Draggynn

Not sure where you got your numbers from, but they're wrong. In the original build you posted FR will recharge in 27.5 seconds 60/(1+.963+.2175) = 27.5 seconds (which is the same number Mids has). with 95% ED slotting it will recharge in 21.0 seconds: 60/(1+.963+.95-.0625).

On your new build with hasten up it will recharge in 22.0 seconds as slotted, slotted for the ED cap it will recharge in 17.7 seconds. In Freezing Rain, over 4 seconds improved recharge is nothing to sneer at. Especially considering that 1) it stacks and 2) it's bugged. (read my guide for details) I stand by my earlier statement that the slotting in Freezing Rain is not worth the 6.25% recharge bonus.

Err hmm...I see what you're doing. You're counting the force feedback proc as being a permanent bonus. Even if you spam Gale (NOT RECOMMENDED) and manage to hit the target cap EVERY time, there is still only an 80% chance of the proc firing, so I would not include that as a permanent value in your calculation.

If you decide that you have enough recharge that your gains from recharge are so diminished that it's not worthwhile to slot recharge in FR, then don't waste your slots on the Positron blast, but proc Freezing Rain out with damage procs.

edit:
You may want to re examine the build with gale turned off. Hasten will still be about 30 seconds off Perma as slotted, and recharge on Tornado will be lower (like everything, but those are the two you pointed out). It occurs to me another number you might find useful in evaluating this is every time FF procs on your build, the recharge of hasten will go down by 1.7 seconds

The wiki serves a difference purpose though. In my opinion the wiki should provide exclusively factual information. I think most people who write guides are giving their subjective opinions, and as several folks have said, that's what they look for in a guide. I don't believe that the subjective information belongs on the wiki, and I know as a guide writer I have no interest in letting other people edit my guide.

I don't really expect any responses to my guide. I started writing it because I found myself having to post the same information over and over again in response to posts and having to debunk the same myths repeatedly. Theoretically I thought it would be easier to write a guide and then just direct people there so that I didn't need to go into a lengthy explanation every time. Of course then I started writing the guide...and now I think it would probably have been easier to just keep repeating myself

This. Especially if you want to try to say something more than just stating what the powers are and what you took and not simply repeat what someone else has said. I've been working on my guide for almost two years now, and hope to finally get it finished this summer.

Glad you guys liked it!! I've been trying to snag a piece form him for over a year now after seeing all the awesome commissions folks here had gotten from him (especially you Caemgen), and finally managed to get in before his queue filled up. I almost commissioned several in a row from him because there were spots open, but managed to contain myself

No idea on that one, you'd have to ask the artist! I've decided to explain as perhaps he is getting ready to blow a gale force wind.

Were you linking the images instead of the pages. Depending on your browser you can just right-click and select "Copy Image Location" or sometimes you have to go to the image properties to get the image link

According to red's only the -speed is irresistible, could be wrong though.

That was sort of my point. Doing this would be rather challenging and I have to think some of the numbers we settled on for this would have to be rather arbitrary, especially for your Hurricane example.


Trying to figure out where where your 33% is coming from, because i'm getting a (1-.95^5) 22.6% chance/sec. I think better though than trying to actually calculate a number for the mitigation, KB, like recharge, would be better done empirically. Pick a mob to stand in for our "average mob" and then test damage incoming with and without FR. Of course the problem with this is that in Freezing Rain you can't separate the slow portion from the KB portion so one would have to report a single number, unless we choose an enemy with 100% -recharge resistance. And understanding how powers stack would be almost impossible from those numbers.

That looks like what Garent did to me.

Yes, but the question is how do you do that and how do you find a metric that isn't completely arbitrary. I think Garent was smart to just focus on the pure debuffs where we can compare hard numbers, but even there interpretation is still a challenge.

Ah, not sure how i missed it before. Yeah, it tends to work about 65% of the time, but that's just from empirical testing, and probably better not to include anyway.

Oh sorry, 95 is the AVs, regen rate, I suppose I should probably make that clear. I just rounded 94.239 to 95, I didn't pull 95 out of thin air. AVs regen 5% of their health every 15 seconds and a standard lvl 50 AV has 28,271.7 hitpoints. Obviously as you mention this depends on lvl and there a couple unique AVs that operate differently. But I figured the lvl 50 AV was a good baseline.

I agree with keeping it to the facts. I wasn't talking about opinion, but rather what this means in terms of game play. That was horribly unclear, sorry about that.

I don't think most folks have an intuitive sense of how -recharge compares to -damage, compares to -to-hit. The regen to -resistance was easy to put in terms so that the two could be compared side by side like I did above. The defensive aspects are harder though since you need to choose some baseline enemy for the -recharge to really have any meaning, and I'm not sure which enemy to choose. Once an enemy is chosen though it may be relatively easy to get a damage reduction number from empirical testing.

Fixed. Should have linked to it.

I would probably go into more detail on comparing -regen and -resistance, although exactly how to do that would be challenging. Comparing two sets would be easy, so the best thing to do is probably pick one to be a benchmark and then compare the others.
For example:
level 50 AVs regenerate HP at ~95/sec. So for rad that's effectively 35 hp/sec from their -regen.

This means if a Storm defender wants to "outdamage" the rad defender they need to deal an effective 35 hp/sec more due to their resistance. Of course, they only have a 22.5% damage resistance advantage based on your assumptions so that comes down to dealing 157 damage/sec. That is a number that it would be almost impossible for most solo defenders to reach, although trivial for teams.

How to generalize that into a metric though for comparing all of the sets though...I don't think the benchmark set method I mentioned above would work....perhaps a table would be better with a "damage at which X surpasses Y" values...oh well. Something interesting to think about.

I suppose in general I'm interested in a "what does this mean" summary. Trying to give meaning to the offensive portion is just easier than the defensive portion. Not sure what the best bench mark is there to provide useful meaning.

Nope, just means you've been around a while. Honestly, I'm shocked that folks actually tried to give constructive feedback.

Just in case the OP actually wants advice they should probably make that clear.

Optimal slotting for endurance goes:
stamina no slots: 25%
Miracle Unique: 15%
Performance Shifter Proc: 12% (If you have more than 13.2 additional endurance, 1 slot in Stamina is better)
1 slot in stamina( lvl 50 IO): 10.4%
Numina Unique: 10%
Pancea Proc: ~9% (If you have more than 5.7 additional endurance a second slot in stamina is better, and this is crazy expensive!)
2 slots in stamina: ~8,5%
3 slots in stamina: ~5.7%
However note, if you are going to put 4 slots in stamina, you are better of slotting 4 Performance shifters rather than 3 endmod and 1 +end, due to the recovery bonus.

not sure what they go for these days, but I'm a big fan of getting KB protection from Blessings of the Zephyr, personally. I would swap out one of your flight IOs for that.

Note that power pool stealth is also one of the powers that doesn't stack with Steamy Mist, so don't go that route and just get the IO

I don't think this matters to the folks who want empathy changes as this was already pointed out several times in the thread, including at least three times by me.

Actually, knockup will never turn into knockback. Knockup and knockback refer to the direction in which enemies are thrown (up or back) and this will never change. However, if the magnitude of either knockup or back falls below about .7 then enemies will only be knocked down and will not go flying in any direction at all.

Regardless though, what Stormy Darkness said about Psionic Tornado is accurate. Since it does knockup it is not subject to any of the problems usually associated with knockback powers.

Although TK is the only non-psi damage in /psi I find that you can get by without it by relying on vet attacks if you have them (black wand and Nemesis Staff). If not, some of the robots may become quite painful. Subdue, Will Dom, TK Blast is a nice attack chain though.

I'm not certain on regen, but the Numina unique is better than the Panacea for recovery (10% instead of 9% and a WHOLE lot cheaper).

KB IO in sleet is wasted. I would go for 2 recharge, 1 end (since you think you need it) and either an Achilles' Heel or a damage proc. You can see my sig and read the section on Freezing Rain, since Sleet is similar (controller level values) for more insight. (and I would probably try to scrounge up a few more slots for it)

It's a little unclear from this, but you do realize that the only portion of ID that is being made AoE is the resistance portion, not the mez protection portion. I think the players that thought Kin was better before will still think kin is better after the change. And I think the folks that thought empathy was better before aren't going to have their minds changed by what is essentially a resistance buff to kin (I don't really see folks clamoring for thermal or sonic buffs).

As I understand it the point you're trying to make is, "Other sets now have to spend less of their time buffing, and so should Empathy" I'm just not sure it's a valid point. I believe the purpose of the change was to eliminate some of the tedium of trying to buff 8 or 48 people that can make these sets especially not fun for folks to play. A side effect of this is that players have more time to attack, but that was not the desired goal. Empathy does not suffer from the problem of tedious buffs that need to be applied to everyone (with the exception of CM, but all buffing sets will keep that problem) and therefore does not warrant the change.

Will this additional freed up time create an imbalance...I suspect not. The buffs that are getting modified are generally applied proactively and therefore would have limited impact on the dps output of the characters.

Would it be hugely problematic to give empathy a reduced cast time on fortitude and AB...probably not...but that begs the question, "why?" And such a change would be unrelated to the current set of changes, and would require a reexamination of all powersets.