Umbral

Well, most of the people that I talk to agree that regeneration and heals aren't actually a form of damage mitigation and are instead forms of damage recovery, using damage mitigation to refer to effects that prevent damage (such as mez, def, res) rather than allow you to recover from the effects. The semantic differences are functionally summed up in the difference between reactive survivability contribution and proactive or preventative survivability contribution.

Either way, semantic debate is only useful when people are actually attempting to remove any ambiguity from a term in the first place rather than insisting that your position is wrong because they're using a different definition of the term. Arguing that something isn't defensive when the real advantage of taking such an action is an increase in survivability is simply ignorant.

If you're aiming for each of them receiving roughly the same level of decreased survivability on a percentage scale, then the answer is likely yes, with an acceptable degree of variance (though EA might be a bit of an outlier... I need to get a hold of Arcana's defense spreadsheet again so I can play with those numbers...).

Actually, it will affect them in a roughly identical manner. Sets with a lot of defense suffer a proportionately larger decrease in survivability when affected by a defense debuff as a resistance based set affected by an identical defense debuff. The reason for this is that mitigation from defense (and resistance) increases as you get more defense. Reducing 45% defense to 40% defense results in a doubling of incoming damage whereas reducing 0% defense to -5% defense results in a 10% increase in incoming damage. If the defense debuff were resistable, each set would, for the most part, be affected in a roughly identical manner thanks to the way Castle has allocated DDR.

Or, maybe, killing or otherwise taking out someone trying to kill you. We protect the population by putting criminals in prisons. Is that some way of resisting the damage that criminals have on society?

It's not redefining the term. It's realizing that the existing definition applies to more than you think it would within the narrow confines of what is happening in the game. Frontloading your damage is a strong defensive contributor, just like mez effects and debuffs. It doesn't matter whether you think it's offensive because it's an attack: the end result is that enemies deal less damage and teammates (and self) are exposed to less damage.

If you feel like being obtuse, keep going on, but you're not making it seem like you actually have any clue what's going on when you're incapable of understanding that a word can have a different definition than the single use you're used to.

Says the guy that doesn't understand that contributors to survivability (i.e. defensive mechanisms) aren't the same as outright defense. Survivability isn't a percent of incoming damage that gets mitigated over an infinite period of time; it's the ability to restrict the amount of damage that would arrive over any specific period of time, and increased damage, whether frontloaded or otherwise (though frontloaded damage is going to be significantly more effective), contributes to survivability in a significant manner by decreasing any specific period of time by a quantifiable amount. Assuming that every comparison of survivability needs to operate off of an assumption of immortality is simply ignorant and prejudicial.

Whether the fact that EA has a heal (highly contributive though variable with number of nearby targets) and endurance drain (virtually useless for mitigation) accounts for the fact that it has only marginally more DDR than Invuln is probably up to debate. Does the fact that EA has a heal on a 60 second base recharge really make up for the fact that EA has both lower defenses, lower resistances, and lower DDR? Energy Drain is a pretty decent heal (though that depends heavily on the number of targets around) but EA is still pretty dependent on defense as its primary mechanism of survivability.

From what we can tell from the general placement of DDR, the varying quantities are given out to sets in rough equivalence to the amount of defense they have natively, and therefore, if we operate under the assumption that all sets are balanced, DDR would similarly scale with the amount of native defense that each set has.

Of course, as you probably know, I'm an advocate of Castle being substantially more liberal with debuff resistances than he has shown a predilection for being, so anything I say here is probably going to show that prejudice rather strongly, not to mention that I, personally, believe that EA is still a bit too weak even after the Energy Drain improvement (I'd love to see Conserve Power get the Energize treatment and have it be turned into a 20 second 7.5% +def or 25% +res buff on a 180 second timer with the token end redux still there to prevent breaking the cottage rule; adding a little bit of energy damage to nearby enemies would also be an interesting addition but not entirely necessary).

Considering it's primarily a defense based set (with a couple tricks thrown in to diversify it a bit), EA is pretty low on the DDR scale.

Shield (ignoring double stack Active Defense or HO slotting), which actually has less defense than EA with 59.1% DDR.

Invuln, which has less defense than EA even with saturated Invinc and more diverse survivability mechanisms, has 50% DDR.

SR, with it's almost sole focus on defense, has capped (95%) DDR.

EA, which is primarily defense based with a tad bit of resistance and an ignorable to moderate heal based on the number of nearby enemies, has only 51.9% DDR. Considering it's a set that relies extremely heavily on defense in order to survive, one could easily make the argument that EA is in need of some more DDR (among other things).

I would definitely recommending going for defense emphasis over regen emphasis if you're looking to make yourself survivable. Defense would help you dodge mez effects (which are a major problem for humanform Khelds imo), not to mention that it's the strongest defensive effect you can get from IOs, especially since you've already got respectable damage recovery from Essence Boost and Reform Essence (which, with a decent bit of recharge is going to net you ~25 or more hp/sec).

Personally, I think that they big 4 accolades are fine as is. Every single one of my numerous 50s has them. They generally get the Atlas Medallion in their early 30s, TFC in their late 30s, FPR anywhere between 30 and 40 (whenever I decide to get a team together to hunt Fake Nems for 15-20 mins in PI), and Portal Jockey shortly before 50 because I like running through my own Maria arc.

I wouldn't be antagonistic to the idea of other, additional accolades though, especially if they added nice little bonuses such as small amounts of debuff and/or mez resistance (not protection) or +rech. They shouldn't be game breaking (i.e. giving passive mez protection), but they should be nice. The best way to come up with numbers is to assume that absolutely everyone will have or get them and go from there. A passive 10% +rech bonus for an accolade would be fine but a passive 50% resistance to all mez effects would be massively overpowered.

Well, considering that Energy Aura (~26% +def, 10% +res, and a pretty powerful self heal) has more diverse survivability mechanisms than */SR (which pretty much only has 30% +def and ~20% +res from the scaling resists), it makes sense that it should be affected by def debuffs a bit more than */SR.

Before anyone thinks to make it seem like I'm suggesting that EA and SR are even close to the same level of effectiveness, I don't believe so. I'm just saying that it makes sense that EA should get hurt by def debuffs more than SR because SR has more of a focus on defense than EA.

On a */Regen Scrapper, getting more regen is rather pointless because of the comparative improvement of regen decreases as you get more (5 more hp is is a 100% improvement when you've got 5 hp/sec but only a 5% improvement when you've got 100 hp/sec), not to mention that you actually get just as much, if not more, more hp/sec from your click powers than from simple regen.

On a */regen Scrapper, I generally aim for 50-60 hp/sec passive regeneration because investing IO effort into improving mitigation pays out much higher dividends. Essentially, just slot the regen powers that actually have decent payouts and don't aim for any set bonuses. The same applies for */WP.

For any other Scrapper secondary, I would aim for 25-30 hp/sec at the very minimum, though, to me, it's more important to set a goal number for damage mitigation and just get as much tangential damage recovery as you can along the way.

Considering it's a single model (huge, male, and female all use the same granite armor) with a single combat mode (no flight), it would be one extra animation for absolutely everything than can be used with it. So, not as much as some things but way more than others.

I dunno... I could see it being reasonably balanced to have it act as MoG meets Shield Charge. The longer recharge time would prevent abuse as an attack and the set could actually use a bit of a survivability boost to bring it up to Shield Defense's level. Giving it a decent end cost (10.3 is standard for click powers) and no +recov or +end would probably make it work rather well.

Except that the closest parallel to the power you're attempting to turn it into is MoG. The comparison stands because it's comparing apples to apples: the AT the power is used by doesn't matter within the confines of the change.

First off, MoG is only on a 20% shorter timer and doesn't have any of the offensive benefits. Secondly, you've obviously never had to deal with MoG because it has an animation that lasts nearly 3 seconds, eating up almost 10% of the time of the power; RotP has an incredibly short cast time and the "root" still allows you the full ability to attack (of course, you should also notice that I recommended removing that penalty). Third, heals scale with base HP; the proportion of the effect stays the same (you might as well claim that you're not allowed to make comparisons between Tank shields and Scrappers shields because the Scrapper shields are smaller). Fourth, the mez protections are blatantly unneeded because the only thing MoG covers that isn't already covered by Integration is Repel (which only exists in PvP). Fifth, MoG have +recov but RotP actually grants more endurance by directly granting endurance to the user.


You obviously didn't actually look at it within context because the "nonexistent" was there only as a lowball option to prevent the power from being MoG with a substantial heal, nuke, and AoE mez, which, combined, on the timer it would have, would be way too strong.

Actually, it wouldn't. It would be a reduction all of the effects to make up for the fact that you get to use it while alive. The very reason the power is so strong is that you have to be alive to use it.

First, I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. Healing Flames is a 25% base heal, not 50%. Of course, you probably didn't notice, but the power was actually improved from its original state by making it recharge 20 seconds faster than Reconstruction, so it already provides a massive amount of damage recovery to a set that already has decent damage mitigation capabilities already.

Secondly, the heal in RotP only exists because it is a self rez power. You have to remember that you're functionally asking for the power to be MoG on crack so some sacrifices would have to be made and, considering that FA already has an incredible self heal within it already, it's like that the heal would one of the first attributes to be put up on the chopping block.

Which makes it rather redundant when the set already has Consume (removing virtually all end problems) and the fact that the power is already granting a huge amount of endurance. Besides, if you look at the model for other tier 9 powers, all of them cost a pittance to make up for the fact that they are on long timers and are supposed to be of situational use. The end cost shouldn't be a prohibition against use.

Why would it be a problem to take the auto-hit aspect of the power out? It's not even associated with the actual activation of RotP and, if there were different versions of the power, it would be pretty easy to simply have the power summon a different Phoenix pseudo-pet that uses a version of the attack power without the auto-hit tag. I don't think you quite grasp how the power actually works.

Strange because that's exactly what I recommended, though I don't think it should be to quite the same degree as MoG gets (which is what I think you're attempting to recommend even though MoG only gets 71.3% +def(all types but psi) and 71.3% +res(all but psi) and def/res numbers are granted based upon percentages rather than simple numerical increases).

You have to realize that the power would still be at the exact same strength as it currently is to be used while alive. The entire reason why it is so strong is that you have to be dead to use it. The ability to use it while alive dictates that the power should be substantially weaker, especially when you compare it to the existing powers that you're attempting to model it after (whether you know you're modeling it after those powers or not).

As it stands, you would want the power to become MoG fused with Reconstruction mixed with Shield Charge and a dash of Flashfire all with virtually no real cost to reduce its effectiveness or take away from its current functionality. That's not even remotely balanced.

SJ was taken specifically because the BotZ set bonuses are awesome. I'd still recommend taking a movement power, if only to be able to slot the awesomeness of that set. Taking one of the two transport powers I most recommend most (SS and SJ) is generally a foregone conclusion for the builds I make because, even if you save the power choice, what are you going to save that makes up for it? If you don't take those, you generally lose out on the BotZ sets, which are a great boon to positional defenses.

[quote]2. In the short term there is no way I can afford the +rec uniques you have slotted. Will I be crippled if I drop Stamina before I get them? I will lose .84 end / sec[quote]

Considering you'd be dropping Maneuvers, SJ, and probably Eviscerate to fit Stamina in, I doubt you'd really see much of a loss in end efficiency. If you're still worried about your blue bar, you could always drop Resilience, put the Steadfast unique in Tough, and take Conserve Power (with the default slot only).

You're a regen. You've got damage recovery coming out of your nose. The comparative loss is virtually unnoticeable and you're actually gaining a good deal more survivability thanks to the increased defense. I'm not sure if you noticed, but I didn't slot FH either and that's a substantially stronger power than Health. Neither power is particularly important to a */Regen because you've already got Integration, IH, and Recon pulling way more weight than either of those powers ever will.

Even so, I wouldn't ever slot FU like that. The +tohit is already large enough to allow you to get away with a good deal less acc slotting. The +tohit doesn't need any enhancing to still be awesome. Besides, no matter what you do, it's still an attack first.

MoG has gone through some pretty severe changes over time. If you read a guide that was written prior to Issue 11 (wherein MoG was changed to its current awesome form), you most likely got truthful advice to avoid it like the plague. If you read one a guide that was written post I11 or received advice from another */regen player, that person is a complete idiot and needs to be slapped upside the head repeatedly until the brain damage they're obviously suffering from is corrected.

Current MoG is 15 seconds of complete unkillability that you can get nearly 20% uptime on. I would skip IH before I skipped MoG, and I haven't even designed a build that skipped IH.

If you really want to get funky with applying a penalty to accuracy, the devs could always make it a tohit debuff and, in order to prevent team buffs from rendering the penalty completely nonexistent, tohit buff resistance as well. To make it interesting, you'd probably want to make the tohit debuff roughly 10% and the tohit buff resistance roughly 50% (forcing there to be 20% +tohit in order to achieve normalcy).

Personally, I'd much rather Castle just overhauled Stone Armor completely rather than trying to piddle around with a single power in the set. As it stands, the set is woefully underpowered prior to Granite Armor and painfully overpowered once it acquires it. Of course, many of the current Stone Armor users that love the current set up would probably cry foul if the set were changed in any way so as to discourage or prevent leaving Granite Armor up at all times (or at least, at all times in which a fair to middling level of damage is incoming), which is probably the biggest reason why Castle done anything to it already.

That was one of the problems that BABs brought up in one of the previous discussions of a polearm/quarterstaff set. The part that I brought about the vectors and bends at anchor points was actually something that BABs informed us about in a Katana thread (in which it was asked why the Katana doesn't actually have both hands anchored to the grip) and referenced in a polearm/quarterstaff discussion when someone suggested simply having static gripping points, which would look patently ridiculous.

Well, considering that GC has a faster cycle time, better DPA (which is the only real valid metric of comparison because endurance costs are normalized by damage, which allows you to gauge EPS based on DPA), and better contribution from procs (thanks to animating faster), I would say that GC does trump SotW rather soundly. There isn't any sensible, numeric reason to take SotW over GC.

Actually, there are no standardized rules for that. None whatsoever. Animation time wasn't a considered value when the sets were designed (and are only a consideration for a few sets out there at the moment). Katana isn't even alone in having the tier 1 (i.e. lower damage) attack have better DPA than the tier 2 (i.e. higher damage) attack: Charged Brawl is better than Havok Punch (Elec Melee), Energy Punch is better than Barrage (Energy Melee), and Stone Fist is better than Stone Mallet (Stone Melee). Before the Brawl animation fix (prior to which the punches that currently have .83 sec animation times had .67 sec animation times), Shadow Punch was better than Smite as well. There has never been a "rule" that the "tier 2" attacks had better DPA than the "tier 1" attacks.

Except that, for the exact same number of situations, SotW will waste endurance by requiring a second hit in the exact manner you describe GC requiring a second hit. GC is penalized no more than SotW, so you're bringing up a completely moot point and acting if it is a point in SotW's favor because you don't realize that the exact opposite is just as true.

Which, as I've said, is just as untrue because DPE is a standardized value. The only differences in DPS are generate similar differences in EPS. The only sets that are actually more end efficient are Claws (because that's Claws' secondary effect) and Fire (because the DoT is free damage). Saying that Kat, in general, has fewer end woes than other sets is simply ignorant, especially since, at the top end, it actually costs more because it has a greater baseline DPS than most other sets.

Really? /em facepalm.

First off, I'm not sure you understand what I'm talking about. Katana uses 2 hands on the sword's grip but the sword is only anchored to the left hand. The right hand isn't anchored to anything. It's simply floating in a rough approximation of where it should grip if the sword were actually anchored to it. It's actually possible, if you use quirky enough settings on your character's height, shoulders, and other attributes, to make it so that the right hand is actually passing through the grip of the Katana and holding on to empty air.

The problem isn't so much with having variable anchor points. If that was the problem, it could be solved to some extent by simply extending the length of the haft during the specific animations while the anchor points don't actually change location (because the haft of the polearm would be appear the same throughout the entire action, the fact that you're still gripping the same spot but the size of the haft is, itself, changing in length, it would look like you're gripping it somewhere else).

The problem is that the game engine is currently incapable of making sure that the polearm would remain along the same vector as the original vector. Essentially, if the character had different proportions than the base character BABs used to animate it, the polearm wouldn't be straight, it would be bent at each anchor point because the game can't change the vector of each increment to make sure that it is straight with the other increments.

It's not a question of "needs to be able to tweak the anchor points". It's a question of "needs to figure out how to make sure the haft is actually straight".

That's not 2 anchors. The weapon is actually held on a single anchor and the other hand simply passes through. This is the same mechanism that is used to make it seem like you're holding a Katana or Ninja Blade in two hands. If there were 2 anchors, for every variation in anchors except for the "baseline", the portion of the weapon above the 1st grip would skew off at a different vector than the portion between the two grips which would then skew off at a different vector than the portion below the second.

As BABs has told us, the single biggest thing that is preventing the design and implementation of a polearm set is the fact that having a weapon that is supposed to be completely straight anchored to two points looks really, really bad thanks to engine constraints. I'm reasonably sure that BABs (and the other programmers/animators) could generate a workaround, but the amount of work is probably pretty huge.

I'm not sure, but I kinda want you to describe what this puppet looks like...