Kenteko

It's in my opinion that every tank in the game that is actively doing their job against content that matters is almost certainly gonna be better off with the DDR from Ageless. It's a godsend on my DM/Inv brute, and does a wonderful job of stacking with my innate resists. I'll generally use it as a timer during one specific trial (Keyes) simply because it's meant to completely and utterly offset AM's debuffs. Beyond that, I use it off cooldown for the recharge and end fill, then let Cardiac take care of my end problems otherwise.

That being said, my MA/FA scrapper rocks the Core version of Ageless because
1) She's not built to tank
2) Musculature is a bigger damage return than cardiac
3) Ageless solves all her end problems
4) RotP

Either way, if you are intended to endanger yourself and expect debuffs, there's no reason not to use it.

Something to keep in mind that quite a few people are forgetting is the inherent danger present in tanks and brutes (the toughest ATs) that are non existent to the other ATs. This is where the vast disparity lies, and is probably the number one problem with untyped damage.

To start, I'm going to ignore Nova Fist for the most part. I sincerely consider it an idiot check, as it's near impossible to die to it unless you're overwhelmed by adds or you're asleep/get a stroke of really bad luck.

First, for this example, I'll be using my DM/Invuln Brute and my Sonic/Sonic Corruptor as two ends of the spectrum. My brute has been IOed out to the gills, can tank STF Recluse and all 8 AVs under her own power, and is basically one of the prime examples of "zomg never dies" characters. My Sonic/Sonic is softcapped and has enough recharge to spam a shriek/shout chain, and runs enough toggles to get 2.2 end per second.

Now, in all the trials, the more survivable of the two is, and always will be, the Corruptor. Even though my brute has siphon life, dull pain, HP cap, and is regularly at incarnate soft cap and with massive resists, she still experiences exponentially more attacks per second. This is not a problem in Lambda and BAF, as she can solo an entire Lambda wing without breaking a sweat, and only in BAF if she's tanking Siege and standing under a tower (untyped/auto hit scaling damage). In both of these trials, she's extremely tough, despite the fact that she's taking the brunt of the attacks. Meanwhile, my corruptor never gets attacked (probably weathers close to 20 attacks, including aoes, over the course of either trial including Lambda), still sits at soft cap, and is only ever in danger during the Nightstar pull or if I get bored and start attacking adds that get ignored. That being said, if/when she gets heat, I tend to have to mash inspirations or do something to not die, typically hovering out of range or running to something with a taunt aura. This is par the course for how the game has worked thus far, so no biggy.

With these examples set up, I want to move to Keyes. In Keyes, the attack divide is still roughly the same, with my brute likely getting attacked by everything on the map (obvious hyperbole) while my corruptor only ever takes the pulses. Normally, my brute is the Keyes tank, on top of clearing Warworks and various other things and dealing with the pulses. My Sonic corruptor, on the other hand, just tags along to a random tank/brute or just goes out and cheaps the Warworks off (Shoot them once, hover around a corner, watch then jump off the reactor, laugh), then just applies the power cells and moves on, never in danger. In this given trial, my corruptor lives MUCH, MUCH longer then my brute, short of the brute being baby sat by an empath. Even then, it's all dependent on the streak breaker.

See, this is what people keep forgetting: Tanks/Brutes are the ones that regularly throw themselves in danger to keep other people alive. When I'm sitting and tanking AM, I'm taking full on Rad debuffs, on top of fighting an AV that even at incarnate soft cap, has a disgustingly high chance to hit. Worse yet, I have to contend with his crippling cascade failure AND the pulse, which comes out to an unsatisfying experience. I've been hit for something like 3-4k damage (after debuffs) by AM through roughly 40-60% resists, which likewise destroyed my defense and forced me to demonic/pop purples. Even if I get hit with a piddling 1k damage hit by AM, if the pulse happens to trigger at the same time, I'm -hosed- without an empath that has cybernetic reflexes or sheer luck. Realize that I mention this while using the Ageless DDR buff, so I'm literally tanking AM through the use of three different timers (Unstoppable, Demonic, Ageless), greens/purples, AND Siphon Life. Meanwhile, my corruptor is skipping along in a field of rainbows and butterflies, putting in the absolute minimum effort and laughing at the very concept of the pulses. Heck, in a pinch, she can shoot AM to get his attention, fly over to someone in a taunt aura, then fly off and continue not caring. About the only reason I even bother firing rebirth is to help the poor schmuck who does have AM aggro, and even then something like half a tray of greens that I pass on is more then enough.

The above is probably the largest example of badly done untyped damage in the game. There's no stating that tanks/brutes are able to get away with being hurt more because if they're doing their job, they will simply be in danger more often. I'm absolutely certain that my brute will never die if I just outright ignored AM, but the design of the trial REQUIRES that someone babysit AM no matter the cost. So when I get the choice between "Actively letting the trial fail" and "Being suicidal" I consider that a bad design in general. It really isn't that I'm expecting to die, more that I know that I'll run out of timers are some point, and the pulse is gonna hit me for most of my life. The funny part is that the damage increase from the pulse (1% more HP lost for every 2% he misses) IS resistable, meaning that most tanks/brutes/scrappers will likely not even notice it until AM is at 50% or lower, while the squishies will notice it almost immediately.

The thing is, this is a pretty easy to solve problem that I'm more than certain the devs don't even acknowledge as a problem. Simply give AM a PBAoE bubble that makes everyone in it immune to the pulse ala the Nuclear Reactor shield (since he is presumably immune to his own reactors). This means the tank isn't unjustifiably punished for, y'know, doing his job, and people who fear the untyped damage can occasionally run in and shield themselves which would raise the comedy factor of Atomic Blast exponentially. It'd probably not take them that long, just drop in a recolored Force Bubble's graphics, and suddenly the popularity of Keyes will probably skyrocket along with the extra Emp.

tl;dr Untyped damage is fine when it's avoidable and utilized as a way of encouraging movement (Apex/Nova Fist/Towers), but not when it punishes you for doing your job. Tanks/Brutes are in more danger, so pulses are dramatically worse for them.

Thanks for the help, it's mostly a bit of a rough call. I can drop Incinerate completely and pick up Assault (and a PVP global in Hoarfrost), but I don't think even with 190 recharge I can make a blaze/fire blast/flares chain. I may be best off sticking to Incinerate in the chain, much as I hate the animation, and keeping the KC while just one slotting Flares.

[QUOTE=Biospark;3821283
But.... You spent alot of time mentioning some of your choices and I would bet any amount of money that a DM/Inv with hundreds of hours and billions of Influence spent will outperform my Emp/Electric with hundreds of hours and billions of Influence spent as far as what they can do solo. Even being played by the same player with the same level of build and solo-competance. Money, Time and Skill matter, but there ARE things that fall into the realm of the game's inherent constraints.

I am not trying to start a fight, just that my observations have shown me that folks who mainly play "self-sufficient" ATs like Scrappers, Tankers and Brutes fail to realize that what they can do is not the same as other ATs. And its not ONLY about skill.[/QUOTE]

In the hope of a fun conversation, I will agree about the discrepancy of self sufficient ATs vs non. The thing is, the EMP/Electric with an equal amount of tweaking or build may likely end up being a much better force multiplier to the team: Forting the entire group, potentially keeping two ABs up (or one AB permanent) on top of both auras and whatever other build/options they want. It's extremely hard to qualify the contribution that a fully forted group gives, on top of AB, but odds are in a team setting that it's as much/more as my brute.

The real problem comes with the second half of that mix: Electric Blast. Let's be honest, it's pretty terrible all around. Melee groups have equally bad stinkers: Broad Sword, Pre fix Energy Aura, and a few other arguable ones depending on your goal or intent. The game as a whole is balanced around "Ability to solo" but doesn't generally care about balance beyond that. It's only when massive, world splitting differences show up (Willpower completely invalidated Invuln, Invuln was buffed. VEATs completely invalidated Stalker, Stalker was buffed, etc) that devs tend to bother to even bring stuff down from on high. Even then, it's more likely that they buff the terrible stuff then ever consider nerfing the overpowered stuff, which in turn creates power creep.

This is why blasters feel like they're falling behind the curve, why some sets seem to be comically outperforming everything else, and why some people just feel like there's an oversaturation of tank magi: A power arms race. Why bother playing SR or EA when SD is likely gonna be better in every way? Why bother with Sonic Resonance or Force Field when Cold blows both out of the water? Concept and whatnot notwithstanding, it gets really, really aggravating when you play powerset X and someone else plays powerset X+Y.

You want to fix tank magi and power creep, strive to fix the power sets. This has to include nerfs as well as buffs to bring things down to a good middle ground where everyone can contribute equally. It also requires tools such as DPS meters and whatnot to get true tests by people who enjoy doing so to create benchmarks for everyone, BEYOND pylon tests. Stuff like cold has no business dropping more -res then sonic, a set that specializes -res and nothing else, on top of the massive debuffs and buffs it provides. Scrappers fought tooth and nail to get brute damage and fury tweaked down slightly because at the high end, brutes were more survivable and did as much or more damage then scrappers. I find it hard to believe that blasters or stalkers (Being less survivable then scrappers) are going to cause scrappers to get the same treatment, or even buffed upwards.

Most sets and ATs can and do excel beyond belief at their job with an equally tuned and insanely expensive build as a DM/Inv Brute. Those that can't (PBs, I'm looking at you as the poster child) need to get brought into line with the other sets and those at the top of the totem pole need to get brought down. My sonic/sonic runs something like 8 toggles at 2.25 end consumption (with a cardiac) or something insane along those lines while maintaining a seamless attack chain and keeping everyone buffed, entirely due to sets.

Balance needs to be achieved. Until then, incarnate slots are only going to show the ridiculous discrepancy between powerful sets and the PBs and equivalent sets get left in the dust.

I think it's inane to argue about the homogenization of CoH when the 800 pound gorilla is showing us how that is done in spades. At this point, while the power creep in CoH has gotten pretty high (and as Arcana mentions, we're still not at "Dumpster Puppy" levels), the uniqueness in builds, sets, and ATs is really approaching an all time high. There are quite a few outliers, but each AT brings something interesting and unique to the field with a few exceptions. Even the "Terrible" ATs (Stalkers/PBs) play differently to most other ATs in the game, with a few exceptions to the rule.

Likewise, I think the claim of "It's too easy" is definitely in the eye of the beholder. My main, the brute in my signature, is purpled and slotted out so hard she shines from space. This is a brute that has several thousand hours of gameplay in, has existed pretty much as long as CoV has, and I've tried to do as much as I could with her build wise and challenge wise. She's DM/Invuln and is so kitted out, she's soloed a Sutter TF, can solo +4/x8 Rikti (and did so in a god awful Dr. Q), cleaves through Carnies, has T4 incarnate stuff, and I'm more then willing to bet that my VEAT friend and I can just flat out duo Lambda. She was built to be as ungodly durable as possible and I achieved that goal in giant flaming letters...through the use of years worth of build refining, inspiration use, timer use, and skill. The game is "easy" by most people's definition with her, but I'm also willing to bet that if I passed the controls off to a friend, they wouldn't be able to pull the feats off that I have done.

By the same token, the three other 50s I've even bothered to start incarnating on are wildly different roles and are nowhere near that pimped out, but perfectly acceptable regardless. My MA/Fire scrapper always jumped into trial groups at +0 with NO enhancements slotted and walked away just fine because of insp usage (or RotP). She's soft capped and has dropped 3k crits during a BAF, but is still fully capable of pulling AVs and tanking Keyes (and regularly does both). Her build is bargain basement at best, with the KCs being the biggest cost, and she gets roflstomped in any x8 content that I can't kill with my alpha or deals fire damage (I don't even bother fighting carnies). My Sonic/Sonic corr runs a soft capped build that, to my memory, was cheap as heck and still pulls AVs and tanks them (again, momentarily with insps) because I'm sick and tired of all the scared tanks/brutes. She gets utterly stomped in anything x8, period. Finally, my freshly minted Elec/Fire dom runs x4 with bosses on, using basic enhancements, and does so with quite a bit of fun times, regardless of the challenge. She can't hit the broad side of a wall in trials (yet).

The problem isn't overpowered builds, easy content, or the like, it's complacency and the handful of people in the high end simply dragging or flexing their power to help people on the low end move up. I saw a BAF fail yesterday because of too many prisoners escaping and the league that was chock full of melee was blaming the doms/controllers, despite both north and south chokepoints patched to hell and back; it was the LTs that got through. I've seen more "Wait until 18 minute" Lambda runs fail then succeed, mostly because people work and operate under the assumption that either EVERYONE is at the same level as them, or they're being carried by one of the "Shining Stars" of the uber class. It's gotten so bad that both my sonic/sonic corr AND my MA/Fire scrapper tanked and dragged Keyes around through ridiculous insp juggling and buffs while a GRANITE TANK sat within eye range hitting some Warworks. Because that tank didn't care, someone else always did it.

Someone else's problem is a huge factor in this game, and was mentioned, it's the PEOPLE that bring difficulty (or lack thereof) to the game more then anything else. The game IS hard and CAN be challenging, but people are more than likely to shift the blame and pitch a fit if they're not immediately winning. Worse yet, because the good players are genuinely willing and able to pick up the slack (this is what makes them good players), self improvement is a trait that is near impossible to find in this game due to an absolute and complete lack of a metric to judge it on.

I for one would love to see things like damage meters introduced into the game not for an elitist desire, but so people can look at the numbers and go "Wow, I did something wrong," nevermind the volumes of information we can get as far as set performance goes. It infuriates me to see fire blasters that literally just spam flares and fire blast, then complain about how hard the game is.

Create your own difficulty and challenge, it's possible to do so regardless of your build and AT as long as you flex your creativity. It goes a long way.

So I made an Elec/Fiery and I've mostly gotten a build together I'm happy with, but a question pops into my head: What's the highest attack chain for Fiery Assault? At the moment, I'm sitting at roughly 120 global recharge and softcap, so I'm none too shy about entering melee. Is the top chain something like Blaze -> Fire Blast -> Incinerate or is it best to do Flares -> Fire Blast -> Blaze? Incinerate and Fire Blast do roughly the same damage, and Flares itself doesn't do a whole lot, but incinerate is easily the worst animation speed of all four attacks. For the record, I'm going Ice Mastery for concept.

This was what I was curious about, thanks both of you!

So after looking a bit through the dom boards and whatnot, I'm curious about specific procs and how they work in Electric Control's powers:

1) Presumably, a proc in Jolting Chain (Force Feedback/Devastation hold) only works on the first target and not the jumps, correct? The same question also applies to Synaptic Overload and Contagious Confusion.

2) Conductive Aura and its procs: Do they apply to the user, the enemy, or both? If I drop a Performance Shifter chance for End in there, do I gain end periodically? What about an Energy Manipulator chance to stun?

3) Static Field: How does the Chance for Placate and Chance to Heal work? One check every ten seconds per enemy?

Thanks!

As Flux has said, PBs are likely to be entering an arms race conflict if balancing continues as such. If the original mechanic is maintained and numbers keep getting tweaked, the X will become the best form and the other two will grow weak. Rebalancing happens and second verse same as the first. What needs to happen is that the forms need to be tuned, perhaps PB only, to allow PBs the flexibility that WSes receive.

One big idea comes to mind: Change Ammo. Allowing forms to work in a Change Ammo capacity creates a nice situation where forms augment the base human form, perhaps with a damage buff, proc, or group proc, while preventing any one form from being the best. Realistically, this also means less attacks as human form attacks would be allowable to be used if a Change Ammo mechanic is implemented, meaning that this is pretty much a pipe dream.

Likewise, it bears mentioning that any big form changes made to PB are almost certainly going to apply to WS whether they like it or not, potentially crippling the WS by extension. Utilizing the above example, a Change Ammo system would cause the WS to lose double Mire, mostly because there'd be no need for dwarf attacks.

Ultimately, this is the time to talk about how to make PB forms work with the PB instead of against: as Flux pointed out Warshade forms are part of a large trinity of power, constant changing being the core of their gameplay. PBs pick a form and stick to it, and are often penalized slightly for changing (loss of powers) or shoved so hard into a role, they've practically lost any reason to bother doing much but one or two things (dwarf). It's very possible that this could easily be balanced without needing to incorporate massive number changes, as this is almost certainly a mechanics problem and little more.

Something to keep in mind is that Mires and Eclipse are still perfectly valuable on a single target to the tune of the equivalent of one insp if Mire is double stacked or Eclipse is used alone (eclipse counts for half again if slotted).

It's absolutely immature to think that Eclipse has an opportunity cost because you have to activate it before a fight. Warshades have this ability, it's called Shadow Cloak. While in Shadow Cloak, you are in a state called "Stealth" where enemies have a hard time seeing you. Short of some rare situations, it is perfectly viable to walk up to a group, Eclipse as an alpha strike, and enjoy the full benefits of capped resists before you even suffered one attack. At worst, you get hit by a Rikti drone (please don't tell me that rikti drones one shot you, they don't). If you are presumably chugging along with a full on fuzzy accompaniment and rocking orbiting debt, odds are you're already resist capped, so what opportunity cost?

As for the Mires, let's do a little thought exercise with math. Scrapper Soul Drain, fully saturated, returns 140% damage buff: 50% from the first one, 90% from the remaining 9. This was due to the overall lack of desire to ever soul drain on a single target. As a point of comparison, brutes gain 112% damage buff from Soul Drain (40% first, 8% for the remaining 9). Warshades have two mires, a traditional Soul Drain clone without the "first target" perk and an extremely fast recharging one with a shorter duration in dwarf form. A fully saturated mire returns 112.5% damage increase, more then a brute on technicality but realistically the same. A double mire returns 225% damage buff, with Black Dwarf Mire being trivially easy to perma and a good aoe attack in the tank form on its own. Essentially, the fact that Warshades don't get an initial boost from the first one is a balancing factor simply because if we made both work like Soul Drain, you'd end up with 72% damage buff (36*2) on top of a whopping 225% damage buff assuming you had them saturated.

Simply speaking, this means that Mires have -immense- strength when fully saturated and are so so to passable when on a single target. This is far from situational because there's absolutely no reason not to use both off cooldown when the enemies number past 3-4. Complaining it's situation is like complaining that Inferno is situational because it's garbage against single target (in other news, water is wet). Touch of Fear is a great example of a situational power: Something that has use in a limited situation, but otherwise doesn't really bring a whole lot to the table except for those times. Nebulous Form is a better example for a Warshade, NOT Eclipse and the Mires.

It's because scrappers get two better survivability tools then brutes in their epics: Hibernate and Shadow Meld. I'm not entirely sure why Darkest Night has been heralded as some sort of holy grail of survivability when it has an obnoxiously long cast time, the tohit gets resisted into the dust, and the -damage isn't gonna be topping charts. Meanwhile, you have a complete invulnerability and a huge +defense that will compensate for any cascade failure you receive.

You don't take soul mastery on a brute for Darkest Night, you take it for gloom and Dark Obliteration. Darkest Night is just a nice little cherry on top of an already great set. Hibernate and Shadow Meld are both substantially better survivability tools in the long run, so I'm not sure why they've been ignored.

Looking at the inherent and the buffs it allows, I'm unsure if the inherent is the entire problem or not a problem at all. Pushing aside the issues of mez resistance and wonky power designs for the moment, it could be that a Kheldian's "out of the box" performance relying on teams is more of a good thing.

To extrapolate, the two biggest problems I see in relation to Kheldians are "Soloability" and "High end contribution." While the former speaks for itself, the latter is something to expand upon. As is shown by the DPS with a "kitted out" Kheldian, Khelds don't really improve worth a hill of beans, nor do they bring anything major to the table assuming a fully stacked or even slightly balanced group. Assuming this as an optimal situation, it's kinda hard to put a Kheldian side by side with, say, a high end scrapper and not immediately feel that the scrapper is better in every way. I feel that nerfing the inherent or baking it into the power won't do anything here but solve the first problem without bothering to address the second. After all, dominators still use domination to augment their controlling and vigilance still helps the defenders end usage to allow each to have a given role.

If I may say so, after looking at these numbers I'd be willing to say that Khelds' inherent really brings uniqueness to the class much like Fury does to a brute. Because of this, I think that changing the inherent to retain uniqueness while attempting to maintain the same numbers is the smartest move, in my mind. Likewise, I think that using the inherent as a base rewards Kheldians for taking both "paths" in IOs (recharge or softcap) and should be retained as best as possible.

In light of that, I like the earlier mentioned idea to half the cosmic balance buff, bake it into the Kheld's powers, then make Cosmic Balance return to the team. This gives Khelds a semi unique role (jacks with support) and makes a good starting point to allow further analysis into the power. For example, PB forms could grant a certain buff to the team and the PB (Nova for damage, human for mez protect, lobster for resist) which stacks with Cosmic Balance. Warshades could be given a Gauntlet ability where attacks in a certain form likewise grant debuffs (Nova -res, Human -rech, Lobsters -damage). These are obviously starting points, but as I mentioned earlier, it's best to identify what Kheldians are right now and what they should be, then work design changes to reach that paradigm and remove the glass ceiling they have now.