UberGuy

Actually, you have to know the foe's normal current and maxHP to know how much it loses

If it's got a max of 10,000 HP, is at 7,000 (70%) and you lop off 1000 from the max, I believe you lop off 700, because that's (1,000)/(10,000) of its current HP. But if it had, say 36,000 HP, it would lose 2520.

Edit: The chances are, like reactive, 25%, 50% or 75%, depending on which branch and tier you're using. Folks going for the higher rate of DoT (which probably is more useful against non-AV foes) usually go Radial, which maxes out at 25%. I believe the debuff can stack up to four times.

Not really. If the AV has full HP at the start, then yes. Once it's damaged, the effect of -maxHP on actual HP is proportional. So if it has 70% of its max HP when you whack it with -1000 maxHP, it still has 70% of its new (lower) max afterward.

This post talks about how to compare Degenerative and Reactive. The short version is that, against foes less than AVs, Degenerative is actually a bit stronger than Reactive in terms of letting you defeat a foe sooner. When I wrote it, Degenerative only gave -150 maxHP vs. hard targets like AVs, but the same general comments apply, except that obviously -1000 maxHP is a lot more effective. It's actually somewhat close to what it would do if it had the -3.5% maxHP against AVs, but is less effective vs things with more HP. (Which includes zone GMs, Hamidon, iTrial AVs with maxHP buffs, and Reichsman.)

If you're fighting a single foe at a time which all have relatively low HP (minions, LTs and bosses), then no, the aura isn't going to make a lot of difference unless averaged over many foes, which is potentially deceptive.

If you're fighting a single, high-HP foe, then that DPS can become a significant contribution to how fast you defeat it unless your single-target attack chain is fairly spectacular. When you consider that it adds directly to the DPS of your attack chain with no cost in activation time, and deals its damage every few seconds, a damage aura can represent a lot more DPS than you can gain through other means. Slotted Death Shroud is around 12.5 raw DPS (on a Scrapper), assuming no procs are added to it. That's a pretty big increase if you've already tweaked out your attack chain.

Where a damage aura likely affects performance the most is against lots of foes with relatively low HP. That situation probably describes what most melee characters spend most of their time doing - being surrounded by 3-17 standard mission foes at a time.

Sorry, information on the forums are not "advertisement".

This is an MMO. Stuff changes. They handled it poorly, but this stuff of "they advertised it and changed on me" is tiresome.

I think that all the concerns about merged markets originated in the idea that Infamy and Influence would remain independent currencies that would be linked only through the auction house. While I was all for merged markets, there were some arguments I thought were sensible about how "economic" problems could arise in such a situation.

However, pretty much all the legs were lopped off of all those theories when they went whole hog and removed any currency barriers whatsoever - Inf is Inf is Inf. I think most of the forumites debating the topic would have known that such a merger would been almost completely painless, but no one actually imagined they would take the merger all the way to the currency level. I'm pretty sure everyone talking about it assumed there would be an "exchange rate" between two distinct currencies.

But then the devs tried adding a third currency, realized along the way what a colossal pain in the posterior they were creating for themselves, and just merged it all completely. And I am incredibly thankful they did.

That's odd that you didn't get the badge, assuming you harmed him at all. I've gotten the badge by getting in just 1-2 shots on an extremely low-heath Nemesis just before he died.

Looking at my characters who have flat-rate purple procs in their T1/T2 attacks, all of whom are PvE-spec, I am looking at ranging from very small improvement (things like 37% proc rate instead of 33%) to pretty significant improvement. (Broadsword/Hack is going to 53% despite having 95% recharge - but Hack is a bit odd for having an 8s recharge.)

Part of this is that my builds tend to explicitly exclude putting large levels of recharge in attacks with 4s recharge times or lower. This has nothing to do with the pending PPM changes - I've been building this way all along. The only exceptions have been if I wanted set bonuses and the set forces me to include a ton of recharge, and for some reason I couldn't put that recharge to better use in a longer-recharging power.

I will take a hit on most of my ATE procs, but as was pointed out...

-50% per attack. That's a lot to a non-AV/GM critter, but pretty modest otherwise, at least vs. 50+ critters, where ~85% resists are typical. I doubt they stack it very high given their attack rates.

I managed to get the badge on seven characters last night. I experienced one invasion where the GM apparently went somewhere other than the main mosh pit - he announced himself and no one ever saw him.

I have to say, the GM Nemesis is wicked brutal if he gets too much Vengeance. At one point he showed up and wiped literally half the league present with the first blast from his staff, and that included a fair number of tricked out 50s. I kind of pity lowbies fighting this stuff unless they can find a team with lots of +toHit buffs.

Color me annoyed that, based on what I was seeing, Nemesis troops can benefit from Vengeance cast by defeated buddies before you can even see them, let alone target or attack them.

Overall, I enjoy the event. Nemesis are actually somewhat challenging foes to face in this format. It's not very novel in that it's "just" Nemesis stuff, but I think they work well for this.

In the time I've played CoH, I...

• Work for the same company, but changed teams once and managers four times.
• Bought a new car.
• Moved twice, once to an apartment and once to a suburban home.
• Upgraded my gaming rig twice. (I build my own, and making them pretty cutting edge future-proofs them pretty well.)
• Have seen my internet download speed about go up about a factor of six.
• Have seen kids who were babies when the game came out with their own accounts and self-designed characters, including playing with Mids.