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3. Blazing Aura at level 1 as an offensive pbaoe taunting aura (correct me if I'm wrong about gauntlet working with blazing aura)
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It should - it is an attack. And even if it doesn't, it stil generates AoE agro because it is a damage-dealing attack.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
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Arcanaville, that's really stretching it. I mean, excluding how your example only works when you don't think about how Player A's power only buys him 5 seconds, while Player B's power buys him 10 seconds.
_Castle_ only said that the power works more for a Tanker rather than a Blaster even with an identical base scalar.
You may consider that a "duh", but given the mess with Slows, it's nice to have official confirmation (even if it's stuff that Iakona gave out a few weeks ago).
No, Aracana's analysis is exactly right. This is precisely how you have to set up the finite state machine equivalent to calculate Time To Live models.
More base health is exactly equivalent to an increase in Res, the effect of self healing in such a calculation is not changed. (In fact the major change when looking at such models is the effect of EXTERNAL heals on the Character.. those with more base health gain less from external heals than those with an equivalent res)
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I'd like to do both, actually (and both my Brute and my Stalker use it!) But, alas, Aid Self isn't changing. Healing Flames, on the other hand, might get a boost.
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Aww, I use Aid Self too. 
But if you want to nerf it, restoring it to its original activation time would do the trick. It got stealth-buffed a while back, so the healing takes effect a lot sooner. I thought the longer activations time, coupled with its interruptability, balanced out.
Arc #41077 - The Men of State
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More base health is exactly equivalent to an increase in Res,
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Exactly but there is more. Increased base HP equals increased natural resistance, or basicaly, its the same as having the same hp as everyone else but inherent resistance, only its a second layer of resistance that does not stack with the resistance we know now.
Additionaly, higher base HP does not only resists incoming damage, it also resists incoming external heals.
HP buffs in a similar maner also make you more resistant to both, damage and external heals, PLUS they make you resistant to self heals.
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More base health is exactly equivalent to an increase in Res,
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Exactly but there is more. Increased base HP equals increased natural resistance, or basicaly, its the same as having the same hp as everyone else but inherent resistance, only its a second layer of resistance that does not stack with the resistance we know now.
Additionaly, higher base HP does not only resists incoming damage, it also resists incoming external heals.
HP buffs in a similar maner also make you more resistant to both, damage and external heals, PLUS they make you resistant to self heals.
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Yes, it's not a linear mapping, but that's fairly obvious. The point is that Arcana is right on the money with her post.
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HP buffs in a similar maner also make you more resistant to both, damage and external heals, PLUS they make you resistant to self heals.
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I'm pretty sure that heals that heal you for a % of your life, which all self heals do, scale from dull pain, as does regeneration, which would mean from just your own point of view, a DP health boost by 60% would be like 60% resists that multiply on top of your real resists, although you resists straight number heals.
I'm not positive about this, however, and I may be wrong as I can't test it.
EDIT:
I should clarify what I mean by multipling on top of your real resists. What I mean is if you have 50% resistance, and 60% pseudo resists from dull pain, in a way you have 1/2 * .4 = .2 = 80% resists. But it's only true as long as you don't take external heals into account and you are comparing you vs your old self.
I dunno, something just doesn't feel right calling the hp boost resists, but the numbers work out anyways.
EDIT#2: Corrected bad math. Said 60% resists meant you took 1/4 total damage 
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I'm pretty sure that heals that heal you for a % of your life, which all self heals do, scale from dull pain, as does regeneration, which would mean from just your own point of view, a DP health boost by 60% would be like 60% resists that multiply on top of your real resists, although you resists straight number heals.
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Im 100% they dont. Very easy to tst with a regen scraper, activate dull pain, afterwards activate reconstruction. You will see the heal back is based off your base HP.
Also may be a bit harder, but if you got an HP buff badge on a fire tanker it may also be easy to check, Activate healing flames and it will be healing 17.5% of your original base.
Regeneration is based of a % of your HP bar, regardless buffs or anything so it will be "boosted" with hp buffs numericaly, but it simply stays the same speed for the % of your hp bar, and thats the reason you can call HP increase resist-like, else it would be messier.
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I should clarify what I mean by multipling on top of your real resists. What I mean is if you have 50% resistance, and 60% pseudo resists from dull pain, in a way you have 1/2 * .4 = .2 = 80% resists. But it's only true as long as you don't take external heals into account and you are comparing you vs your old self.
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As i noted, HP buffs make you resistant to damage and also to heals. BTW, dull pain fully sloted is a 59% hp buff and that equals not 59% resistance but 37.11%. The reason for this is a bit long to explain right now (i have a guide i'll post soon as i have to revise a bit on the formating) but the easier to understand example is that 100% hp buff would be like 50% resistance because your hp bar becomes twice as big and therefore damage would do half the damage to the % of the bar as they would normaly do.
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I dunno, something just doesn't feel right calling the hp boost resists, but the numbers work out anyways.
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For this reason i like to call the benefit i get from HP buffs and high hp not resitance but sturdyness. Every type of mitigation in the game has its disadvantages, defense is not reliable on a hair from death because it rellies too much on luck, resistance is always typed and has holes here and there, -dmg and -acc debuffs are debuffs and will become weaker against stronger enemies, healing and regeneration will never stop one shooting as its not trully mitigation but fixing, and so on. HP sturdiness has the issue of making you stronger against the benefits of heals and self heals.
Ya you are right. I remember thinking that a 100% health boost wouldn't be the same as 100% more resistance....so the real resistance boost (and heal resistance) would be 1 - (Old HP / New HP)... so no change = 0% boost, double your hp = 50% boost, and a 50% boost in hp is a 33% boost in resists. And a 60% boost gives that 37.5% boost you were talking about.
At any rate, I'm both glad to know that it doesn't scale and sad to know, because that means aid self isn't as broken as I thought, but it also means it's not going to be as effective for my tanker as I thought 
EDIT: IF you just know the hp boost, another version of the forumla is
1 - (1 / newhp%), where if you have a boost of x% newhp% = 1+newhp%.... so, with a 60% boost
Effective Resists = 1 - (1 / 1.6) = 1 - .625 = .375 = 37.5% effective resists, and 37.5% heal resists.
I think that's a better formula, because you only need to know the benefit you are getting.
I use the following formual on my guide:
RHP = Base HP relative to Peacebringers human form (tankers have 1.75)
HPBenefit = (1-1/(((RHP/100)*(1+(HPBuff/100)))/1)) * 100 * (1- (DmgDebuffBenefit + DefenseBenefit +RechargeBenefit + ResistBenefit) /100)
If you only want to think on pure HP benefit just use this part:
HPBenefit = (1-1/(((RHP/100)*(1+(HPBuff/100)))/1)) * 100
If you only want to measure the HPBuff that will provide you a resistance your self heals, just asume an RHP of 1.
Here is a sample sturdyness table with ATs and how they end up being "sturdier" (not counting hp buffs like dull pain)
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>AT RHP% Sturdiness
Tanker 175.0% 42.86
rute 140.0% 28.57
Scrapper 125.0% 20.00
Blaster 112.5% 11.11
Kheldian 100.0% 0.00
Corruptor 100.0% 0.00
Controller 100.0% 0.00
Defender 95.0% -5.26
Stalker 95.0% -5.26
Dominator 95.0% -5.26
Mastermind 75.0% -33.33</pre><hr />
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HPBenefit = (1-1/(((RHP/100)*(1+(HPBuff/100)))/1)) * 100
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That / 1 doesn't change anything, was that a typo? Trying for example hp buff = .6 and rhp = 1
(1-1/( ((RHP/100) *(1+(HPBuff/100))) / 1)) * 100
(1-1/( ((.001) * (1+(.006))) / 1)) * 100
(1-1/( ((.001) * (1.006)) / 1)) * 100
(1-1/( (0.001006)/1))*100
(1-1/( 0.001006))*100
(1-994)*100
-993 * 100
-99300
I think I'm missing something or misreading your formula or something.
Sorry I confused my forumla versions, if you just want to see the benefit of the hp buff itself you use 100 not 1. Not a typo, a full fledge messup on my part.
Also on the HPBuff i also expect a full percentage, so enter 60 not .6, thats why i divide by 100, to convert percentages to decimals. I made the formula to be used on an excel calculator of mine and wanted the user not to worry about 60% meaning .6 so I added that to allow a user to enter a percentage there.
BTW, note that in your example you divided RHP by 1000 on the second step, not by 100. 1/100 = .01 not .001
As for the division by 1 that you say seems to not do anything, I am not sure why I have it there, I know my full formula includes a load of other stuff so it may be a reminder of my extraction of this part. Taking out other calculations sort of made it redundant and I forgot to take it out before placing it on the guide, its the same as the whole RHP/100 * part being redundant if you are not going to compare diferent ATs.
As it stands it does is safe to remove it.
Here is the example (with that final division removed):
HPBenefit = (1-1/(((RHP/100)*(1+(HPBuff/100))))) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-1/(((100/100)*(1+(60/100))))) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-1/((1*(1+.6)))) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-1/((1*1.6))) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-1/1.6)) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-0.625)) * 100
HPBenefit = 0.375 * 100
HPBenefit = 37.5
Ah okay, awesome
This step here
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HPBenefit = (1-1/1.6)) * 100
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Is the forumla I had basically, or put another way, I was basically saying
HPBenefit = (1-1/(((RHP/100)*(1+(HPBuff/100))))) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-1/(((100/100)*(1+(HPBuff/100))))) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-1/(((1)*(1+(HPBuff/100))))) * 100
HPBenefit = (1-1/(1+(HPBuff/100))) * 100
My super simplified version... but as you know, I like my super simplified versions
Yours is definately the better full version, and I like those too, for reference. All we need to do now is combine Arcana's monster defense equation with your hp benefit equation and make some kind of overall survability factor equation, and I think we'd have the one equation to rule them all (tm)
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Since he said they're not changing it I feel comfortable saying this. Aid Self is overpowered. It's on a third of the timer that the other self heals are and it heals for more than Healing Flames. My Blaster loves it, but a 20 sec. recharge is just silly.
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And as has been pointed out many, many times... none of the other self-heals are
a) Interruptable
b) Have incredibly long, no-action-allowed animations
Yes, you can make Aid Self near uninterruptable by slotting two interrupt reducers in it. That's two slots you can't use on recharge.
I have Aid Self on my Invulnerability Scrapper. If I use Aid Self while standing in a fight, by the time I can actually attack again I have always lost almost exactly as much health as I gained as the foe beat on me while I stood there animating the power. The one thing I can do is move around after the interrupt period ends, maybe getting out of melee range, but that does not help me win the fight.
For these reasons I fail completely to understand any comparison with powers such as Reconstruction, which has a no-op animation (the worst side effect is weapon "sheathing" - a non-issue for some users) and can't be interrupted.
Healing Flames, on the other hand, has no business being a smaller heal and does need to be fixed.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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All we need to do now is combine Arcana's monster defense equation with your hp benefit equation and make some kind of overall survability factor equation, and I think we'd have the one equation to rule them all (tm)
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I just posted my updated guide, you may want to give it a look, check it out here and let me know what you think. 
I dont use Arcana's formulas mainly because this guide is based on I7 changes and Def there will be overly simple as it wont be having any huge disparities based on your enemy, and as noted there, its about mitigation not full survival against X or Y enemy.
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I have Aid Self on my Invulnerability Scrapper. If I use Aid Self while standing in a fight, by the time I can actually attack again I have always lost almost exactly as much health as I gained as the foe beat on me while I stood there animating the power.
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If you are losing 25% of your health in about 2-3 seconds consistantly (40% heal, but with dull pain running, the heal is 25%, you are fighting guys you shouldn't be fighting, and nothing is going to save you. You'd be dead in about 10 seconds, and that's hardly enough to take out your enemies.
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And as has been pointed out many, many times... none of the other self-heals are
a) Interruptable
b) Have incredibly long, no-action-allowed animations
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Except for healing flames (for b), but then again, you did admit it needed a buff, and the devs did too.
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Yes, you can make Aid Self near uninterruptable by slotting two interrupt reducers in it. That's two slots you can't use on recharge.
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It has a 20 second base recharge, why would you want to put that many recharges in it? It already comes up faster than most self heals fully slotted, unslotted. And still, with 1 recharge and hasten, it comes up about once every 10 seconds. Even without hasten, it still has a 15 second recharge. That's pretty darn good.
The optimal slotting for HP/S for Aid Self is 2 Interrupt/2Heal/2Recharge. If I remember correctly from when I did the math, you get roughly 200 HP/minute more that way than with any other slotting. Pretty much blows away any other self-heal in the game.
I think I'd still rather drop one recharge for a heal, at least for my /fire brute. I'd rather be attacking more than healing more, even if it's more efficent that way, plus I have 2 self heals running (healing flames and aid self) and often hasten too, so I'm in general not going to need the extra healing.
In theory anyways. If I find I'm not regenning fast enough, I'll prolly switch back. I think reconstruction is still better though. 3 heals 3 recharge it heals more than aid self, with out the interrupt, much faster animation, and as fast recharge as aid self with one recharge, although add in hasten or another recharge and aid self is clearly faster, although I'm not sure which one would heal more over time.
Obviously tho, the answer is to take both
Yeah, for real world usage, having 2 Int/3 Heal/1 Rechg is going to be better, since attacks will keep you from being able to use Aid Self every time it's up. My Fire tank has both Aid Self and Healing Flames.
You can't underestimate killing enemies as a part of your mitigation. Dead mobs do no damage, so it's not realistic to build your heals purely around cycle time. Gotta take attack time into account.
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Arcanaville, that's really stretching it. I mean, excluding how your example only works when you don't think about how Player A's power only buys him 5 seconds, while Player B's power buys him 10 seconds.
_Castle_ only said that the power works more for a Tanker rather than a Blaster even with an identical base scalar.
You may consider that a "duh", but given the mess with Slows, it's nice to have official confirmation (even if it's stuff that Iakona gave out a few weeks ago).
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I don't consider it a stretch, and more importantly, not a nit-pick on wording, for this reason:
If Castle's perspective is shared with the designers of the power - a heal of scaler X is implicitly stronger for tankers than other ATs because of higher health - its logical to assume that tanker heals are "supposed" to be stronger: that that was the designer's intent.
However, how we define "stronger" is a bit subjective, and therefore there isn't an obvious way to calculate whether something is or isn't "stronger."
But we can make some extrapolations. Would you say that 50% resistance was "stronger" for tankers than blasters? I wouldn't. But 50% resistance acts to increase survivability between the two in a proportional way, not a linear way. Resistance doesn't buy everyone a fixed amount of time, everyone reacts to resistance in a percentage way; incoming damage drops by the same fraction, survivability goes up by a different fraction.
Two heals should be judged on the same basis: if a tank has twice the survivability of a blaster because of higher health (or whatever the number is), then if the heals preserve that ratio, they are neutral - they have the same effect on both. If two heals widen the gap between them, then we'd colloquially say that one heal was stronger than the other.
Two heals with the same scaler do not widen the survivability gap, *if* we fairly look at heals in the same way we look at Defense or Resistance, therefore they have the same value.
Why this is important is that *if* the designers believed that tanker base health was increasing the net benefit of the heal they were creating, then:
1. Heals are being treated completely differently from Defense and Regen in terms of comparing one to another and thats deliberate (but it also means calling one heal "stronger" than another is less meaningful)
or
2. Tanker heals have accidentally been designed too weak.
You could say that, in fact, you do believe 30% resistance is stronger for tankers than other ATs. Which would be fine, except that perspective makes it very tedious to ask the question "when do these two powers have equal benefit to tankers and other ATs?"
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10% is 10%, no matter the AT.
100 health vs 140 health is defintely not the same, especially considering in most cases that 140 health is being applied to someone with a good deal of damage resistance. It means that the tanker with the same scale of heal will almost certainly survive longer than a blaster with a 100 point heal.
Surely, you agree with that?
/agreed.
But only if you agree that the tank is the one getting pounded on more often than the blaster. With more hits posted against the tank, could it equal out?, could it be more detrimental to have the same heal?
It's a vicious cycle.
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10% is 10%, no matter the AT.
100 health vs 140 health is defintely not the same, especially considering in most cases that 140 health is being applied to someone with a good deal of damage resistance. It means that the tanker with the same scale of heal will almost certainly survive longer than a blaster with a 100 point heal.
Surely, you agree with that?
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The issue is that there are two mutually exclusive ways of looking at the effect of base health.
In the first case, you're looking at the total HP that the person has. Let's say that the tank has 1400 HP, and the blaster has 1000. Let's say that disregarding resistances, each is hit for 100 damage per attack.
The tank will fall in 14 attacks without healing, and 15.4 attacks with a 140hp heal.
The blaster will fall in 10 attacks without healing, and 11 attacks with a 100hp heal.
The second way to look at it is from the perspective of % health. The 100 damage hit does 10% damage to the blaster but ~7.14% damage to the tanker.
The 10% heal simplisitcally allows a total 110% of base health to be depleted before death, therefore
the blaster will fall in 10 hits without the heal, and 11 hits with the 10% heal
the tanker, 14 hits without the heal, and 15.4 hits with the 10% heal.
Thus you see from both perspectives the answer is the same.
The mistake that Arcana is warning against comes when you try to apply the effect of the extra base HP twice, once to the survivability and once to the heal.
Ie it would be a misleading to say "A tanker has 140% of base survivability of the blaster, and in addition his heal is 140% the effectiveness of the blaster." This is effectively double counting the base hit point ratio. This implies for someone who doesn't know what they are doing:
blaster survival = (1000hp * (100% + 10% heal)/(100hp/hit) = 10 hits
tanker survival = (1400hp *(100% + 14% heal)/(100hp/hit) = 15.96 hits
which is incorrect.
Not many people actually performing such a calculation would make this error, however it can be easy while in looking at it in a qualitative fashion to fall prey the mental shorthand and make the double-counting mistake.
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If Castle's perspective is shared with the designers of the power - a heal of scaler X is implicitly stronger for tankers than other ATs because of higher health - its logical to assume that tanker heals are "supposed" to be stronger: that that was the designer's intent.
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I think _Castle_'s intent was more to clarify the mechanic than state that the power provides more survivability under a specific metric.
[ QUOTE ]
Would you say that 50% resistance was "stronger" for tankers than blasters? I wouldn't. But 50% resistance acts to increase survivability between the two in a proportional way, not a linear way. Resistance doesn't buy everyone a fixed amount of time, everyone reacts to resistance in a percentage way; incoming damage drops by the same fraction, survivability goes up by a different fraction.
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Actually, I would consider Tankers to benefit more from 50% resistance than a Blaster. Whether you look at it as a damage to kill (a Blaster goes from 112.5% of a base Kheldian's damage to kill to 225%, while a Tanker goes from 175% to 350%) or time to live (what would kill a blaster in ten seconds normally goes to 20 seconds, and a tanker undergoing the same rate of damage would normally survive 15.7 seconds goes to 31.4 seconds). Unless you consider 10 seconds to live to be the same as 15.7, or 112.5% of a Kheldian's base damage to kill to be the same as 175%, of course.
They're equal in *relative* terms. But hey, I've been trying to measure powers between ATs, so I probably look at things a little differently.
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Which would be fine, except that perspective makes it very tedious to ask the question "when do these two powers have equal benefit to tankers and other ATs?"
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Not really. It requires a bit of math, but not much. For example, 30% resistance on a blaster increases their survivability from 1.125 C/K to 1.607 C/K, a difference of 0.482 C/K. To provide the same change for a Tanker, you need a mere 21.6% resistance (to bring them from 1.75 C/K to 2.232 C/K).
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Ok, here's the scoop.
Heal Self is not affected by AT Mods directly any longer. I'm not certain when this changed, but it was before 9/21/2004. The Heal Self Table is now a straight 10% of the AT's base (unbuffed) Health. So, Tankers still see a greater effect from a Heal Self of even scale than a Blaster or Defender because their base health is higher.
So, these values ARE correct.
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A level 30 Tanker using an unenhanced Healing Flames gets 178.5 health. With 2 SO's, that would increase to 296.31. 178.5 is 17.5% of a Tankers health at that level. 296.31 is 29% of a Tankers health at that level.
[/ QUOTE ]
[/ QUOTE ]
Er... anyone see a problem here?
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, the problem I see is probably not the one everyone else sees. I'm hoping Castle will understand what I'm saying, though:
"So, Tankers still see a greater effect from a Heal Self of even scale than a Blaster or Defender because their base health is higher."
There's a problem with this statement right here. Its technically true, but it contains a very subtle but significant mathematical flaw. If tankers are supposed to have higher health than squishies, and that health is supposed to act in essence to lower the effect of incoming attacks (they do less of your health bar per hit, because your health bar is bigger) then you cannot simultaneously assert that a 10% heal helps a fire tank more than a 10% heal helps, say, a blaster. Doing so double-counts the benefit of having higher health.
What do I mean? Well, let me show a very simple (and non-existent in CoH) example. Lets look at one player with 1000 health, and another with 2000 health, and both have a 10% heal. Lets make life simple and ignore natural regeneration for now.
I could say that Player Two, having twice the health, in essence takes only half the effective damage per hit than Player One: it takes twice as many hits to take out Player Two as Player One. I can also say that Player Two has a twice as strong heal as Player One. But notice what happens if I attempt to assert both at the same time: Suppose Player One and Player Two get hit with 200 point damage attacks every second. Player One is dead in 5 seconds, Player Two in 10 seconds. Now, Player One uses his heal ten times (always at times when he gets the full benefit of the heal) and Player Two does likewise. Now, Player One is dead in 10 seconds, and Player Two is dead in 20 seconds - still twice as long. Player Two's extra health is making it take twice the amount of damage to kill Player Two as it takes to kill Player One. And that's still true when both use their heals. If Player Two's heal was "stronger" than Player One's heal, it should buy more time on a relative basis, but it doesn't: that's because its heal is scaled to the higher health.
If the benefit of having higher health in this case is "you are twice as tough" notice that heals don't change that: ergo, the heals affect each player in the same way, as far as survival is concerned.
If you say Player Two has a "I'm tougher" benefit from having higher health, you can't also say "And he gets more benefit from his heals." There's only one benefit here: claiming two separate benefits double counts the one.
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