UberGuy

A level 25 boosted to +5 is not remotely the same as a level 30. Its enhancement values are actually just shy of a level 50. So if you want to be able to exemplar down to level 25 (23, actually) and keep all your set bonuses, but have just shy of the enhancement of someone slotted with level 50s, you can.*

Where the main difference comes in is whether you want to focus on exemplar or level 50 play in your build. If you want to play at level 50 most of the time and aren't (as) concerned about keeping your set bonuses when exemplared, then you can use boosters to amp up your performance by boosting level 50 IOs. A common/uncommon/rare 50+5 IO has the same enhancement values as a superior (purple/very rare) IO. For some things, like damage in attacks, this is likely overkill, but it can be useful for shoring up sets with low values in accuracy, endurance reduction or recharge. It's also very useful for saving slots. Two level 50+4 commons provide about 101% enhancement, which is a good way to get ED-compliant slotting for something like Hasten's recharge in just two slots.

* Note that the exemplar system scales down enhancement values, so whether you have level 50 or level 25+5 IOs slotted, you lose a bunch of enhancement value from most enhancements. However, you end up at pretty much the same place whether you have 50s or 25+5s slotted, because you start at pretty much the same place.

I can see the former, but they seem fond of undercutting the latter by giving out auto-hit defense debuffs and +toHit on mobs. Probably the most extreme example of auto-hit debuff is that put out by Tarantula Mistresses, but of course that's been around for a while and may not have been the brainchild of any current devs. However, the Scryer version of Seers has a very similar power that is also auto-hit.

There were. She's going to be in both places, for now.

Given that all the hero TF contacts are standing both in their zones and in Fort Trident, I wouldn't be bothered if she was in both places all the time. But I wouldn't mind BaB in Atlas, either.

They appear only as drops, and only from Incarnate content (currently iTrials and anything in DA, including street mobs). At present they are character bound, though the devs have acknowledge that this is sucky and plan to do something with it, but we don't yet know what.

Again, it does not account for resistance when showing the applied value.

As Hopeling mentions, the total will be correct given any resistances, but when you look at the brreakdown list of applied values, they are not adjusted for resistances.

No. This includes when both ATs are at the damage cap.

The Brute damage cap was reduced slightly in I18 to enforce this. (Edit: It does require accounting for average benefit of critical hits from the Scrapper.)

It's unlikely that it's bypassing resistance. I do not believe that the attribute monitor ever accounts for foe initial damage resistance when displaying DR debuffs.

The Combat Attributes window never shows actual resisted values for things like this. All it will correctly indicate is the change in values due to differences in level - the "purple patch" effect. In the MoM trial, the AVs are effectively level 56. 13 is 65% of 20, which is exactly the effect scaling for things +3 levels over you, so I'm guessing your Bane is 50+3. That's not the AV resisting your effect as much as it's the effect being less effective against a +3 critter.

As J_B mentioned, the reason Bruising is showing up at the full 20% is that the AV is given a temp power that causes it to debuff itself. Since it's always its own level, the debuff isn't scaled by the "purple patch".

Now, I believe the devs have added tech to make these effects honor level-difference scaling, as they put out a patch note a while back saying they had done this with Interface slot effects. (I haven't checked this, though.) However, they might have left Bruising alone since it doesn't stack, as others have mentioned.

That's so not why they are expensive. Six slotting defense toggles (or worse, passives) is a terrible opportunity cost for the benefit - very few people do that.

They used to have a decent price just because they were a nice, Uncommon rarity set that was good in defense-centric powersets, but they're much more expensive now, and there's only one reason. You can use Enhancement Converters to turn them into LotGs.

How powerful something is "out of the box" is only part of the picture. Shield Defense isn't that hot without IOs either, yet there was a pervasive message on the forums that if you were going to build out with IOs, if you care about maximum performance you should use Shield Defense as your foundation. That's the same fundamental message you're giving about */Metnal and Drain Psyche. And you aren't just mentioning here and there and moving on, you're parading it in people's faces in multiple threads, and breaking out posts like "lol [yourcharacter]" in response to other people's posts about what they can do. You're promoting the very kind of forum undercurrent that catches the devs' collective eye.

Let me be absolutely clear: I'm not going to be PMing the devs asking for DP to be nerfed. I'm trying to make clear to you that your behavior is just the kind of thing that can precipitate it. Now, that's hardly to say that the devs couldn't decide to change it without that kind of input, if they thought it needed it - they aren't slaves to forum trends. But if you're actually successful in convincing readers that the only way to go for a high-end survivable Blaster is /Mental, and DP is why, then you're certainly recreating conditions that have lead to adjustments in the past.

I'm pretty sure both nation states and criminal organizations would be all over malware that did that.

It's not exploitative in the sense that you aren't using some bug to do it. You are taking ruthless advantage of something that's radically outside the normal capabilities of a Blaster.

I'm going to be blunt. Drain Psyche is a poster child for powers that get nerfed. People acting like you do with regards to it help get them nerfed, because game devs don't like to see opinions like yours appear. "There are many choices, but this is the right one, because it's the only one that gives you these capabilities." One right choice is never deemed a good thing by devs who offer many choices. If one choice is always unambiguously superior, it's always a prime candidate for the bat.

Do you know what precipitated Shield Charge being nerfed at the specific time it happened? It was a thread titled "Why play anything but /Shield?" Castle saw that, posted in the thread "are you guys going to make me look into this," looked into it, and discovered long-standing errors in the power that were why it was so powerful. That's exactly the kind of tone your posts sets for Blasters and Drain Psyche.

You've posted in the "Blasters in Modern CoH" thread about how you think that all blaster powersets should be brought up to par with Drain Psyche, but based on past and ongoing behavior, I find the likelihood of them giving all Blasters something that powerful radically unlikely. I hope Blasters get improved, and will argue for it, but I expect something far less radical, which would leave DP as an outlier, and I would not be shocked if it got changed.

Dude, you seriously need to put that thing back in your pants. The only reason you can even make such claims is because you get sizable, enhanceable -regen, which is an outlier for Blasters the size of the Orion Nebula.

You're not wrong. This is the same thing Arcanaville spent so much time being one of the most vocal opponents of back before I7, because back then critters over +0 and over minion rank got +toHit, and that was disproportionately hard on sets like SR. Now, years later the devs have turned around and basically replicated that for Incarnate critters (and, mysteriously, for all level 50+ DE). Critters in Incarnate contexts have what amounts to +14% toHit, on top of anything else they might do that's bad for defense sets. So it's exactly as if your 30-35% defense was 16-21% defense in the rest of the game.

This was somewhat possible to overlook in the iTrials, since the leagues are so large and +def buffs tend to be plentiful. It stands out like a sore thumb in DA, though, where they have stated that they expressly tuned the content for solo characters or very small teams. You aren't nearly so likely to be swimming in +defense buffs in that context, and the mobs automatically ignore something 1/3 to 1/2 of the defense of an SO'd build for defense sets.

Sure. But the Scrapper can have that too from Mako's.

Melee attacks usually can't be used against you. You can still be mezzed or have to fight in a constrained space where you can't get the elevation or hallway length that will reliably keep foes out of range. The only sets that are particularly strong at keeping foes out of melee range in such circumstances are Dark, thanks to Tenebrous Tentacles, and Devices, thanks to Caltrops.

And I'm sorry, but why does it matter if PBAoEs are excluded? There are plenty of TAoEs out there. Even just Council/5th human bosses are armed with shotguns that can ruin your day because they fire TAoEs. (This is the voice of experience.)

Indeed.

I would first like to mention that the power I think you're looking for seems to be Hoarfrost, not Frostworks. Compared to Dull Pain, this power is very challenging to have permanent uptime, given it has a base recharge/duration ratio of 4.5. If we assume a Blaster with 200% total recharge for the power (100% slotted an a fairly impressive 200% global), the power will be back in 135 seconds. When the power is down, the survival ratio above changes to (.1/.1)* (.84/.25)* (2400/1445) which is around 5.6. Still not 20, to be sure.

But now lets take a more holistic view of "survival". One thing your calculation ignores is HP recovery. Lets assume only slotted Health, Dull Pain for the Scrapper and Hoarfrost for the Blaster. Let's assume both characters get optimal benefit from the healing of their respective powers.

Slotted Dull Pain is about an 80% heal (about 1070 HP) every 180s. Slotted Hoarfrost is about a 60% heal (about 723 HP) every 270s. For a Scrapper that's about 6 HP/sec. For a Blaster that's about 2.7 HP/s. With slotted Health, accolades and Dull Pain, the Scrapper regenerates about 18 HP/sec. The Blaster with slotted Health, accolades and Hoarfrost regenerates about 12 HP/sec, or about 11 HP/sec when Hoarfrost is down.

Adding the regen and healing together gives the Scrapper about 24 HP/sec recovery and the Blaster around around 14.7 HP/sec, 13.5 when Hoarfrost is down.

Now, we can get the "immortality line" - the DPS each character could survive forever, by dividing these HP/sec numbers by the respective damage admittances. Taking the ratio of these immortality lines looks like what you've done for HP, but with the HP/sec in place of HP.

(.1/.1)* (.84/.25)* (24/14.7) = 5.5
(.1/.1)* (.84/.25)* (24/13.5) = 6.0

So for an SO'd build with Hasten and no other self-heals, the Scrapper is going to be able to stand around and ignore between 5.5 and 6.0 times as much incoming L/S damage as the Blaster, on average.

Definitely not 20, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.

(By the way, I if I switch to something like E/N damage, assume both have gone all-out on L/S defense at the expense of E/N or ranged, and both took Tough/Weave and CJ, I get that the Scrapper can still take about 2x as much damage as the Blaster without ever dying, mostly because the Blaster gets zip for E/N resists and the Scrapper has better E/N defense from Invinc and Tough Hide.)

Edit: Given the clarification that the factor of 20 was referring to pre-ED, pre-GDN, pre-I7 critter attack mechanics changes, being able to hit a factor of 6, even to just one damage type, is actually pretty good.

Woo, did not know about that one. Thanks!