Hopeling

Nukes can often get by without much/any acc slotting because they're almost always used with Aim/Build Up, anyway.

Well, compared to a normal damage proc, the Achilles proc will go off exactly as often (20% chance, and in a Rain power it gets a chance to go off every 10 seconds). So really, we can just compare the effect of the Achilles proc to the ~72 damage you'd get from Positron's Blast (or whatever else).

So, what conditions have to be true for Achilles' Heel to be worth more than 72 damage? It increases the damage the target takes by 20%, or one-fifth, for 10 seconds. So you need to do >360 damage, before counting the debuff, during those ten seconds for the proc to add >72 damage. A level 50 minion only has 431 max health, so against minions you will roughly break even at best (360+72 is all the health a minion has), and if the minion survives past the end of the debuff, or if the minion is not at full health when the debuff is applied, you're already behind.

Higher-ranking foes have enough health for the Achilles proc to break even or do better than the damage proc, but not by much on Lieutenants (although this depends somewhat on circumstances; if you/your team deal high enough damage to consistently wipe out all the Lieutenants in <10s from full health, Achilles does start to look pretty good), it's really mostly on Bosses and above that Achilles shines. And you can get a lot more opportunities to proc against bosses by putting the proc in a fast single-target attack than an AoE power that generally has a much longer recharge.

Edit: I suppose "not worth using" is an exaggeration, but it's not nearly as amazing for most AoE uses as it is for single-target.

Achilles' Heel is generally not worth using for AoE powers (a simple damage proc is generally better). Dehydrate already has acc/dam/end/rech/heal fighting for its slots, so using one for the proc is not preferable.

In short, I say Aqua Bolt.

Pylons have the same 20% resistance to all damage types, actually. This is one of the reasons they are such a widely-used benchmark for DPS.

And yeah, Smashing damage is more commonly resisted than fire/NE, but not dramatically so. Players tend to mentally group it with Lethal, but Lethal is far more resisted. Robots, in particular, tend to be very resistant to Lethal but have low or even negative resistance to Smashing.

I agree with Reppu's assessment: TW/Fire/Soul is excellent, and a strong competitor to SS/Fire/Soul, but neither clearly has the upper hand. TW by itself is better than SS by itself, but SS gets better use from Burn/Gloom/Darkest Night, both because of Rage and because it never has to deal with redraw.

The -150 per stack limit was raised a while ago, to I think 1000 or something. So it's significantly less awful against AVs and above than it originally was.

The level requirements appear to be fixed, but the enhancements still seem to have levels, even though the level doesn't do anything. You can see this by dragging one into chat to link it, or by narrowing the level range in the AH interface. Since a level 50 Overwhelming Force is technically not the same as a level 49, or a level 48, or etc, they have separate listings in the market (and don't stack in base storage). They're functionally identical now, regardless of level, but they are technically separate items.

The question is, is this another bug, or is it an intentional/acceptable part of the fix they chose? Also, does it apply only to already-obtained Overwhelming Force pieces, and new ones will all be the same level? Or will enhancements obtained after the patch continue to have the same (semi-hidden) level as the character that obtained them?

They have the outline all Attuned enhancements have, but not all Attuned enhancements can be catalyzed. Catalysts specifically only work on ATOs, as they say in their description.

Or tint it orange and call it Lava Blast

On beta just now, I was indeed able to use Geyser while flying with a Raptor Pack. So no, it doesn't appear to require you to be on the ground.

Yay water blast!

Because VIPs get a free one every other month?

No, seriously, the price is a bit silly. I suspect they chose the price because they want to keep renaming to a minimum, rather than to maximize profit on that particular item.

Power Analyzers don't work in trials, since they're temporary powers (yes, this is really annoying). Banes and Blasters can look using Surveillance, but Banes are relatively rare and not every Blaster takes Munitions Mastery.

It gave me the error message several times, then worked. It might just be overwhelmed by all the people trying to buy it at once, so keep trying, or wait a little bit.

New items in the market (like powersets) become available at 6am pacific. Give it about 10 minutes.

I wasn't able to get any of the BotZ IOs to convert to themselves in 15 tries, which doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong about the bug, but it does say it appears to be erratic. Was this the IO version or the Attuned version of BotZ? Any other remotely relevant conditions?

The studio is in Pacific time, so announcements are usually made in reference to that because they can just look at the clock. Server maintenance is done by people living in that same time zone. Store releases are manually enabled by a person living in that same time zone.

Would it actually make a difference if Rangle had told you "early afternoon UTC"?

Dehydrate, like Life Drain and most other self-healing powers, works off a percentage of base health, so Corruptors heal more than Defenders, and Blasters more than either.

For one thing, even with the i24 changes we know about so far, Water Blast will still have better AoE than Fire Blast, plus a self heal, plus knockdowns/slows/the ability to slot Achilles' Heel. So it's not being totally left in the dust, here.

For another, Arbiter Hawk specifically mentioned that there could be other changes in i24 if sets without snipes (like Water) fall behind. i24 isn't even in beta yet, so its feature list is pretty tentative.

Battle Agility's DDR is enhanceable. So you're looking at more like 53% with one AD, and 70% with two.

*facepalm*

derp. I didn't. Johnny's 545 number works if you count Bruising as a 20% increase.

It's a less crazy figure, but I still don't agree with the reasoning that led to it.

Envenomed Daggers take animation time (about 1s every 10, if you want to keep the debuff on constantly), cause redraw for weapon sets, provide only half as much -regen as whatever set your hypothetical debuff friend is probably using, and limit you to 30 at a time, so if you can't solo the GM with daggers in
That said, I do agree that temporary powers aren't quite in the same category as IOs, because you have an extremely finite supply of temporary powers (easily refilled with a trip to the university or your SG base, or even with Field Crafter if you have it, but none of those are easy to do in the middle of a fight). Lore pets, despite you not liking them, are a permanent part of the character - they can't run out of charges - but their DPS does kind of mask how much is being done by the actual character.

So, "I can solo GMs with Lore pets" = valid (IMO), but "I can solo the same GMs you can, if I use my Lore pets" doesn't say much about how the two characters stack up to each other. But then, comparing GM soloing between a character that can debuff regen and another that can't doesn't say much about how they stack up to each other, either, except for the specific purpose of soloing GMs. That's not to say your Archery/Mental can't do other things well, since clearly it can, but you can solo GMs for a reason that is largely irrelevant to your ability to do most other things.