roleki

@Bossk_Hogg Agreed that KB:KD in Bonfire may be a bit too good, especially when you can quite easily have 3 of them out at once. I would gladly give that imbalance up to not have to over-slot Force Bolt just to keep dudes onscreen

Uh, duly noted. I'll go and add the flight pool to all my Hey wait a second, don't ever tell ME what I have to slot.

Oh, don't get me wrong - I don't want to eliminate KB - my first character on Live was an en/en blaster, and I personally am fine with the mechanic as a damage mitigation tool AND as a source of amusement. That said, as good as knockback is while soloing, it is situational (at best) on teams. It can still be put to effective use, but the KB pilot ends up doing way more calculus in-game than their peers with other mitigation effects. Enter the KB:KD enhancement. It is a good solution! Having that available has allowed me to completely reinvent my Fire/FF controller - I can actually wander on top of my Bonfire instead of putting it up like a wall! I can have Repulsion Field going, and still use Hot Feet! This is great! But, even while I am enjoying these new possibilities, I can't help but reflect that in order to get HERE, I was forced to go THERE. Very few other sets have to slot the same 1-trick-pony enhancement 5 times - even the LotG Global Recharge enhancement also enhances defense. And the thing is, I could easily slot the KB:KD enhancement 6, 7, or 8 times in an En/En blaster, if my goal was to eliminate KB from the equation altogether. I get that not everyone is 'KB-averse' because I am not, at all. In fact, my HC En/En has a second build where I go for broke with the KB. But even there, I had to spend (well, not a LOT, but a nonzero amount of) influence and burn a build slot so I could solo how I want AND team without holding back the heavy shots; most builds can get there without treading so carefully or investing as much time/effort into doing so. That is why I would hope that a mechanic like the KB:KD Accolade toggle I suggested could be implemented - something available to anyone who REALLY wanted it, but not something that nerfs the original utility of KB in general. I would gladly pay a 0.33 end/s 'tax' to convert KB:KD if it meant I could slot the rest of my build just like everyone else.

While it is great that the Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown enhancement exists, it kind of sucks that some characters have to slot numerous copies if they want to use their powers in teams without scattering mobs to the four corners of the map. What's worse, the set bonuses for just dipping into SA are pretty common and these characters can easily find themselves over the Rule of 5, but the enhancements of the set itself make taking the full set an unattractive option in most cases. Would it be possible to tweak the set bonuses of Sudden Acceleration to be more... interesting and front-loaded, to make up for having to dip a toe into that set just to have a more team-friendly build? Failing that, could the devs create an accolade that awards a toggle power that converts Knockback to Knockdown, so characters don't have to choose between an optimized build and a team-friendly build?

That's what I've been doing to breathe life into characters that have kind of peaked; make a second (or third) build and either focus on a whole new playstyle, a different set of IO goals, or, take powers that I wouldn't have taken on a primary build. Like, I have a separate build on my en/en blaster where I took out all the KB:KD procs and maximized KB. On my Fire/FF, I made his secondary build a KD/proc machine, and it was so effective I actually run that as the 'main' build.

After doing some more testing, it looks like the +Rech proc in Bonfire only fires once - on activation - no checking back again after 10s or anything good like that. Surprisingly enough, I seemed to get the most +Rech out of Repulsion Field, with multiple hits as I waded through throngs of goobers. The Annihilation -Res seems to be 20% for ~8 seconds; far as that goes, it seems like Energy Torrent was the better vehicle for the -Res proc, usually hitting multiple targets on every activation. Bonfire *does* seem to check multiple times during the life of the pseudo-pet, but it sends no information back to the Combat tab so I am judging solely off the sudden appearance/disappearance of triangles and a small uptick in damage numbers. Individually, this all seems underwhelming but when you stack everything together it seems to add up.

I think it tries to execute the last power in the list first, so, if Burn is available, you get Burn. If Burn is not available, you get "sad.wav." I am sure there is a way to do what you're trying to do, it just may not be through the /macro approach.

@Lost Ninja I am going to test this tonight and will update the post with my findings; hopefully it answers more questions than it raises.

Awesome, that explains exactly what I was seeing. Thank you!

I hope so, Bonfire is actually useful. Math is as inscrutable as magic to me, but if I was reading the PPM posts correctly, the small radius and lack of slotted recharge should(?) have made Repulsion Field a pretty decent mule for procs, but having slotted Repulsion Field with both the FF: +Rech and the KB:KD procs, all I ever saw in the combat window was hundreds of notices that my RF had knocked down so and so, but, nobody ever falling down.

I was messing around on test last night with a Fire/FF, just taking powers I usually skipped or frankenslotting ppwers I usually put sets into, and what I saw led to some questions. First set of questions are in regards to Annihilation: Chance for -Res... The description says it "... provides a chance to reduce the target's damage resistance by a moderate amount for a short time." What is a moderate amount of -Res? What is a short time? Does anyone know if it messages back to the combat window if it procs? Does anyone know if it triggers just on firing, or, if I slot it in Bonfire will it 'stick' to the resulting pet and fire off at random for the life of the effect? Second set of questions has to do with Force Feedback: Chance for +Recharge. I slotted one in Bonfire, one in Force Bolt, one in Energy Torrent EPP, and another in Repulsion Field. I noticed the proc firing off ALL THE TIME but it never stacked, i.e. my base Recharge without Hasten was 67.5, and it would pop to 167.5 for a few seconds, go back to 67.5 for a few seconds, spike to 167.5, and so on. When I had Hasten up, it would spike to 237.5. As often as it was firing, I would have expected to see an occasional 267.5 or 337.5, but I didn't in about a half hour of testing. Is it possible the Attrubutes window was bugged, or was I just unlucky, or does that just not stack? I'm also not exactly sure where I was getting all those 'hits' from; with the recharge I was able to have two Bonfires up at all times, and Repulsion Field is a toggle, but it seemed to be pretty much more time spent at +100 than not. I will test the individual powers/slots more tonight, but since that's like 12 hours away, if in the meantime anyone has general info to share regarding how procs work in 'pets' like Bonfire or toggles like Repulsion Field, that would be great to know.

I know I joked earlier, but I do have a question: On one of my characters, through slotting 5x LotG, having a smattering of +Recharge set bonuses, and taking Spiritual Radial Revamp, I am sitting at a solid 191.25 recharge with perma-hasten. Is that expressed as 291.25 in your formula? Otherwise, I am not sure how I have perma-hasten, because I am nowhere near 284. ETA duh, nevermind, I forgot you're talking about getting perma hasten with just Ageless' decaying +Recharge. Never mind!

This is Jas. When she's not camping on my fancy Lenovo heating pad (as she is in this picture) or stalking from one side of my desk to the other repeatedly for 10 minutes at a time, she can be found planted squarely in front of me, thumping the keyboard with her tail, and presumably cat-giggling at my frustrated attempts to get her to move just a bit.

I dunno if I would consider a formula to be any kind of 'simple' if I don't even have the fonts on my computer to type it. But I am glad YOU have them!

@Gulbasaur That sounds intriguing; i hadn't even considered redside ATs.

Isn't this where someone steps in to remind everyone that there's no fighting in the War Room?

It's too bad the original forums are lost forever, because @jubakumbiis absolutely correct, that is exactly how it happened - the devs realized their new toy could be harnessed to harm revenue, and started bashing it immediately. Sycophants crawled out of the woodwork to evangelize the "PL BAD!" mantra, and almost all of them used nebulous, hand-wavey arguments that farmers weren't playing the game the right way... the same weak arguments being used today, in this thread and others, with no foundation other than "I don't like it so I am going to rail about it." Then there's whatever the hell you're doing. ETA: I would even go so far as to say the two recent threads wherein AE is discussed almost read like they were planted there, what with the one having an arrogant title crafted in such a way as to whip up a furor where none existed and the other being right up the whole "AE farmers are morally weak and cannot control themselves, therefore it must be taken away from them" ethos espoused by a particular brand of lunatic.

@Mercurias It wasn't as easy or as cheap as I would have liked, and I probably sacrificed some useful bonuses, but I think I had it slotted to a base 111.25, then with perma-hasten and Spiritual Total Radial Revamp (T3) i have a flat 191.25 recharge rate at all times, which is just enough to have PA recharged about 1.5s before they fade out. But so far, Ill/Dark has been awesome! Highly recommend it!

@VV Will do; I'm still getting my Ill/Dark tuned just so (finally was able to get Perma PA and Clarion, which was my goal) but with just Hybrid and Judgment left to round out, I'll be poking new builds soon.

It can be, until the serial whiners get their way and changes are made that affects everyone but them.

I wouldn't say it's cheap, but I slotted towards bonuses for recovery and melee defense above anything else. I'll check out the guide and see what suggestions it has. Thanks.

AE farming isn't nearly the drain on server resources that raids are, but sure. Meanwhile, I think the extra inf I acquire while supporting player-created content in AE is scant compensation for not being able to experience content and roleplaying and costume contests. Why are you looking to punish people who are supporting creatives?

I'm not sure about the Oro temps, but I get all the ranged P2W temp powers and max them out for assistance in working towards "Defeat 200 X" badges. The grenade is especially helpful because it can sometimes hit 2 or 3 enemies that are standing close together; at level 50(+3) the P2W temp powers can actually one-shot a good number ofthe stuff you didn't hunt in your 20s and 30s. Actually, as a Blaster, you may not get that much use out of them. Still, it is fun to heroically pull a revolver and arrest a vampire by shooting it.

I'm always curious about what maps people are clearing in 4/5 mins, or where people are earning 150M an hour before factoring in drops. I'm not doubting the claim because it seems to be the standard earn rate claimed by a lot of farmers. My experience with my Rad/Fire has been a little different... I pretty much only farm the Comic Con Outdoor Fire map (short) or Cave Jam if I want to change things up. With a dude at the door on 4/8, it takes me about 24 minutes to clear Comic Con and about 38 minutes to clear each Cave Jam door. Doing that, I'm 'only' bringing in about 1.1M inf per minute which is WAAAY off the pace that everyone else is getting, BUT, I'm also dragging alts from 0-50 in about 3.5 hours, which is anywhere from .5 to 1.5 hours faster than the rate people seem to think it takes to PL a char to 50. So, I would think, if I am killing stuff at such a pace as to PL faster than the average bear, if I walked into the mission map solo I would clear it as fast or faster/earn more/etc but that isn't really the case. When I solo those maps at 4/8, I shave about 1/3 off the time, and make about 1.4M a minute solo. Maybe I'm doing it wrong? I AM still earning XP towards VL, but when I turned XP off/turned on exemp xp, the jump still didn't put me on a 2.5M per minute pace. At the end of the day, I farm to PL so I am getting what I want out of it, but I would like to know what everyone else is doing (that I am not) that makes farming so much more lucrative for them.

Thank you all for your suggestions; unfortunately everything sounds interesting. Think I am going to have to spend a couple hours on the test server and see what jumps out. All in all, a good problem to have 🙂