Umbral

Because comparing SO grade survivability to top-end IO grade survivability makes so much sense, not to mention the fact that, in order to softcap a Blaster, you're pretty much dumping your offensive capabilities.

Right... And the Defender still has the ability to buff absolutely everyone else on the team to an obscene level of survivability. The primary weakness of buff sets (and support oriented classes in virtually every medium) is that they are not effective at personal augmentation. That's the trade off they make: they can make other people awesome, but not themselves. This game already makes support sets and ATs way more powerful than standard ATs. They don't need to be made even more awesome by being able to buff themselves as well.

Just look at FF and you'll realize exactly why the ST shields will never be made into PbAoEs without some major weakening. FF would turn into automatic SO slotting level personal softcapping at all times for a pittance of endurance. Cold wouldn't be much behind it. The balancing factor behind the ST buffs is the fact that they don't make the caster unkillable.

And by doing that you can be assured that there would be a massive reduction in the potency of the powers in question. Quite possibly the only reason that the ST buffs we're talking about are so strong is because they can't be applied to the user and are therefore exclusively team support.

That's a bit of a logical fallacy. When considering the proc, you have to remember that the proc check is ignorant of any previous checks made (keeping in mind that only one check is made every 10 seconds). Just because the proc went off 10 seconds ago when you weren't fighting doesn't mean that it won't go off right now when you are fighting. This means that it doesn't matter how many of the procs are "wasted" by activating when you're not in combat because they have no effect on how the proc will operate while you are in combat.

The only time you're going to see better returns by slotting the Gauss proc into BU is if you are only using the proc as a damage frontloading mechanism. If you care about maximizing your performance over time, a toggle or short recharge power such as BF or FU are going to be best (personally, I go with the toggle because the difference in performance between the two isn't large enough to justify losing out on the 6 piece Gaussian's set bonus).

I've noticed this as well, though it's not something that's completely new. I've had the Perf Shifter proc reward 10% a number of times before, though never reliably. The only time it ever occurred previously, however, was when I was low enough on endurance that the proc wouldn't have taken me to full end (i.e. 90% or less than max). The change seems to be that it is now providing the 10% of max on a constant basis rather than on the rather erratic basis that it was before (not to mention the intense debate that went on for the longest time on how much the proc actually granted).

Actually, that wasn't the first basic rule. That was simply the first guideline. If you're having to remove slotting capability for the power, it's a broach of the cottage rule. This does not mean that if you simply maintain the same slotting capabilities that the cottage rule is maintained.

The change you're suggesting would still break the cottage rule because you're turning a passive +res power into a click self-rez. The functionality changes completely and therefore breaks the cottage rule.

I'm not entirely sure where you're getting those Brute numbers from. The Brute damage cap is 775% (this includes the default 100% you start at), so the max damage scalar multiplier for a Brute is 5.8125.

For Scrappers, as has been said before, you're forgetting about critical hits, which are a significant part of their damage output. The average chance to get a crit is generally assumed to be roughly 7.5%, which increases the Scrapper base scalar to 1.209375, so the max damage scalar multiplier for a Scrapper is 6.046875.

You're also forgetting about the whole issue of how hard it is for a Brute to get to their damage cap compared to the ease with which a Scrapper achieves it. With SO slotting, a Scrapper is only going to need ~305% +dam. A Brute with 75% Fury and SO slotting is going to need ~430% +dam. Without any +dam buffs, Scrappers and Brutes are roughly equal (Brutes have some variance that allows them to overtake Scrappers if Fury is maintained at a high enough levle). When any degree of +dam is included, Scrappers overtake Brutes and maintain that advantage indefinitely.

Because of the short duration the value needs to be high enough to have a substantial impact for the needed short duration of the power. I actually chose 40% was because that's what allowed for those specific ratios of survivability I gave. In order to preserve that same level of performance while lowering the resistance provided, the uptime ratio would need to be changed (which is risky because, as I wrote it, the power has a potential uptime of 33% with SOs, which is already very high for that kind of power; MoG has only 12.5%).

And teams complicate everything. When talking about this, it works best to simply assume that the individual in question is soloing because otherwise you have to deal with the vast plethora of buffs and the question of how valuable survivability is when you're not being attacked by everything in question.

As to the usefulness of the recovery time frame, numerically, a mitigation based set is going to get more real, applicable benefit out of a period of non-combat than a damage recovery based set will simply because any specific quantity of hit points is going to be worth more to the mitigation set (thanks explicitly to how mitigation functionally multiplies remaining hit points) than it would be to the recovery set. It's not a question of how many hit points you heal during the downtime. It's a question of how much that downtime increases your comparative survivability for the next fight. For */Regen, it's a virtually negligible improvement because the set itself spends a vast majority of its time at full health thanks to all of the damage recovery it packs in.

The reason why SR gets to cap its DDR is because it relies almost entirely on defense in order to survive (the passive resists are nice, but they exist more as a cushion to prevent attrition by small hits). EA has the resists as well as an often undervalued heal (Energy Drain is valued to be roughly the equivalent of Reconstruction when factoring in the set's mitigation mechanisms). EA doesn't really need more DDR, honestly (and it's likely that sets like SD and SR could likely use less DDR considering how powerful defense is and how easy it is for them to completely ignore def debuffs).

The issue isn't with 180 and 1800 second calculations being meaningless. They are valid within specific contexts, but their importance is overvalued outside of that context. You can claim that the 1800 seconds of constant fighting is representative of running a mission, but it doesn't consider the fact that, with mitigation sets, you are fully capable of stopping when you are at low health in order to recover and functionally reset your timer. You even made the point that, if a player isn't stopping to use Rest every time it is recharged, they aren't being as efficient as they are capable of being (which is the entire point of running through a mission as a single combat rather than turning it into a series of separate combats). Since mitigation sets are not forced to run through continuous attrition combat, you can't say that a long constant period of fighting is valid for those sets because it isn't representative.

Unless you are running an explicit farm mission (i.e. one designed to minimize time between combats to maximize rewards), you're going to have, at a minimum, 5-10 seconds between each fight simply due to navigating the mission itself, which does virtually nothing for */Regen (since you're pretty much guaranteed to be at full health at the end of any fight) while it appreciably increases the survivability of sets like */SR and */Invuln because they are assumed to enter into subsequent combats at below full resources. Similarly, because each discrete fight exists in shorter time frames, the relative risk for mitigation based sets is lower than it is for recovery based sets because they have substantially higher performance within those short time frames. Combine the two issues by using longer time frames that assume a constant state of combat, and */Regen looks a lot better than it should and mitigation based sets look a lot worse.

The entire question is what the defined playstyle is assumed to be: are players assumed to run directly from one fight to the next with an absolute minimum downtime between each (creating a situation wherein combat is virtually ongoing for the entire duration of the mission) or is the mission separated into a series of discrete shorter periods of combat punctuated by variable periods of recovery (from travel time from one combat to the next or simply using Rest)? Unless you're going to assume that farming (downtime negligible constant combat) is now the standard of solo mission running (which wouldn't mesh with the forced requirements of only using average player performance the standard of balance), a long period of constant combat isn't going to be a legitimate model of actual mission performance. It would be more accurate to look at missions as a series of short combat periods rather than a single long period explicitly because of this.

My entire proposal for buffing EA up to a point of reasonable performance is pretty much founded on this idea. Turning Conserve Power into a 20 second duration 120 second recharge 40% +res(all) 100% +endredux power allows for it to maintain roughly 150% of Invuln's survivability while it's active before sliding back down to its current level (roughly 60% of Invuln) while it recharges. The overall contribution would be to put EA roughly on par with Invuln (balanced by the fact that Invuln and EA both get rather large grab bags of useful goodies other than survivability).

The other major revision would be to reduce the +hp in the Stalker (and potentially Scrapper) versions of Overload down to just 20% pre-enhancement and provide 15% +res(all) to make up for it. The fact that Overload already puts Stalkers above their hp cap and would be redundant for a good portion of Scrappers as well (i.e. those with sources of +hp other than Overload) always seemed kind of wrong to me. Lowering the +hp but adding in resistance would end up providing the same level of survivability without resorting to redundant mechanisms.

I'm saying that the information that Arcana provided can't be used to model performance across an entire mission because it ignores the fact that there is downtime between fights. The only time those values are going to be valid is if you assume that absolutely everyone goes through a mission running from one enemy group directly to the next regardless of how much damage they have actually sustained.

Missions are comprised of a series of separate combats. Arcana is using 1800 seconds of constant fighting to represent what is more accurately described as 36 instances of 40 seconds of combat and 10 seconds of non-combat. What she has chosen to do generates gross discrepancies in performance between the two basic survival methodologies, which is, comically enough, why you see Arcana's numbers painting */Regen as having insanely high comparative survivability while actual play experience places */Regen in roughly the middle, if not lower, explicitly because of the time frames she chose to operate in.

There is also the question of how apt that analysis really is. No matter how many times Arcana pulls it up, I'm always going to point out that it pretty much only looks at extended periods of survival (immortality line, 30 minute survival, etc.; the shortest time frame analyzed is the 3 minute survivability time frame) which is going to naturally overemphasize */Regen's survivability due to damage recovery mechanisms. She keeps telling me that it's been addressed and discussed, but I haven't seen anything anywhere in those threads that actually brings it up or addresses it. Maybe it was in the one that the forums ate, but, if it was brought up and addressed, I find it strange that it didn't get noted in her repost of it.

Looking at the actual numbers we've got for shorter more plausible time frames (i.e. because how often have you actually seen a fight that lasts for a whole 3 minutes straight, and how often are you actually not allowed to recover hp in between fights over the course of a 30 minute mission?) via Arcana's survivability spreadsheet actually shows Regen doing rather poorly in comparison to the other sets it should be competing with (look at the 60 and 30 second time frames). Because Arcana's big point is that the I7 analysis validates her spreadsheet numbers (which show */Regen performing substantially worse than */Invuln in 60 and 30 second time frames), but somehow she insists that */Regen doesn't underperform when, logically, it should overperform if we assume that the devs actually have a consistent opinion on skill allowing for noticeably higher levels of performance (Fury allowing Brutes to average higher damage than Scrappers while solo), I have to wonder which is true: that */Regen is performing at the same level as other sets or that Arcana's analytical tools are correct, which can't be correct at the same time (unless you honestly believe that fights in solo mishes routinely last 3 minutes without interruption).

The problem with making an argument for adding debuff resistance to a powerset is that there isn't really a model that's been presented that actually takes debuffs into consideration, in the same way that no set has really taken into account the lack of KB prot/res in DA and FA. The contributions of those effects are just too abstract to make what you would consider to be a compelling argument (i.e. lots of numbers, followed by some rigorous modeling and simulation).

There's likely some legitimacy to the idea of adding native KB prot to DA and/or FA, since it's a rather explicit weakness of those sets as a whole , but we're not going to be able to make many arguments that you would consider legitimate because we just don't have that kind of information at our disposals (or it's just way too much work for the comparative payout if you want to extrapolate).

The exact same thing applies to providing debuff resistance to */Regen. You can say that the devs only add debuff resistance when it's seen as a balance necessity and is only done in such a manner as to bolster the performance of an underperforming set to compete with other sets, but I really have to wonder how much effect non-DDR debuff resistance has on overall performance as the devs see it? It's pretty obvious that adding recharge debuff resistance to Temperature Protection way back when didn't really make the set a competitive performer (which I know to be true largely because of the changes that happened in I18 that actually made it competitive). Did adding end drain protection to Murky Cloud provide a substantive improvement to DA's performance or was it really just throwing a bone to the set to help it deal with end draining enemies (which aren't really common enough to make a substantial impact on the overall performance of the set)?

Non-DDR debuff resistance isn't something that has a substantive effect on performance when compared to things like damage resistance, defense, and healing. If anyone actually came out with some math that indicated that */Regen was an underperformer, I doubt the devs' solution would be to give it some debuff resistance because the overall contribution of those values is pretty much guaranteed to be less than the margin of error they have set up for performance of those sets themselves.

The argument for giving */Regen debuff resistance isn't so much "this set is weak and needs a buff". The argument is "why doesn't */Regen have debuff resistance when every other set does"? Defense based sets get DDR as well as defense mitigating incoming debuffs. Resistance based sets get remarkably varied debuff resistances coupled with the use of a mechanic that resists debuffs against itself. Even other nominally healing/damage recovery sets like */Willpower (which actually has better performance in virtually all tiers, even ignoring its debuff resistances) have debuff resistance to important native attributes. */Regen is the only set that has absolutely nothing there to mitigate incoming debuffs, even to completely tangential attributes.

As to why the arguments for debuff resistance only ever get brought up at the absolute top tier of performance when used by top tier players it's largely an issue of the contribution of debuff resistances not being substantial enough at average levels of difficulty to make their presence actually worthwhile and noticeable. If you only ever bring up the assumption of average performance, virtually all non-DDR debuff resistances are completely pointless: the only time most debuffs matter to any significant extent is when they are being leveraged heavily, which doesn't matter when you're assuming average performance because average performance doesn't include enemies in sufficient quantity to actually make much of a difference. It doesn't make much of a case to point out the flaws of lacking debuff resistance when most sets could completely remove their non-DDR debuff resistance without ever noticing it. The only time the lack of debuff resistances is actually important is when you're doing high performance activities where the lack of debuff resistances is actually going to inhibit you.

I was agreeing with you, actually, and using the fact that there are some very unthematic attributes out there as a reason why it would make sense for Regen to get some debuff resistance as well as a why arguing against a a generic buff for thematic reasons doesn't really hold water.

What's even more worrisome is that Cyber_naut and I are actually agreeing on something.

How is end drain resistance thematic for Dark Armor or Fiery Aura? How is recharge debuff resistance thematic for Shield Defense? If the debuff resistance is needed or desired for the set to achieve a reasonable point of balance (which I believe */Regen does, since it's the only set that has absolutely no debuff resistance whatsoever made worse by the fact that it has no reliable avoidance mechanisms either), then you can think up a thematic reasoning for the set to have it.

Using performance concerns for reasons to not provide */Regen with something that everyone else gets and largely takes for granted doesn't really make much sense anymore anyway. With the way that the traditionally underperforming sets have been getting buffed recently, */Regen is nowhere near being a top performer anymore (unless you assume it's being used by a highly competent player rather than an average player, which is playing by double standards when you consider how skill-leveraged mechanics are balanced in pretty much every other area of the game).

My number crunching back when DP was first released generated a series of attack strings for various recharge rate amounts, as posted here.

Assuming you're packing a lot of recharge (250%), your best bet is going to be Incendiary Ammo with ES>DW>Pistols. If you're going with Standard Ammo (250%), PR>ES>Pistols>DW is going to be a close second. With less recharge (~135%), you're going to want to go with Incendiary Ammo ES>Pistols>DS>Pistols. The other attack strings at lower recharges get significantly more complex but that's to be expected.

And my question would be whether it was actually intelligent to use those powers in mid combat.

Snipes deal a base 172.67 damage. The fastest of them (Sniper Rifle) takes 3.828 seconds to animate (assuming you didn't get hit while attempting to use it). That's a DPA of 45.1. The worst tier 1 blast (Snap Shot) has a DPA of 44.23. The best Snipe and the worst tier 1 blast are equivalent DPA attacks. That should tell you something about how they actually fare as "real" attacks.

I don't think it's that hard to imagine the devs buffing Snipes and Assassin's Strikes to the point where they're actually viable attacks. The devs have already done what I'm pretty much asking for where the Dominator Snipes are concerned (increased recharge to 20 seconds and damage scale up to 3.56), so I don't think it's hard to make a case for the same to be applied to Blaster Snipes (and possibly something similar done to Assassin's attacks, such as making less of the total potential damage reliant on being hidden while increasing the dam/rech/end). If it's an attack that's only supposed to be used at the start of a fight, why does it recharge as fast as your tier 3 blast (which is intended to be used all the friggin' time)?

That's the problem with those powers, though. Why are you going to bother taking and slotting a power that can only be used to open a fight? Powers such as AS and Snipe make sense in games wherein powers are simply given out to characters when they need to be made available, but when getting these powers and improving them to the point where they're actually useful is made at a cost to the rest of your build, they don't really fit in with the overall design.

I can generally agree that the interruptible time frame should remain, if only because it makes sense for the powers (you're focusing), though I would just as happy if being interrupted didn't make you "lose" the power and, instead, cause it to have reduced effect. In order to make them useful, however, I'd like to see them actually buffed to the point where they actually offer a decent payout for the investment and risk. Right now they're balanced around 12 and 15 second recharges, respectively. How often are you actually going to need to snipe or use AS though? The recharges could be increased to 30 seconds and there would be little to no difference in their actual use rates simply because you there aren't enough times to use them. Along that same line, if the recharge was increased, the damage would be high enough to actually justify using them while in combat (at reduced and/or riskier effectiveness), allowing them to be more than just situation combat openers.

Because when I make an abstract comment about how I would fix a power that is, as it stands, completely broken and only balanced within the context of a horribly imbalanced set, and say that one of the first order fixes for the set would be to fix the rest of the set so that it no longer needs a completely borked buff power to make it viable I should specifically tell you how I would prep the rest of the set in order to make the largescale change allowable? Wow... that makes so very much sense (that's sarcasm if you missed it).

If you want to actually make constructive comments, I suggest that you actually understand what you're talking about rather than just assuming that printing some largely pointless numbers will suddenly turn the argument in your favor or make it seem like you actually understand what you're talking about rather than simply flailing to grasp a concept that you obvious don't quite have the cognitive capacity to understand quite yet.

1) It's going to provide a helluva lot more of a damage buff than Rage does as it stands now: at SO grade slotting, the 50% additional damage that my variant of Rage would have would provide the same returns as 95% +dam and it only gets better from there.

2) It's going to have a potential 100% uptime all the time if you're willing to deal with the higher endurance costs. It's not draining your endurance while you use it. All it does is increase the endurance cost of your SS attacks (and only the SS attacks) while it's active. If you're low on endurance, you can stop attacking and regain endurance like normal if you want to leave it on all the time.

3) You can have higher damage any time you want, but you're not going to be able to dance it just to ensure that you never have to spend more endurance than you want to on an attack. "Damage whenever you want" does not mean the same thing as "the ability to turn it on and off as you please". The recharge is an opportunity cost for choosing to attack at optimal efficiency rather than at the decreased efficiency that my Rage variant would cause.

Before you start screaming about how bad you think it would be, consider that it's a toggle and it's adding damage in the same way as Fiery Embrace does. It's going to provide a substantially larger benefit than the current Rage does, without a substantive crash, using a restrictive mechanism that, with an appropriate teammate, intelligent playstyle, or some blues, can be mitigated to a large extent.