for everyone to do their thing and stay alive. The bosses really don't get a lot of chances to attack.

I can spot-solo spawns of +4 bosses on 8-person teams, too, but it is risky, and of course it's much faster with a team helping.

See, I was suggesting you use the extra slots from Parry to slot Deflection for resistance AND defense; for instance, LotG +rech, +def, +def/end AND Aegis +res, +end, +res/end would fully slot for both resistance and defense, and give you very good endurance reduction as well.

Hack does look much better. Without Hasten you're not going to get it to recharge much faster than that, so I don't really know what else to tell you. It won't bookend Headsplitter, but maybe you can plan out an attack chain that makes the most of both.

When you get to the point of actually planning out a ST DPS attack chain, you may find it necessary to get rid of Slice and pick up the faster-animating Slash, or even bringing back Parry instead. This may allow you to maximize Hack and Headsplitter better by giving you a less time-consuming filler attack. But for now I don't have time to open that can of worms.

I've noticed a strong upswing in rare salvage prices on redside in the past several days (basically since the 2xp announcement). So is that what we're doing now, salting them away for the feeding frenzy at the end of July?

Which brings me to another question: patrol xp doesn't apply to AE content. Will 2xp be shut off in AE missions as well?

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Chaos..yes you did. However I think (of course with all the holiday stuff and family I could be brainfarting) changed the build some.

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OK, I'll take another look then.

OK: first of all, although it's pretty cool that you've managed to come close to the melee defense softcap without any defense enhancement in Deflection, allowing you to slot more S/L resistance into the power with the Impervium Armor resistance set, you could really avoid a lot of contortionist slotting elsewhere in your build (like putting Kinetic Combat in Hack) by slotting Deflection for defense as well. In fact, the defense is really more important than the resistance, and if I had to choose only one, I'd choose defense. But I think you can get by with both, which will be very nice, if you follow my advice in the bolded text a few paragraphs down.

Also, the Miracle +recovery is badly misplaced in Aid Other. Slotted there, it will only function for 2 minutes every time you heal someone else, and if you've nobody else to heal, you won't be getting the benefit. You need to get that Miracle into Health or True Grit.

Next, right up there with Headsplitter, Hack is one of your MVP attacks, since you have it slotted with the Achilles Heel proc. So get its numbers up into a more respectable range. Kinetic combat is a great set for typed defense builds (of which I have a few), but it isn't so great for positional defense builds like this one. And if you had Deflection slotted for any defense at all, you wouldn't need that crummy 1.88% melee.

To put it in perspective, Hack does better damage for the animation time than Disembowel: in fact, it's not far behind Headsplitter. And right now, it's the home of your Achilles Heel proc, which you want to check as often as you can. So I'd get better acc/dam/rech into that power.

As for Parry, well, you don't need it the majority of the time. If you plan on taking on a lot of custom enemies in AE missions, then it could be useful, and it will help you when your defense is debuffed, but even considering those benefits, it's pretty marginal in a softcapped build, since if you don't need the extra defense, it's nothing more than a drag on DPS.

If I were you, I'd lose Parry and work in Conserve Power. Your endurance problems will be thereby solved, and you will have 3-4 extra slots to throw at your other powers. Most notably, defense in deflection, an extra slot for Hack which so richly deserves 6, and maybe an extra slot in Health for that Miracle unique.

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Is BS/SD a "av killer...or can it be?" I dont know if Im just tryin to do it all at once and getting nothing as a result.

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Every week this seems to come up. Just a few days ago, a poster said in another thread that he'd never heard of a broadsword scrapper soloing an AV. I came into the thread a little late, but I posted a list of AVs my BS/SD scrapper has soloed--probably not a complete list because I don't record the fights--and there were at least a couple dozen of them, including a couple fights where I soloed 2 AVs at once.

Nobody acknowledged that post, the thread died with my list at the end of it, and it fell off the front page. It's the same way every time. Next week there will be someone else doubting whether broadsword scrappers can solo AVs. I guess that's because I didn't make videos, post threads about it, or make a sig which tells how many AVs my BS/SD scrapper has soloed.

That's mostly because I have half a dozen toons on half a dozen ATs which have all soloed AVs, and the novelty of it wore off for me back in i8 sometime.

But yes, BS/SD can be made into a viable AV soloer.

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Perhaps I should stick with my resist based scrapper....seem to have better luck. On paper it seems this would be stronger (of course I have no luck what so ever normally with rolls)

Please for the love of god dont put any purple sets in there...I dont want to have to sell my kids to get them ( well maybe 1...)

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I don't remember 100%, but it seems I posted before to give you some advice, and Fury Flechette posted you a shoestring-budget BS/SD build that achieves some OK defense numbers.

Problem is, OK defense numbers aren't going to float you if you like to appear at Freak Tank conventions wearing a t-shirt that reads, "1 g07z ur fr33k r1gh7 h34r b1chizz!" You will need softcapped defenses (i.e. 45% to melee, at least) and some combination of enhanced smash/lethal resistance and self-healing.

I don't like to build BS/SD scrappers under cost restraints, because they're honestly NOT very cheap to both softcap and build for good damage output. But I will refer you to John_Printemps Shield Defense guide, which may contain some helpful pointers for you, if you're having issues with survival.

One final note though: if you're absolutely opposed to using any purple or other very expensive enhancements (like PvP IOs), then I have to say, you're probably using the wrong powersets to create an AV soloist.

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dave_p:

Those numbers are very, very misleading. They're also incorrect--your division's wrong. I'm not sure why, but it is. For example, Ball Lightning's single-target DPA should be 59.64 (63.81 Damage / 1.07 Activation Time). There are division errors all the way through your data--you'll want to recheck them all.

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No, they're exactly as accurate as City of Data is and account for Arcanatime. Straight divisions are what's misleading. And I already said that if you manage to hit the AoE cap for SS, you catch up to the cone attacks or ranged AoEs, but again, if your starting point is 1/2 of those other attacks, you're still not catching all the way up, even if you happen to hit all 16 mobs, which, lets face it, rarely happens.

Elec might beat out Ice becaues Ice Storm recharges so slowly, but then IC has approx 3x the DPA or SS (yeah, yeah, it's a rain). Blizzard also far outdamages TB too--I'd call those two a wash. Elec absolutely does not beat out En (hardly an AoE powerhouse itself) for any practical purposes. Ball Lightning does a hair more damage than ET, but ET recharges faster, and EB outdamages & outrecharges SS. Yes, you could argue Elec does decent AoE damage (more than En or Ice) given absolutely perfect conditions, but for most practical situations, it's below average.

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Oh, I see. We're dealing with "fuzzy math" here. If straight division is supposedly "misleading", then exactly how are you making the division?

Or is that just an elaborate way of saying "I can throw any numbers out there I want, even if they're completely and utterly mathematically incorrect, but you have to believe me because I'm invoking Arcanaville's name in the middle"? Because that's what it looks like.

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When it comes to actual in-game practices, "Arcanatime" (so named because Arcanaville did extensive testing to uncover the existence of and precise length of "server ticks") is much more accurate than the published cast times of powers.

This is because although an animation might last 1.07 seconds, you can't actually begin a new power animation until the server tick in which your animation finishes expires, and another server tick elapses, during which you are flagged "good to go" for your next power animation.

Server ticks are 0.132 seconds each. So, to calculate the "Arcanatime" for a given power, you divide the published activation time by 0.132sec...

1.07sec / 0.132sec = 8.106

..and then round up to the next integer, because the server tick has to expire before anything else can happen...

8.106 rounded up = 9 ticks

...and then add 1 tick, because the server and client take 1 tick to "sync up" and flag you as good to go for your next power animation...

9 + 1 = 10 ticks

...so the actual, in-practice, in-game cast time of a power with a 1.07sec animation is

10 ticks * 0.132sec = 1.32sec.

That's how long the power will actually take to animate in-game.

These numbers aren't just "fuzzy math" or "whatever numbers we want" which you must believe because they contain a reference to Arcanaville.

Believe them or not according to your own skepticism, but those who calculate attack chains to account for Arcanatime will produce much more accurate estimates than those who don't.

FWIW, here is a list of AVs I've soloed on my Broadsword/Shield scrapper. I doubt very much it's a complete list, as there are probably a few I've encountered, soloed and forgotten. All were done without temp powers or inspirations:

Adamastor (AV/Monster class version, not GM)
Kronos Titan (again, AV class version, not GM)
Hro'Dtohz and Nemesis (simultaneously)
Positron and Manticore (simultaneously)
Capt. W.M. Dietrich
Dreck
Requiem
Countess Crey
Chimera
Shadowhunter
Bobcat
Neuron
Anti-Matter
Battle Maiden
Infernal
Marauder
Black Swan
Mother Mayhem
Ice Mistral
Giovanna Scaldi
Vanessa DeVore
and a whole host of custom AVs in AE missions.

Those are ones I remember soloing with no temps, inspirations, allies, etc. I've done a whole host of others with various inspirations and temps, including the rest of the Praetorians, Black Scorpion, several custom AE villains, and I can't remember if I did the Psy Clockwork King with or without inspirations.

And no, I didn't make videos or screenshots.

So anyway. Yeah, I've soloed AVs on my Broadsword scrapper, too.

Edit: just remembered a couple.

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They don't exist to justify a rating or explain why the rating was less than perfect. The player has no need to justify or explain the rating, and therefore ratings of three stars without comments are perfectly valid.

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Deliberately avoiding what I said about 1- or 2-star ratings being "low", but okay.

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Fine. 1- or 2-star ratings without comments are also valid. I used 3-star specifically because I told Lazarus, "By my rubric, I may have 3-starred your arc, and I make no apology." And Lazarus replied, approximately, "That's OK as long as you explain yourself."

Either way, a rating of 2 stars is as valid as a rating of 5, with or without commentary, and as long as the ratings aren't given maliciously, they aren't griefing. Lazarus has opted to defend the position that they are, simply because they don't provide the author with a solution.

Frankly, the only reason that you and I are going back and forth is because you presumed to step in and reply to one of my posts. The basis for my viewpoint has been disagreement with this notion that droppng from five to four stars overnight implies griefing, and the idea that a three-star rating given without comment constitutes some form of griefing.

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I see now that you're generally about playing rhetorical games, which is fine - just own up to it.

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On the contrary, I've made considerable effort to remain clear and be straightforward.

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And my point was simply that ratings without comments aren't constructive.

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To rehash just a little more, I agree that ratings without comments aren't constructive criticism; however they are still valid ratings, and serve a purpose within the larger playerbase.

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If you don't care about anyone else improving what they do, by all means, rate and move on.

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From declining to leave a comment to accompany a rating, it simply doesn't follow that I don't care about anyone else improving what they do. In point of fact, I help people improve themselves in a variety of ways every day, whether I include a comment when rating a particular MA arc or not.

It does follow, however, that I don't care enough about that specific arc to open myself to possible harassment, griefing and pointless debate. That's logically implicit.

But you choose to generalize that reticence to imply that I'm not a helpful or considerate person, in order to indict my personality on general terms through logical fallacy.

It is you who are playing rhetorical games.

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Your solution of just not providing feedback on things that are questionable is one way of dealing with that. The educator in me prefers to see people able to learn and improve, so I tend to take the other approach when I can. Different strokes, etc.

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While I'd like to be helpful to authors whose story arcs could be significantly improved with simple corrections, the history of this forum suggests to me that it's better just to rate the arc and move on in most cases. For example: let's say a story arc is full of text like this:

"I need you, and, um, whomever is with you, to, er, to go to the alternate dimension and determine, if you can, a way of stopping all the munchkins, I don't care how, you'll think of something, and if possible, bring back the red, green, and blue rolls of cellophane that were taken from the warehouse."

Now, I'm pretty sure that the text is a run-on sentence and would read better this way:

"I need you and your team to get over to the alternate dimension and find a way to stop those munchkins. You'll think of something. And try to find those three rolls of cellophane that were taken from the warehouse."

Or, if that doesn't sound in character for the contact, then at the very least:

"I need you and um, whomever is with you, to, er, to go to the alternate dimension and determine, if you can, a way of stopping all the munchkins. I don't care how. You'll think of something. And if possible, bring back the red, green, and blue rolls of cellophane that were taken from the warehouse."

...because at least this way, it isn't a run-on sentence. It reads better with periods separating the major ideas.

But heaven forbid I should comment that there are "too many commas" in the text. We've seen how that's worked out for others in the past. It hasn't gone to the betterment of story arcs everywhere, to say the least.