Umbral

Damn straight.

The problem isn't AAOs theme. The problem is AAO's numbers. AAO simply allows you to get too much +dam to equate to its "lower survivability". The fact that you're already killing things 20-30% faster just because you're in melee with them already means that you don't need as much survivability. The +dam buff is honestly what needs to be reigned in in order to make almost any other set out there a truly viable option in the endgame (for Scrappers; Brute SD is a joke because of +dam dilution and Tankers don't really get much out of SD in the endgame, considering that they're designed around taking hits).

I don't really care how it's done as long as the end result is that AAO can't maintain perma-BU +dam levels just because it's surrounded. I doubt the target cap would get diminished (since the -dam is also a useful attribute and it's the taunt aura regardless), so the best solution is likely to simply reduce the size of the +dam buff itself (I would leave the "base" +dam alone and reduce the stacking buff to only 3% so that it gives you 15.5% with a single target and caps at 42.5% with 10).

Other things to note:

While Concentrated Strike does not crit, it instead provides instantaneous recharge for Power Siphon. If you don't think that is way more awesome than getting a crit, you're hallucinating because Power Siphon is a beast.

For the longer animating powers, the root times (which are what is listed under activation time) are not the same as the animation time (which must be completed before the power begins recharging). This means that Concentrated Strike, Burst, and Focused Burst all begin recharging before they finish their animations (something that others and I dearly hope the devs will start doing to other sets as well).

And, like most of the time, the majority is simply wrong. KM is actually a very good performer from a numerical perspective. The attacks are actually quite fast, regardless of the player perception of them and they have remarkably high DPAs overall. Even more, the -dam is an incredibly powerful secondary effect that makes KM an excellent AV soloing set.

Because everything else that it's already packing (like that massive dose of permanent +dam) doesn't more than make up for the fact that it's got lower base survivability (and doesn't get the pittance of +rech that comes with rolling SR). SD is a beast even without IOs. The entire argument that it's somehow balanced around having lower survivability to make up for the higher damage capabilities gets thrown out the window rather quickly when you realize that the additional damage you're getting allows you to kill things substantially faster than they're able to kill you. It doesn't matter if you have lower survivability if the additional damage capacity you get let's you kill things fast enough that your lower survivability doesn't matter (which is definitely true where SD is concerned) and, in fact, actually provides you with a higher level of survivability because you're exposed to such a proportionately small amount of damage.

If SR is actually allowed to maintain even remotely close to the same degree of survivability (which, when you're softcapped, pretty much means "how much DDR do you have?"), while maintaining every other imaginable advantage, there's not much point in arguing balance. SD is massively overpowered. I've played SD, and I've crunched the numbers for it. It doesn't matter how you try to spin it: SD is overpowered (why do you think everyone and their cousin is putting together builds and/or toons with SD?) and not by a little bit.

Scaled +def would be a horrible idea, especially if we're talking about IOing prospects since the primary problem with */SR is the fact that +def is already so easy to get ahold of. It's also completely counter to the entire idea behind the scaling resistances, which were meant to soften the blows as you get lower on health, because, unlike almost every other set out there, SR can't rely on its mitigation mechanisms to perform in the short term.

Honestly, the best solution isn't to find some magical way to buff SR. SR is fine as is (if not a bit too strong thanks to virtual immunity to defense debuffs). What needs to be done is bringing SD down to sane levels of performance. Simply removing the ability to enhance the DDR in Active Defense with HOs would go a long ways toward doing that (though that would require Castle actually deciding that his new sets shouldn't blow everything else out of the water).

The problem with this use of Snipes is that it makes them massively situational. The only time you would ever use a snipe is to open combat, assuming that no one else has. Once a fight has begun, there is no point in using a snipe because of the bad DPA. While this tactic works well for other games, it doesn't work well for CoX because powers, and attack powers especially, represent a larger investment than they do in other games. You have to specifically choose to take the Snipe power rather than being given it and you then have to spend power slots on it to make it even remotely viable.

In all honestly, all powers like this (Assassin's attacks and snipes; i.e. those attacks that are useless unless they're explicitly used to open up a fight) should be changed into viable attacks to use in mid-combat to offset the comparatively high costs of making them useful and their limited usefulness even then thanks to the fact that they're some of the incredibly small number of interruptable attacks in the game. They would be much better attacks (i.e. actually taken as used as more than a curiousity) if they were simply given damage to make their DPAs viable and the primary prohibitive factors for their use were their recharge and risk, rather than simply having the situation itself be the primary limiting factor of effectiveness.

The devs have come out and said that it's a server side issue. The problem stems from having so many entities on the map, all active (i.e. have seen a player and have entered combat mode), and all using a server intensive power (the version of Phalanx Fighting/Grant Cover the Cimerorans have). In order to mitigate the massive lag, the devs would need to either remove a large portion of the enemies along the path (i.e. all of those mobs that everyone and their cousin skips 99.99% of the time) or change the power in question so that it doesn't each up so much server capability.

If you're ever getting a lot of lag, there is actually a very simple method for getting around it: kill everything that you see as you see it. Absolutely everything, from the guys on the arches to the patrols. By killing the enemies in question, you prevent them from using the power that eats up so many server processes. The times I've run the ITF kawg (kill as we go), we've never had a problem with lag because there were never enough enemies around.

Sleep already has an advantage: it's a very low "value" control that, when used properly, is incredibly powerful. Sleeps get to have twice the uptime that stuns do, which are themselves allowed to be up substantially more often than holds. Making them better is kind of pointless, especially when you look at what you can do if you play intelligently with sleeps already.

The problem with Snipes isn't that they provide little on teams. They provide little overall because you're exposing yourself to a good bit of risk (i.e. interruptible animation). The only times it's valuable to use a snipe is to open up a fight and that's assuming that no one else is gonna charge ahead in front of you. The problem with snipes is the completely horrible DPA that makes it completely pointless to use the attack at virtually any time because you'll get better damage with less risk in the same time just by using your other attacks. A better solution, rather than attempting to make them akin to the assassination attacks (which suffer from the exact same problems) is to simply increase the damage (and, by extension, the recharge and endurance costs) to make them a numerically valuable attack, much like the Dominator snipes were tweaked (4.28 base damage and 20 sec recharge compared to 3.48 base damage and 12 sec recharge). Of course, I would go further and just increase them to a 30 sec recharge to give them very substantial DPAs to justify the risk of being interrupted.

Honestly, it's overpowered, but that's because you're vastly understating one specific power (and, even then, it's only because of this one power that you'd be doing anything other than dying). Of course, you're also making a horrible set for the same reason because you're vastly overstating other attributes and completely ignoring playability.

-Dam doesn't work the same way as -res (i.e. the effect is reduced proportionately by the resistance of the attribute to be reduced). The end resistance of a target is what resists the -dam effect. Essentially, if a target has 70% +res, you would reduce their outgoing damage by only 24.5% with a 35% -dam effect. Even with the 8% -res factored in, you would only manage a 26.46% reduction in outgoing damage. And that's assuming you're fighting even level targets: if you were ever fighting higher level targets, the effect would get further reduced thanks to the Purple Patch.

On the same note, -rech is largely a useless attribute that you're giving untoward value to. It's only particularly useful in large numbers and, even then, it's not going to contribute a lot because it's not going to reduce incoming damage by the amount you suggest: enemies have more than a single attack. Because of this, you're not going to see a particularly impressive reduction in outgoing damage simply because enemies already don't use attacks they've got. If you reduce their recharge, you simply make them start using their other attacks rather than the 1-3 that they normally use to beat your face in.

Now, concerning the damage recovery mechanisms, what's the point of the 5% auto-heal power? Regeneration already does that pretty much explicitly (natural regeneration is provided by providing you with 5% ticks of you max hp; +regen just speeds them up). Base regeneration is one tick every 12 seconds. You're essentially providing 600% +regen from a single toggle (which is ridiculously powerful, especially if that's supposed to be base value).

The biggest problem with the set, however, is one of playability: it's the primary problem with making any debuff oriented armor set. Debuffs are affected by the purple patch and enemy resistances, which means that they're going to do virtually nothing on hard targets, which are the targets that you honestly need a tank for.

What's worse, you've functionally designed a set that doesn't even have a decent amount of mitigation to act as a foundation for the set as a whole: the only effects that scale with the danger of your foe are direct mitigation effects (i.e. defense and resistance), which you only have on targets that are away from you (by providing yourself with AoE and Ranged defense), nor do you have any resistance to debuffs, which, if you've actually played around with an armor set and looked at the debuffs that get tossed at you, is something of massive importance. The only set that doesn't get debuff resistance is */Regen and it gets hammered by debuffs when they're present (just ask a */Regen to recall the last time they fought enemies with -rech or -regen; a stream of expletives will ensue).

Another major problem is that you're creating a massively bad set design by making some powers absolutely required to do anything (Infrared Pulse) while having others that are largely a joke (Polymerization), and others that are completely useless if you attempt to do anything other than even level radio missions (Photodisintegration, Ionizing Aura). On that same note, too many of the powers are attempting to do too much, which creates massive problems with slotting: virtually every power except for Immunity Boost and Photofission would require 6 slots to be effective (and even those require 3-4 slots each). You'd run out of slots ridiculously fast.

What you're forgetting is that tanks are already team oriented defense characters that make the enemies their opponents face less dangerous by forcing them to attack the tank themselves. It's kind of pointless to suggest that the tank is somehow making the enemies in melee range of them weaker as a way to protect their allies when they're already doing that by generating massive threat thanks to taunt auras and gauntlet.

If you honestly wanted to build a debuff oriented set that actually works from both functionality and playability perspectives, you need to provide a baseline of mitigation that operates regardless of what is thrown at you and then have the debuff effects operate as the additional effects that bring you in line with other armor sets. A better design would be to have a suite of armor toggles and passives (to provide baseline mitigation that scales), a mez toggle, and then fill the rest out with debuff powers (remember, all auras are going to be taunt auras for tanks so there's no need to make an explicity taunt aura). Don't attempt to do too much with a power (which you are rather guilty of considering how many different attributes you attempt to give absolutely everything) and remember that armor sets have a very strong tendency to be easy on slots (i.e. try bringing attributes that use the same enhancements so that you don't have to have full +def slotting in 2 different powers even though it's ridiculously specific).

Take the +res aspects from Polymerization and Absorptivity, bump them up a notch, and turn them into a single power (or a pair of powers; one for s/l and another for f/c/n/e). Take the +def from Spectral Pulse and Polmerization and fuse them into a single power (essentially provide the set with a single "when my enemies are not in my debuff toggles" power). Turn Spectral Pulse into a pure-and-simple -tohit toggle (possibly including some -def as well). I would probably steal the +hp from Absorptivity and replace the +regen in the mez toggle with it and then create a straight up self-heal from the remnants of Infrared Pulse. You'd then have space for a generic utility passive (like Photofission pared down to simply be a clone of QR or change it to be a diluted version of its existing numbers to make it actually sane; 20% +recov and 15% +rech would probably be a less ridiculous combination), a straight up debuff toggle or click power (Photodisintegration, possibly consider removing the -spd/-rech and replacing it with a chance to deal some damage), and the god mode (likely with a tweaked crash because, honestly, 1 minute of that would be bad enough that almost no one would find it worth it; probably replace it with something like a partial endurance crash and a large -dam crash).

No. With default slotting, you'll have roughly 500% +regen, not counting all of the damage recovery you're packing from Recon, DP, and IH. Health provides only 40%.

It depends on your build. If you have decent amounts of end redux slotted, you can easily go without Stamina, especially if you also took Body Mastery for CP and/or Physical Perfection. In general, you want to get roughly 3 end/sec net passive endurance gain (passive recovery - passive end consumption).

On an IO'd */Regen Scrapper, Fitness is completely optional. If anything, I would generally recommend against it because you can do a lot more with those 3 power choices and endurance assistance beyond the point of infinite endurance sustainability is redundant.

That and whether there is a point to playing a */Regen scrapper at that point. Why both paying through the nose for defense if all it's going to force you to almost completely ignore your secondary to accomplish it (yes, I've actually put together a fully softcapped Kat/Regen build so I know what I'm talking about)? If you're going to bother IOing a */Regen, you should focus on playing to your strengths and getting only as much defense as you can manage while simultaneously pulling in as much recharge as possible as well.

Gauntlet doesn't actually provide the functionality you're talking about here. "Gauntlet" is simply an empty power that does nothing but tell you it's there. The actual effects of it are baked into all Tanker attacks.

That Taunt modifier (Melee Taunt attribute) only applies to the duration of common taunt powers, like Confront, Taunt, Challenge, and Provoke rather than the actual threat generated by each attack. Of course, Tankers don't get Confront, and Scrappers don't get Taunt, so you don't really get to see that (the differences in the threat capabilities of each power individually is actually more due to the baked in threat capabilities of each power).

What you really meant to refer to is the different Threat Levels of each AT. Tankers and Brutes both have Threat Levels of 4, Scrappers (and Dwarf form Khelds) have a Threat Level of 3, Stalkers, EATs, and Masterminds have Threat Levels of 2, and all others have threat levels of 1 (as shown here.

Don't confuse an AT attribute modifier (like melee damage, or stun duration, which modifies the base values of a power to account for AT differences) with an AT attribute (like max hp or threat level).

Except that the degree of their endurance costs isn't nearly the same. Tactics costs .39 end/sec. FA costs .78 end/sec. Yes, they're both comparatively expensive, but, while Tactics is simply expensive for a toggle, FA is one of the most expensive toggles in the game.

In general, you'll get more real returns out of Tactics because the entirety of its contribution is enhanceable. Of the 3 things you get from FA (Acc, Tohit, Tohit resist), only the Tohit is enhanceable, and it's 5% compared to Tactics' 7%. The only times its really beneficial to have FA rather than Tactics is when large amounts of tohit debuffs are being tossed around and you have plenty of endurance to burn.

In determining which one you want to get, though, it depends on your build. If you don't want to take Conserve Power but want to get Physical Perfection, FA is a solid pick, the endurance cost irregardless (though, honestly, considering what you can get, it should be a helluva lot cheaper) because it gets you to the power you want. If you're tight on endurance in your build and would be taking CP anyway, it's better to go with Tactics since you don't particularly need FA to get to Phys Perf and Tactics is substantially better bang for your buck.

Depending on how you define "speedster", you could quite easily fit in Body Master and forgo the attacks (like I normally do, because, honestly, they all suck as I see it). FA could easily be explained as you simply thinking faster and making minute adjustments as your target attempts to dodge. CP could be tapping into your inner "speed force" to not get tired. Physical Perfection is pretty much a combination of not getting tired and regenerating faster, so it works just as well. It's kind of hard to not think of a concept that couldn't use Body Mastery. It's like not being able to fit in Fitness: every theme is pretty capable of accommodating it with ease.

I am a pretentious *****! How nice of you to notice (and try to tell me by circumventing the language filter)!

/facepalm

Scrappers don't do any tanking either but they still have the full allotments from their secondaries. I really have to wonder if you've ever actually attempted to play a set with just those powers beyond the first few levels. Only having those powers to rely upon largely a joke, especially when you completely ignore mez powers on one set while taking them on others. Even worse, I'm not even sure if you realize what the powers you're ignoring do. You're said, quite explicitly, that the armor sets are "pretty much just 2-3 powers". If you honestly believe that, then I have to ask you why no intelligent person would ever dream of taking less than 5 of the powers from their armor set, if not 7 or 8? You can argue that a power doesn't do much but they you're completely ignoring the whole "mitigation stacking to provide continually improved returns" aspect of those powers. Seriously, stop trying to make yourself look like less of an idiot for making a grossly uneducated comment and simply fess up to it: you were wrong and had no idea what you were saying.

Well, considering that I have said multiple times that, in order to achieve full damage capability, it would need to be in melee, I'm reasonably sure that I'm not providing them a reason to never be in melee. Secondly, if you honestly believe that the SR passives, Instant Healing and MoG, and Energize are "the fat" of those sets, I'm just going to have to dismiss anything you say from now on outright. You have officially passed into "utter dip-****" territory.

Seriously, you have no idea what you're talking about. The lack of tier 9s isn't that stellar (not to mention that it's not even true; Total Focus, Psionic Shockwave, and Seismic Smash are all tier 9 powers) nor is the apparent lack of the powers you mentioned because they've generally been replaced by powers that are just as good. You can scream about not having Fireball for FSC, but it doesn't really mean anything when you've still got Fire Breath and Combustion. Static Discharge is actually better than Ball Lightning. The list goes on. Just because you don't see one or two explicit powers doesn't mean the damage is low. It just means it didn't take those powers. There's a reason the highest damage builds in the game right now are Dominators: the Assault sets are incredibly good.

You're wanting the devs to invent tech to deal variable damage based on the range of the target and now you're going to try and argue that, in CoX, it wouldn't be possible to keep at range? That's a joke, right? We're talking about the same game, right? Where I can just turn on CJ + Hurdle and spend half a second bunny hopping 100' from where my target is? Where a controller can simply lay down an AoE immobilize and permanently keep entire enemy groups where they are? If you honestly, think that "having to keep enemies at range" would do anything other than make players completely ignore their melee attacks, you must be smoking something really expensive to be that detached from reality.

So. Much. Facepalm.

Do you need reading glasses because I think you didn't read that all the way? I said that the support bolsters your existing survivability and that all but roughly 2 powers within the set would be team support. Those statements aren't mutually exclusive.

Or you have some support abilities that are useful solo but you need to be on a team to fully access all of your support capabilities. See how actually reading a comment works! Seriously, I'm getting tired of dealing with people with the reading comprehension skills of a soft headed 5-year-old.

No, but I believe the reverse is true (-res amplifies -dam) because -dam is resisted by the final resistance of a target (resistance after all +res and -res is applied).

I wouldn't be adverse to the recharge being unaffected by buffs or debuffs (which is one of the reasons I qualified that statement with "if"), but when you look at the general opinions on those powers that already do so (OwtS and SoW, namely) they're not generally that popular. Of course, that could just as easily be due to the fact that they're set to have a comparatively low uptime ratio and a long base recharge and "weak" effects (when compared to true god modes with more substantial crashes). Either way, it's an issue that would need to be addressed, though if recharge isn't going to be enhanceable, I would expect there to be multiple enhanceable attributes to "make up" for the lack of enhancing what would otherwise be a "needed" enhancement (i.e. multiple of +res, +hp, +regen, +def in each power).

IIRC, the animation from TI can be interrupted, but the root cannot. In other words, while you may be able to continue running if you activate it while you are running, you wouldn't be able to activate another power while you're activating it. The same thing happens with Recon, which means that, regardless of whether you can continue moving or not, you're still incapable of making attacks for the time frame of the power's activation.

Tell that to my DM/Regen Scrapper. 3-4 clicks is more than manageable as long as you ensure that they're on different timers.

Another option would be to make it so that you have a suite of different powers that all share a cooldown. You could take however many different powers within the set, each with different effects, that all force a cooldown of all of the click powers within the suite so that you can only use one at a time. Each power could have a separate enforced cooldown (such that power1 causes all powers to recharge for 15 seconds while power2 causes all powers to recharge for 1 minute). If the devs really wanted to, I'm sure they could even have multiple suites of powers, such that you would be dealing with 2 different "clicks" to cycle as you saw fit (one focused on damage mitigation and another focused on damage recovery, with each power having a different secondary effect, potentially).

Personally, I'm a massive fan of click based survivability, though I know I'm in the minority there. I really wish that the devs would create more sets around the */Regen model rather than the */SR model.

The biggest problem with designing survivability around clicks is the issue of recharge and animation time consumption. If the powers are affected by +rech, you could get to the point where powers that are intended to have only 50% uptime with SO slotting (which it seems like you're suggesting) have substantially better uptimes, potentially perma (just look at Dull Pain). Similarly, if powers have low durations (such as you're suggesting) to go with those relatively high uptimes, you're going to have to start accounting for the animation time that those powers consume over time because you'll essentially be planned around losing a specific percentage of your time to get your defenses.

You're kidding, right? Energy Aura and Elec Armor are your guideposts, and, even then, you can't get them right? Elec Armor and Energy Aura are designed to be utility armor sets. Elec has 4 powers that must be taken at a minimum in order to have even a remote chance of surviving decently (Charged Armor, Conductive Shield, Static Shield, and Energize) with others that fulfill utility and survivability roles (Power Sink and Grounded). Energy Aura virtually requires 7 of its powers (all but CP and Overload) or did you forget that Energy Drain has a heal component attached to it.

When looking at normal armors that aren't designed around having massive utility, only having 2-3 armors and a mez prot power looks rather sparse. SR has 6 direct armors, a mez toggle, a single utility power, and a god mode. Regen has an entire suite of powers focused on personal survivability, only 2 of which are actually skippable. Invuln is the same. If you honestly believe that the armor sets are pretty much just comprised of 2-3 powers and a mez toggle with the rest just filled with utility stuff, I have to wonder if you've even looked at an armor set.

You're not understanding what I'm saying. What's the point of having ranged powers if you're going to be in melee all the time regardless? What's the point of having a full strength armor set if you're not going to be spending all of your time in melee? An assault/armor set would be like having a lower damage Scrapper on a team: there simply isn't a point to it. This is why you lower survivability and add support. While solo, the support bolsters the existing survivability. While on a team, the support allows you to contribute where your lower damage and survivability would otherwise prevent you from doing so.

A "balanced" assault/armor AT (i.e. lower damage to compensate for ranged capabilities) would always take second chair to virtually any other damage AT in the game: Blasters would do more damage, Scrappers and Brutes would be both harder to kill and do more damage.

That's a lark. Did you not read what I was saying previously? If you provide an even division of melee and ranged powers in the attack set you force a decision between going into melee to deal full damage by using all of your attacks or sticking to the periphery of the fight and dealing less.

Are you looking at the same Assaults sets that I am? Without equivocation, all of the Dominator Assault sets look to have very nice on the damage from where I'm standing. Earth Assault has both Seismic Smash and Heavy Mallet. Electricity Assault has Charged Brawl and Havoc Punch. Energy Assault has Bone Smasher and Total Focus. Fiery Assault has both Incinerate(!) and Blaze(!). Should I go on? Whenever I see the assault sets, they generally look like they got the best powers from their parents. They don't seem light on the damage in the least.

What you're suggesting with an armor/assault AT is essentially a Tanker with some ranged attacks, which I heartily doubt will happen, especially since you're, without a doubt, going to be coughing up either damage or survivability to counter the advantages of range. At that point, you should start asking yourself why not just bring a tanker?

Any variant on an AT with ranged damage and an armor set is going to force you to ask the question of "why?" simply because it's going to be bringing two things to a team, damage and survivability, neither of which it's going to do any better than other ATs that are already in game. Unless it has some secondary functionality to account for the lack of capability within a team, it's not going to be balanced, much less an attractive option.

By providing it with a support sub-role, there is actually a point to bringing it, to such an extent that it actually allows the AT to have a purpose beyond making the existing ATs look better. Armor powers would present to offset the reliance on melee damage to reach full damage potential. Support powers would be present to offset the lower performance that would have to be present with both ranged damage and a degree of survivability greater than Blasters. You can't have full ranged damage and survivability higher than base without rendering Blasters redundant (by dealing the same damage while being safer to play as well). No matter how you build it, the support needs to be present to any extent to make the AT a viable and balanced option within the AT "marketplace".

If you want to argue that it would be too strong, remember that I'm defining support as team support. The usefulness of the powers in the secondary while solo beyond the armor sets would be limited (i.e. make all but a couple of them targeted buffs) so that, while solo, they provide nothing, forcing the required performance balance. Similarly, there would be animation time considerations: you can't play full support and full damage. You have to choose to allocate your time in order to fulfill one role or the other so that, though you may be able to deal the same damage as a Scrapper, you wouldn't be able to do any support at the same time (which means you're fulfilling the role of a Scrapper while being easier to kill).

If I were to design it, I would make it so that, at best, you can manage roughly 75% of the damage and survivability of a Scrapper while supporting at roughly the 75% of the support functionality of a Defender. On a team, you would act much like a Corruptor (less support than a Defender but more damage), with the exception that you expose yourself to more risk while being harder to kill.