Umbral

No, they don't. They don't provide a damage advantage over incendiary ammo and the -rech is next to useless against NPCs.

Against hard targets, chem ammo is ridiculously strong, especially when stacked with other sources of -dam. It's possible for a pair of DP defenders to completely floor an AVs outgoing damage while using nothing other than their DP powers with Chem ammo because of how -dam works.

I don't think RoA was intended to be the power of comparison for HoB. Full Auto is actually substantially closer: when I gave the devs the numbers for the damage that HoB currently uses, I used FA as the basis rather than RoA (largely because RoA was way too much damage, considered). The longer recharge was required because HoB has a larger area of effect (17% larger, not to mention that it's also more useful considering it's a radial AoE rather than a cone), a higher target cap (16 compared to 10), and has multiple secondary effects (rolling DoT, KD, -rech, or -dam whereas FA deals only damage).

This is hilarious because none of my blaster builds are IO'd. I take and use the pure damage auras because they're a source of exceptionally cheap damage and save me large amounts of endurance over the long run, something that few top end IO builds actually have to care about. I've met many players that do the same thing. Just because you don't use it doesn't meant that it doesn't see use.

Let me help you with something here. The +def in Cloaking Device is a joke. It provides the same +def as Combat Jumping while in combat for 4 times the endurance cost, or did you not know that? Were you operating under the faulty assumption that the entirety of Cloaking Device's +def operated all the time (only half of it is active if you've been attacked or have attacked in the last 10 seconds)?

This also ignores the fact that defense is largely useless unless you have a substantial quantity of it. Reducing your chance to hit from 50% to 47.25% (1.75 * 1.56 = 2.73, 50-2.73 = 47.27) will do jack and squat to your survivability. Defense does virtually nothing for you unless you're packing on 10-20% because it only provides a chance at avoiding damage. The amount of defense that a Blaster can pack on with an SO build (CJ, CD, Weave, Maneuvers) is a joke (14.47%) considering the cost that is required to get that much defense and how little returns you actually get for all that you took. The only time that personal defense actually matter to a Blaster are heavy IO builds that can actually pack on meaningful +def. To any Blaster that isn't willing to spend multiple billions of inf on a build, the +def in Cloaking Device (or an clone thereof) is going to do virtually nothing. The only reason that Cloaking Device is considered useful for Devices is because they actually have a reason to become invisible and sneak up on their enemies (Trip mine, Time bomb) because they can actually sneak away after they drop them.

Well, if you actually look at every set except for Mental Manipulation, you'll see that those sets have a vast preference for melee performance. Even mental manipulation has 2 very good reasons for closing to melee (Drain Psyche, Psychic Shockwave) or did you miss all of that?

And before you attempt to tell me that I'm trying to build a pure blapping/melee set, remember that you're the one that wants the frontloading capability of the powerset to be melee oriented. If anything, I'm the one trying to build a set that actually fits with the existing sets and you're the one trying to make a set that completely breaks the mold.

No, you said "Soul Drain is a formidable AoE attack on it's own", which is the exact same friggin' thing or did you forget that? Try reading what you wrote yourself before saying I didn't read it. Everything you've said about Soul Drain has pretty much proven to me that you have never played a set that used the power. You have no clue how laughable the damage is and you are completely ignorant of the difference in animation time that exists between the two powers (which means that BU actually takes up substantially less time out from your attacking to get things accomplished).

And then you'd immediately get gibbed before you have a chance to actually make the attack because you're going to be rooted for 2 seconds before you can even make an attack with it. You seem to be completely overestimating the damage that Soul Drain deals, even moreso the fact that, in order to get the massive +dam benefits from the power, you need to be surrounded by enemies (which further lowers your chances of survival). Go play a DM Scrapper, turn off your entire secondary except for a Stealth power, and just into a reasonably large spawn to use Soul Drain. You'll laugh at how quickly you get gibbed and that's with a Scrapper that has higher base hp and better defense contributions. Seriously, you have no clue what you're talking about. Blasters are about as likely to get Soul Drain as they are to get Follow Up.

Actually, it's gotten all of that player attention because it was horribly borked and will remain popular because it still provides massive untoward benefits, especially when IO'd heavily (and will continue to do so unless Castle grows a pair and brings AAO down to a more sane level of contribution). If the "breath of fresh air" argument actually held ground, sets that are actually substantially different from the "classics" without being numerically overpowered (like Dual Blades and Dual Pistols) would be ridiculously popular even after their initial release. Oh wait, neither of them are.

Actually you did. The only change you suggested to my version was to make the range on the power 40'. My version would have the exact same stats as the Scrapper version, or did you misread "Direct clone of Scrapper version"?

I act just like this in real life as well. Idiocy perturbs me as much in normal life as it does whenever I have a keyboard in front of me. If you hang around long enough, you'll likely learn that I do this kind of thing to anyone that acts like an idiot where I see it. There's a reason that second line is in my sig.

Seriously, research anything I suggest. I'll give you a few minutes. You'll find that one of the things I outright despise is designs like that. I go out of my way to avoid designs like that. The only reason you think I'm building a set antithetical to a comprehensive balance design is because you have no idea what you're talking about. Stealth powers are not the massive boon that you are attempting to make them out to be. Soul Drain would get more Blasters killed than it would help kill faster. Touch of Fear as a ranged power is simply ridiculously overpowered and, if you remove the debuff, there isn't much point to it existing.

Do not get me started on snipes or crashing nukes. A vast majority of players have a beef with them. Comically though, not many have massive beefs with damage auras on blasters or many of the other things you seem to be complaining about. You can complain about the utter uselessness of snipes and the large scale lack of use of crashing nukes and I'll agree with you, but I'm going to laugh myself blue if you think that anyone other than you thinks the same thing about damage auras or that anyone honestly believes that stealth powers are as valuable as you seem to make them out to be.

And you're a great joke! Do you honestly believe that I'm just like this because I have a massive ego (a point I don't contest; intelligence has a habit of breeding self-superiority)? I'm amused that you attribute everything I do to the anonymity of the internet rather than simply being smart and not suffering fools at all (much less suffering them lightly). I treat everyone that acts like an uneducated idiot like this. You can say I'm hiding behind the veil of internet anonymity but if you confronted me in real life I'd treat you the exact same way: stupid people don't deserve to be coddled simply because they're stupid. If you want me to stop treating you like this, stop trying to talk about things that are well above your expertise and I'll consider it.

Seriously, how many of your errors have been due to an inability to read? It was written there quite explicitly.

The internet would be less obnoxious if people used it for things other than spouting their mouths off and claiming expertise where they obviously have none. I'm actually quite a nice guy to be around when people aren't being stupid. I only act like a jackass when people deserve it, and I think the internet would be a much more obnoxious place to be if people like you were actually given the credit you think you deserve regardless of the fact that you have a lot to learn.

Once again, I suggest you actually look at what you're reading, learn about what you're trying to talk about, and do some research before you start opening your mouth or letting your fingers touch the keyboard. You can call me classless, crass, or a jackass all you want: it won't change the fact that you're a bumbling fool that's not even capable of reading an entire post without screwing up vital information.

I don't think so. Primaries would have 4 melee attacks, 4 ranged attacks, and a self buff (re: BU or equivalent) and Secondaries would have a weak mez toggle, 2-3 armor powers, and a remaining suite of support powers. It would play much the same as a nominal assault/armor AT with the exception that it wouldn't be as tough (thanks to lacking full armor capabilities) but would provide more force multiplication (thanks to having some support abilities).

The biggest problem with designing any AT with a more than tangential focus on ranged damage as well as full support is that you start getting into the realms of tankmagery. By diluting the survivability or damage you risk rendering the AT largely redundant: if damage is too low, what's the point of bringing them onto a team when you could grab a Scrapper and if the survivability is too low, what's the point of bringing them onto a team when you could grab a Blaster. By mixing a support role into the armor subset, you allow for the AT to have a function on a team even when there are other ATs that already fulfill the role of hardy damage dealer (Brute, Scrapper) which an assault/armor AT would be attempting to fulfill.

Where the powersets are concerned, it would actually be rather simple considering the powersets we've already got. The Fire secondary would be a combination of thermal radiation and fiery aura. The Ice secondary would be a combination of cold domination and ice armor. An Energy set could be a combination of Force Field and Energy Aura or Kinetics.

The standard chance to crit against players is 5%. Some powers have higher chances to crit (Storm Kick has a 10% chance, Eviscerate has a 15% chance). Where Scrappers are concerned, you have the same chance to crit against players as you do against minions.

And you'll note that I didn't claim there were 4 damage auras. I said there were 3 sets with damage auras. Please, learn to read.

So because almost no blaster ever picks those powers (which is a bit of a joke; I see plenty of blasters taking those powers explicitly because they're exceptionally cheap AoE damage and the sets they're in make excellent blap sets), you don't think that those powers should exist anywhere else? Seems to me you're assigning an arbitrary definition of value to those powers when they're actually quite good when used in the right hands.

So all */Dark Blasters are going to have Dark/* as their primary? That's an awesome design mentality to use! Secondly, you're talking about allowing Blasters to get a single attack lined up. Stealth isn't going to help lining up any attack other than the first and, honestly, how hard is it to line up the first attack with a blaster cone anyway? Enemies won't aggro that far away from me regardless.

[quoteFront-loaded damage OBVIOUSLY won't be that much of a point with Dark Blasters given that a significant amount of the damage is by the way of DoT (Gloom, TT, Night Fall) while also potentially lacking a tier 3 big hitter in the blast set.[/quote]

Like I said before, all */Dark Blasters are going to be Dark/* blasters as well? Are we designing an entire AT or a secondary? I'm designing a secondary. You're apparently designing an entire AT because you're assuming that all dark manip will never be used without dark blast.

That's a joke. It's a scale 1 damage attack on a 120 second base recharge time. The damage aspect of Soul Drain is a joke. And I know this for a fact: I play a DM scrapper.

Except that it wouldn't. As soon as you went into melee and used Soul Drain, you'd expose yourself to a full volley from the entire enemy group around you. Soul Drain draws aggro and you have to survive that aggro to get any benefit out of it.

Except that Shield Defense is actually very similar to Fiery Aura so it's not really a "breath of fresh air". It's more like "we wanted an offensive defense set" and went with defense and +dam rather than resistance and damage.

Learn what you're talking about before you try to "correct" me. Do you even know what AT mods are? Soul Drain uses the melee_buff_tohit and melee_buff_dmg attributes. Defenders have .1 melee_buff_tohit and .1 melee_buff_dmg attributes. Scrappers have a .1 melee_buff_tohit and .125 melee_buff_dmg attributes. This is why Scrappers get 25% more +dam from all self damage buffs than Defenders do.

Now, you may be thinking that just because Tactics and Assault provide more for a Defender than they do for a Scrapper that I don't know what I'm talking about. This isn't true. Both of those powers use the ranged variant of that attribute, which Defenders have a .125 to both and Scrappers have as .7 to both. Soul Drain uses the melee version (i.e. the self buff version) whereas the powers you're probably thinking of use the ranged version (i.e. the team buff version).

Want some more evidence to support my claim that you don't know what you're talking about? Go in game and check [Darkness Mastery.Soul Drain] and [Dark Melee.Soul Drain]. Change the AT on each to Scrapper or Defender. They'll have the exact same values.

Right, because those are AoE control powers? You're also ignoring the substantially more common melee mez powers (like Stun, Shocking Grasp, Lightning Clap, Ice Patch, Frozen Aura). There are a lot more melee control powers than there are ranged ones, and you're also ignoring the fact that ToF is also a very strong debuff power as well. You could make the claim that ToF should be ranged by bringing up Scare, but that doesn't really make much sense since all that Scare does is fear whereas ToF also has a very substantial debuff attached to it (oh, and it's also on a 20 second recharge compared to an 8 second recharge and has less than half of the duration when modified for AT mods). Of course, I only know this because I actually play Dark Melee and have seen and used Touch of Fear enough to know that it's substantially too strong to be given to a non-support AT as a ranged power.

And I consider your definitions of superior and inferior to be jokes. You don't even know what a good power would look like in function, nor do you have any idea what you're talking about when attempting to assign efficacy to a power.

How am I perpetuating design flaws of the past? I'm looking at what already exists in game in an effort to design a build that would actually be balanced and functional. You're simply asking for things while operating under a laughable lack of understanding concerning the use of powers while being completely oblivious to the actual attributes of other powers and completely ignorant of the fact that the devs might want to design a set that doesn't expect to be paired with a specific primary as a point of design (more than half of your arguments have assumed as much).

I would be less abrasive if you knew what you were talking about and didn't force me to talk down to you or teach you things that you should know before entering into a debate on design simply because you operate under delusions of competence.

Oh, right. My numbers are arbitrary because they're based on existing precedent and research whereas yours aren't because you said "well, that looks right". I suggest you actually look up the definition of the word before you accuse my numbers of being arbitrary.

Frozen Aura. Look it up. I'll also bring up Fire Sword Circle and Drain Psyche too, if you want.

Stun powers have twice the recharge for the same area and duration as sleep powers do. I used the same basis for assigning a recharge to my version of Dark Pit as was applied to Frozen Aura (I essentially built a stun version of Frozen Aura because it was the closest power of comparison). You would have known this had you read the linked thread.

First off, AT mods. Defenders have better mez attributes than Blasters do. Secondly, duration doesn't mean squat compared to uptime ratios. Thirdly, melee mez powers have better uptime ratios than ranged ones with very few exceptions. My version got a better duration and uptime pretty much explicitly because it's a melee power rather than a ranged one. Bigger reward for the bigger risk of being in melee.

Where did I claim that making Dark Regen into a +regen power was somehow "less blasterish" than simply providing a straight heal (which wasn't actually your suggestion first, it has been made numerous times by other people when I made the suggestion and I defended it quite well; personally, I don't care which: I think having a recharge that is 4 times longer and forces the Blaster to be in a situation (melee) that they are generally not wont to be in makes it rather well balanced (not to mention the fact that damage recovery mechanisms aren't particularly spectacular without damage mitigation mechanisms to bolster them, especially with the low level of Blaster hp))? I challenge you to find where I said that, unless, of course, you're hallucinating such things because you are operating under some ridiculous delusion that I care enough about contradicting you to abandon all notions of intelligence to blatantly claim something contrary to reality.

The only claims I've made are that you have no idea what you're talking about which I then supported with evidence (that you then proved true by interpreting incorrectly; thanks!). I continue to say that you have no idea what you're talking about, and I will continue to do so until you start, especially since you have shown a laughable inability to actually read the thread where I explained all of what you're asking about in detail. I heartily suggest that you either remedy this situation or leave before you make yourself look like more of an idiot.

Which would beg the question of "what's the point?". It would be a nominally damage based AT that can't deal damage. How is that at all useful?

I'd much rather see an assault/(support + armor) AT than a straight up ranged/armor AT. Damage evenly spread between ranged and melee (so that you can close to melee to deal your entire potential of damage or stay at range and only deal a portion of your potential damage) and support split between personal support and team support (to keep you alive while in melee while giving you a reason to exist on a team). It's be more like the ******* child of a corrupter and a scrapper than anything else, and be much more balanced and playable than a pure ranged/armor AT.

I'm always amused at how little credit I get for the builds I design. I can remember a few occasions where someone has explicitly pulled one of my builds and tried to pass it off as their own. It's nice to see a little credit thrown my way, though.

Holy necropost batman!

I doubt there would be a melee KB power simply because there is only one set that gets a melee KB power at level 1 and that's largely because it doesn't make sense for there to be one. In the thread I referenced, I went into the reasoning behind the choice of an ST immob at level 1. I suggest you read it.

Which is why there are 3 sets with damage auras and only 1 set with a personal stealth power right? Stealth powers are remarkably low on the utility scale for Blasters, where their primary methods of survivability are range and killing things quickly. Stealth doesn't allow for either of those. A damage aura allows for the second one.

First off, there is a very good reason why I went with BU rather than Soul Drain. BU is a mechanism for frontloading damage. It allows you to get in a very hard hit from range right at the very beginning of a fight, before your enemies have started beating you in the face. Soul Drain requires that you lose that advantage by making an attack while in melee in order to gain the benefit of it.

Secondly, you do realize that the Defender and Scrapper versions of Soul Drain are identical with the sole exception that the Defender version has 2.25x the area of effect, right? The differences in damage and buff values are due exclusively to AT mods.

Because getting a better version of Scare makes so much sense, right? Ranged mez/debuff powers don't really have a place within a manipulation set. I went into the reasoning behind this in that same thread. I once again recommend you actually read it.

Once again, I went into the reasoning behind those numbers which were taken explicitly from existing power designs in the linked thread. You can try to claim that it's more "blasterish" based on whatever you arbitrarily decide, but I've actually got the numbers that blasters are already using supporting the numbers that I came up with, so I'm pretty sure that mine is more "blasterish" simply because I'm using what blasters already have/get.

It's -spd and -rech. Personally, I don't think that it's all that worth it. In order for -rech to be particularly useful, you have to stack a lot of it on a target and that target has to be alive long enough to cycle all of its attacks multiple times. As a Blaster, if a target gets to cycle all of its attacks multiple times, you're normally dead already. If you're not, the target is generally dead by the time it would get to that point.

In all honesty, there really isn't a reason to use Cryo Ammo (beyond simply wanting to shoot ice bullets rather than fire/chem/standard bullets). The debuff isn't particularly useful and the additional damage you would get from dealing a portion of cold damage is less than you would get from simply using Incendiary Ammo (even against enemies like Behemoths that resist fire and are weak to cold; the additional damage from incendiary more than outweighs the increased damage from the cold weakness). On my DP, I only ever used chem (for -dmg) and incendiary (for more damage).

Comparing anything to Fire Blast is going to make the set look bad, unless you actually have a reasonably fair way to adjudicate the lack of mitigation. Fire Blast is pretty much the king of DPS. The fact that Dual Pistols, a set that is designed around utility, doesn't compete with its damage is a given.

The closest comparisons that you can honestly make with Dual Pistols are with Energy Blast and with Sonic Blast. Energy Blast and Dual Pistols have similar levels of AoE and ST damage (DP leads a bit on the AoE because of the crashless nuke but ST is roughly equivalent when you compare all of the ammo types), while Sonic Blast and Dual Pistols are both sets that generate better returns when used by the nominal support ATs.

While I wasn't the one that -repped you (not that it matters now that rep has been removed), I can honestly tell you that DP isn't massively subpar and "at best" average. As a whole, the set competes for middling in ST damage, but the set is actually quite good at AoE damage (especially when augmented by incendiary ammo).

The set is, as a whole, a utility set rather than a specialist, which is why so many people decry its usefulness. The set has a native hold unlike most other blast sets (Suppressive Fire + non-Standard Ammo), nice-but-not-top-tier AoE performance, a nice team damage multiplication mechanism (Piercing Rounds + Standard Ammo), and the potential for some very potent debuffage (Chem rounds) when stacked properly.

The problem that most people have with the set (from a Blaster standpoint) is that it's not really designed to be an exceptional blasting set: the primary usefulness of the set as a whole is in the secondary effects, which Blasters get substantially less out of compared to Defenders and Corruptors. Defenders and Corruptors get a lot more out of the set than Blasters do so many Blasters see the set as being subpar when it's really just in the middle of performance for them.

Pretty much, yes, though, rather than seeing the set become more like Kat, I'd much rather the two sets diverged a bit more, such as doing what I suggested earlier and giving BS a more defensive/mitigation orientation to make up for the offensive advantages that Kat has.

Not a full cycled attack string but a specific series of attacks that you use. It's a matter of getting through more attacks in the same time frame than a BS user can and, because of that, you can generate better functional burst (i.e. your chances of actually killing someone within the window of availability that they give you).

Consider the differences between Golden Dragonfly and Headsplitter in PvP: GD takes only 66% of the time that HS takes to animate and yet deals 83% of the damage. In the time that you could get off HS>Dis, you could get off GD>SD>SotW, which, along with having better proc damage thanks to a higher number of attacks and the exact same mitigation capabilities, would deal 456.19 base damage compared to the 407.95 from HS>Dis.

It would have been better to say that the same DoT isn't in both attacks, and that Kat gets its better DoT damage for free. Whirling Sword gets 3 ticks of scale .1 damage, and The Lotus Drops gets 3 ticks of scale .12 damage.

Even further, though they have the same recharge times, Whirling Sword has a much longer animation time (2.904 sec compared to 1.98). It's going to have a second faster cycle time no matter what recharge assumptions you're using. So Whirling Sword is universally worse than The Lotus Drops: it deals less damage and cycles slower.

Except that Katana is actually better at PvP because it can generate better burst within a single BU cycle (and get more out of procs). The "big burst" that many players talk about with BS doesn't really have much of an effect on gameplay because it's really just based on single attacks hitting hard. Neither PvP nor PvE is about a single attack hitting hard, so the fact that Katana can generate better performance over the short term, the long term, and against multiple enemies means that BS isn't really a PvP set either: it's simply outclassed by Kat in everything except for the aesthetic of "smash".

If/when MA gets fixed, I expect for there to be some impetus for the devs to look at BS compared to Kat. Personally, I think that it would work for the set to be more of a "defensive" version of Kat by providing some or all of the attacks in the set with some chances for KU/KD (to go along with the "smash"). Kat could keep the speed and greater offense while BS gets to be a bit safer and toss enemies around a bit.

It also doesn't cause an endurance crash and recharges in one third of the time. It doesn't need to have its area of effect increased to 2.56 times its current size. It's perfectly fine where it is now.

Back in those days we also didn't realize that animation time has a substantial effect on your overall damage dealing capabilities so people only really looked at the big fancy numbers flying over their enemies' heads. BS's only real niche has, and likely always will be, burst damage, though it's only burst from individual hits: you can actually get more damage in roughly the same short time period with other sets thanks to having higher DPA variance amongst attacks. What's worse is that Kat actually maintains higher AoE damage (that free DoT in Lotus Drops isn't in Whirling Sword, Flashing Steel's lower cycle time and animation time consumption allows it to completely outshine Slice) along with better ST damage. I can't really think of a numerical reason to play BS rather than Kat unless you're specifically going for a Shield build (and "can be used with Shield" shouldn't be a reason for a set to be weaker).

Actually, the formula has existed since the beginning of the game: the Cryptic devs created it in order to allow them to adjudicate "balanced" attributes for attack powers. Secondly, it has been applied very consistently throughout sets: the number of exceptions to the formula is remarkably small (and, even then, they only get an exception on a single attribute at most). Third, I'm curious what you mean by "unique way SS is set up". Do you mean "completely horrible without a single late game power buoying it" or do you mean "massive early ST focus with a single late AoE power"? If you actually knew what you were talking about, you'd know that both of these are due to the fact that the formula does exist.

Which is what I'm talking about. All of Claws v. all of SS. If you want to get into something really funny, it's actually better to have all of your AoE capabilities in one power rather than 3 because it allows you to save on slots and animation time. Want to see the math (from the Claws' fanatic's mouth)? I gets even funnier when you ask yourself the simply question of whether a set that only has a single AoE should be able to compete with one that has 2 and a half.

Is it just me or are you simply ignoring the fact that I've said, over and over again, that DPA doesn't matter where AoEs are concerned?

And SS gets one of the best single target attacks in the game at level 12 (you know, one on par with Total Focus, Seismic Smash, and Greater Fire Sword) or did you forget about that?

Unless you didn't get this the first time, it's better to have all of your AoE concentrated in a single power. There is a reason people love Shield Charge so much.

Using up 100% of its animation time and doing barely more damage than SS, which will use up roughly half of that time to do the exact same thing. Seriously, I know I've gone over this before and I know that you were there for it. Are you just oblivious to intelligence?

Except that I know the equation is working exactly the way I think it does and the game is working exactly the way I think it does. It's not my problem if you're simply incapable of actually playing in a way that allows you to avoid the endurance issues of SS because you insist on punching things at all time and completely ignore the ability to increase your endurance efficiency rather than your damage throughput.

Except that you're the one misreading my argument. Good job on that. It makes you look both intelligent and well informed.

So is every set. The sword sets' secondary effect is -def, though they get +def, KU, and KD. DM's is -tohit but it also gets an immob and a self heal. Dual Blades' is the combos but it gets a -def attack and KD. Elec Melee's is -end and a chance for +end but it also gets KD, and Sleep. Should I go on or have I sufficiently demonstrated that just because a set has a cohesive secondary effect that the individual powers within the set are not allowed to have others?

The formula "works" by taking an area, converting it into a number of target equivalents and then multiplying the damage dealt by that quantity (in a way that very heavily favors larger areas by using completely unrealistic assumptions of how spread out targets are) in order to arrive at a value that is then converted into the standard dam/rech/end formula. Oh wait, I forgot, math doesn't exist! Yeah! The formula is simply randomly applying numbers! Joy!

And it's good enough to actually make spin look like a joke. It's "better overall" to such an extent that it can perform favorably against 2 other AoEs being used against it. But, I keep forgetting, you have to wait til tier 9 to get it so it's allowed to perform better, right? That doesn't really stop Storm Kick from being the best attack in MA, does it? Or cause any meaningful difference between Hand Clap and Lightning Clap?

Answer mel me this, please. I'm very curious. Why should a set that only has a single AoE be even remotely similar to the AoE performance of a set with only 1 (especially when you consider how SS can leverage outside AoEs while Claws is virtually incapable of it)?

And getting massive ST ability at level 12 is an advantage and becomes a larger advantage when you're fighting hard targets (cuz, you know, AVs never show up, right? And AoEs are the absolute shiz against them when they do?).

Are you simply incapable of proper reading comprehension? I've never said that FS should be a clone of Spin. Hell, I'm simply saying that FS should follow the AoE formula rather than being allowed to break it, which means that it should have its radius reduced to 10' and that's it. How am I talking about making it a clone of Spin?

Oh, wait, I get it, you're completely misreading everything I'm saying.

You wouldn't be the first person to conclude that (though the lawyers assure me that I am capable of defending myself in the court of law). Of course, I also didn't think that DA had terrible endurance problems when I played it because I played it intelligently rather than spamming everything as often as possible. Because, you know, sometimes a set should be played differently. Just because you can punch something doesn't mean that you should (not to mention that you completely ignore the fact that, no matter how you cut it, SS gets massive functional endurance efficiency increases, though that's just the math speaking; it's not like this game is governed by that at all).

What sets are you comparing? The only sets with better than standard accuracy (a 1.0 accmod, which SS has) are War Mace and Battle Axe (which have a 1.05 accmod to account for their redraw). SS has exactly the same accuracy as almost every other set out there. The only attack in SS that has substandard accuracy is Hand Clap (.8 accmod) and that's because it's a guaranteed AoE hard mez and all non-chance AoE hard mezzes have lower accmods (even the controller ones).

I'm curious how you "checked the sets" if you didn't see that.

If only having a single AoE power is what mattered, then sets like MA and Energy would get the same treatment (which they don't). As I said before, what level you get a power doesn't affect it's end effectiveness. We have this as dev fiat: what tier you get a power doesn't affect how it handles the formulas in question.

For ST damage, and only because it has subpar ST attacks to work with. For AoE damage, Rage + Footstomp actually allows SS to deal more damage with lower animation time consumption than Claws. I can link you to the math if you want me to (and, comically enough, it's coming from a guy that will scream the awesomeness of Claws/* at the top of his lungs whenever he gets the chance).

For the endurance efficiency argument, consider Whirling Mace, which consumes 13 endurance to deal scale 1.12 damage. With 95% +dam slotting, WM deals scale 2.184 damage for 13 end, or .168 scale for each point of endurance spent (and has a smaller area than FS has now or should have if it got reduced). FS consumes 18.512 end to deal scale 1.42 damage. With 95% +dam slotting and 80% +dam from Rage, FS deals scale 3.905 damage for 18.512 end, or .211 damage per point of endurance spent. FS with Rage is 25% more endurance efficient than WM (completely ignoring the fact that FS is also going to hit more targets more easily thanks to the substantially larger area). Care to argue that point as well now that the math supports what should have been obvious?

1. Claws' "secondary effect" is a recharge and endurance cost reduction so it should recharge faster and cost less end. You'll also notice that it doesn't have the mitigation secondary effect, which is another plus in FS favor.

2. At the "proper" radius, FS would have a 10' radius. Compared to Spin, it would have a 56.25% larger area of effect. You can't assume that Spin would be directly compared to FS since the area that a power fills is a function in the AoE cost formula as well (larger areas cost more rech and end than smaller areas).

As I've stated before and the devs have stated before, what level a power is accessed doesn't affect the potency of the power. The only "guide" on tier is that lower tier powers should be more "basic" powers and higher tier powers should be more "complex" power.

If you stop attacking for the 10 seconds every 120 seconds that you do virtually no damage (because, at that point, you're operating with the outright worst DPE you could ever hope to have) and you have Stamina, you won't have the same problems. Slotted Stamina increases your base recovery up to 2.48 end/sec. Factor in some end drain thanks to toggles, and you'll get around 15-20 end if you don't attack for those 10 seconds, which means that it only costs you about 5-10 end unless you insist on attacking for no real effect.

Now, if you want to get even more involved when talking about endurance issues, you have to realize that, while SS has lower DPS capabilities than other sets, it also has lower endurance consumption from those exact same attacks (because end costs are based off of base damage). Assuming 95% +dam enhancement, Rage would provide ~41% endurance "reduction". This means that if another set is spending 3 end/sec on its attack string, SS is spending only 2.13 end.sec to do the exact same damage. Factoring in that difference over the 110 seconds that you're allowed to attack with Rage, you'll "save" ~96 end compared to the other set (which more than makes up for that 25 end "loss"). If you want some other support for this, just look at Billz's thread about Brute and Scrapper DPS and end costs: you'll notice that Brute SS manages to spend only 2.9 end/sec where other sets are spending ~3.2 end.sec (and that's for Brutes which get less benefit than Tankers or Scrappers do from +dam).

If you want to get even more involved, you can always bring up the whole "perma 20% +tohit" thing as well which allows you to maintain a 90.44% chance to hit against +3 enemies with a single acc enhancement in your attacks (assuming you didn't enhance Rage for tohit enhancement at all; a single enhancement would let you maintain a 95% chance to hit against +3s and 83.79% against +4s; 3 enhancements would allow you to maintain a 95% same chance to hit against those +4s). Other sets have to devote 2 acc slots in all of their attacks to maintain a 95% chance to hit against +1s, 2 slots in all of their attacks to be just shy of a 95% chance to hit against +2s, and 3 slots in all of their attacks to be just shy of a 95% chance to hit against +3s. If you devote that "saved" slot to a single end redux, you'll be even more efficient than that as well.

Oh wait... SS has end issues right? And it's not just because you don't know how to leverage what SS brings, right?

When you compare them to Scrappers and Brutes and factor in comparative survivability and AoE capability, Stalkers are pretty low on the comparative totem pole of melee effectiveness.

My solution, honestly, is to increase the Stalker HP cap to the Scrapper HP cap (but leave the base hp where it is), increase the base damage scalar of Stalkers from 1.0 to 1.125, alter Assassination so that each ally provides more requires only 4 allies to be within 30' of you to max out your crit rate (increase the range by 10' and increase the crit contribution to 5% from 3% per ally), and change the Assassin's attacks so that they're actually useful for situations other than those where you've been out of combat for 10 seconds (allow all damage to be dealt while hidden or unhidden but leave the fear and demoralized attached to the hidden status, increase recharge time to 30 seconds, and leave the interruptibility).

Stalkers would have the de facto best ST damage in the game but quite possibly the worst AoE damage (thanks to the dearth of AoEs that Stalkers have). You wouldn't need to ask your teammates to mob around you to get all the benefit of your inherent, and Assassin's attacks would actually be of some use in a melee (though you would still want to make sure you're not going to get hit because the interruptibility is preserved). Top end survivability would be increased to such an extent that Stalkers are capable of surviving as well as Scrappers (assuming that they get the greater buffing required to get there) but the base survivability would remain where it is (and the damage:survivability ratio would be closer to what it should be at while solo).

Except that you're missing some extremely important things: DPA doesn't matter where AoEs are concerned because DPA is only a valuable metric when you are animation time saturated (something that SS is definitely not) and endurance costs are based on a dam/rech/end formula so FS costs more end explicitly because it deals more damage (and you're also bringing it up against Claws, which gets a discount to end and rech as its powerset "secondary effect", and Fire, which gets greater end efficiency because its secondary effect is simply more damage; you're also ignoring the whole "massive permanent +dam provides increases to end efficiency" thing that SS has, which actually makes FS more end efficient than FSC).

Footstomp has been proven to be 5' larger than it is supposed to be by the formula the devs use to determine the size, damage, and costs of AoEs. The only "reason" it has for being larger is that the devs let it slide way back when. Everyone that knows how the devs design the game and what they use to determine the various attributes of powers realizes that Footstomp is larger than it has any right to be (and then there's the fact that it also gets a very nice secondary effect attached to it as well). The only "reason" as to why FS gets to simply be a better attack than any other AoE out there (because those other powers don't get to break the AoE formula) that has ever been reasonably brought up to defend Footstomp is that it is a tier 9 power, and, even then, that argument doesn't hold water because the devs have outright said that what tier a power is doesn't have any effect how it handles the formulas used.

My SO standard is and almost always has been 1 acc/3 dam/2 rech, largely because I do a lot of teaming and +tohit and -def debuffs seem to just be thrown about like crazy that I've just found that it's more useful to underslot acc and get more recharge. If I really need to beat something's face in, I can just pop some yellows.

Yeah, so you're asking for an SO build then. Here ya go.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.704
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Claws
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Swipe -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(3), Dmg(5), RechRdx(5), RechRdx(7)
Level 1: Fast Healing -- Heal(A), Heal(50)
Level 2: Slash -- Acc(A), Dmg(7), Dmg(9), Dmg(9), RechRdx(11), RechRdx(11)
Level 4: Reconstruction -- Heal(A), Heal(13), Heal(13), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(17)
Level 6: Quick Recovery -- EndMod(A), EndMod(17), EndMod(19)
Level 8: Follow Up -- Acc(A), Dmg(19), Dmg(21), Dmg(21), RechRdx(23), RechRdx(23)
Level 10: Dull Pain -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(25), RechRdx(25), Heal(27), Heal(27), Heal(29)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump(A)
Level 16: Integration -- Heal(A), Heal(29), Heal(31)
Level 18: Focus -- Acc(A), Dmg(31), Dmg(31), Dmg(33), RechRdx(33), RechRdx(33)
Level 20: Spin -- Acc(A), Dmg(34), Dmg(34), Dmg(34), RechRdx(36), RechRdx(36)
Level 22: Boxing -- Acc(A)
Level 24: Tough -- ResDam(A), ResDam(36), ResDam(37)
Level 26: Eviscerate -- Acc(A), Dmg(37), Dmg(37), Dmg(39), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(39)
Level 28: Instant Healing -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(40), RechRdx(40)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(40), RechRdx(42)
Level 32: Shockwave -- Acc(A), Dmg(42), Dmg(42), Dmg(43), RechRdx(43), RechRdx(43)
Level 35: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 38: Moment of Glory -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(45), RechRdx(45)
Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(45), EndRdx(46), ToHit(48), ToHit(48), ToHit(48)
Level 44: Physical Perfection -- EndMod(A), EndMod(46), EndMod(46)
Level 47: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 49: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(50), EndMod(50)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 0: Ninja Run