Gilia

I believe you are correct. Since pre-alpha slot it takes 110% global recharge to make Hasten perma, the extra 30% should contribute to that, making the "new" requirement 80%. With 3 level 50 recharge IOs, and considering the portion of the alpha which is affected by ED, it should be about 76%.

I realize you're probably after Power Boost, but if you were willing to let that go it seems like Ice Mastery might be a better option. Ice Storm would stack with Sleet very well, and it has an AoE cone on top of that. I think that's as much AoE damage as you can get...

A damage proc in Terrify would be nice, too. There's no obvious slot to give up though.

Correct me if I'm wrong (again ), but this is part of what I was trying to get at in my first post. Continually casting Freezing Rain means the procs actually do (0.2 * 72) / 7.5 = 1.92. Not a huge improvement, of course, just a mild distinction. Because procs on psuedopets don't care about other psuedo pets. So in the "cast every 15 seconds" scenario, the proc checks at T0, the initial cast, T10, the pulse on rain 1, T15 the second cast, T25, rain 2 pulses, etc. So in every single 15 second window, the proc has checked/rolled twice, because of a cast and a 10 second pulse. 15/2 = 7.5.

Because if you claim that slotting Freezing Rain with damage procs is (virtually/almost/whatever) never a good idea, then you ARE saying it's never a good idea for any psuedopet/patch/rain powers. Because the damage value of such a proc in Freezing Rain is the same as it is in those other powers. Arguably, it's better! Because the damage is low enough that a Damage IO isn't going to do more damage over time, there's a -res to boost some of the procs' damage, and Freezing Rain is a patch you will try to put up all the time.

So it's not a worthwhile use of slots to put a damage proc in Freezing Rain, it must not be to put one in Earthquake... that won't be up as often. It must not be a good idea to put it in Rain of Fire... because RoF benefits from damage IOs, has no -res, and no way KD to keep enemies clustered within it.

Really, you aren't reading into your OWN argument. Oedipus_Tex was just showing you where your line of thinking eventually leads.

Similarly, if a damage proc isn't worthwhile in a patch power that's up virtually all the time, then the only place that damage procs could possibly ever be worthwhile is (a) because they're contributing to a set bonus or (b) because the attack's recharge is less than 10 seconds, and it can be expected to hit as many targets as a patch would. (B) is extremely rare. So, your line of thinking would actually put the value of damage procs almost exclusively as pieces of sets, contributing set bonuses.

They could also just be basing their opinion on the cost of running all the toggles in a set. It's considerably higher than the other armor sets (more than twice what most of them run). Second place goes to Electric, which has two endurance management powers. I think Dark might be the only armor set with no autos and no (pre-proc) powers designed to help with endurance issues.

At any rate, I agree that it's a problematic interpretation. Adding Cloak of Fear into the "total cost of the set" isn't right, since there's nothing like it in the other sets and it's not crucial, and for Scrappers it's the only set with a Stealth toggle built in.

Also, Endurance management in this game is pretty easy outside of the gravest of situations. Even if a build calls for more endurance/second, you can adjust it or your play style to manage.

I would actually say MA/SR is going to be about as tight as it gets if you plan to take that many attacks. You may want to consider using your two builds (or perhaps a respec) so that you can take all your attacks as you level up, but once you get to 26/32 your attack chain should be more than saturated. At that point, switch builds or respec to drop Thunder Kick and probably one other. I'm not familiar enough with MA to guess which other one should be on the chopping block. Once you get to 41/44, if you pick up an attack or two in your Epic you might be able to drop another MA attack.

With SR I wouldn't skip anything but Elude. I also would be hesitant to not talk Boxing/Tough/Weave. Combat Jumping is really tempting too. You throw a Steadfast IO in there and you'd have about 40% defense. That's only a couple expensive sets away from softcap (45%).

If you take all the attacks you mentioned, and all that, you only have 4 power choices left.

As for Dark being end hungry, it can be. However, if you take /Dark for the sake of loosening up the build and reducing the number of necessary powers, you probably wouldn't take Cloak of Darkness, for example. Dark might be a good idea because it has Oppresive Gloom and lots of MA attacks do stun (which would stack to disorient bosses) and Death Shroud could help make up your lack of AoE.

Also, many people use the Theft of Essence proc in Dark Regeneration to turn it into a good way to refill your endurance.

Short version: Yes it is possible.

Long version: Blapper usually refers to a Blaster who emphasizes attacking in melee, despite the fact that they have none of the shields and so forth that the melee archetypes do. Of course, it also is sometimes expanded to include other squishier ATs with good melee attacks, like Peacebringers.

However, Crabs aren't squishy. They DO have those shields. There's no reason to think you couldn't very easily build an effective melee crab. That's going to play a lot like a Scrapper w/o Criticals, or a Brute w/o Fury, with the added bonus of awesome team buffs and possibly pets.

I think melee crabs are just less common because the ranged modifier is the same as the melee modifier for crabs, and they have quite a bit more AoE at range. That combined with their passive offering ranged defense, they are considerably more survivable at range, before IO defenses come into play.

Was he a /Force Field Controller?

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/pat...s_-_92910.html

They're also susceptible to -perception. If you have access to Flash Arrow, Smoke Grenade, or Smoke it's actually pretty easy to ghost past them. Of course, if the point is to speed through a mission, it doesn't really help because this will slow you down.

You can get a temp power version of Smoke Grenade, but AFAIK their lack of availability and low number of charges means they aren't that useful for ghosting entire missions. You can get them in Siren's Call if you're fighting for the redside and villains are in full control of the zone. That's 10 uses. You can also get one version by doing the Vault and Arachnos base day jobs.

I think it actually exemplars down to level 45.

It doesn't lower the bar much in terms of much global recharge you need to get perma Domination. From what I can tell, even with a Spiritual Core Paragon, the minimum global recharge required is still 63% (and that's for an end result similar to having 70% global recharge pre-alpha slot, where Hasten and Domination are up with about a second to spare before they have to be reactivated).

However, with the same Core Paragon, you could free up two slots. Just put a single level 50 recharge IO in Hasten. That'd give you just shy of 85% recharge in Hasten, and that only raises the amount of global recharge needed to like 72%.

Or even better, if you've got that alpha enhancement then perma Hasten is considerably easier to attain with 3 slots. With 3 level 50 Recharge IOs, the Core Paragon would just reduce the normal amount needed by its worth as an enhancement, ~36%. So you only need 74%, instead of the normal 110% to perma hasten.

Not too shabby.

I believe with 4 the chance that one hits is only 59%, not 67%. I know the formula you used was 1-((Chance for Failure)^Trials)= Chance of at least one success. So 1-(0.8^trials), and your first three match what I get.

That's only relevant because you used the 67% in the next step. Though, you could have just as easily used the same formula and assumed 8 trials. Either way, the end result is 83%. Not much lower than your 89%. I think your point is still completely valid.

Dang! It seems like I should feel like the last kid on the block to find out about something. Really, I'm just upset at how poor my in game judgement of time is. I appreciate the correction.

That definitely cuts into their worth. In my experience with Sleet, I actually preferred the Range/Damage HOs (mostly because they're cheap and I like the range), a frankenslot Damage/Recharge, and Recharge. Achilles makes sense, but I wasn't terribly keen on any of the sets. That's even while I was mistakenly thinking it would proc 4 times.

In deed it does. I'm all for rating the average damage of a proc against the value of a damage enhancement, for the sake of damage over time. I did not mean to sound like I felt otherwise.

You see, procs won't check to fire again for 10 seconds out of the same power, if it's a toggle or psuedopet power (like Freezing Rain). Since Freezing Rain lasts 30 seconds it can proc up to 4 times! At cast time, after 10 seconds, 20 seconds, and 30 seconds.

So you weigh the damage of the proc (~70 at level 50 I believe) times the chance (usually 20%), for 14 damage (on average, against each target). However, that will go off 4 times, so really each proc adds an average of 56 damage against each target. For a power that only does 25 damage at base, that's pretty impressive.

It has nothing to do with attack chains or the recharge on your other powers. So yes, in that sense it's not relevant. For the value of procs vs regular damage IOs it's very relevant.

Now if you mean to say it's irrelevant for DPS concerns because each 10 second block will do the same damage you're close, but not quite on. Since Rain powers can check 4 times in 30 seconds, you actually have to calculate them as if they went off every 7.5 seconds if you want to boil your DPS down to a small window like that. Even doing that is horribly impractical. The mathematical hoops you have to jump through to calculate your DPS in small windows like that just aren't prudent. You'd be better off calculating your DPS in the whole 30 second window of Freezing Rain. Why is that? Because it's not just your quick recharging attack chain's DPS + Freezing Rain, it's your quick recharging attack chain minus the activation time of Freezing Rain (at intervals that vary based on your recharge) + Freezing Rain's DPS. Ick.

It did. The only Blaster secondary that's been added since release was Mental Manipulation .

Yes, yes, yes! I've heard and seen so many skip either or both of these powers and I just couldn't do it. I like when someone's worried about ambushes or patrols in ITF. If I'm on my MC Dominator, then they are no threat at all. They're too busy snoozing off or attacking each other.

I just wanted to add to what you have here that they are not positionally typed! There's plenty of types of enemies that will quickly make Mesmerize into your highest damaging attack, because it will hit that much more often. Of course others have good psi defense so the opposite can happen as well :P.

Well put. This is what I was getting at in a round about way. For a crashless godmode to provide the same mitigation as DP+IH you have to be fighting stuff that will probably kill you anyway. What you'll fight against in actuality is stuff that (normally) wouldn't kill you before IH and before SoW/OWTS. In that case, IH provides more mitigation because the portion of damage that SoW/OWTS reduces is a much smaller number. In fact, IH may shine because adding resists means you continue to lose HP over time, but adding +regen might mean you're gaining it.

However, in either case, it should just mean you survive.

Oh, absolutely. I don't think it sounds snarky at all. My point was apples to apples, DP+IH compared to crashless god modes is pretty impressive. In all cases, regen is just one layer of mitigation. The reason (as I noted) it becomes so complicated to analyze is it's not apples to apples anymore once you start adding different layers of mitigation from different sets. I'm sure most of us who have been around a while have read Aracanaville's virtual dissertation on the immortality line. It's not a simple matter to compare different types of mitigation in the context of different powersets.

I agree with the rest of your post, and I too was devoted to /Regen early on. My first 50 was a Spines/Regen (side note: my name sake actually... I think my name was referencing the flowers on cacti or something to allude to spines...). I would just add to your notes that part of /Regen's problem is it's a one trick pony. As you said, +regen a veritable pinata, and from there all it takes is a good amount of -recharge to really stick it to /Regen.

All things being equal, while you could make an Invul Scrapper with that much regen, you could also make a Regen Scrapper with that much more regen or a good chunk of defense, etc. It's not the best set by any means in City of Invention Sets, but again, all else being equal IH is a pretty impressive power. I do not skip IH, but I do skip OWTS and SoW (at least on Scrappers).

The real reason is because Sleet has a bigger -res than Disruption Arrow. To match it's debuff power you need to fire Acid Arrow as well. So it's more like three powers and something to light the oil slick.

But yes, the damage is considerably more and OSA is also an awesome power.

So... just to be clear, you stand by them as jokes or as actual opinions?
It's really funny to stand by the statement that 6 powers in a set that can in no way be replicated by IOs and power pools can in fact be. But, to each his own.

Well, if you've spent 63 months playing ar/dev then I'll concede you know far more about it. Only because you said "period" though.

Good catch! I should have said as much.

Yeah the average damage that placing that proc in a toggle adds is really low . Of course, if you have the slot for it then it can't hurt. Leveraging the awesome Defiance numbers helps compensate as well.

Do you actually believe that Targetting Drone and Cloaking Device are "most of the set?" Or do you have a pool power/IO that can do what Web Grenade, Caltrops, Taser, Trip Mine, and Time Bomb, and Gun Drone can do?

If you include the possibility of replacing the set's powers with temporary powers, you can include Smoke Grenade.

I would REALLY refrain from accusing people who pick certain powers of having a lower IQ when you start your message with such a blatantly ridiculous statement.

Though I do think this is useful information for seebs. A guide on /Devices should definitely include some of the halfbaked reasoning that people who hate on it use.

Understandable. It's still "not quite" though. It only interferes with cooldown in the sense that you won't be using Sleet as often, the same effect a longer cooldown will have. Depending on your current ±recharge, it could have no effect, it could mean waiting to activate it for 2-3x as long, or (if you Hibernate first) it means not firing it at all.

Similar conclusion, but different.

This is an incredible over simplification. It's VERY hard to calculate how close it is to a godmode and even then, whether it's as good depends on the circumstance.

I just wrote out a lot of complicated math and scenarios to explain why, and I think it's a waste now.

IH+DP offers 53 HP/S. That's a flat rate of sustainable incoming damage. The other god modes offer a relative rate. Resists and defense remove a portion of otherwise incoming damage. To match a reduction of 53 HP/S with other crashless god modes, you have to be expecting A LOT of incoming DPS, and even after the reduction there will be quite a bit left over. Enough to kill a base HP scrapper in about 25 seconds.
Just pretend for simplicity that a click power mitigates 50% of incoming DPS in your circumstances. That means you have to be taking 106 DPS to have said power match DP+IH. That means there's a remainder of 53. You are still in trouble (whether you used this imaginary power or DP+IH).

Crashing god modes don't need nearly that much. The relative amounts of mitigation from other powers makes it very complicated, however. Yes, Elude can mitigate 95% of incoming typed damage, but compared to the 60% that would have been mitigated w/o it (assuming you didn't just rez+Elude), it's really not that impressive. The way I run it, to match DP+IH in those circumstances, all the damage left over will amount to a measly 8 DPS. The resist based crashing god modes are less effective by this measurement, though still more effective than DP+IH practically.

However, those godmodes CRASH. Compared to other crashless click powers that self buff, DP+IH is amazing.

Yeah, you're right. Dominating was too strong of a word.

I actually wasn't forgetting Cold. Sleet is awesome. There's no buts about it. I would give it to the damage and -defense though. That and, as you say, it takes TA 3 powers to do what Sleet can do.

However, with the same circumstances you mentioned, you'd be stacking Disruption Arrow, and Acid Arrow would fire off more often. Again, the smaller radius of Acid Arrow combined with the smaller base numbers of these two powers means Sleet will still win out. But the same build happens to have the same potential: -80% res (Acid + Proc + Disruption*2). On a fast group, you'd probably find the proc more useful on fast recharging Acid arrow, rather than the procing every 10 seconds of a single instance of Sleet.

The real heartbreak in this comparison is that Controller/Corruptor's Sleet is just as good, and their Acid/Disruption Arrows are not.

I believe for both of them, the forced origin and heavily restricted power sets are a result of a predefined source of power.

My longer explanation of this can be found here, on a similar thread.

In that post I said the source of power was "heavily implied." That was an undercooked argument. The source of power is explicit. The Epics available to EATs are consistent with the game lore. It'd be more surprising if they were anyway other than how they are now.

Here's the whole thread, just in case anyone's interested.