LuxunS

You know I was thinking. I know I wasn't doing anything wrong, and i'm pretty sure that your testing was sound. So, why are we getting completely different results? I thought maybe...

The recharge cur is different for different archetypes
or
Something is off with mind link

Only other long recharge power I have is aura of confusion at 240s. I went and looked at that, and it does indeed match up mathematically and ingame with what your results have shown. The only conclusion I can come to is that there's something wrong with mind link recharge. Maybe it has to do with the power doesn't follow the normal recharge rules and has to use IOs to get the bonuses or something else. *shrug*

This makes my day...

That seems to be exactly the case. I fiddled around with lots of possibilities to find the one that explained why mind link was recharging in that amount of time. That one fits mathematically, and fits with arcana's explaination.

It does suck

As con said, its not terribly difficult to do. There is room for more, but that's what I needed for my purposes.

4x 10% from purples
5x 7.5% from lotgs
4x 5% from crushing impact/adjusted targeting
1x 6.25 from decimation
1x 7.5 from kinetic crash

I'm the first to agree with you; I was merely giving an objective comparison of damage among the 2 archetypes. I tire of discussing defenses in pvp. Castle has made it clear there's no plans for changes any time soon. Writing about it is almost as frustrating as trying to deal with it in game.

This isn't exactly true. Forts had their damage wizzed on, but Widows didn't really come off that bad. Comparison between Widow and Scrappers with the same attacks

Scrapper-Widow
Swipe = 79.08 - 71.71
Strike = 101.54 - 102.38
Follow-up = 110.14 - 82.42
Lunge = 112.85 - 104.66
Slash = 114.81 - 124.32

Widows fall short with Lunge and Follow-up. Lunge does less damage for widows because it has a significantly faster animation time then the spines version. I don't have any numerical explanation for follow-up *shrugs*. The fortunata attacks Subdue, TK Blast, Dominate, do similar or less damage then they do for Psy Defenders with the Psy epic pool, that makes me sad

As for defenses in pvp, I'm not going to talk about that because I'll just end up nerd raging.

I don't mean to seem impudent, but isn't this statement in indirect contradiction to the goals of the current pvp system? I thought part of the reason it was implemented was to make pvp more attractive to pve players; that the goal was people wouldn't have to spec for pvp to function in it.

Originally under those suppositions I supported the proposed changes to the pvp system. Though my character was a pve spec (fortunata) I did well in pvp, and had hopes that if many pve builds could do as well, it would add greatly to the pvp community.

Fast-forward to today and it seems that things are a mess. The above mentioned pve character has no pvp capability. It does the same damage as a defender with psi blasts, has virtually no damage mitigation, and has the lowest shared base hit points (except masterminds). In zones it is just a target that's hardly a threat to anyone. Even pvp spec'd with IOs carefully placed to fit within the confines of DR, that character is barely pushing the resistance levels other archetypes get inherently and still not putting out damage that a blaster with SOs is (even with attacks slotted with 2 procs). Many toons have found their roles in pvp reduced, or even eliminated completely. But back on topic....

We don't have access to numbers, but subjectively it seems that the pvp community has diminished significantly, while the additions from the pve community have been minimal. I remember a few months back there was a discussion about soloing ghost widow and you (castle) posted that you could do it on many toons that someone else in the office could not; you have an understanding of the powers and AI mechanics that this person lacked. For many players this is what the game becomes to us. Mechanics and numbers become second nature (even if its not consciously understood) and even the games greatest challenges become more or less trivial. After playing ever story arc and running every task force and soloing AVs, pylons, etc etc, what's left for people to do with the characters they've invested so much into? PvP is the answer.

Or rather PvP should be the answer. Opponents with constantly changing tactics with a variety of different powers that require different approaches to defeat. There were always FOTM toons who had an advantage, but now it seems the zones have become even more homogenized. Toons that ended up pulling the short straw with the pvp changes are SoL.

The development of this game has been moving in a good direction pve-wise. Removing most of the AE farming problems, allowing toons to set their own difficulty, power color customization, all good things for that aspect of the game. However, pvp seems to not be moving forwards. I beg you, please make pvp more of a priority. The original (inferred) attempt to pull pve players into pvp can still be accomplished. A BALANCED pvp system with reward incentives will draw players. After all there's only so many times you can run the high level task forces repeatedly before you move on. Options are rolling an alt, pvp, or moving on to another game.

I made a mistake with the vanguard merit number. I neglected to account for the merit rewarded for completing a mission. Running more today and keeping track better. I'll try to get 2k or so kills to have a better sample size.

One question, what's the underling drop rate if there is any... I'm coming across lots of monkeys ><

I had thought darkest night would be a godsend for pvp. Allowing us to make up that defense we lost from DR, but upon further consideration it has limited use. How often do you actually get to 1v1 someone outside of the arena What's your take on it?

Overall I'd say VEATs get shafted this issue. None of the abilities added to the PPPs seem worth of taking. We get no additional claw options, and no power customization options. Only thing i'm looking forward to is being able to set missions to the "proper" difficulty

The challenge is done to test a build. So long as you're relying on your own powers and not inspirations or anything outside I thought it valid.

By that reasoning, any secondary effects are illegal. If confuse is invalid, holds are invalid too (since the mobs aren't aggro on you while they're in a block of ice or rock or holding their head). It would be terribly difficult to do the RWZ challege on a fort without the use of scramble thoughts, dominate, or any confuses and just SOs. Would such things be illegal on a dominator where disabling opponents is the main form of damage mitigation? Many melee sets use their secondary abilities to great effect, ss/ with its knockdowns and kob, em/ and ma/ with its stuns, dm/ with its to-hit debuffs and fear. Why should forts be penalized for powers they have available?

If a /wp scrapper can use a wall to get the rikti into melee range so they get the benefit of rttc, why is it illegal for a fort to stay out of melee range to get the best benefit of their defenses (so long as they don't lose aggro)?

On test we have the new brute version!!! Hope it's not a bug lol

The devs do seem to take care to make sure that powers within sets don't overlap with epic/ancillary power pools. It is odd that banes are the exception...

Rules other than no insps, temp powers, teammates? On both the fort widow it isn't terribly difficult.

With the fort you can open with aura of confusion and keep single target confusion on a chief soldier boss. Outside of that just pick away everything else around. It's easy to stay mobile out of melee and rikti do mostly psi and energy damage. Since we have psi resistance its not a major concern. Aid self for hairy spots. Single target confuse has had its animation time lowered since I tried it with SOs months ago, I'd imagine its even easier now to do it with this tactic.

With the widow you don't have the convenience of confusions, but you do have elude. It puts you significantly over the soft-cap and gives you 3 minutes of unlimited endurance to take them out.

You're looking at damage, I'm talking about damage per activation time. Looking at things the way you do, the powers that do the most damage are those that are the best. I'm looking at what powers do the best damage for the amount of time they take to animate. When you talk about 4s attacks you're looking at the recharge time, not the animation time.

The example you gave, energy punch isn't better than swipe. DPA wise...

Energy Punch – 0.7 Smashing + 0.3 Energy = 1.0/1.056 = 0.947
Swipe - .8 Lethal + 3x.08 toxic = 1.04/1.056 = 0.985

Even damage wise
Stalker Energy Punch
38.93 Smashing damage
16.68 Energy damage =
55.61 Total Damage

Widow Swipe
44.49 Lethal damage
3 * 4.45 Toxic damage over 2.10 seconds =
57.84 Total Damage

Poison Dart does more damage then Swipe, but has a much longer activation time. If you're just looking at powers that do the most damage then by all means, ignore my ranting But for attack chains swipe is a very good attack. Since Widows get some of the best DPA attacks in the game with slash and lunge, it may seem underpowered, but compared to attacks of other sets, it is more then competitive.