Obitus

True, but that's not really a comment on what I said so much as it is another point entirely. What I said is that WP has more leeway to supplement its defenses with Luck inspirations. I didn't explain that statement because I felt like the reasoning is obvious: WP has less need of both greens and blues.

And once we start talking about builds that use pools and IOs, we're effectively talking about two sets that start at the soft cap, which means that Invuln gets more mileage from its debuff resistance, but it also means that WP can throw Lucks at the problem and remain functionally immortal.

The basic bottom line here is that Invuln is likely to be roughly as strong or maybe even a smidge stronger in terms of pure survivability, but it spends a lot more time and effort filling in various weaknesses that WP doesn't have to bother with. As you allow for more resources to be spent on each build, the WP can focus on survivability whereas the Invuln has to worry about endurance management too.

Again, the above-quote paragraph may be true, but even if it is true it has very little to do with regeneration, in principle. I can't take it as given that WP necessarily performs worse in 20-second intervals against non-S/L damage simply because ... regeneration. Over 20 seconds, regeneration isn't irrelevant. I don't intend to accuse you in particular of anything here, but it's worth pointing out (for anyone else who may be reading) that there's an oversimplification implicit in your reasoning (as you've posed it).

The immortality line has its limits in practical application. That is true. It's also true that you can easily adapt the immortality-line calculation to fit smaller windows of time. It also may very well be true that Invuln has a sizable advantage against burst damage, but simply citing a cliche ("longer fights favor regeneration") isn't sufficient to prove the point.

I object to the implicit logic of the exchange more than I object to your conclusion. The reason I used an absurd example in my last post isn't that I was trying to represent your position as absurd; I used an absurd example simply to establish that the axiom you cited isn't an axiom.

Depends on the particulars. What's your definition of "shorter fight" in this context? How much regeneration versus how much RES/DEF are we discussing? You can't say that a longer fight always favors regeneration. The problem with statements like yours is that they sound reasonable in the abstract, but when you really look at the scenarios that would support those statements, they sometimes turn out to be preposterously impractical.

For example, we had a long long debate on the Scrapper forum a year or two ago in which someone argued that there are scenarios in which 5% DEF (in isolation, that is, without stacking it on other DEF) is numerically superior to 50 HP/sec regen. But in order to justify that statement, you must construct a scenario in which both hypothetical characters are totally screwed regardless. In other words, there must be so much damage coming in, so quickly that the advantage for the DEF character is effectively moot.

Unless you're facing heavy psi damage, in which case an Invuln can drop at a speed that puts WP at its worst to shame.

Yeah, I see where you were coming from. Really, my comment about Fire/Cold DEF pertains solely to IO build strategies; it isn't worth building for F/C DEF because so many F/C attacks are also typed as S/L for the purpose of opposing DEF, and because F/C attacks don't generally carry DEF debuffs, as Lethal/Energy attacks have a tendency to do. (And because if you're building for significant IO DEF otherwise, chances are Invincie will cap you against F/C with a handful of foes in range whether you explicitly build for it or not.)

All of that is scarcely relevant to your test, which only measured each set's stand-alone survivability against a hat-picked exotic damage type. Probably shouldn't have mentioned it.

Yeah, all of that is true too. There are a bunch of little things about Invuln that have bothered me, vaguely, ever since WP was introduced. For good or ill, though, I don't think Invuln merits any considerable developer attention right now, given the state of the game as a whole.

I can't speak for Starsman, but in my view Invuln neither needs nor will receive a significant buff any time soon. Even if we stipulate that Willpower is better (given its comparable survivability and its recovery advantage), complaining about Invuln's state relative to WP would be akin to complaining that your Ferarri isn't as good as a Bughatti.

Don't understand this point. The idea was to track sustainable survivability. Regeneration is only part of that equation, neither favoring the Invuln nor the WP in principle. The reason the Invuln loses in Starsman's test is not that WP has higher regeneration per se; the reason Invuln loses is that the combination of Invuln's regeneration, resistance, and defense amounts to less than the WP's combination of the same traits.

10 HP/sec + 90% resistance = 100 HP/sec, to use an oversimplified example.

It is a contrived scenario. Frankly I think fire damage is very nearly irrelevant in CoH PvE; certainly I've never believed (as seemingly most of the Tanker forum does) that Invuln Tankers should build to soft-cap F/C DEF (with one foe in range of Invincibility). Given the distribution of attacks you're likely to face (and the attendant effects that are packaged with those attacks), Psionic attackers are a far bigger threat. Energy/Negative attackers too.

That said, Willpower has a smoother performance curve. I don't think anyone can argue otherwise with a straight face. Starsman's scenario may be contrived, but it's an adequate analogy for a principle we all (should) understand intuitively. Invuln's strength is that it has higher peak performance against the most common attack/damage types in the game, which are coincidentally also the hardest hitting, typically. Invuln also has DEF-debuff resistance.

Then again, WP theoretically has more leeway to supplement its defenses (offset debuffs) with Luck inspirations. Quick Recovery appears to be the tie breaker in the comparison.

You're entitled to feel however you wish, but you might feel differently if you understood the facts underlying the issue. The above-quoted paragraph is so blatantly wrong in almost every way that I can scarcely believe you're serious.

But hey, if you've made up your mind, then so be it.

Haven't run the event, but I did pick up three procs for ~400 million influence the other day. Money very well spent. Should probably buy more.

Yep. Totalitarian regimes are efficient in the short term, but the side effects are a serious buzzkill.

That's true. Willpower does have a sizable qualitative advantage in Quick Recovery, though.

The original post expressed gratitude for Paragon's communication. The community team here has nothing to do with past business decisions. In fact, Paragon as a whole studio has very little to do with NCSoft's decision to cut the EU offices/servers/whatever. Paragon might have recommended one thing or another, but at the end of the day it wasn't their decision to make. When Cryptic sold City of Heroes, Paragon took over (to use your phrase) the development and day-to-day management of the game; Paragon did not take over ownership of it.

You're entitled to feel however you like, but do understand the facts here.

See, this is a straight-faced attempt at an argument as to why the nazi comparison shouldn't be used. I don't necessarily agree with Sam's argument, but ironically he's made a decent case against Godwin through his rational approach to the topic, even though his goal was superficially to argue for Godwin.

Yes, absolutely the nazi social structure is at play here. So, too, are the circumstances of Hitler's rise to power, which is pretty close to Tyrant's if my understanding of the game lore is correct. Both leaders used an external threat or threats as a scape goat against which to rally the populace and consolidate power. (In Hitler's case, the Treaty of Versailles -- which was legimately punitive to post-WW-I Germany -- and the Jews. In Tyrant's case, the Hamidon.)

Both leaders made liberal use of propaganda and indoctrination to maintain their grip on the populace. Both leaders declared (and subsequently lost) wars that they didn't strictly have to declare. (In Hitler's case, he shouldn't have committed to war with Russia when he did, and in Tyrant's case, it's at least arguable that he didn't have to make war on Primal Earth at all.) Both leaders were (effectively) removed forcibly from power by external forces, as a direct result of their arguably careless war-mongering.

The parallels are almost too apt not to mention them. This isn't simply a matter of carelessly invoking Hitler's name for shock value.

Yes, I understand Godwin's law. Leaving aside the inherent contradiction in your combining, "Usually," with, "Never," the above-quoted paragraph is a fair interpretation of the axiom, and a fair approximation of what I argued in my previous post, in fact.

Usually that's true. But to say that all allusions to Hitler are automatically bereft of credibility is to commit, in reverse, the very same mistake you're trying to correct. If it's true that casual allusions to Hitler diminish legitimate allusions to Hitler, then it's equally true that dismissing all discussion of Hitler -- effectively pretending he never existed, or worse, lending a clownish aspect to any reference to him -- is to diminish the tragic lesson that his rise to power and subsequent reign of terror represent.

If you truly believe that GG's analogy is inaccurate or inappropriate, then feel free to argue that position. My only objection is the idea that your position should be presumed correct simply because you made a vague appeal to authority (Godwin's law). To the extent that any Hitler analogy on a game forum can be appropriate, Tyrant seems a pretty obvious subject for such an analogy.

We are discussing the nature of evil in this thread. The whole thing is an implicit analogy to various historical figures who have earned that characterization. Some of the game villains discussed here might be analogous to Charles Manson, some to Jack the Ripper, others perhaps to Ratko Mladic or Saddam Hussein. And yes, I think one of them is at least tenuously comparable to Hitler.

We cannot divorce our understanding of fictional evil from our experience with and perception of real-world evil. The same thing is true of goodness, love, friendship, sadness; fiction only succeeds to the extent that the reader/viewer can relate to it.

Yes, Hopeling's spot-on. So's Fan, at least with respect to his view on Power Boost's attendant benefits. The only thing I can add is that 9% is the amount of dead time just from Power Boost in this scenario.

In other words, if you're also using Aim, Build Up, and Boost Range, you're going to have more dead time, which means that the dead time from Power Boost will account for a larger proportion of your available attack time. If we stipulate that a non-EM Blaster spends let's say 9% of his time on Aim and Build Up, then his practical attack uptime will be ~91% of what you'd expect to find on paper.

If we stipulate that a comparable EM Blaster build spends the same 9% on Aim and Build Up, and let's say 4% on Boost Range, and 9% on Power Boost, then his attack uptime will be 78% of what you might expect to find on paper, or 78 / 91 = 85.7% of the non-EM Blaster's.

And if we stipulate that the EM Blaster's on-paper DPS (that is, his DPS before we account for activation time) is 20% higher than the non-EM Blaster's, the comparison works out to 1.2 * 0.857 = 1.028, or a net advantage of 2.8% DPS for the EM Blaster.

Now obviously, these numbers are heavily fudged. The actual numbers will vary quite a bit depending on your build choices and IO investment. What's clear is that EM loses a larger proportion of its DPS as recharge bonuses rise. On the other hand, EM also gains significant attendant benefits in the form of +DEF and in terms of endurance saved through its new Energize clone (the more endurance you use -- the faster you attack -- the more the endurance discount helps you, whereas recovery offers a static benefit).

It's not like EM is a loser here; I'm just saying that the much-touted perma-fast-snipe advantage may be close to a wash once you get down to brass tacks.

No, but Brutes generally get the better end of the deal in high-buff team situations, because they can approach Tanker survivability. To the extent that Scrappers win with respect to damage buffs, they don't win by as much as Brutes do on the survivability side.

And you'll note that I've already acknowledged that Scrappers benefit more from damage-buffing Primary sets (like DM). That's one of the main reasons I said that StJ doesn't favor Scrappers. (Combat Readiness is a small damage buff, relative to the field.)

Yeah. And against higher ranked critters, the Scrapper number goes up to 6.1875, or 6.6% higher than a Brute's damage at the damage cap. Not a practically noticeable difference.

The damage-buff argument really only favors Scrappers by a notable amount when you're discussing lower-end buff scenarios. For example, a DM/Shield Scrapper will have a significant advantage, self-buffed, over an equivalent DM/Shield Brute build. Or let's say you have one Empath in your team; Fortitude will give a generic Scrapper a noticeably higher boost in damage output than it gives a generic Brute. But at the cap? Eh, who cares?

The one compelling thing you can say about the damage cap is that the generic Scrapper can hit his cap easier. Standard damage slotting + Build Up puts the Scrapper roughly 200% in base damage bonuses away from his cap. The same set up, and 80% Fury, puts the Brute about 340% in base damage bonuses away from his cap.

1. Reducing Power Boost's cycle time to 15 seconds or less is a non-trivial endeavor. If your build does it, then more power to you, but yours isn't the typical case. Yours isn't even the a-typical case.

2. If you're cycling Power Boost every 15 seconds, then you're eating up the previously mentioned ~9% of your time without even touching Boost Range.

3. You should be using Aim and Build Up fairly often, regardless.

Click on the link in my previous post. I use movement keys to trigger the auto-toggle switch, but you could also use attacks if you wanted. I'm not gonna tell you that it's the most convenient arrangement on earth, but I think perma-PB would be about a bajillion times more annoying than my Domination setup. YMMV.

Plus, the Villain-Alignment power, Fury, gives me instant Domination if I happen to let it lapse. I haven't checked in awhile, but you used to be able to jump-interrupt snipe a bunch of times to fill your Dom bar even out of combat, too.

[Edit: Heh, that's supposed to say, "Frenzy," not "Fury."]

Gotta say, I've never understood the almost religious awe with which people invoke Godwin's law on the internet. Hitler certainly doesn't belong in every conversation, but like it or not, he is an historical figure. Simply mentioning him shouldn't invalidate everything you have to say.

Though I obviously can't speak for the man, I doubt very much that even Godwin himself would apply his axiom so liberally as most people seem inclined to do.

In this case, in a thread the subject of which is the nature of evil? Uh, yeah. Hitler's an obvious candidate for analogy.

Perma-fast snipe for EM requires that you juggle Power Boost with Aim and Build Up. Really, all non-Devices Blasters have become significantly more click-heavy in I-24; that's one of the reasons I don't like the snipe change.

EM is just more click-heavy.

As for perma-Dom? That's why god invented keybinds. It's easy to set up the auto-toggle to alternate between two powers on a relatively long-term basis (~80-120 seconds, in this case); it's not so easy to manage four extremely short-duration clicks, and even if we ignore the qualitative complaint, the activation of all those short-duration clicks does eat up non-trivial amounts of time.

That's true.

Sure, I'm not saying it's undoable, and I'm not disputing that the options EM offers are advantageous, even if you don't consistently make use of them.

What I do question is whether the pay off is ultimately worth the effort. That's largely a subjective question, but I'm also not entirely certain that the mechanical trade off in terms of dead time doesn't offset the DPS advantage of EM's perma-fast snipe, even on paper. If, for the sake of argument, you're hitting Boost Range and Power Boost once each per 30 seconds, then that's, what? 2.64 / 30 = 0.088, or almost 9% of your potential attack time eaten.

That's on top of the 9+% of dead time that most any IOed Blaster will incur through the regular use of Aim and Build Up. Now, sure, the EM Blaster is getting offsetting benefits over and above the perma-fast snipe (a part-time DEF and control/debuff boost, and a significant boost to the coverage of any ranged cone), but if the perma-fast snipe isn't an unreserved advantage, then that changes the complexion of the discussion by a not-inconsiderable amount.

My offhanded comparison between Blaster EM and Scrapper Regen wasn't a wholly whimsical. Rightly or wrongly, people have complained for years that as Regen approaches its (defensive) performance peak, it loses more DPS -- and Regen's clicks aren't available anywhere near as often as EM's. Clearly, EM will be very strong, perhaps even the strongest Blaster Secondary in I-24 (based on what we know now), but it's not obvious to me that EM will be significantly superior to its peers, all things considered.

Yeah, that's pretty much always the bottom line.

If the question is whether a particular combination of power sets favors Brutes or Scrappers, though, you can make a rational argument one way or the other. In this case, I have to go with the Brute: the interaction between Willpower's regeneration and the Brute's higher HP (and much higher HP cap) is an obvious advantage on the survivability front, and on the offensive front, StJ is one of a handful of primary sets that don't obviously favor the Scrapper.

(Combat Readiness has a lower-than-usual damage buff, so the Scrapper gets less mileage out of his higher AT scalar, relative to the Brute, than he might get from a set that has Build Up. Also, Scrapper criticals don't give you full credit for StJ's combo-point damage bonus. All in all, StJ might even be the worst set for Scrappers relative to Brutes.)

And I haven't even begun to consider the Brute's advantage in high-buff team situations.

You won't regret picking the Scrapper; it's certainly conceivable you'd enjoy playing the Scrapper more -- but if I were picking a powerset combination for a Scrapper, StJ/WP wouldn't be it. A combination like, say, DM/Shield is on the opposite end of the spectrum. And if we're looking at StJ in isolation, I'd have to agree with a previous poster, actually: Stalkers probably get the most mileage out of StJ.

There's always room for dancing hamsters.

More seriously, all the old content needs is massive pruning. If the existing arc requires the player to go to ten separate warehouses, kill all the dudes inside, and grab a McGuffin, pare it down to two or three warehouses, or hell, one would be ideal. And try to minimize gratuitous inter-zone travel.

The most glaring flaw in the game's original content was largely solved in CoV, which launched scarcely more than a year after CoH. The fix doesn't require any new tech at all, as far as I can see. It's just a matter of pacing.

I dunno, man. On paper, you're probably right. Energy already had a surprising amount of utility before I-24; the (needless) mechanical quirk of the snipe change only adds to that utility, relative to the utility of other Blaster secondaries.

But realistically? Managing all of those extremely short-duration click powers (Power Boost, Boost Range, Build Up, Aim) is going to be a PITA. The dead animation time you'll incur in the regular use of those powers shouldn't be underestimated either.

Someone recently (either in this thread or another) compared I-24 Energy Manipulation to Scrapper Regeneration, and I think that's an apt comparison: EM will give you high theoretical performance potential, but that potential will come at the cost of constant micromanagement.

A seamless attack chain is a useful benchmark not because you should adhere to one in normal play, but because it means that you can start to pick and choose among your best attacks. The point is that melee sets can do it with one set whereas blast sets traditionally don't allow you to do it. The point is that you can supplement your offense with higher DPA attacks from your secondary, if you choose to utilize Blaster melee attacks.

The fact that Blasters are more prone to interrupt themselves while attacking isn't an advantage.

Pitcher of beer and a dart board. You're preaching to the choir. This is why I don't think it's cool that the Primary set of the supposed damage specialist should be disadvantaged relative to melee characters. The closest thing we have in CoH to a DPS-throttled PvE encounter is an AV/GM fight, and Scrappers are better at it than Blasters, even in a team. Uh ... awesome. (Support ATs are by far the best at those encounters, of course, but that ship's sailed.)

Yeah, I was joking.

I use the term as a convenience, because it's not a given that a Blaster will want to use melee attacks at all, or even that a given Blaster will have access to melee attacks (Devices doesn't have any -- though you could make an argument that Taser and Trip Mine count towards a 'blapper' playstyle).

It's not a degenerate play style to move into melee range situationally. It is, I think, given the over-arching design of the game, an odd-ball play style to rely heavily on (single-target) melee attacks as a matter of course. I personally can't justify taking them, unless they have some sort of situational utility (like the Bonesmasher/Total Focus combo Arcana mentions). PBAoEs I'll take, but as noted previously, that's largely because many primaries don't allow for WTFPWN AoE damage exclusively from range. The nuke buff will change that somewhat, but many nukes are PBAoEs themselves.

Which is an advantage for Blappers. Or Blasters who use secondary attacks, if you prefer.

I find this quote amusing, because it hangs a lamp shade on the flaw with ranged attack sets. You're making my point exactly; not every attack set has the capability to construct a seamless attack chain at all, much less one that passes over low-tier starter attacks that may be sub-optimal in a high-end context. Blast sets are notoriously bad for the purpose of constructing seamless attack chains without IO investment.

Melee sets are complete in and of themselves. Blast sets need supplements. For Blasters, that supplement takes the form of Secondary (usually melee) attack powers, which is why I cited the extra selection of attacks as an (offensive) advantage for melee Blasters. I don't believe that should be a meaningful advantage, because I believe that blast sets should have a stronger selection of good attack powers (rather than the typical 3 regular-use ST attacks, one of which, up until I-24, only works at half-range) -- but there's no evidence that blast sets are getting the kind of overhaul I'd like.

Personally? I think Blaster melee attacks should be boosted so that they're more worthwhile even in comparison with a theoretically complete selection of ranged attacks. But I don't make the decisions.

I'm telling you what a Blapper's potential advantages are, and will be, in I-24. You keep saying that melee for a Blaster will be superfluous, but you haven't explained why you think that. The snipe buff and the range boost to tier-3 attacks doesn't even come close to killing off the Blapper, even if we ignore the qualitative benefits of various Blaster-secondary attacks (that is, even if we pretend that damage is the only standard by which to measure the melee attacks' value).

As for the rest, we're in irreconcilable disagreement territory. I'm not interested in rehashing the epic wall-of-text exchanges we've had elsewhere (and I doubt you're interested, either). At least you're open about wanting Blasters to be weak, and wanting Blaster ranged offense to suffer for the sake of the Blapper playstyle. And at least I'm open about my opinion that Blaster Secondaries were designed (and I use the term loosely) with a pitcher of beer and a dart board.

Well, yeah. Apologies if I was unclear. I'm not making an argument that Doms/Scrappers/Brutes are unusually possessed of overpowered build options. Those three are just the most obvious ATs against which to compare Blasters.

Pretty much the whole game is affected by power creep; you're right about that. My only point is that the developers probably aren't interested in giving Blasters every bit of the same power creep to make them strictly equal to other ATs -- but that doesn't mean that the devs aren't interested in or concerned about Blaster balance.