ShoeTattoo

I've had good luck with the hall of fame and guest author arcs, award winners, and five star arcs. On those odd occasions when something is poorly written, I just bail and move on to something else.

Basically, if you stick mostly with the highly rated material you'll run across some very well done arcs.

I'm putting together a longer post about enhancements and the markets, among other subjects. I'm requesting some feedback about some calculations I made about the number of set IO markets. The information given below, and concerning which I'm doing a little fact checking, is part of the support for that (future) post.

Even though everything below the line is readable, at present, I would be glad to improve the formatting by putting the information into three clearly drawn columns, so that its easier to read. I just don't know how to do it. Suggestions provided about how to use Open Office 3 to generate nicely formatted tables for a forum post would be appreciated.

My thanks in advance for feedback provided.

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The simplest way to calculate the number of set IO markets is to ask for how many items you need to post a different bid / ask price. Markets can be regarded as related, but still distinct, if prices do not track each other perfectly. By that set of criteria, each level of each set IO should be treated as a separate market. The number of markets calculated for each recipe should be doubled because you can buy a recipe and then craft a set IO enhancement, or you can just buy the enhancement (as long as items are available for purchase, of course). Using this definition of a market, there are 35,754 set IO markets. To provide the details used to make this calculation, the data is given further down:

Information given on each row:
1. Set IO category
2. Total # of markets as defined above, for the named set IO category
3. Total # of recipes plus total # of enhancements, for the named set IO category

melee damage, 2064, 114
pbaoe damage, 2080, 80
pet damage, 1638, 78
ranged damage, 2064, 114
recharge intensive pets, 504, 24
sniper attacks, 1456, 56
targeted aoe damage, 1576, 56

accurate healing, 504, 24
defense, 2076, 76
healing, 1878, 78
resist damage, 2076, 76

confuse, 1218, 58
fear, 1206, 46
holds, 2214, 94
immobilize, 1218, 58
knockback, 852, 36
sleep, 1218, 58
stuns, 1218, 58
taunt, 852, 36

flight, 432, 12
leaping, 432, 12
running, 432, 12
teleport, 432, 12
universal travel, 492, 12

accurate defense debuff, 504, 24
accurate to hit debuff, 504, 24
defense debuff , 852, 36
endurance modification, 852, 36
slow movement, 1206, 46
to hit buff, 852, 36
to hit debuff, 852, 36

Totals for all set IO categories:
35754 distinct markets
1518 recipes + enhancements

I'm putting together a longer post about enhancements, among other subjects. I'm requesting some feedback about some calculations I made, and some conclusions I drew, about the relative influence of enhancements versus the base attributes of powers on the final effectiveness and efficiency of powers. The information given below, and concerning which I'm doing a little fact checking, is part of the support for that (future) post.

My thanks in advance for feedback provided.

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How much can current enhancement values impact the efficiency and effectiveness of powers?

To make the following calculations a little easier, I'll begin by working with a Generic Healing Power (GHP) that does 100 points of healing, takes 2 seconds of activation time, costs 10 endurance to cast, and has a base recharge time of 10 seconds. Lets work with the assumption that a player uses set invention origin enhancements (set IOs) to enhance GHP to produce a 90% level of enhancement to healing power, endurance cost, and base recharge rate. How much do these enhancements to GHP improve its performance?

Each enhanced attribute, by itself, is easy to calculate; 100 hit points of healing becomes 190 hit points, for a 90% increase in healing power. The endurance cost falls to 5.26 endurance (10 / (1 + 0.9)) = 5.26, for a 47% drop in endurance cost. The recharge time drops to 5.26 seconds, which is a 47% drop in recharge time, or a 47% improvement in power availability. The most valuable help provided by enhancements, though, of course, comes in how enhancements to individual power attributes work together. If you look at healing per endurance point spent (HPE), with an unslotted GHP you spend 1 point of endurance for 10 points of healing, which translates into a HPE of 10. If you slot GHP as indicated earlier, you end up using 5.26 endurance to do 190 hit points of healing, for a HPE of 36.1. In summary, the enhancement levels outlined earlier lead to GHP being over 3.5 times as efficient in the amount of healing provided, and the power is available for use close to twice as often.

Next, I'll use the calculations just done to provide an exact answer to the question “How much of the benefits available from using GHP are due to enhancements, and how much are due to the base attributes of the power itself?” In the above example, the healing efficiency (HPE) of this Generic Healing Power is 28% due to base power attributes and 72% due to enhancements (10 / 36.1 = .28, and 26.1 / 36.1 = .72).

The upshot? If you focus on examining healing efficiency (HPE), then enhancements account for almost three quarters of the healing efficiency achieved. If you factor in the option to use GHP close to twice as often, one could quite reasonably argue that enhancements are much, much more important in determining the performance of GHP than the base attributes of GHP itself. Furthermore, it bears mentioning that the values used for calculations made earlier are in fact not as high as they can be; enhancement values can actually be higher for higher level characters using set IOs, and players can in fact do much better than the 90/90/90 enhancement levels used for these calculations through the use of set IO bonuses.

The conclusion that enhancements are much more influential on power effectiveness and efficiency than the base stats of the powers themselves applies to more than just healing powers; consider also the effect of enhancements on attack powers. Measuring the effect of enhancements on the damage potential of attack powers requires more complex calculations than for healing powers because at a minimum you will need to consider the percentage chance to miss, damage done when a mob is hit, attack availability because of recharge speed, whether or not an attack chain can be “saturated” with high damage attacks (ie: there are no gaps in it, so that in theory you character could continue it forever), endurance costs, and activation times. Area of effect (AOE) attacks are even harder to analyze because of variability in how many mobs are hit and the effects of enhancing range on the damage potential of some AOE attack powers (especially cones). Still, the conclusion for damage powers is the same as for healing; skillful enhancement strategies easily overpower the base attributes of damage powers, as a percentage of damage that can be done to mobs. This is true in part because of improvements in the damage potential of individual powers through skillful enhancement choices and in part because any given character's best attack powers can be the focus of heavy slotting and enhancement, to increase the prominence of the most damaging attacks in saturated attack chains that far surpass the performance of a set of unenhanced attack powers.

Furthermore, neither healing nor attack powers are at the top in the list of powers that become better through enhancements; powers that gain the most through enhancements are mezzes, such as holds and stuns. An unenhanced hold such as freeze ray in the ice blast set will at lower levels not even keep an even level lieutenant permanently held, when it even hits at all, which it often will not do when operating with just the base slot. A fully slotted, skillfully enhanced freeze ray will rarely miss its target and it can keep many higher level bosses permanently locked down, after two initial castings that hit the boss (Purple Bres, Overseers, Gunslingers, and Elite Paragon Protectors, I'm looking at you!). As an aid to the survival of the relatively “squishy” character classes that can choose the “ice” blast set, there is currently a huge difference in utility between an unenhanced and a fully enhanced freeze ray.

All of the foregoing even further understates the possible improvements in power effectiveness if a player uses purples, procs, or other IO-driven methods to improve overall character performance.

When something's nervous system stops functioning correctly, which a sudden or sustained electric shock can easily bring about, every single function performed by their metabolism (or their circuits, for machines) is likely to function less well.

In addition to the effects usually associated with electricity in COX, electricity could easily be argued to reduce perception, reduce mob to hit values, reduce mob damage, reduce agility-based defenses, reduce movement and attack recharge rates, reduce regeneration rates, reduce recovery rates, and cause knockdown. Of course, putting mobs to sleep would make sense as an addition to one or more of this menu of control options. A buff to the recovery rate of friendlies could also make sense, much like spirit tree, only in a more "electric" kind of way.

To date, -endurance and -recovery have been the primary negative effects associated with electricity, with holds and sleeps also in the mix. But, a character based around electric control could quite easily bring more to the table than that.

Leveling as a human form kheld is definitely viable, from level 1 onward.

For both a human-only PB and a human-only shade I'd recommend getting stamina at level 20. Even though stygian circle is all manner of win for any shade, stamina helps a lot when fighting single hard targets, in the absence of any nearby defeated mobs to use as an instant refill.

On a related point, your "burn rate" for endurance can easily exceed your human-only kheld's innate recovery rate, while in human form. This is especially true because a key effectiveness-related reason you might want to play a human-only shade is to get more value from toggles such as those in a shade's secondary powerset and in the leadership pool; having stamina makes using such toggles much easier to manage. Just as shades can, PBs can also go through endurance like water, especially when making heavy use of their AOEs.

I also really like the new content (and i17 in general).

I've done the new villain arcs solo and teamed, and they're very well done. I've not quite completed the second hero arc, but I'm enjoying the hero-side equivalent as well.

"Two thumbs up"

A perma PA permadom with the /psi secondary could be so tough that it would be almost broken, for most in-game situations.

The drop in year-on-year quarterly sales is substantial, and has to be a reason for concern.

On the other side, you could argue that when more players return to their games after the economy improves, the updated graphics engine and GR place COX quite well to have a decent rebound in subscriptions.

The rez is probably the most skippable power, if you're going to skip a power from the thermal secondary; it uses a lot of end and multiple players have reported pulling major aggro onto their MM when using it. Thaw is another power to consider dropping if your build is extremely tight. But, the anti-mez and the protection against -recharge can be extremely helpful, on occasion.

Forge is a very good power choice, and particularly helpful when you keep it permanently on your assault bot. The level 35 and 38 thermal debuffs are very good when soloing EBs and ugly bosses, and when taking on AVs / Heroes in teams; they're probably best not skipped. The shields and heals are the first four powers, and they're probably all best taken, as they work together to keep your bots upright better.

You can safely skip "Repair" from your primary, as a bots/thermal.

If the Incarnate system was written in the same spirit of lackeyism as the 40s missions, a *lot* of players would have a strongly negative response.

My sense is that the devs listen a little too closely to feedback they get from players for that to happen.

In slightly more general terms, the Incarnate arcs would be a wonderful time for Arachnos and Longbow to take an extended vacation, given their ubiquity throughout the rest of a villain's career.

Having Recluse encourage other villains to become an Incarnate wouldn't make any sense. Why would Recluse show up as anything but an opponent to the idea of characters gaining the powers of an Incarnate? Why would he want the competition?

If the 40s is about learning the grandeur and power of Grandville and Arachnos (and its sometimes bitter internal divisions), which in some ways is what the missions in the 40s are about, then the Incarnate system would make better sense if it is about villains finding their own way forward and about taking their own role in shaping the game world (however that might be possible).

The original set of contacts was organized around origins / mob types, and the makers of COV more or less stuck with that formula; it was probably a constraint handed to them.

The COV contact list has a fair amount of variety in the kinds of contacts, and for the most part I like the contacts, the variety they represent, and the missions they offer up.

- Diviner Maros gets players involved in a kind of "destiny" arc, where he serves as a guide or interpreter of forces not really under his own control. You're not really a lackey in that arc; you're just reacting to a script driven by something that Maros himself probably doesn't fully understand.

- Darla Mavis needs you as well because she's really "lost it" because of others' actions, and she's clearly still angry and bitter about that. She treats the world pretty much like she treats you. You're a contractor / mercenary when working with her, and not a lackey.

- Timothy Raymond is on a quest to sort out his past and heal his damaged psyche, and you get recruited into helping him. Its not really clear that he's evil so much as he is permanently and deeply injured, in the end. My characters' motivations for helping this lost soul are not usually all that clear to me.

- Shadowy Figure is a mercenary and he works with you because you profit and he profits. He's not so much your contact as you're one of his (probably many) contacts. The motivation for working with this contact is clear, but the degree of fit with this contact's motivations and that of each of my characters varies quite a bit.

- Technician Naylor finds himself reacting to the choices of other NPCs. He's not as smarmy as Vernon (who I like very much as a contact; Vernon is funny and fun). But Naylor clearly needs your character more than you really need him.

- The Phipps arc gets done by default, mostly because the exterminator's arc is a pain in an awkward place when you're in the low 40s, with those hunts. I'm not particularly thrilled with Phipps' storyline or with Phipps, though. Phipps' arcs feel petty and mean, like Phipps himself.

- I don't care as much for the Abyss arc, or the Daos arc, or the patron arcs, for reasons that others have mentioned. I'm level 40+ at that point, and still being treated as a lackey. The snake EB/AV arc is fun, though.

As a brief aside, hopefully the Incarnate powers allow players to essentially bypass the patron arcs, while still providing for similar types of powers to what can be gained through the patron arcs.

Summing up, I see the "lackeyism" mentioned by others, and it does get bothersome after a while. I see a lot of other choices and contact / arc trajectories, though, in addition to those in which my character is cast as a lackey.

As for "how evil would I like to be", I have no desire to RP the murder of children or other innocents, or torture, or the stuff at the "truly heinous" end of the scale. I'd like a fair amount of variety so that I can follow through on the "nature" of my characters. The new clone arcs are a welcome step toward building on what I see as a fair amount of variety that is already present. I also like the "pop-up" nature of these new contacts, as I like having an alternative to running 10 to 15 mayhems to get contacts in each level range.

Everybody who logged in since i17 went live could be given a badge for surviving the market glitch: "Black Friday Survivor" or something like that could be a good pick for the badge name. Or perhaps that's a little too much dark humor, and the badge idea would go over like the proverbial lead balloon.

I'm essentially out of the markets these days, meaning I didn't lose anything, so perhaps its easier for me and others like me who didn't lose anything to let all of this go.

Would it be unreasonable to say "Sometimes stuff happens."?

As a slightly fancier way of saying what Silverado said, performance differentials between sets that might have been huge years ago have been smoothed out to a large degree by balance changes over the years.

Nowadays, if you'd like a major challenge you'll need to build below a set's potential or try to do "fish out of water" kinds of things. For example, you could make a challenge for yourself by building a strong single target character and playing that character at x8 players, by building a strong AOE character and setting mobs to +3 or +4 levels higher than that character's level, or by playing a petless mastermind (whips/poison or whips/dark might be FOTM for petless MM players, for a while).

I would guess that at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the time my TA/ice has spent in-game, to date, has been spent AFK or in the markets; I was doing offline chores between spawns a big chunk of the time I was leveling up, messing around in the markets for other significant chunks of time.

When you're sitting just shy of level 30 and you've spent about 1 hour per level actually adventuring, how much better can things get? Even if you cut the leveling time in half, which is probably much too optimistic if most time is spent solo on any kind of defender, you'll have spent a grand total of 15 hours less leveling up to just shy of level 30.

You're arguing as if the journey to 30 is a weighty issue. But, there just isn't enough time involved for your argument to be compelling.

Your point about primaries is valid; I do recall reading about /sonic defenders being able to solo GMs.

Frosticus: I don't know why the idea that you can solo quickly with an ice blast defender puts such a pebble under your shoe that you find it necessary to use words like "gimped."

I dusted off my level 29 TA/ice just a little while ago, to check on the hours she has been in-game so far. With *loads* of afk time, and enough time spent at the market to build up 33 million plus influence, it has taken 43 hours to get to level 29. This has mostly been a solo character (being on Protector, that's not uncommon), with one Sister Psyche TF (organized some months back by Blaze Rocker, if I recall correctly, as BR frequently does that on Protector) and some random teams mixed in every now and again. Slotting is SO only, at this point.

A few other things to mention:

A while back, I believe Silverado had a thread going in which he gave screenshots backing up claims to have solo'd AVs with an ice blast defender. I don't recall any similar threads about either sonic blast or archery defenders.

When stuff is held, it isn't punching you in the face or shooting you from range. Or mezzing you. You can hold stuff from level 16 with ice blast, and the two other blast sets you mention take longer to provide meaningful mitigation. Your traps / archery example makes good sense precisely because traps provides excellent mitigation and strong anti-mez capabilities. If the OP would enjoy rad, TA, or storm more than traps (traps isn't everybody's cup of tea, after all), then the superior mitigation in ice blast is particularly meaningful; RI goes down when mez hits a rad defender, TA defenders mitigate damage when solo *much* better with the extra control provided by freeze ray, and stormies benefit from having freeze ray whenever they fight ranged attackers that spread themselves out. On a related point, things can go downhill quickly for a soloing stormy when they suddenly get mezzed and hurricane goes down.

On another point, at lower levels it is very difficult to slot up three single target attacks really well, unless you wholly give up on slotting AOE damage and/or your primary. With ice blast, you take and slot up the first two ST blasts, then also slot up frost breath to improve your damage further. Frost breath is still useful when soloing and leveling up, especially when fighting 3 minion spawns (a very common scenario when soloing). The accuracy bonus makes it particularly useful in lower levels, when starved for slots. And, in your 20s ice storm goes very nicely with frost breath for a nice 1-2 punch against 3 minion spawns, as well.

I opted for quicksand over snowstorm and I've been happy with that choice. Snowstorm is a wonderful power when you can keep it reliably working. But, its a toggle and it gets switched off every time you get mezzed. Quicksand is more reliably helpful than snowstorm and its hefty helping of -def is very helpful when on teams.

I also wouldn't take salt crystals. I took stone prison to solo better, and didn't bother with stone cages. That reduces overall damage done because containment isn't maximized. But, I focus on control and buffs / debuffs instead with my earth / cold. YMMV, and stone cages is also a reasonable choice.

I did take frostworks as a leveling up power, as well as both shields. Frostworks has the base slot and one more, with a heal and a recharge in the two slots devoted to it, which is part of why I took it; powers that buff and require few slots are nice to have, while leveling up. I put frostworks on the team's alpha taker and also on the teammate(s) who have the biggest death wish. In theory, players can cap their own hit points and get no benefit from frostworks. In practice, very few players take the time needed to do that and teammates tend to faceplant less often with frostworks on them. Also, when soloing, I stick both shields and frostworks on Rocky, and he never, ever dies.

With arctic air for stealth, your controller can be positioned appropriately to open with stalagmites or when soloing you can move on by mobs, and Rocky will engage mobs first and draw their aggro. You can then strike with your controller, either with sleet or with a control power. Soloing is quite straightforward, this way.

Slotting is pretty much what you would expect. Cold does require significant slotting to get it working well, but you should still have an adequate number of slots for your earth powers.

Regarding movement powers, super speed matches nicely with arctic air to provide invisibility and hasten meshes nicely with the powers you have on a long timer, for an earth/cold.