Sir Myshkin

If the damage balance (buff) manages to eventually make its way to the live server, you'll be in for a big surprise in performance. We're going to need a soloist support group for Crimson Prototype...

To quote myself from earlier: Ice Armor was my #2 of top 3 most likely choices, makes, can almost match SR's 33% (technically can exceed it potentially for 15/s at a shot on SO's with stacked Energy Absorption). Likely scenario is leading with Icy Bastion in order to setup Energy Absorption cycles and then leaving it as a panic button. This is the flat opposite in terms of Resistances and Defense (trading 35% S/L Resists for 30% S/L Def). Less regen to work with, but more max HP potential (about 400 more, but ~18% regen versus 43% on WP outside of Icy Bastion). Enemy damage types are really important in this scenario as anything Fire is going to be a free shot on Ice Armor at the SO level. The ability to buff Smashing or Lethal defense is also going to be a lot more important because it can now be the difference of completely shutting off that damage type from being an issue. This thing is going to want to be in a group of 10 or more to really hit its stride, but it'll be dangerous. As always, for your consideration:

heh, Nice. Submitting formal request for name change of Moonbeam Moonboom.

When you have an AoE effect like this, every target inside the effective area will get its own Hit Check for when the ability (or a proc) goes off. The more mobs in a field, the more likely you are to see a proc go off. In my test experiences usually 4-5 in a spawn will give 1 opportunity of a proc out of the group, and in 10+ usually 2-3 depending on the probability of the procs themselves and whether we're talking cone, (PB)AoE, or patch effect (each a little different algorithm). Obviously more physical procs in the power, more dice rolls for trigger effects. You will almost never see every mob get hit. Not saying it can't happen, but it is highly unlikely you'll successfully roll a hit on all mobs in a spawn. I hadn't honestly considered it, but the ability of there being two different mechanics going on (oil slick itself, and then the ignition form) entails two different events sourcing from the same ability. This means one part (the slick itself) is actively responsible for a proc call, and then the fire is responsible for the other. I haven't taken the time yet to devote my own supportive test with the ToLG... I feel like there was a reason I'm forgetting for why I didn't, but it's obvious that it's functioning now (as we've come to discover a few other things have in fact changed somewhere under the hood in the last few months for other patch-based powers). It wouldn't be abnormal to get two events providing feedback at the same time. The Oil Slick might be on fire, but it's still there, so it's not unreasonable that you'd be seeing two proc opportunities (which is actually a really good thing).

That point of discussion is open floor to anyone as they choose to respond to it. I have a close friend who spent 75% of his active time playing City of Heroes pre-sunset purely solo. He'd roll a new character and work through contacts exclusively alone, and only team periodically for things like the Task Force badges or difficult AV's (pre IO's). It wasn't that he was adverse to people and teaming, he just really enjoyed digging through the lore of the game and taking his time to experience it all.

Why would you average them in the first place? They're going to reflect two different themes. Going from a set specifically chosen to be as unbiased and non-impacting as possible, to a set that is designed around maximizing mitigation tools in multitudes. Dark Armor gives the "what happens when the secondary gets involved" scenario. We don't need an average performing set, we already have that baseline. We have a core response value for what each Attack Set fundamentally performs at both in an SO and IO environment. No matter what set gets picked, it's going to change the dynamic of that initial test because the metrics of the secondary are going to be scaling in different directions. Your only linchpin for using Electric Armor is in that it provides endurance tools, and at the core of it the only one key aspect that it would grant is that it also has a Damage Aura, which is the only altering unique aspect compared to Willpower. Given that I believe the majority of what damage is done by the included minions is S/L, we're not looking at changing a significant avenue by going "full Resistance" here, given we started at what was primarily resistance driven mitigation to begin with. If the intent and purpose of any further testing is regulated around the idea of finding the curve, then there needs to be more significant variation from the baseline to build that curve. We can just as easily run Dark Armor without OG or CoF (typically most only do one or the other, never both) and end up with the same performance as Electric Armor sans endurance tools. But, again, I still stand by the fact that, in order to get the raw accuracy of end cost in the primaries, it's in a set that doesn't have an inherent tool for it, and if a test is going to be performed then it should maximize utility and provide multiple answers as possible, which Dark Armor does. Raw Cost (can run everything but OG/CoF and try to minimize the need for Dark Regen), and Kit Mitigation (OG/CoF), while also giving access to a Damage Aura. It's the extreme end of the curve. Ultimately, not my final say, and if I'm interpreting @Galaxy Brain's intentions on these tests wrong, then so be it, but as I've understood these tests are primarily about the performance attributes of the Attack Sets--which has been established--and is now progressing into the impact of enhanced tool kits in the armors and how they alter the performance of the Attack Sets. One of the key driving factors in all of the tests was how any one set was able to mitigate/control the spawns inherently, and the armor sets that impact mitigation and control the most are Bio Armor, Ice Armor, and Dark Armor. An honorable mention to Radiation Armor for double AoE access, damage as a form of mitigation. A true full-encompassing value of every sets impact on the primary is the only definitive measure for showing how each one alters the game play of each Attack Set, but that's a truck-load of testing. I wouldn't say repeating close-variant tests is worthwhile if we can easily fill in the expected gaps between sets. Rolling a test character takes a considerable amount of time, especially 20 times. I'd rather test one build for two or three things than one build for one thing, and then another build (very much just like the other one minus one thing) for another. Don't get me wrong Shell, I get what you're driving towards and agree in the long-term the information would be useful, I just don't agree that, in the short term side of this, that Electric Armor is going to provide a worthwhile data point when just compared to Willpower. There's just not enough variance there beyond the additional damage aura, which we know will improve times for all sets, as an obvious factor. It really does come down to who does the final tests, of course. Being one who's done a few throws at tests here (and in general towards a ton of other stuff), I'd sooner make the leap towards what provides the greatest metric return when only a few points can be evaluated immediately. Small note on this: Energy Aura not only provides +Recharge, it also provides compensating +End, and the highest SO based values for Defense. That set is going to show an abnormal curve on SO's no matter which way you look at it. Not as much as Bio Armor, I'd reckon, but that doesn't mean that there's a problem with the attack set, but simply where Energy Aura sits on the curve from "better" to "worst" in the performance impact. Edit to add, cause I realized I didn't complete my thought here: Each set is going to show a variance difference off the base line depending on how uniquely it benefits the attack set paired with it. This is why Bio Armor is such an extreme case. The fact that it has an easily compensated offset to gain an offensive boost and a -Res component into its tool kit means pretty much every single set paired with it is going to perform considerably better than versus any other set. That's not an imbalance on attack sets, but a uniquely attributable side effect to Bio Armor's Offensive Mode. And that in itself is a whole different pile of mess. Being that, I'm not sure what you're getting at with your statement when it comes to the Armors themselves, as attack set balance is not one-in-the-same with armor balance.

The Experience I went digging, I do a lot of sleuthing about on the nitty gritty of the game these days, looking for a small bit of information on a specific Task Force the other night that I found myself soloing simply for the heck of it. By the other end of it I came up pretty empty handed both in regards to that Task Force, and just the general fact that there was strangely a lack of discussion around the idea of soloing it. Hoped back onto the forums from beyond Google to see if there were ever any threads with open discussion about soloing content, thoughts, experiences, just anything in general in the last few months. Not a thing specifically designated to that purpose. So I figured, why not open that floor up and see what the thoughts are out there? I recently took on the challenge of building a Titan Weapon/Regeneration Scrapper with the explicit purpose of putting it through as much challenging content as I could, with as much solo as I find the time to do. The game was quiet, so I decided I'd try and take a peak around Khallisti Wharf for the first time ever, and also take a swing at the Task Force (Market Crash) while I was around. I hadn't actually taken a tour through it yet, and thought it'd be fun to try and run something brand new. There's relatively no direct-link resource for that TF, so it was a bit of a blind-run (not a big deal, really), until the end with the last AV (Crimson Prototype). That thing smoked me within 15 seconds and I was, truly and honestly, baffled. I hosp'd and took another swing, got it about 1/5 down before it happened again... just flat-lined out of no where. Que growing rage. For an AV, the Crimson Prototype is kind of annoying, but in a solo circumstance I was finding him, on that build, irritatingly difficult and it wasn't until another death, and really looking at the combat log that I realized it causes -MaxHP. I knew I had a ton of effective debuffs stacking on me, but not a lot of time to really stop and question them individually in my fight to kill that thing, and stay alive at the same time. There's also the fun little fact that whenever it manages to get a hold of, or summon a Force Field Generator, that tiny little drone makes the CP effectively untouchable. Its debuffs are what killed it for me on a Regen, though. I could cycle a lot of +Def and +Res, and hold up for a considerable amount of time without question, but at the end of it all Regeneration is one of my key elements, and that guy was stripping me down 100's of HP at a shot to the point where I was getting dropped by half, making those meager 150-200 damage attacks critical me. In the end I had to fold and give up the TF. It didn't matter if my Regen ridiculously high, it was chopping my hit points right out from under me. In the end, I might not have made the attempt if I'd come across a more definitive "btw, watch out for this..." I'll possibly revisit it down the road once I have the last few sets catalyzed in my build, and the Incarnates at least all T3 (versus only having Alpha and T1 Judgement). The Call to Action! That being said, I wanted to call out to others whose quest is to solo the content of our great city on their thoughts, tips, tricks, or stories they've experienced that might weigh in on the idea for others. What lessons did you learn, or what event happened that no other soul got to witness but you, alone in that dark cavern beneath Oranbega? I wanted to hear from others, to share those memories into something constructive for others, if anyone's interested. What's your Solo: Best Experience Favorite Content Task Force Tips AV Challenges GM Takedowns Bang-for-Buck Arcs Merit-Making Side-Runs Soul Crushing Defeats World Breaking Wins Solo Questions Advanced Warnings Overall Tricks If enough people dive in and there's a good flow of info, I may even go back and edit it together into an archive/table of contents.

The very specific reasons you've pointed out here are the very reasons I suggested Dark Armor as a polar opposite to Willpower. It is an endurance heavy set, it requires consideration to use at the SO level, but it is not unusable, and you will not be consistently running every toggle. It's situational awareness. The very fact that a player may get slowed down by endurance use, in my opinion, is a necessary metric in evaluating the long-con of this test. The fact that we can create net-neutral builds with IO's washes out most people's endurance woes, but if anyone is really going to show the base line of performance for the attack sets, their damage performance is just as relevant as the endurance performance. How much does their physical cost actually put a toll on the set, and is it fairly balanced? The additional mitigation tools in Dark also dramatically change the dynamic, which is again super relevant here. Oppressive Gloom, if left on, functionally shuts off the ability to herd that so many of us executed. It would have to be cycled off and on, taking time out of the run to execute the toggle. Cloak of Fear is the same way, yes it has an abysmal accuracy, but we're only challenged against even-con foes so 1-2 Acc SO's will be enough to just barely balance out against those minions (the only thing we'd be effecting anyway). Willpower was very-much a net-neutral set, but it's the only one so plainly unbiased. Just like as mentioned, things in the other sets shift performance in different direction. Super Reflexes gives Quickness, impacts endurance imbalance, but it also lacks a heal, and on SO's for a Scrapper it'll barely breach 30% Defense without CJ, Weave, Maneuvers (which only CJ was allowed on the SO test). Ran the build quick, if I three-slot every single defense power--including CJ--I get 33.3% positional, and with Maneuvers/Weave 42.7% (close enough to Soft Cap). Willpower at least had resistances to deal with the primarily s/l of the test, and a significant regeneration boost. If you add those additional toggles into the mix you're now encroaching right back on the argument against Dark Armor (end heavy with no counter balance) except in a worse scenario because SR has no self-heal. I don't feel that SR is going to play-out (when we restrict its support tools) in a positive way. Ninjitsu would be a better choice if playing a low-rent version of a defense sets abilities is the desired goal. Ninjitsu will net the same defense values as SR, but at least have a self-heal to regulate damage with, and a situational safety tool (Blinding Powder) it could use a few times in the run. Invulnerability will just play out as another Willpower Run. If changing the dynamic, but in a small way is the chaser, then do Energy Armor as it has +Rech, additional +Heal, and +End management, a threat-generating toggle, and probably the highest level of defense possible on SO's without Weave/Maneuvers. But I still stand by this being the most reasonable next step:

Your single target attacks are what trigger the damage spread. I used to play with Proton Sweep as well wanting that extra bit of cone-reach, but it just doesn't end up performing as well as we'd want it to, for the speed it works at. I pulled Sweep out of my Rad/DA build and also scrapped Contaminated Strike so that I'm only running Radioactive Smash, Radiation Siphon, Devastating Blow, and Atom Smasher (of course Irradiated Ground, but that doesn't really count as an 'attack'). Rad-Smash recycles so fast that it's always up right after any other attack so I can easily cycle it around. Siphon has a dual use of either giving contamination, or healing by consuming it, and I just kind of swing and let it do its own thing and the trickle-effects take care of the rest. Devastating Blow is there for Boss level stuff, but I do try and make sure I've hit it with Rad-Smash or Siphon first to try and get that contamination onboard so when DB hits, there's spread. Generally, however, Atom Smasher sets up every mob pretty well so just cycling attack through sees a ton of contamination spreading.

Yeah, it is missing. Possible I deleted it unknowingly when I merged the categories. The page won’t load the edit format on mobile so I’ll fix it later this evening when I’m home and update this post when it’s fixed. Thanks for letting me know! Took 25 minutes to get the page script to stop failing when I tried to edit it, that was weird, but it's fixed now. Fire Blast is back on the Ranged list.

I kind of agree here that its conditioning on SOs and IOs is something for consideration here. If the testing that Galaxy Brain is considering follow-up with is for SO and IO base all over again, then demonstrating what an End-Heavy set causes has merits. It might suck, but the point it is to see what impact is causes in performance. I think my vote would stay on Dark Armor, or also look at the potential of Ice Armor or Radiation Armor. They're all kind of on that polar-opposite scale. Ice would give access to a toggle damage aura, but also a mitigation aura with Chilling Embrace, and also an in-set endurance correction tool. Radiation Armor would give access to two burst AoE's that'd be pretty significant too, I'd think.

It's right there in the center of all that fire damage. "You blast Lattice for 63.7 points of bonus Energy Damage!" It'd be a lot more apparent if you made a damage tab with purely just "Combat and Pet General," and "Damage Inflicted, Pet Damage Inflicted" and nothing else in the tab. Go out, drop Oil Slick, and watch. You can light it too if you want, just to see it do both, but the procs will cycle through at the beginning, and then at ~10/s intervals after until the Slick expires.

At initial drop of Oil Slick, before even igniting: At 10/s mark: Both executed just now on the Live Servers. Oil Slick slotted with Positron's Blast Proc and Touch of Lady Grey Proc. And once more for good measure: Looks to be working.

Just to catch this (somewhat buried, where y'all been on this?!) thread up to speed on the topic: For those interested and still active over on these MM sub forums, hit up the submittable form with your Pylon Run(s) info so we can get the data collected into one source pile.

After some consideration, and a few folks bringing up the idea of a consolidated Pylon Run collection, I put together a submission form through Google's Form for folks to dump their run times into. The form itself will run through the standard qualifiers (AT, Powersets, etc) and give a place to submit the text data (for stacked archiving), a place to submit time for cumulative collection, and also time for AT specific so we can see each scaled out. I figured I'd make a direct topic about it for those that don't typically check that thread on a regular basis to request everyone who has submitted run times go back and submit them to the form so they can be properly tracked going forward. There's 21 pages of content at this point so doing it myself is beyond a reasonable task and is going to require consistent use going forward to be relevant. The form is found here. The results page can be found here. I've put both in my signature going forward so that they can be easily found throughout the forum as I go about my regular random postage. I'm not in any way, shape, or form looking for this to replace the Pylon Thread itself, and do not want it do that. The request was simply made multiple times for some kind of solution to the issue of allocated results, and this is currently the best, simplest way to aggregate those results as a community. The form itself also doesn't really require any maintenance and is self-graphing. If there's every any significant alteration or adjustment (ie: new powerset), adding that information is super easy and doesn't impact the standing results data in any way. Please continue to also utilize and post in the Pylon Thread, but for posterity I encourage dropping those times in this form as well. I will reach out to the original creator of that thread but I doubt they'll respond (haven't logged in since July) to see about having it added to the first post. Any thoughts, questions, or otherwise about the form please speak up, it's still early enough in its creation to be pliable and issues corrected if there are any. And if anyone wants to volunteer going through some (or all) of the thread to pull the data out and submit it to the form, let me know so we can coordinate that task more effectively (as in avoid duplicate work).

I posted a practical testing update a bit up the page going off the primary influence build. Solo is an interesting point just due to tactics involved and play style. Just running amock it was a bit rough because you have to really leverage the fast recharge to cycle in the stuff like Force of Nature to get those capped resistance bonuses, or the pool abilities that give you the spiked defense. There's a ton of tricks in the bag though, and in a light-to-full team scenario that high-yield recharge is going to let you focus on just dishing out explosive damage with fast-cycling BU/Aim. Survival changes a lot with these though when you move off the Blaster version into the Sentinel or Defender variants that can have (as close to perma as possible) T9's, or a lot of fancy support from their primary on the Defender versions. A Storm/Nrg Defender can get away with a TON of insanity.

Thanks for catching that. It is now fixed. Additional note for all: I went through and did a little house-keeping on the form for order of the power selections so they'd flow a bit better between correlating AT's as best possible. I also altered Primary/Secondary duplication so that all "Melee Attack, Melee Armor," and "Support" sets are in a singular category alone with the corresponding AT's instead of separated by Primary & Secondary exclusively. That change shifted the Defender AT from being alone, and reduced redundancy of Attack/Armor being in both Primary and Secondary. Since there wasn't any data in impacted categories, no data is lost or erroneously shifted because of this. I also shifted from radial grids to checkbox grids because the radials could not be un-clicked which forces a reload of the form if something is done in error, where a checkbox fixes that issue. Edit: Went through and added a bunch of my own times along with the few others that got submitted (thanks to those already on the ball!) to get some reflective diversity in the graphs. Already shows some interesting stuff, and it's stacking the entries themselves in a nice clean way that's easy to scroll through at the end of the response page. I also added links to both in my sig for any that need to find them quickly and see my posts.

Shield Defense or Dark Armor would probably be your extreme opposite, although for all that DA is on a defensive aspect, its nature would prevent herding unless toggling OG or CoF off and on a lot. It definitely changes the dynamic of the test though.

... I may possible have a solution for this tracking idea, we'll see. I'm looking into an option that would need community support (ie, people submitting their runs), but might be able to provide a central data point that's easy to parse. I'll edit this with further info once I've got it figured out. Okay, I've looked into a submission option for aggregating these results... I present: Pylon Test Run Submission Open to thoughts and suggestions, please go nuts and submit data to it. Towards the end is a simple text-field submission for inputting the same style of data we've all just posted here so that the individual runs can be parsed into a single log file, but I included all the other fun info so we can see all the data collectively. I also wanted to gather general feedback on the form itself as it should be functional on a mobile platform as well. I looked at a lot of different form-submission alternatives on what could be combined or what data could be linked to an individual submission and the google-based one was the best choice but still doesn't allow for ranking everything in one unit to a data-set. The more options/choices I put into the drop downs or grid boxes/radials the more laggy the system gets on trying to deal with all the data as each field gets created. I could technically add in a pairing option per-AT too, but it started to get a bit weedy at that point. Just having a general layout of the info was interesting enough, and this format allows me to grab the entire document and parse it into one spreadsheet if I wanted. Well, technically Google is parsing it into a single document as-is, but separating the individual categories when I can/will be able to go back later on and merge them into a singular one if wanted. The other, most important of all, plus of the google form is that once you submit you can see the tally of everything and all submitted text options (what everyone ultimately wanted) in one spot. Click here to see cumulative current data. I've added in a few things just to see how it displayed the info, now the rest is just up to everyone else submitting their data into this form. The graphs that display are auto-generated by google forms, haven't found a way to force-display a few of them differently.

Bit late to this comment party, but if you haven't gotten around to it yet, roll that Ice/Stone. It's the absolute only Tank I've ever rolled*, or will roll, and when they're properly built, they don't die. Ever. *In a non-test setting. I've never been in a situation where enough damage has hit me that I can't pop Hibernate, heal to full, exit Hibernate, and not have it back up and ready before I'd be in any sense of danger again. The beauty of it is that you keep your aggro while Hibernate runs, which means you're just an invulnerable block for 30/s. The most powerful Tank is the untouchable Tank. If you build up your defense values to 45% pre-Energy Absorption, then EA ends up pushing you into iCap territory and gives you an incredible buffer for debuff. Stack in the KB/KD heavy aspects of Stone and you can rampage without fear and be a walking aggro magnet that constantly floors enemies around you. Not only are you debuffing speed and damage, but you're stripping the enemies ability to even attack. It's particularly amusing when you get an over-aggro scenario like an ambush or an accidental pull by an overzealous team mate. The AoE and Chilling Embrace do interesting things with excess mobs and how it takes you to the aggro cap, but the powers themselves keep hitting stuff around you, which recycles aggro. "It's my turn to hit the guy!" "No, really, it's my turn, take a walk." "But he just stabbed me with an Icicle, it is clearly my turn to take a whack at him!" "Can't you see there's clearly a line to try and kill this guy right now?!" And just cause I have it laying around: For Psi heavy mobs, or Incarnate content, flip on Maneuvers and CJ and chew an occasional T2 Purple to hit all positional soft caps (to cover Toxic and Psi holes). Having the ability to spike up to full health unimpeded every 40/s pretty much makes up for not having capped resistances. Edit: Force of Will is for Mighty Leap, it provides both travel and an additional--free--AoE KD. Forgot that different Mid's variants will open that incorrectly.

Story: Ran with a team doing DA Repeatables last night and kept experiencing something that I seem to only ever run into with high-recharge TW based toons where abilities never seem to go off quite right. I can que it up, but the server kind of just hangs on it for a tick or two before going "Oh, right, yeah..." So there I was, bolting into a spawn of Banished Pantheon full of Bosses, Shadow Meld activated on the way in and I landed Arc of Destruction and Whirling Blades before the alpha started sinking deeper and I qued up Dull Pain as it had just popped as I ran in. And I sat there going "???" and I died. Now, I'm all for accepting a death because I screwed up, or I wasn't paying attention, but when the server denies me an activation, that sucks.

Sometimes the AI in this game is frustrating to no ends. I went through and rebuilt into IO's, started running through the mission, Times between 4:30-5:00, kept forgetting to even watch for Power Siphon to recharge, the more I kept running the mission to work out the kinks of misclicking from muscle memory of different power alignments, the more frustrating the runs became because the AI started to massively work against me. I clocked a run at 6:00 just because every single time I'd hop back to toss Repulsing Torrent, half the mob would jump up to the rafters, land, and then RUN in every which direction, and it kept happening into the next mission, and the next. I chased one guy around that back central circle, the little headless boss just wouldn't stop. I'd knock it down, it'd get up and keep running away from me, and of course each attack plants me for a second, so I have to catch up and strike again... UGH. From a damage stand point, it wasn't a lack there. Whenever I could get "three"* groups together, it only took me three bursts and two torrents to knock out everything plus a couple of extra ST hits on the bosses. From an AI standpoint, I couldn't break the abnormality of them running on me. *Inconsistent spawn sizes, tried to keep within 16 per grouping so carried over on occasion to the next. It's not improbable that the act of merging so many spawns together without a better form of taunt could've contributed to some of the erratic behavior I ended up experiencing. With that being the case it would make it physically impossible for me to ramp through the mission fast enough to round out 4:00 because of an inability to collect faster without the mobs wigging out. From a numbers stand point, if the spawns just fell on top of it, KM could clear every boss in that map >3:00, but trying to collect up the surrounding mobs and keep them in a Burst field killed the speed of it all. /em shrug Looks like it isn't gonna happen.

It's probably a database error between different Mid's versions that happens with those using Reborn 2.6 (or newer). If you look at the accompanied text version of the build you can probably piece what's missing into your version and save it.

You might be interested in this: I posted an Energy/Atomic build in there too on Oct 27th. If you want full-tilt recharge, that topic will cover you 😁

I still say KM has a practical curve that's learned from experience out in the wild. I think I still have the SO 50 on Beta, I might flip it into an IO build in the next day or two and see. We definitely have different tactics when it came to KM as seen in the SO approach. Just number crunching, KM should be able to clear the map in 3:45-4:15 if ST is exclusively focused on Bosses and two to three spawns are collected at a time with AoE (Burst/Torrent) taking care of everything else. And yes, I'm thinking of that process as dragging Lieuts into the next spawn or two each time. Under just a 70% saturation Power Siphon, Burst and Torrent will clear any basic level 50 minion (~450 damage, only need 430).