Siolfir

They completely ignored it with Crushing Uppercut - at combo level 3 it hits harder on a critical than a Total Focus full-damage critical would. Which, incidentally, is also harder than a from-hidden Assassin's Strike.

And I've posted for years in support of Scrappers getting the Stalker version (with AS replaced with WH) of Energy Melee (which has significantly reduced stun chances, no-self-damage critical on ET, and reduced-damage critical on TF). I don't think it would be appropriate to give them the Tanker or Brute version with higher stun chances, add in a full damage critical for Total Focus (and/or Energy Transfer), and then not do the same for Stalkers.

Edit to respond to corpse-blasting "fast cast": I wouldn't mind it but I don't know that it's okay on a miss (might be a bit OP relative to other sets), and I think that there may be data access issues with determining if it's a corpse-blast or not that would depend on underlying engine changes and as such be outside of the powers realm. The power can tell whether or not to run a line item based on success or failure at the time of activation (see: Scourge), I'm just not sure that the check to run the line item would have access to mob state at the time damage is dealt (which is why individual DoTs in an already-activated power such as Gloom can't Scourge but new activations can).

Concentrated Strike resets Power Siphon on Scrappers (at a higher-than-standard 20% rate) and Build Up on Stalkers (at their normal rate afaik) when it criticals. This means that a KM Stalker with the chance for hide proc in AS can actually perma-BU until the i24 changes drop the rate from 100% chance to hide.

And "larger than normal AoE size" doesn't mean "nearly double the radius" for Titan Weapons. If it were 10' instead of 8' I might buy that side of the argument, and I wasn't including the damage over time as part of its damage because I know to ignore chance-for DoTs (guaranteed DoTs are part of the damage, which is why I included them in Whirling Sword and Lotus Drops).

I haven't seen the spreadsheets, nor am I basing the "breaking the rules" part on that. When KM was in beta, I was responded to by several people (I don't remember if one was Synapse or not) in the feedback thread while I was complaining about scale 1 damage in 8' for Burst, and they all stated that it followed the formula for a 14 second recharge AoE. Those posts would mean that 1.15 isn't correct and 1.0 is, but in any case 1.15 would still be a buff from where it is now (and Whirling Axe needs to be changed also).

It wasn't added with Water Blast, that was just the first time it was used in a Ranged set and the first time that the power was resetting its own timer. Kinetic Melee said to say "hi", but Burnout was pouting and crying off in the corner.

To address another point, Whirling Smash also is restricted in use to when you have Momentum built up, in which case DPA is hardly a consideration for the entire set as a whole. It has its own gimmick, but it shatters the rules that you're talking about being unlikely to break.

The whole point of calculating DPA is so you can decide if the faster-animating lower-damage power is better for DPS than the slower-animating higher-damage power, but it does ignore things like corpse-blasting.

Yes, Arcanatime changes this. Remember that you're losing at least one 0.132 second server tick every time a power activates, so chaining powers is inherently less efficient.

Energy Punch scale 1 @ .83 = 1.056 seconds. (DPA of 0.947)
Bone Smasher scale 1.64 @ 1.5 = 1.716 seconds. (DPA of 0.956)
Barrage scale 1.32 @ 1.33 = 1.584 seconds. (DPA of 0.833)

These powers have a combined scale damage of 3.96 in 4.356 seconds, for a DPS of 0.909. Barrage really is hurt since the 1.33 second animation means that it loses almost 2 full ticks because of the rounding (always up to the next tick). If Barrage's animation were 0.01 seconds faster it would evenly line up with the ticks and be 11 ticks instead of 12, giving it a DPA of 0.909 and the whole chain would be at 0.9375.

If you get the recharge to cycle EP->BS->EP, you do scale 3.64 damage in 3.828 seconds, for a DPS of 0.951. Better than with Barrage, but let's look at Total Focus.

Total Focus is scale 3.56 @ 3.3 = 3.432 seconds. (DPA of 1.037)

What causes the changes for Stalkers is that Total Focus doesn't critical for full value, and Energy Punch and Bone Smasher do. This affects the DPA order when you factor in a higher critical rate, so that with 2 people in range to give the boost (16% critical rate), you get the following:

TF: (3.56 + (0.16 (critical rate) * 1 (critical scale value))) / 3.432 = 1.084
BS: (1.64 + (0.16 * 1.64)) / 1.716 = 1.109
EP: (1 + (0.16 * 1)) / 1.056 = 1.098

So the DPA order shifts around based on team size and position for Stalkers - at even 2 people in range both Bone Smasher and Energy Punch exceed Total Focus's DPA and it's more efficient to chain them.

Besides the issues with changing power order - which breaks a lot of things on a character, you can't "match the other ATs" anyway.

The order that the attacks appear is closest with Tankers and Stalkers, since Assassin's Strike replaces Whirling Hands as an attack and they all line up in the same order if you ignore the rest of the powers. But then you still have issues since Assassin's Strike is a tier 4 (Taunt in the Tanker version), Stalker Build Up is tier 5 instead of 7, Placate is tier 6 where Whirling Hands is at, and Stalker Stun is tier 7 instead of 6. The Brute version has Total Focus at tier 7 with Stun moved to tier 8 and Energy Transfer at tier 9, so you wouldn't get either in place of where Stun is for Tankers at tier 6.

As for corpse-blasting... yes, the team probably doesn't need your damage if there's nothing left to hit before your attack finishes animating. So since your damage is irrelevant while playing EM, you'd have no problem at all with changing the animations for both Total Focus and Energy Transfer to finish in half the time (with half the damage to keep the DPA consistent), right? After all, since that slow, huge burst of damage is utterly meaningless it doesn't matter if it hits for less much earlier... and there's a chance that you might contribute while taking your self-damage for trying to use ET!

Well, he's got the moobs for it!

This.

The tradeoffs to build for +damage aren't worth the gains. You're better off cycling higher DPA powers more often and trying to offset the endurance cost than increasing overall DPA on all of your powers in almost every case... and all of them that I can think of offhand.

Did you miss the TPN thread? I'd kill to be a Praetorian citizen just throwing rocks.

Whirling Smash has a 1 second animation as well. >.>

Whirling Smash has a 15' AoE, does scale 1.15 damage ignoring the DoT secondary, and is a very recent creation.

There are more exceptions to the formula for 14 second recharge PBAoEs than there are powers that follow it (two: Whirling Hands and Whirling Axe), either due to DoT (Whirling Sword, Lotus Drops), higher damage (Spin, Dragon's Tail, Whirling Mace), larger radius (Tremor), multiple of the above (Whirling Smash) or simply changing the recharge and damage at the same time when the power was created to justify the damage increase when I brought this exact same point up during beta (Burst). Spin doesn't fit for Scrappers either, but has a higher damage than it would even with the "faster recharge" secondary effect that wasn't used for the Brute version. I suggested the last time I brought it up that maybe the formula should be revisited if they have to keep making exceptions rather than following it.


No, but you can have two line items (or powers, to use the power redirection mechanism from Titan Weapons) with different radii, each doing identical damage, flagged to go off or not go off as conditions are met to preclude them both going off at the same time.

So you can't increase the radius based on the condition but you can simulate it by either using a different power or just turning off one radius and turning on the other. The in-game power information would simply list the largest possible one, the way it does for every Tanker attack, Thunder Strike, Lightning Rod, etc.

Since this has mostly turned into the two of us going back and forth and we both said we don't agree with the other's opinion, how about we just take any further discussion to PMs and let the thread go for people who want to talk about past nerfs rather than discussing whether or not a new one should happen? Because while I tried to give an answer, I don't have the numbers to quantify exactly what the changes were and that seemed to be what was asked.

I've stated my case about the -res being unique offering for an armor set and offense being a good defense already. We seem to just be talking past each other at this point rather than communicating.

• If your best chain doesn't build 3 stacks, don't worry about it. At two stacks it's twice as likely to crit as not.
• Yes, if the target is likely to live past a few seconds and isn't likely to run. If it's not going to live past a few seconds then you won't get that DPA (it's spread over 45 seconds).

If you need to switch to Defensive to survive, it's because incoming damage is too much for the other adaptations (probably due to getting shot by too many Assault Rifles and needing both more resistance and the heal procs). If it happens on a team, that means you're not receiving outside buffs and likely want the rest of your team which is presumably attacking and not doorsitting to actually do something about the mobs around you.

But I also think that Burn is a great defensive power for my SS/FA because the initial burst (usually after Footstomp) means I rarely deal with anything smaller than a Lt. I definitely have to heal a lot less when I use it frequently.

Well, you can but it would have to be empyrical testing. Bosses in AE with no attacks or some such, standing around in Offensive (best chance) and seeing if they go to sleep.

My Stalker doesn't have the power, as mentioned earlier, so I couldn't test it.

Well, since it simply modifies your Threat and the AI fleeing is likely due to your Threat far exceeding a value it feels capable of dealing with (based on its chance to hit, attacks available, etc. - it's probably a calculated heuristic), increasing the Threat further would only make it that much more likely to flee under the same conditions, right?

WAI.

(Disclaimer: I have no idea what the AI is actually checking for or against, nor how it determines which state to enter; but it seems likely that the default action is to attack the highest Threat first, approaching to get the better (melee range) attacks, and flee if it feels it has no chance.)

The clause of "with less than a quarter of the penalties" most certainly implied that you felt it was a far better trade, and as such a replacement. That's what led to the comment about doublespeak - the impression you provided through your use of wording was that you were far better off than any other set while using Bio in Defensive. I expect most IO builds won't bother to use Defensive even if the penalty was only the -damage just because you won't need the extra survival, but I want the -resistance to stay for two reasons: if you really need Defensive on a team you'll want the rest of the team doing more damage, and the debuff makes it far more likely that the mobs stay focused on you. Having the -resistance isn't just a personal benefit, and it's a unique thing that the set offers as a whole-team benefit similar to Shield having Grant Cover. Unlike Grant Cover its beneficial on its own enough that you're unlikely to skip it when soloing.

In any case, it's obvious that we disagree on the -resistance; you seem to feel that any and all offensive boosts should be removed from defensive mode and I don't.

You're not looking at Assassin's Strike, which has a 1 second animation instead of selecting (one of) the longest of the bunch at 1.67 seconds. You're also ignoring the statement from Synapse saying he was going to normalize them all to 1 second when it was brought up that the blade animations, Street Justice's animation, and Kinetic Melee's animations were all different than the 1 second norm; that second part is why I'm pretty sure that the case holds for stating that they gave an entire AT a power that has better DPA than the old ET.

Secondly, providing self-damage for your best DPA attack isn't a reduction in survival in order to achieve more damage to you?

Yes. After claiming that it was approaching Granite with less than a quarter of the penalties. And with an edit in the post that may have included the line about Granite 2.0, or I may have missed it prior to clicking to quote it or I would have called out the doublespeak then.



First sentence is an opinion - one I obviously don't happen to share - and the highlighted portion of the second sentence is likely why you feel that way. +/- damage on a Brute is watered down heavily. The set exists for more than one AT, so don't balance it for just one.

I see where you're trying to go with it, but that's a bad analogy - the -resistance is there in all forms, not just Offensive. The -damage is the penalty for Defensive and provides enough of one that its penalty is similar in magnitude to the boost in damage you get for Offensive Adaptation and still reduces you below baseline assuming you took another set. That's why I'm okay with leaving the -resistance alone... even with it you're still at less damage than, say, Willpower or Invulnerability.

3.84 DPA is lower than Assassin's Strike with an incredibly easy 2 stacks of Assassin's Focus. Which came as a recent change to an AT that specializes in hard hitting single target damage with lesser/limited AoE. EM is a set that specializes in hard hitting single target damage with lesser/limited AoE... hrm. So recently, the devs decided that it was entirely balanced to provide an entire AT this "broken" DPA in every primary that exists for them.

The self-damage is the cost for a lower endurance cost and recharge, and I agree that paying it when hitting a dead target should be considered a bug.

KOB's longer recharge compared to Total Focus (and Seismic Smash... and Concentrated Strike...) is because it was originally balanced as a control power and not a damage power and wasn't changed a long time ago, not because it was a balance decision compared to other sets. KOB also happens to have a longer range than those other powers, which seemed to be the justification for Crushing Uppercut's longer recharge rather than just fixing KOB at the time.