ATIO prices as proxy for AT popularity?

It has been a long time since there was any reliable data on relative popularity of various ATs in CoH/CoV. I was wondering if relative prices of the ATIOs might make an interesting proxy for relative popularity of the different ATs at this point. I realize it is somewhat confounded with how useful the set bonuses are for various ATs, but the 8.75% recharge should still be popular with everyone, and its the only thing we have that is generated randomly (at least if my understanding is correct, though using merits to buy some high value ones might skew this a bit) but can only be used by specific ATs. With no enhancement converters out yet, the ones for the unpopular ATs like Kheldians are definitely selling for much less then the popular ATs like Brutes, showing a "surplus" relative to Scrappers, for example.

If one were to collect data on this, it would probably be best to exclude the procs, as their usefulness varies much more widely then something like an Acc/Dam, and to collect data both evenings and mornings. I know I tend to play more soloable characters like scrappers and MMs during the morning, when I only have a few minutes before work and not many people are on, so evenings may be skewed towards teaming characters. It would also probably make sense to just average the other five enhancement costs, to make data collection easier.

Unfortunately I'm rarely on evenings, so can't carry out this project, but thought I'd suggest it in case someone thought it would be interesting.

It's not really just the Archetype that ATOs will show the popularity of, it's the set bonuses.

Almost everyone has use for the recharge boost.

But the sets that don't have good defense boosts are getting hosed by the ones that do.

Look, for example, at Arachnos vs. the melee ATs.

Arachnos has fairly generic boosts, and a nearly (NEARLY) useless +2.21 boost to Psi and Toxic resistance. There's almost no reason to slot it over other sets, unless you desperately need an extra 1.5 percent recharge bonus over something another set can offer. I, personally, threw it into one of my Ranged AoEs where the other sets offer similarly lackluster bonuses, and I don't expect to ever think about it again.

Scrapper, Brute, and Stalker, meanwhile, have the much-loved boost to smashing/lethal and melee defense... and on top of that, have a 2.21 bonus to smashing/lethal resistance. There's no set that offers that nice of a combination of survivability for an attacking power. I'm still not sure which set I want to swap it out with, because it's going to change my softcap efforts a fair amount.

The differences between those sets are absolutely staggering.

I'm going to guess that the MM ATOs will be cheap and not because MMs aren't popular... they are. But because the MM ATOs are awful.

The Scrapper ones should wind up to be very expensive, not so much because Scrappers are popular... they are. But because the Scrapper ATOs are fantastic.

It's also a question of powersets per AT. Say you level up a Peacebringer to 50. Will you ever want to do another one? The powers are exactly the same. Sure you could go Human form versus bi- or tri-form, but you could just as easily do that with alternate builds. The same applies to Warshades, except that you might actually enjoy a second Warshade. And the same applies to Widows and Soldiers, using alternate builds if necessary for the 2 available power sets, and you'll probably enjoy them even more. I personally have 2 Peacebringers at 50 (one was for a special project), and 1 of each of the others. But I have 6 Tankers, 6 Blasters, 6 Defenders, 7 Controllers, etc. That's why the Kheld and Arachnos sets are cheap compared to the others.

Besides, we know there are more brutes out there than any other AT, right?

Partly thanks to TopDoc.

MMs benefit just fine from incarnate abilities. Destiny buffs are AoE, so hit every pet. Alpha powers work fine with pets. Lore and judgement work the same for MMs as others. And MMs even get more use out of interface than other ATs, just from the sheer amount of attacks all the pets put out.

I don't think that's really going to work. It would if the ATOs were all made equal, but they're not.

As has already been mentioned, the MM set is not very good. The blaster set is also sub-par. The scrapper and Brute sets on the other hand are fantastic. Because of that, demand will be much higher on the scrapper and brute sets, and much lower on the others.

Which kind of sucks by the way. Brutes get a proc that adds fury every time they attack. Scrappers get a unique that increases their crit chance across the board. Blasters get a damage proc, and not even a better-than-normal one.

I don't think the ATO prices have that much to do with the popularity of different AT's. I have to agree with the previous posters that it's all about the set bonuses.

If any of the other sets had the same amount of s/l defense, recharge and a great proc., we'd see high prices for those sets, too.

Hmm, folks do make a good argument for a lot of the price difference being in how useful the sets are. I actually took my first good look at the MM set, and agree I don't really find it worth slotting on my bots/. I do think the "I have one Warshade so I don't need any others but have multiple tanks/defenders/etc." argument would still reflect in prices if not for the difference in set bonuses, as I wouldn't expect most people with multiple level 50s of particular ATs to take the trouble to respec ALL of them for ATIOs, more often I would think that they would pick one or two favorites, which still helps determine what people like to play.

I wonder if something less direct could be done based on the relative prices now vs. after enhancement converters come out, but I'm not sure if there would be enough data on how many people would be using them to fill orders for scrapper/brute sets vs. MM/Kheldian, for example. Converters will definitely kill any price signals we have now.

I would also say even with the differences in set bonuses, one might still be able to draw limited conclusions. For example, the "good" scrapper and brute bonuses are similar (S/L and Melee defense); which of those two sells for more? The "good" corruptor, controller and defender bonuses are similar (recharge and ranged defense), which sells for more? The not terribly impressive HEAT/VEAT bonuses are similar, which sells for more?

So you can't necessarily say that Brutes are more popular than Corruptors, but you might be able to say that Controllers are more popular than Corruptors, for example.

Check here for relative popularity of ATs.. no proxy needed:

http://cit.cohtitan.com/character/stats/

The problem with that is that we don't have any way of knowing whether the population of people recorded there is actually representative of the game population as a whole.