Peacebringer single-target?

EDIT: Read down a bit, the breakdown is 5 posts in.

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Original post:

Hey PB players -

What do you guys do for a single-target attack chain, and how in general do we compare with other damage-oriented toons on a single-target level?

Thanks

At the high end, a pb can do roughly the same as a non-ss/fire or TW brute.

... with the 'top chain' of Radiant > Blast > Bolt, and trying to factor in Perma Inner Light, but not factoring in Perma Heel Procs because that's beyond me at this hour, I'm getting around 140-150 DPS with out Reactive, but factoring in Musculature.

I'm probably horribly off here, because LolPeaceBringerMath. But 140-150 pre Reactive is pretty "meh", especially with a claim as bolsterous as "Only SS/TW Brutes beat it".

A LOT of sets beat that. But, do correct me on the actual total DPS of that chain, please. PBs aren't my cup of tea.

Looks like I've got some homework, then.

I'll have to do the math and see what I come up with.

Whaddya know, I did my homework.

Peacebringer Single-Target Damage Analysis / Compendium

1. INTRO
a. Foreward
b. Assumptions
c. Methodology

2. DATA
a. Human
b. Bright Nova
c. White Dwarf

3. MODIFIERS
a. Enhancement
b. Additive

4. ATTACK CHAINS

5. OUTRO
a. Conclusions
b. Recommendations

=============================

Foreword:

This breakdown is an attempt to analyze Peacebringer single-target damage rotations and gauge the efficacy of the archetype’s single-target system, and will also highlight potential issues that need adjustment for the AT to continue to be effective going forward. It’s a labor of love with the only expected impact to be a heightened awareness of the reality of Peacebringer performance.

Assumptions:

This breakdown assumes a few things concerning Peacebringer design intent and overall game design:

1. The Peacebringer is designed to be a very survivable DPS archetype with light control and moderate on-target debuffs. This assumption is based on the powers available in primary and secondary pools for the archetype, and powers similarly not available to the archetype. For instance, Luminous Aura has three shields, Essence Boost, Reform Essence, and Light Form to bolster survivability, while Luminous Blast features a number of knockback attacks and only two hard controls. Notably, of the 13 Luminous Blast powers, no less than 10 are direct attack powers. All of those attacks provide a significant defense debuff on the target.

2. The Peacebringer is designed fundamentally to be played on a team. The archetype’s inherent ability, Cosmic Power, is directly linked to the number of players on your team, to the point where it does not function at all without teammates. In addition, the Peacebringer shapeshift abilities Bright Nova and White Dwarf allow the AT to fulfill team-specific roles like sustained AOE DPS (rarely drawn upon in the original design of the game solo) and aggro management / team protection. Finally, the Peacebringer’s debuffs are designed to increase overall team damage and control by debuffing enemy defenses. The Peacebringer itself is a comparatively very accurate archetype thanks to Inner Light and Bright Nova’s inherent buffs so the defense debuffs typically function to aid less-accurate party members such as Controllers, Defenders, and (occasionally) Tanks.

3. The Peacebringer’s shapeshifting roles are designed to supplement - but not replace wholesale - the existing archetypes and are therefore only designed for intermittent use. Bright Nova form enables the Peacebringer to put out consistent AoE DPS and has a modified damage scale to allow for effective scaling, but doesn’t have the range of tools available to the Blaster or Corruptor, such as controls or specialized debuffs. White Dwarf form enables the Peacebringer to do mild aggro control, teleport around to bypass movement speed slows, and shrug off crowd control, but the Dwarf has no Provoke and a limited-at-best Taunt ability. Both forms are also restricted to abilities specific to the forms, and outside of Incarnate abilities cannot use other Peacebringer abilities, power pool abilities, or temporary powers.

4. The only relevant place to discuss Peacebringer single-target DPS is the endgame; no other area of the game provides consistently significant single-target damage challenges. While an analysis of Peacebringer 1-50 development might prove instructive in understanding overall Peacebringer issues, it’s not terribly relevant where DPS is concerned.

Methodology:

This breakdown will utilize the following methods in order to establish a baseline for evaluation of Peacebringer performance and effective attack chains. It’s important to note that because of the above assumptions, a Peacebringer will be compared to other DPS-oriented toons at endgame and that all numbers will be considered in the context of a team environment with Cosmic Balance functioning properly.

First, individual attacks will be vetted for efficiency. Attacks will be evaluated first and foremost for damage per animation time; this is because attacks can be modified in many different ways, but they’ll never be able to execute any faster than their animation allows. This time value will be modified by the server timing mechanism for executing attacks, which has been widely dubbed “ArcanaTime” and forces attacks to start their resolution on specific server ticks. Then attacks will be evaluated for sustainability, which focuses on endurance cost (typically not a factor at the high end) and recharge times. All attacks will be evaluated at the very base damage initially, and then scaling will be outlined after the attack roster is complete.

Second, from the compilation and analysis of individual attack data, I will build attack chains that maximize efficiency, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of those attack chains. A few different chains will be examined during this process, based around various situations and ability utilization, with the intent of examining how they modify slotting and how prioritization flows around abilities. I’ll also use this to kill certain DPS myths and misconceptions where Peacebringers are concerned.

Finally, I’ll use the compiled attack chains as a baseline to compare the Peacebringer’s performance to various other damage Archetypes, such as Blasters and Brutes, and comment on issues that could constrain Peacebringer DPS performance moving forward, both easy stop-gap fixes and larger issues requiring extensive work.

Individual Attack Data

Quick Reference Guide:
Name: Base Damage / Base Cast Time / Arcana Cast Time / Damage per Arcana Time / Endurance Cost / Recharge

Gleaming Bolt: 26.69 / 1 / 1.118 / 23.872 / 3.12 / 1.5s
This is a light and fast ranged attack. While it does very little damage per cast, its relatively quick cast time means that it can effectively be used as filler, and it serves both as a sort of grease for attack chains and a proc carrier.

Glinting Eye: 44.49 / 1.67 / 1.716 / 25.90 / 5.2 / 4s
A slightly heavier ranged attack, but one with a cast time that does not justify its low damage. Glinting Eye is widely perceived as the worst attack for Peacebringers because of its long execution and low damage for that execution.

Gleaming Blast: 72.96 / 1.67 / 1.716 / 42.51 / 8.53 / 8s
Gleaming Blast, on the other hand, does justify its cast time, albeit barely. Gleaming Blast serves as adequate attack chain filler, but is hardly a star attack on its own. It’s our heaviest single-target ranged attack.

Radiant Strike: 92.65 / 1.07 / 1.118 / 82.289 / 10.19 / 10s
Radiant Strike is far and away our best DPA attack. At 82.289 damage per cast it’s almost on the same level as Dark Melee’s Smite ability (~86 dpc), which is the gem of a very good single-target set. Because of its swift cast time it’s also a good proc delivery system for melee proc IO’s. The only downsides here are its substantial knockback and that at the recharge for Radiant Strike is a considerable 10s, meaning that even in the most recharge-accelerated world you’re unlikely to get it under 3 seconds, whereas in Dark Melee, Smite has a 6s recharge time and comes up significantly more often in a compressed attack chain.

Incandescent Strike: 168.28 / 3.3 / 3.3 / 50.93 / 18.51 / 20s
Not an attack often considered to be useful in a consistent attack chain, Incandescent Strike’s very heavy damage manages to overcome its downsides, such as its long cast time. Notably, its enormous cast time happens to line up precisely with server times, which is a rarity. Not every player is going to be comfortable with forcibly holding still for 3.3 seconds, but those that use it will be rewarded with the PB’s 2nd highest DPA attack.

Proton Scatter: 44.04 / 2.17 / 2.245 / 19.61 / 11.86 / 12s
Bad. Might just define “bad”.

Luminous Detonation: 40.04 / 1.67 / 1.716 / 23.3 / 15.18 / 16s
Not quite as bad as Proton Scatter, but still pretty abysmal.

Solar Flare: 67.12 / 2.1 / 2.112 / 31.78 / 18.51 / 20s
This ability is getting closer to “good”, and a great AoE, but definitely not a single-target rotational ability.

Photon Seekers and Dawn Strike are large AOE abilities with long recharge times. They don’t have much of a role in a sustained attack chain.

Bright Nova Bolt: 40.04 / 1.5 / 1.584 / 25.28 / 3.12 / 1.5s
Bright Nova Bolt is essentially a second Gleaming Bolt. Despite doing more damage and having a better damage scale (1.2 versus 0.8) the Bright Nova Bolt is constrained by its animation time, which is a way-too-long 1.5 seconds base.

Bright Nova Blast: 66.73 / 1.5 / 1.584 / 42.12 / 5.2 / 4s
Bright Nova Blast is a reasonably good attack. It’s the heavier of the two Bright Nova attacks, and can hit relatively hard due to its heightened damage scale even despite a relatively lengthy cast time.

Bright Nova Scatter: 66.06 / 1.5 / 1.584 / 41.70 / 11.86 / 12s
Bright Nova Scatter does damage roughly on par with Bright Nova Blast, which is notable because it’s an AOE. In a Bright Nova attack chain, it’s actually reasonably effective… at least, as effective as Bright Nova chains can be, which is something we’ll go into further below.

White Dwarf Strike: 46.71 / 1.2 / 1.32 / 35.38 / 4.37 / 3s
White Dwarf Strike is a reasonably good fast attack. The animation is a wee bit too long for the results, but it’s the most efficient quick attack available to the Peacebringer.

White Dwarf Smite: 73.41 / 1.5 / 1.584 / 46.34 / 6.86 / 6s
Not bad! Smite as a power is reasonably effective and can hold its own in a rotation, although it’s certainly no Radiant Strike by any means. The 6s recharge time does hurt the Peacebringer’s ability to build an attack chain that works for White Dwarf form, since it cannot constantly be available after White Dwarf Smite. I’ll diagnose Dwarf chains below and go into this in more detail.

White Dwarf Flare: 50.05 / 2.1 / 2.112 / 23.697 / 15.18 / 16s
This ability is not intended for single targets, and the numbers back that up in a big way. Overcosted, too slow, and not a hard hitter.

Modifiers:

Many different things can modify your base damage. These can be roughly divided up into several categories: Cosmic Balance, enhancements, short-term buffs (either from powers, inspirations, or ally powers), Proc IO’s, or Incarnate powers such as Interface abilities or the Assault Radial Hybrid enhancement.

Cosmic Balance is our inherent ability. This is fantastically powerful in a properly designed team and no raid should go without the leader organizing the raid so that the Peacebringer has maximum gain from this ability. For each Defender, Tank, Mastermind, or Corruptor in the same group as the Peacebringer, the PB gains a flat 20% additive bonus to their damage. With 7 contributing party members, that bonus reaches 140%, which is an absurdly large bonus; essentially a Build Up and a half at all times.

Enhancements are gear placed into slots that provide bonuses to specific powers; combined sets of specific enhancements, called IO’s, will confer a global bonus to abilities. At endgame, Incarnate Slot enhancements become available and once earned will allow the player to slot in abilities to dramatically increase their capabilities. As far as damage is concerned, without factoring in global bonuses, a player can have about 140% additional damage assuming Musculature Core Paragon in the Alpha slot and either Assault Embodiment enhancement in the Hybrid slot.

Short-term buffs are abilities either used by you the player, or by your allies, to increase your own damage. This can range wildly from Damage inspirations to your own Inner Light ability to the Assault teamwork power to even include the Hybrid ability Assault Core Embodiment, which can stack up to a stunning 75% additional damage. It can be very hard to predict what outside buffs will be available to the Peacebringer and so relying on them too heavily can result in disappointing performance.

Calculating the impact of all of the abilities and bonuses mentioned above may seem daunting, but it’s really quite simple. All you have to do is add the bonuses together and apply them to the ability in question. For instance, Gleaming Bolt does 26.69 damage base, but if you’ve added an additional 100% damage in various bonuses, that bolt will do 53.38 damage instead. The only note of warning here is that as a Peacebringer we have an effective damage cap of 400% of the original damage; this means that our Gleaming Bolt example will NEVER be able to do more than 107.6 damage to a target with standard damage resistance. The confusing part of this number is that the 400% number includes the power’s base damage already as 100% of the intended damage of the power… which means that your damage bonus to a given power can never exceed 300%, to include all buffs, Enhancements, and Cosmic Balance’s substantial contribution.

Moving on to unusual types of additional damage, proc (short for “procedural”) IO’s are enhancements that add a bit of extra damage on each attack. Currently, these enhancements work as a flat percentage chance to activate each time the power in which they’re placed is used. They receive no benefit from any enhancement on your own player and ignore damage cap numbers, since they’re separate forms of damage. These come in two flavors: normal IO’s, which have a 20% chance to deal 71.75 damage, or Superior IO’s (purples), which have a 33% chance to deal 107.1 damage. Despite their chance-based activation they’re quite simple to calculate into the damage of a power or attack chain. All you have to do is multiply the damage by the chance to activate (which works out to 14.35 for standard IOs and 35.34 for Superior IOs, quite a difference), gauge how often the power will be used in a given chain, and then determine how much that IO contributes to DPS over the length of the chain. For instance, in a 5 second chain in which it’s used twice, a Superior Proc IO can deliver ((35.34)2)/5 damage, or roughly 14.136 DPS on the average for that 5 second chain. The first example chain below uses this as an example.

The second unusual source of damage is Proc IO’s or Incarnate powers that lower the target’s damage resistance. One of the unique advantages of being a Peacebringer is access to proc IOs in pools not normally tied to damage, such as Defense Debuff and Accurate Defense Debuff. One of those IO’s is the Achilles’ Heel: Chance for -20% Resistance. Since all of our powers debuff defense, all parts of your chain could theoretically be assigned this IO. If two of your attack chain abilities are suited with this IO, and they go off relatively often, you can usually keep this up a majority of the time. The other source of –Resistance is the Reactive series of Interface Incarnate powers; this has a chance to activate that varies on the tier of the power, and can stack a 2.5% debuff up to 4 times, to a total of 10%. These abilities effectively increases the damage of all of your abilities, after damage % buff numbers, on that specific target. Achilles’ Heel and Reactive will stack with each other to a maximum of 30% -Resistance to the target. This is a considerable source of extra damage; even better, it applies to all players who are hitting that target, so it can lead to being a substantial raid debuff on the target.

The final unusual source of damage is procs from Incarnate abilities. Most Interface abilities feature a damage proc, and on top of that the new Hybrid Assault Radial tree has a “doublehit” proc in it. These two sets of Incarnate powers are not deeply understood and math behind them is dubious at best – to the best of my knowledge nobody has run a DPS parse on the “doublehit” proc to determine average proc chance or percentage of core power it strikes for at T4 levels. This guide assumes that the Interface proc is a 75% chance to activate the DOT at full T4 (if you chose the appropriate IO), and each tick has a 75% chance to activate after that. On average, the power will produce 30.65 damage per cast assuming that number is correct… the only issue is that I have not vetted that number with a statistically significant value and cannot speak to how well it scales - ie, will abilities that have a longer cast time benefit further from the Incarnate power somehow as they do with the Doublehit mechanic.

These three sources of extra damage have to be evaluated independently from the power that they affect, as they are by and large unaffected by the damage enhancements in the power. I’ve added them beneath the display below.

Attack Chains :

As far as attack chains are concerned, there are a few options here, depending on your general level of recharge and access to very powerful IO sets or Incarnate abilities. All damage numbers will be provided at unenhanced levels, and then at “normal” levels of endgame (300%), and then at maximum values (400%). Proc slotting, Achilles’ Heel, and Incarnate powers will be underneath the charts. The final number, based on -30% Resistance on the target, will be adjusted for 95% Accuracy.

Basic Rotation
Gleaming Bolt -> Gleaming Blast -> Gleaming Bolt -> Radiant Strike

Time: 5.07
Total Damage: 218.99 / 656.97 / 875.96
DPS: 41.03 / 129.57 / 172.77
Procs: 3x Superior, 20.91
Interface: 24.18
Hybrid: ?
30% -Resistance Total: 106.36 / 216.22 / 269.06

This is an easy to execute attack rotation and will be possible with mild (up to rare) IO slotting if you’re offensively postured, as it doesn’t take much beyond SO enhancement levels to drive Radiant Strike’s recharge to the point where this is possible. As it doesn’t require much in the way of resources at endgame, it’s a good starting point, but I’d suggest that most players will move on from this rotation as they gain power.

Basic High-Recharge Rotation
Gleaming Bolt -> Gleaming Blast -> Radiant Strike

Time: 3.952
Total Damage: 192.3 / 576.9 / 769.2
DPS: 46.225 / 145.98 / 194.64
Procs: 2x Superior, 17.89
Interface: 23.27
Hybrid: ?
30% -Resistance Total: 107.97 / 231.12 / 291.21

This is a really good rotation for the Peacebringer. Hits reasonably hard, maintains the Heel debuff easily, and can be paused easily for movement issues or renewing long-term click buffs. It’s not the highest damage potential rotation for the Peacebringer, but it’s very close and doesn’t carry some of the downsides of the rotation below.

IS High-Recharge Rotation
Incandescent Strike -> Radiant Strike -> Gleaming Bolt -> Gleaming Blast -> Radiant Strike -> Gleaming Bolt

Time: 9.488
Total Damage: 479.92 / 1439.76 / 1919.68
DPS: 50.58 / 151.75 / 202.33
Procs: 5x Superior, 18.62
Interface: 19.38
Hybrid: ?
30% -Resistance Total: 109.39 / 234.35 / 296.8

This is the highest damage rotation available to the Peacebringer, but it’s not without flaws. There are two significant issues here is that it requires an enormous amount of slots to work – of the 67 slots, no less than 20 have to be allocated to these four powers alone to get their production to the point where the rotation is possible. It’s also quite expensive as a result. The other issue is that Incandescent Strike is a very slow-to-animate ability, and even though its damage justifies its animation time, it can be a liability because the player can’t move for the length of the animation, which in certain encounters can be lethal. Most players like more damage, but to pursue this rotation to gain less than 2% DPS over the previous rotation is going to be a decision that players will have to make for themselves.

Bright Nova Rotation
Bright Nova Bolt -> Bright Nova Blast -> Bright Nova Bolt -> Bright Nova Scatter

Time: 6.336
Total Damage: 212.87 / 638.61 / 851.48
DPS: 33.6 / 100.8 / 134.39
Procs: 3x Superior, 16.73
Interface: 19.35
Hybrid: ?
30% -Resistance Total: 86.05 / 169.04 / 210.53

I hope this puts the idea of Bright Nova single-target viability to rest. I really do. Abysmal, just awful all around. This really shows how poor DPA can just kill the most well-intentioned of ideas… to get this rotation competitive they’d have to almost double the base damage dealt by the attacks. The only thing that might make this useful is that the Bright Nova form has an inherent 45% damage buff, but once the player reaches the elder game, it’s impossible to justify.

White Dwarf Rotation
White Dwarf Strike -> White Dwarf Smite -> White Dwarf Strike -> White Dwarf Flare

Time: 6.336
Total Damage: 216.88 / 650.64 / 867.52
DPS: 34.23 / 102.69 / 136.92
Procs: 4x Superior, 22.31
Interface: 19.35
Hybrid: ?
30% -Resistance Total: 93.73 / 178.28 / 220.54

Amazingly, the tank form is better at single-target damage than the blaster form… but it’s still bad compared to even the basic Human rotation. Also, you need a pretty good chunk of +Recharge to make this work, because Flare has a 16s cooldown – if improperly executed, or if you don’t have enough recharge to drive Flare down to 4.2s recharge time, you’re going to end up with dead time in the rotation.

Outro

Conclusions:
1. Peacebringer single-target DPS in a team format isn’t *bad*, but nor is it what I’d call competitive with the likes of Dark Melee scrappers or Super Strength brutes on a single target level. The set’s AOE presence is certainly significant, and of course Peacebringers can be very hard to kill, but the single-target is something I’d consider underwhelming when looking at the DPS compendium posts from 2010 – even at that point, prior to Musculature/Spiritual Core Paragon and various Interface T4 enhancements, you still had a number of sets that could outperform this set on a single target level. I can only believe that the Incarnate abilities furthered the damage of those sets on a single target level, past even what the Peacebringer is capable of – imagine a very high recharge Dark Melee scrapper swinging a rotation of Shadow Punch – Smite – Shadow Punch – Midnight Grasp, and the raw speed of that rotation combined with proc IOs and Interface procs. Our best contribution to the single-target fight is probably going to be our Defense and Resistance debuffs, combined with our survivability.

2. The transformations are ultimately very much a niche role, based on their performance here. I suspected that the Bright Nova would perform badly because of its DPA, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of its shortfalls until I was in the midst of crunching the numbers. That said, the Bright Nova’s innate damage boost combined with high-speed recharge of its abilities enables it to be effective in the early game, so I don’t believe that the answer is simply to change up damage and recharge numbers, and changing up animation times will help but won’t be enough to make the abilities viable. On the other hand, the White Dwarf’s attack chain is sufficient for maintaining a modicrum of aggro when combined with the taunt, so it can fulfill the off-tank role, but it’s certainly not intended to be a single-target damage machine and doesn’t play like one, which in my mind is just fine. It probably shouldn’t outperform the transformation explicitly designed to be good at damaging things.

3. Efficiency is at an absolute premium in the Peacebringer DPS line. We have two very notable constraining factors that ultimately limit our development as an AT. One of them is the horrid DPA noted by most of our attacks. Radiant Strike has a respectable ~80 DPA; all of the others (literally, all of them) are at least 30 DPA below that. This is not a very efficient attack chain and would require animation changes, substantial damage scale buffing, or a complete AT redesign to fix… a non-trivial problem to be sure. The other half of this is that the current model for Cosmic Balance (and of course its Warshade equivalent Dark Sustenance) is an additive bonus to damage and resistance that help the PB out a great deal, but also lead to elder game problems with the AT reaching the 400% damage ceiling very quickly. This limits overall growth potential and also removes certain abilities from the AT’s toolset, such as Build Up or Hybrid Assault Core Incarnate abilities. I’m hard pressed to find a use for my Build Up powers *now* when considering the volume of buffs and Cosmic Balance’s impact on my damage. I can only imagine it to be harder on a Warshade.

4. As a follow-on response to the point above, the fact that so few attacks have significance in the Peacebringer arsenal draws my attention to the number of attacks in the set as a whole (17) versus the number of *relevant* attacks in the set (10), and more importantly the number of relevant attacks to the single-target game (4). I don’t have much use for Glinting Eye, Proton Scatter, Luminious Detonation, Bright Nova Bolt, Bright Nova Blast, White Dwarf Strike, or White Dwarf Smite. In addition, the only uses I have for most of the remainder are AOE; only Gleaming Bolt, Gleaming Blast, Radiant Strike, and Incandescent Strike really earn their pay in this set, and I’d only consider Radiant Strike to be a *good* attack… Gleaming Bolt only earns a place in the rotation to grease the wheels as a very fast attack and proc abilities. On top of all that, unlike most of the modern sets, the Kheldian sets don’t really have any sort of compelling gameplay mechanic such as Tidal Power or Disintegrate, since the shapeshift powers are so abysmal outside of their carefully chosen roles be they consistent AOE damage or off-tanking.

Recommendations:

There are a number of things that could be done for the Peacebringer to allow growth and bring irrelevant abilities into focus; they get much harder when you consider the volume of time that has to be invested in some of the more involved fixes. Let me say straight away that I really like the Kheldian concept (obviously, after all this) and I like my character right now; I just believe that it could be much more interesting with some effort. I’ll list them in order of difficulty to implement.

1. Allow the Kheldian to reach a damage cap of 500%, vice 400%. This has an immediate impact on gameplay and is essentially just moving damage integers around; not too hard to pull off. This will enable Kheldian use of Assault Core Incarnate abilities, Build Up, and inspirations during the elder game. A simple, easy fix… and quite controllable too, as it’s easy to revert if seen as too powerful. Notably, this is not a global fix to Kheldian issues. It’d probably take a programmer a day or two to track down all references to Kheldian damage bonuses across the spectrum and update them to match Blaster/Scrapper/Corruptor/Stalker.

2. Redesign Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustenance to affect Kheldian base Damage Scale vice being an additive bonus to damage. This suggestion involves modifying only Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustenance and will probably negate most of (but not all of) the need for fix #1. I don’t know if buffing Damage Scale is something that can be done non-trivially, and of course it’ll have to be carefully controlled to ensure that a Kheldian doesn’t go nuts on it – I’m thinking something along the lines of 0.05 Damage Scale per player, so that a full damage-oriented team of 7 folks ends up at damage scale 1.2 and 1.15 for Melee and Range respectively, and stacking with Nova and Dwarf damage scale increases as well. This is a question of tech; if the tech exists to make this work, awesome, if not, it’s probably not worth the effort.

3. Re-animate Kheldian attacks so that they have comparable DPA to other damage-focused toons, OR rebalance all Kheldian attacks around their current animations in order to bring relevant DPA to those attacks. This is non-trivial and would take an individual team member several weeks to accomplish, but it would fix a lot of existing issues, such as the complete silliness of Glinting Eye and Bright Nova Bolt.

4. Establish unique mechanics for Peacebringers and Warshades. Warshades in this respect are substantially closer to having their own mechanic, as they’ve got no less than ten abilities that “drain” something from the target to make them stronger, be that target an active enemy or a defeated one. Peacebringers don’t have much of anything unique to them; their defense set is essentially Invulnerability and their offense set is a mix of Energy Blast and Radiation Blast, with a pet summon that is essentially a small nuke and a random, never-chosen ally heal. Warshades could probably use one or two unique abilities that take advantage of their “drain” mechanic, such as an Against All Odds consistent area sap (probably either replacing a shield or rebuilding Orbital Death), but Peacebringers need a rethinking from the ground up in that respect. As an archetype they’re very scattered in design, but don’t have the tools to support building on any of those various design elements… for instance, a Peacebringer would make an awful, awful healer if the player tried to play them as one. This would take a small team the length of an Issue cycle to accomplish.

5. Do all of the above at the same time, OR lay out a plan and build it in iterative format over several Issues’ worth of content. This is the developer equivalent of <The Really Hard Way> and would revitalize the archetypes, but probably at the cost of new powersets. Both Luminous Blast and Luminous Aura would need a look. Not a fix for the timid but the end result would be impressive.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! Leave comments and I’ll be sure to integrate relevant feedback into my post.

Fantastic work, Rakeeb!

I agree very much with your conclusions on the forms.

Question: Had you thought to try the dwarf numbers with a force feedback +recharge proc slotted in every dwarf attack? It feels like it helps my dwarf's attack chain(I monitor recharge in combat numbers), but I've never really taken the time to quantify how it affects damage output.

Overall, though, a well-wrought analysis! Good work!

Wow, Rakeeb! An impressive summation of PB ST capabilities!

I currently go with the Bolt/Blast/Rad. Strike for my ST Chain, but I do have the slots and funds if I wanted to go with the IS High-Recharge Chain. Not sure that I want to...

Question: you said the IS Chain would require 20 slots to provide Maximum efficiency. By that, do you mean each of the 4 powers being 6-slotted (5 xtra slots per power = 20 slots)? I'm not sure I'd ever want to 6-slot gleaming bolt. Currently I just 4-slot it with 3 damage procs and the Ach.Heel Proc and call it a day.

Question 2: You have 5x Superior Procs listed. I'm assuming the Unbreakable Constraint Proc in IS, the Hecatomb in IS or RS, and the Apocalypse in Blast or Bolt - what other two Superiors are you talking about?

Socorro: I currently have Gleaming Bolt six-slotted. It's got four Apocalypse (including the proc), Heel, and I've also got Decimation's chance to Build Up in there. Not terribly useful for league play, but I solo quite a bit, and it can come in handy there in single-target encounters.

Re: procs, iIn that long chain, you're using GB and RS twice, and IS once, so that's 5 powers with superior IO's going off in that 9 seconds. So I averaged the production of those procs. Unbreakable Constraint is in IS, Hecatomb is in RS, and Apocalypse is in GB.

Whenever I modeled a chain, I did so with the assumption that the player would slot as aggressively as possible.

Haven't checked your numbers, but two things to make sure you are doing: bolt gets more damage from procs than damage IOs, so you should fill it up with procs first, then add some damage if you want. You can get three non-purple damage procs in there besides heel.
The other thing is nova's best chain does not include bolt at all (good indicator something should be changed). It gets better dps with blast>cone>blast>detonation. Still not going to be a contender for single target, bit it's better.

Gotcha Rakeeb - Thanks Again. I like for a Single build to be sort of a 'generalist'. Able to take down single hard targets and also be formidable in teams/leagues; doesn't have to be the very best at either, so in that light I'll probably stick with my slotting for GB.

But the data you've provided is certainly going to make me reconsider Incandecsent Strike. I don't even have it on my current build, thinking the animations times just made it not worth having...

Hmmm... I'm out of respecs. Wait, or by one now...Hmmm...

@Reppu, please do not misquote me. I did not say only SS and TW can beat it, I said it is roughly on par with brutes other than TW and the specific combo of SS/fire. In fact, SS with another secondary is pretty low dps, actually. For a reference of what brutes are able to do, you can search for a thread called Brute Top End Dps by Deus_Otiosus. You will see a range that barely ever breaks 260 dps outside of the two I mentioned.

Found the Hybrid calculations. Whoo boy do they favor the slow-recharge attacks. It's almost absurd.

I'll field requests for specific builds tonight (such as the Force Feedback proc setup) at work... bear with me folks.

It's not attainable without lag. You cannot queue a transformed attack without being in the appropriate form in the first place. So you'll have one unit of server time used to transform, yes, and then you queue up White Dwarf Smite and swing.

If that was fixed...

Interesting. Mids' arcanatime hacks are going straight to the server tick AFTER the execution should resolve... of course, this only makes the set look worse. I may have an incomplete understanding of Arcanatime then, because I was having the next attack execute at the completion of the server tick in which the animation ends, while this hack at it has every one of them requiring an additional server tick to enter "Ready" mode, if you will.

I'm going to have to redo some formulae anyway, because I got the Hybrid numbers, so I'll include this material in there as well. It's not gonna make any of this look much better, I'll say that much. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I apologise for the delay; work has been very busy lately. I redid all of the attack chains for the variance in ArcanaTime noted by Microcosm, accounted for Hybrid Assault Radial Embodiment, and integrated three new possible rotations into the mix. Rather that write over the other rotations, I've chosen to post updated chains here, so that prospective players can compare the two to see the changes Hybrid and ArcanaTime fixes had on overall Peacebringer single-target DPS. A brief conclusion blurb will be in the following post.

Onto the charts!

======================

Basic Rotation
Gleaming Bolt - > Gleaming Blast -> Gleaming Bolt - > Radiant Strike

Time: 5.40
Total Damage: 218.99 / 656.97 / 875.96
DPS: 40.55 / 121.66 / 162.21
Procs: 3x Superior, 19.63
Interface: 22.40
Hybrid: 26.94
30% -Resistance Total: 135.26 / 235.43 / 285.50

This is an easy to execute attack rotation and will be possible with mild (up to rare) IO slotting if you’re offensively postured, as it doesn’t take much beyond SO enhancement levels to drive Radiant Strike’s recharge to the point where this is possible. As it doesn’t require much in the way of resources at endgame, it’s a good starting point, but I’d suggest that most players will move on from this rotation as they gain power.

Basic High-Recharge Rotation
Gleaming Bolt -> Gleaming Blast -> Radiant Strike

Time: 4.286
Total Damage: 192.3 / 576.9 / 769.2
DPS: 44.87 / 134.60 / 179.47
Procs: 2x Superior, 16.49
Interface: 21.38
Hybrid: 33.43
30% -Resistance Total: 143.46 / 254.29 / 309.7

This is a really good rotation for the Peacebringer. Hits reasonably hard, maintains the Heel debuff easily, and can be paused easily for movement issues or renewing long-term click buffs. It’s not the highest damage potential rotation for the Peacebringer, but it’s not bad and doesn’t root you for a long period of time on any one attack. I looked at the possibility of pulling Gleaming Bolt out of the rotation entirely, but you’d need higher than 500% total recharge, and that’s the cap.

IS High-Recharge Rotation (Modified)
Incandescent Strike -> Radiant Strike -> Gleaming Bolt -> Gleaming Blast -> Radiant Strike

Time: 9.038
Total Damage: 453.23 / 1359.69 / 1812.92
DPS: 50.15 / 150.44 / 200.59
Procs: 4x Superior, 15.73
Interface: 16.96
Hybrid: 42.19
30% -Resistance Total: 154.41 / 278.27 / 340.21

This is the highest damage rotation available to the Peacebringer, and there’s enough separation now that it’s worth using. This needs about +300% recharge to work, but in a raid scenario at high end with aggressive recharge slotting (or building yourself a Spiritual Core Paragon alpha power) you’re likely going to be at or around this number. Incandescent Strike is hard for some folks to use and not hate themselves, but the difference maker really is the Hybrid Assault Radial upgrade. It’s a huge DPS difference and a rotation that uses Hybrid-friendly powers aggressively has a significant advantage. Whereas previously I was ambivalent on this rotation I don’t think an aggressive Peacebringer player can go without it.

Bright Nova Rotation
Bright Nova Bolt -> Bright Nova Blast

Time: 3.432
Total Damage: 106.77 / 320.31 / 427.08
DPS: 31.11 / 93.33 / 124.44
Procs: 1x Superior, 10.29
Interface: 17.86
Hybrid: 5.65
30% -Resistance Total: 80.16 / 157.0 / 195.42

I hope this puts the idea of Bright Nova single-target viability to rest. I really do. Abysmal, just awful all around... the IS rotation above does almost double damage base, and still has a 75% advantage at absolute max damage. This really shows how poor DPA can just kill the most well-intentioned of ideas… to get this rotation competitive they’d have to almost double the base damage dealt by the attacks. The only thing that might make this useful is that the Bright Nova form has an inherent 45% damage buff, but once the player reaches the elder game, it’s impossible to justify since you won’t need it any longer.

White Dwarf Rotation – Regular
White Dwarf Strike -> White Dwarf Smite -> White Dwarf Strike -> White Dwarf Flare

Time: 6.864
Total Damage: 216.88 / 650.64 / 867.52
DPS: 31.60 / 94.79 / 126.39
Procs: 3x Superior, 15.45
Interface: 17.86
Hybrid: 15.30
30% -Resistance Total: 99.06 / 177.1 / 216.13

Amazingly, the tank form is better at single-target damage than the blaster form… but it’s still bad compared to even the basic Human rotation. Also, you need a pretty good chunk of +Recharge to make this work, because Flare has a 16s cooldown – if improperly executed, or if you don’t have enough recharge to drive Flare down to 4.2s recharge time, you’re going to end up with dead time in the rotation.

White Dwarf Rotation – Legendary Recharge Speed 500% NEEDED
White Dwarf Strike -> White Dwarf Smite

Time: 3.168
Total Damage: 120.2 / 360.6 / 480.8
DPS: 37.94 / 113.83 / 151.77
Procs: 1x Superior, 11.16
Interface: 19.35
Hybrid: 14.2
30% -Resistance Total: 102.72 / 195.79 / 242.65

Superspeed Dwarf, possible solo only through Force Feedback procs and specialized Inspirations, but somewhat more common in big teams with tons of +Recharge flying around. While superspeed Dwarf is virtually CC-proof, they do struggle to be relevant in the damage department; even the basic Human rotation is better, and the best Human rotation is almost 100 dps better. One interesting note about this rotation is that it’s very good at killing bosses solo, since they basically can’t move from all the knockup.

Multi-Form Rotation – Normal Lag / Transform Time
Incandescent Strike -> Radiant Strike -> White Dwarf Smite -> Gleaming Blast --> Radiant Strike

Time: 10.164
Total Damage: 499.95 / 1499.85 / 1999.8
DPS: 49.19 / 147.56 / 196.75
Procs: 4x Superior, 13.90
Interface: 15.77
Hybrid: 40.63
30% -Resistance Total: 147.57 / 269.05 / 329.80

This rotation is the result of a PM asking me if the recent patch helped single-target DPS any – that is, the no cast time transformation change. This first parse is the current state of affairs, wherein you have to enable the toggle and allow that toggle to resolved before the transformed attacks are accessible. As you can see it’s pretty good, to be sure, but slightly less powerful than the best possible human rotation. This is because transforming requires 0.132 seconds to resolve, and then an attack can be queued to go off a further 0.132 seconds afterwards, resulting in a quarter-second of delay that proved to be the rotation’s undoing. I chose the best non-human DPA attack to replace Gleaming Bolt, but the results are unfortunately not as good as simply staying human in the first place.

But what if there were no transformation lag at all somehow – if you were able to queue up attacks that would automatically activate the appropriate transformation while the attack was executing?

Multi-Form Rotation – Zero Lag / Transform Time
Incandescent Strike -> Radiant Strike -> White Dwarf Smite -> Gleaming Blast --> Radiant Strike

Time: 9.636
Total Damage: 499.95 / 1499.85 / 1999.8
DPS: 51.88 / 155.65 / 207.53
Procs: 4x Superior, 14.67
Interface: 15.90
Hybrid: 44.11
30% -Resistance Total: 157.53 / 284.45 / 348.52

This is a zero lag rotation. It’s currently impossible to execute because of the aforementioned lag issue, but as you can see it is not exactly worldbeating – this is a net 2 1/2% DPS gain over the best human rotation, which is noteworthy but not a fundamental game changer. I don’t know how much code work it would take to enable the Nova and Dwarf attacks to automatically engage the form shift while executing the attack, but I guarantee that it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

For further comparison's sake, I wanted to draw your attention to an example Scrapper set, using the same rules that I've implemented here for Peacebringers, so that you (the playerbase) can make an appropriate comparison.

Our example Scrapper will be "Da Choppa", a Battle Axe / Willpower scrapper. Battle Axe is a strong single-target set and I believe it will provide a strong highlight for comparison's sake. I won't be annotating all details like I have been with the Peacebringer, as this is purely for comparison's sake.

I'm assuming Musculature Core Paragon, Reactive Radial Flawless Interface, and Assault Radial Embodiment as per the Peacebringer. I'm assuming aggressive damage and recharge slotting, as usual, and that the Scrapper in a raid is picking up some damage buffs like the Peacebringer is. Critical Hit will be woven into the Total Damage numbers assuming Archvillain target and including the Superior Scrapper's Strike 6% bonus chance to Crit. I'm also assuming that our aggressive Scrapper took Fire Mastery for Melt Armor, but has chosen not to put Achilles' Heel in the power as it's not used enough to make it consistent. Our scrapper can keep it on the target 50% of the time, so we'll use half of the Scrapper's value for the power, and say that the Scrapper can maintain a 4.875% resistance buff on the target.

We'll use identical damage enhancement averages - the 400% average will be assuming Scrapper use of Build Up, and the 300% average will be our typical comparative point.

Da Choppa Regular Rotation
Swoop -> Gash -> Cleave -> Chop

Time: 7.788
Total Damage: 689.73 / 2069.19 / 2758.94
DPS: 88.56 / 265.68 / 354.25
Procs: 2x Superior, 9.07
Interface: 15.74
Hybrid: 44.49
14.875% -Resistance Total: 172.27 / 365.56 / 462.22

Those numbers are staggering, and I think that Hybrid might be lowballed for this - the chart I got was purely built off of RedTomax's Hybrid formula and I wouldn't be surprised if Microcosm politely informs me that my Hybrid breakout is bad. Our best rotation at 400% damage, our absolute damage cap, is not quite up to a Scrapper who's not using Build Up. If they use it, or they have some other way to bypass the normal damage values, then their degree of outpacing up goes up considerably. Also, I'm sure that "Da Choppa"'s rotation, slotting, and proc use could all be done more efficiently than my 20 minute plug-numbers-into-Mids shows.

It does deserve to be said that Battle Axe as a set has very little AOE as compared to our plethora of baddie-whacking AOE powers. It also deserves to be said that it's not the worst example of a set that has a huge power edge over us... to really drive the issue, a comparison of Peacebringer and Fire/Fire scrappers (who DO have good AOE, along with absurd single-target) would be ideal.

==============

So the biggest conclusion I've drawn from all of this pencilwork is that, to bring the AT up to the expected level of performance, a number of things will have to be done. Bringing damage scale and recharge values up on certain powers (Nova single-target blasts and increasing our damage cap would help, but I'm not certain that they'd fix the problem entirely... I think they could be a very dangerous fix, one that goes over the line easily and causes more problems than they solve. The best solution is probably using part of the above, to increase the damage cap and to find better roles for powers such as Glinting Eye and Bright Nova Bolt, but also to take a hard look at Cosmic Balance and think about giving Peacebringers a unique mechanic set much like Warshades enjoy with their various siphon mechanics.

This might be, like Gravity Control, the rare but necessary situation in which to break the Cottage Rule. I know I've talked a lot about offense, and I think it needs an improvement, but the defense side is just as skewed, albeit in a different direction.