Werner

The exact value, enhancement and stacking are very relevant. It's not a minimal boost to defense. Double-stacked (pretty typical) with two defense SOs puts you at 42% melee/lethal defense. Just about anything will soft cap you at that point. There are plenty of attacks it won't affect, but it's great for the ones it does affect.

Not that there's anything wrong with Dual Blades. As mentioned, you get better AoE and flashier attacks. Assuming you use Divine Avalanche on Katana (the reason to take the set), Dual Blades will also do better single-target DPS. It's also nice to have Blinding Feint boosting your damage aura. I just don't consider Dual Blades the equal of Katana for mitigation. So it depends on what you're after.

Here's the thread.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=260718

It looks like John's most recent version of the Claws/Regen was posted on 5-20-2011. Defense is much lower than I was thinking, but then, we were abusing +3 Enzymes to pull off our defense numbers, so they were surely somewhat higher then than they now appear. It looks like he calculated a survivability score about 60% that of the best Katana/Regens. So yeah, not as good as I'd remembered, at least on paper. Sorry for my bad memory.

It's over a year old, so you won't be able to use the builds directly, but there may be some information there that's still relevant and useful.

Edit: A quote of mine I like, "The Regeneration secondary seems made for these waves of damage. During those forever times when everything is going OK, you aren't even touching your heals. Then when one of those massive waves of damage hits, you're sitting on a huge list of powers that will all help keep you in the game and ride it out. On a Regen, you just about never find yourself just clicking when things recharge, over and over, getting the highest average level of mitigation and damage recovery. You're matching your mitigation and damage recovery up to the spikes and waves. Played well, that makes Regen much stronger than measures of average performance over time suggest."

Yes and yes, though I believe it was John Printemps that did something very similar with Claws/Regen. The most survivable builds, at least on paper, did NOT have soft-capped defense, but instead fell into the mid 30s somewhere. I can't remember what John's build had, but I assume it was something along those lines. Claws would be missing out on sky-high melee and lethal defense, but I'd give it the edge on active mitigation (Shockwave plus movement), plus you tend to be incarnate soft capped on demand with Moment of Glory and Shadow Meld. It might well be as survivable in practice in the right hands, just not on paper, and not without a little extra work.

But yes, add Broad Sword, Katana or Titan Weapons to ANY set, and you can get something pretty solid. Some benefit more than others of course. My Katana/Dark had better on-paper survivability than the Katana/Regens we were proposing. But that assumed you could reliably hit Dark Regeneration right before dying, every time, and that's not going to happen. Regeneration has its own dangerous dance to perform, of course.

So pretty similar, and I consider my Katana/Dark to be near the top end for Scrapper survivability. Strengths and weaknesses vary, of course, making comparison a bit difficult. A survival-spec'd Dark Melee/Invulnerability would run circles around me against smashing/lethal enemies, for instance, or I would assume a Super Reflexes against heavy defense debuffers like +4x8 Incarnate Banished Pantheon.

Honestly, I DON'T know Regen inside and out any more. Other than an occasional fling for old time's sake, I haven't played my namesake Katana/Regen in years, and that was my ONLY Regen. I've never played Regen with Shadow Meld. I've never played Regen with Incarnate powers.

My most recent "experience" with it was in Mids' and spreadsheets and forum discussion maybe six months ago. A number of people on the Scrapper board were really down on it at the time, and I (and several others) really felt that it had a lot more top end potential than most seemed to think. So my initial salvo was a soft-capped near perma Hasten Regen that could spend the majority of time at the Incarnate soft cap, and the community significantly improved it from there. I never built it, but at least several people adopted similar builds and reported great success. But even if that counts as experience, that was at the very top end, no expense spared, all Incarnate powers on the table. That's perhaps most relevant to what the Scrapper board tends to be interested in, but at best peripherally related to balance discussions and whether the set should be left alone, modified neutrally, or buffed.

And I'm not strictly saying that they should leave the set alone. As a dev, that's probably what I'd do, or perhaps add some regeneration and recharge debuff resistance. I probably wouldn't touch Instant Healing. But as a player, and given my current temperament, I'd personally like to see Instant Healing turned into a toggle, acknowledging that it would have to pay for that in other ways.

Yes, understood. And I actually ragequit the game for 6 months at some point during the change from "regeneration" to "spastic clicky-clicky". I grew to love "spastic clicky-clicky" as well, but it certainly wasn't what I'd signed up for. But actually, I'm out of love with it again, even if I believe that it's objectively competitive. I think I'd personally enjoy something in between.

Sounds good to me personally. But back when I really loved the clickfest, I'd have argued against it. I'm sure plenty of people love it the way it is, so it may be best for the devs to let it be. Not sure.

That's kind of like me doing this:

As everyone can understand numbers, I'll throw some out there.

Standard SOs. No Weave, Combat Jumping, etc.

Scrapper Super Reflexes:
Triple-slotted defensive powers
30.4% defense

Scrapper Shield Defense:
Triple-slotted defensive powers
21.3% defense

Consider the above and tell me that Shield Defense doesn't deserve some love.

Regeneration is just one number among MANY numbers that define how useful a secondary may be. Are you getting hung up on the fact that the set is called "Regeneration"? Does that make you think it should clearly have the best regeneration in the game? If it were more-accurately named "the spastic clicky-clicky to survive set" would we even be having this argument? Well, that's what it's been for the vast majority of this game's history, NOT "regeneration".

It doesn't somehow deserve the highest regeneration in the game based on its name any more than "Shield Defense" deserves the best defense in the game based on having "defense" in the name. That's not how game balance works.

But perhaps you're not hung up on the name of the set.

Anyway, I'm not even strictly disagreeing with you. I'm not opposed to a little Regeneration love. A little, such as the oft-suggested regeneration and/or recharge debuff resistance, or even what you suggested about making Instant Healing a toggle (with a suitable drop in regeneration rate). But bringing up a single stat in a vacuum isn't a balance argument. Otherwise, every set can say "My X isn't as good as set Y's X, so I need a buff."

Probably talking about non-positional psy, like fighting Malaise. I think those are rare enough exceptions that I don't really think of it as a hole.

Edit: I should really learn to refresh long threads before replying.

Yeah, I'd like to see that happen. Standard accuracy, non-extreme endurance cost. Then I think it would be more competitive in more builds, and still not overpowered compared to Oppressive Gloom.

A 20% decrease in damage buff, anyway. Probably less than a 5% decrease in actual damage. Overly simplistically, figure you have 100% enhancement + 200% from Fury = 400% damage. Drop to 90% Fury and you're at 380% damage. Plus procs, plus Build Up, plus whatever.

I'm not disagreeing with the point you're making, though, just being pedantic. The argument works the other way too, after all. If someone is claiming that now with the ATO proc Brutes can sustain 100% fury, well, even if they can, and not to trivialize a really nice buff, but it's not such a huge increase in damage as it might at first appear.

I could be wrong, as I haven't calculated it out in detail, but I expect to lose damage in my switch to a Brute on my Katana/Dark. I expect to get it back in practice in most situations due to having more enemies on me and doing less chasing, but that's to me not really what we normally mean when we say doing more damage.

I've actually not played or Mids'ed or number crunched any Stalkers, so I personally have no point of comparison. A Stalker might be next on the list once I finish leveling my two current Brutes, as a couple friends tell me they're great now, and that I'd like them.

I and most of the Scrapper forum regulars.

Yep. I rerolled as a Brute mostly for the taunt aura. I don't think I've played my Scrapper since rerolling. I think I'm 43 right now. The taunt aura is a huge quality of life issue for me, plus since I'm not chasing runners, I believe that I can get through most missions as fast or faster than the equivalent Scrapper despite doing less damage on paper.

It wasn't an evasion. It was an example. I would LOVE to have simply had a taunt aura on my Scrapper. If they gave it to me, I'd switch back. Believe me, my Scrapper can survive the attention, and I'm hardly the only one. I rerolled as a Brute primarily out of frustration with runners.

Many Scrappers solo. Many scrappers have the survivability to handle a lot of attention. Many scrappers hate runners with a passion. Lack of taunt aura is a very common Scrapper forum complaint.

What I do NOT hear on the Scrapper forum are complaints about getting too much attention on the secondaries that DO have a taunt aura. Oh, I'm sure people have complained before, but I just don't see it. Perhaps it's a more common complaint outside of the forum. I don't talk to people in game, so I don't know.

That said, at least Scrappers have some choice in whether or not they have a taunt aura. As a dev, I'd probably leave it alone, even if I'd personally much rather all the Scrapper secondaries taunt.

Of course not. On the other hand, who could argue against raising their cap if they can't hit it? Either caps matter or they don't. If they don't matter, who cares if we raise or lower them? If they DO matter, then it's a legitimate point for a balance discussion.

All that said, I'm far from convinced that Scrappers, Brutes or Tankers are out of balance. My personal hatred of runners is not an argument that Brutes are better in some objective sense that calls for rebalancing. I don't mind balance discussions; I just don't have a strong feeling on this one, and if anything is done, I think the devs should tread lightly.

I suspect it was meant to say something like "Of the 3% defense IOs, I only used the Steadfast" which is to say "I didn't use the Gladiator's Armor, but I did use other defensive set bonuses." But then, if your casual attempt in Mids' got you to 40%, and we include tier 4 Barrier, we could say you're there.

You're not the only one. I hate Hybrid. I consider it both OP and fail.

I don't like how it's sort of a click, and sort of a toggle, though I realize there's a bit of precedent. I don't generally like powers that are sometimes there, sometimes not, other than maybe one or two core things. So I really dislike it. At the same time, when it's up, depending on what you take, and what your build is, it can be completely OP. Not Destiny OP, but still pretty OP. I just don't like the sucky-mechanic, half the time OP, half the time worthless nature of it. I'd prefer half the buff full time. Heck, I'd prefer 1/4 the buff full time, 1/10 the buff full time. I just don't like Hybrid. It's not a numbers thing. I'm not even being rational about my rationale since we could say that Destiny is sometimes OP, sometimes sucky, and Destiny seems OK mechanically to me. But I just don't like Hybrid.

Let's try an example with nice round numbers.

Your Brute has 2000 hit points, 40% resistance to everything, 45% defense to everything, and heals 30 HP/S.

So your Tanker has 2500 hit points, 60% resistance to everything, 45% defense to everything, and heals 37.5 HP/S.

You're being attacked with 2000 HP/S of damage.

On the Brute, defense drops that to 100 HP/S. Resistance drops that to 60 HP/S. Healing drops that to 30 HP/S.

On the Tanker, defense drops that to 100 HP/S. Resistance drops that to 40 HP/S. Healing drops that to 2.5 HP/S.

Now, in a sense, yes, the difference that resistance makes is only 20 HP/S on incoming damage of 2000 HP/S, so a 1% difference. True. But can you see that 2000 HP/S is an unhelpful thing to compare to, and 1% an unhelpful result? The difference that really matters to us is between 40 HP/S and 60 HP/S, and that's a lot more significant that 1% would imply.

And of course your health is only applied to the damage that gets through all of that. So in that sense, your 25% higher health is only absorbing a tiny fraction of the damage. But that tiny fraction is still an arguably significant 40 or 60 HP/S. All told, it's the difference between taking 30 HP/S and 2.5 HP/S, the difference between surviving about 1 minute and about 17 minutes. That's probably not going to make any difference in the outcome of this particular fight. So people are generally satisfied with Brutes.

Now let's say you want to know how much incoming damage each can take indefinitely. The number you come up with is generally referred to as "survivability". Your Brute can indefinitely survive 1000 HP/S of incoming damage: 1000 * 5% = 50, 50 * 60% = 30, 30 - 30 = 0. Your Tanker can indefinitely survive 1875 HP/S of incoming damage: 1875 * 5% = 93.75, 93.75 * 40% = 37.5, 37.5 - 37.5 = 0.

Now, I have defined survivability a little differently than standard. We normally define "incoming damage" as what you'd have been actually hit with if you had no mitigation, so we'd want to including the 50% to-hit already. I kept it as what I'd call "output damage", since you were using the 95% figure rather than the more commonly-accepted 90% figure for the mitigation provided by 45% defense. I personally have always used "output damage" when crunching numbers. But the two are equivalent for comparisons. All survivability numbers would just be cut in half for the more common definition, and thus the comparison would still show the same % difference.

So based on this generally-accepted definition, most of us would say that the Tanker has 87.5% better survivability than the Brute. It won't make much practical difference in most fights. But sometimes, that huge raw survivability difference does come into play.

I'm a bit lost on what you're trying to suggest. It's true that a roll of tail tail tail head tail tail includes about 17% heads. Is that what you're saying? What sort of meaning are you trying to draw from that?

Every possible sequence of six flips has the same probability, 1/64. There are no special sequences. Your chance of all tails is 1/64. Your chance of all heads is 1/64. Your chance of tail tail tail head tail tail is 1/64. You could even write these sequences as binary numbers, heads as 0, tails as 1. They'd range from 000000 through 111111, the binary numbers that in decimal are 0 to 63, so 64 different numbers. So yes, it is JUST as likely for you to have all tails as it is for you to have any other sequence.

But that's not at all the same thing as saying that having 3 tails is no more likely than having no tails, if you were trying to suggest something like that (I can't really tell). Let's go back to a simpler example with three flips. Our possibilities are:

000
001
010
011
100
101
110
111

What's our chance of all tails? 1/8 (111). What's our chance of two tails? Well, there are THREE such sequences (011, 101, 110). The chance of two tails is 3/8. Chance of one tail? Also 3/8 (001, 010, 100). The chance of no tails is 1/8 (000). We can already see a very crude probability distribution starting to form. How about four flips?

0000
0001
0010
0011
0100
0101
0110
0111
1000
1001
1010
1011
1100
1101
1110
1111

4 tails = 1111 = 1/16
3 tails = 0111, 1011, 1101, 1110 = 4/16
2 tails = 0011, 0101, 0110, 1001, 1010, 1100 = 6/16
1 tail = 0001, 0010, 0100, 1000 = 4/16
0 tails = 0000 = 1/16

Our distribution continues to form. If all you're doing is counting, some outcomes are indeed more likely than others. In fact, the pattern it follows is well known, and you can calculate each number of each row in this pattern by adding the two numbers you see above it.


And so on. Note that the total possibilities each time doubles on each row, as we would expect for flipping a coin one more time.

So what's our chance of 1 head in a sequence of six flips? 6/64. We can see it in the table, or we can write out all such sequences (000001, 000010, 000100, 001000, 010000, 100000).

I could be clarifying nothing, as I'm not sure you're even disagreeing with any of this.

That one guy is probably making more than 90 to hit rolls per mission. I might make 1000 to hit rolls on a big map with my numbers cranked up, and with lieutenants and bosses (10%), and using a 15% chance to critical attack, or even the Scrapper chance to critical ATO proc. More criticals than I can count on my fingers and toes is then very, very likely.

You're correct that there isn't a guaranteed crit. However, with 90 attacks on minions with your lesser (not 15%) powers, as already stated, there's a .95^90 approximately 1% chance of getting no criticals. There's therefore a 99% chance of getting 1 or more criticals. The average should be 5% * 90 = 4.5 criticals. So now you get at least some idea of the distribution of the bell curve. 1% chance of no criticals, average of 4-5 criticals. In the real world, with a 15% attack and lieutenants, your chance of no criticals would be lower and your average number of criticals would be higher.

But I don't know why we're arguing basic probability and statistics with you when you can either keep your damage window data or run Herostats and actually demonstrate your critical rate.

As for your Touch of the Nictus example, you don't get a recipe drop every mob. I honestly don't know what the chance is. Let's see, when I'm farming, maybe I'm killing 300 enemies, and I probably get something like 10 recipes, just guessing wildly. So if you've killed 9000 enemies, we might expect about 300 recipes to have dropped. If you're right that Touch of Nictus: Chance for Negative Energy Damage is a 1/362 for recipe drops, and you've had 300 recipes drop, then your chance of having NOT gotten it is (361/362)^300 = 44%. So it isn't at all surprising that you have not seen that exact recipe. It wouldn't be surprising if you HAD gotten it either. It's pretty much a coin flip. (Edit: And it sounds like the chance of getting this particular recipe is dramatically lower for just grinding through enemies.)

Anyway, you appear to not understand the math we're using, but hopefully I can explain it.

Flip a coin. What's the chance of getting heads? 50%, right?

Flip it again. There are now four possible outcomes for the two flips, all with equal probability of having happened. Heads heads, heads tails, tails heads and tails tails. What are the chances of getting two heads in a row, then? 25%, or 50%*50%, or 50%^2. That's also your chance of NOT getting tails, since they're two ways of saying the same thing.

Fip it again. Eight possible outcomes of equal probability. Only one is heads heads heads. Now you're at 1/8, or 12.5% to have not gotten any tails, or 50%^3.

The chance of NOT getting tails for N flips is 50%^N.

Now what about criticals? It's the same formula, just a different probability you're plugging in. Your chance of not getting a critical for N flips is 95%^N. Now, that starts out very high, since any individual "flip" is very likely to not be a critical. But as N gets larger, the chance that you never had a critical gets small. As said, after 90 "flips", you're down to 1%.

Other things being equal, the Brute will generally survive better, plus all secondaries have a taunt aura, plus I believe all attacks have single-target punchvoke (vs. Tankers' AoE punchvoke). So even with less damage on paper, a Brute may be able to leverage that damage better because it's more often surrounded by enemies than some Scrappers. On the other hand, even with more survivability on paper, a Brute may have a tougher time staying alive because it's more often surrounded by enemies than some Scrappers. And then there's Super Strength/Fire, which puts out crazy damage to make Scrappers jealous (even my IO'd out AoE-spec'd Fire/Shield is sad in comparison), and I'm told that Titan Weapons/Fire is in the same boat.

I'm almost never on a team larger than two or three, so those were mostly solo and tiny team observations. A Brute is probably more team-friendly, as it can generally do a better job of keeping aggro off the squishies. But it can be more difficult to keep Fury up on a team, so damage output probably suffers compared to Scrappers. End game incarnate trials seem to like to require everyone to run away to avoid damage, which will probably swing damage even more towards the Scrappers on the incarnate trials, since they don't have Fury to lose, and are always at full attack strength.