Edana

No, since the calculation is an average over time including the crash. The AV/pylon regen isn't interruptable so it gains exactly the same amount in those 10 seconds regardless of whether you hit it or not.

The calculation is a simplification but if anything it underestimates the damage increase because it averages out the damage including the rage crash, ignoring powers with longer recharge times. For triple stacking it essentially assumes that every 4th shield charge does no damage where in reality if SC recharges during the crash you wait until afterward to use it.

You do find yourself ineffective more often but the increase in effectiveness between those times more than makes up for that loss. However it is important to note the actual increase. Even in a spherical frictionless vacuum.

No Rage : 100%
Single Rage : 180 x 110/120 = 165%, 65% increase over none; 100% recharge.
Double Rage : 260 x 50/60 = 217%, 52% increase over single; 300% recharge.
Triple Rage : 340 x 30/40 = 255%, 38% increase over double; 500% recharge.

The crash increasingly eats into the damage bonus, but you hit hardcaps on damage and recharge prior to reaching the balance point when the crash loss equals the gain over the rest of the cycle.

Assuming a worst case scenario of an SS/SD brute with max Fury, ~101% damage slotting in all attacks, Musculature Core Paragon Alpha and saturated AAO; Base damage with no Rage applications is 100+200+101.47+(0.15x15)+30+65=498.72%

Single stack average DPS% is 110x(498.72+80)/120 = 530.49%.
Double stacking Rage is 50x(498.72+160)/60 = 548.93%.
Triple stacking is 30x(498.72+240)/40 = 554.04%.
Quadruple stacking is 20x(498.72+320)/30 = 545.81%.
Except that the brute damage cap is now 775% so the quad stack is capped.
20x(775%)/30 = 516.67%.

So even at the point where rage is contributing the least fraction of native damage boost possible triple stacking rage is still slightly better average DPS than double stacking. If you could quadruple stack you would see a drop in DPS but you hit the recharge cap before that happens.

Not being able to do anything significant for a quarter of the time has a far greater effect psychologically than it actually has to damage output. It isn't fun, but it is technically better DPS.

I would say the inverse of that. Support can only go to other people. If you only use World of Pain on yourself and your pets then you've helped yourself stay alive and do more damage, you haven't contributed any support to the team by doing so. Use it on the team and you have; use it on both and you're doing both. Empathy heals and buffs the entire team; it is a support set. Regen heals and buffs the player; it is an armour set. Pets in bodyguard mode do not absorb damage inflicted on other people, only the MM; so it is armour not support. It would be nice to have a "defend that person" order so you could use bodyguard as team support, but that's a matter for another thread.

That is the meaning I was using yes. Unplayable means 'not able to be played', not 'subpar', an Electric Controller without Static Field is subpar, it is not unplayable. An MM with no pets is gimped, but still not unplayable.

For normal use the APP blasts are better. For single hard targets like AVs and GMs where the healback is going to happen anyway and all pets are attacking the same target as you are debuffing I think Poisonous Ray has an edge solo and I'm fairly certain it would in such a situation on a team. I've been intending to test solo and see but my Ill/Rad/Mace is stuck with a lot of greyed out powers until they fix Mace Mastery.

Edit : Alternative slotting suggestion for blind.

Level 1: Blind

• (A) Basilisk's Gaze - Accuracy/Hold
• (3) Basilisk's Gaze - Accuracy/Recharge
• (3) Basilisk's Gaze - Recharge/Hold
• (5) Basilisk's Gaze - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (5) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure
• (7) HamiO:Peroxisome Exposure

More damage and hold. The reduction in accuracy is negligable and the recharge loss is barely noticable with the amount of global recharge.

Gimped as far as not reaching full contribution that they could in most situations yes; my dark/ff 'fendermind' didn't put out near as much damage as she would have with her pets, slightly less than a similar defender even, but without having to manage and buff them it is possible to be a more active with the FF side; whether you consider it worth the time to play FF as more than 'bubble every 4 minutes' is another argument that there seems little consensus on. I would like to emphasise that I did specify "that side" of their role, not that it made them a better or even equal character in total.

A petless MM is pretty much a Defender gimped by low multipliers. Post proliferation and GR the only excuse for it is a concept that requires whips or a non gun-fu pistol set. Hopefully the latter will be removed by alternate animations soon enough.

Not at all. As an mm on a full team you have one support set and 14 targets to support, by leaving off some pets you reduce that number releasing more of the powers' uptime to supporting the other 7/8ths of the team rather than keeping your 1/8th alive. A defender that fires a blast at an enemy can turn round and cast a buff on an ally as soon as the animation is over, an mm that uses a power to keep a pet alive can't use that same power to aid an ally until it has recharged. On sets like Dark Miasma, Poison, Storm, Traps and Trick Arrow the argument doesn't apply since at most you're looking at a weak heal. With Forcefield it's a very marginal area that I wouldn't bother with these days since you can get an FF defender or controller redside now. With Thermal and Pain Domination however having less targets to keep alive does have advantages.

Bodyguard mode is effectively personal ablative armour. I do not count that as team support any more than I would taking a patron armour toggle. And no, to a large extent I don't use it since I like to be able to give my pets other orders than "stand near me and shoot things if they look angry". My main MM that I play as an MM is bot/dark, I soon learned that bodyguard mode and fearsome stare don't make for quick starts to combat.

Tanks have aggro as a form of control. Controls, debuffs and buffs can count as support. Damage is damage. -Res is a force multiplier, +Dam is a force multiplier, pets attacking things are not. If the pets had some taunt effect like PA I could see them counting as aggro control, but since for the most part they don't do enough damage to pull aggro off anything else that is actually attacking - no, the only pets that count as support are the ones that actually do support. If the MM has taken pool taunts and is using bodyguard mode to be a tankermind, that's another matter entirely.
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Ok, now we've gone from whether elec control is playable without Static Field, through whether it is possible to play the game without mezz protection or just more difficult; and now are arguing about... well actually I don't think we're all on the same page on exactly what we're talking about so I'll summarise my argument as succinctly as possible.

Focussing your build and playstyle on team support makes you better at team support. It does not necessarily make you a better character or increase your overall contribution to a team.

I believe both of those sentences to be correct. Unless someone wants to disagree with the former directly rather than attempting to imply that it contradicts the latter then I think we are in agreement over everything bar what can be classed as support.

If willing to make the trip to villains to get it Mace Mastery has a single target blast with a -res debuff. The recharge is longer and has a bit of redraw so your attack chain is looser; less direct damage for more debuff.

I would add Plant/ to the list since the extra mag 2 stacks nicely with the every-spawn mag 3 Seeds of Confusion.

Killing things and getting hit by them is not support; Scrappers are not a support AT. Some pets do have support powers though, and the Lich... Good point, it's not really the having pets I was finding a problem, more that after bubbling 6 pets and 7 teammates I didn't have enough endurance to do much besides recover for the next buff cycle and with the new AoE buffs replacing a couple of zombies would mean having to drink almost a full column of blues.

Ok, so my argument for 'petless' seems to suffer from a black/white view of either having all pets or none; taking Lich and possibly Grave Knights but skipping the horde would cut the amount of pet buffing in half and remove the squishier stuff so reduce resummon costs a lot. Does skipping the tier 1 pets sound reasonable? Getting bubbles and fearsome stare on the same character is definitely appealing enough to take Lich again, and Grave Knights look like they do a lot more damage than the Horde would for the amount of maintainance required.

Edit: Uh, this thread is about Static Field? Sorry about the major threadjack :/

You seem to be going from the opposite angle. Confuse is good for getting XP at a faster rate at the expense of reducing the overall quantity; in Paragon or the Rogue Isles there are always more missions to do so the quantity is unlimited, losing 20% of infinity isn't a problem. In Praetoria the repeatable missions are missing, you have a story to make as you go through the different arcs and once you run out of missions on a contact if you aren't at the level for the next set in that path you have to either street sweep in a city where the police start shooting at you for helping them out, or swap branch. If you've played through the entire 1-18 range as "lawful good" Responsibility and take a look at the Power contact to get the last couple of levels the difference in attitude can be rather jarring.

I didn't recommend skipping it, nor would I since I found it rather effective until my head started hurting. My disagreement was with the statement "Its considered a core power of Electric Control that would make the set unplayable without it." I think that the powerset is certainly better with it, but that skipping it does not make the set unplayable, merely less good. It takes deliberate sustained effort in this game to make a character unplayable, not missing one power.

It's a lot harder to justify them after a couple of rounds of proliferation and with side swapping available, but it used to be that the only way to have some of the support sets was on a mastermind. Between the personal attacks and patron pools you could even solo slowly. Gimped for what the AT can achieve certainly, definitely not recommended now you can get everything (except poison) on an AT better designed for the role; but it was playable.

I took it at the same time as adding a lot of +runspeed IO bonuses to deal with Granite, which was the single power behind my entire motivation for rolling the set in the first place... So I think I might have shot myself in the foot slightly with that example.

Still, there are a lot of ways the game can be played that aren't ideal. Some I have done that I wouldn't recommend to anyone else; my ice/psi dom comes to mind, never used ice slick and rarely used any controls beyond the AoE immob because with the amount of defence she was built for, perma drain psyche and the -rech put out by arctic air and PSW she was perfectly happy playing at being tank - I loved her but rolling a control AT and not using controls most of the time isn't something I'd recommend.

I actually agree with your recommendation and analysis, it's a great power and really shines as part of the set's overall 'endurance control' abilities. The only part I disagreed on was the statement that the set is unplayable without it. Almost any other emphasis on how good the power is and I wouldn't have commented

Definitely true in the case of defenders, corruptors and controllers, neglecting the other power set doesn't improve their team contribution with the support set. I've just teamed with a few too many MMs that never used a buff or heal on anything other than their own pets. Poor players for not being able or willing to prioritise differently when teamed than solo maybe, but they were fully using both pets and their support set and not contributing any team support. Remove the pets and you are still only getting benefit from a little over half a character, but it's one that is contributing to the team, not soloing in the same map.

Ok, 2 and 3/8ths, still not 3 and if you want to count those as specifically having auras you would have to remove 1/9th from brute for not having a taunt aura in Energy Aura. So in total around 56.6% of dedicated meleers have taunt auras.

About two thirds of the melee sets have either mezz powers or knockdown/up and everyone can take air superiority and keep a mezzing boss bouncing off their back indefinitely. Sewer teams never seemed to find it completely impossible to manage the Lost sections just because the tanks and scrappers didn't have mez protection.

I don't think you're even trying to argue against the point I actually made however. Melee ATs get mez protection because it is useful to them, not taking it is a disadvantage and on some sets a very big one; but it does not make the set unplayable unless you are unwilling to adjust how you play.

I agree that certain powers in sets can be 'core powers' that are part of what makes a set good and the set would overall be less effective without them. My disagreement was specifically with the use of 'unplayable'. Concept characters all over don't take powers that don't 'fit'. Petless MMs deliberately lose 5-6 powers from their primary, but a well built one is still playable as a support character; in fact without the pets to distract them it could be argued that they are better at that part of their role (and prior to GR this was the only way to get a /FF character redside.)

Static field is a very good variation on a sleep with a nice secondary effect, but since there are some people (me included) that found they couldn't use it without the graphic effects giving them a headache, I know that the set is perfectly playable without it.

Two of the four standard ATs that have mez protection have taunt inherents and auras, two don't and one even has placate and hide. Kheldians can fight in melee and skipping dwarf form hardly makes the character unplayable. Half the blaster sets include PBAoEs and blappers are a playable (if insane) build style. Mez protection is very useful, playing with it is a lot easier than playing without it, but it isn't essential to have a power in your build that gives it to you.

As it happens my /stone brute didn't take Rooted until her respec after gaining Granite, before that the movement penalties for using it were more annoying to me than having to keep a stock of break frees or ask someone on the team if they had Clear Mind (one of the other versions usually, not a lot of empaths redside at the time).

Half the ATs don't even have access to mez protection. Yes mez is annoying, but having a power that protects against it is only one way to combat the problem. The MFing tactics don't just work on warshades.

I doubt there are any powersets that become unplayable through the removal of just one power.

Unless you are in Praetoria. There are such a limited number of missions available unless you are willing to ignore the power/responsibility and warden/crusader divisions and do both sets that you can easily end up street sweeping entire levels between contacts without confuse removing a portion of the available in-mission XP before you earned it.

This and this would presumably be the official statement you're referring to, being Positron's posts saying why they were pulling the alpha slot and saying nothing about what it did?

The first official post on the topic coming two days after people posted the entire summary of the system on page one of the same thread. No-one knew whether what got pulled into a later release before the beta went open was still covered by the NDA or not. If the NDA had been tighter and effort put in to enforce the restriction via archiving threads concerning the pulled system in the I19 closed beta forum then the details of what the alpha slot can do would not be public.

Knowing that the alpha slot has been delayed and why is a different matter to knowing what it did and (probably) will be once released. It's the difference between being told you can open your presents in the morning and being given a list of all the contents as bedtime reading.

Twilight Grasp is an aoe centred on the player, easy to do since the player just casts a PBAoE heal if they hit. Transfusion is centred on the target so involves spawning an allied pseudo-pet at the location of the target to cast the AoE heal; if the target dies between hit check and the pet being spawned then the game can't find a valid location for it and the heal part fails.

And 87% of the rest are taken out of context.

If they had tightened up the NDA enough to stop all the details of the alpha slot coming out after it was pulled from closed beta people would have been looking at the core of I19 as 'kinda a big deal'. A delayed big deal, but still. Since people have been discussing how builds are going to change with the new slot since the start of open beta the 'ooh shiny' effect has diminished a little.

Can't imagine why I20's NDA is different.

It will not be fine! First it will be all "ooh shiny". Then everyone will see we got the purple AV and they'll be "noooo!"

I'm not traumatised!

Thematically it could be weighted with higher energy resistance; something like 40% smashing/lethal, 50% energy, 35% negative and 40% fire/cold/toxic.

Would also like to add a 20 second 50% Defence Debuff Resistance allowing EA to cap DDR for short periods, giving it the ability to take on -def dealing mobs without needing to be softcapped to have any defences left after the first two volleys.

All of the systems for Epic/Patron pools were in place long before I18 and several patches later controller Mace Mastery is still broken. Just because it isn't new doesn't mean it can't go wrong.