Sir Myshkin

New Set Update: Electrical Affinity Proc Update April 7th, 2020: Updated info on Rejuvenating Circuit, Empowering Circuit and Energizing Circuit in regards to proc triggers with these abilities. With the advent of this new content having settled in a couple days, and people getting their feet wet, lets talk about the set. This one does come with the inclusion of three new IO Enhancement sets to the game, two of which do have a Unique/Proc included in them. As a whole Electrical Affinity doesn't have a whole of of proc-unique utility because the majority of the set is focused on End Modification based sets, and there's not a ton there, especially not from an enemy-facing standpoint. Since there's a nice list in the patch notes, I'm going to pull from that really quick: Powers T1: Shock (Ranged, Foe -DMG, -End, -Recovery, -Regen) This little gem is decent to toss down on stronger enemies, especially EB/AV's, but that's about where the end of its utility is going to find normal play. If you're going to use it, tossing the new Power Transfer: Self Heal proc would be nice way to roll for a bit of green. Thus far the power taps out on just a couple of End Mods, so it doesn't require much for slotting to begin with, and has no other utilities. T2: Rejuvenating Circuit (Ranged (Chain), Ally Heal, Self +Static) Full Update: None of the uniques pass their effect over to those that get hit with the chain. I stand by Preventative Medicine probably being the best set to place here from a set bonus stand point, but it won't uniquely do anything abnormal with the Absorb Unique (it statically works on its own outside of the ability trigger). Given there's no potential pass through, any method of slotting is probably fine here. T3 (Defenders, Controllers and Corruptors): Galvanic Sentinel (Summon Galvanic Sentinel: Ranged Debuff Special) This little guy is a bit of a Tank given what it is, so you can expect it to stick around for most (if not all) of its two minute duration. Energy Manipulator: Chance for Stun would be a good one to drop into this ability for Discharge going off every two seconds. I haven't fully tested this yet, and will edit if this otherwise proves to be poor chance or doesn't work like it should. T3 (Masterminds): Discharge (Ranged (Targeted AoE), Foe -Dmg, -End, -Recovery, -Regen) Just like Galvanic, good place to drop the EM: +Stun to knock out Minions in the AoE field. Ideally in a spawn of 10+ should knock out at least two or three minions on average per activation, and stack well with Controller stun efects, or secondary effects from blast sets like Dark Pit and the like to take out Lieut/Bosses (potentially). Since this version is MM specific and coming from the player, the new PT: +Heal would be good too as a surplus bonus heal. T4: Energizing Circuit (Ranged (Chain), Ally +End, +Recharge, Self +Static) Full Update: This ability, as previously stated, is like having a miniature on-tap Ageless built into a set. After testing a few procs in the ability I had to revise my expectations for how this power worked, and personally move some slots in a build to accommodate! Power Transfer: +Heal will trigger its opportunity off any individual hit within the chain since it is attributing the chain back to you. Whether this is a "working as intended" feature or not, it is currently the way it is working. As such (and especially for MM's), it can have a chance to spike its heal several times over its chain and it stacks very quickly. Ran into AP around Ms. Liberty and fired it off a few times and get stacks from 3 up to 7 feedback heals on myself. Performance Shifter: +End, unlike Power Transfer, this proc will apply to the target hit with the chain, and grant them the 10% endurance spike, and it does adjust according to their max end. Just like with PT:Heal, I saw a lot of hits as the chain jumped around (at least half of the targets, on average). Definitely worth tossing both procs into the power. T5: Faraday Cage (Location (PBAoE), Team +Res(All DMG but Toxic, Status, Knockback, -Rech, -Rec, -End)) Not a proc focused ability, but I will mention that the best set (in my opinion) to slot here is Unbreakable Guard because it offers three resist bonuses. T6: Empowering Circuit: (Ranged (Chain), Ally +DMG, +Tohit, Self +Static) One could drop Gaussian's +BU into this power, but (in a team scenario) that's better served in Tactics more commonly. Update: Upon further testing with the proc in Empowering, solo it may not go off nearly as often with just the core pets (either just Galvanic for non MM, or the MM pets for MM's), but adding in a couple of additional bodies (8-10 targets) did increase the probability of success. The proc will go off quite a bit so long as the player continues spamming the power. This can be both good, and bad from a "is this worth it" stand point. Also has a chance of firing multiple times, so possible to stack it. T7: Defibrillate (Melee (Targeted AoE), Ally Rez, Foe Sleep, -End, -Recovery) One of only a few enemy-targeted abilities, and one of the only ones that isn't locked into just End Mod, we have access to Sleep sets and Call of the Sandman's +Heal, meaning we can stack two +Heal chances in this ability! With the recharge packed on this ability, if the slots are free to do it I'd easily stick CotS: +Heal, PT: +Heal, EM: +Stun, PS: +End along with just one Rech Reduc IO to bring it down into a more regular-use range. All of those procs will hit their 90% probability leaving for a good chance to get a significant heal, 20 pts of End, and, if desired, that Mag 2 Stun on a few minions. I will mention that having a +Stun Proc in a power that hits with a Mag 3 Sleep and a (potentially static stack) long duration, unless an AoE goes off the spawn is unlikely to hit back anyway, so two or three minions being dazzed won't be such a big win or loss either way. T8: Insulating Circuit (Ranged (Chain), Ally +Absorb, Self +Static) Same as Rejuvenating Circuit here, but I'd personally say keep the Absorb proc in Rejuvenating with the entirety of the set. Insulating doesn't need much enhancement to hit its cap performance as it taps out at 550% Absorb, and just Heal and Heal/End/Rech combo puts it at 490% and depending on global rech, somewhere between 10-15/s recharge, Energizing will help sap that down further if it's caught in the cast. T9: Amp Up (Ranged, Ally +Special, +Recharge) Power Boost an Ally! If you take it, stick a 50 Rech IO in it and call it a day. Cast it on a fellow support toon if you want, but I'd sooner turn it on a Blaster or Melee and really super-charge all those Mag2 secondary effects in their abilities and see how much that really changes the dynamic of their attack cycle. This power also really ahem amps up Galvanic Sentinel's Discharge ability and allows it to single-handedly sap an even-con level spawn within 30/s. Impressions: Proc Worthiness and "Defense v Resistance"? Overall not a ton of potential going on here, but what I will say is that it does leave for a lot of slots to go towards its paired set (Secondary for Defenders, or Primary for Controllers/Corruptors). As it stands, with the value bump of Defender stats, getting higher total results for Resistances is more feesible, but the offset between Defenders and other AT's won't be too high as the majority of the earned values are going to be sourced from set bonuses to get there. My strongest suggestion for an Epic shield would probably be either Electric/Mu for Charged Armor (more easily get to cap on Energy Resistance), or to actually go with Psychic and take Mind Over Body to push S/L/Psi to the cap (psi just needs a slight push). With the amount of healing, -Dam effects in Discharge/Shock, and Absorb triggers this set should fair pretty well as just a Resistance-focused set without trying to shove a ton of Defense into it. Given how little is actually available to bonus from, trying to do Defense based building will be more troublesome and ultimately not worth the same value as getting an added 20-30% F/C/E/N resists would provide much easier. The other reason I say that is because there's a lot in the set worth taking, and if it's on a non-Defender, we can't skip Shock which means one more power from the "maybe not" column is stuck in the build. Depending on what gets taken from the paired set, there wont be a lot of power pool options available, and to me that leans heavily in skipping Fighting altogether as its three powers (two of which likely not being used) for one, and digging up set bonuses from attack powers which is not proc-fu friendly. A Build: I have put together a proc-minded build based on initial testing pre-release in what I found to be the most universal to solo and team function, but is focused on being a bit at-range to add into minimizing incoming damage. The Galvanic Sentinel is pretty tanky, so using it to alpha and sit in a spawn to attract attention is viable while bouncing chains off it from a 10'+ distance (I've seen the chains hit all the way up to 30-40 feet so far, so there's plenty of "gimme" room). In this build I did go Psychic, and took gasp Mass Hypnosis! I'm sure somewhere along the lines someone has read that I generally dislike Sleep based powers, but Sentinel Discharge doesn't wake the enemy (as I've noticed), so this would give a nice "shut down" mechanic to sleep-sap a spawn alongside Defibrillate. I reached back into the ol' testing for a blast set that played into all these considerations too, and grabbed Dark Blast. Lots of range potential, and cones that can favor both ground and flight based players to move in and around spawns effectively, and control abilities. Control was the biggest desire as being 100% reliant on Resistance, any form of stacked control will help, and we can get both a mass immobilize and a mass KD alongside some of the strongest blast attacks available, including Dominate as one of the best proc-crazy ST hitters (for the time being, pending eventual review of dev team). This was a personal choice with Dark Blast, but I know that the build's IO choices can translate to pretty much any Blast set and keep the same global values (give or take a bonus or two). For Incarnate function, with the drive to try and get to the resist cap, of which I tapped out at 60% on F/C/E/N (and close to cap on Psi at 71%) these are the choices I consider optimal: Barrier, at its weakest, is 5%, and if that's paired with Melee Core Hybrid there will be some good up time on being capped to all resists but Toxic. Melee Core will likely cap the character on its own, so Barrier becomes the filler during the two minute cooldown. Not very often we see a Defender running around with "full" 75% resists, a massive absorb shield, and a 30-40% heal every 5/s. A very Tanky set. I also looked at doing something for a MM as well, and put together a Ninja/Electrical Affinity build that does a little bit of "Mad King Special" in its survival technique. A bit lower on the Resistance side of things compared to Defender option, and really hones into being a 45+ build, but it should do decently at trying to keep the little buggers alive using the same Incarnate Destiny/Hybrid cycle as the Defender:

I get the utility there, from an AoE stand point, and a proc stand point (its pretty cool/fun to multiple mez effects there), but when I tested it at 50 with just bare minimum slotting, I could grab 6-8 stacks of Static and Defibrillate+Galvanic and within 10/s (two Discharge hits) the spawn would be taken care of indefinitely, regardless of mez effect. Galvanic lasts for two minutes, and even in the event of a miss on Discharge, the amount of bounce-back recovery any one mob managed was only enough for them to fire off one attack (which consequently cost them that chunk), and then the next swing of Discharge usually locked them back down again. I didn't test this against +4 so I don't know if some additional stacks would be needed to really lock that in, but I didn't even need Defibrillate to do this. I was able to walk up to any level 50 even con (no Incarnate shift) enemy and drop Galvanic Sentinel, and drain out the spawn. About 90-100/s to include Lieuts/Bosses, and ~30/s if I Amp'd Galvanic after I dropped it. There have been an epic TON of folks talking about sap builds and whether they're "effective" but I already know they can, and a Short Circuit fueled Galvanic or Conductive Aura fueled Galvanic is going to be pretty potent, just not at a speed that people feel is "fast enough." But honestly, as an effective strategy, it does work right now. Masterminds are the only one right now I feel just aren't quite there with their self-cast Discharge because it doesn't cycle fast enough. The -End is the important part of Discharge because that's what's keeping the mob drained, the -Recovery isn't enough on its own because it doesn't stack high enough to stop recovery if a discharge cycle misses. So far, just playing without enhancements, on a Mastermind I've been somewhat disappointed with Discharge. I might change that feeling once I can try it cycling at 8/s instead of 20-25. Sorry, I really massively went on a tangent of thinking out loud there. /em soapbox

My initial plan was to roll a Defender, that shifted into one last Hail Mary attempt at a Mastermind after coming up with a build that I couldn't not at least try and play. I feel like I'm ultimately going to roll a Controller because I'm disliking not having Galvanic Sentinel, but want some functional pets. Since a lot of folks are going to be looking for insight and builds, figured it'd be worthwhile to share it in one of these threads, especially since there's a strong(er) chance I wont be rolling it at all. I'm fairly confidant that nearly any Blast Set can be plugged in and keep most of this same end results. I took Dark Blast as the initial consideration partly because of its proc-capability, but also its control aspect. This should be able to play well enough at range, but also be able to jump into a spawn as needed. Pushed Res totals as far as I could before there's just no longer an option to select from any further. What's interesting to me is that I'm certain a combo of Barrier and Melee Hybrid will cover the build's remaining gap of Res no problem.

Well, I went down the rabbit hole of Electric Affinity + Mastermind Pets, gave a hard look at doing something with Ninjas but couldn't nail a theme down and the look of the pets really disuaded me from actually pulling the trigger and starting the build. Ended up going Demon/ElecAff instead, the Primary attacks carrying -Res, and some wider variations on better Resistance values had me shift off Ninja. Dunno, we'll see if I don't shift back and try rolling it anyway. Since I put the build together, figured I'd share it. Designed around building up as much personal Resistance as possible to suffuse with bodyguard, and then utilized Torrent and Explosive Blast as soft control measures. Still took Difibrillate because I'm hoping the MM version of Discharge won't be too slow, but I know Galvanic Sentinel casting it every five seconds is pretty potent on locking down a spawn after Defib hits. It's not just about the -Rec, but also the -End that occurs when it saps, that's the key to keeping a mob from rebuilding sufficient End to attack at all.

I've been racking my brain over this power set since I got dragged into testing it, trying to come up with the "best" pairing, and it's driving me nuts. I've put one build together than can achieve shifting levels of Resist Cap that I feel will make it a pretty rugged Defender, but I'm not "satisfied" with it. The kicker is I think I can translate it mostly to any Defender secondary, which has lead me to Dark from a range perspective, keeping things locked away from a "bubble of isolation" kinda feel. Sonic was considered for the same reasons Zeraphia did (-Res) which would stack well with Reactive, but ElAff might be just too busy for that. Psi to maybe make up for its lack of debuff with a damage type that's less resisted across the board. Water for AoE and soft control KD's, really be an engaged support role. Then I was like, well, maybe I should be focused on a Controller, get some extra pets going on in there, and I started thinking like Coyote, what about all that -Recovery, and Conductive Aura, I'd kind of like to mess around with all that, but I already rolled an Elec/Dark that I kind of wanted to be its own thing, what else would be good? Then I thought: Fire/Elec, that sounds spicy! That good old fashioned damage, a bunch of good solid controls, and a squad of Fire Imps to buff to hell and back inside of Faraday Cage? AND I might be able to actually afford Hot Feet?! Oh man, yum yum. But friends, hear me out... just ... I had one more flash of genius, genius I tell you. Hear me out! And remember, I generally dislike playing Masterminds, rather loathe them honestly (and I still even have two at 50). But hear me out... Ninja/Electric/Field. Heals, Buffs, Protection, I mean, it fixes all these little guys darkest qualms in one tight-nit little bundle. If Electric Affinity is the ultimate support-focused set, and Ninjas are the most deprived pet class...] I think I'm going to do it. Heaven help me.

Hey, just remember, the best survival mechanic in the game is to kill everything dead. 😉 Just keep an open mind on the journey up to 50.

The Interface abilities are a little weird in that regard, and you stack them to a limit so quickly that unless you're gun-ho about Core, Radial can often be sufficient, but it really depends on the attack cycle I suppose more than anything. Degenerative gives -MaxHP, and I'm not really sure anything will dramatically scale against that, but it is technically (technically) the better Interface, but Reactive is really close when a lot of damage is on the table, but either way I'd probably say go with the 25/75 DoT favored version of whichever you choose (probably Degen in your case, since HP/time healing is probably going to help a lower DPS better). Oh, and if you go Assault, go Core, +Dam buff is better for DPS than Proc . If you don't have the materials to go [T4 on it, go T3 right tree, left rare,]* it gives +3 stacks of +Dam and 30% double proc chance. It's the next best (crazy) option. *edit: I think I might have that wrong off the top of my head, and actually be left tree, right rare that does the +Dam/+Proc in that orientation.

That's kind of the thing when going with a build like this, you have to give something up for that level of extra output. When it comes to a Resistance based set like Radiation or Electric that don't splice in any form of additional layered protection (Defense), trying to punch some into the build comes at a sacrifice (Procs), but when you're playing as a Tanker, you've got that sweet 90% Res Cap you can hit, and when you get that high, the Defense can be nice, but really the damage you're going to be taking is going to be so reduced it just won't matter that much. I'd encourage focusing your efforts on getting your Resistances figured out and pushed to their limit. I know that pretty much everything but Cold and Psi can be capped in a Proc Build (will likely require the use of Cardiac to get that last 6-10%), but you'll be much better off for it. Defense has a few sweet spots that if you can hit them, there's some safety nets you can utilize to improve your circumstances on the fly. 20% (a T2 Purple will soft cap), 32.5% (a T1 purple soft caps), and the obvious softcap of 45%, and the harder to reach iCap of 59%. You managed to get into that 20% range, but for it to be of real value you'd have to be ready with a stack of T2 Purples, and in some cases there's a good chance you'll have already eaten that small amount to debuffs. It comes down to what works for you, and what kind of teaming experience you'll ultimate have/rely on. From a self-sufficiency aspect though, I'd encourage at least making an alt file and shifting your build towards Res Cap and see what it looks like.

Correct. For anything even-con and up, the power will execute Knockdown, but anything in the (roughly) -3 or lower the power can inflict KB instead, it was a troublesome thing I had to deal with when testing proc frequencies on the chain.

We really have only two 'tests' - pylon tests and AE farm clear times - and they're both limited in terms of what they can predict (and, in the case of AE farm clear times, we don't have a very comprehensive set of examples from Controllers). So it's disingenuous to claim your opinion isn't an opinion. You made some valid points on isolated cases (Pylon and AE farming), but those are, as you pointed out, isolated circumstances. But those are not the only way to test the content in this game, they are merely one off singular tests measuring a specific scale. What I based my information off of was holistic performance from holistic testing of ST, AoE, and general gameplay performance from empirically collected data when I tested Controller Primaries for Proc validation months ago. I also accounted for counter performance tests and validations from other players. Given that it is possible to see wavering variations in performance within certain block ranges, this is why I grouped sets versus ranking them numerically in the last table. No, I didn’t give a disingenuous statement, I used the performance data I had at hand.

What you're saying here, versus what you said previously, I'm not seeing the connection of how you went from one, to the other, and how that piggy backs into what I empathized with Bill Z on, nor Solarverse's original claim, both of which is what I was staying on topic to addressing. To address this specific statement, I ... and truthfully we're speaking your opinion against my own, I don't see what you're saying to the degree at which it threatens the game. There were just this last month two different players in the MM sub thread talking about running and playing "the worst combo possible" (and truthfully there are just naturally bad pairings), just to experience it. In the Blaster sub thread, same things, players looking at the bottom of the most recent "Played to 50" pairings board and selecting the highly uncommon choices and driving them to 50. The initial player got all the way to 50 and came down to the conclusion that, yeah, the combo was pretty bad together and didn't really work out very well, it makes sense no one plays it. The game's mantra at this point is practically "Play what you want, have fun doing it." There's a big difference between an "ability" and an "effect" you can't bunch that together, or blame one for the other. Given that, you might be surprised at how often something does occur, you miss the fact that it did, that it was positive, benefited everyone, and moved on without ever knowing. But(!) lets carry that torch for a second as it has a somewhat amusing anecdotal relevance here. I said earlier: "We are all better off working to collectively develop new content ideas that can be made and built into fruition that work off the existing foundations we have currently..." You're saying there are abilities in this game that lack purpose (broader term). Some cases many players may (sic: do) feel that way. Of course we do, when was the last time anyone got resurrected from an actual Resurrect? It's all Barrier now, or folks just using P2W temps to spot-res themselves (or other players). Heck, my Blaster carries Resuscitator! I can't tell you the last time I saw an Empathy player who took Resurrect, let alone barely the last time I saw an Empath in general. Resurrect is a situational ability that has a one singular purpose, and is otherwise a dead power in your tray and that's very frustrating. This is an ability in the new powerset Electrical Affinity being moved to the live server soon (posting for all to follow along): T7: Defibrillate (Melee (Targeted AoE), Ally Rez, Foe Sleep, -End, -Recovery) Strike a target with a highly-charged jolt of electricity, reviving all nearby allies and draining all nearby foes. Any enemies affected will be drained of some endurance, have their recovery reduced and be put to sleep for a short time. Defibrillate consumes all stacks of Static, and the strength of the offensive component of this power scales with the number of stacks consumed. Allies will always be revived with full health and endurance regardless of the number of Static stacks consumed. Recharge: Long Now that's a pretty cool power, it does perform a huge revive, and it has a great sapping mechanic packed behind a solid Sleep with an enhanceable duration baked into the design of the power set. We're also getting a handful of new IO sets based around Endurance Modification to go along with this set, and we already have several Incarnate abilities wrapped around endurance modification and -recovery/-end effects. I also just recently posted in the Beta Testing thread about that same sets ability called Amp Up, commenting specifically how it felt that many were missing the fact that the ability massively benefits the secondary effects on non-support related characters (ie: Blasters, Melee) by ahem Amping Up their Mez, Debuffs, To-Hit effects. A lot of comments prior to that were about how "useless" it was, but for me personally I ... really can't say there's any one power that I would skip in that new set. That right there is new content designed to enrich our existing ecosystem. New content doesn't have to be just story lines or enemy groups. Have you ever done a blind survey of the players around you? I logged into Oroborous for a hot second and took a survey of the builds. Eight players were standing around including myself. Four of us had the Fighting Pool, and three of those four had Leadership, two others (six total) had some combination of Leadership (ones without Fighting didn't take Maneuvers), and one of those first four was a Fire Farm build with bonus stats stacking F/C to hit 45% specifically. Four players took Combat Jumping, not all of which had Fighting, and three total took Hasten, but only two of us Super Speed. Four players dipped into the Flight pool. Only one of us had Scorpion Shield (me), and the Epics were otherwise diversified. One of the players that had Fighting honestly didn't need it (Super Reflex) so I'm guessing it was purely there for iCap 59%. At least one player was Leadership + Flight, and a few Epics. There's only 18 abilities between Primary/Secondary, and 24 power picks, three of which are forced from an initial pool of five options. If I skip at least one ability each from my Primary/Secondary, that gives me eight total to pick from out of Pools/Epics, and since most folks tend to only grab one travel power, that means only five power pools are an option and one epic. With an average of three powers per pool, there's six to seven choices to be made, good chance to see dual pools show up. I'm not saying we don't see a lot of "might as well grab that good ol' Fighting Pool" but realistically, what else are people going to take, Presence? Before we had IO Sets, the two most common power pools were Leadership and Medicine, with Hasten splashed in a good amount, and Recall Friend because... literally there just wasn't a better common choice. It's not really formulaic, it's convenience, and IO sets make it even more manageable and logical to choose specific ones over others. No one has to, but at least six of their abilities are going to come from that collective, and they can't all be Epic. If that is/was your intention behind [ this ] comment, then it sounds an awful lot more like you're just upset that people are taking the pool choices they have to make and utilizing them to a wider holistic benefit, and that the mean average of that choice is typically Fighting and/or Leadership which you find upsetting for... the fact that it results in... "unstoppable" builds? Which... sounds an awful lot like this is still the response to you:

It 100% addresses the problem. I'm not talking about piling on HP, or giving all the enemies Unstoppable, that's just obnoxious. I'm talking about more diversified enemies with a wider range of powers that target the fact that more players have built up Defenses, have capped Resistances. Lets start getting more -Def and more -Res, lets really need that extra padding a Thermal or Cold brings to the team. I have played content in this game intentionally designed to challenge a high-spec build put together through AE. It was well thought out, manageable, and playable content, but mistakes cost you something, and on a team of 8 set to +4, we still got our butts kicked and some people died (a lot), but it was a victory that mattered at the end! It wasn't the kind of content you could roll your face across the keyboard and laugh about it. Tactics mattered, debuffs mattered, and buffs mattered. So lets change the semantics, if you want: We need more intelligently designed content that appropriately scales to reflect the dynamic change in player playstyle, build technique, and Incarnate performance. We, royal we, the collective of the player base, need to stop trying to reinvent the structure of the game as it has become, and learn to build on the foundation we have. Did you know that in Issue 4 a patch note was written to include a -Res component into Tar Patch because the ability was altered due to performance issues, and they added the debuff to give it more value. In the note they said the recharge was extended to keep the ability from being double stacked because, back then, all anyone had were SO's. Slotting it with 3 level 50 Rech SO's brought it to 46/s. Do you suppose if someone told them that IO's would one day let a player drag that down to 25/s they'd have said "oh, well, then lets go with 120/s base recharge instead of 90"? No, no one knew the dynamic of the game was going to change like that, you had to design in that moment. We, royal we, the collective of the player base, make the active choice to slot with set IO's in a fashion that gives us "unstoppable" builds and perform at a higher level than the content, as it currently stands, equalizes against. The developers of Paragon Studios acknowledged this fact, and had intentions to continue building on top of that foundation with additional content that would appropriately scale to reflect the dynamic change in player playstyle, build technique, and Incarnate performance. And we, as players, would have made the choice to play that content, with those builds. And we, as players, can also, at any time, choose to not play with those builds slotted, and instead revert to basic SO or IO builds, and play the game at its foundational core, at a level that benefited but did not require a dynamic team composition. Plenty of players still solo'd the game at its highest possible solo levels before IO's came down the pipeline, but lets not forget that IO's were in the game for 66% of its lifespan, arguably a bit longer considering Issue 9 was in development long before we saw it hit beta testing. tl;dr There isn't a single player on Homecoming that would be 100% accepting of any mass change to occur to City of Heroes that changes its core dynamic, structure, and design so dramatically that entire builds have to be reconfigured to accommodate the changes due to negative impact, its just not worth the time and effort to make that argument. We are all better off working to collectively develop new content ideas that can be made and built into fruition that work off the existing foundations we have currently, and I thank the Dev team we have currently for striving to find and fix the countless bugs out in the code-wild, and making the truly honest attempt at finding balance across the board for many things so that new content going forward can truly be positive and consistent in its execution versus going backwards and trying to "reinvent the wheel" by aggressively altering the core of the game to suit a singular preference.

If you scaled them holistically, top down and accounting for their proc potential: Illusion Plant Dark Fire Gravity Electric Earth Mind Ice If we scaled into just Single Target performance alone, Gravity would jump up that list to fall under Plant, and Mind somewhere above or below Dark and/or Fire. There is a pretty good selection of damage procs that can be placed in many Controller sets, but Mind and Ice are the two that see the least amount of potential, and between the two Ice is pretty far divided from all of the other primaries both from a damage perspective, and a proc perspective. Earth and Electric are pretty much right in line with each other (when Procs are included, without procs Electric ends up being better just on pet performance alone), and thus end up being close to Fire in potential. Dark and Plant (again because of raw damage, and proc potential) are a bit above all the others, and then Illusion is the top by another wide margin. It'd really break down more like this: Illusion Plant, Dark, Fire Gravity, Electric, Earth Mind, Ice That's all from a tested and number analyzed perspective, not an opinion perspective. *I wanted to add, being a bit quick on the submit button, that I have seen some circumstances where Plant has been pushed with the appropriate secondary to do some things that gives it arguable comparison to Illusion on a damage scale, and that there are a few circumstances where plant might just be a better call than Illusion depending on the secondary it gets paired with.

That's the absurdity of it, the only thing I have slotted in Galvanic are two level 50 Acc IO's. The character tested on is also only level 50 with no unlocked Incarnates (so no Alpha enhancement). This is with two level 50 End Mod IO: And this is that, Amp'd Up: As a side note for the record, these are the adjusted Defibrillate totals at 19 stacks of Static: Did a six-stack drain before I thought to capture the screen shot and it managed about 80% drain. Edit: Side note, no, I can't really explain the variance in the numbers off hand from non-amp to non-amp, and amp to amp, just realized they were a bit oddly different. The previous test was done against Rikti (obviously, in the screen shot) which were... I think 47's, and this test was done against 50 CoT Scientists. Assuming resistances coming into play there.

From a simple mathematics basis, they could, but no there's nothing (in public knowledge as I know) in the game that buffs the buff values of Damage specifically. From a numeric stand point though, that integer value should/could be manipulated no differently than how Power Boost manipulates Status values (or in fact the way the entirety of the rest of Amp Up itself works). To implement it it would probably result in needing to add a new unit into the code base and make sure it doesn't conflict with anything that creates the buff value, and targets the value that abilities like BU interact with (assuming, again, that all of those are using the same $code structure... yeah, anyway, complicated short answer is: no, doesn't knowingly exist, but it could if thy wanted to and we could do a quick test of it (although there's a lot of powers to fact check it works correctly with).

Talking about Amp Up, I'm not saying I particularly am lining up to take this power, but I feel that some of the intention behind this power's utility might be getting missed under one massive misconception that it is designed to drop on another support toon. What if I drop it on a Blaster who has two holds in their attack chain, a stun AoE, and slow fields with -Def on their attacks? What if I drop it on a Energy Melee Tanker who has a stun packed into over half of its attacks? What if they just so happen to be a Bio Armor who uses Absorption-building abilities? What if I use it on my Galvanic Sentinel? No, really, what if? Here is Galvanic with Amp Up juicing its Endurance Modification: Here is without: Within two minutes without Amp Up, G.S. can do this to a spawn entirely on its own: Doing the same test with Amp Up, completed it within 45/s. Then someone will say "Well I can just kill the spawn in that time" Sure, you probably could, but I'd also more likely run in with a static-boosted Defibrillate and hit the AoE -Rec/-End, and let Galvanic quickly finish the job within 5-10/s and that leaves me all the time in the world. Did go about testing the other aspects of the power out of curiosity and it does ramp up effects like Farsight's +ToHit effect, which is nice. I feel like the ability should have a +Dam boosting component though to really round out the effect and warrant it being a T9 power. Not give +Dam, but boost the effect of +Dam granting abilities like Build Up, if that's possible. Have it self-contained to the impacted character's natural abilities being "supercharged." I would love to see that team coordination of an Electric Affinity Amping a Nature user and them popping Overgrowth to turn the team into wild Rage Fueled Berserkers. If a Kin can do it with one power, why can't [we] vicariously? Pre Amp Post Amp Then had my crash-test Corruptor who happened to be Electric Blast go sling some electricity at some Nemesis in the comfort and safety of a Galvanic Discharge. Since the secondary effects were one thing that hadn't necessarily been fully invested in testing, there we go. The KU effect triggered, and also got the boosted end reduction. The fact that it started as Electric was a plus because that too bumped up 7 additional points. I'm actually somewhat curious to how a duo of Elec/Elec Defenders would turn out on a high-scale build.

I had some initial concerns with this as well because, visually, it felt pretty tiny, but the radius lists 25' and that is in line with all the other protection bubbles. I wanted to demonstrate that, and double check something else. Since I'm personally not sure who to point towards this specific request, I'll just page @Jimmy on this one because we need an adjustment to the graphic visual of Faraday Cage. I dropped a thumbtack on the map and set myself exactly on the marker 0', popped Faraday Cage, then moved 25 from that center point. Pointing out that the area of effect exceeds the actual visual animation for the cage. This explains why I felt it was too small after having played all three sets of Force Fields, Sonic, and Traps. There's 2 feet between where the buff stops, and when I'm actually "inside" (half inside, half outside) the Cage electrical swirl. So we're talking a visual difference of 4 total feet in its diameter. We could probably loose a bit of the glow as well to help define "in" and "out" more clearly. I hadn't thought to more specifically verify this when I brought it up last week, so here we are. validation with the attribute window, outside the visual cage: and one to validate it does stop at 26':

Supporting Wavicle on this, if the power were too good, it's not on the pretense that we can click it to get the protection, but in the value of what it's providing. Right now the thing that makes it a "weak point" is in the constant re-application of the ability as the team moves around. We're talking a likely 20-40/s constant re-upping of Faraday, that can get pretty tedious, and also something easy to forget. If any questions were going to get brought up about what would be unfair would exist in what benefits are gained while inside the cage. As it stands currently, Faraday Cage is giving a pretty high blanket coverage to everything but Terrorize (Fear) compared to the other bubble effects that only hit on Hold, Immobilize, and Disorient. Faraday is also giving some additional debuff resistances while in its effects, which is adding to that gravy. I'm personally accepting of it at least sharing Hold and Disorient, as they play into the theme of what a Faraday Cage actually is; I'll even toss in the debuff resists to -End/Recov. The things that I personally find out of place are Immobilize and Knockback effects, and to an extent possible Confuse. Immob and KB are more physical impairments that make less logical sense. I build up my resistance/tolerance in the field, but if something hits me with enough force, it could still blast me out of the cage. Having no Immob protection would also be a disadvantage to the team, something that would have to be considered or built around as well. The player being stuck in the Cage is perfectly fine, but if the team moves on without them, they loose the benefits. But in all of that potential argument, those are all things that can very easily be built around in a basic IO build (not even a fancy-pants expensive one). So... do we force build around it, or just say "heck with it, here"? In my opinion, it probably shouldn't be so blanket covering that only Fear is the hole. I'd argue that Confuse and Knockback should be stripped out as well so that the player has to make conscious decisions about their cast-actions. Could you imagine getting confused and then dropping a Faraday Cage for the enemy benefit of four minutes?! I'll say this now though, if Faraday Cage stays as-is, then it would be a call to balance Dispersion Bubble, Sonic Dispersion, and Force Field Generator to be more inclusive/in-line with the respective sets. And the four minute timer on Faraday Cage is fine.

Scrappers already have Demon Summoning, it's called "Invite more Scrappers to the team."

Not one I intentionally seek out, I generally just play whatever background music I'm in the mood for, but this one is pretty solid considering the anime it was set with:

I have another one for you that I just stumbled across today. I popped into Steel Canyon to head over to Positron thinking about starting a Posi 1 & 2 when I saw a building on fire. Being Ice, I was like "Eh, why not." Put the building out, got my Volunteer badge, and then noticed this strange little Jaeger named Helden sitting right next to the building, and I was like "Wut?!" I talk to the little bugger and he tells me this crazy Nemesis plot, and I'm like, "Dude, I gotta tell Positron about this!" Of course I'm like "Let's do this at +4/8, right? Totally." First mission, bit hectic, decide to just knock out the core tasks and GTFO, amirite? Get into the next mission and it's filled with Nemesis Automatons. I'm like "..." I zip through, find the task, activate a computer, and an alarm raises. No big, I'm stealth, yeah? Nope. Ambush, ambush, ambush, they don't stop! They're just rolling down the hallways like a TRAIN for miles. I'm dead. Deader than dead. But I can't complete the mission until the timer expires, and I reactivate the machine! I Hit the med-porter and come back in, and they come after me! They're at the door like, "Hey, have you found Statesman?!" I drop a Blizzard, toss some Judgement, and the Vengeance lights up like a Star Wars Christmas Special, the horror! I died, again. What was I thinking?! It's the SSA2 Episode 5 with the contact HeldenJaeger who sits in the Northeast corner of Steel Canyon. Arc is only a few missions long, and the last one has a scaled-difficulty final ending based on whether you decide to collect some extra abilities. Nothing quite like giving 60 Nemesis mobs 8 stacks of Vengeance.

Sees link, knows it's going to link to "Thunder Struck" but clicks anyway. Gets lost in a Youtube void for 20 35 38 minutes resulting in the re-discovery of Irish Bagpipers who cover Rock songs. Obscurity is more like starting with a classic song from AC/DC, and ending up on something massively disconnected like this, and that's not even where the rabbit hole ended.

Just because it wasn't all specific to just Defibrillate, I'll cross-link to it here, but messed around with Discharge through Galvanic Sentinel and not sold on it being 100% in the best place The overshadowing effects of Defibrillate made it easy to overlook before, but taking a closer inspection of what it was doing has me raising a few red flags. Just on its own merits alone it's able to lock down an even-con enemy pretty effectively from attacking so long as the mob doesn't run outside of Galvanic Sentinel's reach. Something to consider when the AI's response is either panic, or "wait it out," the later of which could be abused. Defibrillate's -End wouldn't even really be a major concern for whether that'd matter either, there's enough other powers in the game that the utility of sapping the enemy endurance low enough could be consumed and locked down with Discharge's effect.

@Bopper, given a comment made by Number Six, did you double check any testing with LoS in the configuration? Went back with the new client update and checked into some pre-standing issues, as Tex posted, the endurance reduction has shot through the roof now. Targetted a patch of 41 Nemesis with an 18 Stacked Defib and produced this return: Of course it floored them. They were also effectively knocked out of combat for four minutes. Also, stack cool down should probably be revisited. I tabbed away to start this post and tabbed back, activated Defib thinking I'd be cleared and realized it still consumed three stacks and it was after a full three minutes between. Of which, this is the Defib values I returned on the same spawn: I'd say we probably put a decimal in the wrong place. This would make a lot more sense if it were meant to be 50.99~ and not 5099~, which would translate the previous value of 19500 down to 195, still end-bar reducing, but not nearly as extreme. It would pair down the effect of Defib substantially into a "normal" range. With even a few stacks it'd clear out some end, but not all of it, it'd take the time-investment to get more. Now with no stacks, even lower, and the Nem Units snapped back to attention within just 20/s: Also, what's the debuff duration of the -Recovery effect from Defib currently? It seemed like ~5/s? With zero stacks, Defib with Galvanic out, the Nem Units sat for four minutes before finally recovering a small blip of endurance, at which point they finally decided to actually run compared to just sitting there (not asleep, just sitting there). Discharge I know is listed as a 10/s -Recovery for 50%, but Discharge alone is keeping an even-con enemy locked down. The AI seems to be giving two very different approaches to responding to a lack of endurance. Indifference, or complete panic, and it hasn't been consistent. I also tested against even-con 50 CoT Scientists who just sat there ... going on five minutes now, no endurance. Scientists after eight minutes: I let Galvanic fade and gave the Scientists a chance to recoup some end so they could fire off an attack or two, get engaged, get some blue, and then re-summoned Galvanic back, and Discharge had them shut back down within a matter of three hits. Is the -Recovery in Discharge stacking? Should it? I would presume it shouldn't be, but it seems like it might be. Dug up some monkeys to keep testing on different targets: I caught this when Galvanic dispersed at the end of its duration: This popped quite often that the -3% End was putting the Rikti Monkey into the negative. And this I caught in blips where it'd show -.78% for a fraction of a second in the analyzer, and then jump back to -1.55% Also saw similar oddities with the Regen rate: And at dispersion of the Sentinel: I'd also see just -.1% (-.16) on occasion. If the Monkey baseline is 1%, and the -Recovery is 50%, and I'm not a mathematician, far from it, but to me not one of those screen clips makes sense. Is the game translating a sub-1% value as null, or are the values doubling backwards and resulting in a rounded null value? Cause it's showing a base value of .6% after Discharge, and -.78% as the debuff, shouldn't it be 1% base still with a debuff of -.5%? Mag check on the Monkeys was Mag 3, duration on a 13 stack Static ended up being roughly 90-105/s. Hitting a full 20 stacks of Static bumped up to ~3:00. Also, about the last thing anyone every expects to see happen to a Pylon, first hit took it down to about 800 End, every follow up Defib with at least 6 stacks of Static dropped it to 0: Last thing I went back to test was Jousting and can confirm that it is working both with my character moving into a static target, the target moving with me static, and with both of us moving. All occurrences activated around the target as far as the Debuff and Sleep were concerned. There wasn't anyone on Test I could drag over to try a death/rez with, leave that more in-depth analysis to Bopper and friends 🙂