Siolfir

I don't think this is exactly fair to Synapse - he's been really good about giving people a heads up when things are coming down the pipe and following up on things when he says he will. If he says that he's going to look at certain procs that don't seem to line up with other similar ones, I personally trust him to make it happen.

I agree that PvP hasn't been tweaked and monitored like people were told during the i13 changes, and yes this change will negatively impact proc rates in those two powers - but that high proc rate is apparently one of the reasons why this change is being made in the first place.

As for how this will affect me, my PvE-build Rad/Kin Corruptor has 3 damage procs and an Achilles proc in Neutrino Bolt, just because the base damage is so pathetic that it's hardly worth the slot plus I can self-cap damage easily regardless with FS. Most of my other builds will actually proc more often, now that the PPM rate for AoEs is being adjusted - I think that Sleet, Rain of Fire, and Ice Storm are the only powers I use regularly that will be hurt by the revised changes.

Oh, like I said, I get the idea. And I appreciate that you're trying to be clear about it.

I just think you're underestimating the ability of this community to pick apart and/or misinterpret things - after all, "under-perform" is subjective and sometimes "buff" is as well.


Edit: scooped by Arcanaville.

Not that I don't get where you're likely going with this, but I should think by now you'd realize that what some expect is vastly different than what others do.

Please? >.>

Of those three, two you have to pay for. I think you have to pay for KM if you didn't get GR before i20 launched, but I had so I can't say on that one; that makes my list the "free" sets to go with.

I also skipped mentioning Staff because I haven't actually played the set and so forgot about it.

The first character I started trying to collect badges on is my EM/Elec Brute I made during i8; I had already stopped playing her for much more than badging before the nerf because only having Aid Self to recover the lost hp from cycling ET as often as possible to pretend to maintain any performance advantage over other primaries* on a pure resistance set annoyed the heck out of me. The reason she still exists at all after the nerf is because I didn't want to get some of the more annoying badges all over again, but I started playing her again when Energize replaced Conserve Power in ElA.

So yes, I completely agree. Personal attachment or attempting a thematic fit is the only reason to bother with EM, and with power customization you can try thematic fits with other sets just as easily.



* - there wasn't a performance advantage, even throwing out Aid Self's animation time SM had better performance until the mallet animations had a half second added to each for almost every achievable level of recharge while solo at the time.

From the first page of the pylon thread:
Yes, I'd have to agree that over 300 single-target DPS is probably sufficient.

First, a tangent on KM:
Both the current and previous "head powers" developers (Castle and Synapse) have posted that the 100% chance to critical from hidden status in Burst is a bug and will be fixed. Castle did it publicly in a forum post, Synapse responded in a PM asking if all AoEs could be given the same treatment since it works so well for KM (and the APP Fireball) by stating that neither should have the 100% critical and both would eventually be fixed. Just a heads up for anyone who takes KM thinking that Burst makes it a good AoE set.

After that, it depends on what you're looking for, and if damage type matters or not.

Electric Melee for Stalkers does very well in single target damage because Assassin's Shock outside of hide is essentially pre-nerf Energy Transfer. Scrappers and Brutes don't get that benefit, so will be left far behind in their single target capability with the set. If you want an exotic damage type it's going to be your best bet.

Dual Blades, despite being lethal damage, is a very capable set that can leverage the cones in the set for good AoE damage while still using procs to increase the single target damage.

Spines isn't great for single target damage when compared to the other sets but has a lot of AoEs and like Electric Melee, the Stalker version gets a huge boost from AS which separates it from the Scrapper version. I just got sick of lethal damage before GR and shelved my Spines/Nin and deleted the DB/WP Stalkers.

Usually, but the degree to which I move changes drastically depending on the character.

Examples:

• SM/WP Brute - shuffle around slightly to increase regen from RttC, but no drastic changes since I need to be planted if I have to use Fault.
• SS/FA Brute - I have large radius AoEs and ranged attacks, let them come to me to die. Small shifts to maximize Burn placement if they aren't packing in tightly enough.
• Rad/Kin Corruptor - is it even allowed to play a Kinetic character that doesn't move a lot? Without a way of herding or taunting she's always on the move to maximize AoE effects (Irradiate, Void, and Fulcrum Shift) or avoid potential mezzes (look ma, no Clarion!).
• Dark/Dark Dominator - she's all over the place: cone fear/-tohit + PBAoE stun and attack, melee attacks until things start responding then jump back while using Gloom and/or Life Drain to set up another Fearsome Stare...

Clarifying this some: only if you're either using a lot of procs or are a Stalker that is on a team. Throwing out procs and just looking at the DPA for the powers, the order is ET >> TF > BS > EP > Barrage > WH >> Stun.

The difference between Bone Smasher and Energy Punch is very small and will shuffle around with procs, but I'm not sure how PPM procs affect them because of BS's higher recharge - and thus proc rate. I double-proc'd EP on my EM Brute due to the faster animation on her last respec (for inherent Fitness). Now Total Focus is still annoyingly slow, but it's not like you can't queue it and jump backwards just as it starts to cheat and get some mobility during the root time.

I'll buy that... SR is the Complete Idiot's Guide to Softcapping for Dummies.

But that's the only thing it has going for it when compared to Ninjitsu. You end up using just as many power and slot choices to get the high defense, you just do it with passive powers instead of set bonuses. I've personally found that the higher DDR in SR gets trumped by the soft controls in Ninjitsu, but you have to pay attention and think with /Nin compared to just mashing buttons with /SR.

Even easier math version: play a KM Stalker and don't slot it for recharge at all = whatever the capped % is.

That's why I was originally saying that the 90% cap and using the actual recharge were both trying to address the same thing - that being "this proc is going off too often compared to the PPM rating" - and only one of the two needs to be used.

I'd like to see it go away entirely, and the reason I brought up the streakbreaker was due to another poster bringing up that (paraphrasing) "procs are things that should only have a chance to go off and shouldn't be guaranteed". Attacks are clamped to a 95% max, but there's still a streakbreaker that forces hits - and I actually had an entire AV fight (Radio) on a to-hit capped Brute (I checked the combat log) where every other hit missed, which means that every hit was due to the streakbreaker (like I said before, the RNG hates me); I don't see forcing a proc that's supposed to fire more often than it can possibly be activated to always go off on each activation as being different.

Edit: And once again, Synapse posts while I'm writing with a response to the concern. That was NOT the post I was referring to originally, because my prescience isn't that reliable.

It's been brought up (I compared having 100% proc rates to the streakbreaker). It just likely isn't going to go away, and the penalties due to recharge and AoE are far more likely to affect your performance overall - which is why I suggested bumping it to the 95% that already annoys me, knowing how many times I miss on characters with "capped" tohit I didn't want to think about the "100%" procs happening twice as often.

But then, the RNG hates me.

I inferred the intent based on the fact that none of the procs that existed prior had any area checks, so it had to have been deliberately added just to address AoEs. And it was added as a factor in the denominator when the numerator didn't change. We're not talking rocket surgery to figure out that makes the total go down for any value over 1 (or under 0), and I have to think that someone questioned "why are we adding this extra bit here?"

Edit: Since Synapse posted while I was writing this, it looks like they're at least revisiting that part of the formula.
Edit2: And other portions.

Can you think of any other logical explanation beyond assuming incompetence? They have to realize that setting the base PPM value off of a percentage that fires per target actually hit and then reducing that number based on the area size without a proportional increase in the base PPM to compensate would result in less proc damage overall.

The change was made deliberately and talked about repeatedly. It's just that until the change goes through, you could always use the flat percentage procs and still get the better performance with the only theoretical limitation being the level you get to keep your set bonuses at.

Well, for most single-target attacks it'll be better than the fixed percentages; for pretty much every AoE in existence it will be worse because the PPM on them is far too low relative to the flat percentages - if a floor is added they'll always be at the floor (see post on Fireball, above).

But "PVE diminishing returns" was one of the first things that went through my head when I read about the SBEs being balanced around "procs per minute" in the first place, which is why I was amazed that they used base recharge instead of final recharge in the calculation - then the measurement of how many times it will proc "per minute" is completely skewed.

I simply see it as an implied developer admission that AoEs as they are currently implemented in the game are too powerful and don't need any more help.

It's a fairly substantial boost to Stalker performance that has builds including it routinely over 200 dps, with many over 300 dps, in pylon testing. It wasn't just the new Assassin's Strike that provided such a substantial jump; it was also the guaranteed critical immediately afterwards on your heaviest hitter.


Edit: as for capping the proc chance, why not the 95% we've all come to know and curse every time we miss with an attack?

I know that this is the direction you've stated that you're going, but if it had to change I'd prefer the flat-percentage to the newer PPM version. This eliminates the need for points 2-4 entirely, and since both systems penalize certain types of powers (low damage/short recharge and AoEs for PPM, high damage/long recharge for flat rate) I'd rather deal with the system that's been in place for years.

Also, if this change is to bring PPM procs more in-line with the older performance and there is a minimum at the current flat proc rate to deal with all of the issues that have been brought up about using modified recharge in this thread you're simply introducing a lot of extraneous steps only to clamp it and get the same effect at high recharge.

However, with the assumption that everything is going to be PPM, I personally would say to ditch either point 2 or 3; in my mind they both attempt to address the same problem and you don't need both - it reminds me of how the i13 PvP revamp went, where several ideas to address the same problems were all done at once instead of incrementally, so you couldn't look at the results and state what was and wasn't working, only that people didn't like the result. Of the two I find point 3 more palatable (mostly because I couldn't believe that they weren't set up that way to start when I first heard about balancing around PPM) but you're back to the +recharge being a debuff issue without clamping the low end (and for that, see the first paragraph of my response).

These - and note that they don't need any changes inside the game to occur.