Starsman

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That aside, if Castle wants to bring Bang into PSW without breaking any more rules, all he has to do is increase the power's hit cap to 16. AT that point psi becomes better against huge groups but fire better against 10 or smaller groups.

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Castle was on test earlier and he mentioned this. It's coming in a future patch.

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Great! OK so did the following changes to the charts:

<ul type="square">[*]PSW will now cap at 16[*]Fixed Thunder Strike, had energy (aoe) section way too high.[*]Lowered the "effective duration" of Thorntrops to only 20 seconds instead of the 45 seconds it normally lasts. If foes are not dead by then they will likely be out of Thorntrops for sure.[/list]
As it stands with these changes (some are not in test yet but will be) fire gets to be the AoE king with Psi being a very close second as long as he faces very large crowds.

Thorns is not too far behind on the third place unless it faces spawns of extremely durable foes that don't run.

So I guess we end up with 3 very distinctive yet well balanced AoE oriented sets.

I actually may lower the priority on snipes a bit, they are, after all, undesirable to be used mid combat due to interruptibility. Although it's nice that finally, at least one set, finds a snipe useful in an attack chain.

It is "included" but it's damage per activation time is not the best. It would be used if the snipe was not available or if there was not enough slotted recharge to keep a chain with those powers. With 50% recharge, those attacks should not yield gaps.

Not easy based on how I have these things set up. It's a huge complex beast that does not take range into account...

I could make entirely separate versions that set melee powers into zero priority (basically turning them off) but that would be a new document for me, just a new link for you... I'll see if I can get that done by tomorrow.

How would you define ranged, though? 60ft? 50ft? 80ft? There are many cones that may not apply for ranged calculations, and off course PBAoEs would be out of the question.

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Starsman is this considering the melee modifiers for Psi Scream and Psionic Shock Wave?


Please say no.

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Yes I am but I also strongly consider reach and aoe caps.

Also, I consider Thorntrops to do it's full damage to all foes, this is not always true. In fact, I should shorten it's effective life's usefulness from 45 seconds to something more realistic, like 20-25 seconds.

That aside, if Castle wants to bring Bang into PSW without breaking any more rules, all he has to do is increase the power's hit cap to 16. AT that point psi becomes better against huge groups but fire better against 10 or smaller groups.

As for electric melee, for a set with so high ST damage perhaps the AoE damage portion of thunderstrike is set a bit too high, specially after the changes (unless I got the wrong number, I understand the energy portion is 1.45 and accounts for the AoE damage. When Castle noted he reduced the ST portion, though, I may had taken things wrong and he may had meant this value to be inclusive into that ST portion. That's a thing I am so sure was my mistake that I will fix it without confirming first.

(QR)

Ok some charts up here if anyone wants to check them out.

Also wanted to note: note that even with the "nerf" to electric, it still is the superior single target set with Energy now being a close second place.

My AoE calculations may be a bit unfair right now as I am using a low spacing calculation which is not too realistic, 10ft radius AoEs are "easy" to saturate, but this is not so true for ATs without taunting capabilities. I will increase that spacing to

Edit: OK did some slight re-weighting to make the distinction between various AoE powers more obvious.

The first of my charts is ready.

Things to note:

<ul type="square">[*]Thorntrops does not get benefit of the change as (if i understand right) it never got damage buff transfers. Correct me if I'm wrong there.
[*]The patch notes say Thorn Burst went from 3 seconds to 5, but the power was at 15 seconds so i take it this was a typo. I am guessing the right recharge increase was from 15 to 17 based on the damage scale posted.
[*]Ranking is meant to let you see how the set ranks on that damage category against the others. The lowest possible score is 1, the highest the score, the better the set is.
[*]At the far right you will see a split of what powers my calculator assume are optimal for use in order of priority. The percentage denotes how much of the chain time is allocated to that one attack.
[*]The Diff columns denote if there was a buff or nerf. Orange means nerf, blue means buff.[/list]
Old With Dom 50% recharge

Old without dom 50% recharge

I may list high recharge cases later but I have not decided what number is "right" since, well, can't just go for permadom numbers because those are likely using very specialized builds to achieve those levels of recharge.

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You're missing the point. The CAUSE of this was a patch that was added because back in ye olden days, playing a melee character and trying to hit a moving target was impossible.

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To be more precise: it was an issue with Gauntlet in tankers (and to a lesser degree all targeted aoe attacks with very small radius.) True single target attacks never had the "impossible to hit moving targets" issue.

I was under the impression the fix only affected targeted aoe powers, though, not cones. Although I can see how certain cones would also require the fix as in theory they would had suffered very similar issues.

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There goes your chance at the bug hunter badge

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If I thought badges were worth anything I might find that disheartening.

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It is worth something: the powa to tell badge hunters you, who could care less about badges, have a badge they will likely never get

PS, no, i dont have it nor I care about it. I just thought it was a funny thing to note.

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If they don't want me to hit ten targets with golden dragonfly, then they can change the target cap.

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They want you to be able to hit that many target max, provided you struggle doing it. Also, certain tiny critters (like monkeys or the tiny shards that come off defeated DE critters) also may easily be fit within the normal radius of the power. So no, "lowering the cap" is not the fix for this.

In MMO terms, exploiting is not committing a crime but notably making intentional use of something that is obviously an unintended bug.

The argument about "if they did not intended me to hit so many foes..." may be attempted to be squeezed because, well, it's sort of true, but the truth is not about how many foes but over how big of an area.

Now, I would not fear any retaliation out of exploiting this bug as the personal benefits of it, although not insignificant are not game breaking either. I would fear more retaliation out of promoting and attempting to convince people that it's intended and that everyone should be doing it.

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Same. I noticed this too, but I didn't realised it could be an exploit.
Are we not supposed to use it now, or it's "free game if it's there"?

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My gut says it's an exploit.

It's not an exploit you will get banned for, though. The consequence of it are not as big as nasty exploits precisely due the target cap.

I personally would still refrain from doing this but not due to fear of retaliation, just my own conscience.

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I know that most melee cones now have a range of seven feet, and I've always done some small sidestepping with them to try to get as many targets hit as possible.

Lately, however, I've noticed that when I'm moving around a bit, I have been hitting groups of enemies that shouldn't be hit at once by a seven foot cone. Specifically, when I move away from a target, the cone acts like the range includes where I am when I click the attack, as well as where I was a moment before. For example, here I managed to hit two targets with shadowmaul, even though when I'm stationary they are too far apart to active the power. Moving appears to mess with the range.

But, I'm sure there are unbelievers, for shame, that think it might be a small oddity or the result of lag. I challenge anyone to explain what looks like extending shadow maul to 20 feet, give or take a foot. Looks like about 20.

Once I notied this odd behavior, I tried applying it to other melee cones, like golden dragonfly, which is all but impossible to use to hit more than two enemies at once. Or is it?

Perhaps I need to respec back into breath of fire for a bit...

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There goes your chance at the bug hunter badge, you had to PM this and not post it publicly

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I really wish the emote pop-up menu picked up more of the newer ones. I forget they are there, and I feel silly keeping a print out of them on my desk.

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Many of the new emotes are tied to exclusive content such as Booster packs. Our quickmenu system isn't robust enough to discern whether or not an emote is something that you can actually do, so there'd be a lot of confusion for players if the Wedding pack or Cyborg pack emotes suddenly appeared in their quickmenu, but they couldn't actually use them.

However, some of our more clever players have figured out that you can edit the quickmenu on your personal system and basically set it up to do whatever you want. A bit of searching and I'm sure you can find a link to the how to for that.

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How about this, BaBs: every time a booster gets an emote, a "power" is granted to the player that does nothing else than activate the emote. It can be something like mastermind command icons and be in a tiny "Elite Emotes" power category.

The only reason I bother with numbers is because I realized long ago it's the language the game and the devs speak. They don't care about Anegdoteze or Envinish or Nerftilian, all they speak is Mathematics.

If it was for me, I'd not bother. I was a math fluke at High School that did the bare minimum math to pass the class, I knew I had the potential (the college board assured me I did) but I am that math lazy.

The fun part is that these numbers tend to back-up personal experiences, and when they don't that's a huge hint I need to make sure these numbers are corrected (I always check my personal anecdotes before my numbers.)

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Plus they are available by lvl 20, technically the level you are finally "out of the gate and into the world." All required powers should be available by then.

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Disagree here. All *required* powers should be available around the time that they are *required*.

Either that or Stamina should be selectable at L1

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OK, all native powers.

I don't mean to have full protection at that level either, just that primary sets should be designed to have a decent coverage to the most common types by that level.

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Despite how some build their tanks, the set has to be viable from level 1 relative to other sets at those level ranges.

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I think you're getting away from the OP. The set obviously is "viable" from level 1 ... otherwise you would not have any Stoners around.

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That's why i said "relative"

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I agree with your analysis of Stone and Fire pre-Granite with the exception of alphas where Healing Flames may become a non-factor.

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That is why i did not account for Healing Flames on the alphas.

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The difference is that UY, TI and Invince don't override eachother ... they compliment eachother.

Granite replaces all the toggles below it. That's bad design imo (my main beef aside from the lack of customization of the stone form itself)).

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Plus they are available by lvl 20, technically the level you are finally "out of the gate and into the world." All required powers should be available by then.

I would not go into those arguments for two reasons:

1) toggling granite detogles your other armors. You can only switch back stright into one protection leaving a lot of hole opens until you manage to patch the rest.

2) all those arguments just would lead the devs to make granite have a higher recharge after de-togling or another sort of nerf than allow the rest of the set to be sub par, should they decide to look at them.

If you treat Stone as a full set with granite, all you will do is get it nerfed because as you note, if the set is revised they will do what they can to make the set viable from 1 to 32.

Despite how some build their tanks, the set has to be viable from level 1 relative to other sets at those level ranges.

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To tell you the truth, though I know what the numbers respresent, I'm not entirely sure what the numbers are actually based on, probably because I missed that class....but still; I think it makes the vast majority of people reading this thread unsure as to what, exactly, your numbers mean.

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Here is what the numbers mean:

There are two columns, Alpha Tolerance and Regeneration (Sustainability)

Alpha Tolerance is simply the stacking of resist+defense+HPBuffs. Debuffs are not accounted as they are not applied before the alpha. The higher this number the nastier of an alpha you can take in. Capped resist and Capped Defense would yield 99% Alpha Tolerance.

Sustainability is what has been labeled by many in the past The Immortality line, basically, the amount of DPS that can’t overcome your Regen therefore you are immortal. I use it a bit different as a margin of sustenance as it also means that slightly over it will kill you very very slowly. Due to this, if you can survive a foe’s alpha, you will be able to live longer without resting than the other guy, should your Sustainability be higher. This equates faster solo leveling due to less downtime.

In addition, a set with high Sustainability benefits more from buffers while a set with high Alpha Tolerance benefits better from healers.

The numbers on the last block are just a division of the Fire and Stone results like so:

SAT = Smashing Alpha Tolerance

Relationship = StoneSAT / FireSAT -1

If the relationship is negative, fire is superior. If the relationship is positive, stone is superior. If the relationship is zero, both tie up. Off course, the closer to zero the more insignificant the difference is.


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In terms of balance, wouldn't this argument point towards FA getting buffed instead of stone though? An FA should probably have a better survivability than a stoner outside of granite in most areas, or at least in my mind they should (and my mind is a weird place).

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As to Fire, that set is meant to be the weakest defensive set precisely designed to be so due to its amount of offensive tools. A set should not match Fire’s low survivability unless it has huge utility/damage tools. Shields base build also matches fire but again, it has many powers that are considered utility or damage oriented that can be skipped on in favor of additional survival tools from pools.

The fact that the base stone build only matches this level of survivability without utility or damage boosts and such an insane investment is the true issue. The set should be much higher than that. As for the “granite fixes stone issues” the set should work without Tier 9s. The tier nine for armor sets is always meant to be a utility situational power with penalties or drastic pre-requirements built in (like death.) Granite can’t even claim to be open to interpretation there since it is so obvious it was meant to be full of penalties that even a blind man could see it.

That’s not to note no single power set should suck until it gets it’s 9th power. Regardless whether Granite is meant to be as is or not, the base Stone build should be much more survivable than it is, or bring a lot more utility and damage. Damage would require replacing powers and that wont happen. Utility MAY be possible but nowhere near enough to justify the low level it suffers now.

I just noticed my previous numeric comparison had a minor error: It is comparing base + Tough + Weave. Both sets had it, though: Fire and Stone.

The difference is a bit more pronounced on both directions without Tough and Weave, meaning Stone looks even more superior in the alpha and Fire even more superior in sustainability, but neither by a huge margin. Here is the corrected relationship chart:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Alpha Tolerance Regeneration (sustainability)
0.23 0.57 (0.41) 0.14
0.23 0.57 (0.41) 0.14
(0.57) (0.32) (0.92) (0.85)
0.25 0.98 (0.47) 0.02
0.07 0.46 (0.50) (0.04)
0.07 0.46 (0.50) (0.04)
(1.00) 0.82 (0.68) (0.10)
99.99 99.99 1.12 3.10
</pre><hr />

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Actually, I believe he said that if one wants a set to change, they must provide numerical evidence to support their claim. Not that he is against the change in and of itself. There is a difference.

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The thing that ignited all this was Talen_Lee's post saying:

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I find myself direly amused by people who make Stone Armor characters, get them to a high level range, then decide they don't want what they knew they were getting into.

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And subsequently saying:

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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And off course at one point making an analogy that was seen as just not fitting and once everyone called him on it (by disecting the analogy mostly) he replied:

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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The first post alone would be enough to ignite a flame war, the second would guarantee an ongoing back and forth argument with at least one person and the third... well I won't get into how far that one goes.

The fact that the OP himself has not posted numbers does not means that other posters that complain about the set have not seen these numerical issues or posted about them in the past. I know I have, and I'm feeling all my posts are being bypassed here during this argument about no one posting numbers...

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Aceman

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Acemace

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Normally I agree with most of what Starsman has to say because he does his research and formulas etc. I have to disagree with him on this now.

The comparison to fire armor and stone armor pre-granite is not valid. My stone armor without granite was more survivable than my fire armor tank. add tough and weave to both and the stone pulls easily further ahead. Stone does have to take more powers... but it is better.

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When you account for Healing Flames, Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Temp Protection, the effective regeneration rate and alpha absobtion levels of fire are as follow:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>S 72.5% 2298.4%
L 72.5% 2298.4%
F 90.8% 6849.3%
C 36.6% 995.5%
E 50.9% 1287.5%
N 50.9% 1287.5%
T 36.6% 995.5%
P 07.8% 684.9%
</pre><hr />

While out of Earth Embrace, a stone tanker that runs every single power (but granite and earth embrace) is:


<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>S 74.2% 1143.8%
L 74.2% 1143.8%
F 43.8% 524.5%
C 43.8% 524.5%
E 57.7% 697.7%
N 57.7% 697.7%
T 07.8% 320.0%
P 85.8% 2077.5%
</pre><hr />

While inside of Earth Embrace:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>S 83.8% 2210.3%
L 83.8% 2210.3%
F 64.6% 1013.6%
C 64.6% 1013.6%
E 73.4% 1348.3%
N 73.4% 1348.3%
T 60.1% 898.7%
P 91.1% 4014.4%
</pre><hr />

Comparatively speaking, Stone stands by Fire Arura:


<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Alpha Tolerance Regeneration (sustainability)
0.02 0.16 (0.50) (0.04)
0.02 0.16 (0.50) (0.04)
(0.52) (0.29) (0.92) (0.85)
0.20 0.77 (0.47) 0.02
0.13 0.44 (0.46) 0.05
0.13 0.44 (0.46) 0.05
(0.79) 0.64 (0.68) (0.10)
10.00 10.68 2.03 4.86
</pre><hr />

Parenthesis numbers are where Fire is superior. Stone does have a minimal superiority in alpha abortion either in or out of Earth Embrace, but fire has a similar superiority on sustainability unless the stone is inside earth embrace, and this assumes that earth embrace is used to maximum potential by not being activated before a fight and only used to heal.

So optimally or not, both sets overall have similar performance with drastically different build requirements.

If you are curious, superior Alpha Tolerance means you are better at tanking, while superior sustainability means you are better at soloing. Off course, if the difference is minor it makes little difference.

I won't get into IOs at all while discussing base performance, though. Specially since I also have capped smash/lethal defense on my fire tanker.

The only post I have seen from Castle in respect of stone was actually about granite and how, at the moment, his only grudge with it was how easy it was to bypass the penalties, specially with IOs but not excusively through it.

As for a previous post, the damage debuff is -30, not -70. Assault alone can lower that to -19.5 and in normal play that translates to an actual 9.75% damage debuff if no rage, soul drain, blinding feint or build up spamming are used.

(QR)

Here are issues I think exist with Stone:

Out of granite, the set performs at best at the same level as the baseline Fiery Armor build (no pools) only trading the Fire superiority for Psi superiority, Psi being less common type than Fire.

To do this, Stone requires 7 powers, 8 if you want the taunt aura. Each power uses a minimum of 3 slots, Earth Embrace uses 6. Thats 7 powers+24 slots.

Fiery Aura uses 4 powers to do so, and 3 slots them all for exception of Healing Flames, that it six slots. This is, mind you, if he wants to cover cold to it's max, if he neglects cold he uses 3 powers. I also can have the taunt aura.

So fire armor gets, tops, 4 powers and 15 slots to do the same mitigation as stone out of granite, plus it gets all those cool tools like endurance drain, Fiery Embrace, bonus damage aura and Burn.... OK ignore burn.

The point? Stone out of granite performance is sub par at best without any single bonuses and requires insane amount of effort to build without any true rewards. On the other hand, it suffers additional penalties that prevent it from running hover or combat jump for additional defense, plus a horrendous mobility penalty that includes the forced de-toggling of status protection to actually do any non-tp movement.

And then Granite.... Granite who's people complaints are not it's penalties but on the other hand how easy it is to get over most if not all the penalties without having to sacrifice survivability.

Whoever says that set has no issues in face of people noting them is the child trying to talk to adults, either that or he just has vested interests and is afraid of stone being reviewed as it would, as a minimum, mean measures set so that Granite's penalties can't be worked around.

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Technically the sky doesn't have a color.

And in other news, the world isn't flat either.

/popcorn

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Hey I was going to say that one but then found that stuff about green skies and figured it would be more fun to note how it CAN turn green.

It's funny when you ignore those that say the sky CAN be green, then one day you wake up you see green sky AND a few minutes after get hit by hail or a tornado.

Just as the sky CAN be green, and it usually meaning bad things, Stone armor can suck horribly. Specifically outside of granite. At the same time, Granite's penalties can be almost entirely neglected by IOs. If you are cool with TP (and teletanking is actually quite cool, you can ask any shielded that does it by choice) you can focus all your IO resources to recharge and damage (some may loose some focus on speed)