What can the other secondaries do better than /Shield?

That is so full of win I can only stand in awe.

<.<
>.>

Gonna have to devote a costume slot to the new longhair JEJ model of BZB now.

I'll post picks later.

odd that you would for scrappers and not tanks..oh wait..no its not.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Keep in mind Castle said "Shields." He didn't say "Scrapper Shields" or "non-Tanker Shields," but just generic "Shields." Yes, he is responding in the Scrapper forum, but that's because it's where this thread is.

Does too much debuff/buff in its toggles ( the damage one comes to mind). Slotted half decently for +def and +dmg it holds its own against groups very well and gives itself a nice buffs for taking these groups out before they hit you enough to kill you.

Honestly I would love to see the other powersets get a minor debuff attribute in their AoE Minor dmg toggles that helps them like the AoE Enemy Debuff to DMG and self buff to DMG the shield powerset has. I honestly think if you added that attribute to the other sets you would see them start to narrow the margin between them and Shields; but we know how things that perform well last around here don't we?

is the point my temple began to ache. There shouldn't be a 50% disparity in max performance here. I'm not too concerned about the protection levels shields can generate; it'll be needed. The DDB Resist is higher than designed, but, again, not really the major concern here.

AAO, actually looks fine. The maximum boost it can generate isn't that large.
Shield Charge isn't bad, basically it can get you to 2 scale 0.7 aoe's on, at best, an 19.5 second cycle time (ignoring Arcanatime, for the moment.) Then again, to get that, you've got a +400% Recharge, which is freakin' huge.

That leads me to believe the discrepancy lies with the primary sets Fire Melee and Dark Melee. Fire is MEANT to have higher DPS overall, so that's 'fine.' Dark Melee, not so much. I'd have to look at specific builds and slotting to see what's going on there, but that's a project I don't have time for now.

Several folks have suggested via PMs and in this thread that I look at Fiery Aura again; to bring it's performance up a bit. I'll see what I can do.

Dark melee has huge ST DPS, so is very good for this type of challenge, but has no meaningful AoE so is not a real balance problem for the game.

I tend to agree. But not everyone plays the same and not everyone takes optional powerpools and not every attack set offers even remotely similar mitigation. Unless you are prepared to account for every possible composition and nearly every possible playstyle it is probably more silly to start arbitrarily including random additional elements outside of personal information gathering.

If you can't compare things at their most basic form then the possibility of comparing them at more complex intervals literally flies right out the window into obscurity.

I am serious, if we are unable to compare something in this state:

Then heaven help us when it gets to this point

Well, it would be a silly way to compare secondaries if anyone thinks a singular test or equation "balances" an entire secondary. Comparing the raw performance of two defensive secondaries, outside of primary power or pool synergy, is one test for design reasonableness. It doesn't mean the two sets are balanced against each other if they pass this one test, but it does mean they *aren't* balanced against each other even if they pass all sorts of other tests, because this test case is significant to game balance.

Usually, I mention this case and the devs mention this case not to state that its definitive, but to remind people that comparing two specific builds, top level or otherwise, is essentially an anecdotal comparison that is highly unlikely to be representative of the playerbase as a whole. They are likely to be corner cases, and corner cases have their own separate balancing requirements.


As to actual mitigation models, the one that I'm currently working on is a combined offensive/defensive valuation model that converts both survivability and damage into a singular score. It starts with a set of "standard candles" which act as proxies for average offense and defense (right now, for scrappers my stand-in for the standard candle for offense is Broadsword without the +DEF of Parry, and my standard candle for defense is Invuln with Invincibility, both slotted with SOs).

Without getting too technical, the really big catch to the model is that ultimately, both offense and defense get valued in terms of the XP they can generate (defense can generate XP by creating opportunties that amplify offense) but they also can get valued in terms of endurance and health: defense is ultimately a way to convert endurance into health. This "dual currency" of the model makes it extremely tricky to make work: it tends to generate surprisingly contradictory statements unless you define its goals extremely specifically.


(For example: suppose you discover that at a particular difficulty level, the critters pose so little threat to you that your offense alone can kill them faster than they can significantly injure you. Its possible then to run through a mission at that difficulty at maximum speed and kill everything without dropping significantly in health. As a result, you're only bound by the amount of endurance you have to launch attacks. In that case, defensive toggles and clicks remove endurance but return only more health you don't need. As a result, in this situation defensive toggles actually have *negative* value. This condition where defensive powers can have almost any value, including less than zero, suggests there are places the game design should never go. Unfortunately, sometimes it does. Most scrappers know that in the early game, prior to SOs, defensive toggles can often seem like they burn more endurance than they are worth. The numbers suggest this is not an illusion, but an actual design issue with the game rooted in the fact that endurance costs for defensive powers were basically just made up, and mostly judged based on the late game.)

On this subject, you're comparing claws/NOT shield defense to dark melee/shield defense. If it were a possible combination, there wouldn't be such a large disparity between claws/shield and dark/shield. Be careful you don't go making an unfair comparison.

That said, I don't think dark melee should be able to pump out as much damage as it does considering the utility (healing, +end, +tohit, +damage, -tohit, fear, and immobilize) it brings.

Elation.

Right on about FA, Castle.

About the damage output on FM/SD and DM/SD, please note(!!!!) that I was comparing my claws/sr to those. SR gives no damage buff at all. That DM/SD is using Saturated soul drain AND AAO. All a claws/sr has is doublestacked followup.

I reiterate, repeat, rewarn, say again, we're talking about a specific set of circumstances against a pylon and leveraging two damage buffs that are based on the presence of enemies with a radius specifically designed to achieve maximum single target DPS.

MAX AAO buff plus MAX SD buff against double stacked FU.

That's damage buffs of 74.375+140= 214.375 versus 75

If I were a allowed to build a claws/sd, we'd be talking about 241.375 versus 149.375 instead and that would most assuredly change the DPS values.

ANOTHER EDIT: And it should be mentioned that I have NOT built my claws/sr for max DPS. To do so would require a loss of mitigation that I did not wish to accept. That said, on paper I've gotten claws to punch up higher than 200 DPS. A claws/fa with FE cranked to the walls would be able to push even closer to what the DM/SD is pushing out. Just sayin....

Based on this I'd like to retract everything I've said negative about Shields. I no longer want you to look into the issue at all.

If Shield Charge is all good can you share some of that love to other AT's like blasters (excluding arch), corrs, defs, doms, and trollers? They want to be "not that bad" too.

Lastly the discrepancy is not fire or dark, go ahead and enable shields on your internal server for claws, kat, and db, then pimp the builds. They will be right up there in performance too. Maybe with five brightly lit arrows pointing in the right direction the path will be visible.

edit: good news about FA, hopefully it will be "not that bad" with powers like AAO and SC after you finish with it.

Castle... I love you man. Seriously, I want to hug you right now.

Please, take a look at the examples expressed in this thread. You probably can't comment on them, but they are very interesting solutions that make Fiery Aura the "more damage for less mitigation" set that it should be. These days it feels like I'm the only one that plays a Fiery Aura Scrapper a lot. I have such a hard time getting other Scrappers to even consider the set.

If you just figure the +def set bonuses I went after with my BS/SD scrapper I'd guesstimate that build at around 100 million in today's market; the Steadfast unique, a few sets of Mako, a few sets of Scirocco and Weave to make up the 45% Range/AOE def and Parry for Melee. I did add in quite a few other bonuses of course bringing the final tally into the 300 million range but for the most part they were recovery/bonus end/recharge bonuses, not core survivability.

Since you don't have Parry to leverage the Melee you'll have to invest in a few more bonuses; that would probably double the price tag or maybe a bit more.

Don't think you HAVE to chase perfection though, I've a friend with a 50 Elec/SD and he was quite effective and survivable with his defenses hovering in the 35-40% range... it's not a case that your build sucks if it isn't soft capped, it just moves from very good to godly. As with most builds you generally get better the more you can throw into the build but it's by no means bad with moderate bonuses.

As a general rule I build my characters for maximum performance at minimum expense... I've only one character who has close to a billion invested and that's my perma-PA Ill/Rad controller. Most of my characters have less than 200 million in their builds and some, like my namesake, have less than 100 million.

This just caught my eye and could have some serious ramifications. If you are talking about a fully built Shield vs future content it means one of two things (or both).
a/Mobs in GR are going to be much harder (excellent) and will probably have significant tohit buffing ability.
b/Fire is so badly in need of a buff if you are ok with the peak survivability attainable on shields.

A couple things to consider (forgive me if you've already thought of them):

• They're utilizing herding to saturate AAO. This likely isn't the usual performance. (Similarly, Invulns can herd monkeys to be unusually safe. In actual team environments, you probably won't see all 10.)
• This is comparing Claw/SR to DM/Shield. SR has +rech* while Shield has a lot of +dmg, something you can't get in the quantities Shield gives.
• In this case, AAO is providing a +dmg boost of +81.25%. In other words, saturated AAO is allowing the Scrappers to operate with higher damage enhancement (before FU and SD) than most ran with pre-ED.

It would be interesting to see what kind of dps Claw/Shield could pump out.

* +Rech starts to lose it's value after the "ideal" attack chain has been hit. It can help with things like higher Soul Drain uptime and the like, but Claws doesn't benefit from it.

Hold that thought a second, taking another look at "the list":

289 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - _Mojo_
212 Dark Melee/Super Reflexes - DR EVIL NA
36% performance difference

276 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Iggy Kamakaze
189 Fiery Melee/Super Reflexes - Gaidin
46% performance difference

236 Broad Sword/Shield Defense - Chaos String
165 Broad Sword/Invulnerability - Hopeling
43% performance difference

174 Martial Arts/Shield Defense - Broken Prey
167 Martial Arts/Super Reflexes - American Dynamo
4% performance difference

Keep in mind, that's only a handful of people, and their builds (and chains) likely varied, but it's the only "hard" evidence I have on hand. However, if having a 50% performance gap is bad, take a look at the non-Shield perofrmance:

Highest performance per primary (no Shield)
262 Dual Blades/Electric Armor - Shadowsylph
228 Claws/Super Reflexes - Iggy Kamakaze
223 Dual Blades/Super Reflexes - Shred Monkey (added since Shadowsylph is such an outlier)
219 Katana/Super Reflexes - Laevateinn
212 Dark Melee/Super Reflexes - DR EVIL NA
189 Fiery Melee/Super Reflexes - Gaidin
167 Martial Arts/Super Reflexes - American Dynamo
165 Broad Sword/Invulnerability - Hopeling

The point? Even before adding Shield into the equation, there can be a huge performance rift. Between Iggy's Claw/SR and Hopeling's BS/Invuln is a 38% performance gap.

For regular humans, its not bad. At its peak, though, its larger than you might think, but in a tricky way. At its peak of ten targets (admittedly difficult to generate except under engineered circumstances), it'll generate a buff of 12.5% + 6.875% * 10 = 81.25%. Not high, as you say, but because its in a toggle, at the high end performance we're talking about that is very significant.

Build Up generates a much higher buff: +100% damage. But at the highest levels of performance, it comes with a significant cost: its cast time. At low levels of performance, 1.17s of offense lost is small, for a big gain. But at high levels of performance, 1.17s of offense lost is big (because your damage is much higher) for a lower gain (because you probably are running with +DMG invention bonuses on top of slotting, which dilute BU's buff). AAO dilutes just like BU does, but it doesn't cost anything (in theory) in offense to get the buff.

Also, because its theoretically possible to have the buff permanently, its going to deliver a bigger punch than BU will. Lets consider a simplified example and compare BU and AAO, just to see the rough numerical difference. We'll assume that the player is running with just +50% damage on top of +95% damage slotting. We'll also assume that they have enough global and slotted recharge to reduce BU's recharge to just 30 seconds. I am going to factor in ArcanaTime, and call BU's total rooted time penalty 1.32 seconds, but I'm not going to adjust the recharge for that (just assuming 30s of recharge for now, whatever value of recharge buff that requires). And I'm going to assume a saturated AAO.

So the player normally has 245% damage (100% + 95% + 50%) and with BU they have 345% damage. Assuming no funny attack chain games, BU will cycle thusly:

10 seconds of BU, 20 seconds of no BU, and 1.32s of casting BU

The damage done during each phase, and total, is:

345% * 10s + 245% * 20s + 0

The average damage becomes (3450%s + 4900%s + 0)/31.32s = 266.6%

In other words, the player went from 245% all the time, to an average of 266.6% when using BU as often as possible. That's a net overall increase of 266.6/245 = 1.088, or about 8.8%.

The AAO player is easier to figure out: they went from 245% all the time to 245%+81.25% = 326.25%. An increase of 326.25%/245% = 1.3316, or about 33%.

Most players aren't going to see this dramatic difference between BU and AAO, but top end min/maxers will.

The cast time penalty of BU tends to be consistently dismissed or underestimated in most damage calculations. But absolutists doing explicit attack chain calculations are, I think, beginning to see the very large penalty associated with BU. Its still a good power to use, but its own cast time neutralizes a significant chunk of its net benefit. Its a big frontloader, but only a small damage booster.

AAO is a damage booster, period. And a good one.


Huh? That doesn't sound right, but I don't have access to my numbers at the moment. I could have sworn Shield Charge for scrappers was *way* higher than that. I think it should be (normalized to Scrappers since it does pet damage) about 3.2 scale (i.e. 200 points of base damage at level 50). Its an AoE with a DS/sec (DPA) rating higher than nearly all single target attacks. That's what makes it always good to insert into an attack chain, even if you are only attacking a single target, if you can activate it fast enough and if you have the endurance to power it.

At SC's scrapper numbers, my Blaster would gladly trade Nova for Shield Charge. It does slightly less damage (on average) in a slightly smaller radius, but doesn't crash and recharges a gazillion times quicker.

Ohh snap.

Can someone explain to me why this isn't wrong? Sarrate has the same value but I've been utilizing 12.5% for the first enemy and 6.875% for the next 9, totally 10 enemies.

Are yall stating that the first enemy actually grants 19.375% buff?

oÔ

+80% dam on alts with ~220% average damage "isn't that large" ? That's essentially a 36% damage boost, or the difference between doing 200 DPS and 272 DPS (which is, incidentally, close to the difference Sarrate shows between x/SD and x/x).

Also, I doubt FM/SD can actually reach 300 DPS, and Claws/SR can get to 220ish, so that's giving a little bit too much of importance to a random sentence.

AoEs with a 20' radius, that animate in 0.7s each, hit up to 16 foes and knockdown most of them, while also being in a defense set and stacking with other AoEs from primary/epics.

Edit : had no clue what "scale 0.7" means in ingame numbers so didn't comment, but now that Arcanaville has posted on it... Yes, SC does slightly over 200 base on a level 50 scrapper. If that corresponds to scale 3.2, then even Brutes do much more than scale 1.4 (2*0.7) with unslotted, 0 Fury Shield Charge.

Just making sure you're not comparing SC to, say, a 8 feet PBAoE hitting a max of 10 without any secondary effect. Of course you're not. Please tell me you're not.

Seriously though. I'm scared now. Not because of nerfs, but rather because I'm getting the feeling the power guru doesn't truly understand the monster he created.

Yeah, that first enemy actually gives you 12.5% plus the 6.875%.

Look at it like the 12.5% benefit of the power is a "are there enemies in range" check, and the first mob counts as giving you 6.875% for being an enemy.

I'm curious how you're defining AAO as "not that large". Saturated, AAO provides 81.3% +dam the entire time. Assuming slotted attacks, that's a 41% increase in total damage that's perma-capable out of the box. How is 41% "not that large"?

The problem that I see from a lot of people when they talk about Shields is that they immediately make the mistake of assuming that offensive capability and defensive capability are mutually exclusive. When you're calculating survivability in a vast majority of situations (those that aren't all about the immortality curve i.e. AV/Pylon soloing), survivability is a function of both your defensive and offensive capabilities. Your defensive capabilities allow you to stay in a fight longer without dying while offensive capabilities allow you to get through a fight faster. With saturated AAO, you're going to kill your enemies in 70% of the time that it would take someone without AAO. Assuming that you kill your enemies in a linear manner (which is, honestly, worst case in that it assumes that you use no AoEs), you're still going to be going through entire mobs in ~83% of the time. Even if you don't kill them all at once, the increased damage allows you to defeat weaker targets and partially mitigate the damage that is coming from multiple sources faster. Shield Charge makes this even worse because you can use it, along with a single AoE attack, to take out every virtually every minion in a group and drop the damage capabilities of entire spawns to virtually nothing.

AAO blows virtually every other +dam mechanism that is available to the ATs that get access to Shield out of the water. Conceptually, it would be balanced by the fact that it degrades as you defeat more of your targets (as the fight progresses). Shield Charge allows you to functionally ignore that limitation and simply kill half of the spawn so that you're only facing a minority of enemies (and heavily damage remainders of them, at that) so that, although you have lower survivability from a mitigation standpoint, you have substantially better survivability from a functional standpoint and better xp/inf earning capability as well (because you're killing faster).

You can't simply ignore the fact that Shield is both capable of shortening fights by killing targets and frontloading a vast majority of its damage by using a high powered pseudo nuke.

/looks at his multiple spreadsheets....

well ****.