Hopeling

No, this is the part that doesn't work. 44.2% of the cards you get are commons. That doesn't mean they make up 44.2% of the value. In fact, since Commons as a rule have the worst/least desirable/least valuable/easiest to obtain items, they make up less than 44.2% of the value, although since many of the items on the cards can't be purchased directly with points at all, it's impossible to say exactly how much. Similarly, Very Rares make up more than 15.8% of the value, because VR cards are more desirable than Common cards.

Also, you took your "44.2% of cards are commons" number and tried to interpret that as "a single common card is worth 44.2% of a super pack", which is a totally different thing. The first is commons-per-card, the second is value-per-common.

Edit: To illustrate further, a pack contains 5 cards. On average, with Arcanaville's percentages, that's 2.21 commons, 1 uncommon, 1 rare, and .79 very rares. By your method, this would mean that the average super pack is worth 2.21*44.2% + 1*20% + 1*20% + .79*15.8% = 150.1% of a pack. Your method leads to the conclusion that a Super Pack is worth more than a Super Pack, which is quite clearly not true. So either your method is not valid (and your conclusion is not proven), or Arcanaville's numbers aren't valid (and your method relies on them anyway, so if they are not valid your conclusion is still not proven).

I know I'm coming into this thread rather late, so possibly I missed an explanation of this earlier; if so, a link or post number will suffice. At a glance, at least, I'm not convinced of this. 5 cards for 80 points would suggest 16 points per card, but that only holds if all the cards have the same value, which they don't. Specifically, inspirations appear only on Common cards, which are the least valuable kind.

But anyway, since the contents of the Super Pack are inseparable, even if some components end up taking up more of the cost of the pack than they would purchased separately, I feel pretty confident saying that the total average value of a pack exceeds 80 points, so it's discounted as a bulk purchase and because you don't get to choose specifically what you get.

I don't particularly object to Elemental Order being sold as a costume pack for 400 points, but this is a really bad way to measure the value of Super Pack cards.

A new powerset every 2 months is pretty amazingly awesome compared to any other time in the game's history pre-Freedom, and that's before even including Time, Dark Control, and any other future free-to-VIP sets.

The store-bought Achilles Heel proc on beta currently is 3 PPM. With the i24 changes that will be 3.75 PPM. So as long as the attack has a cycle time (counting slotted recharge) of at least 3.2 seconds, the proc will be at least as good as it is now. A few powers that are currently favorites for the proc (Gambler's Cut, Neutrino Bolt) will lose out a little with that, but in most other powers the proc will be better than it currently is.

Still, since the proc did -10% res when we originally saw it and was changed to not have any, I strongly suspect that -20% res is not an option that will even be considered.

Speaking from direct experience with /Inv in Incarnate content, this is simply not what happens the vast majority of the time. Especially for a set with as much knockdown as TW.

On rare occasion, a perfect storm of debuffing enemies will floor your defense and rip you apart. Most of the things you can do to counteract this happen during play, not in the building stage (smart inspiration use, targeting the right enemies first, etc), but building for LESS defense certainly won't help.

This. Occasionally eating a few insps, or just dealing with the damage, is far better than compromising the rest of your build to still be pretty weak against Psi. From direct personal experience, you can indeed say "forget the psi hole" and not really have any problems.

There's no standard ST chain for TW, do you have a specific chain in mind?

...yes, definitely. Are there cultures that don't do this?

I don't mean that in a cynical way. And I don't just mean small sub-cultures like the players of a single game. When science became a thing and people discovered that whales belonged in a different biological category than most of the other stuff in the ocean, we redefined the term "fish" to no longer include whales. The phrase "beg the question" is difficult to use at all now because nobody's ever quite sure if you're using the historical meaning of the phrase ("assume the conclusion") or what the words by themselves imply ("raise the question"). A huge fraction of the words, phrases, and grammatical structures in any language that's been around for a long time were once considered "mistakes" or meant something different.

Anyway, despite the name, I've never actually seen anyone use the phrase "pay to win" to refer to any situation that actually has a "winner". People insisting that a game with no winners can't be pay-to-win are the ones misusing the phrase.. It might be better phrased as "pay for power". A VIP sub is, in a sense, paying for power, but this is a poor comparison because 1) subscriptions are still the game's lifeblood, so VIP is not "pay for power" so much as "pay to play the game", and moreover 2) a VIP subscription does not give you large inspirations, nor inventions, nor Incarnate powers. All it does is allow you to earn those things. If the item on the market were an "amplifier license" that allowed you to earn amplifiers through in-game activities, rather than buying them with points directly, this would be comparable, but that's not what is being sold.

That said, although amplifiers are technically pay-to-win, they're a rather minor example of it. I find them no more objectionable than Ninja Run. If they are the precursor of a much larger pay-to-win trend, that's something I'd be worried about, but so far I haven't seen much reason to think Paragon is going very far in that direction.