Powerset Comparisons

I think it's valid to compare a powerset to the perceived best. Basically the idea wouldn't be to see if the set can match the best but rather to see how close it comes to the best. For example, if a new ranged powerset comes out and when compared to fire blast it's shown to do 15%* less damage that gives people a good reference point. I could look at what the set offers besides damage and decide if it's worth trading 15% damage.

But that's only when you're concerned about performance. If your main concern is concept and the powerset fulfills that then you don't even need to read a comparison thread to decide to use it. At that point people only read comparison threads to either feel good about their choice or find out if they need to start asking for buffs to the set.

*I'm just making up random numbers here.

I appreciate the discussion so far. One additional thing to consider is that when we make comparisons using the outliers as the standard we also discourage players.

I am a consummate alt-oholic. I create new toons almost 2 times a week, get them to the mid 30s or 40s and then move on to other things. I have a few 50s but not more than 7 or 8 out of the 50-60 characters that I have at any one time. I want to be powerful and have fun in this game. I want to feel useful on a team. I want to contribute. I want to have some challenge and to know that the result of any encounter is the direct result of my skills and ingenuity (or a teammates). When I am playing the game and find a set (or combination) to be extremely powerful, so much so that the game becomes trivial I usually move on to another toon. Likewise when I am playing a set which under-performs greatly compared to members of my teams or with other characters I have played in the recent past I usually move on.

I come to the forums sometimes to research what people say about the sets or combinations I am considering for my new toons. It is sometimes discouraging to find post after post in which people disparage a set not because it is "un-fun" or even particularly under-performing. They disparage it because it is not the "uber" set that some other ones are. Sometimes I listen to their arguments and don't bother to roll that new toon. Other times I ignore them or I determine based on my own understanding that they are wrong and go for it anyway.

This is a free forum and people can post whatever they like (within reason). People can label others as "insane" or call them nerf-herders because they seek balance where it doesn't currently exist. People can ask for builds which allow them to plow through mobs like they weren't there and in the long run kill the game for themselves (like using a cheat code in a single player game). Others can come on the forum and use it as a public place for them to extol all their achievements in an effort to prove themselves worthy to the community or themselves.

My hope is that we can have a civil discussion about how we approach these issues on the forum.

Am I the only one that thinks that Radiation Emission actually is the middle-of-the-road set for support? Other sets have specific buffs and debuffs and do them better. Rad does them all "okay" and every debuff is an AoE. It's the utility knife - it's never the perfect tool for the job, but it does enough that it's never the wrong tool, either.

The main outliers I can think of for support are Trick Arrow and Poison, and that's because they spend too much time in animation to get to similar values as the other sets - and in Poison's case, in a terrible AoE radius. Force Field and Sonic Resonance had some of their thunder stolen by Cold and Thermal respectively, but they still offer mez protection to the person using them while Cold and Thermal don't and are still stronger at their specialties of defense and resistance respectively.

As to the point of the OP, most of my comparison discussions are taken with a moderate but not top-end IO build in mind. If I were to look at Fiery Aura compared to Dark Armor, I'd say that the DA will survive better against large crowds but won't kill nearly as fast (and it won't). Both rely on fast recharging heals, but FA's heal works better against single targets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I think that statement is likely the closest approximation of reality.

The difference between the top 5 (arguably) armor sets is a different balance of strengths and weaknesses. The same for most other archetypes and after i24 even blasters will have little variance.