Cawshun

The circle around the power stays as long as you have the rage effect active. Recharge buffs do not impact this in any way. There's nothing tricky about it.

If you find it easy to maintain +80% damage from reds outside of farming, then sure? I think you might have misunderstood the numbers. I thought so as well, but some of the numbers I got appeared lower than that during the crash (I was using the log, so it was definitely from the ability itself and not another damage source). Perhaps something weird was going on. If I get time I'll look in to it more. I don't think stackable rage is OP by any stretch in its current(and beta) form. I think it's strong enough, especially in burst, to create a potential risk/reward for faster mob clears in any content, even in builds that aren't fully optimized. I agree with you that the beta version is pretty close to the best of both worlds. If you don't want the crash, you don't have to deal with it. If you want the extra burst from another stack, you can have that too. It's not really free, since it comes with a crash currently. Regardless, the point is that SS has it now, and I wouldn't say SS is really OP because of it either. What I'm suggesting is that some of that power is kept in the extra abilities, rather than all funneled into just SS. I'm not sure how that's ridiculous.

You're right I was calculating the dps change wrong, but you're heavily overestimating the recharge needed for practical perma double stack. For meaningful perma you only would need it to recharge in ~65s, not ~60s. If you cast it at ~60s, you'll be casting rage INTO the crash, not out of it, wasting 10s of rage and the gaussian's proc. ~65 ensures it can be cast at the end of every crash. Also keep in mind that a crash doesn't put you at 0 damage, it floors you to 5%. I launched the beta and took some actual damage values from abilities against 54 mobs to calculate a semi-accurate dps increase for the character, using 0 rage stacks as a baseline(100%). I did two tests. The first is with Agility/Melee Core, which is how I had the character built originally. That resulted in 134.14% dps with 1 stack, 154.58% average with 2 stacks for 20.44% average increase from double stacking. To be fair to not stacking, I also tested with Musculature/Assault core for as much +damage% to get diminishing returns more heavily involved. With ageless and FF +rech proc I still had perma-double stack surprisingly, so no changes needed there. That test resulted in 128.85% average increase from one stack, and 140.27% average from two, for a 11.42% dps increase. This does not take in to account aspects such as judgement incarnate ignoring damage modifiers, so that's a full strength nuke every other crash. Also I'm a bit lazy and don't really want to compare Assault core vs radial for this, but as radial scales off the initial hit, it will scale better with double stacking. This is also pure solo play again. I'd be curious to test with a kin, but again I'm lazy and that would take time. I think regardless, stacking at the very least has a valuable place in solo damage currently. I realized from this that there is another reason that removing the stacking and just buffing SS numbers would be impractical. Rage buffs all damage (aside from abilities which ignore damage modifiers, of course). So any damaging abilities from a defensive set or from power/ancil/epic pools are buffed as well. The extra build up stack of double rage buffs those as well. It would take an immense amount of tweaking to find the sweet spot where the change wouldn't be a nerf to the kit. Even if that was found, it would still make attacks outside SS feel lackluster in comparison. Perhaps if that was the route people really wanted, rather than buffing just SS numbers, apply a passive damage modifier to rage on top of the activation. That way all powers would be buffed by the change and not just SS. I still think that sort of change would make rage feel a bit boring, though.

Do you slot gaussian's proc in rage? If so, having it on auto is already a bad idea, as you're more likely to waste the proc. Armor sets like Shield or SR can make use of the auto cast on their CC protection, you mentioned ageless which could be worth auto casting depending on the situation. Personally I wouldn't run SS without hasten and I run a +rech proc in FS as well, but that's personal preference on how I like SS to feel. When did I say overlapping is bad? I just said if you don't want to crash, don't overlap. I plan my SS builds around the crash, that way I have a way to deal with it when it happens. Hasten doesn't really stack, and requires significant investment in +recharge to get to the point of being up permanently. I'm not as familiar with dom because I don't like the archetype personally, but I don't recall it stacking. Even if it does, it also requires massive investment to have it stacked for any meaningful amount of time. As you've already stated, it doesn't take much investment in rage to stack it. With a really heavy recharge build you could even triple stack it if you wanted, which is definitely not possible with your examples. Removing the crash and the stacking would require massive overhauls of SS damage numbers, which in the end would still result in a nerf to the set's damage potential, as numbers would have to be tuned around an average. TL;DR: Apples and Oranges.

Well that's user error for setting it to auto cast and ignoring the mechanics of the power. Take it off auto cast and press it every two minutes, problem solved. Frees up your auto cast to be used on another power too. What isn't working as intended? If rage overlaps at any point, both will crash. If there's no overlap, there won't be a crash. So don't recast rage early. If monitoring the buff for when it falls off is an issue for many players, maybe another way to monitor buffs needs to be looked in to before resorting to reworking a power.

The version on beta offers a crashless, easy-to use perma rage. You're literally getting what you want, while those of us that want rage to continue being a unique and fun risk-reward mechanic get that too. The closer you get to perma-stacking and the lower your base damage%, the more value you receive. My Bio/SS tanker I made for testing is at 118.5% damage bonus with one stack, 198.5% with two. With perma double stack that's an average 167% damage bonus for a 41% dps increase over the base buff. Sure when taking group buffs in to account, especially with a kin, that % will drop, but the point is that while solo, it is a significant bonus.

I'm not sure I would understand the point of casting rage more than once every 120 seconds outside of niche scenarios if this was the case. If it was cast every 90 seconds, the uptime would be the same as if it was cast every 120 seconds. It has a cast animation as well, so casting rage while it's still up would actually be a detriment mid-combat, because the tanker could have used a damaging or defensive ability instead. Rage fits in to a risk-reward play style on live, and the beta allows it to also be used in a safe style if the user chooses to forgo the damage and ToHit benefit of stacking. The implementation on beta is great because it gives the player the choice on if they want to risk the crash for more damage output or play things safe. I tested a Bio/SS a bit in some different scenarios (+4/x8), and I'll honestly say that if it wasn't for the damage drop, I wouldn't even notice the crash. I originally designed the character with the idea of swapping to defensive adaptation during the crash to make up for the mitigation loss and back to offensive afterwards, but I found that even in offensive adaptation I could basically ignore the mitigation drop.