Eclipse.

Based on Merits values/reward calculation, none that people actually run. Virgil Tarkoss is a bit over at ~40m The Ouro arcs are all in roughly the 15-30m range and Katie Hannon is ~15m Most of the Redside SFs are in the ~1hr 15m range (similar to ITF based on merits), except Silver Mantis which is in the 2hr range Blue side....is much longer on average. Other than Ouro & Katie mentioned above, they START at the 1hr 30m mark. Posi (before being split up), was apparently around the 3hr mark (after the split they're ~30m and ~45m respectively based on merits), and the first TF most people would encounter...as was Synapse, and then Sister Psyche would be 2.5, it trends down towards the 1.5hr mark from there until the Shadow shard which are mostly 3+ hr affairs.

We've had very different experiences with ITFs, I feel like most "Kill Most" +4 ITF runs I've done (with pugs) are in the 30-40 minute range. I can't think of a task force that is consistently shorter than ITFs, with a party that is mostly higher levels, even if you're not doing a speed run. Even Katie Hannon often takes longer than ITF if she bugs or runs away in my experience. I think ITF's real issue from a time-perspective is that it was originally designed with the largest level disparity in the game. It's pretty middle of the pack as far as how long it took to run, At least on live & Blue side based on Merit Rewards*, 13 that are expected to take longer, 5 that take less. The difference between a group with a lot of 35's and a group of all 50's is pretty massive, though. MOST task forces are expected to be well over an hour on blue side. I'm curious if you played primarily on Red side on live, though, where all the taskforces were much shorter affairs (ALL BUT ONE of the redside task forces are shorter or extremely close in merit rewards to the ITF) Edit: It'd be interesting to see what the new Merit rewards would be [potentially] for various taskforces if the HC devs re-ran the numbers based on the changes made since 2009. I suspect they'd be a lot lower, especially for ones that require a lot of multi-zone travel.... *Task Forces give an average of 1 merit every 3 minutes of average time (20 merits an hour), Trials give an average of 1 merit every 2.5 minutes (24 merits an hour), and Story Arcs give an average of 1 merit every 7.5 minutes (8 merits an hour). The reason for this major difference is due to the considerable time and effort Task/Strike Forces can take to set up and complete, so naturally these tasks grant a much greater reward. -source

While this sounds all fine and good, it might not matter if what ever The Random function uses a seed on the server that has more/less entropy than the seed does on your local hosted version. IIRC, though, the source code uses a fairly basic pseudo-random generator that relies on os.urandom (it uses the default rand() in python). All fine and good (if "predictable") as long as the seed is set after the servers have been up awhile, less brilliant if the seed is set shortly after the servers were spooled up. I don't remember ever seeing it being seeded differently than default. Working, no access to source right now.

IDK If you're still working on this, but as a heads up it doesn't seem to honor all of the UNIQUE constraints for enhancements, at least for blaster ATOs. Summary and file example attached. AI Character Snapshot 15.mxd

With todays patch, Combat Jumping is 100% convinced it is about to expire 100% of the time and is blinking in the buff tray. Turning on DO NOT BLINK does stop it appropriately

Wasn't targetting the comparative SR performance based on the quoted, a few levels above mine. Just the diminishing of the significance of that 2.5% defense by Hyperstrike I specifically quoted.

You're not wrong...but I'd argue when you put it like that it makes it sound a lot less significant than it is. That +2.5% better defense = 10% more damage mitigation in that equation. baseline 0% you take 1/2 (20/40) hits. 2.5% defense you take 19/40 hits 25% defense you take 1/4 (10/40) hits. 27.5% defense you take 9/40 hits. 30% defense you take 1/5th (8/40) hits Every 2.5% defense = 2.5% (1/40) less hits taken as a static amount, but as your defense goes higher thats a larger percentage of increased damage mitigation. (inverse is also true...at 42.5% defense you receive 50% more damage than you do at 45%)

In general I don't think it needs fixed, I think a 5% chance to miss is fine. However, I think _if_ we're going to make it theoretically possible to get 100% to-hit chance, that's also fine...with the caveat that enemies should be much more likely to have +def powers other than Veng/MoG/Elude. Right now it seems relatively rare. Centurions in ITF should have maneuvers/phalanx fighting, it fits thematically, they all have shields yet only Rom and 1 minion type has a defensive power? Crey tanks should have appropriate defensive shields, pretty sure they have EM so why don't they have EA shields? Honestly, given how little defensive powers enemies have I feel like 5% chance-to-miss is generous on some mobs, and perhaps egregious on others. I don't make that decision based on Min/lt/boss, but on skill set a Roman soldier with a shield should not have the same likelihood of getting hit by a hero with a broadsword as a circle of thorns cultist in a robe.

In one of the senarios where there was a _specific_ complaint earlier in the thread, Assassin Strike Missing, a reduced damage "partial hit" would actually be worse than a full out miss. Missing still leaves you hidden, just gotta wait for the CD, a 'partial hit' would pop you out of hide. There's a number of other scenarios where this would be true, as well, well placed snipes can fall in the same category, as can certain Targeted-AOE Mezz skills. Also, for partial mezz how would you handle that? -1 mag, -2 mag, -% duration, -% mag? What about domination, or skills that already have lower mag mezz? Would just the damage be reduced, but the mezz stays? Or even worse, how would you handle skills that have a to-hit check but don't do damage (EG. poison debuffs)

I think if you were to make a click-heavy (or click-exclusive) set it'd need to be really uniquely different. I think it'd also need to be a very high-risk, high-reward set. Something like Attack Reflector Autos with low base-line defenses/resistances. click powers that are unique takes basically on confusion mechanics with cooldowns that prevent them from ever being perma. like % chance to return projectiles for X amount of time, redirecting melee attacks to nearby enemies, if no enemies are in range for redirection you take it. Absorbing AoE damage as healing. Short duration Mez reversal... Give them a confusion, stun, recharge, or -tohit aura. T9 that is basically just all of the above on steroids. I think it would be interesting, but doable/popular is a completely different matter and balancing is a whole other issue. A set like this in teams with Thermal Shields/Ice Shields and set bonuses capping their defenses would basically just be free damage.

Thanks for that! Yeah, I have no reason to doubt @arcanaville's work. I was just highlighting that, while it is extremely unlikely, you shouldn't expect that in any SMALL sample size (few hundred) that the random generation won't end up streaky. Just pulled it up, looks like an average non-farming play session for me is ~500 attacks out logged, and ~1800 attacks in logged. With highs closer to 15k attacks out and 20k in I'd be curious how the random is seeded, but ultimately I've also never noticed anything especially egregious in my logging (I have a few hundred hours of Combat logs in Grafana, both my own and others spanning years of live play). The few things I have found surprising, I've been able to find obvious answers for looking at the source code (IE. Auras, and some other AoEs only logging misses). Still, if it's seeded at shard creation it's always possible that you get 1 unlucky seed, but the chances of it persisting for more than 1 mission is just really really really unlikely. 99.99% of the time I'd still bet on it just the player's negativity bias.

I got pinged into this thread, so I certainly haven't read the whole thing. I do want to highlight something important though. COMPUTERS ARE BAD AT GENERATING TRUELY RANDOM DATA. With that in mind, the odds might not be what you expect as if you were to roll a fair die, for example. I'm not going to dig into what specifically the tohit check is using for random number generation, and even if I did the seed for the Homecoming servers might be different (ie. lower entropy) than on a server with more uptime or something. That said, CoH is largely C based, so I'm going to assume it uses the standard rand() function, which is actually a psudo random number generator. The numbers it creates are entirely predictable, given the same seed, unless it is seeded with a higher level of entropy from srand(). Even if that part is Python, 1.) Python is also C based 2.) Python rand() is also psudorandom IDK about CoH, but I am aware of at least 1 other games that had "Unlucky Characters" that were actually caused by how the RAND was seeded for characters. (There was a huge article on it, but I can't find it at the moment). As well as a few games where you could eek out patterns and increase your odds by spamming /roll until you saw a favorable pattern... It's possible that what ever is seeding the random data does make to-hit checks more likely to miss even if, in theory, you have a 95% hit chance. Assuming seeds are changed regularly you should still even out. If you want to setup some log visualization for City of Heroes it might help with that. It is worth noting that some things DO NOT LOG their hits, and can still eat up streakbreaker possibilities (Auras, and a handful of AoEs). @valcryst81 did a great job setting that up initially... I meant to make it easier to stand up via docker, but got distracted with my real work/life for the last few months.

It's included in the screenshot that the attack did Energy damage -- and only energy damage.

Or had just been hit a few times by some -def power... Burst (Ranged) Lethal, Damage over Time, Foe -Defense

There is a lot going on in this picture...isn't Snap Shot (typically) a bow skill, why do the Family have bow+Arrows? Why is it hitting for energy damage, as is HE Shot(?) I didn't think that the Family had any non S/L powers. Which mission was this in, does it use some Special power set for the Family? I was also unaware of "Heavy" Capos. Wiki isn't helping me with any of these things.

Mids doesn't "support it", but it is doable. That said, if you make your build dynamically you can pickup all of your skills, then drag&drop the power from level 49 to level 2, 6 slot it, drag it back. It'll end up greying out the "invalid" slots, but it'll still count all of the bonuses they give. I agree though, the respec system could use an upgrade. I typically do 4-5 revisions of a build before respecing it because of the pain of the whole process. I've had a new build planned for my main for nearly 3 months now and still haven't done it.

Greater Firesword is bad, it is like 50% smashing damage. Ditto for Cremate. For LT/Bosses: Primary Firey Melee: Scorch, Fireblast, Incinerate, Breath of Fire Secondary Super Reflexes: Quickness* Add Practiced brawler for EBs, assuming your farmer doesn't rely on mez...and even if they do probably shouldn't for EBs. For Minions remove Incinerate and Breath of Fire. Single type damage, no extra defenses, and the additional recharge helps them less than an extra attack does. The damage of incinerate is higher base than Cremate/GFS, but unless you have 90% resistances to Fire AND smashing Incinerate will end up doing less. Should put you at numbers like so for "Kill Boss" objective groups: *alternatively you can go with Firey Aura Blazing Aura, but I wouldn't personally recommend it, it's a lot of extra damage, but at least it's fire damage. Not a good option for EBs, as you can't get 100% XP rate w/o picking up Fiery Embrace.

Weave is actually a GREAT example. Weave on a tank gives 5% def to all. Invulnerability's Invincibility and Toug Hide gives 6% and 5%def to all TYPED damage respectively, but not ranged/melee/aoe. So weave gives as much as a T8 auto power at the cost of 3 power slots, and additional endurance consumption. Or 20% less DEF (and no secondary effects) at a rougly 50% increased end cost. By comparison Aid Other Heals for less than the T1 AOE heal from: Empath, Dark, Pain, Kin, Therm, and rad...and it has a longer recharge, longer cast, and is interruptable? (It heals for more than T2 time heal if you exclude the over time bit...barely.) Aid other could have it's heal doubled and still be less effective in both healing (~20% less if increased by 2x) AND recharge (~2.5x longer) than Heal Other/Soothe/Alkaloid etc. Aid self by comparison is actually over tuned as far as healing goes (both heal percentage AND recharge)...but I'd rather have the amount it heals brought down to be in line or slightly below other self heals and get rid of the interrupt. Sorry, but any self heal that can be interrupted is completely pointless IMO.

Honestly...something that takes 3 power slots SHOULD be stronger than a "proper" heal, or at least "as strong". Even if it had 0 interrupt once you got field medic I don't think it would be, though.

Oh, yeah that's 100% what I meant. Broadsword animations hold the swords with 2 hands IIRC, which is why I more suggested DP/DB... just change one of the hands to hold a gun/sword instead where appropriate (could just be a costume option/setting instead of the actual animations...it'd be a bit weird, but could be worse). It might look a bit funny with the gun hand waving around, ditto for DP with things coming out of the sword hand occasionally...but at least they're already designed to have individual items in both hands, just gotta update the costume options to have 1 hand pull from gun pool 1 hand to pull from sword pool. or just go all out with new costume items gunswords...

Street Assault. Dual Pistol/Assault Rifle ranged attacks with Dual Blade/Kantana Melee attacks. Gogo.

Most of the final powers are at least usable and don't hurt to take...though, admittedly, usually people have better options, with a few exceptions Cross punch isn't bad -- especially if you picked up kick and boxing -- it's just very hard to justify the cost to get it to full power in most builds. Not even mentioning Weave which has the same cost investment. Burnout is pretty great, if limited in useful application. (double gangwar?) Afterburner is regularly taken by people who like flight * Phase shift is a great escape tool...not useful in PVE generally, but regularly used in PvP. Acrobatics is...ok for mez protect, not bad for fire defense and not rare to see in PvP Vengence is niche, but very useful. Victory rush is less niche, but also very useful prior to Incarnates. Teleport is basically the only set that doesn't have a useful T3 at all -- and as already mentioned that's due to access to dev commands. Most of the pools at least have 1 useful T3 power, which maybe is that Ressuricate is for the medicine pool, but field medic is basically required to make the t1 and t2 power in the pool useful, so...idk. The whole medicine pool is just lacking (IMO), even the presence pool is a better investment...Unrelenting and Invoke panic are both solid skills at the least. * IMO this is basically a must to make it on par with other travel powers. This is honestly where I feel field medic falls. It's basically a requirement to make the rest of the pool powers "viable", due to interrupts, but unlike afterburner it's not useful for mule slots, and the other powers are fairly meh regardless.

Duh, I guess I never noticed it on Scirraco -- but of course he does. Recluse himself does as well, (channel gun) that one is a lot more obvious when it hits. I'll have to check the actual strength of their end drains when I get home. Lamashtu has both an (enddrain, -recovery) AOE power and a +endCost power, interesting. I don't know that I've ever fought him.

I think their rank is exactly why it's not an issue. A Sapper AV would be [very] problematic*. As a minion they're easily manageable as long as you "look out for" them as you said. *Are there any EBs/AVs that apply substantial -recovery or -end?

2 someones. I burned 1.6Billion on 2 ATOs T-T