Umbral

You've obviously never been to Texas. The difference between an Austin Texan and a rural Texan are about as large in scale as you can get (if you've ever been to Berkeley, California; Austin is like a larger version of it). This completely ignores the fact that there are large tech companies (such as Dell and HP) nestled less than 30 minutes from cattle ranches and military bases all over the place.

Saying I'm from Texas will tell you almost nothing except the weather.

I play on +2/x8 and never really have a problem. Of course, I can still empathize with you because, when he gets in trouble, he goes down fast (though I have Hasten, so I have a decent bit of overlap between when the power recharges and when he dissipates in case he dies before his time is up).

You forgot the 15 seconds of untouchability. The best suggestion would be to simply have 2 completely different functions within the single power: one that operates if you're dead and another that operates if you're alive. The dead effect would be stronger (re: as it is now), and the live effect would be a limited version of the dead effect (smaller to nonexistent heal, smaller to nonexistent end gain, no untouchable, not autohit, no debt protection) with some of the self-rez penalties removed (no self immobilize, potential +def/+res).

Not directly, but if you slot a Dam/Mez HO, the Dark Servant will receive both resistance and damage enhancement. Unless there is some arcane mechanism that prevents Chill of the Night from receiving enhancement increases without the tag (Dark Servant Resistance already ignores enhancements and buffs), a Peroxisome Exposure will actually increase the damage that the Dark Servant deals. City of Data would support this conclusion.

I never really have much problem keeping the fluffy alive on my Dark/Ice 'fender except for those times when I'm corner pulling with Darkest Night and Steve (as I have named him) decides he needs to go play with all of the guys that I decided to pull, before they get to the corner I'm at (this is, of course, the reason I plan on getting Recall Friend). In a fight in which he doesn't decide to take the alpha, I never really have a problem keeping him alive because he almost never gets hit because he and I are flooring everyone's chance to hit with our collective tohit debuffs (Darkest Night, Fearsome Stare, Chill of the Night, not to mention Maneuvers and Shadow Fall increasing defense).

Of course, I never played with Dark Miasma before the Dark Servant's AI tweak (though that's not the reason I chose to play Dark Miasma now), so I don't have the experience to compare his current survivability to his past survivability, but I rarely have a problem keeping him alive.

No.

Well, the first thing you have to realize is that Mids' is simply generating a sum value based off of your tohit buffs and acc mods based on the chance to hit calculator. It just plugs everything into this formula and pops out a number:

((1 + PowerAccMod)*(1+AccMods)*(75 + ToHitMods)) = Output

Now, the goal number you want to aim for with this formula depends heavily on what enemies you plan on fighting. If you plan on only fighting enemies that are even level, you only need to have 95% as your output (since the baseline assumption of the formula is that you're fighting an enemy with a base 75% chance to hit). If you plan on fighting enemies that are higher level, you'll need more: +1s would require 110%, +2s would require 128%, +3s would require 149%, and +4s would require 183%.

If you want to check my math or figure out how I got them, these numbers were generated by dividing the base baseChanceToHit (.75) divided by the level modified baseChanceToHit (.65 for +1, .56 for +2, .48 for +3, and .39 for +4) which is them multiplied by the desired chance to hit (.95). The logic behind this formula is that the Mids' number accounts for tohit and acc in the same manner by multiplying through to generate a tohit chance before the clamp is applied.

The only time this will not actually generate an accurate value is when a power that has a power acc mod of below zero (such as a controller's AoE hold), does not have any acc enhancement or global acc buffs, and is using only tohit buffs to achieve the desired 95% chance to hit. If you're curious as to why this case is so, it is because a clamp is applied to the pre-accMod chance to hit, preventing it from having a value over .95, which would be required for any attack with a total acc value below 1 to have a 95% chance to hit. The chances of this happening are pretty rare though (i.e. no acc slotting and no global acc buffs with only giant amounts of tohit buffs) and only apply to a very small minority of attacks, so the value can be used as an accurate measure of potential accuracy across most situations as long as you have the appropriate information with which to interpret Mids' output.

Then don't bring up poor design decisions that exist only to assuage your personal distaste for similar attacks as if they were, somehow, optimal choices. I honestly don't give a damn if you prefer SotW over GC. It doesn't makes a difference to me. I take offense at your inaccurate and false attempts to make it seem like SotW is actually a numerically superior choice.

Because. A. Single. Power. Was. Changed.

Read what you are saying rather than complaining that I'm not reading. I am reading what you're saying, and and what you're saying is that the change to a single power on a long recharge (20 seconds is a long base recharge for an attack, no matter how you attempt to obfuscate it) somehow fundamentally altered the way in which the entire set operated (it didn't, unless the entire operation of the set was built around ET's borkedness). That's like insisting that changing Frozen Aura so that it actually did damage fundamentally altered the way the entire set operated.

Of course, I keep forgetting that if you have redundant powers and use all of them to the point of peak end efficiency, you'll get different efficiencies.

The difference you're attempting to make isn't nearly as substantial as you're attempting to make it seem, though. BS attacks cost more per activation but Kat makes more activations per time frame so the actual difference in endurance efficiency is incredibly small. You'd get more ground with the argument bringing up Fire's higher end efficiency since it actually has a mechanism that differentiates its dam/end consumption beyond the abstract of efficiency of use.

You'd be surprised how little the build up chains actually matter since the attack strings are already based upon getting the most out of the specific attacks. It's not a PvP build either, so it's not like there is a specific need to extract as much damage from the 10 second period as possible.

So you're advocating taking the the worse of two powers specifically because it deals more damage per activation but deals less damage over time (which makes even less sense because SotW is just as likely to have wasted damage as GC is not have enough)? You're acting like wasting 3 points of endurance is some kind of cardinal sin. This is a Kat/WP IO build. Endurance is one of the last things you need to worry about since you're already packing Stamina and QR, along with end redux in all of your attacks. There is no need to make choices that purposefully decrease your top end performance to allow you to have some arbitrary ability to save a couple point of endurance that were going to be wasted anyway because you're already dancing around with infinite endurance sustainability.

Quit trying to act as if there were some modicum of intelligence in what is obviously bad advice. SotW is, by far, the worse attack compared to GC, no matter how you try to spin it.

Of course, it's also not the same as some loser who keeps ******** that people that building intelligently are losers because he doesn't understand the math that's actually involved in the decision. If you want to ***** about the optimization choices that other people have made (and recommended you take so that you'd actually achieve the performance you want), look at the ******* system and attempt to learn it before you immediately abandon all notion of the recommendations we're giving you ever being grounded in intelligence rather than rote repetition.

Well, first off, I'm pretty sure that most of the min/maxer's would actually agree that generating optimized builds is fun, albeit a completely different kind of fun. We realize that we're playing a game that uses superheroes as the mechanism to achieve the fantastic. We focus on the "game" aspect more than the "superhero" aspect, because, at least to people like me, playing the game is the fun part; the superheroes are just a tool to enjoy it. You, on the other hand, focus almost entirely on the "superhero" aspect and then ***** about the "game" part interfering with what you think your superhero should be. You don't get to say "**** the game, I'm making the superhero I want," and then immediately ***** about the superhero you made not performing to the level that you wanted it to.

You mentioned wanting to run at +3/x6 in your previous thread and, when we told you that you would need to pack in the defense, you ran away whining and screaming. Now that we're still telling you the same thing, you're now insulting us because you don't have a ******* clue about what the hell we're talking about or why we're recommending certain courses of action beyond the fact that Maneuvers gives you defense.

Please, if you want to build for concept, build for concept, realize you're not going to be as badass as you could possibly be, and quit attempting to insult us here (seeing as it's a rather lackluster attempt to insult us when you don't even have a clue what you're talking about in the first place and can only come up with calling us "losers" for being good at something; very "high school" of you).

If you want to build for effectiveness, you may need to realize that you're not going to get your concept down on the first try. You're probably going to have to make some sacrifices, most of which are probably pretty easy to modify your concept to account for anyways, but you will get a character that laughs in the face of overwhelming evil because he's just that awesome. You'll also want to actually start learning the system so you're not just recreating what we tell you from rote, unless you're okay with being left behind whenever anything changes.

No matter which option you go with, quit attempting to make it seem like you've got the "superior" or "more pure" playstyle and play around with Mids' a bit so you don't seem like such a glorious dumb-*** trying to get the people that have a skill you don't have to do all of the work for you.

Tier matters only within the context of powerset design, not within the context of power design. There is a significant difference between the two that most people don't grasp. Is Unyielding more powerful than Indomitable Will? It's pretty hard to argue since, even though they perform the same function (mez protection), they have disparate effects (Indomitable Will provides more types of mez prot while Unyielding provides more survivability). Their tiers are different but the powers are functionally balanced (especially within the confines of the powerset as a whole).

The fact that KO Blow recharges slower than the other equivalent tier 9s (which, could, in and of itself, be due to the fact that it has 2 full powered secondary effects) isn't due to early positioning. If that were true, every power that was a different tier than "normal" would be modified accordingly (re: QR and FH in WP and Regen). KO Blow recharges slower because the powerset as a whole is completely borked by the presence of Rage (which is disgustingly imbalancing) which functionally gives all of the attacks that are ever used by the set a 41% increase in damage (175% +dam compared to 95% +dam) and the fact that the power needed to be modified in this way (thanks to heuristic balancing) simply demonstrates why SS is such a bad powerset to determine precedent by.

The entire point I was attempting to make (way back when) was that SS is, by virtue of the fact that it already breaks rules in virtually every power in order to attain some semblance of balance, a horrible powerset to be comparing anything to where balance is concerned. Comparing EM to it in an attempt to make specific powers appear in need of retrofit is an exercise in futility since SS as a whole would need a retrofit before any of the powers in it could be considered balanced individually.

So, changing the animation time of a single power on a long recharge fundamentally altered the entire feel of the power set for you? You're precisely the kind of person I'm describing. You may not want to admit it, but you were attempting to continue using ET at every possible interval rather than at times in which it would be used to take down harder targets. That is explicitly refusing to learn to use it at more opportune time.

Even up to the point where ET got the animation time change, EM was one of the most popular PvE sets because it offered such excellent ST damage (and tangential control potential via the chances to stun). PvE isn't all about AoE damage for everyone (and not even for all number crunchers because many people rolled EM because they loved the pink pom-poms). People that were building EM Tankers for PvE specifically knew that EM wasn't a great AoE machine (Whirling Hands' abysmal performance has been known for a long time), but it was inordinately good at ST damage (thanks to ET being the be-all-end-all of DPA), which made them go for it still. The fact that you, functionally, got 2 tier 9s, one of which was better than any tier 9 out there because it hit so hard and so fast, kept people coming knowing that they were sacrificing AoE damage. Hell, people still rolled DM for PvE before it got the changes to MG and Siphon because it was good at ST damage and completely sucked at AoE damage (which it still does).

Yeah, that was my bad. I'm used to dealing with the Blaster versions of the powers which have different damage values for Energy Punch and Bonesmasher. Even so, Tanker TF is still a massive blowhard of a power when you realize that it is a tier 9 being compared to the tier 2 and 3 attacks of the set, when virtually every other tier 9 ST attack power (except for Eagles' Claw) easily outclasses the lower tier ST attacks within the set (and the reason for TF's ***-tasticnes is due exclusively to an excessive animation time).

The fact that changing the animation time of a single, long recharge power changes so much about the set as a whole tells me that you were relying on ET completely too much. The animation time of the power was changed to not make it a whole magnitude better than any other attack in the game. No set needs to have an attack that has a DPA completely that outclasses even nukes in order to be playable. The fact that so many people feel as if the set is completely different and no longer playable because that one power was brought back down from the stratosphere should tell you something about how much the power needed to be brought back down.

Gah. >.< Remind me not to trust what numbers I remember off the top of my head. I did my internal DPA comparison based off of GC having an Arcanatime of 1.056, not .924 (bad Umbral). I keep forgetting just how insanely fast GC is (and I remember when all of the tier 1 attacks were that fast...).

Even so, it's still all the more reason to not even bother touching SotW. GC utterly destroys it on all counts (reminds me of how I'm always telling people off of Havok Punch in favor of Charged Brawl for the exact same reasons).

Actually, GC is better than SotW. SotW takes up more time in your attack string, thereby reducing the overall contributive DPS of SD and GD, which are your real money makers. SotW might have better DPA, but GC allows you to have better DPS with your attack string overall.

Since base DPE is a standard value, the only powerset that actually is "very good on endurance" is Claws/* specifically because it is designed to cost less and recharge faster than the other sets. Kat/* is just as hard on the blue bar as BS/* and every other set out there.

Awww... sounds like someone is jealous. Don't worry Turg, not all of us can live where the weather is actually decent year round.

And, of course, this conversation is held within the confines of the situation in which you are lying on the floor dead and the "loser" is standing over your corpse waiting for you to finish making another wakie because his build was substantially more survivable than yours.

Comically, enough, it's not hard to get Flight because it's so easy to switch it out for Leaping (Hover + Flight is pretty much the exact equivalent of CJ + Leaping), so I don't think I'd ever find someone who was complaining that they'd have to get rid of Flight for Fighting.

If you're going to be going for concept over effectiveness, don't complain when everyone tells you you're not as effective as you could be. Some of us don't really care as much about concept as you (or are willing to modify our concept to allow for certain choices that are more effective), and, interestingly enough, it doesn't really behoove you to attempt to insult our playstyle when you are asking us to help you out because you're incapable of operating within the system on your own.

Suffice it to say that, if you don't like what everyone is telling you about how to be most effective, don't complain when they tell you that the explicit reason that you're going to be less effective than you want is your recalcitrance to accept that strict adherence to concept will oftentimes inhibit performance. Learn to play around with the numbers on your own if you don't like what we're telling you and learn it yourself. We're not forcing you to play our way, much less forcing you to abandon your concept in the face of gaining the survivability you seem to be demanding. It's not our fault that we say you're an idiot when you ask us to jump up and touch the sky while wearing concrete blocks on our feet.

Actually, he doesn't heat it at all. That's why a single lump of coal is enough to last for 6 generations.

That depends entirely upon what other powers were reordered to get those powers available at the different levels. If I was playing a Tanker and the powerset was forcing me to wait forever on Taunt in order to get Footstomp asap, I'd probably play the other first because I need to get aggro before I begin bothering with AoE damage.

And would you be willing to have KO Blow be weakened to account for the fact that it is actually available 3 tiers earlier than it should be? EM has to wait until the same level as everyone else in order to have the same ST focus powers available to it. SS gets its best ST damage power significantly earlier than everyone else. By your own logic, KO Blow should actually be weakened because it is available earlier.

You're completely missing the point of what I was saying anyways. I've met people that absolutely love talking about how Footstomp is balanced because it is a tier 9 power, even though it has twice the area of effect that it should with its damage, and end and recharge costs. What tier it is has nothing its capabilities. Those values are governed by a completely different calculation that doesn't give a hairless rat whether it's tier 9 or tier 3 (Spine Burst breaks the rules in the exact same way and is a tier 3). In the design and evaluation of a power, it doesn't matter what tier a power is as long as the powers that are more fundamental to the operation of the powerset are lower in tier.

Dark Melee is definitely worse at AoE damage than EM. Dark Melee has a tiny area of effect, horrible activation time, and half the number of potential targets, not to mention that Soul Drain and Dark Consumption are both on recharge times that are long enough to prohibit real contribution to AoE capability. MA is just as bad at AoE damage as EM (they both have only a single AoE that does nearly the same amount of damage; MA is only slightly better because of the animation time is better on DT) and is actually worse at ST damage.

With this, I'm not saying that EM doesn't need to have its AoE capability improved; I'm just trying to put its AoE woes into perspective.

Actually,





Actually, I'm making it exactly as complicated as it needs to be especially since you insist on using SS as the model of balance (which, on a power-for-power basis, it's the absolute worst set to use for this purpose). Balance is a complex process. The fact that many people are frustrated with EM has nothing to do with the fact that it is presumed to be weak. They're frustrated with it due to the fact that it is weaker than it used to be and now has to be played in a different manner. It's for these same reasons that */Regen no longer sees the number of players that it used to.

The people that have shelves their EM toons because of the change to a single power are doing so because they're not willing to change the times in which they used the power. People still use Greater Fire Sword, Headsplitter, 1k Cuts, and Eagles Claw even though those powers all take a long time to animate and oftentimes result in wasted animation time because their target is already dead. The players that use those powers have learned to minimize target deaths during animation by specifically hitting healthy targets that aren't near death. The fact that people are used to using ET against targets already at half health and taking them out completely are now having to deal with the fact that their targets are dying before they get to finish their animation is due to people having to learn to adjust the use of the power. ET is still a really good power. It's just not one you would want to use immediately against every enemy on the planet.

You're also assuming that "many" people are intelligent and didn't just take EM because it was the flavor of the month. EM was insanely popular because it was doing boatloads more DPS than was capable with other sets (oftentimes allowing a Tanker to deal just as much damage as a Scrapper). Now that ET has been brought down in effectiveness and no one is shouting out its virtues from the rooftops, it has fallen from favor. That doesn't mean the set is broken. It's still a top contender for ST damage and has an excellent secondary effect. Even if the devs did increase its AoE damage, I still doubt it would see a resurgence in play just because it's not as awesome as it used to be. The same would happen if */Shield or */WP were brought down in effectiveness to be more balanced with other sets.

I wouldn't actually recommending giving TF some AoE capability. The problem with TF is that it takes too long to animate. Its DPA is utterly atrocious. Honestly, I think its damage needs to get a free upgrade (i.e. no increase to end or rech time) to account for the fact that it takes more than a second longer to animate than any other melee tier 9 attack power (except for 1k Cuts, which gets a pass because it's a cone and a DoT). Either that or the animation needs to be sped up to give it a better DPA so that there is actually a point to using it in an ST attack string.

I'd probably just take Melt Armor rather than Fire Blast because Fire Blast is going to do you virtually no good.

With no +def powers (and thereby no LotG +rech IOs), you're not going to be particularly resilient since virtually all damage is going to be getting through to you. You'd be only slightly more survivable than a Fire/Regen with SOs and you'd also be devoting a lot more animation time to using your click powers.

Perma-DP is pretty much a must but Perma-Hasten isn't really all that great, especially when compared to what you could manage if you're willing to allow for a ~10 second downtime in exchange for a host of defense.

By the way, have you looked into getting Mids' Hero Planner? Might make it easier if you want to ever actually post a build rather than a list of powers. You might want to try messing around with it a bit yourself to see what you can come up with yourself rather than just asking other people to give you a build that fulfills your rather stringent requirements.

Enhancing Fluffy for recharge is pretty redundant since recharging him faster doesn't do anything unless you plan on him dying more often. Endurance is similarly pointless since he costs about .11 end/sec unless he's dying often.

I'd probably go with 3 Endoplasm Exposures and 3 Dark Watcher's Despair (Debuff, Debuff/Rech, Debuff/End). You'd get 95% acc, 95% hold, 95% immob, 54% debuff, 1.5% +hp and 2.5% +recov out of that. Conversely, you could go with 2 Peroxisomes, 2 Touch of the Nictus (Heal, Acc/Heal), and 2 Siphon Insight (Debuff, Acc/Debuff). That combination would net you 53% acc, 66.6% dam, 66.6% hold, 66.6% immob, 69% heal, 41% debuff, and a 1.88% +hp set bonus. Fluffy is just so wonderful it's hard to think of only a way that slots him so as to augment all of his wonderful attributes.

You get 15 seconds of untouchability with RotP. RotP has a 1.5 second (1.716 sec Arcanatime) activation time, Fire Shield has a 1.67 second (1.848 Arcanatime) activation time, and Plasma Shield has a 3 second (3.168 Arcanatime) activation time. Those are the only armors that FA actually has natively. Presuming you also need to turn on CJ (0.0 sec Arcanatime), Tough (3.3 sec Arcanatime), and Weave (.924 sec Arcanatime), you still have slightly more than 4 seconds of untouchability after RotP. That's quite a decent bit of time to be completely immune to everything, but still be able to attack, especially since both WP (which has more toggles than FA) and Regen (which has no protection at all while it stands up) don't benefit from untouchability whatsoever.

This also completely ignores that, if the power were able to be used at full strength while alive, you'd be similarly immune to damage and effects while not having any need to retoggle anything. Being able to use the power at full strength while alive would be stupidly overpowered.

The main reason is because you'll get a lot better enhancement values from the 6 piece sets that I mentioned as well. Kinetic Combat and Smashing Haymaker will underenhance the attacks you put them into so you're sacrificing the functionality of those powers to fuel those set bonuses when you would be getting full power functionality from slotting the positional defense sets while getting the same functional defenses.

In general, when given the option to choose between typed and positional, I always go with positional at the top end because there are more, better options for getting those set bonuses that don't reduce the native effectiveness of the powers unless the powerset in question already has a preference for typed defenses (like WP, Invuln, or Ice).

Is it okay to laugh at all of you and taunt you with the fact that I'm currently wearing shorts and the AC is turned on?

It depends upon the enemies you're fighting and what tohit you already have available. Without any tohit or def debuffs, you would need 26.7% +acc to have a 95% chance to hit an even level enemy. Under the same conditions, you would need 46% +acc for a +1 enemy, 69% +acc for a +2 enemy, 98% +acc for a +3 enemy, and 144% +acc for a +4 enemy. Toss in 10% +tohit (or 10% -def or any combination of the two that sums to 10%) and those number would instead be 11%, 26.7%, 44%, and 64%.

The reason for this is because players have a base chance to hit dependent upon their level in relation to their target. Attacking an even level enemy has a 75% chance to succeed. +1 has a 65% chance to succeed. The other values are on the first data table (entitled "Level-Based BaseHitChance
for Players Attacking Critters") on this Paragonwiki page. This base chance tohit is modified by the defense of the target (negative defense increases it while positive defense decreases it) and your tohit (positive increases the number and negative decreases the number) and then multiplied by your total acc modifier (which is itself the sum of your power's acc enhancement and global acc multiplied by the natural accuracy of the power itself).

I would actually love this idea to be implemented for all of the self rez powers, though I'd first like to qualify it a bit.

One of the big reasons why the self-rezzes are so potent is because they can only be used when you're already dead (numbers are for Scrappers). That's why RotP has such a significant stun (mag 4, 8.3 second), such nice damage (111 damage compared to Shield Charge's 133), and the incredibly powerful untouchable benefit. That's also why Resurgence has such huge buff numbers (100% +rech, 28% +dam, 21% +tohit). Every single one of the self rezzes (except for Revive, which is utterly pitiful) has substantial benefits attached to it.

To balance out the ability to use them while alive, it's most likely that the devs would reduce the effectiveness of the powers when used while alive (potentially based on a sliding scale based on your current hp with them being more powerful at lower health akin to the SR passives). They would most likely have a limited heal, less damage, and probably less or none of the other effects of the rezzes.