Mister_Mass

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Just dinged 600 - on the strength of 29 MA badges. All too easy....

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I dropped back to 599 after the new issue removed 50+ AE badges - & dinged 600 again by completing the new TF. All too easy....

Just dinged 600 - on the strength of 29 MA badges. All too easy....

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Im curious how Rad infection/Darkest night and force field/Sonic field are gonna stand up now?

Sonic should stay the same, but side by side comparison with Bubbles should prove something interesting given the "New and improved fiasco" of Jacks online prima guide with Bubbles and Sonics clocking in at the same values 11.25 for the little bubbles........ didnt def=2 res....so Sonics at half value?

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Prima lists sonic bubbles at 15% res for the little bubbles and 11.25% res for the dispersion bubble for corruptors. It lists FF bubbles at 11.25% for the little bubbles for masterminds and 7.5% defense for the dispersion bubble. If I'm doing the AT scale conversion correctly, this means FF for defenders is 12.5% defense for the little bubbles and 10% defense for the dispersion bubble. Sonics would be 25% res for the little bubbles and about 14% res for the dispersion bubble. The little sonic bubbles do seem to work out to twice the numeric value of the little FF bubbles, which equates to about the same level of protection. Dunno about the dispersion bubbles, though.

I'm not an expert on the sonic set, so I cannot confirm those numbers on the sonics set for defenders; that's just what the AT modifiers tell me it should be if the set is has the same inherent scale strength for corruptors and defenders (and I'm using the right AT modifier). The sonic dispersion bubble's number "feels wrong" to me, but again, either the Prima Guide or my conversion could be off.

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Tne Prima numbers look right for Sonic. Defenders get 20% & 15% on the little & big bubbles respectively. And .75 (Corruptors have the same scalar for M & R) of those values are 15% & 11.25%. These numbers have been verified by ingame testing, which is trivial for RES.

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Because it would be interesting:
Time to death against a "reliable" "fast" damage source (PBAoE DoT, ...).

I can't say for sure how easy it'd be to find a damage source that's "just right", but it'd be an interesting approach.

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I got lucky. There's a level 50 contact that just happens to give out a mission very early on that generates a large number of attackers in a very small area that cycle attacks very quickly that an unstoppable scrapper can survive when using at least three small lucks.

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You tested using the infamous Infernal portal mish?

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Great work Arcanaville. We all felt Lucks were overpowered based on the in-game description numbers & expected some kind of nerf to them eventually. Of course even these numbers are likely still too high.

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I'm not sure they haven't been like this for quite awhile. The numbers are consistent with my experiences back through issue 3.

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Kali, actually I didn't mean to imply that I thought that inspirs were recently stealth-nerfed. I expect that these have been the real numbers for a long time, probably before I got here in the early days of I4. My tendency to edit my posts on the fly while working can result in not always saying what I mean.

Anyway, I do think these have been the inspir values for a long time. But I wouldn't be surprised if adjustments to the DEF cap around I5 were the source of some of the odd DEF/To Hit/ACC issues that some posters have noticed over the past many months. But without the real numbers on this stuff, it has been too easy to dismiss these anomalies more-or-less out of hand. Here's to hoping that the increase in numbers verification issuing from the Devs is a continuing trend.

Great work Arcanaville. We all felt Lucks were overpowered based on the in-game description numbers & expected some kind of nerf to them eventually. Of course even these numbers are likely still too high. And I am surprised about the Luck/Insight imbalance - these 2 inspirs need to be balanced against one another on a one-to-one basis if the Devs continue to expect us to use them as counterweights in an ever-escalating DEF/To Hit Buff arms race, as seems to be their intent.

Anyway, as always your contributions to bettering our understanding about how this crazy game that we love actually works are well appreciated.

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I mean come on...what would Manticore say about this

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Nothing. Manticore's an Archery/TA blaster.

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Personally I think he is a reformed Archery/TA Corrupter.

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Incredible necropost, though we still don't have a real response as to why the debuff doesn't scale the same way the buff does on Unyielding.

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The silence is deafening. Almost 3 months since this thread was first posted & we still don't have a Dev response on this issue. Nice.

Let's lay this out again.

1 - The DEF Debuff is unjustifiable on Tankers. Unyielding is the powerset's mez protection toggle. Using it shouldn't make the character more vulnerable - the power is supposed to make them less vulnerable. If the justification for the Debuff is that Unyielding also provides RES, then remove the RES from the power & redistribute it to the RES powers in the set. If the justification is that the powerset overall generates too much DEF (& thus needs the 5% Debuff to be balanced) then reduce the DEF powers in the set by 5%. (Since Tough Hide only supplies 5% DEF total itself, this means yet another nerf to Invincibility, since it is the only other +DEF power in the set).

2 - Even if the 5% DEF Debuff is justified for Tankers, making Scrappers & Brutes carry the full penalty when they only get 75% of the power's benefits is absurd. At most Scrappers & Brutes should have a 3.75% DEF Debuff to be belanced with Inv/ Tankers.

3 - With the I7 DEF changes on the horizon, the burden imposed by the DEF Debuff is now increasing, since the Debuff will scale up with enemy level & classification. Anyone using Unyielding who is fighting anything higher than a white con will be adversely affected by the change. Since this is anticipatible, an adjustment should be in the works now, & yet we have no indication that anything is planned.

4 - It is just embarrassing that the Devs haven't addressed this issue yet.

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Ok, quick run down:

The AV / Player bonus only applies if your Fury is 80% or more. That's the point where diminishing returns sets in, and this allows you to get to max rage easier. That's not exactly what we wanted, nor is it exactly what you folks were told. I'm sorry for that. I'm uncertain at this time what can be done to improve how this works, but I'll be exploring possibilities.

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I was alot happier with "Its broke"

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Yeah, really. The problem with fury in PvP isn't that we can't get from 80% to full fury quickly enough, it's that we have about a snowball's chance in hell of getting even close to 80%. We need help building fury in PvP, period. Not in specifically reaching the very maximum fury possible.

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He's saying we only get minion Fury generation *until* 80% currently.

Presumably, after it's fixed, you'll get the appropriate Player/AV level Fury generation from 0-100%.

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I'm not sure _Castle_ is saying what you think he is saying - otherwise this would be an easy fix. The implication is that Brutes are getting the AV Fury bump in PvP at 80% because that is when the AV bump scales in in PvE - & both PvE & PvP use the same rules for Fury generation. While Brutes in Beta were promised quicker Fury generation in PvP, the game presently doesn't deliver this until after 80%, at the same point that the rate of Fury decay accelerates.

The easy fix would be to give Brutes the higher AV Fury rate before 80%, but if the PvE & PvP rules are the same, then this would mean that Brutes would build Fury faster against AVs pre-80% in PvE too. Presumably the Devs think that this would be unbalancing, allowing Brutes to get near max Fury too quickly in PvE fights against AVs. As long as PvP Fury rate is tied to PvE AV rate, balancing the two will be difficult. Brute PvPers need accelerated Fury generation in order to be balanced against ATs in PvP, but the Devs likely consider the Fury generation rate needed for PvP would be unbalanced in PVE. Hopefully _Castle_ will see a way to square this circle.

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Did anyone ever get the actual numbers on Energy Defense for Kinetic Shield? It's the only one missing from the post a few messages above.

I'm working on a guide, and I'd like to be accurate. (I'd also like the actual Resist numbers too. )

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2.25% DEF

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That number above is apparently still unconfirmed. My apologies for the confusion.

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Did anyone ever get the actual numbers on Energy Defense for Kinetic Shield? It's the only one missing from the post a few messages above.

I'm working on a guide, and I'd like to be accurate. (I'd also like the actual Resist numbers too. )

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2.25% DEF

The RES passives have been quoted as 7.5%.

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Castle stated that he was only talking about the max value per shield. He didn't take stacking into account. He also didn't tell us WHAT the value of the energy defense in kinetic shield was. I'm beginning to wonder if it exists at all.

Calling Stupid_Fanboy, paging Mr. Stupid_Fanboy. Please come to the thread and share with us whether you determined anything about the energy defense value in kinetic shield.

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The last best guess on this was an additional 2.25% DEF to Energy in Kinetic Shield. But maybe _Castle_ confirmed a value in a PM to S_F?

/em looks hopeful

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These final numbers then are the tested and confirmed EA numbers, much thanks to TopDoc for correcting me.

Kinetic shield: 12.75% S/L, ??% E
Power shield: 15% F/C/E, 10.5% N
Energy cloak: 3.75% all.

Again, I'm sorry for giving faulty numbers.


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NP. Thanks for doing the research, posting it, & then correcting it in a timely manner. 3.75% DEF for EC was what I was expecting, albeit not what I was hoping. Still, it is a decent amount to stack on top of the other DEF in the set, it applies to EVERYTHING, & is in a power that performs another useful purpose - stealth. So Energy Cloak is a good power - worth taking, worth using, & worth slotting (to ~6% DEF to all) eventually.

Thanks S_F - & thanks to _Castle_ for confirming the numbers.

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Question about Toothbreaker. Does it have to be all five of YOUR missions, or can you earn it running anybody's Snaptooth mission?

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Anybody's missions.

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Just to clarify, things guys.

The numbers I posted were the highest value of each armor. There is no stacking taken into consideration at all.

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S_F, one way to read what _Castle_ is saying here is that he didn't include the (lower) value for Energy DEF from Kinetic Shield, since he was only listing the "highest value". So Kinetic Shield could still be providing an additional boost to Energy DEF (2.25%[?]) to stack with the 15% from Power Shield. This fits with _Castle_'s comment that "there is no stacking taken into consideration at all". In that case (excluding Energy Cloak), Energy Aura generates 17.25% Energy DEF, 15% F/C, 12.75% S/L, & 10.5% Negative once stacking is taken into account. This would give a differentation among damage types that looks neat & intentional, at least to my jaundiced eye.

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to recap castle's numbers
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>S/L : 12.75 %
F/C : 15.00 %
__E : 15.00 %
__N : 10.50 %</pre><hr />
i don't think Castle took into account the energy defense of Kin shield, or if he did -he made a mistake and subtracted it from the Negative def% instead of adding it to the NRG def%.

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Another possibility is that _Castle_ mistakenly added the extra Energy DEF of Kinetic Shield to Fire &amp; Cold, instead of just to Energy. In this case base numbers would be 12.75% DEF to S/L/F/C, with Energy receiving the extra 2.25% bump from Kinetic Shield to get to 15%, while Negative gets 2.25% less &amp; so stands at 10.5%. But certainly something about _Castle_'s numbers is wrong.

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For the defense case, I have to be hit 10 (or more) out of 20 times. The chance of that happening is around 1 in 100, which is an astounding 10,000 times more likely than the resistance case.

So, if you the question you are asking is "what is the average damage taken?" 25% defense is the same as 50% resistance. However, if the question you ask is "how likely am I to die?" then 25% defense is no where near as good as 50% resistance.

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You're going to drag us all through binomial theory aren't you.

truly thou art evil!

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Average lifetime analysis is a Markov Chain analysis, not so much binomial theory. Last time I said that, someone actually did it. I'm pseudo-lazy: I didn't want to calculate it, but I was willing to write a simulator to model it.

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Over on the Tanker forum, da5id has been working on a Markov Chain Time to Live model for the game - when not preparing for his Physics dissertation defense of course.

I agree the the Devs were being "super conservative" in their approach to bases. Erring on the side of caution is preferable to setting the bar too low &amp; then having to raise it later. Additionally, I think the Devs are quite content to keep the pace of base-building slow while they work out of the bugs in the system. The beta-testing of bases was sorely inadequate &amp; I doubt base-building would have gone Live when it did - except for the fact that the Devs wanted to include base-building as a selling point for CoV. High base prices &amp; non-availability of the IoP trial are ways for the Devs to buy time to fix problems with base-building &amp; base raiding before those problems can affect a large portion of the playerbase.

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Rage is 80% damage buff that is still perma-able in addition it also buffs accuracy. so you need not slot accuracy in the attacks anymore leaveing you more slots to play with.

Also, my milage always seems better when i'm working with attacks that do knockdown as opposed to stun,mez,etc
knockdown they're not attacking you AND they're not superspeeding away either.
Energy Melee is heavy on Mez if i recall. Stone and Strength are heavy on Knockdown

add in the fact that Stone and Strength both have MUCH better AoE attacks (again with lots of knockdown ability and a a higher brawl index rating) and the sets begin to look a bit better.

oh yeah and one more thing. Energy Melee doesn't have a ranged attack. stone and SS both do. slow. but its there.

power isn't always measured in pure DPS.

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Regarding the AOE attacks...

Stone Melee and Energy Melee AOE attacks have the same brawl index with Energy dealing some energy damage. Super Strength's AOE has a higher brawl index but at the same time the recharge timer is much longer then the timer on EM's AOE attack.

Edit: Additionally, I believe the accuracy buff of Rage is only 20-25%. (I would have to double check as I am not sure on this ...)

Second Edit: The COH hero builder claims Rage gives 83% accuracy buff... however I would of sworn that on the Tanker forums it was around the number listed above through various testing by KaliMagelena or whatever her name is.

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Rage's To Hit buff has been quoted as being anywhere from 20% to 80%. Since it is difficult to test adequately, we just don't know for sure. The Damage buff is verified at 80%, which goes a long way to making SS at least the equivalent of EM by itself.

As to the To Hit buff, even at the low end estimate, it can effectively replace 1 ACC in all attacks. On my Tanker, I run perma-Rage with 1 ACC in all attacks &amp; can regularly hit baddies with high DEF, so my in-game experience validates a pretty high To Hit buff.

So while SS might have nothing to match ET, EM has nothing to match Rage. The powersets are reasonably balanced IMHO. Of course if Stone Melee is balanced with non-Rage SS, there might be an argument that Stone lags both SS &amp; EM - but it makes the screen shake! What's more SMASH! than that!

Spiritwrath, as annoyed as I am with Statesman's idea of tanking that you quoted, there is some validity to it. Given a more-or-less balanced team, a Tanker shouldn't need to hold more than 1/3rd of the aggro. A Controller can easily lock down 1/3rd himself &amp; a Scrapper &amp; Blaster can easily handle another 1/3rd of the spawn, especially with Defender support. So on a balanced team, the Tanker is only left with 1/3rd for himself. It only makes good strategic sense to take those that can cause the most problems for the squishies or else the ones that the Tanker can handle best himself. So Statesman's handling of the Carnie Strongmen makes a certain sense, even if it seems a bit lame.

But as Tankers have endlessly noted since Statesman posted his example, this just isn't much of a role for an AT. And the problem is that the Devs just can't see this.

I don't know if buffing draws aggro in the game presently, although I can see the reasoning for why it should. But I will note that all else being equal, mobs will attack a Defender before a Tanker. The base AI for the mobs is to attack the "weakest" enemy (I think it defines "weakest" by HP, but I'm not sure). Of course, this is quickly overriden by damage, taunt, &amp; the like, so the behavior isn't easy to observe.

But I can recall an instance that demonstrates it. I was duoing on my Tanker with a Blaster. I was leading &amp; rounded a corner, where 2 mobs saw me &amp; headed in my direction. Simultaneously the Blaster came up, rounding the corner. As soon as the mobs had LoS on the Blaster, they both switched aggro &amp; made a beeline for my partner instead of me. Since neither of us had attacked them, the mobs were just following their base AI, but clearly chose to forgo the nearer original target (me) &amp; go for the farther (but "weaker") target. Since I didn't have Taunt, I moved to intercept. Then apparently Invincibility pulsed &amp; both mobs immediately switched back to aggro on me before I could even get a melee attack in. After the (short) battle, the Blaster (a much more experienced player than I) told me that this was typical AI behavior, but was pleased that Invincibility's base taunt was enough to override the AI.

Of course, this seems only to matter in the absence of any aggro-generating activity. Once the fight is on, a mob will almost always have someone generating aggro on it. But the base AI is to go after the weakest member of the party that a mob can see, so Defenders already do have something to worry about.

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Right now, I say we fight for where we're REALLY getting hit-- our DEFENSE. This 25/33/whatever % delayed resistance in CE that we're getting, it's negligible compared to our defense. There's no reason why we can't have 20% base Frozen/Glacial and 5-10% unenhanceable Wet Ice!

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Well, I think most of us on the boards agree with you, but the Devs don't. The intent of I5 seems to have been to scale down the amount of DEF available in the game to a much lower level, even if this disproportionately hurt the powersets that relied the most on DEF (Ice/ &amp; /SR) - which many felt were underperformers to begin with. The Devs aren't going to reverse this, so it is pointless to try. The best we can do is what Circ has been doing for the past few months - working to convince the Devs to improve other aspects of the set in lieu of more DEF. The fact that Statesman posted in this thread is encouraging. Quite frankly I figured that the Devs were so focussed on CoV now that any tweaks to CoH were a pipe dream. But put down your pipe - Ice might yet get a few more crumbs. And if that happens, it will largely be because Circ has worked so tirelessly.

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That said, I'm fairly sure that 90% of Statesman's intent is for Ice to be Scrankers, as he pretty much said to exactly what you did to me: the extra slots mean you can slot for more damage. Which is BS as my core attacks were already 6 slotted by 50, and their slotting hasn't changed.

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I am pretty sure thats their general policy with all tankers except Stone.

And then there is the fact that there are no (announced) defensive Primaries in CoV. Thats got to tell you something.

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Yes, it looks like the Devs have decided that defensive primary powersets are a mistake. Let's face it - the point of playing such a set is to become more-or-less invulnerable. But that causes balance problems for the Devs. How do you challenge a mostly invulnerable character? The Dev solution in CoV is simply to not allow such a character in the first place - which I must admit is likely the right choice. But in CoH, the Devs seem to be stuck with this white elephant since they don't really have the option to remove the Tanker AT entirely. This doesn't bode well for the future.

Kimmie, this looks like a good I5 build. But I would pull the 2 To Hit Buffs in Invincibility &amp; replace them with DEF Buffs. Maxing out Invincibility's per mob DEF buff is the most effective damage mitigation available in I5. The per mob ACC Buff from Invincibility was lowered on Test &amp; Rage by itself should provide all of the ACC-boosting you need in I5, generating a 60% ACC Buff. If you feel the need for more ACC, slot additional To Hit Buffs in Rage. But if you stick to the Devs' intent in I5 &amp; fight mostly even cons or thereabouts, you won't need that much additional ACC. Havok had it in his I4 build in order to fight purples effectively. That likely won't be as much of an option in I5.