The big letdown: Staff

... Odd, considering Plant Control is considered an Outlier.

I guess Fire Control fell off since Fire/Kin got kicked in the gut from the pet recharge adjustments, but I personally enjoy Fire Control when I get around to playing it.

Regardless, it effects all Slow Animation attacks equally. Titan Weapons is filled with them so I guess it artificially hurts them more. 'Thankfully' ToHit debuffs are surprisingly rare. Maybe because dev-side knows NOT hitting is a lot less fun than hitting and doing poor damage.

Yet when you fight against enemies that HAVE those powersets, yeesh, it's frustrating.

Those animations are always slow, though. They don't get even slower if previous attacks miss. They still suffer proportionally less than TW. Tohit debuffs suck for everyone, as I already agreed, but not to the same degree for everyone. Sets with large persistent tohit buffs also suffer less from debuffs, so it's not just TW in one category and everything else in another category, it's more of a continuum, with TW on or near the far end of "most affected".
Ageless is great, don't get me wrong. I meant exactly what I said: if you're using Ageless, you're not using Rebirth or Barrier, and those are sometimes very desirable. Moreover, it represents a direct tradeoff between offense (recharge, endurance) and survivability (mitigation, healing), which again puts TW in the situation of having some tradeoffs, not simply being the best in every way.

I've got two TW 50s and another on the way up. I love the set, it is probably my favorite ever. Overall, it has extremely high performance, better than most if not all other melee sets. Even being the best overall still is not the same as being the best at everything.

I'm hyperboling VERY slightly when I respond to posts about "YOU CAN'T HAVE AMAZING ST AND AMAZING AOE THAT IS BROKEN" with "Titan Weapons"... but only slightly. We have more than enough documented proof showing TW hits the top levels of BOTH damage areas, along with large amounts of KD soft mitigation.

So, yeah. Unless we figure out where the balance points lies, I'm going to advocate nerfs or buffs. Or maybe neither now, because someone always gets pissed.

Yes, and with significant drawbacks in other areas. I agree that it is a very high-performing set. Even Hyperstrike's comment on the last page that prompted this exchange, and more explicitly ClawsandEffect's comment (post #165) in the Staff Attack Chain thread, though, has not said anything about amazing ST + amazing AoE, but rather that no single set has amazing EVERYTHING, which still holds true for Titan Weapons.

TW has outstanding damage, with some substantial drawbacks in other areas. These drawbacks can be overcome, and it's a very good set overall.
Staff has average-ish damage, with some substantial benefits in other areas. If it's pretty average among melee sets, it is balanced with other melee sets pretty much by definition.

...and yeah, actively advocating nerfs or buffs will almost always get some group to disagree with you. As Ukaserex says, the best way to start an argument is to express an opinion and wait.

I can actually picture the exact argument already: It starts with "But Seeds of Confusion is a CONE and those are NEVER better than regular AoEs."

Anyway, the reason TW suffers more than other powersets against -ToHit (or +Defense) was stated by other posters, but it's because the speed of future attacks requires the previous attack to hit. This is glossed over by DPA calculations, which assume all hits connect. When a hit misses, TW falls further behind than other sets. This applies both in terms of -ToHit but also applies to the 95% accuracy check cap.

Anyway, it doesn't take a -ToHit situation necessarily to produce this. Someone who PUGs a lot leveling up probably spends a lot of time below the 95% hit cap. The reason: super side kicking. It is nowcommon for people to join teams 5, 10, 20 or more levels higher than them, most often with most of their attacks not fully slotted. TW is in a more precarious position than other sets if it coms up against mobs it can't hit.

Not to mention one other penalty it has: if you queue up attacks to take advantage of max-speed attack chains, you could stuck in an extremely long animation if one attack misses. This has killed m Electric/TW Tanker when a heal I was hoping to fire miissed due to animation lock. I bet it's even more of a nasty surprise for people running away from death patches.

And then there is knockback and enemies that run away/die halfway through your chain to worry about too...

Except my 50 Staff Fighter is the most fun I've had so far.

Hurrrrrrrr.

"Top tier" and "top" are not the same thing. Nice backpedal, Sparky.

True fact: Miss streaks NEVER happen with capped acc and +tohit!

Except, you know, you have a maximum 95% chance to hit no matter what and the RNG can be streaky on that 5% sometimes.....

...this is a joke, right? Have you actually played this game? They're freaking EVERYWHERE.

Because if you lose momentum, the DPS drops until you get going again. A miss on a non-momentum swing deals a MUCH bigger hit than a miss on a swing with momentum active. The point I'm trying to make talking about it with and without is that whether or not it's active makes a big difference. And even if you never miss, it does drop for at least one swing every few seconds.

If you're measuring DPS while it's active during the whole sample, it's going to be MUCH higher than if you measure when it's dropped.

If anyone actually using plant control thinks it's underpowered, though, they're doing something HORRIBLY wrong...

Fire Control was is not good because of the pets. Fire Control is good BECAUSE of anything but the imps. The pet recharge adjustments did jack diddly to how great fire control is.

The reason why Fire Control isn't used as much for farming is because Fire Brutes got better due to the changes to SS/Fire. Particularly the Fire side.

Yeah, I really hope no one would say that even if it were a pay set. lol.

I was mainly referring to the well-known (or at least it should be well-known) sentiment that you should avoid giving minions in any ae mission fire control for smoke alone.

Which is a shame because there are a lot of great ideas for missions where you'd want to simulate a burning building and have smoke everywhere. turns out that's a literal NAND gate blocking out lots of people from getting that mission done.

The worst is still setting a timer on a mission and giving everything black hole.

... "Top Tier" and "Top" are the same thing. I did not say "ABSOLUTE BEST EVER MUST NOT COMPARE". Saying something is "Top Tier" and... you're not even making sense.

Next; Streakbreaker denies your logic of constantly missing hit after hit at 95%.

And yes, they must be rare, or I build enough +ACC (And I do) to never miss. And by never I mean "I am not affected by -ToHit unless I'm hit by five Radiations at once." I'll clarify that, before someone goes "NYAAAAAH!"

Between keyboard and chair, I guess.

Well, I did say "maybe". I do remember Machine Gun Imps.

Same here man. Same here.

Actually, if you have a 95% chance to hit, you can NEVER miss twice in a row.

And because AoEs roll attacks against enemies one at a time, NOT simultaneously, if you use an AoE with a 95% hit chance (That's total hit chance, not base Accuracy) against 2 or more opponents, you're guaranteed to hit at least one of them. That's why, when I need momentum and keep missing, I start spamming AoEs. Even if I'm heavily Accuracy or ToHit debuffed, I'll force Streak Breaker to kick in faster.

I hate the momentum mechanic. With staff I get to skip 0 and go right to 60. With TW everything seems to take forever.

The was hammered in even deeper during the escape phase of a BAF today. On TW that part of that trial is like having my nails pulled out with pliers while jumper cables are being attached to my.... well any way it sucks.

With staff, even w/o a level shift it was fun. It was fun because it was fast, very fast. Stuff died, because I attacked fast.

To each their own. I will take Staff over TW any day of the week. I do have a lvl 50 of both.

I would, too. It would be the reason why I nuked my TW for my SF. I think Staff is perfectly 'fine' as is. It's very 'average'.

Could it use buffs? Not before Blast sets.

I'm perfectly fine with the simultaneous existence of both "average" and "outlier" sets. Whether they're free or paid-for.

"Top Tier" is like saying "One of the best". "Top" is like saying "The best". If you can't tell the difference, then I'll just quite trying to engage in a battle of wits.

The only place I said anything about "constantly missing" was in your imagination. If you have to put words into my mouth to refute what I'm saying, don't bother arguing. You've lost and you know it.

Here is the problem with average. IOs and IO sets blew it out of the water. Because I have near unlimited resources I can make builds that surpass what less fortunate people can make. With my inf and merits, and well shear time in the game, I can take claws and make it better than TW. (yes that was a exaggeration)

There are always going to be better builds, and better players. Sadly there is no way to average for that, well some l33t math person like Arcanaville may can. No real way to balance for it either and still keep the game fun and exciting.

I feel that is what is really being missed here. Sure if we do all our builds with SOs then some things are going to be better than others. That is not what we are doing though. Your SOed TW, and my IOed Staff build is going to blow it out of the water. Either because of damage, or because you will be dead and I will not be.

I maintain balance is gone, and it will not come back until we all have access to the same stuff. Hey, I am willing to spend more cash and time on the game than others, they are going to have a really hard time catching up with me. Not to mention I have been playing for 7 years, and know most of the tricks of the trade.

He may have misinterpreted what you said, but you DID say that it's possible to have miss streaks with a 95% hit chance.

Technically, you CAN miss multiple times in a row with a 95% hit chance, but only if you're mixing in attacks with a lower chance. If ALL your attacks have a 95% chance, then the streak you mentioned IS impossible.

I'm sorry, that goes way beyond "misinterpreting". "Streaks are possible" does not equal "I'm constantly missing" in any wild stretch of the imagination.