Umbral

Actually, I am determining incoming damage from the start, as in, the start of where you begin comparing the performance of defense to regeneration.

You cannot say that unmitigated regeneration is worth the same as mitigated regeneration. It's simply untrue.

Regeneration and other damage recovery mechanisms only act on damage that actually arrives. If you have 90% mitigation of incoming default damage thanks to 45% defense, your regeneration is going to be worth 10 times as much in terms of real survivability as it would if you had no defense whatsoever (because only 10% of the original damage is getting through to be recovered by the regeneration). Because the value of regeneration in terms of real survivability contribution (i.e. how much damage you're actually recovering from) is based upon your existing mitigation capabilities, it is impossible to claim that there is a static, constant defense-to-regeneration exchange equivalent for all values of combinations of defense and resistance for any specific value of incoming damage.

Let's assume that there is a world wherein an enemy has a 100% default chance to hit, and players recover 100 hp/sec but only have 1 hp (the damage is applied as a penalty to regeneration before it is applied to hit points). In this state, you would rate defense and regeneration improvements to be completely equivalent on a 1-for-1 basis because 5% defense is reducing incoming damage by 5% and 5 hp/sec is 5% of your regeneration, in other words, they're completely equivalent.

The improvement of 0%->5% defense (100%->95% chance to be hit) is not the same as the improvement of 100->105 hp/sec: incoming damage is being reduced from 100% to 95%, the survival equivalence (i.e. how much DPS you could actually take before getting killed) of the defense improvement would leave you with an equivalence of 105.263 hp/sec (100 hp/sec / .95 incoming damage).

Now, let's do the same thing, but exchange the 100% hit rate for a 15% hit rate (i.e. 85% +def). The amount that this individual would be able to survive is now 666.667 hp/sec (100 hp/sec / .15 incoming damage). According to your math, 5% +def would provide the exact same thing as 5% +regen. Let's test this. Adding 5 hp/sec would provide an increase of 33.333 (((100 + 5) / (.15)) -(100 / .15)). Reducing chance to be hit by 5% would provide an increase of 333.333 (((100) / (0.15 - 0.05)) - (100 / 0.15)).

It's pretty evident that what you're saying is just not true. Thanks to the variable value of regeneration (insofar as it functions more powerfully in the presence of mitigation), it's impossible to say that there is a single exchange rate between the two for anything more than a single point on the plot. Any time you want to find an exchange rate, you have to calculate the equivalence completely anew based upon any changing values of defense or regeneration that the target might have. This is why there was a difference of regeneration contribution between the first example (5 hp/sec more survivable) and the second (33.333 hp/sec more survivable) when the same quantity of regeneration was added.

The other interesting thing you'll notice is also that the values of the individual quantities of defense changed, exactly as predicted by everyone but you. The initial example showed just over a 5% increase in survivability (5.263 more hp/sec survivability) while the second showed a 50% increase in survivability (333.333 more hp/sec survivability). The value of defense as it pertains to how you will survive depends entirely upon how much defense you've got set as your default state. If you have very little defense, further defense will have low comparative values whereas, with very high defense, further defense will have exceptionally high comparative values.

I forgot the exact formula that I got by reverse engineering Arcanaville's survivability spreadsheet, so I rebuilt that one off the top of my head. I don't believe I was ever actually given that formula, but you could probably give credit to Arcanaville or one of the other old school number crunchers.

This is both true and false. It is true in the sense that no matter where you gain the defense, it is still going to be mitigating 5% of the incoming damage, no matter if it is your first or last 5% interval of defense. It is false in the sense that it provides the same real increase in survivability, and I, like many others, can prove this mathematically.

At 0% +def, 5% +def is going to mitigate 10% of your incoming damage (turning what was a 50% hit rate into a 45% hit rate), which means that you need 10% of your base regeneration to equate the improvement. At 40% +def, the last 5% +def is going to mitigate half of your incoming damage (turning what was a 10% hit rate into a 5% hit rate), which means that you would need 100% of your base regeneration to equate the improvement. At 40% +def, a 10% increase in base regeneration rate would only equal a 10% increase in survivability. Regeneration scales directly (newRegen / oldRegen = survivability increase) whereas defense scales indirectly (survivability increase = ((.5 - oldDefense) / (.5 - newDefense)).

If you plot those two functions, you'd find only 1 point of intersection within the set of numbers we care about (i.e. quadrant 1), which means that there is a single point of equivalence for any specific combination of defense and regeneration. In order for your above quote to be true, there would have to be an infinite number of intersections along those two lines. A single point of equivalence is what you'd actually get, which is direct mathematical proof that your above quote is false.

(From a different response, but I didn't want to split my own response when one will suffice)

There is a reason that the model that you were referred to is called the "immortality curve". It doesn't care if you kill something. It assumes that you never will (i.e. the amount of damage you can indefinitely sustain while never dying). This is not, however, the only measure of survivability ever used. You can calculate for any reasonable time frame rather easily by adjusting the formula a bit and covering that base and still completely supporting the veracity of the "defense myth" (actually, adjusting for time frame actually makes it look way better because regeneration is a direct counter to attrition, which is what you're directly trying to counter with immortality).

The formula is as follows:

(((Regen * Time) + MaxHP) / (1 - Mitigation)) = Damage

Regen is your regeneration per unit of time.
Time is the total number of units of time.
Max HP is your Max HP.
Mitigation is the percent of incoming damage you mitigate (via defense, mez, resistance, etc.).
Damage is the amount of damage you can take in total (in order to determine the DPS needed to kill you within the Time, just divide Damage by Time and you'll get your answer).

I saw bad math in the 7th post and just had to facepalm. You know it's bad when I'm too ashamed of someone's stupidity to call them out on it.

Health provides a base 40% +regen buff. With a single level 50 heal, you're enhancing it by 42.4%, for a gain of 16.96% +regen. The Numina's proc provides 20% +regen and the Regenerative Tissue proc provides 25% +regen. In other words, the proc is the best thing you can put in there (provided you don't have another slot with a lower opportunity cost than 16.96% +regen).

Yes, it is stronger. Even for powers like Quick Recovery (which are stronger versions of Stamina), the Performance Shifter proc is better (outright better thanks to I18 because the proc is providing 10% of your end rather than simply 10 end). Stamina is a 20% +recov buff. A single level 50 End Mod is provide 42.4% enhancement, for a gain of 8.48% +recov. Base endurance recovery is 1.67 end/sec, so the 8.48% increase translates into .1416 end/sec. The Performance Shifter proc provides a 20% chance every 10 seconds to regain 10 endurance (10% of your max, but I'm assuming you've got a max of 100 for simplicity's sake; the proportions remain the same regardless) for a total gain of .2 end sec. The first slot in any passive power you have that can be slotted for End Mod should be the Perf Shifter proc.

Oh, I love this game because it lets me show you how little you actually know about the game! Of course, we should keep in mind that I said to look at survivability, not just numbers, so it's not like you even did what I asked you to do in the first place. You've simply learned to bring up City of Data and copy-paste power entries without really learning what they mean. (I'll even keep with using Brutes, regardless of the fact that they're not intended to be the primary meatshields that Tankers are supposed to be, which is what the intention of Granite Armor seemingly should be)

First stop. You're forgetting about enhancement values and resistance capping. Unstoppable combined with the rest of Invuln's powers put Invuln's resistance to s/l at 95%. Depending on your slotting of Unstoppable (this varies rather heavily since it's not a particularly powerful payout on a slot-for-slot basis), you're either going to manage ~65% +res(f/c/n/e) or ~94%. For Granite, because slots are so easy to get and slots in Granite do so very much, you're pretty much guaranteed to have 88% +res(s/l) and 58.5% +res(f/c/n/e).

Those numbers provide a slight edge to Unstoppable in the resistance department: only about 7% +res. Not really much there, honestly.

Let's do the same math here!

Granite Armor provides 15% +def(all but psi). Enhance that and it's 23.4%. Invuln manages 3.75% from Tough Hide, and (let's give it a nice average of 5 targets) 7.5% from Invincibility. That's 17.55% +def(all but psi).

So, doing some simple math here, that's a 5.85% +def advantage to Granite Armor. Keep in mind that, from a survivability standpoint, defense mitigates twice as much damage as resistance and Granite Armor is already doing better from a survivability standpoint than Invuln with Unstoppable is.

So Unstoppable has increases your recovery by an amount equal to your baseline recovery? Amazing. Truly, I never would have remembered that. Except for the fact that you're ignoring endurance costs for the powers in use. Granite Armor (.23) + Rooted (.21) + Tough (.33) + Weave (.33) = 1.1 end/sec. Invincibility (.21) + Temp Invuln (.26) + Unyielding (.26) + Tough (.33) + Weave (.33) = 1.39 end/sec. Let's give that 100% +recov bonus (1.67 end/sec) a reasonably fair uptime of 40% (.67 end/sec). This means that the end buff that you laud only really equates to a .378 end/sec advantage over Stone Armor and that's not including the end crash (which actually pulls it down to Invuln having only a ,155 end/sec advantage if you completely ignore burst endurance drain and operate under the assumption that endurance drain happens only when averaged over long periods of time).

You know, aside from having lower survivability thanks to having lower total defense, but you're not paying attention to that, right?

I'd also like to know how you regularly plan on working around it like you do with Granite Armor. You can't use IOs to get around the massive endurance crash since it removes the 100% of your endurance bar, not just 100 endurance. You've only got .5 seconds at most to get your endurance back before your toggles cycle and drop off because you don't have the endurance to run them, which also means you can't be in the middle of an animation when it drops or else you're SoL. The only "workaround" is having insanely fine-tuned response times. And by insanely, I, of course, mean that you've got a less-than-half-of-a-second-response time.

Did you not read my previous posts that actually went over this? It's not a 30% reduction in outgoing damage. It's a 30% -dam debuff. With default enhancement values, Tankers reduce this to only a 15% reduction in end damage output. Brutes, thanks to Fury, reduce this to only 9%. 15% reduction in damage output for several times increased survivability is an insanely favorable exchange.

Actually, it's not. Good job attempting to understand how recharge mechanics work, though. As said before, the -rech is applied as a debuff, not as an end penalty to all recharge values. This means that a theoretical power with a 10 second base recharge and 65% recharge reduction would have it's recharge reduced from a 6 second recharge time to a 10 second recharge time. Unless you're really saying that everyone has more than 130% +rech in all of their attack powers, you're not going to be adding more than half of the recharge times of powers to powers.

You're also forgetting that just because your attacks aren't recharging as quickly does not mean that you are attacking any slower. A reduction in recharge time doesn't suddenly lengthen the animation times on your powers. Since Stone Armor has so very few necessary power selections compared to pretty much every other set out there, you're given free license to pick up other powers, which means that you should have a power available for recharge at virtually any time.

Something else I guess you didn't want to consider is that the -rech isn't just countered by +rech. One of the reasons that Speed Boost is so potent for Granite Armor users is that the -rech isn't flagged to be unresistable so, whenever you get hit with Speed Boost, you're suddenly going from -65% recharge globally to .175% +rech, which means you're getting 82.5% +recharge from that SB, not just 50% +rech.

You're forgetting yet another one of Stone Armor's advantages too. Rooted. You may dislike it for the heavier -spd penalty, but even if you only toss it on when you're already entrenched, you're still getting 195% +regen. Factor in slotted Health and that's a 110% increase in your end damage recovery capabilities, which means you have 110% of the long term survivability capabilities of Invuln.

Strange. You're acting like I was saying that it could completely negate the effects on its own when I never did that. In fact, I believe I said that it could mitigate the effects and that the question, in fact, was not that it could or couldn't mitigate those effects to a substantial degree but in fact that the penalties did not, in fact, provide substantial enough penalties to justify the massive increase in survivability provided by the power.

First off, psionic is going destroy Invuln just as much as a Granite Armor user, so it's not really a viable weakness to note, or did you just not notice that nowhere in Invuln's capabilities does it note resistance to psionic?

Secondly, Granite Armor is managing higher survivability than Invuln + Unstoppable thanks to higher defense and damage recovery mechanisms and it's managing it at rather than just 40% of the time.

Thirdly, the lack of ability to jump is completely mitigated by the fact that you can still teleport just fine. So what if you can't jump, you can teleport.

So unstoppable only ever crashes when you're done with a pull and out of combat? The unstoppable crash is big enough (no toggles and you're at 10% health) that, if there are any enemies still up and swinging at you, you're dead. You seem to be discounting the impact of that crash a lot.

You're also completely ignoring the single most important aspect of this as well:

Unstoppable as a duration of 180 seconds and a base recharge of 1000 seconds. It is literally impossible for Unstoppable to be up at all times. Most players would be able to manage a 40% uptime and that's activate it at every single instance and feel like dealing with the crash every single time. Granite Armor is permanent right out of the box, with no detrimental and sudden crash in performance that skyrockets risk of death.

I did all of the work (not that you really did any of the work previously), and it still demonstrates that Granite Armor is ridiculously borked. All you demonstrated was an ability to copy-paste info that you don't even understand from a site that you likely don't even know how to use.

When I asked you to actually look at the survivability of the sets under the conditions in question, I didn't ask you to copy-paste information from a site. I already use City of Data and use it rather aggressively to boot. i asked you to actually analyze some data, which you shied away from for whatever reason. Looking at survivability numbers means actually looking at the sum capabilities of sets and comparing the ability to survive. It doesn't mean looking at Unstoppable and Granite Armor separately and arriving at blatantly inaccurate conclusions. It doesn't mean completely ignoring fundamentally important balance factors like uptime and damage recovery capabilities. It means actually understanding what's going on.

The next time you feel like calling me out on something, I challenge you to actually know what you're talking about enough that I'm not having to correct you every step of the way. I really don't like having discussion with people that are obviously too uneducated to actually comprehend what I'm talking, much less when I'm having to teach them the fundamentals of the topic at hand because they didn't understand them in the first place. If you want to argue, learn about the topic first so you don't stick your foot in your mouth over and over again by spouting blatant and obvious falsehoods that you mistaken think support your viewpoint when really they're evidence that you are wrong.

Nostalgia. Because back in the day, we didn't have the pansy long wait times between spawns so we got em crazy fast almost back-to-back and we were terrified of it because those bastards seemed to just hone in on the reactor core and attempt to wipe the floor with it at the least chance. And the Rikti spawned way higher than they were supposed to. And there was no aggro cap to protect the tank whenever he got another 2 groups spawned right there on him when he was struggling with the pain being inflicted by the 2 groups already on him.

Nostalgia....

Try actually looking at the survivability that Stone Armor with Granite Armor active provides side-by-side with the survivability provided by a set like Invuln, with Unstoppable active and inactive. You'll then realize exactly how wrong you are. Granite Armor on its own provides survivability commensurate with god mode powers. If you can't see that, you need to get your eyes examined.

If you're curious why I'm so angry when people start talking about Granite Armor it's largely due to the people like you that honestly believe that Granite Armor isn't horribly overpowered and in need of a good nerfing. I've actually looked at the numbers and compared survivability and effectiveness with and without the power active. I've actually done the math and it is patently obvious that the power is ridiculously overpowered. I get angry when people tell me that it isn't overpowered, provide me with some half-***** piece of evidence that doesn't even support that claim, and then act like all is hunky-dory with the world. If you actually looked at the numbers, you'd agree with me. Hell, Castle agrees with me. Every single person I know that I respect to any degree that has actually looked at the numbers rather than a blind desire to believe that Granite Armor isn't some horribly broken remnant of a bygone era agrees with me.

I'm angry because people are stupid.

You have proved the first by stating the second.

The penalties for using Granite are virtually nonexistent compared to the benefits. Granite Armor provides survivability on par or in excess of traditional god mode powers (Unstoppable, SoW, OwtS, Power Surge, etc) on a permanent basis (10 second base recharge on an unrestricted toggle is functionally permanent; manipulable recharge god modes have baseline uptimes of ~18%, set recharge god mods have uptimes of ~33-40%, and that's assuming you have a use-paradigm that insists upon immediate usage upon recharge). The Granite Armor penalties are a moderately easily overcome reduction in movement (take teleport, get some IOs, Speed Boost), a minor decrease in damage (30% -dam is a ~15% reduction in end damage to a Tanker, which only really needs damage while solo, and a 9% reduction in end damage to Brute), and a substantial decrease in recharge (65% reduction is the functional equivalent of removing all enhancement slotting from an attack slotted 1acc/3dam/2rech) that can still be overcome comparatively easily (frankenslotting heavily mitigates the losses otherwise forced upon upon you by SO slotting, Speed Boost and other sources of -rech debuff resist like the Winter's Gift unique partially or completely mitigate the debuff because it isn't flagged to be unresistable). Traditional god modes are remarkably difficult to mitigate: Unstoppable completely removes all of your endurance (which equates to dropping all of your toggles as well) and sets you to 10% of your max health; OwtS takes away 60% of your endurance and cannot be resisted; SoW takes away 50% of your endurance and cannot be resisted; Power Surge completely removes all of your endurance and flatlines your recovery for the next 20 seconds and sets you to 10% of your maximum health. The only way to really mitigate the penalties associated with the traditional god modes is to have an exceptionally well timed and coordinated buffs on you right as they crash; without them, an in combat god mode crash is, in essence, a death sentence.

So I'm curious how the easily mitigated penalties of Granite Armor are really all that "serious" or even remotely close to balanced: Granite Armor gets all of the benefits of a traditional, crashing god mode at all times with easily mitigated penalties that aren't going to substantially hinder your progress. Care to explain this to me?

I really wish I was on my PC rather than my new laptop so that I could give you a build rather than simply a scathing critique.

You vastly overslotted Fast Healing, especially considering that you've provided minimal slotting for every other Regen power. The set bonuses for Numina's aren't all that stellar either, so you're dumping 3-5 more slots into FH for very little return. Use it to dump your Healing Uniques. On the same note, you really need to put more slots into your other Regen powers, because, even with the Spiritual 33%/33%, you're not getting nearly the same returns that you should. I seriously recommend 5 piece Doctored Wounds for all of them or Panacea 5 piece (in Reconstruction) if you can afford it.

You've also overslotted Resilience, which is pointless because, even if you slot it heavily, you're getting almost nothing from it thanks to pitiful starting value. Stick a Steadfast in it and be done with it.

I'd also recommend going with 6 piece Touch of Death or Obliteration on all of your attacks (re: tweak Shadow Maul, Siphon Life, Midnight Grasp) because the enhancement values are high enough with all of the internal buffs provided that the Spiritual buff will provide the rest and the set bonuses are better (melee defense > ranged defense).

MoG is overslotted (you don't need that much defense on a power that provides 75% +def), so you'll want to pare off a few slots. I recommend my default MoG slotting of LotG +rech, LotG def/rech, and 2 recharge IOs. I'd go with that same slotting for Shadow Meld as well (since an IO'd Regen build treats the powers fundamentally the same).

Tough and Weave are both underslotted. For Tough, I'd go with 3 piece Aegis. Weave would go with either 2 piece LotG/2 piece GotA or 3 piece LotG.

My issue with Granite Armor isn't that it makes you run slow and prevents jumping. My issue is that it only makes you run slow and prevents jumping. Granite Armor is a perma-god mode power with little to no real drawback (i.e. something that actually makes you want to turn it off while in combat) and people think this is even remotely balanced how? The power needs to either get weakened to such an extent that people will actually have to give a thought about leaving it on all the time.

I would, because then the set wouldn't be terribly sub-par without Granite Armor. Probably one of the biggest contributing factors to everyone and their mother with a Stone Armor character running perma-Granite is that, if you're not using Stone Armor, you're noticeably sub-par compared to every other set out there and it costs you more endurance to do so. The first thing that needs to happen to the set is to actually make non-Granite, non-IO'd, non-heavily buffed performance viable.

You're right up until this point. -Res is resisted by the undebuffed resistance value. If you have 40% resistance undebuffed, all resistance debuffs will be reduced by 40%. On a different note, -dam uses your debuffed resistance value to determine its effectiveness, and all debuffs use whatever resistance you have that applies to it on the fly (so if you get hit with a 20% resistance debuff while affected by a 10% -dam debuff while you have 0% resistance, you will now be at -20% resistance and -12% damage, rather than the -20% resistance and -10% damage that you thought).

The question is not whether the effects are noticeable. I notice how slow I am when I exemplar down below the level that I took Swift on my Regen Scrapper. The real question is whether the effects are actually severe enough to justify having on all the time what every other powerset only gets roughly 20-40% of the time, coupled with the fact that every other powerset has to deal with a crash after theirs is over. The penalties are barely noticeable within that context.

Because a very small minority complaining halfheartedly is the exact same thing as a large portion of the player base that uses and abuses a broken powerset screaming bloody murder at the mere suggestion that Granite Armor is too strong and should get changed, right? There is an entire order of magnitude in the difference between those levels of outrage and developer reluctance.

Please learn something: the world does not exist in binaries. There are continua that you have to pay attention to and, because of this, one person complaining and 1000+ people complaining are not even remotely close to the same thing.

Because that would involve doing a full review of the set in order to justify buffing the power in question, and, since it's pretty much been said that Stone Armor is a set woefully flawed in design and balance, a full review would piss a lot of people off.

I have no doubt in my mind that Castle would like to do a numerical review and rebuild of Stone Armor (so that it becomes more than just Granite Armor), and the only thing keeping him from doing it is the fact that it would generate a lot of player backlash.

How about you actually reference the ranges of the powers in question rather than simply blithely stating that a power is an attack or a mez? Manipulation sets are supposed to have attacks within them. We all know this. What you're ignoring is that only 4 of the powers in Mental Manipulation have "melee" ranges (they may be melee PbAoEs, but they have ranges that are large enough that it's not entirely accurate to describe them as being "melee", especially Psychic Scream), not to mention that their design is actually intended to make them support powers for when you are in melee rather than default attacks (unless you think lower damage attacks with heavy debuff components are intended to be default attacks).

Using Mental Manipulation as a design reasoning to have a set that is comprised entirely of melee attacks doesn't really grok. Something else to consider with your set is that you're also using a large number of powers that are now known to be very heavy hitters (pretty much everything in there that isn't Thunder Kick) and forcing them to be weakened to such an extent that they no longer work like they used to. At least with the other powers Manipulation sets share with outright melee sets, the powers at least operate in a similar manner (with the possible exception of Frozen Aura). How would you deal with the critical functionality of Storm Kick and Eagles Claw anyway (which it doesn't really make much sense for Blasters to have)?

I created an entire thread that got rather... intense... earlier this year in which I gave out more specifics and specific numbers than your suggestions have. Link here. Your suggestions are remarkably similar to mine, though I preferred to keep the modifications within the same enhancement types to prevent massive enhancement bloat (i.e. requiring most of your powers to require full defense and resistance enhancement in order to achieve assumed levels of survivability).

A majority of that thread actually revolves around discussion of Granite Armor, which I think you might find rather enlightening. In the first post, I actually did all of the math to determine the values needed to keep Granite performance at the same level while allowing it to stack with everything else in the set (it's actually slightly better performance with those numbers thanks to not having a psi damage hole), so it's not really all that hard to figure that out. The real difficultly would be in finding an appropriate middle ground for the usage of the power: pretty much everyone can agree that, as it is now, it's way too strong for whatever purpose, largely because it's so easy to mitigate or ameliorate the detrimental factors. My personal preference would be to make it more akin to classic god mode powers (still utilizing toggle functionality but applying a maximum uptime such as is used by the various phase shift toggles while removing the easily negated side effects), though, many of the people that fervently demand that the power always be perma-capable insist that it would be possible to achieve the same functional effect (i.e. you don't leave it on at all times) by simply increasing the detrimental side effects of the power to such an extent that you would have to turn it off (preventing any kind of teleportation and forcibly immobilizing you either with ludicrously high immobilization effects or massive, insurmountable irresistable speed debuffs). I recommend a read if you're looking for ideas.

I take umbrage at that. Both of those powersets are named after me for a reason.

The way that Hami is designed you need all ATs (or at least, functional AT roles) in roughly equal quantities in order to be successful. Because of that, I doubt there would be much in the way of AT bias. The biggest problem I see with CoP instancing would be issues with organization. A vast number of Hami raids that I've seen rely upon walk-in players for a not-insignificant portion of their group make up. Turning Hami into a CoP style trial would exclude pretty much all of those people.

Personally, I'd rather see some kind of zone-instance-tagging that reserves your spot in the zone instance for something like 5 minutes after you've left it so that, even if you die or DC, you'd still have a window of time to get back in before your spot is "lost".

As the leechers, it's hard to think of a solution that isn't easily avoidable that doesn't simultaneously screw over legitimate raiders since it's a public event. Maybe if mitos had some kind of tag they applied to all nearby characters when they are killed that was required to get access to the reward when Hami is finally killed (i.e. you have to have been within a minimum range of at least 1 mito at the time of its death to get the reward). There are ways to get around it and leech a bit, but it would still require that the character put themselves at some risk or help for at least some portion of the raid.

This is true, but it's not due to some inherent flaw in MG, but rather the low comparative DPA of Siphon Life. From a sheer numerical perspective, Smite isn't the best attack in a top tier DM attack string, no matter how you slot it. MG is. Smite is an excellent attack, but it's not better than MG (not that it should be, considering the low slotting requirements and early availability).

An Mg>Smite>Siphon>Smite attack string with the Hecatomb proc in Smite is going to do more damage than the same string with the proc in MG (entirely due to getting to use the superior damage proc twice as often; it's also a comparatively minor increase, since it's a question of ~5 DPS; I generally put Hecatomb into MG rather than Smite simply due to the set having better rech enhancement than ToD), but that doesn't change the fact that MG will still have better DPA than Smite with identical slotting conditions (which is what I was saying).

Are you sure about that?

Smite (50): 90.8 base damage, 1.188 sec Arcanatime
MG (50): 189.9 base damage, 2.244 sec Arcanatime
Siphon (50): 134.9 base damage, 2.112 sec Arcanatime
Hecatomb: 107.1 damage, 33% chance

Toss in some basic +dam slotting (95%), and you get...

Smite + Hecatomb: 178.8 DPA = (((90.8 * 1.95) + (107.1 * .33))/ 1.188)
MG + Hecatomb: 180.8 DPA = (((189.9 * 1.95) + (107.1 * .33))/ 2.244)
Siphon + Hecatomb: 141.3 DPA = (((134.9 * 1.95) + (107.1 * .33))/ 2.112)

Siphon is the attack that pulls your DPS down, but that's to be expected considering its secondary effect. It's not apt to state, however, that Smite has better DPA that either MG or Siphon, since, once you actually factor in +dam enhancement, MG still maintains an obvious advantage.

If you actually consider how much the powersets in question contribute, you'd be surprised by how little those sets get played.

Just because a majority of the playerbase doesn't utilize a set doesn't mean that the set is somehow numerically inferior and therefore in need of a buff. Most of the people that play this game are rather blatantly oblivious and don't even notice the contributions of non-healing-centric support sets.