Obitus

I'm glad you mentioned this, as it's the main thing I've wrestled with. The builds I've mocked up don't see a huge difference in damage output, but the Defender definitely has a little more room for sundries, and we do have a lot of attractive sundries these days - the absorb proc, the max HP proc, the scaling RES, the +5% RES global, not to mention the old standbys like Kismet, Miracle, Numina, Performance Shifter, Panacea. Those last four are borderline mandatory on a Storm build, given our endurance burden. This is also a very good point, especially with regard to Defenders. I doubt a soft-capped Corruptor can well afford to slot procs in his attacks, as a rule, with the notable exception of the Corruptor ATO set's damage proc. A Defender might be able to do it. Still, Fire is generally considered a top set because it combines high single-target damage with very high AoE. Ice lags a bit in the latter, though it does have a really nice nuke. (I prefer Blizzard, anyway, because it's ranged, and it has a good bit of Scourge synergy too.) I appreciate the discussion. Lots of food for thought. I'll go ahead and post two Storm builds I've been wrestling with, just for reference, one on each AT. Both have soft-capped Ranged DEF; both have roughly the same amount of global recharge (~80+%); both have perma Hover in the 40 mph range, nearly identical levels of recovery, and the same amount of +damage (not counting Vigilance). Both have the all-important Sudden Acceleration KB-to-KD procs in Hurricane/LS/Tornado. (These items loosely match my build priorities.) I would have preferred to slot more procs, but you can see I didn't have much room. The main differences are that the Defender has more DEF to other types/positions, a stronger and more useable +RES shield (better End reduction) and a couple more slots to play with, but the Defender also loses Afterburner because I couldn't skip Ice Bolt. Likewise, the Corruptor had to make at least one weird slotting decision to keep Frost Breath slotted as I like (with plenty of range enhancement); the full Malice ATO set went in Ice Storm, though obviously I'd prefer to put it in something like Bitter Ice Blast. Based on these two particular builds, and your arguments, I'm actually leaning towards the Defender now, though it's hard to say for sure which is better: Click this DataLink to open the build! 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Yeah, the apocalyptic rhetoric in the OP isn't quite appropriate. Don't get me wrong, earning 200 million INF in "a few days," is impressive, but there are ways to earn more, faster. And "crashing" the ATO market is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. It won't happen, of course; the price will find an equilibrium point, but in principle, there's nothing wrong with dirt cheap ATOs. The average player would benefit.

effective at what? speed clearing content, or keeping the team alive in difficult fights? in the first case, you're making the argument that you think 8 SO-only Defenders can clear content as quickly as 8x Judgment and Lore with 8 mixed ATs behind them (very likely including some corrs and trollers among them). if you're saying that organization clears content faster, i might bite. but what you seem to be saying, somewhat inadvertently, is that defenders do -- i realize your intended point is about force multiplication but when you try and hard-separate out all force multipliers from 'incarnate content' we're no longer discussing CoH. even scrappers do -regen these days. Actually, my point was to separate force multiplication from IO set bonuses. I explicitly said that I think Incarnates do trivialize group content in a similar way that stacked buff/debuff do. IOs do much more for each character's solo capability, generally speaking, but their benefits don't scale in team settings to the same degree. Your ellipsis changes the whole post's meaning. I probably could have phrased it a little better. And by effective, I meant the whole shebang. You mentioned Superman earlier; let's use his CoH analogue: A team full of Statesman (INV/SS) will be less effective than a team full of Positrons (Rad/Rad, IIRC). This remains true even if you give Statesman IOs to boost his DPS by (e.g.) 50%, or to make him even more unkillable. (A 50% DPS boost from IOs is probably a little generous too, btw; there are cases where IOs can dramatically increase practical kill speed, for example by reducing the recharge on blaster nukes, but by and large IOs' contribution to offense is far more subtle - tightening up attack chains to increase DPA, shoring up endurance so as to facilitate a faster pace, etc. Everyone's into DEF slotting not just because DEF is powerful, but rather also because IOs don't offer a whole lot in terms of practical offensive boosts once you've passed a certain threshold of +recharge.)

Ha, I just solo-ran this mission for the first time in a decade the other day. Waylon died in an eyeblink. I was so disgusted that I shelved my Blaster and rolled a new character. :P Can't think of any other particularly difficult examples, though some of the old annoyances with various map layouts have been coming back to me. Still, I think the hardest mission is having the game disappear for 7 years.

I like your points and how you make them, but I'm not going to cede the "Destiny, specifically, is too stronk in a way IOs are not" point because each of those things -- as you point out, end goals an entire IO slotting strategies -- are accomplished with single Destiny powers for the entire team at once. I'm not sure I quite understand your phrasing here, but I'll lend support to Rumors' point: Incarnate powers (specifically Destiny, Judgment, and Lore) scale in team content in a way that IO bonuses typically don't. IOs vastly increase solo capability, generally more so than Incarnate powers do - and this increase in solo capability does translate to team content, but not to anywhere near the same extent that 8 nukes on the team will, or 8 copies of the force multiplying buffs from Destiny, or eight Lore pets that are individually capable of putting out DPS comparable to the best pre-Incarnate Scrapper builds. CoH is absolutely famous for its broken buff/debuff stacking. I daresay that a team of SO-only debuff Defenders is still more effective than a hodge-podge-AT team, even IO'd to the gills. It's harder to argue the same thing about a hodge-podge team of full Incarnates, even without IOs. So I think the major takeaway with regard to IOs' effect in team play is that IOs allow players to make lemons into lemonade much more easily, to carry bad or marginal teams, to take any build that wants to join without worrying overmuch about the balance of the team's strengths and weaknesses. As to the solo game, I think you made an interesting point about everyone turning into Superman. I don't entirely disagree, though it is worth noting that even the solo context is fairly complicated. By itself, soft-capped DEF isn't quite as uber as many people seem to think; for a lot of builds, it's the starting point before you can start to solo at a high level. Traditionally squishy ATs like Blasters still have to keep their heads on a swivel, even with soft-capped DEF, which is usually limited to one position or 2-3 types (S/L/E). One of the biggest threats to such builds is mez. And the only comprehensive solution to mez for most traditionally squishy builds is, you guessed it, an Incarnate power. Other builds simply don't have the damage output to make soloing at the highest difficulty levels practical. IOs can help with that, but there's only so much they can do if you start at a low baseline. In any case, no one's soloing the whole of the game's content, indiscriminately, at +4/x8, or if they are they're not doing it fast or easily. There are a multitude of different enemy factions in this game. It's always been true that every build has a weakness, an enemy type or situation that plays to the build's disadvantage. And that remains substantially true, post-IOs, and even in many cases post Incarnates. Take an SR (or any other build relying on soft-cap DEF) against Rularuu, for example. Others have pointed out how gold-side content really ramps up the buffs/debuffs/controls. Some people like it; others hate it, but it remains an option for players in search of a more robust challenge.

This is a good write up. I go back and forth about the above quote, though. Though it's true that Tornado/LS don't benefit from Scourge, you could say the same thing about more or less every other buff/debuff set's crowning powers, which will also tend to be (slightly) stronger on Defenders. It's also true that Defenders' Vigilance helps Tornado/LS; this is a pretty significant advantage in solo scenarios. In team scenarios, the situational end discount from Vigilance can help too, which is worth mentioning because Storm builds tend to be extremely end-heavy. (LS is also ~10% stronger on Defenders to begin with; its strikes do ~44 base damage versus 40 for Corruptors. Tornado, sadly, appears to be the same for both ATs.) And of course, Defenders get the signature Storm powers a lot earlier, which is a big plus both when leveling and when exemplaring later. On the other hand, I want to emphasize that Vigilance does not fully compensate for the Corruptor's damage advantage; I've seen that claim a few times recently (not in Borias' excellent post, but around). Given standard 95% damage slotting, the full solo-damage buff from Vigilance is worth 30 / 195 = 15.4% net. This exactly matches Corruptors' damage-scalar advantage (0.75 / 0.65 = 1.154) - but there are a couple of big caveats. First, we are not limited to 95% damage slotting; as +damage rises, Vigilance's net value will fall. And of course there's Scourge, which is worth up to 30% net, though probably a lot less than that in practice, given that we spend so much time fighting low-HP minions. Regardless of where you peg Scourge's net benefit, though, it's significant. Much as I love me some Lightning Storm, the truth is that a Corruptor's extra blast damage will tend to overshadow the Defender's damage advantage on Lightning Storm. LS is absolutely beautiful, but it really only shines in long fights against hard targets. Tornado is a little more generally useful to both ATs, because it's quicker to cast, far faster at delivering its damage, and (at least to a degree) mobile. (Its knockdown is a huge mitigation tool too, obviously.) All of this is a long way of saying I'm stumped. The answer, I've found, is to roll both. You can never have too much Storm in your life, after all. I'd say if you want to pair Storm with a strong DPS blast set, e.g. Ice or Fire Blast, then Corruptors are probably better. If you want to pair Storm with a debuff heavy blast set like Dark or Sonic, then Defenders are certainly better. I'll end this rambling monstrosity of a post by saying a few big "Amens" on the subject of Sudden Acceleration. Talk about a game changer.

Excellent info, Sunsette. Pretty sad results.

This thread is helpful: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,427.0.html

You can hide the glowy hands now, or change the color. I'm still a bit in shock, myself. (There goes more or less my #1 reason to want to skip Hasten.)

I feel like the above quoted statement should prepend all of my suggestions. That said, I'm wondering if there are any plans to port the Sentinel version of Sonic's Screech power to other ATs, in the wake of the snipe changes. The set could use a reasonably heavy hitter that animates faster than the glacially slow Shout.

I would draw a distinction between "underpowered," and without a niche, but I've rambled at great length about that already. Basic gist is that Sentinels are very easy and fast to get to a good level of performance, but they appear to have a comparatively low ceiling. This may or may not bother you, depending on your playstyle. The game doesn't start at level 50 with IOs and Incarnates, after all. One of the draws of City of Heroes is that there really are very few gimpy or underpowered build options. Just about anything can work, and work very well. I'm certainly not trying to rain on your parade here; if you're having fun with the Sentinel, then that's all that matters. Well, there are two issues. The first is that Blazing Blast is genuinely bugged; it doesn't deliver the damage that the tooltip says it does. From a pure damage perspective, you're better off using Fire Blast. The second issue is more subjective: if the power just had a knockback attached to it, then players could choose to turn the KB into a knockdown via enhancement, but there's nothing you can do about repel. A lot of people would consider that a disadvantage. Agreed, though we are in a bit of an odd place. Given that the devs work entirely for free, it's hard to argue that anything really needs to be done. Man, just such a thrill to have the game at all. And a forum on which to argue over this stuff :D

I'm a fan of Sentinels too, but I think there's a bit of a disconnect on this issue. On the one hand, the Sentinel is an extremely appealing AT for the average player - a ranged generalist with good defenses and solid damage potential. If you want a smooth trip from 1-50, solo or teamed, the Sentinel is an excellent option. A Scrapper/Brute might do a little better, as well as a handful of specific powerset combos in other ATs, but Sentinels are certainly near the top of the heap, here. On the other hand, once you dig into the numbers, there isn't anything terribly exciting about the Sentinel at the high end. It's either a Scrapper with weak single-target damage and (very slightly) less durability, or it's a Blaster with weak ST/AoE damage and (very) high defenses. To say that the AT doesn't have a niche is almost an understatement; it's a second or third-tier soloist practically defined by its lack of an obvious role in teams. This latter criticism largely boils down to the design of blast sets generally, and of the Blaster AT specifically. Blast sets have never had particularly good single-target damage (again, at the high end), even at the highest AT damage scalars. (Back on the live-server version of the Rikti Pylon thread, some Tankers managed to out-DPS Fire Blasters. Blasters typically need help from melee attacks to be competitive in that space, and even then their numbers are usually nothing special.) Even after the recent buffs to Blasters, they remain under-compensated for their ranged-damage crown; there's little room to make a Sentinel-like AT without stepping on the Blaster's toes. So Sentinels ended up with the same damage scalar as Dominators (0.95), which is pretty damn good - ~15.5% less than Blasters' (@ 1.125) - but they also got a significant penalty on the range of their attacks, and a massive cut to the target caps on their AoE powers. The reduced target caps especially hurt, as the main practical benefit of Sentinels' extra tankiness, at the IO'd high end, is to fight huge spawns of enemies. In that sort of scenario, it's easy to believe that Sentinels only manage ~60% of a Blaster's damage, possibly even less. And on top of that, Sentinel power sets appear to suffer an unusual number of bugs/errors - and/or they're just poorly understood by players - which is understandable given that it's the newest AT, but this state of affairs makes the AT's inherent pros/cons difficult to pin down. Where Sentinel powersets are duplicates of other ATs', the Sentinel versions seem to have an unusual number of differences, not all of them obvious, intuitive, or well quantified. Sometimes those inconsistencies go in the Sentinel's favor. For example, AFAIK, the Sentinel version of Sonic Blast is the only one with the improved version of Screech - a much-needed buff to the set in the wake of the snipe changes. Sometimes the inconsistencies go against the Sentinel; for example, the Sentinel version of Fire Blast has a buggy and inferior analogue for the Blaster's fast snipe. (Weird that the Sentinel, which doesn't need damage mitigation tools as much as Blasters do, would get a repel on this power.) This isn't, by any stretch, a bad AT. It shines in the leveling process, and at the top end it can be built to feel plenty OP. Perhaps more to the point, it needs IOs less than certain other ATs to feel powerful. But I can also understand why many people would be disappointed by the AT's lack of a niche at the high end. For the moment, I'd have to say the Sentinel is clearly weaker than the Dominator and Scrapper/Brute for pure solo strength, and clearly lacks in teams compared to Blasters and (obviously) Doms/Corruptors/Defenders. After Blasters and Corrs grab Clarion and IO set bonuses, it's even hard to argue that the Sentinel is a better soloist.

Tossing a power analyzer on a pylon reveals 20% resistance to all (including psi and toxic). Not sure if this was an update at some point, but it might at least save a little face to what psi melee has. Ah, good to know (and good for Psi!). I'll tell ya, coming back to this game after seven years sometimes makes me question whether I'm senile. Appreciate the correction, and your ongoing testing/commentary in this thread.

This is an excellent breakdown, thanks.

Ditto. Pretty sure I mentioned this in one of my big attack-chain comparison posts years and years ago. Of course the wayback machine is down for maintenance right now, so I can't double check. (EDIT: here it is.) Given that the -Res procs aren't team-stackable, I think they're a little overrated. Or rather the capacity to slot Res procs in a given set's attack chain is a little overrated. They help a lot in Pylon tests, and when soloing AVs, but in general play the Res procs are unlikely to provide much in the way of noticeable benefit. There's a solid chance that they'll be redundant in high-end teams, even against extremely hard targets (either because teammates are already using the -Res procs specifically, or because the hard target's been debuffed into the stone age generally.) None of this is to say that long-term single-target DPS isn't a fun, interesting, and useful basis for comparing sets. This thread has always been one of my favorites; I especially appreciate Kaeladin's testing efforts over the last few weeks. Basically I'm just repeating a variant of Nihilii's sensible caution about Water Spout. While I'm here, I'd like to echo a previous poster, RE Psi melee. My memory of the Pylon is that it has 20% resistance to everything except Psi, which means that the Psi scores in this thread are probably inflated a bit. Take for example, Kaeladin's best result in his recent Psi post: If psi damage is unresisted by the Pylon, then a pure-psi character with that time would have scored ~290 DPS. Of course, Psi melee's attacks appear to mix damage types, so the 290 number isn't quite realistic either; it represents the lower bound, with Kaeladin's being the higher bound. Still, if 368 was a sad result, then the reality is probably a good bit sadder.

This feels like deja vu. After 7 years of no CoH forum, I find myself once again of one mind with Oedipus Tex. In addition to the post quoted above, he mentioned his fondness for */Time/Fire Blasters, and I've been working on just such a build. For what it's worth, here's my attempt at Fire/Time/Fire with soft-capped ranged DEF: Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Mutation Blaster Primary Power Set: Fire Blast Secondary Power Set: Temporal Manipulation Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Flight Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Leaping Ancillary Pool: Flame Mastery | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1551;710;1420;HEX;| |78DA65944B4F135114C7EF4CA794B6601F94F27EB4A53C0A14AAAE8C46E55140694| |2C4B8336494094C52A69352125D29EA27D0C4850AA81BC58531F1F55DC4E7D228EA| |D685A967E6FC0B93CC24D3DF9973CF3D8F7FEF4CE1DA54C3CB99CDD3426A9C2CAAE| |BEB4B13F45BD1CAF5858D8A5AD14B86B02E1FDD6D5859BAA01A2BDA7236AF97358E| |4ED75616374CB354AE642F6A6B44B5B854500DDDDC28DA892273C6AA56D68C4AB66| |604164AA56276D1D4B4E5A06DE68BFACA6A2564DBF39ABAAC95D75775B3A1F66CEA| |C64A74DAD4AF52A0BAA65176ABEAF5566A6E84EE33A27655BD628B90F309791BDC6| |12A8FC127CCBAA7CCB343077B857825D9BE097A92904F128AEDAB97409919F0800A| |33EC652649318FBDB92A7986AD1A7E51070669CD8B5ADE14D79F82C8562DDF6BF63| |5BC01DF328FBC03DF33C319CE3745BDFB79AFE4478DD15DD98E99A6C7206A05B1E6| |A7428DDC9BA7B199674D7CE0F8C41E7320C6FE08C58638560E21361E66F6FF23779| |74FE40911F41E81EE51E81E85EE31E81E83EE71E89EA7DE9B38BFB7E92E6ADF630E| |DD67664E4A769DCC09F014334ABD35F35ED19CE0D926092DE8A5E581C7DEDFFA107| |CC4ECDE02B799033BCC19EB90636F1BE668C71CED98A3137374628E6ECC11A75E3A| |A053474D5368D9F79129E2D436E797BB10D30FDDFB113B4BAB3D1CE3E9F92EDB73F| |6FE007F82FBCC59D22E897E9337385FEA26B809DE62F6DD06EF30E7686F1ADAA58F| |F2FCCF08839C4F19FCC4BEA1CFE017E6C857E6E837E62E6118730FB7F0FF321207F| |F72CC0B42167D66D1E718FA1C439F63E833873E73E83346B28DE3FC8E43B34EC5F1| |AE56E91209A5F6AA56AB19D7EAB8CB9373798EB93CC75D9E7997674139F84208C9F| |6F8C3F4DEB3A7BA1FA055682CA5F87CFE3EF4C9D2259E67F41C718066DE67BD7E39| |F70DF2F9FAE3F4F572AEF34D04D4DA75D8CF9387F642C0FA2AB07DD961AB0EFB8AC| |3FE0F5F78FEEA| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| As always, there are trade offs and misgivings, and of course it's always possible that someone else could refine or improve my efforts. In this case, I skipped the Fighting Pool to make room for more fun/flavor picks. It's very difficult to fit Afterburner, Assault/Vengeance, and Rise of the Phoenix when you do take Fighting, though of course Weave makes it easier to soft-cap, which increases slot flexibility, and Tough improves S/L RES considerably. From a pure powergaming perspective, you could improve the build by ditching one or both of the travel powers and picking up the Fighting pool. I'm also not super thrilled with all the 6-piece Thunderstrike sets in my single-target attacks. Ideally, you'd have at least a few procs in those, but unfortunately all the AoE attacks in this build leave little room for sets that confer ranged DEF. Fire Breath is a bit of a love/hate object for me. Despite its mediocre reputation, Fire Breath is actually a great damage power, but the trick is that it needs range to shine. You could, of course, grab some global range through Incarnate abilities, but that's a trade-off too - so for the moment, I'm stuck with the somewhat awkward looking 5pc Positron's + generic range IO. As for /Time, it's pretty close to ideal for a ranged Blaster. It gives you stun protection, an albeit short-duration AoE stun power, and passive +recharge. My only minor complaints are that the immobilize has a short range, and deals no damage. The single-target hold is interesting; if you stack the immobilize (Time Wall) first, then the hold becomes mag 5, good for taking bosses out of the action. Unfortunately, the extra hold magnitude apparently only lasts for 8 seconds, and the hold itself has a slow animation. I'm not sure that spending ~4 seconds of damage-free animation time to hold a boss for 8 seconds is a worthwhile trade off, given the power/slot investment required. Altogether, between the AoE stun and the knockback-to-knockdown-enhanced Bonfire, this build should perform like a mini Controller with Blaster-tier damage. You have perma-Hover (at 40+ MPH), 45% ranged DEF, some Absorb, and a moderate amount of S/L resistance to help you deal with whatever your controls fail to protect you from. I still think fully IO'd Dominators (and certain flavors of Corruptor) are more powerful overall, but something like this Blaster will work great. This turned into a longer post than I intended. Just thought I'd offer an example build of a survivable Blaster. (EDIT to add a data link because I can't seem to get the copy-paste data-chunk import to work. Also not sure what happened to the list formatting, but it'll do.)

Though I'm not particularly moved by the argument that Doms are unfairly penalized under the new system (because Doms have always been extraordinarily powerful, especially in comparison to Blasters), I don't think there's any harm in leaving fast snipes, even unconditional fast snipes, at their old damage scale. Ranged damage builds have always lagged behind Scrappers/Brutes (with the occasional Tanker even matching or exceeding the best Blaster primaries) in single-target damage. Fast snipes, even overpowered ones, won't suddenly make ranged damage dealers unparalleled single-target powerhouses. I also, obviously, agree that the DPA disparity among different damage sets (both ranged and melee) speaks to a longstanding flaw in the game's design paradigm. The standardization of Tier 1 and 2 attacks in ranged sets was only a small step in the right direction. Of course, given that our current devs work on a purely volunteer basis, I wouldn't expect them to address all, or even any of the above. Having our game back, for all of its many minor flaws, is reward enough.

This is great work. Thanks PK. I have a handful of my old posts saved via bookmark through the archived site, but it's extremely difficult to find specific posts/threads using that method.

Agreed. After wrestling with various flying builds in Mid's, I've come to regard Afterburner as a near-egregious tax on flying character concepts. It's immensely fun, and at least Afterburner serves as a LotG mule, but Fly is already fairly difficult to justify from a min/max perspective, because the rest of the powers in the pool have limited appeal. Hover's really only desirable if you're playing a ranged character; Air Superiority is a decent filler melee attack, but the only times I've been tempted to take it lately were when I was trying to shoehorn in enough pre-reqs to get Afterburner. On top of all of that, Fly/Afterburner are more slot intensive than other travel powers. (Except maybe Teleport, which has its own issues. Both Teleport and Fly look especially lackluster now that we have Sorcery, which provides both in one power pick, along with a pretty sick capstone in Rune of Protection.) And of course, now everyone has ample travel options without spending power picks at all. I have a lot of residual sympathy for the idea that Superspeed is lackluster as a standalone travel power. Its raw speed doesn't make up for its lack of vertical movement - but that ceased to be a compelling argument a long time ago. With the Vet/P2Win store, you've got vertical options from level 2, for zero cost. In the meanwhile, Speed remains the most attractive power pool because of Hasten, and SS itself provides Stealth in a power-pick-efficient package. As for Burnout, it looks terrible to me except in niche scenarios. It could certainly use a boost (or maybe a wholesale revamp), but there's no shortage of bad pool powers competing for attention.

Oh ho, Nihilii. There's a familiar name. Good seeing ya, man. How's it goin? Yeah, this could be a very valuable thread. I think Cheli's done some good work; if we could get past the the mis-categorized damage bonuses (and the inconsistent assertion that Core is simultaneously always +75% net, and +75% towards the damage cap), then I think we could pin this down. Sadly, I'm a long way from earning Hybrid myself. In fact, all I've managed so far is to roll a new alt every night for the past week. Spend about an hour in the tailor and the Hero Designer, a few minutes marketeering, then it's time for bed. It's almost like I'm too excited about the game to play it. :P To make this post more substantive, if we look at the Hybrid pages on Paragonwiki, we do get a little information. Whether it's accurate or up-to-date, I don't know. But for the sake of discussion, the Core Assault page, for example, lists the chance of building a stack of (15%) +damage at 65% per attack. Yet there's no duration listed for the buff. If the duration is something like 20-30 seconds, then it shouldn't be a problem; it'll take awhile to build stacks, but you should be able to hit the max of 5 stacks consistently if you try. On the other hand, if the duration is 10 seconds, then it looks like a character averaging 2 seconds per attack will only maintain an expected value of 3.25 stacks of the buff. (1 attack per 2 seconds seems like a reasonable average, given that even extraordinarily fast attackers will tend to spend at least a little time repositioning or using utility/defensive powers.) Then again, maybe you can trigger the damage buff multiple times (or more consistently) with AoE attacks. This is important info to figure out, if we're ever to compare Hybrid options. What's encouraging is that Cheli seems to take it for granted that players will get to 5 stacks of the Core buff, but I don't know how he tested it. Likewise, we'd need to pin down the proc rate of Assault Radial to make a sensible comparison (along with figuring out how the proc damage is calculated). I find myself in a bit of a weird spot here. Not only have I forgotten more than I remember about the game's mechanics; we also have all of these new, exciting changes to the game that aren't well quantified. The archived copy of City of Data helps, of course, as does ParagonWiki and of course this forum, and Mid's/Pine's too - but the dearth of info in certain (albeit small) areas really contrasts with the almost ridiculous amount of knowledge we used to take for granted in the CoH community. We were spoiled. Maybe we should get together and powerlevel Arcanaville. :P

Ha, ok. Correct. Never in question. Nope. Unless something dramatic changed in i-25 to reclassify enhancement slotting as something other than a damage buff/bonus. (Whatever you want to call it; quite frankly your patronizing tone WRT your preferred terminology is unwarranted.) Read the link I supplied. I mean, I guess it's possible that the wiki had it wrong for all of those years. Maybe I was a complete moron, too, for all of those years. Nah, probably not. I'm senile now, but not so much back then. Ok, then, so its net benefit diminishes with damage slotting. Progress. And damage slotting, and IO +damage bonuses, and Musculature, and any number of other things. I grant you that reaching the damage cap isn't easy, but you've really underrated how prevalent these buffs are. Again, no. You have the base damage of the power. Then you have the AT scalar. Then you have everything else. Base * AT Scalar * (1 + slotting + buffs). That's how it's always worked. (In the case of Incarnate attacks, the AT Scalar generally doesn't come into play, or at least it didn't with Judgment, IIRC. This is obviously because the devs wanted Incarnates to boost everyone equally, to the extent that equality is possible.) Tell you what, though; don't take my word for it. Here's a simple test: Try using an attack that is 3-slotted for damage, with no other +damage bonuses. Then hit Build Up, and attack again. Compare the numbers. You won't see a +100% net damage boost; instead you'll see something closer to +50% net. This is because Build Up's +100% damage is additive with the 95% you already have from enhancements. 100 / 195 = 51.3%. Or if you don't wanna try it in game, feel free to try it in Pine's Hero Designer. lol, ok, now we're onto a whole different interpretation. I'm beginning to think you're confused about the whole topic. When you say that doublehit deals the "base damage" of the power, you clearly have a definition for that term that no one else uses, so if nothing else it's important to clarify what you actually mean. We seem to be getting somewhere on that front, at least.

This seems incorrect to me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. Damage slotting is equivalent to damage buffs, in almost every case, certainly every case that I can think of. Damage slotting is not some sort of separate category that separately raises "base damage" prior to other multipliers. I'll use an example, to see if we're on the same page: If you have let's say a Blaster with 95% damage slotting, a 10% damage buff from Assault, and a 40% buff from Defiance, then your total damage modifier (irrespective of AT scalar) follows: 1 + 0.95 slotting + 0.1 Assault + 0.4 Defiance = 2.45, or 245% of the base damage In other words, the damage buffs and the damage from enhancements stack additively. Are we agreed on that? Now, this next bit of your post suggests that Hybrid Assault Core is, in fact, a damage multiplier separate from all others, i.e. a context-independent net 75% damage increase: But you also say that Assault Core "is subject to the damage cap," which is just a cap on the damage multiplier heroes can achieve through conventional (i.e. additive) damage buffs. (e.g. Blasters can't raise their damage above 500% of the base.) Both of these statements of yours are unlikely to be true, because the exceptions to the additive-damage-buff rule, by definition, exist outside of the damage cap's domain (e.g. damage procs). This distinction, between conventional damage buffs that respect the cap (and whose net value varies by context), and proc effects that don't care about the damage cap, more or less encompasses the entire point of the comparison in your original post. Or so I thought, hence my attempts to clarify. If you have, in fact, demonstrated through testing that Hybrid Core's +damage is a separate multiplier from all other damage buffs, then that's great information! Again, I don't know for sure, as I'm in the odd position of being a born again n00b after 8 years of playing the game, and then 7 years of forgetting most of what I knew. I'd be pleased to be proven wrong, but what I do know about conventional +damage buffs suggests that we have a fundamental disconnect somewhere. A 75% net damage buff to, say, a Brute already at +500% in damage buffs sounds way too good to be true, too. EDIT: Here's a link to help explain what I'm talking about - https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits#Damage

Holy crap. She's back. This whole experience is a little surreal. Glad to see y'all. To get back on the topic: "I knew an MMO of which I spent seven years forgetting more than I'll ever know about any other game."

This is a great build. I'm just gonna offer a counter-argument: yes, S/L/E DEF is much more comprehensive when it applies, which will be the majority of the time, but when it doesn't apply, the change can be shocking. Ranged DEF offers a more consistent experience against all factions, and if you can grab Mez protection (via Clarion or elsewise), then your sustain + killing speed should carry you against the occasional melee/AoE attack that gets through. Obviously all of this is subjective, and largely dependent on playstyle. I favor Blasters with perma-Hover and few melee/blapper attacks, so YMMV. And happily, you don't really have to choose; as Nic's build shows, you can get a good mix of both types of DEF without too many problems. Or you could mix ranged DEF with a RES shield. One of the perks of the ranged DEF approach is that your Patron/Epic choices are a little more open, but of course this is a trade off too; as Nic says, the S/L approach lets your Patron/Epic shield do most of the work, leaving more margin for error in your IO choices. Me? I like having the option to take things like Electrifying Fences (Mu) for a little anti-scatter. (Unfortunately Web Envelope has terrible redraw, in my albeit distantly old experience). Bonfire with a KB-to-KD IO is a great idea too. Haven't tried that yet. There are many ways to skin this cat.