JRaven

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Yeah cause debuffs now are awsome.Not.

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I disagree. The regeneration debuff in the team heal for Dark Miasma makes a large amount of trouble for me, as I do not have any short-recharge heal. I had six fights against a Ninja/Dark Miasma MM yesterday, where we ended up equal in wins/losses. It usually came down to how often he managed to hit with his debuffing team heal. Without my regeneration, I go down sooner or later.
That said, Dark Miasma has trouble functioning properly against defense based opponents unless they have very good accuracy and ToHit.

In addition -recovery debuffs are very dangerous for me in most fights where they appear, even more so than end drain.

The only point where I, based on my experiences, would agree with you regarding debuffs being of dubious value are toggle debuffs. They are usually extremely easy to shut down by mezzing the person running them.


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Yeah.Crazy healing reduction.

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Here I am uncertain as I do not play a MM myself, but does Heal Suppression affect Mastermind pets? The Mastermind himself, certainly. I am uncertain regarding the pets however - I do know a Pain Domination MM is capable of keeping me from killing any of his minions by healing them constantly (barring me using red inspirations or temporary powers).

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(This is an extra idea... doesnt have to be in place but maybe a good idea so ill throw it in!) when you open the SG tab.. theres a new column [Cage Score] and this will show how many cage fights they have won. (not losses as it woundnt be a good idea to damage others pride)although.. it may encourage them to be better at PVP

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A problem with the current Arena ratings system, from my point of view, is that noone uses it. In all the time I have played, the only time people have wanted to do rated matches in the Arena is when they were fairly certain they would win. And noone ever agreed to it because the losses would be visible in their character information.
The part of your suggestion that I have quoted would be very welcome not only for possible SG cage matches, but also for the old Arena ratings system. Removing the display of losses and draws, as well as making all matches automatically rated, would perhaps finally let the ratings system see some use.
I still think keeping it separate from the PvP reputation points is a good idea, as the Arena matches are usually a very different ballgame from the somewhat more chaotic environment in the PvP zones.

Now, to return to the topic at hand...

Regarding SG cage matches, to a certain extent they duplicate the Arena system. I like the idea conceptually - an SG training room does make sense. The way I look at it, making Arena kiosks available as an SG item would probably be an easy and quick solution (as I am definitely not familiar with the CoH source code, the degree of difficulty is speculation).
One thing mentioned above that I would definitely like to see is the ability to test the base defenses by doing a practice attack on your own SG base.

I am curious as well now. It may change some slotting decisions for me if I am overslotted on accuracy as I would really want some more endurance reduction. I'll update my character on Test in order to check.

I will likely be on rather late tonight, after about 9 pm. We could do some testing then, if you have the time?

I am a bit uncertain on the DR mechanics regarding accuracy. As far as I know, there are two different types of Accuracy for the purpose of ToHit checks:

1. The power accuracy. This is not enhanceable, but is a fixed feature of the power in question. KO blow for example has 1.2 power accuracy.
2. Player accuracy. This is the sum of the global accuracy (i.e. accuracy from set bonuses and powers like Focused Accuracy) AND the accuracy you have actively slotted into a power.

These two types are multiplied with eachother to yield the total Accuracy of an attack.

Whether DR applies to global accuracy only, or the sum of slotted accuracy and global accuracy, or (PowerAccuracy x (GlobalAccuracy + SlottedAccuracy)) I have no idea.
In case it is global accuracy only, it should be possible to see it directly in the Combat Attribute monitor as the contributions won't add upp to the total. If it is any of the latter two options I suspect you'd have to do some testing while looking at the final net ToHit chance in the combat log, and then do a bit of calculating.

As far as I understand, any attack powers will deal PvE damage to PvE targets which includes NPCs in PvP zones such as Recluse's Victory. The powers will only deal PvP damage against player characters. This is my understanding only, from Red Tomax' site among other places. I have not tested it personally.

What I have personally seen is that there is considerable discrepancy between the damage per activation numbers reported in Mids and the numbers reported by the in-game power information. I have not done any tests to verify which of the two numbers are true, though I would assume the in-game numbers are more reliable. If so, that would make Flurry and other powers far less effective than Mids currently indicates.

I'd recommend reading through this guide by Arcanaville on the US forums. It contains the relevant ToHit, defense and accuracy formulas.

Exactly how Elusivity works seems to be a little unclear. I have looked a bit after some posts I've seen on the topic but I can't find them. If I recall correctly from those posts however, the final net to hit chance given by the formulae in the guide above is multiplied by (1-Elusivity). Most sets and powers that do have Elusivity have 30%. A list is available here. Numbers can also be found on Red Tomax' site.

(QR)

Regarding Unstoppable in PvP, my experiences are that:

- You will not cap resistances, due to Diminishing Returns. Even with 90% S/L resistances before using Unstoppable, I could only reach 70%. F/C/T/E/N resistances were lower. It should be noted I used only one Aegis: Res/Rech in it though. It might be possible to get higher with Unstoppable fully slotted for resistance.
- Unstoppable makes knockback less of a problem. Someone with KO blow will not be able to launch you skyward anymore, which they'll manage through Unyielding unless you've slotted KB protection IOs.
- Due to very high mez resistances, Unstoppable makes Hold/Stun/Sleep type mezzes last very short time periods.
- The recovery bonus works well, as always.


On an ending note, I got rid of Unstoppable in favour of Hurl and IO-boosted defense. Even when in Unstoppable, I was getting worn down and killed in 1 vs 1 fights with some brutes. The defense route, especially considering the lack of a crash, has so far worked rather well in PvP.

I just found this thread on the US scrapper forum. It makes for an interesting read on Invulnerability and what you can do with it.

Invulnerability is a good set with good to excellent mitigation, depending on damage type and environment.

Peak performance after suitable power choices and slotting IO sets is very good. The set does however need a while to mature. Lower level play (below 20) can be frustrating at times, especially so before Invincibility is available.
Invulnerability is also somewhat slower to recover from damage or exertion than some other sets, as it does not have extra recovery or regeneration. This differs from Willpower.

As for PvP performance, it can work very well if the build is good. It benefits from added resistance (Tough), defense (Weave, Hover, Combat Jumping, IOs, et.c.), regeneration (Health, IOs) and recovery (Stamina, IOs). As always, Aid Self is highly useful if you can fit it in, have the recovery to use it and can stand the animation (personally I can't, but opinions vary). I would personally recommend focusing on extra Defense for a PvP build.


One piece of information I have found important to remember is that Invulnerability relies on both resistance and defense to stay alive. Neglecting either will make it much less effective than it could otherwise be.

I am not familiar with the DR limits for the different ATs, although I do know they differ. I know that for Tanks, it allows you to reach 30%+ defense fairly easily. 45% is achievable with Eye of the Magus running.

I could not check the Controller values first hand, it was what he told me that he saw. I was somewhat surprised as well, as I thought a Controller could get more than 20% def.

To clarify in case there was a misunderstanding, the 3% defense was the increase from 17% to 20% seen by the Controller when he activated PFF. He was well above 3% total defence the entire time.

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Yesterday I got the opportunity to test a few things against a Forcefield Controller in the Arena.

As before, I was running Rage and Focused Accuracy. Both are slotted for ToHit using two HOs.

Unlike the results against FF Masterminds or Dominators in Recluse's Victory, my net to hit chance was not floored:

- Using LBE (full purple set) and most other attacks, net chance to hit sat at 20%.
- KO blow with it's inherent accuracy bonus sat at roughly 25%.

Further:
- The Controller's defense values while in PFF was slightly above 20%, due to Diminishing Returns.
- My ToHit, as reported by the Combat attribute monitor, was about 97% (though this would be against PvE targets, so I assume in PvP it should be 25% lower).
- My Global accuracy was 1.57 (i.e. +0.57 from set bonuses and Focused Accuracy).


The only way the numbers would match up is due to significant Elusivity. Without PFF but with all other shields and defense powers the Controller had 17% def, for which I had from 75%-95% net chance to hit depending on which power I used (KO blow again being the most accurate). The extra defense from having PFF on as well, +3%, can't account for that kind of drop in net chance to hit.

While I did not have any chance of taking him out, given that he had both Aid Self and Hibernate, the large difference in net to hit compared to the Masterminds and Dominators I've fought (where I've so far been floored) was very noticeable. Whether this is due to a higher effective "DR-cap" for defense for those two ATs compared to Controllers, or some other factor I'm not certain.

Does anyone know whether the patron power pool shield powers grant extra Elusivity? And if so, does it stack with what PFF grants?

Charnell, why do you consider Superstrength to be overpowered? I am curious. I have my own ideas as to what are the problematic features, of which the main part centers around Rage, but I'd like to know your reasons.

Max, does it work to use 20 insights? I haven't tried it myself: my impression was that due to Diminishing Returns that is not a viable tactic anymore after the first four or so (depending on the amount of ToHit you already have).

My own observation is that with slotted Rage and Focused Accuracy, as well as 30% global accuracy bonus from sets (so a total of roughly 50% with Foc. Acc. active) I have:

- roughly 40-50% net chance ToHit on a Widow not running Elude
- roughly 20-25% net chance ToHit on a Widow in Elude
- roughly 5-8% net chance ToHit on any person I've come across in Personal Force Field. I suspect I am floored for most attacks, and possibly slightly above the floor for KO blow, which has an inherent accuracy bonus.


The times I have seen someone in PFF go down in a zone it is either due to being attacked by roughly four or more enemies, or they were slow with switching PFF on and were already low enough on health that a single lucky hit killed them.

Personally I have never managed to kill someone at full health that was in PFF: I usually ignore them as they are no threat while inside it and go for someone else until they drop it. Very often they tend to wait until it has recharged before they come back however, so commonly it is a case of hitting them until they have to activate it and flee to regenerate back up to full.

For most end-game tasks on the PvE side of things I would rate Unstoppable as useful to highly useful depending on how often you're willing to use it. It can be used even if not strictly necessary, in order to steamroll a bit. It will be very rare for you to die while in Unstoppable.

Additionally, if you stock up on some Ethereal Shift temporary powers you will not have to worry about the crash at all - you'll have 30 seconds to regenerate, toggle on the armours and pop Dull Pain just before the Ethereal Shift drops. Just keep in mind that you'll lose aggro by phasing for 30 seconds.

However, if you intend to go the defense route with IO sets to jack your defense up to the 40% region with one enemy in melee, I would consider Unstoppable somewhat superfluous once you've reached that level. Until then it is however nice to have.

A few comments:

- Switch out the Aegis Res/Rech to the Aegis unique in Resist Energies. You shouldn't lose much En/Neg resist since you are so close to the ED limit, and you'll gain some mez resistance as well as 3% psi res.
- Dull Pain can be slotted with Numina Heal, Numina Heal/Rech and Doctored Wounds Heal/Rech, Doctored Wounds Rech. That will put you more or less at the ED limit as well as give you some extra regeneration.
- If you can get the slots, I'd recommend a few more in Health. In part to get some extra regeneration from the power, in part to have a place for the Numina and Regenerative Tissue uniques.

I'm afraid I can't comment on the Dark Melee part, as I lack experience there.

I'm afraid I don't quite follow your comment Max?

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After reading through most of the posts in the thread, I have a few comments as well as a couple of questions.



Regarding Fortunatas and Widows, some have posted that they effectively have no equal. I do not quite agree with that - it takes a specialized build but it is very possible to take them out. Against a single one, I've so far scored either a win or a draw. If they have Aid Self, it's usually the latter. If I fight two, I usually lose.
The primary reason to that is the combination of Rage, Focused Accuracy and some global Accuracy bonuses. And Laser Beam Eyes (LBE) does help to an extent. If they are in Elude, I'm usually at 25-30% net chance to hit though it can go up noticeably if LBE hits first. Outside of Elude, 50-60% net to hit is a common level.
I would agree that they are powerful though - their prevalence in the zones certainly imply that. I nonetheless suspect that if/when PvP builds start focus on having both high ToHit and high Accuracy, defense characters such as Widows and Fortunatas will feel less powerful.

Regarding Superstrength, I'm curious as to why people consider it overpowered. Again, the prevalence of the set in the zones certainly imply that it is, but I'm curious as to why? Is it:
- The large, more or less permanent, ToHit bonus from Rage?
- access to a hard-hitting ranged attack in Hurl, that also grounds fliers?
- that the damage is considered too high, once Rage is factored in?
Personally I would say it's mainly the large ToHit bonus from Rage that is responsible, but as I wrote above I'm curious about what the common perception is.


Regarding the mobs in the PvP zones, I agree with most of the comments posted so far: the mobs are now extremely dangerous compared with the threat they pose in standard PvE play, and that a large part of that is due to the mezzes. Interestingly high defense characters will cope better with the mezzes since they do not hit as often, which I suspect contributes to the perception that defense is overpowered.
I suspect the dangerous mobs in PvP zones were an unintended side effect however, given that the PvP changes were aimed at Arena PvP. Hopefully they will be changed once they go over zone PvP.

Sure, I'm always up for a duel. And good luck with building it up.

A short question for the OP: what kind of 1 vs 1? Standard Arena duration of 10 minutes? Or Last Man Standing?

It may have a very large effect on how viable end drains and recovery debuffs are. An opponent with Geas of the Kind Ones is practically immune to endurance drains and recovery debuffs for the 1 minute duration. In Last Man Standing, if one kill can be scored during that minute the match is won.
In addition, for Last Man Standing and shorter 1v1 duels inspirations can also have a larger effect than otherwise (since combatants are not as likely to run out) and can compensate weaknesses in the powersets.
I feel the question has some bearing due to any zone duels normally being equivalent to Last Man Standing, while Arena duels are normally 10 minute duels. Both are fairly common.

I am afraid not - the changes were primarily aimed at the Arena, with Zone changes coming later.

Castle's post on PvP changes

Further, to quote a section of his post...

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We wanted to spend time working on revamps for the existing PvP zones; but due to the massive amount of work involved we’ll need to address this in a future release. That meant that we had to focus almost entirely on Base Raids and Arena PvP. We did a lot of work on Bases, Raiding and the Cathedral, but we have to save that for later -- those are all works in progress for a future update. Arena PvP, though, was a self contained area which could be isolated and worked with. It also provides an excellent testbed for Base Raids, since the two are at least in the most basic terms similar. That's where we focused our attention.


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Do you mean for tanks, brutes or some other AT? I believe the Diminishing Returns curves vary slightly depending on AT.

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no problem thank you for reading, the tanks now gain resists to everything, but with a blasters lowered damage and a defenders increase, defenders seem to be very much closer to winning than blasters most of the time.
Agreed its not all tankers that =godmode, the ones we tested which seemed to be too strong were all resistance based charecters, also something i have noticed on mids, tankers psy resists on invul in pvp go to 71.3% in pvp zones when slotted without sets, whilst willpower goes to 67.6% granted the difference is small but why does invul get that little bit more when its already got more resists everywhere else? willpowers defences range from 20%-30% where as invul has 30% alround with one person in area for invincibility, now i know willpower has regen, but its not enough to be made equal to that is it?

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While I think it varies for different tanks, I know that tanks do not automatically gain resistance in PvP, i.e. there is no specific PvP bonus for them. There are a few factors though:
- Diminishing Returns seem to cut resistance to the 50% level. My Inv is usually barely capped to S/L, in PvP this now drops to 53%. I imagine resistance-focused tanks are hit rather hard by Diminishing Returns. In Unstoppable I got S/L resistances almost at 70%. Before DR they should be at roughly 170%.
- If an armour set lacked protection against a specific type of damage, it was added. Invulnerability gained psi resistance in Temporary Invulnerability, at the same level of the S/L resist. As far as I can remember, I sit at about 40-45% in PvP after DR (Mids do not handle Diminishing Returns yet, so the numbers seems much more impressive there). Inv did not gain any psi defense though.
- While I do not know how Willpower's regeneration is affected, my experience against WP brutes so far is that while they get hurt slightly faster (until they get Fury up) their regeneration rates are much better. Given that Diminishing Returns seem to put resistance levels roughly on par (I think slightly favouring the Brute) a fully slotted WP brute is difficult to take down for a tank.
- The tanks have very high base hitpoints, which helps offset the fairly low resistance levels (compared to what tanks have in PvE) to some extent. It also helps their regeneration in terms of HP/sec.


After I13 hit and I noticed I got worn down by a single Energy Melee brute while Unstoppable was up, I adjusted the build heavily. Unstoppable was dropped in favour of Hurl, and slots and sets rearranged to give me some level of defense. I think the experiment was a success, as it turned out with those defense levels an Inv does not need Unstoppable in PvE (might still be useful for Lord Recluse in the STF). In PvP it worked rather well against -most- opponents, the exception being Superstrength brutes.

Had I worked in Aid Self I suspect it would have been more effective at keeping me alive, but I have issues with that power.


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Also unrelated hi jess didnt use you for a tank because you werent on at the time, i did check since you beat me up pretty well the other day.

At some point though if i can get hold of the rad defender again thought i would like to see its effect on you even though your fully slotted with sets etc it did seem to put up a great fight.

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I would be very interested in fighting a Rad defender. I've so far mainly been fighting Rad Corruptors, which due to the resistable debuffs are quite different.

Very nice summary of your tests, Starcrash. I'm a bit curious about some details though, so I have a few questions.

All tests:
What was the "IO level" of the combatants? Fully slotted with purple sets? Ordinary sets? Mixture of SOs and sets?

Which combatants had builds aimed at PvP? Also, were they updated for I13 PvP?

Did any combatants have and use Aid Self? I'm partly asking because I personally have found a melee character with Aid Self extremely difficult to kill (though I do not play characters with DoT powers, which would affect the usability of Aid Self for the opponent).

How much PvP experience did the combatants have? I realize this might be difficult to answer though.

Did you use temporary powers or inspirations during the matches?


Test 4:
Did the Inv/SS tank have considerable extra defense from sets?

Did the debuff toggles actually stay up during those two minutes? Usually one KO blow on a rad defender should drop them immediately. The reason I am asking is that I'm trying to understand why the Scrapper was whiffing while the tank went after the defender. If defender debuffs are still unresistable the Tanks defense should be gone.

Further, if I understand you correctly (please correct me if I'm wrong) but the Scrapper was debuffed from the radiation toggles placed on the Tank - did this debuff the Scrappers ToHit and contribute to the Scrapper whiffing? Or was the Scrapper running Focused Accuracy and resist the debuff that way?

I assume the Scrapper did not have Provoke to keep the tank on himself?



Lastly, thanks for writing up your post. It's nice to read about the battles and how they unfolded. I do not completely agree on some of your conclusions, the tank = godmode one to be specific. While tanks are fairly good now as far as I've seen, I think godmode is stretching it a bit. A 2 vs 1 I would usually not expect to win, from my own experiences in RV (where admittedly certain Flavour-of-the-Month ATs and sets are very common). This is also the reason why I have so many questions about the last test match you described.
Again though, thank you for the write-up.

Hi Mechano. Some feedback for your build:
- If you are at all able to, see if you can fit in a Steadfast Protection: Res/Def IO. It will boost all your typed defenses by 3%, which is highly useful.
- For Resist Elements/Energies, I'd recommend using either Aegis (good Fire/Cold def), Impervium (some psi def and recovery, if you are not already at 5 recovery boni)or Reactive Armour (extra Energy/Negative def). By using the Res, Res/End and Res/Rech you will not sacrifice that much of the enhancement values.
- Consider using set IOs for Weave, in order to decrease the end consumption a bit. I.e., use IOs with Def/End. For a toggle it is fairly expensive. With Gift of the Ancients you may be able to pick up a Recovery set bonus as well.
- Two lvl 50 recharge IOs in Unstoppable is not that much worse than three, due to ED kicking in. You may want to consider moving a slot elsewhere, if you are not going for maximum recharge. I'd still advise you to switch out at least one Rech IO for a Res/Rech IO from any resistance set though. If you ever go into a PvP zone, it'll be useful with extra resistance in Unstoppable.
- The same goes for the three lvl 50 end mod IOs in Stamina. You may want to switch out two for the Performance Shifter: EndMod and Performance Shifter: Chance for +End proc. You'll get some extra movement bonus, as well as a chance to recover end regardless of whether your recovery has been debuffed to zero or not. Downside is slightly decreased recovery.