MirrorDarkly

Gun drone might be very nice for Storm helping to tank while you get out your ground targets. But my big hang-up with Storm/Devices is how badly Targeting Drone performs with Storm. If you look at the CoD info you'll see targeting drone is a +18.5% to hit and a +20% damage buff that is reapplied every .6/.75 seconds so neither Storm Cell or Cat5 will see an meaningful benefit from that part of the power. What's worse (in my mind) is that the separate +60% damage buff only lasts for .75 seconds and stops applying once you enter combat. Meaning you'll have to use another attack to open up combat other than Cat5 (or any other sudo pet) if you ever want to to make use of that bonus.

Of those I would personally go with Temporal. The extra recharge should help in getting out Cat5 significantly and for me Storm Blast is all about that power. That being said, if you like controlled chaos you might want to consider Storm/Fire/Fire. The DoT aura's add extra passive damage leaving you free to call down lightning and thunder. I made one on the test server when the set was in beta and it was a lot of fun.

Very exciting and honestly not something I ever expected to have happen! Looking forward to what the new year brings. 😄

More like a billion+ of years of relative time (assuming the punch took a fraction of a second). Approximently as many attoseconds pass in one second as seconds have passed since the big bang. Even for comics I've always had a hard time buying that one...

You are missing that they get an Assasin Stike for a hard hitting single target as well (giving up the second cone I think). Also they also get Forn of the Body for free, they just can't switch to the other two.

You raise many good point which I'd like to think my idea took into account. I'm going to highlight some and give my thoughts on why I think this is a reasonable proposal. I'm using pylon and trapdoor times as evidence for adjusting the set but they are not the reason. The main thing that stands out to me as problems is that for two ATs the optimal ST rotation ignores both the core mechanics of the set and any of the set's attacks you'd pick up after level two. The other two ATs are Stalker where the set ranks in the low middle and would not be changed with this proposal and Scrapper where it is dead last in the ranking so I feel safe that raising it up a little would not harm the game or lead to power creep. Nothing in my proposal changes Guarded Spin, which as you note builds stacks. And again I don't see why it would need to be changed.? The defense bonus is not out of line with the ones other sets offer that do better ST damage and have better trapdoor clear times. People think if Staff as a defensive and AoE focused set but there are actually several sets that outshine it in both of those areas. Again just using the brute numbers MA, TW and Katana all have attacks that buff your defense and beat it in both pylon and trapdoor times with MA and TW being at or near the top of both rankings. As for people who already use Form of the Mind I'm not advocating they lose much and perhaps they wouldn't need to lose anything honestly. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most likely people in FotM are doing so for the recharge bonus the stacks give you before they are spent, which I'm not saying should change. The reason I'm advocating for buffing FotM specifically is for the tradeoff you already make using it. Being in FotM already locks you out of the resist bonus and -resist debuff FotB generates and the sustain FotS grants.

Lets look at actual attack chains, which of course are highly sensitive to recharge. I am going to use the ones posted by Ston since I have no reason to suspect they are not honest attempts to make the best possible single target attack chains for each set with all other variables being as equal as possible. Also I'm using brute numbers which was the second best overall showing. Stalkers (#1) are outliers with several unique things about the set and that would not be affected by my purposed change. The Staff attack chain as an unenhanced damage of about 39.5 DPS. (60.9 + 73.4 + 55.0 + 35.0)/(1.848 + 1.32 + 1.32 + 1.188*) War Mace's attack chain produces about 51.2 DPS. (121.7 + 73.4 + 95 + 81.7)/(1.452 + 1.32 + 2.508 + 1.98) So War Mace second per second will put out almost 30% more damage before any other factors such as procs, secondary effects etc. Now again I am not saying there are not advantages to Staff. I'm only suggesting that the least (I believe) used stance be adjusted so there is less of a difference in the DPS at the cost of sacrificing some of the set's utility if you choose to be in that stance. If you remain in Body or Soul you would see no changes at all. *I used arcanatime since that is what you experience in the game.

Yes of course recharge matters some but activation time is by far the most significant "time cost" after you have enough attacks to make a gapless rotation. Also recharge can be reduced significantly which heavily favors powers with low animation time but long recharge times. There is a reason War Mace takes nearly 60% longer to take down a plyon in the test data I linked earlier.

I don't understand what you're doing for the DPS of each attack, it seems like damage/(cast time + recharge) but unless you're standing around waiting for attacks to recharge its the damage/cast time that determines each attacks value to your overall DPS. So using your numbers, Clobber has a base damage per activation of 148.52 (182.6796/1.23) where as Serpent's Reach has a dpa of 63.62 (112.6107/1.77).

That is exactly my point, most of the powers in the set are underperforming to the point that pool powers are better from a damage perspective. So I'm floating the idea of making one stance where using the core mechanic increases damage enough that it outperforms using mostly pool attacks and just using a few quick attacks to build FotB stacks and never spend them (trading the utility in that form only for more damage in that form only). As you said the three form do buff the damage of EotS and SS, along with providing other benefits, but its such a small buff that it is more single target damage just to skip the majority of the set (as well as being average to below average AoE damage despite having a large number of AoE attacks). I see that as undesirable. As for Guarded Spin why would that need to be adjusted? Other sets such as Katana have very similar powers and overall put out more damage. However if it was for some reason to much to allow Guarded Spin to keep the +11.25% bonus to Melee and Lethal defense then the obvious fix would be to remove or lower it only when you're in Perfection of the Mind. But again I don't see why that would be needed since the Katana version gives +15% to those same defenses (comparing Brute numbers here).

Look it's another staff idea..... So it's no secret that outside of the Stalker staff does poor damage, being at or near the bottom in both single target and trapdoor clear times, and that at least for Tanks and Brute you're better off shoving as many pool attacks in your single target chain as you can (seriously it's use both your level 1 attacks and pool picks) than using the later attacks. Now in theory this was probably intended to be balanced by the defensive and utility bonuses the set provides but given how easy it is to get those in IOs that is often not worth the trade off. So I was wondering how people would feel about changing Perfection for the Mind to a stance that actually increases the damage of Sky Splitter and Guardian Spin (maybe add strong Psi DoT's to each at 3 stacks) to the point that they would be competitive for their very long animation times? That would leave you with the choice of Body which is currently the most used stance still offering a modest overall damage increase plus survival bonus, Soul which some people use for the sustain and Mind which would be more damage/finishing move focused in exchange for losing much of the sets utility. Since Stalkers don't get to change stances you wouldn't have to worry about this making the version of the set which currently does the best damage too powerful by accident. It would also reward people who use the build stacks and spend them mechanic which was clearly the intent of the set as opposed to the current situation where you actually do the most damage by building three stacks of body and then *not using it* while still allowing for that playstyle if you enjoy it.

Storm Blast is what finally broke my alt-itis. I find it immensely satisfying when Cat5 drops and lightning starts flying everywhere.

I would be fine with that. But if that is the case and if it's even seen as a reasonable project by the devs it should be added as new aura so that people who are using the existing one still can.

I would not be surprised if that is true and if it is time consuming to change I don't think it should be a priority. But if it's not difficult it would make that aura in particular many times more useful.

Late in the beta for the last release the Storm Blast powers Storm Cell and Cat 5 were changed so that you could set the color of the lightning to be different from the color of the storm. Is it possible to do the same for the Thunderhead costume aura? I have wanted to use it on several characters but always end up frustrated that the cloud color and the lighting color are the same and usually one ends up looking bad.