Sarrate

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You shouldn't put the Steadfast Protection in Earth's Embrace. It only lasts 120 seconds, which is to say it won't be very reliable. Stick it it something like Stone Skin that you'll have running all the time, and that will benefit from the resistance. I went ahead and made that swap before calculating. I also gave you High Pain Threshold.

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Untrue, good sir! The steadfast +3% Def IO functions as a set bonus, not a proc. (It has no 120s duration and shows up in your set bonuses window.) As such, it's always on, whether the power is on of off.

The melee vet powers are pretty much only used at low levels for me. Once my characters mature and hit the higher levels, I stop using them - I prefer to use slottable attacks that are more accurate, end efficient, and effected by damage buffs such as Build Up. (Keep in mind the streak breaker uses your lowest tohit chance for figuring out how many misses it should allow, so using a vet power in the high end game is more trouble than its worth, imo.)

The ranged vet powers still get some use if the character doesn't take a ranged blast from an ancillary pool, though.


That said, I tend to favor Sands of Mu because it's a cone, although I have made special exceptions to take the axe when it has a strong enough conceptually fitting. (That, and against some undead enemies who you want to use the axe on (such as Spectral Daemon Lords), they debuff accuracy.)

That looks correct to me, too.

Btw, if you wanted an explanation of where the formula came from, you can read Arcanaville's Guilde "How long do your attacks *really* take?" As usual, make sure you have your refreshments handy before you start reading, it's a doozie.

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If only recharge was touched, to meet the rules to the key, it would have to be changed to a 56 second recharge, this would lower dps drastically.

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Looking for a little clarification on this point. Was that a typo, or did he really mean 56 seconds? What's the recharge set to now?

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That is no typo - following the power formula to the letter, PSW should have a ~55.9s recharge and an end cost of ~48.4. (I did the math myself last night because I was curious.) It currently has a 10s recharge and an end cost of 10.192.

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If Starsman's cruising through... How far off is the Blaster version from the baseline?

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Yuri: Assuming damage is the constant (as opposed to the recharge)?

Recharge - 20.09375 (less than 1/10 a second off)
Endurance - 18.59 (current is 10.192)

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Battle Axe: Gloom > Swoop > Gash > Cleave.
200% recharge in Cleave.

Cleave just beats Chop by a tiny bit and that chain requires less recharge (160% in Swoop).

War Mace: Gloom > Clobber > Jawbreaker > Pulverize

Requires 219% recharge in Clobber.

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Did you factor in redraw times for those? (I honestly don't know how much time redraw adds, but it would be a non-trivial amount, esp doing it every other attack for WM.)

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sorry bub, AT changes != PvP changes

case in point, Stalkers last buff.

anways, his latest bit said if there was going to be change, it would be balanced around the Blaster version.

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*Shudder*

I just ran some numbers - if he does exactly the same thing it will amount to a gutting of PSW.

Radius Cut from 25' to 15'
Recharge doubled from 10s to 20s
Damage going from 70.8 to 39.7

That last one worries me a bit.

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With the damage scale increase, base damage would be 58.11 dmg. (This assumes a direct port, of course.) Still, it would be less damage since it wouldn't have Domination buffing it, and it would still deal less damage at the cap.

Btw, the Blaster version does have a 16 target cap vs the 10 target cap of the current Dominator version.


(To be clear, I'm not making any judgment on the speculated changes.)

I think it'd be interesting if you did a level breakdown (say, every 10 levels?), since low level critters generally have very little resistance, with it becoming more and more common as you get higher.

Not sure what your source information is (Culex's spreadsheet?) or how time consuming that would be.

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I can see what Kruunch is trying to say: tanking is more than just holding the attention of 17 targets, but more minimising the danger to the entire team.

On the other hand, I personally would call what he's demonstrating as "tanking" so much as "good team play including his tanking." It's taking a lot more than his prowess to make what he's showing work, which is fine, but his tanking is only a subset of that, and saying otherwise is conflating a subset for its superset.

As for affecting more than 17 enemies, technically you're still only handling 17 or less at a time. If the Blaster with you was a bit less cautious, you'd see everything beyond your current 17 peel off like cheap wallpaper. So again, this seems more about good team play than about tanking.

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Now this, I can agree with.

I'd generally avoid groups of this size since it doesn't increase kill speed and is much more dangerous to the team; but when it happens (say multiple ambushes) you have to be able to roll with it. I don't consider it it to be tanking more than 17, though.

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As far as I know the Achilles Heel procs don't stack, but those would definitely add a considerable amount of damage.

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I have the Achilles Heel -res proc in Hack, and the Gladiator's Fury -res proc in Headsplitter (hence the importance of the cone). Likewise, Hecatomb in hack, Armageddon in Headsplitter (again, important cone).

The Achilles Heel and Gladiator's Fury procs do stack.

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Yeah, seconds after I hit "Post" and reread what I posted, it dawned on me what you must have meant. (I edited it, too.) Thanks for the confirmation.

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Well I don't know what chain he finally settled on. Last I heard, he was rejecting the one I use for an inferior one. As for what the procs can add, Broadsword's capable of stacking two -res procs and grinding out a lot of purple +damage since the ST chain actually includes a cone.

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As far as I know the Achilles Heel procs don't stack, but those would definitely add a considerable amount of damage. If it was up just half the time, that's 20 dps alone. Yeah, I could see them making up the difference.

[edit: You said two res debuff procs, indicating the PvP one. Duh.]

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I guess it sounds like I'm being called out here

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If that was directed at me, I apologize, it wasn't my intent at all. I was genuinely curious how procs could make up that much of a difference. (As I said, AH was the factor I neglected.)

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However, it's worth noting that I have done an AAO-saturated pylon test in 5:53, which calculates to 236DPS. So I'm not sure what it is that you're trying to illustrate, here.

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Hmm... I was going to say he's probably ignoring procs... but can they really add ~33 dps?

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Tanker bias, anyone ?

[/ QUOTE ]I can only think of one instance where they did do this. Back when unyielding had the penalty. Brutes and scrappers got the full penalty but it was later scaled down. Thinking about this now shouldnt brute granite have less of a penalty since it gives less protection than tanker granite?

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Since Brutes have a lower damage scale, the damage debuff from Granite has a lower impact on them than Tankers. When you count Fury, it's even smaller. (15 Fury completely negates the damage debuff.) They'll still be slower, but each hit will deal considerably more damage.

Ex:
Tanker Seismic Smash in Granite - 261.3 dmg [edit: 308.8 dmg out of Granite, ~15% drop [~47.5 dmg lost]]
Brute Seismic Smash in Granite - 452.8 dmg (70% Fury), [edit: 497.4 dmg out of Granite, ~8.97% drop [~44.6 dmg lost]]

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As you can see it's well over the cap limit.

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You're not over the cap limit. The enemies over the aggro limit are either ignoring you or looking for someone else to attack.

I see it all the time. Here you can see a bunch of Freaks standing around waiting for their turn to fight, because I'm already at the aggro cap.

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Yep, that's exactly what I see as well; nothing demonstrating that are more than 17 enemies trying to attack you, Kruunch.

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The dots are enhanceable by damage buffs, so it should be fully effected by Fury.

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That's what I expected to hear. wooooof.

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Clearly, Castle should buff Scrapper's Fire Melee.


[edit: Don't forget that GFS deals a different scale for Scrappers and Brutes in your calculations.]

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So the AR/Dev blaster taking the animation into the to the activation time is not supposed to happen?

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I may have misspoke, I have a strong melee tendency, so I don't remember if AR or Archery got the same treatement. I know three of AR's powers were recently sped up (Buckshot, Beanbag, Full Auto), but I don't know about the set as a whole.

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Like I said, I've observed it (broadsword redraw) activating with the redraw taken into account. Is this also working incorrectly?

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The only thing I can think of, honestly, is that you're seeing lag or too fast/slow timing it (no offense meant). If you really wanted to study it, you should to a demo analysis - but that's beyond my knowledge. (I don't have the patience to parse through those.)

The dots are enhanceable by damage buffs, so it should be fully effected by Fury.

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Power activates in 2 seconds
Redraw is 2 second
Power Activation + Redraw SHOULD equal 2 seconds

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This is how it used to work.

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What seems to happen is:
Power Activation + Redraw = 4 seconds.

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This is how it works now.

Before you think of it as a nerf, there are two important things to note. First, the previous way was a penalty all the time. You always had to wait for the redraw animation whether you had your sword out or not. The second thing is that now that the redraw has been taken out of the powers, they activate faster than they used to. For example, Hack went from ~1.87s activation to 1.33s; Disembowel from 2.87s to 1.8s; Headsplitter from 2.87s to 2.33s; etc.

Weapon sets are much better off now than they used to be. They were close to (if not the) bottom of the barrel before the changes were made - Broadsword especially.


(Btw, the redraw animation is much smaller than 2 seconds. I'd say somewhere between 0.5s and 1s.)

[edit: Oh yeah, Spines was exempt from this change - it still operates as it always has.]

AVs are essentially immune to knock* effects, but they can be vulnerable for very small windows of time. For AVs that have a small vulnerability you can knock them for ~2s out of every 75s. Other AVs are, as far as I can tell, completely immune.

In other words - it's neat when it happens, but don't plan on being able to do it with any degree of reliability.

Happy birthday! May the cake be real... and delicious!

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Was it? I can't say I'm the most dedicated person when it comes to getting involved in Tanker discussions, so I apologize, I didn't realize that had been thought of and already sort of rejected by the community.

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Well, look at this way. Energy Melee pretty much fits that mode right now (slow, but big numbers), but gets a lot of flak for it. Could you imagine all Tankers being slowed down to that level? Yikes, it wouldn't be pretty. Personally, I don't mind the occasional slow attack, but and entire set? No thanks.

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Seems to me like they're trying to get the sets as *close* to each other as possible so they can be proliferated from one AT to the next, rather than making the sets within the different AT's more unique for their individual roles.

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Which I think is quite a shame. The ATs have different focuses, and I think the sets should reflect that... it'd be a much bigger headache to keep everything in line, though.

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Isn't the main thrust of that suggestion that it makes Tanks more appealing on Teams, not just that it helps their own individual powers?

The fact that it helps Mace a bit more is nothing compared to the fact that it helps any Controller they are teamed with, right?

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That may be the idea behind the change, but I think it would be folly to ignore the effects to the sets themselves, especially depending on the relative rankings of the sets. For example, Stone Melee would be a huge winner due to Fault and wouldn't surprise me if it was a top performer. Compare that to Ice Melee which only gets 1 power that "really" benefits from it - Frozen Touch.

Of course, the more I think about it, the more questions I ask myself...

*) What is the intent of the change? Is it meant to make Tankers more team friendly? If so, it's a pretty specific change, as it would only boost teams that actually use a decent amount of control. I'd look at (if you can data mine this) what ATs Tankers usually team with. If they're on control heavy teams, the change could be superfluous (things are locked down anyways), but on control light teams, would it be strong enough to notice?

*) Is it intended to make a second Tanker more attractive? If so, then I have a concern in line with the last part above. If there's enough control, the making them last longer wouldn't have as much of an effect as adding another AT (especially one with buffs/debuffs).

Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting idea, but I'm a bit shaky on what problem it's supposed to address... It's effects seem to be a bit to narrow in scope to make a big difference.

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You make a valid point with the brute/stalker example and you are correct that simply buffing tanker damage is not the answer. Something needs to be done to make tankers and scrappers as divergent in play style as brutes and scrappers. Vox Populi had a good suggestion. I think taking that a step further and applying the increased debuff/control to any mobs affected by gauntlet would be a step in the right direction. While not increasing damage (accept maybe in the case of Fire Melee’s DoT) it would move tankers toward more of a group fighter role. Which, IMO, is where they should have been all along.

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Now that's interesting, and easily doable to boot. All you'd need to do for that is apply a status resistance debuff to the target, thus making controls last longer. It does gives some sets more perks than others, though.

For example, compare Axe and Mace. Very similar sets, except all of Axe's attacks have a chance for knockdown while Mace is a mix of knockdown/stun. Knockdown wouldn't be effected by the status resistance debuff (it would cause knockback which has just been removed in most cases) and the stuns would. Mace would be able to benefit while Axe would be left in the cold. Now I'm imagining giving that to Stone Melee... (Fault anyone?)

Still, it's something to think about. (Finally, a fresh idea!)

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3) To toughen yourself up, add IO set bonuses that either boosts your S/L defense, defenses to fire/cold/energy/neg energy and add hitpoints. For example, 4 slotting Kinetic Combat in your attacks yields about 3.5% (?) S/L defense that stacks nicely with Heightened Senses.

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This looks like the big one, especially against Cims.
His total's about 8% S/L def; mine's at 23% in a fairly untwinked build.

Steadfast: Res/+DEF IO, 2 sets of Kin Combat = +10% (the rest is apparently due to me slotting weave), which is a significant boost against in survival against the alpha, if nothing else.

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cims are all broadsword. they will debuff the hell out of any defense willpower can stack since the set has no defdebuff resistance. best thing one can do as a brute if you have desires to tank and be willpower is to take a more tank-like primary. the tank primaries we share all have soft control for a reason

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That's not true, WP does have def resistance in Heightened Senses (~27% when slotted), but it is pretty piddly. As stated, the Cimerorans will cut through all but the most extreme amounts of def resistance (ie: Soft capped SR or Shield with 95% def resistance).
[edit: Or if you have enough of a defense buffer over the soft cap to cover being hit a couple times. That'll do it too.]

By the way, even control heavy primaries get shafted against the Cimerorans. Pretty much all of them have Energized Shield, which gives them and all allies within 8 ft, MAG3 status protection (knockback included) and the Lieutenants / Bosses have Shout of Command which gives 15s worth of status protection / resistance (not sure exactly how much, since I don't have mob modifiers). It's possible to control small numbers of them, but in a big herd? Heh... good luck.

The Cimerorans are just a brutal group to fight against.

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The redraw is still baked into the powers, so using outside powers shouldn't effect its dps at all.

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It is? Just Spines, right? These days, my habit is to always have my "weapon" out before engaging in combat. Guess I'll still do that to stay in practice, but it's nice to know that it doesn't matter with Spines.

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Yeah, all the weapons sets but Spines (Thorns too, I believe) were modified to pull out the redraw. I don't remember the reason why they were left as is - if a reason was given.

I hear ya about good practice, though. I haven't played a weapon set in a while other than my lowbie /Thorn Dominator every once in a while.

The redraw is still baked into the powers, so using outside powers shouldn't effect its dps at all.