Mind Forever Burning

Yay, I made it in! I wasn't sure what the deadline is. I guess I'll publish the Market Report on Thursday evenings from here out.

Also, the Dominator horoscope literally made me laugh out loud. My cow orkers are all looking at me funny

- Protea

This week's salvage price report is here.

Tobay,

I think it would be cool to include some kind of Market Report. I've done part of one for the villain side, focusing on salvage prices, here.

What would be really cool is if the auction servers could generate a report from their database, rather than have a player like myself take notes with pencil and paper, but I dunno how willing the devs would be to make that happen.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
Does your suggested IO price account for a "present value" discount for not having to upgrade the enhancement later, as with a SO?


[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, that is pretty much the whole point of the post, to do that math :P

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
Here is my plan. Each new toon gets 5 million inf to start them out.

...

Level 12:
If I can find cheap lv 15 IOs on the market, outfit with them, otherwise buy DOs as usual.
Level 17: Nothing


[/ QUOTE ]

Any slots that don't have lvl 15 IOs in them are going to go red at level 19 according to this plan.

I've actually been toying with an alternate plan, which is to buy all IOs at levels 12 and 27 and nothing in between. You sacrifice some performance between 22 and 27, but +3 DOs are actually not that bad, all things considered, and the character would likely be very playable. That saves you something like 1M inf compared to the other plan I outlined.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and the acc isn't exactly wasted. It has a max ToHit Chance of 50%, which is also it's base. But go against a +3 LT, and it is less. The Acc actually makes up for that somewhat (Re CASTLE when I asked him about Acc/Hold HOs in CC). It's not exactly a better chance of hitting PER SE, but it will help you to hit stuff higher than you, or higher ranked.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you serious? I hate to be doubting someone as mighty as Castle, but from how I understand the power to work, it is basically a proc and has no ToHit at all.

In addition, the fact that the power ever benefited at all from +Acc should have been a bug, and one that was supposedly fixed around i7. The base power does not take Accuracy enhancements at all, mind you. So the bug fix, which was to make sure that powers that didn't take an enhancement for an aspect also didn't get to enhance that aspect when HOs were dropped in, would have fixed this behavior even if the Accuracy from an HO were ever doing anything to begin with.

Do you still have the PM from Castle to dig up?

The thing I am grappling with here is whether *all* procs are basically to-hit checks and won't trigger as often against higher conning foes.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]

18) --> Choking Cloud
* Ghost Widow’s Embrace (Dmg/Hold)
* Ghost Widow’s Embrace (Acc/End)
* Ghost Widow’s Embrace (Hold/Rng)
* Ghost Widow’s Embrace (End/Rng/Rch)
* (Ghost Widow’s Embrace (20% Chance of 0.67 * Melee Damage-Psionic)
* Neuronic Shutdown (20% Chance .15*Melee Damage (Psionic per tick of 4.25 sec)
+RunSpeed 2.5, +HP 2.5, +End 2.5, +Duration(Hold) 2.5
(Damage=27.19, Acc=27.19, Recharge=21.75, EndRedux=48.94, Range=29.36, Hold=54.38)
40% Chance of Damage of Psionic Melee Damage


[/ QUOTE ]

Hm. I know you're going for set bonuses here, but I think you might have problems with endurance. Choking Cloud is one of the end-hog level powers; I regularly slot it with 3 endredux.

Also, the damage and accuracy aspects are wasted, since CG uses neither.

I would seriously consider whether the set bonuses you're going for are worth the loss in end and hold. Are there other ways to slot GWE and NS to get the same effect, but trading acc/dmg for end/hold?

At the same time, slotting for dmg procs is kinda neat. YMMV.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I8 launch: Freedom Phalanx at level 53, 95% debuff resistance. Team requirements looser, as follows:

[/ QUOTE ]

You forgot the dominator way:

- 1x mind dominator
- 2x kinetic corrs
- pretty much anything else.

Mind dominator dual-boosted can keep the AVs slept while the other 7 people take on the AVs one by one. I've been on teams doing this, it works, no nukes, no shivans and no radiation required. One time we ran it with a level 46 brute tanking, sk'd to 49.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right, sorry about that. That's still a pretty specific team build, though. (I haven't personally seen this done but I know it's possible.) The critical trick IMHO is not so much the perma-sleeping of the FP as a whole, though that certainly makes things easier, but the ability to perma-hold Statesman through the PToD so that he can't use his ridiculous game-breaking version of Unstoppable. That Unstoppable is the real reason unresistable -regen or gigantic stacked -res is such a key factor.

My point is we don't know what's required to punch through Unstoppable now that the rules have changed. It might be easier, it might be the same, it might even be harder (now that -regen isn't resistable).

- Protea

This is mostly a <qr> to the thread.

History of team composition requirements for the LRSF, by Protea, who thinks he knows about as much as anyone on the topic

I7 launch: Freedom Phalanx at level 54, 95% debuff resistance. Only two reasonable team compositions:
[*] Granite brute + kin + (N x rad); -or-[*] Team fully decked out with Shivans and Chemical Burns nukes, plus either some Biological Mutagens or a Kin, plus someone who can rez

I8 launch: Freedom Phalanx at level 53, 95% debuff resistance. Team requirements looser, as follows:
[*] 1x source of dmg buff[*] 5x sources of resistance debuff, -or- One source of unresistable -regen (/rad corr or /poison MM, possibly /TA MM)[*] 1x Shivan for every non-Brute, non-dmg-buff Corruptor, or other AT; -or- stacked vengeance[*] Someone who can rez

I9 launch: Freedom Phalanx at level 53, 85% debuff resistance, no more unresistable -regen. Team requirements UNKNOWN

I don't think anyone has done enough testing to know how easy (or not) the LRSF is now that debuffs are 3x as effective as they used to be against the FP, but we no longer have unresistable -regen. So before we make any more claims about what should or shouldn't happen to Shivans and Warburg weapons as they relate to the LRSF, we should probably do some testing.

Peace.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
You are absolutely right and I apologise.

[/ QUOTE ]

Apology accepted I know I've done my share of taking things onto tangents before.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
To the OP: My apologies if I upset you but I'm used to working with people much less insightful than you are and as a result I like to see my information laid out in captain-dummy talk. I reread your posts and the information was indeed there...I was just accustomed to having the pertinent stuff closer to the surface.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a perfectly valid criticism of my post. But I think the main reason I was irritated by your responses is that I feel like I am being threadjacked. General discussions about whether the Inventions system is too confusing or whether it's worth your while to test it out belong somewhere else.

As for the "captain dummy" talk, I am considering starting a new thread where I simply lay out the upgrade decisions as I outlined in my last post, and point interested readers here for a discussion of why.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
I liked that at level 22, I could slot a level 25 IO for a boost that was very close to what an SO would give me. I could sell salvage (getting salvage is inevitable), have more than enough influence to pick up a quite a few IOs, and have my hero decked out with a rather large percentage of IOs by the time I hit level 23.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you chose to slot N level 25 IOs rather than N*2 level 25 SOs? Interesting. You made the decision I would like to see encouraged, but I had the impression that players would be dissuaded from doing so by the sizable sacrifice required in the *number* of enhancements the player could afford at 22. (Note that you're also sacrificing performance, slightly.)

Here is what I plan to do for my own characters, who are going to be funded by my own 50s via my SG (yes, I twink):

pre-level 12: Use drops only
Level 12: Outfit using lvl 15 IOs
Level 17: Nothing
Level 22: Outfit using level 25 SOs
Level 27: Outfit using level 30 IOs
Level 32: Nothing
Level 37: Nothing
Level 42: Upgrade selective 1 or 2-slotted aspects to lvl 45 IOs
Level 47: Upgrade selective 1 or 2-slotted aspects to lvl 50 IOs

This is only 3 rounds of "required" enhancement purchases for the entire career of my character, compared with 8 currently. The last two rounds will not be full upgrades and may depend on whether I can respec to change slotting around.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
In a perfectly balanced system, Defense should have the same expectation for performance that Resistance has, regardless of accuracy and/or ToHit buffs. This, currently, is not true.

[/ QUOTE ]

This line of reasoning is exactly why I wrote this post.

- Protea

Castle, I did a whole bunch of thinking about this over the weekend... and I simply feel answering these questions isn't going to help. The question of "what should happen" expectations is clouded irrevokably by what happens elsewhere in the game. In PvP, the defense question has a huge impact on the resistance question, and vice versa.

With that in mind, I have created a different thread highlighting the mathematical differences I see between the two.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
I'm looking for it [information] and not finding it.

[/ QUOTE ]

One of your questions:

[ QUOTE ]
So at what point does a single IO give the same bonus as a basic, even-level SO? Using Dmg as an example will there be a single IO that will give me +33% Dmg as a single SO will now?

[/ QUOTE ]

indicates to me that you didn't read even the post you are responding to, much less do much investigation in other parts of this forum.

The table is posted in Part II of my analysis and understanding it is an integral part of the numbers I come up with. If you didn't even glean this much out of my post, I am not sure how to help you. I realize my analysis is long, and perhaps could be tightened up, but the information is there before your eyes.

The answer to this specific question, by the way, is "a level 30 IO gives roughly the same bonus as an SO". (That's an approximation; if you want the exact percentage, see the aforementioned table.)

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
Why did you put a Remaining column for yout TCO chart? IMHO simply showing the TCO of 285,465 would have been sufficient. Sorry to nit-pick but at first glance it was a little confusing.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Remaining column shows the most important number in that table: the Remaining number is the opportunity cost of switching over to a basic IO midway through character career. That's how much inf you save if you never have to upgrade your enhancements for that slot again.

I know the post was long and wordy, and I probably could have represented the information better, but that is a critical point so I wanted to underscore it.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
Even combining three [level 50] SOs are you looking at less than 1/2 of the cost of a basic IO that you bought the recipe for and then crafted (and possibly had to buy expensive salvage.)


[/ QUOTE ]

No, that's not true. A doubly-combined level 50 SO is not the equivalent of a level 50 IO. A doubly combined level 50 is the equivalent of a level 40 IO. In addition, if you buy that level 40 IO when you hit level 37, you get three rounds' worth of doubly-combined SO valuation - the ones you would have purchased at level 40, level 45, and level 50. By that metric, level 40 IOs win by a fair margin over SOs.

That is the whole point of the analysis. Basic IOs are a ridiculously good deal at 30, 35, and 40. They are completely ignorable at 10 and 20. They are worth buying at 15. 25 is an anomaly because SOs are actually more powerful.

But at 45 and 50, they are not directly comparable to SOs, because they represent a level of power you cannot buy into in the current TDSO system.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
4) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

[/ QUOTE ]

I expect an attacker at the to-hit cap to hit a defender at the defense cap 25% of the time, or half of what you'd see if both were at base.

I had a long explanation for this but it got into too many mechanics.

- Protea

Edit: for the first 3 questions, the existing in-game numbers are fine (50% base, 95% cap, 5% floor).

[ QUOTE ]
First, all of those games mentioned have healthy, strong MOD communities which constantly churn out new maps, weaponry, and options. None of them are remotely the same as they were the day they were released, and most of the modifications come from fans who donated their time to create/alter content.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have always wondered why MMORPGs did not try harder to develop ways for fan-based content to be published. Players on this forum have asked numerous times for the ability to design missions, and even given certain constraints to avoid "freebie" designs that gave too much reward for the risk, it sure seems like players would happily generate content for each other.

I fully realize that such a system would still have costs - developers would have to review content before publishing, which is no small task - but I still wonder if, ultimately, this would be a better use of the subscription dollars than doing all the content development centrally. (In a way, it's like the Cathedral vs. the Bazaar all over again.)

Any thoughts on that topic? Has Cryptic even theoretically toyed with opening that Pandora's box?

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
Combat Stance were in the game to begin with to a degree. The non-stakcing armors from Tanker and Scrappers Defense sets. And to a lesser extend the End Cost for maintaining several toggles. It was OK conceptually and would have been fine for PvP.

[/ QUOTE ]

That was in the game at a time when the game was massively unbalanced for PvE. Dark armors didn't stack, but Regeneration's toggles did, and so did SR's, I believe (though I didn't play one at the time, so I'm not 100% sure). Invuln's armors weren't mutually exclusive either, though at the time Unyielding made the player immobile, so perhaps that counts.

Dark also had the additional problem that its combat stance decisions were all degenerate: nearly everything did some combination of smash/lethal + something else, so 95% of the time running the "something else" armor instead of the smash/lethal armor was a bad decision. That meant that even taking that other armor was probably a bad decision. You'd be much better served taking the fighting pool and using Tough.

So while I might go along with the idea that these were *intended* to balance through combat stance, they certainly didn't do a good job of it.

Trying to balance through combat stance is a good idea, but IMHO combat stance should be something fluid, that is determined by the player moment-by-moment. In an MMORPG world where gaining powers is discrete and (to some extent) irreversable, combat stance represented by powers is, I tend to think, inherently flawed.

A long time ago I suggested the idea of "focus points" where you could boost certain powers by "focusing on them" during battles. This would be a much more fluid way of achieving a result similar in spirit to enhancements. I still think that would be a good idea for some MMO (though not, at this point, CoX in specific). (I also think it does a pretty good job of representing what actually happens in complex learning task situations in real life.)

Fascinating thread, by the way.

- Protea

Part III

Now that I have finally had time to dive into this again (apologies, devs and other testers), let's look at the actual recipe + crafting costs for basic IOs:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Lvl Recipe Craft Total Recommended % of Rec.
10 1700 3400 5100 1500 340%
15 3550 7100 10650 9000 118%
20 16350 32700 49050 12000 408%
25 17550 35500 53050 30000 176%
30 30975 41300 72275 120000 60%
35 47025 63700 110725 240000 46%
40 74475 99300 173775 300000 57%
45 177200 177200 354400 400000 86%
50 464400 464400 928800 500000 185%
</pre><hr />

There are some interesting properties of this table.

First, I strongly believe that the level 10 and 20 IOs are grossly overpriced. There is absolutely no incentive to even craft one of these things given that the 5 levels it will take for them to become obsolete compared to TDSOs will take very little time to work through, and you'd be better served fighting and gaining XP than dealing with the salvage involved.

It's possible that badgers will flood the market with level 10 IOs they crafted, but other than that, level 10 IOs are going to be completely ignored. Why even have them if they cost this much? Level 20s have a tangible advantage in their bonuses, but they become outstripped so quickly by SOs that again I think most people will ignore them in practice.

As an aside, I was astonished that the recipe cost at 10-20 is so significantly less than the craft cost. If the devs inverted this relationship, lvl 10 and 20 IOs might still see some use by people who got lucky drops. As it stands, even the crafting cost for these items serves to marginalize them.

Second, I think there is a problem at levels 25-40. In this level range, basic IOs are still expensive enough that non-twinked characters are going to have huge difficulty justifying the expense. Yet they are so cheap at 30 compared to the current cost of twinking characters with SOs that sugar-daddy sponsors would be foolish not to use them. This is exactly the rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer problem I was trying to avoid in my analysis: twinking not only gives you more power over the life of the character, it also saves money. I don't think twinking should be encouraged to that extent.

I would like to re-iterate my suggestion that level 25 IOs be normalized in cost to SOs. They are weaker than SOs at that level, so fully twinking min-maxers will ignore them anyway. This is the golden opportunity for Cryptic to allow people to buy into the IO system in a deliberate way that won't cripple the characters' other slotting at that level.

Last, I will fully admit that the numbers for levels 45 and 50 basic IOs were kind of pulled out of a hat. I actually have very little problem with what Cryptic chose to do here. The level 50 cost seems a bit high, but given that it can potentially allow 2-slotting instead of 3-slotting, it's hard to figure out how to map that onto an inf cost.

OK, that's it for now. Devs, you now have my opinion on record

Peace

- Protea

Part II

This post will analyze the current cost of the TO/DO/SO upgrade path and compare the resulting total cost of ownership with never-expiring Invention Origin enhancements. Starting from some basic design goals and the existing upgrade economy, I will derive suggested total costs for common Invention Origin enhancements.

Note that I have not looked at what common IOs actually cost; I deliberately did this calculation before looking so that I would have an unbiased outlook.

I know that others have posted on this, but the calculation is so long I thought it needed its own thread. Lemur_Lad can snowflake me all he wants

I. Groundwork

Power curves

The power curves for common IOs and TOs/DOs/SOs are quite different. While IOs gradually increase in power with level, the current system (with required upgrades every 5 levels) gives a sawtooth pattern. Power bumps up at levels 2, 7, 12, etc, then gradually decrease. For each of the three domains of this graph (the TO, DO, and SO domains) the average value of this sawtooth function is a constant.

It is possible, though hardly common practice, to bump up the average value of the sawtooth by refreshing enhancements twice or even three times per 5 level period. We will use the cost of this uncommon practice in comparing costs with IOs at some of the mid- to high-level upgrade points.

Terminology

First, for a given enhancement slot in a given power, we will call the cost of investing in enhancements for that slot over the lifetime of a character the total cost of ownership (TCO) of that slot. For TOs/DOs/SOs (hereafter referred to as TDSOs), that total cost is paid out in increments. For common IOs that survive the life of the enhancement slot, that cost is paid out in one lump sum.

Note that the inf savings, if any, of switching over to an IO system midway through the career of the character actually decrease with level, because of the costs already paid out into the TDSO system.

Note also that IOs do in some sense become obsolete; the point at which an IO is superceded by the average benefit of the TDSO system is called the crossover point, and the number of levels between the purchase of the IO and the next crossover point is called the IO's lifetime.

Guiding principles

In order to determine a fair price for common IOs, we need to establish some guiding principles, which are the mathematical expression of desired game results. They are fairly easily stated as follows:
[*]Common IOs need to be economically competitive with the SO upgrade path. This is something of a sine qua non; if they are not economically competitive, no one will use them when there is a way to get equivalent power with TDSOs, i.e. prior to lvl 45. The savings also have to be substantial enough to justify the additional complexity of dealing with storing, sorting, and potentially even buying recipes and salvage.
[*]Common IOs need to be economically feasible for characters with no inf benefactor. If the system is economically beneficial but out of reach for poor characters, due to lower TCO but a staggering up-front cost, we end up with a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" kind of system.
[*]Common IOs need to have a tangible and substantive cost. While perhaps not directly unbalancing, having common IO costs that are too low will neuter crafting badges and render the use of consignment for recipes moot.

You may ask whether it's possible to satisfy both the second and third constraints simultaneously. I do think this is possible, and I'll explain why in the calculations.

II. Calculations

Average benefit for TDSOs

We would like to know what the average of the TDSO sawtooth is for the best-case upgrade scenarios, so that we can compare them to IOs:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Upgrading once per 5 levels: (+3, +2, +1, 0, -1): Avg TDSO level: +1
Upgrading twice per 5 levels: (+3, +3, +2, +1, 0): Avg TDSO level: +1.8
Upgrading thrice per 5 levels: (+3, +3, +3, +2, +1): Avg TDSO level: +2.4
</pre><hr />

Note that upgrading multiple times every 5 levels doesn't give quite an overall +1 benefit, since the bonus is still capped at +3; still, we can fudge factor this a bit and say that to get +2 average SOs, you'll need to upgrade twice, and to get +3 average SOs, you'll need to upgrade three times.

TCO Table for Damage TDSOs

I chose damage TDSOs because the numbers are (usually) round, and they are perhaps the most common enhancement type overall. Other types of enhancements are simple scale factors of these numbers: accuracy is slightly more, recharge slightly less, etc.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Level Type Cost Remaining
5 TO 500 284965
10 TO 1000 283965
15 DO 5985 277980
20 DO 7980 270000
25 SO 30000 240000
30 SO 36000 204000
35 SO 42000 162000
40 SO 48000 114000
45 SO 54000 60000
50 SO 60000 0
-----
Total TCO 285465
</pre><hr />


Comparison Table for Damage IOs

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Level IO % Equiv Lifetime Breakeven Cost
10 11.7 -3 DO 5 1000
15 19.2 +3 DO 10 13965
20 25.6 -3 SO 5 N/A
25 30.2 -1 SO 0 none
30 34.8 +1 SO 23 240000
35 36.7 +2 SO 18 408000**
40 38.6 +3 SO 13 486000***
45 40.5 +4 SO 8 N/A
50 42.4 +5 SO 3 N/A
-----
** Attaining this value with SOs requires double upgrades; breakeven cost is 2x
*** Attaining this value with SOs requires triple upgrades; breakeven cost is 3x
</pre><hr />

To calculate the breakeven cost, I looked at the corresponding table entry in the TCO table above. For example, after buying a level 25 damage SO, I have 240k inf left to invest in that slot. If at level 30 I buy a damage IO instead, I have saved myself 240k minus the cost of that damage IO.

I did fudge the breakeven costs a little bit. In order to get +3 DO efficacy, a character would need to upgrade 3 times every five levels; but the difference between a +1 and a +2 DO is much less than the difference between a +1 and a +2 SO, so the double- or triple-purchase upgrade plans are not very appealing. At the higher levels, however, these other purchase plans are the only real way to compare IOs to TDSOs, so I left them in place.

The breakeven cost represents the maximum anyone should be willing to pay for an IO. In other words, going above this cost would immediately violate the first guiding principle I listed above.

In order to be competitive with TDSOs, IOs need to cost significantly less than the breakeven cost. But how much less? To answer that question, I need to point out an anomaly in the comparison table:

At level 25, there is no power incentive to use IOs as opposed to SOs. A level 25 IO is actually less powerful than its TDSO equivalent. This is the only level in the entire curve where the lifetime of the IO is "zero".

There is a subtle opportunity here. Characters with inf benefactors have zero incentive to use IOs at that level; instead, the rational plan is to use SOs at 25 and switch to IOs at 30. So level 25 IOs are only relevant to poor characters. We can tweak the cost of these IOs in order to satisfy the third guiding principle above, by making level 25 IOs cost the same amount as level 25 SOs. Characters can then buy into the IO system with enhancements that never expire and pay only a small penalty in their power curve. The rich might still be able to get richer, but the poor can now get richer, too.

With all this in mind, I present:

III. Final Results

Suggested Total Costs for Damage IOs

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Level IO % Equiv Lifetime Breakeven Cost Suggested Cost
10 11.7 -3 DO 5 1000 1500
15 19.2 +3 DO 10 13965 9000
20 25.6 -3 SO 5 N/A 12000
25 30.2 -1 SO 0 none 30000
30 34.8 +1 SO 23 240000 120000
35 36.7 +2 SO 18 408000 240000
40 38.6 +3 SO 13 486000 300000
45 40.5 +4 SO 8 N/A 400000
50 42.4 +5 SO 3 N/A 500000
</pre><hr />

Note that the values for 45 and 50 IOs represent an extrapolation of the table's existing trends, since there is no direct comparison in the TDSO system.

I think this table does a good job at satisfying all constraints. IOs represent a cost savings opportunity, at the burden of increased complexity. The cost savings are substantial enough to warrant spending some money in the Consignment system acquiring recipes and salvage pieces. At the same time, they are expensive enough that crafting badges and memorized recipes have a tangible benefit.

Recipe vs. Crafting Costs

The above costs represent the total of the recipe and crafting costs. In the interest of simplicity, I would suggest splitting this equally between the two (i.e., at level 10, the recipe costs 750 inf and the act of crafting costs 750 inf).

Parting thoughts

That was quite a long post - even longer than I'd imagined. As I mentioned before, I have not actually looked at what the inf costs are in game for crafting various levels of common IO.

I'm hoping that what I see in-game will mesh with these calculations, in which case, perhaps this post will guide some of the justifications for the rates staying as they are. If not, then this is my argument for rebalancing around the numbers I give.

Peace,

- Protea

Part I

This post will attempt to analyze the inf costs of basic (non-set, single aspect) IOs. This is an area that I believe still needs some balance work, and I'm hoping that the devs have time to address a few concerns.

Part I of the post is this section, the introduction.

Part II is a re-post of something I wrote up in the closed beta, before I had seen the actual crafting and recipe prices as they appeared on the tables. Other than a few edits for clarity I am re-posting it verbatim. Part II is itself a long post, so be warned.

Part III is a comparison of the recommendations I made in Part II with what actually exists in-game on Test. I believe there are some ranges of basic IOs where the cost is out of line with the value of that IO when compared with training, dual-origin, or single-origin enhancements available at the same level range.

OK, let's begin. Remember the next post is a few weeks old at this point.

[ QUOTE ]
Given that other major -regen powers are almost all -500%, and that the patch for the unification of LR made no mention of changes to other powers, it seems extremely likely that they normalized LR to 500%, not 100%. Otherwise, LR would be the worst -regen power of the ones available to various folks for all ATs with access to it.

[/ QUOTE ]

The notable exception is MM /poison's Weaken, which comes in at an anemic -50%. That set got the shaft with this change, and honestly, given how overpowered /dark is compared to /poison for MMs (in PvE), I think /poison's -regen should stay unresistable.

- Protea

[ QUOTE ]
It was different for different ATs. Controllers and Corruptors had -500%, Defenders had -100%. It was equalized back in December, but the patch notes actually don't mention what value the powers got. I'm not sure if anyone posted which value was used, but the general belief seems to have been that they were all made -500%.

[/ QUOTE ]

The patch notes stated that the power that was changed was the Defender power, ergo it was bumped to 500%. I was actually the one who posted on the boards that Defenders had gotten accidentally hosed.** At the time I thought the solution was to lower the Corruptor/Controller -regen rates, but that is not what happened.

To hedgehog: If we hadn't started raising all the fuss, Controllers and Corruptors would still be applying 5x the amount of -regen as your rad/rad defender, so count your blessings.

- Protea

** I should add that at the time, several people called me insane for making that claim.