Siolfir

My response was specifically in reference to "Blasters get Build Up so they do more damage [with Blizzard]". Assuming both are damage capped, no matter how they get there (honestly, inspirations is the easiest way), then yes they'll do the same damage until Scourge kicks in - something that I pointed out several times in this and other threads.

But Build Up doesn't mean anything to the discussion: a Kinetics Corruptor can maintain Fulcrum Shift for the full duration of Blizzard, a Blaster hitting Aim and Build Up will have Aim, then Build Up wear off before it finishes dealing damage, and while they can hit the damage cap by using those they still need extra sources of +dam above typical slotting.

It's due to the higher damage cap, and the math was posted in the other thread linked.

That's exactly what I meant. Invisibility provides 55', or Stealth + Stealth IO provides 65'. The only time the extra 85-95' of stealth radius matters is when you have to deal with turrets (@ 100') or snipers (@ 149).

I never said that Stalkers were being seen by them, and I've frequently said there's no point in taking Stealth - or especially getting a stealth IO - on a Stalker unless you're building for PvP. Anything that will see you at 150' of stealth ignores any level of stealth you can build up, and the PvE cap is 200' anyway.

Heck with the first 10 seconds from Build Up, Corruptors get Fulcrum Shift, so they do more damage for the full duration of Blizzard. +300% > +162.5%, even assuming they both last the full duration, and the base damage for both versions is the same. It's not +400% for the Corruptor because Blizzard is a pet (as mentioned in the quote from the other thread above).

Blaster Inferno beats Blaster Blizzard. Corruptor Blizzard can beat Blaster Inferno if enough ticks Scourge, but on the average Blaster Inferno will do more. And as posted in the other thread, the highest single orange number you're likely to see from a player power is a little over 30000 damage from the critical portion of Assassin's Strike - it was calculated at 30030 at +49 difference, but you can get to +50 now. I'm just not sure that it goes higher than *6 for that extra level.

Eh... yes and no. The extra stealth over everyone except Illusion Controllers really only matters if there are snipers or turrets, but can show up at times, and Placate helps if there's a spawn close. It's not completely foolproof, but given how you can play with LOS to click things already, only having one thing that's capable of spotting you is pretty common.

Of course, I've had better luck with AoE controls (my Mind/Energy Dom with Super Speed and a stealth IO is great for clicking whatever glowie I want), or just running the Darrin Wade arc and holding onto Midnight Visage to click glowies while standing in the middle of a spawn without aggroing anything. And if I really, really don't trust not being hit, I can just hit Self Destruct while I'm close on anyone.

When the game makes an attack roll, it checks the attack type and position of the attack (so, for example: smashing, cold, and ranged for Ice Blast).

It then checks your character for those types of defense, and uses the highest defense value you have available - in Energy Aura, this is likely Cold defense if you have Power Shield, since its base defense is 15% to Cold compared to the base 12.75% Smashing defense in Kinetic Shield, and you only get Ranged defense through Energy Cloak at 3.75%.

Once it decides which defense to use, it subtracts that from the mob's base to-hit and adds in any to-hit bonuses. That number is then clamped to a minimum of 5% chance to hit, or a maximum of 95% chance.

Next it applies accuracy modifiers that are specific to the power, mob rank, and relative level, all of which are multiplied together and then by that 5-95% number from before. So Citadel was attacking you with Energy Transfer in the last mission of the LRSF, he'd be a +3 (1.3x) Hero (1.5x) using a power with a 1.2x modifier. Even if you were soft-capped at the 5% minimum chance from above, he still has a 11.7% chance to hit you. This value is also clamped between 5% and 95%.

Then the determines a random number from 0.0-100.0%, and compares this to the number calculated after accuracy modifiers. If it's less, you just got hit and your defense is done doing anything but your resistance is just getting started. If it's higher, you were missed and your resistance just sits there waiting for something to get through. Let's assume that it's lower, so we can move on.

Going back to the first example of Ice Blast, it has two damage types: Smashing and Cold. These may or may not be different than the attack types - most of the time they line up but not always. Each type of damage is resisted by its appropriate resistance, not the highest: so the Smashing portion of the attack is resisted by your current Smashing resistance, and the Cold portion is resisted by your current Cold resistance. So if that Ice Blast was supposed to do 80 Cold damage and 50 Smashing damage (made-up numbers), and you had 10% Cold resistance and 25% Smashing resistance, you'd take 72 Cold and 37.5 Smashing damage, for a total damage of 109.5 instead of 130.

That should take care of how the attacks work. As for making Energy Aura useful, your best bet is to layer on more defense to try to get that chance to get hit minimized. If you do that, Energy Drain can keep your hit points topped off from the hits that get through most of the time. But really, its claim is to being a pretty defense set, not a sturdy one.

Aww, there goes most of the fun of the mission!

I used to love setting the difficulty up to x8 and then just watch him get overwhelmed by his "hired help" while he's begging for support.

Since I don't think I ever explicitly stated it in this thread, I was content with the imbalance as it existed and assumed that it was within the "noise of other factors" that you talk about. The only AT I discriminated against on teams was Masterminds, and that was due to the sheer number of people who think that standing there and letting their pets wander uncontrolled around the map aggroing everything they can is the "correct" way to play. I know what a good MM can do, but until I know that someone can play a MM well, I don't want to team with them.

So anyway, I felt that things were skewed, but not so much that it really needed to be tweaked. But then the devs tweaked the melee ATs - reducing the Brute damage cap and average damage due to Fury, giving Tankers a resistance debuff for a little more damage and a higher hit point cap, leaving Scrappers alone, apparently as the baseline, while Stalkers got... what? Oh, yeah. They still do less damage in most situations than Scrappers with less survivability, and a post much later after I started a thread about the imbalance saying "they're as strong as we want to make them".

But the stated logic behind the Brute changes was due to them often doing more damage than Scrappers while having more survivability. For full disclosure on the subject, I don't even consider the Fury changes a "nerf", although it did reduce my sustained +damage during most missions on my Brutes enough people like the steadier level that it's debatable; the definite nerf is the damage cap reduction which means that damage buffs always favor the Scrapper. If that amount of difference was significant enough to make a change for one AT then why not another?

That's where I'm coming from on this issue - it's not because all I play are Stalkers, although my Stalkers outnumber my Scrappers 2-1, but because I want some form of consistent behavior in how such balance changes are enacted. That consistency is why I was fine with the nerf to Shield Charge, even though I was pushing for a buff to Lightning Rod at the time - they didn't do what I was hoping for, but at least SC doesn't completely outclass LR in every imaginable way now like it did when it did full damage to the entire radius.

Or the more obnoxious cousin of this phrase I use on my Fire/Kin and Rad/Kin Corruptors after vaporizing the spawn before the Footstomp gets to deal its damage: "bewm"

Energy Aura.

The Stalker doesn't always do greater burst damage, and the longer the window you look at, the more the Scrapper pulls closer or ahead (depending on the set you look at and time window in question). The standard crit rate is 10% for Scrappers when fighting anything you'd care about single-target burst on - which is to say, lieutenants or larger. Running some quick numbers for Martial Arts, a Scrapper has about a 90 point advantage in burst at the end of a Build Up cycle (~2400 vs ~2311) unless the Stalker uses Placate to take advantage of Eagle Claw's higher scale for Stalkers and somehow squeezes in a last attack with 0.014 seconds left in BU's active time (then the Stalker is up to 2617, or if they don't get it in 2254... lower than if they hadn't bothered to use Placate and just kept going with harder hitting attacks). That's a really tight margin for error, as well - you're probably going to lose 0.02 seconds at some point due to network latency.

There's also the fact that single-target burst in this game is completely and utterly useless; AoE burst is good for clearing out an entire spawn quickly and recharging while you move to the next one, but Scrappers have a definitive edge there (see: Shield Charge).

This is the one I was going to post about, because of the broken and horribly stupid AI. Unless they fixed it, it's not just killing every single mob on the way out - he was running away from following me to go to the ambushes where they spawned. I had to literally backtrack to each and every ambush spawn point, defeat them there, then lead him back past all of the area that I had already led him through because he latched onto the ambush instead of me.

I eventually said hell with it and taunted the mob so that the -range would force it to follow me, and led the ambush - with him following them and not me - back to the beginning after the third time it happened. I also petitioned the mission for griefing me.

Edit: also, why is it that the only Knife of Artemis that can't see through stealth is the one that we have to lead out through the map?

Except that they still aren't, really: insert force-multiplying AT here.

I agree that they should do more damage - single target, at the least - compared to Scrappers at all times, though; it only makes sense given the rationale we were given for lowering the Brute damage cap. Given the ability to split PvE and PvP damage, it wouldn't even affect PvP at all, so "unbalancing them in PvP" can't be used as a viable excuse anymore. But that was almost explicitly ruled out by Castle's last post on the subject, so I'm not expecting to see that happen anytime soon. Or even Soon™.

... from up-thread:
If you're not getting as much attention, the holes are a lot less noticeable. Also, since Brutes are the only AT that has Energy Aura right now, being less noticeable is one of the problems people have with it: you have to work harder to keep things focused on you, whether because you feel the need to tank for a group or just to help your Fury out, although in the past this was a bigger concern than it is now.

But what it does offer is unlimited endurance for hanging around in fights, a not-likely-to-be-more-than-minor-when-you-need-it heal, and decent defense numbers for what it does provide protection against.

I'll echo DM/SR, Kin/SR or Elec/SR if you're not looking to IO it but still want to do well enough, substituting /Nin if you don't plan on being the center of attention, and NB or BS for extra survivability via Divine Avalanche/Parry if you don't like -tohit + heal, -dam + KD + stuns, or stuns + KD. Which primary depends on how much AoE you want to do, and those three were specifically chosen because they're not all Smashing/Lethal.

I've had the same experience with my Colds; I like Traps, I just think that for many "speed teams" it just is a bit slower than Cold for the same end result. And the vote for Kin assumes competence: I've been on teams where the Kin decided that only one person at a time should have Speed Boost, and Fulcrum Shift was a "last resort" sort of power. They're no help to the team at all.

It can happen more often than you think: how many people complain about their RI, DN, or Snow Storm anchors being killed too quickly?

While not untrue, one of the considerations you should definitely look at is the effect of your personal damage on team damage as well. In small teams it can be significant.

Also with some team makeups - usually those that are already steamrolling things fairly well - you may find that a bunch of debuffs (particularly those that increase survivability as opposed to making things die faster) aren't going to matter that much and you can make things go faster launching an AoE or two instead to shave a second or two off of the cleanup time.

Priest or priestess in that climate, sure - but Freya herself? Not well known for modesty... (see: how she got her necklace)

...

Have you read much Norse mythology?

Yeah, 20% is far too modest.

You can't become an incarnate, regardless of your subscription status, unless you paid for Going Rogue. Does that count?

DOOOOOOOM!

there, no need to wait any more